The Journal

 

Serving the Metropolitan Area

 

Since 1872

 

October 5th

 

SOURCING the DATA!

 

By Jack Parnell - retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate

 

Syndicated by Acme Features

 

 

 

"Character no longer counts for aught unless reinforced by a bank account... Men are sent to Congress whom God intended for the gallows, while those he ticketed for the penitentiary sprout inanities in fashionable pulpits. The merchant who pays his debts in full when he might settle for ten cents on the dollar is considered deficient in common sense... Why is this?"

-  William Cowper Brann, Editor of the Waco Iconoclast (gunned down, April Fools’ Day, 1898)

 

“April Fool’s is done and past, and you’re the biggest fool at last!”

 

 

 

 -  American children’s rhyme – timeless or, says the DJI.260403, eighteen fifty-ish.

 

         

Last time out I mentioned, though briefly, how most as passes for intelligence is just the propaganda... sometimes clever, sometimes appallingly crude.

          The late and little-lamented Reverend Moon – with the indicticators breathing down his neck for bilking little old ladies out’n their widows’ mites - knew most Americans had heard of, and (at the time) respected, the New York Times and Washington Post. So he just knocked city and name together and, since New York already had a Post, started up the Washington Times with his cash from the arms factories in South Korea and little cult slave girls selling flowers in sleazy 'Murkan bars. And presto!... people began thinking the Washington Times authoritative too, especially those as agreed with its Nixon-lovin’, Trump-humpin’ agenda.  Still do.

          And now that the orthodox (non-Trump) right’s Weekly Standard’s gone to that newspaper Boot Hill occupied by the Journal American, Amurkan Mercury, Iconoclast and dozens of big and small city dailies from Atlanta to Zelienople, Bill Buckley’s boy, Fred Barnes, decided that the capitol needs another right-wing rag, so he copycatted Reverend Moon, added a few teaspoons of Hearst and birthed the Washington Examiner.  (Which will likely lead to other geo-medial imitations… the Post is taken and the boob toob’s got the Week in Review, but how about the Washington Chronicle, Washington Enquirer (edited, perhaps, by that Pecker guy, or Stormy Daniels?), Tribune, Herald and on and on and on – leaving the remainder for Oracle online to pick and choose from… )

          Let me explain something as might sound underhanded... if you’ve read a story in the news or over the Internet, especially one as has come out of Washington, more like than not it'll have been planted.  Not necessarily fake, but planted… slanted... Enchanted!  Way down at the end, or buried in the copy, might be the name of a politician trying to draw attention to himself, or else some organization or think tank... often just mentioned by its initials!  Might be real, might not, might be Russian, might be Martian.  Might be Honduran.

          The American Medical Association's journal got caught in the act, so to speak, running this "study" as recommended everybody take up the Viagra. This Edward Laumann of the University of Chicago was quoted in JAMA, then picked up by more papers and television stations saying that the study "gives us a base for explaining why we had this enormous response to Viagra."  See this Lesson from the DJI for the correlation of mostly useless snake oil with advertising blitzers and outrageous prices, more often than not paid for by corporate insurance (who then pass on the premium costs to consumers) or the gumment (which just lets the debt pile up).  

          Now I'm all for enormousity and wouldn't have wanted gumment going round making more crimes of possession, throwing poor ol' Bob Dole in the Graybar Hotel... but Mr. Laumann really ought to have 'fessed that his study was bought and paid for by Pfizer. The company as scores its commercials with “Blitzkrieg Bop” and makes... yeah... Viagra!  Pfizer could easily have washed their money through some Pfizer front or tame, multi-pharmaceutical think tank... they just got really arrogant, so they got caught. Happens with others dozens of times every day, probably hundreds.

          (Now if the Pfizoids cared to salt their Corona vaccines with a little joy  juice, you could watch them plague and vax denialist populations sink to about zero!)

          Here's a baker's dozen of common lobbies as are always in the media pushing something or other... can you identify them?

 

1)

AIM

5)

III

10)

NRA

 

 

2)

CDFE

6)

IRPL

11)

PMP

 

 

3)

CLSP

7)

NAM

12)

UI

 

 

4)

FS

8)

NCC

13)

UPI

 

 

 

9)

NEF

 

 

          We have programming now... distributed by everybody from the Institute for Policy Studies to the Hoover people... that filters Information according to preset perceptions so nobody needs hear discouraging or dissenting words!  Peck in your prejudices and credit card number and, as Nick Negroponte... Mister Digital... predicted, this internet firm will serve you up an e-paper podcast: "The Daily Me" as confirms all your stereotypes, with advertising configured to your paper trail. "The key ingredient in creating an illusory world is a biased selection of facts to fit a preconceived notion," I was once informed by Tommy Sowell who, of course, would never stoop to enhancing horizontal or vertical properties of the signal himself!

          "Whoever gets swept up by this begins to have as the entire perimeter of their consciousness the imagery of Roger Rabbit... you see that same image either on a mug, on a tee-shirt, related to the plate on which you're getting your hamburger, somehow or other connected to the time you take your Coke," said Herbert Schiller to Bill Moyers, many years back (would’ve been Harry Potter some years after, and now… well, nothing – since a gob-stricken Hollywood contacted the sequel-mania – or maybe something spawned by Marvel. "This", back then meant the "unidimensionality" of information, entertainment and advertising, then exhibited by Coke and McDonald's sponsorship of Disney's movie, as later inspired Barbara Lippert's take on Mickey D's animated moonhead crooning rewritten lyrics to 'Mack The Knife'...

