Jon Lowder

Why They Assume We're Stupid

You ever wonder why politicians and their "strategists" continue to use tactics and schemes that have only the thinnest connection to truth or reality?  I'll tell you why; it's because there are enough people ready to believe the BS that it's worth their while to do it.  In other words, enough of us are dumb or naive enough to believe it that they know they'll lock up enough votes to make it worth their time and effort to sling this hash.

You wonder what I'm talking about?  Right now the easy examples involve Barack Obama.  It's not news that some of the Fox-wannabes and Limbaugh lites have been playing with his middle name (Hussein) for effect, or that they're playing to the xenophobic segment of the population by painting him as some sort of Muslim mole in the supposedly Christian US.  Now some dope has concocted an email that purports to be from syndicated columnist Maureen Dowd and floats all kinds of crazy accusations about Obama's online fundraising coming mostly from places in the Middle East, like Iran and Saudi Arabia.  The email has been debunked, but I guarantee you that those that want to believe it will, and they will spread it like a virus.

Why do I think this is true?  Because I've been in my barbershop and heard a guy say, in all seriousness, that if Obama wins we'll be kneeling toward Mecca in no time.  I've heard, repeatedly, that ours is a Christian nation and that a Muslim should not be elected president.  It's tempting to argue with people about the accuracy of calling our nation a Christian nation (I think it would be news to the Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, atheist and "other" citizens of the United States), to explain that many of our founding fathers were not Christian (try explaining what a Deist is to someone), but when you get right down to it these folks don't care.  They are predisposed to believe this crap, and they swallow it whole and then regurgitate it to anyone who will listen.

And no this phenomenon is not unique to the red-meat conservatives.  You can bet that there is and will continue to be plenty of flimsy poop being flung at McCain that the left wingnuts will gladly wallow in and share.  And that my friend is the problem.  Both sides know that we are bored by the "issues", that we're drawn like moths to a flame to stories that prove that the one we oppose is somehow alien, is not one of us, and thus must be feared and beaten at all costs.  And the media?  They love it because they get to sell advertising, so their job is to simply facilitate the process and highlight the ludicrous.

All of this is nothing new and will continue long after the elections in November.  Thankfully, though, the election will at least end the high political "season" and we can get back to pondering things like Janet Jackson's nipple.   

Joltin' Joe Asked to Go

A bunch of "netroots" folks have submitted a petition, signed by 43,000 people, to the Senate Democratic Steering Committee asking them to strip Senator Joe Lieberman of his rank and committee chairmanship before Congress convenes in 2009.  Essentially I think they want the Democratic party to label Joltin' Joe a traitor for, among other sins, backing McCain.  From the website:

We CANNOT tolerate a leader of the Senate Democratic Caucus who supports George Bush and McCain's War in Iraq. We CANNOT tolerate a Democratic chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee who endorses and stumps for McCain. We call on the Senate Democratic Steering Committee to strip Joe Lieberman of his chairmanship and his leadership role.

There's going to be a show tomorrow morning near the Russell office building.  Since DC is typically as quiet as a church this time of year there shouldn't be much else going on there tomorrow.

It doesn't seem so long ago that Lieberman was being hailed for his bipartisan stances. 

Denver in August

I received an email from my Mom which contained a forwarded message from the Obama campaign.  She was in Denver last week and her opinion of the city seems to be that it is the barf of the Mountain West that you must hold your nose and pass through as quickly as possible to get to the vast, beautiful expanses of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and parts of Colorado not named after a country music singer.  It's also apparent that she might be willing to hold her nose long enough to experience Obama-palooza. - Correction: upon re-reading her email she says she'd rather repeat the second grade than experience a political convention.  We're in agreement. Here's the email she was sent:

From: David Plouffe, BarackObama.com
Date: Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 1:10 PM
Subject: Big announcement
To: Rachael

Rachael --

I wanted you to be the first to hear the news.

At the Democratic National Convention next month, we're going to kick off the general election with an event that opens up the political process the same way we've opened it up throughout this campaign.

Barack has made it clear that this is your convention, not his.

On Thursday, August 28th, he's scheduled to formally accept the Democratic nomination in a speech at the convention hall in front of the assembled delegates.

