Category Archives: RW Smears

Deceptive New Romney Ad Is Key Test For Media

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The Romney campaign has released an astonishingly deceptive new ad, containing a blatant, flat-out lie. The new ad actually edits together snippets of words and sentences to make it sound as if President Obama said something he did not say, and then attacks him for saying it. How will America’s news media respond? Will the public be informed that they are being lied to? And if not, what comes next — “photos” of the President robbing a bank?

The New Romney Ad

This is the new Romney ad, intended to shock opinion leaders enough to move public scrutiny away from the problems of his tax returns, conflicting statements about when he was or was not at Bain Capital, and possible possible illegal conduct.

Here is what the President actually said: (from Monday’s post, The Latest Lie: “You Didn’t Build That”)
President Obama pointed out that businesses did not build the roads and bridges that help them get their products to markets. He said that in the United States we succeed together. Here is the full quote:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

Media MUST Take Sides On This

What is the purpose and function of our news media? This country was once a self-respecting democracy and the purpose of the news media was to provide needed information to the public so We, the People could make informed decisions. And people who entered the journalism profession did so to serve as watchdogs of the public interest.
That was then. Today, many say that the purpose of the media — and everything else — is to make money for those who own it. And that means respecting and never, ever going against those with the most money. And today the ambition of many in the profession is to follow a corporate career path, maybe eventually land a major-media gig. Going down that path means playing ball, not making waves, and most of all not being branded as “anti-business.” And all that means, of course, never, ever going against those with the most money.
This new journalistic model — never, ever going against those with the most money — is what the Romney campaign is counting on today.
In this model news is supposed to be “objective” and “not take sides” as long as you take a side against those who are not “business friendly.” The new standard for news reporting is to follow a “he said, she said” storyline. And always throw in a dose of “both sides do it” false equivalence.
So what about when a big, flat-out, blatant lie — a knowing fraud with clear intent to deceive people — comes down the pike? What should journalists and news organizations do then? Should they pass the buck over to snarky “two pinnochio” pretend-fact checkers, or should they take it on and warn the public?
This ad is a key test of the direction of our national news media.
The media can’t just take the usual “one side said, the other side said” approach, because we can see what “one side” actually said and it isn’t at all what “the other side” says was said. This ad is just a lie. It is a fraud against the public and democracy for a campaign for President of the United States to do this.
So, news media, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to warn the public? Or are you going to claim that “both sides do it”?

Questions For Comments

Leave a comment, what do you think?
How should the news media respond when something like this — so far out of the boundaries of conduct for American Presidential campaigns — comes along? How should the media handle blatant lies?
Is this the most deceptive ad in Presidential campaign history?
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Elections Based On Lies Bring Policies That Hurt Us — See Update With Astonishing Lie

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Note — see the update at end of post, in which the Romney campaign uses astonishingly doctored audio, to make it seem as if Obama said something he never said.
Early in this campaign the Romney team put out an ad with a doctored Obama quote. Now Romney is again claiming Obama said things he never said. The billionaire-corporate-funded right-wing media machine drives the lie to millions. This might well work, which brings up a question: If someone gets into office based on lies, what kind of policies result? Those policies help the people pushing the lies, but do those policies help or hurt us in the real world in the long run?

The Lie The First Time

In November the Romney campaign was caught editing a quote in an ad to make it sound like Obama had said something he never said. The ad portrayed Obama as saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose,” when Obama had really said (four years previously), “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.”
The Romney campaign defended this use of lies, saying they are just showing they are willing to do what it takes to win. The Boston Globe reported, “Romney aides even said they were proud of the reaction and suggested that the ad was deliberately misleading to garner attention.”
At the time Thomas B Edsall wrote in the NY Times,

“…the spot’s direct duplicity is also the latest step in the transgression by political operatives of formerly agreed-upon ethical boundaries. What was once considered sleazy becomes the norm.”
And so the sleazy became the norm for the Romney campaign.

The Lie This Time

The sleazy became the norm, so they’re cranking it up. This time, the lie machine is telling people that President Obama said that business owners didn’t build their businesses, government did. What President Obama actually said was that businesses did not build the roads and bridges that help them get their products to markets:

Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.

