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Racist Propaganda at its Worst! (nm)

Posted By: Shameful on 2008-09-21
In Reply to: I Invented the Internet (Ep. 1 - Audacity) see msg - A must see!!!

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Why do you say its racist propaganda
I just watched the video and there is nothing racist or of any propaganda. Whoever made the video took actual clips of Obama talking and talked about Obama's ideologies and mentors. Nothing racist involved. Is it your just upset because the truth about Obama is coming out and you dont want anyone to know what he is like?
If they want to believe the worst, let them.
Toxic, just toxic.
bush the worst

Maybe not the worst in US history...
US Grant had lots of problems with the whole Teapot Dome scandal brought on by his best friends - great General, poor President. The list goes on and I'm sure one day Bush will be added to it, but I'm not sure he deserves the title of Worst.
ACK! My worst nightmare!
That was just mean, LOL.
Even the worst of ideas

and plans that don't and won't work can be presented eloquently and there certainly will be people dumb enough to believe that those ideas and plan will actually work.  This is all a bunch of fluff to get elected.  Obama does give hope....it is called FALSE HOPE! 


NOBAMA!!!!


This is washington at its worst
What an absolutely lying piece of garbage this guy is. The dems want to pass all their little pork projects at the tax payers expense. He certainly is not going to be paying any in taxes for this...WE ARE!!! I'm sick of crooked politicians getting up saying... the American people don't care. The American people want this or don't want that, when it's a blatant lie. News flash...he doesn't care about the American people. He should be among the top to be thrown out of DC. Talk about the ol BP rising today.
WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER.

Racist? You calling me racist? sm

I voted for Alan Keyes.  He be blacker than Obama any day.


I despise Obama not because he is called African American by the MSM but because he is a liar parading around in sheep's clothing.  He says one thing to one group, contradicts himself on the same subject to another, and plays idiotic Americans like a violin.


Obama's parentage does not qualify him to be called black anymore than his foreign birth qualifies him to called an American.  To say people oppose him are racist because of his skin color is preposterous when he is neither black nor African American.


 


VOTE FOR BUSH--As the worst!!!
338 OF 415 HISTORIANS SAY G.W.B.

IS THE FAILING AS A PRESIDENT- DO YOU AGREE?*

An overwhelming 338 of 415 historians polled by George Mason University
said Friday that George W. Bush is failing as a president. And fifty of
them rated Bush as the worst president ever, ranking him above (below?)
any other past president - even those you've never heard of who were
also really awful. Why do these misguided, obviously-socialist,
ivy-smoking and - of course -American-hating intellectuals feel that Bush isn't
doing his best?

Well, they look at the record ...

# He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend
and foe alike in the process;
# He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive
military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;
# He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and
state;
# He has repeatedly misled, to use a kind word, the American people
on affairs domestic and foreign;
# He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and
foreign (Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);
# He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of
pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;
# He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
# He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems,
corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.

Quite an indictment. Perhaps it is too early to evaluate a president -
or is it?


The Worst President in History? sm

The Worst President in History?


One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush






George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

From time to time, after hours, I kick back with my colleagues at Princeton to argue idly about which president really was the worst of them all. For years, these perennial debates have largely focused on the same handful of chief executives whom national polls of historians, from across the ideological and political spectrum, routinely cite as the bottom of the presidential barrel. Was the lousiest James Buchanan, who, confronted with Southern secession in 1860, dithered to a degree that, as his most recent biographer has said, probably amounted to disloyalty -- and who handed to his successor, Abraham Lincoln, a nation already torn asunder? Was it Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, who actively sided with former Confederates and undermined Reconstruction? What about the amiably incompetent Warren G. Harding, whose administration was fabulously corrupt? Or, though he has his defenders, Herbert Hoover, who tried some reforms but remained imprisoned in his own outmoded individualist ethic and collapsed under the weight of the stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression's onset? The younger historians always put in a word for Richard M. Nixon, the only American president forced to resign from office.


Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a failure. Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's pursuit of disastrous policies. In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton -- a category in which Bush is the only contestant.


The lopsided decision of historians should give everyone pause. Contrary to popular stereotypes, historians are generally a cautious bunch. We assess the past from widely divergent points of view and are deeply concerned about being viewed as fair and accurate by our colleagues. When we make historical judgments, we are acting not as voters or even pundits, but as scholars who must evaluate all the evidence, good, bad or indifferent. Separate surveys, conducted by those perceived as conservatives as well as liberals, show remarkable unanimity about who the best and worst presidents have been.


