Smoking Politics

Watching Freedom's Watch: The Donors

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:52:51 -0800

Since 2004, we have been very involved in investigating, exposing, and uncovering the roots and exposing the tactics and lies of the right-wing smear machine. James was involved not only in John Kerry's campaign, but also in the Truth and Trust Team, a group of Kerry friends and family who attempted to fight back against the Swift Boat Veterans. Dave, of course, followed the campaign and those attacks closely, and then worked with James and others, including our friend, Taylor Marsh, on The Patriot Project in 2006. Created by John Kerry, David Thorne and others, The Patriot Project helped veterans such as Joe Sestak, Patrick Murphy and John Murtha defend themselves -- even looking into previous attacks on John McCain. We also were part of the team that exposed the Economic Freedom Fund, a group created with a $5,000,000 donation from Bob Perry that attacked moderate Democrats, primarily in red states. Why do folks like Bob Perry give money like that? It's strictly business.

If You Are In LA Area

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 09:00:14 -0800

James Boyce will be a guest on the Mario Solich Show, Los Angeles AM 1150, 4:20 pm Pacific time talking about the California Newsladder.

The Boy Who Cried Terror

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 12:49:43 -0800

Message to Congress: No one believes Bush and this is dangerous to the country! There is an urgent warning today from the FBI, that Al-Qaeda might attack shopping malls over the holiday season. See Exclusive: FBI: Al Qaeda May Strike U.S. Shopping Malls in LA, Chicago,

The FBI is warning that al Qaeda may be preparing a series of holiday attacks on U.S. shopping malls in Los Angeles and Chicago, according to an intelligence bulletin distributed to law enforcement authorities across the country this morning.

Is there a single person in this country who doesn't wonder if this is another Bush trick? Be honest, it crossed your mind, didn't it? But what if it's true? Meanwhile, hardly a day goes by without another dramatic statement from Bush or Cheney claiming that Iran poses a grave threat to the world. But few bother to listen anymore. People just roll their eyes. Bush cried wolf over Iraq. Bush raised the terror threat level and announced arrests or warnings for political purposes. Bush pumped fear into the country to win elections. And now another warning. But what if it's true? Listen up, people! The FBI is warning about an al Queda attack on shopping malls this Christmas and almost no one will pay attention because no one believes this government anymore. Everyone has seen them manipulate terror threats, pump the fear for elections -- or just to get another capital gains tax cut passed. Bush has lost credibility, but the world remains dangerous. Congress must act! Congress must remove Bush and Cheney for lying to the country to start a war. Congress must restore the public's trust in our country's leadership. The current situation is dangerous. If the government says we are about to be attacked we need to be able to believe them and act on it, instead of rolling our eyes and wondering how these clowns think they can get away with more of this fear-pumping. Because there just might BE a time when we ARE about to be attacked. One more time: Congress, stop posturing. Stop worrying about the political fallout. Start doing what is right for the country. Bush and Cheney have to be removed from office because they lied to us to get us to support war in Iraq, and now no one believes the government, and this is dangerous.

New Republican "NASCAR" Smear On Democrats

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 07:10:47 -0800

Republicans are circulating a new smear, saying that Democratic Congressional staffers advised aides to get vaccinations before visiting NASCAR events. It is, of course, just a lie designed to drive the "elite limousine liberal" and "Democrats hate regular people" narratives. In fact the aides were visiting "health care centers, detention facilities and other operations where they could be exposed to communicable diseases" and the immunizations are routine. The Drudge Report has been headlining the smear for a several days. Of course Republican talk-radio has been running with it. Here are just a few examples of the spread of the smear: FOX: Aides immunized before NASCAR race,

Going to a NASCAR race? Better get your shots. That's the message Rep. Robin Hayes seems to think is being sent as a handful of congressional aides were told to get immunized before a fact-finding trip for a House Homeland Security Committee. The group was immunized for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus, diphtheria and influenza before attending last weekend's NASCAR race in Talladega and this weekend's race in Concord, N.C.

Atlanta: GOP outraged over NASCAR-immunizations advisory And days after the lie was refuted, the lie continues to spread: Atlanta TV: Congressman Insults NASCAR Fans Indianapolis: NASCAR races danger to government workers? One way the Republican machine spreads this stuff is posting to forums. And here is an example of a "regular person" posting a comment in a sports forum:

It is offensive that the Democrats choose to be vaccinated from Nascar fans. I thought they claimed to be inclusive of everyone and they blame Republicans for having stereotypes. If they went to a football, baseball, or basketball game would they have been vaccinated? NO. It's when they go to a Nascar event that they are vaccinated. Obviously they consider Nascar fans to be a group of rednecks, southerners and Christians that are apparently disease ridden.

Here is another sports forum example.

Al Gore WILL Be Smeared

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:25:06 -0800

If Al Gore Is awarded the Nobel Prize he WILL be smeared. There is no question about it. On May 15, 2007, we wrote a post titled, We Guarantee Al Gore Will Be Attacked Next Week, We Absolutely Guarantee It. We wrote,

On Monday, Al Gore has a new book coming out next week, titled, The Assault On Reason. Because he is standing up, telling the truth and because he simply is a Democrat and progressive leader, Al Gore will be smeared mercilessly by the right-wing smear machine. He will be ridiculed, made fun of and mocked. They will tease and make fun of him. They will rush to say that he is bitter about 2000, crazy, insane, pontificating and out of touch. They will bring up his utility bills and the boards he is a member of. They will talk about his kiss with Tipper, her crusade against vulgar rap lyrics. They will bring up his weight and the beard. And say it's all about 2008.

Hillary Clinton: Mission Accomplished.

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:25:25 -0800

On January 22, 2007, as Senator Clinton went viral with her announcement that she was, essentially, running for The White House, we noted that her first challenge was to shatter the prism of the right. We wrote,

[T]his simply is a fact of modern politics in America. For the past three decades, the right wing has employed a powerful strategy of "$ell and $mear." They insist on being the gatekeepers to public opinion and have developed a powerful machine that tells us who to like - and who to hate. ... They $mear Democratic and Progressive heroes, reducing American success stories such as George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis into humiliated historical footnotes. They destroy our leaders. They destroy those that might become our leaders. There is no Democratic or Progressive leader of any note of the last twenty years that has not been attacked.

Essentially, what we meant was:

Chinese-Americans Give Money To Clinton. The Horror. The Horror.

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 08:21:31 -0800

If it kind of worked once, keep trying it again and again. So once again, the Right is reviving the tired 90s Asian-donations smear on the Clintons. Headlined at the Drudge Report, the Wall Street Journal has Big Source of Clinton's Cash Is an Unlikely Address,

It isn't obvious how the Paw family is able to afford such political largess. ...

Did you ask them? Is it your business? Actually they did ask them:

But he added: "I have been fortunate in my investments and all of my contributions have been my money."

But they have a Chinese name, so let's do a big story on it.

The Paws' political donations closely track donations made by Norman Hsu, a wealthy New York businessman in the apparel industry who once listed the Paw home as his address, according to public records. Mr. Hsu is one of the top fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign.

And now we get to the root of the big scandal - (queue horror-movie music) Someone is CHINESE-American!

Behind The Front: The Pro-War "Freedom's Watch"

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:34:04 -0800

In the early 1970s, the Nixon Administration took a page out of the tobacco industry's playbook and actively organized front groups to counter the anti-war efforts of Vietnam veterans like John Kerry and Bobby Muller. Men like John O'Neill - later to re-appear as one of the Swift Boat Veterans - were hired to create what Watergate felon Charles Colson called "counter-foils." Today with the launch of "Freedoms Watch" our politics are further poisoned by the appearance of another mutant variation of this front-group tactic. Freedoms Watch is a shadowy 501c4 organization created to try to keep Republicans from abandoning the White House on Iraq. Ironically, on the very day the President invoked the legacy of Vietnam, his administration has created this Nixonian front-group counter-foil.

The Global Warming Denying Machine Story Goes Mainstream.

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 15:01:39 -0800

We just wanted to thank and congratulate both Newsweek and Sharon Begley, the author of a great new cover story about the funding of the Global Warming Deniers. This story, read it here, is a major step forward in exposing this machine and in furthering the understanding we all need to have in how the right uses strategies first developed by the tobacco industry to promote its agenda.

Pat Tillman: Anti-War Leftist Worm Dirt

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:59:20 -0800

Pat Tillman was a noted professional football player with a salary over $500,000 a year and a brilliant future ahead of him in the National Football League. The exact opposite of a "Chickenhawk," and after 9/11, Pat Tillman dropped everything, turned down a 3-year, $3.6 million contract and enlisted in the US Army to help his country. Two years later he died in Afghanistan. The Pentagon told Tillman's family that he was a hero who had been killed by enemy fire. At first, Tillman's death was a useful propaganda tool for the right and a tool to encourage patriotism for the war.

Reporting Live Earth News Or Shaping Opinion?

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 07:40:52 -0800

Organizers say Live Earth's internet audience may have been as many as two billion people*. But how is it reported today? Earth underwhelmed by environment pop extravaganza ,

They rocked the world, but as the clean-up at nine climate change gigs around the globe begins, many wonder if the galaxy of pop stars did much to change it. U.S. and British media were generally underwhelmed on Sunday by Live Earth, the mega-concert organized by former U.S. vice president and green campaigner Al Gore, which, though built on the model of Live Aid and Live 8, created a less positive buzz.

