Without Apology

Here's what I've been thinking:  "Conservatives" have had a field day with the Clever Turnaround that says it all when it comes to convincing the 30-40% of people who really don't wanna think much more deeply than your basic bumper sticker.  They need to categorize the issue, and file away something that's easy to recall, and sounds more or less like it fits with the standard bullshit that "all we really need is some good ol' fashioned common sense up in here".

We've heard it a thousand times.  In response to mountains of facts and miles of perfectly cogent reasoning about the honest-to-god, real-life need for sensible Gun Control, they say, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns".

So how 'bout we fight fire with fire?  I've been having a lot of fun trolling the facebook posts of my Radical Right friends, and it's a little weird, but it's almost like they just don't expect to get any push back on anything - like they can say any bullshit thing, and nobody's gonna call 'em on it.  It shocks the hell out of 'em sometimes when all I do is hit 'em with the kind of crap they usually come up with.  One guy put up something about how things had gotten so bad under Obama, so I posted a comment saying he sounded like he was being very critical, and then I asked him why he hated America.  I could almost feel the heat when he posted his next comment, which came in very short order, and of course, ended in ALL CAPS!!!!!!!

But here's what I've boiled it down to - this is what I'm gonna try.  Whenever somebody says some wacky crap about repealing ObamaCare (eg), I'm gonna turn it around and just say:
--"When healthcare coverage is outlawed, only outlaws will have healthcare coverage".

--or--

("All taxation is theft")
-- "When taxes are outlawed, only outlaws will collect taxes"

--or--

("Churches and good neighbors should care for the less fortunate")
("The Government has no business trying to force me to look after poor people")
-- "When charity is outlawed, only outlaws will get charity"

--or--

("Government Workers and Retirement Obligations are bankrupting state and local governments.")
--"When law enforcement is outlawed, the outlaws will be law enforcement."
--"When clean water is outlawed, only outlaws will have clean water."
--"When safe streets are outlawed, only outlaws will be safe on the streets."
--"When pensions are outlawed, only outlaws will have pensions."

What else?  Must be a gajillion of 'em.  Roll with me.

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.

Today's Pix

We must doing something right 

Fighting The Myth

From The Daily Beast:

Of all the great, near-great, and less-than-great tweets and remarks about the Clint Eastwood disaster, the most profound came from The American Prospect’s Jamelle Bouie: “This is a perfect representation of the campaign: an old white man arguing with an imaginary Barack Obama.” The story of the whole week, indeed of more or less the whole last four or five years, is of Republicans and conservatives peddling to voters an imaginary Barack Obama. To their immense frustration, a lot of that effort hasn’t taken hold the way they’d have liked. But now it’s crunch time, and in the important states that will decide the election, every vote counts. So Obama and the Democrats should spend part of next week dispelling the five myths that have the potential to singe.

The Money Votes

More at The Real News

Expanded Mashup

Here's a better and longer version of the clip I posted a few days ago.

From The Newsroom on HBO.

Fact Vacuum

Charles Blow, in an Op-Ed at NYT:

There is some degree of mythmaking and truth-stretching in every campaign, but the extent to which Republicans have embraced ignobility in this campaign is astounding. They have used their convention podium to unleash a whole lot of half-truths, so many that fact-checkers have been working overtime. But trying to chase down every lie is like trying to catch every bug in a log. It’s almost impossible.

If the news media has to pour so much energy into fact-checking, which is noble and necessary, I worry that the big picture gets short shrift. The convention itself was shockingly low on vision and high on venom.

Yet the candidates are virtually tied in most polls. What does this portend for the republic? I worry deeply about this, not simply because I work at a newspaper, but because I am an American.

Favorite Comment:

Ironic that the party which declares itself so unapologetically Christian should keep ignoring "Thou shalt not bear false witness". --O. Sharp, Seattle

The Empty Chair

And wasn't it just absolutely the height of vulgar disrespect when Romney totally ignored The Invisible Obama standing right there next to him on the podium through that whole acceptance speech?  How rude!

These Republicans - I just dunno.

Chris Rock Tweets

Lifted in its entirety from Democratic Underground:

5hChris Rock‏@chrisrockoz 


Clint Eastwood debated a chair and the chair won. #RNC #GOP2012 
40mChris Rock‏@chrisrockoz 


The Dems should have an empty chair on stage for the entire DNC, & when anyone asks who it belongs to, they can say Osama bin Laden #DNC2012 
1hChris Rock‏@chrisrockoz 


BREAKING NEWS: CNN REPORTS: Last night when he got home, Clint Eastwood got in a huge fight with the rest of his furniture. #RNC #GOP2012 
2hChris Rock‏@chrisrockoz 


Romney proves w/ a little hard work & a little luck, even a multimillionaire white guy from Harvard can succeed in this country #GOP2012 
2hChris Rock‏@chrisrockoz 


Mitt Romney says he's never paid less than 13% in taxes, which I think is fair because only 13% of his money is in this country #GOP2012 
2hChris Rock‏@chrisrockoz 


Clint Eastwood, an 82 year old man who has had 7 children with 5 women, was married twice & talking to me about family values! #RNC #GOP2012 
4hChris Rock‏@chrisrockoz 


The empty chair was a metaphor for the entire GOP platform. There's nothing there, but blind hatred for a man that doesn't exist 
4hChris Rock‏@chrisrockoz 


