10 November 2011
Posted in News - Deception & Mind Control

Bill Anderson
LRC Blog

To get a sense of just how intellectually and morally bankrupt mainstream academic economics has become, this article tells all, however unknowingly, since the author believes the quoted economists are correct:

Another professor who teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Michael Salemi, was able to identify statements from six candidates that “would earn failing grades in my Econ 101 class.”

Salemi called Ron Paul’s rationale for returning to the gold standard “one of the most dangerous ideas put forward by a politician in recent years.” (emphasis mine)

All in all, the economists quote the Keynesian line as though it were Absolute Truth. One professor, for example, actually believes that Obama’s “green energy” proposals are sound (although he admits they won’t make for a good “jobs program.”)

As one who has taught college economics for nearly 25 years, I can say that the mainstream approach is so preposterous and so skewed that it is unsalvageable. The college texts so revered in this article teach that competition is based upon homogeneity and any time there are similar but somewhat heterogeneous goods sold, that situation is a “market failure” that needs to be “corrected” by government. Furthermore, we are supposed to believe that there is no need for entrepreneurs, as government regulators are blessed with perfect information and always can arrive at “optimal solutions,” as long as they seek the help of academic economists.

And notice the absolute reverence these people have for the Federal Reserve System. Yeah, it is quite rich to see clueless academic economists accusing Ron Paul of being “dangerous” because he wants sound money.

06 November 2011
Posted in News - Deception & Mind Control

The American Dream

Have we completely and totally failed an entire generation of young men?  Have we failed to equip them with the tools that they need?  Have we raised an entire generation of young men that do not know how to be men?  Today, young adult men are nearly twice as likely to live with their parents as young adult women are, and young adult men are much less likely to go to college than young adult women are.

Now I want to make something perfectly clear before we proceed.  The point of this article is not to slam women or drag them down.  Not at all.  Rather, the goal of this article is to point out that we have a real problem with our young men and that they are lagging way behind.  Vast numbers of them don’t want to go to college, don’t want to pursue careers, don’t want to get married and don’t want to take on any serious responsibilities.  Of course there are always exceptions.  In fact, there are some young men out there that are absolutely outstanding.  However, what this article is trying to say is that the overall trends all point to the fact that our system has raised up a crop of young men that are generally weak, directionless, wimpified and unwilling to take responsibility.  This is not a good thing.

What comes to your mind when you think of men under the age of 30 in America today?  Does an image of an irresponsible, sex crazed, beer swilling slacker come to mind?

Unfortunately, that stereotype is way too true.  We have failed our young men.  We did not teach them how to be men.  Yes, as I noted earlier, there are definitely exceptions to this, but in general we have a real problem on our hands.

Let take a look at some of the hard numbers.

As a recent CNN article noted, young men between the ages of 25 and 34 are almost twice as likely to live with their parents as young women the same age are….

The number of adult children who live with their parents, especially young males, has soared since the economy started heading south. Among males age 25 to 34, 19% live with their parents today, a 5 percentage point increase from 2005, according to Census data released Thursday. Meanwhile, 10% of women in that age group live at home, up from 8% six years ago.

Among the college-aged set, the 18- to 24-year-olds, 59% of males and 50% of females lived with their parents, up from 53% and 46%, respectively.

So what in the world is causing this?

Men that are between 25 and 34 should be in their prime working years.  Instead, almost one out of every five of them is living with mommy and daddy.

This is a major problem.  Rather than working hard, taking responsibility and building their own lives, we have way too many young men that are living in our basements and that spend much of their time watching television or playing video games.

The lack of ambition among many of our young men is absolutely appalling.  Today, young women are far more likely to pursue a college education than young men are.  According to the New York Times, approximately 57 percent of all young people enrolled at U.S. colleges are women.  That means that only about 43 percent are men.

As I have written about previously, unemployment is also rampant among our young people.

Only 55.3% of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 were employed last year.  That was the lowest level that we have seen since World War II.

Today, there are millions of young men that are sitting around with no job, no hope and no direction in life.

