Romney Camp: REMAIN CALM! ALL IS WELLLLLLL!

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Well, it looks as if in the Battle of the Conventions a couple of weeks ago, the Democrats came out on top. The Republicans got a weak-to-nonexistent “bounce” in the polls, and Barack Obama surged ahead.

One way you can tell that the Democrats took that round is the way the Romney campaign is trying to pretend that conventions and post-convention “bounces” just don’t matter.

Romney pollster Neil Newhouse sent out a memo that reminds one of that Kevin Bacon character from “Animal House” screaming, “Remain calm! All is well!” before the panicked crowd runs him over and literally stomps him flat.

“While some voters will feel a bit of a sugar high from the conventions,” Newhouse said, “the basic structure of the race has not changed significantly.”

Well, Neil, if you mean the structure where Barack Obama has been leading for months in enough states to give him more than the 270 votes he needs to win the Electoral College, then I guess you’re right.

But that doesn’t really help you. And it doesn’t explain why your campaign is pulling ad buys in crucial high-electoral-vote states like Pennsylvania and Michigan. It also leaves out the significant gains President Obama has made in the crucial swing state of Ohio.

It doesn’t explain why Mr. Etch A Sketch suddenly backpedaled on the bill the right loves to hate (the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare) by saying, “Well, I am going to keep some parts that people like.” Then he had to backpedal yet again when the Rabid Right went back into its customary full-blown tantrum mode.

Remember, the Republicans are the party that’s “not letting fact-checkers determine their campaign,” the party that believes that if you just repeat a lie enough times, it doesn’t matter that it’s not true.

And I think they’d really like it to be true that nobody’s affected by conventions, because the image of their convention that’s burned into everyone’s mind is that of a old man stumbling through an argument with a chair.

In contrast, the Democratic convention was forward-looking and upbeat. Again and again, the Democrats took R-Money’s tired old talking point that “Obama can’t run on his record” and stuffed it back in his face like Shaquille O’Neal dunking on a hapless defender.

I confess, when Joe Biden’s speech began, I was holding my breath hoping he wouldn’t say something stupid. But he delivered one of the best lines of the convention, the one that sums up not only why Barack Obama can run on his record, but why he is: “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.”

Because here’s the thing. In many ways — not all, but many — we really are better off than we were four years ago.

The stock market is up, and corporate profits are at all-time highs. Statistics from the National Association of Realtors show that national sales of existing homes are up about 10 percent from July 2011 to July 2012. Auto sales are up as well. If, for some reason, you don’t think these numbers helped the economy, then I guess you’re telling us that the kind of trickle-down economics espoused by RomneyCorp isn’t working, right?

Add to this the fact that we’re well out of the quagmire that The President Who Must Not Be Named created in Iraq, and are on our way out of the morass in Afghanistan. I’d have to say that the people fighting those wars, and their families, are better off.

Of course, since Mitt Romney doesn’t seem to think those soldiers and their families are “important” enough to be mentioned in his convention speech (according to a campaign spokesman), I suppose that doesn’t count to him.

As for the president’s own speech, it concentrated on shared sacrifice and hard work rather than soaring “yes we can” rhetoric. It was a reminder that we’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go, and that “we” means all of us.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, blew smoke about how he was going to create “12 million jobs” (a figure which some economic forecasters say is going to happen no matter who’s president) but offered no forecast of how he’s going to do it, other than pursuing the same policies that were in place when the economy tanked.

He says he’s going to cut taxes and still balance the budget by closing loopholes, which he refuses to identify. He’s already proven he’ll say anything to get elected. Meanwhile, Barack Obama talks to us like we’re grown-ups. And that’s one of the many reasons I’m voting for him.

Don’t Facts Matter Any More?

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I recently pointed out that, despite the hand-wringing of the professional hand-wringing class, the current election is not even close to being the nastiest in terms of political rhetoric.

All that said, there’s one thing that’s striking about this one, one thing I have not seen before. That’s the degree to which one side has not only decided to entirely abandon the entire idea of being factually accurate, but has also decided to be completely up front about doing so.

Shortly before the Republican National Convention, Neil Newhouse, a pollster working with the Romney campaign, appeared on a panel organized by ABC News. He was asked about the frequently repeated and just as frequently debunked claim that President Obama had “gutted” the work requirements of welfare reform.

