ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE CRAZY AT VALUES VOTER SUMMIT
A good match.
One must go where the money is and the missile defense lobby, led by the Heritage Foundation, realizes the Values Voters constituency is their place.
Now, here's where it gets tricky. The missile defense industry doesn't care a hoot about the really crazy side of the Values Voters confab -- the well-known Republican idiot from Missouri and his thinly veiled racist joke about the president being a monkey who runs out of the jungle to steal golfballs, the fool from Oklahoma telling a rapt room that all pornography turns one into a homo.
However, the EMP crazy lobby (and, by extension, conjoined with the missile defense lobby) is correct in judging the crowd's rage and frustration ripe for manipulation. So it taps into one of the greatest bete noirs of the Values Voter in 2009, and adds its own sales pitching: First, there is too much money -- entitlement -- going to poor people who aren't white, and that money could be spent for missile defense, and -- second -- entitlements -- or money going to poor people who aren't white, aren't constitutional, but defense of the nation is, so missile defense is guaranteed by the Constitution.
To get some of this, you'll have to watch a trailer put together to sell a movie made by Heritage called 33 Minutes. However, in truth, the message has been tailored through the summer to fit into the world view of teabag protest -- an interesting trick involving turning a vested arms-manufacturer national security interest into something supposedly populist and common man.
It's a bit over seven minutes and delivers the entire story -- that Muslim terrorists and Iran -- cue the muezzin calls -- are perhaps mere steps away from taking the US back to the time of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Missile defense is the only answer, it's constitutional and you know, in your heart of hearts, it's the right thing. America must lead and leadership means missile defense.
Even an ex-Soviet bioweapons developer, Ken Alibek, makes an appearance, perhaps because he looks and sounds scary, talking in a thick accent about lots of people getting killed. Call it stock documentary footage for when you need the crowd to feel a sense of menace and forboding.
"The film talks about not only the threat of a direct nuclear blast on our cities, but the threat of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP)," notes one right wing blog in discussing the EMP and missile defense lobby's presence at Values Voters. "A nuclear weapon of the right size detonated at the right height over the United States could fry almost every electronic circuit board in the country –- computers, televisions, phone switchboards, automobile computers ... The United States would, in an instant, be hurled back to [the time of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.]
"Can you imagine how difficult…no, how impossible it would be to maintain our modern way of life under these circumstances? Can you imagine the millions who would starve to death in the big cities where no food could be delivered ... ?"
"But when you consider the trillions we spend on social programs that aren’t even authorized by the U.S. Constitution, the system would cost peanuts," it concludes. "Are not the lives of millions of Americans worth it?"
The 33 Minutes trailer:
Also featured is Heritage employee James Jay Carafano.
Heritage, as DD mentioned last week, is a propaganda organ for the pushing of far right policy dressed up as scholarship.
It gathers various suspect ideas -- that healthcare reform must be defeated, that the welfare class is getting too much in entitlements and undeserved stuff, that the rich are being taxed too much, that gays are assaulting the precious institution of marriage, that global warming, while no longer a cruel hoax, if dealt with will result in diminished US business, poorness for the wealthy and a much weakened military, that poor people who aren't white are unjustly sopping up national treasure that could be spent on missile defense, a project which spreads freedom around the world, that the auto-industry bailout and cash-for-clunkers took money away from freedom-ensuring missile defense, etc -- and employs its stable of bought-and-paid-for experts to craft pieces which exhort readers on the excellence of such beliefs.
For instance, just this week South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, explained this at Heritage, readers being told that the Obama administration's stance on missile defense "[is] the inevitable result of an American foreign policy unmoored from our commitment to human rights and human freedom ..."
Now, aside from the laughable assumption post-9/11 that the US stands for commitment to human rights because its exceptionalism insures thats its torture of Muslim prisoners has always been superior by nature and therefore a Geneva Convention-approved-and-OK kind of torture, missile defense is, DeMint insists, the embodiment of "American ideals." And anyone who doesn't see this is probably a traitor.
"Missile defense represents freedom's ultimate shield -- not just for us, but for friends of freedom around the world," argues DeMint.
And here's the Rachel Maddow Show's recent segment on the Values Voter Summit.
If you watch the Maddow show, you must be gay. And you know what 12-year old boys think of gays, right?