But even many of those that do have jobs are not making much money.  The number of the “working poor” in America is rapidly increasing, and this is especially true among young adults.  Since the year 2000, incomes for U.S. households led by someone between the ages of 25 and 34 have fallen by about 12 percent after you adjust for inflation.

In the past, women always complained about the “gender gap” when it came to wages, but today we are actually seeing that reversed among our young people.  In fact, author Guy Garcia says that women in their twenties now earn more money than men of the same age in the ten largest cities in the United States.

This current generation of men also seems to be extremely hesitant to take on the responsibilities of marriage and family.  Today, an all-time low 44.2% of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 are married.

Instead, most young men seem to want to run around “hooking up” with as many women as possible without any consequences.

But there are consequences.  The irresponsible behavior of our young men is putting an incredible amount of strain on our young women.

For example, in 2010 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.

So what is causing all of this?

Well, certainly there are a lot of factors, but it certainly does not help that men are almost always portrayed as weak, irresponsible, sex-crazed idiots on television and in our movies.

This point was made very well in a recent article in The Washington Times….

If the fall TV season is any guide, the sexual revolution that was supposed to liberate men and women from traditional sex roles seems to have resulted instead in a straight-up role reversal. The male characters are messes — insecure, jobless, barely able to dress themselves without a wife or girlfriend and/or living in mom’s proverbial basement. Their female counterparts, meanwhile, are flaunting the same selfish, boorish ways that once got men called “chauvinist pigs.”

Today, our society generally does not teach young men that they should be strong, noble, ambitious and eager to take responsibility.

Instead, we are constantly sending our young men the message that we expect them to act like idiots, drink lots of beer, chase women and pretty much be as lazy as possible.

I fear that we have failed this entire generation of young men.  Yes, there are many that have turned out great, but in general we have a real mess on our hands.

So what can we do about all of this?

21 September 2011
Posted in News - Deception & Mind Control

Benjamin Cohen
Guardian

Facebook has recently changed the way we organise our relationships online, making it easier to decide who sees what by grouping our “friends” into lists.

For me it couldn’t come sooner because, much to my surprise, recent events have made me realise that my life on Facebook and other social networks was just too public.

Sometimes my friends have complained that I “take over” their Facebook or Google+ homepage because of the volume of content I share, both professionally and personally. But no more.

Events in my personal life made me sit back and question, really for the first time, why we post what we do and what it’s telling us about the way we think and live our lives. For a while, I’ve worried that social networks can be a distraction from real life, can reduce our productivity and potentially warp the way that we understand friendship.

Read full article here

02 September 2011
Posted in News - Deception & Mind Control

A review of Daniel Pipes' "Conspiracy: how the paranoid style flourishes and where it comes from"

By Jerry Russell and Richard Stanley

Revision 1.1, 3/25/2003

Many historical conspiracies (starting with the murder of Julius Caesar) are widely accepted facts.  When it comes to current or ongoing conspiracies, however, we are much more likely to find that the predominant view is set by the conspiracy naysayers.   These are social commentators of various ilk, ranging from network news anchors to public relations spin doctors to bar stool jockeys.  Daniel Pipes' 1997 book "Conspiracy: how the paranoid style flourishes and where it comes from" is a prime example of the naysayer's art, and yet (as we shall see) Pipes is also very good at promoting "conspiracy theories" when it suits his purposes.

The Swiss army knife in the naysayer’s toolbox is the skillful exploitation of the persona of the public.   In a Jungian view:  every individual maintains a vital defense mechanism called the persona,  which is their constructed  image or facade which is presented to the world.  The persona is not so much a self-consciously aware construct, but rather it is built up and internalized throughout the process of socialization during childhood.

In American culture, the persona includes a strong conviction that we are surrounded by people with benign intentions -- and that by joining enthusiastically in the American consumer culture, we are ourselves participating in an expression of the best of human aspirations.  We are deeply convinced, as part of our social make-up, that our culture represents the highest flowering of justice and democracy.  Of course, this psychological construct is continuously fortified by educational institutions, employers and the corporate media.

