Alan Milner's Open Salon Blog

Republican 2012 Campaign: Train Wreck....Or Juggernaut?

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 11:09:32 -0400

Right now, the American Electorate is watching what might be described as the Republican Train Wreck....unless what we are really seeing is a Republican Juggernaut in disguise.

The supposed Republican Train Wreck began during the 2008 campaign, when the Republican Party embraced the Birther fantasy, which was the core belief of the Tea Party fanatics.

The Birther thing was launched by Hillary Clinton partisans during the primaries by posting anonymous emails that questioned Barack Obama's citizenship....but members of the Tea Party movement picked up the refrain and, by October of 2008, the issue boiled over in a series of anonymous emails citing a Kenyan newspaper report that referred to Obama as "Kenyan-born."

In the 2010 by-election, the Republicans rode the Birther myth and the Tea Party Movement to a majority in the House of Representatives, only to discover that the Tea Party Republicans were unwilling to play by the rules, pushing the nation to the brink of financial insolvency.

John Boehner's inability to control the Tea Party Republicans in the House of Representatives is one of the strongest arguments against the Republican party. Over the past two years, the Republicans have demonstrated that they aren't capable of ruling because they can't find a consensus between the more liberal and more conservative Republican representatives, which makes it impossible for them to reach an accord with the Democrats on policy matters.

The electorate is rethinking the Tea Party experiment and, while the Republicans will probably retain control over the House, they may very well lose their stranglehold over that body.

Nevertheless, my great fear - and it is a very serious one - is that Romney's smarmy caricature of a Presidential candidate, and his seemingly irrational choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate results from their belief that the fix is in and they literally can't lose.

Over the past 25 years, the Republican Party has gained greatly increased control of a significant majority of state legislatures and governor's mansions which has enabled them to Gerrymander congressional districts to create what may be a permanent Republican majority in the House of Representatives, and to enact voter suppression efforts designed to prevent likely Democratic voters from casting their ballots, thus insuring a Republican victory.

Republicans control 31 of 50 Houses of Representatives, and 29 Senates. In 22 states, the Republicans own both houses and the governor's office. If the Republicans win four more governorships, they will have an absolute majority in enough state houses to build a firewall against future Democratic campaigns.

But nothing explains the Romney's abysmal performance as a presidential candidate more succinctly than the fact that election may already have been decided before the first vote was cast....and the candidate knows it.

One reason for the Republicans' unseemly confidence may well be their belief that they will be able to suppress Democratic votes enough, in enough states, to swing the election to Romney.

This possibility also explains Romney's refusal to "go big," to take stands on the issues or explain his budget plans or his tax policy because, as long as Romney remains vague and non-threatening, the fix will remain viable. If, however, he were to come out with his real opinions - or, rather, Paul Ryan's real opinions - he might upset enough voters to cost him the election by turning off likely independent voters and not-stupid Republican voters.

And, in the increasingly likely event that we are heading toward a tie in the Electoral College, that tie will be broken by House of Representatives, where the Republican majority will give the election to Romney. If the election were to be contested, that contest would end up before the Supreme Court which will, once again, award the presidency to the Republican candidate.

So, in the final analysis, Romney doesn't have to win to win. He just has to get a tie.

Obama has to win cleanly with a sufficient margin so that no state vote count can be questioned.

Romney just needs a tie. Obama has to win big.

And that's the essence of the Republican strategy, to deny Obama re-election by simply undermining the confidence of the middle of the road voter in Obama's viability as a president without presenting a credible program for their stewardship of the nation.

This picture should terrify many Americans, and especially those who rely on Social Security and Medicare.

I'm one of them.

An Open Letter to an Irate Iranian

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 21:09:55 -0400

An Open Letter to A Young Iranian Muslim

When you first contacted, me some weeks ago, I was very pleased to hear from you because I have a great affection for the Persian people, and a great sympathy for the religion of Islam.

My father served in Iran during World War II and nearly lost his life serving the Persian people, coming home as a disabled veteran.

I have been associated with a traditional Iranian Sufi Order for nearly 40 years now. I have lived with Iranian people for many years and, right now, I work with Iranian people.

