Act Blue Turned Conservadem

I was reading a post on Crooks and Liars about Maddow blasting Conservative Democrats when a familiar name popped up (source TPM):

“Conservadems like Jon Tester and Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman are siding with the Republican senators, who are siding with no voters — not even their own!” Maddow exclaimed, noting a recent CNN poll that found that 63 percent of Republicans favored saving the jobs of teachers and first responders.

That name rang a bell… Oh right here he is, and again here with other “netroots” candidates.  What should we do with outsider candidates we vigorously supported and helped win office, when they turn directly against us once in office?

Help vigorously support their primary opponents.

Fun With Rhetoric, Communism and the Far Right

Its been far too long since we’ve checked in with SPLC’s Hate Watch, and there’s a wealth of new stories (quite the uptick in insane sovereign citizen stories).  But today I want to talk about an extraordinary piece of ultra conservative insanity.

Anti-Muslim crazy from SPLC (emphasis mine):

Frank Gaffney, an anti-Muslim activist who in April told conservatives that “Shariah is communism with a God,” has called on Congress in a Washington Times column to bring back the McCarthy-era House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). This time around, the infamous panel’s job will be to root out the Islamist operatives who, he claims, are well on their way to replacing America’s democracy with a Shariah-based caliphate.

This is brilliant.  Why?  Because it combines two feared and hated subjects, makes no sense, and is short memorable and catchy.  One could surely stretch the imagination to find similarities, just as easily as one could claim Jesus was a Communist on account of his well known views on the wealthy.  But that doesn’t end any real credibility to it, which works in Gaffney’s favor.  The more insane and clearly untrue the slogan, the more the increasingly schizoid right seems to embrace their loony leaders.  They seem to get just as much pleasure from seeing the left bang their heads against the wall in frustration as they do in having yet another “reason” to hate on their favorite targets.

Why not hit back with more of the same?  Can you come up with any good ones?  Off the top of my head, here’s two:

1. Conservatism is Corporate Communism.
2. The Religious Right is Shariah with Jesus.

What do you think?  Most important of all, will it piss off the far right?

Outlaw Arbitration

The recent Supreme Court decision against arbitration was yet another victory for corporations over the rights of citizens.  The case was decided along partisan lines, with Republican nominated justices providing the majority pro-corporate opinion.

It is time we fight back.

Arbitration is, in essence privatized justice where the legal ball is always in the corporation’s court.  It is essentially being forced on consumers in a manner strangely reminiscent of price fixing and collusion.  This will not stand.  We live in a time where corporate rule has led directly to the entirely preventable disasters in Japan and in the Gulf of Mexico.  They have been granted ever more power to directly influence our government with their massive financial resources.  This is not about drawing a line in the sand.  It is about recognizing that corporations now have far more say in our system of government than we do, and resolving to fight back any way we can.

One way to fight back would be to campaign to outlaw arbitration.  We need a coordinated, grassroots campaign to provide consistent and compelling communications to convey how arbitration puts citizens at risk while allowing corporations to get away with crimes.  We need legislation prohibiting the use of arbitration clauses to lock consumers into a lopsided means of conflict resolution.

Call your legislator today.  Let’s outlaw arbitration and snatch this victory back from the jaws of SCOTUS.

There Are No Fiscal Conservatives

Quick Hit: We need to kill the term Fiscally Conservative, and replace it with Fiscally Responsible. Because Fiscal Conservatives are never Fiscally Responsible, and its Fiscal Responsibility that we need.  That means not cutting off your source of funding with tax cuts, not cutting off programs that provide social services and ignoring the negative long term economic impact.  It means understanding that when you screw the poor and middle class you destroy the basis of our economy – which thrives on consumption.  It means you don’t put the prejudices of social conservatives ahead of fiscal discipline.  You cut the expensive programs where there’s waste even if its the hard choice politically.  That means cutting the military budget.  It means refraining from entering into new conflicts when we can’t afford the one’s we are still embroiled in.

The Liars That Get Away

Professional liars like James O’Keefe are able to successfully manipulate the media into damaging their targets.  Amanda Marcotte writes:

At this point, he releases a video, everyone knows up front that he’s a liar, and everyone will just pretend that he’s not for the 12-24 hours it takes for the video to ruin someone’s life.  And he’ll basically gloat in public by releasing the full video, as if to say, “Hey, we all know I’m lying, but no one seems to give a flying fuck!”And on that, he’s right.

How do you fight against that?

