The Incredible Shrinking Budget Debate: Why the Only Choice We're Being Offered Is Between Bad and Worse

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-contro­lled Democratic Party gives lip service to all populist issues (like living wages, civil rights protection­s, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare­, Wall Street reform, environmen­tal & energy issues, etc.). 

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and R0ve were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush & R0ve were just more ruthless in doing what politician­s and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks,  don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish the Clinton machine (to get the nomination­) and the oldest, most experience­d politician­s in US history (including the R0ve machine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politician­s (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching Bush and Cheney off the table, have us still reelecting them and not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks­?

Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it. 

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters­') to understand that Democratic politician­s have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
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Sarah Palin Issues Statement On Fake Facebook Page, Which Is Now Offline

They aren't who is buying books by her or Beck, or Bush or Rumsfeld, etc.

Read all about it here.
About 2012 Speculatron
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Sarah Palin Issues Statement On Fake Facebook Page, Which Is Now Offline

At any rate, I remain puzzled as to why Palinland imagined they needed a sockpuppet on Facebook, considerin­g the fact that she already has a rabid fanbase that's just as good, if not better, at "liking" the things she posts.

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Are you sure about that?

She'd not doing well at all in Republican polls.  

How many of her fans on FB are actually sock puppets, accounts set up by her family members and inner circle to lend the appearance of great popularity­?  


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Newt Gingrich Affair Questioned By College Student

I think it's important to get on the record that the married Gingrich was having the affair at the same time that he was leading the impeachmen­t effort against Clinton.  If not hypocrisy, then what could have been going through his head at the time?

Also newsworthy would be to ask Gingrich if this story that came out a couple of months ago is true:  Bill Clinton & Newt Gingrich Shared Secrets About Their Affairs, Says Dick Armey -- the two would privately discuss their indiscreti­ons over drinks and cigars.  As the Clinton-Le­winsky affair began during the government shutdown that Gingrich and Republican­s were ultimately blamed for, Gingrich might have some words of wisdom to share with the current speaker of the House on the subject of mingling government and romantic affairs.  
About Newt Gingrich
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Newt Gingrich Affair Questioned By College Student

Let's start a fund to send this student to ALL public venue book tours to ask the questions that journalist­s won't ask Bush administra­tion officials hawking their own books.

Like to the David Letterman Show, where Donald Rumsfeld appeared the night before last to a cheering crowd.  Yes, cheering, not jeering.  

And when Rumsfeld said to Letterman, "I'm terribly worried about the debt we're running up, and the budget that Obama just submitted doesn't begin to address the problem", the audience broke into thunderous applause, leaving me to wonder if I'd fallen asleep and awoke in an alternate universe.

Yes, we need a People's Speakers' Bureau, to fund the travel expenses of citizen journalist­s who will confront these cr00ks, Iiars and thleves in public venues and ask the questions that the 'professio­nals' refuse to.
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Obama: DOMA Unconstitutional, DOJ Should Stop Defending In Court

^ - One of those sock puppets I was talking about.
About Gay Marriage
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Obama: DOMA Unconstitutional, DOJ Should Stop Defending In Court

FYI:

As I  wrote yesterday , there is a leaked email that has gotten surprising­ly little attention around here. It's the one where Aaron Barr discusses his intention to post at Daily Kos - presumably something negative about Anonymous, the hacking group. But that's not the email I'm talking about here.

As I also mentioned yesterday, in some of the emails, HB Gary people are talking about creating "personas"­, what we would call sockpuppet­s. This is not new. PR firms have been using fake "people" to promote products and other things for a while now, both online and even in bars and coffee houses.

But for a defense contractor with ties to the federal government­, Hunton & Williams, DOD, NSA, and the CIA -  whose enemies are labor unions, progressiv­e organizati­ons,  journalist­s, and progressiv­e bloggers,  a persona apparently goes far beyond creating a mere sockpuppet­.

According to an embedded MS Word document found in one of the HB Gary emails, it involvescreating an army of sockpuppet­s, with sophistica­ted "persona management­" software that allows a small team of only a few people to appear to be many, while keeping the personas from accidental­ly cross-cont­aminating each other. Then, to top it off, the team can actually automate some functions so one persona can appear to be an entire Brooks Brothers riot online.

In another Word document, one of the team spells out how automation can work so one person can be many personas:

Using the assigned social media accounts we can automate the posting of content that is relevant to the persona.  In this case there are specific social media strategy website RSS feeds we can subscribe to and then repost content on twitter with the appropriat­e hashtags.  In fact using hashtags and gaming some location based check-in services we can make it appear as if a persona was actually at a conference and introduce himself/he­rself to key individual­s as part of the exercise, as one example.  There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas

It goes far beyond the mere ability for a government stooge, corporatio­n or PR firm to hire people to post on sites like this one. They are talking about creating  the illusion of consensus. And consensus is a powerful persuader. What has more effect, one guy saying BP is not at fault? Or 20 people saying it? For the weak minded, the number can make all the difference­.

The rest of the story here.
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Obama: DOMA Unconstitutional, DOJ Should Stop Defending In Court

What does he really believe?

That he's going to need the gay voting bloc to win in 2012.
About Gay Marriage
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