It always sounds condescending when someone says, "Some of my best friends are (insert the name of the group you're prejudiced against)" but, in my case, it happens to be true.

You asked me if I was a Sufi. No one can ever answer that question truthfully because whether or not you are truly a Sufi depends upon how other people view you. I can say that I have studied the Sufi Path for almost 40 years, and let you draw your own conclusion from that.

So, I can't call myself a Sufi....and neither should you.

And, right now, if someone asked me whether you having the makings of Sufi, I would have say that I don't know.

I understand that you - and millions of other Muslims - are outraged by the movie that sparked the attacks now going on around the world.

I have watched the film and I agree that it is a terrible example of extreme prejudice against Muslims and against the Islamic religion.

I agree that it is obscene, profane, and disrespectful to the Prophet Mohammed and to the religion of Islam.

But....it was just a movie. It was not worth a single human life.

And, let me tell you this: the people who made this movie made it specifically to instigate exactly the kind of behavior that Muslims around the world have displayed over the past five days. They made it knowing that it would instigate riots across the Islamic world, and knowing that those riots would drive a wedge between America and Islam, and especially between the people of Libya and the people of the United States.

And you, and people who believe the same things you believe, fell right into their trap. You behaved in precisely the same way the film depicted Muslims behaving.

You fell right into their trap, because your behavior exactly mirrors the behavior illustrated in the film.

In the film, a group of Muslims break into a man's business, destroying the contents and putting the building to the torch. And, just hours ago, a group of Muslims burned a KFC franchise to the ground. What did that KFC franchise have to do with a film made in the United States?

Some of the people who share the same beliefs you hold have murdered an American diplomat who was instrumental in the liberation of Libya from a despotic dictator along with three of his companions, none of whom ever did anything to you or to the people who murdered them.

And that's where you and I differ....because you believe that everyone else in the world should respect your religion the same way you do....and I believe that everyone has an absolute right to the freedom of speech, to speak their minds on any subject without having to ask anyone else's by your leave.

I would like you to try to understand this one fact: We, here, in the United States, do not have the right to tell anyone else what they can or cannot say as long as they are not inciting people to riot....and that is the difference between freedom and repression.

Of course, if someone says things about you that are not true, you can sue that person for slander. If they put their slander into print, you can sue them for libel.

But that's not good enough for you, because you believe an insult to Mohammed is an insult against you, personally, and must be answered in blood.

In the United States, we believe that everyone is entitled to express their opinions on any subject we wish. It's written into the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which makes it impossible for the government of the United States to repress the free speech of the people.

As long as you believe that the government of the United States has the power to silence its citizens, you will not understand the United States, nor will you understand the rest of the modern world.

Here's a list of the countries where the government has the power to prevent people from exercising the right to free speech: Russia, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba...and most of the countries under Muslim rule.

In Iran, right now, you don't have the freedom to speak your mind....you only have the freedom to say what your government and Sharia law says you can say....and that's why you don't understand the freedom of speech: because you don't have it, have never had, and probably never will have it as long as you live in Iran.

I understand that you don't understand this....and that's the tragedy of your life. Your freedoms have been so deeply castrated that you don't even feel the pain.

Of course, you believe you can say anything you want to say....because you have never tried it.

Do this experiment.

Go to a public place and say the following things:

"I love America. America is a great place. America loves Iran. Iranians love America."

Are these things true? Obviously not from your point of view.

But let me ask you a question: would you feel safe doing it?

If your answer is no, then you don't live in a free country.

Think about it.

Will McAvoy Address Convention?

Tue, 4 Sep 2012 12:09:06 -0400

Today, the most important Democratic National Convention ever will begin in Charlotte, North Carolina.

It's important because the Obama campaign desperately needs to get a big bounce in the polls in order to open up a significant lead in the pre-November polling which, to a large extent, will determine how the news media characterizes the Democratic campaign for the next 63 days which, in turn, will determine the fate of the nation for the next 48 months after that and perhaps for much, much longer.

