Your “interview” is missing the “r”

Need. Coffee.

Teabaggers, (and for that matter, Tucker Carlson), don’t need to be “tricked” into saying stupid things. That comes naturally for people who would embrace that clownish group.

Out early…have fun. Margaret….hope you have some good news. Are you still thinking of Austin? Later, all.

That’s one glowing testament to the stellar accomplishment of the vaunted American Educational System.

Is the Wright State question usually on IQ tests ? If not, it should be.

I’ve never given up on getting back to Austin. If I wind up homeless, I’ve been offered a place in Spicewood Springs.

Really very sad but the Kock brothers must be delighted.

Good Morning, BT et All,
Now, that is one scary video. Kind of answers the question What are they thinking? Oh, my. I kind of wish I didn’t know.

Morning, BT, pups

Bud Chiles (I-FL) is expected to announce that he’s quitting the race for governor. Too bad, he was the only non-neoliberal or batshit crazy candidate on the ballot.

I don’t have the heart to watch the video. Not least because I am heartily sick of giving Glenn Beck so much press for his Bund Rally.

“Take back our country.” I didn’t know there were so many Native Americans in the Tea Party.

and these people say LIBERALS hate america?

all these people do is whine and bitch that america’s no good.

The answer to it all — LESS education.

It highlights Angle’s Tea Party affiliations and some of her more controversial positions, including abolishing the Department of Education.

Honey, it’s prolly better for you not to watch. Their words would just “poke you in the eye”. It’s really That Bad.
But, I want me wanna them chairs what has it’s own little canopies attached.

That’s a shame. Here in Texas, Rick Perry is still refusing to debate Bill White. So far the news media here are wanting to hold debates. The last I heard, there was going to be at least one “debate” between Bill White and an empty chair. They ought to forgo the chair and make it between Bill White and an empty suit but then everybody would think that Perry changed his mind and decided to debate after all.

Years ago some friends of mine and I were camping and got to talking about Miguel and Nicole’s new fancy camp chairs, (with canopy and reclining action), and decided that they must be the White Trash 9000 Ultra. Unfortunately I’ve only ever owned the White Trash 750, (with just the one cup holder).

Crist has been avoiding debating Rubio and Meek but will debate them on the 17th. Gonna be tricky.

Chiles prolly didn’t have a snowball’s chance but one never knows. He sez he didn’t want to pull votes away from Sink. Classy dude. Scott would be a disaster for FL. Sink isn’t much better but prolly wouldn’t give the state away to her buddies. Scott wants an immigration bill like AZ so he’s thrown the Hispanic vote away.

When videos show over and over again people in ones and twos on 8 x 10 tarps in reclining lawn chairs, they cannot insist they were packed in, shoulder to shoulder, occupying 2.5 sq ft per person. I am amazed that people who watch Beck every day have no recollection he called Obama a racist. It’s because his stream of consciousness foolishness about faith and honor and founding fathers is so scattered and nonsensical, even his faithful can’t tell you what his message is on any given day.

If you end up homeless, I have a spare bedroom-it is always available to a friend in need. Convenient to the VA and all the local bus lines. All you would have to do is reach an agreement with the master of the place, my rescue boxer, who found me, and then adopted me. She runs everything-or so she thinks. She may be correct.

Morning BT, Firepups:

OK, BT. You’ve outdone yourself with this clip, although plunging this deeply into the surreal so early in the morning may disable me for hours…

Sometimes when I’m camping, I end up sitting on the cooler, or a large rock or a tree stump. I wonder what that makes me?
But, back to the video. The people interviewed seemed hugely misinformed. They seem to think communism is the same as socialism. And, it doesn’t even seem like they know what Beck has said. Can you imagine if the college student had asked him about the Big fat mouth comment?

The empty chair will almost surely acquit itself better than the real item, after all, it has been blessed with tens of additional IQ points more than our esteemed Governor Goodhair.

I wonder what that makes me?

Smart. You didn’t drag half of your home furnishings into the bush to “rough it.”

