Another Democrat Candidate Loses A True Liberal’s Vote

March 31, 2010

Chris Kelly is running for Attorney General of California.  Recently he contacted tamerlane (aka, “Ima Puma”).   Tamerlane/Ima replied.

Hi Chris,

I’m a social liberal and registered independent who’ll be voting in the upcoming Democratic state primary.  And I won’t be voting for you.

You started with as good a chance as the other half-dozen AG candidates I knew nothing about, until you sent me an email entitled, “Don’t Sue President Obama”.  In it, you waxed rapturous about the “landmark” health care reform bill.

Except that bill had scant “reform” in it, and nothing to do with health “care”.

You also lied.  You wrote, “I was there when [Bill & Hillary Clinton] worked hard to achieve [universal health care] but fell short of the finish line.  Well, yesterday, President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats took us across that finish line…”

… the ‘finish line’ of universal health care?   As my fellow ranchers often say, I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t *last* night!  That bill is a steaming turd, a sell-out to the insurance lobby, and an insult to the 3/4 of Americans who were crying out for universal, single payer health care.

Chris, you seem like a decent guy, and somebody I’d eagerly support under normal circumstances.  But if you want to hitch your wagon to the biggest fraud in the White House since Andrew Johnson, do so at your own peril.   Because of your blind devotion to obama, I won’t be voting for you, not in the primary, and not in the general.

Think about it.  And feel free to contact me to discuss.

Best,

— Ima

3 Comments | Democratic ineptitude, Elections, Ima Puma, Kool-Aid drinkers, proglydites | Permalink
Posted by Matt

A Thin and Weak Brew

March 29, 2010

– by ‘tamerlane’

In one scene in the 1963 film, THE GREAT ESCAPE, a prisoner of war, played by Donald Pleasence, fixes a pot of tea for his fellow POW.  As he robotically fetches the leaves, boils the water, and fills the pot, Pleasence apologizes for reusing very old and weak tea.  What Pleasence tries to hide is that he is virtually blind, and has carefully rehearsed the steps involved in brewing the tea to fool his comrade.

The present day “Tea Party” movement (“TP”) is reminiscent of Pleasence and his stalag tea.  Theirs is a thin and weak substitute for that first, potent brew.  Today’s protesters hope that by blindly aping the motions of an earlier era, they can can create a brew as potent as the original.


No Sons of Liberty, These

The current TP gang thoroughly misinterprets and perverts the objectives and principles of the 1773 Boston crew.  The Sons of Liberty were not protesting taxation per se, only who had the right to tax  — a distant parliament, or their own representative bodies.

The Patriots certainly didn’t seek to abolish, or even limit, government.  The colonies all had robust legislatures, enacting broad regulations and imposing numerous taxes, which the Boston Tea Party and other protests, and the ensuing rebellion, sought to preserve.   Most tellingly, immediately after securing their right to self-rule, the Americans sat down and created a very complex and overarching system of national government, with the Constitution as its operating manual.

Modern TP activists routinely call for the elimination of that system created by our Founding Fathers, with the repeal of much or all of the Constitution they wrote.   The original tea party was a question of the form of government, the modern movement questions the very existence of government.


Ersatz Tea

The TP was unquestionably astroturfed by libertarian/anarchist agitators who for decades have harbored a master plan to kill the government that interferes with their rapacious greed.  But the masses of average Joes and Jolines now filling the TP ranks are motivated by inchoate sentiments of anger, resentment, and powerlessness.   Still unformed in their minds — or their movement —  is a set of concrete objectives or even fundamental principles.  The various TP splinter groups are just now getting around to holding rancorous debates over a platform.

