by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
“Silence is argument carried out by other means.” – Che Guevara
“Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.”
– “The Sound of Silence”, by Simon & Garfunkel, lyrics by Paul Simon
“Darkness isn’t the opposite of light, it is simply its absence.” – Terry Pratchett
“In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.” – Henry David Thoreau
Just as darkness is the absence of light, silence is an absence. We’ve considered the word and the image as propaganda up to this point, so let us pause to consider their antithesis as a form of propaganda. The phrase “[t]he only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” is often attributed to 18th Century Irish born English statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke, although what he actually wrote in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents was that “when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Regardless of the apocryphal attribution, the quote goes right to the heart of the issue of silence being a form of propaganda. Like most tactics of propaganda, silence has multiple forms and uses. Let us examine some of these variations on a theme.
What is “silence”? According to Webster’s it is:
silence \ˈsī-lən(t)s\, n.,
1: forbearance from speech or noise : muteness —often used interjectionally
2: absence of sound or noise : stillness
These are the common meanings of silence that automatically leap to mind when one reads the word, but more to the point in discussing propaganda, we need to consider the full definition of the word and even enhance it a little bit. Consider the third meaning of the word “silence” . . .
3: absence of mention: a : oblivion, obscurity b : secrecy
With this fuller definition, it becomes clear that silence is more than the absence of sound or stillness. For discussion of propaganda, let us use an expanded specialized definition to have silence mean not just the absence of sound, but rather the absence of information. All propaganda is aimed at shaping the flow and content of information. With this expanded definition, we can see the broader scope of silence as a propaganda tactic. As you will see, this can lead to an interesting contradiction.
The first use of silence as a tactic is what you’d expect and the traditional definition of silence: the “No Comment” maneuver. You see this all the time coming from Hollywood and the entertainment industry as well as in the political arena. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t and this is dependent upon a variety of factors. The public’s perception of the speaker, the relative severity and the public or private nature of the topic not being discussed, any associated value loading that can go with a scandal, how amenable to obscuration or obviation is the topic in general and are there any related topics currently drawing the public’s attention that may either attract or detract attention are some of the mitigating factors that influence how well playing the “No Comment” card will work out. Let us consider a couple of examples from both the entertainment and political realms and why or why not they succeeded.
Movie stars are well known (or not) for their scandals (real or imagined) popping up from time to time in the tabloid press. Very often, attempts to mitigate the damage of an embarrassing disclosure do more harm than good. An example of this is the current Kristen Stewart/Robert Pattinson/Rupert Sanders story. After photos of Stewart and Sanders (a married man with children) surfaced, naturally her relationship with her Twilight co-star Pattinson became somewhat complicated. In an effort to mitigate the damage, Stewart made a very public apology to Pattinson. This effort backfired as she caught criticism for everything ranging from the public nature of what most would consider a private message to the content for not being apologetic enough concerning the impact on Sander’s marriage and children to the impact the negative press would have on the forthcoming installment of the Twilight series. This in turn led to speculation that the studio might be reconsidering her for future roles as well as much distress among the Twilight fans. To complete this study in contrasts, consider the recent development in this story where Stewart (possibly after taking advice from her former co-star and actress/director well acquainted with the silence strategy, Jodie Foster) is now refusing to answer questions about her and Pattinson’s relationship.
In the political arena, silence is playing a larger part than usual in the Presidential campaign. The Romney campaign is trying silence as a tactic on his business dealings, his tax returns and the more extremist views of his choice in Vice Presidential running mate Paul Ryan. So far this application of the tactic has generally backfired miserably. For his business dealings, silence makes him look like a liar and a fraud considering it is his past business dealings that make up the bulk of his alleged experience and skill set to lead a nation. With his taxes, silence simply makes him look like he has something to hide in addition to the arrogance he has displayed on the issue showing him to be massively out of touch with the American people and an elitist with remarks about “you people” and “trust me”. With silence about the points of view of his running mate, Paul Ryan? It is early in the use of that strategy to see how well it will work, but early indications are it is going to only serve to highlight Ryan’s extremist views as the media and the public start asking questions. Another spectacular backfire as Ryan’s stance come under greater scrutiny including his budget proposals (even attacked by Conservative King of Trickle Down Economics – David Stockman), the privatization of Social Security, replacing Medicare with a voucher system (also a form of privatization), cutting funding and participation in Medicaid, his dubious and manifestly politically expedient disavowal of his nearly life long love for Ayn Rand and all things Randian, his hypocritical support for economic stimulus when Bush was for it but attacks on it when it is Obama for economic stimulus, and reports of general dissatisfaction among voters of all persuasions about his selection.