It seems like McCollum’s hard right turn against Hispanics by unveiling legislation that he was boasting was “tougher than Arizona’s law” was what cost him the election. McCollum was a right winger through and through and as such I was no fan but anybody STUPID enough to piss off Hispanics in a state with so many ex Cuban conservatives is too stupid to run a state anyway.

We’re going back up to Pismo next week. The best place we’ve found so far that we can take the dog on the beach. Yesterday, I found a way cool LED light that is a circle and fits around an umbrella pole. I love picking up stuff for 50% off at the end of summer sales.

That’s sweet. Where are you? I love boxer dogs, one of my best friends has a boxer named Duke and another has a female named Mia. My own boss would have to agree to that arrangement also. Kuroneko grew up around big dogs but she hasn’t been near any for a while now.

Good morning everyone. It was difficult to watch the video and realize how many really uninformed and misinformed people there are. And Tucker Carlson’s take (Wright State = Redstate) is truly shameful.

As many here have said many times, “Teh stupid, it buuurns.”

Fortunately I have a spare kybd *g*

Margaret, I’m continuing to keep fingers and toes crossed for you! Hope you get some good news today.

Exactly! All of my camping gear, including tent and stove fit into one ice chest and one storage box. All of it can be easily packed and carried on my back when it becomes necessary to carry it further in, (except the ice chest of course which is by nature inconvenient).

My uncle had a boxer named Val. Loved that dog. Sweetest animal, well trained and pure joy to be around.

Anybody see this yet?

Murkowski Concedes

Duke is….exuberant….

Yep. I saw that among all of the Obama love at TPM this morning.

I’m in South Austin not far off of I 35 at the Oltorf Exit. I grew up right here, and it sure makes me wish I’d been a lot nicer to some of those old ranch girls way back when! There have been plenty of land fortunes made (and lost) around here.

Tent, sleeping bag, food, K-bar, small magnifying glass, matches. Know where a creek is for water and I’m set.

Morning, Molly.
So you’re a free woman, now, huh? Got your feet up and eatin’ bon bons?

wish I’d been a lot nicer to some of those old ranch girls way back when!

LOL

I used to live on Royal Hill. I used to say if someone blew up the IRS building, debris would land on my house.

I imagine everything looks civilized to you after some of the bush in ‘Nam. Me? I was happy and proud to get three hot meals a day being on board ship.

And thanks! I will surely keep that in mind. If nothing else than for a place to kip while I job hunt up there.

Well, in a way. Sitting on my deck with my tea and my laptop, enjoying the morning. I can get used to this! Until now it has been a weekend luxury.

Gotta get out and about, though. (My late uncle used to say, “Gotta get walkin’ and a-talkin’!”) I have to figure out how to select a paint color for my bathroom, which has a new granite countertop but at the moment very little light until the new fixtures are installed, which will make selecting a color challenging. I want to paint before they put the mirror back up. I also want to get in a morning bike ride before predicted t-storms this afternoon.

My suggestion is to get a bunch of paint chips, stick them up and live with them for a few.

If you have a desk lamp you can set it on the new stone and place swatches against the wall in the pool of light. Not the best method maybe but choosing a color in poor light is never a good idea.

There is a little squirrel that keeps running back and forth across my deck. My place is sorta wooded and the squirrels have been digging in the pots on my deck and burying nuts. They’ll be pretty surprised when I bring the pots inside, nuts and all, when the weather gets cold! Meanwhile, this little guy has been very busy for about the past hour!!

My compliments and gratitude to the young student for taking the time to show what happens when you get your “news” from Fox News! Ability to reason just melts away.

Really articulate, aren’t they? Polly want a cracker? Geesh

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.

US KIA Afghanistan: 1,269

US KIA Irak: 1,216 (We’re still there in force, regardless of what Mr Grand Symbolic Gesture sez)

Iraki and Afghan casualties: estimates vary to over 1.5M

US MBS 2010: 30,132 and counting

Outside A Small Circle of Friends

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.

Namaste

Yeah, I will bring a lamp in from somewhere. There is no natural light in the bathroom anyway, so artificial light will work OK for this. I want to paint the wall where the mirror will go, so I don’t have to try to paint around it once it’s up.

