We Live in an Era of Spin

“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.” — Edward Bernays, 1928

Today we live in an age of spin. By spin I am not referring to a Ferris wheel or top, but the distortion in the news and how current events and the products we buy are portrayed in our media. We live in an age where we are accustomed to 15 or 30 second commercials telling us what automobile, breakfast cereal, tooth paste, or beer to buy. We are used to these and our brain is able to process 15 or 30 seconds worth of spoken words, images, and sounds very easily.

This world of spin now affects the way we receive our news about politics and national affairs. If you have ever watched some of the news and opinion shows you will see how the talking heads will stick to their preconceived talking points no matter what question is asked of them. They will stick to the agenda that has been approved for them by the political party or politician they support. Even in so-called debate shows where the debate lasts for two or three minutes the opposing parties beat each other over the head with their talking points and rarely address the issue at hand with honesty or candor. In essence we live in a world dominated by PowerPoint.

A recent example is the issue of the terrorist attacks on our consulate in Benghazi and the so-called Romney tape.

Both domestic and foreign intelligence sources have repeatedly stated that the Benghazi was a planned Al Qaeda attack and were not spontaneous protests caused by the so-called anti- Muslim video. The most recent report of this appears in Fox News:

“Intelligence sources tell Fox News they are convinced the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was directly tied to Al Qaeda -- with a former Guantanamo detainee involved.

That revelation comes on the same day a top Obama administration official called last week's deadly assault a "terrorist attack" -- the first time the attack has been described that way by the administration after claims it had been a "spontaneous" act.

"Yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy," Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said during a Senate hearing Wednesday.”

However, his statement goes beyond White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, saying the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate was spontaneous. He is the first top administration official to call the strike an act of terrorism. The Fox Report continues:

“Rice appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and four other morning talk shows to say the attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans was "spontaneous" and sparked by an early protest that day outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, over an anti-Islamic video.

"It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States," Rice told Fox News. "The best information and the best assessment we have today is that this was not a pre-planned, pre-meditated attack. What happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo."

However, that account clashed with claims by the Libyan president that the attack was in fact premeditated. Other sources, including an intelligence source in Libya who spoke to Fox News, have echoed those claims. The intelligence source even said that, contrary to the suggestion by the Obama administration, there was no major protest in Benghazi before the deadly attack which killed four Americans. A U.S. official did not dispute the claim. “

This is spin by an administration that is attempting to avoid embarrassment, yet alone culpability for its lack of providing proper security at the consulate.

We no longer have proper debates in the form of the Lincoln-Douglas debates where the two candidates stood side by side for several hours and presented theirs view on the views on the questions of the day — mainly slavery and the Dread Scott decision. There was no moderator with a specific agenda allowing a mere 90 seconds for a talking points answer. The longer these men went on the more they said and revealed their true thoughts and character. They were versed in the skill of rhetoric, not the use of the teleprompter or PowerPoint. It was up to the public to make up their minds as to who they wanted to vote for based on the fortitude, character, and philosophy expressed by the candidate.

So how did we get to the point in our national debate where we are today?

In the days of the traveling snake oil salesman he had to go from town to town with his wagon load of tonics and elixirs, set up shop and spend the day telling the assembled crowd how his preparations could cure everything that ailed you. When he had finished selling all he could he would pack up and move to the next town where he would start all over again.

In the early 1920’s radios became affordable and almost every home across the land owned one. This gave rise to more and more radio stations and the demand for more and more programing. To support the cost of the stations and programming he radio stations needed to sell air time to sponsors who would sell the products over the this new electronic media.

Unlike the traveling salesman and snake oil peddlers radio stations did not have all day to sell a sponsor’s product over the air waves. They had to do it in 30 seconds or less if they wanted to retain the attention of the listeners — thus entered the growth of the ad agencies and Madison Avenue.

These add men had already been making their living producing advertising for magazines and newspapers. With the printed media ads could contain both words and images, but on radio the commercials depended on words and music, thus the advent of the singing jingles and slogans that we can still see today. This was called branding.

People tended to believe testimonials for products on the radio. The more soothing the voice was more believable the message. This worked especially well with women who listened to the daily soap operas while their husbands were at work and usually made the decisions on what products to purchase for the family. This is why these daily 30-minute dramas were sponsored by laundry soap (thus the name soap opera), breakfast cereal, flour, and other home products.

Spin and propaganda has always been with us to some extent. When Rome burned Nero blamed the Christians and the French blamed Dreyfus for the leakage of French military secrets to the Germans. Both were not only false they were clumsy. When Woodrow Wilson dragged the United States into the First World War he needed an arm of government to spin his war message to the American Public. For this purpose he created the Committee on Public Information AKA the Creel Committee due to its chairman George Creel. It was the mission of the CPI to promote Wilson’s war to the American public through the use of newspapers, magazines, posters and the newly discovered power of radio. It used every medium available to create enthusiasm for the war effort and enlist public support against foreign attempts to undercut America's war aims. Creel was a die-hard Democrat who was quoted as saying; “"an open mind is not part of my inheritance. I took in prejudices with mother's milk and was weaned on partisanship.” Other members of the CPI were the renowned political columnist Walter Lippmann and the Austrian born nephew of the famous psychoanalysis pioneers Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays. It was Bernays who would go on to become known as the “father of spin.”

Amazed by the degree to which the “democracy” slogan had swayed the public both at home and abroad, Bernays wondered whether this propaganda model could be employed during peace time. Due to negative implications surrounding the word propaganda because of its use by the Germans in World War I, he promoted the term "Public Relations". According to the BBC interview with Bernays’ daughter Anne, Bernays felt that the public's democratic judgment was "not to be relied upon" and he feared that "they [the American public] could very easily vote for the wrong man or want the wrong thing, so that they had to be guided from above". This "guidance" was interpreted by Anne to mean that her father believed in a sort of "enlightened despotism" ideology. This was a far cry from our Founders who put their thoughts and philosophies of government in the Federalist Papers.

Bernays’ public relations efforts helped to popularize Freud's theories in the United States. Bernays also pioneered the PR industry's use of psychology and other social sciences to design its public persuasion campaigns: He is quoted as saying:

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.”

Bernays refined and popularized the use of the press release, following its invention by PR man Ivy Lee, who had issued a press release after the 1906 Atlantic City train wreck. One of the most famous campaigns of Bernays was the women's cigarette smoking campaign in 1920s. Bernays helped the tobacco industry overcome one of the biggest social taboos of the time: women smoking in public. Women were only allowed to smoke in designated areas, or not at all. If caught violating this rule, women would have been arrested. Bernays staged the 1929 Easter parade in New York City, showing models holding lit Lucky Strike cigarettes, or "Torches of Freedom". After the historical public event, women started lighting up more than ever before. It was through Bernays that women's smoking habits started to become socially acceptable. Bernays created this event as news, which, of course, it wasn’t. Bernays convinced industries that the news, not advertising, was the best medium to carry their message to an unsuspecting public. This is a technique that has been refined for today’s mainstream media as lazy journalists buy the spin and ignore the facts.