Instead, Barack will leave the convention hall and join more than 75,000 people for a huge, free, open-air event where he will deliver his acceptance speech to the American people.

It's going to be an amazing event, and Barack would like you to join him. Free tickets will become available as the date approaches, but we've reserved a special place for a few of the people who brought us this far and who continue to drive this campaign.

If you make a donation of $5 or more between now and midnight on July 31st, you could be one of 10 supporters chosen to fly to Denver and spend two days and nights at the convention, meet Barack backstage, and watch his acceptance speech in person. Each of the ten supporters who are selected will be able to bring one guest to join them.

Make a donation now and you could have a front row seat to history:

https://donate.barackobama.com/demconvention

We'll follow up with more details on this and other convention activities as we get closer, but please take a moment and pass this note to someone you know who might like to be there.

It will be an event you'll never forget.

Thank you,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

This all sounded kind of like a typical faux-love-in that today's politicians pass off as populism until I read this on Fec's blog:

From Leslie Wayne at the NYT:

“Everything that the Democrats did got off to a late start,” said Peggy Beck, a co-owner of Three Tomatoes Catering. “It was such an ordeal. We’ve jumped through hoops and hoops to bid on their stuff, and we had to have certain color food so the plates would be colorful.” In the end, the parties that she had been bidding on were canceled to save money. “This was some of the silliest stuff ever,” she added.

From the Denver Post:

Leasing the Pepsi Center for the seven weeks of construction, the week of the convention and the remaining two weeks of reconstruction, means $6.5 million for Kroenke.

(That’s $1.5 million more than the host committee for the Republicans is raising to pay rent for the Xcel Energy Center in Minneapolis-St. Paul, according to The Associated Press.)

The tree huggers are running amok:

The DNCC wants garbage sent to landfills trimmed to a spartan 15 percent, all with the aim of making the 2008 nominating event the greenest ever, one that produces virtually no waste and that offsets most of the carbon its jet-setting delegates produce - all on a volunteer basis.

Just like some people say they stay in campgrounds to get closer to nature when really they're just too cheap to pay for a hotel, I think perhaps the DNC is trying to save a few sawbucks and maybe even reach their "green" quota by throwing a big outdoor shindig with next to no amenities and pass it off as an open-air political concert that only their man could pull off.  Of course, I'm a cynic.

Fair warning to the Obama folks:  Mom has a wonderful heart and she tends to back politicians who are imminently more appealing than the average and yet somehow manage to lose.  The list is long, and going purely off of memory (Mom will correct me if I'm wrong):

• '68 Humphrey
• '72 McGovern
• '76 Carter
• '80 Anderson and then a switch to Bush I in an effort to thwart Darth Reagan. She even volunteered for Bush's campaign. I always admired her for this bit of pragmatism.
• '84 Mondale
• '88 Hart and then Dukakis after Hart was caught with his pants down.
• '92 Clinton
• '96 Clinton again, but grudgingly
• '00 Gore
• '04 Kerry

If you're keeping score that's a 3-7 record.  Personally I hope she goes 4-7 since I definitely prefer Obama to McCain, but I'm also suspicious of my rationale for wanting Obama.  Basically it comes down to this: I'd like to have a President who doesn't make me cringe every time he speaks in public, someone who is a dynamic orator.  McCain's not as bad as Bush (who is?), but he's no Reagan.  I'm suspicious of this motivation on my part because in 2000 I was looking forward to having a President who wasn't the subject of BJ jokes. In other words my core motivations are very shallow, just like 98% of everyone else who votes. Thankfully I have more info at my fingertips this year thanks to Al Gore's internet, and based on what I've read and heard so far I also like Obama's stated policies better than McCain's, which is a relief.

I'm still not going to Denver, though.  Nothing makes me queasier than a bunch of politicians and their groupies all gathered together to gaze at their navels.

