Posts Tagged ‘ Karl Rove ’

Quote-to-Quote: Edward Bernays on Propaganda

April 11, 2011
By

Every day, we are seeing the teachings of the ‘Father of Public Relations,’ Edward Bernays, played out in our media and political discourse. The propaganda techniques of Bernays have been used by Nazi flack Josef Goebbels as well as Frank Luntz and Karl Rove and, unfortunately, they usually work. Until the public realizes they are being hoodwinked by psychological mumbo-jumbo and dismisses the fearmongering and deceptions of the propagandists, the country has little hope of digging out of the ditch that’s been dug for us by the monied elite who pay the propagandists to practice their dark, democracy-killing art. “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost…

Read more »

The GOP Master Plan

March 25, 2011
By
The GOP Master Plan

Read more »

The Koch Bros. Corporate Crime School

March 3, 2011
By
The Koch Bros. Corporate Crime School

Read more »

The News Pauper: So You Say You Won…Fair and Square

November 4, 2010
By

By W.B. Dunne This one goes out to the youngsters out there who have only begun to experience the political process in America. The ones who voted Obama into office and are now seeing the correction for the first time in these midterms: The Democrats won in a landslide in 2010 for the first time ever in a midterm election, and the fact that there is a “Speaker Boehner” on November third is due to a Supreme Court decision, the Koch Brothers, Fox News, the US Chamber of Commerce, and Karl Rove. The NP reminds the young voter that the great court supported the corrupted GOP with its Citizens United decision, allowing for unlimited and undisclosed money from corporations and foreign interests in the campaign. The unintended consequence was that it helped the Tea Party candidates too, and that fact threatens to split the right wing in the House of Representatives. A silver lining for Progressives if ever there was one! Hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign interference has bought the corporate masters precious little. Speaker Boehner will get what he always wanted and was promised long ago, the mantle of Head of the GOP Majority, but it will…

Read more »

The Tattlesnake – Yankee Doodle Kydoodles and Other Yowling Yowfs of the Teabaggers Pox Americana Edition

October 29, 2010
By

“What then is freedom madness? God forbid. For freedom and madness exist not together.” – Epictetus, “Golden Sayings,” No. XXIX Non-corporate dissectors of the political scene, and Board Certified (in the Rand Paul sense) observers such as myself, have learned to read the stray tea leaves crushed beneath the corporately-financed circus wagon of this year’s New, Improved Tidal Wave GOP (“Democracy’s Detergent!”) and the occasional bits of actual useful information that drop off the Big Media buffet table of parboiled conventional-wisdom offal determined fit for the rustics by the over-paid ‘two legs good, two legs with money great’ crew that pounds a dismal beat between Beltway Washington and the glass canyons of New York. A pattern has emerged as clear as the unblinking eyes of Karl Rove when he’s lying through his teeth; despite the noises made by national pollsters — whose questionable practices include antiquated techniques from the ‘one ringy-dingy’ age of rotary-dial Bakelite phones, and a habitual penchant for loading poll questions with such baloney as, “If you had to vote for a really fantastic Republican candidate or a Democrat who nightly dines on dogs and cats, which would you prefer?” or “Yes, I know it’s the headquarters…

Read more »

The News Pauper: On Freedom of Speech in the Year 2010

September 28, 2010
By

By W.B. Dunne As the News Pauper peruses the demise of sensible discourse since the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, he is forced to ask himself if the Founding Fathers expected anything like Fox News or Rush Limbaugh to exist. It seems to be common belief that the actions of these right-wing ‘Nattering Nabobs’ and those like them will somehow put the Constitution to a test…those archaic intellects can’t be safe in a world with Mass Media Mensas like Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes to contend with! It seems to smack of panic-stricken recognition of the threat of irrelevance or defeat that drives the daily shrillness on Fox. Glenn Beck bounces the rhetorical superball down the crazy collider and Rush superconducts the energy generated into the mainstream conversation. In the beginning, Rush carried the crazy relatively alone, but now, a generation later, the crazy is refracted and amplified. Like shards in the gutter from some smash and grab, there are so many knock-offs of Rush we may never be completely free of them. The NP begs the reader to consider the environment in which our founding documents were spawned, and consider the possibility that the intent of the…

Read more »

AZ Gov. Jan Brewer’s Headless Corpses Lie

September 3, 2010
By
AZ Gov. Jan Brewer’s Headless Corpses Lie

Read more »

Flashback: When Rove Met Junior

August 17, 2010
By
Flashback: When Rove Met Junior

Read more »

Today’s Quotes: Even Chuck Todd Finally Gets It — Sort Of

July 24, 2010
By

Will wonders never cease — even the always-lean-to-the-right Chuck Todd, et al, finally figured out that Andrew Breitbart was pulling his chain. “After conservative activist James OKeefe pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for entering a federal building under false pretenses, you would have thought that all of us in the ACTUAL news business would have learned this lesson about Andrew Breitbart and his prot訩s: Theyre not out for the truth; theyre out for scalps.” – Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Ali Weinberg, from “Snookered,” MSNBC First Read, July 21, 2010. But hold the phone — Chuck and Co. blundered into the swamp of Standard-Issue Beltway Conventional Wisdom lower down on the same page: “But here is something to consider: It’s the country — not the system — that’s stacked against liberals and progressives.” [...] “From 1989 (after Reagan’s presidency) to now, the most stable data in the NBC/WSJ poll has been that roughly one-fifth of the country identifies as being liberal, while one-third identifies being conservative. Even in 2008, when Obama decisively won the presidency, the average in the poll was 25% liberal, 36% conservative. And in 1996, when Bill Clinton easily won re-election, it was 22% liberal,…

Read more »

The GOP Broken Record: Avoiding Blame Republican-Style

June 17, 2010
By
The GOP Broken Record: Avoiding Blame Republican-Style

Read more »

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9 other subscribers