John McCain isn’t boasting about a new endorsement, one of the very, very few he has received from overseas.
By Nicholas D. Kristof October 26, 2008 Tne New York Times Op-Ed Columnist
It came a few days ago:
“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.
The endorsement left the McCain campaign sputtering, and noting helplessly that Hamas appears to prefer Barack Obama. Al Qaeda’s apparent enthusiasm for Mr. McCain is manifestly not reciprocated.
“The transcendent challenge of our time [is] the threat of radical Islamic terrorism,” Senator McCain said in a major foreign policy speech this year, adding, “Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House.”
That’s a widespread conservative belief. Mitt Romney compared the threat of militant Islam to that from Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Some conservative groups even marked “Islamofascism Awareness Week” earlier this month.
Yet the endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists.
Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Joseph Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him.
“From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is best for Al Qaeda recruiting,” said Professor Nye, adding that Mr. McCain is far more likely to continue those policies.
An American president who keeps troops in Iraq indefinitely, fulminates about Islamic terrorism, inclines toward military solutions and antagonizes other nations is an excellent recruiting tool. In contrast, an African-American president with a Muslim grandfather and a penchant for building bridges rather than blowing them up would give Al Qaeda recruiters fits.
During the cold war, the American ideological fear of communism led us to mistake every muddle-headed leftist for a Soviet pawn. Our myopia helped lead to catastrophe in Vietnam.
In the same way today, an exaggerated fear of “Islamofascism” elides a complex reality and leads us to overreact and damage our own interests. Perhaps the best example is one of the least-known failures in Bush administration foreign policy: Somalia.
Today, Somalia is the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster, worse even than Darfur or Congo. The crisis has complex roots, and Somali warlords bear primary blame. But Bush administration paranoia about Islamic radicals contributed to the disaster.
Somalia has been in chaos for many years, but in 2006 an umbrella movement called the Islamic Courts Union seemed close to uniting the country. The movement included both moderates and extremists, but it constituted the best hope for putting Somalia together again. Somalis were ecstatic at the prospect of having a functional government again.
Bush administration officials, however, were aghast at the rise of an Islamist movement that they feared would be uncooperative in the war on terror. So they gave Ethiopia, a longtime rival in the region, the green light to invade, and Somalia’s best hope for peace collapsed.
“A movement that looked as if it might end this long national nightmare was derailed, in part because of American and Ethiopian actions,” said Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert at Davidson College. As a result, Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism have surged, partly because Somalis blame Washington for the brutality of the Ethiopian occupiers.
“There’s a level of anti-Americanism in Somalia today like nothing I’ve seen over the last 20 years,” Professor Menkhaus said. “Somalis are furious with us for backing the Ethiopian intervention and occupation, provoking this huge humanitarian crisis.”
Patrick Duplat, an expert on Somalia at Refugees International, the Washington-based advocacy group, says that during his last visit to Somalia, earlier this year, a local mosque was calling for jihad against America — something he had never heard when he lived peacefully in Somalia during the rise of the Islamic Courts Union.
“The situation has dramatically taken a turn for the worse,” he said. “The U.S. chose a very confrontational route early on. Who knows what would have happened if the U.S. had reached out to moderates? But that might have averted the disaster we’re in today.”
The greatest catastrophe is the one endured by ordinary Somalis who now must watch their children starve. But America’s own strategic interests have also been gravely damaged.
The only winner has been Islamic militancy. That’s probably the core reason why Al Qaeda militants prefer a McCain presidency: four more years of blindness to nuance in the Muslim world would be a tragedy for Americans and virtually everyone else, but a boon for radical groups trying to recruit suicide bombers.
Barack Obama's team is briefed by Bush staff after warnings about a Terrorist Attack Senior aides to Barack Obama have been meeting George W.Bush's staff to begin planning a smooth transfer of power
By Tim Shipman Telegraph UK Oct 19, 2008
Officials from both campaigns have been asked to briefings after warnings from US intelligence that terrorists and rogue states will seek to exploit the power vacuum following November's presidential election.
For the first time in American history the FBI has begun vetting likely officials of the next administration before the election, to ensure they have security clearance to deal with crises on day one.
Intelligence chiefs expect an attempt to emulate the terrorist strikes on Britain when Gordon Brown took power and are concerned that Russia or Iran could use the 77 days of paralysis between the election and the inauguration on January 20 for acts of international brinkmanship, like the invasion of Georgia.
An official involved in the transition discussions told The Sunday Telegraph: "There has been no specific threat but the assessment is that someone will try something.
"It could be a terrorist attack on US assets overseas. It could be the leader of a rogue state chancing his arm. Putin and Ahmadinejad have form."
The transition of power in the US is a chaotic process. More than 1,100 political appointees in senior posts have to be approved by the Senate, a process that can take months.
On Wednesday the current White House chief of staff, Josh Bolten, chaired a meeting of senior White House staff and representatives of both Mr Obama and his Republican rival John McCain.
President Bush's creation of this Presidential Transition Coordinating Council, the earliest ever, is designed to avoid a repeat of the situation on September 11 2001, when only one third of his national security appointees had been approved by the Senate, nine months into his presidency.