          "This is perhaps the first time a song about murder - slicing people up - has been turned into a toe-tapping jingle to sell hamburgers."  Which leads to “Help” selling Google “, Sympathy for the Devil” selling cars and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” selling the Presidents, 2016. ’20 and ‘24.

          "There is some rebellion in this video. A message," as also promised the hawkers of Joey Buttafuoco's rock video. "There's different ways to say our piece."

          Thus the quixotic appeal of the Tea Party’s exhumation of Dick Armey's flat tax to the short-attention-spanned... just to pull Dick a bit, I offered a substitute amendment, back in the day... a poll tax, like they had over in Maggie Thatcher's farm. Brother Rush bit the bait and remarked, approvingly, sort of:, howling: "what's slowing the U.S. down? The poor!... do they pay any taxes? No. They don't pay a thing. They contribute nothing to this country. They do nothing but take from it."  Mitt Romney said much the same thing, but poor people vote… at least some of them… and he paid the price for his honesty.  At least he got a Medal of Freedom for his trouble.

          Now, if the media seem more pliable, perhaps it's because there are more and more of ‘em, at least electronically (tho’ less and less of 'em accountable to anything save the whims and prejudices of their Creators). A few years back, noted Moyers, "only six corporate behemoths play a major role in virtually everything we see on television." Since his PBS special, "Free Speech for Sale", the Ellison-Murdoch- Dell Vicolcom has bought the peacock, bought out the Sackler drug money and renamed itself Vee Three (though there ain't a one, nor two!) and General Electric spun off NBC into that dark hole of grabbitry as is known as MicroTimeTM, enabling that micronetwork as puzzles folk as turn to it expecting good ol’ Country Western music to go "all reruns, all the time!"  Macrobrewer Bud bought out macrobrewer Miller and thus merged two bland suds into ABM,  Once Google finishes buying ABC off'n the mouse factory a’fore merging with Disney/Fox/ILM, there'll be three.

          Other day, in case you heard, the last paper in Dayton shut down, supposedly to be replaced by an eight-page weekly insert out of Cincy… mostly advertising, tossed into your yard by work-release prisoners so as to remain in piles, slowly decomposing in the weather.  Not to mention “Nightline”, after being shuttled off to the post-midnight desert by Jimmy Kimmell (before his indictment), then bein’ yanked in favor of “Hollywood Probe”.

          "With the growing interlocking concentration of media power, where the agenda is set by fewer and fewer corporations," says Moyers, "you have the issue of political worth and net worth intruding into the whole question of who gets heard."

          Do away with competition and you solve everybody's problems with the media.

          Just like in the Garden of Eden, Russia, under the Commies, or the DreamBellTM dreamworks, as made director Rod Lurie re-cut this movie "The Contender" into left-leaning propaganda, according to former blackballed vampire Gary Oldman...

          No need for censorship, without which... as General Westmoreland reflected, eight years after the curtain rang down on Vietnam… "things can get terribly confused in the public mind." A body might ask, well, why doesn't Congress just pass a law making all this hypstering and huckstering and robocalling illegal, but I will have to say that: one, we’ve had one, since 1793, although rarely utilized since the Cold War and 2: there are reasons for not doing so! Information… infotainment, actually… however inedible, is crucial to our balance-of-payments, being that lubrication, as keeps the wheels of society turning... whether to convey the fortunate from public spotlight to interior palaces or, obversely, to grind life's losers beneath its gears.

          Face it... without Taylor and Queen Bee, their imitation principlers and their merch, America would have gone bankrupt months, if not years ago.

          Have you ever read, or do you expect to read (or watch, or stream) a commentary by Marc Thiessen celebrating the triumphs and tragedies of the gig-econslaves… or, for that matter, a screed by Rachel Maddow suggesting that Americans take responsibility for their own lives?  Na’gonna happen!

          Of course that hasn’t stopped POTUS from floating more sedition prosecutions or sterner libel legislation like they have over there in Blighty, as George Washington fought to break free of and John Adams and Saint Alexander Hamilton brought back.  Or Kash Man at the FBI from arm-twisting the movie malls from illegalizing the wearing of costumes at screenings of “The Joker”.

          Even a late, great old-timer like Joe Franklin would agree. "Saying these shows are degrading America, that this is the beginning of Sodom and Gomorrah, that's just wrong.

          "This won't ruin America. They're only TV shows!"

          Have to think that out! But... later!

          Time for "Cop on the Run"!

          And how ‘bout those rumours that Pope Leo… it bein’ nearer to God and to Halloween… making a special guest appearance.  As Himself, presumably.  (Or maybe the Godfather?)

 

Answers to above: 1) Accuracy in Media - conservative (also the American Indian Movement, which is moving more and more over into casino gambling lobbying these days), 2) Center for Defense of Free Enterprise - anti-environmental lobby, rotten with Moonies, 3) Center for Law and Social Policy - liberal lawyers, 4) Federalist Society - conservative, 5) Insurance Information Institute - occupational, 6) Institution on Religion and Public Life - think tank far to the right of the Moral Majority, says Bill n’ Hillary Clinton used to chill by performing abortions in the White House basement, 7) National Association of Manufacturers - occupational, 8) National Council of Churches - occupational, but tend towards liberal policies, 9) National Energy Foundation - lobby for oilies, tend to oppose alternate energy unless Washington's tossing out subsidies for it! 10) National Rifle Association - recreational (but lean rightwards, 11) Progressive Media Project - liberal Woodstein-Burnward wannabes, 12) Urban Institute - self-designated "moderate" think tank that supports a liberal view oftener than not, 13) United Press International - formerly objective, moderate wire service now owned and operated by and for the interests of the irrepressible (even beyond the grave) Reverend Moon!)

And compare these to the initials of the Kochtapus in the Don Jones Index!

   

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