Vote Suppression

People with power use their power.  Sometimes to get more; sometimes to keep what they have; sometimes just to make sure we all know who has it.

From Balloon Juice, here's a pretty good rundown:

(from the Pennsylvania voter ID law)

All photo IDs must contain an expiration date that is current, unless noted otherwise. Acceptable IDs include:
• Photo IDs issued by the U.S. Federal Government or the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania:
•Pennsylvania driver’s license or non-driver’s license photo ID (IDs are valid for voting purposes 12 months past expiration date)
•Valid U.S. passport
•U.S. military ID - active duty and retired military (a military or veteran’s ID must designate an expiration date or designate that the expiration date is indefinite). Military dependents’ ID must contain an expiration date
•Employee photo ID issued by Federal, PA, County or Municipal government
•Photo ID cards from an accredited Pennsylvania public or private institution of higher learning
•Photo ID cards issued by a Pennsylvania care facility, including long-term care facilities, assisted living residences or personal care homes

All the "liberal" complaining about this really doesn't look like a standard conspiracy theory.  This looks a lot like Repubs (who hold governorships and who control state houses in OH, PA and FL) are cooking up ways to tamp down on some pretty significant voter demographics that are known to lean towards voting for Democrats.  I know that's a bunch of equivocation, but while there's practically no similar efforts in places where Dems hold power, and the fact that these laws are almost exclusively being jammed thru in battleground states, AND that there's practically no evidence of anything even close to the level of Voter Fraud these restrictions are aimed at preventing, we still have to make sure we're not just stampeding over the cliff, saying all Repubs are power-mad assholes who want a lockstep totalitarian dictatorship.  The thought has crossed my mind - in fact it's crossed my mind often enough to have worn several easily followed trails into it.  I'm just not ready to point and yell, "J'acccuse", that's all.

One thing I really don't like about this is that the Press Poodles seem not to be looking closely at it at all. As if glossing over it or ignoring it helps their Horse Race approach by working to make Obama's lead look narrower than it is.  One tho't on that: because it's too one-sided, reporting on it would make 'em look biased, so until they can come up with something the Dems are doing that they think can "balance it out", they'll continue looking past it.

Modern Methods (updated)

I caught this episode on The Science Channel the other night - this is what explains to me some of the methods political hucksters use to get us leaning and keep us in line.

It's what prompted a previous post - Modern Methods.

And for all the Centrists out there, please look around and tell me what examples you can find to show that the Dems are trying to pull the False Memory trick.  I realize they're using a lot of the same advertising gimmicks, but I've not seen the outright attempt to change the facts of historical events to fit their ideology.  That seems to be the near-exclusive province of the Wingnuts.



Full episode on YouTube

At about 14:30, they start talking about the causes and effects of Memory Errors.  Once this is understood, it's a short step to manipulation.  ie: Play up the fear, which revs up the amygdala; plant the new memory, and you've got yourself a new convert.  Sounds like a pretty handy little tool to me.

Modern Methods

Actually, I don't really know how modern it is, but Repubs have developed an extremely effective approach to convincing people of the "rightness" of their political views.

The one overarching objective of this process is to turn somebody into somebody he's not.

eg 1:
Sarah Palin had no real chops as a politician, and certainly no great knowledge as a citizen (or as a human being for that matter), but the GOP needed us to think she was ready to serve as VP so they mounted an all-out campaign to turn her into some kind of Statesman Savant.

eg 2:
John Kerry is a mostly honorable guy and (as much as possible, I think) a legitimate war hero, but the GOP couldn't afford direct comparisons between him and W, so in 2004 they set about turning Kerry into a French-ified flip-flopping coward who lied about his war record to get medals blah blah blah.

This shit works because too many of us just don't have the time or the inclination to try to sort it out and find what the truth really is.

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right."
Thomas Paine

Sounds good, doesn't it?  Now, maybe you trust me to verify the stuff I put in here and maybe you don't, but how many people are going to look at that quote and just accept it at face value, versus the ones who'll take 45 seconds to Google it and at least make a cursory effort to check it out?

Enter Thomas Jefferson.  Even the the jerkiest of "conservative" jerks know they're not gonna make it to where they wanna go by sliming Tommy Jeff, so there's an ongoing effort on the part of the Wingnuts to co-opt Jefferson, and turn him into a guy who said things that seem to support the Christianists' point of view.

Some of what Mr Jefferson actually had to say:

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purposes."

"The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind."

"Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."

 Some of the bullshit they want you to buy:

"Sir, no nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man, and I as chief magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example." monticell.org

"Without God, liberty will not last." monticello.org

 "The Bible is the source of liberty" monticello.org

Take nothing for granted.  Always check, especially when it seems this or that "quotation" attributed to a "Founding Father" seems to be in near-perfect alignment with any particular ideology.  Let's be careful out there.

