Friday, March 29, 2013

The Message is in the Medium


Recent news stories in the Washington Post and BuzzFeed pointed to something tucked away in the GOP’s report on Growth & Opportunity Project.  (Would that be GOP’s GOP or GOP’s G&OP?)  The GOP is going to hire “activists” to YouTube Democrats in what will be seen as embarrassing shots for the party.  (Has YouTube become like Google and can be used as a verb?)
Here from the report, page 54, section 11, “Define the D’s early AnD TrAck ‘EM”, (Why all caps?) and the chapter “Introduction to Friends and Allies is the juicy quote:
Begin quote
Well-funded conservative groups should seek to hire activists to track Democrat incumbents and candidates with video cameras constantly recording their every movement, utterance, and action. Within the applicable legal constraints, we need to create our own video content, bank it, and release it when it suits our candidates’ needs. 
An allied group dedicated solely to research to establish a private archive and public website that does nothing but post inappropriate Democrat utterances and act as a clearinghouse for information on Democrats would serve as an effective vehicle for affecting the public issue debate.
End quote
The stories listed above claim the new GOP vehicle for doing this is America Rising, and it is a copy of the Democrats’ America Bridge, which “allegedly” outed Todd Akins’ infamous statement that legitimate rape did not cause pregnancy because the woman’s vagina somehow interrogated incoming sperm as to how they got there and would not let rape sperm pass – a TSA in women’s privates.  I wonder if they have intimate reveling scanners or full ejaculate searches.
Doesn’t both American Bridge and America Rising sound a lot like the White House Plumbers – before they got into bugging?
The head of America Bridge, Rodell Mollineau, welcomes the competition but believes there will be slim pickings for them since Democrats do not live the double standard lives of Republicans.  Mollineau claims Republican talk extreme right philosophy when talking privately to the Tea Party and then middle of the road, moderate politician when talking to the general public or when cameras are rolling.  Examples other than Akins’ are Richard Mourdock’s comment on God’s blessing rape or Romney’s 47 percent of Americans are free-loaders.  Mollineau claims Democrats don’t do that.  There are no hidden liberals making empty liberal promises, so he claims. 
Bleeding-heat liberals are no different than the Tea Baggers, and America Rising is going to prove him wrong.  Or will it prove something entirely else?
What I’m waiting to see from the new GOP plumbers group is what they tape and “expose”.   What they think is embarrassing or potentially political suicide may be more illuminating of the Republicans than footage of a Democrat acting a fool.  The more interesting story may be what they choose to expose, and in so doing, expose their own selves. 
A young Republican journalist-in-name-only has pioneered “the rising”.  James O’Keefe got a lot of air time on Fox News until he got busted for bugging a New Orleans democrat’s phone.  While masquerading as a pimp to get a misleading story is journalistically unethical, impersonating any technician and bugging phones is illegal as well as bad journalism.  No doubt, Fox New would have run it had O’Keefe not got caught.
Here it is once again:  White House Plumbers.  History repeats, and this is especially true for conservatives' behavior since they are the buttresses of tradition.  How America Rising chooses to expose its targets may be the bigger story.

Thursday, March 07, 2013

Send in the Drones


Over at HuffingtonPost, today, they had a story about the tragic death of innocent people, especially children, from our drone attack.  It pissed me off to no end.  I left a comment but I got no replies, responses, likes or faves.  So, here goes…
3,000+ Americans have been targeted, all of them as -- if not more -- innocent as any bystander in Afghanistan or Pakistan.  And here is the key, essential, way more important point: innocent Americans were all targeted ON PURPOSE!!!  The intent was to attack and kill as many innocent Americans as possible.
OK, the 125 at the Pentagon may have been quasi-military targets, but they were more bureaucrats than solders, and although there’s many a Tea Bagger that would say they were doing us a service taking out federal bureaucrats, still there was noting “collateral” about it.  The innocent bystanders were the targets.
That is the enemy. 
I left a question.  3,000+ not enough?  How many more Americans have to be targeted or killed before you will say send in the drones?  Give us a number.  Or, do we have to pass the number before you say enough is enough?
As the atomic bomb is to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, so to killer drones are to 9/11.  It’s the new war.   Don’t North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the ones around him realize that if they start something, they will be targeted?  If they start something, they will not live long enough to know how it will end.
I realize that life in American may change when the drones come home to roost.  They’ll be looking over my shoulder or that of the police.  Who knows how they will be used, but used they will be.  It’s the new “new.”
But back to our current unpleasantness.
What if they take some innocent kid and promise him 40 virgins in heaven if he will strap Iranian highly enriched nuclear material to his body and detonate it in an American city and kill millions of innocents – ON PURPOSE – would you send in the drones then?