The media doesn't report the news: they fabricate it, and they fabricate it on the basis of the opinions reflected in the polls which, in turn, are manipulated by the paid advertising to which the media is forced to react in the absence of substantive comments by either party.

It is important for the Democrats to get a big bounce from their convention precisely because the Republicans flubbed their convention so badly they got almost no bounce at all from their convention. The Democrats have to score a major bounce to take advantage of the opportunity the Republicans have given them.

The conventions aren't important because of the speeches but rather because of the fact that each party will get approximately 18 hours of prime time coverage on multiple media outlets during the convention during which the media will analyze and disect everything that was said, creating a multiplier effect that will push the Democratic talking points into the collective consciousness of the nation, or so one would hope.

The average cost of a single prime time television commercial averages $284,000 per minute on the networks. That comes to $360 MILLION per network for the entire 18 hour period FOR ONE NETWORK.

Multiply that by the eight major media outlets (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and PBS) and you get a whopping $2,453,760,000 worth of air time. For the decimal challenged, that's just under $2.5 BILLION worth of air time over a concentrated three day period.

You literally cannot buy that kind of coverage.

On average, television programmers allot 18 minutes of commercial time per hour, which means that advertising can purchase up to 432 minutes per day per network, or 3,024 minutes divided among the seven networks that accept advertising. This amounts to 50.4 hours worth of advertising, which would cost $14.3 Billion...more than all of the campaign contributions raised by both parties over the past 15 presidential campaigns.

So, who do you think the surprise speaker will be at the Democratic Convention who will take advantage of that opportunity to generate a big bump?

We already know that the Democrats are planning to call former employees from Bain-funded companies to the stand to testify against their former employer.

Well scripted, they will be old news and old news equals no bounce so expect for them to go rogue if given the chance.

Hopefully, the Democrats will have enough sense to pre-tape them but, in this campaign year, counting on common sense may be grasping at straws.

We've been reviewing the list of eligible candidates for mystery guest.

The results are enlightening.

First, let's discuss the criteria.

A mystery guest cannot be a sitting office holder because we all know that sitting office holders are whores and will go anywhere live microphones are within shouting distance....and there's no mystery about what an office holder's speech will be about.

If the speakers are Republicans, they will tell you how great they are. If the speakers are Democrats, they will tell you how great their candidate is.

No, the mystery guest has to be from some other walk of life. Here are some candidates for consideration:

Arianna Huffington: over-exposed. You can't avoid her but once you have listened to her you're never exactly sure about what she said....or what it means. She can't stay on message to save her life.

Bill Maher: way over-exposed. Also prone to straying away from the party line, and just selfish enough -even after contributing $1 million to the Obama Campaign - to save his best material for the next edition of his HBO series.

George Carlin: dead, unfortunately. We'd really like to hear what he might have said about this campaign.

Al Franken: A two-fer, both a senator and a comedian, but an intentional comedian, unlike many of the clowns in the Senate. Disqualified because he's a sitting office holder but he is probably the smartest man in the Senate, now that Russ Feingold has been voted out. Comes from a great Minnesota Democratic tradition: Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, and Mark Dayton.

Lewis Black: Al Franken's smarter brother from a different mother, but only because he was smart enough NOT to win a seat in the Senate. Currently taking all the bookings that Al Franken used to get before he was a senator. Guilt by association...and too foul-mouthed to be trusted near a live mike that's not on a time delay.

Or, we could go with one of Democratic One-Percenters, Warren Buffett or George Soros, but neither one of them is as rich as he used to be, so maybe we should take their advice with some salt.

Steve Jobs: Also dead, and maybe too crazy for the middle of the road gang, but he would have been a hoot. We're not even sure if he qualified as a Democrat because we haven't yet finished Issacson's biography of Jobs.

Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs smarter partner from another mother is very liberal but somewhat out of touch with reality. Wouldn't you be, growing up with Steve Jobs? Has the common touch when he remembers not to speak over everyone's head. Problem: we will just look at him and wish that Jobs was there instead.

And then there are the actors, lots of actors:

Unfortunately, most of the big marquee names in the film industry are Republicans: Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Willis, Norris....just about anyone from the cast of the Second Expendables movie. We're not sure which party gets Tom Cruise, nor are we sure which party wants Mel Gibson but we sure don't want them.

