Healthcare Independent Expenditure idea
(I wrote this up and sent it to a few friends who I thought could tell me if it was a decent idea or not. Only one responded, and even then without saying whether it was a good idea or not. I'm getting the feeling that I'm either past my prime or unable to get any political scheme funded or people interested anymore. So, I'm posting it here in the resigned defeat of watching another political idea die on the vine.)Healthcare Independent Expenditure idea
1. Get a voice artist who sounds similar to President Obama
2. Identify and rent lists of elderly likely voters in key areas
a. Senate
Colorado – Bennett
Arkansas – Lincoln
North Dakota – Dorgan
b. House
South Dakota – Herseth
(other potentials)
c. Legal limitations
Check for states where the most favorable regulatory regime exists:
http://winningcalls.com/statelaws.html
3. Record a short spot using the voice artist:Sterile female voice:Please hold for a fake message from the President Barack Obama
Obama voice artist:Good afternoon seniors,
I want to talk to you for a moment about healthcare reform. I know many of you are concerned about losing Medicare and Medicaid benefits and likely cuts to Social Security that will be necessary to pay for my healthcare reforms. However, I want to ask you to end the divisiveness on this issue and support me. I know what’s best for you and even if we do take your benefits, tax your healthcare plan or increase taxes, it will be worth it to provide healthcare to those who can’t afford it. So, please stop opposing me and trust me.
Thank you.
4. Robocall lists with this message. Distribute .mp3 file to other organizations with robodialers.
Labels: activism, election, healthcare, obama, politics
Healthcare proposals
Apparently the administration is going to back down on the commissar's option, the so-called "public option", which is a great thing. A few days ago when this was all still on the table,
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wrote this editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which listed out a few fabulous, serious, reforms that would truly benefit the system. A friend sent it to me saying how wise it was. And, surely, it is - but I had also sent this friend
my own article from a year ago which said almost exactly the same thing. I need a better platform, or to stop caring.
Labels: healthcare, obama, policy, politics
Death Panels image
Something I just made up:
You can also
download the photoshop file here.
Labels: healthcare, imagery, obama, policy, politics
Some mindless images
At the request of a friend, I made the Obama graphic and then after playing around a bit in flash I made it animated:
And then also wishing to get a decent flash background, I made this one for use in message boards:
Both are ridiculous, but it fits a certain blend of absurdist humor that I enjoy.
Labels: humor, imagery, obama
"So far Mr. Obama has used his personally exciting presidency for initiatives that are spending public money on a scale not seen since ancient Egypt."
This great WSJ article, entitled "Obama's America: Too Fat to Fail" was an excellent piece on the unbelievable molestation of the market and the wonderboys Obama has hired to 'fix' the economy who will undoubtedly only end up wrecking it further.
Government is not the solutions to our problems, government is the problem.
Labels: Democrats, Detroit, Economics, obama
Obama as Leviathan
I made
this Obama Leviathan graphic, both with graphic images and
without, based on this
infamous cover to Thomas Hobbes' classic work,
The Leviathan. Alas, the only consistent comment from friends seems to be that they don't initially see 'it' and then when they do I don't hear anything further.
Labels: abortion, government, history, imagery, obama
Immune to hypocrisy, history and anti-trust: the Government
It's hilarious that Tim Geithner can get up and say that some business like AIG is "too big to fail" and convince lawmakers to bail out the preferred business/industry of the day. Businesses becoming too big to fail used to be called control of the market, and subject to the anti-trust laws that mandated their separation. Not central banks of course, but those 'other industries'
such as telephones in 1982. That these companies got so large that they became 'too big to fail' seems, as well, like a failure on the part of government to adequately enforce the already existing anti-trust laws. The government's monopoly over the money supply is beyond question, but when other countries point out the obvious and don't want to keep financing Uncle Sam's perpetual debts, Geithner can talk about a global currency in one breath, saying both that he'd oppose it
but telling others he'd support it.
Such is the madness, the Washington circus.
