Just Ignore 'Em: A Democratic Strategy for the Post-Bush Era

Jesse Berney suggests that Dems "ignore" Republicans after Obama is sworn in. Some people objected to what they perceived to be a suggestion to do to them what they've done to the Dems when the shoe was on the other foot.

In theory, you are correct.

However, I think the author's premise is a belief that the Rs will continue their current strategy of pure obstructionism and political posturing. They don't want to (and may not even be capable of) put forth sensible bills or amendments. It's what they've done in the past and there's not much reason to presume that they will change their tactics.

The Rs seem determined to tail gun anything and everything that Obama and Dems push for after 1/20/2009. Kill everything possible and then loudly, vigorously paint every single piece of Dem legislation like it's the nail in the coffin to freedom and capitalism. That will be their full-throttle, 24/7 life.

So as appropriate as "engaging" is - if there is no one in the audience other than insane people incapable of productive partnership, it won't work. The old saying, "it takes 2 to tango" but the Rs don't seem at all like they have any interest in dancing. They'd rather burn down the ballroom.

The only way to get what you want is for the Repug party to clean house. There are Republicans out there who would do a great job in Congress, but they are not really allowed to the table... only the shrill, obnoxious, xenophobic, whack jobs manage to move up the chain.

Senate Predictions Part One: The Races Already Over

Bob Geiger did his Senate Predictions and there was some hope by some commentators that Dem leadership could kick Lieberman out of the caucus ONLY it we had 60 Dems. I expressed the following in disagreement.

lieberman moves his office - no matter what. I don't care if we end up with 57, 58, or 59 seats.

Kicking out the clown who has been a tool and mole for the "liberal media" to cast the Dems in a negative light on every major issue gives you something very important: dignity.

There is NO upside to keeping him in the fold. He gets credibility and a bully pulpit that he doesn't deserve when he rails against us "white flag" Dems and whatever the topic du jour is. He's in it for joe. That's it.

He's spent more time this campaign season with Rs than anyone else. His ouster can/should be raised in that context - he has made his choice by his actions; he is a Republican.

Senate Dems have a far better chance of pealing off one or two Rs when there are contentious votes than they do of keeping lieberman on board. And if all else fails and no single R will have the courage to let something go to a vote, then there's always the 'nuclear option'. Long term, lieberman instantly becomes a lame duck the minute he's in the R fold. He won't be re-elected.

Bottom line: The Democratic Party and the country have no time for entertaining lieberman's petty, selfish games. Gut this fish and let's move on.

The GOP's "Nah Nah Nah Can't Hear You!" Argument

David Sirota rocks. I agree with his comments posted here, but I think it's worse than what he's saying.

Gonna need at least one generation for those clowns to get another shot at implementing 'trickle on' economic policies.

Basically, these idiot neocons have to take every voting age person with enough cognitive ability to see what the last 8 years have done to the country and convince them that it never happened. It was "all Clinton's fault" isn't washing with the youngest group of voters right now. Large swaths of electorate have been lost by them.

And the boneheads who've most exuberantly shoveled all the idiocy down as fast as it was slogged onto their plate (the elderly) have a shorter shelf life than the 18-30 year-olds. So as they are taking their leave of this mortal plane, people graduating high school who have to deal with soaring health care costs, education costs, national debt, and a shrinking job market will be taking their place in the voting booth... and probably not as nervous about rovian "there's a terrorist over the hill!" rhetoric as they are about the prospects of not being able to get a meaningful job or not being able to move out of their parent's house until they're 26.

Ain't gonna work.

538's Nate Silver: How McCain Could Win

OK, in consideration of the following factors....

• I believe mccain is mentally unsound.
• I don't know who runs his campaign.
• This race isn't anywhere near how close it was in 2000 and 2004, snatching a state here and there with a little bit of skulduggery WON'T WORK.
• "Insane" things done over the last 8 years have been bold, outlandish, illegal acts so shocking that people can't believe they are intentional.

.... the only way mccain "wins" isn't a win at all.

He must leverage the bush-cheney maniacs to conduct outrageous acts of violence and illegality at polling places in key states like PA, OH, FL, etc. Then dubya claims they are "terrorist attacks®" and uses his year-old, unchallenged executive order that declares him king in the event of a catastrophe.

That is his only chance.

So the question is, just how desperate are the neocons? Will they be willing to wait 4 years to regroup and try again? Or will they fulfill their own prophecy by bringing us to the brink of our demise by trying to "save" us from a "disaster" like Obama by conducting unconscionable, un-American acts?

I believe they will wait. There have to be enough people smart enough to realize that the mess they're leaving Obama (and us) is so HUGE that 4 years can't possibly be enough time to fix it up. They may have a much easier time in 2012.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Rovian Strategy Dead???