There are liberals in Hollywood, of course.

There's Warren Beatty, who's been mentioned for public office so many times that many people think he's actually a politician first and an actor after, and George Clooney, who gets the roles that Beatty can't play anymore but is also becoming too political.

Here's an idea: let's get Affleck to play Clint Eastwood, and ask Matt Damon to play Bill Maher interviewing Clint Eastwood to determine just what exactly was going through his head when he put his foot in his mouth.

On second thought, Clyde, the monkey from Eastwood's film, "Every Which Way But Loose" might have turned in a better performance that Clint did but, come to think of it, Clyde stole that film from Eastwood too. I believe he - ah, Eastwood that is - swore never to work with an animal again....and then he goes and hooks up with Paul Ryan.

No, we think we should go with our first choice: Jeff Daniels.

Throughout this political summer, Daniels has been starring in Aaron Sorkin's HBO series, "The Newsroom" as cable news network anchor Will McAvoy, a role in which the liberal Daniels plays a Republican journalist who has become disaffected from the Republican Party in the aftermath of Tea Party take over.

For the past 10 weeks, and now in re-runs, Daniels has been Sorkin's mouthpiece for his critique of the American political process in general, the coverage of the political process by the news media, and the sorry state of affairs in Congress in the aftermath of the Tea Party takeover.

If you haven't seen this show, you should. If you're a Democrat, take notes, because Sorkin has laid out the talking points for this campaign far better than any Democratic spokesperson has yet managed to do, and Daniels conveys those thoughts more convincingly than anyone else the Democrats could call upon to outdo Clint Eastwood. (If you are a Republican, well, watch and weep.)

Daniels is one of those yeoman actors who never turns in a bad performance, but always gets overlooked when they are giving out Oscars and Emmys and is utterly convincing in the role of a network news anchor.

Some people have commented that it is easy for Daniels to look good because the stories covered are retrospective, and Sorkin has the benefit of hindsight to color his accounts of the BP Oil Spill and the Fukashima Nuclear Disaster and Anthony Weiner's penis jokes...but it's a truly praiseworthy effort nevertheless because they strive to keep things in context.

In particular, you might want to watch the opening segment from the premier episode, the now famous "America Isn't the Best" speech:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIffq85zMI4

Then, just for good measure, watch the closing soliloquy, the "American Taliban" speech:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvED4KRe958

Now, between the two of these you have an excellent example of a great audition for the role of the Clint Eastwood antidote and, as a matter of fact, you might also just have the template for an award winning stump speech

Yeah, let's go with Jeff Daniels. He doesn't even have to be there. Just roll the tape.

Truth Serum: The Republican Campaign Strategy

Thu, 7 Jun 2012 08:06:28 -0400

Mitt Romney is far and away the worst presidental candidate the Republican Party has put up for office since Taft gave up the Oval Office to Wilson.

What do you do when you are saddled with such a liaiblity?

You sell the platform instead of the candidate.

And what do you do when the platform itself is so full of inconsistencies and previously failed policies?

You sell the sizzzle instead of the steak...by using the Big Lie to plaster over the obvious incongruties in the Republican Platform.

And here's how they sre going to do it:

If you live in one of the battleground states, and you don't have the intestinal fortitude to turn your television off for the next six months, you are going to be inundated with the most scabrous series of political advertisements ever unleashed upon a civilian population in peace time.

With unlimited funding at its disposal, the Republican Party is about to unleash a "saturation bombing" campaign against the consciousness of the American people that is designed to quite literally make it impossible for Americans to think clearly about the choices being presented to them.

It's called the Big Lie, a propaganda technique developed by the German High Command during World War I to encourage the German people to engage in a great patriotic war to achieve their manifest destiny as the natural rulers of all Europe, and perfected by Adolph Hitler and his propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, in their efforts to motivate the German people to engage in yet another futile effort to achieve world domination.