This allegation was a blatant and shameless distortion of a proposal by the Obama administration to grant exemptions from the federal requirements to state governments — but only to those who could show they had alternative plans to put more welfare recipients back to work.

Every single fact checker from every source that examined the allegation pronounced it false. Former President Bill Clinton, who was lauded in Romney ads as the person who created the welfare reform proposal, said the Romney claim was untrue. (And if you needed any more evidence that the world has gone insane, seeing Republicans holding Bill Clinton up as an example of good policy-making should make up anyone’s mind.)

Even conservative Newt Gingrich had to admit that there was “no proof” that the administration had done to welfare reform what the Romneyites said it had.

Yet when questioned about the fact that the Republican candidate had approved an ad to which The Washington Post’s fact checker had given “four Pinocchios,” its highest rating for mendacity, Newhouse didn’t even attempt to defend the truthfulness of the ad. His response: “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”

Wow. We knew these guys had chutzpah, but that one was really mind-boggling. It’s not unknown for both sides to stretch the truth in a campaign, but most of the time when confronted, they at least try to provide some justification. I mean, even Gingrich tried to cover himself by using the old “well, we don’t have any evidence that Obama did this, but it sounds like something he’d do.”

Newhouse basically said, “Every fact checker says it’s a lie, and we don’t care.”

Of course, why should they? We do, after all, live in a media environment where the “public editor” of The New York Times feels the need to wonder whether “Times news reporters should challenge ‘facts’ that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.” (Answer: Yes.) And they’ve known for years that the Beltway press is reluctant to jeopardize their all-important access by saying “wait a minute, that’s not true.” They might stop getting invited to the good cocktail parties or make the advertisers angry if they do.

Fortunately, that seems to be changing in the face of the relentless tide of pure, brazen BS flowing from the Romney swamp. Recently, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien committed an act of actual journalism when she responded to Romney surrogate John Sununu’s noisy repetition of another debunked Romney talking point: that Obama had “gutted” (they seem to like that word a lot) Medicare by $717 billion.

O’Brien pointed out that sources such as the Congressional Budget Office, Factcheck.com and CNN’s own analysis had refuted the claim. Sununu became furious, rudely shouting at O’Brien that she should “put an Obama bumper sticker on her forehead” when she said such things. O’Brien’s calm response was enough to warm even my cold and cynical heart: “You can’t just repeat it and make it true, sir.”

The main thing Romney’s snake-oil campaign is depending on is that a depressingly large number of Americans truly do not know the difference between a fact and an opinion. Confront many people with facts that conclusively refute some crazy allegation they’ve made, and they’ll huff, “I’m entitled to my opinion.”

That’s true, as far as it goes. As the saying goes, however, you aren’t entitled to your own facts. Again, the American press has done an abysmal job of educating people as to the difference.

Their idea of “objectivity” has been “Republicans say this, Democrats say that, who do the polls say is winning?” In a world where a presidential campaign spokesman feels no qualms about blithely stating, in effect, “Fact checking? Who cares?” actual reporting of actual facts — and confronting those of either party who’d misrepresent them — is more important than ever.

I'm In Good Company!

– In an ocean of self-published titles, two questions surface: How can readers find quality e-books, and how can authors of quality e-books find readers?

Before Amazon’s Kindle changed the face of electronic publishing, in 2006, 51,237 self-published titles were printed as physical books, according to the data company Bowker. Last year, Bowker estimated that more than 300,000 self-published titles were issued in either print or digital form.

How can readers sift through hundreds of thousands of self-published titles to find quality e-books that will be worth their investment of money and time?

Author collectives such as the recently launched “Killer Thrillers” provide one answer. All 22 Killer Thrillers members are award-winning, bestselling, and internationally published thriller authors committed to bringing high standards and professional quality to their self-published works.

Of the 163 self-published titles currently featured on the Killer Thrillers website, many first appeared in print. Others are original e-books. All are written by talented, experienced thriller authors who’ve proven they know how to tell a ripper of a story by winning major awards, becoming regional, national, and international bestselling authors, and seeing their novels translated and published in other countries. Some of the Killer Thrillers titles have also been optioned for television and film.

