I still maintain Paul Schmelzer might be the closest thing to a legitimate journalist at the MNMon anymore.
But I read this piece this morning at the Monitor – which, as Erik Black noted in confirming a years’ worth of hints and suspicions, numbers George Soros among the other “liberals with deep pockets” that underwrite the operation – and almost yakked up my skull.
I quote, with emphasis added:
The propaganda potential of blogs — noted by former Bush adviser Dan Bartlett, who said many conservative sites “regurgitate exactly” what the administration tells them — isn’t lost on the U.S. government: in 2006 the military’s Joint Special Operations University explored the possibility of covertly paying prominent bloggers or training and promoting new bloggers to “pass the U.S. message.”…We shouldn’t be surprised that the Bush administration considered paying bloggers to tout its messages, writes Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report.
So let me get this straight – the blog that is paid to spout propaganda (and, let’s be honest, lied about it for a year), is writing about an academic exercise where someone proposes paying someone to spout opposing propaganda.
Now that’s meta.
Schmelzer also notes
While the document doesn’t specifically name friendly blogs it could seek to channel its message, it does note the roles of conservative blogs like The Drudge Report, Little Green Footballs, Townhall.com and Free Republic forums, without listing any centrist or left-leaning blogs.
So Schmelzer’s “standard of proof” is “innocent until mentioned by a couple of writers with track records, themselves, as left-leaning shills?”
We’ll keep that in mind.
UPDATE: Maybe it’s an April Fool’s joke!
Thats’ gotta be it. Not even the MNMon can talk that far out its’ ass…
*flash* in 3…2…1…
It’s all clear to me now.
Flash has spent the last week preparing the ground for this blockbuster. He’s been spreading the “truth” – “don’t believe all those pesky facts and admissions against interest! It’s really all those pesky conservatives who are in the bag for a sinister larger force that controls their purse strings and, thereby, their souls! NOT US!”
Fiendishly effective, that.
By the power of ScaifeNet! I have THE POWER!
. . . to write about farts and toilet paper. . .
Hmm, I’m beginning to connect the dots.
ScaifeNet gives Yossarian the power to write about toilet paper.
Procter & Gamble makes a lot of toilet paper
Wal-Mart sells a lot of P&G products
Hillary Clinton once served on the board of directors for Wal-Mart
Scaife and Hillary Clinton met last week.
My God, Yoss – you’re implicated!
Sad thing is, to Flash, that’s probably logical.
Yeah, but it makes him really good at that “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game, I’m guessing.
Some of the funniest propaganda posters I’ve seen are on a British WWI site.
Painting of a group of men in uniform charging on horse back as an artillery shell rips into them. Caption: “There’s a Place for you on the Front!”
Painting of a Zeppelin lit up by spot lights over London. Caption: “Better to die from a bullet at the Front than a Bomb at Home!”
Painting of an enlisted man shoeing the rear hoof a horse while an officer looks on approvingly. Caption: “You Can Learn a Respectable Trade in the Army “
Terry’s comment now has me thinking of various lines from the darkly funny series Blackadder Goes Forth.
(It ain’t as good as the Third, but it is quite funny… especially Pvt. Baldrick’s impersonation of a Sopwith Camel.)
I’ve been wondering lately what Flash’s inspiration has been. I mean he has taken the (very timely) demise of George Soros’ toe-hold in the Minnesota blogosphere really personally.
You couldn’t help but notice that the intelligence-free content of an increasing number of posts was very similar to what Feckless Jeffy the wingnut slayer would peck out.
Then, Robin “Sockpuppet Queen” Marty floated up to try and cover Flash’s ass every time he’s done one of his “MDE expose'” pieces and my radar was up, and I’ve been expecting a follow up from Minnesoros Moneytor would be forthcoming at any moment.
And here it is.
What we have here is a bag of hopelessly compromised sockpuppets reaching out to a heretofore credible blogger to run interference for them. I would have thought that Flash was smarter than this, but with the increased dosage of Kool-aid the poor boob has obviously been swilling I guess this was inevitable.
The question remaining is what we do now. Oh sure, it’s all well and good to include a token moonbat, but really, is the MOB a big enough tent to cover a surrogate sockpuppet?
I suggest that as long as Flash is willing to create a disclosure page that details his involvement with The Open Society Institute, or it’s agents, and that he updates that page monthly, his MOB membership is safe.
Flash?
I can get paid by the VRWC to blog? Shee-it, where do I apply for my check? Is there a minimum word count?
This is rich. Military thinks hmm, we have a good story to tell, but the MSM won’t tell it because they’re too busy carrying water for the Defeatocrats. What can we do?