I thought that student did an excellent job with the interview. He had a very neutral demeanor, challenged a bit with follow-up questions but never argued even with the most nonsense (can’t pray at the “Lincoln monument”? Really??)

Correction:

US KIA Irak: 4,416

Mojo’s fault. *g*

The 9000? Meh. I spose they’re ok. But if you really want a good lawn chair, you need the 9010X Ultra. I keep one tucked away behind the excercise bike.

This video reminds me why our great experiment in self-government and democracy is doomed to fail. We might want to believe that these folks are a minority but in my neck of the woods, they are a VAST majority. Guided by MSM propaganda and deep seated religious beliefs, they are convinced of their great intelligence and righteousness. There is NO reasoning with them. But, these are our fellow Americans! When we strive for a return of power to the people, these are the ones who will usurp that power. Personally, I have no desire to align myself with a great vast majority of the human beings in this nation. I look now to what options I have; to either live in this nation – founded on using overwhelming force to eradicate the indigenous native population – among these people or somehow emigrate to a place lest infested…

LMAO! Like I said, the 750 has always worked for me!

….or somehow emigrate to a place lest infested

Humanity is humanity and in my travels one thing struck me beyond anything else and that is that essentially, people are the same everywhere pretty much. Some have different likes and prejudices, some have different areas of wanton ignorance or earned wisdom but all pretty much in the same ratio as any other place. You might have to move to Mars.

just astounding ignorance

Is it I love humanity, it’s people I can’t stand, or I love people, it’s humanity I can’t stand.

If I just didn’t live among such a high concentration of ignorance… Mars would be fine… now if I could only liquidate my (minimal) real estate holdings.

No idea. For me it’s the latter.

This is more scary than sad. The video shows how “good people” have reason obliterated by fear. “The um…. the um…?” Nice boots lady!

That was a good interviewer. He never laughed at the stupidity, just listened patiently. He deserves a trophy.

Palin stepped onto the national stage at the republican convention 2 years ago from obscurity. Within hours she was embraced by these same people in this video because she speaks and thinks the same brand of stupid.

I remember a bunch of us DFHs getting serious grief (and instances of someone getting their head bashed) for “desecrating,” the flag when wearing some red, white and blue with a few white stars throw in for good measure. The times they are a changing.

In for a sip of coffee, morning everyone.

i paricularly liked the reclining lady who said, “All I know is what my sister tells me and she lives in Arizona.” Ooooooooookay.

Yeah, well, THAT was for people who made their shirt out of r/w/b Leather and it had Fringe, K?

Finally, a production from Ohio which makes me proud. Thank you Stoll and Whiteside.

That one isn’t complete nonsense. A couple weeks ago, students visiting the Lincoln Memorial from some Christian school spontaneously had a group prayer aloud on the steps of the monument. The DC police came over and told them to stop because demonstrations of any kind aren’t allowed at the Lincoln Memorial. So, in fact, praying aloud in a group is illegal at the ‘Lincoln monument.’ I think we can forgive the lady’s slip of the tongue on the name of the location.

Bashing these people really does us no good. Here’s an example of a person trying to illustrate her point with an item in the news. Good for her. It’s a shame that she’s getting her information from such corrupted sources. Let’s put the blame where it lies, with the purveyors of misinformation and skewed interpretation of events. Why do we as a nation allow this to go on unchallenged? As many have pointed out here, our problem is with the media and the mass disemination of propaganda – whether it’s by Glenn Beck or by the White House. Bring back some objective reporting and fact checking and label opinions as such.

What I liked about these people in the video is when the student asked them if they felt the nation could be reunited, could be restored (to whatever it is they think they remember), they said yes. These folks still want things to improve, they want to be optimistic. They’re looking for a leader and all that’s offered lately are the nutjobs on the right. What a lost opportunity for the left.

Yeah…it’s a crime to be outside a hospital while very pregnant, but only if you are brown. The audacity of showing up at a hospital to give birth!