Historians do tend, as a group, to be far more liberal than the citizenry as a whole -- a fact the president's admirers have seized on to dismiss the poll results as transparently biased. One pro-Bush historian said the survey revealed more about the current crop of history professors than about Bush or about Bush's eventual standing. But if historians were simply motivated by a strong collective liberal bias, they might be expected to call Bush the worst president since his father, or Ronald Reagan, or Nixon. Instead, more than half of those polled -- and nearly three-fourths of those who gave Bush a negative rating -- reached back before Nixon to find a president they considered as miserable as Bush. The presidents most commonly linked with Bush included Hoover, Andrew Johnson and Buchanan. Twelve percent of the historians polled -- nearly as many as those who rated Bush a success -- flatly called Bush the worst president in American history. And these figures were gathered before the debacles over Hurricane Katrina, Bush's role in the Valerie Plame leak affair and the deterioration of the situation in Iraq. Were the historians polled today, that figure would certainly be higher.


Even worse for the president, the general public, having once given Bush the highest approval ratings ever recorded, now appears to be coming around to the dismal view held by most historians. To be sure, the president retains a considerable base of supporters who believe in and adore him, and who reject all criticism with a mixture of disbelief and fierce contempt -- about one-third of the electorate. (When the columnist Richard Reeves publicized the historians' poll last year and suggested it might have merit, he drew thousands of abusive replies that called him an idiot and that praised Bush as, in one writer's words, a Christian who actually acts on his deeply held beliefs.) Yet the ranks of the true believers have thinned dramatically. A majority of voters in forty-three states now disapprove of Bush's handling of his job. Since the commencement of reliable polling in the 1940s, only one twice-elected president has seen his ratings fall as low as Bush's in his second term: Richard Nixon, during the months preceding his resignation in 1974. No two-term president since polling began has fallen from such a height of popularity as Bush's (in the neighborhood of ninety percent, during the patriotic upswell following the 2001 attacks) to such a low (now in the midthirties). No president, including Harry Truman (whose ratings sometimes dipped below Nixonian levels), has experienced such a virtually unrelieved decline as Bush has since his high point. Apart from sharp but temporary upticks that followed the commencement of the Iraq war and the capture of Saddam Hussein, and a recovery during the weeks just before and after his re-election, the Bush trend has been a profile in fairly steady disillusionment.


The Republicans' worst nightmare --

Honest voting machines.


http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/ELECTRONIC_VOTING_LAWSUITSITE=NHPOR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT


Iraq Progresses To Some Of Its Worst

WASHINGTON, Dec 29 (IPS) - Despite all the claims of improvements, 2007 has been the worst year yet in Iraq.

One of the first big moves this year was the launch of a troop "surge" by the U.S. government in mid-February. The goal was to improve security in Baghdad and the western al-Anbar province, the two most violent areas. By June, an additional 28,000 troops had been deployed to Iraq, bringing the total number up to more than 160,000.

By autumn, there were over 175,000 U.S. military personnel in Iraq. This is the highest number of U.S. troops deployed yet, and while the U.S. government continues to talk of withdrawing some, the numbers on the ground appear to contradict these promises.

The Bush administration said the "surge" was also aimed at curbing sectarian killings, and to gain time for political reform for the government of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

During the surge, the number of Iraqis displaced from their homes quadrupled, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent. By the end of 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there are over 2.3 million internally displaced persons within Iraq, and over 2.3 million Iraqis who have fled the country.

Iraq has a population around 25 million.

The non-governmental organisation Refugees International describes Iraq's refugee problem as "the world's fastest growing refugee crisis."

In October the Syrian government began requiring visas for Iraqis. Until then it was the only country to allow Iraqis in without visas. The new restrictions have led some Iraqis to return to Baghdad, but that number is well below 50,000.

A recent UNHCR survey of families returning found that less than 18 percent did so by choice. Most came back because they lacked a visa, had run out of money abroad, or were deported.

Sectarian killings have decreased in recent months, but still continue. Bodies continue to be dumped on the streets of Baghdad daily.

One reason for a decrease in the level of violence is that most of Baghdad has essentially been divided along sectarian lines. Entire neighbourhoods are now surrounded by concrete blast walls several metres high, with strict security checkpoints. Normal life has all but vanished.

The Iraqi Red Crescent estimates that eight out of ten refugees are from Baghdad.

By the end of 2007, attacks against occupation forces decreased substantially, but still number more than 2,000 monthly. Iraqi infrastructure, like supply of potable water and electricity are improving, but remain below pre-invasion levels. Similarly with jobs and oil exports. Unemployment, according to the Iraqi government, ranges between 60-70 percent.

An Oxfam International report released in July says 70 percent of Iraqis lack access to safe drinking water, and 43 percent live on less than a dollar a day. The report also states that eight million Iraqis are in need of emergency assistance.

