Associated Press
TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts
It seemed like quite an idea. Joe Ricketts, the wealthy AmeriTrade founder whose family owns the Chicago Cubs, would spend $10 million on an ad campaign attacking President Obama over his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "The Ricketts Plan" would hire an "extremely literate conservative African-American" as its spokesperson, who would accuse Obama of being a "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln."
What could possibly go wrong?
The plan was short lived, and once the idea came to public light, Ricketts quickly pulled the plug. He's not, however, done exploring creative ways to attack the president.
[Ricketts] is involved in another effort slated for this summer, a documentary film based on a widely criticized book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage" by Dinesh D'Souza, which asserts that Mr. Obama is carrying out the "anticolonial" agenda of his Kenyan father.
Responding to questions from the New York Times, Ricketts's aides stressed that the AmeriTrade founder is one of several investors, and he's financing only 5% of the film's budget.
But the fact that Ricketts would be involved in such a project at all is not only startling, it's a reminder that Mitt Romney and Romney's supporters have very different ideas about what the 2012 election should be about.
The Republican candidate wants to focus on the economy, which polls show is the nation's top issue, and the argument that Obama hasn't cleaned up the economic mess he inherited quickly enough.
The Republican candidate's allies want to focus on red-meat attacks that target the Republican id. It's likely why Ricketts was drawn to the original Jeremiah Wright plan in the first place, and why he and some like-minded benefactors are willing to pony up for a film version of D'Souza's anti-Obama screed.
And what will this "documentary" be about, exactly? I'm glad you asked.
Media Matters published this detailed report back in October 2010.
In his new book The Roots of Obama's Rage, Dinesh D'Souza theorizes that President Obama is motivated by an "anti-colonial" ideology inherited from his father, and boasts that this theory explains Obama's actions in a way "that no rival theory can even begin to do." In reality, D'Souza's absurd "anti-colonial" theory is premised upon a series of false and misleading claims.
The report documents 15 specific claims from D'Souza's ugly thesis, none of which stands up to scrutiny. The bizarre screed, which insists the president has the mindset of an African "Luo tribesman," was even dismissed by the right -- George Will urged Republicans to "recoil" from the thesis and The Weekly Standard criticized it for "misstatements of fact, leaps in logic, and pointlessly elaborate argumentation."
When D'Souza's thesis first appeared as a piece in Forbes, one of the magazine's own columnists blasted D'Souza's "intellectual goofiness," "factual problems," and "unsubstantiated ideological accusations."
But thanks in part to Joe Ricketts' checkbook, this garbage will be a "documentary" to be released in advance of the election.
Wealthy right-wingers with too much time and money on their hands should probably be able to think of better investments, but they're confused -- not only about reality but with what kind of messages might resonate with the American mainstream.
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Yet Jonathan Alter has told us that this is going to be a 'clean' election season because of Super Pacs.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2012/05/how_superpacs_will_keep_the_ca037537.php
Sounds more like it will just be a "stupid" election. (And the most dishonest ever, thanks to Rove.)
What a d'ouchebag.
...it's a reminder that Mitt Romney and Romney's supporters have very different ideas about what the 2012 election should be about.
Do they really have different ideas about what the election should be about or is the Mittens hiding in the shadows to keep his fingerprints off of the evidence?
The thing to remember is that these right wing billionaires don't give a rat's keister is they change a single solitary mind about Obama. They're not trying to make liberals or moderates go "Oh, my God, Obama hates America." They just want you to think "hey, there's so much about there about Obama hating America, what if there IS something to it all?" Just planting a seed of doubt. Just enough so that maybe you won't vote. Because that's how they win - purging some voters off the rolls and confusing the others so they feel like they can't be trusted with something as important as choosing who leads them. Then the right GOTV machine goes to town.
But that means they do, indeed, have to plaster your eyeballs with anti-Obama ads and planted news items and "documentaries" and too much is never enough. It's like the guys in charge of plastering ads in a stadium - if there's an inch where an ad doesn't exist, that's an inch where an ad COULD exist.
A lie will travel halfway around the world while the Cubs are still putting on their shoes. Ricketts will waste a lot of money on both.
And that lie can travel around the world several times while the Cubs are misplaying ground balls, striking out in key situations, and stumbling on the basepaths.
Can you say "boycott"? Come on, Chicago, a few targeted days of action gets some pretty good publicity.
The last news I heard was that Mayor Emmanuel is refusing to meet the Ricketts who are looking for taxpayer money to fund Wrigley Field renovations. The Ricketts were looking for about $150 million in subsidies.
