Progress, Anyone?

I have to think there are tiny rays of sunshine peeking thru the gloom - cuz I'm such a hopeful and optimistic fuck, don'tcha y'know.

One of the problems I have is that I rarely find a really good analysis of what any given piece of legislation actually says, and tries to accomplish.

Talking about what we need to do on our southern border, we have to put something in place that allows for compliance with our treaty obligations, while gearing up for possibly massive increases in human migration because of political and economic disruptions driven by Climate Change - and while trying to be humane about the whole fuckin' mess.

It's a puzzlement, as usual.

Anyway, we can take a shot at cutting it into bite-size chunks so we don't have to try swallowing the whole big ugly thing at once.

And maybe we're also getting a look at some pretty slick politicking on the part of some so-far-not-very impressive players.

Chuck Schumer and Mitt Romney and Tom Tillis and Bill Lankford are not names that come tripping easily off my tongue when I try to speak of the great thinkers and statesmen of the US Senate. But I have to reserve judgement until I see if this thing they're cooking up can actually serve the dual purpose of moving better Border Security into place, while also prying loose a few of Trump's fingers from the throats of Republicans.

Yeesh

These last few days have provided a good lens for me to focus in on why I have a solid Love/Hate Relationship with politics.

John McCain escapes from a hospital in Arizona, kinda wobbles his way thru a short address to the Senate, and votes in favor of going forward with debate on a bill that fucks everybody over who isn't pullin' down about $200k a year - I can hate that one pretty bigly. 

But maybe by doing that, whatever version of this piece-of-shit bill McConnell has up his scaly sleeve today finally gets exposed as a piece-of-shit bill - so maybe I don't hate that one so much.

Meanwhile, 45* continues to shit on his AG because he thinks the guy in charge of the DoJ is supposed to be loyal to the POTUS instead of holding him (and everybody else) accountable before the law.  So I love showing 45* up for the Daddy State Swingin' Dick he obviously is.

But that means I'm forced into the position of having to defend a malignant leprechaun like Jeff Sessions, and fuck me, I hate the shit outa that one.

Mr Insurance

Donald Trump has "targeted" Ohio Pennsylvania and Florida, figuring if he wins those 3 "Battleground States" he'll have a real shot.

Unfortunately for Trump, he also has to hold every state that Romney won in 2012.

Evan McMullin is running for president.

Evan McMullin is ex-CIA.

Evan McMullin is a Mormon.

Evan McMullin has some rich buddies backing him.

Evan McMullin has missed getting on the ballot in some very important states, but he managed to get on the ballot in Utah.

Evan McMullin won't win in Utah, but he'll syphon off plenty of votes - very possibly enough to make Hillary the winner in Utah.

Trump is up by about 7 points in Utah - where favorite son Romney won by 48 points in 2012. Mormon matters.

Evan McMullin's mission is to fuck up the election for Donald Trump.

DIY Whitewash

First, say something honest-ish sounding:  "There will be no whitewash".  But don't use the term "whitewash" because that's old hat, and you must never ever ever allow any words to be used that might make anybody question your "integrity".

Second, make it clear to the handful of underlings who actually know you're a lying sack of shit that they will burn if they say anything - that's what you tell them in private just before you announce that they've been fired for the scummy things they did on your behalf and at your instruction been fired for doing bad things totally unbeknownst to your own saintly self, or that they've left public service to pursue opportunities in the private sector, or that they need to spend more time with family blah blah blah.  Also, publicly you say there will be no immunity and no deals and no fuckin' around here - I mean it.

Well, no shit - you cut people loose and leave 'em standing naked and alone while you threaten to bring the full power of a state government down on them as you slide on by?  Gosh - you just might get some very quiet people that way.

Third, since all or most of your fellow-consprators won't be saying anything to your hand-picked team of "investigators", there's no real chance that anything of substance will ever turn up - not in time to make a difference anyway - so you can conveniently insinuate that the people who know where you buried the bodies are actually the guilty ones because - hey, why else would they plead the 5th?  Why would they not testify if they have nothing to hide - am I right or what?

