Tag: Political Tactics

Argumentum ad populum

Do you watch the news?  You know all those Medicare reciepients that are biutching about a government take over of Health care….or all those macho little pricks with their guns worn in public…or maybe elected officials that are spouting fears of socialism or out right lying to stir up the people in opposition to any Dem health care agenda coming out of Washington.

I know….I know all that is old hat….so what is new?

Since most schools have eliminated the teaching of Latin and I do not want my reader to have a brain aneurysm trying to decipher the title of this post….let me help out….”argumentum ad populum”…..In Logic, a proposition to be true because many or all people believe it; it alleges, “If many believe so, it is so.”

Just where am I going with this?  Right?  Good question and hopefully you will get your answer.

The idea has many names:  appeal to the masses, appeal to belief, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people, argument by consensus, authority of the many, and bandwagon fallacy,

See what I am saying?  The GOP is plying this tactic in the health care debate.  That is to use every tactic available to sway a mass amount of people that will make the case for them.  It is a fallacious argument at best…but it is effective if one figures in the rational ignorance effect.  (for definition, go to my page with the same name).

How about a little clarification?

The argumentum ad populum is a red herring and genetic fallacy. It appeals on probabilistic terms; given that 75% of a population answer A to a question where the answer is unknown, the argument states that it is reasonable to assume that the answer is indeed A. In cases where the answer can be known but is not known by a questioned entity, the appeal to majority provides a possible answer with a relatively high probability of correctness.

It is logically fallacious because the mere fact that a belief is widely held is not necessarily a guarantee that the belief is correct; if the belief of any individual can be wrong, then the belief held by multiple persons can also be wrong. The argument that because 75% of people polled think the answer is A implies that the answer is A fails, for if opinion did determine truth, there be no way to deal with the discrepancy between the 75% of the sample population that believe the answer is A and 25% who are of the opinion that the answer is not A. However small the percentage of those polled is distributed among any remaining answers, this discrepancy by definition disproves any guarantee of the correctness of the majority. In addition, this would be true even if the answer given by those polled were unanimous, as the sample size may be insufficient, or some fact may be unknown to those polled that, if known, would result in a different distribution of answers.

Thanx to wiki for the above definition.

Polls are used in this way….i.e. if the prez has 51% approval down from 56% then the people are losing confidence…..,good work, but that is not necessarily the case.  The idea is to make it look as if more people believe in a thing and in doing so, that it is correct and true.  Once again , not necessarily so.

People need to check everything they are told…most times it is either misinformnation, taken out of context or an outright LIE!

Do They Have An Idiot Button?

Of course, I am talking about the GOP.  These guys and gals just keep throwing buzzwords around and not alternatives to Obama’s proposals.

One of the most used…lately…is “socialism or socialist”.  This tactic may have worked 25 years ago but today it has nothing on it.

Demonstrators outside Obama appearances are waving signs denouncing his supposed embrace of “socialism.”

“When you hear people saying, `socialized medicine,’ understand I don’t know anybody in Washington who is proposing that, certainly not me,” he said at a town-hall meeting on health care.

“Socialized medicine would mean that the government would basically run all of health care. They would hire the doctors, they would run the hospitals. They would just run the whole thing. Great Britain has a system of socialized medicine. Nobody is talking about doing that, all right?”

Obama is leaving it to Congress to take the lead in designing a health care plan. He has endorsed broad proposals, supported by many Democrats, to create a government-run health plan to compete with private insurers.

Republicans claim such a system would lead to government rationing and denial of care and could drive the private companies out of business.

That is the ploy being used……”the government will come between a doctor and his patient”  cute saying but someone needs to actually explain how that will happen.  Sorry, but saying so does not make it so.

Sorry Irene, but no where in Obama’s proposal does it smack of socialism.

After watching the debate on health care, as well as other proposals, I have found that the Repub strategists are pushing the same idiot button as the politicians.

A New Path?

As Yogi Berra once said, “when you come to a fork in the road, take it” and that best describes the “new” direction that the GOP will be pursuing.

From an article written by Perry Bacon, Jr for the WaPo:

RNC chairman Steele has outdone himself this time.   Steele, speaking to the 168 members of the Republican National Committee, continued his fiery rhetoric in the last few weeks against the president, who he said “could not be more partisan.” He accused Obama of “yielding his legislative agenda almost entirely to radicals like Nancy Pelosi” and called Obama’s first 100 days a “reign of error.”

“We’ve seen strategists writing memos and doing briefings urging that Republicans avoid confronting the president,” he said in a speech at a convention center in Oxon Hill. “Steer clear of frontal assaults on his administration. They suggest we should go after Nancy Pelosi, whom nobody likes, or Harry Reid, who nobody knows”

“The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over,” Steele says. “It is done, we have turned the page, we have turned the corner. No more looking in the review mirror.”