The persona also includes an  inbred social desire to belong to the currently favored social clique. By adhering to the conventional wisdom, anyone can leverage or protect their position in society, whether this be in elementary school playgrounds, in a corporation, or at the heights of governance.  By contrast, anyone who draws attention to wrongful acts within society, is acting as a cassandra or alarmist -- and risks a punishment proportional to the severity of the disconnect between the persona and the reality.

The ideas that emerge from the conspiracy literature --  that government is not always good but rather might be murderous and evil, that our society is to some extent based in trickery and deceit, causing pain and suffering around the world -- represent deep attacks on our own conception of ourselves.  In Jungian terms, these are part of the shadow world, the deeply repressed, unconscious archetypes of evil.   The conspiracy literature is not approached with normal cognitive facilities of critical evaluation, but rather it is attacked (if it is confronted at all) almost as a form of pornography, a tool of the Devil himself.

Daniel Pipes: Common Sense turned on its head. Daniel Pipes' book is best interpreted as an exquisitely crafted appeal to the deep-seated psychological prejudices in the persona of his readers.  Remarkably, Pipes frames the topic of "conspiracy theory" so that, by definition, his opponents must be, essentially,  wacko.  In an Orwellian semantic reversal, Pipes writes (p.21):

"A conspiracy theory is the fear of a nonexistent conspiracy. Conspiracy refers to an act, conspiracy theory to a perception. While the first is an old term, dating to Middle English, the latter goes back only some decades."

In a footnote, Pipes adds that a German term Verschworungsmythos, meaning "myth of conspiracy" is much more explanatory.  However,  he cannot bring himself to use this straightforward terminology in English, although it works just as well as in German.  Pipes ignores the fact that  the word "theory" is in itself quite neutral, as in "the theory of gravity" or "the theory of relativity", a scientific description of a thought process that may be quite accurate and factually based.  In fact, as hinted at by Pipes, it's highly likely that the pejorative use of the term "conspiracy theory" dates back to the controversies over the murder of John Kennedy and other liberal political figures of the '60s, when the term was hi-jacked and abused by media apologists for the mythical "lone nut" theories promoted by the FBI and other Federal agencies.

At any rate, the pejorative use of the term "conspiracy theory" is now widely accepted.  Our recommendation is that activists avoid the term, or else use it only in Pipes' sense --  such as the following expression --  "The myth of Islamic responsibility for 9-11 is a fraudulent conspiracy theory promoted by corporate media shills and the US government."

Pipes admits that conspiracies do occur, and have at times played an important role in history. He also states that there is a vast literature concerning conspiracies and their historical importance, and states that the quality of this literature varies widely, from tabloids and hysterical mimeographed handouts to highly scholarly and encyclopedic efforts by the most eminent scholars. Nevertheless, when it comes to determining the factual validity and historical effect of a conspiracy, Pipes recommends that the primary tools should be "Common Sense" and "A Knowledge of History" (pp. 38-39). In practical terms, this means accepting as axiomatic that "Catholics, Jews and Democrats do not use such methods" (that is, White Folks Like Us can never commit conspiracy, especially not if homicide is involved) and that "killings that make sense in Moscow do not in Washington".

In other words, rather than relying on factual analysis, Pipes asks that we enshrine our own parochial prejudices as the supreme and ultimate basis for judgment. Of course, Pipes' prejudices lead to a wholesale rejection of the real importance of many historical conspiracies which he summarily dismisses as fictional.

Other conspiracies (such as the Illuminati) are admitted to be factually based, yet Pipes avoids any analysis of their real significance.  He can only approach this literature with his hand firmly placed holding his nose: "I deal not with the cultural elite but its rearguard, not with the finest mental creations but its dregs.... conspiracist writings constitute a quite literal form of pornography (although political rather than sexual)." (p. 49)

To his credit, Pipes does suggests some valid criteria for assessment of the conspiracy literature; for example, he shows that some analysts rely too heavily on forged documents, or that they dismiss contradictory evidence, or have a cavalier attitude towards the facts. Unfortunately, these valid criteria are applied only sporadically in Pipes' survey of the literature.  Furthermore, as Pipes points out -- a sense of perspective is often lacking in studies of conspiracy, which fail to acknowledge their place in a broad tradition. Pipes' survey is something of an antidote to this problem, although seriously marred by his overt ideological bias.