Labels: bailout, Economics, fiat money, obama
newspapers: mandatory subscriptions
While I was writing the last post, it occurred to me how they could 'save' the newspapers now that we're entering full-fledged socialism: mandatory newspaper subscriptions. Everyone who lives in an area will get taxed the subscription fee for the designated major paper, the tax will get collected, and then given to the newspaper of choice. It'll be done someway in which "government doesn't have control over the paper"... at first, but then morph into the local paper being the functionary arm of the state within a short period. I can already see my liberal relatives rejoicing at the paper being 'saved' and 'jobs' created, and also how great it will be that everyone in their area receives the paper! Colleges already do this, setting up huge distribution bins and taxing everyone for three copies of crappy papers no one reads. Welcome to the revolution, comrades!
Labels: journalism, obama, Pelosi, policy, politics, theory
Obama to release Gitmo detainees inside the U.S.
What could possibly go wrong with this plan? A follow-up from a post from a few days ago.
Labels: foreign policy, obama, policy, terrorists
On Closing Gitmo
So the GOP told us that to close Gitmo would just put terrorists back out in the field. Looks like
they were right. The strange desire to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay stems, it seems, from a very misplaced notion to always embrace one's attackers. It's the basis of a certain left-wing desire to have pure tolerance, and even hidden admiration for, those who hate the West. The left (said as though this amorphous blob of intellectual thought is a coherent, consistent organism) may presume that this will then result in more terrorists being given a nice show trial like they watch on Law and Order. But in reality this will likely mean that a 'no-prisoners' policy will be in effect on the battlefield, a significantly worse outcome.
Labels: foreign policy, leftists, military, obama, policy
Media softening the public to accept cocaine legalization
Proclamations about how the 'drug war' is failing are about as old as time. One wonders if cartels can afford unchecked spending how much it would cost to bankroll some interest groups, lobbying outfits and hollywood producers. As Ted DiBiase taught all us young kids through his theme song as a young WWF fan: "everybody's got a price."
We're told/sold that the war on drugs is lost, that it's a failure, even though it stabilized Columbia. We're told that after legalizing it, the crime will go down, even though as a drug it becomes an irrational desire, an unchecked addiction. We're told/sold that diseases and viruses will vanish because needles will be plentiful and safe. It's almost the same b.s. marketing around abortion and the pill: that sex will be safe and without consequence and everyone's marriages will improve and that human beings will live in harmony with one another. The liberal dreams are always nightmares in reality, and who knows, perhaps we'll be able to watch the disintegration of our communities at an even faster pace if Czar Obama, Caesar of the Ages, either decriminalizes, legitimizes or ends enforcement against hard drugs. By the time kindergartners are shooting up on the playground, Obama will be busy giving 250k speeches on the lecture circuit, so what does he care.
This also demonstrates that the economics of hard drugs, claimed by libertarians that the constricted supply artificially creates the destructive situation where violence flourishes is essentially a completely false premise: more drugs equals more violence. When a commodity is as precious and as desired, no amount of supply is going to stop people from doing whatever it takes to procure it.
Labels: drugs, government, obama, policy
politically incorrect tax cheats
Get an appointment by Obama and your tax cheating is an 'honest mistake' but be
politically unpopular like these folks, and you're going to prison.
Labels: government, obama, taxes
Bailouts and Stimuluses and Messaging
I had the thought that the recent bank bailouts and stimuluses really amount to a new form of corporate welfare - and these new welfare queens are even less worthy than the welfare queens of time past. We get upset when John Thain redecorates his office to the tune of millions, just as we rightly get upset when poverty mama spends her assistance checks on game systems, new shoes and expensive jewelry. Obviously there's a greater moral wrong when the businessman, who is supposed to be disciplined and moral, makes these kind of lapses, but our righteous anger ought to be channeled in such a way as to have a similar welfare reform as we did in 1996 for a corporate welfare reform of 2009 to start allowing companies to fail, and remove the rent-seeking regulations on smaller companies to take up the slack when giants like Sh*ttybank (Citibank) and Skank of America (Bank of America) fall.