"Iraqis are suffering from a growing lack of food, shelter, water and sanitation, healthcare, education, and employment," the report says. "Of the four million Iraqis who are dependent on food assistance, only 60 percent currently have access to rations through the government-run Public Distribution System (PDS), down from 96 percent in 2004."

Nearly 10 million people depend on the fragile rationing system. In December, the Iraqi government announced it would cut the number of items in the food ration from ten to five due to "insufficient funds and spiralling inflation." The inflation rate is officially said to be around 70 percent.

The cuts are to be introduced in the beginning of 2008, and have led to warnings of social unrest if measures are not taken to address rising poverty and unemployment.

Iraq's children continue to suffer most. Child malnutrition rates have increased from 19 percent during the economic sanctions period prior to the invasion, to 28 percent today.

This year has also been one of the bloodiest of the entire occupation. The group Just Foreign Policy, "an independent and non-partisan mass membership organisation dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy," estimates the total number of Iraqis killed so far due to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation to be 1,139,602.

This year 894 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq, making 2007 the deadliest year of the entire occupation for the U.S. military, according to ICasualties.org.

To date, at least 3,896 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, according to the U.S. Department of Defence.

A part of the U.S. military's effort to reduce violence has been to pay former resistance fighters. Late in 2007, the U.S. military began paying monthly wages of 300 dollars to former militants, calling them now "concerned local citizens."

While this policy has cut violence in al-Anbar, it has also increased political divisions between the dominant Shia political party and the Sunnis – the majority of these "concerned citizens" being paid are Sunni Muslims. Prime Minister Maliki has said these "concerned local citizens" will never be part of the government's security apparatus, which is predominantly composed of members of various Shia militias.

Underscoring another failure of the so-called surge is the fact that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad remains more divided than ever, and hopes of reconciliation have vanished.

According to a recent ABC/BBC poll, 98 percent of Sunnis and 84 percent of Shias in Iraq want all U.S. forces out of the country. (END/2007)


Here's the stark truth about the war. 


Can someone explain to me please why in all communications about the war in Iraq, both for and against, they never speak of how many Al Qaeda are being eliminated during this continued fighting in Iraq?  Considering that this would be the ONLY plausible reason why we should continue with it, if we were actually making headway against Islamic extremism and the Al Qaeda network?  Furthermore, why in the last six months or so has the media started referring to the "insurgents" as Al Qaeda with no clarification whatsoever? 


This is very telling isn't it?  If we are not fighting the terrorists anymore, why is our military still putting their lives on the line?


I believe this is because they are no longer there, considering that there was a very small faction there to begin with.


Considering that the Bush administration is losing what is left of their reputation continuing this war against AL Qaeda in Iraq, is it so far fetched to see media manipulation in the fact that now all of a sudden the American media is sprouting headlines about Al Qaeda being the cause of Bhutto's death without any proof whatsoever but based on wishful thinking and supposition?  When in reality Musharraf has the most to gain from her death?  Especially if it is lauded that Al Qaeda is behind her death, this lends to solidity that Bush will not withdraw US funds from Pakistan if it is thought that Al Qaeda is behind Bhutto's death, perhaps Musharraf asking for MORE funds and getting them from the Bush administration to fight Al Qaeda (supposedly) in Pakistan.


Manipulation at its highest level.


She or McCain is the worst thing that
could happen to this country.  If she or McCain gets in the WH, we are done, gonzo, and the middle class' problems will be magnified.  Get ready people.  There is something in the air with the Clintons.  Scary stuff, and not at all democratic society we knew before 9/11/01.  Obama took all of them by surprise, that the people are in some way rebelling from the present way things are done in Wash. Now they don't know what to do about him.  Scary.for Obama too.
This is not just distraction politics at its worst.
Hurricane country does not need to be getting its instructions in sound bytes between hours of distractions. The time to start preparations is NOW, not the day before the hurricane.
Thank you - Intolerance is the worst religion of all
x
Why do you always expect the worst? You call sm
yourself an independant and I have not seen anything to convince me that is true. You spew such venom toward anything that the democrats do and keep repeating false information that you have heard somewhere, probably FOX news, I could be wrong, without ever investigating to any depth yourself to see if it is 100% true or not. Spin doctors spin in both parties, I think you need to recognize this and think and investigate for yourself if you truly consider yourself an independent.
Okay. On his worst day, Obama is 10 times the
And his best days are 'way, 'way BEHIND him.
The big "O" aleady the worst and he hasn't been....
there a year yet. The next would be Jimmy Carter. Read up on the economy under HIM. Obama doesn't give two hoots about what "we" want. He is pushing through his personal agenda at lightning speed and the worst of it is he really believes this will work...kinda like Caesar fiddling while Rome burned around him. Well, they say ignorance is bliss and he must be one deliriously happy camper right about now.
Pelosi is the worst speaker ever. A divider. The
nm
This post is an example of the worst kind of damage
This kind of ignorant, self-righteous, utterly uninformed, breathtakingly bigoted and hate-filled pronouncement, void of any depth or evidence of intellectual capacity, is exactly the kind of divisive belief system and world view W created with his "you are either for us or against us" war on terror. Islam is a monotheist religion, just as Christianity is. The kind of politicized Christianity you have expressed is of the sort that was the driving force behind the Crusades...bloody terrorism in its very worst manifestation. Politicized religion in any form has NOTHING to do with God and the brand that you are promoting here is every bit as much of a terrorist act as a suicide bombing. Moslems pray to the same God that Christians pray to and no amount of hateful bigotry you try spread will change that fundamental truth. As long as you hold this kind of hate in your heart, you will always be a very isolated, fringe element of our society. If you are truly a person of faith, pray to God to to fogive you for this blasphemy, to enlighten you and to purge you of the ignorance and hate you harbor.
No, I think Carter was the worst president in history.
nm
Carter = worst president ever...yes, I agree with you.