Because of Pipes' presumptions, some of the most interesting conspiracies in recent history get very short shrift.  His analysis of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is remarkably inadequate.  Pipes notes that public opinion polls show that Americans overwhelmingly believe that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy (in fact, a recent CBS poll shows that only 10% believe the Warren Commission conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and only 13% are convinced that the government is innocent of perpetrating a cover-up.)  Pipes rejects the conspiracy model on the grounds of Occam's razor: the assassination and cover-up would have required too many participants in his view.  He also notes that conspiracists argue that the CIA was active in suppressing evidence, a charge which he argues is simply bad logic: "piling on conspiracy theories" and "dismissing contradictory evidence"(p.41).  Pipes agreeably quotes the analysis of Gerald Posner: that the enduring interest of the public in the JFK assassination is ultimately driven by a simple, vulgar profit motive, as conspiracy theorists make money by selling videtapes, memorabilia and books.   "The JFK murder has, regrettably, become an entertainment business," said Posner, who also contributed a ringing endorsement for the back cover of Pipes' book.

Unfortunately for Pipes, the Warren Commission account of the Kennedy assassination also has serious problems with Occam's Razor.  As noted by Michael T. Griffith, the Lone Nut Theory  relies on the "magic bullet":

the same 6.5 mm metal-jacketed Carcano bullet which supposedly hit Kennedy in the back of the neck exited his throat, struck Governor John Connally in the back, tore through his chest, transited his wrist, and ended up in his thigh, causing all of Connally's extensive wounds, to include the smashing of a rib bone and the shattering of the radius bone in the governor's right wrist, and yet emerged in nearly pristine condition to be found at Parkland Hospital shortly after the President was pronounced dead.

Obviously Occam cries out for a simpler explanation, that more than one bullet caused the damage.

Pipes also notes that literally thousands of books have been written on the JFK assassination; of those, only a very few diehards still remain, who advocate the Lone Nut Theory.   Gerald Posner is perhaps the most notable recent advocate of the Lone Nut.  Because Posner's 1993 book "Case Closed"  attracted a great deal of favorable media attention, the JFK "conspiracy buffs" have carefully examined his work.   At the "assassination web" site, editor David Starks has gathered a fusillade of critical reviews.  As Starks notes, these reviews exhaustively demonstrate that Posner's work  "overflows with mistakes, distortions, selective presentation of evidence and surprising misrepresentations."   Stark also notes that various reviewers have discovered that "Several people Mr. Posner claimed to have interviewed say they never spoke to him."

Stark furthermore notes that:

At the end of Case Closed, Posner acknowledges help from Peter Earnest (who is listed as "the chief of the CIA's Office of Public and Agency Information"). Mr. Earnest was described by Posner as being "very generous in his assistance."

Which raises the interesting possibility that the flaws in Posner's book may be related to this "generous assistance" whose nature is not otherwise disclosed.

Another well-known advocate of the Lone Nut Theory is John MacAdams, whose abusive behavior and covert activities are documented at the MacAdams FAQ page, while his analytical absurdities are exposed by Michael T. Griffith at his excellent web site.

So Pipes' examination of recent American conspiracies is not only  brief, but also bogus.  However, the book does include an interesting analysis of the role of paranoid conspiracy myths under Hitler and Stalin. Pipes showed that Hitler began with a crude model of Jewish conspiracy as promulgated by the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and undertook to convince the German people that every Jew in the land was equally responsible for the calumnies described there; while at the same time, Hitler himself was at the center of a small secret society of psychopathic individuals who were busily implementing an exact replica of the evil plan described in the Protocols. Yet even regarding this remarkable set of circumstances, Pipes' analysis is strangely myopic. He ascribes the paradox to a simple ironic effect, that individuals who believe in the power of conspiracies, are likely to want to apply that power to their own projects.  There is no discussion of the probability that the occult secret societies essentially created Hitler (rather than the other way around), nor any acknowledgement of the crucial role of American high finance.   Any serious analysis of the curious, well-documented collaboration of the Zionists and Nazis in pursuit of a hidden agenda, would also cause difficulties for Pipes' oversimplified view of the Hitler regime.

