Posted 3:44 PM by Scoobie Davis

What a Joke
Abigail Thernstrom´s opinion piece in the LA Times claiming that the days of elctoral ´´disfranchisement is a closed chapter in American history.´´

The LA Times should allow a rebuttal by Greg Palast, Mark Crispin Miller, or Bob Fitrakis.

UPDATE My bad. I forgot to mention Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Read his latest article on election fraud. I´ve just added Kennedy site that he has with Greg Palast, Steal Back Your Vote, on my list of links.

Posted 9:40 AM by Scoobie Davis

Omissions
Today the LA Times did a list of the top 25 LA movies of the last 25 years. It's a good list but they listed mediocre films like Less than Zero and Fletch but left out Go. Also, they didn't list Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs but gave an explanation when they picked Jackie Brown (number 3). I agree: Jackie Brown is my favorite Tarantino film.

Posted 9:22 AM by Scoobie Davis

Soundalike?
When I heard Sarah Palin give her VP speech with John McCain in Dayton, I thought, "That voice sounds familiar." Then it struck me: Palin has the same voice that Joan Cusask used as the uptight principal in School of Rock.

Posted 4:08 PM by Scoobie Davis

Short Post on the Sun Myung Moon Blog
Click here

Posted 9:04 PM by Scoobie Davis

You Won't Read This on Other Blogs
I've been too busy to deal with the convention. Here's something you won't find on other blogs: Jack Chick has a new tract "First Bite." It's a trip.

UPDATE: Chick Publications announced that you can now embed "First Bite" and some other Chick tracts. Here's "First Bite":

Posted 5:54 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Joe Conason asks "Pumas" some tough questions.

Posted 6:11 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Media Matters on Swiftboating 2.0

Posted 9:29 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Paul Krugman:

But in the world we actually live in, pro-corporate, inequality-increasing Republicans argue that you should vote for them because they’re regular guys you’d like to have a beer with, while Democrats who want to raise taxes on top earners, expand health care and raise the minimum wage are snooty elitists.

And in that world, stripping away the regular-guy facade — pointing out that everything Rush Limbaugh said about Mr. Kerry applies equally to Mr. McCain, that Mr. McCain lives in a material world few Americans can imagine — is only fair. Yes, Mr. Obama vacations in Hawaii — and Cindy McCain says that “In Arizona, the only way to get around the state is by small private plane.”

The squealing from the usual suspects demonstrates how much the Obama counterattack has the G.O.P. worried. Back in 2004 Fox News described John Kerry as “one of the haves” with a “billionaire wife”; now it asks whether raising the issue of Mr. McCain’s houses is “bashing the American dream.”

Posted 7:23 PM by Scoobie Davis

Radio Interview
Today I was interviewed by Nat & Drew for Vancouver BC's 95 Crave morning show about how to crash a party. I don't know when the interview will air but you can listen live on the Internet. In case you missed it, Wired magazine interviewed me for the August issue.

Posted 2:01 PM by Scoobie Davis

Kicking Ass And Taking Names
Click here

Posted 7:03 AM by Scoobie Davis

Hey, Wait a Minute. What about Mary Matalin's Racism?
There has been a lot of talk in the news about author Jerome Corsi's bigoted statements about various groups (largely thanks to the tireless work of Media Matters for America).

Nobody has mentioned the racism of Mary Matalin, the chief editor of Corsi's publisher, Threshold Editions. During the aftermath in Florida following election day 2000, Republicans sent operatives to riot in order to stop the recount. At the same time, Jesse Jackson held entirely peaceful demonstrations of mostly African Americans, some of whom had been disenfranchised due to being falsely accused of being felons. Matalin referred to these people as "rent-a-rioters."

UPDATE: Not This Time. Eric Boehlert on why the Fox News/Swift-boating attempts are not working this time around:

But there were also key marketplace changes within the cable news industry that affected the Corsi coverage, I think. Because remember that in 2004, Fox News drove the Swift Boat saga; it was practically a co-sponsor of the anti-Kerry crusade, devoting endless hours to promoting the Vietnam-era allegations. By sheer force of repetition, Fox News, then the dominant player in cable news, forced its competitors to not only acknowledge the Swift Boat story, but to go all in as well. And soon all the cable news outlets were treating the Swift Boat saga with Fox News-like breathlessness. (CNN aired nearly 300 segments referencing the topic.)

