Tag: messaging

The Fucks Don’t Matter

You need simple proof that the facts don’t matter? Doesn’t get much more simple than this.

Dick Cheney, on the floor of the Senate tells the cheerfully collegial Pat Leahy “Go fuck yourself.” Here’s how Cheney described this incident yesterday:

“You’d be surprised how many people liked that. That’s sort of the best thing I ever did.”

Bill Kristol says:

“[telling Leahy to go fuck himself is] a beautiful statement, really, of justice. […] Dick Cheney is going out [and] defending justice in the end.”

Joe Biden, on the other hand, says “This is a big fucking deal” with glee, not with malevolence or personal animus, in regard to the signing-into-law of health care reform.
Bill Kristol says:

“This is one of the most despicable moments in American politics in our lifetimes.”

Repeat after me: The FACTS DO NOT MATTER.

Factual Fail

Couldn’t agree more on the myth of the drunken poor (emphasis added):

over 72 percent of adults whose family incomes are at least four times the federal poverty level drink alcohol. The figure for adults whose families make less than the poverty threshold? 45.2 percent.
[…]
These surprising figures counter the prevalent misconception that poor people drink too much, forfeiting well-paying jobs in exchange for lazy afternoons in front of the TV, beer bottle in hand. Rush Limbaugh’s suggestion that Americans on food stamps “buy Twinkies, Milk Duds, potato chips, six-packs of Bud, then head home to watch the NFL on one of two color TVs” is more than factually incorrect (food stamps can’t be used to purchase alcohol anywhere in the country); it’s another disturbing example of conservative propaganda that blames poverty on the poor. The sole function of this dangerous rhetoric is to dissuade middle- and upper-class Americans from examining the flawed social structures and policies that both cause and perpetuate poverty across the nation.

From that promising start we go right into Why We Fail:

we progressive advocates do have something powerful on our side that Limbaugh and other conservative personalities lack: facts.

How many times does the fact that facts don’t matter, at all, have to be shoved into our collective faces before we realize it? Let’s all have a Dr. Sean Maguire moment together:

The facts don’t matter
The facts don’t matter
The facts don’t matter
The FACTS DO NOT MATTER

In the modern rhetorical war, taking place in the context of the modern MSM, the facts are a hindrance to be overcome. The modern GOP proves that simple truth above all else. Nuance, reason, adherence to “the facts” simply doesn’t play and wont play anywhere in the foreseeable future. Short, rhyming slogans, preferably divorced from all meaning and aimed directly at the limbic brain are what will carry the day. Every time. Until the Democrat realizes that, and plans accordingly, they will fail. Every time.

(Go Die) In the Street

Turns out that a lack of healthcare killed, or at the very least contributed to the death of Alex Chilton:

At least twice in the week before his fatal heart attack, Chilton experienced shortness of breath and chills while cutting grass. But he did not seek medical attention, Kersting said, in part because he had no health insurance.

On the morning of March 17, she went to work. Chilton called her after suffering another episode; she arrived home before the ambulance, and drove him to the hospital. He lost consciousness a block from the emergency room, after urging Kersting to run the red light.

Just one case. But policies have consequences. This is one of them. Writ large it is exactly what makes us ~37th in healthcare outcomes amongst developed nations. It is inexcusable. God forbid any Democrat fucking talk about this. Ever.

Tea Klan in Brief(s)

Witness the Shirks, perhaps the most ironically named Tea Klanners in existence:

For the Shirks, it was a day for their children to seek inspiration from Palin and the other speakers, who questioned Obama’s patriotism and at least one of whom referred to him repeatedly as Barack Hussein.

The couple, who rely on Medicaid for their health care, were also upset about the nation’s new health reforms.

When asked why her family used state-subsidized health care when she criticized people who take handouts, Valerie Shirk said she did not want to stop having children, and that her husband’s income was not enough to cover the family with private insurance.

“I know there’s a dichotomy because of what we get from the state,’’ she said. “But I just look at each of my children as a blessing.’’

Truly paragons of the Individual Responsibility arm (far-right lunatic division) of the GOP. I mean, seriously. No doubt they arrived in a Cadillac.
Lest you think this is some isolated case, here’s another just like it (served up with a twist):

Tea Party supporters said they did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security – the biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on “waste.”

Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.

Others could not explain the contradiction.

“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”

Progress, I guess. When faced with a serious logical disconnect, a Tea Klanner didn’t just impugn the veracity of Social Security being a government program or somesuch, they reassessed their position. More like this, please.

And maybe there would be more like that if we bothered to teach any kind of formal reasoning or critical thinking in schools. Unfortunately, we all know that shit went out along with any other R not relating to Religion. Years ago.

The other angle here, of course, is the failure of the Democrat. Bridge falls, E. coli outbreak, mine explosion, train crash, whatever: each a powerful object lesson in what functional government can do that a non-functional, regulatory captured government cannot. But that sort of talk is, apparently, too shrill.

The issue is, who pays when banks make a bad decision — the banks or the taxyapers? Republicans want the taxpayers on the hook. They support business as usual on Wall Street, which means having taxpayers bail out the banks, rather than holding the banks accountable for their own mistakes.