The conservative elite will never cease dreaming up new smears and lies with which to attack our president, will they? So going after Obama's non-existent connection to Rev. Wright is taboo, but calling him a Kenyan "anticolonialist" (what the heck does that mean, anyway?) is kosher for these rabid extremists? Where is Mit Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, to smack down his legion of supporters and tell them enough is enough.? Romney tacitly endorses this behavior with his silence. He must be held accountable by the press for this. http://www.sunstateactivist.org
Weren't our founding fathers "anti-colonial"? You know, that revolution thing, the Declaration of Independence, the exile of people loyal to the colonial master?
Yup. And today's Republicans would be Tories.
It's pretty funny to watch and see what the GOP has been trying to do just to get Romney to win. If you have to spend that much money, if you have to revert to such tactics like voter suppression and false witnesssing against your neighbor if you have to violate almost all of The Ten Commandments in order to win an election and if you expect to win without 1 good idea that would benefit the American People , they must be living in some kind of a nightmarish fantasyland. The GOP lost a long time ago when they started lieing and deceiving the American People. I am just going to sit back and watch and hopefully others will finally see how they have been fooled into thinking that the GOP actually gives a ....
Talk about being a monomaniac. It's a big stretch for D'Souza to try to paint Obama with his father's anti-colonialism (a father he spent only one month with after infancy) but the other problem with this is that 'anti-colonialism' is D'Souza's ONLY theme. The man is, like Niall Ferguson, a defender of Empire, in D'Souza's case against his own people.
So which is more attractive: a bootlicker to Empire like D'Souza, or Obama's father who opposed that Empire?
And it has NOTHING TO DO WITH BARACK OBAMA.
True, I don't think people today, research anything. The history that you have uncovered should be news, even news channels and some journalists don't seem to want to be bothered with investigative reporting, there is no longer a market for telling the truth. And soon there will no longer be a channel that people can turn to in order to hear the truth. If a Presidential candidate can lie and receive money for lieing something is wrong. Our government is no longer being run by elected officials. Our Country is being run by Wall st. and the Banks. Our only hope is President Obama. To elect someone who will run this Country much like Bush, Nixon and now Trump is insane. If we do this we will be digging our own graves, literally.
Calling Alex (Literate African American) Haley: How about a documentary detailing Romney's "Roots"?
Stating with the multiple wife thing, Mexico, Blacks not welcome in the Mormon cult, yada yada yada. There is enough there for a three part mini series. . .
Maybe the truth will set us free.
I'm not so sure it is necessarily a bad thing that wealthy right-wingers with too much time and money on their hands can't think of better investments.
The Citizens United decision and its flood of money into the political process has brought so much interesting stuff into the light of day, stuff that perhaps could have remained hidden for years and years, and perhaps has.
One aspect of the flood of money that continually strikes me is that it accomplishes something our regressive tax system does not: these mega-rich nutjobs are actually OPENING their Scrooge McDuck vaults and SPENDING, as opposed to swimming in their piles of hoarded gold.
That is a new development, wouldn't you say? Before Citizens United, their top priority was reducing inheritance taxes to zero, to ensure their heirs could get it all (a denial-ridden variation of "you can't take it with you" and the old camel trying to get through the eye of the needle)-- to essentially recreate an aristocracy of blood from the new-money barons of our age.
From there it would be a small step to the "Eldest inherits all" rule (like the Downton Abbey entail) that keeps large estates (monuments to an ego that can't take it with him) from being broken up. Human and corporate nation-states unto themselves.
Like Neal Stephenson has in Snow Crash-- private nation-states as fiefdoms, franchises. Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong (love those Rat Things!). Uncle Enzo's Cosa Nostra Inc. (a pizza delivery outfit, but don't miss a delivery!) Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates franchise. L. Bob Rife's aircraft carrier flotsam raft.
But no, thanks to Citizen United, the vaults are opening, money is leaving, in large amounts. Is it flowing to the hinterlands? Is it juicing local economies in swing states? Could this not be seen as a form of economic stimulus? Against their wishes? Will any of it trickle down to poorer people? Remains to be seen.
And if they spend this money stupidly? On rhetorical appeals that fall on barren ground, so to speak? Spend bad money after bad? Poor their sickening riches and excess down the drain? Is this not a cause for celebration?
I mean, if I go to a ball game and pay stupidly high prices for a hot dog or a candy bar, it is because the concession stands at these places understand it is their JOB to separate people from their money.
So if these right wing super rich nutjobs are being separated from their money with delusional campaigns-- maybe that's just their version of a ball field hot dog-- to scale perhaps.
