Ever wonder when the GOP figured out they could lie right into Americans faces and get away with it?

[NNN0LHI]

http://thereaganyears.tripod.com/economicpolicy.htm

Lessons in Reaganomics

"Reagan, who more than any president in history railed against government benefits and spending, set the standard for all members of his administration. In addition to his presidential pension of $99,500 a year for life and his annual pension as a former governor of California of $30,800...he received Secret Service protection from forty full-time agents and other security at a cost to the government estimated at $10 million annually, more than double that of other living presidents. A suite of offices atop a new thirty-four-story office building twenty minutes from his home, commanding a view that extended from the Pacific Ocean to the towers of downtown Los Angeles, cost the government $173,000 a year to lease."
--Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years

"At his seventh press conference, President Reagan...responds to a question about the 17% black unemployment rate by pointing out that 'in this time of great unemployment,' Sunday's paper had '24 full pages of...employers looking for employees,' though most of the jobs available--computer operator, for example, or cellular immunologist--require special training, for which his administration has cut funds by over 30%."
--Paul Slansky, The Clothes have no Emperor

"The epitaph of the Reagan presidency will be: 'When Ronald Reagan became President, the United States was the largest creditor nation. When he left the presidency, we were the world's largest debtor nation.'"
--Lester Thurow, MIT professor of economics

"Reagan's theory was really 'trickle down' economics borrowed from the Republican 1920s (Harding-Coolidge-Hoover) and renamed 'supply side.' Cut tax rates for the wealthy; everyone else will benefit. As Reagan's budget director David Stockman confided to me at the time, the supply-side rhetoric 'was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate.' Many middle-class and poor citizens figured it out, even if reporters did not."
--William Greider, magazine article, "The Gipper's Economy"

Two years into Reagan's presidency, the United States experienced its worst recession since the Great Depression, with unemployment peaking at 10.8 percent. Rather than take responsibility, Reagan attempted to blame the 1982 recession on his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. (for details click here)

[kentuck]

1. When they saw that the media would not call them on it....

For example, if a mother took her daughter to a pro-Obama rally downtown and a drunk Republican ran up on the street with his car and killed the little girl holding the Obama sign, then the media would report that as a political story and needing balance and non-bias in their reporting. Did the little girl say something to cause the driver to run upon the street? Was he trying to get out of the way of the "radicals" that were "occupying" the street? Obviously, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered...

[geckosfeet]

4. Yep. After they bought the media it was open season on reality.

[xiamiam]

21. exactly..my first thought when i saw the headline of the post..nt

[spanone]

34. bingo!

[stillwaiting]

40. This was my answer too.

When the Republicans knew they had the media they needed to get away with it, they became unabashed in their falsehoods.

Our media allows for the presentation of "both sides" even when one side is flat out false. The media is not interested in reporting truth, facts, history in context, or historical trends. So even if the media's job is not to report truth, as much of the media now believe (in my opinion the media certainly should be focused on reporting truth), viewers can't even make good and accurate decisions if the information is so very skewed, misleading, and devoid of any type of meaningful context.

Of course, this has all been done on purpose. So far it's been a win for the elite and the oligarchy. They have captured our media which should expose the "YOU DECIDE!" narrative of infotainment as the blatant propagandistic ruse it is to anyone with a logical and rational mind.

Edited to better present my thoughts. Should never post right after waking up.

[madokie]

42. They started buying up the media right after nixons resignation

Now the pukies own most if not all the media outlets in many of the locales

[CanonRay]

2. About a third of the population is stupid or religiously crazy or both

and another third simply don't give a shit for one reason or another. The republicans figured that out.

[coalition_unwilling]

19. That is one scary post (because of its deep truth). Are there any

antidotes or should we all simply succumb to general despair? (No snark intended, but your post make me quite despondent.)

[xtraxritical]

37. VOTE A STRAIGHT DEMOCRATIC BALLOT and give yourself a chance.

[CanonRay]

43. I'm not saying it cannot be overcome

but I am concerned about the general lack of fear of Rmoney because he is such a crappy candidate. It's the behind the scenes stuff that scares me about him. We need the young in this country to get pissed off annd either vote, or take to the streets, or both. Rmoney and the rethugs are going to screw this country.