Only slightly more in focus is a target for their bile:  the ‘undeserving’ ne’er-do-wells (not exclusively, but often coincidentally, minorities), and the government that allows them to free-load off hand-outs paid for by TPer’s tax dollars.  In directing their anger at those a rung or two below them on the socioeconomic ladder, instead of at the corporate oligarchs who thieved and cheated their way far up that ladder, the TP masses have allowed themselves to be mightily duped.  For there is no greater recipient of federal largesse than the big corporations — cash handouts to airlines following 9/11, token lease payments for federal land to ranchers and drillers, bailouts of AIG, GM & Goldman Sachs.  If this corporate welfare elicits any ire at all in the TP luddites, it is always directed at the feds issuing the checks, not at the corporations themselves who lobby and bribe.

There’s no denying that the leaders of the American revolution were nearly all affluent planters and merchants partly concerned that Parliament’s sundry excises might crimp their trade.  To their credit, the Founding Fathers were also motivated by firmly-held principles derived from their egalitarian, commonwealth heritage.  In contrast, the unspoken goal of the TP leadership is nothing less than a return to a pre-Magna Carta feudal society, with impoverished vassals bound in servitude to wealthy and omnipotent lords.  That the prospective vassals are actively working to bring about their loss of liberty indicates that, intellectually, they are the functional equivalents of medieval peasants.


When The Sheep Empower the Wolves

The real oppressor of the people is not the government.  It is the unregulated free market, with its sociopathic corporations and robber barons who  habitually act in their own self-interest and against the interests of society.   When they cannot sufficiently exploit their American workers to meet their insatiable avarice, they simply fire them and find new workers in foreign countries that permit unbridled exploitation.

A major role of any government is to protect its people from the selfish acts of anti-social individuals.  Before our federal & state governments began “meddling” with the free market, America was home to virtual slave labor camps, known as mining towns.  Before the government saddled business with “onerous” regulations, factories routinely used child laborers, paying them a pittance for 10 –12 hours’ daily work.  Before the government “stifled productivity” with environmental protection, industrialists and mining magnates cut costs by dumping pollution, poisons, even radioactive waste, thereby forcing society as a whole to subsidize their obscene personal wealth.

The benefit each of us derives from our government’s intercession on our behalf far outweighs any minor burdens from 1040s and the DMV.  The ignorant fools who comprise the bulk of the TP have no idea of the ruin and suffering they are working to bring down upon their own heads.  They are like sheep, who, resentful at being herded by the dog, kill the dog, unwittingly exposing themselves to the predation of the wolves.

(c) 2010 by ‘tamerlane.’  All rights reserved.

8 Comments | Elections, libertarians, tea party | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Matt

Time to Move On, MoveOn!

March 10, 2010

Just before New Years of 2009, the progressive PAC, MoveOn, took a poll.  Eagerly awaiting the inauguration of the man they had worked so hard to elect, who they were certain would usher in an era of miraculous Change in America, MoveOn asked its five million members to select the four top goals for the obama administration.  Here’s what they came up with:

#1 Universal Health Care

#2 Economic Recovery and Job Creation

#3 Build a Green Economy / Stop Climate Change

#4 End the War in Iraq

It’s no coincidence that the goals most important to MoveOnians were the same ones obama had most frequently and emphatically promised to focus on — that’s why MoveOn campaigned so zealously for him.  Fifteen months have since passed, and all four of these goals have been shot down in flames:

•  It took only a few of obama’s first hundred days to discover that his Iraq policy was going to be a carbon copy of Shrub’s;

•  The green economy received a few speeches and little else, while a reluctant and ineffectual overnighter to Copenhagen was the best the slacker-in-chief could manage for climate change;

•  Despite obscene handouts to corporations, the economy remains listless.  The administration proudly reported we had actually experienced a “jobless recovery” — a comfort, no doubt, to all those unemployed who’ll soon be receiving moneyless paychecks;

•  Even before the plan for healthcare reform left the White House, it was stillborn.  Nothing more than a sell-out to big pharma and the insurance lobby, obama’s bill ought to die but, like some manure pile that’s caught fire, it continues to smolder and stink, while no one can figure out how to put it out.

Surely MoveOn ought to be greatly disappointed, angry even, at how their Chosen One has failed them.  Inexplicably, they do not hold obama accountable.  They’ve blamed Joe Lieberman, they’ve blamed Blue Dogs and Republicans.  They’ve blamed Geithner, Rahm, and they probably blame Bo, the First Family’s purebred Portuguese water dog, for giving his master bad advice, too.