One of Bernays’ favorite techniques for manipulating public opinion was the indirect use of "third party authorities" to plead his clients' causes. "If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway", he said. In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted a survey of physicians and reported their recommendation that people eat heavy breakfasts. He sent the results of the survey to 5,000 physicians, along with publicity touting bacon and eggs as a heavy breakfast. This technique was used during the debate over ObamaCare when 50 people dressed in white doctor’s coats appeared on the White House lawn to promote the passage of the bill. This was pure Bernays

Bernays also drew upon his uncle Sigmund's psychoanalytic ideas for the benefit of commerce in order to promote, by indirection, commodities as diverse as cigarettes, soap and books,

In his 1928 book Propaganda Bernays argued that the manipulation of public opinion was a necessary part of democracy:

“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 every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

In the first chapter, Organizing Chaos, of his book Bernays writes:

“In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea.

It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading, committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to eat. But we have chosen the opposite method, that of open competition. We must find a way to make free competition function with reasonable smoothness. To achieve this society has consented to permit free competition to be organized by leadership and propaganda.

Some of the phenomena of this process are criticized—the manipulation of news, the inflation of personality, and the general ballyhoo by which politicians and commercial products and social ideas are brought to the consciousness of the masses. The instruments by which public opinion is organized and focused may be misused. But such organization and focusing are necessary to orderly life.

As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.”

In chapter VII, Propaganda for Education Bernays writes:

“The normal school should provide for the training of the educator to make him realize that his is a twofold job: education as a teacher and education as a propagandist.”

In the book “The Father of Spin” by Larry Tye reviewers John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton write:

“Today, few people outside the public relations profession recognize the name of Edward L. Bernays. As the year 2000 approaches, however, his name deserves to figure on historians' lists of the most influential figures of the 20th century.

It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political, economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs in the public relations industry. PR is a 20th century phenomenon, and Bernays -- widely eulogized as the "father of public relations" at the time of his death in 1995 -- played a major role in defining the industry's philosophy and methods.”

…

Bernays' life was amazing in many ways. He had a role in many of the seminal intellectual and commercial events of this century. "The techniques he developed fast became staples of political campaigns and of image-making in general," Tye notes. "That is why it is essential to understand Edward L. Bernays if we are to understand what Hill and Knowlton did in Iraq -- not to mention how Richard Nixon was able to dig his way out of his post-Watergate depths and remake himself into an elder statesman worthy of a lavish state funeral, how Richard Morris repositioned President Bill Clinton as an ideological centrist in order to get him reelected, and how most other modern-day miracles of public relations are conceived and carried out."

Many of the new insights that Tye offers have to do with Bernays's relationship with his family and his uncle Sigmund Freud, whose reputation as "the father of psychoanalysis" owes something to Bernays' publicity efforts. Bernays regarded Uncle Sigmund as a mentor, and used Freud's insights into the human psyche and motivation to design his PR campaigns, while also trading on his famous uncle's name to inflate his own stature.

There is, however, a striking paradox in the relationship between the two. Uncle Sigmund's "talking cure" was designed to unearth his patients' unconscious drives and hidden motives, in the belief that bringing them into conscious discourse would help people lead healthier lives. Bernays, by contrast, used psychological techniques to mask the motives of his clients, as part of a deliberate strategy aimed at keeping the public unconscious of the forces that were working to mold their minds.

Characteristically (and again paradoxically), Bernays was remarkably candid about his manipulative intent. "If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it," he argued in Propaganda, one of his first books. In a later book, he coined the term "engineering of consent" to describe his technique for controlling the masses.

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society," Bernays argued. "Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."

….

During Bernays' lifetime and since, propaganda has usually had dirty connotations, loaded and identified with the evils of Nazi PR genius Joseph Goebbels, or the oafish efforts of the Soviet Communists. In his memoirs, Bernays wrote that he was "shocked" to discover that Goebbels kept copies of Bernays' writings in his own personal library, and that his theories were therefore helping to "engineer" the rise of the Third Reich.”

The next time you read an article in a newspaper or magazine or watch one of the numerous news and opinion shows on TV watch with a jaundiced eye and listen with a doubting ear. Consider the person or publication making the statement and the agenda they are promoting. Study history, not from a college professor who no doubt has a personal agenda at work in his classroom, but from various sources. Learn to identify the spin and talking points and demand more honest debate. The hand of Edward Bernays may be reaching out from the grave.

Just One More Example of MSM Bias

“During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety.” — Thomas Jefferson, Second Inaugural Address — 1805.

Nothing much has changed since 1805 when Jefferson made the remark quoted above. Rather than speak truth to power — one of the tenants of a free and unbridled press — we have a press that speaks power to truth. Most of our mainstream media and their blog partners are so loaded with “journalists” educated and steeped in progressive/socialist philosophy they truly believe that their job is to slant and twist the news to favor their progressive agenda and suppress news that might put their agenda at some risk. In essence they are dishonest whores of the progressive left.

The latest example is the reporting of the shooting at the Family Research Center in Washington, D.C. this week. On Wednesday morning A gunman entered the building housing the FRC, took issue with the work FRC does (no motive is known other than the gunman uttering a complaint about what FRC does), and began to shoot. A security guard was shot in the arm, but managed to get the shooter down. During his attack, the gunman stated the shooting was about "what this place stands for." The FRC strongly promotes traditional marriage and pro-life issues.

Shortly before 11 a.m. on Wednesday, 28-year-old Floyd Corkins, a supporter of the LBGT agenda opened fire on a security guard at the conservative Family Research Center, located in downtown Washington, D.C. Local news stations, including NBC's Washington station, devoted resources to cover the developing story, as did CNN and Fox News, which regularly updated viewers with progress in the investigation. But MSNBC devoted a scant 17 seconds to the story, in a news brief at 2:51 p.m. by News Nation substitute anchor Jose Diaz-Balart, and ignored noting that it may well be classified as an incident of domestic terrorism.

As the day went on, the shooter was identified as Floyd Lee Corkins II. ABC reported:

“Leonardo "Leo" Johnson, 46, was shot in the left arm Wednesday afternoon at the Family Research Council offices near Chinatown. The Family Research Council is a conservative lobbying organization whose president supports, among other issues, Chick-fil-A’s public stand against same-sex marriage.

"I am not real comfortable with the hero thing, I mean, I was doing my job,” Johnson says.

The alleged shooter, Floyd Corkins, reportedly said he opposed the organization's politics and had 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his bag, federal authorities said Thursday.

Clad in a white jumpsuit and showing little emotion, Corkins, 28, was charged in federal court with assault with intent to kill and bringing firearms across the state. He told a judge that he only had $300 to his name and was assigned a public defender.

Corkins is currently being held without bond and faces a detention hearing next Friday. A mental evaluation is also being ordered.

