GOP fetishes

Tim Pawlenty sticks with failed Republican fetishized positions. Of course, Republicans think a tax cut can solve any problem.

But that's old news. The funny part is the constant refrain of small business this, small business that. Republicans don't really care about small business. They use it for protection from the true accusation that they are in the pocket of big business - and have been for many decades.

This is a case of a Democratic formula backfiring. Sometime around the 1970s, Dems wanted to reassure voters that they were in fact in favor of a strong economy, but they had been hammering big business so hard since the Great Depression that they had to make a distinction about which businesses deserved their help and advocacy.

Republicans quickly saw the advantages of this market positioning. After all, only a narrow niche of voters would ever find big business to be warm and fuzzy, and they already knew the GOP was buttering their bread.

Elite media loved and love this formula, too. Every economic downturn brings out formulaic stories about how many jobs small business creates. The better studies, though, show that small business does not create net jobs at anything like the scale of big business.

What you'll notice if you look closely at actual policy, as opposed to dishonest GOP marketing, is that Republican goals always help big business and leave a few crumbs for small business, much as their tax cut policies do for the very wealthy vs. the middle class.

At bottom, the Republicans' single most important policy position is tax cuts. The rest is just marketing. They don't really care whether a tax cut will solve a problem, economic or otherwise. They only care to lower their patrons' taxes.

In the end, we're back to the old news. The chant of "small business" is only about helping big business.

Buzz is short for bullshit

Remember the VP buzz that our media spent at least half the summer on, feeding us planted stories filled with bullshit all along?

Now there's Cabinet buzz. It's similarly filled with bullshit.

What are the purposes of this type of buzz?

• The media get to print a compost pile full of stories that don't require much effort or get in the way of hitting the nearest watering hole.
• People who want positions use the buzz their PR people generate to put their names in play.
• The incoming administration gets to compliment people it has no intention of appointing - Gates, probably.
• The administration gets the vetting started (but this is a really minor effect, since it would require the press to, you know, actually investigate something).

Whitewashing bullshit

Petumenos: Hello, Governor, how are you today?

Palin: On advice of counsel--

Van Flein, Palin's leash-holding flack, uh, lawyer (sotto voce): That one's o.k.

Palin: Oh, I'm fine and mav'ricky today. Back atcha!

Petumenos: Good. Shall we get started?

Palin looks at lawyer, who nods.

Palin: I've been lookin' forward to clearin' my name.

Petumenos: Governor, did you at any time ever do anything wrong?

Palin: Uh.

Petumenos: ... in your official capacity as a government official.

Palin: No, of course not. It was all about reform. I'm a reformer. I reformed this investigation, din't I?

Van Flein: Objection!

Van Flein (sotto voce): Remember we prepped to stick to the question and not volunteer anything?

Palin: Oh, sure, you betcha.

Van Flein: Please ask again, Mr. Petumenos.

Petumenos: Governor, did you at any time ever do anything wrong in your official capacity as a government official?

Palin: No, not a thing.

Petumenos: Thank you for clearing that up, Governor, and thank you for your time. Let's see, that's all I have.

Don't tell me that McCNN can't tell the difference between the whitewash investigation and the real investigation. They know they're feeding us bullshit, but they got a press release from the McCain campaign, so they just have to do it.

One more time: The Alaska Personnel Board "investigation" is the one that Sarah Palin called on herself. This was not an honorable act. It was a blatant attempt to get a friendly forum for a whitewash. It's transparent public relations in the guise of legal process.

It's like boldly announcing, "Yes, my mother believes me."

Only naifs like McCNN think it's meaningful.

Smack checking

McCain and Obama are both talking smack about each other. McCNN says it's all even-steven, all fair in love and war, a pox on both their houses, they all do it.

Never mind that much of Obama's ad budget is going to contrast ads about their actual positions, while most of McCain's is going to character assassination. Just tot up the spending for ads that cast the respective candidates in a bad light - that's McCNN's method.