Simply stated, and it really is very, very simple, the Big Lie refers to a process in which you make a series of statements, each of which contains a completely outrageous and obviously untrue falsehood, and continue to reiterate those statements over and over again until you hear those statements coming back to you from the audience as if they were irrefutable facts.

The way this works is that, as each successive lie is unleashed upon the public, more and more people become convinced that the falsehoods included in the previous message must be true because, as outrageous as they were, they were much less outrageous than the next bundle of lies in the next, subsequent statement, which are even bigger and less believable.

(You think you know these things, but you really, really don't. Keep reading.)

The evidence that this system works is irrefutable because it is based upon the same exact premise of advertising and public relations: repetition builds sales. When it comes to propaganda, repetition builds belief.

Most of us think that we're smart enough to see through these lies, but we're not, because these techniques work on a sub-conscious level.

In hypnotic trance inductions, the hypnotic state is achieved by doing three things, the use of repetitive statements that match the current sensory experiences of the subject, the regulation of breathing patterns through the use of timed statements that first match the subjects breathing and then slow that pattern down by slowing down the timed statements, and through the use of shifting focus of attention in which you encourage the subject to shift perspectives until the subject voluntarily closes his or her eyes to eliminate the distraction which consists of the cognitive dissonance between what the subject sees and what the subject is being told to see.

Taken together, these techniques are very close to the process through we induce our sleep cycles when we are tired. Tired, our thoughts become repetitive and circular, our breathing slows and deepens, and we find ourselves closing our eyes to reduce the distractions that attract the eyes.

These are precisely the same effects that Adolph Hitler achieved in his speeches, during which he manipulated first his small circle of followers and eventually an entire nation...but Hitler was a primitive compared to the modern practitioners of the Big Lie: the American Advertising Industry.

The Republican Party - which includes the various Superpacs who are building the Republican brand across America - has already established the talking points they are going to drill into us over the next few months. They have been tested throughout the long Republican primary season, during which the talking points were tested and tweaked and tested again until they have been honed to a fine edge.

Now, you may think that you can withstand this barrage of lies but, if you can, it is only because they aren't aimed at you. Instead, they are carefully aimed at very specific target populations. If you're not a member of these target groups, the advertising will go right over your head, dismissed as mundane fabrications.

If, however, you belong to one or more of these target populations, these messages - repeated over and over again from a number of different sources - will encourage you to begin to question your previous assumptions about the facts as you become more and more convinced that some of the Republican arguments actually have some merit. This is the nose of the camel coming into your tent.

The Big Lie technique overwhelms the conscious mind's rational objections to the obvious absurdities being asserted with volume and repetition

Here's how it works, metaphorically speaking:

You are standing in a room with one other person, having a quiet conversation about a public issue.

Gradually, a group of uninvited guests begin joining you in the middle of the room, each repeating the same chant over and over again, louder and louder, until you can no longer hear the person standing next to you. Occasionally, the content of the chant changes but the overall effect remains the same. The conversation breaks down because you can no longer have a rational exchange of opinions in the middle of that cacophony...but you can clearly hear the things that the uninvited guests are saying to you.

It gets worse.

Now imagine that an important public figure is standing on a podium at one end of the room, repeating some of these stories thr0ugh a megaphone. And then a second public figure mounts a second podium and begins another recitation. And then a third public figure begins to reiterate the same statements. These are highly-regarded exemplaries, not run of the mill moakes.

By now, you have realized that it doesn't matter if the facts that are being exclaimed are, in fact, not true because there's no way you can communicate with anyone else in the middle of this cacophony.

In Mob Psychology, the maintenance of a hyperactive state among the members of the mob is sustained by the practice of the collective chanting of slogans, the repetition of which also has a hypnotic effect upon the members of the cohort, enhancing their cohesion to the group, and the cause the group espouses. (The process of chanting also regulates breathing patterns so that the members of the group actually breath together which stimulates sexual arousal.)

The two most typical reactions to this environment is to either get up and leave, or sit down and ignore the fact that these lies are becoming commonly accepted as facts. In either case, the colloquy between the two friends has been disrupted. Once disrupted, they cannot engage in a free-flowing exchange of views that, under normal circumstances, would clarify their positions and reinforce their commitment to them.