The billionaire-corporate lie machine version? Heritage Foundation: Obama Tells Entrepreneurs “You Didn’t Build” Your Business.
Watch the beginning of this FOX News segment, note how the editing actually shows Obama’s mouth moving, before they bring the sound up partway through what he is saying, then listen to the commentators as they pretend this is what Obama actually said. (Of course they know this is not what he actually said, which makes the performance so shocking.)
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The lie is propelled through the right-wing media: FOX News, Wall Street Journal and other Murdoch-owned papers, Limbaugh and the rest of talk radio, Washington Times, Weekly Standard, NewsMax, WorldNet Daily, hundreds of right-wing blogs, etc., and then posted by paid operatives as “reader comments” at local news sites, hundreds of sports and auto and other discussion forums, and many, many other places until it “becomes truth.”
Watch the kind of crap that much of the public is hearing from almost every media source many of them are exposed to. Seriously, make yourself watch the whole thing, and then think about how many people watch FOX News or listen to talk radio or read the Wall Street Journal or one of the other newspapers that pushes this stuff, or read right-wing blogs — and even CNN. There is a huge corporate-billionaire-funded media machine pushing this stuff, and it seems it is almost everywhere now.
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And then, once it “becomes truth” the Presidential candidate repeats it. WaPo: Romney Hits ‘Didn’t Build That’ Obama Remark
Romney: “I’m convinced he wants Americans to be ashamed of success … [but] I don’t want government to take credit for what individuals accomplish” …
FOX News dedicated 2 hours, 42 segments, to pushing the lie. CNN even helped push the lie.
So, once again, the lie machine is working to “kinda catapult the propaganda.”

Policies Resulting From Lies

What is the result when policies are made, based on lies?
If you believe that Iraq is refusing to turn over their chemical and biological weapons, and that invading that country will be a “cakewalk,” then you want Iraq invaded. We all know how that one worked out.
If you believe that cutting taxes increases government revenue, then you want taxes cut. The real-world result, of course, is huge budget deficits — and dramatically increased income inequality.
If you believe that President Obama’s policies made the jobs emergency worse, then you support the anti-government policies that fired teachers and police officers and cut off unemployment benefits for desperate people. (The last month of Bush’s Presidency the economy lost 815,000 jobs. Now it is gaining jobs.)
If you believe that we shouldn’t be trying to win a share of the new green industries (lies about Solyndra and saying the Chevy Volt is flammable) then you vote for oil-company-backed policies that leave us dependent on oil and coal and refuse to combat climate change.
Basically, look at the results of most of the policies the country has followed since Reagan, and you get the picture.
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost — In Charts
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Is Crumbling
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Drowning In Debt
Finance, Mine, Oil & Debt Disasters: THIS Is Deregulation
The Reagan Ruins
Revisiting the Reagan Nightmare
Reagan’s Mean-Spirited Legacy of Economic Disaster
The Real Effect Of ‘Reaganomics’
Third World America: Reagan Revolution Drags Us Down

You Aint Seen Nothin Yet

And this latest lie is just a warm-up. The corporate-billionaire-funded machine will seriously be in operation in October, just before the election. The lies will be all over the place, and democracy doesn’t have an advertising budget.

Update – We Hadn’t Seen Nothin Yet

The Romney campaign has released an ad with astonishingly doctored audio — even more doctored than the FOX video above.
The Plum Line: The Morning Plum: Romney video deceptively edits Obama speech to make it sound anti-business,

So here’s where this is going. The Romney campaign is out with a new Web video hitting Obama over the “don’t build that” quote. It features a business owner who is angry at Obama for supposedly insulting his hard work. “My hands didn’t build this company?” the man asks. “Through hard work and a little bit of luck, we built this business. Why are you demonizing us for it?”
But the video deceptively edits Obama’s remarks to seamlessly link up two different parts of the speech, removing a chunk in order to make Obama’s remarks seem far worse than they are.

What Did He Really Say?

Here is what the President actually said: (from Monday’s post, The Latest Lie: “You Didn’t Build That”:
President Obama pointed out that businesses did not build the roads and bridges that help them get their products to markets. He said that in the United States we succeed together. Here is the full quote:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Sign up here for the CAF daily summary

Romney/Bain/Accounts – Where Is Our Country’s News Media?

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Back when Bill Clinton was President there was a huge media-swarm controversy because a decade before her husband was elected Hillary Clinton had made $100,000 over ten months by investing in cattle futures. Now, skip forward to 2012. Report after report circulates about a candidate for President who owns a secret company in Bermuda, Swiss and Cayman Islands bank accounts and an IRA containing as much as $100 million — and who may have filed SEC documents containing false information (a felony). Huge media swarm this time? Not so much.

Cattle Futures?

In the 1970s Hillary Clinton made some speculative investments. Over a period of 10 months she made investments in cattle futures that did well, earning $100,000. Later when her husband was President, the media wanted to find out how she was able to make such a large, huge, ginormous sum from speculative investments.
Take a look at the 350,000-or-so web references to cattle futures trades made by Hillary Clinton way back in the 1970s. This might give you an idea of how big a deal it was back in the mid-90′s that Hillary Clinton had made $100,000 (!!!) on speculative investments back in the 1970s. (The number of stories located online is possibly reduced by the fact that the media swarm happened in the mid-1990s — largely before the Internet.)
Look at the outlets that assigned teams of reporters to investigate: All the TV networks, the Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, and all of the rest of the jouranilmalism crowd were all over what was considered to be a major story.
This story was investigated, written about, investigated, written about, and investigated. No evidence of any wrongdoing was ever found — which many in the media took as clear proof that there had been a massive cover-up.