Of course, Bridget Ann Kelly et al will deny it and refute the findings, and we'll all have a merry old time being distracted by raising money for the Defense Fund and spending the next several years slugging it out in court, and watching the whole thing every day and every night on Nancy Grace and DumFux News and Ed Schultz.

But Christie has done the politically smart thing by getting his shit out in front.  No matter what else, he gets to point at "an investigation that exonerated me fully", and to play the jolly ol' fat workin' stiff who's just tryin' to do a job for the fine folk of New Jersey, but who's beset on all sides by disloyal sycophants and a corrupt liberal-biased press; and they're all jealous of his masterful prowess; and they only wanna bring a good man down to further their own ambitions.

And you just keep pounding away at it - believe what I say, not what your lyin' eyes are tellin' ya.

There's a perversely delicious beauty to it.

Today's Irony

...but more like The Law Of Unintended Consequences - unless you're convinced that Evil Geniuses control our legislative process from outside the visible political spectrum.



Ms Seabrook came pretty close to screwing the pooch on this one by not addressing some important questions, which are basically:
What was the rationale for the fucked-up-edness in the first place?
What deals had to be struck that made the thing the way it is?
Who were the major players at the time?
Who was lobbying for one side or the other?
She never asks the questions directly, but maybe that's OK because she's trying to focus on outcome instead of process(?) - anyway, she does (kinda) get to those points eventually.

And while Mr Johnson spins a bit of conspiracy about poisoning the well, he puts up a very good conclusion - ie: if it seems like the gubmint ain't listening to you, it's prob'ly because this law makes it really hard for the gubmint to listen to you.  And since lawmakers have the power to do something about it but continue doing nothing about it, the conspiracy angle just gets harder and harder to dismiss.

Like the man said - nobody's going to get elected running against something called The Paperwork Reduction Act.

The numbers mentioned in the clip:
Hours spent every year by Americans doing their tax returns: 2,147,483,647
...which converts to 244,983 years.

The Opposites Game

Using the same tactics you criticize your opposition for using.

Let's call this one The Alinsky Gambit.  The following is a list of Power Tactics that Saul Alinsky put together in his 1971 book, Rules For Radicals - A Pragmatic Guide For Realistic Radicals.  See if you can spot the ones being employed by your favorite "conservative" organization.

Always remember the first rule of power tactics: Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

The third rule is: Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.

The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.

The seventh rule: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time, after which it becomes a ritualistic commitment, like going to church on Sunday mornings.

The eighth rule: Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.

The ninth rule: The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

The tenth rule: The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.

The eleventh rule is: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative.

The twelfth rule: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying "You're right — we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us."

The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

hat tip = Snopes

And yes, the Dems use the same tactics - but then the Dems aren't saying it's a bad thing for the other side to be doing it.  There's only one side doing that.

Along the same lines - "conservatives" bluster and harrumph about something like Rules For Radicals, but then turn around and mimic the thing they spend so much time and energy slagging.  Here're a coupla books on Amazon that I guess are intended to countervail Alinsky:

Seriously, They Just Lie

Via Rude Pundit (cain't hep muhsef - the guy's on fire):

And notice the kicker (from the GOP.gov website) - they "repealed" ObamaCare on 01-19-2011, and then, a day later, they passed a resolution instructing their committees to come up with a replacement.

They've got nothing.  They know their little scheme is going nowhere in the senate, and they know Obama wouldn't sign it into law, and they know they can't override a veto.  So they pretend - they literally just make shit up.

But to hear them tell it, Obama's the one who's lying about everything?

One last thing - their website also has this:

On the rare occasion when the Press Poodles aren't busy wearing their asses for hats, we've heard a tiny bit that the Deficit's been coming down in almost remarkable fashion (which means the Debt will be reduced as well).  And I've wondered why the Repubs aren't playing it up a little more, trying to claim it's because of their steely-eyed grit and determination to hold Obama's spend-thrift instincts in check blahblahblah.  They've tagged Sequestration as Obama's idea (in an obvious attempt to cause pain and then blame The Prez) but gosh - it seems to be backfiring on them.