And just like Fox, they weren't asking the tough questions. Instead, they gave the Swift Boat accusers the same free ride that Fox News did. They became media enablers, too.

Not this time around. With Fox News no longer the dominant cable news king -- and with Fox News no longer driving the campaign narratives -- its competitors opted for a much different approach to covering Corsi. And I think the coverage from the competitors sent a subtle, yet simple, message: We no longer take our cues from Fox News' lead, because they no longer dictate campaign coverage. Instead, we're going to exult in our role as a counterbalance, as a fact-checker, to the Fox News-produced Corsi attack campaign. In fact, we're gonna help pull the curtain back on Corsi.

Posted 6:13 AM by Scoobie Davis

Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich
You've probably seen this clip of Newt Gingrich telling Sean Hannity that Obama in in the pocket of Big Oil for telling Americans to have thir tires properly inflated (e did it on Fox News, of course). Click here for the hilarious transcript of me taking Hannity to school about Gingrich.

Bonus: the transcript of me telling Slanthead about his buddy Jerry Falwell.

Posted 5:30 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
McCain's Mansions:

Posted 12:50 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Talk to Action on the Texas roots of the modern sectarian right. Note: I have discussed Billy James Hargis here.

Posted 4:41 PM by Scoobie Davis

Gotta Love This Parody

Posted 6:30 AM by Scoobie Davis

The U.S. Justice Department Apparently Likes My Blogs
I have noticed that someone from the U.S. Justice Department has been lurking on my main blog and my anti-Amway blog for the past several months (see the addendum for info from my Statcounter page on the Amway blog).

Quick note to Justice Department lurker(s): if you really want to do your job, do something about illegal activity, do something about the illegal "tools" pyramid created by some top Amway distributors which have netted them hundreds of millions of dollars--if not billions of dollars. Also, you could refer to the INS the charges made by Nansook Hong about how the Reverend Sun Myung Moon engaged in immigration fraud to bring an underage girl to the United States to become the unlawful bride of his adult son.

Initially I was amused that the Justice Department reads my blog; however, this morning I listened to Sam Seder's interview of journalist Scott Horton.

Addendum: Info from my Statcounter page for my anti-Amway blog:
Host Name wdcsun27.usdoj.gov
IP Address 149.101.1.127 [Label IP Address]
Country United States
Region District Of Columbia
City Washington
ISP Us Dept Of Justice
Returning Visits 10
Visit Length 54 seconds
VISITOR SYSTEM SPECS
Browser MSIE 6.0
Operating System Windows XP
Resolution 1280x1024
Javascript Enabled

Posted 2:48 PM by Scoobie Davis

That's Mighty White of You, Mr. Corsi
Jerome Corsi to appear on "pro-white" radio show.

Posted 7:48 AM by Scoobie Davis

Appealing to the Reptilian Brain: A Mellon Family Tradition
Recently I got the DVD for the Showtime film Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical (see the addendum for more about it) and made an interesting discovery: two of the most influential paranoid fear-mongers of the twentieth century were related to each other. In the special features portion of the DVD, a mini-documentary gave some background on the criminalization of marijuana in the 1930's. It mentioned Harry Anslinger, the notorious bureaucrat who helped to spread nationwide fears of cannabis through lurid propaganda linking the use of weed to savage violence, criminality, and insanity; in essence, Anslinger utilized what scholar Alfred Lindesmith called "the dope fiend mythology."

When I watched the documentary, I learned that Anslinger was the son-in-law of banking magnate Andrew Mellon. That made me think: Anslinger was spreading irrational anti-pot fears throughout the early and mid-twentieth century and another member of the Mellon family, Richard Mellon Scaife, was spreading paranoia during the last part of the twentieth century (Scaife’s mother was Andrew Mellon’s niece). That’s a lot of fear-mongering for one family.

