Monday, August 31, 2009

Another measurement of "phoney-ness"

Another measurement request: what is the ratio of arrests at tea party's or Obamacare rallies? How many union members in the numbers arrest? How many registered members of the respective parties, including LaRouche supporters?

A Measurement of Phoney-ness

To coin a phrase, let's measure "phoney-ness."

To me it seems easy, what is the ratio of cars to buses parked near the protest area?

While organized groups use buses, self-motivated protesters tend to drive themselves or car pool. Spreads the costs of transportation in smaller, de-centralized increments.

Even to the extent that such a measurement can be manipulated, it would increase the costs and logistical headaches for the organizers. More parking needs. More money to subsidize drivers from the union coffers. Etc.

Does a tea party protest have event-parking pricing? What about a union rally? Are they the same price for the same location for similar weekend or holiday timing?

I would be facinated to learn if there were differences.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Government-Option Healthcare v. Microsoft

The Department of Justice has a long running history of picking fights with Microsoft (EU is even worse) over supposedly monopolistic behavior. The idea seems to be that one player is too large and must be brought down to size.

Based on Obamacare's characteristics as written in the House Bill, does that mean that the Obama Administration has no issues with Microsoft or later Google over dominating their segments of the market?

This behavior is monopsony (a term I just learned; remember use all new terms in a sentence). Monopoly is one seller for many buyers. Monopsony is one buyer for many sellers.

Obamacare is either monopsony today or tomorrow.

So if I understand Obama, he either likes single buyers (or large ones that have the power to delcare itself a monopsony) and hates monopolists or likes monopsonists and monopolists both.

Let's watch Microsoft and Google and learn.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Fire the Journalists

I have an idea: let's fire all journalists. No one likes them. They are irritating. Their content is worthless.

With that one statement, we have just created a lot of new openings, so who should fill those chairs?

I propose people with degrees in advertising or marketing from business schools or experienced sales people. They know how to tell pithy stories. They understand that telling a good story is imperative to making a profit when the subject matter turns difficult. They know how to make you feel good about the most depressing or mundane subjects. They know how to turn grammatical variations into phrases repeated around the world by teenagers and young adults.

Journalists go to school to learn to tell stories, but advertisers tell better stories with pictures or shorter scripts. Why waste time reading 500 words of journo-babble when we can get the idea in 30 seconds or just a neat picture?

Journalists go to school to learn how to get two sources for every article, then they turn to old school chum or neighbor to be their representative of the general public (less effort you know). Advertisers and marketers are far more skilled at finding out what the general public wants and thinks and giving it to them.

Journalists go to school to learn how to take polling data and make it a tear-jerking human-interest story about one person that illustrates the point that the journalist wants to make without any regard to what the polling data shows. Marketers have experience in digging into polling data and giving any one segment of the population exactly the product they want. Marketers don't care if one segment of the population agrees with Henry Ford and only wants black cars while another segment wants bright yellow ones. Marketers will use the polling data to order enough black cars and bright yellow cars to make everyone happy. Just imagine if the newspapers were run by marketers that told the same story for two different market segments: one liberal and the other conservative. Imagine that the number of column-inches given to each version of the story could be based on the percentage of that paper's readership who share that political persuasion.

Journalists play at marketing by constantly making the papers look more and more like Romper Room but still giving us the same Henry Ford black Model T for liberal, empty content.

The Middle

I have written before about my joys and frustrations in reading a particular website. He subscribes to what I would call the "single issue anger." Admittedly this unnamed website does not simply attack the opposition to Bush's immigration deform, but several other attacks on Bush's wayward behavior. The key point for him is the supposed Conservative attack on Bush's variance from the supposed Conservative gold standard.

As hated as Nixon is today and as demeaned as election strategy is too (move rightward for the primary and move to the center for the general election), he understood some basic concepts. He understood that the body politic is actually not just two parties but several groups. These groups are small and align around broader, similar concepts. These groups become successful and powerful when they aggregate larger and larger alliances together. Part of the process is dropping concepts from their main message that the larger group cannot support. Part of it is softening catch phrases to remove the harshness of tone. Moving between groups at different times is part of group building.

The part that few people wish to admit, except at times of radical transition, is that a common enemy is the biggest group builder of all. The common sentiments of frustration and anger allow people to shed old alliances and the older, larger groups start shrinking. These new unaligned voters may stay unaligned unless they find a group that shares their message and tone. The common enemy allows old hatreds to begin to appear petty compared to the new frustration and growing anger. This allows a courtship, similar to the old lyrics from the "Facts of Life" theme song: "The boys you used to hate, Now you date."