Sequestration's still a pretty stupid thing, but they can't afford to own it and they can't afford to let it make Obama look good.  So by trying to have it both ways (as usual), they get dick (as it should be).

A Fragile Democracy

A media system wants ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity.

Your homework for this week:

Today's Douchey Congresscritter

Mr Stephen Fincher (R-TN08).

Wikipedia:

A seventh generation farmer, Fincher is a managing partner in Fincher Farms, a family business that grows cotton, corn, soybeans, and wheat on more than 2,500 acres in western Tennessee. The company has received $8.9 million in farm subsidies over the past decade, mostly from the cotton program, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.[6][7][8] Fincher received a $13,650 grant to help buy grain hauling and storage equipment from the state Department of Agriculture in 2009 as part of the Tennessee Agricultural Enhancement Program.[9]

Barre Montpelier Times Argus:

The House bill cuts projected spending in farm and nutrition programs by nearly $40 billion over the next 10 years. Just over half, $20.5 billion, would come from cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps. The Senate voted to cut spending by $23 billion, with $4.1 billion of the cuts coming from the food stamp program.

 --and--

Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., then quoted a verse from the 26th chapter of Matthew, saying the “poor will always be with us” in his defense of cuts to the food stamps program.

Fincher said obligations to take care of the poor should be left to churches, not the government.

--and--

A report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan Washington research group, said the cuts in the food stamp program would eliminate 2 million people from the program, most of them children and older people. The report said the cuts would come in addition to a reduction that food stamp recipients would experience starting Nov. 1, when benefits that were increased under the 2008 economic stimulus expire.

“Placing the SNAP cuts in this farm bill on top of the benefit cuts that will take effect in November is likely to put substantial numbers of poor families at risk of food insecurity,” the report said.

I had to look up the bible quote, thinking the full text would say something to contradict Mr Felcher Fincher.  But it didn't, and I admit to being a bit surprised.

Matthew 26:

⁶ While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, ⁷ a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.

⁸ When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. ⁹ “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”

¹⁰ Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. ¹¹ The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. ¹² When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. ¹³ Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

So now it occurs to me that while quoting the bible out of context is a useful thing for guys like Fincher, sometimes they can get an even bigger boost from the passages that reveal the simple fact that Jesus could be just as douchebaggily self-centered and prickish as they are.

Well played, sir.

hat tip = Wonkette

Here It Comes Again

The Debt Ceiling looms again as the next perfect opportunity to fuck with us like we had tails.

Via Democratic Underground, this guy's a new one for me:

Just Wonderin'

The Fiscal Cliff is supposed to be this terrible horrible thing that threatens everything from the lives of our grandparents and/or our grandchildren, and our neighbors and all of our house pets, and basically the very fiber of our all-American being.  It's the worst thing that could ever happen ever.

And the reason it's so awful is that is cuts way back on both revenues and on spending, which somehow coincides almost perfectly with the opposing viewpoints of Dems vs Repubs. I guess that in itself isn't particularly hard to see, but what exactly is it that "going over The Fiscal Cliff" actually means?  What overarching policy does it represent?

Can you say "austerity"?  I knew you could.

So we have one party screaming (as usual) about the need to rein in the gubmint, and impose some real limits on spending - a little austerity, if you will - at the same time it's warning us that we better make a deal that favors their ideology cuz we really don't wanna fuck up the economy with all that austerity stuff.

When do we get some real leaders who aren't constantly taking hostages and trying to terrorize us into doing things that ultimately fuck us over?

Look Closely

From mistermix at Balloon Juice:

I’ve always thought that there was something fishy about the GOP’s GOTV and advertising operations. We’d hear every cycle that a massive, highly effective GOTV operation was cranking up to make the big difference in the election, but I never saw clear evidence of what, exactly, that operation was.

