Doctor Schumer Auditions for Regime Minister of Propaganda

Photo Credit: The New Media Journal

Photo Credit: The New Media Journal

Recently, US Senator Charles Schumer – Harvard Doctor of Jurisprudence – auditioned for the position of Minister of Propaganda for the Obama Regime, and, perhaps, as a candidate to be the next Majority, or Minority, Leader of the Senate Democrats.

Doctor Schumer’s January 23, 2014 speech, delivered at the Center for American Progress, used several of Saul Alinksy’s “Rules for Radicals,” coupled with propaganda devices described by Julius Yourman in his article Propaganda Techniques Within Nazi Germany printed in the November 1939 Journal of Educational Sociology.

Schumer’s remarks, lasting fifty minutes, were titled “The Rise and Potential Fall of the TEA Party: the Fundamental Flaw in the TEA Party’s Premise and What Democrats Can Do to Exploit It.”

The founder and former president of the Center for American Progress is John Podesta. Podesta was President Clinton’s Chief of Staff from 1998-2001, co-chaired the Obama-Biden Transition Project, and is now a “White House counselor.” It requires the “willing suspension of disbelief” to think that Schumer’s speech was not choreographed from the White House, and is anything other than a preview of the Democrats’ strategy in the run-up to the midterm elections.

Schumer began his speech with this question:

“Why does the TEA Party, a group that seems to represent a small but extreme part of America, have such undue power, which, all too often, results in a stranglehold over our politics and policies?”

He defined the growth of the TEA Party as “an ingenious, well-executed plan.” In other words, it’s a conspiracy.

Here are samples of Schumer’s, essentially the Regime’s, accusations against the TEA Party that he formatted by coupling Alinsky Rule #12 – Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it – with Yourman’s Nazi Propaganda Technique #1:

“‘Name calling’ is a device to make us form a judgment without examining the evidence on which it should be based.”

According to Schumer, the TEA Party has:

▪ “…stymied Democrat priorities”
▪ “…taken a sledgehammer to programs important to tens of millions of Americans”
▪ “…had a devastating effect on domestic investments like scientific research, education, and infrastructure”
▪ Caused “voting rights” to be “rolled back”
▪ Caused the House to “stonewall” the “Senate-passed immigration law overwhelming supported by most Americans”
▪ “…shut down the government in October”
▪ “…blocked infrastructure bills that previously enjoyed bipartisan support”
▪ And has “greatly unsettled the American psyche.”

Also, “the TEA Party’s intransigence has prevented all efforts to reverse the trend” of declining middle-class incomes. Not a word, though, about how the TEA Party has increased tooth decay among poor children.

Schumer implicitly accused the TEA Party of being a racist movement that grew as a “backlash against the election of Barack Obama,” and that appeals to “parts of America” that are uncomfortable in “a different America” that “looks different, prays different, and works different.”

Doctor Schumer outlined a cascade of conspiratorial puppet masters.

First, who is behind this diabolical plot? It’s the “TEA Party elites.”

Schumer mentioned the “elites” seven times. The TEA Party elites have made:

▪ “…government the boogeyman”
▪ “…decided to light the fuse of discontent” in America
▪ “…gained extraordinary influence by being able to funnel millions of dollars into campaigns with ads that distort the truth & attack government”
▪ “…swooped in and sold many Americans on a simple nostrum: that government was to blame for all their problems. ”

“TEA Party elite have manipulated their millions of grassroots followers.” This is a variation on Yourman’s Nazi Propaganda Technique #5: “‘Plain folks’ is a device used by politicians, labor leaders, business men, and even by ministers and educations to win our confidence by appear to be people like ourselves.” The TEA Party has manipulated the “plain folks.”

But who controls the TEA Party elites? It’s the “plutocrats” who are the TEA Party “leaders”:

“The fundamental weakness in the TEA Party machine is the stark difference between what the leaders of the TEA Party elite, plutocrats like the Koch Brothers, want and what the average grassroots TEA Party follower wants.”