It's Not About That

It's never about what they tell us it's about, so when a Repub says "this is about...", you know you're gonna get a load of finely shredded and heavily composted mulch dumped right on top of your pea-pickin' little head.

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

In a weird way, this is NOT about contraception - but it's definitely not about big bad gubmint pissing on your faith either.  It's about Repubs giving every business a chance to shitcan The Affordable Care Act for any stoopid "reason" they care to come up with over a few highballs after work.  Notice that the attempts (eg: The Blunt Amendment) are all aimed very generically at letting employers opt out of practically anything they have "a moral objection" to.  Fairly simple for the GOP to fit it in with all the other flimflam they get the rubes to swallow every time out.  To wit: "I think this is socialized medicine, and I believe it's immoral to forcibly confiscate any of my employees' hard-earned rewards in order to pay for somebody else's abortions, or whatever ".

Stick to your guns, Dems.  And somebody please tell Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to stop arguing about whatever these assholes want her to argue about and start looking for the real shit for a change.

Saul Alinsky

And BTW: when somebody sneers about "Obama's just a community organizer", I've taken to asking a couple of clarifying questions.

Does it mean you're against communities in general, or just the ones that are organized? 

--or--

When you say "community organizer" like that, do you really mean "uppity nigger"?

A Shortage Of Surprise

The rubes have become extremely well-conditioned.

Somebody took this:

PhotoShopped it into this:

And got this:

Influential conservative blogger Erick Erickson of Red State retweeted a link of the picture that said, “why oh why did Mitt Romney pose for this picture.”

Then there's this:

Now when I say "the rubes", it apparently has to include people like Erickson and at least one guy in the US House Of Representatives - people I would usually associate with propagating this nonsense; who I have always figured for cynical manipulators.  But when it's evident that these leaders of the cult have totally abandoned even small vestiges of healthy skepticism, I have to think we've turned some kinda corner into a very weird place.

I wish I was surprised by this, but I guess I'm not because it seems like a simple progression to the logical extreme.

Little Jimmy (updated)

(update) - From a story at The Boston Herald site

James O'Keefe strikes again!  Except he doesn't.  Here's the video of O'Keefe's latest escapade, attempting to demonstrate the urgent need for Voter ID.



I'll certainly agree with the basic premise that we have to look after the integrity of our elections process - no argument there.  But this Voter ID thing is a solution in search of a problem.  And while we're at it, how come the "party of personal responsibility and small government" is being so adamant about getting Big Gubmint to step in on this one?  Can you say "Nanny State", bitches?

Anyway, Ryan Reilly at TPM has the breakdown.  (hat tip = Balloon Juice)

“Who in their right mind would risk a felony conviction for this? And who would be able to do this in large enough numbers to (1) affect the outcome of the election and (2) remain undetected?” Hasen wrote.

That quote hits it smack on the head for me.  Again - Voter ID (eg) is not about what they tell us it's about.  So what is it?

Sounds Kinda Important, Actually

via Balloon Juice yesterday:

Today is the day that a significant part of the Affordable Care Act took effect. Today is the day that companies that sell and provide health insurance have to start spending 80% to 85% of their income from insurance premiums actually delivering the services for which they charge their customers. Overhead like office space and supplies, marketing expenses, salaries, and yes, profits have to come out of the remaining 15-20%. The rule is called the the medical loss ratio, and in an important decision recently by the Department of Health and Human Services, the insurance companies cannot count the sales commissions that they give out to the people who sell you your insurance plan against the medical loss ratio.

So lemme see - Repubs are promising to "repeal ObamaCare", which (so far) means:

• they want 4,000,000 small businesses to lose their tax breaks
• they want state governments to lose federal help in meeting their Medicaid obligations
• they want the feds to stop cracking down on Medicare fraud
• they want people taking early retirement to lose their Gap Coverage
• they want 4,000,000 seniors to lose the donut hole discounts on Brand Name meds
• they want the 15,000,000 young adults who can now stay covered by their parents' insurance to lose their coverage
• they want insurance companies to go back to using tricks and traps to justify rescinding coverage; and they don't want any way for a patient to appeal rescission. 
• they want the 20,000,000 Americans who used to be subject to denial of coverage due to "pre-existing conditions" to lose their coverage
• they want the insurance companies to arbitrate payouts according to business considerations instead of clinical evaluation.
• they want 20,000,000 low-income Americans to lose access to Community Health Centers
• they want Americans living in (mostly rural) underserved ares to lose support for the docs and nurses who want to stay in those places, but can't afford it

And as of 02-DEC-2011, they want the insurance companies to continue to have the option of jacking up your premiums in order to pay sales bonuses, and to pay out nice fat stock dividends, and, and, and - the law now requires the insurers to pay out 80% of their revenues to healthcare providers.  As much as I hate strict regulation on actual levels of profit and reward, I can't help but see this as a common-sense attempt to get us all to understand that healthcare is just one of the things that can't be shoehorned into the standard business school model.

Take a quick peek at the ObamaCare Timeline.