There is a second variation on silence as a tactic and that limited silence or partial disclosure. A fine example of this is the career of Michael J. Fox in its post-Parkinson’s phase. Since his diagnosis, he was careful with the media but remained largely silent. After announcing his condition, he carefully controlled his media presence until the scope and effect of his condition and the effectiveness of his treatment could be assessed. What started with silence became partial disclosure of his progress, using his celebrity to draw attention to the condition and support for research, and eventually a slow and partial reintroduction into promoting active acting projects. This illustrates that in the process of information management, what you don’t say and when you don’t say it can be as important to image management as what you do say and when you say it, and that balance in tactics can be crucial.
The third use of silence is a close variant to the “no comment” form of silence and that is the tactic of externally enforced silence. Oddly enough, this tactic can arise from tactical missteps as well as situational elements and there is a perfect example of this going on in the current Presidential campaign. Consider Mitt Romney’s camp and their inability to mention one of his (few) great successes in political leadership without having it blow up in their face and that is the so-called Romneycare he shepherded to life while Governor of Massachusetts. Their silence on this issue is externally enforced because of the similarities to Obama’s ACA plan. Romney cannot attack Obama for actions incredibly similar to actions he took as governor and then tout his actions as governor without tactically shooting himself in the foot with his target audience.
The fourth use of silence is where silence as the absence of information comes to the forefront as well as the previously mentioned interesting contradiction. Sometimes silence can be noisy. Another way to create silence in the sense of an absence of information are the strategies of obfuscation and distraction (which can employ many tactics from white noise to straw men to simple misdirection). In this regard, when evaluating information it is just as critical to ask “what does this speaker not want me to think about or discuss” as it is to look at the explicit content of what they are saying.
Consider in a broader media sense the contrast between the television news coverage of World War II, Vietnam, the first Gulf War, and Iraq/Afghanistan. The media kept silent about a great many details of World War II and in those days of analog media dominance, it was possible to maintain such silence. To the credit of those in government who controlled the flow of information during World War II, the bulk of what was kept silent was validly done so in the name of operational security and once Allied troops were out of danger fuller disclosure was usually forthcoming. Contrast this with the media coverage of Vietnam and the then relatively new medium of television. The collapse of public support at the end of the Vietnam war was due in part to the inability of the government to exert control over television. Once the images of what was really going on over there and the cost it was taking on our citizen draft military with daily visions of caskets being broadcast into a majority of American homes, it was only a matter of time before any public support for that war evaporated.
Fast forward to the first Gulf War. The war mongers in government had learned their lesson from Vietnam and the Draft was not a concern with a volunteer force – removing some of the direct impact into American homes from a war abroad. True, many civilians were against conscription, but getting rid of it came with a hidden cost to civic duty and a hidden opportunity for the unscrupulous to make war easier because of less public challenge. Add to this a high level of embedded journalists, a whole new bag of technology that made showing night actions possible and a theater conducive to night actions and relatively low casualties and you get the first war sold to the American public as essentially a video game. This war as an exercise in modern media control can only be termed a success from the point of view of policy hawks. Silence was kept where needed to keep public support flowing and the flow of information out was carefully controlled. The effectiveness of pro-war propaganda was back to WWII levels.
Now comes the invasion of Iraq. America was reeling in the aftermath of 9/11, but anyone who focuses on intelligence in looking at foreign policy issues knew that Iraq didn’t have a damn thing to do with those heinous terrorist attacks. The general public was in a state of fear and the Bush Administration seizing upon that opportunity forced through Congress the purposefully vague Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) as well as the arguably prime facie unconstitutional Patriot Act. Using their media savvy sharpened by the Gulf War, little if any media mention was made of the pure irrationality of attacking Iraq was mentioned during the lead up to that action and once again the television was ablaze with video game warfare images. However, that silence about the cost and irrationality of this invasion had to deal with a change in technology analogous to what transpired in Vietnam with television: the Internet. Although it had technically been around for a while, the World Wide Web hadn’t reached maturity until roughly the same time the war in Iraq started. Due to the very nature of the medium, government found it difficult to control the message and enforce silence, but also due to the massively increased number of media outlets, the impact of negative reporting of the true costs of invading Iraq were somewhat diluted compared to the impact of television on Vietnam. Combined with the lack of impact created by a conscription military, a situation ensued where dissent against the invasion slowly built though the alternative information channels the World Wide Web provided, but instead of ending the war in 13 years (1962-1975) in Vietnam, the pressure to end the invasion of Iraq took 8 years (2003-2011) to “officially” end – seemingly an improvement. But is it? We still have troop presence there so anyone paying attention knows that it is not over. A lesson learned in Vietnam is the euphemistic language of calling a war something other than what it really is, like “police action”, “liberation”, and “nation building”.
