Monday Musings: October 11, 2010

Did you have the Reno Gazette Journal delivered to your house on Sunday. If not, and you didn’t go buy one, you will miss out on some excellent analysis of the Reid-Angle race for Senate. The RGJ calls this a print exclusive. It’s probably an attempt to rev up declining sales of the analog version of the paper - and give the advertisers some reason for hanging in there and buying ads which provide revenue for the RGJ.

I grew up working for newspapers of all sizes. I get it. But when it comes to something so important as who is going to represent the state of Nevada for the next six years of rough, tough times - wouldn’t you think that should deserve the broadest possible coverage? Doesn’t the only remaining newspaper of substance in northern Nevada have some sort of obligation - beyond the one to their shareholders and the advertisers?

An obligation to defend and promote democracy?

It’s probably just me.

If you had read the feature on the Reid-Angle race, and you could still vote for anybody but Reid, I’d like to know why. I’d like to know just what you missed from that piece. Or what it is that you still don’t quite understand.

A friend of many years made some posts on my Facebook page that were actually rather embarrassing … to him. He’s the kind of person who would still vote for Sharron Angle.

Here’s the first post:

“What else can we expect from hair brain Harry? Maybe we will get lucky and he will crash into a deep canyon and just disappear. Hope fully he would have Bitchie Pillosi with him.”

This has been typical, including the venom and mis-spellings.

Then there was this one:

“One more thing:
Those elected to Congress receive life time salaries after only one election. This should be stopped and only two elections allowed. Also, they should be required to contribute to S/S and Medicare like any other non political citizens.”

I sent him a personal email, rather than correct him in public. He’s so mired in bitterness that he can’t even think straight anymore. I sent a couple links to websites that, of course, explain that people in Congress have been paying into Social Security since 1984, and that a quirk in the congressional retirement law does allow for the big lifetime salaries for a miniscule number of persons - those that got elected very young, served only a short time and went home to live very long lives. As Bob might realize, if he thought much about this issue, he bemoans how long congressmen/women stay which sort of defies getting that pension for many years.

At the end, I very gently suggested that before he says things like that in public, he might want to check facts rather than take viral bogus emails at face value. I doubt my words will have any effect.

You might think my friend is some sort of undereducated trailer park ne’er-do-well. You’d be very wrong. Quite the opposite actually. In his eighties now, Bob had a long distinguished career (military and private sector) and was very successful. But this is a large group of what Democrats and Liberals - or just the people with the intellectual discipline to challenge their assumptions - forget they’re really fighting in these campaigns.

The Democrats have done a piss poor job of getting their message out. They’ve done a piss poor job of getting the facts out. That there are literate citizens of this country that still don’t know that Congress pays into Social Security is shameful. That these same citizens are essentially disenfranchised by their age and lack of skill in perusing the internet for facts, and fall victim to viral emails is so lame. Add to that, the millions out there who are still new to the internet or don’t have the money to buy access to the worlds greatest storehouse of knowledge and information.

Add to that a lame assed infrastructure that can’t even manage to get ‘four bars’ on your cellphone anywhere you might happen to be. This is the worlds’ greatest country?

We invented these technologies but didn’t care enough to make sure they are available for all our citizens. America virtually invented the age of modern communications and we are arguably the worst at actually putting it to effective use - unless there is a fast buck to be made.

It isn’t enough to invest in hard infrastructure unless you make a comparable investment in usage skills. One informs the other. Neither exists in a vacuum. And you don’t weight your investment too heavily in just one sector - say, business or government - than another, i.e. the end user/consumer of information.

America has left it’s most important end user/consumer in the lurch - the electorate that should be driving this train of representative democracy.

How many times can you see irrational fact-challenged Sharron Angle ads (knowing full well there are thousands of voters who actually believe that tripe) without admitting to a large scale failure of information technology across a vast swath of society? How great can our IT and telecommunications be when all we do is keep ‘geeks’ and ‘swells’ connected - and the rest still think witchcraft or Nazi re-enactments are just hobby choices, congress doesn’t have to pay social security, and that Sharron Angle’s latest lie just might be true?

To me, at least, this screams “failure to communicate” on a scale so massive it’s almost criminal.

Here is an example of some good communications by the Dina Titus, D-NV campaign:

Dina - and I’m not in her district and can’t vote for her, although I would if I could - is at least proud to stand up and say just what she did. Would that other Dems would, too.