The Human Network's Future

An interesting presentation titled Hyperpolitics, American Style given at Personal Democracy Forum on June 24, 2008, provides some interesting factoids about human networking, past, present and future.  Full video below, but first some interesting data shared during the presentation:

• Half of all people on earth have mobile phones
• It took one decade to go from 50% of people not having phones, period, to 50% having a mobile phone
• It took one decade to get to 1 billion mobile users
• It took four years to get to 2 billion mobile users
• It took 18 months to get to 3 billion mobile users
• Some time in 2010-2011 there will be 5.1 billion mobile users (75% of humanity)
• 43 billion text messages were sent last year

Here's the video:

"Republicans pretend to be conservative every day"

One of my favorite quotes of the last, well, 12 hours is this from Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal:

"This was a real wakeup call for us," someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. "We can't let the Democrats take our issues." And those issues would be? "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives," he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

I had lunch with Fec on Wednesday and he said the exact same thing.  In fact he's said the exact same thing every time we've had lunch, which explains his disenfranchisement -illusionment. 

I've known a few true conservatives in my time and while the most strident of them often scare me, I find that I get along really well with them because they're predictable.  I know exactly where they stand and I know that they will consistently support their causes.  Ironically I know I scare the bejeezus out of them because I often change my mind (they call me wishy-washy) and I can be swayed by effective argument.  That's a no-no to the strident on the left and the right.

For the record I usually fear the strident liberals more than the devout conservatives.  Mainly it's because I believe that the conservatives know, and admit, that they'd shoot me for the cause if necessary, but the liberals have no idea that when push comes to shove they'd not only shoot me but burn me in effigy to make sure everyone gets the point.  They'd only realize it when they awake from their trance wearing a bloody shirt and reeking of gasoline, mumbling something about "loving everyone but sometimes sacrifice is necessary for the good of all man."

Will There Be Any Actual TV Shows on Tonight?

As I posted earlier I'm kind of laid up nursing a bum knee so I've been reclining on the couch with my leg iced and elevated, a laptop on my, er, lap, and a TV on in the background.  If I didn't already know that tomorrow is North Carolina's primary then I would have figured it out pretty quickly.  I don't think I've seen a commercial that wasn't paid for by one campaign or another all day, and I'm beginning to wonder if Coke's gone out of business.  I'm also thinking that tonight we're going to have at least 20 minutes of political ads for every 40 minutes of actual TV programming.

My favorite ad so far is one co-sponsored by three Yadkin County dudes and though it's low-tech it's high on the scare tactic meter.  Picture a black screen with white text scrolling and it says things like (I'm paraphrasing here because I can't find the ad online): "English is NOT the official language of Yadkin County" and "Sectarian prayer is NOT allowed in Yadkin County" and "Illegal immigration is uncontrolled in Yadkin County", etc.  I'm thinking these cats represent the progressive ticket and are looking to align themselves with Obama's campaign for change. 

In looking for the ad online I did find an article on the Yadkin Ripple website that says that a county commissioner running for reelection is going to file a complaint against a group that is running an ad in support of sectarian prayer at commission meetings.  Hmm, combining God and government.  Works in Iran, why not Yadkin County?

Pigs Flying, Snowballs in Hell

I'm shocked, SHOCKED, to read an article that has me vociferously agreeing with my very own Congress Critter Virginia Foxx.  Go get 'em Ms. Foxx.

I wonder if Congresswoman Foxx has read this little 'ol blog of mine. If so and if she's also read BlueNC and is still willing to co-sponsor the Blogger Protection Act then I have to give her a lot of credit for putting principles before what I'd expect is a little bit of disdain for the likes of me and others who snipe at her while sitting at home in our sweats, hammering out inane musings on our PCs.

Can We Just Fast Forward to November 4? Please?

I had lunch on Tuesday with a friend who shall remain anonymous to protect his identity.  He urged me to blog more about big issues like the war, our country's moronic leadership and all the illegal immigrants flooding our border from Canada.  Said I have an informed opinion and, besides, it'd do great things for my traffic.  Of course all my friends and family have told me it bores them silly when I write about such things and I think it's because they know I don't know squat about spit.  But since ignorance has never stopped me before I guess I'll give it a whirl.  Here goes.