The plutocrats are the, “wealthy, hard right, selfish, narrow people who don’t want to pay taxes and don’t want government interfering with their companies… the plutocrats and their friends never acknowledge where government helped them.”

And who facilitates spreading the message of these plutocrats, who control the elites, who control the TEA Party members? Answer: “The Rush Limbaughs and the Fox Newses agree with the plutocrats and spread their propaganda to the masses.”

To explain the rise of the TEA party, Schumer used Yourman’s Nazi Propaganda Tactic #2 – “‘Glittering generalities’ is a device by which the propagandist identifies his program with virtue by using ‘virtue words,'” like reducing, growing, and creating.

The TEA Party is responsible for opposition to the Senate immigration bill which is based, in part, on the conservative principles of “reducing our deficit by billions, growing our economy, creating jobs and spurring new entrepreneurial activity.”

Meanwhile, “while we [the Democrats] were carefully crafting a healthcare bill that would ultimately reduce costs and improve healthcare in America, we allowed them to capture the negative. False scares of: ‘you’ll lose your Medicare or you’ll lose your employer-based healthcare if Obamacare passes,’ combined with the message: ‘healthcare = more government = disaster” predominated.'”

Schumer flips, taking positive to negative, Yourman’s Nazi Propaganda Technique #4 – Testimonial:

“a device to make us accept anything from a patent medicine or a cigarette to a program of national policy.” Schumer used negative testimonials to personalize and polarize the opposition.” (see Alinsky Rule #12, above)

In one negative testimonial he said,

“I came to realize this [namely, that grassroots Americans really like big government programs] while engaging the TEA Party members who would routinely come to picket my events during the Healthcare debate. I’d approach them and immediately someone would shout: ‘Get your government’s hands out of my pockets!'”

In detail, he described another negative testimonial that happened at

“an event on southern Staten Island in a working class, blue collar, and very Republican community. I was at a sidewalk event talking about prescription drug abuse with other legislators, Democrat and Republican, and a group came there to heckle us. The heckling was led by one very angry and very impolite gentleman. He kept interrupting us using all the standard Rush Limbaugh talking points.”

Midway through his speech, Schumer transitioned into Alinsky Rule #11 – The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

His “four-points” progressive alternative to the TEA Party is to

1) make the case for government as a “necessary force for good”;
2) “Focus, this year, on four or five simple but compelling examples of where government can help the average family”;

Then (3) & (4) morph into a list of “five issues we should focus on”:

a) raise the minimum wage;
b) devise “a simple, concrete, government-funded program that makes it a lot easier for people to attend college”;
c) “renew our commitment to revitalizing our national infrastructure”;
d) promote “equal pay for women”;
e) address the loss American jobs to other countries that, like China, don’t play by “the rules”;

And even though he said there were five issues, he added

f) address “universal Pre-K and childcare affordability”;
g) deal “with job training and the skills gap”;
h) “provide manufacturers with the capital to expand and hire”;
i) close “corporate tax loopholes”;
j) “address the damage done by the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision”; (11) “Finally, we have to look at electoral reform.”

Whew! Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?

Schumer rolled out a virtual hodge-podgic cornucopia of progressive initiatives – red meat to the denizens of the Center for American Progress – to counter the TEA Party mantra of less government in the next ten months. It was an example of Alinsky Rule #2 – Never go outside the expertise of your people. And those to whom his audition was addressed are the liberal progressives at the Center for American Progress who only know one direction for big government – grow it bigger.

As has been proven throughout world history, all propaganda is based on the projection of a wholly imaginary, alternative universe. At the close of his speech, the presumptive Minister of Propaganda for the Obama Regime said:

“The decline of the deficit and Obamacare as the most salient electoral issues and the prominence in the issues of government’s ability to help restore and build the middle class provides us a golden opportunity to expose what has always been a fault line in the TEA Party: that the obsessively antigovernment philosophy of the TEA Party elites does not meet the actual needs of the TEA Party membership.”

Of course, the manipulated grassroots TEA Party members are the “plain folks” for whom progressives deeply care.

Addendum: If you found this overview of Schumer’s presentation rambling and disjointed, try reading his entire speech. In comparison, the above is a bus schedule.