Martha Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, an independent group that advises the transition teams of both campaigns, told The Sunday Telegraph: "The times of changing of power are soft times, times of vulnerability. Just look at what has happened around the world, including in Great Britain.
"You had the failed bombings in London and then the attack at Glasgow airport three days after Gordon Brown took office. In Spain the Madrid bombings were three days before the presidential election."
There have been particularly intensive efforts to make sure Mr Obama has his national security team in place, not just because he is widely expected to win the election on November 4, but because intelligence analysts believe America's enemies are more likely to try to take advantage of Mr Obama's international inexperience than they would of Mr McCain.
A senior official in the Obama camp, whose name has been submitted for FBI vetting, said: "We will be ready and we will be seen to be ready."
He said that Mr Obama is close to finalising plans for his first 100 days in power - which will include major moves on the economy, healthcare and Iraq in his first week, designed to make his priorities clear to Americans.
He is planning a series of early interventions to stamp his authority on the economic crisis. This will include legislation proposing a $300bn stimulus package which would be published before President Bush has even left the White House, so that it can be passed as soon as he takes power.
Mr Obama is also planning executive orders that do not require legislation on his first day in office, which could include plans to promote renewable energy resources and create jobs. His transition team, which is reportedly much more extensive and active than Mr McCain's, features 10 working groups in different policy areas to convert campaign promises into concrete legislation. It is chaired by John Podesta, Bill Clinton's former White House chief of staff who runs the Centre for American Progress, a think tank long seen as a Democratic administration in exile.
Mr Podesta is working closely with Michael Signer, a former foreign policy aide to John Edwards in charge of homeland security affairs. Mr Podesta and Jason Furman, one of Mr Obama's two most influential economic advisers, have already held talks with sceptical conservative Democrats to line up the votes to pass a stimulus package.
Mr Obama has also worked to cultivate a close relationship with the Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, and personally asked him to help out during the transition, sparking speculation that he might keep Mr Paulson in post for the first year of his presidency.
Ms Kumar said: "There are things that a president can do immediately that establish his brand of leadership and help establish with the public what the priorities are.
"Reagan issued executive orders at the luncheon following the inauguration. He didn't even wait to get to the White House. He wanted to show how seriously he took the issue of the economy."
FBI vetting is also under way on 100 people from both campaigns, including Susan Rice, expected to be made the second successive black woman national security adviser after Condoleezza Rice; Greg Craig, a Washington lawyer tipped to become Mr Obama's chief White House counsel and his likely White House chief of staff; and the former senator and campaign chairman Tom Daschle. If Daschle prefers to become Health Secretary, Obama's current chief of staff Pete Rouse, nicknamed the 101st Senator for his connections on Capitol Hill, would take the job.
Other key national security officials will include Denis McDonough, chief foreign affairs adviser to the campaign and Richard Danzig, a secretary of the Navy under Clinton.
John Kerry, the Democratic candidate four years ago, and his fellow senator Chris Dodd, a failed candidate this year, are vying to become Secretary of State.
Mr Kerry, an Army veteran, is also a contender to take control of the Pentagon, but many expect that post to go to a Republican, perhaps the maverick senator Chuck Hagel. Colin Powell, a former secretary of state and chairman of the joint chiefs could return to government if he endorses Obama, as many expect. The veteran Democratic Senator Sam Nunn's name is also in the frame.
Did the McCain Campaign Violate the McCain-Feingold law with Palin Clothing Purchases?
In what has to be one of the most embarrassing turn of events for the McCain campaign thus far, it appears that in purchasing $150,000 worth of clothes for Sarah Palin and her family, McCain and his campaign and/or the RNC have violated the 2002 McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act.
by Steven Leser 10/23/08: Opednews.com
A link to the entire text of the law and the relevant text are below. Only a lawyer would know for sure if this constitutes a breach of the law but the spirit of the law was definitely broken by the RNC, Palin and the McCain campaign:
SEC. 313. USE OF CONTRIBUTED AMOUNTS FOR CERTAIN PURPOSES. (a) PERMITTED USES-
... (b) PROHIBITED USE-
(1) IN GENERAL- A contribution or donation described in subsection (a) shall not be converted by any person to personal use.
(2) CONVERSION- For the purposes of paragraph (1), a contribution or donation shall be considered to be converted to personal use if the contribution or amount is used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate's election campaign or individual's duties as a holder of Federal office, including--
(A) a home mortgage, rent, or utility payment; (B) a clothing purchase; (C) a noncampaign-related automobile expense; (D) a country club membership; (E) a vacation or other noncampaign-related trip; (F) a household food item; (G) a tuition payment; (H) admission to a sporting event, concert, theater, or other form of entertainment not associated with an election campaign; and (I) dues, fees, and other payments to a health club or recreational facility.'
