Mitt Romney’s corrosive culture of political dishonesty advanced closer to its goal of transforming and ultimately dominating American politics last week. We underestimated the flip flopping tool of the money. In the 27 major lies he shouted before over 70 million people into the face of the President and the attack on the unemployment figure released Friday, the King of Bain showed us lies work. This Thursday, in the deep red state of South Carolina we plan to challenge it. You could help. We have to hit back.
On Right - Commentary on last week's debate
At 8 pm, on Thursday, October 11, in the Club Room of the Sgt. Jasper Apartments at 301 Broad Street in the historic and blue City of Charleston, SC, we’ll bring in Pizza, non alcoholic beer (in honor of Joe Biden) and other refreshments. We’ll turn on the big screen TV to the noise of the chattering class and we’ll plug power strips into outlets along the walls. Into those power strips we’ll plug our laptops, tablets and other connected devices all aimed at the Hashtag #jobiwifidb on Twitter. For once, we’re holding a political event in SC somewhere which has Wi Fi. You can sign up on Facebook now Facebook Signup for Joe Biden's Wi Fi ing Debate Smackdown Party
“Joe Biden’s Wi Fi ing Debate Smackdown” is going to try competitive, online fact checking in real time. We’ll keep score. The first person to catch a misrepresentation and tweet out a message with a link to the proof gets the point. First appearance on the twitter feed will determine who gets the point. The person with the highest score takes home the pizza. We have room for 30 people here, but we’ll have friends joining us online, many trapped in the miserable ghettos of redneck politics which surround our precious, blue city of grace and culture here in South Carolina.
Romney and the Republicans have taken political deceit to a new level in America, which is quite an accomplishment given a national history which prizes drama and excitement over facts and logic. In most countries imaginary “death panels” wouldn’t persuade people living in single wide trailers working for nine dollars an hour that a health care plan which would enable their children to see a doctor is hell born. It does here.
Romney didn’t level the economies of towns to grow a fortune which is parked in untaxed accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands without understanding how to manage the creeping power which dissolves the ground beneath the feet of his opposition.
Romney didn’t crush unions with baseball bats. Mitt won’t turn fire hoses on poor people trying to vote. The errand boy of the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson will attempt break the American middle class by destroying their will to be citizens. Romney can start with the 47% that he insults in chats with your wealthy friends at fundraisers and work his way up to the 99%.
The political class and those earning their living in the rapidly eroding main stream media are, however, getting a bit nervous. They’ve figured out the need of the Republican rich to force a permanent victory before they are demographically overwhelmed is taking the conflict to a level of intensity they can’t comfortably manage. They like the game where winning is counted in dollars and votes and very little that matters changes while the wealth concentrates at the top and the nation slowly glides downward. A Presidential election is their favorite circus. However massive grass roots involvement on both sides coupled with instantaneous internet communication might start a guerrilla ground war for the future of the country. If such a war starts, True the Vote squaring off against minority voters who want to vote for their champion of hope and change in a thousand urban precincts might be where that happens. If it does, don’t count on the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street or the Unions to stand down.
The better way to level the middle class is to simply destroy their capacity to participate in the process by attacking the things in people’s heads which empower them to act. The most basic thing to attack is their sense of reality; their confidence in what they know; their knowledge of what is true. That is what the 27 lies on national television which Romney told were about last week. That’s why someone subsidizes Orly Taitz’s birther lawsuits. Over time such massive dishonesty destroy the ordinary person’s confidence any anything factual or real related to government. If frees the right to motivate the tea party through fear and prejudice. It destroys the progressive voter’s willingness to commit.
If the nominee of a major Party tells 27 lies on Wednesday, dismissing hard economic data that unemployment in the United States is at it lowest level in four years on Friday as fraudulent, he can be leverage that through the media’s commitment to moral equivalency into two wins.
We would score that differently and on Thursday we'll try.
Points will be awarded for four things, one unique to Ryan’s odd relationship to Romney.