__________________________________________________________________________

First published at The New Media Journal.

Since 2007, Lee Cary has written hundreds of articles and blogs for several conservative websites, including the American Thinker and Breitbart’s Big Journalism & Big Government (as Archy Cary), been quoted on national television (Sean Hannity) and on nationally syndicated radio (Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin). His articles are cited in Jerome Corsi’s The Obama Nation and in Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny. Cary now writes for the Texas-based site teaparty911.com.

Counterterrorism Chair: ‘These Are Going To Be Very Much Threatened Olympics’ (+video)

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, told ABC News’s Jon Karl on “This Week with George Stephanopolous” on Sunday that the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia will be “very much threatened.”

“The fact is that these are going to be very much threatened Olympics. Probably more than any we’ve had in our past, more than Greece, certainly more than London or China,” said King, who said he could not give U.S. athletes a “100 percent guarantee” that they would be safe in Sochi.

“Everything is being done by the United States, but the fact is this is a dangerous region in Russia by the north Caucuses. There are active terrorist organizations there,” he said.

“And quite frankly, the Russians have not been cooperating with us or with other countries anywhere near the extent that, for instance, the Greeks or the Chinese or the Brits did,” King added.

Read more from this story HERE.

Is Barack Obama an Imperial President?

Photo Credit: Charles Dharapak/AP

Photo Credit: Charles Dharapak/AP

Ju Hong’s voice rang out loud and clear, interrupting the most powerful man in the world.

“You have a power to stop deportation for all undocumented immigrants in this country!” the young South Korean man yelled at President Obama during a speech on immigration reform last November in San Francisco. Waving away security guards, Mr. Obama turned and addressed Mr. Hong, himself undocumented. “Actually, I don’t,” the president said. “And that’s why we’re here.”

“We’ve got this Constitution, we’ve got this whole thing about separation of powers,” Obama continued. “So there is no shortcut to politics, and there’s no shortcut to democracy.”

The reality isn’t so simple. Obama, a former constitutional law lecturer, was once skeptical of the aggressive use of presidential power. During the 2008 campaign, he accused President George W. Bush of regularly circumventing Congress. Yet as president, Obama has grown increasingly bold in his own use of executive action, at times to controversial effect.

Read more from this story HERE.

House Democrat Slams Obamacare… After Announcing His Retirement First

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

A top House Democrat slammed Obamacare’s inability “to work” — but only after he announced his impending retirement from Congress.

12-term Virginia Rep. Jim Moran, an Appropriations Committee member who said this month that he will not seek re-election in 2014, said that not enough young people are signing up for Obamacare coverage to make the law work.

“I’m afraid that the millennials, if you will, are less likely to sign up. I think they feel more independent, I think they feel a little more invulnerable than prior generations. But I don’t think we’re going to get enough young people signing up to make this bill work as it was intended to financially,” Moran said in an interview with WAMU American University Radio.

Read more from this story HERE.

NSA and GCHQ Target ‘Leaky’ Phone Apps Like Angry Birds to Scoop User Data

Photo Credit: The Guardian

Photo Credit: The Guardian

The National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of “leaky” smartphone apps, such as the wildly popular Angry Birds game, that transmit users’ private information across the internet, according to top secret documents.

The data pouring onto communication networks from the new generation of iPhone and Android apps ranges from phone model and screen size to personal details such as age, gender and location. Some apps, the documents state, can share users’ most sensitive information such as sexual orientation – and one app recorded in the material even sends specific sexual preferences such as whether or not the user may be a swinger.

Many smartphone owners will be unaware of the full extent this information is being shared across the internet, and even the most sophisticated would be unlikely to realise that all of it is available for the spy agencies to collect.

Dozens of classified documents, provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica, detail the NSA and GCHQ efforts to piggyback on this commercial data collection for their own purposes.