If you vote against Obama because he can't get stuff done, it's like saying, "this guy can't cure cancer. I'm gonna vote for cancer." #RN 
6hChris Rock‏@chrisrockoz 


Republicans are getting so confident of beating Obama they've started admitting he was born here #RNC #GOP2012 
7hChris Rock‏@chrisrockoz 


Half a billion dollars have been spent on campaign ads so far. It's a good thing our schools & economy are in great shape or I'd be mad #RNC 
7hChris Rock‏@chrisrockoz 


The people who demanded to see Obama's birth certificate dont seem the slightest bit interested in seeing Romney's tax returns #RNC #GOP2012 

Condi Rice

"Dr Rice has a Chevron Oil Company tanker named after her.  She's a perfect symbol for the corporatocracy..." --Larry Wilkerson

I can't get the audio player to embed, so you'll hafta to go over to truthdig to listen to the interview.

And BTW - I'd like to know how Col Wilkerson doesn't get better traction for the things he'd trying to get us to hear.

Willard's GOP

What in the blue-eyed buck-naked fuck were they thinking?

Old (and maybe a little tipsy?) white guy arguing with an imaginary Obama.  That was the big electrifying surprise?

Really, Repubs?  You wanted us all talking about Clint Eastwood the day after your convention, and not about the guy you just got done nominating for president?



I can get a little squirmy when Alec Baldwin or Barbara Streisand start diving into it, but that Eastwood schtick was cringe-worthy on an epic scale.

The Mavericks

If McCain and Palin coulda covered Gram Parsons like these guys, I mighta been persuaded to vote for 'em.

Today's Pix

DumFux News

This kinda thing makes me wonder if the very fabric of the cosmos is raveling.

I felt compelled to copy the whole post because I have to think it's bound to be stuffed down the Memory Hole any minute now.

Under the title "Paul Ryan's Speech in 3 Words" at Fox News.com

1. Dazzling

At least a quarter of Americans still don’t know who Paul Ryan is, and only about half who know and have an opinion of him view him favorably.

So, Ryan’s primary job tonight was to introduce himself and make himself seem likeable, and he did that well. The personal parts of the speech were very personally delivered, especially the touching parts where Ryan talked about his father and mother and their roles in his life. And at the end of the speech, when Ryan cheered the crowd to its feet, he showed an energy and enthusiasm that’s what voters want in leaders and what Republicans have been desperately lacking in this campaign.
To anyone watching Ryan’s speech who hasn’t been paying much attention to the ins and outs and accusations of the campaign, I suspect Ryan came across as a smart, passionate and all-around nice guy — the sort of guy you can imagine having a friendly chat with while watching your kids play soccer together. And for a lot of voters, what matters isn’t what candidates have done or what they promise to do —it’s personality. On this measure, Mitt Romney has been catastrophically struggling and with his speech, Ryan humanized himself and presumably by extension, the top of the ticket.

2. Deceiving

On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.

Fact: While Ryan tried to pin the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on spending under President Obama, the credit rating was actually downgraded because Republicans threatened not to raise the debt ceiling.

Fact: While Ryan blamed President Obama for the shut down of a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, the plant was actually closed under President George W. Bush. Ryan actually asked for federal spending to save the plant, while Romney has criticized the auto industry bailout that President Obama ultimately enacted to prevent other plants from closing.

Fact: Though Ryan insisted that President Obama wants to give all the credit for private sector success to government, that isn't what the president said. Period.

Fact: Though Paul Ryan accused President Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare, the fact is that that amount was savings in Medicare reimbursement rates (which, incidentally, save Medicare recipients out-of-pocket costs, too) and Ryan himself embraced these savings in his budget plan.

Elections should be about competing based on your record in the past and your vision for the future, not competing to see who can get away with the most lies and distortions without voters noticing or bother to care. Both parties should hold themselves to that standard. Republicans should be ashamed that there was even one misrepresentation in Ryan’s speech but sadly, there were many.

3. Distracting

And then there’s what Ryan didn’t talk about.

Ryan didn’t mention his extremist stance on banning all abortions with no exception for rape or incest, a stance that is out of touch with 75% of American voters.

Ryan didn’t mention his previous plan to hand over Social Security to Wall Street.

Ryan didn’t mention his numerous votes to raise spending and balloon the deficit when George W. Bush was president.

Ryan didn’t mention how his budget would eviscerate programs that help the poor and raise taxes on 95% of Americans in order to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires even further and increase — yes, increase —the deficit.

These aspects of Ryan’s resume and ideology are sticky to say the least. He would have been wise to tackle them head on and try and explain them away in his first real introduction to voters. But instead of Ryan airing his own dirty laundry, Democrats will get the chance.

At the end of his speech, Ryan quoted his dad, who used to say to him, “"Son. You have a choice: You can be part of the problem, or you can be part of the solution."

Ryan may have helped solve some of the likeability problems facing Romney, but ultimately by trying to deceive voters about basic facts and trying to distract voters from his own record, Ryan’s speech caused a much larger problem for himself and his running mate.

Sally Kohn is a writer and Fox News contributor. You can find her online at http://sallykohn.com or on Twitter@sallykohn.

Please, Mr Ryan

...can we try a little harder to keep the Nazi salutes to a minimum?

(my apologies to Mr Godwin)