…in my opinion they KNOW they are full of it but decided to play this game anyway. Listen to how they phrase things:
The bills are so loosely worded, abortion-rights advocates say
A Planned Parenthood official testified last week at a hearing on Nebraska’s LB 232 that such legislation “authorizes and protects vigilantes.
Oh of course. “Abortion rights advocates” and “planned parenthood” (one and the same) are saying this. Abortion is a sacrament to them. Anything that dehumanizes the unborn is sacred to them.
Now the only paragraph were they phrase it differently they say:
Critics of the bills, including law enforcement officials, warn that these measures could invite violence against abortion providers and possibly provide legal cover to the perpetrators of such crimes.
Do they name the law enforcement officials? Do they specify the affiliations of said folks, sorry no can do.
As Stacy McCain points out AUL has made no secret of any of these things:
My point is that there is nothing at all secretive about Americans United for Life’s role in promoting these laws. The model legislation for the “Pregnant Woman’s Protection Act” is featured on AUL’s Web site, and providing model legislation and legal advice is a specialty that AUL proudly proclaims on its Web site:
Let’s cut to the chase, AUL is not endorsing murder. Anyone who thinks that this would trump basic murder laws is selling you something. So why do you see this kind of panic article? Simple. The left is losing, and losing big, not only in terms of elections of republicans, but polls have been moving for years against abortion.
This is what comes of killing off millions of your potential voters over a 40 year period.
When Morning Joe went long with Rolling Stone great Military expose four days ago I said this:
WOW that’s absolutely positively…ordinary
Today at Hotair Bruce McQuain tells why Rolling Stone gathered no moss.
Hastings apparently took the word of LTC Michael Holmes as the premise and theme of his article. In fact he sets it up with a quote from Holmes:
“My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave,” says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. “I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line.”
Except LTC Holmes job wasn’t “in psy-ops” (Psychological Operations) nor is LTC Holmes trained in PsyOps. That is a very specific Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) that requires school training. The place in which PsyOps is taught is the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Ft. Bragg, NC. According to Special Operations Command, the Special Warfare School has never heard of LTC Michael Holmes.
His conclusion?
In short Hastings was gulled by Holmes. If anyone was a victim of “psy-ops” here, it was Michael Hastings. His lack of knowledge about the command plus an apparent desire to put another general officer notch in his journalistic belt left him open to a sob story from a disgruntled officer that may have sounded good to him, but appears to have little or no basis in fact. A story from an officer who had already been reprimanded for making a false official statement.
Go and read the whole thing. Joe Scarborough? Better luck next time, will be interested in how you will report on this stories crash and burn. As for Rolling Stone…I suggest you stick to Bieber manina.
One of the advantages that control of the MSM and the major newspapers gives the media is the ability to convince people who do not regularly pay attention to current events beyond Charlie Sheen, Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber of things that simply aren’t true.
Half of this battle is ignoring stories that they don’t want promoted (see “The News Hounds that didn’t bark” or this link at Big Government of yet ANOTHER assault on a tea party member by a union man“. The other half is manipulating the reporting on events that are covered. Today’s example is Move-on’s “50 state rally” attempt to rally non-union types.
By all accounts the rallies didn’t energize much of anyone:
Despite the best efforts of the state-run media and the far left, protesters failed to materialize today at the dozens of rallies in support of government employee unions. Maybe it’s because government employees make twice as much as the private sector?
Let’s face it. These were no tea party numbers despite their best astroturfing efforts.
In Jefferson City, Missouri about 200 and around 300 counter tea party protesters turned out at competing rallies. The tea party protesters, of course, showed more energy. In St. Louis only 40-50 protested. In Utah maybe a couple hundred turned out.
Possibly 300 in Virginia. Around 500 in Washington DC where a bunch of loosely-connected leftist groups took turns complaining about the usual suspects: corporations, the rich, Speaker Boehner, the Tea Party, and men. Los Angeles may have had one to two thousand in attendance – including self-avowed socialists.
Over all, it was a complete failure. But, don’t tell the state-run media.It doesn’t fit their agenda.
So how horrible was the turnout? There were more people at the Recall Wisconsin Senator Wirch rally today that there were at several of the MoveOn rallies.
‘It seems that unless government workers get a paid day off (from us) they’re not too interested in taking their unpaid days off to protest.’”
Meanwhile Professor Jacobson who has some harder numbers notes that the media had already decided that Move-on’s protests were successful:
Outside of Madison, there were no reports of sizable crowds. And if you read the news reports, almost all the protesters were other union members. Despite the efforts, the organizers failed to motivate significant numbers of non-union members to come out for protests.
The 50-state protest was a failure, plain and simple, although the images from Madison may create the false impression of massive nationwide protests.
Update: As predicted, the mainstream media is painting the nationwide protest as a success. The headlines talk about protests around the country, but the stories talk almost entirely about Madison, giving the false impression that there was widespread support around the country:
Why is this important? He explains
Since NYT and AP stories are run at thousands of local newspapers around the country who cannot create their own content, it is likely that most people in this country never will hear about the dismal turnout for these protests. This is your biased MSM in action.
The idea is to go into the fight with a pre-ordained template and to find a way to manipulate the available information to make it fit.
The target of this is not those who are involved but those who are not, who don’t check out the cable news (except for during a huge crisis or maybe just before an election) those who will catch only a glimmer of what is happening and then when in a position to make a decision will have only that glimmer as a reference, something that “everybody knows”. It’s playing on the nature of belief.
In the 3rd episode of the Doctor Who Serial Image of the Fendahl from 1977 there is an exchange between the elderly Mrs. Tyler and her grandson when she tries to give him a charm and he objects:
Jack Tyler: “You know that I don’t believe in all that.”
Mrs. Tyler: “Most around ‘ere do and when most believe that da make it true.”
Jack Tyler: “Most people used to believe that the earth was flat, but it was still round,”
Mrs. Tyler: “Ha ha but they behaved as it were flat!”
The exchange begins at 6:51
And that is, as always, the goal of the MSM. To make people behave “as it were flat!” so that when a person on a show says: “the Union protesters are peaceful or the Tea Party is violent” that it will be accepted as common knowledge.
Thousands of people rallied in cities across the United States on Saturday against a Wisconsin plan to curb the power of public sector unions that has sparked similar government efforts in other states.
The headline Labor protests draw thousands across United States is telling, 50 states and “thousands” how many thousands? one thousands? two thousands? only when you go deep into the story do you see only one rally cited with even 1000 people outside of Madison.
Update: Thanks glenn. Just to give you an idea of how many Hits Instapundit gives. Glenn’s link to me was the 3rd update on a post put up 12 hours ago. that means the vast majority of his readers have already read that post, yet it has generated 100 hits in 2 hours on a Sunday morning.
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