So the plan is to start attacking the prez on all fronts.  Is that a wise choice?  The prez has a 70% approval rating and the people may not be receptive to such attacks.  I know the party is struggling to find its footing, but is this a wise choice?  Why not formulate some new ideas on the economy and such to present to the people and let them, see that the GOP is truly a viable party?

And all out frontal assault is about as wise as just saying NO to everything.  Not sure that this decision was thought out completely before it was offered to the members of the RNC.  Or if the political fallout was taken into serious consideration.

Why Is The GOP Attacking Women?

Why not?  They surely cannot have much success attacking a popular president.  Why are women their focus of attacks?

In Brownback’s case, he is one of the Republican Party’s leading social conservatives and has been under pressure from that wing to disavow his support of the Democratic governor.

Though Sebelius has a reputation for working across party lines, she is anathema to abortion opponents because she supports  abortion rights.
Conservatives are still incensed about a Homeland Security memo that draws attention to the possible threat of “right-wing extremists” here in the U.S. But Democrats and other Napolitano supporters argue the memo itself originated with the Bush administration.
While it’s not surprising that Republicans are angry with a Democratic cabinet secretary, this brief episode is another instance in which rank-and-file Republicans tack further right than party leaders in their criticism of President Barack Obama. Conservatives in the House on Wednesday night called on Napolitano to resign because one of her memos mentioned right wing extremists as a threat.

As Media Matters for America documented, Pelosi has been the target of attacks by Republicans and conservative media figures. The Republican National Committee has attacked Pelosi for her “extremely liberal record.” On the November 1 edition of CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, correspondent Andrea Koppel reported that Pelosi was “among the most liberal politicians in America,” and that “Republicans have seized on the prospect of liberal lawmakers running the House as a way to fire up their base on the campaign trail.” On the October 24 edition of MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, host Joe Scarborough claimed that Pelosi is “out of touch … in so many districts across the country.” On the October 12 edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, host Sean Hannity claimed that “people don’t know how extreme she is, but we’ve got 26 days to inform people.” Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, on the October 12 edition of The O’Reilly Factor, attacked Pelosi’s “San Francisco values.” On the August 21 edition of Hannity & Colmes, Hannity called Pelosi “that San Francisco extreme left-wing liberal.”

Plus the GOP is blaming the recession on Pelosi, calling iut the “Pelosi Recession”.

Just three democratic women that are being singled out for attacks by the GOP.  I am sure there are more, but these are just the most senior of the attacks.  But why is the GOP attacking women?

But It Does Not Exist

During the whole political drama that was the debate on the American Recovery & Reinvestment Plan, Obama’s stimulation plan, I kept hearing all about the CBO report that basically said that if left alone the economy would recovery on its own in 10 years.  And also they kept saying just how this report stated that very little would be accomplished by the plan being offerd by the administration.

From a post in the Huffington Post:

Reports of a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, showing that the vast majority of the money in the stimulus package won’t be spent until after 2010, have Democrats on the defensive and the GOP calling for a pullback in wasteful spending.

Funny thing is, there is no such report.  How is that for BS?

“We did not issue any report, any analysis or any study,” a CBO aide told the Huffington Post.

Rather, the nonpartisan CBO ran a small portion of an earlier version of the stimulus plan through a computer program that uses a standard formula to determine a score — how quickly money will be spent. The score only dealt with the part of the stimulus headed for the Appropriations Committee and left out the parts bound for the Ways and Means or Energy and Commerce Committee.

The CBO numbers were given to a small number of congressional Democrats and Republicans, but were not posted online because they’re not an official CBO product. (Media outlets, while reporting widely about the “report,” have declined to post it online. Here’s the whole thing.) Democratic aides say they are certain that the GOP leaked it to the Associated Press in order to undercut the spending portion of the stimulus.

The press broadly picked up on it and a simple narrative developed: the stimulus bill won’t stimulate the economy. The administration tried to push back against the CBO numbers, sending around a set of talking points making the case that the “new CBO spendout rate report is being taken out of context.”

So once again the GOP has resulted to using BS to make their case.  I guess if you do not have any facts to back up your claims then make them up….it has worked in the past…it will work in the present.

“Gotcha Politics”

Have you people enjoyed the last couple of weeks of political theater?  Or what I call “gotcha politics”.

You know what I am talking about…..all the posturing in the debate over the Obama Stimulus plan.  Theater?  Yes indeedy…political theater at its best (or worst, depending on your point of view).  All that he said they said was nothing more than a positioning of a party looking to 2010.

I have to hand it to the Repubs, they did a fine job of taking the message away from the President.  Now they will continue and pray that the stimulus plan is a failure or at least does not do as much as is expected.  Then the stage will be set for their return to power in 2010 mid term elections.

After all that was what this whole debate was about……the power thing!

The “JOE” That Will Not Go Away

Dammit!  Dammit!  Here is a guy with the IQ of a garden slug and he is being used to generate interest in the GOP?  Basically, as a GOP strategist.   And you still think the GOP has a chance to return to its former glory?