Operation Electromagnetic Pulse from last week.
A good match.
One must go where the money is and the missile defense lobby, led by the Heritage Foundation, realizes the Values Voters constituency is their place.
Now, here's where it gets tricky. The missile defense industry doesn't care a hoot about the really crazy side of the Values Voters confab -- the well-known Republican idiot from Missouri and his thinly veiled racist joke about the president being a monkey who runs out of the jungle to steal golfballs, the fool from Oklahoma telling a rapt room that all pornography turns one into a homo.
However, the EMP crazy lobby (and, by extension, conjoined with the missile defense lobby) is correct in judging the crowd's rage and frustration ripe for manipulation. So it taps into one of the greatest bete noirs of the Values Voter in 2009, and adds its own sales pitching: First, there is too much money -- entitlement -- going to poor people who aren't white, and that money could be spent for missile defense, and -- second -- entitlements -- or money going to poor people who aren't white, aren't constitutional, but defense of the nation is, so missile defense is guaranteed by the Constitution.
To get some of this, you'll have to watch a trailer put together to sell a movie made by Heritage called 33 Minutes. However, in truth, the message has been tailored through the summer to fit into the world view of teabag protest -- an interesting trick involving turning a vested arms-manufacturer national security interest into something supposedly populist and common man.
It's a bit over seven minutes and delivers the entire story -- that Muslim terrorists and Iran -- cue the muezzin calls -- are perhaps mere steps away from taking the US back to the time of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Missile defense is the only answer, it's constitutional and you know, in your heart of hearts, it's the right thing. America must lead and leadership means missile defense.
Even an ex-Soviet bioweapons developer, Ken Alibek, makes an appearance, perhaps because he looks and sounds scary, talking in a thick accent about lots of people getting killed. Call it stock documentary footage for when you need the crowd to feel a sense of menace and forboding.
"The film talks about not only the threat of a direct nuclear blast on our cities, but the threat of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP)," notes one right wing blog in discussing the EMP and missile defense lobby's presence at Values Voters. "A nuclear weapon of the right size detonated at the right height over the United States could fry almost every electronic circuit board in the country –- computers, televisions, phone switchboards, automobile computers ... The United States would, in an instant, be hurled back to [the time of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.]
"Can you imagine how difficult…no, how impossible it would be to maintain our modern way of life under these circumstances? Can you imagine the millions who would starve to death in the big cities where no food could be delivered ... ?"
"But when you consider the trillions we spend on social programs that aren’t even authorized by the U.S. Constitution, the system would cost peanuts," it concludes. "Are not the lives of millions of Americans worth it?"
The 33 Minutes trailer:
Also featured is Heritage employee James Jay Carafano.
Heritage, as DD mentioned last week, is a propaganda organ for the pushing of far right policy dressed up as scholarship.
It gathers various suspect ideas -- that healthcare reform must be defeated, that the welfare class is getting too much in entitlements and undeserved stuff, that the rich are being taxed too much, that gays are assaulting the precious institution of marriage, that global warming, while no longer a cruel hoax, if dealt with will result in diminished US business, poorness for the wealthy and a much weakened military, that poor people who aren't white are unjustly sopping up national treasure that could be spent on missile defense, a project which spreads freedom around the world, that the auto-industry bailout and cash-for-clunkers took money away from freedom-ensuring missile defense, etc -- and employs its stable of bought-and-paid-for experts to craft pieces which exhort readers on the excellence of such beliefs.
For instance, just this week South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, explained this at Heritage, readers being told that the Obama administration's stance on missile defense "[is] the inevitable result of an American foreign policy unmoored from our commitment to human rights and human freedom ..."
Now, aside from the laughable assumption post-9/11 that the US stands for commitment to human rights because its exceptionalism insures thats its torture of Muslim prisoners has always been superior by nature and therefore a Geneva Convention-approved-and-OK kind of torture, missile defense is, DeMint insists, the embodiment of "American ideals." And anyone who doesn't see this is probably a traitor.
"Missile defense represents freedom's ultimate shield -- not just for us, but for friends of freedom around the world," argues DeMint.
And here's the Rachel Maddow Show's recent segment on the Values Voter Summit.
If you watch the Maddow show, you must be gay. And you know what 12-year old boys think of gays, right?
Operation Electromagnetic Pulse from last week.
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