It’s a shame that she’s getting her information from such corrupted sources. Let’s put the blame where it lies, with the purveyors of misinformation and skewed interpretation of events. Why do we as a nation allow this to go on unchallenged? As many have pointed out here, our problem is with the media and the mass disemination of propaganda – whether it’s by Glenn Beck or by the White House. Bring back some objective reporting and fact checking and label opinions as such.

A combination of the First Amendment and the utterly unenforceable concept of maintaining “objective reporting” puts the onus on the individual consuming the feed of information. That’s sorta the idea behind freedom of speech. Pretty much anybody can say any damn fool thing they want to, and be revered or reviled for it, but it’s up to you which camp you’re going to put your tent up in.

The ignorance and bigotry is breathtaking. And heartbreaking.

Google Obama voters being asked questions. Bigots? the left is always attacking people of faith. Koch brothers? Me thinks Soros funds this very site.

How embarrassing.

Make that “The ignorance and bigotry ARE breathtaking.” Ironic, eh?

Notice how Glenn Beck says his eyes are getting used to the substance he’s using to appear to be crying…This has been around for awhile, but it really needs to go viral so his “followers” can better see the fake that he is…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmgoHXDKezQ

Me thinks Soros funds this very site.

Well, I know I collect a big fat check for commenting here.

Well, I’m way later than you guys, but I only made it to seven minutes. Most of it, I suppose, is not surprising, except for all the people who don’t believe or know about Beck’s “Obama is a racist” comment. Sigh.

Beck said he was wrong. However, Obama did say his grandmother was a typical white person, who has an inbreded fear of blacks.

Fat , ugly, and stump stupid is no way to go through life, goobers.

Boy there is a lot of tonnage in that crowd. It is pretty clear that none of them has gone hungry.
I would not call them stupid, but it seems that no one is there with an IQ of more than 100, rounding up.
The koolaid from the last election is having residual effects.

The Peanuts pennant that I had for many years had Lucy saying, “I love mankind! It’s people I can’t stand!”

Is that you, Sarah?

I don’t mind people who are not quite so intelligent and who are ill-informed. Most citizens, frankly, are ill-informed and low-information these days.

My issue/concern with this crowd is that they truly believe that it should be “their way” or the highway. Plus they insist on believing that this is “their country” and not “our country.” I get that kind of terminology tossed at me regularly on other blogs, so I’m not just talking out of my hat.

I watched the video with bated breath bc my well-educated and quite otherwise intelligent sibling & spouse attended the rally. Thankfully they didn’t make it into the video, but I doubt that they would have been any more articulate that the folks in the video.

We can rail all we want about the lies and crap in the media, but it’s really up to citizens to be more pro-active at searching out the truth.

If some group of school kids were asked to leave the Lincoln Memorial, it’s because there are rules about not congregating there (as in a rally style of group). The kids weren’t asked to leave simply because they were praying there.

I’m quite tired of willfully ignorant people sitting around victimizing themselves and constantly bitching and moaning about how the USA is not living up to some weird “standards” they want the nation to have.

I want MY country back: you know, the one where everyone agreed that no matter who was elected to POTUS or Congress, that it was “their” turn to be there. The country where both political parties made a least some effort to honestly and really be bi-partisan and to work together to pass legislation that was good for the voters, not just for zillioanaires.

You know: the county that existed before rightwing @ssholes, like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, filled the airwaves 24/7/365 with hatred, hatred, hatred, fear, fear, fear, fear and more hatred. I’m frankly frackin’ SICK of the nation as it is now, but these selfish, narcissitic, foolish, idiots – who don’t even bother to really listen to their radio gods – are the ones who need to wake up and make things better – themselves – without constantly victimizing themselves to “the other.”

Of course, Rupert Murdcoh and the Koch brothers were rubbing their grubby mitts with glee at the willful ignorance on display. Much easier to manipulate that crowd – and how!

Sheesh: “I know how the Native Americans felt.” GAH: the nerve! ICK.

Steve’s onto us. I hope he doesn’t find out that I use the Soros money I get for commenting on this site to finance more abortions.

As one with a documented NA ancestor (tribe unknown b/c it wasn’t noted on the marriage license, most likely Iroquois/Six Nations Confederation), I hear that, onitgoes.