. . . Sec. 323 '(a) NATIONAL COMMITTEES-
'(1) IN GENERAL- A national committee of a political party (including a national congressional campaign committee of a political party) may not solicit, receive, or direct to another person a contribution, donation, or transfer of funds or any other thing of value, or spend any funds, that are not subject to the limitations, prohibitions, and reporting requirements of this Act.
'(2) APPLICABILITY- The prohibition established by paragraph (1) applies to any such national committee, any officer or agent acting on behalf of such a national committee, and any entity that is directly or indirectly established, financed, maintained, or controlled by such a national committee.
This puts McCain and his campaign squarely in the realm of slapstick comedy.
Does anyone still think he has the managerial and leadership skills to be President?
His first major decision was choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, the most unqualified person on a major national ticket in over 100 years, now his campaign violates a campaign finance reform law that he himself wrote. It's hard to demonstrate incompetence any better than that. He makes Inspector Clousseau, Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello seem adroit by comparison.
Will McCain and the RNC now stop whining about the money Obama has been able to raise?
If they can afford to spend $150,000 on Palin's clothes, they obviously are not hurting for money. What does this say about the campaign's attempts to reach out to the 'Joe the Plumbers' and 'Joe Sixpacks' and 'Hockey moms' out there?
Do those types of people spend $150,000 on clothes from Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue?
To think that Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and various other denizens of the Conservative Right went ballistic over a $400 haircut for John Edwards. Edwards' expenditures are minor league compared to the McCain-Shoppin' ticket. You betcha!
McCain is now in the unenviable position of trying to convince the American people that he should be the Chief Law Enforcement official of the land when he doesn't even obey the laws that he crafted.
If he were waging an issue based campaign and not hurling false accusations at Obama as fast as he could shovel, one would almost feel sorry for him. McCain had it right when he suspended his campaign a few weeks ago, but the reasons and duration were wrong.
He should suspend it permanently because he clearly does not have the judgment or skills for the job.
By Elisabeth Bumiller and Jeff Zeleny New York Times October 20, 2008
Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president on Sunday morning, calling him a “transformational figure” who has reached out to all Americans with an inclusive campaign and displayed “a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity” and “a depth of knowledge” in his approach to the nation’s problems.
The endorsement, on the NBC public-affairs program “Meet the Press,” was a major blow to Senator John McCain, who has been a good friend of Mr. Powell’s for decades. Mr. Powell, a Republican, has advised Mr. McCain in the past on foreign policy.
Mr. Powell told Tom Brokaw, the host of “Meet the Press,” that he had been disturbed in recent weeks by the negative tone of Mr. McCain’s campaign, particularly its focus on Mr. Obama’s passing relationship with William Ayers, a 1960s radical and founder of the Weather Underground. The McCain campaign has sought to promote the idea that Mr. Obama is “palling around with terrorists,” in the words of Mr. McCain’s running mate, Governor Sarah Palin, because of Mr. Obama’s weak links to Mr. Ayers.
“Mr. McCain says that he’s a washed-out terrorist,” Mr. Powell said. “Well, then, why do we keep talking about him?”
After the program’s taping, Mr. Powell told reporters that the thought of attacking Mr. Obama for Mr. Ayers was “over the top.”
Mr. Powell, who was secretary of state in the first term of President Bush, also said that he was concerned about Mr. McCain’s selection of Ms. Palin as his running mate and had come to the conclusion that she was the wrong choice.
“She’s a very distinguished woman, and she’s to be admired, but at the same time, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don’t believe she’s ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president,” Mr. Powell said during the taping.
Mr. Powell offered Mr. McCain a small dose of solace by calling him a different kind of Republican and said that he believed Mr. McCain would make a good president. The problem, he said, was that the Republican Party had moved further to the right “than I would like to see it,” and that over the last several weeks the approach of the party and Mr. McCain “has become narrower and narrower.”
Mr. Powell told later reporters that he believed that Mr. McCain would continue to carry forth standard Republican policies. “As gifted as he is, he is essentially going to execute the Republican agenda, the orthodoxy of the Republican agenda, with a new face and a maverick approach to it, and he’d be quite good at it,” Mr. Powell said. “But I think we need a generational change.”
On “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. McCain shrugged off the endorsement by Mr. Powell.“Well, I’ve always admired and respected General Powell,” he said. “We’re longtime friends. This doesn’t come as a surprise. But I’m also very pleased to have the endorsement of four former secretaries of state” — Henry A. Kissinger, James A. Baker III, Lawrence Eagleburger and Alexander M. Haig — “and I’m proud to have the endorsement of well over 200 retired army generals and admirals. I respect and continue to respect and admire Secretary Powell.”
In offering his endorsement, Mr. Powell became the highest-profile Republican to add his support to the Democratic ticket. Although he told Mr. Brokaw that he would not campaign for Mr. Obama in the final two weeks of the race, he did not rule out accepting an appointment in an Obama administration, whether it were a formal position or a more advisory role.
When Mr. Brokaw asked if Mr. Powell would be interested in perhaps serving as an ambassador at large in Africa or taking on the task of resolving the conflict between Israelis and Palestinianas, Mr. Powell replied: “I served 40 years in government and I’m not looking forward to a position or an assignment. Of course, I have always said if a president asks you to do something, you have to consider it.”
