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Doctoring audio in an ad to fool voters? No problem, and certainly no consequences. Romney did it and got away with it, and then did it again, and got away with it again. So now it's the new normal for corporate-conservative election campaigning, just run ads that make stuff up, and propel them with millions in corporate cash.

This Time - Coal

The American Energy Alliance is running an ad with doctored audio. They took audio from a statement in which Obama supported coal (as long as it is cleaned up) and doctored it to sound like he wants to put the industry out of business. This matters because they are running it in swing-state areas where people's jobs depend on the industry.

Here is Obama's statement supporting coal, as long as we can find a way to keep it from polluting so much:

and later a different statement, saying that cap-and-trade brings increases on the front-end that will lead to the economy benefiting and if you can't make that argument it won't happen,

Now here is the ad with doctored audio making it sound like he is saying exactly the opposite:

The Washington Post takes a look, in Did Obama promise a ‘war on affordable energy’?,

"The comments in this ad appear in reverse chronological order."

In 2009, the Obama administration dedicated $1 billion in economic-stimulus funding toward re-starting a long-stalled program called FutureGen, which aimed to create the first zero-emissions coal plant in the U.S. The George W. Bush administration had put the brakes on that program in early 2008, citing cost overruns.

The Obama administration also committed $1 billion in 2009 toward moving forward with the Clean Coal Power Initiative, a public-private partnership started during the Bush years aimed at developing coal-fired power plants that use carbon capture and storage -- catching the carbon from exhaust and pumping it underground. It also dumped about $3 million into research on clean-coal technology at the university level.

… The coal-mining industry has shown a net increase of about 600 jobs since Obama took office, based on data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

… To review, the missing context in this ad was: 1) Obama said he supports clean coal and 2) he said consumers don’t necessarily have to feel the effects of tighter regulations.

So here we are, entirely in a George Orwell propaganda zone, where lies are the norm, and corporate money means the truth will not be heard.

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