Continue reading →

More Indicators A Nasty, Say-Anything Republican Campaign Is Coming – And See Updates

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There is a news report that yet another right-wing billionaire is going to spend even more millions to run even more poisonous, divisive, racist, degrading, insulting, lying, character-assassination ads designed to turn people against government and democracy. And an added bonus (for Republicans) will be turning people away from even voting. They’re going to do this because it works — for them and the billionaires who back them.
NY Times: G.O.P. ‘Super PAC’ Weighs Hard-Line Attack on Obama,

A group of high-profile Republican strategists is working with a conservative billionaire on a proposal to mount one of the most provocative campaigns of the “super PAC” era and attack President Obama in ways that Republicans have so far shied away from.
… The $10 million plan … includes preparations for how to respond to the charges of race-baiting it envisions if it highlights Mr. Obama’s former ties to Mr. Wright…
The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an “extremely literate conservative African-American” who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln.”

Obama is black, black, black, black, black. And in case you miss it, here is Republican Strategist Lee Atwater explaining the Republican strategy:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

It Works

Just lying — making stuff up and blasting it out there — works. In 2010 Republicans spent millions and millions on ads saying “Democrats cut half a trillion from Medicare” and captured the senior vote for the first time, throwing the House over to them. It worked, they spent millions broadcasting lies, they took the House — and then voted to turn Medicare into a voucher program.
From the post, “Half A Trillion In Cuts To Medicare”

In the 2010 election campaign Republican groups ran millions and millions of dollars of ads promising not to cut Medicare, and to increase Social Security. They campaigned against Democrats for “cutting $500 billion from Medicare” and not increasing Social Security cost-of-living. As a result, for the first time the senior vote went to Republicans.
Here are just a few of the ads that saturated the airwaves, saying that Democrats should be thrown out for cutting Medicare:

And voters were sent flyers like this: (click for larger)
politifact-photos-ron_johnson_flier_combined_660

The Obstruct-And-Lie Strategy

Republicans have a huge “noise machine” and they know how to use it. And they really, really don’t care if they are telling the truth or not, they say what they need to say to win.
After years of blocking President Obama’s efforts to try to create more jobs, Repubicans are campaigning saying Obama didn’t create more jobs.
After running up huge deficits — Clinton left behind a surplus, Bush left behind a $1.4 trillion deficit — Republicans are campaigning that Obama has run up huge deficits.
This summer when student loan rates double because Republicans blocked efforts to keep them from doubling, Republicans will blast out that Obama doubled student loan rates.

Negative Ads Suppress Turnout

The point of running negative ads is not to get people to show up and vote for someone. Negative ads are about turning people off from voting. Negative ads tell people they should not have hope, that anyone they think could be a leader is actually a scoundrel, etc. The point of the millions and millions of dollars that will be spent by Republicans on negative ads this year is to try to keep the kind of surge election that brought so many people out to vote in the 2008 election from happening this time.

The Media Enablers

Republican media outlets like FOX News, the Wall Street Journal and Rush Limbaugh will go ahead and repeat the party line (when they aren’t out front creating it). They reach a lot of people, and the rest of the Republican “noise machine”‘ is very skilled at echoing the lies until they become “truthy.” But the rest of the media does not serve as a counterweight, bringing people the facts. As a result almost everyone — consumers of the right’s propaganda and people who think they aren’t — is left misinformed in ways that serve Republicans and their billionaire backers and hurt everyone else.
Greg Sargent wrote the other day in, How Mitt Romney gets away with his lying,

If you scan through all the media attention Romney’s speech received, you are hard-pressed to find any news accounts that tell readers the following rather relevant points:
1) Nonpartisan experts believe Romney’s plans would increase the deficit far more than Obama’s would.
2) George W. Bush’s policies arguably are more responsible for increasing the deficit than Obama’s are.
[. . .] The two bullet points above could not be more central to the debate over the debt that Romney’s big speech set in motion yesterday. Yet the vast majority of news consumers who now know that Romney has accused Obama of lighting a “prairie fire of debt” that threatens to engulf our children and our future haven’t been told about either of them.