Deep Down

I think it's a good idea to remind myself once in a while that politicians are always in search of a unifying theme to shape the political narrative, and one of the most powerful is Self-Loathing.

How many of the TeaBaggers (eg) are people who absolutely deify "The Greatest Generation"?  How many of them were too young - or not physically present on the planet - to have had much to do with either the Great Depression or WW2 (the events they keep telling us made that generation The Greatest)?  How many of them look back at their own lives and "hold their manhoods cheap" because they didn't have the chance to test their mettle in the forges of hell?

How many Boomers are thinking they copped out on their opportunity to mount a protest and missed their chances to get "hassled by the pigs" or shot at by teenagers in Nat'l Guard uniforms?  How many are thinking they should have stayed true to what they used to believe in because a lot of what they thought was wrong back then is coming back on them now?  Or we can take that one in the other direction, and ask how many Boomers were happy to duck military service in the 60s and 70s, but now feel a little guilty about it?

And how many of us feel the need to make up for our past failings by finding ways to demonstrate how worthy we are now?  Seems pretty natural - a shot at redemption is a powerful thing.

Nobody likes the feeling that their main problem is themselves.  Smart politicians are always looking for ways for us to take the anger we all occasionally feel towards ourselves, and redirect it at a conveniently unpopular target.  Starting to sound familiar?

Both Sides Do It

...except when they don't.

The Southern Strategy
Watergate
IranContra
Willie Horton
The Arkansas Project
McCain's Black Bastard Child
WMD (update: this one can be balanced off by Gulf of Tonkin)
Valerie Plame
Swift Boaters
Max Cleland
Birthers
The Kenyan Usurper
Death Panels

I don't have any problem understanding both Dems and Repubs being at least roughly equal in their venality when it comes to the Pay-To-Play aspects of our system here in the US.  We've allowed a pretty great thing to get almost totally FUBAR.  From that viewpoint, they're dead even.

But when I look at how the 2 sides conduct themselves when they're trying to sell the public on either a candidate or a policy, I see one side getting a lot deeper into the muck.

If you can come up with something Dems have done that can match the whoppers I listed at the top of this post, please apprise me of them so I can check and compare.

Unconvincing

This is ridiculously powerful, but it's (prob'ly) not gonna matter.

First, she's obviously an egghead, and we all know now that all eggheads are liberal tools of the liberal academic establishment, and the liberal media.  Science cannot be trusted because it keeps insisting that we address "What Is", rather than freeing us to indulge ourselves in "If Only".

Second, she keeps referring to the EPA, and (here again) we all know that the EPA is just a bunch of Big Gubmint looters and parasites bent on obstructing the free market system and denying our noble entrepreneurs their God-given right to do whatever the fuck they want.

You Can't Go Home

The GOP started to lose me in Reagan's 2nd term (Charles Keating and the rise of the TheoCons, Ed Meese's censorship commission, Iran-Contra, etc);  I then struggled mightily to vote for Senior Bush because of the Willie Horton ad; and then had no problem at all going with Clinton* twice - mostly because he was the best Republican president since Eisenhower (IMHO) - but also because his guys weren't pulling shit like The Arkansas Project.

(*large bunches of Clinton's achievements had some pretty great short-term effects.  The problem is that they also helped get us into our current abysmal pickle; but that's a slightly different rant.)

By way of truth-out.org and The New Republic, here's some good smart analysis of what's been going on.

Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. If there is an earlier American precedent for today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery. --John Judis, tnr.com

-and-

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner. --Mike Lofgren, truthout.org

My conservative instincts tell me to stick with the program.  ie: when the problem is that democracy is at risk, the solution is never less democracy.  Even when the system itself is corrupt (maybe especially when the system is corrupt), you can't strengthen democracy by abandoning the principles of that democracy.

Part Of The Problem

A complaint that I find fairly typical on the part of a lot of Americans who consider themselves "regular folk" is that Government is filled with people they disdain as elitist, while at the same time, they spout the virtues of evolving an elite class of leaders in the private sector.

Why is Darwinism commendable and preferable in Business, but dangerous and damnable in Government?

You can try to argue that Government has the power to coerce thru the threat of violence, but I think it's obvious that as Business captures control of Government, then it acquires the coercive powers of Government and you end up with the same effect.

Again: If your basic premise is false, then your conclusion cannot be true.

Interesting

Wisconsin State Sen Lena Taylor rips into the "voter ID bill" - and makes a pretty good impression IMO.

What really stuck for me tho' was her mention of Martin Luther King being a card-carrying Repub. It always startles me a little when I'm reminded of how everything seems to flip over once in a while. In the American South during Jim Crow, the Democrats were guys like Lester Maddox and Strom Thurman and George Wallace, and they were all Democrats because Abe Lincoln was a Republican. So it just makes sense that MLK would line up with just about anybody other than those guys. It's good to get these little refreshers once in a while.