Poor MoveOn — they just can’t accept that they fell in love with a compulsive liar.   It’s no surprise, really, that an organization that devotes most of its energies to printing hand-held slogans would fall for a mellifluous charlatan whose credentials were limited to the words “Hope” and “Change.”

But now it’s time to move on, MoveOn.  Time to stop being a codependent.   Face it — your boyfriend is a manipulative, untrustworthy shit.  Dump him.

And you need to stop rushing into these unhealthy relationships with shady characters, MoveOn.  No more Howard Deans or Jon Edwards.  Get to know the person first, meet their family, examine their voting record.

And for godsakes, make some bigger signs!

(c) 2010 by ‘tamerlane.’  All rights reserved.

2 Comments | Democratic ineptitude, Elections, Kool-Aid drinkers, MoveOn, proglydites | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Matt

He Who Lies First, Lies Best

February 9, 2010

– by ‘tamerlane’

The Lie We Remember

Studies have shown that people tend to remember the first piece of information told them, even if it’s later proven to be false.  Even when corrected in as little as 30 seconds, the false information is still given at least partial, permanent credence by the recipient.

So, when Sean Hannity tells you that 2008 was one of the coolest years on record, and I later prove that it was actually one of the warmest,  Hannity’s lie is still stuck in your head.

When Shrub spoke in ominous tones of proof that Iraq was purchasing uranium in Africa, your fear lingered even after learning the “proof” was a crude forgery.

When Chris Mathews waves a piece of paper he insists is an original birth certificate, then you later learn it was only a recent computer printout … well, you get the picture.

For fun, let’s play this trick right here.  First I’ll tell you a lie:

Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts proves that Americans

have had enough of Obama’s crusade to force a multi-trillion-dollar health-care “reform” on America, replacing private healthcare with a government-run system that will empower federal bureaucrats to make life-and-death decisions about your medical care.

Now, count to thirty before reading the following:

82% of Obama supporters who voted for Brown support the public option, as do 86% of Obama voters who stayed home.

57% of Obama voters who stayed home support the Senate health care bill or think it doesn’t go far enough.

Of Obama voters who cast a ballot for Brown, nearly half (49%) support the Senate bill or think it does not go far enough.  Just 11% think it goes too far.

The first statement (lie, to-the-point, emotional) came from an Human Events email.  The second (truth, long-winded, dry) came from MoveOn.  Which version have you heard most?

Propaganda War

Many liberals think the GOP is in for a shock because they’re misinterpreting the message behind the Brown victory.  Guess what  —  the GOP doesn’t care what the real message was.  They created their own false message — ‘the voters rejected socialized healthcare’ — and broadcast it loud and long until it is now the generally accepted “truth.”

Not only have the Democrats said nothing to refute this lie, they’ve helped reinforce it.  Throughout Coakley’s campaign, the Dems joined the GOP in proclaiming the special election a referendum on health care reform.  Then, lending credence to the GOP lie that Brown’s victory signaled the voters’ rejection of real health care reform, Obama gleefully lopped off the few remaining useful components of his bill.

The Brown victory spin capped a masterful GOP propaganda campaign that began months ago with the astroturfed protests of the Dems’ town meetings on health care reform.   Faced with a substantial majority of Americans favoring universal health care with a public option, the GOP didn’t even bother with changing actual opinion.  It’s enough to simply give the impression that most Americans just adore their current private health care, counting on people go along with the “majority” (sic).  This is known as the “bandwagon” technique :

“Bandwagon is an appeal to the subject to follow the crowd, to join in because others are doing so as well. Bandwagon propaganda is, essentially, trying to convince the subject that one side is the winning side, because more people have joined it. The subject is meant to believe that since so many people have joined, that victory is inevitable and defeat impossible. Since the average person always wants to be on the winning side, he or she is compelled to join in.”