Scooping up information the apps are sending about their users allows the agencies to collect large quantities of mobile phone data from their existing mass surveillance tools – such as cable taps, or from international mobile networks – rather than solely from hacking into individual mobile handsets.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pentagon Fumes as Afghanistan Frees Taliban Fighters with ‘Blood On Their Hands’

Photo Credit: UNITED STATES FORCES AFGHANISTAN

Photo Credit: UNITED STATES FORCES AFGHANISTAN

Afghani officials freed 37 insurgents and Taliban fighters with “blood on their hands” in what the Pentagon called a “major step backward” for the rule of law in the war torn nation.

The hardened fighters were among 88 prisoners who were being held by the U.S. and being transferred to the emerging Afghan criminal justice system. U.S. authorities said many had directly participated in attacks that wounded or killed scores of U.S. military personnel and Afghan citizens, yet were freed by the Afghan Review Board.

“The ARB is releasing back to society dangerous insurgents who have Afghan blood on their hands,” the United States Forces-Afghanistan said in a statement. “This extra-judicial release of detainees is a major step backward in further developing the rule of law in Afghanistan.”

Many of those freed were Taliban fighters who were connected by forensic evidence to specific IED attacks. Several were captured in possession of bomb materials and some even admitted taking part in attacks on coalition forces. At least two had been captured, freed and recaptured.

Read more from this story HERE.

Army Develops ‘Combat Gum’ to Fight Soldiers’ Cavities In Field

Photo Credit: Rodrigo Abd

Photo Credit: Rodrigo Abd

Deployed? Don’t worry about the missed dentist appointment. The Army has discovered – and over the course of seven years, fine-tuned — a gum that helps the soldier in the field fight plaque, cut cavities and clean teeth.

The military said the fact that taxpayers fund more than $100 billion a year for dental services for troops and families helped spur the cost-cutting creation, the Army Times reported. But first and foremost, the peppermint-flavored gum, called Combat Gum, is aimed at keeping troops healthy and their mouths happy in combat and field-training situations.

“Oral health is essential to warriors on the battlefield and could potentially save the military countless hours and dollars in dental health,” said Col. Robert Hale, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon and commander of the Army Institute of Surgical Research, in the Army Times report.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sheriffs Cheer Pot Shot, Say DEA Chief Ripped Obama Remarks

Photo Credit: Matt West

Photo Credit: Matt West

DEA chief Michele M. Leonhart slammed President Obama’s recent comments comparing smoking marijuana to drinking alcohol at an annual meeting of the nation’s sheriffs this week, according to two sheriffs who said her remarks drew a standing ovation.

Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson said he was thrilled to hear the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration take her boss to task.

“She’s frustrated for the same reasons we are,” Hodgson said. “She said she felt the administration didn’t understand the science enough to make those statements. She was particularly frustrated with the fact that, according to her, the White House participated in a softball game with a pro-legalization group. … But she said her lowest point in 33 years in the DEA was when she learned they’d flown a hemp flag over the Capitol on July 4. The sheriffs were all shocked. This is the first time in 28 years I’ve ever heard anyone in her position be this candid.”

The American flag made of hemp was reportedly flown over the Capitol on Independence Day with the backing of a Colorado congressman.

DEA spokeswoman Dawn Deardon said she was not in the room and couldn’t discuss Leonhart’s comments to the sheriffs.

Read more from this story HERE.

Baier Tracks: Obama’s Three Dog Night

Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

‘One is the loneliest number…’ is how the song goes. Tuesday night, a president frustrated with his stalled agenda in Congress will tell Americans in his State of the Union Address that he’s ready to go it alone. Here’s how the WSJ writes it: ‘[President Obama] will seek to shift the public’s souring view of his leadership, a challenge the White House sees as critical to shaping the nation’s policy direction over the next three years. Mr. Obama will emphasize his intention to use unilateral presidential authority — bypassing Congress when necessary — to an extent not seen in his previous State of the Union speeches, White House officials said.’”

To make the most substantive changes though, the president will need Congress to sign on. He’ll likely tout the budget compromise reached by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., as evidence things CAN happen. But, to hammer Republicans for inaction and being obstructionist and then ask them to help move big legislation seems like it may be a delicate, if not futile, rhetorical dance – especially in an election year.