This folds nicely into a larger question of how we fight a range of falsehoods perpetuated and popularized by the media.  New organizations (or companies purporting to be news organizations such as Fox News) can all too easily put false info out there, at which point it becomes “effective truth” (Digby):

This is why O’Keefe is able to keep going. The Village really believes that it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not once it’s “out there”. O’Keefe and the Brietbartians know this and since they get oxygen from the fact that liberals flail around trying to prove them wrong

This is a dire strategic problem for our country.  Without the proper facts we cannot make the proper decisions, and one party is content with governing based on wild falsehoods:

MAHER: New Rule – Fantasies are for sex, not public policy. When you go down the list of useless distractions that make up the Republican Party agenda; public unions and Sharia law, anchor babies and a mosque at ground zero, ACORN and National Public Radio, the war on Christmas, the New Black Panthers, Planned Parenthood, Michelle Obama’s war on desserts…

…you realize that one reason nothing gets done in America is that one of the political parties puts so much more into fantasy problems. Governing this country with Republicans is like rooming with a meth addict.

You want to address real life problems like when the rent is due and they’re saying “How can you even think of that stuff when there’s police scanner voices coming out of the air conditioning unit?”

This creates a massive power imbalance favoring lie-based politicians and pundits, and leads to policy decisions with very real effects.

So what can we do to counter?  A few things:

1. Support non profit journalism (via Miguel Bloomfontosis)
2. Build a website to document lies, sources, and media acceptance in a way that makes said data easy to digest and use.
3. Hit the pocketbooks of media organizations that go along with falsehoods (via Olive)
4. Proof by Prank – If we are going to drive home how toxic this is, we need to use the media’s willingness to publish anything buzz worthy coupled with their love of navel gazing to our own advantage.
5. Cultivate brave and perceptive public figures who can – when a new lie hits – see it for what it is and step in to counter it.
6. Break up the monopolies.

1.  Any support that gives real journalism a chance to live and thrive outside the bounds of a profit motive will serve us in this battle, and in many more to come.

2.  With intelligent data we can identify trends and bolster arguments.  Do some organizations fall more readily for these kind of lies?  How often do they repeat them?  How long does it take to issue retractions?  How frequently do they repeat those retractions?  Are the retractions made through the same media as the lie(is a tv mistake retracted only on the website)?  Etc.  What we need here are dedicated volunteers to gather data, verify data, and a web application that can transform that data into a story laypeople can quickly grasp.

3. Armed with #2 we will know who to go after.  Is CNN especially susceptible?  Then we need a campaign to go after their advertisers.

4. Using your opponent’s strengths and weakness alike against them is essential when fighting a more powerful foe.  The media’s strength is that it can take any story and disseminate it quickly to a large number of people.  Their weaknesses are a willingness to forgo diligence in order to snag a potentially juicy story, and a love of gazing inwards.  This gives us the opportunity for a real one-two punch.  Our first strike takes advantage of their strength and willingness to accept “evidence” at face value.  A false video of our own could gain wide play before it gets outed.  At which point we engage in the essential step two – claiming responsibility and using the prank as an opportunity to drive home repeatedly the problem the media has with accepting stories like this uncritically (and dearth of critical reporting in general).

5. Once someone like James O’Keefe let’s the cat out of the bag – we know.  The instant a known liar puts forth a ridiculous story we need people in high places to go on the news shows and tear down both the lies of people like O’Keefe, and to criticize the media directly for accepting them.

6. Media companies have become large corporations that collude on coverage.  As such when it comes to the product (news articles) – we are unable to get the product we need from the companies that utterly dominate the market.  This impacts what gets covered (blogs may be able to expose cracks here and there, and if we pretend wikileaks isn’t being politically prosecuted we can imagine viable alternatives to getting the truth out – but largely investigative journalism happens at the pleasure of these large media companies).  For a country that votes a functioning news service is a public utility.  If private companies want in on the game that’s fine, but there needs to be a greater responsibility to provide accurate news – even if that responsibility only comes from societal pressure.  At the very least though – we need to break them up.  Large multinationals are simply too powerful to respond to pressure in a way that makes them truly accountable.

With each of these initiatives in place we could make sizable headway towards changing the way our media functions.

Pocket Guide to the Budget Debate

Here’s what you need to know when engaging with Republicans and ConservaDems on the budget.

Our deficit is about $1.2 trillion a year.

We are spending just over $1.2 trillion a year on our military.  We are basically spending our deficit every year on our military.