How did these people get so ignorant?

It’s an effect of the electorate-jacking myth we’re all taught, that America is the bestest, most blessedest place on earth, and we’re god’s favorite kids, thus neatly conflating the president with Our Great Father in Washington. To oppose the USA becomes tantamount to challenging god almighty.

Our fellow citizens, neighbors, friends, co-workers, what have you, aren’t crazy, stupid, genetically inferior (careful with those oh-so-clever insults, my fierce firedogs, dehumanizing adversaries with eliminationist rhetoric has a way of leading to overt violence, isn’t that our point?), or inherently evil. What are they?

Like us, they’re getting jacked by the power of the myth of American Exceptionalism[1]. Busting that myth is our best hope for gettng out of this god-forsaken Waste Land.

I just commented about this exact phenomenon over at MaxKeiser.com, re: MK’s comparison between Soupy Sales and Beck.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pardon my terseness, broke my left arm last week.

Yes, Beck’s a clown, but there’s much method in that there madman.

Soupy didn’t wrap himself in a “cloak of invisibility” woven of the myth of America’s unrivaled superiority like Beck, and our other demagogues, do.

What’s the common theme of Becksters, Birthers, and Baggers, oh my? They’re all on the Yellow Brick Road to see the Wizard. They’ve been infantilized by weapons of mass deception.

Beck’s our latest Zardoz[2]. Faux News is his fake flying godhead, powered by the myth of America as god’s chosen land. Can’t you hear it?

Watch this clip over at Firedoglake, in which Becksters speak in terms of The Beck’s power to magically transform this benighted land (and we all can see who benighted us: the Dark One and his dark darkies and their darky-loving liberal friends) into the Promised Land.

Early Morning Swim: College Students Interview Teabaggers at Beck Rally, Hilarity Ensues (VIDEO)

And while you’re at it, watch John Oliver’s segment from 7 months ago, Even Better Than the Real Thing, in which JO says, “Beck has so mythologized his childhood, he’s completely lost touch with reality,” and where you’ll find this comment made by yours truly, presented here in a much edited form (so much for being terse).

The Baggers and Birthers and Beckerheads oh my have done the same with our political economics. They’re in a fantasy land, but not a random one, of course.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#
You commented | 7 months ago

DEMOCRACY NOW! SEPTEMBER 19, 2007

NEWSREEL: The 1940s have been a decade of breakthroughs and developments in medicine and psychiatry. Scientists have developed a new technology to cure mentally ill adults. With the use of electroshocks, the minds of sick patients are being wiped clean, giving them a fresh start. On this blank slate, physicians then imprint a new healthy personality.

NAOMI KLEIN: Remaking people, shocking them into obedience. This is a story about that powerful idea. In the 1950s, it caught the attention of the CIA. The agency funded a series of experiments. Out of them was produced a secret handbook on how to break down prisoners. The key was using shock to reduce adults to a childlike state.

TEXT: The following narration is excerpted from the CIA’s 1963 and 1983 interrogation manuals.

NARRATION: It’s a fundamental hypothesis of this handbook that these are techniques are, in essence, methods of inducing regression of the personality. There is an interval, which may be extremely brief, of suspended animation, a kind of psychological shock or paralysis. Experienced interrogators recognize this effect when it appears and know that at this moment the source is far more open to suggestion, far likelier to comply, than he was just before he experienced the shock.

NAOMI KLEIN: But these techniques don’t only work on individuals; they can work on whole societies: a collective trauma, a war, a coup, a natural disaster, a terrorist attack puts us all into a state of shock. And in the aftermath, like the prisoner in the interrogation chamber, we, too, become childlike, more inclined to follow leaders who claim to protect us.

One person who understood this phenomenon early on was the famous economist of our era, Milton Friedman. Friedman believed in a radical vision of society in which profit and the market drive every aspect of life, from schools to healthcare, even the army. He called for abolishing all trade protections, deregulating all prices and eviscerating government services.

These ideas have always been tremendously unpopular, and understandably so. They cause waves of unemployment, send prices soaring, and make life more precarious for millions. Unable to advance their agenda democratically, Friedman and his disciples were drawn to the power of shock.

