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  Fake News, Fake Political Ads -- Headline Material . A Simple Proposal EVERY DAY, EVERY EDITION, FRONT PAGE LISTING AND DESCRIPTION OF ALL THE ELECTION INTERFERENCE BY OTHER COUNTRIES Every fake ad, every "viral" post,  every fake comment on a story... list 'em all,  Clearly identify the bastards by copy points, visual references, talent descriptions. Define this subject as a beat. Put your smartest people on identifying these propaganda  poison  darts. Leave the stories up, put them on every Net presence you have. Show compounding lists. Identify the originating countries. Call out every lie. Describe how the lie works -- partial truth, heavy repetition, etc. Give this story "above the fold" and lots of graphics and pictures treatment. BE THE ANTIDOTE TO INTERNATIONAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE! I'm askin'. I'm beggin'. Newsguard Reality Check: overview

Forbes Magazine was Just a Billionaire's Fan Boy …But I still thought they had some decent financial reporting, some telling investigations and a tendency to be tough when it counted.  That was their "image" in my wee brain for years.  I thought Steve Forbes was a rightist dweeb, but I didn't hold that against his magazine. (source) Then they hired "Smiley" James Taylor (here supporting Rick Perry) (senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute*)  to write blatant denialist pieces on climate change.  He's a slick trickster who writes pseudo-science with the total confidence of a con man selling you a pyramid scheme.  Here's an example: He reports on a NOAA study from 2013 about the relationship between extreme weather and global warming, and headlines it: NOAA Report Destroys Global Warming Link To Extreme Weather …cherry picking such paragraphs as this:  " Adding additional emphasis to the NOAA publication’s fin...

Ever Heard of Edward Bernays? Forget about (well, you know...) Hitler's guy Joseph Goebbels or Stalin's guy Molotov. They just gave propaganda a bad name. But Bernays basically invented it. CHAPTER I From his 1925 book ORGANIZING CHAOS, the first paragraph: 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. Bernay's first task was to drag the screaming isolationist U.S.A. into World War I. ... with stuff like this: Then he parlayed his techniques into a big P.R. business. His first biggy account was a ciggy account - Chesterfield. This dude convinced women is was cool and sexy to smoke. ... with stuff like this: All rights reserved by Christian Montone But Propaganda wasn't "bad" until the Nazis and the Commies used it to brainwash ...

Rants, "Taken Private" You may have (not) noted that I have been quiet. Not a rant in weeks. Well, busy-bee me has been ranting to friends and relatives instead of to the blog-o-swear. So here are a few excerpts from said rants. A friend said: "Obama's socialist" I said: There you go again. Socialism is when the government owns the companies. "... Economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods." Or, worse, ".. . state control of capital within the framework of a market economy..." kind of like helping Bear Sterns, Fannie/Freddie and now Lehman Brothers. Who's the socialist here, anyway?] A friend sent me an editorial from Independent Business Daily , blasting Obama's positions. I said: America is in serious trouble. If we are to remain the beacon of freedom, the leader of the free world, the font of innov...

Propaganda for the lame minded "ANWR Is Such an Ugly Piece of Wasteland There's No Reason Not To Let The Oil Companies Completely Screw It Up" So since the "Eco Nazis" misrepresent how ANWR really looks ( ugly! ) we should dismiss what they say about the environmental disaster drilling would cause and GET THOSE RIGS UP THERE PRONTO!! (And get our gasoline prices down, equally pronto.) That was the essence of the misleading, misquided piece o' drek that was forwarded to me. I looked at the pictures and read the idiotic text. My response: The coastal plains of ANWR: I never saw a more fragile, important ecosystem in my life. "Barren Wasteland" indeed. The author of that stupidity is obviously massively ignorant of anything about how nature works. Portraying the coastal plains of northern Alaska as "ugly" and not worth saving is exactly like saying the "Everglades are evil," and look what that got us. ANWR is one...

Fool Me Once….. [Excerpts from a NYTimes.com article , interspersed with mild mannered commentary .] Agriculture Secretary Edward T. Schafer is preparing to walk into a buzz saw of criticism over American biofuels policy when he meets with world leaders to discuss the global food crisis next week. He’s carrying the Big Bush Talking Point, “Golly, ethanol from corn is only making a tiny difference in the price of food around the world.” See, the ethanol mandates and subsidies are just terrific for BS (Bush Supporters) in Big Ag, like Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Tyson and lots of millionaire big farmers. So the Bushies are going to fight hard against this new awareness that corn is a really bad feedstock for ethanol in terms of cost, climate benefits and unintended consequences. So… Mr. Schafer took the offensive at a press conference on Thursday that discussed the food summit, planned for Rome. He said an analysis by the Agriculture Department had dete...

Where Has John Gone? Have you noticed a sudden drop in the amount of coverage in the "mainstream media" of John Edwards? To the casual viewer it looks like the Democratic nomination contest has become strictly Obama vs. Clinton. The populist theory about the Populist Candidate is that he has stepped over the line in his criticism of "Big Business, the corporations that own and control most of Congress these days." So sayeth John Edwards, loud, clear and long. So those corporations - which own a lion's share of the mainstream media - have just sent down the word to their media minions to start ignoring him. Dang. Now we read that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is going to raise another $60 million specifically to fight any populist, "anti-business" candidates for President. Guess who has top billing in that fight? Here's the way the match-up looks: John Edwards, Populist /// Thomas Donahue, Pres U.S. C of C Under Donahue, the U.S. Chamber has b...