September 9, 2012

Unfortunately, it isn't that simple.

In the debates, Romney gets to hide behind an annoying facet of American politics which is being called the "backfire effect."

If you don't wish to read the 2000 words about it in the link above, the nutshell is this: when a conservative politician lies and a liberal refutes the lie with facts, conservative voters are more likely to believe the lie.

Yes, you read that right. Providing conservatives with the correct information actually reinforces their stupid beliefs. So the President cannot simply point at Mitt and say, "you are a liar," without encouraging conservative voters to believe Romney is telling the truth.

God damn, that pisses me off. But there it is. Anyway....

I think this means that the President will have to take a more indirect and much more difficult path to sowing doubt in the minds of conservative voters. The President will have to have an internal library of the statements and positions of other conservative authorities which contradict whatever lie Romney is telling at the time. He will have to recite that conservative authority's quote back to Romney. "Karl Rove doesn't agree with you," might be a good retort, as infuriating as that is to me personally.

I'm not sure if the President can use Romney's own previous lies against him--but that's something the President definitely needs to run by the psychologists (I hope someone on his debate staff is reading this!).

Unfortunately, it is going to make viewing of the debates difficult for the lot of us, because we are all going to be shouting at the television for President Obama to call Romney out directly when that is exactly what he should not do in most cases. But we are in the bag for the Democrats and the objective is to lead conservatives to some semblance of the truth (which will depress their turnout and may even convert a few of the wiser ones), or at least doubt about their own unworkable positions.

Those of you who doubt me may wish to revisit the DU threads on the Cheney-Edwards debate of 2004. Cheney lied his ass off, and Edwards perhaps wisely let many of those lies go, but mistakenly went after him on some of the big ones. Then in November, a good proportion of stupid conservatives shambled into the booth still believing that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, in part because Edwards dared to refute that stupid belief before a large number of conservative viewers.

The backfire effect is the primary way that a cabal of very evil people have suborned the Republican Party and shackled it to the whims of the ultra-wealthy. But President Obama is a master of taking the advantages of his opponents and turning those advantages against them, so we can expect him to have a thoughtful, if not obvious, response.

September 1, 2012

A lot fewer than there were.

Since GWB was elected President, life expectancy for white males without insurance in southern states has dropped all the way down to 48 in some cases. For all white males in Republican states, life expectancy has dropped precipitously.

As the extreme example, statistics suggest that nearly half of the 54 year-old men in Holmes County, Mississippi who voted for George Bush in 2000 are already dead.

But of course that doesn't mean they won't vote.

August 31, 2012

It's like watching...

It is like watching a headless chicken fluttering over the fence into the pig pen.

Hilarious, dark, and disgusting all at the same time.

August 26, 2012

My suspicious nature says...

I wonder if Romney is going to use the Monday open-and-shut to slip his and Ryan's nomination into the proceedings somehow. Then the circus can go on without any real danger from the ronpauls screwing around.

I keep saying that Romney's real expertise is in taking the decisions away from the people. I don't know if he'd be that bold, though.

August 25, 2012

I wish he'd read my article instead of just snagging the illustration.

If he'd actually read it, the dude would know that the lemming analogy only applies to the Republican party. Their over-the-cliff mentality is part of a unique political makeup that makes those poor people the spear-point of fascism. Democrats don't do it.

http://njvetcaucus.blogspot.com/2009/04/gun-toting-nazi-lemmings.html

August 17, 2012

Sure, skepticism is in order.

Since Mitt is logically boxed in, anyone can claim knowledge of Mitt's guilt (legal and/or ethical), and be proven correct to some degree later.

We should expect plenty of people to latch on to that and fill in the tunnel with details of their own conjecture.

But at the same time, a great many people probably know some details or are in a position to make very accurate additional guesses of their own. The list of disgruntled former associates of Mr. Romney is probably longer than the number of participants in this thread.

To a certain degree, I hope that Romney can hold on to some of the more damning facts until after the convention and ideally closer to October, when the disclosures will cause even more damage to himself and his party. But I don't think the hive mind is going to let him get anywhere near that far before the general outline of Mitt's indiscretion is fully sketched.

But I'll say this: Mitt hasn't told the truth about a single damned thing yet, and I'll bet that didn't stop with the IRS--before, during or after that amnesty, if he took it. If details begin to spill, some of them might just revoke the terms of the amnesty. So my guess--definitely a guess--is that this time two years from now Mitt is going to be planning a vacation to Club Fed.

I think Mitt Romney now has the chance to lose the mid-term elections of 2014 for the Republicans, too, which would certainly place him among the very worst candidates in US history. What a guy.

August 11, 2012

Here's a prediction that will stick.

I predict that from now on, the rate of melt will continue to be larger than each subsequent prediction, and the rate of increase over the prediction will also increase.

There, that ought to keep us straight until the basement floods.

August 11, 2012

I concur.

ptownbro is on to something. Ryan has name recognition and his publicly displayed lack of empathy for others is actually a selling point to right-wingers.

And that's the bottom line: he is "saleable" to the right-wing authoritarians.

Of course this pick also betrays a significant failing of the Romney campaign, which is that Mitt was able to game the primaries for a win, but he never won over the RWAs who are the most important subset of Republican voters.

So Romney had to go with a guy with high negatives among virtually everyone but the RWAs. Those high-negative voters will be further energized by the fact that they can pay themselves by voting all-Democratic instead. But a major enticement to the 'wingers is needed to make them come out to vote to raise taxes on themselves.

The pick also necessarily defines some of the future strategy they must take. The Democratic plan will obviously be to inform virtually all voters that they can pay themselves by not voting Republican, and it will be even easier to do with Ryan aboard.

The Republicans, therefore, have to shout down the Democrats with hundreds of millions in advertising, hundreds of hours of airtime, and an army of harlequins doing their best to distract and misdirect. They are going to have to try to crowd out the Democratic message with a huge, lengthy, and expensive volume of crap.

I think it will cost them billions, altogether, just to get close enough to steal it. And I don't think they can do it. The Republicans are well on their way to proving to Wall Street that politics is a terrible investment, because the losses they incur will add up to far more than what they blew on the hugely expensive wager itself.

August 10, 2012

Pretty soon I'll be able to make my own cheap crap.

I haven't seen a single public source acknowledge what the mathematicians (particularly fans of John von Neumann) must certainly know by now.

We are quickly approaching the steep part of a hyperbolic manufacturing curve, as self-replicating 3D printers become a reality. Faster than anyone seems to guess now, the need for exported goods is going to disappear virtually overnight as local manufacturers gain the ability to build any part within beautiful tolerances, limited only by raw materials, power, and for awhile after that, human assemblers.

The big-boxes will die out quickly, because consumer products will be built within the home or at corner manufacturing shops. There will be no storage costs, no shipping costs, and the products will be tailored to the precise needs of the local population.

But the big-box buildings will be highly valuable to local manufacturers, so I expect the parking lots to still be crowded with people. But they'll be there to make money instead of handing it over to filthy rich corporations. Don't worry about them; they'll still find a way to steal a slice of your pie at every stage, but they won't have us by the balls like they do now.

If you've got a kid, you might encourage that child to look into mechanical engineering. Someday soon, the engineers will again rule the world.

August 10, 2012

Goddamn I hate CNN.

Right now they're goggling over the glorious full-color photos from THE WRONG FUCKING ROVER on Mars.

They keep showing the "Greeley Panorama," which can be seen here:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20120705a.html

An amateur like me can tell it is the wrong picture off the bat (even if I hadn't looked at this picture already this week) because Opportunity's tire tracks are visible. Curiosity has not yet moved.

Just... just awful.