The naysayer himself is a conspiracist: Since Pipes is so well aware of the problems relating to fraudulent conspiracy theories, it is indeed strange to find that he is himself one of the foremost proponents of a conspiracy theory that militant  Islamics intend to destroy the United States.  As Justin Raimondo notes in his column of Nov. 14, 2001, "it is in Pipes that the anti-Islamist ideology takes on its purest, most extreme form." Raimondo points to an interview with Pipes by Salon Magazine in which Pipes accuses that the Islamic public relations group CAIR (Committee for American Islamic Relations) is part of a subversive conspiracy to replace US law with Islamic Sharia law, and bring Islamic fundamentalist fascism to power in the US. He admits that CAIR has never publicly advocated any such thing, but claims nevertheless that he can "sense" their secret motivations.  Raimondo rightly chides Pipes for his attempts at clairvoyance.

But Pipes' feud with CAIR has apparently been going on for years.  For the most part, Pipes' arguments are a pastiche of unproven accusations and second-hand gossip.  The centerpiece of Pipes' case against CAIR is this article from the San Ramon Valley Herald July 4, 1998, where Omar M. Ahmad (CAIR's board chairman) is quoted as saying:

"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant, " he said. "The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth," he said.

While this statement proves that Ahmad is no ecumenical religious liberal, there is still a difference between evangelical advocacy of a religion, and utter authoritarian fascism.  For whatever it's worth, CAIR disputes whether Ahmad's remarks were correctly reported (although their denial is perhaps somewhat Clintonesque.)  At CAIR's web page, the following statement appears to explicitly reject a militarily aggressive or fascist interpretation of Islam:

"Jihad" does not mean "holy war." Literally, jihad means to strive, struggle and exert effort. It is a central and broad Islamic concept that includes struggle against evil inclinations within oneself, struggle to improve the quality of life in society, struggle in the battlefield for self-defense (e.g., - having a standing army for national defense), or fighting against tyranny or oppression.

Pipes fails to address this (or any other) exculpatory evidence, but persists in his belief that CAIR is a vital component of an internationalist conspiracy.  An immensely worse failing is that Pipes extends his unsupported conspiracy theory to embrace Islamic mosques in America, most or all of America's major universities, and ultimately to all American Islamics.  In a post-9/11 editorial in the City Journal, with the Orwellian title "Fighting Militant Islam -- Without Bias",  Pipes argues (without any basis whatsoever, certainly not from any public opinion polling) that "From 10 to 15 percent of the millions of Muslims in America are Islamist radicals."  Furthermore, Pipes goes on to argue that "Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers."  Imagine if the same sort of syllogism were applied to some other ethnic group: for example, "David Duke and his followers are white supremacist fascists; individual Whites may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but all must be considered potential killers???"

Of course, conspiracy theories are at the heart of George Bush's case for war in Iraq.  The conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Center (itself a matter of serious controversy) is melded seamlessly with the Anthrax letters (a proven hoax, clearly meant as a frame-up of Arab-Americans).  Bush repeatedly names Saddam Hussein himself as a co-conspirator in terrorism, until many Americans start to believe Saddam was responsible for 9-11 as well (in spite of the complete absence of evidence).   Pipes functions in the role of providing pseudo-academic support and depth for this government policy.

