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Distractions

Posted on March 27, 2009 at 5:16 pm

Lean Left on how the people are kept from concentrating on the real issues:

But at the same time I have a sense that we are inundated, not so much with “whining” as just stupid distractions and idiotic disputes over things that don’t matter, or shouldn’t be controversial. In part this is politically strategic. The right wing is constantly and calculatedly ginning up “wedge issues” deliberately designed to prevent critical attention to their own failures and extremism: consciously empty scandals like Al Gore’s suits or John Edwards’ hair, and fraudulent or just insane controversies manipulated to divide the electorate, like gay marriage or the Terri Schiavo travesty. But to a large degree it’s just sheer stupidity run amok. The general public, liberals and conservatives, are just so thoughtless, so myopic, and so easily agitated, that the smallest, dumbest things can turn into social controversies.

Comments

19 Responses to “Distractions”

  1. dontcallmemikey writes
    March 27th, 2009 7:42 pm

    like teleprompters.

  2. BluedogCatcher writes
    March 27th, 2009 10:18 pm

    They HAVE to focus on the teleprompters. The last GOP president couldn’t even read them.

  3. dontcallmemikey writes
    March 28th, 2009 6:47 am

    I think they just found out about the technology … thought everybody used insex cards like Reagan …

  4. mike samoose writes
    March 28th, 2009 9:01 am

    In the infamous words of our inspired President, “let be perfectly clear…uh, um…”

  5. TennRod writes
    March 28th, 2009 10:38 am

    The right wingers are master of straw men and false controversies, of changing the subject to something unimportant, of saying “What about…” (one of their favorite distractions, in which any Republican misdeed is answered, not with a discussion of the issue at hand, but a citation of some Democrat or liberal who did something akin to it, even if it were 25 years ago).

    The current wedge issue in Tennessee is this idiotic SJR127, an anti-abortion grandstanding play which will have absolutely no substantive effect on abortion and is really designed to: 1) create a diversion to placate the bug-eyed anti-abortionist wingnuts; and 2) turn ou these same wingnuts in an important election year.

    The AIG bonus scandal is something akin to this, although it wasn’t so much a liberal vs. conservative issue. Pretty much everyone was pissed off about the bonuses except some corporate bootlicking types in the country club set). While BILLIONS were flowing into Wall Street to protect a bunch of non-productive, useless, paper-shuffling crooks, the American people focused on the MILLIONS going to a few of the same. Don’t get me wrong — those getting the bonuses don’t deserve anything more than a few years in prison — the the focus was on the trivial.

    Same with gay marriage or gay adoption. No one anywhere is harmed by two gay people getting married or an unwanted child getting a good home. Just the opposite, in fact. But these are reliable ways to gin up some froth on the mouths of the far right. Meanwhile, people have no health insurance, the foster care system is overloaded, people are out of work. But, by god, we sure as hell won’t let Brenda and Sue get a marriage license.

  6. Glen Dean writes
    March 28th, 2009 12:06 pm

    Umm like how 1/1000 of the money that was used to “bailout” AIG was spent. I mean the left just elected a People Magazine President. Unbelievable, maybe you all should worry about the plank in your own eye.

  7. serr8d writes
    March 28th, 2009 12:43 pm

    Kleinheider’s link leads to a whiner whining about whiners.

    A circle jerk, no less. Can’t you find a way to bring in Olbermann?

  8. dontcallmemikey writes
    March 28th, 2009 12:44 pm

    People magazine president. Very illustrative of the point.

    When a Repub is forced away from comments about teleprompters and People magazine, they cannot sell their agenda. Your right about the abortion non-issue, the gun non-issue, the ‘apology for slavery’ non-issue … down the line.

  9. serr8d writes
    March 28th, 2009 12:55 pm

    mikey, you just elected a dirty socialist president who’s main theme was amorphous and misleading ‘CHANGE’, and you dare speak to ‘agenda’ from the GOP?

    How’s your CHANGE agenda working out for you, given the multiple trillions of vapor dollars BHO is giving out in spendulous funds that come due for your grandkids?

  10. TennRod writes
    March 28th, 2009 1:23 pm

    Well, serr, it’s working out a hell of a lot better than the 12 years of Republican malfeasance in the Congress or the 8 years of Republican incompetence in the White House, corporate bootlicking, anti-environment, anti-worker, borrow-and-spend, sell-our-souls to China, wreck the economy, war on the middle class, unjustified war, anti-intellectual, anti-science, willfully ignorant, privatize Social Security, demonize people of color train wreck that you and those like you subjected us to with Bush, Cheney, DeLay and Gingrich.

    When did you leave the City Paper blogs, serr? Haven’t seen you here much. Did they finally get tired of your dancing around like a parrot on cocaine chanting socialist! socialist! socialist! communist! every two seconds? You are such an idiot, and I have kind of wondered if you are really a liberal trying to make conservatives appear to be unhinged.

    Serr, you need to get over it. You and your kind lost. Big time. Crushed. Overwhelmed in both the Congress and White House races because that same, tired, foolish, stupid, out-of-date, no-longer-relevant (if it ever was), McCarthyite bullshit that painted everybody to the left of Attila the Hun as a socialist subversive just doesn’t ring ay bells (except of course with your fellow paranoid parallel-universe tin-foil hat wearing dittohed morons). Hold on for dear life in the rural south; that’s about all you have left.

