Friday, July 13, 2012
What might be politically potent this election:That: Romney was sole shareholder, sole director, Chief Executive Officer, President, and managing director of Bain Capital when it invested in a company that was involved in disposing of aborted fetuses. That won't get people to vote for Obama, but it might turn off a lot of conservatives who would ordinarily vote (perhaps reluctantly) for Romney.
posted by Quiddity at 7/13/2012 06:14:00 PM
22 comments
Fortunately under the Constitution the President is NOT the sole stockholder and director of America. Has Bain become the bane of Mitt R-MONEY's candidacy?
Pro-choicers do very well with the public when they are able to frame the abortion issue in terms of choice, freedom and women's rights.
Pro-lifers do very well when they are able to frame the abortion issue in terms of trash barrels filled with tiny corpses with crushed skulls.
So by all means, let's hold a national referendum around the fact that the abortion industry produces so many dead fetuses per year that they need to be disposed of on an industrial scale, but not blow the carefully manicured framing of abortion as nothing but choice, rights and freedom into pieces in the process.
That's quite a tightrope walk through a shitstorm the Obama campaign has planned for themselves. What could go wrong?
Go ahead. Throw dead fetuses at Mitt Romney and see if they stick. Everyone can talk about it for weeks, with pictures and statistics and everything, but don't be surprised if you turn off a lot of liberals who would ordinarily vote for pro-choice candidates. And by "turn off", I mean make them so sick to their stomach that they vote pro-life for the first time in their lives.
Consider R-MONEY in the Wizard of Oz as:
1. The Scarecrow: If only my BAIN had an R.
2. The Tin Man: If only I had a heart that could beat for the poor, even though I'm well oiled.
3 The Cowardly Lion: If only I had the courage to release my tax returns.
4. Toto: I hope the Wiz doesn't put me in a carrier on top of his car.
5. Dorothy: OOPS!
Everyone can talk about it for weeks, with pictures and statistics and everything, but don't be surprised if you turn off a lot of liberals who would ordinarily vote for pro-choice candidates.
It's hard to reconcile Romney's current anti-abortion position with his ownership of a company that services clinics and hospitals where abortions take place.
But I must compliment you on your original strategy, of using pictures of stillborn/aborted fetuses for the pro-life side to demonstrate what it's all about.
Genius, I tells you, sheer genius. Nobody ever thought of doing that before.
That's quite a tightrope walk through a shitstorm the Obama campaign has planned for themselves. What could go wrong?
What color is the atmosphere on planet Nutjob?
"a tightrope walk through a shitstorm"
jms: I disagree with your political calculation on this one but I love the metaphor.
Of course it's hardly original for pro-lifers to bring up the dead fetuses, but it's quite original for pro-choicers to do so. It's something they never, ever talk about. To pro-choicers, it begins and ends with choice. From the way they like to talk about it, you would think that a women walks into the choice clinic, the doctor greets her with a smile and gets out his choice tools, does some choice things, and the unwanted choice disappears in a rainbow-colored cloud of choice vapor.
For pro-choicers to center a political campaign around barrels of dead fetuses is quite original. Sheer genius, and I'm absolutely fascinated how it's going to turn out. I'm sure it will be a spectacular success, because Barack Obama has the smartest campaign strategists in the history of America. They know this because they all tell it to each other and how could so many brilliant people be wrong?
Can you tell us which 'pro-choicers' are hitting Romney with his investment in a firm that serviced places where abortions take place every week, if not every day?
The use of pictures of human feti to support so-called "pro-life" positions will finally work this time around, after some 40 years of using this tactic.
I'm sure it will be a spectacular success, because Barack Obama has the smartest campaign strategists in the history of America. They know this because they all tell it to each other and how could so many brilliant people be wrong?
"O beautiful, for spacious skies..."
This is your brain on Fox News.
Any questions?
David Corn of Mother Jones, for one. I assume he's pro-choice. If he isn't, you can knock me over with a feather as a special bonus.
Ah, the America The Beautiful Ad. Quite a piece of work. Take a beloved, patriotic song that mostly brings back the emotions of the aftermath of September 11th, when it practically replaced the Star Spangled Banner as our unofficial national anthem and a call to mourning and unity, and use it in a sneering, derisive context in a smash-mouth attack on Mitt Romney.
I'll bet his campaign staff was peeing their pants with glee when they put that one out. We'll have to see if swing voters feel the same way, but I wouldn't beam too smugly over that one.