The bandwagon is just one of several propaganda techniques identified and given names in the late 1930’s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis.  The term propaganda originally meant any form of persuading of large numbers of people as to the veracity of a statement, but modern propaganda techniques are considered devious. Their messages are brief, simple, and target basic human emotions, and therefore powerful enough to override logic and reason.

To counter deceitful propaganda, simply telling the truth is not enough.  Your message needs to be brief and touch people’s emotions ….OK, also propaganda, but true.  In marketing terms, you need to talk benefits and not features.

How to Make Friends and Influence Voters

Even though their ideals aren’t shared by most Americans, Republicans consistently defeat Democrats because, while the Democrats give dry, albeit veracious, minutiae, Republicans use propaganda.  In 2000, 60% of voters agreed with Al Gore’s positions, yet only 51% gave him their vote.  That means over 9 million people were tricked into voting for the wrong person.  Why? Because most Americans felt Bush would be more fun to have a beer with.

Democrats used to be quite good at “messaging.”  JFK’s innovative use of an advertising “jingle”, with a chorus of voices chanting “Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy!”, was classic bandwagon.  The 1964 “daisy” attack ad, aired only once, was devastatingly effective in tapping into a primal fear that Goldwater’s bellicose stands, coupled with his notorious explosive temper, would lead to nuclear armageddon.

But when Nixon returned to the game, he’d learned his lesson on propaganda — the False Assertion that he had a “secret plan to end the war” was a key component (along with some criminal and treasonous acts) of his ’68 campaign.

The nadir of Democratic propaganda effectiveness came in 1984, when Mondale was so desperate for a marketing message he had to bum a line off a Wendy’s ad.

It was Bill Clinton’s personal charisma that won over the common folk, but his mojo could not be bottled for the rest of the party.  And, so, the Dems were powerless to resist the Glittering Generalities of The Contract on America.

In 2000, when, despite Donna Brazile’s hardest efforts, Al Gore still won the election, Republicans astroturfed a protest of the Florida recount to plant the meme that most Americans wanted to ‘move on’ and ‘seek closure’, lest a count of every vote cast precipitate a frightening ‘constitutional crisis’.  In a bold counterattack to recapture public opinion, the Democrats droned on about wonky legalisms.

The Circus Left Town

There’s no need to describe here the massive propaganda circus staged for obama’s nomination, or to enumerate the many, egregious lies it propagated.  For the first time in decades, the Democratic Party ran an effective presidential campaign employing all the tools, including terse, emotion-stirring propaganda, but it was against a fellow Democrat.  Once that victory had been secured, the whole show pulled up stakes up in the middle of the night, leaving only some flattened grass to indicate it ever existed.

And now the Democrats are back to their impotent ways, standing mutely by while the GOP convinces Americans that they don’t really want the healthcare reform they say they want.  Most peculiar.

(c) 2010 by ‘tamerlane.  All rights reserved.

Leave a Comment » | Democratic ineptitude, Elections, GOP evilness, Kool-Aid drinkers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Matt

They’re Shooting Hostages

January 21, 2010
by ‘tamerlane’

The liberals just shot their first hostage.  The candidacy of Martha Coakley, a solid if nondescript Democrat, was ceremoniously marched out and executed in broad daylight by the voters of the most liberal state in the Union.  Their demands had been very clear:  pass a real public health care reform bill, not a sham private health insurance mandate.  But the Democrats in Congress, and the fraud in the White House, refused to heed the warnings.  They thought they could put lipstick on a pig, call it “health care reform”, and we’d all be duped like we were in the Spring of ‘08.

Massachusetts was a bad place to test this assumption.  Bay Staters embrace their legacy of political defiance, dating back to when the original Patriot Act was enacted in 1775 on Lexington Green.  Despite being predominately Democrat or democrat-leaning, half of registered voters there are independents.  This is also an electorate with a habit of periodically placing conservatives in high office to course-correct its leftward drift.  Mitt Romney and Bill Weld were governors, and in the 1996 senate race, Bay Staters were toying with electing the conservative Weld until Kerry, in an unforgettable debate, woke up himself and the voters, then put on the afterburners.