Labels: Congress, Economics, messaging, obama, Pelosi
Pardon Rudolph!
As further evidence of how exceedingly mediocre this President is, this topic will cause more outrage among friends than
Bill Ayers did for those on the left.
Eric Robert Rudolph conducted a one-man bombing campaign for political purposes in the 90s. He was captured and now resides in the Federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. Rudolph's bombings, most notably the 1996 Olympic games, killed two. William Ayers
founded and led an entire movement that killed scores more.
Ayers himself is responsible for at least one, and has never spent a day in prison. I would even entertain the concept of some false duality whereby both Ayers and Rudolph were jointly pardoned, as confused and misguided political reactionaries who now disavow their terrorist past, but oh wait, Ayers isn't sorry for his crimes and said he didn't do enough. Regardless, it shows the intellectual cowardice of the right that in its closing moments of power, for at least four years, this issue isn't even on the radar. It also helps that the left-wing donor class is more attuned to making sure that traitors like
Marc Rich are let go, and their monied interests are outraged when pardons aren't issued for those who kill federal agents such as
Leonard Peltier. If Bill Ayers can walk free, then it is a moral outrage that Rudolph is in prison for the rest of his life.
Labels: abortion, Bush, obama
When Social Scientists Lie: Covering up Abortion Reductions
A group "Catholics in Alliance" has joined a variety of pro-Obama enablers to argue that 'social justice' issues are the strongest ways to reduce the incidence of abortion in America. In general, as a broad abstraction, they may be correct. More directly, and more provable, however, is that sensible pro-life state-level restrictions have had an effect on reducing the abortion rate in the country. This is timely because President-elect Obama has promised to make FOCA (The Freedom of Choice Act) his first action upon seizing the Presidency. FOCA will overturn every state-level abortion restriction in the country. Therefore, this issue of what has truly caused the real reductions in abortion is a very charged one.
Joseph Wright attempts to critique Prof. Michael New's studies showing that state-level laws work. Wright fails miserably, and
Dr. New easily dissect Wright's sloppiness and shoddy reasoning. At some point one has to acknowledge that these are not reasonable and rational differences, they are not preferences, rather they are the systemic and deliberate misconstructions of those who seek to increase the number of abortions in the country by enabling a man who will remove everything that has successfully reduced abortion. Because they fight with words makes them no less evil.
Labels: abortion, obama, policy, pro-life, pro-life movement, science
Banned SNL skit & "free speech"
Here's the infamous banned SNL skit. Personally, I stopped watching SNL years ago, and didn't particularly find this skit hilarious. But its topic was so on point that it obviously caused our central Politburo for "truth" to get their minions at NBC to pull the clip. More than that, interestingly, is that they've managed to get it pulled from Youtube and other distribution networks as well. Here is the censorship, here is a world where ideas are dangerous. And where, I ask, is the ACLU or other free speech 'watchdogs'? Nowhere to be found.
Labels: election, humor, obama, politics
Thoughts on beating Obama
Watching the news and reading stories, I have two thoughts on how to deconstruct Barack Hussein Obama:
1. Destroy the brand
As much as I hate the politics of personal destruction, Obama's been a master of it in the past getting his surrogates to unseal a divorce proceeding of a former opponent, Jack Ryan, from many years ago. His stature has been blown up so big, that it just needs one solid cut to make a terminal wound in his brand. He needs something that really has a burnt-tongue aspect to the narrative he's crafted. He's a community organizer? Then show somehow that he cheated a welfare mom. He's a Harvard Law Review editor? Show his legal inexperience. Do what it takes to show that the Obama myth is all hope, and in so doing change people's perceptions.
2. Attack his greatest strength: speeches
Disruptions, like this one where they interrupted his speech, are effective at taking apart that carefully constructed moment. If Republicans actually cared about winning, they'd unplug his teleprompter no matter what it took-- hell, get arrested but just make sure he's seen as the empty suit he is when the teleprompter goes dark. He doesn't know what he's saying, he's just reading the scripts.