“Sources say Corkins walked into the Family Research Council and said “It’s not about you, it’s about the policy,” and then shot the guard.

……

Corkins had been volunteering for about the past six months at The DC Center for the LGBT Community, said David Mariner, executive director of the community center, which is in Northwest Washington. He usually staffed the center’s front desk on Saturdays, and his most recent shift was about two weeks ago.”

I waited for the mainstream media to connect Corkins to the homosexual activist community — but this did not happen.

After all, to this day liberals link Scott Roeder, who killed late-term abortionist George Tiller in 2009, to Operation Rescue because authorities found a Post-It note with Operation Rescue’s phone number in Roeder’s car.

And Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards labeled Tiller’s murder as only one of “violent attacks by anti-choice extremists,” quoting from CNN.

And within hours of the Aurora, Colorado, theater shooting last month, ABC falsely linked the killer to the Tea Party.

So if Corkins actually worked at a homosexual organization, and it was during the time when that organization was actively promoting the defamation of Chick-Fil-A, and if on Facebook Corkins listed only two friends, one being David Mariner, executive director of The DC Center (who Mariner quickly defriended), well wow, surely MSM would promote Corkins as a poster child for homosexual violence, right?

And wouldn’t MSM then investigate for deeper connections? Were Corkins and his only male Facebook friend Mariner lovers? Why did Corkins stop working at The DC Center? Did officials at The DC Center notice abnormal behavior, or did Corkins threaten violence against FRC and/or conservatives The DC Center didn’t report to authorities?

No, of course not. Negative profiling by liberals and the media only goes one way.

And will Obama’s FBI charge Corkins with domestic terrorism, or with committing a federal hate crime?

And will Obama and liberals now call on their own, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, which currently lists FRC as a “hate group,” to temper their inflammatory language against conservative groups?

It is not a political statement, but a fact that for years the left inside and outside the media has ridiculed the family values the Family Research Council defends. It is not a political statement, but a fact that had this been at an abortion clinic or the Human Rights Campaign’s headquarters instead of the Family Research Council’s headquarters, we’d be in for a week of handwringing in the media about homophobia and right wing nuts. But because the Family Research Council promotes the values shared by a majority of Americans, but only a minority of the left in and outside the media, this story will move off the radar very quickly.

Instead, the Human Rights Campaign, which aggressively supports gay rights, will go on calling the Family Research Council a hate group, which it did the day before the shooting, the media will give the shooting a passing reference, and it will all be forgotten until Brian Ross and ABC News can figure out a way to pin it on the tea party. It took only 20 hours for CNN to uphold the 'Hate Group' Label for FRC.

Imagine a volunteer for the Family Research Council marching into some gay group’s headquarters with a gun, and after shouting his opposition to the homosexual agenda, opened fire and wounded a guard before being subdued. Never mind evening news. This would be Breaking News! And for days there would be seemingly endless coverage of continued conservative hatred.

These networks are aiding and abetting liberal violence by refusing to identify it as liberal violence. Whether it’s vandalism at Chick-fil-A or rapes in Occupy Wall Street camps, these networks simply cannot find “news” in liberal violence of any kind.

One can easily imagine how the national media elite justify their decision to spike the story. No one was killed, or in danger of dying. There are dozens of shootings a day in the DC area; this is just one more. We have more important things to cover. According the Media Research Center both CBS and NBC spent more than two minutes promoting Team Obama’s “Dream Act” amnesty for students. NBC devoted two minutes and 45 seconds to a Chelsea Clinton story on orphaned baby elephants in Africa.

These same media outlets pounce on allegations of conservative hatred, even when there isn’t a scintilla of evidence. The Oklahoma City bombing was caused by hatred from right-wing talk radio. The Aurora killer was a member of the Tea Party. So too was the man who shot Gabby Giffords. On and on it goes, and over and over, it turns out not to be true.

ABC led “World News” with the story on the FRC shooting and saluted the heroic security guard for saving the FRC from a mass shooting in their offices. They were the exception.

Once again the MRC reported:

“Our taxpayer-funded media were silent. The “PBS NewsHour” offered nothing. It did have time to announce “About four million Bumbo baby seats are being recalled because infants can fall out of them.” NPR offered no story on “All Things Considered” on Wednesday night, but did find time to report on cheating at a national Scrabble tournament. NPR also skipped it on Thursday’s “Morning Edition,” but covered the riveting story of “inter-tribal cattle violence” in South Sudan.

MSNBC’s prime-time lineup, starting with Chris Matthews, said nothing about the shooting at FRC – except for Rachel Maddow, who offered a slightly longer brief than Brian Williams. This is the same network that went over the top and around the bend that someone at a Tea Party rally was carrying a weapon at a rally. So why can’t they produce one full story on an actual shooting at a conservative office?

On Thursday morning, the network pattern continued: ABC offered another full story (adding the LGBT volunteer connection). By contrast, NBC offered a tiny anchor-read update. CBS aired nothing, but did find the time for a story on the 40th anniversary of the movie “Deliverance.” Burt Reynolds in make-believe is somehow more newsworthy than a left-winger aiming to massacre up an office of conservative Christians.

CNN was the most offensive of all. Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage was interviewed on Thursday morning’s “Early Start,” and protested how the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” designation for several Christian conservative groups – including FRC – is obviously now causing real harm.

In reply, with zero sense of post-shooting decency, CNN anchor Zoraida Sambolin suggested the FRC absolutely deserved the SPLC’s “hate group” label, reading from a 1999 FRC pamphlet on the National Man-Boy Love Association and gay activists. She berated Brown: “It is spewing hate, isn't it? So it’s hate spewing hate.”

Within 24 hours of a gay-left activist shooting at the FRC, the world-class jerks at CNN are still demeaning FRC and social conservatives as “hate groups” that should be drummed out of the public conversation.”

Then we have Chris Matthews, the star anchor of MSNBC and probably the best example of left-wing bias in the media. It was Matthews, who previously linked Sarah Palin and Michele Bachman to the attempted killing of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, completely ignoring the shooting of the security guard at the conservative Family Research Council.

By Matthews' own past statements, wouldn't an examination of the possible root causes of the FRC shooting be warranted?

On January 10, 2011, Matthews said of the Giffords attack: "Sarah Palin using gun play language. What is she talking about crosshairs and reloading and Bachmann out there with her kind of talk." He hinted, "Why are guns talked about so much, especially on the right? Why?"

On June 10, 2009, Joan Walsh, one of Matthews' favorite guests, linked Rush Limbaugh to the Holocaust Museum shooting. She bloviated:

“There is a very disturbing and disturbed element of political discourse. And I would, I would throw in Rush Limbaugh. Not blaming him, but when you say that our President is more dangerous than al-Qaeda you've gone off into crazy nut job land. You are off the charts crazy. And you are, you are whipping people up.”