This is not to mention that we are still in Afghanistan, a country well known to military history buffs both professional and amateur to be a place practically impossible to occupy due to both terrain and a fractured culture in part created by that terrain. So here we are, still involved in two wars, one an invasion of questionable legality and unquestionably bad tactics (unless you’re in the oil business) and the other an attempt at occupation against a legitimate target but a target that historically has been shown highly resistant to occupation strategies. Unlike Vietnam though, the propaganda masters in government rapidly adapted to the World Wide Web. If you look only at MSM Web sources for news, you might be minimally aware of some sanitized facts of what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you only watch television, you might be hard pressed to even realize there are two wars going on at all. In either case, you can hear the media’s politically driven drumbeat starting already for war with Iran.
The propaganda masters have learned their lessons and put them into application. Where they could not directly silence, they sowed confusion. Where they could not sow confusion, they manufactured false support with tactics like hiring propaganda trolls and astroturfing. Where they could not manufacture support, they outright lied. And when their lies where exposed by whistle blowers like Bradley Manning and Wikileaks, they resorted to that old standby of fascists and totalitarian regimes to enforce silence about their misdeeds and malfeasance in representing the best interests of the general citizenry: threats and intimidation.
In being or seeking to become a critical thinker and a responsible citizen in the age of modern media and propaganda techniques, silence as an absence of information is your enemy. It can be overcome by diligent research, practiced evaluation, supporting whistle blowers who bring the public evidence of institutional and personal wrong doings by government, industry and its members and to practice through and proper analysis (in context) of as many sources of information as your mind can handle. But is it enough to overcome the silence of information to make your decisions about such matters? As George Orwell so famously noted, “Speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.” Is it enough to find the truth behind the silence? Or is it your civic duty to speak truth to power?
I think the answer is quite clear if you are following the sage advice of Marcus Aurelius and “seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed.”
What do you think?
________________
Source(s): E!, The Daily Beast, Times Live, Huffington Post (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), Politico, New York Times, League of Women Voters, CNN (1, 2), Slate, Vanity Fair, The Raw Story
~submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
The Propaganda Series;
Propaganda 105: How to Spot a Liar
Propaganda 104 Supplemental: The Streisand Effect and the Political Question
Propaganda 104: Magica Verba Est Scientia Et Ars Es
Propaganda 103: The Word Changes, The Word Remains The Same
Propaganda 102 Supplemental: Holly Would “Zero Dark Thirty”
Propaganda 102: Holly Would and the Power of Images
Propaganda 101 Supplemental: Child’s Play
Propaganda 101 Supplemental: Build It And They Will Come (Around)
Propaganda 101: What You Need to Know and Why or . . .
Related articles of interest;
Mythology and the New Feudalism by Mike Spindell
How about Some Government Propaganda for the People Paid for by the People Being Propagandized? by Elaine Magliaro
Tony,
The key to the social compact is mutual benefit. While a substantive part of that is protection? Well, I’ll let John Cleese give you an idea of some of the “non-protective” functions of government in re shared infrastructure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSELOCMmw4A
The hangup here is the word “primary” – first in order of time or development, of first rank, importance, or value. Is protective services in the form of laws and order and mutual military defense a fundamental function of government? I would agree with that, but it is not alone or first in importance. It is rather conjunctive with the other mutually derived benefits government provides.
Tony, et al,
“Social Security and Medicare are not a redistribution of wealth, and they are not government assistance; they are programs administered by the government so that they can be run as non-profits, which shaves at least 15% off of premiums, and so that they can be relied upon for a lifetime, which is not true for ANY private, for-profit business operation. … managers of the Trust fund (in 2011) the trust fund plus anticipated tax revenue and premiums will cover 100% of Part A expenditures for at least the next 13 years (until 2024).”
Here’s an interesting side-note that is messing big time with the Trustee’s predictions. People aren’t retiring. In other words, they are working and/or stating they intend to work for several years past their “official” retirement date. Thus they are still contributing to both the SS and Medicare funds. The Trustees have no way to predict how this continued flow or increase in flow into the two funds affect the future. It’s a good thing but unsettling for the forecasters.