Can we please, please, please just skip forward to November 4, 2008 and then just go right to inauguration day 2009?  At this point we've whittled our prospects for a new president down to four people who can't possibly be any worse than what we've got and the differences between the four are essentially the same as the difference between a Honda Accord and a Toyota Camry.  Slightly different body, pretty close to the same price and about as exciting as oatmeal.

Personally I'd least like to see Huckabee ascend to the throne that King George II is abdicating if only because I'm sick and tired of hearing Onward Christian Soldiers.  Yes, yes, yes we're fighting a war but for God's sake it's not the Crusades no matter what the Bible-thumping nimrods like Cal Thomas think.  Honestly I almost don't care what else Huckabee thinks, I just don't want to spend even one more day with a President who thinks he's there due to divine intervention. Think I'm exaggerating? Here's what his website says: "My faith is my life - it defines me. My faith doesn't influence my decisions, it drives them."  I think we've had about enough of that.

I'd have to put Clinton as my next-to-last pick.  Why?   I think she's just as obstinate as King George II and maybe even less likely to say the words, "Sorry I was mistaken."  We've had plenty of stiff-lipped resoluteness over the last seven years and look where it's gotten us. 

That leaves me with Obama and McCain.  Eh.

We have all kinds of big issues facing us (crappy economy, crappy health care system, crappy foreign policy, etc.) but I find myself thinking that really all I want is for our next president to restore our good name and start to rebuild our honor.  I find it disturbingly ironic that when King George II was elected it was seen as a way to lift the Presidency out of the moral gutter that Clinton had dragged us in.  Maybe without 9/11 we'd have simply had four or eight years of a president who really didn't do much of consequence but ran really well organized meetings.  Maybe God would have merely been invoked in King George II's great campaign to further redistribute our booty to his silver spoon cohorts rather than in his campaign to smite the infidels sitting on top of his oil fields thumbing their noses at his daddy.  We'll never know since fate conspired to punish us for our hanging chads.  Did you ever think we'd get to the point where someone could look at Clinton's, uh, indiscretions and say things like "At least all he did was diddle the intern, it's not like he blew up the Middle East or anything?"

Since there's no use crying over spilled milk I guess the best we can do is hope that we get through this year without the King doing too much more harm before our next "president" can come in to start reminding the world that we aren't all a bunch of torturing, incompetent bureaucrats who leave their own people to die and fester in swamped cities while we do a fly-by.   We need someone to remind the world of all the good that we've done and that we continue to do.

So can we just fast forward 10 months and be done with it?  Whether it's Senator McCain, former Arkansas Governor Huckabee, Senator Obama or Senator Clinton...oh man we're screwed.

Eelymosynary?

Ed Cone channeled George Will in the comments on one of his own blog posts.  The post yesterday was about John Edwards withdrawing from the Democratic presidential campaign and it attracted Ed's usual crowd of commentors, a few of whom began questioning Edwards' championing of the poor (i.e. he's a rich hypocrite) and others who defended him.  Anyway, here's an excerpt from Ed's comment that had me running to my dictionary (okay, looking it up on Dictionary.com):

Poverty itself demands structural approaches, beyond any eelymosynary remedies applied to individuals or small groups. (Emphasis mine)

I don't know what John Edwards gives to charity. I don't think he has to give most of his money away, certainly at this point in his life and his children's lives, to be considered charitable or to show genuine concern.

But his message as a politician is more about addressing poverty and its structural causes than proclaiming himself the charity champion.

I tried looking up eelymosynary but I think Ed misspelled it because Dictionary.com didn't find it but did suggest eleemosynary, an adjective which is defined as "of or pertaining to alms, charity, or charitable donations; charitable."  I can't hold this one against Ed though since I can't pronounce the word, much less spell it.

Anyone who's read George Will more than once will recognize the phenomenon of having to keep a dictionary handy in order to wade through the article/editorial.  I always felt this was a weakness of his since the point in his line of work (columnist) is to effectively argue an issue, not show off his vocabulary.  If you require your readers to consult a dictionary you aren't really communicating are you?  In other words whenever I read the guy I feel like writing him and telling him "We all know you're that kid who was always the smartest in the class, or at least sounded like the smartest kid in the class, so quit showing off and tell us what you think in terms that more than 2% of the population understands."