David Corn of Mother Jones, for one. I assume he's pro-choice. If he isn't, you can knock me over with a feather as a special bonus
You're confusing reporting with advocacy.
use it in a sneering, derisive context in a smash-mouth attack on Mitt Romney.
No, it's a tribute to the patriotism of someone who valued the contribution to the American economy that outsourcing brings to it.
Take a beloved, patriotic song that mostly brings back the emotions of the aftermath of September 11th, when it practically replaced the Star Spangled Banner as our unofficial national anthem and a call to mourning and unity,
Actually, that was "God Bless America":
Major League Baseball
Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, "God Bless America" is commonly sung during the seventh-inning stretch in Major League Baseball games, most often on Sundays[16], Opening Day[17], Memorial Day[18], Independence Day, All-Star Game, Labor Day, September 11[19], and all post-season Major League Baseball games. Following the attacks, John Dever, then the Assistant Media Relations Director with the San Diego Padres, suggested the song replace "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", the more traditional 7th inning anthem.[20] MLB quickly followed the Padres lead and instituted it league-wide for the rest of the season; presently, teams decide individually when to play the song. Yankee Stadium[21], Dodger Stadium[22], and Turner Field[23] are currently the only Major League ballparks to play "God Bless America" in every game during the seventh-inning stretch. The Yankees' YES Network and the Dodgers' telecast on Fox Sports West televises its performance during some (mainly home) games before going to a commercial. During major games (playoff contests, Opening Day, national holidays, or games against Boston or the Mets), the Yankees will often have Irish tenor Ronan Tynan perform the song.[24]
Indianapolis 500
The Indianapolis 500 is traditionally run at the end of the month of May, and has sung "God Bless America" since 2003. The song "America the Beautiful" was sung before, but it was switched to "God Bless America" in the post-9/11 era. The song has traditionally been performed by Florence Henderson, a native Hoosier, and is a friend of the track's owners the Hulman-George family. Her performance, often not televised, immediately precedes the national anthem.[25] Henderson routinely sings the entire song, including the prologue, and in some years, sings the chorus a second time.
If they had used Romney singing Mr. Berlins' encomium, you'd have a point, but as a good conservative we can't expect you to let facts get in the way of an argument.
"We'll have to see if swing voters feel the same way, but I wouldn't beam too smugly over that one."
Romney tried to use one with Obama singing, so I'm sure that the Obama team is ROTFLTFAO over such an obvious attempt to repeat their obvious success.
R-MONEY'$ singing makes him eligible for American Idol, Glee, Smash, Ted Mack Amateur Hour and the Lawrence Welk Show, and all places off key and off shore.
Oops. Yeah, I confused the two songs. Actually, come to think of it, this is probably the warmest cultural association between my generation and America The Beautiful, and Romney even sounds like Fozzie when he attempts to sing!
Patriotism swells in the heart of the American bear.
The Obama/Al Green ad might have backfired on the Romney campaign, except that Bertlesmann AG, the German-owned company that Barack Obama outsourced the publication of his autobiographies to, filed a DMCA takedown to interfere with a U.S. Presidential campaign, and instantly reframed the issue as the misuse of copyright law by Democrats to suppress Republican campaign ads. If there's one thing that Americans loathe across the board, it is political censorship, and this is about as ham-fisted as it gets. The most interesting part to me is the statement by the Romney campaign that The Romney campaign are now battling to get the video back online. All the Romney campaign has to do is file a DMCA counternotice with youtube claiming fair use, and youtube is required by law under the safe-harbor provisions of the DMCA to reinstate the video. Certainly the Romney campaign knows that, but they seem to be getting better publicity by leaving the link to the DMCA takedown notification and throwing the Obama campaign tactics right into the face of the American public. The black screen says a hundred times more than the rather ineffective ad ever could, and you can't buy those google results.
The Obama attack campaign isn't just an obvious success, it's a $100,000,000 obvious success!
R-MONEY'$ comparison to Fozzi:
"Patriotism swells in the heart of the American bear."
unbearably fails to inform us whose hand is moving R-MONEY'$ lips. (Synchronized hand-puppeting is not yet an Olympic sport but let's give that hand a big hand.)
Actually, the firm in question is basing its' banning over having the copywrite to the song, not because of any malevolent influence by the WH.
A bit ham-handed, because the response of "You have our candidate singing, we'll feature yours, who is doing so ON-KEY!" would actually serve Obama better than any so-called suppression by the WH.
Oh, and whadda know, it's back on Youtube, and it was Al Green who filed the complaint, FWIW.