Now, how do we get them to spend all that dough trying to convince folks the Earth is flat? That it revolves around the Sun? Good lord, they believe enough other ridiculous things they've been force-fed by Fox News, like how global warming is a myth, or that people lived in the time of dinosaurs.
OR, could we invent some invisible thread, and weave fancy coats from it, charge couture prices for it, and get them all to start parading around naked? Yeah, get them to open the vaults for that too!
When the news stations decide it may be in their best interest to start reporting what is actually happening, and decide that their future is not in the hands of Corporate America they will start digging up the dirt and searching for clues. They have the means in which to uncover every conspiracy known to man. When they collectively decide to help the people who are on their side in fighting evil, they will win and then we all will win. Otherwise, all this will be swept under the rug.... again. Most of MSNBC's audience are not watching for entertainment value, they are watching in hope and prayer that someone is listening to them, and sees what they see. This needs to be taken seriously, it involves the entire human race. If no progress is made, The American People will search for another source where the truth is being told.
Unfortunately, they're not spending willy-nilly, they're purchasing the keys to the public kitty. They aim to manipulate markets for their personal gain, make the tax structure into a siphon into their pockets, and lighten their tax burden till it is zero, like it is for many corporations. It's a slow-motion stickup of the American coffers. They aim to privatize America and then rent it back to its citizens, for a nice fat profit.
If it weren't for our Founding Fathers' "anti-colonial agenda", we would all be singing "God Save the Queen".
Since the other former colonies of settlement are now all more progressive and more democratic than we are right now, maybe that wouldn't have been such a bad thing.
Let them waste lots of money pushing ridiculous stuff like birtherism and the Reverend Wright nonsense that turns off centrist voters, and sponsoring idiots like D'Souza. The more time and money they spend venturing into these intellectual wastelands, the less they'll have for sensible and potentially more effective campaign ads.
Dinesh D'Souza is a jealous little Indian prick ashamed of his roots and cannot understand why negroes do not fall at the feet of his white masters like he has! He inspired the character DIMPLE ASS THE ESPOUSER in "gods and negroes" I've been told: Excerpt here: http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=773472396242354845#allposts
Good point, Keeping Track, but I think I agree more with mpguy.
The delusion that plagues the super-rich is that they THINK their money directly converts to power, that there is nothing their money can't buy.
But I'll call the question on that assumption. I think there is quite a lot all the money in the world CAN'T buy (not even Demi Moore, if you are Robert Redford with a million bucks in a movie).
It can't buy belief. It can't buy love or respect (does Elizabeth Warren NEED as much money as Scott Brown, when, with far less resources, she has EARNED the love and respect of HORDES of people?). It can't overcome deep cynicism or disgust.
Even in a world of corrupt public offices and officials, a world of boss politics from another century, of patronage and protection, rackets and racketeering, conspiracies to commit crimes (against the people, who are the state, not the state itself)---
Conspiracies fall apart. Someone breaks ranks, leaks, gets caught, tells tales out of school. Even Iron Curtains erode from within (but not without causing untold genocides and suffering--I'm not totally naive).
But the Soviets had their dissidents too. Ordinary people saw thru Pravda's lies, just as surely as people saw through the false case the Bush 43 Administration made for war against Iraq, despite the US media ACTING like Pravda (and I was complicit in this endeavor-- I didn't have the courage to be an open dissident).
But EARNED ethos, vs. a crass attempt to purchase it? Doesn't karma factor in here, at some level? Doesn't the stink of the corruption of money and its use to buy power rise unto the heavens? Don't these wannabee tinpot dictators ring to discerning people like a tinny bell, a false god?
Yeah, naive. I know.
And I was complicit, as I mention above. Does that mean I had my price, that I could be bought? (my price was getting to keep my job in mainstream media by not breaking ranks-- I kept a roof over my head, while on the side, I did build warblogs for independent journalists in Iraq. I didn't get sent to Siberia for it.)
Don't Fighting Bob LaFollettes rise up against the corruption of Boss Politics? Doesn't someone, anyone, stand up to the Senator McCarthys?
Who convinced Cotton Mather to let my ancestor out of that jail, even after her two sisters had been put to death? Oh yeah, it didn't happen until the girls started calling out against the IMPORTANT people.
BTW, I misspelled "pour" as "poor" in my post above, and it is bugging the hell out of me.
Wealthy right wingers: proof there is no connection whatsoever between the brain and the billfold. Most of them got where they are through inheritance to begin with (as did Ricketts), and likely wouldn't have made it to small-time con artist on their own.