Arianna Huffington posted a piece to HuffPo today that sounded the death knell for rovian campaign tactics. Very hard to swallow that suggestion with a clear head.

Arianna cites the reach of the Internet in fighting smears and repeated lies, bemoaning the utter uselessness of the mainstream media in actually reporting facts. She ignores, however, the fact that the Internet is also filled with lies and smears. And with comcast and verizon working hard to control the Internet, we're only one bad piece of legislation away from the same meltdown that hit the media after ronnie ray-gun killed the Fairness Doctrine.

I can only agree that the impact of rovian tactics is not working for mccain in this election.

I cannot agree that rovian tactics will no longer work. Too much empirical evidence suggests otherwise.

There are roughly 45% of the entire voting population that believe what mccain's goon squad campaign is telling them. That is a staggering number of people. If it were 20%, then I'd be willing to hop aboard this happy bandwagon.

Update 11-8-2008: In a pot-election Rasmussen poll, 64% of Republicans want the palin to run for President in 2012. Her entire shtick was rovian slanders and backroom skulduggery. Again, a little early to declare death to the approach.

We have a very likable, credible, rational candidate on our side against a very unlikable, grouchy candidate whose credibility is utterly bankrupt. But what if we had Hillary Clinton on the ticket against mccrotchety? Are you willing to guarantee that the smears that would have been hurled at her would have fallen away so easily? Yes? Probably right.

But what if the Rs had picked Romney or someone else a ton more likable than mccain? What if the economy wasn't in freefall? I think she'd sink like a rock under the attacks.

Keep your eyes on the ball, folks. Rovian tactics are highly effective. I think Obama has done extremely well. But I confess to being disappointed by the fact that he could counter those tactics and break the blind lemmings out of their stupor by turning mccain's rovian strategy into an issue. We're tired of the health care ads (dear gawd, make them stop!) - deliver ads that delineate the lies and misleading statements, mapping to "how DC works."

And don't think for a minute the RNC hasn't learned a lesson from this. They will adjust. Expect a tidal wave of web sites to arise over the next couple years to "watch" the Obama administration. They will spread these sites and their continued torrent of lies into the 45% - just like "conservative talk radio" has exploded since ronnie tore down the walls of journalistic integrity. They will push hard to get more "ownership" of the Internet into the hands of corporate content managers like comcast and verizon so they can begin censoring and throttling access to sites like HuffPo.

In short, they are NOT going to toss away the text book, shrug, and say, "Well, I guess we have to come up with another plan!" They are going to rebuild the breached walls.

We need to teach people how to stop getting duped by liars. THEN we can declare the rovians dead. When media cartels are shattered and Fairness Doctrine is restored, I will begin to relax. But not before.

Is There a GOP Strategy -- A Kamikaze Campaign for the Black Helicopter Crowd?

Response to RJ Esko's article at HuffingtonPost. RJ is always a great read.

RJ, the core of your question is just like the creation debate: is this intelligent design or a "big bang" event?

If karl rove was at the helm, I'd say it's 'intelligent design.' With rove, there was usually a very deliberate goal for the heinous GOP acts (vote tampering, Constitution shredding, etc.). The goal was typically concentrating power - and with the belief that the results and administration actions were the best thing for the country (and the wealthy). There was usually an obvious thread (although amazingly visible only to people outside the media!) so that when something baffling was done, you could eventually figure out what was going on.

At this point, there seems to be no equivalent "visionary" (pardon me for that term) in the GOP camp. All that you've got are insane witch hunters and enraged, terrified, scorched-earth maniacs. They've learned some tricks from rove, but I bet they had him booted out because he just wasn't insane enough. We are witnessing a Lord of the Flies implosion on the 'right,' where there is no trace of logic. There is only explosive, irrational reactions... a bunch of activities that have an impact, but aren't cohesively moving toward any sort of goal. In a word, "terrorists."

The Clinton problems were partially due to the fact that he had a pretty full closet of skeletons. Obama doesn't have that burden and his personality seems to be better adjusted to ethically and morally dealing with "absolute power" than Bubba.

I agree that it's troubling to think about how this "movement" will end. In the meantime, jujitsu-like responses have been very effective. But, unfortunately, there will need to be a proactive and thoughtful campaign to continuously counter the moves of these anti-democracy terrorists. If their efforts can be blunted for two terms, they will most likely die out. The best way to crush them will be good governance.

McCain will Cost Media and Ad Business Billions

A "Media Expert" posted an entry to HuffingtonPost purporting to be concerned about mccain's proposal to eliminate military recruitment advertising on TV.

What it really was - and you can read it for yourself to see where I'm coming from - was a bemoaning of lost ad revenue for the media cartels.

Boo-freaking-hoo. The below was rejected by the censor or author.