Untruth- Lies, misstatements of known facts, misstatements of the public record and statements which are logically or mathematical impossibilities.
Flip Flops- Statements, positions or policies argued or promoted which contradict positions previously taken by Mitt Romney in public or private since he first sought elective office.
Ryan contradictions- Statements made by or policies being supported by Paul Ryan as a candidate for Vice President which contradict his previous statements as a private individual or political leader, where Ryan is apparently saying something merely so it will match Romney’s position.
Platform Violations- Statements made and policies supported which clearly and directly conflict with the Republican Party’s national platform as adopted at it’s 2012 convention.
I understand why President Obama didn’t tear Mitt Romney’s head off last week. The President never was a court room lawyer as I’ve been for 25 years. He didn’t have the seven years of debate practice I picked up in college. Obama remains a man who believes facts and rational policy can move this country forward. People die with the President makes mistakes and Obama carries that knowledge with him. The President’s graying hair shows the weight of it.
Mitt Romney, who has leveled entire towns with management decisions, scarcely cares what happens to the poor he’s never met that Obama worked with in Chicago. Mitt dismissed the needs of the sweating laborers he discarded at Bain. The Republican nominee will not lose sleep over the wounds of soldiers who will never be any of his sons. He knows nothing of the struggling masses overseas who live in slums like those of Jakarta where Obama spent some childhood years while he was having the houseboy make sandwiches for him in Paris. In Romney’s world such people exist to be manipulated, marginalized and exploited.
If we leave calling out Mitt Romney’s lies to the Press, they may prefer to perpetuate the advertising bonanza which is this political horse race. Last week certainly called out tens of millions more in political advertising revenue. The decision to focus on the President’s lax performance while ignoring Mitts industrial scale deceit might cost us our futures.
Our pensions, social security and medicare might end up vouchered and downsized to nothing. Our sons might march off to wars of corporate necessity never to return. PBS transmitters might turn off across America and Big Bird, while he’ll survive on cable and the shelves of Toys R Us, will be unseen in the places where poor and underprivileged children dwell. Mitt must level it all and ensure that the rising tide of minority voters and popular disgust at corporate greed never reaches the front doors of the Towers of Wall Street again. A year ago, there were 35 thousand protesters down there one night.
We little people, we citizens, we the unfavored ordinaries of the 99%, the 47% the takers are going to sit down Thursday and demand the truth as fast and as hard as we can here in Charleston. We hope you will do the same. Without the truth to stand on, we cannot protect our country.
Wed Oct 10, 2012 at 7:16 AM PT: Thanks for all the wonderful comments. There are some real gems down there worth reading to. What happened last week and what has to start happening this week are expressions of massive cultural change grounded in technology, economics and politics in our transitional age. When things are moving on you, don't stand still.
We certainly welcome everyone to monitor our Twitter feed. Feel free to experiment along these lines with groups of your friends. If it works, and was already working to some extent last week, by the next Presidential debate we'll have hundreds of thousands ready to shout back at the lies online. It doesn't have to be limited to Twitter, but it has to be fast and massive. They don't want to listen, so we have to be very, very loud.
The logical extension of this would be on the street political activity the following Friday and weekend directly linked to what happens. Go from passively watching the debate and "shouting at the TV" to Twitter, other online activity and after that to the streets. Make the truth hard to avoid. We're going to be out there phone banking and going door to door anyway. Let's make that immediate and relevant. We have the internet, photocopies, Ipads and all these toys. Why campaign with canned scripts and month old paper literature that is the same for everyone, everywhere all the time?
If the Main Stream media understands that is happening, they resort to talking about style in interest of the advertising selling horse race model at the risk of the credibility.
In the movie Network, you will remember, people put their heads out of their windows and shouted "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more" when someone on television told them to.
This is rather the opposite, we're going to watch TV and when it makes us Mad as Hell we're going to go on the air ourselves and shout at it. New world, new rules.