Extending the Bush Tax Cuts is costing us $860 billion a year.

Corporations are not paying their fair share in taxes, costing us billions more a year in lost revenue.

Republicans (with support from many Democrats) want to enact “austerity measures” – which basically means “cuts for the poor and middle classes”.  These measures total $61 billion, a dollar amount spread thin over a massive number of programs:

From education to job training, the environment and nutrition, few domestic programs were left untouched – and some were eliminated – in the measure

If we did away with the Bush tax cuts, lessened loopholes corporations exploit, and trimmed programs for the military (like their sponsorship of NASCAR) we could totally eliminate the federal deficit.

As it stands today the likelihood of this happening is nil: the intelligence, foresight, and will to enact an approach like this is missing in Washington.  Instead we will reap the benefits of tax immunity for corporations and the wealthy, and austerity measures for everyone else: decreased spending power in an economy that relies primarily on spending power to function.

Exposing Tort Reform as a Sham

It sounds reasonable: “People are suing for crazy-pants reasons!  Its out of control and we all pay for it!”.  Except its all bullshit.

Pajiba is more of a place for excellent movie reviews than politics, but when they do dive in damned if they don’t get it perfect.  On Tort Reform:

Tort reform is a sham, folks. It was something dreamed up by huge billion dollar conglomerates in order to increase their profit margins. Really, all you need to know is that one of the major engineers of tort reform law in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s was Karl Rove. Guess who benefits the most from tort reform? People like Karl Rove. Big oil. Credit card companies, The insurance industry. Tort reform was basically designed to take the jury out of the equation.

Dead on (emphasis mine):

There’s such a huge corporate-funded marketing campaign behind tort reform that few people understand the reality: It mostly benefits corporations at the expense of taking away a jury’s right to make a decision. A jury can still decide if someone can get the death penalty, of course, but apparently, a jury is just too wild and unpredictable to be allowed to decide how much an insurance provider has to pay if 1,000 kids get sick because of lead in toys. They tried to give Stella Liebeck $2.7 million, or two day’s worth of profit on McDonald’s coffee as a message to the restaurant to lower the temperature of its coffee (it has since done so) and to improve the lid design so that even more people don’t end up with severe burns. How unreasonable!

Support for Tort Reform is unapologetic class warfare favoring the corporate class over the rest of us.  So how do you respond when your “reasonable” centrist or republican friend brings up tort reform?  How do you respond when they complain jury awards are “out of control”?

First – make the above point clear – “How are juries responsible enough to determine the death penalty – but not to determine a fit punishment in a “Company poison’s water” case?”.

Next, you have a few options.

Are you dealing with a numbers person?  Go into the incredibly small size of the largest jury awards when compared to actual income for the guilty company. Ask what is going to give a company incentive to stop their criminal behavior if the penalty is small enough to be considered a minor tax increase?

Are they concerned about frequency?  Ask what it means for consumer protection in this country if so many companies are successfully sued?  Just what the hell is going on here?  If they are truly liable for doing this much damage – why the hell aren’t they being regulated more?

Tort Reform opens the discussion to how the American public is largely left unprotected from the abuses of corporations.  This is the corporate world’s attempt to strip away even that last remaining shred of protection.

Tea Party vs Abortion – The New Fight

The exceptions for the health of the mother, rape, and incest are under attack.  As the anti-abortion movement exposes its true face – a theocratic desire to control women’s reproductive options in all circumstances – they are also removing all pretense at compromise.  The newly invigorated anti-abortion movement is going to oppose contraceptions.  They are going to force children to give birth.  They will fight tooth and claw to not only destroy Roe v Wade, but to go further and actively pass legislation making childbirth mandatory for any woman fertilized during sex.

This is the battle we are facing and to win it we need to pull its arguments entirely out of the shadows.  (We also need a new consistent and memorable name for the anti-abortion crowd.  Potentially “forced-birthers?”).  When Republicans argue against contraception they are really saying “Women do not have the right to prevent themselves from being impregnated”.  When they remove or reduce the rape exception they are saying “Women do not have the right to withhold consent from being impregnated”.  A woman who is raped can go to the doctor and get medication to handle any std’s picked up – but will not be able to prevent pregnancy – even if that was the rapists aim.  When conservatives oppose exceptions for the health of the mother they are saying “Women do not have the right to life saving medicine if they are pregnant”.