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/9/17/the_shock_doctrine_naomi_klein_on

Reply to this comment | Edit | Delete | Flag

#
knowbuddhau
You commented | 7 months ago

Dude, you just blew my mind. This is exactly what I’m on about! What’s the primary function of the shock in Naomi Klein’s epochal Shock Doctrine? Infantilization! They’re trying to mind-f^#% us into infants, and when we regress, to impose themselves on our psyches in the “angry father” iconic image, the better for TPTB to jack us to hell and stick us with the bill in every effing way. IOW, Faux News can be seen here using the power of myth to power weapons-grade domestic propaganda. John Oliver, I bow in your virtual direction. (Oh yeah: who’s the precocious kid?)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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[1]

American exceptionalism is the worldview that the United States occupies a special niche among the nations of the world[1] in terms of its national credo, political and religious institutions, and its being built by immigrants. The roots of the position are not clear, although some attribute it to a passage of Alexis de Tocqueville,[2][3] who opined that the then-50-year-old United States held a special place among nations, because it was the first working representative democracy.

Belief in American exceptionalism is more characteristic of conservatives than liberals. Howard Zinn and Godfrey Hodgson[4] said that it is based on a myth, and that “there is a growing refusal to accept” the idea of exceptionalism both nationally and internationally.[5] By contrast, conservative leader Mike Huckabee argues that “to deny American exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation.”[6]. [Wikipedia: American Exceptionalism.]

The roots of AE are in our mythology, ie, the ideas we have about how the cosmos is composed, how it functions, and the proper human role in it. For example, like many demagogues, Glenn Beck claims to speak directly with, and thus for, god almighty.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[2]

In the year AD 2293, a post-apocalyptic Earth is inhabited mostly by the “Brutals”, who are ruled by the “Eternals” who use other “Brutals” called “Exterminators”, “the Chosen” warrior class. The Exterminators worship the god Zardoz, a huge, flying, hollow stone head. Zardoz teaches:

The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was, but the gun shoots death, and purifies the Earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth . . . and kill!

The Zardoz god head supplies the Exterminators with weapons, while the Exterminators supply it with grain. Meanwhile, Zed (Sean Connery), an Exterminator, enters Zardoz, hidden in a load of grain, and shoots (and apparently kills) its pilot, Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy) (identified as an Eternal in the story’s prologue), and travels to the Vortex. The Vortices are hidden communities of civilization where the immortal “Eternals” lead a luxurious but aimless existence. [Wikipedia: Zardoz.]

[PS: Please pardon the length, I'm only going to type this one time today. Stupid wrist is killing me.]

He explained to me how he broke the Bank of England so I’m gonna use the dough I got from him to break the Bank of Japan.