Now, having said all this, of course I need to restate that I won't be voting for McCain under any circumstances because of stem cells and amnesty. It's important never to forget that Obama may be awful, but McCain still isn't worth voting for when he has no problem killing kids and keeping the borders open.
Labels: election, obama
Peggy Noonan: Is my man the right one? What if both sides say no?
the best quote: "The economic crisis brings a new question, unarticulated so far but there, and I know because when I mention it to people they go off like rockets. It is: Do you worry that neither of them is up to it? Up to the job in general? Is either Mr. McCain or Mr. Obama actually up to getting us through this and other challenges? I haven’t heard a single person say, "Yes, my guy is the answer." A lot of shrugging is going on out there. This is a read not only on the men but on the moment."
from
Peggy Noonan's "Why It's Getting Mean"
Labels: election, mccain, obama, politics
Cynicism towards Ben Ladner's Obama optimism
It would be too easy to outline the hypocrisy of former AU President Ben Ladner in his recent opinion piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on "
No Reason to be Cynical of Celebrity" in regards to Obama. Ben Ladner spent 11 years ruining American, inflating tuition, running roughshod over the faculty Senate, charging every bill he could to the university and then making sure to cut off his pound of flesh from the body of the University in the form of his severance package. Now he spends his retirement, and the millions he stole from American, on
his 40+ foot boat in South Carolina. I don't like Obama, but at least his hypocrisy is light years less than Ladner's.
Labels: Ben Ladner, election, obama, politics
Sex-ed for Kindergartners
If ever one needed yet another reason not to submit one's children to the horrors of government education,
let Obama's Illinois/Planned Parenthood sex-ed to Kindergartners convince you. The left acts indignant that this could possibly come up, that they would ever support child sex! But yet,
leftists love Alfred Kinsey, who clearly had no problem with this and in fact, encouraged it. Kinsey and his Kinsey Reports, are the foundation for so many of the current bad ideas towards sexuality and sex-ed, and yet criticism of Kinsey is about as likely to appear in the mainstream media as Margaret Sanger's eugenics, or other major truths about big lies.
Labels: education, obama, politics, sex
"Message" a.k.a. Political words that mean even less than political promises
So,
Politico is saying that Obama supporters are worried that his 'message' isn't resonating compared to McCain's. All that McCain seems to have done differently is to choose Sarah Palin, who actually had a discernable record. Funny enough, though McCain's numbers have gone up, typically among Republicans, Obama's have stayed roughly in the same place. What this article fails to note is that neither candidate has a message or any serious vision. Neither one offers a voter any real choice, rather, just two disparate images of 'character' and 'leadership' and 'vague words that mean nothing' in place of "issues." And while Democrats complain about being "defined" in the "messaging" by "Republicans" they forget that Republicans have a natural advantage: they can readily screw over their base, like McCain, and the base will still vote for them! Obama has none of the same flexibility. McCain can talk about gun control, being pro-choice, being pro-union, and raising taxes, and he'll only shave off a point or two but will gain ten. Obama can't deviate on any of the major issues without risking a real revolt: he can't kick big unions, admit that abortion is murder or even admit obvious facts about Israel, race, entitlements, social services or even foreign policy. In terms of the "message", the constraints are not due to Republican chicanery, it's due to the ferocious strength and political acumen of the varied interests on the left. McCain can play the populist and Obama's stuck in a message box held together by his "friends" to always toe the leftist line. No wonder why he's stuck at 45%.
Labels: election, mccain, messaging, obama
The limits to my anger at Republicans
As much as I want to support the Democrats, and as much as the Republicans give me no room for hope that they'll ever get serious about implementing real change at least they're not avowed baby killers. I know some conservatives who have gone so far as to opine about the potential benefits of an Obama Presidency, but consider
these recent insane comments by Nancy Pelosi on abortion, which are clearly a lie. As well, Obama's
refusal to support the Born Alive Infant's Protection Act as reported by the amazing
Jill Stanek. Certainly we can know that these people, the people who would support these things, are never worth associating with until they change their positions. Jill recently posted
the video from a 2000 O'Reilly interview which outlined what the Infant Protection Act would prevent, which really demonstrates how far gone the Democrats have become.