As for the polling:
July 18: New Polls, but Little Change in Horse Race
By NATE SILVER
Polls from major news organizations, including The New York Times, have a lot going for them. They make a real effort to take a true random sample of Americans — including the substantial number of Americans who rely exclusively on cellphones. They usually have strong standards of disclosure and transparency. They include long and detailed survey batteries, in addition to reporting the horse-race numbers. In an era of constrained news media budgets, they aren’t cutting a lot of corners. All of that counts for a lot, in my view.
That's from the 538 blog at the NYT
Just a minute. Are you refuting me? The Politico article you linked to says that:
The 30-second spot attacking Obama for alleged cronyism was removed on Tuesday after BMG Rights Management filed a complaint on behalf of Green, an Obama supporter.
Politico confirms what I said, that BMG filed the complaint, not Al Green. Also, I described the action as the misuse of copyright law by Democrats to suppress Republican campaign ads. Green, an Obama supporter, is presumably a Democrat. He requested that BMG file a takedown. That's a Democrat suppressing a Republican campaign ad.
The article also implies that the Romney campaign did not file a counter-notification, intending to leave the DMCA takedown notice in place, just as I suggested, and that it was Youtube that reinstated the video at their own discretion. Note that Youtube would not have done this if they were not absolutely confident that the use was non-infringing, and that the DMCA notification filed by German-owned BMG on behalf of Democratic Obama supporter Al Green was a misuse of copyright law, because by reinstating the video on their own they lose safe-harbor status.
But take a step back for a moment. We can argue all day about which side is more fiendishly clever, but in the simplest terms, Barack Obama just spent his own campaign's money on an ad linking Mitt Romney to one of the most beloved patriotic songs in American history. As a campaign strategy, that's way out there.
Not that anyone is going to pay much more attention to this little petty psych-ops skirmish after yesterday morning.
Politico confirms what I said, that BMG filed the complaint, not Al Green.
No, read it again:
BMG Rights Management filed a complaint on behalf of Green, an Obama supporter
It's like when a lawyer files on behalf of a client, the lawyer didn't initiate the action.
"English, M-F, can you read it?"
But take a step back for a moment. We can argue all day about which side is more fiendishly clever, but in the simplest terms, Barack Obama just spent his own campaign's money on an ad linking Mitt Romney to one of the most beloved patriotic songs in American history. As a campaign strategy, that's way out there.
Like the "Countdown" ad that Johnson ran against Goldwater in 1964, or the sainted Reagan kicking off his 1980 Presidential Campaign in Philadelphia, MS?
You need to review the history of American political campaigns, if you think this goes beyond the pale. Contrasting Romney's appearance of patriotism with his known actions isn't unjust or hitting below the belt, and to play Aunt Pitty-Patty over it is a bit histrionic, to tell you the truth.
BTW, how do you feel about a campaign that uses deceptive editing in their own ad?
Mitt Romney’s campaign will bring a deceptively edited clip of President Obama’s “you didn’t build that line” to a much wider audience. The campaign is taking an abridged version of the video and expanding it into a full ad buy.
The amount of the buy for “These Hands” is still unknown. The ad features Obama discussing the importance of transportation, education and other government investments for the private sector, but selected lines are cut up and spliced together to make it appear as if he’s delivering one continuous passage:
If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
The sentences left out in Romney’s edit clearly indicate that Obama was discussing public services, not the businesses themselves. The quotes cut out of the ad are in bold:
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.
The worker featured in the ad by Romney had a nuanced take on Obama’s remarks on FOX News Thursday that took into account the president’s actual words in a much more honest and direct fashion than the ad’s edited account.
You completely misunderstand me. I am in no way offended by the ad. I'm laughing at the Obama campaign because I think that they're now producing sophisticated pro-Romney propaganda without even realizing it.
The ad was obviously produced by people who are deeply cynical about traditional American patriotism and its popular expression -- the sort of people who use phrases like "flag-waving" with a sneer on their lips. They assume that middle America is going to buy into their cynicism and they are so very wrong. People unabashedly love America The Beautiful. It simply can't be used to cynical effect on anyone who isn't already deeply hardened with anti-Americanism. It's not going to work the way they think it's going to work.
The text is very aggressive. It's a big turn-off, and I think that most people are going to simply avert their eyes when Romney leaves the screen and the attack text starts. Most people don't watch commercials anyway unless the video is somehow compelling, but they can't help but hear the audio.