It’s time for Dems to quit allowing the likes of Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie (see him on Bob Schieffer this morning? Gag.) to continue to promote the simple-minded sitcom worthy parody of complex legislative initiatives like health care reform. Yes, it’s big. It’s wide. It’s hard to understand at times. So was the ‘stimulus’. That’s because the problems - yes, we even have problems here in the land of the free - were just that big.

If the Dems continue to sit there on their well-principled hands, then voters like Bob will only remember the parody.

And talking about simple-minded parodies, here’s Ed Gillespie on Face the Nation:

Gillespie must have also been a high school debater like Karl Rove and I.

Here’s the key: talk really fast, spouting out all manner of outrageous lies rapid fire and overwhelm the opposing team in bullshit so deep they don’t know where to begin to shovel. I know that shell-shocked look of the other team. I had it on my face a couple of times when I had to face Karl Rove’s high school debate team trainees from Olympus H.S. in Salt Lake City. He taught them well. But I finally learned the trick as well.

For him to sit there with a straight face and declare that he and Rove aren’t actually running American Crossroads is beyond the pale. Of course they aren’t sitting “on the board”. And Bugsy Siegel probably wasn’t on the board of the Vegas casinos back in the day. Right. No influence.

Finally, Sharron Angle made news talking to her choir on a conservative Las Vegas radio show. She totally flip-flopped her positions on Social Security privatization, similar with the VA privatization, and now believes unemployment insurance benefits aren’t welfare:

“We pay into it, so in some respects, it is an insurance policy that we bought into with our paychecks.”

Again, her constituency of the short term memory issues will probably generously ignore all the evidence - in Sharron’s own damning words - to the contrary. Talk about a woman with absolutely no convictions whatsoever - hell, she’s the perfect Republican candidate in a nutshell. And I do mean Nut Shell.

Yes, Sharron Angle wants to win just that badly. Harry must have closed a poll number gap somewhere.

Well, Ladybird Kat is up here on my desk, trying to give me the head bump that says: “hey lady, gimme some of that Kat Kandy” (AKA hairball goop that she loves)

 

Try and have a great week at work while I try and remove the dangling grey Kat tail from my keyboard.

Oh, and I almost forgot, those of you who got the email from MoveOn about taking your pictures for a tee-vee spot supporting Harry Reid against old whatshername and Karl Rove’s front groups - get out there in the sunshine and get it done. I did mine. All 15 of ‘em, before the light outdoors failed me.

Uh, I think they coulda, shoulda warned us that they wanted that many. Coulda, woulda planned for more light.

-maven

If you want to look at the real Sharron Angle then Justin Barasky (thanks!) has provided links to Sharron’s actual views on Social Security, Medicare, the VA and unemployment benefits - and official position of stonewalling the mainstream media.

Angle is clearly on tape saying
repeatedly<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu-FPDC4nhQ>she wants to
“phase out” Social Security, even going so far as to declare
that “the idea of getting out of Medicare and Social Security is not up for
grabs<http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/06/angle-getting-out-of-medic…>.”
The VA lie is also easily
falsifiable<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKzjwQ3Z6Js>and in fact was
the subject of a scathing smackdown by veteran NV journalist
Jon Ralston, who called Angle
“pathological<http://www.lasvegassun.com/blogs/ralstons-flash/2010/sep/28/angle-i-n…>.”
And Angle’s antipathy toward unemployed Nevadans and the benefits that have
“spoiled” them is something that is not only irrefutably captured on
tape<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hudjhBtV8Nk>– it’s something she
once apologized for saying.

“Thinking the media wasn’t present, Sharron Angle finally got caught
acknowledging it was the official policy of her campaign to stonewall all
press inquiries – while lying pathologically to a group of right-wing
backers about her extreme and dangerous agenda to eliminate Social Security,
end unemployment benefits that “spoil” struggling Nevadans, and privatize
the Veterans Administration,” said Reid campaign spokesman Kelly Steele.
“Sharron Angle has dishonestly declared she wants an ‘informed electorate,’
but the reality – which she’s now been caught admitting when she didn’t
think the cameras were rolling – is that she’ll do or say anything to hide
her extreme and dangerous agenda for Nevada from our state’s voters.”

You might also want to read: ‘At rally, Angle not afraid to verbalize hypocrisy’