When Bill Clinton became president, Scaife became a proponent of the “Clinton Body Count”—a paranoid urban legend that argued that Bill and Hillary Clinton were responsible for bumping off dozens of political opponents as well as friends who knew too much. This absurd propaganda was spread by Scaife’s paid agents--notably Joseph Farah and Christopher Ruddy--as well as by Roger Ailes who is now the head of Fox News (even though the Clinton Body Count is dismissed now even by the most fervent American wing-nuts, to this day, it is a staple of Rush Limbaugh’s radio program).

Propaganda is the bane of democracy. It does not strive to encourage dialog; it seeks to dominate by appealing to base fears. There’s nothing wrong with appealing to the reptilian brain if a legitimate danger exists. If an out-of-control car is careening toward you, someone who yells, “Get out of the way!” is appealing to your survival instinct but doing it in a rational and humanitarian manner.

The problem is that Anslinger and Scaife used rhetoric that appealed to the fight-or-flight reflex for problems that were either nonexistent (e.g., the Clintons as murderers) or problems that could have been addressed in a thoughtful manner (e.g., while Anslinger was scaring American parents half to death about “the assassin of youth,” New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia commissioned a study that looked at marijuana from a responsible perspective). The Anslingers and the Scaifes of the world want to seal off meaningful discussion before it begins. Their goal is a frightened and acquiescent populace that does not weigh and measure issues in a meaningful way.

Jerry Falwell, who was part of the Clinton Body Count hoax, was a master of appealing to the reptilian brain in his sermons that were broadcast on his The Old Time Gospel Hour television program. The typical Falwell sermon was devoted to a topic such as gays, feminists, secular humanist, or Bill and Hillary Clinton. In the first half of the sermon, Falwell would tell his congregation what a terrible threat to decency, Christianity and the American way of life the given phenomenon posed to them. Falwell then spent the second half of the sermon telling them that he and the GOP were fighting the good fight but they needed help--primary financial help (when Bill Clinton became president, Falwell sold a videotape (for $35) claiming that Clinton was murdering people. Falwell even tacked on infomercial to the end of his Old Time Gospel Hour broadcast in which Falwell interviewed a silhouetted figure claiming to be an "investigative journalist" who claimed to be in fear of his life (Salon reporter Murray Waas found the silhouetted man was the producer of the video who did not fear for his life--quick note: I confronted Sean Hannity about this). Falwell’s goal was a docile, obedient flock. Referring to his congregation, Falwell once quipped, "Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions." True to form, Falwell knew how to squeeze every last penny out of his scared followers. Falwell is dead but his spirit lives on in the Obama-is-a-Muslim spam e-mail campaigns.

Addendum: Reefer Madness and the two types of Camp. Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical is a musical remake of the camp classic Reefer Madness made in 1936 (watch it here). Susan Sontag, in her essay “Notes on Camp,” distinguished between naïve or unintentional camp and self-conscious, intentional camp. The original Reefer Madness is amusing because of the over-the-top depiction of marijuana use while the remake is pure intentional camp. Sontag believed that "[c]amp which knows itself to be Camp ("camping") is usually less satisfying." I don’t know if this is true for me in this case because I like both films equally.

Posted 10:49 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Greg Palast interview

Posted 9:29 AM by Scoobie Davis

Post I'm Working On
The Mellon family tradition of promoting paranoia.

Posted 4:09 AM by Scoobie Davis

A Thought
It's great to be back in Ohio for the summer but I would have loved crashing the premiere after-party for The Pineapple Express.

Posted 7:59 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Eric Boehlert on just one more symptom of the decline of Fox News and why the lion's share of the credit should go to bloggers and the online community.

Posted 7:47 AM by Scoobie Davis

Regnery Publishing And Me
After I posted the article on Regnery Publishing's cozy relationship with cult leader Sun Myung Moon, I e-mailed them to let them know about the post. They e-mailed me back informing me of the following information: "The Regnery logo is copyrighted material, which we do not give permission to reproduce, and we ask that you remove it from your blogs immediately, as well as that you refrain from using it in the future."

In other Moon news, I ask "why?" on the Moon blog.

