The Fala Speech

[babylonsister]

The Fala Speech

by Charles Lemos, Thu Aug 19, 2010 at 02:58:03 PM EDT

The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a very interesting thing, because it is foreign. They have imported the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad. Remember, a number of years ago, there was a book, Mein Kampf, written by Hitler himself. The technique was all set out in Hitler's book - and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan. According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible - if only you keep repeating it over and over and over again. - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, The Fala Speech

With nearly one in five Americans believing that Barack Obama is a Muslim and with 55 percent thinking that he is a socialist, I have been reflecting on FDR and in particular a speech he gave on September 23, 1944 to a meeting of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America. It was an election speech with FDR in the midst of a presidential campaign against Thomas Dewey. That speech is remembered as the Fala Speech as it references FDR's Scottish Terrier, Fala.

Then, as now, the GOP did what it does best - it employed the big lie. Among the lies the GOP was plying then was that the Great Depression was caused by Democrats even though the stock market crash came in October 1929 when Herbert Hoover was President. But while elephants never forget, the noxious pachyderm that is the GOP hopes that you do. Both Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Rep. Steve Austria of Ohio had the temerity to suggest last year that FDR caused the Great Depression. Nor is that unlike the meme that the GOP has floated now that the cause of our economic trouble now is all attributed to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The parallels on the big lie are so striking that they now even include the White House pet. In 1944, GOP operatives accused FDR of leaving Fala in the Aleutian Islands and then sending a destroyer back to find him. In Obama's drama, Bo, the Portuguese Water Dog, stands accused of being shipped by the White House on a separate jet to Maine on purpose. That's not some nutcase blog pushing that misinformed meme, it is a group with ties to Rick Perry called GOP-USA. GOP-USA is described by its owner Bobby Eberle as a news/information/commentary outlet, and is, as its name implies, a Republican and "conservative" advocacy group. The reason that Bo was flown separately is that the President's B-747, the normal Air Force One, was too large to land at the the small Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport in Trenton, Maine. Instead, several smaller craft flew the President and his detail. Bo went with one of the President's agents, his personal aide Reggie Love. Hardly some conspiracy to defraud the taxpayers.

more/full text of speech at link~

http://mydd.com/2010/8/19/the-fala-speech

[Hepburn]

1. My Scottie's fav of all the FDR speeches!

So, of course, a K n R for FDR and Fala! :hi:

[starroute]

2. Ah, GOP-USA of blessed Jeff Gannon memory

I haven't thought about them for a *long* time.

http://mediamatters.org/research/200501280006

January 28, 2005

Talon News, a conservative company whose Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent Jeff Gannon is well-known for asking loaded pro-Republican questions at White House press briefings, appears to be more a political organization than a media outlet. . . . A more in-depth look at Talon, Gannon, and Eberle casts additional doubt on Talon's claim to be a media outlet and raises questions about whether Gannon should be a credentialed member of the White House press corps.

Eberle is also, as Media Matters has previously noted, president and CEO of GOPUSA, a "conservative news, information, and design company dedicated to promoting conservative ideals." Though Eberle has claimed on the September 13, 2004, edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country that GOPUSA and Talon News are separate companies, they overlap heavily. . . .

Talon News apparently consists of little more than Eberle, Gannon, and a few volunteers, and is virtually indistinguishable from GOPUSA.com.

Eberle and Gannon both post on the right-wing online forum Free Republic, and Gannon has also hosted a radio show on Radio Free Republic. Eberle's and Gannon's posts on Free Republic suggest that the two have more in common with partisan political activists than with journalists.

[GeorgeGist]

3. So you're saying that being a Muslim or

progressive is evil.