Anyway, Ed rarely whips out the Willian phrasing so he's actually a very effective communicator.  This was a classic though.

American Idiots

Driving to a lunch meeting today I tuned the car radio to the local public radio station and one of the topics being covered was the upcoming Democratic primary in South Carolina.  The show's host was interviewing an editor of a South Carolina newspaper about poll results showing Obama was ahead of Clinton in the polls, and how Obama was surprisingly popular with women, but that what really showed through was that Obama was popular with young men and women.  In other words he owns the young voters.  Blah, blah, blah. 

What really caught my attention and almost caused me to run off the road was when the host asked about John Edwards.  The editor said that Edwards was popular with issues-oriented Democrats, but that not enough of those existed to help him win.  Further, he said that the average Democratic voter was more focused on candidates' images (morals?) than on their stances on specific issues.  So even though Edwards was the first candidate to offer any substantive proposals for things like health care reform it wouldn't do him any good in getting elected.

Sadly I think the editor was right.   Average Americans just don't seem to give a rat's ass about issues outside their immediate daily lives.  It's not that we're all stupid it's just that most of this stuff is boring and we have so much going on in our lives that if we're given the choice between watching American Idol while sucking down a couple of adult beverages or trying to wrap our brains around some big-picture economic policy I think most of us opt for killing brain cells.

On the other hand maybe more of us would pay attention to these big issues if they were actually communicated to us in ways that are digestible.  Perhaps someone could put together a scorecard that says something like, "On health care Obama believes this, Clinton believes that, Edwards this; on raising the minimum wage Obama says this, Clinton that and Edwards this, etc."  But no, what we get from our esteemed Fourth Estate is akin to what the sports pages give us in the run up to the Kentucky Derby.  "Clinton looks good because exit polls in Vermont showed that left handed feminists with moles on their left buttocks liked her so she ought to do well in parts of Florida."  Sounds a lot like "The filly Absurd is going off at 2-1 based on her last run at Aqueduct which has a similar track to the one in tomorrow's race" doesn't it?

I'm not the only one who thinks the press has botched their political coverage.  Matt Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone:

This 2008 presidential race looked interesting once, a thrillingly up-for-grabs affair in which real issues and real ground-up voter anger threatened to wrest control of America's politics from the Washington Brahmins who usually puppeteer this process from afar. And while the end result in Iowa — a historic and inspirational Obama victory, coupled with a hilariously satisfying behind-the-woodshed third-place ass-whipping for status quo gorgon Hillary Clinton — was compelling, the media has done its best to turn a once-promising race into an idiotic exchange of Nerf-insults, delivered at rah-rah campaign events utterly indistinguishable from scholastic pep rallies. "If there's policy in this race," one veteran campaign reporter tells me with a sad laugh, "I haven't noticed it."

And while it's tempting to blame the candidates, deep in my black journalist's heart I know it isn't all their fault.

We did this. The press. America tried to give us a real race, and we turned it into a bag of shit, just in the nick of time.

Actually I think Taibbi should include we average Americans in the blame game.  If we demanded better coverage of the issues from our media, if we rewarded smart stories about the issues with our attention then maybe the media would deliver it.  Sure we're all tired after a long days work and yes it's easier to mindlessly watch crap like American Idol, but that doesn't mean we couldn't tune in for a half hour of informative television about something that will affect us for the next four years or more.

But it's a kind of chicken and egg thing isn't it?  You could argue that the reason we aren't more engaged is because the best the media can offer us is Tim Russert and company, or you could argue that the media would give us more informative programming if we'd show that we'd consume it.  Whatever.

Actually we might already have a solution (or two) at our fingertips: Comedy Central.  With its "news parodies" The Daily Show and The Colbert Report the network that gave us South Park is also giving us the only television that comes close to covering the issues.  By skewering the blowhards on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC and taking the self-centered politicians to the woodshed on a regular basis these shows unwittingly educate us in the process.  So I guess my little rant here is really worthless.  Just listen to the other Jon and we'll be OK, because if you don't we might just end up with another Bush.

Here's a little Daily Show sample to enjoy over the weekend: