Tag: smear campaign
Texas grand jury INDICTS two anti-abortion zealots behind Planned Parenthood smear campaign
A grand jury in Harris County, Texas (includes nearly all of Houston) has officially indicted two individuals associated with the altered videos that were part of an attempt to smear Planned Parenthood over fetal tissue research:
David Daleiden, executive director of the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress (CMP) – Indicted on a felony count of tampering with a governmental record and a misdemeanor count related to the purchase of human organs
Sandra Merritt, employee of CMP – indicted on a count of tampering with a governmental record
The grand jury was originally convened to investigate Planned Parenthood over the videos, but decided to turn the tables on the anti-abortion smear artists and indict two of them instead. I hope that Daleiden and Merritt are prosecuted to the fullest and fairest extent of the law.
altered videos
Center for Medical Progress
David Daleiden
edited videos
fetal tissue
Harris County TX
Sandra Merritt
OH MY! Former Hillary supporter ADMITS to anti-Bernie online smear campaign
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am NOT, in any way, affiliated with the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.
If you've suspected that the Hillary Clinton campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has been waging a stealth campaign against Bernie Sanders by smearing him in online posts, we now have proof of that. An individual, who described himself/herself as a former digital media specialist for Hillary (through a public relations firm) who is now a Bernie supporter, gave a lengthy explanation of an online smear campaign that Hillary operatives have been waging against Bernie. The original post was taken down, although it's since been re-uploaded to Reddit by (apparently) a different individual.
The smear campaign has operated in the form of Hillary campaign operatives posting various anti-Bernie smears on various social media and left-wing political websites at the behest of higher-ups in a public relations firm affiliated with the Hillary campaign, with the people attacking Bernie not revealing themselves to be working for Hillary. Hillary operatives use five different attack lines against Bernie:
1) Sexism. This was the biggest one we were supposed to push. We had to smear Bernie as misogynistic and out-of-touch with modern sensibilities. He was to be characterized as "an old white male relic that believed women enjoyed being gang raped". Anyone who tried to object to this characterization would be repeatedly slammed as sexist until they went away or people lost interest.
2) Racism. We were instructed to hammer home how Bernie supporters were all privileged white students that had no idea how the world worked. We had to tout Hillary's great record with "the blacks" (yes, that's the actual way it was phrased), and generally use racial identity politics to attack Sanders and bolster Hillary as the only unifying figure.
3) Electability. All of those posts about how Sanders can never win and Hillary is inevitable? Some of those were us, done deliberately in an attempt to demoralize Bernie supporters and convince them to stop campaigning for him. The problem is that this was an outright fabrication and not an accurate assessment of the current political situation. But the truth didn't matter – we were trying to create a new truth, not to spread the existing truth.
4) Dirty tactics. This is where things got really bad. We were instructed to create narratives of Clinton supporters as being victimized by Sanders supporters, even if they were entirely fabricated…These kind of posts are manufactured to divide and demoralize Sanders supporters, and are entirely artificial in nature. (The same thing happened in 2008, but it wasn't as noticeable before social media and public attention focused on popular forums like Reddit).
5) Opponent outreach. There are several forums and imageboards where Sanders is not very popular (I think you can imagine which ones those are.) We were instructed to make pro-Sanders troll posts to rile up the user base and then try to goad them into raiding or attacking places like this subreddit. This was probably the only area where we only had mixed success, since that particular subset of the population were more difficult to manipulate than we originally thought.
Hillary Clinton is running a dirty, underhanded campaign as part of the failed Obama-Clinton Democratic establishment's War on Progressives, and we have proof of that. This is yet another reason why I'm backing Bernie Sanders.
dirty campaigning
dirty tricks
former supporter
internet post
left campaign
negative campaigning
online post
political operative
PR firm
stealth campaign
switched support
Hillary Clinton and her allies are running a gender-baiting campaign
Hillary Clinton has made it clear that she is not going to run a campaign on the issues and, instead, is going to run a gender-baiting campaign by emphasizing the fact that she's a woman (she did this at least twice that I know of at the first Democratic presidential debate) and falsely accusing Bernie Sanders of sexism. Now, some of Hillary's allies, most notably Stephanie Schriock, a career political operative who leads the big-money Democratic establishment organization EMILY's List, are attacking Bernie over one of his campaign operatives (idiotically, in my opinion) floating the idea of Hillary possibly being Bernie's running mate should Bernie win the Democratic nomination.
This is disgusting gutter politics from the Hillary Clinton campaign and Hillary's allies, and it would seriously damage the Democratic Party if Hillary wins the Democratic nomination. Hillary is, for all intents and purposes, running her presidential campaign on the fact that she's a woman. That would be the ruination of democracy in America if Hillary were to win the nomination that way. The qualifications to be President of the United States are that one must be at least 35 years of age, a natural-born U.S. citizen, and a U.S. resident for at least 14 years at the time of inauguration. The Constitution does not include a gender qualification for the presidency, and there are, to my knowledge, four Democrats (Hillary, Bernie, Martin O'Malley, and Lawrence Lessig) running for our party's presidential nomination who are legally qualified to run for president.
For those of you who are invariably going to accuse me of sexism, I don't think it's feminist for one to run a political campaign primarily on the candidate's gender. It is feminist to run a campaign for public office in support of ideas like paid family leave, reproductive rights, equal pay for equal work, and other pro-woman ideas.
Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, is running an ideas-based campaign. Bernie is more than willing to talk about actual political issues like women's rights, gun safety, and legalization of marijuana. That's the kind of campaign I support.
EMILY's List
false accusation
gender-baiting
Stephanie Schriock
Joe Biden's "Susan Happ" problem
With Vice President Joe Biden likely to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, I do want to bring up an historical parallel between Biden's likely presidential bid and Jefferson County, Wisconsin District Attorney Susan Happ's failed bid for Attorney General of Wisconsin last year.
The parallel between Biden and Happ is this: Both Biden and Happ are/were, prior to running for higher office (or, in Happ's case, after winning a statewide Democratic primary in Wisconsin), viewed favorably by voters not because of their actual track records or positions on the issues, but because they liked the candidates personally. In Biden's case, he's seen by many voters across the country as an approachable guy with an interesting personality. In Happ's case, she was seen by many voters in Wisconsin as someone who rode a Harley-Davidson motorcycle in a television ad.
Happ's campaign to become Wisconsin's top prosecutor fell apart not long after Happ won a contested Democratic primary with a narrow majority of the vote. Republicans and the far-right corporate media in Wisconsin viciously attacked Happ's record as a county-level prosecutor, making her look like a corrupt prosecutor who gave out light sentences to Democrats and political cronies, when, in reality, it was a major distortion of Happ's record. The sustained attack on Happ damaged her campaign and allowed Republican racist Brad Schimel to be elected Attorney General of Wisconsin.
Biden has a legitimately awful record, especially as a U.S. Senator from Delaware, including, among other things:
Helping put right-wing extremist Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court despite serious sexual harassment allegations against Thomas
Voting to repeal the Glass-Steagall regulations on banks and other financial institutions, which led to the Great Recession
Voting for the Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA), which prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriages prior to being ruled unconstitutional by a conservative U.S. Supreme Court
Publicly claiming that "abortion is always wrong"
Helping enact legislation, signed into law by George W. Bush, that made it harder for Americans to file for bankruptcy
Helping enact legislation that expanded the prison-industrial complex in the United States
Voting for George W. Bush's unjustified Iraq War
It wouldn't take much for one of the Democratic presidential candidates already in the race to brand Biden as an awful politician, if Biden were to run.
I believe that there is an important lesson that is to be learned from the failure of Susan Happ's campaign for Wisconsin Attorney General last year. When one runs for public office, his or her track record can, either fairly or unfairly, be used against him or her by any political opponent. While Joe Biden's decision on whether or not to run for president is entirely Joe Biden's decision to make, I would caution him that his record as a U.S. Senator would likely come back to haunt him politically.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015 Tuesday, October 6, 2015
bankruptcy reform
considering run
corporate merger
crime legislation
DE-Sen
failed campaign
personally liked
prison-industrial complex
recognition of marriage
Susan Happ
unjustified war
Wisconsin Republicans want to take the opportunity for cures away from people across America
In response to the recent release of heavily-edited videos by a right-wing smear group as part of a political witchhunt against Planned Parenthood, Wisconsin Republicans are pushing to enact an outright ban on the use of tissue from aborted fetuses in medical research.
Make no mistake about it, banning fetal tissue from being used in medical research would be disastrous, not just for Wisconsin, but the entire country. Not only would Wisconsin lose jobs if this legislation were to be enacted, the entire country would lose out on research, conducted by the University of Wisconsin System, that seeks to find cures for serious ailments like Parkinson's disease, heart defects, various forms of cancer, and multiple sclerosis, just to name a few. This would make it far more difficult for researchers to find cures for serious ailments that affect millions of people in this country. I don't think that there are any colleges or universities outside of Wisconsin that do medical research with fetal tissue, but I could be wrong about that.
The right-wing political witchhunt against Planned Parenthood and other pro-women groups is incredibly short-sighted. In Wisconsin, the right-wing witchhunt against Planned Parenthood has officially turned into a full-on attack against sick people and medical research.
Friday, August 14, 2015 Friday, August 14, 2015
fetal tissue research
illnesses
outright ban
political witchhunt
proposed legislation
research for cures
secret videos
UW System
War on Research
Wisconsin Legislature
witchhunt