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Worst. Poltical Ads. Ever!
Posted by Brave New Films, Brave New Films on May 21, 2008 at 3:15 PM.

Tonight Growth & Justice, an economic think tank, will hand out the awards for the worst political advertising in America. We'll bring you the winners of the non-partisan lampooning after they're announced. The UpTake's Mike McIntee gets a preview of some of the videos that are in the running from Growth & Justice President Dane Smith.

In our video preview we see examples of bad ads from the following categories: Improper Props, Guilt By Association, and Rated Sexxx. We also talk about ways to improve political advertising and how new media such as The UpTake may play a role in that.

There are many other categories and videos that will be seen tonight at the Pantages Theatre, 710 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, MN and start at 8pm. The headliner of the event is veteran journalist Aaron Brown, formerly of CNN and currently the Walter Cronkite Professor of Journalism at Arizona State University.

Taking a Bite Out of a Blue Dog Dem
Posted by Glenn Greenwald, Brave New Films on May 21, 2008 at 9:21 AM.

A major new ad campaign aimed at freshman Democratic Rep. Chris Carney of Pennsylvania will begin this week. The campaign -- funded by donations from readers of several blogs -- will swamp Carney's Northeastern Pennsylvania district with a coordinated series of ads on television stations and top-rated radio programs, full-page ads in six out of seven of the largest newspapers in Carney's district, and strategically placed billboards on major roads. The impetus and rationale for the ad campaign was explained here.

The campaign arises out of the leading role Carney has been playing in pressuring the House to vest the President with vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and to bestow amnesty to telecoms which illegally allowed warrantless spying by the Bush administration on their own customers. Carney has received substantial campaign contributions from several of the telecoms which stand to benefit most from the amnesty he supports.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Postville, Iowa: A National Disgrace
Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films on May 21, 2008 at 9:16 AM.

What's going on in the small town of Postville, Iowa is a national disgrace. Last Monday, ICE agents raided the Agriprocessors, Inc. kosher meat packing plant in pursuit of illegal immigrants. They arrested 300 undocumented workers—the largest single-site raid in the country—which has left the town of less than 3,000 people in utter chaos.

According to Nightprowlkitty at Docudharma (cross-posted at Daily Kos), families are unable to reach or receive any info about their detained loved ones. Lawyers can't access these workers either. Children are afraid to leave their homes to go to school. And to top it all off, federal authorities have the ability to ship these detainees across country for deportation without any notice.

Postville epitomizes the dire state of our national immigration system. You have undocumented workers who are subjected to inhuman labor practices because they can't come forward, can't unionize. And you have an ailing national economy that relies on the labor of undocumented workers, just like in Postville. You also have detainees being mistreated, even perishing, at the hands of grossly mismanaged private detention facilities, which make huge profits at the taxpayers' expense. Meanwhile, the families of these detainees (including children who are here legally by birthright) are left in the dark.

With an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in our country, is Postville what we're going to see from now on?

Daily Kos also has ways to send aid to the Postville families affected by the raids.

The Liberty City 7 Exposed Homeland Security
Posted by Brave New Films, Brave New Films on May 20, 2008 at 3:00 PM.

What happens when the FBI funds domestic terrorism?

See more MobLogicTV here.

The Biggest Hypocrisy of McCain's Campaign
Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films on May 20, 2008 at 11:23 AM.

VoteVets.org has launched a new ad today, in which veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan implore Senator McCain to vote for the bi-partisan Webb-Hagel GI Bill.

We need to keep the pressure up on McCain to support our vets. It's one of the biggest hypocrisies of his campaign.

O’Reilly Irrational Jihad #472: General Electric
Posted by DJK, Brave New Films on May 20, 2008 at 8:46 AM.

Bill O’Reilly has identified yet another Greatest Threat to America to go along with DailyKos, Arianna Huffington, college professors, the War on Christmas, George Soros, and lesbian gangs with pink guns — General Electric, parent company of NBC, and its CEO, Jeffrey Immelt.

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post has an article tracing some of the history behind BOR’s newest jihad. BOR claims that his criticism stems from GE’s dealings with Iran — who America is NOT at war with, despite the fondest wishes of FOX and the neocons. Some excerpts from BOR’s new fatwa:

General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt does not seem to care about the damage Iran is doing to America and the world. –snip-

Meantime, Immelt receives more than $20 million a year in compensation. Can you believe it? Everybody else gets hosed; Immelt gets wealthy.