Oh my gosh - the Clinton years were the worst
I have never seen such horrible horrible times as the Clinton years. It was awful, awful, awful. DH and I both worked full time. We both had excellent salaries but we could never get ahead. We didn't live life in the rich lane - a 1 bedroom apartment (no washer dryer) in a hole-in-the-wall complex. A Ford Taurus (so not a fancy car). I don't own any diamonds or furs and my clothes were bought at the local Walmart, Sears or stores like that. No children, no college education to pay off and we had absolutely nothing. Clinton's tax increases raised our taxes so high that we were paying out 38% in taxes and even then at the end of the year we always owed an extra $2000. Everyone kept telling us to buy a house and get all these great "benees". In SF? Right! We couldn't afford to go out to eat never mind buy a house and when we did try to apply for a loan we were turned down. On top of that my family and friends back east were losing their jobs (thank you NAFTA). Family freinds were losing their homes because they lost their jobs and they were starting to live in their cars. My dad took in a couple he knew because they were living in a campground and winter came and it got too cold to stay in their tent. It wasn't until Clinton got out of office that our taxes went down, we were able to save some money, get a better place to live, and go out to eat with family and start to enjoy life a little more. The economy may be bad now, but we're in better shape than we were when Clinton's were in. Now we're terrified we're going to be back into the same exact sitaution. We're certainly not in great shape here, so anything worse would put us in a bad situation but luckily we rent so can move if we have to. But the economy needs a lof of work. We have no health insurance (unless you want to call having a policy that you have to pay 10K/year first before the insurance company will pitch in), DH is out of work and we just take one day at a time. All I know is most everyone I know (family, friends, and acquantances of my family) say they may have thought Clinton to be a good looking guy, but they have been better off financially since he left office.
The one, single thing that took the worst toll on US
nm
Nah, propaganda?
They're just on a roll for stupid remarks. Check out the Repug from Iowa's dignified, intelligent line of thinking. What a jerk; obviously King prefers anemic blonde bimbos who spew out the same garbage he does.


http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002726435

Iowa Congressman Apologizes for Rude Helen Thomas Reference

By E&P Staff

Published: June 22, 2006 2:00 AM ET

NEW YORK Rep. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, apologized to Helen Thomas on Wednesday for disparaging comments he made about the veteran White House correspondent.

Last Saturday, Rep. King, while discussing the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi at the state Republican convention, said, What occurred to me that morning is something that I imagine a lot of you have thought about and he's probably figured it out by now. There probably are not 72 virgins in the hell he's at and if there are, they probably all look like Helen Thomas.

The remark drew wide laughter and applause.

A spokeswoman for the two-term congressman said King has apologized to Thomas, 85, now writing a column for Hearst newspapers.

King is running for re-election this fall.

Joyce Schulte, King's Democratic opponent in November, said
Mean-spirited remarks are beneath the dignity of any self respecting congressperson, and remarks about another person's appearance are even lower. I hesitate to even use Helen Thomas' name in the same document with so vile a wretch as al-Zarqawi. But I want her and the world to know that Iowans are not insensitive buffoons who make fun at someone else's expense.




because it is propaganda

due to the upcoming election.


 


Propaganda goes on. n/m
x
That is taken from the PROPAGANDA

link, which I already explained, and when you click on the red "require" link, it takes you directly to OBAMA'S PLAN, which does NOT SAY THAT.  The original link IS A LIE.