Mr. Powell’s endorsement exposed a fundamental policy rift in the Republican party’s foreign-policy establishment between the so-called pragmatists, a number of whom have come to view the Iraq war or its execution as a mistake, and the neoconservatives , a competing camp whose thinking dominated President Bush’s first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.
Mr. Powell, who is of the pragmatist camp and has been critical of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war, was said by friends in recent months to be disturbed by some of the neoconservatives who have surrounded Mr. McCain as foreign-policy advisers in his presidential campaign. The McCain campaign’s top foreign-policy aide is Randy Scheunemann, who was a foreign-policy adviser to former Senators Trent Lott and Bob Dole and who has longtime ties to neoconservatives. In 2002, Mr. Scheunemann was a founder of the hawkish Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and was an enthusiastic supporter of Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi exile and Pentagon favorite who was viewed with suspicion and distaste at the State Department when Mr. Powell was its secretary.
Mr. Powell met with both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama in June in preparation to make a possible endorsement. He has said repeatedly in recent months that he wanted to wait until after the political conventions and the presidential debates before making a decision.
Mr. Powell’s support of Mr. Obama was not a surprise to people who know him well and within Washington’s foreign policy establishment, but the Obama campaign welcomed it as a powerful reassurance to voters about Mr. Obama’s national-security credentials. Other voters, however, could discount it as an action of a disgruntled member of the Bush administration or as simply the support of one African-American for another. Mr. Powell also told reporters on Sunday that he was troubled that a number of Americans believe that Mr. Obama is a Muslim, although he did not directly link that supposition to the McCain campaign. At a recent town-hall style meeting during which an audience member said she thought that Mr. Obama was an “Arab,” Mr. McCain replied, “No, ma’am, he’s a decent family man.”
“These are the kinds of images going out on Al Jazeera that are killing us around the world,” Mr. Powell said. “And we have got to say to the world it doesn’t make any difference who you are and what you are. If you’re an American, you’re an American.” Mr. Obama called Mr. Powell at 10 a.m. to thank him for the endorsement and told him “how honored he was to have it,” said Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. The two spoke about 10 minutes.“He said he looked forward to taking advantage of his advice in the next two weeks and hopefully over the next four years,” Mr. Gibbs said.
By Michael Winship t r u t h o u t Perspective Oct. 18, 2008
Michael Winship sees the ACORN "election fraud" story as one of the urban legends that come up every election cycle.
ACORN and election fraud. Hang on. As soon as I can get the alligator that crawled out of my toilet back into the New York City sewers where it belongs, I can turn my attention to this very important topic.
You see, the ACORN "election fraud" story is one of those urban legends, like fake moon landings and alligators in the sewers, and it appears three or four weeks before every recent national election with the regularity of the swallows returning to Capistrano.
First, the basics:ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is an activist group working with low- and moderate-income families to, among many other things, register voters.
To do this, they hire people to go around signing up the unregistered, killing two birds with one stone - giving employment to people who need it (some with criminal records) and providing the opportunity to vote to members of minority communities whose voices all too often go unheard.
What happens is that some of those hired to do the registering, who are paid by the name, make people up. As a result, you'll discover that among the registrants are such obvious fakes as Mickey Mouse and the starting line-up of the Dallas Cowboys, among others.
This is where the Republican meme kicks in.
As they have in past elections (although now louder and more angrily than ever), the G.O.P. has made ACORN the red flag du jour as the party tries to mobilize its conservative base and, allegedly, attempts to suppress the vote and distract attention from accusations of election tampering made against them, too.
The charge is that these fake registrations will create havoc at the polls. On Tuesday morning, former Republican Sens. John Danforth and Warren Rudman, chairs of Senator McCain's Honest and Open Elections Committee, held a press conference and described the results of the bad seeds in ACORN's registration program as "a potential nightmare." Danforth said he was concerned "that this election night and the days that follow will be a rerun of 2000, and even worse than 2000."
John McCain raised it at Wednesday night's final debate and went further, adding, "We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, who [sic] is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."
Obama replied, "ACORN is a community organization. Apparently, what they have done is they were paying people to go out and register folks. And apparently, some of the people who were out there didn't really register people; they just filled out a bunch of names. Had nothing to do with us. We were not involved."
Which is not to say Obama has not been associated with ACORN in the recent past.
He has.
As he said in the debate, as a lawyer, he joined with the group in partnership with the US Justice Department to implement a motor voter registration law in Illinois - allowing folks to register to vote at their local DMV. His work as a community organizer bought him into contact with ACORN, the organization received money from the Woods Fund while he was a board member there, and his presidential campaign gave ACORN more than $800,000 to help with get-out-the-vote campaigns during the primary season - but not, apparently, for registration drives.
All of this distracts from several important points. ACORN has registered 1.3 million voters and maintains that in virtually every instance it is ACORN that has reported the incidents of fraud.