@Gene: IMO there is a primary function; the most primitive forms of government, both historically and extant, that are not despotic or dictatorships are basically forms of protection. Against murder, theft, enslavement or coercion, using military (for external threats) and police (for internal threats). I call it “primary” because (a) I think it is the first thing governments are formed to accomplish, (b) I have read of governments that do almost nothing but that, (c) I have not read of anything I would call a ‘government’ that does NOT do that.
We can imagine small scale governments that do not tax, like Moses living off the spoils of conquest, or governmental functions supported by volunteerism (think of a posse).
Restricting our view to non-dictatorship governments, when I try to carve away everything reasonably “optional” in such a government, even if it is a small government, what I am left with is protecting people from coercion and deprivation of life or property by force; which is what I mean when I say, “protecting the weak from the strong.” A subset of that is protecting individual rights; no individual alone can protect their own rights against a sufficiently large mob, no matter how many guns they own.
Bron,
It’s really not that complicated. You cannot defend the rights of individuals without protecting the weak from the strong. Without that that dichotomy of power, there is no tyranny to defend against. Conversely, if you are not protecting the weak from the strong collectively you cannot protect the individual in a democratic and egalitarian society. When you selectively protect only certain individuals, you have oligarchy, not democracy. We have a Constitution that spells out an egalitarian democracy which is contrary to the tenets of Objectivism.
Play dumb all you like. Just because you’re willing to adopt willful ignorance of the consequences of your chosen ideology? Doesn’t mean others don’t see through the dissonance and falseness of your positions as well as your, shall we say, “definitions dilemma”.
The proper function of government is manifold. There is no “primary” function. And the proper function of government includes both protecting the weak from the tyranny of the strong and protecting individual rights (just in an equal manner).
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/08/2012-or-never-for-gops-white-base.html Team Romney White Vote Push:”This is the Last Time Anyone Will try to do This.” Jonathon Chait is on target again.
Matt Taibbi has a new piece out about Romney, Elaine. I linked it for you.
Mitt Romney – a man whose own father built cars and nurtured communities, and was one of the old-school industrial anachronisms pushed aside by the new generation’s wealth grab – has emerged now to sell this make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone ethos to the world. He’s Gordon Gekko, but a new and improved version, with better PR – and a bigger goal. A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we’ll all end up paying for the acquisition.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829#ixzz24wWksRjd
Gene H:
huh?
@Bron: when you pay $10 and get a $100 in benefits, you are on government assistance.
Except that is not the case, is it? First, let me point out these are insurance programs, like unemployment. I have car insurance, I have home insurance, I have liability insurance, I have life insurance. If my home burns to the ground, I will be paid far more from my insurance than I paid in premiums. That does not mean I am on “Insurance Company Assistance.”
Medicare is paid for by its premiums, or did you not know that? The taxes for Part A (76% of enrollees and the one everybody is entitled to have) go into a trust fund, and according to the managers of the Trust fund (in 2011) the trust fund plus anticipated tax revenue and premiums will cover 100% of Part A expenditures for at least the next 13 years (until 2024). This is an annual assessment done by the trustees, and throughout its lifetime the Fund’s average “insolvency period” has averaged about 11 years. It has never BEEN insolvent, because taxation policies get tweaked (as they were again in 2012) whenever the insolvency period drops into the single digits.
For Social Security, the tax has historically been about 14% of wages. If somebody works from 18 to 65, that is a 47 year career (if they go to college at 18, their greater earnings will much offset the fewer working years).
If people COULD put aside 14% of their earnings for their entire career, then under typical safe investment programs, the amount of modestly compounded earnings (5% annually), accounting for inflation, would still constitute over 20 years worth of benefits. In the USA, our life expectancy is about 78 years, which would demand only 13 years of benefits.
(Although individual waitresses and fork-lift drivers may not be able to reliably grow their savings at 5% above inflation (3.3%); by pooling those resources we could expect that level of return over the long term for billions of dollars; it is beneath what most sovereign wealth funds would average in returns; another case of collectivism returning far more than individualism.)
Social Security is not a 10 for 1 deal, it is a 1 for 1 deal at best.
It is not government assistance, it and Medicare are government run insurance programs. The reason they are government run is because, as the Crash of 1929 proved, company run retirement programs and for-profit and free market insurance operations are not trustworthy on the timescale of a human lifetime.
That is why we see so few plausible retirement programs among businesses, they were relieved of that duty by SS, their contribution and the employee contribution were defined and fixed as a tax, but they are still paid for by the employer and employee. It is not a redistribution of wealth.