    But I want to congratulate you, serr. You have never wavered, and today you come across as looney as you always have. You are 100 percent for being an idiot.

  11. dontcallmemikey writes
    March 28th, 2009 2:43 pm

    serr - thanks for proving the point. Disappointed you didn’t work the teleprompter in, but a good try.

    As for answering your specifics - TennRod did a fine job. I might add that nearly everyone understood what CHANGE was all about - the full scope. Perhaps you missed it, or were so sure screaming ’socialist’ would scare people away at the last minute.

  12. serr8d writes
    March 28th, 2009 3:18 pm

    I don’t know how Tenn-no-Rod finds that a 53 - 47 margin is ‘overwhelming’ (must be that public school math) but comparing presidencies, let’s see: BHO has only been around for a couple months and has already created more debt than all the other presidents combined (including Bush), and he’s just getting warmed up. Bush is gone, lefties, you’re on the block now, so instead of looking back, try supporting Baracky, for a change. What, exactly, is he doing that’s helping this country? Besides debt, and spreading socialism, what? I’ll wait.

    Oh, the NCP is a small stage that doesn’t even support hyperlinks. I’ll check it out occasionally, but really, why? It’s fetid swampland. I’ll pass.

    Do you have a blog, T-N-R, or, like Mickey, do you just mouth off at forums? Insty-punks? Let’s see what you have, boys, before you run your yaps.

    A cowardly punk never admires or strives to emulate success, but always envies and resents it. The punk’s habitual modus operandi is to encourage others to join his efforts to undermine the prestige and authority of successful leadership. The punk assembles a coalition of losers, an army of naysayers who sit around griping and grumbling about everything, telling each other how unfairly they’ve been treated, and blaming all their woes on the successful people.

    That pretty much sums up T-N-R, Mickey, and life in lefty land, generally.

  13. serr8d writes
    March 28th, 2009 3:20 pm

    Oh, T-N-R, I didn’t miss The Telepromptocracy, after all.

  14. dontcallmemikey writes
    March 28th, 2009 4:29 pm

    Funny, serr … the insta-punk description seems accurate more for Republicans than Democrats.

    Hmmm … as for having a blog. No, I don’t. Answering a few posts from time to time seems to fulfill my needs. I’m assuming you have a problem with that … LOL.

    Let’s see, how many days into Obama’s presidency? and he’s already reversed many Bush regulations that tipped the scales of justice from polluters, reconfigured plans for Afghanistan, he’s gotten even insurance copmanies involved in some kind of universal health care plan - and is grappling with an economy that everyone knows is going to get worse before it gets better. Hmmm … .and from REpubs, we’re gonna get an April Fool’s joke …

    I do believe we all knew change what change meant, serr …

  15. serr8d writes
    March 28th, 2009 5:42 pm

    ..reversed many Bush regulations that tipped the scales of justice from polluters..

    Details? Links? If, by ‘reversing regulations that tippled justice’ you mean ‘increasing the cost of energy and driving the stock market down’, well, you have that, don’t you? Every time Baracky opens his trap the markets plunged, until someone finally got him to STFU. Baracky lied, the economy died.

    ..some kind of universal health care plan..

    As always, details escape you. Let’s just say I surmise you want evil Rethuglican Bushitler business owners and capitalists to absorb the cost of health care for every person in the U.S., well, I’ve heard that before. I don’t think it’ll work without further bankrupting the nation, but liberals and this Angel of Left BHO excels at grandiose plans. But details escape; none of you have any clue as to how they are to be paid for. Except for the printing new money part, Baracky is good at that. And at, well, lying. Shattered dreams, eh, lefties? Where’s the tax cut he promised?

    Pump my free gas! Pay my mortgage! What’s this lefty savior doing without miracles, eh?

  16. serr8d writes
    March 28th, 2009 5:43 pm

    ..reversed many Bush regulations that tipped the scales of justice from polluters..

    Details? Links? If, by ‘reversing regulations that tippled justice’ you mean ‘increasing the cost of energy and driving the stock market down’, well, you have that, don’t you? Every time Baracky opens his trap the markets plunged, until someone finally got him to STFU. Baracky lied, the economy died.

    ..some kind of universal health care plan..

    As always, details escape you. Let’s just say I surmise you want evil Rethuglican Bushitler business owners and capitalists to absorb the cost of health care for every person in the U.S., well, I’ve heard that before. I don’t think it’ll work without further bankrupting the nation, but liberals and this Angel of Left BHO excels at grandiose plans. But details escape; none of you have any clue as to how they are to be paid for. Except for the printing new money part, Baracky is good at that. And at, well, lying. Shattered dreams, eh, lefties? Where’s the tax cut he promised?

    Pump my free gas! Pay my mortgage! What’s this lefty savior doing without miracles, eh?

  17. serr8d writes
    March 28th, 2009 5:48 pm

    Oh. Printing new money. Baracky has that down pat.

    But I hear that he can part the Dead Sea defy the laws of hyperinflation.

    Zimbabwe.

  18. dontcallmemikey writes
    March 28th, 2009 6:30 pm

    LOL … and then John Boehner said … “—————–”

    I really don’t have much to add except … “Baracky lied and the economy died.’ Hmmm … now THAT’s informed punditry.

  19. Hunker Down writes
    March 29th, 2009 2:09 pm

    Note to TennRod: Well said!

    As James Carville has stated, “Politics is like the circus: the worst job is cleaning up after the elephants.”

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