As the organization asserted in a response to Senator McCain, "ACORN hired 13,000 field workers to register people to vote. In any endeavor of this size, some people will engage in inappropriate conduct. ACORN has a zero tolerance policy and terminated any field workers caught engaging in questionable activity. At the end of the day, as ACORN is paying these people to register voters, it is ACORN that is defrauded."
Arrests have been made, as well they should be.
Add to this the simple fact that registration fraud is not election fraud.
Seventy-five made-up people who are registered as, say, "Brad Pitt," are not likely going to show up at some polling place on November 4 to vote in the election. Because they don't exist. (Besides, Angelina would never give them time off from babysitting duties.)
Granted, there are ways to mail in an absentee ballot under a fake name and, too, from time to time some joker is going to come to the polls and try to bluff his or her way in. But despite the charge that thousands and thousands of fakes will flood the machines and throw off the count, it does not happen very often. And according to ACORN, "Even RNC [Republican National Committee] General Counsel Sean Cairncross has recently acknowledged he is not aware of a single improper vote cast as a result of bad cards submitted in the course of an organized voter registration effort."
Not that this has stopped the G.O.P. from banging the same drum every national election. And amnesiac members of the media and some government agencies from buying into it every time. Last year, The New York Times reported that the federal Election Assistance Commission, created by the Help America Vote Act, legislation enacted after the Florida debacle, was told by a pair of experts - one Republican, the other described as having "liberal leanings" - that there was not that much fraud to be found. But their conclusions were downplayed.
As per the Times, "Though the original report said that among experts 'there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud,' the final version of the report released to the public concluded in its executive summary that 'there is a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud.'"
Which raises the ongoing investigation of the Justice Department's firing of those eight US attorneys shortly after President Bush's re-election.
It shouldn't be forgotten that despite official explanations, half of them were let go after refusing to prosecute vote fraud charges demanded by Republicans. The attorneys had determined there was little or no evidence of skullduggery; certainly not enough to prosecute.
(In an interview with Talking Points Memo on Thursday, one of those fired attorneys, David Iglesias, reacted to reports that the FBI has launched an investigation of ACORN: "I'm astounded that this issue is being trotted out again. Based on what I saw in 2004 and 2006, it's a scare tactic.")
What's equally if not more scary are continued allegations of Republican attempts at "caging" minority voters - making challenge lists of African- and Hispanic-Americans registered in heavily Democratic districts.
Just this week, a federal judge in Michigan ruled that voters could not be purged from the rolls in that state simply because their mailing address was invalid - this followed a failed attempt by a Michigan Republican county chairman to use a list of foreclosed homes as the basis of voter challenges.
This comes on the heels of a recent report from the Brennan Center at New York University documenting how state officials - often with the best of intentions - purge huge numbers of perfectly legal voters from the rolls.
As my colleague Bill Moyers reported, "Hundreds of thousands of legal voters may have been dumped in recent years, many without ever being notified." The report describes a "process that is shrouded in secrecy, prone to error, and vulnerable to manipulation."
Hardly reassuring words if you want democracy to work, and sadly, not an urban legend, but the simple truth.
Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program "Bill Moyers Journal," which airs Friday nights on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
Brainwashing doesn’t take any sci-fi gadgetry or Manchurian Candidate hypnotism bullshit. There are all sorts of tried-and-true techniques that anyone can use to bypass the thinking part of your brain and flip a switch deep inside that says “OBEY.”
Now I know what you’re thinking. “Sure, just make an ad with some big ol’ titties on there! That’ll convince people!”
While that’s certainly true …
… they’ve got a whole arsenal of manipulation techniques that go way beyond even the most effective of sex.
Techniques like …
#6. Chanting Slogans
Every cult leader, drill sergeant, self-help guru and politician knows that if you want to quiet all of those pesky doubting thoughts in a crowd, get them to chant a repetitive phrase or slogan. Those are referred to as thought-stopping techniques, because for better or worse, they do exactly that.
Sounds like:
“Say it with me now, folks!”
“FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS!”
“One, two, three, four, I, Love, The Marine, Corps. One, two…”
Why It Works:
The “Analytical” part of your brain and the “Repetitive Task” part tend to operate in separate rooms. But you didn’t need an expert to tell you that. You know you can’t solve a complex logic puzzle if I force you to scream the chorus to that Chumbawamba song over and over again while you’re doing it.
Try it.
Meditation works the same way, with chants or mantras meant to “calm the mind.” Shutting down those nagging voices in the head is helpful for stressed-out individuals, but even more helpful to a guy who wants to shut down an audience full of nagging internal voices suggesting that what he’s saying might be retarded.
Recently Seen:
At the political conventions, notice how they trained the audiences to fill the gaps between applause lines with chants (”U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”) rather than, say, pensive silence to carefully consider what the speaker has just said.
Also, those of you who’ve worked at Wal-Mart are familiar with the “Wal-Mart Cheer” that begins every shift:
They used to sacrifice a goat at the end, but PETA put a stop to it.
