myopiclunacy.com

What a great article - found on Eddie’s page. There are lots of other interesting tidbits but the highlight is here:

Highlights: Newsweek’s Special Election Project | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008 | Newsweek.com

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

you have to take it with a grain of salt, surely, but it’s still fun. I love that some of the clothes were “lost” - yeah - cuz I’ve used that excuse too! hahah. Also fun is this FOX NEWS report about Palin not knowing that Africa was a continent. Are you kidding me? Sure explains the Couric interview … and how Alaskans re-elected Ted Stevens.

Other highlights: McCain aides wanted to tell McCain that it was over before the last debate. Pain ran with the Ayers attack before the campaign approved it. McCain’s campaign was planning but scrapped a soft-on-crime Willie Horton ad as well as a “dancing with a lesbo” ad with footage from Ellen. Obama had to be convinced not to consider Hillary for VP. Hillary was on better terms with McCain than with Obama. And my favorite:

At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys’ club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. “I’ll be just a minute,” she said.

Oh yeah, daddy! That’s what I call a serious debriefing.

Popularity: 12% [?]

FLIRJ = First Lady I’d Rim Job

Popularity: 6% [?]

So succintly put - in American presidential politics, it’s not about logic. It’s about emotion. And the Dems don’t get it. Or rather - the Republicans get it more. It’s sad that this is the case, but apparently solutions for problems doesn’t pacify the American voter. Bill Clinton got it with the “I feel your pain” and the thumb thing. And he went up against some Kerry-esque competitors (along with getting the Perot assist) and Gore almost prevailed when he frenched Tipper at the DNC in 2000. But this culture war is real and it’s not going away.

M.S. Bellows, Jr.: Republicans Revive “Bittergate,” Dems Flounder

In the two main convention speeches Wednesday night — the big night, Sarah Palin night — the Republican Party revived a major theme of the Clinton primary campaign and made it a centerpiece of the general election, turning what was a contest between candidates, parties, and arguably genders, into one between cultures. And, in a telephonic press conference the next morning designed to counter vice presidential nominee Palin’s well-delivered speech, the Democratic National Committee failed to rise to the challenge, trotting out female Obama supporters to fight yesterday’s policy and gender wars instead of the new, gender-neutral, policy-empty culture war the Republicans have unleashed.

It goes into the whole story behind Obama saying that people in the red states are bitter and turn to guns and religion and anti-immigration during times of economic hoplessness. A regrettable comment, to be sure, and pounced on by Hillary Clinton as well as John McCain both then and now at the RNC. The response by the DNC completely missed the mark, as pointed out by Jim O’Toole:

A little later in the call, Jim O’Toole, politics editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, put his finger right on the Democrats’ problem - their “programmatic” rather than “visceral” responses to Palin’s “empathetic” approach last night - but the Democrats didn’t even seem to understand what he meant:

O’Toole: I’m struck that your rebuttals to Governor Palin’s remarks and the other speakers’ are all pretty programmatic, and that’s fine as far as it goes, but are you concerned that you have - people vote for President partially on visceral reasons too. Are you concerned that you have a kind of an image problem, kind of a narrative problem, in responding to the kind of … empathetic messages that they put forward last night?

Gibbs: What exact - what empathetic messages? I may have missed those. [laughing.]

O’Toole: Well, the very familiar attacks on, as another questioner mentioned, Senator Obama’s ‘bitter’ remarks.”

Gibbs then answered adequately, reminding O’Toole of McCain’s forgetting how many homes he owns and a McCain adviser’s description of Americans as “whiners,” but returning again to policy, policy, policy.

Analysis: The Democrats Aren’t Playing The “Frame Game”: Watching the Republican Convention, I’m struck by how deeply different the people on my screen are from the people I saw at the Democratic Convention in Denver last week. Both groups care about their communities and their countries enough to become involved in the political process. Both are excited about their candidates and their parties. Both are engrossed by the sport and spectacle of politics. But, contrary to Republican spin, I didn’t see any blind worship of Obama at the Dem convention; rather, I saw mostly geeks and policy wonks, people parsing the factual details of every speaker’s spiel, people who actually paid attention to the differences between Clinton’s and Obama’s health care plans and who know, as soon as they hear it, exactly how and why McCain’s claims about Obama’s plan to “raise taxes” on them are untrue.

At the Republican convention, on the other hand, I hear entire speeches compiled of bumper sticker slogans (some of them very good). I hear clever-sounding but meaningless lines that haven’t been changed since the Presidential campaign in 1964 (Fred Thompson: “They say they are not going to take any water out of your side of the bucket, just the ‘other’ side of the bucket!”). I hear flat-out lies, like speaker after speaker talking about how liberal Washington is (after 6-8 years of Republican dominance of all three branches of government) and promising to allow individuals more choice (McCain and Palin favor a Constitutional amendment banning abortion).

Most importantly, though, I see a crowd mesmerized by those slogans and truisms and lies. They love it. They eat it up. Most don’t know they’re being lied to — but even those who do, don’t mind; for them, it’s not about facts, it’s about feelings.

A former client of mine, who ran a construction company in Anchorage, once told me that no one is as sensitive as Alaska ironworkers; he always had to be careful not to hurt their feelings or they’d quit and storm off in a huff. That’s a good description of many Republicans, in my experience: physically tough, but they do tear up at those sad country songs. Or, as Stephen Colbert brilliantly put it, it’s about truthiness: “The truthiness is, anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.”