As always, you have been misled by shallow thinkers that cannot do simple arithmetic. Social Security and Medicare are not a redistribution of wealth, and they are not government assistance; they are programs administered by the government so that they can be run as non-profits, which shaves at least 15% off of premiums, and so that they can be relied upon for a lifetime, which is not true for ANY private, for-profit business operation.
That is the failure of the free market or even the regulated capitalist solutions, Bron: Once the money is gone and the contractual promises are broken and the company has claimed bankruptcy, there are victims that will never be made right. All of Bernie Madoff’s assets will not repay the billion dollar losses of his investors; nor will his lifetime in prison make up for those losses, no matter how hard the broken contracts are shaken, no money will ever fall out.
SS corrects that free market failure. So a company owner cannot promise there will be retirement money for 40 years and then shrug their shoulders when an economic downturn bankrupts them. The retirement program has to be run independently to prevent that problem. But no matter where it is run, if it is a private company the risk is the same: It can go under and bankrupt the retirement security of somebody that has already finished most of their career, and has no time left in their life to start over. The “independent” entity has to be something permanent, and the only permanent entities we can really count on being there fifty years from now are state and federal governments.
Quickly (as playing catch up has been combined with storm prep):
Bron,
“’I have said before that I believe the first function of government is to protect the weak from the strong;’ [Tony]
No, it is to protect the individual rights and property of all people.”
Protecting the rights of the individual by definition includes as a primary function protecting the weak from the strong. It is literally impossible to do one without also doing the other. That’s basic logic. However, it is easy to understand how you could miss that basic fact when you filter everything through the Objectivism lens of “me, Me, ME!”.
The government isn’t just about you, Bron.
It’s about everyone.
Just because you rail against anything you see that is a collective effort as being an affront to your “individualism” (read: ego) doesn’t make it either not fundamentally a collective action (like all forms of government are) or solely about individuals. It is the fundamental lack of empathy in your pseudo-philosophy and in those that adopt its tenets that prevent you from realizing this simple fact: civilization and societies are inherently cooperative collective actions by definition. No culture was every made up of one person. Ever. Anywhere.
Like your statement to Tony, Objectivism is a failure at inception because it is built on fundamentally wrong, flawed or incomplete definitions that do not reflect reality. “Well society is made up of individuals!” Irrelevant. Collectivism comes in the verb and the plurality of the noun. When more than one person acts in concert it is by definition a collective action. Objectivism is, as Tony is want to say, a fantasy. A self indulgent wallowing in the idea that you are somehow special that keeps you from seeing that – yes – there is a world around you and it is filled with other people who are owed the same rights as you.
Your ideas don’t fail under repeated critical scrutiny because you are the one making the argument, Bron. Your ideas fail under critical scrutiny because they suck. That you should choose to present them is beside the point. Poor logic, made up or incomplete definitions and a fundamental lack of understanding of civilization and society and how they work in reality as based upon observation due to ideological blinders that cater to self-worship.
Seriously, man. Get rid of the Rand. She not just a joke but a poisonous joke that prevents you from achieving proper understanding of the world because her ideological lens distorts your ability to attain proper definitions.
The proper function of the government is stated specifically in the Preamble and the Bill of Rights as applied to the Federal government directly and to the states via the 14th Amendment, and the remaining relevant Amendments.
These functions include protecting the weak from the strong (the promotion of justice) and protecting individual rights including property rights (the enumerated rights and the retained rights as visited on a case by case basis).
I’ll be back later to address the 3/5 split and electoral issues of plural presidency – which is by far a more interesting conversation than rehashing for the 1,000th damn time why Objectivism is inherently wrong and intrinsically anti-Constitutional.
During the Monica Lewinsky nonsense, I kept saying, “Listen to the stuff that is not being said.” I was convinced (since perjury is deliberately lying about something that is both MATERIAL and RELEVANT, and the sex with Lewinsky was NEITHER) that the whole theatrical production was being stoked by both the Republicans and the Democrats to keep our attention focused on something while the two of those groups of thugs were really doing something completely different, behind our backs. Wow, was I right.