As reported in the Politico.com

Fresh off his stint as a war correspondent in Gaza, Joe the Plumber is now doing political strategy with Republicans.

When GOP congressional aides gather Tuesday morning for a meeting of the Conservative Working Group, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher – more commonly known as Joe the Plumber — will be their featured guest. This group is an organization of conservative Capitol Hill staffers who meet regularly to chart GOP strategy for the week.

Wurzelbacher, who became a household name during the presidential election, will be focusing his talk on the proposed stimulus package. He’s apparently not a fan of the economic rescue package, according to members of the group.

If nothing else, GOP aides are using the appearance to get staffers to attend the 9 a.m meeting.

“In case you weren’t planning to attend CWG tomorrow morning, you might want to reconsider because Joe the Plumber will be joining us!” Kimberly Wallner, an aide to South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, wrote in a message to her e-mail list this afternoon.

Hey conservatives!  Why would you want to use a fraud to generate interst in your party?  Is this what you want for the GOP?  If so, then you may be dooming the GOP to a place in history along side the Whig Party.

Oh My God! Are You Serious?

I found this story while surfing when I was bored with the usual crap in the news.  It is just amazing what politicians will do to try and deflect attention from what they are doing, huh?

Face to face with the worst economic crisis to face the nation in decades, our leaders are hard at work trying to come to America’s aid. The latest legislative salvo? A bill that would require cameraphones to make a sound “audible within a reasonable radius of the phone whenever a photograph is taken with the camera in such phone.”

The bill, called the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act, is the brainchild of New York’s Peter King, and it’s a response to the continued popularity of voyeuristic photos snapped on the sly by those darn kids. King specifically cites adolescents being spied upon “in dressing rooms and public places” in the draft of the bill.

As well, Wired notes that a similar law is already on the books in Japan, where such behavior is practically a national pastime.

But, as Wired also notes, the prospects for King’s stateside bill doesn’t look entirely rosy. He has no co-sponsor for the action and, a smattering of press reports aside, there hasn’t been much interest in the legislation at all.

One supposes that Congress may have other matters at the top of its mind right now than phone-wielding peeping Toms. Just a hunch.

Sen. Burris–Moronic Political Theater

Few other lawmakers are going as far as Rush in suggesting that racial considerations were at play in the Senate’s decision. The Congressional Black Caucus has not gotten involved as an organization, despite pressure from some of its members to weigh in on Burris’ behalf.

Still, several black lawmakers have broken with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Obama — and, for that matter, Illinois’ African-American Secretary of State Jesse White, who refuses to certify Burris’ appointment — in saying they believe Burris should be seated.

If you think that the Repubs are silly sometimes, then this should just crack you up.

Burris, senator designate from the state of Illinois, should be sworn in immediately.  Why?

Glad you asked!

1–he meets the requirements of the constitution–age, residency and citizenship.

2–He was legally appointed by a sitting governor–no matter the accusations against him, he is still doing the duties of his office like signing bills and such and doing it legally.

3–Sen. Burris has the political experience, not a necessity but it helps.

This whole situation is just damn silly.  What is the real reason the Senate does not want to seat him?  Is it race?  After all he would be the only black person in the exclusive club.  Or is it his political track record in the last 5 elections that he was in?  They may think that he cannot successfully defend his seat in the next election.  Or is it something more pathetic?  Or could it be trying to divert the people’s attention from their new pay raise?  Maybe it is just moronic political theater.

Blago called Reid’s bluff and now Reid is tap dancing like a man on crack.

Drama At The CIA

President-elect Barack Obama phoned key lawmakers to defend the selection of Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency and quell concerns over Mr. Panetta’s lack of first-hand intelligence experience.

In his first public comments on intelligence matters since the election, Mr. Obama also promised that his intelligence team would break from Bush administration practices that he said had “tarnished” the government’s image.

A formal announcement of Mr. Panetta’s nomination is expected later this week.

The two senators, the top Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, chastised Mr. Obama on Monday for not choosing an intelligence professional for the job and not telling them of his plans to nominate Mr. Panetta. The intelligence committee will hold confirmation hearings for Mr. Panetta and the expected nominee for director of national

Only two CIA directors in the past three decades — Robert Gates in the administration of George H.W. Bush and current CIA Director Michael Hayden — have held senior intelligence posts prior to appointment. Outsiders are frequently selected to be CIA director, with mixed results.

The senators that are the most vocal in opposition were Bush collaborators.  They white washed the intelligence to allow the invasion of Iraq.  Their lax oversight has given the country more grief than they have given good news.  Especially Feinstein who championed such stuff as the Iraq War, FISA and the Patriot Act.

The truth is that their feelings were hurt because they were not consulted in the pick.  But why would Obama , who wants change, seek counsel from the very people that are the problem in the intel community?