It was cleverly worded, intended to promote the propaganda that's attractive to predisposed Obama haters, who apparently are known to NOT click on the "supporting" link which, in this case, DOES NOT support their assertion.  I agree it worked with some, and that's sad.


This confirms our worst suspicions. Certain pubs factions
What plantet do you come from? I am so sure he could have just vaporized without "announcing" his destination and the reason for his absence. See post directly above for a more plausible explanation. Your mean comments do you speak well for our concept of family values, diminish your party's credibility on that subject by leaps and bounds and make you look very small.
Watch that propaganda now!
It's simply not true that Cindy Sheehan had "nothing but praise" for Bush and has now done a 360-degree turn. It's Drudge and Limbaugh nonsense with quotes taken out of context and spun to try and seem....what? It's nothing if not illogical. Aren't those intent on smearing her loudly proclaiming that she has been anti-Bush and anti-war since long before her son was killed? Then why would she fall all over herself praising him AFTER her son was killed? It makes no sense at all, but the attackers aren't really big on making sense apparently. They just throw all the garbage at the wall and see what might stick, that's how they operate.

What I really don't get is what the attackers are meaning to say. Even if it were true that Ms. Sheehan "did a 360" - point please? So what? So perhaps she was trying to make the best of a bad bad situation and least be respectful toward the president in consideration of his meeting with her and other family members - but since then, as she says herself, we have had the Downing Street proof, we have learned there were no WMDs at the time we invaded, we have learned all sorts of unbelievably horrible things - why SHOULDN'T anyone let those things change their views?

Now she just wants to know what this "noble" cause is that the President keeps referring to, and she wants to ask him to stop using the dead to justify making more unnecessary dead. But oh no, she must have an AGENDA! - well seems like that's it, isn't it? She wants to know and she wants him to look her in the eye and explain himself. And why shouldn't he? Or more precisely, why can't he seem to be able to do it? If he is sincere in his beliefs and committed to the cause, considering he's such a straight-talking nice guy, what's the problem? What is the big deal? It could all be over with in an hour. Why won't he just do it?
I agree. Probably over-the-top propaganda. sm
The more she hawks that film, the less interest I have in viewing it. I'm guessing it has more creative editing and special effects than a Hollywood movie, with plenty of lies and misinformation thrown in for good measure.

I like to find objective sources of information whenever possible, and that sure ain't gonna come from sam on this topic, IMO.
propaganda when convenient to you.
nm
That's pure propaganda

Right down to the music that is being played in the background.  Anyone can take bits and pieces of articles and flash them on the screen.  Those aren't facts. 


The democrates did not cause the financial crisis. Here are some real facts:


Since 1960 the nation's deficit has risen during every republican administration and dropped during every democratic administration. 


The standard of living and income has improved for everyone in the country during every democratic administration since 1960, EVEN for the top 1% of the country.  It has gotten worse for everyone in the country during every republican adminstration EXCEPT the top 1%. 


While Nixon and Ford were in office interest rates for mortgages had ballooned to 11%-13% and many people in this country could not afford to buy a home.  Carter brought those rates down so that more people in this country could afford to buy homes. 


What caused this mess is not the people who were extended credit.  Here is part of what caused it:  Banks issued subprime mortgages to people at a rate they could initially afford but which would increase to an inflated rate after a period of time.  Those banks then immediately sold those mortgages at the inflated rates to other banks. First-time home buyers were especially targeted.  A lot of them didn't understand what they were getting into because it was misrepresented to them.  They didn't know, for example, they could not refinance for a period of time without huge penalities.  Then the market started to decline and many of those homeowners found themselves upside down on their loans and they were unable to refinance.  Their interest rates had ballooned to rates they could no longer afford.  As homeowners lost their homes the banks who were sold the loans at inflated prices were no longer able to collect on those loans.  But the banks (and the CEOs) that initated those loans walked away with a great deal of money. 


It was because of greed.  And the deregulation that the republicans passed allowed it to happen. 


 


More Republican propaganda s/m

If you had been alive or old enough to remember, things like this were not that uncommon.  The hippie cult was rampant, especially in California and most of them were drug crazed, LSD I believe was the drug of choice, haven't heard of that in years..  The Viet Nam War was even more controversial than the Iraq War.  Soldiers came home from Viet Nam and were spit on by these kinds of radicals.  It was on the news daily.  Anyone else remember?  These people now have grandsons and granddaughters in Iraq and I can tell you first hand that at least some of them regret what they did and said in the 60s.


