Oopsie . . .
Spontaneous rant vaults media second stringer to national prominence, inspires Tea Parties, and Corporate America readies it’s pushback on Obama Economic Proposals . . . not surprisingly all connected
Go ahead, slap yourself on the forehead in a shoulda seen this one coming kind of way, I did.
Playboy (who knew ?) apparently has the goods on what looks to be yet more Astroturfing mischief from Koch Industries.
What we discovered is that Santelli’s “rant” was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger for the anti-Obama campaign. In PR terms, his February 19th call for a “Chicago Tea Party” was the launch event of a carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign, one in which Santelli served as a frontman, using the CNBC airwaves for publicity, for the some of the craziest and sleaziest rightwing oligarch clans this country has ever produced.
What hasn’t been reported until now is evidence linking Santelli’s “tea party” rant with some very familiar names in the Republican rightwing machine, from PR operatives who specialize in imitation-grassroots PR campaigns (called “astroturfing”) to bigwig politicians and notorious billionaire funders
That’s right boyz and girls, the same folks who brought you Obama Pals Around With Terrorists purchased the chicagoteaparty domain last august.
Ignorant of cbl Rule Number 1: Don’t F*** With Da Hippies, they are attempting to cover their tracks
Go, read the Playboy link, (some of you can finally say "I read it for the articles" with a straight face) and give our friends at CNBC a call – CNBC Viewer Services: 1-877-251-5685
Update: John Cole says I’m full of it we retort, your decide . . .



25 Comments




firedogs, in my wildest dreams I would have never expected to link to Playboy here at the Lake :D
this is good stuff! it was especially good when i did it yesterday!
Thanks for highlighting this!
I don’t see a ‘recommend link’ on my page, or I’d have recommended it!
I just saw this via C&L and felt that it was so important that I came right on over to FDL and just mentioned it on CHS’s “Morning Cuppa” thread, not realizing there was an Oxdown post. (Note to self: next time, check Oxdown, then comment on other threads.)
Given the gravity of the financial meltdown, plus the short timeline in which the Statutes of Limitations are due to run out on some very serious Bu$hCo crimes (see Emptywheel, bmaz, and Mary for more) it makes even more sense that the oilgarchsAndOligarchs want to distract at present.
Mixing in the websites with the MSM — oh, and weren’t those asshats clever little beasties to be using CNBC, hahaahaahahahah — this is very ominous, IMHO.
But, as with all things venomous, disease-ridden, and vile, best to ridicule it into a mere empty shell of its evil, vaunted ambitions.
Thanks VERY much for your post, and I hope it gets many, many reads!
I tip my hat to you.
Lots of comment has flown around the blogosphere about this in the last day or so, skippy, including thee and me. And C&L and….
Let’s not squabble about who wrote first. Instead, let’s focus on the important question:
“Will Brian Williams lead his Nightly News (as he did with the Santelli rant originally) with a news story about how he actively participated in the astroturfing or was rolled by it?”
He likes talking about how he rolls, so let’s press him to explain this one.
Kudlow is 100% responsible for recruiting Santelli to do this. It has been BLATANTLY OBVIOUS for the past week that Kudlow and Santelli have been literally finishing one another’s sentences, giving virtual reach-arounds on camera all day long. It’s been ridiculous, and now the reason is OBVIOUS. They have the same boss – and it’s not just CNBC.
BEHOLD:
Media ownership study ordered destroyed
Sept 14, 2006
‘Every last piece’ destroyed
Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, said senior managers at the agency ordered that “every last piece” of the report be destroyed. “The whole project was just stopped – end of discussion,” he said. Candeub was a lawyer in the FCC’s Media Bureau at the time the report was written and communicated frequently with its authors, he said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14836500/
Politicization of the airwaves used to be illegal in a place called America.
“You can’t tell any more the difference between what’s propaganda and what’s news.”
FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein
15 August, 2006
– William Casey, CIA Director (from first staff meeting, 1981)
The Koch’s are the same rat-bastards who brought you the end of manufacturing in America…
WHY THE PRO-NAFTA HYSTERIA?
November 1993
I’m puzzled. I’d like to know why so many free-marketeers, so many free-market think-tanks and pundits, are not simply pro-Nafta, but are fervently, frantically, almost hysterically pro-Nafta. Look, I can understand, though not agree with, mild approval. An old libertarian friend of mine, for example, told me that he was mildly pro-Nafta but not really interested in the entire topic. That seems sensible. So why the furor, the passion, the enormous resources poured into praising Nafta and reviling its critics? Why is there a highly active free-market Nafta Network, when no one has ever bothered forming a Repeal-the-Income Tax Network, or an Abolish-the-Fed Network? And if we want to confine passion to more directly political issues, why was there no Lower-Taxes Network, or Stop-the-Clinton-Budget Network? Why is the entire pack: the Cato crowd, the rest of the Kochtopus or Koch Machine, the majority of Heritage, the Tony Snows and the Steve Chapmans, why are they going all out, playing hardball, in their frenzy to get this thing passed? Why are these gentry acting as if their lives depended on the passage of Nafta? Could it be because if not their lives, at least their fortunes (though scarcely their sacred honor), do in fact depend on it?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch21.html
digg is open.