This is a great look at the basic swindle that's going on in the GOP.  It turns out to be practically nothing more than a microcosm of what that "party" has been trying to do to the whole world.  The approach is the same old trickle down crap - "if you pay the Operatives lots of money, they'll turn around and pay their staffers well, and then the staffers will have enough to go out and make the magic happen".  Everybody down the chain thinks he's a mover and a shaker, so he takes a nice big cut, and delegates the task down the line to the next guy.  So, by the time it gets to where something's supposed to get done, there's not much money left to make it happen.

Case in point (Breitbart, via Balloon Juice):

Project Orca was supposed to enable poll watchers to record voter names on their smartphones, by listening for names as voters checked in. This would give the campaign real-time turnout data, so they could redirect GOTV resources throughout the day where it was most needed. They recruited 37,000 swing state volunteers for this.

--snip--

Then at 6PM they admitted they had issued the wrong PINs to every volunteer in Colorado, and reissued new PINs (which also didn't work). Meanwhile, counties where we had hundreds of volunteers, such as Denver Colorado, showed zero volunteers in the system all day, but we weren't allowed to add them. In one area, the head of the Republican Party plus 10 volunteers were all locked out. The system went down for a half hour during peak voting, but for hundreds or more, it never worked all day. Many of the poll watchers I spoke with were very discouraged. Many members of our phone bank got up and left.
I do not know if the system was totally broken, or if I just saw the worst of it. But I wonder, because they told us all day that most volunteers were submitting just fine, yet admitted at the end that all of Colorado had the wrong PIN's. They also said the system projected every swing state as pink or red.

To me, this looks like the Operatives are all doing everything they could possibly do to put as much of that money as possible into their own pockets, while spinning the yarn back up to the Campaign Managers that everything was peachy dandy.

mistermix:

One of my core prejudices is that big consulting firms can’t write software. They’re a bunch of fast-talking MBAs who bullshit management into buying their services, and after they get the contract, all they care about is how cheap they can offshore a project, and how many hours they can bill. Well, Mitt Romney, the biggest consultant of them all, had to eat his own dogfood on Tuesday, and it was a goddam unappetizing meal.

I seem to recall stories of how totally fucked up everything was in the USSR all through the 80s - beyond the Kremlin, anywhere anybody looked, all they saw was empty factories and empty stores and empty streets.  But in Moscow, there was always a parade or a bunch of shiny things to look at, and lots of happy talk about the glories of the Soviet.

More recently, there's the story of how Sadam Hussein "totally fooled" the CIA into thinking he had WMD, or was "on the verge" of acquiring them.  But the real story was that after the Gulf War, Sadam's whole program collapsed, and it turned out that the people he was paying to develop the nukes for him thru the 90s were taking the money and submitting bogus reports of their "progress".  And the same thing happened with his Chem and Bio Weapons.  They just scammed the shit out of him.  And when we invaded, he had nothing.  Prob'ly came as quite a shock.

The power players in the GOP are mostly just like Romney.  They've spent their whole lives figuring out how to get somebody else to do the work while they count the money. And when suddenly they find that everybody under them has seen their example and learned to do exactly the same thing, they're surprised and they feel betrayed, but somehow they can't quite figure out what could possibly have gone so wrong.

Here's a thought:  The GOP always talks a good game about individuals and personal effort, but then they run political campaigns that are always top-down and tightly controlled.  Meanwhile they criticized the Dems for being all about Big Government and central planning when the truth is that Obama had a few people on the ground in thousands of locations who were given basic instructions and plenty of support, but who were also free to make it happen the way it needed to happen in their precincts.

And finally - which party just got its ass kicked for the second time in a row by a punk-ass community organizer and a bunch of wussie libruls?

Eat it, bitches.

Wouldn't It Be Nice?

Yeah - they're prob'ly not really able to do it - pretty cool if they could tho'.  And that's how it starts.

Out On A Limb

I have to admit I've been a little intrigued by what Lil Donny Trump's October Surprise could possibly turn out to be.  But then, along comes Gloria Allred and it's very possible that I can make a solid connection, and a prediction with a fair probability of being right.