Labels: abortion, Democrats, obama
Deconstructing Obama Excitement
I saw this image from
this pointless IHT article about Obama's running mate. Look at the faces, they're ecstatic. I've met John McCain before, I've met my fair share of celebrities and famous people, and never, never once, has it occurred to me to be quite this excited. And so, with perhaps too much armchair psychology, we ought to say what could motivate one to be this worked up.
Clearly, the moment meeting and touching a famous person can't be this rationally exciting. Otherwise there'd be a business of paying to touch famous people. And it's really not about their fame per se, since many other politicians are famous but people don't react this way, i.e. when people meet Newt Gingrich they faint. And it's not the policies they support since academics and other politicians don't elicit this sort of response. I suspect it really has to do with two issues: media-hype coupled with a certain base sex appeal, and the excitement of later being able to brag to their friends that they met someone famous in the media. What's rare is desired, and what's current and timely is more desired so as to set ourselves as superior to our friends. A silly notion, to be sure, but I'm at a loss to explain this picture any other way.
Thinking about human dynamics and trying to extrapolate some sort of rule:
Subject
1. Must be adored by the media/whatever functions as media, i.e. gossip circle, some sort of social validation
2. Must be desired by the group and individuals within the group, some base sex appeal
3. Must be rare, not around all the time, otherwise gets taken for granted
4. Have a compelling personal story
I think this explains to some small degree why ugly men can date models, why good girls date bad ones, and perhaps how Chicago ad-men managed to make a huge swath of the country settle for a bad candidate for President.
Labels: media, obama, psychology
Obama's Infanticide Votes
We live on borrowed time. Abortion in this country is so depraved that it's killing children outside of the womb, and our "leaders" are justifying the madness and not working for truth. God bless Rick Warren for giving the candidates the chance to confront the slaughter in our midst, though it's worth pointing out that McCain's answer indicts
himself and the slaughter of the unborn embryos lost to "science." It's interesting that his campaign site is
trying hard to hide this fact.
Jill Stanek's fabulous blog, my favorite one in the pro-life movement, has been covering this scandal and covering it perfectly.
Labels: abortion, mccain, obama
Obama's Abortion Hypocrisy and outright lies
On the only real political issue: abortion, Obama couldn't have less leadership or principles. Outside of the fact that
he lies about his opposition to the Born-Alive act, or
deflects the most basic abortion question,
he now claims that abortions haven't gone down under Bush,
erroneously. Not to mention that
he's wrong, or that
Dr. Michael New shows what really reduces abortion rates, the media fails to point out that, if this is true, it represents the failure of both Emergency Contraceptives and RU-486, both legalized and highly promoted within that time frame, to reduce the abortion rate as promised. The hypocrisy is amazing. I guess facts, truth and logic are above Obama's "pay grade" as well. As someone not paid at all for this, it's not above mine.
Labels: abortion, obama
President Hillary further undermined by media bias?
Granted, I'm no fan of Hillary Clinton, but I do have to say that the media was incredibly biased in favor of Obama. They repeatedly wrote Hillary off, and cast her aside. Which, from a certain point of view, was entertaining because of how often the media does it to the right. Nevertheless, the media bias covering up John Edwards' love-child
might have had a secondary motive-- to drive votes away from Hillary? Jill Stanek is where I read it first. Will we call this a vast-left-wing-media conspiracy? At least in this case she'd be right in suspecting it.
Labels: election, hillary, media, media bias, obama
McCain revealed, again.