Chris Van Hollen, chief of the DCCC, getting perilously close to useful.

Resolution 9

Mark Warner (D-Va.) discusses the early talking points surrounding the financial reform package:

If you haven’t spent time with these issues,“ Warner sighed, "it’s easy to pop off with sound-bite solutions that don’t work.”

Indeed it is. And that’s exactly what the GOP plans to do. And they’re already doing it; they have likely already won the framing war. Compare and contrast these statements from GOP fucktard in chief, Mitch McConnell

“We cannot allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks. And that’s why we must not pass the financial reform bill that’s about to hit the floor.”

-and-

“[The Dodd bill] gives the government a new backdoor mechanism for propping up failing or failed institutions…. We won’t solve this problem until the biggest banks are allowed to fail.”

with these (all from Warner):

“It appears that the Republican leader either doesn’t understand or chooses not to understand the basic underlying premise of what this bill puts in place.”

“Resolution will be so painful for any company. No rational management team would ever choose resolution. It means shareholders wiped out. Management wiped out. Your firm is going away. At least in bankruptcy, there was some chance that some of your equity would’ve been retained and you could come out in some form on the other side of the process. The resolution that [GOP Sen Bob] Corker and I have tried to create means the death of the company. The institution is gone.

Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, refers to the resolution authority as:

a "slush fund”

-and-

“the mere existence of this [slush] fund will make it all too easy to choose a bailout over bankruptcy.”

Warner counters:

“Again, it’s either that they don’t understand or they choose not to understand. There’s nobody in the financial sector who believes this. They’d laugh at the proposition that $50 billion is enough to get you through the resolution process if a couple of firms go down. What we’ve heard time and again is that the challenge in a crisis is to buy enough time to keep the lights on for a few days till you get the FDIC in here. You could make it smaller. Corker and I spoke about $25 billion. But this is funded by the industry.”

“And here’s the hypocrisy of the Republican leader’s comments, I can guarantee you that if there had not been some pre-funding, the critique would’ve been: ‘Look at these guys! They’ve left the taxpayers exposed! What’s going to keep the lights on for these few days? It’s going to be Treasury funds or Federal Reserve funds. The taxpayer will be exposed!’ ”

You are goddamned right they would. But that’s not the point. As usual, the Democrat has a nuanced, sober take on the way forward. The GOP has a short, meaningless slogan that offers no policy insight or suggestion whatever. It’s just "go die in the streets” pointed at their corporate paymasters. Of course, both parties know such an event would never be allowed to transpire, so all’s well.

What the Democrat should be saying:

The GOP wants to help these fatcats to the punchbowl. Again

The GOP is lining the pockets of the bankers and guaranteeing future bailouts

Why is the GOP against prosecuting the worst of the Wall Street offenses? Why do they want to perpetuate the boom/bust cycle that benefits only the richest few?

And etc… Rest assured you’ll hear none of those in the run-up to 2010. Attempts at financial reform will fail. The next economic meltdown will happen sooner rather than later and find an American government that’s financially unable to do anything about it. Depression II will make the current recession seem like the good old days. And will be blamed on Obama. Wait and see.

Repeal, Replace, and Recur

The Onion gives the GOP (and you, the ‘Merican people) a little taste of what running the 2010 campaign on a complete repeal basis will look like:

“Republicans have no greater ally in this fight than leukemia,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who was flanked by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), and the abnormal increase in white blood cells. “Denying insurance to Americans with preexisting conditions and ensuring that low-income Americans stand no chance of receiving quality health care are just a few of the core beliefs that the GOP and leukemia share.”

“And believe me, if anyone is angrier than the Republican Party that children can no longer be denied coverage for having preexisting conditions, it’s leukemia.” DeMint continued. “We’re a match made in heaven.”

[…]

“I look around and I see Sen. Bob Bennett, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, eosinophilic and megakaryoblastic leukemia, and Sen. Pat Roberts, and I think, ‘This is what the Republican Party is all about,’” Sen. McConnell said. “We don’t like this new bill. We don’t like that it will cut the national deficit by $1.3 trillion over the next 20 years. We don’t like that it’s now illegal for insurance companies to suddenly drop a parent for getting deathly ill. That’s why we’re so very proud to be working with leukemia.”

I’d say that about nails it. The Democrat ought to use that line about “what the Republican Party is all about” unedited and in its entirety, read by that scary voice dude, and superimposed on pictures of the sick and dying, lying about in the streets. Where the GOP wants them to go die. That’s how you push back against the right wing noise machine. And it’s the only thing your GOP opponent will really understand. Once that level of pushback happens over anything, John McCain will get his wish: everyone will suddenly sit down and agree to cut out all the shit. Until that day, nothing will change in the GOP. Just like a schoolyard bully, they badly need their nose bloodied.

(h/t jasencomstock)

Hot out there

By my gauge, it’s currently 86° in sunny Boston, MA. NOAA says we goin’ to 92° (though that figure clearly represents a government takeover of weather forecasting). Today’s low will likely turn out to have been 57°, four degrees above the average high.

