Category Archives: The Contrarian

‘Please, Please, It’s Too Much Winning.’

 

I’ve never been much on attack ads, Political Action Committees or cliches, especially in U.S. politics.

Alas, it may be time to embrace all of them. In fact, it may be the only time.

As demonstrated in the terrific documentary Get Me Roger Stone, the GOP has been masterful at whisper campaigns, PAC money laundering and sloganeering. How else to explain that our last two Republican presidents managed to take  office despite not winning the popular vote? (If the Dems do win enough of the two branches of government and do not eliminate the electoral college — an antiquated concession to appease slave states after the Civil War — they will deserve its consequences.)

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The Dems’ first goal has to be 2020. And never have they been more poised to claim it.

Consider: The Democrats have never been a more diffused enemy to target, nor the Republicans a more unified one. So why not start the attack ads now?

The reasoning is simple math. The Dems are looking at the most crowded slate of presidential hopefuls in the party’s history. And it’s too early to begin ads from any of them for fear of voter fatigue. But that’s an advantage; it makes a smear against any of them impossible.

Image result for democratic presidential candidates

Republicans, on the other hand, have become victims of political singularity: The Donald. Challengers have either died, retired, or quietly become supplicants of the inbred tanning bed. Image result for mcconnell graham

So why not start sowing the seeds of discontent now against Trump, which would be a shotgun blast at the GOP writ large. Liberals have free reign to use PAC money to point out the broken promises of the president, with no singular target vulnerable to a return volley. What would a GOP ad do? Attack Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer? There’s no indication either will even seek the Democratic nomination.

You don’t even need a narrator for the ads.

Picture this: a prime-time, 30-second spot simply replaying a broken promise Trump has made, followed by a headline or news clip showing the reality of truth. There would be so many to choose from you’d run out of PAC money before you could address them all. (Speaking of which, while you’re at it, change the acronym, Dems. Instead of Political Action Committee, already seen as a scourge, why not Public Action Committees?)

Sample ads could include:

  • Trump’s promise that Mexico would pay for a border wall. Then cut to any number of rebuttals, from Mexico laughing at the proposal of Trump proudly — and publicly — announcing he’d take the mantle of shutting down the U.S. government if Congress won’t force taxpayers to foot the bill.  Image result for mexico laughing at paying for the wall
  • Trump’s public denial of global warming. Then cut to the 17 TRUMP-run agencies declaring it real. Or footage of a state on fire.  Image result for california wildfires 2018 from freeway
  • Or underwater.Image result for hurricane flooding 2018
  • Or Trump’s promise of a tax cut, along with his oath of a simpler tax form. Image result for trump kissing tax form
  • Follow that with the new IRS study showing refunds declined 17% in 2018.Image result for smaller tax refund 2018
  • Or the promise of bringing jobs back to America. Abutted against, among others, Harley-Davidson’s announcement of moving abroad because of tariffs.
  • Or his pledge of hiring “only the best” advisers, trailed by mugshots of Trump campaign staff charged, indicted or already in prison. Image result for trump indictment bingo

 

The options are endless. And the precedent already set: Remember the Brett Kavanaugh support TV commercials? And the guy wasn’t even running for office.
Image result for angry brett kavanaugh

At the end of each ad, end with Trump’s most notorious lie: the promise that voters would win so much they’d get sick of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daOH-pTd_nk

After the clip, simply end with the tagline: Schneverdingen SICK OF ‘WINNING’ YET?

Throw a punch back, Dems. You already struggle with a mealy mouth reputation, a stigma that has likely cost you myriad elections. Yes, it would require embracing the demons of American politics: negative ads and PAC money. But you already do, just too late in the game. Sometimes it’s better to own the pit bull than be running from it.

And yes, it’s a tired cliche, to fight fire with fire. But as we learned watching innumerable firefighters struggling just to hold their own last year, controlled burns work.

That’s the ugly reality about cliches. All have a kernel of truth. So speak it.

 

How to Save Journalism

Amid the layoffs, the dire world and domestic developments, the exclamations of fake news, journalism appears doomed.

Here’s how you fix it. Run just one story, like this out of Chicago, on your front page everyday. Show that real journalism doesn’t need to lead with what bleeds. Counter punch the villains of this world.

Starting now.

Your turn.

Chicago Woman Got 30 Hotel Rooms for Homeless People During Severe Cold Snap

As temperatures plunged to life-threatening lows this week, more than 100 homeless people in Chicago unexpectedly found themselves with food, fresh clothes and a place to stay after a local real estate broker intervened.

The broker, Candice Payne, 34, said it was a “spur-of-the-moment” decision to help. “It was 50 below, and I knew they were going to be sleeping on ice and I had to do something,” she said on Saturday.

Ms. Payne contacted hotels and found 30 rooms available at the Amber Inn for Wednesday night at $70 per room. Temperatures in Chicago reached lows of minus 25 and minus 26 on Wednesday and Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.