In Conspiracy (pp. 179-180), Pipes wrote:

Conspiracy theories very often provide a reason, truly believed or conveniently manufactured, for an aggressor to take up arms.... Conspiracism also creates a bellicose climate that primes populations for war and can create an illusion of strength conducive to war.... Conspiracy theories have a key role in developing murderous instincts, whether in every step of preparing and carrying out mass murder (as in the Nazi slaughter of Jews, Slavs and others) or only indirectly present (as in the Japanese murderousness during World War II).  Conspiracism deprives the accused of their humanity and makes them vulnerable to elimination as though an unwanted pest.  The killing fields begin by turning citizens into saboteurs, counterrevolutionaries, and spies, and then go on to make them into vermin, dogs, bacteria, or just "garbage".  No other set of ideas so thoroughly turns neighbors into enemies worthy of extermination.  Without such a view of victims, it is difficult to incite cadres to carry out atrocity after atrocity.

It is important in this context to make a distinction between conspiracies involving small numbers of elite, wealthy individuals, and conspiracy theories which indict whole races and creeds.  It is only the latter type of conspiracy theory which has the poisonous effects Pipes describes so well.

Broad masses of people cannot "conspire" together.  However, if they are openly assaulted by  fear-mongering and hate,  in the media or in the churches, they can be reluctantly cajoled into supporting the murderous policies of government.  "Jews" do not conspire, but Zionist leaders might.  "Americans" as a whole are not naturally war-mongers, but the Bush Administration is, and the media is doing its best to encourage a war frenzy.

Pipes is completely blind to the poisonous power of his conspiracy-mongering and his promulgation of suspicion and hate against all Islamic people.  The very best we can say about Pipes is that he seems to be a dupe, a spoke in a hub-and-wheel conspiracy promulgated by the US government in its attempts to prepare Americans for a genocidal war against Islam.  And we also note that Pipes is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, one of the wealthy and powerful organizations which, Pipes himself assures us, could never act in a conspiratorial manner.

Could it be that Pipes'  persona is so strongly constructed, and his shadow is so solidly repressed, that he unaware of this deep self-contradiction?  Or is some deeper psychopathy in operation here, as Pipes tunes his fraudulent message to the psychological prejudices of his readers?  This is the enigma which we ultimately confront in our attempt to understand Daniel Pipes and his virulent and paradoxical combination of conspiracism and conspiracy denial.

REVISED 3/25/2003: added information about Pipes' membership in the CFR.

01 September 2011
Posted in News - Deception & Mind Control

Washington-friendly network is earning its federal bailout money

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com

MSNBC has yet again implied that political criticism of Obama is racist after talking head Richard Wolffe mused that Republican opposition to Obama making a speech on a date that clashed with a presidential debate was down to “the color of his skin”.

During an appearance on MSNBC’s The Last Word, a vehemently statist broadcast hosted by Lawrence O’Donnell, who previously attempted to portray Ron Paul as a Ku Klux Klan-supporting bigot, Wolffe played the race card in explaining why people have lost respect for Obama.

“The interesting question is: What is it about this president that has stripped away the veneer of respect that normally accompanies the Office of the President? Why do Republicans think this president is unpresidential and should dare to request this kind of thing? It strikes me that it could be the economic times, it could be that he won so big in 2008 or it could be, let’s face it, the color of his skin. This is an extraordinary reaction to a normal sequence of events,” he stated.

Wolffe is an MSNBC regular, having appeared numerous times on Chris Matthews’ Hardball and previously filling in as a guest host for Keith Olbermann.

MSNBC has a history of race-baiting and attempting to characterize legitimate political criticism of Barack Obama as racist.

Back during the Obama Joker poster era, when depictions of the President as the fictional character out of Batman were deemed racist by the establishment media despite identical images being produced of Bush as the Joker for years before, MSNBC host Carlos Watson insinuated that calling Obama a “socialist” was secret code for a racist slur.

Responding to those questioning Obama’s big government agenda by labeling him a socialist, Watson wondered whether the term was “becoming a code word, whether or not socialist is becoming the new n-word for some angry upset birthers and others.”

Of course, playing the race card is a dirty and underhanded means of silencing dissent and it always has been. Disagreeing with when Obama times his speeches or his big government agenda has nothing to do with skin color.

