Terrifying Cheney goon Mary Matalin has grown bored with old-fashioned propaganda. These days, she’s experimenting on voters’ brains so surgeons can destroy the part that hates this administration. Matalin describes her bizarre human-research laboratory in a weird “Point-of-View” on that HotSoup.com thing:

When you put people in a room and discuss politics with them and you put an M.R.I. on their brain, the functioning, rational, logical part of their brain relative to politics goes black, and their emotional mind and the emotional part of the brain lights up. Further studies have shown not only do the rational parts of the brain fire up over political dialogue, the next step that’s happening is the brain is ascribing negative motives to the opposite view.

WTF? We find it interesting that Matalin reveals her horrific Mengele techniques just as the Pentagon begins publicly using Pain Rays on citizens, researchers find a convenient “silver dollar sized” part of the brain that should be removed to make people stop smoking, and the Washington Post reveals that every paranoid fantasy about government mind control is actually true and being practiced today. MORE »

If you were worried that even neocons seem to have lately discovered shame and regret, we’ll always have alternative-reality propagandist Amir Taheri and his endless supply of hysterical bullshit about Iran and Iraq and whatever other country they’re going to blow up next. Witness the tragicomic incoherent beauty of Taheri’s column in today’s NY Post:

Some 70 percent of Baghdad’s violence is concentrated in five neighborhoods, where both Shiites and Sunnis have been the targets of rival death squads for months. Other Baghdadis say the population of those areas will greet the American troops with sweets and flowers.

What?! Not even Dick Cheney in campaign mode has peddled this ridiculous lie for years. Oh well, what do you expect from the propagandist who made up an entire “Iran makes the Jews wear yellow badges and homosexuals wear blue hat” story that the National Post put on the front page? MORE »

Our hardworking buddies at TPM Muckraker have compiled a fun list of the Bush Administration’s top Stalinist memory-hole operations. Here are a few: MORE »

The Washington PR firm that bravely paid off Iraqi journalists to publish make-believe “good news” is back on the job with an all-new $6 million (or $20 million) contract.

Lincoln Group had already collected more than $100 million from the Pentagon when it was caught bribing reporters to run fake articles about how well that whole U.S. occupation was going.

How will the DoD’s favorite propagandists spend the new millions? We’ll break it down, after the jump.

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• “…the resemblances between blogs today and their actual (rather than imagined) 18th century equivalents are very nearly uncanny. Conservative hacks used coffeehouses to propagandize against any who would attack the privileges of the monarchy.” [Crooked Timber]
• “Step 1: put bomb on plane. Step 2: Put menacing note on hidden air sick bag.” [Eschaton]
• The Evangelical Outpost drives a Dodge Neon, hates rap, is so goddamn white. [The Evangelical Outpost]
• Other people following Katherine Harris campaign. [TPM Muckraker]

Looks like that anti-suicide bomber PSA we posted about earlier is pumping up would-be suicide bombers all across the Middle East, not just in Iraq. From Rebecca Sinderbrand: MORE »

• Godspeed You! Black Emperor offshoot Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band (same as A Silver Mt. Zion) is very dark, awesome. Even their website is enjoyable. With Black Ox Orkestar. $12 at 8:30PM. Black Cat. [Black Cat]

• Gordon Lightfoot no longer in a coma tour. $22- $38 at 8PM. Wolf Trap. [Wolf Trap]
• International Spy Museum hosts panel called “Propaganda and Persuasion: Psychology’s Use in Intelligence.” Was JFK killed by the CIA? Did AIDS originate in a lab in Maryland? These questions will be answered for only $12 at 6:30PM. [Spy Museum]

• NYT endorses Lamont, WP, The Hartford Courant and the Connecticut Post back Lieberman. [Red State]

• Abortion cartoon not funny. [Pandagon]
• “There’s convincing evidence that the pictures from Qana were cynically staged and exploited in a way that will turn your stomach, as the Lebanese ‘rescue worker’ we see in many of these photos parades around with a dead child for four hours, even changing his clothes and continuing the exhibition.” [Little Green Footballs]
• The Administration “may have broken over two dozen federal laws and regulations — some of them multiple times — according to an unreleased report from the House Judiciary Committee Democrats.” [TPMMuckraker]

Striking back in the war of Internet images, the American military today released what they said were the captured outtakes of a video made by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi that it hoped would make him look more like a bumbling paintball player than the ruthless jihadist he has portrayed himself as.

-New York Times MORE »

• Pentagon commits $300m to “psychological warfare operation” that “includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the U.S. government as the source”; bumper stickers and t-shirts are also being considered. [USAT, USAT]
• Army approves new, classified rules for interrogation. Official: “This is a stick in McCain’s eye. It goes right up to the edge. He’s not going to be comfortable with this.” [NYT]
• Pentagon is reportedly monitoring the activities of “peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.” [NBC, Reuters]
• Administration is debating the need for new nuclear warheads; “the U.S. could someday spend billions of dollars replacing much of the current arsenal.” [WSJ]
• Democrats press for subpoenas of White House officials regarding government response to Katrina. [WP]
• Texas prosecutors are investigating possible ties between Rep. Tom DeLay and lobbyist Brent Wilkes, who was linked to former Rep. Randy Cunningham. [NYT]
• House nears passage of tough border security bill. [NYT]
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce splits with Republican leadership over immigration bill. [WP]

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Reading the New York Times’ massive front-page story Sunday on the U.S. military’s propaganda efforts, we were charmed by these ideas generated by the now-infamous “Lincoln Group,” sadly left on the drawing board:

Lincoln proposed variations of the satirical paper “The Onion,” and an underground paper to be called “The Voice,” documents show. And it planned comedies modeled after “Cheers” and the Three Stooges, with the trio as bumbling wannabe terrorists.

The latter, clearly, offers the most intriguing possibilities, including the image of a terrorist slapping his nose up and down and saying “nyuck-nyuck-nyuck” after a car bomb explodes early. MORE »