New York Times bestselling author David Morrell, christened “the father of the modern action novel” for his iconic creation, John Rambo, lists 15 self-published e-books on the Killer Thrillers website including First Blood, the title that introduced the world to John Rambo, The Brotherhood of the Rose, the basis for a television mini-series, and his other Rambo books.

“I'm in the process of archiving my entire 40-year output of novels, essays, short stories, and non-fiction works as e-publications,” Morrell says. “E-books are wonderful for authors. No more out-of-print titles.”

Killer Thrillers authors include Brett Battles, Raymond Benson, Sean Black, Robert Gregory Browne, Blake Crouch, Karen Dionne, Timothy Hallinan, Katia Lief, CJ Lyons, Bob Mayer, Grant McKenzie, David Morrell, Boyd Morrison, J.F. Penn, Keith Raffel, J.D. Rhoades, Jeremy Robinson, L.J. Sellers, Zoë Sharp, Alexandra Sokoloff, Mark Terry and F. Paul Wilson.

http://www.killer-thrillers.com

Sane Republicans: Rare and Endangered, But They Do Exist

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As some of you may have noticed, one of my interests is in finding and cataloguing a rare breed known as the Sane Republican. Alas, not only is it a rare breed, it’s getting rarer.

They’re being hunted to near extinction by other species such as the Raging Right-Winged Moonbat and the Red-Faced Red-State Howler Monkey. Yet, this plucky species continues to live on, and can be sighted if you’re paying attention.

Let’s start by heading to upstate New York, where first-term Republican Congressman Richard Hanna told The Syracuse Post Standard that he was “frustrated” by how much “we — I mean the Republican Party — are willing to give deferential treatment to our extremes at this point in history.”

As a specific example, Hanna mentioned the demand of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Insane Asylum) and other right-wingers that Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, be investigated for Islamic extremist ties, not for any action of hers, but because some of her family members were “connected” (in ways not specified by Bachmann) to “Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations.”

Hanna responded to this bit of neo-McCarthyism by noting that “we render ourselves incapable of governing when all we do is take severe sides.”

Normally, such reasonable statements, especially as they relate to Congresswoman Crazy Eyes, would be the equivalent of painting a set of cross hairs on your forehead. But Hanna survived a challenge from a candidate favored by the tea party (remember them?) back in June. It remains to be seen what will happen when he faces Democrat Dan Lamb in November.

Next let’s head down to Utah, aka the Beehive State, the only state I know of that has its own official state firearm (the Browning M1911 automatic pistol). Utah’s Republican governor, Gary Herbert, recently responded to an Obama administration proposal to relax some of the federal work requirements for welfare recipients for states who wished to try their own projects. The requirements for participation were that state plans (a) get more people working and (b) produce verifiable results.

Herbert did not, however, repeat the Romney administration’s repeatedly refuted falsehood that the proposal “gutted” work requirements, and would lead to people just “sitting around and getting a welfare check.”

You’d think giving states greater flexibility in implementing federal programs would be regarded as a good thing by Republicans. But the Romneyites weren’t going to miss a chance to throw a little race-baiting — OK, a lot of race-baiting — into the campaign by resurrecting the well-worn specter of the lazy “welfare queen” from the Reagan years, and never mind the fact that such an accusation was a blatant lie.

Herbert, on the other hand, is trying to get stuff done. He told The Huffington Post that “the idea of flexibility is something that all states want to have,” and that his own state had asked for one of the waivers.

He disagrees with the administration’s method of implementation, contending that it has to be done through Congress, but that’s actually a reasonable argument to have, in contrast with the hysterical ranting of a proven lie, which is what RomneyCorp has chosen.

Also in the Beehive State, we find Republican Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. When President Obama announced, to howls of rage from the right, that he’d no longer be using federal resources to deport children of illegal immigrants if they met certain conditions, Shurtleff called it “clearly within the president’s power” and pronounced himself “pleased” with the decision.

“Law enforcement makes decisions based on the resources available to them,” Shurtleff said. “The administration is saying, ‘Here’s a group we could be spending our resources going after, but why? They’re Americans, they see themselves as Americans, they love this country.” Exactly.