#5. Slipping Bullshit Into Your Subconscious
The rise of the internet news portal has given birth to a whole new, sly technique of bullshit insertion. What They (and from here on, “They” with a capital T means anyone who draws a paycheck by manipulating your opinion) have figured out is that most of you don’t read the stories, you just browse the headlines. And there’s a way to exploit that, based on how the brain stores memories.
The Drudge Report lives off this. A single anonymous source will report to some news blog that, say, Senator Smith runs a secret gay bordello in New Orleans. Drudge will run the headline:
NEW QUESTIONS ABOUT SMITH’S SECRET GAY BORDELLO
Or perhaps there’ll just be a question mark on the end:
SMITH: SECRET GAY BORDELLO ASS MASTER?
It doesn’t matter that the headline merely involves “questions” about the bordello. The idea has been planted, and two months later when somebody mentions Senator Smith around the water cooler you’ll say, “The gay bordello guy, right?”
Sounds like:
“WHAT IS OBAMA’S CONNECTION TO LEFT-WING EXTREMISTS?”
“TOYOTA PRIUS - MORE WASTEFUL THAN A HUMMER?”
“OFFICIAL SAYS WTC COLLAPSE ‘UNEXPLAINED’”
Why It Works:
They call it “Source Amnesia.” For instance, you know what a wolverine is, but probably don’t remember exactly how you learned that piece of information. The brain has limited storage, so it stores just the important nugget (that a wolverine is a small, ferocious animal) but usually discards the trivial context, such as when and where you learned about it (the movie Red Dawn, probably).
In the era of the web and information overload, that’s a mechanism They can exploit very easily. What They have found is that a piece of information–say, an ugly rumor about a politician–can be presented with all sorts of qualifiers (a question mark, attribution to a shitty source, the word “unconfirmed”) but often the brain will only remember the ugly rumor and completely forget the qualifier.
The entire point of putting a shaky rumor into the press is to force your opponent to deny it. Why? Because They know that the denial works just as well as the accusation. Thanks to Source Amnesia, for millions of people all three of these …
SMITH DENIES GAY BORDELLO RUMORS
SMITH REFUSES COMMENT ON GAY BORDELLO RUMORS
SMITH ADMITS GAY BORDELLO
… register as the exact same headline.
Recently Seen:
During the presidential primaries, Drudge ran a huge photo of Barack Obama wearing a turban. Under it was an inflammatory headline about how disgusting it was that Clinton staffers were circulating such a picture.
Obviously the idea is to insulate the members from any opposing points of view, to keep them marching in line.
That technique works just as well outside of the cult world, but They have to be more subtle about it. It just takes a little poison in the well, that’s all.
Sounds like:
“Of course the public is misinformed! They’re reading that trash in the liberal mainstream media!”
“Of course the public is misinformed! They’re watching Faux News and the other trash in the corporate mainstream media!”
Why It Works:
Studies show the brain is wired to get a quick high from reading things that agree with our point of view. The same studies proved that, strangely, we also get a rush from intentionally dismissing information that disagrees, no matter how well supported it is. Yes, our brain rewards us for being closed-minded dicks.
So with a little prodding, the followers will happily close themselves in the same echo chamber of talk radio, blogs and cable news outlets that give them that little “They agree with ME!” high.
This wouldn’t have been possible even 20 years ago. I grew up in the 80s, in a house with three TV stations. Three. We got one newspaper, the local one. You didn’t get to pick from the conservative news or liberal news, back in my day you took what you got and you were thankful for what you had, dammit.
Today, I go through that many outlets a day just to get my freaking video game news.
And now, that explosion of the 24-hour cable news stations and, later, the web and blogosphere, has created these parallel universes of Right vs. Left media outlets, complete with their own publishing arms.
And for each, their favorite topic of discussion is how corrupt and ridiculous the other side’s media is. They each even have “watchdog” groups that exist purely for the reason of hammering away at each other (the left has FAIR and MediaMatters, the right has the Media Research Center).
Recently Seen:
When an MSNBC interview with candidate John McCain got tense, he responded to the question by openly accusing the reporter of being an operative for the other side:
This technique is relatively new, but you’ll see a lot more of it in future elections. The candidate will talk right past the reporter asking the questions and says to his supporters, “These guys work for the enemy, don’t believe a word they say.
Their lies will only poison your mind.”
#3. Keeping You In Line With Shame
I won several formal debates in college using my patented technique of simply repeating my opponent’s argument in a high-pitched, mocking tone while wiggling my fingers in the air. There really is no defense.
They call this the appeal to rididcule fallacy. To which I would simply rebut, “Oooooh, appeal to ridicule fallacy! Well I’ve got a ‘phallus’ you can ’see’ right here, college boy.”
Professionals have more sophisticated methods, but it boils down to the same technique. “They” know that if they can paint an idea as ridiculous, the listener usually won’t bother examining it any closer to find out if the ridicule is justified.
After all, why even consider something that’s ridiculous? That’s only something a ridiculous person would do! And you’re not ridiculous … are you?
You are if you use something other than Alltel Wireless! Look at these assholes! Is this you?
Sounds like:
“So now they’re telling us that–get this, folks–global warming is caused bycows farting! Priceless!”