Now, considering this was back in the 60s and there is absolutely no proof that Obama was best buds with Ayers in the first place, why not let it go?  Apparently Ayers is a respected professor today.  How many of you who are of a ripe old age like myself would like to be judged on what you did when you were in your 20s?  I wouldn't.


 


Propaganda can be destructive to us ALL


by: Robert Parry, Consortium News


photo
Republican Whip Eric Cantor meets with his staffers. (Photo: Doug Mills / The New York Times)




    Today's Republicans are thumbing through Newt Gingrich's worn playbook of 1993 looking for tips on how to blunt President Barack Obama's political momentum and flip it to their advantage. In doing so, they also appear to have dug in to what might be called the secret appendix.

    The official history of what happened during Bill Clinton's difficult first two years - which ended in a sweeping Republican congressional victory in 1994 - focuses on the GOP's united resistance to his economic plan and Hillary Clinton's failed health care reform. But there was a darker side to the political damage inflicted on the early Clinton administration.


    Republicans and their right-wing allies disseminated what - in a covert operation - would be called "black propaganda." Some exaggerated minor scandals, like the Travel Office firings and Clinton's Whitewater real-estate deal, while other key figures on the Right, such as the Rev. Jerry Falwell, spread ugly conspiracy rumors linking Clinton to "mysterious deaths" and cocaine smuggling.


    Sometimes, these multiplying "Clinton scandals" built on themselves with the help of their constant repetition in both the right-wing and mainstream news media. For instance, overheated accusations about some personnel changes at the White House Travel Office pushed deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster into a deep depression.


    Then, on July 30, 1993, a distraught Foster went to Fort Marcy Park along the Potomac River and shot himself. The Right quickly transformed the tragedy into a new front in the anti-Clinton psychological warfare, with Foster's death giving rise to a cottage industry for conspiracy theorists and a new way to raise doubts about Clinton.


    Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, among others, popularized the notion that Foster may have been killed elsewhere, with his body then transported to Fort Marcy Park. Repeated official investigations confirmed the obvious facts of Foster's suicide but could not quell the conspiracy rumors. [For the fullest account of the Foster case, see Dan Moldea's A Washington Tragedy.]


    The "mystery" around Foster's death also bolstered the "mysterious deaths" list, which mostly contained names of people who had only tangential connections to Clinton. The effectiveness of the list was the sheer volume of the names, creating the illusion that Clinton must be a murderer even though there was no real evidence implicating Clinton in any of the deaths.


    As the list was blast-faxed far and wide, one of my right-wing sources called me up about the list and said, "even if only a few of these are real, that's one helluva story." I responded that if the President of the United States had murdered just one person that would be "one helluva story," but that there was no evidence that Clinton was behind any of the deaths.


    Other dark Clinton "mysteries" were spread through videos, like "The Clinton Chronicles" that Falwell hawked on his "Old-Time Gospel Hour" television show. Plus, salacious tales about the personal lives of the Clintons were popularized via right-wing magazines, such as The American Spectator, and the rapidly expanding world of right-wing talk radio.


    The Right also generated broader conspiracy theories about "black helicopters" threatening patriotic Americans with a United Nations takeover. The paranoia fed the rise of a "militia movement" of angry white men who dressed up in fatigues and went into the woods for paramilitary training.


    By fall 1994, Clinton's stumbling performance in office and the public doubts created by the black propaganda opened the way for a stunning Republican victory. Recognizing the influence of talk radio in spreading the Clinton smears, House Republicans made Rush Limbaugh an honorary member of the GOP caucus.


    However, the forces that the anti-Clinton psy-war campaign set in motion had unintended consequences. In the months after the Republicans gained control of Congress, one pro-militia extremist, Timothy McVeigh, took the madness to the next step and blew up the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Clinton Coup d'Etat?"]


    Reprising the Smears


    Now, 16 years since the start of Clinton's presidency, the Republicans and their right-wing allies are again on the outside of Washington power and are back studying the lessons of 1993-94. Only a month into Obama's presidency, there are some striking similarities in the two historical moments.


    In both cases, the Democrats inherited recessions and huge budget deficits from Republican presidents named Bush. In both cases, congressional Republicans rallied against the economic package of the new President hoping to strangle the young Democratic administrations in their cradles.


    And, as congressional Republicans worked on a more overt political level, their media allies and other operatives were getting busy at subterranean depths, reviving attack lines from the campaigns to sow doubts about the two Democratic presidents - and trying to whip up the right-wing base into a near revolutionary fervor.


    So far at least, the Republicans are experiencing less success against Barack Obama than they did against Bill Clinton. According to opinion polls, Obama remains widely popular with an American public that favors his more activist agenda for reviving the American economy and confronting systemic problems like energy, health care and education.