This is all terribly embarrassing for the climate change deniers. I’m sure they will be called to account for this deviation from their unsubstantiated by any data ever collected anywhere “nothing’s changing” stance. How can “nothing’s changing” possibly account for the fact that it is warm today? I demand to know. ‘Merica demands to know. Also, Al Gore is fat.

STARTing to sink in

I suppose this qualifies as PAM; Spencer Ackerman over to the Washington Independent has finally noted that even if you manage to keep Dick Lugar aboard the START train, you still have to find seven other GOPers willing to vote with the President on anything:

that acrimonious tenor is likely to flip some of the [relatively few GOP] yes votes [on arms reduction under W Bush for fuck’s sake] to either no votes or abstentions, however striking the hypocrisy.

Indeed it is. Now, of course, this isn’t considered to be the result of faulty logic or lousy governance on the part of the GOP, mind you. Oh no, definitely not that. They’re just playing the game and trying to win the day, politically. All that matters is what happened five minutes ago, and that’s only for the next 15. What we have here is plainly, plainly a failure on the part of The Democrat:

It’s just not clear yet [if the GOP votes will be there]. If not, it won’t just be an indictment of the Obama administration’s legislative acumen.

I guess we’re supposed to celebrate the “won’t just be” part of that. Strikingly bad construction. Rest assured that we shall never, ever see an article that systematically attacks the GOP’s stunning and repeated hypocrisy and categorizes the brazen lies, all of which is made worse by being lies and hypocrisy in service of nothing; they have no policy ideas to offer that go beyond a four word, rhyming phrase, and they never do. Because they aren’t required to. Nihilism works because it’s allowed to work by the Washington media establishment. At least it is when it’s coming from the GOP. And, in this case, it’s a brazen hypocrisy that threatens us all, directly and existentially. This ain’t kids with dirtbikes, these are actual fucking hydrogen bombs. And it’s a brazen violation of what was supposed to be a long-respected construct that “politics ends at the waters edge” when it comes to granting the President reasonably wide leeway on foreign policy, and especially when it comes to nuclear foreign policy.

START is a dead letter under a Democrat. Period. May not even get out of committee. That’s what the MSM should be looking at, day after day, 24/7: how can the country’s governance be this fundamentally broken? Instead, we’ll get plucky dogs and Clinton’s penis.
The Democrat should be hollering today and every day about the thousands, thousands of potentially loose nukes that are now going to be sitting around, just waiting to find a use. And putting it all on the GOP’s doorstep. We’ll see none of that. Instead, Obama will just stroll into the messaging buzz-saw. Again.

STARTs and stops

Obama notes the recent progress in strategic arms reduction treaty talks with Russia:

“It cuts – by about a third – the nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia will deploy,” Obama said describing the agreement. “It significantly reduces missiles and launchers. It puts in place a strong and effective verification regime. And it maintains the flexibility that we need to protect and advance our national security, and to guarantee our unwavering commitment to the security of our Allies.”

He should have added:

and, despite “frequent communication with lawmakers from both parties” there is no way in hell that this gets 67 votes.

So, in light of this, my friends in the GOP caucus want me to remind everyone to, please, go die in the streets when Our Nuclear Armageddon comes; it will make cleaning out the remaining buildings that much easier and will eliminate any need for an unpleasant government takeover of nuclear-cremains and/or partially incinerated body-parts removal. This is why I’m proud to announce bipartisan agreement today that Halliburton has been selected out of a lengthy, no-bid process to provide for all post ONA nuclear-cremains removal and storage. God bless America. Goodnight.

Seriously, does anyone believe that any move by the President, no matter how important, no matter how useful, no matter how “unrelated” to domestic politics will garner even a single GOP vote, much less eight? Anyone? (Looking at you, Code Brown) And yet lots of pundits and bloggers seem to be rather sure that this time the GOP will set aside its whiny-ass titty baby shtick in favor of actual good governance. As if. They could care less. This will be yet another whirlwind for Obama to inherit. Period. And yet here we go again, walking blithely into the buzzsaw, no pre-messaging, no talk of any kind to inoculate the general public to the shitstorm that will inevitably erupt from this.

Carve it in stone: START is a dead letter if it needs to be ratified under a Democrat. Better plan right now for some sort of executive agreement sidecar, or however it is that one goes about reducing the nuclear weapons census by A THIRD in the face of uniform, unyielding, and certainly unthinking GOP obstructionism:

Maybe these egg-heads in New England “think tanks” and “colleges” who like to do things like “read” think it’s wise to reduce nuke-you-lar weapons by a third in the face of our 47 ongoing wars, but we here at the GOP want to increase them by 89%, which will pay for itself by cutting taxes on the rich. Hell yes we do! Hell yes we can!

And so forth.

On Jan 3rd, 2011, please do eliminate the filibuster using 51 Democratic votes and a ruling by Joe Biden. Don’t “look at it” don’t consider it, don’t reform it, eliminate it. Period. It’s precisely what the GOP plans to do the second they hold the Senate and the Vice Presidency. May as well get some things done in the meantime.