Posted 10:27 AM by Scoobie Davis

I'm Wired!
I'm featured in the August 2008 print edition of Wired magazine. I tell readers how to crash a party. Check it out on page 123 or online here.

Posted 9:40 AM by Scoobie Davis

Regnery Publishing's War on American Democracy
Regnery Publishing just released The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate by David Freddoso. I have not read the book so I can’t comment on the specifics of the book. However, I can cite some reports about that raise serious questions: 1) There has been some pre-release information about the book that show that there are some serious problems with the truthfulness of the book. The media watchdog Media Matters for America uncovered some falsehoods in the introduction and the first few pages which were released by Regnery prior to publication. Media Matters has been doing an excellent job of documenting misinformation in the anti-Obama book by Jerome Corsi (who co-authored the wildly inaccurate Regnery 2004 hit book on John Kerry, Unfit for Command).

However, what is particularly revealing is that the publisher of the book, Regnery Publishing has a pattern of publishing books that denigrate true American heroes, such as John Kerry, as well as books that elevate sociopaths--namely the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Regnery's History of Elevating Sun Myung Moon and Unification Thought

Regnery has been the publisher of five books that have served the purposes of Sun Myung Moon, who is 1) a sexual predator who committed immigration fraud in order to bring an underage girl to the United States to be the illegal bride for his violent and drug-addicted son; 2) a thief who has stolen hundreds of millions, possibly billions, from vulnerable Japanese widows in what is known as the spiritual sales scam; 3) A megalomaniac who believes that he is the Messiah and the world’s savior; 4) A would-be tyrant who believes that American democracy—-which he views as “Satan’s harvest”—-should be overthrown and replaced with a theocratic rule. In a word, the guy is a nutjob (my YouTube video "The World's Most Powerful Cult" gives a succinct overview of Moon and a more comprehensive look at Moon can be found in John Gorenfeld's recent book Bad Moon Rising as well as my blog devoted to Moon).

Regnery has published not one but five books promoting Moon’s pathological philosophy. Two of those books specifically defend Moon’s criminality and anti-democratic worldview and attribute criticism of Moon’s predation to racism and bigotry. I will discuss each of these Regnery books, starting with the two books that specifically defend Moon's indefensible behavior and outlook.

1) To Bigotry, No Sanction: Reverend Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church by Mose Durst. Then-president of the Unification Church Mose Durst wrote this apologia of Moon and the Unification movement and blamed Moon's unpopularity with Americans to racism and bigotry. These charges of racism and xenophobia are not only an example of blaming America first but they are particularly ironic since Moon's Washington Times has been a repository for white supremist and neo-Confederate thought.

Quick aside: It's revealing that Regnery's anti-Obama author David Freddroso is a contributor to William F. Buckley's National Review. The back of the dust jacket of Durst's book has an endorsement by William Rusher, then-publisher of National Review (as I noted, the popular narrative about Buckley and NR marginalizing crackpots and extremists from the American conservative movement is a crock).

2) Inquisition: The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon by Carlton Sherwood. When Moon was sent to prison for tax fraud and conspiracy, Sherwood served as Moon's primary literary apologist. The main premise of Sherwood's book was that Moon was railroaded because of racial and religious bigotry. Sherwood claimed that he wrote the book independent of Moon or the Unification Church but a PBS Frontline documentary found that unification Church officials reviewed and edited Sherwood's manuscript (Quick note: I confronted Fox News Democrat Tammy Bruce about Sherwood's dishonesty on her radio show--friends have told me that the transcript is priceless).

It should be no surprise that during the 2004 election, Sherwood produced the anti-Kerry film Stolen Honor--a film that contained many misrepresentations and libels.

3) At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried to Steal the Election by Bill Sammon.
Sammon, an operative for Moon's Washington Times, wrote this apologia for the Bush campaign. This is hardly surprising since the Bush and Moon families are very close and there has been a history of Moon's Times doing dirty work for the Bush family. Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler uncovered blatant examples of journalistic misconduct by Sammon (I addressed this in an article for American Politics Journal).

