Conservatives Can't Get the Facts of Socialist Attacks Right

The Right have accused President Barack Obama of leading America towards socialism. Conor Clarke's chart shows the percentage of corporate assets owned by the federal government. Compare that to the assets not owned by the government. The Federal government owns only 0.21 of American business assets. Numbers don't lie. Conservative pundits are a another story.

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh claim the Russian newspaper Pravda wrote an op-ed stating President Barack Obama is leading America towards socialism. The op-ed was written by blogger Stanislav Mishin. Mishin uses blogger and ran the piece on his Blogspot site and Pravda On-Line.

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

Pravda On-Line is not involved with the former state newspaper. The Pravda On-Line about page makes this clear.

At that time, a very serious split occurred in the editorial office. Over 90 percent of the journalists who had been working for Pravda until the coup d'etat of 1991 quit their jobs. They established their own version of the newspaper, which was then closed under government pressure.

These journalists had to take their fight to cyberspace, and the Internet newspaper PRAVDA On-Line was launched in January of 1999, the first Russian newspaper of its kind. We think that both the newly registered newspaper and PRAVDA On-Line (you are now on its server) have an equal moral right to continue the history of the newspaper that was closed by then-President Boris Yeltsin in August of 1991. The number of journalists that work in the head offices of both publications is comparable with the number of journalists who worked for Pravda at the time it was closed.

In spite of the fact that the journalists of both these publications are still in touch with each other, we have different conceptions about news about Russia and the world. The newspaper Pravda analyzes events from the point of view of the Party's interests, whereas PRAVDA On-line takes a pro-Russian approach to forming its policy.

Beck told his audience it was the Russian Pravda of old and incorrectly told viewer to find the op-ed at Pravda.com. The piece is at the web domain address Pravda.ru. Wikipedia makes it clear the current Pravda newspaper and Pravda On-Line are not related. The former communist era Pravda was sold to Greek entrepreneurs. 90 percent of that era's Pravda left the newspaper to start their own publication. The government forced that paper to shut down.

Beck, Limbaugh and other cable news pundits cite a Pravda newspaper article that was never published in a newspaper. Cable news pundits are lazy and refuse to research the thing they report to their audience.