[Tennessee Gal]

3. Excellent post. However,

I think the GOP decided to find a way to lie to the American people during the Nixon administration - especially because of what happened to them getting caught regarding Watergate. It was during that time frame that Ailes developed a plan to manipulate the media and establish right wing ownership of media outlets. They also focused on "framing" issues to hide their lies and how harmful their policies are to the vast majority of Americans.

[geckosfeet]

5. I don't know. Even then the media reported the Watergate hearings.

Hell. It was wapo reporters that originally exposed it. Now they are gagged and fed talking points and call it reporting. Our print media is a national embarrassment. And they wonder why newspaper circulation is declining.

[Tennessee Gal]

6. That is what I mean.

After Watergate the right wing made an all out effort to control the media and "frame" the discussion to pass off their lies.

[Alcibiades]

18. Don't forget Vietnam

The lies in Vietnam predate Watergate-hell, they predate Nixon.

But for my money, it began in the Reagan era, beginning with the freeing of the embassy hostages. That was fishy to me at the time, and I was 11.

[coalition_unwilling]

20. Historical note: Karl Rove got his start as one of Donald Segretti's

"dirty tricksters." Special prosecutor launced a preliminary investigation of Rove that died on the vine following Tricky Dick's resignation.

[Fumesucker]

7. No, not really, I was watching while it happened..

Arrant nonsense treated as gospel truth.

It's no mere coincidence that Reagan's last gig as an actor was as a narrator on Death Valley Days.

[NNN0LHI]

8. It was like witnessing a head on train wreck in slow motion

And there was nothing I could do about it.

Leaves a sick feeling in my stomach just thinking about it.

Don

[Fumesucker]

9. Been that way for over half my life now..

And you can't just look away, I've argued a lot about that with people over the years, people who won't tell me I'm wrong when I lay out event after event of the slide into the oubliette but basically tell me to ignore it.

&ob=av3e

[coalition_unwilling]

22. Awesome, learned a new word today ("oubliette"). Had no idea

the word referred to prisons and dungeons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon.

This is but one reason I so love DU and its members

I got sick and tired of being condescended to and patronized when I would try to sound the warnings. I generally keep my views to myself now and simply think "Dumbass!" to myself (except here on DU, of course

[ThomThom]

10. They figured it out after the "Lone Gunman and No Shots from the Grassy Knoll"

came out.
The people will buy anything.....

[RC]

11. Or a smoldering fire on the 80th floor, in steel frame building, can suddenly pancake it

into its own foot print in less than 2 hours.

[patrice]

33. .

[stupidicus]

12. no

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002601251

[UpInArms]

13. everyone should read the Walsh report

From the investigation on Poppy Bush - it's amazing how they got away with it all.

[Bosso 63]

14. If you repeat a lie often enough......

[DCBob]

15. Yes that is their strategy but it also coordinated lying as well.

They get politicians, media, pundits, business leaders, etc to all say the same thing. That has an impact on many voters.

[sofa king]

23. It also requires false equivalence and misdirection.

Most notoriously, American voters are easily flogged into indifference through false equivalence, the equal coverage of the lie alongside the truth. Most of us are not informed enough to decide which contradictory statement is true and which is not, so we ignore both.

False equivalence cannot be used in a society with a truly free press, just as falsified data cannot survive thorough peer review.

Therefore misdirection must also be employed at the same time. That's why "the terrorists" were ever-present during the '00s. Their job was to plow under the lies with fear and distraction.

We can expect the GOP to create that fear and distraction in coming months. It is their only remaining chance.

[shcrane71]

16. John Wayne asked Reagan to stop lying about the Panama Canal.

Something I learned from Rachel Maddow's book, Drift.

