Cross Posted at Left in Alabama Living in Karl Rove's Alabama is a bit like reading Lewis Carroll's Through The Looking Glass. Up is down, tall is short, the innocent are guilty, the guilty are not even investigated. And higher education, supposedly a bastion of liberal thought in most of the country, answers to the beckoning call of conservatism.
I know about that last part firsthand, having been fired from my job at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) apparently because I dared to write a blog that is critical of the Bush Justice Department.
My research indicates that people connected to Rove are responsible for my termination. And UAB is engaging in a coverup that is positively Rovian, even Nixonian. Perhaps the biggest absurdity comes when you compare UAB's handling of my case to a previous blog-related employment incident.
When I went to Pennsylvania to canvas for Obama before the primary, Tim Kaine spoke to us at the Wilkes-Barre headquarters. I had very much liked his speech in response to Bush's 2006 SOTUS, in which he laid out a better way for our future, and he did not disappoint that morning. He had us all fired up to go out and brave the rural Pennsy electorate.
Governor Kaine is a very intelligent and engaging man. He is not boring. He does not have baggage. He has run a state. He has not had to cast votes in Congress that the Republican spin machine can cast in a bad light. He, too, went to Harvard, which does not have a weird, God help us, Skull and Crossbonessecret society, but has a positive, uplifting open atmosphere that emphasizes learning and solutions, not the macabre. Heaven knows, we've had enough of secrecy and death under this administration, and we are gasping for a breath of fresh air and change.
Successful national campaigns for the presidency combine extremely effective media and outstanding ground efforts--no matter how loathsome and low-road they might be. And, since the GOP is the only party I know of that's won a national election in this country in the past 11-1/2 years, I am referring to the GOP'ers penchant for putting the two major pieces of this winning strategy together more effectively than us Dems during this era, as well.
With the Rethugs, winning is the only thing. With the Dems over the last few years...not so much.
However, a new style of broadcast ad buying is being quietly implemented by Rove & Co. this cycle. It's right from the pages of an Orwell novel. It's mind-boggling.
I know, now that you've gotten nauseous, hear me out. And yes this is another suggestion from a nobody but it dovetails with what Josh Marshall has argued about how Obama needs consistent arguments.
Flame me if you want. Call me a concern troll. But I see what McCain is doing and Obama is not doing and something really needs to be done about it.
And here's the Rove recipe. Attack in 3s. Sounds simple. It is.
I witnessed Bush beat Ann Richards for governor and he did it by picking three issues which were weak about Richard's past 4 year term. He repeated these three over and over and over. Soon the campaign became about those three arguments. I believe one was a rise in teenage crime. There was so little to criticize her on but he found three. Soon the campaign becamse about those three issues and Richards was forced to play defense. And despite great popularity, she lost to Shrub.
It was Karl Rove who did this and he laughed about it later. Americans have such a short attention span, they won't spend time disecting issues. Pick three points and run with them. That's all you need. Three weaknesses of your opponent.
Why threes? It works. When writing persuasive papers or making a closing argument, uses threes. It works. Simple. Direct. Repeatedly.
John McNicotine is now for the tobacco lobby after years of working against it. He not only opposes the cigarette taxes he used to support but also opposes FDA regulation of the tobacco industry after years of supporting it. McNicotine is an ex-smoker and should understand just how addictive nicotine is, and he even acknowledged the exceptionally high death rate for tobacco users when he joked that cigarette exports to Iran were part of his plot to kill Iranian citizens. For McNicotine to cave in to the tobacco cartel is the ultimate flip-flop:
http://www.boston.com/...
Why has McNicotine caved in to the interests of the tobacco drug cartel? It couldn't possibly have anything to do with hiring tobacco lobbyist Charlie Black as his senior adviser. Move along folks. There's nothing to see here:
http://firedoglake.com/...
Now let's use the traditional Rethug "moral values" and "sanctity of life" frames against McNicotine! There's more in the flip.
Kakutani is a pretty damn good N.Y.Times book reviewer, but she is in over her head this morning, in her review of the new Thomas Frank book, "The Wrecking Crew,How Conservatives Rule"
Frank's tome is a brilliant and timely analysis of Conservative deceit. Appearing on bookshelves alongside the latest swift boat "literature" it effectivly acts as an antidote to the venom spewing from the Corsi best seller and similar attack books.Kakutani doesn't see it that way.
Surprisingly she sees with unusual clarity that the left despises the "wickedness of conservative government in general" yet is so terribly befuddled that we let it bother us this much. In effect she says "it's ok for the left to point out how Conservatives are the "party of the rich," but we shoot ourselves in the foot when we try to combat what is a "fact of life" in a Capitalist society.
For the last few weeks we have brought in some key fundraisers as our special guests. Those have been Karl Rove , Saxby Chambliss, John McCain and Karl Rove. Well this week we are ending the jokes and asking you to make this Rick Noriega Day.
Yes! Celebrate the return of Democrats to the highest offices in our land, and the man who's making it all possible... Vice President in waiting Timothy Michael Kaine. See here he eviscerates Karl Rove:
Play it and weep, High Broderists and MBNA.
Now, it's true, some folk here are down on Barack's main man Timmeh. Take this character for instance...(Continued)
On Saturday at the Saddleback forum, Rick Warren asked a lot questions the candidates would not normally get asked on the campaign trail, one of those was to define wealth. What John McCain said should earn them the title of elitist stupid...!
In one hour flat, regardless of style or performance or substance or pundit analysis, Obama successfully disarmed the GOP attack machine by catapulting above the Muslim question. He accomplished this feat without having to even mention the term 'Muslim'. What Obama did last night was he talked about not whether or not he's Christian but what kind of Christian he is. In doing so, Obama forced all of god-fearing America to bear witness to his true faith. Even better, Obama's appearance in Saddleback will continue to serve as a reference point as the GOP scrambles to contrive new attacks and give legs to fresh lies.
Here's a primer on what has been unfolding in the Caucusus, and how it has affected the political debate here in America. I'm aware this has been blogged about here before, this is just my take on it.
I had an opportunity to speak with Rep Keith Ellison (D-MN) about the U.S. Attorney scandal, Don Siegelman and Karl Rove. Keith Ellison serves on the House Judiciary Committee.
August 8, 2008
MOSCOW - Georgian troops launched a massive assault on the breakaway province of South Ossetia on Friday, taking control of much of the region and bringing Georgia's U.S.-allied government closer to the brink of full-scale conflict with Russia.
Just hours after Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili declared a cease-fire with South Ossetian separatist troops, Georgian military forces unleashed a barrage of shelling on the province's capital, Tskhinvali, late Thursday and early Friday. By the morning, Georgian tanks had entered the South Ossetian capital.
