Friday, July 13, 2012

Sine Qua Non


If you need an example of the pot-calling-the-kettle-African-American strategy of the R party, and of their Rominee in particular, look no further than this video. This, from the man who lies constantly, who's barely uttered a word about Barack Obama that's not demonstrably false. And, as more information comes out, even the above ad turns falser and falser, like the Marshall family's chests. Over time. It's Rovomcconnellboehnerhannitianism par excellence: accuse Ds of doing what you've been doing since day one, while expressing Louisrenaultian outrage.

If Obama fudges, Rominee packs fudge...

As I've said many times, even though it appears to be effective, I don't much like the line of attack on Bain. To me, the point is that what Mitt did there has nothing, zero, to do with how a president might manage the economy. (As the President just said.) And the more important point is what the budget that The Rominee loves will do to the economy.

As response to the above ad, I think the Obama campaign needs to make ads listing the lies of Romney, and throwing the line back at him: America expects more from a president.

Only problem is, it'd take way more than thirty seconds. Maybe a series, lasting from now till November. That'd cover about half of 'em. (Turns out, there is such an ad, but since it lasts longer than thirty seconds, it'll never be on TV.)

Related, here's an opinion piece by a conservative writer which exemplifies the sort of false equivalency that people apply to Obama and Romney:

Mitt Romney's unusually frequent flip-flops, shameless misrepresentations of the truth, and brazen pandering has caused some pundits to marvel at how dishonorable he is. "How did this happen?" Scott Galupo asks. "How did we come to this pass, where a man like Mitt Romney -- whose candidacy represents a breathtakingly cynical, borderline nihilistic pursuit of power on behalf of a tiny sliver of the population -- sits within striking distance of the highest office in the land?"

I won't defend the Republican nominee. But I am a bit confused by all the folks who aren't as disgusted by President Obama's performance on these metrics. This is, after all, a man who misrepresented his core to the electorate in 2008, constantly asserting that systemic reform would be his first priority in Washington, D.C., only to arrive in the White House and work within the system.

Admitting that Romney's lies are shameless and brazen and dishonorable (he links to another conservative who calls Rominee "loathsome"), he moves on fast -- nothing to see here -- and comes up with a list of Obama's transgressions which he suggests are equivalent. (Wow! "... worked within the system." The monster!!) They're not. Apples and... really small apples. Obama made some unfulfilled promises, all right, but he was thwarted at every turn when he tried to carry them out. Closing Gitmo is frequently cited, for example, as an Obama lie. But it was Congress -- Rs, mostly, of course -- that refused to allow it; which hardly makes it a lie, or in any way comparable to deliberately lying about what is already known. And so it goes.

I'm not saying Obama doesn't play footsie with the truth; and I agree with Friedersdorf that we've gotten pretty blasé about what we accept from politicians in terms of honesty. But I see enormous orders of magnitude of difference between the things that Obama has done or not done, said or not said, and what The Rominee says daily: if the former sometimes stretches the truth, or has failed to pull off what he said he would, the latter takes the truth and smothers it, boils it, turns it into something unrecognizable, and feeds it back as its opposite, to be gobbled up by Foxified R voters like chocolate pudding, with which it shares certain features, from a distance, and absent the senses of taste or smell.


12 comments:

  1. Ah Sid, so much to choose from,
    OK, they say there's no such thang as a stupid question, BUTTTTT
    I don't get the whole "Pot calling the Kettle" Thang,
    Isn't Pot GREEN?
    OK, it gets a little brown if it's past its prime, or sometimes even yellow...
    And must be the Pot, cause I could have sworn there was a DemoKKKrat House and Senate for the first 2 years of EICOTUS's rain, when he could have Closed Gitmo/Pulled out of Michelle/Iraq/Afghanistan bla bla bla.
    And Kudo's for the "Packs Fudge" non-sequitor, which is still as funny as when I first heard it in 1972...
    Guess you really do age backwards as you get older...

    Frank "Still waiting for names of the "5 elected Black Officials" you know...
    Umm and "Chief Cook & Bottle Washer" at your VFW doesn't count.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I gave you Norm Rice, Frankie. You'll have to work for the rest. But, since I've never lied here, they're there for the finding.

    (Hint: school boards, city councils, county councils...)