    Though Republicans scored points inside the Beltway with their opposition to Obama's $787 billion stimulus bill - and their complaints that Obama "failed" in his bipartisan outreach to them - the GOP tactics appear to have backfired with the American people.


    Gauging public opinion one month into Obama's presidency, polls found that most Americans faulted the Republicans for rebuffing Obama's gestures of bipartisanship, and a New York Times/CBS News poll discovered that a majority said Obama "should pursue the priorities he campaigned on … rather than seek middle ground with Republicans." [NYT, Feb. 24, 2009]


    But the Republicans seem incapable of coming up with any other strategy than to seek Obama's destruction, much as they torpedoed Clinton. The three moderate Republican senators who supported the stimulus package - Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter - were widely denounced by the right-wing media as "traitors."


    Indeed, the Republican Party arguably has become captive to the angry right-wing media that the GOP conservatives did so much to help create in the late 1970s, after the Vietnam War defeat and Richard Nixon's Watergate debacle.


    This Right-Wing Machine proved useful in protecting Ronald Reagan during the Iran-Contra scandal; undermining Clinton in the 1990s; dirtying up AL Gore in 2000; and wrapping George W. Bush in the protective garb of a full-scale cult of personality after 9/11.


    But the machine wore down in its defense of Bush's multitude of disasters and ultimately could not generate enough suspicions about Obama to elect John McCain. Still, it remains a potent force in the country and particularly among the Republican "base."


    It is also a machine that can run only on the high-octane fuel of anger and hate. If it tried to down-shift to a more responsible approach to politics, it would stall out, losing its core audience of angry white men who feel deeply aggrieved by their loss of status.


    In turn, Republican leaders can't disown the right-wing media infrastructure that has advanced their interests for so long. In the first month of Obama's presidency, the congressional Republicans fell in line behind Rush Limbaugh's openly declared desire for Obama to fail.


    Now, the Republicans may see little choice but to bet on the ability of their Right-Wing Machine to continue spreading doubts and hysteria about Obama.


    More books and DVDs can be expected soon, recycling the 2008 campaign's rumor-mongering on Obama - that he wasn't born in the United States, that he's a secret Muslim, that he's in league with 1960s radical Bill Ayers, etc.


    Rumbling Insurrection


    Much like the Clinton-era militia movement's fear of "black helicopters," there already are rumblings about the need for an armed uprising to thwart Obama's alleged "communist" agenda.


    Ironically, right-wingers who defended George W. Bush when he mounted a radical assault on the Constitution - seeking to establish an imperial presidency while eliminating habeas corpus and other key freedoms - are suddenly seeing threats to the Constitution from Obama.


    Fox News, in particular, has been floating the idea of armed rebellion. On Feb. 20 - the one-month anniversary of Obama's inauguration - Glenn Beck hosted a special program called "War Room" that "war-gamed" various scenarios including the overthrow of an oppressive U.S. government when "bubba" militias rise up and gain the support of the American military.


    The segment featured former CIA officer Michael Scheuer, retired U.S. Army Sgt. Major Tim Strong, and Gerald Celente, a prognosticator who began pitching the idea of an armed rebellion on Fox News shortly after Obama's election last November.


    "This is going to be violent," said Celente, founder of Trends Research Institute. "People can't afford it [taxes] anymore. The cities are going to look like Dodge City. They're going to be uncontrollable. You're going to have gangs in control. Motorcycle marauders. You're not going to have enough police or federales - just like Mexico - to control the situation."


    Beck envisioned the uprising - theoretically set in 2014 - starting "because people have been so disenfranchised" leading to a "bubba effect" touched off by federal agents from the ATF or FBI arresting some rancher in Texas or Arizona who has taken the law into his own hands in defending his property.


    "That's totally possible," ex-Sgt. Strong said. "You've got people who are going to do the right thing to truly protect the interests of the United States, to include their own. … Your second and third orders of effect are going to be your bubbas hunkering down and being anti-government."


    Beck, who was a longtime fixture on CNN's Headline News before moving to Fox, then expanded on the justification for the bubba uprising against a federal government that was "coming in and disenfranchising people over and over and over again - and having the people say please listen to us."


    According to Beck, these oppressed Americans "know the Constitution. They know the writings of the Founders and they feel that the government - or they will in this scenario and I think we're on this road - the government has betrayed the Constitution. So they will see themselves as people who are standing up for the Constitution."


    Beck then turned to ex-CIA officer Scheuer and asked, "So how do you defuse this, Michael, or how long even do we have before this becomes a crazy real scenario?"


    "I don't think you'd want to defuse it, Glenn," Scheuer responded. "The Second Amendment is … at base not about hunting or about a militia, but about resisting tyranny. The Founders were very concerned about allowing individual citizens weaponry to defend themselves as a last resort against a tyrannical government."