Oh my god, what a bunch of irrational goobers.

~~~ModNote: Please expand.~~~

Early Morning Swim: College Students Interview Teabaggers at Beck Rally, Hilarity Ensues (VIDEO)

The people being interviewed are crazy.

Am I in the wrong forum to discuss the Beck gathering and the college interviews?

Seems there aren’t too many comments about the film, just random conversation.

Ahhh… I just had to read farther. The homeless stuff and the paint chips threw me.

Excellent answer.

Maybe you and Nathan are too young to remember the news media as it used to be practiced. There was no 24hour cable news, filled with mainly opinion commentators. The fairness doctrine required the existing broadcasters, who are priveledged to use the public airwaves, to give equal time to political points of view. The key was – if the other side had no such presentation to give, the requestor didn’t get the air time either. So there was no opportunity to have an unlimited blathering of one political point of view on multiple channels and media (ClearChannel radio and FauxNews).

In addition, journalism schools have radically changed their standards over the last 20 years. Students are taught to bring their own interpretation into their articles. This results in very slanted adjectives and straight out opinion pieces passed off as news on the front page of the NYTimes and the WaPost, among many others. These aren’t labeled analysis or opinion. News articles should objectively provide information and maybe include background material, fact checking, and source verification. Instead, everything you read whether online or in print media, you have to put a filter on to figure out the bias of the writer because they are definitely trying to convey that bias to you.

Also, we need to enforce some basic consumer protections in news. In a case brought in Florida, FoxSnooze won a court case which essentially said that they have no obligation to present factual material, even when they know that the information being aired is false. I would maintain that we should then not allow Fox to use the word ‘News’ in their title. They can say anything they want but we shouldn’t allow them to claim that deliberate lies are news.

The first amendment isn’t the issue with the crappiness of the ‘news’ media. It’s what we allow to be considered news. For instance, wouldn’t it be great if every Rush Limbaugh show were announced to be for comic entertainment purposes only at the beginning? Just maybe a few listeners would be clued in that 90% of what he says are lies.

Au contraire, artman11. Like us, they’re getting jacked by carefully crafted narratives (eg, the meme that Obama has our best interests at heart, as in ‘just look at how stupid his critics are, do you want to elect them, instead? Don’t even think about not voting Democratic.’ And other electorate-dividing false choices). The power of their own dreams, terrors, and aspirations is being used against us, in a propagandizing process I call myth-jacking

Or do we, and only we, have some sort of immunity to “domestic strategic disinformation campaigns” and other ways of manipulating public opinion? We’re as susceptible to getting jacked as anyone else is, diminished only to the extent we see through the masks of all this kabuki.

One of the funny things about mythologies, by their power to shape the background in which we act, is that ours seem like common sense, while theirs seem bat-shit crazy. Thus we speak past each other from within absolutely incommensurate paradigms. They just don’t get it, we say, they lack all common sense. I disagree. They’re making sense based on assumptions of mythic proportions, just like we are.

As Jung would ask, by what myth are we living our lives? We each have to have a mythos, they’re the operating systems of our psyches, so to speak. And as Campbell would say, our myths are broken, that’s why they produce fucked up societies.

We’re not inherently crazy, it’s the malicious myth-making by electorate-jacking demagogues that ails both the Baggers and us.

Neglecting the power of carefully crafted myths, to jack single voting blocs or even entire nations to hell and back, sticking the people with the bill in every way, only makes us all the more vulnerable to them.

See my comment at 83, esp.:

How did these people get so ignorant?

It’s an effect of the electorate-jacking myth we’re all taught, that America is the bestest, most blessedest place on earth, and we’re god’s favorite kids, thus neatly conflating the president with Our Great Father in Washington. To oppose the USA becomes tantamount to challenging god almighty.

Our fellow citizens, neighbors, friends, co-workers, what have you, aren’t crazy, stupid, genetically inferior (careful with those oh-so-clever insults, my fierce firedogs, dehumanizing adversaries with eliminationist rhetoric has a way of leading to overt violence, isn’t that our point?), or inherently evil. What are they?

Like us, they’re getting jacked by the power of the myth of American Exceptionalism[1]. Busting that myth is our best hope for getting out of this god-forsaken Waste Land.

Word! Nice rebuttal, lizpolaris, well said.

I remember network news, even Walter Cronkite and Vietnam. You folk are correct. They are being hand fed information. But they do choose and ignore any distortions as the cost of doing business or just ‘politics’. They’ve embraced the Atwater/Rove scorched earth permanent campaign.

Not many GOPers even realize where Foxnews came from.

In the 80s the Reagan outfit the Office of Public Diplomacy ran by Otto Reich was declared illegal domestic propaganda by the SCOTUS. When that happened a few very wealthy individuals including one Rupert Murdoch created Foxnews, their own media outlet, which would have absolutely no prohibitions of any kind against propaganda. They infused it with a massive budget, took CIA counter-intel methods and blended it with blatant propaganda and bad big business advertising. Voila. The masters of disinformation.

I’m glad I came back, thanks, artman11.

I’d like to see more consideration of deliberate information ops etc., rather than the focus on this or that demagogue, or the wacky things people will say after being subjected to weaponized rhetoric (designed to manufacture consent) their whole lives.

If we aren’t investigating up the chain of command, then we’re doing no different than scapegoating the grunts. Our friends, neighbors, et al. aren’t the enemy, it’s the makers of the malicious myths.