On Wednesday, Fox News reported of the FRC attack:

“The suspect "made statements regarding their policies, and then opened fire with a gun striking a security guard," a source told Fox News. WJLA-TV7 reported the suspect was also shot. Sources also said the gunman may have been carrying a bag from Chick-fil-A, the embattled fast-food restaurant whose president came under fire from gay activists after he said he did not agree with same-sex marriage.

Sources told Fox New that after guard took away his gun, the suspect said, "Don't shoot me, it was not about you, it was what this place stands for."

It's sadly not surprising that Matthews, who often likes to jump to conclusions and link conservatives to acts of violence, had no interest in covering an attempted slaughter at a conservative organization.

On the other hand in an example of suppressing news unfavorable to their agenda the MSM pretty much ignored the fizzle of the Chick-fil-A “Kiss-in.” The broadcast networks promoted gay activists’ protest of the fast food company Chick-fil-A, but when that protest fizzled, they did little to cover the failure.

According to a report by the Media Research Center ABC’s Steve Osunsami hyped the protests ahead of time, saying “nearly 100,000 friends and family have been invited online.” After the apparent lack of turnout at the kiss-in, however, the networks stopped reporting on the protest. Only ABC briefly mentioned the results of the kiss-in, after all three networks talked about the protests on the morning of August 3^rd.

“Gay activists scheduled their National Same Sex Kiss-in Day that day as a protest against the pro-traditional marriage views of the firm’s founder and Chick-fil-A’s contributions to pro-family groups.

The only attention ABC gave to the kiss-in was a brief on the Aug. 4 edition of “Good Morning America.” Ron Claiborne reported: “And hundreds of people across the country turned out for the latest round in the culture war sparked by the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain. Gay rights advocates staged a kiss-in on Friday, snapping photos of themselves kissing in front of the restaurant. This came a couple of days after people packed the fast-food chain showing support for the company's president's anti-gay marriage stance.”

After talking up the protests, the other two networks completely ignored the sparse attendance. CBS reported on Aug. 3: “At Chick-fil-A restaurants across the country, today gay rights supporters are calling for a national same-sex kiss day,” but skipped reporting the Chick-fil-A kiss-in altogether in its evening coverage and over the weekend.

Gay activists scheduled their National Same Sex Kiss-in Day that day as a protest against the pro-traditional marriage views of the firm’s founder and Chick-fil-A’s contributions to pro-family groups.

The only attention ABC gave to the kiss-in was a brief on the Aug. 4 edition of “Good Morning America.” Ron Claiborne reported: “And hundreds of people across the country turned out for the latest round in the culture war sparked by the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain. Gay rights advocates staged a kiss-in on Friday, snapping photos of themselves kissing in front of the restaurant. This came a couple of days after people packed the fast-food chain showing support for the company's president's anti-gay marriage stance.”

After talking up the protests, the other two networks completely ignored the sparse attendance. CBS reported on Aug. 3: “At Chick-fil-A restaurants across the country, today gay rights supporters are calling for a national same-sex kiss day,” but skipped reporting the Chick-fil-A kiss-in altogether in its evening coverage and over the weekend.”

I understand that bias that will occur in the press and media. This is natural and I have my own biases, biases on the right. But these prejudices should be confined to the opinion pages and blogs, not the front page of the papers or media that claims to be news. As an example The Fox News Channel, which proclaims “fair and balanced” has its news show and opinion shows. Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and John Stossel have opinion shows. Bret Baier, Shepard Smith, Peter Doocy, and Bill Hemmer are hard news reporters and will bring on advocates for both sides of an issue. This is what they are the leading TV news service in the nation.

There are two ways to project your bias in the media. The first is by having anchors, reporters, and opinion writers obviously in the tank for the agenda they espouse. The other is by having editors and producers select the stories they want to report on and then use certain code words to slant the news. As an example how many times have you heard the “far right extremist” in and news story as compared with the term “far-left extremist?” The answer is rarely, if never.

For eight years our MSM ran negative stories about George W. Bush. That’s because they hated him. On the other hand negative stories are few and far between about Barack Obama and his policies. That’s because they love him.

The job of the fourth estate is to report the truth to power — all power. Not to pick and choose stories that will best fit their agenda. This is the way they dictate the dialog. How can the voters obtain truthful and accurate information so they can make informed decisions when going to the polls?

I am not in favor of any form of censorship as recently demonstrated in Russia with the jailing of young dissenters, who protested the policies and regime of Vladimir Putin. Let the MSM and blogosphere have their opinion pages and writers. But let us have a MSM that will report fairly and accurately on breaking news stories and government policies and officials without using code words and editing out stories that do not match the agenda of the opinion page.

Disinformation, a Tool of the Left

"Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.” Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals.

In the Alinsky way of Chicago politics the art of disinformation has been very sharply honed. In the absence of being able to run on his record Obama and his Alinskyite strategists will be running their 2012 campaign. You will not hear Obama or his minions proclaiming the wonders of Obama’s accomplishments as there are none. Instead you will be given a steady stream of disinformation to sway the voters for Obama.

Disinformation is a tactic where and organization or person are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address. This tactic was developed by the communists at the turn of the twentieth century and honed into a science at the Frankfurt School to demonize the capitalist and free-market economic system.

Two recent examples of how the left is using disinformation to reelect Barack Obama are illustrated by Harry Reid and Joe Soptic.

Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) has been claiming for almost two weeks that Mitt Romney has not paid any taxes for 10 years. He makes this claim based on information he received from an unnamed former Bain Capital investor. Of course he has no evidence to support this claim yet he stands, almost on a daily basis, on the floor of the Senate and tosses this accusation around with total impunity.

According to Politifact Reid has said Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. It was no slip of the tongue. He repeated the claim on at least two more occasions, at one point saying that “the word is out” when in fact it was only Reid who put that “word” out.

Reid has produced no evidence to back up his claim other than attribution to a shadowy anonymous source. Romney has denied the claim, and tax experts back him up, saying that the nature of Romney’s investments in Bain make it highly unlikely he would have been able to avoid paying taxes altogether — especially for 10 years.

Reid has made an extreme claim with nothing solid to back it up just as Alinsky advises in his Rules for Radicals playbook.

Anyone with an ounce of brains knows that the IRS would have been all over Romney like a wet blanket had he paid no taxes. It matters not that Reid has no evidence for his claim the disinformation is out there and the damage is done. Yes, Romney can refute this claim, but it will take energy away from his campaign and Reid can tell any lies he wants from the floor of the Senate without the fear of being called to the bar of justice for liable — as a serving senator he is immune from the laws of liable.

On the other hand Reid has been linked to disgraced fundraiser Jack Abramoff, participated in nepotism-related scandals which are frowned upon everywhere west of the Kennedy compound, and even pushed for a taxpayer-funded “green” high-speed rail system which would directly financially benefit his cronies and him while providing a “vital” rail link between Las Vegas and that heart of West Coast travel and tourism: Victorville, California.

The second, and most recent, example is the claim of Joe Soptic. The Obama supporting Super PAC Priorities USA yesterday introduced us to Joe Soptic who claims Mitt Romney killed his wife. According to CNN this claim is a bold face lie.

Soptic claims in the Super Pac ad that Mitt Romney and Bain Capital bought GST Steel at some point. Romney left day to day operations of Bain in 1999. Thereafter, Bain offered Joe Soptic a buy out and he refused. Eventually the steel plant went out of business and Joe went on the unemployment line. That happened in 2001 — two years after Romney left.

In 2002 or 2003, Mrs. Soptic injured her rotator cuff and left her job. She lost her insurance. In 2006, she was diagnosed with cancer and died a few days later. It is a terrible tragedy that Mitt Romney had nothing to do with.

It seems Mr. Soptic chose poorly on the buy-out offer, lost his job, and would prefer to blame Mitt Romney than anyone else. Priorities USA has set a new standard — Mitt Romney killed a woman, despite being removed from both time of death and decision making. This is disinformation, Alinsky style, at its pinnacle.

There was a time, not too long ago, that governments and the groups of elites that controlled them did not find it necessary to conscript themselves into wars of disinformation.

Propaganda was relatively straightforward. The lies were much simpler. The control of information flow was easily directed. Rules were enforced with the threat of property confiscation and execution for anyone who strayed from the rigid socio-political structure. Those who had theological, metaphysical or scientific information outside of the conventional and scripted collective world view were tortured and slaughtered. The elites kept the information to themselves, and removed its remnants from mainstream recognition, sometimes for centuries before it was rediscovered.

With the advent of anti-feudalism, and most importantly the success of the American Revolution, elitists were no longer able to dominate information with the edge of a blade or the barrel of a gun. The establishment of Republics, with their philosophy of open government and rule by the people, compelled aristocratic minorities to plot more subtle ways of obstructing the truth and thus maintaining their hold over the world without exposing themselves to retribution from the masses. Thus, the complex art of disinformation was born.

The technique, the “magic” of the lie, was refined and perfected. The mechanics of the human mind and the human soul became an endless obsession for the establishment.

The goal was malicious, but socially radical; instead of expending the impossible energy needed to dictate the very form and existence of the truth, they would allow it to drift, obscured in a fog of contrived data. They would wrap the truth in a Gordian Knot of misdirection and fabrication so elaborate that they felt certain the majority of people would surrender, giving up long before they ever finished unraveling the deceit. The goal was not to destroy the truth, but to hide it in plain sight.

In modern times, and with carefully engineered methods, this goal has for the most part been accomplished. However, these methods also have inherent weaknesses. Lies are fragile. They require constant attentiveness to keep them alive. The exposure of a single truth can rip through an ocean of lies, evaporating it instantly.

Today most historians consider Edward Bernays the father of modern disinformation. He believed this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct'. One of Bernays' favorite techniques for manipulating public opinion was the indirect use of "third party authorities" to plead his clients' causes. "If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway", he said. In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted a survey of physicians and reported their recommendation that people eat heavy breakfasts. He sent the results of the survey to 5,000 physicians, along with publicity touting bacon and eggs as a heavy breakfast. It was Bernays who was retained by Woodrow Wilson to shape American public opinion to favor entry into World War I. His books and treatises were widely read by those who wanted to shape public opinion and one of his disciples was Joseph Goebbels, Adolph Hitler’s minister of propaganda.

The mainstream media, once tasked with the job of investigating government corruption and keeping elitists and masterminds in line, has now become nothing more than a public relations firm for corrupt officials and their globalist handlers. The days of the legitimate “investigative reporter” are long gone (if they ever existed at all), and journalism itself has deteriorated into a rancid pool of so called “TV Editorialists” who treat their own baseless opinions as supported fact.

The elitist co-opting of news has been going on in one form or another since the invention of the printing press. However, the first methods of media disinformation truly came to fruition under the supervision of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, a supported of Franklin Roosevelt and big government who believed the truth was “subjective” and open to his personal interpretation.

Some of the main tactics used by the mainstream media to mislead the masses are as follows:

Lie Big, Retract Quietly: Mainstream media sources (especially newspapers) are notorious for reporting flagrantly dishonest and unsupported news stories on the front page, then quietly retracting those stories on the very back page when they are caught. In this case, the point is to railroad the lie into the collective consciousness. Once the lie is finally exposed, it is already too late, and a large portion of the population will not notice or care when the truth comes out.

Unconfirmed or Controlled Sources As Fact: Cable news venues often cite information from “unnamed” sources, government sources that have an obvious bias or agenda, or “expert” sources without providing an alternative “expert” view. The information provided by these sources is usually backed by nothing more than blind faith.

Calculated Omission: Otherwise known as “cherry picking” data. One simple piece of information or root item of truth can derail an entire disinformation news story, so instead of trying to gloss over it, they simply pretend as if it doesn’t exist. When the fact is omitted, the lie can appear entirely rational. This tactic is also used extensively when disinformation agents and crooked journalists engage in open debate.

Distraction and the Manufacture of Relevance: Sometimes the truth wells up into the public awareness regardless of what the media does to bury it. When this occurs their only recourse is to attempt to change the public’s focus and thereby distract them from the truth they were so close to grasping. The media accomplishes this by “over-reporting” on a subject that has nothing to do with the more important issues at hand. Ironically, the media can take an unimportant story, and by reporting on it ad nauseum, cause many Americans to assume that because the media won’t shut-up about it, it must be important!

Dishonest Debate Tactics: Sometimes, men who actually are concerned with the average American’s pursuit of honesty and legitimate fact-driven information break through and appear on TV. However, rarely are they allowed to share their views or insights without having to fight through a wall of carefully crafted deceit and propaganda. Because the media know they will lose credibility if they do not allow guests with opposing viewpoints every once in a while, they set up and choreograph specialized TV. debates in highly restrictive environments which put the guest on the defensive, and make it difficult for them to clearly convey their ideas or facts. Sometimes this is called “Fair and Balanced.”

TV pundits are often trained in what are commonly called “Alinsky Tactics.” Saul Alinsky was a moral relativist, and champion of the lie as a tool for the “greater good”; essentially, a modern day Machiavelli. His “Rules for Radicals” were supposedly meant for grassroots activists who opposed the establishment and emphasized the use of any means necessary to defeat one’s political opposition. But is it truly possible to defeat an establishment built on lies, by use of even more elaborate lies, and by sacrificing one’s ethics? In reality, his strategies are the perfect format for corrupt institutions and governments to dissuade dissent from the masses. Today, Alinsky’s rules are used more often by the establishment than by its opposition.

Alinsky’s Strategy: Win At Any Cost, Even If You Have To Lie

Alinsky’s tactics have been adopted by governments and disinformation specialists across the world, but they are most visible in TV debate. While Alinsky sermonized about the need for confrontation in society, his debate tactics are actually designed to circumvent real and honest confrontation of opposing ideas with slippery tricks and diversions. Alinsky’s tactics as professed in his Rules for Radicals, and their modern usage, can be summarized as follows:

1) Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.

We see this tactic in many forms. For example, projecting your own movement as mainstream, and your opponent’s as fringe along with. convincing your opponent that his fight is a futile one. Your opposition may act differently, or even hesitate to act at all, based on their perception of your power. How often have we heard this line: “The government knows what is best for the people and there is nothing the people can do now.” This is a projection of exaggerated invincibility designed to elicit apathy from the masses.

2) Never go outside the experience of your people, and whenever possible, go outside of the experience of the enemy.

Don’t get drawn into a debate about a subject you do not know as well as or better than your opposition. If possible, draw them into such a situation instead. Go off on tangents. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty in your opposition. This is commonly used against unwitting interviewees on cable news shows whose positions are set up to be skewered. The target is blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address. In television and radio, this also serves to waste broadcast time to prevent the target from expressing his own position.

3) Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.

Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address. This what happened to the Catholic Church over the contraception issue promoted by Sandra Fluke and NOW.

4) Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.

The objective is to target the opponent’s credibility and reputation by accusations of hypocrisy. If the tactician can catch his opponent in even the smallest misstep, it creates an opening for further attacks, and distracts away from the broader moral question.

5) Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

“Ron Paul is a crackpot.” “Gold bugs are crazy.” “Constitutionalists are fringe extremists.” Baseless ridicule is almost impossible to counter because it is meant to be irrational. It infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage. It also works as a pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. In essence attack the person with ad hominems not his position.

6) A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.

The popularization of the term “Teabaggers” is a classic example; it caught on by itself because people seem to think it’s clever, and enjoy saying it. Keeping your talking points simple and fun helps your side stay motivated, and helps your tactics spread autonomously, without instruction or encouragement.

7) A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.

Don’t become old news. If you keep your tactics fresh, it’s easier to keep your people active. Not all disinformation agents are paid. The “useful idiots” have to be motivated by other means. Mainstream disinformation often changes gear from one method to the next and then back again. The term “Useful Idiots” was coined by Lenin to describe journalists like John Reed who would promote his Communist ideology in the capitalistic west.

8) Keep the pressure on with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.

Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. Never give the target a chance to rest, regroup, recover or re-strategize. Take advantage of current events and twist their implications to support your position. Never let a good crisis go to waste.

9) The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

This goes hand in hand with Rule No. 1. Perception is reality. Allow your opposition to expend all of its energy in expectation of an insurmountable scenario. The dire possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.

10) The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

The objective of this pressure is to force the opposition to react and make the mistakes that are necessary for the ultimate success of the campaign.

11) If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside - every positive has its negative.

As grassroots activism tools, Alinsky tactics have historically been used (for example, by labor movements or covert operations specialists) to force the opposition to react with violence against activists, which leads to popular sympathy for the activists’ cause. Today, false (or co-opted) grassroots movements and revolutions use this technique in debate as well as in planned street actions and rebellions (look at Egypt. Libya, and Syria for a recent example).

12) The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem. Today, this is often used offensively against legitimate activists, such as the opponents of the Federal Reserve. Complain that your opponent is merely “pointing out the problems.” Demand that they offer not just “a solution”, but THE solution. Obviously, no one person has “the” solution. When he fails to produce the miracle you requested, dismiss his entire argument and all the facts he has presented as pointless.

13) Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.

Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. The target’s supporters will expose themselves. Go after individual people, not organizations or institutions. People hurt faster than institutions. This what Harry Reid has done with the issue of Romney’s taxes and Joe Soptic with his wife’s cancer. They are attempting to make Romney out to being a “bad” person

The next time you view an MSM debate, watch the pundits carefully, you will likely see many if not all of the strategies above used on some unsuspecting individual attempting to tell the truth.

The most recent and more powerful means of spreading disinformation is the Internet. Internet trolls, also known as “paid posters” or “paid bloggers,” are increasingly and openly being employed by private corporations as well governments, often for marketing purposes and for “public relations” (Obama is notorious for this practice). Internet “trolling” is indeed a fast growing industry.

Trolls use a wide variety of strategies, some of which are unique to the internet, here are just a few:

Make outrageous comments designed to distract or frustrate: An Alinsky tactic used to make people emotional, although less effective because of the impersonal nature of the Web. This tactic is best illustrated by web sites like Media Matters, Move On.Org, and the Daily Koss. These sites are notorious for posting lies and half-truths in true Alinsky fashion.

Pose as a supporter of the truth, and then make comments that discredit the movement: We have seen on our many forums. Trolls pose as supporters of a conservative movement, then post long, incoherent diatribes so as to appear either racist or insane. The key to this tactic is to make references to common conservative arguments while at the same time babbling nonsense, so as to make those otherwise valid arguments seem ludicrous by association. In extreme cases, these “Trojan Horse Trolls” have been known to make posts which incite violence — a technique obviously intended to solidify the false assertions of the think tank propagandists like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which purports that Constitutionalists should be feared as potential domestic terrorists and racists wanting a return to slavery because they believe in the 10^th Amendment.

Dominate Discussions: Trolls often interject themselves into productive Web discussions in order to throw them off course and frustrate the people involved. They also use this tactic by calling into conservative talk radio shows and purporting themselves to be like-minded and then putting forth racists comments to portray conservative thinking people in such a manner.

Prewritten Responses: Many trolls are supplied with a list or database with pre-planned talking points designed as generalized and deceptive responses to honest arguments. When they post, their words feel strangely plastic and well-rehearsed.

False Association: This works hand in hand with item No. 2, by invoking the stereotypes established by the “Trojan Horse Troll.” For example: calling those against the Federal Reserve or ObamaCare “conspiracy theorists” or “lunatics”; deliberately associating anti-globalist movements with racists and homegrown terrorists, because of the inherent negative connotations; and using false associations to provoke biases and dissuade people from examining the evidence objectively.

False Moderation: Pretending to be the “voice of reason” in an argument with obvious and defined sides in an attempt to move people away from what is clearly true into a “grey area” where the truth becomes “relative.”

Straw Man Arguments: A very common technique. The troll will accuse his opposition of subscribing to a certain point of view, even if he does not, and then attacks that point of view. Or, the troll will put words in the mouth of his opposition, and then rebut those specific words.

Sometimes, these strategies are used by average people with serious personality issues. However, if you see someone using these tactics often, or using many of them at the same time, you may be dealing with a paid internet troll.

The best way to disarm disinformation agents is to know their methods inside and out. This gives us the ability to point out exactly what they are doing in detail the moment they try to do it. Immediately exposing a disinformation tactic as it is being used is highly destructive to the person utilizing it. It makes them look foolish, dishonest and weak for even making the attempt. Internet trolls most especially do not know how to handle their methods being deconstructed right in front of their eyes and usually fold and run from debate when it occurs. The only weapon hey have is to scream louder and attack their opposition on a personal and vulgar manner. It you doubt me just look at the vulgar natures of those commenting on these blogs.

The truth is precious. It is sad that there are so many in our society who have lost respect for it; people who have traded in their conscience and their soul for temporary financial comfort or power while sacrificing the stability and balance of the rest of the country in the process.

The human psyche breathes on the air of truth. Without it, humanity cannot survive. Without it, the species will collapse, starving from lack of intellectual and emotional sustenance.

Disinformation does not only threaten our insight into the workings of our world; it makes us vulnerable to fear, misunderstanding, and doubt: all things that lead to destruction. It can drive good people to commit terrible atrocities against others, or even against themselves. Without a concerted and organized effort to diffuse mass-produced lies, the future will look bleak indeed.

Obama’s Media

"Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands?" — Thomas Jefferson

As the presidential campaign begins to heat up and the Republican candidates continue to beat each other in their quest for the nomination Obama is gathering his forces, especially those in the media. This includes journalists, opinion writers, TV talking heads, and Hollywood fellow travelers.

For some Washington reporters and media execs, cheering their team from the sidelines just isn’t good enough: Tugging on a red, white and blue Team Obama jersey is the answer.

That’s the case for a whopping 19 journalists and media executives, including five from the Washington Post and three each from ABC and CNN, who’ve gone into the administration or center-left groups supporting the president.

The Washington Examiner ran an article last week stating:

“Those inside the administration hit 14 this month when the Post’s Stephen Barr joined the Labor Department. That’s a record, say some revolving door watchers, and could even be much higher: The Post reports that “dozens” of former journalists have joined the administration, although Washington Secrets couldn’t verify that tally.

Many are in communications and speech writing offices, most prominently Jay Carney, the president’s spokesman who ran Time’s Washington bureau, and husband to ABC’s Claire Shipman. Some joined as the news business collapsed, many to finally voice their politics, and others, notably former Transportation spokeswoman Jill Zuckman, because she liked her future boss, Secretary Ray LaHood, a rare Republican in the administration. That relationship rocked: LaHood broke through the lower-tier Cabinet P.R. ceiling to become one of the most well-known Transportation secretaries ever. She had worked for the Chicago Tribune.

The revolving door isn’t a surprise to critics of the media and Obama. “The number of reporters going into the Obama administration merely confirms what I knew and what most conservatives long believed,” said Noam Neusner, himself one of the few reporters hired as a Bush speech writer. “There is a vast supply of liberals in newsrooms, they are very happy to support Obama administration policies if they can get hired and they barely hide their ideology in the way they cover the news.” Neusner, who I worked with at U.S. News, said that he too might have been guilty of a pro-Bush bias, but said correctly: “My editors and colleagues were surprised to hear that I was a Republican.”

A former GOP Capitol Hill and cabinet spokesman added, “It’s frustrating to see so many reporters that had relationships with trusted sources give up their ‘impartiality’ and start playing for the other side. It does show that the game is stacked in favor of the other side when most reporters still working in their profession remain silent.”

Stephen Hess, a presidential and journalism scholar at the Brookings Institution, said reporters can be “conflicted” when they trade places. “On the other hand,” he added, “reporters going back to journalism after a stint in government are always better reporters in that they now understand how government really works.”

With the so-called journalists getting on the Obama train it was time for the campaigner-in chief to get out to Hollywood and bring the actors and movie moguls on board. Of course he is doing this with your money.

Last week he spent three days in southern California dipping into the coffers of the useful idiots in the film industry with his $35,000 per plate dinners. People like George Clooney, Barbara Streisand, and Steven Spielberg were quick to dole out the cash for these events.

Obama also ventured up the Pacific Northwest where there are no lack cash-rich lefties ready to contribute to his campaign. John Hayward writes in Human Events:

“The Oval Office sits empty, as President Obama invests most of his time in running for re-election. Even his “2013 budget proposal” was nothing more than a campaign document. Any resemblance between that proposal and a serious attempt to perform the duties of governing was purely coincidental. And remember, his previous budgets were equally absurd – not just controversial, but obviously impossible to pass, and packed with delusional assumptions and big-spending wish lists.

Obama also spends a great deal of time on tours to promote D.O.A. legislation he introduced solely for the purpose of demonizing its opponents, like his $450 billion “jobs bill,” which was almost as silly as his budget proposals.

Today finds the President in Seattle for a few more big-bucks events, as reported by the Seattle Times:

President Obama plans to make a cash withdrawal from his base of wealthy Democratic donors in the Seattle area Sunday, popping in for two fundraisers as part of a West Coast campaign swing.

No public events have been announced for the president's visit, but donors who pony up thousands of dollars can get up close and personal.

First up is an exclusive brunch at the Medina home of former Microsoft executive Jon Shirley.

The event costs $35,800 per couple and 100 people are expected to attend, according to a Democratic Party official.

Then Obama will head to a larger fundraiser at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle, with tickets starting at $100 for balcony seats and up to $7,500 for VIP seating and a receiving-line photo with the president, according to event invitations. Up to 400 people are expected at that event, which will include a lunch catered by chef Tom Douglas and a performance by the Robert Cray Band.

This comes on the heels of another $38,500-per-plate extravaganza in California yesterday. Via Twitter, Mark Knoller of CBS News is keeping score: “In Seattle, President Obama does 2 more fund-raisers - bringing 3-day total to 8 & total since filing for re-election to 92.” Obama filed for re-election on April 4, 2011. That’s 92 fundraisers in a little over ten months.”

National elections are expensive, and even with all the advantages of incumbency, a President seeking re-election would be obliged to spend some time raising money. Byzantine campaign finance laws increase the amount of time a candidate must devote to such activities. But at some point, the amount of time spent on campaigning and fund-raising becomes excessive - especially when coupled with a willingness to twist the duties of the President’s office, such as providing leadership on the federal budget, into campaign tools.

It’s also food for thought when assessing the viability of various Republican campaign strategies against the President. No one is going to be able to out-spend him. In fact, the ability to prevail despite a massive imbalance in campaign spending should be a top item of interest in any Republican resume.”

And then of course there is the case of Media Matters, the left-web site that promotes Obama and his radical agenda. The Daily Caller has been running a series of articles on Media Matters’ financial backers and how they are attempting to demonize conservatives.

Media Matters has raised millions of dollars from major liberal foundations since its inception, benefiting from heavyweight organizations like the Tides Foundation and George Soros' Open Society Institute.

A report Friday in The Daily Caller detailed the sources of about $29 million in Media Matters donations dating back to 2003. Though much of the group's finances are secret, the $29 million represents more than half of Media Matters' total funding in that time.

The left-wing Tides Foundation accounted for $4.38 million of the sum. According to the Caller, more than half of that contribution was in place before the Media Matters launch in 2004. The Open Society Institute also donated more than $1 million, in installments over three years.

Funding for the liberal media advocacy group comes from dozens of other organizations. Among them, according to the report, are the anti-war MoveOn.org, the Barbra Streisand Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Joyce Foundation. President Obama sat on the board of the latter until 2002.

According to the Caller, Media Matters has received nearly $1 million from the Ford Foundation since 2010 — even though the group reportedly was planning to run an ad against Ford as part of its campaign against Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs when he was with CNN, because Ford was advertising on his show.

This brings me to the point I want to make concerning the involvement of the media, especially the film industry, in progressive, left-wing politics.

Back in the mid-1980s I took several courses in film making believing these courses would help me with my presentation skills. During these courses we viewed and then discussed films like The Red Balloon, Battleship Potemkin, Olympia, and Triumph of the Will.

The Red Balloon demonstrated the use of a simple object in a film to draw the viewers’ attention to the adventures of a young boy as he journeyed the streets of Paris. The 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin, by Sergei Eisenstaedt, presents a dramatized version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers of the Tsarist regime. It was the first film to use cut-aways and inserts such as close-ups, a broken pair of eyeglasses, a baby carriage bouncing down the stairs, and a dead child, to invoke feelings for the demonstrators being chased down by Tsarist troops.

Olympia and the Trump of the Will were documentary and propaganda films made by the Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Olympia was made in 1938 and depicted the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. It was the first documentary feature film of the Olympic Games ever made. Many advanced motion picture techniques, which later became industry standards but which were groundbreaking at the time, were employed — including unusual camera angles, smash cuts, extreme close-ups, placing tracking shot rails within the bleachers, and the like. The techniques employed are almost universally admired, but the film is controversial due to its political context. Nevertheless, the film appears on many lists of the greatest films of all-time, including Time magazine's "All-Time 100 Movies.

Triumph of the Will was a pure propaganda film. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. The film contains excerpts from speeches given by various Nazi leaders at the Congress, including portions of speeches by Adolf Hitler, interspersed with footage of massed party members. Hitler commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening titles. The overriding theme of the film is the return of Germany as a great power, with Hitler as the True German Leader who will bring glory to the nation.

Triumph of the Will was released in 1935 and rapidly became one of the best-known examples of propaganda in film history. Riefenstahl's techniques, such as moving cameras, the use of long focus lenses to create a distorted perspective, aerial photography, and revolutionary approach to the use of music and cinematography, have earned Triumph recognition as one of the greatest films in history. Riefenstahl won several awards, not only in Germany but also in the United States, France, Sweden, and other countries. The film was popular in the Third Reich and elsewhere, and has continued to influence movies, documentaries, and commercials to this day.

So with all this in mind I am composing a letter from Fräulein Riefenstahl to Barack Obama with some advice on how to dazzle the electorate with his message of hope and change.

Schatzi, it's been over a year since I last wrote you. Please forgive me. It's been so hot here I can barely stand to touch the keyboard. Not that I don't appreciate the green energy projects you funded to cool off this place, but dear, you know even with the trillions you spent, those projects just keep going under. Yes, I know it helped put billions in the pockets of your donors, but hell is not freezing over you know and we could use energy for the air conditioners.

Anyway, I forced myself to endure the scorching temperatures and pitchforks to congratulate you on those brilliant HHS regulations forcing people to fund insurance coverage for abortions, sterilizations and birth control against their consciences.

Darling Adolf just loved to do that sort of thing. Remember — are you old and well-read enough to remember? He figured out that if he could get people to operate against their conscience on small things, big things like Judenrein (Clean out the Jews) would be easier. Of course, that was just a start.

Martin Bormann said it just right: "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable." For the party to rule, he said the Churches' influence in the leadership of the people "must absolutely and finally be broken." He was taking about the Nazi party, but heavens, Progressives, Democrats, and Nazis — state control is state control.

So, this move by your Administration is just a great first step. You had all the social justice crowd in the church supporting you, and now those wicked bishops — how many divisions do they have anyway? — had to step in to try to put a stop to this.

Well, the match is set.

On your side you have some real geniuses. I mean all the media is helping you sell the fairytale that you are battling people who want to force women to forego contraceptives. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a real feather in your cap; arguing that all women deserve free contraceptives and that religious institutions shouldn't be imposing their values on their employees is, you should pardon the expression, pure Göbbels. And you can count on the press to let her get away with this big lie. After all isn’t Media Matters, MSNBC, and NBC the same as Der Strümer?

The media want to replace old fashioned religion with civic religion as much as you and I do. So, some Catholics have and continue to threaten to shut down their social welfare services rather than comply with such things? Great! The sooner the people learn that the state is the provider of all things, the better — for you and your party. Of course, not necessarily better for them or their country, but that's not the point, is it?

I suppose you have some other good ideas in the wings at HHS. Off the top of my head here are some ideas for you: Make public schools serve pork and require all kids to eat it; force Christian Scientists to see physicians and take medicine; make the Mormon Tabernacle Choir admit Moslems; ban religious circumcisions of males; draft the Amish into the military; outlaw Lutheran lutefisk parties and bake sales.

My goodness, the possibilities once you control the levers of power! And what could possibly give you more power than controlling healthcare delivery? Imagine the rake offs, too. Plastic surgeons want liposuction and botox coverage? Let them kick in to your party. Somebody's poor mom is too old for treatment, cross your palm with silver and a hospital bed becomes available. Why am I telling you this, you of all people? I mean Mr. President Chicago Way, right?

And then your opponents are playing this rather stupidly. Letting you and the press frame this as a women's rights issue, not a Constitutional issue. (Is it just gossip or is it true that Harvard Law School where you attended and the University Of Chicago Law School where you were a lecturer, are mortified? Who cares? That Constitution is so old and updated anyway. Ask Justice Ginsburg, even she's not crazy about it.) Maybe next year you can wait until Congress is in recess and replace it with something newer from Zimbabwe. Well, you certainly don't need me to advise you on how to destroy religion or the Constitution.

I was delighted to see how you are reviving the Sturmabteilung. Of course, you can't credit us — we all discussed it here and understand. Calling it a Truth Team, a "grassroots communications team" will go over much better, but, schatzi, we all know where you got that idea. The explanation is another bit of brilliant propaganda: "The goal is to ensure that when Republicans attack President Obama's record, grassroots supporters can take ownership of the campaign and share the facts with the undecided voters in their lives."

I mean even Michelle Obama's Mirror calls it the "SS. See something, Say something." I think she means it sarcastically but check out the great logos she's come up for the Truth Team!! We couldn't do better and we tried in between KZ camp roastings.

She didn't even get to Project Narwhal, a data-mining outreach operation designed to snare even more low information voters than the media can rope in.

And it's working on ill-educated single women, who'd apparently gladly give up their right to worship as they choose in order to get someone else to pick up their contraception tab, never realizing they're giving up something for nothing, because there really is no free lunch.

I figure a couple years of this and there will be no private insurance companies because they'll be run out of business, or employer provided health insurance because it's all going to be too expensive. And then you'll have the entire country in the palm of your hand. Don’t forget Adolph’s Germany had free health care, except for Jews and other untermensch.

If I had a heart, liebchen, it would be singing right now.

P.S. I keep meaning to tell you — when you tilt your chin skyward like that, you remind me so much of the Italian heart throb Benito.