Thanks cbl2.
mods–
for some reason there is no ‘recommend’ button available on my screen. went to another diary to check, there is one there…..something need fixed?
thanks cbl2. i just love it when snake-in-the-grass wingnuts use terms like ‘grassroots’, a phrase founded in the labor movement in the 80’s in kentucky.
i also love it when they are caught being fire ants, too, since they all wait and strike at once- knowing one of their bites isn’t a thang to worry about. chicken livers. seems like every time they get on the news it’s because they organized some false tactic, or said something stupid or crass…not because they have said or done anything new or helpful or designed to help move us out of this mess that they helped create. —-wads. teabaggers!! yep that’s it!!! ROFL>
good job cbl2
(and since when is one story/one perspective enough about something>?)
Not the mods but from what I’ve seen, if a diary gets “promoted” to the top spot of Oxdown, the Recommend button goes away.
Anyone who wants can join me in forwarding this content to CNBC via squawk at CNBC dot com. That’s CNBC’s morning show, but there are plenty of others. I hope we can get some traction and perhaps get some NBC suit to issues a statement.
CNBC is CLEARLY IN ON IT. They were featuring the Rick Santelli rant on their site almost as soon as it happened, and running promo ads to drive people to it for several days thereafter. CNBC is a total shill network, owned and controlled by the banksters and fascist robber barons. There is nothing that comes over their air that is not contrived and scripted days earlier.
I have them totally figured out – particularly Kudnlow, Santelli’s minder:
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/3778
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/3820
There is no “market”
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/3565
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/3667
Last week, CNBS turned 100% anti-Obama 24/7. It was relentless. Their collective memory loss (who left Obama with this problem) is absurd on its face and simply not credible. They are running a game on us.
It would not have mattered what politician assumed the Presidency, the shills and banksters had already completely destroyed the system. Their only goal now is to compel you to blame the guy who wasn’t there when they broke it. The further out on the time horizon we move, the more likely they will be to convince the public that everything was just fine before Obama showed up.
THEY ARE LYING TO YOU. IT’S BRAINWASHING.
How are CBNC’s actions any different than this? It’s ALL illegal propaganda…
Barry McCaffrey – Paid CIA (GHW BUSH) Propaganda Asset:
The Purchase Of The Mainstream Media By The US Government
http://www.independent.org/new…..asp?id=324
The office of drug czar Barry McCaffrey secretly paid the television networks to propagandize its anti-drug message. According to a special report from Salon magazine, the scripts of popular television shows like “ER,” “Chicago Hope,” “Beverly Hills 90210” and many others were doctored to fit the requirements of McCaffrey’s White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).
A free and democratic society cannot long tolerate extensive government manipulation of the media. What is next? Will the Department of Defense pay the networks to drum up support for more bombers? Will the CIA pay filmmakers to alter the scripts of their movies? The payments from the office of the drug czar to the networks make one wonder whether this is not already occurring.
Government tampering with the media is not new. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover planted editorials in major newspapers, had reporters and writers tailed, and collected incriminating sexual information against publishers in order to blackmail them. McCaffrey has been far more circumspect. Why blackmail a publisher when you can buy a television show?
But doesn’t everyone agree that drug use is a national problem to be fought with every means necessary? No, everyone does not agree. We are currently spending billions of dollars and putting hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens in prison in support of the war on drugs. McCaffrey’s purchase of altered television programs was a political act designed to sway public opinion.
It’s disturbing when the government spends more on advertising than any corporation in America. It’s worse when taxpayer dollars are spent to influence public opinion about political issues. It’s intolerable when those dollars are used to manipulate programming in ways undisclosed to the viewer. In an October 1999 speech McCaffrey described the goal of his programs as increasing the “mind share” of anti-drug messages with the help of “experts in behavior change.” Such language is inconsistent with a society in which the people are meant to control the government and not the other way around.
Barry McCaffrey should learn that the ends do not justify the means. Failing that the drug czar should be more truthfully renamed: minister for propaganda and national enlightenment.
Reveal all of the intentional brainwashing and call it by name:
WHO BRAINWASHED THE TROOPS IN IRAQ?
How was it that according to a Zogby Poll, nearly 85% of active duty troops in Iraq actually came to believe that they are were specifically to avenge the attacks of 9/11?
What type of active PsyOps program was approved by Rumsfeld to ensure this result to motivate these troops in this way?
When these atrocities were committed, did the guilty troops actually believe that they were taking revenge for the attacks of 9/11?
Was that their mindset?
If so, how did that come to be?
What role has Rumsfeld played in allowing the myth to be perpetuated throughout the military – that we are in Iraq specifically to avenge the (FALSE FLAG) attacks against the United States on 9/11?
