A better class of propaganda

In the old country, they were not skilled at propaganda. They never tried to disguise it as entertainment, or news or sports. It was just that: propaganda 24/7, pretty much displacing entertainment, news or sports. Everyone knew what it was, but was helpless to do anything about it.

The first time I knew I had to get out of there because it was messing with my brain was a time they decided to reduce pensions. Not stop COLA, but reduce them. I was young and couldn’t care less about that. But then I started seeing old people on TV cheering and explaining to me why this was a good thing. My threshold for absurd just exploded.

Once I came to the US, It took me a while to find the nicely packaged propaganda (about one month I would think). I comfortably kept it at a distance, along with advertising with my  superpower my voyage bestowed on me (kinda like Superman could fly because on his planet….)

But very soon, I’ll fly into the same threshold of absurdity, ironically on the very same topic: old people will tell everybody why it’s good they’ll be put on an ice floe.

Obama to Deploy Campaign Apparatus to Persuade Americans to Look Forward to More and Better Catfood

And there’s an extra layer of irony here: these are the same people who convinced enough voters that voting the guy who brought war and poverty is a good thing.

And Obama himself, in an interview with Des Moines Register on October 24 had this to say

“
And we can easily meet—’easily’ is the wrong word—we can credibly meet the target that the Bowles-Simpson Commission established of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, and even more in the out-years, and we can stabilize our deficit-to-GDP ratio in a way that is really going to be a good foundation for long-term growth. Now, once we get that done, that takes a huge piece of business off the table,” he went on to say.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-vows-debt-cutting-grand-bargain-immigration-reform-142348400–election.html

A transcript of the whole interview has since been scrubbed. But just in case the so called “other side” didn’t get the wink wink, the campaign leaked stronger signals one day before the election

WASHINGTON, Nov 5 (Reuters) – If President Barack Obama wins re-election, he’s expected to move quickly, perhaps within a day, to renew his bid for a bipartisan deal to avert a “fiscal cliff” that threatens to push the United States into recession, top Senate Democratic aides said on Monday.

A victorious Obama could reach out to Republicans as early as Wednesday and pledge that, with the election decided, it’s time to find common ground to deal with the year-end expiration of Bush-era tax cuts and the launch of automatic spending cuts that would suck $600 billion out of the economy in 2013.

And he did, even before staging the photo op with Sandy victims in NYC. Election time, I was sending that article to those asking me to vote Obama with the words “your thank you letter is in the mail”.

Now the same people will ask me to be happy about shopping for generic/smaller cat food.

Not sure about my super-powers against propaganda now. My head might explode after all.

Wow, Newsweek! From Messiah to Napoleon!

The 1% surely are having fun with their latest hat trick. Is general a good word these days?

More tabloid fun with CIA

NY Post really goes all the way

as Daily News is a bit lamer

The reality is very likely here

Seriously, America? It’s Never the Sex, Revisited

 But the stories I’ve seen provide two clues. The less intriguing one, although it still offers much food for thought, is found here:

The resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus came less than a week before he was scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

A spokesman for the committee said acting CIA Director Mike Morell would testify Thursday in place of Petraeus, who resigned Friday after admitting to an extramarital affair.

That, and his replacement with kill list John Brennan

Also, a cogent article in the guardian on the reverence the media shows for this scandal

There are several revealing lessons about this media swooning for Petraeus even as he exits from a scandal that would normally send them into tittering delight. First, military worship is the central religion of America’s political and media culture.

Second, it is truly remarkable what ends people’s careers in Washington – and what does not end them. As Hastings detailed in that interview, Petraeus has left a string of failures and even scandals behind him: a disastrous Iraqi training program, a worsening of the war in Afghanistan since he ran it, the attempt to convert the CIA into principally a para-military force, the series of misleading statements about the Benghazi attack and the revealed large CIA presence in Libya.

 

Obama era part deux – New York view

Yeah, it was the storms,

but it’s Obama’s Bloomberg too

And this is more from our Mayor

And this is more of what we should hear

,

“Let the neighbor’s goat die” election

In the old country there was a saying which, for a while at least captured the spirit of the nation. When faced with the magical opportunity of getting one wish come true, that’s what one wished: that the neighbor’s goat die. Not a goat for himself, or maybe two. No. That the neighbor’s die. It’s the same spirit animating the voters for the two party candidates as fueled by the media: you want the other guy’s goat to die. Forget that you are unemployed, about to lose social security, sent to wars and spied on. The most important thing in your life is to get the other guy’s goat dead. Dead. dead. dead.