    But, as usual, you ignore the point of the post; probably because, as usual, it's irrefutable.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Point?*
    besides the one on yo' Haid'?...
    That y'all talk a big game, color-blind, bla bla bla, some of your best Black Elected Official Friends you don't the names of live only 20 miles from you...
    Out of 159 State Legislators, Governor, Lt Governor, Surpreme Court Judges,
    your state has ONE lonely Brother,
    who I already forgot his name, but that you probably never knew in the first place...
    While MY Redneck State has TWO just on the Surpreme Court, FOUR in Congress, and 49 in the State legislatures, for a grand total of....
    umm carry the two,
    FIFTY FIVE PEOPLES of COLOR in elected Orifices.
    thats 55 to 1 if you're keepin score.
    Of course you make up for it with a State Prison System thats 20% African American..

    Frank "Im a very good driver" Drackman

    *Your State is more racist than mine

    ReplyDelete
  4. Frank,

    Georgia is 27.5% black, whereas Washington state is 3.1% (http://www.ipoaa.com/us_black_population.htm). Maybe you should go back to perseverating about Gitmo or Ted Kennedy.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hmmm 3.1%???
    Which makes the 0.3% Afro-Americans in your Legislature/Court/Governor and 20% in your State Prisons even more embar-ass-ing..
    I know, I know, you know 5 guys, and you had a black mayor 20 years ago, who lost in the Semi-finals to some Average White Guy...
    I mean if Georgia was as racist as you'se guys we'd have to incarcerate 189% of the Black Population, which is hard to do...

    Frank

    and how can you "Prove you're not a robot" merely by typing some random letters/numbers? I mean even the obsolete T1000 in "The Terminator) had infrared/iris scan technology, and would easily slip through...

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think we're all sick of "FRANK" I know I am.....Pat

    ReplyDelete
  7. ...and would easily slip through...

    Which explains a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Well, doc, you might not think Bain has much to do with how Romney will act as POTUS, but the fact is that he does. He doesn't say much about his tenure as gov, because the less said about that, the better as far as he's concerned. Nope, it was good ole Bain Capital he pointed to. Until now, when one of two things must be true. He either was in charge until 2002, which means he gets to own all the decisions made until that time, and which he now would very much like to disavow. Or the SEC filings were fraudulent, which has its own set of ramifications.
    And as Frank so nicely demonstrates, Repugs have the attention span of fleas when it comes to something they'd rather not talk about, but are bulldogs when they have a nice shiny bject that they think proves something vaguely sinister about, well...something. Even if one were to stipulate that the number of black elected officials demonstrated racism in Washington state, it has zero relevance to Mitt's mendacity, the topic de jour. And yet that discussion has been neatly sidetracked to deal with frank's idiocy. Kind of the political process writ large for the last twenty years.
    But now they've got Mitt dead to rights, if the D's show some backbone and the media can be persuaded to follow up. It's a story that's easy enough for frank to understand, if his attention span allowed.

    Regards

    Painless

    ReplyDelete
  9. It's not that I don't think Romney at Bain is relevant; and, especially added to the rest of the data suggesting he's a nasty guy, it's part of a picture of someone who doesn't care much about the effect of his actions on regular folk. It's just that I think the more relevant points are that his so-called business experience has nothing to do with running an economy, and that the budget he supports will ruin the country.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Of course, it's more relevant. But it's a way too sophisticated argument to be making to the general electorate. Or to the media types, which is kinda the same thing. Unless there's blood in the water (doesn't much matter whose), there'll be about zero interest in the story. How many insightful stories have you seen so far on the Ryan budget? How many voters do you think have any idea what's even in it? Maybe not zero, but close enough.
    But if they manage to hang Bain around his neck, you've got a framework from which to explore the budget priorities he does support.
    And if his continued mendacity bothers you as much as it does me, if the meme catches hold that he is, in fact, a liar, then everything he says between now and election day is going to get framed that way. Exactly the way it was applied to Gore in 2000, but this time it will be richly deserved. And satisfying to watch, I might add.

    Painless

    ReplyDelete
  11. Completely agree. And I think I've written more here about Romney's pathological lying (and my amazement that conservatives aren't more upset about it) more than any other subject. Working on another one as we type.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Does the number of African Americans filling elected positions actually have anything to do with racism or more to do with the number of Black candidates seeking office?
    If < 50% of the US Senate is female, does that reflect gender bias (or sexism) given that 50% of the USA is female? (There are 17 of 100 senators that are women.)
    DD

    ReplyDelete

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