There’s no denying that Coakley, a backroom player who figured she’d already done all that was required by maneuvering her way into the nomination, mismanaged her campaign.  Anyone who can’t identify Curt Schilling is unfit for office in Massachusetts.  But as any Gloucester fisherman will tell you, red skies in morning:  sailors take warning.  The clouds of this brewing red storm were ominously apparent for months, yet Coakley, the state party, and the DNC all were caught asleep at the wheel.

The Dems knew — and openly proclaimed — the symbolic and tangible significance of this race, of the need to replace Teddy, the longtime public healthcare champion, with someone who would ensure passage of Obama’s bill.  Did they not think the GOP was cognizant of that significance, too?  Unlike Democrats, Republicans have practical experience getting things done, like earning annual bonuses, outsourcing jobs, and running effective campaigns.  The RNC marshaled its forces and invested in Brown’s campaign at the critical moment.  The GOP correctly judged the tide, and deftly plotted a course toward the open berth at Kennedy Bay.

In a bizarre twist, the Democrats now had to play catch-up in a race they were leading.  Their response:  appeal to the voters’ desire to support Obama and to pass his health bill.  The Dem leadership must have been tippling off some left-over barrels of kool-aid, because all the polls showed that Brown’s surge was due solely to a backlash over Obama’s joke of a bill.  Coakley’s only salvation would have been to publicly distance herself from it, to declare “when I get to the Senate, I’ll won’t vote for any health care reform bill unless it contains a public option!”  But Coakley is a mundane party hack.

Massachusetts is Clinton country — Hillary won the primary by 15 points.  So in desperation, the DNC dispatched Bill to point out how repulsively rightwing Brown was.  But then they also sent in Obama, and made a last ditch appeal to “save health care.”  And that’s what the voters of Massachusetts, in their minds at least, did.  They shot a hostage to save real health care reform.

Unfortunately, once you start shooting your hostages, things can only end one of two ways:  either your demands are met, or you end up dead, too.  The rightwingers are crowing loud and mighty that the Brown victory proves that Americans hate “ObamaCare” for being too “socialist.”  In Massachusetts, which has its own limited public health insurance program, ObamaCare was not socialist enough.  As this plays out, liberals would do well to remember that the enemy of my enemy is usually still my enemy.  Extreme measures may be necessary to break the obots’ hold.  Electing Republicans simply to punish the Democrats might feel good in the moment, but it won’t do good in the long run.

So who’s the next hostage to go?  The Dem incumbents already considered the most vulnerable were: Blanche Lincoln, AK; Michael Bennet, CO; and our dear, old Harry Reid, NV; plus Dorgan’s seat in ND. Barbara Boxer had been considered a lock.  Democrats like to think of California as one big, smooth-sailing cruise ship for them.  The Poseidon was a cruise ship, too.  Boxer, an ardent Obama supporter who’ll likely face the dynamic political outsider Carly Fiorino, is already starting to sweat.

These senators, and a large portion of Democrats in the House, should have the image of the Massachusetts hostage shooting burned into their retinas.  Instead of trying to pass Obama’s sham bill, they ought to jump ship ASAP.  All politicians have a keen sense of self-preservation, but most don’t possess the brightest of minds.  Nor will the obot bolsheviks who hijacked the Party relinquish power without a fight.  So there’s no guarantee the Democrats will right their ship before the full storm hits.  And with a capsized Democratic Party, we’re at the mercy of the GOP.

Coakley would have made a competent, liberal senator.  Brown will be a horrible, extreme conservative one.  Losing the sixty-vote majority, which failed to yield any real results, (and which in any case was dependent on the DINO Lieberman) is no real loss.  Still, handing the enemy a solid liberal seat was an expensive way to send a message.  Let’s hope our demands will now be taken seriously.

(c) 2010 by ‘tamerlane.’  All rights reserved.

11 Comments | Elections, tea party | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Matt

Next Entries »