Tag: brown

Code Brown: PAM

ryking reports that:

the Teabaggers were going apeshit over Brown’s vote for the jobs bill on Twitter and I almost wet myself laughing at the vitriol. I guess these imbeciles thought he’d vote like a typical GOP automaton. News flash, imbeciles: Brown knows he won a protest vote in Massachusetts; he wants to be re-elected after he serves out the last two years of Ted Kennedy’s term so he can’t — and therefore won’t — march in goosestep, er, LOCKSTEP, with the America-hating GOP.

I wish I thought this was an accurate analysis. Unfortunately, I’d say this is an example of the GOP leadership knowing that a lockstep vote here, coming hot on the heels of the Brown mania, would be an all-too-clear and inescapable indictment of their current anti-democratic ways.
Of a piece with that, repeatedly bottling up jobs bills just isn’t going to play for any of them. Thus, Brown is given the go-ahead to vote for cloture, and a few of the moderate GOPers also scurry in to join him. The key vote, though, comes later: when the bill will pass 98-0 or some-such. The GOP Senate knows well that people don’t pay attention to anything, and certainly not the vagaries of cloture votes. No price will be paid for their delaying or otherwise weakening bills; after all, the GOPers can still just run on having voted “for” it in the end. They know that neither will their enablers in the media ever bring up the inconvenient cloture votes nor will the Democrat ever stoop to being so impolite as to mention such a thing in public.

It’s basically stimulus 2.0: take all the glory of anything that works or turns out to be popular, while doing none of the actual policy work needed to bring it about. In fact, you fight all that every step of the way and use the legislative mayhem to further inculcate the sense that DC is fundamentally off the rails. Rest easy that nobody on any side of the aisle or in the media will say or do anything about it. It’s an entirely cost free position that, so far anyway, is working like a charm.

So, no. I don’t feel the need to advance our Code Brown independent vote counter past 0. That happens in the unlikely event of his taking a difficult stand, one clearly against the leadership’s wishes. When FOXnews hollers about a vote, or he’s forced to apologize for some perceived slight, or prostrate himself before Rush: then and only then the 0dometer will advance. And sorry, it’s just not going to happen.

A Very Simple Question

There is no proof that Scott Brown is a light skinned Cuban national that underwent cosmetic surgery and years of voice training to “pass” as an American?  Yet. As of this writing, there is no proof that he is a deep cover Russian agent sent to infiltrate the US Senate from the inside? Is Scott Brown actually Canadian? We don’t know. We have not seen his long form birth certificate.

A Very Simple Question

Understanding:Salary::

The Washington Post notes what others have: there’s an absolute shit-ton of money sloshing around in these final days of the MA US Senate special election:

Independent and party groups were set to spend nearly $5 million on television ads in the final weeks leading up to Tuesday’s special election between state Attorney General Martha Coakley (D) and state Sen. Scott Brown ®.
[…]
there are 13 – yes, 13 – groups paying for ads in the race’s final days, with Democratic groups outspending Republican-aligned by more than $1 million.

Remarkable that the very same organizations that have a vested interest in selling these ad slots are the ones that also are the editorial gatekeepers on which polls get play. Thus, it’s far more interesting to run a poll showing it as being close than it is to show one that came out on the same day showing it not-so-close.

So which one is right? As a resident of MA, I can tell you that anyone with caller ID is simply not picking up the phone for any reason; anyone, that is, but rabid tea baggers, Scott Brown partisans, and older-skewing demographics who don’t know or don’t care who is calling. We currently get at least two or three automated polling calls A DAY. That’s before the supporter calls, the robo-calls, and the occasional shout out from the President of these United States. My totally unscientific man-on-the-ground assessment is to say this take is right in saying Brown’s numbers are getting inflated by this. Turnout is what will decide this thing, and even the polls favoring Brown tend to show that many of those very folks (presumably the independents) talking to pollsters aren’t actually sure they’ll a) vote and b) actually vote for Brown.

The media establishment would, of course, disavow that editorial and ad revenue divisions even know what floor the other one is on. But, of course, this phenomenon cuts two ways. It’s much more interesting to write stories if the race appears closer than it is. So, if two of ten polls say it’s close: then, BY GOD, it’s the closest race in the history of close races. Sell more papers, attract more viewers, sell more ads. A lot more ads. Direct collusion is, of course and as usual, utterly unnecessary.