There are others, of course. But sadly, the Republican herd often drives the moderates and even the mildly sane out of the fold, like former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, who’ll be speaking at the Democratic Convention.

Because, you see, there’s a word for what used to be called “moderate Republicans.” The word is “Democrats.” A goodly number of current Democratic positions, including the Affordable Care Act, were ideas from the Republican Party, before it completely lost its mind.

If you’re a moderate Republican who doesn’t feel at home in the GOP anymore, you might consider jumping ship. And if that suggestion fills you with scorn or apoplectic rage, you’re not one of the people I was talking to.

QOTD: You Built It All Yourself, Huh?

“Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally.

Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist, the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilisation, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”

Thomas Paine, Founding Father

h/t to commenter The Other Chuck at Balloon Juice

Dirtiest Campaign Ever? Really?

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Have you ever noticed how, about this time of every election year, the chattering and scribbling classes erupt in a frenzy of clutching their pearls, fanning themselves, and looking for the nearest fainting couch, because "Oh, mah stars, this is the nastiest, most divisive campaign evah!"

It happened in 1988. It happened again in 1992. And in 1996. And 2000, 2004, and 2008. Every single one of those campaigns was decried by pundits and wounded pols crying foul as "the most negative," "most divisive" or "dirtiest" in history.

Poppycock. Poppycock and balderdash. Also, codswallop. As former Obama and Clinton campaign aide Blake Zeff points out in a recent article in the online journal Buzzfeed, "Not only is this not the most negative campaign ever - it's not the most negative campaign of your lifetime, unless you happen to be 3 years old."

Don't believe me? Return with me, friends, in the Wayback Machine to the thrilling days of yesteryear. Specifically, to the year 1800, when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams found themselves pitted against one another in a nasty fight for the presidency and, like every election before or since, for the future of the nation.

Jefferson's campaign got the ball rolling, saying Adams had a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."

Adams' men wasted no time in firing back, warning that if Jefferson was elected, "murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest would be openly practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes." They also called Jefferson an "atheist, mountebank, trickster, and Francomaniac."

Fast forward to 1872, when Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, hero of the Union, was opposed by New York Congressman and former newspaper editor Horace Greeley. Greeley's supporters called the Grant administration "the crowning point of governmental wickedness."

Grant, however, had the backing of the nation's wealthiest men, and poor Greeley was saddled with a running mate with a drinking problem so bad that at one campaign picnic, he got plastered and tried to butter a watermelon. Say what you like about Joe Biden, he never pulled a gaffe that big. Too bad they didn't have YouTube.

In the 1884 election, supporters of James Blaine accused Grover Cleveland of fathering an illegitimate child with the taunt "Ma! Ma! Where's My Pa?" to which Cleveland supporters shot back, "Gone to the White House, Ha! Ha! Ha!" Cleveland supporters also had a chant of their own: "Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine! The continental liar from the state of Maine!"

I'm not sure why they used "continental." "Monumental" would have fit and made more sense. But I'm sure they had their reasons.

The advent of mass media, television in particular, gave negative campaigning a truly visceral wallop. Among the first to gather controversy was Lyndon Johnson's infamous "Daisy" ad, which featured an adorable little girl picking daisies in a field. When she gets to "10," a metallic voice starts a countdown. The girl looks up in puzzlement just as the count reaches zero, at which point we see an image of a mushroom cloud.

The message is clear: If you vote for Goldwater, in the words of Johnson's voiceover, "we must die" in a nuclear war.

Interestingly, the ad, like the infamous "Mitt Romney killed my wife" ad by a pro-Obama Super PAC, only ran once on actual TV, but the controversy swirling around it gave it millions worth of dollars in free air time.

In recent years, we've had ads which implied that Michael Dukakis was responsible for the rape and armed robbery of a Maryland couple (1988). We've had ads accusing a decorated veteran of lying about his war record (2004). We've been told a candidate would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign (2008).

And in every one of those years, someone's claimed that "this is the nastiest campaign ever." Well, I won't believe that until someone pulls a Thomas Jefferson and calls Mitt Romney or Barack Obama a hermaphrodite. Frankly, my biggest problem with modern negative campaigning is that it lacks that kind of style.