Romney is obviously singing sincerely - you can hear his smile come through. The echo added to the audio is supposed to make it ominous, I suppose, but it instead evokes nostalgia. The song fades out before the end, and every time I hear it, I complete the last line in my head.
Take away the text, and it becomes a very effective Mitt Romney ad. But the audio is so much more powerful and evocative than the text that I think that it's the audio message that sticks, not the text in the video.
There's a reason why political ads with lots of text usually accompany the text with very simple audio -- usually just one chord swelling, so that people's ears don't distract them from their eyes. The Romney ad is way more conventional. The first few seconds come over a single harsh chord, so the music doesn't distract from the text. Then a few seconds of Obama singing, which actually distracts from the text. But instead of ending the commercial with Obama singing, the audio changes to a low frequency rumble, so as not to interfere with the text they want you to read, AND to stop you from singing the Al Green song in your head.
As for the new ad campaign, sorry, but Obama owns this one. He just delivered the entire Romney campaign bundled up with a bow. He has no one to blame but himself. He went off-teleprompter on a riff and started beating up on business owners and telling them not to be so proud of their accomplishments, because there was a government building roads and bridges. He's clearly trying to cut them down to size by telling them that they owe their success to the government doing things for them. (with their own money, of course. Whose tax dollars pay for those roads and bridges anyway?) Obama's gaffe isn't just bad out of context, it's bad in context, and so wrong-headed that it's provided a campaign theme to a candidate who didn't really have one -- In one stroke, Barack Obama created an entire theme for the Romney campaign -- lionizing entrepreneurship and building small businesses -- which remains to this day incredibly difficult and challenging despite the existance of roads and bridges.
If Obama had kept his eyes on the teleprompter and his brain turned safely off, Romney would be justly accused of creating a straw-man argument. But Obama really said it. In detail. Not just one isolated sentence either. Obama's quote, in context, confirmed a lot of people's worst fears about him -- that he is not just pro-government, which everyone knew, but actually anti-business.
It's not Mitt Romney's job to get Obama out of this one. It's his job to run him over with it.
Obama was beautifully refuted by Ayn Rand in 1957:
“He didn’t invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”
“Who?”
“Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”
She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”
The roads and bridges are there for everyone. Why do so few people build successful businesses?
The ad was obviously produced by people who are deeply cynical about traditional American patriotism and its popular expression -- the sort of people who use phrases like "flag-waving" with a sneer on their lips. They assume that middle America is going to buy into their cynicism and they are so very wrong. People unabashedly love America The Beautiful. It simply can't be used to cynical effect on anyone who isn't already deeply hardened with anti-Americanism. It's not going to work the way they think it's going to work.
Again, they're pointing out the contrast between someone who seems to be patriotic vs. his actions of putting his money in what are known as off-shore accounts and tax havens, which doesn't seem to me to be pro-American whatsoever.
He went off-teleprompter on a riff and started beating up on business owners and telling them not to be so proud of their accomplishments, because there was a government building roads and bridges. He's clearly trying to cut them down to size by telling them that they owe their success to the government doing things for them. (with their own money, of course. Whose tax dollars pay for those roads and bridges anyway?) Obama's gaffe isn't just bad out of context, it's bad in context, and so wrong-headed that it's provided a campaign theme to a candidate who didn't really have one -- In one stroke, Barack Obama created an entire theme for the Romney campaign -- lionizing entrepreneurship and building small businesses -- which remains to this day incredibly difficult and challenging despite the existance of roads and bridges.
Which is why the Republican campaign ad doesn't mention roads and bridges when they quote Obama.
But, you're probably correct, Mr. "Corporations are People" is probably more of a patriot than the President of the United States.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.
Which is just like what Ayn Rand had her character say in the quote you excerpted.
Oh, there's this by Romney:
Meanwhile, Romney has made a virtually identical point on the trail, even as he attacked Obama for saying the same thing: “There’s no question your mom and dad, your school teachers, the people that provide roads, the fire, the police,” help business owners, Romney said on Wednesday. “A lot of people help. But let me ask you this, did you build your business?
From the link in my previous comment.
This is your brain on Fox News, folks.
Any questions?
Yes, the advantages of being born on third base, with R-MONEY'$ mis-thoughts of how he got there on his own, as he tries to score - FLIP-FLOP - towards second base.
Nothing more patriotic than shipping jobs overseas.
Romney's problem is that he wants to be like this, but in reality he's this fellow, albeit with a fat bank account and a cleaner police record.
Cobblepot for President!
Ok. Even I have to admit this shit is funny.
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