How does our Defense Department set about demonizing an entire race of people to make them easier to kill?
Remember the “Fairness Doctrine?”
The Fairness Doctrine is a former policy of the United States’s Federal Communications Commission. It required broadcast licensees to present controversial issues of public importance, and to present such issues in an honest, equal and balanced manner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F…..ine…
THE MEDIA WHORES HAD IT ELIMINATED.
Hat tip to “Z” for this:
Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) is a powerful industry-funded think tank, promoting deregulation. It was founded by Koch Industries interests and continues to maintain strong links. In 2003, an internal rift between CSE and its affiliated Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation led to a split in which CSEF was renamed as a separate organization, called Americans For Prosperity.
CSE is often described as a “consumer group,” but according to internal documents leaked to the Washington Post, 85 percent of its 1998 funding came from major corporations. “The ‘citizens’ in question [are] companies like Amoco, Bell Atlantic, Citibank, General Electric and General Motors”, Washington Babylon explains (p. 15). “During recent years, the CSE, headed by C. Boyden Gray, who acted as counsel to the president under George W. Bush, has opposed health care reform and a rise in the minimum wage, while championing corporate tax cuts, deregulation and a balanced budget.”
THIS explains why Tom Delay continues to show up on NBC-owned channels:
Fred’s son, Charles G. Koch, founded the Cato Institute and has championed a strategy of ‘market-based management’ (MBM) in the business. Son David H. Koch ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980. Koch money flows through Triad Management Services, an advisory service to conservative donors groups and candidates to support.
http://sourcewatch.org/index.p…..Industries
Triad Management Services
Triad Management Services is a Tom DeLay-affiliated organization that launders money from large corporations into congressional campaigns.
Among its recipients are Congressman Sam Brownback (R-Kan.)
http://sourcewatch.org/index.p…..t_Services
Thomas Dale DeLay, the former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives who represented Texas’s 22nd congressional district from 1985 to 2006, co-founded Coalition for a Conservative Majority (CCM) with former Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell in November 2007 as a “new grass-roots organization that he says will help conservatives better convey their message to voters and take back control of Congress.”
Thanks cbl, Though no surprise.. it’s still just outrageous!
If this is remotely true, Santelli and any other employees of CNBC MSNBC etc. who were in the know or otherwise involved should be fired immediately and they should all air multiple on air apologies.
Koch and Delay:
http://www.democrats.com/node/7789
PBS Report on Triad Management:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/…..html#triad
Here’s Tom Delay – showing up again on Chris Matthews last week:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaaKCY-ZR8g
Now you know why he just won’t go away and continues to get access to the airwaves. The Koch’s control them.
According to internal documents leaked to the Washington Post, 85 percent of CSE’s 1998 revenues of CSE’s $16.2 million came not from its 250,000 members, but from contributions of $250,000 and up from large corporations.
According to Media Transparency, between 1985 and 2002, CSEF received $16,928,712 in 108 separate grants from only twelve foundations:
* Castle Rock Foundation
* Earhart Foundation
* JM Foundation
* Koch Family Foundations (David H. Koch Foundation, Charles G. Koch Foundation, Claude R. Lambe Foundation)
* John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.
* Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
* Philip M. McKenna Foundation, Inc.
* Scaife Foundations (Scaife Family, Sarah Mellon Scaife, Carthage)
In 2002, CSEF gained $920,000 in grants from three of these foundations, accounting for a little under one-quarter of the organisation’s revenue. The Claude R. Lambe Foundation was the most generous contributing $700,000 for general operating costs while the Scaife Foundation donated $175,000 and the John M. Olin Foundation $45,000.
Other CSE funders (not included in above funding total) have included:
* Archer Daniels Midland
* DaimlerChrysler ($25,000)
* Enron
* General Electric
* Koch Industries
* F.M. Kirby Foundation
* Philip Morris (>$1 million)
* U.S. West ($1 million)
* ExxonMobil ($75,000)
* Exxon ($175,000)
* Hertz ($25,000)
* Microsoft ($380,000)
* U.S. Sugar Corp. ($280,000)
****GENERAL ELECTRIC MEANS NBC, CNBC AND MSNBC
Plunger~
Long time…
As usual, you are way ahead of the game and I am grateful for your investigative acumen. Is the Koch family involved with Triad election machine company? Do you ever hit the Wayne Madsen Report? Wayne just brought up the Koch association today, and the convos are slow.
playboy has always been an excellant publication and I have said since college, if they published a version without the pics they would sell more magazines
I love reading it but I don’t want to to be insultice by reading it in public
thanks dakine. seems to me though, that we should be able to keep recommending to keep it in the box longer. cuz then when it gets bumped from the box, it’s bumped off the other list box off of the home page due to the front-pager traffic.
and right now this post is not in the top ten box, and there is no recommend button and i think i should be able to vote to recommend it. it should be bumped back in there if we vote it in.