But far worse is the Iran deal. If my child were killed in Iraq, I would blame the likes of Jeffrey Immelt. There's no excuse for his behavior or his incompetence.

Millions of Americans hold GE stock in good faith, but this is a bad company. Doing business with people killing American soldiers and Marines is simply unacceptable. And paying a guy $20 million to run a company into the ground is simply breathtaking.

There are more than a few villain CEOs in this country, but Jeffrey Immelt could well be the worst.

First, as Kurtz points out, BOR’s new fatwa has more to do with his running feud between him and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who has been relentless in his efforts to expose BOR as the lying, ignorant, ridiculous blowhard he is. But because BOR refuses to even mentions Olbermann’s name (and threaten anyone who does so in his presence), BOR has turned to attacking everything around Olbermann, like NBC, MSNBC, and GE. I guess BOR knows he’d lose if went head-to-head against Olbermann, so he’s trying every other angle.

Second, BOR’s latest attack is actually a tacit admission by FOX that BOR is being trounced in his battle with Olbermann, not the result of any breaking news. From Kurtz's article:

[FOX News chairman Roger] Ailes called [NBC chief executive Jeff] Zucker on his cellphone last summer, clearly agitated over a slam against him by MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. According to sources familiar with the conversation, Ailes warned that if Olbermann didn't stop such attacks against Fox, he would unleash O'Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well.

The fact that GE has dealings with Iran is hardly news, nor is it illegal. As Kurtz notes:

"Under growing criticism from the public and its own shareholders, GE announced in 2005 that it would accept no new business in Iran and would wind down existing contracts, which mostly involved sales of oil, gas and energy and health-care equipment. The remaining work, valued at less than $50 million, amounts to less than .01 percent of GE's income, and the company says the final four contracts will expire within weeks."

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

The Real McCain 2: Over Half a Million Views in 24 Hours!
Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films on May 19, 2008 at 1:39 PM.

This is truly spectacular: within 24 hours, The Real McCain 2 has skyrocketed to over half a million views! It's the #1 most viewed video on YouTube right now, and it's getting loads of love on Digg as well. These numbers put us right up there with many cable news shows, as you can see from the ratings. The difference between us and them, however, is that we're spreading our message virally through the web. We're also spreading the truth about John McCain.

This incredible feedback clearly indicates that what the general public wants to see (and what the corporate press has failed to show) is an accurate portrayal of McCain. So continue to pass this video along to all of your family, friends, and colleagues.

We need to end the mainstream media's love affair with McCain, and we need to end it now!

Nominate a Local Activist for This Brave Nation Award
Posted by Erikka Yancy, Brave New Films on May 19, 2008 at 11:43 AM.

Nominate a young local activist at BraveNation.com

I consider myself a socially conscious person. It's the way I was raised. My family attended a pretty progressive church — as far as churches go. Every year the church made a trip to Haiti to help repair a church and a house or two. I always wanted to go, but was too young. By the time I was old enough to go, the trips had stopped. But by then, I'd discovered the Peace Corps.

I went to a high school where the school motto was "live simply so that others may simply live." We were all required to do a minimum of forty hours of community service before graduation. I did 60 in the day care at a homeless shelter because it was fun! We colored, played games, and drew pictures of enormous houses with bright green yards filled with flowers and trees.

I was always so very pleased with all my socially conscious work. I volunteered, read books to kindergarteners and 1st graders in a "bad neighborhood" that no one else would go to — so brave, never gave less than a dollar to homeless people on the street, and recycled. Big pat on the back to myself — well done! But there was something nagging at me…

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Neocons Have Hijacked What It Means to Be "Pro-Israel"
Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films on May 19, 2008 at 7:35 AM.

On the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence, the new American-Jewish lobbying group J Street is calling for peace in the Middle East through peaceful, diplomatic means.