After Ms. Payne paid for the rooms on a credit card, she asked on her Instagram account for anyone who could help transport the homeless people. Soon she had a caravan of cars, S.U.V.s and vans with volunteer drivers.

“We met at tent city, where all the homeless people set up tents and live on the side of the expressway,” Ms. Payne said. “It is not a secret. The homeless have been living there for years.”

She asked as many people as she could to go with her to the Amber Inn as donations were pouring in to her Cash App account.

Ms. Payne met two pregnant women and a family of five in the first group of homeless people who went to the inn.

“We had to accommodate everyone. It was really overwhelming,” Ms. Payne said. “They were so appreciative. They couldn’t wait to get in a bath and lay in a bed.”

Ms. Payne bought toiletries, food, prenatal vitamins, lotions, deodorants and snacks and made care packages to help make the people feel comfortable. Restaurants donated trays of food, and many people called the inn.

She said she has spent about $4,700 so far on the rooms and other materials.

“People from the community, they all piggyback off Candice,” said Robyn Smith, the manager of the Amber Inn. “Other people started calling and anonymously paying for rooms,” she added, and Ms. Smith lowered the price to accommodate more people.

What started out as 30 rooms doubled to 60, Ms. Smith said. The rooms were only supposed to be occupied until Thursday, when temperatures in Chicago were expected to moderate. But with the donations Ms. Payne has received — more than $10,000 so far — she has been able to house the people in the hotel and feed them until Sunday.

“I am a regular person,” Ms. Payne said. “It all sounded like a rich person did this, but I’m just a little black girl from the South Side. I thought it was unattainable, but after seeing this and seeing people from all around the world, that just tells me that it’s not that unattainable. We can all do this together.”

Ms. Payne wants to organize other ways to help homeless people in Chicago.

“This was a temporary fix, and it has inspired me to come up with more of a permanent solution,” Ms. Payne said before she received a call on her other line — from J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois.

“He thanked me,” Ms. Payne said. “He said it was one of the biggest acts of kindness we have seen in a long time.”

NYT, 2/2/19

Holy Shit

 

I don’t have a social media account, which not only makes me a dinosaur, but something of a hypocrite. Because I can no more stay away from Trump’s tweets than I can half-off candy.

And this was his latest gumdrop:

Donald J. Trump

The tweet came from, where else, Fox & Friends, the television’s version of Pravda.
The Trumptards had North Dakota Republican Rep. Aaron McWilliams on the program, touting his sponsorship of a bill to support Bible literacy in the classrooms of his state.

In addition, they brayed, five other states are considering similar measures: Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia and Florida.That was enough to get Trump’s sausage fingers a flyin.’ Which will, very likely, get his base in other states to demand similar proposals.

Let’s set aside any legal questions, which interest our president as much reading. Let’s also ignore the fact that the U.S. Constitution, in calling for a separation of church and state, does not use the word “God” once in its text.

Instead, let’s frame this proposition from a religious standpoint. Let’s go further: we’ll tackle the issue as believers, giving as much benefit of the doubt as academically feasible. We’ll even accept the good book is not only accurate, but an acceptable role model for our children, just to appease Bible thumpers.

The question, then, is this: which of its literary passages should the kiddos learn? We’ll tackle only the biggest, as the Bible is rife with innumerable inconsistencies, contractions, and historical and scientific inaccuracies within its covers. I guess that’s to be expected, perhaps even accepted, considering it was written by first century illiterate goat shepherds.

First, the ten commandments, namely the one purists love to point to as the moral compass for humanity. Here’s number six:Image result for the ten commandments

Thou shalt not kill.

Seems reasonable enough. But will we redact the chapter where the priestly tribe of the Levites was instructed to punish anyone who insisted on sticking to their pagan idolatry? Image result for tribe of the Levites draw swords

Thus sayeth the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side. and slay ever man, his brother, companion, neighbor.  — Exodus 32:27

Now onto a common theme of the Bible: rape. The Bible’s rules on rape are laid out clearly in Deuteronomy: pay the father of the violated woman, who must marry her rapist — and who will not be free of him until he croaks:Image result for Deuteronomy rape

The third instruction of that list of golden rules says:

If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. — Deuteronomy chapter 22.

A shekel of silver is worth $320 in today’s U.S. currency. That’s $16,000 per rape.

It gets better. Old Deuter (sorry, Lebowski) later tosses out the recompense entirely if the rapist is arrested and victim identified:

If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death— the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you. — Deuteronomy verse 29

And I’ll guess we’ll have to omit the 13th Amendment of the Constitution altogether during civics class, because the Bible has a lot to say about slavery, and none of it holy. The Bible describes Timothy as a righteous missionary and good friend friend of the Apostle Paul who warranted his own byline and quote in the good book: 

All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. — Timothy 6:1

To make the sure point was not lost on the heathens, Paul and Timmy co-wrote this gem: Image result for apostle paul and timothy

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. — Colossians 3:22

One of these days I’m going to quit reading Trump’s twit tweets. I swear to god.