Screw the media. And screw your vacuous 'buggy whip' inferences.

Broadcast advertising is driven by economic realities. Your comments imply that we need to make sure their coffers are being filled. Guess what? If they don't have the money to pay a "star" $500k per episode for some brain-sucking TV show, then they will have to do what anyone else in the business in the real world does - renegotiate to lower and control costs, or go under.

Also implicit in your piece is a sanctimonious ideal about military recruiting over broadcast media. I majored in Business and worked for a few years in a marketing group and socialized in those circles many years back. The major life lesson I got from that (only to be reinforced countless times in the interim) is that marketing "professionals" are afflicted in very high percentages with soaring delusions of grandeur - not only on a personal basis, but wholly revering in a creepy, bizarre way, an absurd belief that if it weren't for marketing "professionals," society will implode. As if one couldn't possibly figure out how to get their grubby, unwashed claws on some canned peaches without the miracle of marketing "professionals."

This prevailing attitude is as disturbing as it is absurd. Nonetheless, it flourishes.

Maybe you're not one of them and maybe I'm reading too much into your post. But it's hard to not see you fitting snugly into the image because I can't think of too many people outside of marketing "professionals" who'd get misty over the idea of seeing MORE $billions of pharmaceutical money - that could otherwise be used to LOWER drug costs for 10s of millions of Americans - getting burned at the altar of advertising.

Republicans, Please Stop Calling Me a "Communist" Simply Because We Disagree

"It reveals that you know so little about government that you are forced to regurgitate fear-mongering GOP talking points from more than a half century ago."



Not really correct. It's actually bigger and more desperately sad than that.



The people who can only manage about 2 exchanges in a dialog based on topics for which mountains of empirical data is publicly available before resorting to irrational name-calling are exhibiting serious mental health disorders. There is a wide array of problems, but I am confident, based on my personal experiences (despite lacking formal mental health training) that these extremists suffer from at least one clinical, diagnosable disorder.



Your attempt to cope with these conflicts by using logic to verify your command of real-world conditions is an example of a healthy mind, but is totally unnecessary in the context of your interaction with people who object to facts and reality. These are damaged people - terrified, enraged, confused, detached, depressed - and a splash of conversational truth won't begin to address their problems.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Why Hockey Should Give Palin a Pass

I wish I could understand your point.



Here's what happened in Philly (my home). A rabid supporter of the neocons, Ed Snider, owns the Flyers. We give him a pass on that and buy tickets, merchandise, and support the team enthusiastically.



Ed got himself a thought. That was to help promote the neocon court by putting the palin out there on the ice for a photo-op - an effort to help their campaign. His arrogance - and the arrogance of the mccain campaign - decided, apparently, that the Flyers fan demographics leaned in their favor. At least leaned enough to avoid embarrassment. Well, they were off a bit.



If you support the idea of separating politics from hockey, then you should be calling Snider on the carpet for his deliberate promotion of a viciously divisive, dishonest, and deplorable campaign. This was his decision. The palin could have declined, too. So how about naming names?



You generically call out to "politicians." But I know of only one pair of politicians who debased the sport during this election season. This isn't about "the politicians." This is about the swine in the mccain campaign and one of their supporters. Call them out specifically and don't imply that others are on (or near) the same rung on the ladder of immorality. Or add their names, too....
About Sarah Palin
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Sarah Palin isn't Funny Anymore

This comment was in response to a veteran, darkfeather, who commented on a post-VP debate article at HuffingtonPost. His comment's context was over how our departure from Iraq isn't being seized as aggressively as it should by the Obama campaign.

darkfeather, my family's thanks for putting it on the line.

I'm with you on this. However, I suspect the campaign is comfortable with assuming that since most people want a timetable to get out of Iraq, that they don't have to work the issue. I think that's the wrong approach.

I'd at least give it a new spin. For example, I recall some insanely right-wing colleagues talking about the issue and their rationalization of American soldier deaths in Iraq was, "If these guys were living in Camden, NJ, they'd be getting killed at a higher rate than what is happening in Iraq." I'm certain this is a silent but pervasive sentiment in those at the far and leaning-right.

So why not call that out? "Hey, is winning in Iraq when we get the murder rate lower than our own US cities? Thanks to the miracle of ethnic cleansing and some sensible counter-insurgency alliances and tactics, the rate is lower than our most populace cities. If we can't get our own country's murder/violence problems solved, how are we supposed to believe that we can get Iraq's murder/violence rate even MORE lower than US?!?! Or should we redeploy troops to Philadelphia? If our mission is to create safer urban areas than we have in 'the greatest country in the world,' then we are truly stupid if we let this occupation nonsense go on for one more day."

That gives the argument a new spin and a grounding that makes it clearer to "average" Americans that "winning" has either been achieved or is completely unachievable.