The federal government has done everything in its power to portray ideological adversaries of the Obama administration as dangerous extremists, most recently by characterizing white middle class people as the most likely terrorists, so it’s unsurprising that MSNBC is following suit.

The network is part-owned (49% to Comcast’s 51%) by one of Obama’s biggest campaign contributors, General Electric, which itself received $16 billion in federal bailout money, a story MSNBC’s hosts were keen to avoid.

MSNBC hosts who do dare to challenge the status quo are quickly dispatched. Young Turks presenter Cenk Uygur was forced to leave the network despite excellent ratings after he was told by company bosses to “tone it down” because “we are the establishment.”

I’m no fan of blowhard neo-con Rush Limbaugh, but he nailed it in his response today to Wolffe’s comments.

“If they ever do a colonoscopy on Obama, they’re going to find Richard Wolffe’s head there,” said Limbaugh.

26 August 2011
Posted in News - Deception & Mind Control

Writer states “Paul isn’t really running for President, at least not entirely.”

Tony Cartalucci
Infowars.com

TIME magazine has published a five page spread on Ron Paul’s presidential campaign that hits newsstands today. While some are declaring this a lifting of the veil on media coverage of the Congressman, the reality is that the piece will go out of its way to convince readers that Paul is a fad and has no chance of winning.

Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple today shared a post entitled “News media reverses Ron Paul blackout”, which links directly to a Politico article that contends “Ron Paul scores success in media assault”.

“Paul’s complaints contributed to Time’s decision to do its first major piece on him this campaign season,” the Politico article states.

“He performed strongly at Ames,” Time writer Alex Altman told Politico. “I thought, and my editors think, that he had a valid complaint that he was being overlooked.”

On the surface this sounds great from a Ron Paul follower’s point of view, however, it quickly becomes clear from reading Altman’s blog that the Time piece represents a continuation of the desperate establishment attempt to convince voters that Ron Paul does not have a snowflake’s chance in hell.

In his explanation of the upcoming Time piece, Altman opines, “Paul is probably not a credible contender for the nomination,” attempting to convince readers that his ideology and policies do not resonate with voters.

“His foreign policy of nonintervention is a nonstarter among neoconservatives. His view that social issues like abortion and gay marriage should be left up to the states causes social conservatives to blanch,” writes Altman.

“He’s a fiscal conservative, but his crusade for commodity-backed money and warnings about the looming dangers of hyperinflation aren’t exactly simpatico with deficit hawks’ concerns.” the piece continues. “At 76, his age could be a factor, and he hasn’t shaken the fringe rep he was tagged with in 2008. “Ron Paul is not going to be President of the United States,” conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer said recently.”

So Paul’s ideas do not resonate? One commenter puts Altman’s claims into perspective:

Ron Paul can’t win because he appeals to traditional conservatives who believe in small government, to leftists who believe in personal liberty, to ‘blue’ democrats who believe Obama has betrayed the party, to independents who voted for Obama but are disgusted with the Hopey-Changy that never happened, by gays who don’t want government dictating marriage rules, by straights who don’t want to be forced to live by a ‘gay agenda’. Gee…left, right, young, old, conservative, liberal, gay, straight…with all that support, he doesn’t have a chance!

Altman then takes a leap into Orwellian territory by suggesting that “Paul isn’t really running for President, at least not entirely.”

Last time I checked, Paul was placed third in Gallup’s national presidential preference poll, and is running at an almost dead heat with Obama in the popularity stakes.

It has been an average week as far as Ron Paul appearances on the news networks are concerned. He’s been on CNN a couple of times, Fox News a couple of times and appeared on CNBC also. There have also been more print media stories this week, primarily, and rather paradoxically, reporting the fact that the media is not covering Ron Paul.

So the fact is that Ron Paul is no longer being completely ignored by the media. However, as Time has made it all too obvious, he is still being marginalized and ridiculed.

When the time is right for them, the media will simply ignore Paul again – this is the stark reality that the Congressman’s campaign and his followers have to deal with and overcome.