The right wing’s vicious new hard line on abortion is an assault on more than a woman’s right to choose to give birth or not.  It is an assault on a woman’s right to live and aiding an abetting rapists at inflicting trauma.  If we are going to win we need to tackle this extremism head on and aggressively.

The New Republican Rhetoric and Bachmann

Buzzfeed has a collection of the best (craziest) Michele Bachmann quotes.  So a friend – understandably – posts this on Facebook wondering how someone this stupid is in office.

Stupidity isn’t at play here, malicious intent is.  Michele is lying to push her agenda forward.  One might reasonably presume she is making effective use of the overton window – namely she is pushing an idea further to the extreme than her goal in an effort to move the discourse in her favor.

However this is not the case – I believe she is aiming for what she wants directly.

When I first started this blog I identified a style of discourse currently unique to conservatives in this country – the radical style.  Imagine a royal court.  In American politics most speakers either cast themselves in with the audience as a member, or try to cast themselves as the king speaking down to his subjects.  A radical stylist positions themselves outside the court in an effort to create a new base of authority around themselves.  When I wrote this post I wondered whether a radical style was effective.  Turns out it is, and Bachmann is proof.

Imagine three points along a political spectrum for an issue: health care.  A conservative might want health care entirely privatized but still subsidized by companies.  A progressive might want health care entirely provided by government.  Using the overton window as a progressive I’d argue we need to get rid of all private insurance and only have public insurance, hoping to at least have public insurance available as an option.  A conservative might argue we need to have insurance be bought entirely by individuals – with no obligation at all for corporations to subsidize plans for their employees.  Either approach would in theory push public opinion further towards the extreme, making our actual position as a progressive or conservative more likely (so the theory goes).  (For fun – filter Obama’s approach to health care reform through this lens).

Now let’s apply the radical style.  As a progressive I argue health care is a human right, and having tiers of service is a form of violence we should no longer stand for.  I push whole heartedly for full public health care for all and cast private plans as an attempt by the rich to bribe the medical community.  As a conservative I argue that health insurance itself is outdated and we need to get rid of it – people should simply pay for services rendered directly.  If they can’t afford it – tough.

When you place your interests and your position together there is far more power to your argument.  In other words – applying the radical style of speech to one’s arguments can be more effective than appearing even relatively more conciliatory with an overton approach – and is far more effective than arguing for the middle ground from the get go.  It is precisely like tug of war over a mud pit.  If one team starts in the pit, where do they think the battle will end?  As progressives we are barely able to muster public speakers who can stand far enough from the mud pit to take an overton approach to discourse.  But perhaps we need to aim even higher, and see if we can muster a few folks able to use the radical style.  The question is – would a progressive utilizing a radical style get anywhere near as far as a conservative?  When a radical like Bachmann takes the stage she gets coverage on mainstream networks like CNN.  Did the progressive response to the SOTU get any coverage at all?

Even so, this seems worth looking into.  The new Republican rhetoric is working against astronomical odds (they are successfully pushing the most obvious and odious lies with it), we ought at the least take a look and see if there are techniques worth utilizing.

Thoughts On Tunisia

There’s a lot to process.  In seeing fellow humans push back against tyranny and succeed – even if only for a moment – you are filled with rush of happiness and contentment.  Upon looking closer – other observations present themselves.

The LA Times has a pretty good run down of the run up to revolution.  In essence it is clear much of the pressure came from economic and social inequality.  The corporate elites who truly run this country have noticed (and are concerned).  It is also clear that it was the military that played the deciding role (though the unions helped immensely):

Gen. Rachid Ammar, the army chief of staff, has yet to explain his role in the uprising. But officials and diplomats close to the 45,000-strong force say that he probably feared a rift within the army if the soldiers were ordered to fire on demonstrators.

As the UGTT announced a general strike for Jan. 14 and activists began calling for a massive protest, it may have been the army that called on Ben Ali’s trusted Interior Ministry forces to stand down.

“If the police fired on the people, [Ammar] told them, the army will take up positions against the police,” said a Western source with extensive contacts in the military. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

Had the military been on the side of the government things might have turned out slightly different.

The media has gone into a frenzy over the use of twitter and facebook – as expected.  The internet loves to navel gaze, and media desperate for page views loves to capitalize on that.  It notable, just perhaps not in the causal way that’s being implied.

There is the possibility these protests will spread – but will they have the same impact?  The answer likely lies in the reactions of the military and police forces for the various countries experiencing newly inspired protesters.