For far too long, the neocons, Christian evangelicals, and conservative Jewish leaders have defined what it means to be "pro-Israel" in our country. They have purported themselves as the only friends Israel has in the U.S.; they have dictated U.S.-Israeli policies; and they have erroneously painted Bush as Israel's staunchest friend in Washington. By perpetuating the myths about what it means to be "pro-Israel," the neocons have suggested that you can't be simultaneously pro-Israel and pro-peace. Well, the dovish J Street is here to change the definition of the term.

J Street wants the U.S. government to take a stronger hand in putting diplomatic pressure on the Israeli government and other Arab nations. They believe the neocons have undercut Israel's longterm security. And they feel that Bush has basically been a cheerleader when it's come to Israel, when what he should have been was a referee, brokering peaceful Arab-Israeli negotiations and compromises.

Make Your Own O’Reilly Tantrum Remix!
Posted by DJK, Brave New Films on May 17, 2008 at 12:49 PM.

In case you’ve been living under a rock with neither internet nor cable access, you might’ve missed this recently unearthed clip of Bill O’Reilly experiencing, um, technical difficulties on the set of Inside Edition during his pre-FOX days. It’s good to see that the fame and fortune he gained from The O’Reilly Factor really hasn’t changed him that much — he’s still the same unhinged, unstable, belligerent blowhard he was when he had hair, and I’m sure tantrums like this date back to his infancy. And this guy actually thinks he’s an authority on raising kids?

O’Reilly has tried to laugh this off, but there’s plenty more fun to be had. In solidarity with his idol, Stephen Colbert released a clip of one of his own past freakouts, and Keith Olbermann invited an O’Reilly-type body language expert (actually Stacy Grenrock Woods of the Daily Show) to talk about BOR’s dictatorial body language “mostly seen by your Benito Mussolinis, your General Pinochets.” Some terrific remixes of BOR’s meltdown have started surfacing, like this hilarious one from Barely Political, and even a dance remix.

So we at FOX ATTACKS! thought we’d invite all of you to submit your own O’Reilly Tantrum remixes! As you can see from the clips above, there are a lot of directions you could take this, so go for whatever you think is the funniest and most entertaining. You can find a downloadable Quicktime version of the original clip here — the rest is up to you!

When you have finished your video, post it on YouTube and paste the URL into a comment in this blog. Once we have enough videos, we’ll put them on a page where everyone can view them and vote on them. There will be prizes for winners in multiple categories (TBD).

Can’t wait to see what you guys come up with!

Colbert Imitates O'Reilly's Meltdown
Posted by Huffington Post, Huffington Post on May 17, 2008 at 9:38 AM.

On the "Colbert Report," Stephen Colbert had fun with Bill O'Reilly's "Inside Edition" meltdown, showing "never-before-seen" mock footage of his own past as midday anchor at WPTS in Patterson Springs, NC. Watch as Colbert freaks out over the words written on the teleprompter in true O'Reilly fashion (and throws in a Brian Williams shout-out as well):

The Attack of Racially Charged Republican Attack Ads
Posted by Max Blumenthal, Al Jazeera on May 17, 2008 at 8:53 AM.

Barack Obama's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination has been marred by the controversy over remarks made by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. And now that relationship is being used by the Republicans in a strategy Democrats say is racially tinged.

We sent Max Blumenthal, a writer for the progressive magazine, The Nation, to the southern state of Mississippi. He asks if attack ads used in a congressional election there could be a sign of things to come.

Huckabee Jokes About Someone Shooting Obama
Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films on May 17, 2008 at 8:49 AM.

Gun control certainly isn't something to joke about, neither is the assassination of a presidential nominee. And yet Mike Huckabee did both yesterday while addressing the NRA.

From CNN:

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

Obama supports extending the assault weapons ban, limits on gun sales, and a national law against carrying concealed weapons, with exceptions for retired police and military personnel. John McCain – whose legislative record was awarded a C+ rating by the NRA in 2004, but has received a perfect score – will address the group later Friday afternoon.

Hilarious Behind-the-Scenes Look at O'Reilly's Meltdown
Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films on May 16, 2008 at 11:42 AM.

Most people have seen Bill O's rant online... here's a brilliant behind the scenes look. New footage shows O'Reilly's now legendary tantrum in an unbiased, spin-free light. Did he go overboard? Or was his producer at fault? You be the judge. look.

Wonder if CBS will try to pull this one too over copyright infringement.