I think this is what bothers me the most. It’s been 8 years of the same old culture crap while the country falls into an economic and political hole run by the rudderless Republicans for the better part of 6 of those years, yet we keep falling for the same old tricks. We even have cottage industries like The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert built up around this frustration. The author even cites to his creation of the word “truthiness”

Amazing, isn’t it? This is 3 years old yet rings every bit as true then as it does now, and without some work by the DNC will continue to ring another 4 years.

Until last night, the Republican myth was, “It’s a scary world, Obama’s young and inexperienced, and McCain is the tough father figure who will care for you.” And Obama’s frame was, “This place you’re at now is scary bad. You need to get away. McCain wants to keep you here, but I’ll lead you to safety.” And Obama was winning in that “battle of frames.”

Wednesday night, though, the Republican Party unexpectedly changed frames - and did so brilliantly. The agent of change was Sarah Palin, who suddenly has become the most dangerous person to the progressive agenda since Ronald Reagan himself. Through Palin, the frame has now become, “The government doesn’t understand you or like you. That’s why it’s hurting you so badly. Come to Tough Hockey Mommy and I’ll make them go away.”

And how did the Obama team respond Thursday? With, “Here are our policy prescriptions for creating rural jobs through national investment in alternative fuels research.”

What O’Toole, the insightful Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editor, was asking, is this: how’s that policy prescription approach gonna work for you, against Tough Hockey Mommy?

Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz at least understood the question, but she’s betting all her money on the dubious proposition that voters ultimately will vote logic over emotion, explaining (in response to O’Toole) that while her constituents respect her personal story as a mom who bore all three of her children while in office, they reelect her because of her position on issues like reproductive choice and stem cell research. Toward the end of the second audio above, she predicted that “when you look beneath the layers of the surface issues of her [Palin] being a mom, the women voters and voters across the country are going to see that there’s just no there there.”

I’d like to think she’s right - but I don’t. A lot of voters will vote logic, and thus Democratic. A lot will vote emotion; they’re almost all lost to the Republican side. But there are a whole lot who vote both - and to leave out the emotional component, to fail to see and respond to the new Republican frame, is to throw the race. The logical, policy-wonk concepts that actually have the potential to revive small-town America are what Obama will need to actually govern - but to be elected, Democrats also need to appeal to the parts of the brain that Sarah Palin appealed to Wednesday night. This election is both a logical policy contest and, as Jay Rosen presciently pointed out before last night’s debate in a must-read post, a highly emotional culture war. Democrats need to fight on both fronts.

And when you talk about the culture war, the most divisive quote in recent American foreign policy is applicable: “You’re either with us or against us.” That cuts right to the heart of what enough Americans saw in George Walker Bush to elect him despite his history of business and academic failures. He was able to play the part the best. He was able to do what he had to do to get elected. Didn’t matter that Al Gore had solutions, he had the debate zingers - like “fuzzy math.” And with Obama talking truth instead of truthiness, he may just ensure that the only change in Washington is that we’ll have a female VP. Reminds me of that great scene from the movie The American President:

Lewis Rothschild: You have a deeper love of this country than any man I’ve ever known. And I want to know what it says to you that in the past seven weeks, 59% of Americans have begun to question your patriotism.

President Andrew Shepherd: Look, if the people want to listen to-…

Lewis Rothschild: They don’t have a choice! Bob Rumson is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.

President Andrew Shepherd: Lewis, we’ve had presidents who were beloved, who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty. They drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.

Popularity: 4% [?]

BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a change! The chicken wanted change!

JOHN MCCAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure right from Day One! that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn’t about me.

GEORGE W. BUSH: We don’t really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

DICK CHENEY: Where’ s my gun?

COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.

BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken. What is your definition of road?

AL GORE: I invented the chicken.

JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken’s intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need more black chickens.

DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won’t realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he’s acting by not taking on his current problems before
adding new problems.

OPRAH: Well, I understand that this chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I’m going to give this chicken a car so that he can drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed access to the other side of the road.

NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he’s guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer’s Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No bird gave me any insider information about crossing.

DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I’ve not been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.

JERRY FALWELL: Because the chicken was gay! Can’t you people see the plain truth? That’s why they call it the “other side.” Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you may become gay, also. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like “the other side.” That chicken should not be crossing the road. It’s as plain and as simple as that.

GRANDPA: In my day we didn’t ask why a chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

BARBARA WALTERS: Isn’t that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it had experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.

ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

JOHN LENNON: Imagine all the chickens crossing roads together.

BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken 2008, which will not only cross roads, but will integrate with those that lay eggs. Henhouse Explorer is an integral part of eChicken 2008. This new platform is much more stable than previous versions.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road pass beneath the chicken?

COLONEL SANDERS: Which way did he go?

Popularity: 5% [?]

Not that those with critical thinking skills and some understanding of the African American experience couldn’t already figure this out, but it’s amazing how controversial people sound when you conveniently leave out the context in which they make statements … especially when those statements are paraphrased and especially when you have an agenda to push. You know - like Sean Hannity’s Neo Nazi sympathizer agenda (allegedly):

YouTube - FOX Lies!! Barack Obama Pastor Wright


God Damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God


Xmas 2007, Part 1


Xmas 2007, Part 2


Xmas 2007, Part 3


Xmas 2007, Part 4

Popularity: 8% [?]