First, the leading speculation seems to be that Trump has "uncovered" some "evidence" indicating that Barack and Michelle Obama were like all set to file divorce papers back in 2001 or whatever.  So this is not a big deal in any meaningful way except as a political tool.  Did the Obamas get a divorce?  No.  Did they move beyond some kind of preliminary filing?  Apparently not cuz they're like y'know, still married.  Does any of that shit matter?  Yes - but only if you think I should be in jail because I've tho't about kicking Donald Trump in the nuts; or that Tagg Romney should be in a cell at Gitmo for saying he wanted to take a swing at Obama.

Enter Ms Allred, who is helping out Maureen Stemberg Sullivan in her divorce efforts against Tom Stemberg (founder of Staples).  It seems ol' Willard gave sworn testimony in the divorce proceeding, and that his statements were sealed, and that The Boston Globe has petitioned the court to unseal them for all to see and enjoy.

Could there be anything in the testimony that's bad for Willard?  Well, what if his statements were to the effect that Staples wasn't as profitable as WIllard was telling his investors?  What if he kinda fudged it all - just a little - so his buddy Tom could kinda fuck his soon-to-be ex-wife out of a nice big chunk of settlement money?  And it doesn't have to be anything all that horrible.  If the story is that Romney did anything but stand up and champion Mrs Stemberg's cause, you can bet Benjamins to Baby Wipes he'll come off looking like a paternalistic wife-beater to lots of women voters.

So in rides The Donald to make a pre-emptive strike that works to show Obama in the same light.  On the one side, you've got Romney + Divorce, and on the other side, you've got Obama + Divorce.  Simple equation.  Both sides do it.  Both sides are exactly the same.  Nothing to see here, nothing to think about.  It's all even - go back to sleep.

Ya heard it here.

Sounds Vaguely Important

What makes the stories in this clip different from stories we used to hear in school about Robber Barons and Company Stores and dead Union Organizers?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This just keeps sounding shittier and shittier.

Today's Prank

Try leaving this on some windshields at work or at the mall or whatever.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Deny, Deny, Deny

In everybody's attempts to figure out what the fuck went wrong Wednesday night at the "debate", we seem to have overlooked important elements in the Repubs' tactical approach.

1. Mis-represent, mislead, mis-state (but be sure your surrogates are regularly hinting/claiming/screaming that your opponent is a fibber/liar/etc)
2. Be prepared to dance a little if somebody calls you on it (but knowing nobody's gonna call you on it, feel free to make it all up)
3. When the Lefty Scum point to very specific examples of the unicorn shit you've been spraying on the walls - Deny, Deny, Deny

The Backfire Effect

Posted by sofa king at Democratic Underground today:
(and pasted into this post in its all-together cuz it's awesome)

"But why would people so woefully lacking in the basic facts of an issue think they were the best informed? Social scientists call the effect, 'pseudo-certainty.' I call it, 'being a fucking moron.'" --Al Franken

The use of cognitive bias against the public can probably be traced back to the United States' foundation. Consider, for example, the rapier-like tact Americans used in the Declaration of Independence, directing all of their ire against Great Britain's slowly maddening King instead of the Parliament that they knew had wronged them. I think it is a classic example of misdirection, in the same family of dishonesty as mentioning Osama bin Laden in the same paragraph every time one mentions Saddam Hussein.

Last night, Mitt Romney made the most of a particular cognitive bias which we all need to know about. It is called the Backfire Effect. Here is a link to the paper.

People have a bad habit of clinging to disinformation, particularly if they are fed the disinformation first. If the disinformation is refuted, many of us simply give up trying to figure the problem out and default to the first thing we learned, and if the first thing we learned is crap, we believe the crap.
We are all vulnerable to some degree to the Backfire Effect, but there is a critical difference in the way the Backfire Effect works between conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans.

The shortest version I can give is this: when a conservative lies and a liberal refutes the lie, conservative observers become more likely to believe the lie. This effect does not work in reverse--because liberals have better thinking skills, I say, but I'm biased. This is part of the reason why an alarming number of American doofuses are still shambling about thinking that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, and why the vast majority of them are Republicans.