“And then he said we could save gas by inflating our tires! I couldn’t make this stuff up, folks!”
Why It Works:
It’s no secret you can short-circuit somebody’s brain with shame. How many of us were shamed into doing something stupid in high school? Hell, I still have that huge Dokken tattoo on my back.
But why does it work?
Well, there are these primitive, lower parts of your brain called amygdalae that controls those base, emotional reactions. That’s where things like contempt and shame come from, and stimulating it can completely shut down the analytical part of your brain. The gang calls you a coward and the next thing you know, you’re wedging a roman candle between your buttcheeks. You’ll show them!
You can thank evolution for that. Way back when humans started forming groups and tribes, social status was everything. It’s what guaranteed you food, protection and ladies (that is, a chance to pass on your genes).
Making a person, idea or behavior the target of mockery gave it a lower social position, and made it clear that anybody who associated with it would share that lower position, leaving them out of the hunting/eating/fucking that made life in the tribe worthwhile. Thousands of years later, a good dose of mockery can shut down critical thinking and make us fall right in line, no questions asked.
Recently Seen:
We again come back to our 2008 presidential campaign, and again we find both sides guilty.
The speakers at the Republican National Convention had a great time mocking Barack Obama as a “community organizer,” drawing laughter from the crowd and skipping smoothly over the part where they explained what a community organizer is and why it’s ridiculous.
And of course the other side does it with McCain’s age…
From here …as if there is something inherently silly about having lived a really long time.
#2. Black and White Choices
Listen to an argument between your friends.
Any argument.
Listen to one guy say John McCain is a Fascist, while his opponent says Barack Obama is a Communist. Watch as even fans of the same football team bitterly divide themselves over whether the new quarterback is going to be “awesome” or “garbage.”
Never anything in between.
Everyone is a friend or enemy, every band either rules or sucks, black and white, nothing in the middle. They (capital T) love this, because They can convince you that you must choose either their way, or the most utterly retarded option on the opposite extreme.
Sounds like:
“Will we fight? Or run away as cowards?!?”
“You’re not in favor of the death penalty? So you want murderers to just roam free then!”
“Are you going to the strip club with us, or are you a fag?”
Why It Works:
Because we evolved from creatures who were always in danger of being eaten, our brains were built on a very simple foundation: the “fight or flight” mechanism. This let us make lightning-fast decisions by boiling every situation into two options. Anyone who preferred to stop and mull over the subtleties of the scenario wound up in the digestive system of a saber-tooth tiger.
So if somebody wants to bypass your critical thinking circuitry, all they need to do is make you scared or anxious, often with a time limit or urgent threat (”We need to act now, or lose our way of life!”).
"We need to pass the financial bailout bill or else.........."
Instead of pondering the situation with the analytical neocortex, you’re using the primitive limbic system, scanning the landscape for the “Right” and “Wrong” move. You’ll have no patience for wishy-washy talk about “a spectrum of options.”
Recently Seen:
After the trauma of 9/11, the whole country dragged subtlety into the alley and shot it in the head.
But you can’t blame us. After all, our entire fucking mythology and popular culture are based on the idea. There’s a dark side of the force and a light side.
Choose your path!
Now!
Ain’t a fucking gray side, Luke!
Now, as bad as this one is, and you could make the case that 80% of the stupid choices humans make is because of this, there’s one even more powerful. It’s a spin-off of this one, and it’s by far the best way to get thinking humans to respond like trained dogs.
#1. Sex?
No, other than that.
I’m talking about…
#1. “Us vs. Them”
Holy shit. Here we go.
Sure, we know about the obvious examples, they’re written across the history books in blood and bullet holes. Racism, genocide, horrifying caricatures on propaganda posters.
But They have figured out that the same technique that works so well for getting people whipped into a murderous apocalyptic frenzy, can be used sell you cars, or hamburgers, or computers.
Sounds like:
“The heart of America ain’t in Hollywood! It’s right here in [insert name of small town]!”
“You can listen to what I have to say, or bury you head in the sand with the rest of the sheeple!”
“You have a Nintendo Wii? Are you a toddler or just a retard?”
Why It Works:
Basically, we’re hard-wired by evolution to form tribes. The more stress we feel, the more we feel love and attachment to those who look and sound the same as us, and the more we feel hatred to those who don’t. It’s just an old survival mechanism, since the ancient guys who didn’t show that kind of blind loyalty were killed off by the fierce tribes formed by the ones who did.
So today we get that petty dehumanization of everybody outside of our group (”hippies,” “rednecks,” “fundies,” “geeks,” “douchebags,” “libs”, “cons,” “fags,” “breeders,” “infidels,” “towel-heads,” “honkies,” “darkies,” “players”, “haters”).
WEST SIDE SUCKA
They can play on those old, primal urges for even the most retarded of results, such as fierce brand loyalty (the PS3 vs. 360 vs. Wii flame wars will make you claw your eyes out).
But to really make this one work, They can’t just define your group, but have to define your group asthe elite group, a shining beacon in a world full of weak-minded walking turds.