Sargent writes about how the “mainstream media” for one reason or another won’t call out the Republican machine for spreading lies. Again, the result is that almost everyone — consumers of the right’s propaganda and people who think they aren’t — is left misinformed in ways that serve Republicans and their billionaire backers and hurt everyone else.
Update: How Citizens United Is Leading To More Racism In TV Campaign Ads
Update 2: Huge headline at The Drudge Report reads: ‘BORN IN KENYA’
Update 3: Rep. Mike Coffman: Obama in his heart ‘not an American’
Update 4: Ben Stein speaking on FOX: Ben Stein: Obama’s not very smart
Update 5: Romney accuses Obama of character assassination: “Character assassination has become the nature of his campaign,” Romney said.
These updates are all from just today, and this is only May.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Republican Noise Machine Accuses President Of Politicizing 9-11

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The full Republican media “noise” machine is rising up in a full-scale “hissy fit” because the President pointed out that Osama bin Laden was killed a year ago, under his watch. They are pretending to be absolutely outraged, accusing the President of politicizing the killing of bin Laden.
Yes, that would be the very same Republicans known for this:

Here is the 9-11 video shown at the Republican National Convention (oh, no, no politicizing here, look away, look away):

Yes, these Republicans: (Watch the whole video, and remember.)

Yes, those Republicans.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Chevy Volt Flammable? Compared to GASOLINE?

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The right-wingers smearing the Volt as “flammable” don’t get it that cars now run on GASOLINE? Which isn’t flammable? HOW many gasoline car fires are there a year? (Hint: the answer is “In 2003-2007, U.S. fire departments responded to an average of 287,000 vehicle fires per year. These fires caused an average of 480 civilian deaths, 1,525 civilian injuries, and $1.3 billion in direct property damage annually.”)
My favorite right-wing propaganda about the Volt was that it “ran out of juice in the Lincoln Tunnel” on a test drive. Of course, what happened was that the battery ran down and it switched on the gas engine and kept going, but … whatever. It sure SOUNDS bad.
By the way, to learn about how the right’s propaganda machine works, click that link and observe just how many sites repeated the lie.
One more thing about electric cars. Think about this: How often do you need to service your refrigerator motor? You will never have to replace the water pump, or adjust the valves, replace the muffler, etc. New tires and lubrication is about it. One Ford engineer told me they have some electric cars on the track that are over 1 million miles.

The Origins Of The Right’s Smear Machine

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This is a must-read to understand the history. Starting with Nixon, again and again Dems let Republicans off the hook, again and again they respond by doing even more and worse. Background: Dems had evidence that Nixon’s presidential campaign sabotaged peace talks that could have ended the Vietnam war in 68, to help Nixon in the election. Dems kept this secret “for the good of the country.” Nixon then kept the war going four more years so he could announce its “end” just before the 72 election. (“Peace is at hand.”)
How the Right’s Smear Machine Started | Consortiumnews,

… the decision by President Lyndon Johnson and his top aides to withhold from the public their evidence of Nixon’s sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks in fall 1968 proved to be the opposite of their stated intention: to hide the dirty secret for “the good of the country.”
As Johnson’s national security adviser Walt W. Rostow observed in 1973 as the Watergate scandal was unfolding, Nixon may have dared undertake that domestic spying program because he had gotten away with his 1968 skullduggery unscathed.With the evidence of Nixon’s “treason” kept under wraps, Republicans could fancy themselves the real victims in the Watergate scandal and thus could justify doing whatever was necessary to protect some future GOP president from similar treatment.
With the evidence of Nixon’s “treason” kept under wraps, Republicans could fancy themselves the real victims in the Watergate scandal and thus could justify doing whatever was necessary to protect some future GOP president from similar treatment.

Reagan let off the hook for Iran Contra and for sabatoging Carter’s hostage talks. Bush let off the hook for torture and illegal war and various acts of corruption. … and so on.

Some examples include evidence of another October Surprise dirty trick in 1980 (with Reagan’s campaign frustrating President Jimmy Carter’s efforts to free 52 American hostages in Iran), the Iran-Contra sequel (as President Reagan traded more arms to Iran for more U.S. hostages in 1985-86), the Iraq-gate scandal of secretly arming Saddam Hussein (which put President George H.W. Bush on the spot after the Persian Gulf War in 1991), or the Plame-gate affair (which involved George W. Bush’s administration leaking the identity of a covert CIA officer to get back at her husband for exposing a lie behind the Iraq War in 2003).

These People Are Just Nuts

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The latest right-wing frenzy is over a film of Barack Obama as a student giving a speech in favor of racial diversity in universities, and then hugging Derrick Bell, who was the first black law professor at Harvard. At the time Obama has been elected President of Harvard Law Review – the first black person in that position.
That’s it. They are saying that advocating racial diversity is “Marxist” and that being the first black law professor proves the guy is a “radical.” They say that letting a black guy be a law professor is “demonizing whites.” They say that Obama advocating racial diversity reveals “another corner of the president’s murky past,” and proves that “Obama is not so secretly a radical.”
That’s it. He was the first black law professor at Harvard, therefore he is a “Marxist” and a “radical.” Because Harvard is such a “radical” institution, I guess. Even though it didn’t hire any black law professors before the 90s.