And to this strategizing, which is what every farging marketing firm does for a living, the left invariably replies Leni Riefenstahl! Leni Riefenstahl!
Here’s a nugget from that report,
***
Governments have noticed this potential, and many authoritarian governments censor blogs believed to threaten their regimes. Iran has imprisoned bloggers who offended the ruling mullahs. At the same time, however, Iranian officials recognized the value of blogs to information strategy, holding the Revolutionary Bloggers Conference to promote pro-regime blogs in February 2006.
***
Essay question for lefties? Is the US Military the same as the Iranian regime? Why or why not? Justify your answer?
There was also this gem.
***
Postings that are well researched and thoughtful, and that bear out this initial assessment, may draw more links than ignorant diatribe, although this is not always the case.
***
I must change the name of any blog I am a part of to “Ignorant Diatribe.”
I also like this one.
***
The implications of the entrenched inequality of the blogosphere for influence operations are threefold. First, other things being equal, the blogs that are linked to the most often are likely to be among the most influential. Second, the vast majority of blogs can be ignored, concentrating efforts on the most popular blogs.
***
So, correction, my blog name must be “Ignorant Diatribe That Can Be Ignored.”
“Ignorant Diatribe That Can Be Ignored.”
That could be the title for practically every Nick Coleman column.
If you view the people as a collective, and all their human problems as collective problems, by necessity you have to have everyone view the struggle against the problem in the same way. You can’t have half the people believing man made global warming is god’s own truth and the half think that that it’s legitimate to view man made global warming is a hoax. By definition you couldn’t achieve a collective goal.
It’s difficult to see how a rational being can believe that the military trying to shape how its mission is viewed should be disparaged as ‘propaganda’ in its worse sense — lies to fool the People — while Gore’s .An Inconvenient Truth is an exercise in informing the people.
In other words, you wingnuts think it’s ok to use taxpayer money for partisan propaganda, but private citizens can’t use their money to back a website. Good to know.
If that’s how you translate it, AC, you really haven’t been paying attention.
you wingnuts think it’s ok to use taxpayer money for partisan propaganda, but private citizens can’t use their money to back a website. Good to know.
Nope.
It’s stupid for writers that are in fact right now paid to write propaganda to cast aspersions on writers whom – according to one account – one government agency thought about paying, maybe someday, to write propaganda.
So if, say, Fox “News” were to do a story on a similar Obama Administration plan, that would be out of bounds too I guess. You know, cause wingnuts are nothing if not consistent.
And another swing and a miss for AC!
Time to get your eyes checked, littler fella.
you wingnuts think it’s ok to use taxpayer money for partisan propaganda,
No, we’ve been saying all along that 501(c)(3) tax exempt charities like MiniMoni shouldn’t be using taxpayer money for partisan propaganda.
you wingnuts think it’s ok to use taxpayer money for partisan propaganda,
No, I’ve opposed public financing for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for years.
I guess ‘winning a war’ is now considered an illegitimate use of taxpayer funds on the left.
AC did try and make an argument, tho “So if, say, Fox “News” were to do a story on a similar Obama Administration plan, that would be out of bounds too I guess.”
Depends. Are you talking about a war? Certainly, if the war was duly authorized under the constitution. Forcing people to use CFL’s? Don’t think so.
So if, say, Fox “News” were to do a story on a similar Obama Administration plan, that would be out of bounds too I guess. You know, cause wingnuts are nothing if not consistent.
As a general principal? When have I said anything otherwise?
Never!
Jeez what a piece of crap from the MinMon. I finally downloaded the original PDF of the JSOU article.
The MinMon article contains this line:
While the document doesn’t specifically name friendly blogs it could seek to channel its message, it does note the roles of conservative blogs like The Drudge Report, Little Green Footballs, Townhall.com and Free Republic forums, without listing any centrist or left-leaning blogs.
The original PDF lists these blogs only in the introduction to the article where the authors recount the Rathergate scandal and the roles these blogs took in exposing that story to the wider public. It never identifies these blogs as friendly or unfriendly, liberal, conservative, or moderate. It never mentions them again in the 30 page article.
The MinMon article hints that the Armed Forces were considering using conservative (in the eyes of MinMon) bloggers to push propaganda. That is a lie. That is propaganda.
The perfect place for AC and the MNMon folks: AngryJournalist.com.
Something else to make them angry, though. How many of the 50 largest US cities are ruled by the Democrats? Why is the average graduation rate of students in Demoncratic governed cities less than 50%? Even in Clown’s beloved NYC we see the “graduation rate for its main school district of 45.2 percent.” Why do the libs hate children so much that they force this system upon them?!