This is the president’s last pressure point in what looks like a diminishing ability to get any legislative ball across the goal line. What was left of the president’s ‘juice’ on Capitol Hill – the ability to influence – disappears more and more the closer we get to November 2014.” – Bret Baier.

Read more from this story HERE.

Point-Counterpoint: It’s Time for Alaskans to Have School Choice

Photo Credit: truth in american education

Photo Credit: truth in american education

“There is no respect in which inhabitants of low-income neighborhoods are so disadvantaged as in the kind of schooling they can get for their children.” (Nobel Prize-winner Milton Friedman)

Milton Friedman heralded freedom — that free choices and free markets unfettered by government restrictions produce the happiest, healthiest, wealthiest peoples throughout world history. Friedman’s free-choice belief was most adamant in the education marketplace — where government-run monopoly public schools often consign poverty families to multi-generational bondage to local failing education institutions. Alaska is fraught with examples from inner city to remote native regions.

Americans have long understood that free market competition produces a better product at a lower price than government monopolies. The collapse of the command-and-control Soviet economy was proof positive. Yet, for unknown reasons, we ignore this principle when considering the most important product — our children’s education. This despite the fact that many studies show that both public and private schools perform better when they are competing against each other on a level playing field. Twenty-six such studies are cited online at The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. And other studies focus on the tax dollar savings resulting when school competition produces cost efficiencies — one study revealing $444 million in tax dollar savings attributable to various school choice programs.

Alaska parents and school choice advocates want parent consumer empowerment with a school funding system where education dollars follow the student to the private or public school of the parents’ choice — via scholarships, grants, or even tax credits. This gives parents flexibility to put their child in the private or public school best suited to their child’s needs, and gives them “customer clout” to demand higher performance from their local public schools. The research proves this.

Rather than debating the conclusive research and economic logic supporting school choice, government unions and educratic interests prefer hiding behind the Alaska Constitution’s Blaine Amendment — “No … public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.” Yet, as a violation of the federal Constitution’s 14th Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Blaine Amendment unconstitutional in Mitchell v. Helms (June 28, 2000) “…This doctrine [the Blaine Amendment], born of bigotry, should be buried now.”

In 2007, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reiterated that state Blaine Amendments are rooted in shameful religious bigotry. “… Blaine Amendments reek of religious discrimination. As such, they are illegitimate relics of a shameful past we have neither adequately acknowledged nor effectively remedied.”

And consider the false narrative that the Blaine Amendment’s anti-religious prohibitions are wise or prudent. Seventy years of American history prove repeatedly that religiously neutral student support is effective and efficient. The GI Bill aids veterans to attend religious (or non-religious) schools of their choice, with amazing positive results. Child Care and Development Block Grants provided government aid irrespective of the religious or non-religious affiliation of childcare institutions, with similar positive results. And both federal and state Child Care Tax Credits subsidize parental choice of child care providers with direct credits offsetting expenses — regardless of the providers’ religious affiliations.

These are three examples of numerous government aid programs which succeeded despite clear diametric conflict with state Blaine Amendments.

The $64,000 question: If a religiously neutral, competitive level playing field is good for college programs, preschool programs, after-school programs, and summertime programs; why isn’t this also good for K-12 regular school programs? Here’s why — none of these other programs have powerful government unions lobbying against them, opposing any attempts to reform the monopolistic system. That’s the only difference. Alaska politicians need to recognize this fact and choose sides rather than feigning “constitutionality” crisis issues.

And government union lobbyists need to start debating school choice on the merits of competition. Try refuting the many studies which reveal improved public school performance in school choice marketplaces, rather than clinging to the shameful anti-religious bigotry known as the Blaine Amendment.

Legislators should grant Alaska voters their right to vote on this reeking relic long past its time. If voters do the right thing and toss it from their constitution, they will have cleared the first hurdle en route to educational freedom, real school competition, and better schools.

_______________________________________________________________________

Joe Balyeat ([email protected]) is the state director for school choice projects for Americans For Prosperity — Alaska. He is a National Merit Scholar and former Montana state senator. He resides part year at his home near Anchor Point.

image001