Never mind that the McCain campaign cannot show one single positive ad. Of course, they won't admit this; they just won't call you back. Well, actually, their flacks in the field will tell you that you'll have to talk to HQ to get a comment on that one story, and then HQ won't call you back. But if you're a reporter, don't worry; they'll still hand-deliver their latest spin on everything else, not to mention the catering schedule.

Never mind that Biden's assertion is about proportion, not total amounts. McCNN "reasons" that Alexander Mooney, one of its producers, found that the Obama campaign is spending double the McCain campaign, so the fact that it's spending half on so-called negative ads means it's keeping pace with McCain.

Never mind that people with an ordinary middle school understanding of basic arithmetic can see that this finding confirms Biden's claim.

Never mind that even this claim from Mooney of McCNN is false. His numbers are vague estimates, not backed up by ... anything. The group that actually studied the question says that Obama is spending a third of his budget on negative ads, which is only "roughly half" if you're republishing a Republican press release and pretending against all experience that it could be accurate.

McCNN still claims that Joe Biden is stating a falsehood when he says that 100% of McCain's ads are negative. It's McCNN's claim that's bullshit.

Never mind that it's bullshit. Swallow it whole. Assuming you like the taste.

Lesson for flacks

Don't stop talking when you got nuthin'. Distract, change the subject, attack the question.

It's a school for scoundrels.

I always wonder why other people don't get as outraged as I do at the obvious stinking smokescreen of smoldering bullshit that Tucker Bounds emits in volcanic volumes.

Good on Campbell Brown for, as someone I read yesterday says, committing journalism.

Storm surge of snark

The Republicans from Duhbya and Darth to McCain aren't so much afraid of the real hurricanes, Gustav and Hanna. What they really fear is the eye wall and storm surge of snark.

This is really too easy:

• Suppose they gave an RNC and nobody came.
• Photo-ops for a failed comb-over.
• Balloon drop into 150 mph winds!
• Obama had Invesco, but we'll always have the Superdome.
• Republicans in disarray - you hadn't noticed already?
• The RNC Welcoming Committee is all that's left. (And boy are they left!)
• McCain, why did you vote against hurricane relief?
  

These hurricanes are a complete PR disaster for the Republicans. If they weren't such venal, unsympathetic, and incompetent bastards, I'd almost feel sorry for them. But no, they deeply deserve to have what goes around come back around to land on them.

I'll save my concern for the innocents who'll lose their lives, their property, and their livelihoods in what comes. The victims may, like Katrina's, have their lives disrupted for years. They are the ones who don't deserve four more years of Bushist Republican misrule. Among others.

Image in the public domain. You and I already paid for it.

Update: See also "How many refugees". The snark continues.

Please sir, I want some more

Newsweek begs for some of the $58 million T. Boone Pickens is spending for his PR campaign. That kind of money will buy a lot of hagiography like this fluff piece.

I wouldn't for a minute dismiss all the ideas he has cribbed from other people, but I don't trust him.

A flack's wet dream

McCain campaign aide gets press release onto A1 of the Washington Post with a substance free story about the timing of the Republican veep nomination. What a worthless story.

Fun (but also worthless) to guess:

• Romney - how many houses between him and McCain? More than ten, so we know they can relate to the mortgage crisis.
  
• Jindal - Mini-He scares everybody a little
  
• Ridge - threat level low
• Portman - who? A Bush budget director? Somebody's pulling wool. Is he the only Ohio guy they've got?
  
• Pawlenty - my guess
  

Sow's ear

These Bushists really believe that marketing can change reality. In this age of collective Alzheimer's, they may be right.

Meet Duhbya, environmentalist, edumacator, civil rights activist, responsible spender, uniter. Is there no bullshit so pungent that they shy from trying to make us swallow it?

Adspeak

Public relations is a synonym for lying.