Up to now, Mitt Romney's biggest problem has been that he hasn't won over the right-wing authoritarians who make up the most important voting bloc in the Republican Party, and maybe in all of American politics. They are diligent voters and can be easily programmed with lies, fear, and racism, of which they are fed a steady diet by Fox News and AM radio. Almost one in four Americans fits the profile of a right-wing authoritarian.

Despite every effort, right down to nominating arch-conservative darling Paul Ryan, Romney just hasn't been able to convince them that he's their guy.

And why should they think so, when Romney gamed the nomination process, knocked off the conservative authorities they trust one by one, and silenced all dissent at the convention? He had to steal it from them before he can steal it from us, and they haven't easily forgotten.

Last night was Romney's last big chance. He's got the press and the pollsters pulling for him to make it a closer race, because it is to their personal, professional, and financial advantage. He has finally assembled the captive audience of right-wing authoritarians he needs to win over. All he needed to do was to finally, permanently, establish himself as a conservative authority, someone the conservatives can trust.

He needed President Obama to help him, by doing what every Democrat, including myself, wanted him to do: call Mitt a liar.

So Mitt Romney went out and did what he's best at. He lied his ass off. He changed a central plank of his platform at the debate in an attempt to draw out President Obama, to encourage the President to raise his voice and express outrage at such malicious dishonesty.

But President Obama wouldn't bite.

Instead, the President stuck to his own policy, his own platform, and pointed out only the most basic and agreed-upon flaws in whatever Romney's so-called plan is today (or rather, last night, because I'm sure he's walking back half of what he said right now). He tried not to show flashes of anger or disgust, as Al Gore so tragically did in 2000.

It was probably disappointing to all of us here to see the President steer away from direct confrontation, but it probably also sealed the election for him.

Consider what would have happened had the debate swung a different way.

Gov. Romney: "I'm not in favor of a $5 trillion tax cut. That's not my plan...."

President Obama: "That's bullshit. You've run on that all year."

Millions of Democrats would have stood up and cheered at that moment, to be sure, but it wouldn't have done a damned thing to change the political landscape because we're all already going to go out and vote for President Obama, and every other Democrat on the ballot. We're all registered now, right?

Just as certainly, a giant mob of tea-partiers would have been on their feet and whooping. That would have been the signal they needed, the sign from baby Jesus that Mitt Romney was the anointed one. They would have dusted off their IDs and registrations, and they would have come out and voted--at a higher frequency, unfortunately, than we do. Millions of our votes would have been canceled out.

We need to realize that right now an unusually high number of right-wing voters are far closer to reality than they usually are. They don't trust Mitt Romney, and they shouldn't, and it is to their credit that they do not in spite of the enormous psyops being run on them.

But we also need to acknowledge that these voters unfortunately tend strongly toward racism, and are highly motivated to vote against President Obama simply because he is a person of color. President Obama will never win their vote--but he might win their non-vote.

So that is why President Obama didn't "win" last night's debate. Because this debate wasn't about us. But do you know who is going to refute Mitt Romney's bullshit? We are. In the voting booth.

J'accuse!

Aha - Willard's not just a lyin' sack o' shit - he's a cheatin' douche nozzle to boot.



Rules is rules, bubba - from the agreement that both sides signed up for:

"No props, notes, charts, diagrams or other writings can be used by the candidates"

(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

Strategy

Can anybody tell me with a straight face that the Repubs are all about truth-telling, and nuance and getting at the real heart of the matter?

From Addicting Information:

Fact: Shark Attacks Increase w/ Ice Cream Consumption

Based on the above, which statement below is true?
A. Sharks hate people who eat ice cream.
B. Sharks love ice cream, so they eat people.
C. Obama is a Muslim.
D. None of the above

If you answered “C” – You already have all the answers and can’t be convinced otherwise.

To everyone else, if you answered “D” – Congratulations, you are correct.