I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Holland) stars in and apparently helped produce an ad, along with House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, that claims that President Obama has made America less safe by closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and ending the practice of torture for detainees.
“What are Democrats doing to keep America safe?” the ad asks at the beginning. It includes footage of Hoekstra, who is running for governor, on a TV show saying: “The real question we now face is what is President Obama’s strategy to confront this threat from radical jihadists?”
The ad is almost a classic example of the Hollywoodization of politics, the use of dramatic techniques to push emotional buttons. The visual pictures include headlines saying things like “Detainees could end up in South Carolina” — as though Obama’s plan to close Gitmo meant that terrorists would be running the Dairy Queen in Greenville next week, as opposed to being held in maximum security civilian or military prisons.
The last half of the ad features a series of rapid cuts of Obama interspersed with burning flags, terrorists with rocket propelled grenades and explosions, all against the audio backdrop of ominous music building to a crescendo. It’s all very dramatic. You almost expect at the end of the ad to hear that it was an announcement for an action thriller movie opening on Memorial Day. Here’s the video:
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