So
John McCain isn't as conservative as we were told? Color me shocked! That the party would lie to conservatives? Not possible! On every key issue:
guns,
God,
babies,
taxes, John McCain is anathema to the core constituencies of the party. Which may mean that
he polls well in very generic national polls, but who will be stumping for McCain on election day,
other than Sam Brownback? People within the GOP hitched their star to McCain's wagon and we may see the results in the fall. Personally, I think very large, near huge portions of the GOP base of donors, activists, academics and intellectuals are tired of the lies, tired of the excuses and fed up with broken promises. McCain's a singular man, a maverick and has a great personal story, but people want to vote on issues and feel as though they can get results on those issues. We're more policy oriented than a generic feel-good candidate, because we've learned that those kind of leaders frankly can't be trusted to deliver.
Labels: election, mccain, obama, politics
Convenient talk about "Responsibility"; political reality in black and white
Obama is
telling blacks to accept responsibility,
further jeopardizing his
testicles to Jesse Jackson. But the political cynic in me wonders if this isn't just a calculated move to appeal to moderate whites, trying to jam against the idea of Obama as facilitating all the negative traits of black subculture: crime, violence, sex. Obama can give these kind of speeches knowing that they don't risk the black vote for him, and give him the chance to appeal to suburban whites and seem like a real "leader." But as Mike Rothfeld pointed out to me many years ago, a real leader is one who has followers, and who has opposition. Who is opposed to telling blacks to be responsible? Oh, that's right, conveniently Jesse Jackson. It seems a little too constructed, a little too convenient. A real statement that would have demonstrated real leadership by Obama would be to say something unique, something truly provocative. Pointing out the tragic abortion rate within the black community would have been a potential point of leadership, or the racist roots of Planned Parenthood.
Labels: blacks, leadership, obama
Obama's Abortions and Pro-Life Impotence
This article on LifeNews shows that the Obama Presidency will be a dark one indeed,
with an almost immediate repeal of all the laws and regulations pro-lifers have worked so hard to pass in what's become known as the 'incrementalist' strategy in a post-
Casey environment. If this happens, the pro-life camp will place blame in two main directions. The first group, the National Right to Life crowd (whom I affectionately like to call "National Right to Lose" for the political and campaign acumen), will say that the pro-life absolutists split the pro-life vote, confused pro-life voters and made the perfect the enemy of the good. The other crowd will point right back at the other, this crowd led predominantly by American Life League (which to be fair to NRLC, you could call "National Right to Not Know What You're Doing") and say that all those years permitting abortions and not agitating for an outright ban caused this massive defeat in the first place. It's an interesting, and ultimately, tautological proposition-- we'll never know the answer either way. However the NRLC crowd needs to be less arrogant, and the ALL crowd needs to be more accomodating, and if they work together maybe they could actually win some battles, some Senate races, or some things that matter. There are many things one can say about the pro-life movement, but political solvency is never one of them. And having met a few campaign hacks, I've never met one that respected or feared the pro-life vote or movement. That's gotta change if we're ever going to get serious about saving babies. This thinking was part of the plan I wrote for Students for Life of America to expand the movement of college pro-lifers through a field program and serious office, which they've done quite well with after I left. But theirs is a small, but critical, part of a countermovement that needs a radical transformation and renaissance. The major donors who finance pro-life activity feel tapped out, besieged, and frustrated by their previous gifts, but if Obama wins and the battles turn to the states-- a new degree of commitment will be needed from the young, from those at non-profits, and most especially from those who have the capacity to make the magic happen.
Meanwhile,
Satan over at the ACLU, oh I meant
Nadine Strossen whom I sometimes confuse for the dark lord, has been
raising $335 million to put into red states so that when Obama wins, the ACLU can continue its jihad against all things good. I barely need to mention that, as well, if Universal Healthcare brings about subsidized socialized abortions, we'll see a dramatic increase in the abortion rate. The pro-life movement is about to pay dearly for its relationship with Bush which gave them a great deal of access but a complete lack of results, and its decision to keep using the same political tactics.
Labels: ACLU, ALL, movement, Nadine Strossen, NRLC, obama, pro-life