4) Icons of Evolution and 5) The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design both by Jonathan Wells.
Wells, a well-known proponent of the form of creationism known as intelligent design, is one of Moon's most fanatical member of Moon's shock troops. Wells' motivation for his embrace of creationist pseudo-science is his devotion to his "father," the Reverend Moon (note the warlike language):

Father’s words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.

Regnery Publishing's Bizarro World
In Regnery Publishing's bizarro world, true patriots like Kerry and Obama are deserving of denigration while a deranged megalomaniac like Moon is praised. This should be a news story but isn't.

Posted 6:38 PM by Scoobie Davis

D'oh
I almist finished the Regnery post and I accidently los about two hours worth of data. My friends want to party so I will start again first thing tomorrow morning. Lo Siento

Posted 7:55 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Ohio State Fair
I am working on the Regnery Publishing post right now. I was at the Ohio State Fair yesterday. I always have a great time there. The highlight of the day was the dairy exhibit in which they had a Mount Rushmore-like sculpture of the faces of Ohio's U.S. presidents carved in two-and-a half ton "mountain" of butter (Ohio's eight presidents were William Henry Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William H. Taft and Warren G. Harding). It's kind of sad that all of these men were mediocre or worse as president (though, in fairness, William Henry Harrison and James Garfield didn't serve long enough to be judged by history as presidents).

Posted 10:02 AM by Scoobie Davis

Later Today I Promise
A post on Regnery Publishing's war on America. Today is the publication date of Regnery's book The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate by David Freddoso.

UPDATE: I have to break my promise. I've been working on the post for quite some times and I still have a lot of writing to do. I will work on it tomorrow morning but I might not finish it tomorow because I'm going to the Ohio State Fair.

Posted 10:15 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Newshounds on Howard Wolfson. I researched Wolfson for my fothcoming post on why the vanquishing of the Clintons is a good thing.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan has more

Posted 7:17 PM by Scoobie Davis

"Our Man" (Roger Ailes)
I listened to Limbaugh's radio show today and heard part of the telephone conversation Limbaugh had with George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, and Jeb Bush. I missed the part in which Bush the Elder referred to Fox News CEO Roger Ailes as "our man Ailes." Watch the Countdown video.

Think Progress has the important part of the conversation in which the truth came out from Bush the Elder who didn't realize they were on the radio and then corrected himself:

H. W. BUSH: Do you see our man Ailes at all?

LIMBAUGH: Oh, yeah. I saw Roger at Tony Snow’s funeral…And a couple of times earlier this summer.

H. W. BUSH: Are we on the radio, are we? […] I didn’t know that. I’ll clean up my act here. I’m glad they told me.

I thought their man was Sun Myung Moon.

UPDATE: I address Roger Ailes, Fox News, and Limbaugh in this post that examines the chapter on Fox News in Bernard Goldberg's book Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right: How One Side Lost Its Mind and the Other Lost Its Nerve. Also, go to the talk radio transcripts on the left sidebar to read the transcripts of my conversations with Limbaugh.

UPDATE II: The full transcript of the conversation is on Limbaugh's web site. I thought Limbaugh would have edited the Ailes comment out of the transcript the same way he did with his transcript of his "phony soldiers" comment.

UPDATE III: I've gotten a lot of hits from keyword searches. If you really want to stick it to Ailes and Fox News, one easy and painless way is to participate in the anti-Fox News Google bomb I started. Also, here is my post on how to reach out to Fox News viewers.

Posted 4:39 PM by Scoobie Davis

Smokin'
Media Matters has been smokin' lately. They just obtained the introduction to the forthcoming Regnery Publishing hit book on Obama by David Freddoso titled The Case Against Barack Obama. Media Matters found that Freddoso's book is playing fast and loose with the facts.

I should have a post on Regnery Publishing in the next few days.

Posted 8:26 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Reads
Bob Somerby, Robert Parry and Joe Conason on the campaign .

Posted 7:56 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on the Sun Myung Moon Blog
Check it out.

Posted 1:36 AM by Scoobie Davis

Who is Reading this Blog?
I check on my Statcounter stats and found that someone from Creative Response Concepts was reading the blog.