Are there any lessons here for us?  Perhaps.  Perhaps the growing distrust of corporations – and resentment at the ability of the ultra rich to enjoy all the fruits of our labor with none of the risks or responsibilities – will lead to social unrest.  We are facing:

• New norms of high unemployment
• Employment at lower paying jobs with less necessities (calling “health care” a benefit is a cruel lie)
• General “austerity” measures force needed government services (police, education, hospitals – all getting hit hard)
• A society still drifting towards complete police state status
• Massive amounts of propaganda from news outlets like FOX scape goating liberals and Muslims for everything from national security worries to job losses

This is a recipe for political and social instability on a grand scale.  Whether it might lead to a positive outcome is a depressing thought were it not so darkly amusing.  The lesson from Tunisia is that social and economic distress combined with repression can and will lead to action.  With all the misinformation out there it isn’t encouraging to think what the nature of that action might be, or who might be targeted.

First They Came for the Muslims

And then they stopped, because we said ENOUGH. You come for the Muslims you come for all of us and we will not stand silently by and just let you:

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the new chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has promised to launch a series of investigations of Muslim Americans beginning in February. “I’ve made it clear that I’ll focus the committee on counterterrorism and hold hearings on a wide range of issues, including radicalization of the American Muslim community and homegrown terrorism,” he told Newsday. King has repeatedly said that he only wants to single out “Islamic terrorism” in his hearings on domestic security, and has even claimed that there are “too many mosques in this country.”

This man should not be in public office, he belongs in a museum on pre-World War 2 fearmongering in the leadup to the holocaust.  I say that as a Jew who lost a section of his family to the nazis.  How do you think it started?  Launching investigations into the target community, attacking their patriotism, their honor.  Establishing them as a dangerous other.

This is of course utter bullshit, but what else do we expect coming from a Republican like King?

As of 2006, some 212 Muslim-American soldiers had been awarded Combat Action Ribbons for their service in Iraq and Afghanistan, and seven had been killed

Remember the attempted Times Square bombing?  I do.  Foiled by a Muslim.

Why does a man slinging bullshit at the entire Muslim community have any responsibilities regarding our security?  Instead of a phobic hate filled lunatic, a sane, intelligent and experienced person ought to be the chairperson of the Homeland Security Committee.  You know, someone who will go after actual terrorists and not spend his time huddled in a corner asking law enforcement to rough up some Muslims for him.  Is that really too much to ask?  While I’m at it – asking for sensible things – why isn’t a prominent politician on the air right now pointing out that Rep King is a nutjob, unqualified for his position, and utterly full of shit?

Obama: Campaign Promises vs Actions

Clarence Jones has a thoughtful piece over at the Huffington Post on whether Obama has lived up to his campaign promises.  My friend Marco asked me to take a look at it, and a rather long email turned into this post.

The article itself suggests Obama’s achievements with the stimulus, health care reform, and DADT merit recognition.  Surely even a baby step in the right deserves acknowledgement, but within the bigger picture.  A baby step is amazing because for a baby its a big deal.  Obama campaigned successfully as a bit more than a political infant – in fact he had to to counter his relative inexperience.

In fact Obama campaigned not just as an experienced and effective politician, but as a different kind of politician.  One who was not beholden to special interests and lobbyists.  A pro-transparency Presidency.  In addition to specific policy goals like the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and Health Care Reform, Obama brought an army of young progressives into the political arena.  Much of that leading edge that pushed Obama into office was made up of enthusiastic hard working young people – who were able to mount a ground game of get out the vote in states that had previously never been “competitive”.

That enthusiasm is now dead – with grave implications for Obama’s 2012 run.

Protest the TSA, and Avoid Flying

A lot of this bullshit article by the AP doesn’t add up. Written with an anti-populist sneer, the article states:

Despite tough talk on the Internet, there was little if any indication of a passenger revolt Monday at many major U.S. airports, with very few people declining the X-ray scan that can peer through their clothes.

As well as claiming:

Many travelers said that the scans and the pat-down were not much of an inconvenience, and that the stepped-up measures made them feel safer and were, in any case, unavoidable.

According to the article, most people don’t care, hell they don’t mind being molested by TSA officials and feel all warm and cuddly about it.

And yet…

A loosely organized Internet campaign is urging people to refuse the scans on Wednesday in what is being called National Opt-Out Day. The extra time needed to pat down people could cause a cascade of delays at dozens of major airports, including those in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta.

If so few people care or are taking action, how will it cause a “cascade of delays”?