Murdoch's Times of London had this ready, Live Earth fails to pack large-scale punch, and Murdoch's Fox News was ready with this one, reminiscent of the energy-use smear on Al Gore that came out the day after he won the Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth (see part 2 also), 'Green' Means Money, Not Environmentalism to Madonna,

Madonna had better clean up her business before she starts cleaning up the world. ... Madonna, who seems to be on top of all her many business endeavors, has actually invested about $2.7 million dollars in companies that are creating the destruction that Live Earth is trying to raise awareness about. She has invested in several companies named as the biggest corporate polluters in the world. .. The companies include Alcoa, Ingersoll Rand, Weyerhaeuser, and several others associated with oil exploration, digging, and refining including British Petroleum, Schlumberger (a chief competitor of Halliburton), Devon Energy, Peabody Energy, Emerson Electric, Kimberly Clark and Weatherford International. ... one has to wonder why Madonna has put even a penny into the company if she has any feeling for environmental causes. But that's an inconvenient question for the material girl as she prepares to close the Live Earth show live from London.

Nice try, but people do understand the problem and are going to continue to pressure the government for action. *P.S. MSN reports 9 million streaming, AOL reports 5 million. AND,

Control Room, producer of Live Earth and Live 8, said it found that the on-demand streams in the days after the Live 8 had the most impact, especially after clips were passed around by e-mail. Live 8 was streamed by users more than 100 million times in the six weeks following the shows. Live Earth is predicted to be three times bigger with organizers expecting more than 80 percent of the viewership will be on-demand in the days after the event.

So two billion seems high, but one heck of a lot of people did and will tune in for sure.

Op-Ed Or Op-Lie?

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 12:07:13 -0800

What could be more important than dealing with the threat of global warming? Exposing the companies and groups that continue to try and distort the issue for financial gain and holding the media accountable for their role and complicity in the continuing distortion of the truth. Let's be perfectly clear. Global warming is a scientific fact - it is not a political issue. But a few corporations are bringing in incredibly high profit margins from the status quo. These profits depend on Americans and people worldwide burning more and more oil instead of working to put less carbon into the air. So they pollute the "marketplace of ideas," deceiving people by spreading the lie of doubt that global warming is a real problem. Just as Big Tobacco was willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars denying for decades that cigarettes caused cancer while hundreds of thousands died from their product each year -- spreading the same lie that the science was not clear -- so too is Big Oil willing to invest heavily in the global warming deniers. "Doubt is our product" said the tobacco companies, and citizens continued to die. Now doubt is the product again - and the planet continues to grow hotter.

Dr. Allan Brandt Helps Us Put The Smoking In Politics.

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:26:09 -0800

Over at Smoking Politics, we tell and re-tell and constantly point out that the right wing strategy of lie big, ignore the facts and shoot the messenger wasn't created out of thin air, it was started with great success by the tobacco companies almost a century ago.

The clearest current example of the attempts to muddy the water on whether cigarettes actually cause cancer, oh wait, that was the last example, now they're muddying the waters with Global Warming.

Right Circulating A LIE About Hillary and Take Back America

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 09:39:17 -0800

Here is a lie we should try to nip in the bud. Hillary Clinton spoke at the Take Back America conference this morning. The Corner on National Review Online is circulating the following lie about the event:

When she declared, "The American military has done its job," boos began to be heard around the room. As the boos increased, Sen. Clinton raised her voice. "The American military has succeeded," she said, to more boos. "It is the Iraqi government that has failed to make the tough decisions." Still more boos. [emphasis added]

I was there. I heard what happened. NO ONE in the crowd booed her for saying "The American military has succeeded." That is simply a lie by a professional propagandist. Here is a lie we should try to nip in the bud. Hillary Clinton spoke at the Take Back America conference this morning. The Corner on National Review Online is circulating the following lie about the event:

When she declared, "The American military has done its job," boos began to be heard around the room. As the boos increased, Sen. Clinton raised her voice. "The American military has succeeded," she said, to more boos. "It is the Iraqi government that has failed to make the tough decisions." Still more boos. [emphasis added]

I was there. I heard what happened. NO ONE in the crowd booed her for saying "The American military has succeeded." That is simply a lie by a professional propagandist. Bill Scher has more, with video to prove it. Taylor Marsh has more at Huffington Post.

Brent Bozell's Phantom Army

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:53:41 -0800

Let every soldier hew him down a bough And bear't before him: thereby shall we shadow The numbers of our host and make discovery Err in report of us. Macbeth: Act V, Scene IV During Emperor Justinian I's war against the Goths, the Roman general Martinus conceived a strategy to burn as many campfires as possible so as to deceive the enemy about the size of his army. The plan worked, and the Goths fled. In the United States, Nixon invented the fictional "silent majority" of American conservatives to intimidate the progressives of his day, but Brent Bozell has probably done more than anyone to keep the campfires lit.