Twitter shuts down 33 fake accounts created by state Republicans in an attempt to lambast Dems

Just as sleezy and lowdown as you'd expect. Follow the link to read of the R's whining that they got caught, and how it's all "satire" not dishonesty.

Barack Obama's victory last year left many Republicans bemoaning their party's ineptitude when it came to political exploitation of the Web. Democrats, they admitted, were far ahead in the art of using the Internet to seduce voters.

So Connecticut Republicans decided it was time to boldly forge into the 21st century, only to stumble when one of their decidedly deceptive experiments ran into trouble last week.

Twitter, Inc., shut down 33 fake Twitter accounts created by Republicans using the names of Democratic state representatives. The Republican scheme was to send out posts under the Democrats' names mocking the liberal tax-and-spend bastards.

GE's silencing of Olbermann and MSNBC's sleazy use of Richard Wolffe

By GottaLaff

UPDATE: BuzzFlash has more. Please check it out.

Yesterday I posted about GE and Fox exploiting the Olbermann/O'Reilly feud. Glenn Greenwald goes there, too, but then delves much deeper. This is a must-read:

On a very related note: this week, former Newsweek reporter Richard Wolffe was a guest-host on MSNBC's Countdown while Keith Olbermann is on vacation. When Olbermann is there, Wolffe is a very frequent guest on Countdown, where he is called an "MSNBC political analyst" and comments on political news. All of this, despite the fact that Wolffe left Newsweek last March in order to join "Public Strategies, Inc.," the corporate communications firm run by former Bush White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, its President and CEO.

I posted about that when he made the move, here.

According to the Press Release they issued to announce Wolffe's joining the company:

Wolffe, most recently Newsweek's senior White House correspondent, officially assumes his new position as a senior strategist on April 13, 2009. He will be based in the firm's Washington office, where he will advise several of its top clients. . . .

Public Strategies, Inc. is a business advisory firm that serves a diverse clientele including some of the world's largest and best-known corporations, nonprofit organizations, associations and professional firms. Public Strategies helps forward-thinking organizations assess public opinion and risk, and develops strategies for managing corporate reputation and uncertainty. Much of its practice involves managing high-stakes campaigns for corporate clients, anticipating and responding to crises.

Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program -- or serving as an almost daily "political analyst" -- is exactly tantamount to MSNBC's just turning over an hour every night to a corporate lobbyist. Wolffe's role in life is to advance the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and Countdown cover. Yet MSNBC is putting him on as a guest-host and "political analyst" on one of its prime-time political shows. What makes that even more appalling is that, as Ana Marie Cox first noted, neither MSNBC nor Wolffe even disclose any of this.

[...] Wolffe himself -- when it was previously revealed that he was exploiting his position as a Newsweek reporter covering the Obama campaign to leverage access to Obama in order to write a glowing book about him -- said this:

And [Wolffe] suggested he’s not that different from other reporters in an era in which the business and the profession of journalism have gotten closer and closer.

"The idea that journalists are somehow not engaged in corporate activities is not really in touch with what's going on. Every conversation with journalists is about business models and advertisers," he said, recalling that, on the day after the 2008 election, Newsweek sent him to Detroit to deliver a speech to advertisers.

"You tell me where the line is between business and journalism," he said.

That's who MSNBC is presenting as a host and "political analyst" on one of its news commentary programs: someone who is paid by large corporations to propagandize the public and who explicitly says that "journalists are engaged in corporate activities." Then again, MSNBC itself is censored by its corporate executives to ensure that the parent company's corporate interests are advanced by its "news reporting," so in many ways, Wolffe's sleaze and corporate whoredom are the perfect face for this network.

These dual stories of GE/Olbermann and Wolffe reveal what NBC and MSNBC really are about as vividly as anything since the "military analyst" scandal.

Remember that scandal? Propaganda from the mouths of paid military analysts fed to us about the Iraq War? Greenwald has more:

UPDATE: On Richard Wolffe's bio page at Public Strategies, Inc., the role he plays on MSNBC and NBC News is actually touted to the firm's corporate clients and potential clients:

In addition, Wolffe is an NBC political analyst. He provides political commentary on several MSNBC programs, Meet The Press, and TODAY.