[saras]

17. In the late thirties, when American business was IN LOVE WITH the Nazis "efficiency and order"

[TahitiNut]

39. Bingo. The GOP today resembles nothing more than the 1920s-1030s Fascists of Italy, Spain, & Germany

From the abuse of religious imagery and fervor to the "big lie" to the unholy alliance/ownership of government by business to the rabble-rousing of the least educated to the 'harvesting' of bigotry against gays, semites, and any other 'handy' demographic to the relegation of women to the role of Breeders for the State. Every sick and twisted social cancer finds itself equally at home in today's GOP as it did in the Fascist 'ideology' of the 1920s & 1930s.

Our own fascists -- heirs to the legacy the likes of Henry Ford and Charles Lindburgh and Father Coughlin -- find themselves in entrenched positions of influence due to abominable levels of funding from the likes of the Koch Brothers and Mellon-Scaife.

Fascism has been a cancer in our body politic for at least a century.

[lpbk2713]

24. I thought of RayGun before I even opened up the OP.

They wanted an actor to be their president and they got one.

[ashling]

25. This is all good stuff (the whole thread)

but let it be noted that the GOP has always lied to our faces. The difference is only in the degree to which we let them get away with it . . .

at least as far back as U.S. Grant

[Recursion]

26. It's odd how from 1860-1920 or so they were the progressives

I have no problem saying that in that time period I would have been a proud Republican. I think when TR broke with them that was when the bad elements started to take over.

[Bluenorthwest]

27. The GOP has lied full time since the 1920's or so, at least.....

And for many years now, the Democrats preach 'post partisan co-operation' which legitimizes the lies.

[RagAss]

28. I'm convinced the GOP strategists were watching Andy Kaufman .....

when he convinced at least 60% of the Saturday Night Live audience in the early 1980's, that he was randomly selecting women out of the studio audience and wrestling them on stage.
I was just a freshman in college then and I shivered at the thought that these dumb motherfuckers who thought it was real voted too !

[krispos42]

35. You're a fan of Marc Maron? n/t

[RagAss]

44. No but I googled him and heard the Zmuda interview...Thanks !!

[FightForChange]

29. I guess when they realized they served the same people as the media

They are bought by big business and so is the American media. Why not team up and blatantly lie to the American people. A lot of people don't realize that the news stations are full of shit and don't bother to look at who's funding them. Like the oil tycoon, Al-Waleed bin Talal, who is Fox News' fourth biggest investor. Yes, a channel who often portrays Arabs as the sole terrorists in the world (because according to the media you're only a terrorist if you're not white), is actually funded by a Saudi Arabian tycoon. Ironic, huh?

[Thinkingabout]

30. Did not know faux was owned by arab

Good fodder for my republican friends.

[patrice]

32. SAUDI Prince Alalweed bin Talal, 2nd largest block of News Corp stock, a.k.a. Fox News

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/08/17/hey-fox-fans-your-favorite-network-is-part-owned-by-a-saudi-prince-whose-family-rules-by-sharia-law/

[patrice]

31. The focus-grouping techniques that produced "Morning in America" are an application

of behavioristic elements of psychology that some people call "brainwashing", because established stimulus response patterns are strategically and methodically associated with specifically selected and designed new stimuli. It's done all of the time in advertising and it's been an intrinsic part of politics probably forever, but the Reagan team made a quantum leap "forward" with these methodologies by building focus-grouping methodologies on top of communist media propaganda techniques pioneered in domestic politics by Lewis Powell and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce during the Nixon administration.

[muntrv]

36. How about when Ford pardoned Nixon?

[Old Codger]

38. Been going on long time

For years and years we have made a joke out of campaign promises and allowed candidates to say anything they chose and put it down as "campaign rhetoric" lies are called misstatements, I "misspoke" is their constant answer to anything they get called out on.I Misspoke is really "I lied" and you know it and I know it but we will all pretend that it was really a harmless mistake and forget about it, we have been dealing with campaign lies for a long time and doing nothing about it except a little chuckle and write it off. Hell, Washington state supreme court a few years back said that it was perfectly ok for pols to lie so what's new?

[Hubert Flottz]

41. Dad said...

"A republican that don't lie, don't have anything to say."