“Just one or two recalcitrant passengers at an airport is all it takes to cause huge delays,” said Paul Ruden, a spokesman for the American Society of Travel Agents, which has warned its more than 8,000 members about delays. “It doesn’t take much to mess things up anyway.”

Bullshit. They are worried about many people choosing to skip the scan. And not because of the delay. Because with every additional scan they run the risk of more news stories like this one (they broke a man’s prosthetic and left him drenched in his own urine), or this one(patting down a 3-year old child), or this one(a woman is “patted down” underneath her underwear). The negative PR over this is shooting through the roof.

The article’s language (“loosely organized Internet campaign” and “tough talk on the Internet”) screams an aloofness – a desire to minimize the validity and impact of a visceral reaction to police state tactics at the airport. Idiotic politicians are taking one of two routes – use this mess to advocate profiling (guess who… Republicans), or take the time to actual defend this bullshit (you guessed it,Obama). This leaves us with an increasing disconnect between a stressed public who are being subjected to unreasonable and illegal procedures. The pat downs are essentially sexual assault. The scans don’t inspire confidence either from a privacy or a health standpoint (has not seen independent evaluations is technicalese for – the data thus far is just biased jack).

The TSA chief worries about people boycotting the scans. If you must fly, boycott them, slow the line down. Make a statement. Or make a bigger statement by avoiding air travel at every opportunity. That’s what I’m doing. Because when you factor in the cost, unpleasant nature of the cramped seats (coupled with too large passengers), time to and from the airport, time waiting at the airport, risk of getting molested by the tsa, radiation exposure, and the hassle of the security line… Is it really worth the trouble?

Boycott the TSA, boycott the scans, if you get molested let them know “if they touch you inappropriately you will seek all available legal recourse”. Boycott flying. Raise a ruckus.

Democrats Aren’t Democrats

Hahahha, time for a dose of reality dear readers!

From the daily WTF pile over at Digby’s residence:

Quick question for those who believe that criticism of the the president and the Dem leadership is what’s depressing the Democratic base: is this criticism a problem?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is giving Democratic candidates a free pass to run against her and other party leaders.

A number of moderate Democrats are running against her, portraying themselves in ads as a check on the liberal House speaker from San Francisco.

Pelosi is giving them free rein to do this, so the party has no problem with it. But what if Raul Grijalva and Alan Grayson and Russ Feingold did the same thing from the left?

Answer: The Democratic party would stab them in the eye.

This is proof positive the party is utterly non-liberal.  Our country is ruled by a far right Republican party who is only concerned with how to move further right, and a Democratic centrist party obsessed with following them at a “safe” distance.

For all the talk about the “Democratic Base” this one basic observation has been missing.  There is no Democratic Base.  Not anymore.  The Democrats represent an increasingly slim number of actual moderates in a rapidly polarizing country.  The only reason liberals vote for their sorry asses is to stave off the violent theocracy Republicans would put into place otherwise.

Don’t get me wrong, many of us did get our hopes up with Obama’s 2008 campaign.  He’s done everything to be a true Democrat and crush liberal hopes and dreams over the past 2 years.  The Democratic leadership – in the party, Congress, or in the White House – has successfully alienated liberals of all stripes.  Telling us to “Stop Whining” and “Buck Up” hasn’t motivated us to work harder.  Its motivated us to separate ourselves utterly from the failing Democratic brand.

Time for some soul searching dear readers.

Quick Thoughts on Abortion, Choice and Language

I was browsing the America Speaks Out website (created by the Republican party at taxpayer expense).  Its a goldmine of funny.  But it also offers up some rather useful insights.  Take these two quotes:

the sanctity of life should support whatever of woman wishes to do with her body. Without this right freedom is meaningless

vs

Abortion is a complex, difficult moral issue. It is not the proper role of the government to make our moral decisions for us. Let people make up their own minds and take responsibility for their decisions. If we are to be the party of small government, less government intrusion, and personal liberty, we must stop trying to legislate abortion away. It’s not the government’s place to be a nanny that chooses our morality for us.

The first has 2,710 votes, largely against it (but relatively close).  The second has 1,960 votes hugely in favor.  Both are pro-choice statements.  One is effective.

What makes it effective?  It deftly makes use of conservative goals and language to make the case for a supposedly progressive cause.  What it reveals is reproductive choice is not simply a progressive issue.  It is a universal issue, and conservatives not under the thrall of theocratic dictate are allies.