    As the discussion edged toward advocacy of violent revolution, Beck sought to reel it back in a bit.


    "Don't get me wrong," the host said. "I am against the government. And I think they've just been horrible. I do think they are betraying the principles of our Founders every day they're in office. But I have to tell you this scenario scares the living daylights out of me because it is shaking nitroglycerine."


    Beck then got back to the point: "Do the soldiers come in and do they round up people or do they fight with the people for the Constitution? What does the Army, what does the military do?"


    Scheuer answered: "I don't think the military is ever going to shoot on the American people, sir. I think the military - of all people - read the Constitution every year, right through."


    Beck then suggested that Obama's stimulus package might lead to this back-door federal tyranny.


    "We just had in our stimulus package a way for if your governor says no to the money, the legislature can go around the governor and go right to the Feds," Beck said. "It's this kind of thing that would make the federal government say, ‘You know what? We can call up the National Guard. We don't need your governor to do it.'"


    Such insurrectionist musings on Fox News are not likely to be taken seriously by most people. Indeed, many Americans may find it amusing that Fox has developed a heartfelt concern about disenfranchising voters after its enthusiastic embrace of Bush's undemocratic "election" in 2000 or that Fox now feels a sudden reverence for the Constitution after eight years of defendin Bush as he trampled it.


    But this sort of Fox chatter runs the risk of feeding the well-nursed grievances of angry white "bubbas" and possibly inspiring a new Timothy McVeigh.


    More significantly, today's Republican leaders - finding themselves with little new to offer - appear to have turned to the well-worn pages of this earlier GOP playbook to choose the same game plan that set the nation on a dangerous and destructive course 16 years ago, a course that only now, finally, may be playing out.


    -------


    Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.


»


Propaganda - whatever spin they need
We also have socialized K-12 schools and libraries; how is it that big business missed that chance for profit?  Never turned me into a Bolshevik.  But somehow, if we had free health care, it would corrupt us completely.
NOT propaganda - FACT
But I rather doubt people like yourself are interested in distinguishing between the two..

As to independent thought? when is the last time (or the first!) that you ever tried to follow up on a concept that you initially REJECT?

You can't slam the other side if you never consider it's point of view.

Fortunately some of us stopped being robots a long time ago and do our own research...
propaganda - see message

Could those of you who label some posts as having a less than credible news source share your techniques for finding and recognizing purely factual unbiased news and also how you keep from adding your own perspective in order to relay such incredibly unalloyed information to us? 


Not the worst...Jimmy Carter holds that dubious honor....
Mr. Democat Jimmy Carter. Check out the economy while he was in office...and what Obama is doing will make that look like a walk in the park. Oh, but the rest of the world will love us....LOL. Ya kill me. LOL.
Immelt rated "one of the worst" CEO's and booed yesterday
X
Well, that's nasty propaganda at work...
...and they use it because it *does* work, unfortunately.

But hey - Jesus and his closest followers were never a majority of anything. They weren't the powerful, or those in control of the Temple, or those who lived in luxury in the lap of Rome. Those who were in control hated them and considered them pesky liberals. So I guess Democratic Christians stand in pretty good historical company.
This video is propaganda. Repeat...
nm
And the others are propaganda machines for libs...
to each his own, as you say.
Propaganda works well on dimwits but not well enough
su
Your Catholic propaganda belongs on the
*
I didn't take this as catholic propaganda
Yes, it's obvious it was created by catholics, but the overall message was vote your conscious (p.s. I'm Athiest so if anyone I would be offended). Yes, I could have done without putting catholic this or catholic that up there, but the message was clear to me - vote your conscious (and they didn't tell me who I should vote for - that's a plus in my book).
More right-wing propaganda...not buying it! (nm)
:p
Propaganda is a tool of fascism.
x
Just more scare-tactics propaganda. nm
.
Very true. More religious propaganda..sm
One nation indivisibile, no matter what your religion, with liberty and justice for all was the original intent to pledge that you love your country. No religious affiliation necessary. What ever happend to "Love thy neighbor as thyself"? "As you do unto the least, so you do unto me", "Judge not lest you be judged", and there are many others. My God is a God of love and knows we are all fallible, but he does not judge us. He is there to love us and to try to guide us toward loving and helping our fellow humans, not hate and division and bigotry that people who have a lot to gain by influencing politics are fostering in the name of God/Jesus and religion. This is the reason that there need to be a separation of church and state in this country. Amost every war that has ever been fought has been fought in the name of God/religion. Do you think that it is God's intent that we should be at war in his name? Think about it.