They're basically telling their clients and prospective clients: if you hire us to control and disseminate your political messaging, you'll have someone working for you -- Richard Wolffe -- who has a regular platform on MSNBC and NBC News, where he's presented as an independent "political analyst." [...] How much more blatantly sleazy could that be?

I gave you a few relevant excerpts, but please go read the whole thing here. Glenn Greenwald did some excellent reporting which, with any luck, should open a few eyes.

Not a pretty picture.

Former IRI President: Gramm-pa McCain personally supported grants for mainstream Khalidi group

By GottaLaff

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Former International Republican Institute (IRI) President Bruce McColm said that Grammps did something that pretty much makes him look like a big ol' hypocrite. Remember what he and IWRC* Palin said about Obama palling around with that scary monster terrorist boogeyman Professor Rashid Khalidi? Well, guess what:

[A]s chairman of the IRI board, [he] directly supported funding for Professor Rashid Khalidi’s Center for Palestine Research and Studies in the early 1990s:

All our [grant] proposals had to be approved at board meetings with John McCain in attendance and in agreement. John did think highly of these grants. … Ironically, it was Khalidi’s academic background and his known coolness to the PLO that attracted our interest. How strange to see the McCain campaign use Khalidi as a “type of terrorist” with whom Obama hangs around.

Over the last week, the McCain campaign has attempted to smear Khalidi as a radical and link him to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).

Gramm-pa's sleazeball tactics have backfired every. Single. Time.

*"In What Respect, Charlie?

San Francisco Chronicle busts Newsbusters, the RNC, Drudge, and IWRC* Palin

By GottaLaff

IWRC* Palin, the RNC, Drudge, and Newsbusters just got called out by the S.F. Chronicle. Oh-h, suh-nap!

It's not true.

But the Drudge Report, the Republican National Committee and apparently even GOP VP candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fell for completely fabricated news from a shady website called Newsbusters today suggesting the San Francisco Chronicle has ''hidden'' audio with Sen. Barack Obama regarding his statements on coal.

''Barack Obama explained his plan to the San Francisco Chronicle this year,'' she told a rally in Ohio Sunday. ''He said that sure, if the industry wants to build coal-fired power plants, then they can go ahead and try, he says, but they can do it only in a way that will bankrupt the coal industry.''

She added, ''And you've got to listen to the tape.''

''Why is the audiotape just now surfacing?'' Palin asked the crowd, according to a report from CBS News. Someone in the crowd shouted, ''Liberal media!'

So they... lied? What?! Never! IWRC? But... but... she's one of us, doggone it! Gosh! Do you think, given this whopper, that maybe she... could she have... lied before? Like when she called Obama a socialist? Or said he'd raise taxes? Or... ?

Let's be very clear: the Chronicle did not, and has never, hidden any interview, audio or video, of Obama from its readers.

The truth: the paper's January editorial board session with Obama included comments about coal. The entire interview has been in the public domain, available on line to the public -- and to the McCain campaign -- since early January.

''How can anyone suggest that we hid an interview that we did, immediately put up on the web -- and advertised to our readers,'' said editorial page editor John Diaz Sunday, regarding his hosting of Obama at the session. ''We promoted it like like hell...and I'm sure the Clinton campaign and the McCain campaign scrubbed it. You can still find the whole 48 minutes and 33 seconds on line.''

Can't get clearer than that.

A final note: the shoddy Newsbusters blog has been caught in the past simply fabricating news regarding the Chronicle's coverage. Our paper has demanded corrections for their fiction, but to no avail.

We contacted Bill Riggs, regional press secretary of the Republican National Committee tonight on his emailing of this erroneous report suggesting a ''hidden'' Chronicle audiotape to political reporters. His response: he didn't confirm it, or write the headline. He just sent it out.

He got taken. And so did the rest.

Blatant, sleazy lies. Busted.

*"In What Respect, Charlie?"