The famous French philosopher La Rochefaucauld wrote, "La haine est plus proche de l'amour que l'amite": Hate is closer to love than friendship. Obama has succeeded in causing a growing number of his passionate followers to turn on him. These ex-followers are his greatest problem because they will turn forever on him and his party.

The middle that does not wish to ever be passionate but wants to appear reasonable, those are moving away from him. He can get them back so long as they stay dispassionate. They want to reason issues out and find a middle way. These are the people that socialism and its kissing cousin fascism have always played to. Mussolini invented the modern use of the phrase the "third way." He sensed that coloring his socialism for the middle of his body politic would get him elected. He played to this desire for dispassion and made them passionate for an undefined "something else."

Obama rose to power on his version of the third way: "Hope. Change." Like Mussolini, he was less than clear on the stump of what he sought to do. He allowed the radical left to see the details to keep them happy by having white papers on his website that gave details. He knew that the middle of population would never research the white papers. They had too little passion to research his ideas. It was too big of a burden to challenge their hope for a third way. Why deal with the facts when you are comfortable in the middle.

Now Obama has done something that few have done successfully in recent American political history. He has made portions of the middle uncomfortable and angry. They are getting angrier every time they learn more about his health plan.

What's worse is these angry people start doing research on the plan and run across articles on the global warming myth. They get angrier still.

We may soon start to see a disappearing middle. The middle won't disappear because of the brilliance of current GOP leadership. The middle will disappear because they have focused anger that won't allow them to pretend they are being reasonable. They will start to see that reason has a home in the GOP's body politic (even if it is remarkably absent in the Republican party establishment in DC). The GOP's thinkers and middle America members are the real intellectual powerhouses of the country. Their ability to communicate without the DC establishment as an intermediary has created chorus of strong-minded, clear-thinking, passionate, and all-too-polite people. The middle won't be able to remain dispassionate nor to ignore the violence-prone thugs representing Obama's cause. Once the pendulum of political passion starts to sway, it is harder to bring back to rest.

That is Obama's problem. He is getting hit by the pendulum that he put in motion. The pendulum threatens to grow into a wrecking ball.

The quick answer to stopping a swinging wrecking ball is an application of an equal force in the exact opposite direction. Since that is difficult to do, the application of thug power in another direction will cause the wrecking ball of passion and resentment against Obama to careen into his fellow Democrats in Congress and spread the damage.

A disappearing middle and a careening wrecking ball leads to unpredictable results. Damage will spread far and wide. Republicans in Congress should not rest easy. The new class of Republicans will expect privileges that junior members only get when they are a large group (like the Class of 1994). They will insist on changes within Congress and the Republican Caucus. Smart members of the current Republican Caucus will avoid defending the Caucus's recent stupidities of boondoogle earmarks and reckless spending prior to 2006. They will seek strong law-and-order measures, such as border enforcement and immigration law enforcement (as two separate issues rather than one jumbled mess). They will seek simple laws that are easier to self-police, leading to smaller, less wasteful government.

Simplicity of law is liberty. Bureaucracy is the midwife of tyranny. When the middle becomes passionate about these ideas, Obama's agenda is dead.

Comments on Obama's Iconography

This video is a wonderful comment on Obama's scary use of iconography without showing the disturbing socialist iconography of the past.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Democratic Repetition of Soviet Propoganda

While this article proves nearly nothing about whether the Soviets did or did not infiltrate the Democrat Party, it describe well a set of circumstances that seems more likely than not given Democrat methodologies and stated goals.

Truly frightening.

My research on this subject and the truth behind the Vietnam War tend suggests that Soviet propoganda only failed because it did not reach full strength until 18 years after the USSR fell.

Friday, August 07, 2009

Folks created mess

So Obama wants the people who created the mess out of the way.

Does that mean that he will be asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi (failing to address Pres. Bush's attempt to reform Fannie Mae prior to meltdown), Rep. Barney Frank (creating the Fannie Mae system), or Sen. Chris Dodd (creating system) for their resignations any time soon?

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Obama, Democrats, and Soviet Communism?

Here are a few articles worthy of consideration as to whether we are reaping the Soviet infiltration that President Reagan observed in the 1950's in the Screen Actors Guild.

http://www.globalpolitician.com/23436-terror-russia
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-regresses-to-cold-war-mythology-and-switches-sides/
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamas-quest-into-the-magic-world-of-anti-american-mythology/