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Generation Zero is a new documentary about the financial crisis. Apparently, it claims that the baby boomers caused the stock market crash in some way that I can’t figure out yet. I haven’t seen it, but it’s stocked with so many mainstream Republican/neo-con types that it makes me suspicious of just how much new information is in it. Based on the trailer, it looks a lot like Zeitgeist for Republicans.

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Says GOP Senate candidate Curtis Coleman:

“Embryonic stem cell research is taking the concept of taking a life and using it to conduct experiments so we can temporarily extend somebody else’s life. Let me tell you what I just described. I just described what the Nazis did to the Jews in the death camps of WWII.”

And yet again, we find that a government program is being compared to Nazi Germany. As Godwin’s law implies, every person and thing in politics gets compared to Nazis in general and/or Hitler in particular eventually. Here is an interesting examination of this phenomenon. As the author of that piece notes: “Everyone calls everyone a Nazi when they want to win a debate.”

I suppose it’s good that everyone is still so horrified by the atrocities of the Nazis that they keep worrying about it. Still, I can’t help but wonder if, as Godwin warned, this trivializes the magnitude of their crimes.

I will close with a quote that is often attributed to Senator Huey Long:

“When Fascism comes to America, it will be under the name of anti-Fascism.”

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A Bradley Smith  writes in the WSJ, regarding the recent Supreme Court ruling:  

“Already, 28 states representing 60% of the nation’s population allow corporate independent expenditures in state races. These states, including Virginia, Utah and Oregon, are hardly mismanaged. Rather, they are disproportionately among the fastest growing, best governed states in the country.“

(Italics mine.)

By what statistic does he find they are “among the best governed”?

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Today the Supreme Court ruled that businesses and unions can spend their own money on political ads endorsing or opposing a candidate. This raises a question I have long wondered about: how effective are political ads?

Do you really base who you are going to vote for on what ads on TV say? If  there are a lot of people who are that gullible, the Nation is doomed no matter what the Supreme Court rules on this issue. Seriously, I can barely remember any ads from the last Presidential campaign. And I’m fairly confident that my decision was not swayed by them one way or another.

I can’t speak for most people on this issue. And let’s face it; if you’ve brainwashed someone correctly, they’ll swear up and down they were not brainwashed. So I can’t be sure the ads didn’t affect me. 

A friend of mine was telling me that the real danger here is that corporations will disguise the ads to look like authentic news broadcasts–like is sometimes done in infomercials. This will confuse people into believing they’re watching a unbiased newscast that’s saying “Candidate X eats babies.”

I don’t buy it. The only people stupid enough to fall for that are probably already watching their favorite propaganda network (Fox news or MSNBC) anyway. Their votes are locked in. The swing voters aren’t, for the most part, dumb enough to be tricked like that.

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As I have discussed here and here, an attempt seems to be going on to subtly revise history so that people forget George W. Bush was President on 9/11. 

One question I didn’t address in the earlier posts is: Who is doing it? Now, you might think it’s obviously the Republican party doing it, as part of an effort to rehabilitate the image of Republicans as better at National Defense. This is quite likely, although it seems like it would be simpler to demonize Bush, and claim that his Presidency is not typical of Republican ideology. 

But is there any other group that would have an incentive to make this effort?