Fox exec invented news about President, now telling people

By Dan Brooks in lying 2 Comments

Fox News vice president Bill Sammon experiments with combinations of muscle movements that might yield a human smile.

An audio recording has surfaced from a 2009 Mediterranean cruise in which Fox News vice president and Washington coverage chief Bill Sammons admits to starting the rumor that Barack Obama is a socialist back in 2008. “Takes credit for” might be a more apt rendering of his demeanor. But, Sammon adds, he didn’t actually think it was true. Thank god, right? As long as the programming directors of the most popular 24-hour news network in the country don’t believe the descriptions of events they present to the public, someone will still be in a position to make decisions for the American people. It just won’t be, you know, us. Ain’t-I-a-dickens Sammon quote after the jump.

Continue reading

Tactics of Argument: TFD

By Dan Brooks in lying 1 Comment

What the fuck is that thing?

If you’re reading this, Combat! blog has mystically unbroken itself after prosecuting some sort of sympathy strike with AT&T’s cellphone architecture and Japanese reactor coolers for the better part of the day. Form follows function in this case, since today’s post is about both technology and relentless uncooperation. Ben “The Angle” Gabriel sent me this transcript from a trial in Ohio last year, in which Lawrence Patterson—then head of information technology for the recorder’s division of the Cuyahoga County fiscal office—claims not to know what a photocopier is. He obviously does, of course, but he has to be made to admit that before opposing counsel’s argument can move forward. Thus we observe a classic Tactic of Argument colloquially known as TFD.

Continue reading

“Is it possible we have been so deceived by false reports?”

By Dan Brooks in lying 7 Comments

The above political cartoon hails from around 1861, and it advances an argument popular in the South during that time: that slavery was analogous to the factory system in industrialized England, only preferable because it made black people happy and white people, you know, not stunted mill workers. You must not try to read the dialogue in the image above, or your retina will focus all the light in the room into a laser that burns through your brain; read this one instead. “Is it possible that we of the North have been so deceived by false Reports?” marvels a gentleman visitor to the South, where his friend’s slaves have finished work early to have some sort of dance party. “Why did we not visit the South before we caused this trouble between the North and South, and so much hard feelings amongst our friends at home?” Here it should be noted that the dialogue in this cartoon predates the development of naturalism, which sort of explains why a British mill worker in the bottom half of the image would casually remark, “I say, Bill, I am going to run away from the Factory and go to the Coal Mines, where they have to work only 14 hours a day instead of 17 as you do here.” Bill has to listen to this shit all the time, but he knows they’re both going to work at Cloth Factory for the rest of their lives.

Continue reading

Actually, federal taxes are the lowest in 60 years

By Dan Brooks in lying 4 Comments

He also does not look like what you imagined, unless you are a second-century Celt.

Okay, so that headline is a little misleading: federal tax revenues are the lowest they have been, as a share of GDP, since before the Korean War. You know those checks that Don Draper gets and immediately turns into Cadillacs while poor people wait for Medicaid and the Department of Energy to be invented? He pays more taxes than you. Despite all the sorghum subsidies and porno art grants and million-dollar screwdrivers that have turned the US government into a voracious leviathan bent on devouring our children, the bites are smaller than they’ve been in two generations. Such news seems odd just now, since congresspeople have been describing their employer as a “gangster government,” and a whole national movement of incredibly angry old people has risen to protest our unjust tax burden. Oh yeah—we’re also going to shut down the government over our looming financial crisis. It’s the hottest legislative issue since we had to compromise and give everyone  a tax cut last year.

Continue reading

Army officer ordered to use “psy-ops” on visiting congressmen

By Dan Brooks in lying 4 Comments

In this case, you should probably just use the plane.

 

First of all, lest you misjudge how it feels to have psy-ops used on you, the p is silent. According to this article in an evidently self-impressed Rolling Stone, Lieutenant General William Caldwell ordered members of his Information Operations unit to use psychological manipulation techniques on senators and congressmen visiting Camp Eggers* in Kabul. Lieutenant Colonel Michael Holmes claims that Caldwell told his unit to gather background information on John McCain, Al Franken, Armed Services Committee chair Carl Levin and other legislators, in order to use psy-ops tactics to convince them to devote more money and troops to the Afghan War. “How do we get these guys to give us more people?” Caldwell demanded. “What do I have to plant inside their heads?” As one might expect, the Army is prohibited from using propaganda and/or psychological warfare techniques on US citizens—much less members of Congress—and this shit is totally illegal. Also, it doesn’t take a military background check to figure out what will break John McCain’s psyche. Tiger cage: no; woman with nice jawline: yes.

Continue reading