(By the way, I have personal knowledge of the now-T-Party Say-Anything-to-get-on-the-Radio Republican, Gilbert K. Davis, Esq. from Fairfax, Virginia, who engineered the Paula-Jones-US-Supreme-Court-Let’s-Keep-the-Morons-Busy-While-We-Hijack-the-Country production number to start with; it would be hard to find a less Christian-pontificating {can recite the 22nd Psalm in the original Aramaic, and does so if you take him to dinner} more dishonest drunk-driving-ticket-fixing self-righteous-poor-me-make-up-a-story-that-sounds-good Virginian than Gil, and HE CALLS HIMSELF MY FRIEND.)
So now that we have theater about the rapists versus abortionists and the grandma death squads and illegal aliens filling our hospitals and the dykes, dikes, schools for slander and everyone for sale, gee,
What do you think they’re all cooperating to hide this time? Listen really hard to the sound of silence; get that voice guy in to draw a graph of the silence, what are they really doing to us this time?
I am not as optimistic about Obama’s re-election as you are, Blouise. The polls show a very close race. I am rooting for the party of Aiken, Romney and Ryan to lose badly. Only then can moderates or true conservatives take control of the republican party. Romney’s strategy is to win the midwest by appealing to the white working class with Ryan while at the same time using a little race baiting to accomplish this goal.
@Blouise: I think they are prepared to lose at all levels …
Which brings up the question (for me) as to what their goals actually are in running.
I do not understand the rationale for this whole platform, I do not think “firing up the moronic base” is a rational strategy. Romney has already won the nomination, if anything he should have used this convention to turn the corner and make a bid for moderation. They cannot win anything with a 40% Bob Dole result (or even Dole’s projected 45% sans Perot).
Romney really did run Bain Capital and make hundreds of millions of ruthlessly evil dollars, he is NOT so stupid or incompetent at negotiation and large scale management that this platform is out of his control. He knows how to be in charge and be forceful, so he let this happen, or helped this happen. The same thing with choosing Ryan and his cartoon politics.
Unless he has had an aneurysm, Romney has to know this platform and Ryan’s politics have sealed the loss, he cannot get any significant share of independents or conservatives over 65. Even on gay marriage, 51% lean in favor, 45% lean against, and approval is on the rise.
I do not understand what his game is. I don’t think it is coattails, a platform that loses Romney votes loses Congressmen and Senators votes too, right?
I understood the McCain-Palin ticket. McCain thought his personality and heroism would win. Palin was in it for the money that would come with FOX fame, and she got that, it has vaulted her into the deca-millionaire category.
Neither of those motivations apply to Romney. He had a rules lock on the nomination; Nate Silver outlined eight better VP candidates he could have tapped, and he could have used the convention to pivot to his true colors, moderate Republican. Embracing Ryan and this platform stinks of Koch Brother, Randian ideology, which is a guarantee of failure.
I do not get what is motivating Romney to make moves that, he has to know, are ensuring a victory for Obama.
(I am not rooting for either side, just watching the match.)
tony c:
when you pay $10 and get a $100 in benefits, you are on government assistance.
Blouise:
very good essay and so true.
TONY C:
“I have said before that I believe the first function of government is to protect the weak from the strong;”
No, it is to protect the individual rights and property of all people.
gbk,
lol … love humor that sneaks up on you
Here’s one of my favorite Far Side’s … nothing to do with politics but a lot to do with my original career
http://mycolormusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Far-Side-cartoon-of-monotone-caveman-orchestra.png
Blouise,
“Another side-note … hurricanes and the Republican Convention … reminders of Katrina while the Republicans party … Issac is a problem in more ways than one.”
Yeah, especially with “no stimulus here” Jindahl now requesting the feds pick up all the cost of all emergency protective measures:
“We appreciate your response to our request and your approval,” Jindal wrote. “However, the state’s original request for federal assistance … included a request for reimbursement for all emergency protective measures. The federal declaration of emergency only provides for direct federal assistance.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57501394/la-gov-bobby-jindal-asks-president-obama-for-more-tropical-storm-isaac-aid/
I don’t pay attention to polling data, so it’s nice to see someone’s take on them.
Here’s a Mr. Fish cartoon you might enjoy:
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/frost_warning_20120826/
gbk,
One of the interesting points I left out of the loyalty bit: President Kennedy’s average approval among Democrats during his term was only 4 points higher than Obama’s. Democrats are very loyal to Obama and will, more than likely, come out to vote.
Naming Ran as VP had almost no effect on the polls which responded with very little movement.
The election is Obama’s to lose and thus far he hasn’t taken a misstep. I suspect the convention bump will seal the deal.
Another side-note … hurricanes and the Republican Convention … reminders of Katrina while the Republicans party … Issac is a problem in more ways than one.
Blouise,
Nice synopsis.