The items on this list work best in combination, and you’ll see in that the element of mockery and insulation from opposing viewpoints we talked about earlier (why listen to the viewpoints of those lesser sheeple?).
Often this is combined with siege terminology (”The whole country has gone to hell, but we’ve got to stand up for common sense, folks! It’s us against the world!”)
Recently Seen:
Watch five seconds of an election stump speech. Every side does it.
In Sarah Palin’s convention speech she talked about how people from small towns are totally the best (”We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity”).
Earlier in the primaries the Clinton campaign did the same thing, talking about small towns as being the backbone of America where real, honest people are found.
Always there is the unspoken reminder that these honest rural folk are under siege from those scary, phony freaks in the city.
When speaking to those city folk, on the other hand, Barack Obama made the infamous reference to those same small town types clinging to guns and religion, talking about them like they were savages to be studied through binoculars from a tower, with some peasant disease that needs cured by the enlightened.
Not only is “Us vs Them” the first and most important one on the list, it’s the culmination and end goal of all the others. Drawing you into the right tribe is what They want most, because they can accomplish nothing without tribesmen.
If we don’t find a way to resist it, this is what could leave the entire planet a charred radioactive ruin. And you know what else we lose if that happens?
Younger Military Families Closing Ranks Around Obama
By Diane Tucker Huffington Post Oct. 9, 2008
QUANTICO, Va. -- One of the largest U.S. marine bases in the world is located in Quantico, a tidy town with scant election fanfare. Everyone who lives here just assumes Republicans have a lock on the military vote. And so when Obama signs began to appear, tongues began to wag.
"At first I was worried about how my neighbors would view it," said former marine corporal Dawn Jennings, 31, who bravely put an Obama sign in the center of her front yard. Jennings told OffTheBus that Quantico is the "kind of place where they'll ask you to remove an Obama bumper sticker from your car."
Barack Obama is promising to make college affordable for all Americans, and this appeals to Jennings. "I can't imagine telling my two kids, "No college for you, because I voted for McCain."
She emailed all of her military friends, encouraging them to register two new voters. "It's time to take a stand," said the marine vet. "I want us to be like Michigan -- I'd love to see John McCain quit campaigning in Virginia, too."
Jennings isn't the only Obama supporter in Quantico -- not by a long shot -- and this should raise a red flag for the McCain camp. In hotly contested states with large military populations, these voters can make an impact because they turn out to vote in higher percentages (79/64) than the general public, according to a Rand study.
John McCain assumes he has the military vote -- but does he?
Military Voter Surveys Can Be Misleading
The Military Times recently released its annual survey of subscribers, which shows McCain-Palin enjoying a commanding lead over Obama-Biden (68/23 percent). But this is not a random sample, by any stretch of the imagination. Military Times subscribers are significantly older than the active military population. Nearly half of those surveyed are retirees, and minorities are under-represented.
"Everyone I talk to wants change but on base you can't say certain things. At a bar or a party, everyone tells me they're voting for Obama," said Thomas Singleton, 27, a former military telecommunications specialist who was speaking to OffTheBus outside the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Perched on a hill in Quantico, the museum's stunning roof line can be seen for miles. Its design -- a 200-foot tilted mast atop a huge glass atrium -- was inspired by the famous Iwo Jima flag raising of World War II.
"My military friends are tired of being lied to," said Singleton. "They're told to deploy for six months, but it ends up being a year. And when they come home, they can't find a job. One of my friends is staying in the Army only because he can't find a civilian job."
The genuine patriotism these young people feel is complicated by events in Iraq, and grumblings about military miscalculations. "I was proud to go to Iraq, but when I got there all we did for weeks was play cards. We were unprepared. We had the wrong supplies," said Skye Spann, 27, a former medical specialist. "It didn't seem like we had a clear mission."
Deployed Troops Give Four Times More Money To Obama
People in all branches of the service are getting tired of repeated deployments. "I think more of them will vote for Obama than McCain," said Jennings. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, deployed troops are putting their money where their mouth is: they've given four times as much money to Obama as McCain.
"Any assumption that the military vote is overwhelmingly in favor of the Republican Party -- based on demographics alone -- is suspect, at the very least," said Donald S. Inbody, a retired Navy Captain who is on the political science faculty at Texas State University. Inbody also is a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas in Austin, where he is researching the political attitudes and behavior of the American military enlisted person.
For years, the Republicans have enjoyed a reputation for taking care of the troops. But now, at all levels of the military, there's a general dissatisfaction with the lousy leadership in Washington.
Inbody told OffTheBus, "We know from several studies that the officer corps, especially senior officers, identify strongly with the Republican Party. But it is more likely that junior officers and enlisted personnel more nearly mirror the general American population when it comes to party identification and voting behavior."
This could result in a 1.2 to 1 advantage for Obama in military communities, according to Inbody, especially if the campaign "isn't tone deaf" to the inroads that are possible.
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But you can’t blame us. After all, our entire fucking mythology and popular culture are based on the idea. There’s a dark side of the force and a light side. 
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