No one likes to feel as though their views are so divergent that no one else believes them.

And that's what the Republicans are trying to do. They aren't trying to convince us that their falsehoods are facts. All they want to do is to discourage us from believing and voting upon our facts at all because it seems so futile in the face of all that propaganda.

Now, without the metaphors, the Conservative Republicans are buying up every available minute of air time in the battleground states to the point where the Democratic Party will find it hard pressed to find ad blocks left for them to purchase.

In other words, the Conservatives don't have to commit all of their untold billions to the effort to control the public conversation: they only have to commit enough funds to purchase all of the available minutes.

There are, on average, 17 minutes of commercial time available for every hour of broadcast time. That comes to a total of 408 minutes out of a 24 hour day of 9,792 minutes, or 4% of the total broadcast time available per station....but that doesn't to take into account the average of four hours per day that are given over to infomercials, during which there are no paid advertisements, which reduces the number of available minutes to 340 per station per day.

If you want to know exactly how much it is going to cost to buy the 2012 presidential election, all you have to do is multiply the number of television stations covering the battleground states by 340 minutes per day and then multiply that number by the average hourly rate per minute of advertising.

But it doesn't stop there. Before this campaign is over, both parties will resort to buying whole hours to air their own infomercials. This strategy, although ruinously expensive, is the only means by which the Democrats can offset the Republican financial advantage. The problem with infomercials is that no one really believes them, and they are typically one-shot deals that don't benefit from repetitions because there are none.

Another aspect of this is the timing. Advertising buys are first come, first served and, if the Republicans can replenish their war chests at will from their corporate sponsors, they are in a position to buy up all of the available air time with their fast dollars while the Democrats are still accumulating their slow dollars to make their ad purchases, if the Republicans leave them anything to buy. It's much easier to raise $10 million from ten people - if they have it - than it is to collect $10 million from 1o,000 people.

Of course, in the real world, the Republicans won't actually buy up all of the available minutes because they don't really need that many. Once they reach the advertising saturation point, the point at which everyone has seen each advertisement the requisite number of times to achieve market penetration, there's no point in continuing to run those ads....except when it comes to denying the Democrats the opportunity to buy those minutes. Sometimes the law of negative consequences sets in, causing people to become resistant to the repetitious message. Don't dominate the rap, Jack, if you got nothing new to say, right?

Another factor that contributes to the Republican media hegemony is the use of multiple voices repeating the same messages.

If you hear a statement from Rush Limbaugh, you might be tempted to doubt the factuality of his statement, with good reason, because he has a history of lying on the air.

If, however, several Republican surrogates - including elected officials, media personalities, and their captive pundits - repeat the same messages over and over again, they begin to take effect. The Republicans are also very successful at managing their message: their surrogates never wander off the reservation. The Democratic surrogates, who are more idiosyncratic than the Republicans, can't seem to stay on point.

The media exacerbates this Republican domination of the public conversation by slavishly reporting each and every new Republican talking point and, while always careful to provide equal time (although they don't really have to) for the opposing views, the fact remains that each time they cover another Republican salvo, they increase the impact of that barrage.

Their excuse, of course, is that the Republican advertising campaigns are news, but they really aren't. The definition of news is that something happened. Making a statement isn't making news. It's commentary, and the media coverage of their commentary is a commentary on the commentary.

There are no legal protections that guarantee equal speech. That's a misconception. Remember, the equal time rule only applies to public service announcements not paid advertising. Broadcasters have no obligation to provide equal access to paid air time. They are only obligated to charge political campaigns the same rates they offer to their best customers. The Fairness Doctrine, which was supposed to guarantee that broadcast license holders strive to provide equal amounts of time for discussion of opposing sides of an issue, was effectively eliminated in 1987 and officially removed from the FCC rule book in August of 2011, just in time to matter in this election.

This is the hidden agenda behind the Citizens United strategy. The Republican strategists are betting that they can raise enough money to freeze the Democrats out of the market and buy the election lock, stock and barrel.

If someone came to you and offered you $100 for your vote, you would be justifiably outraged. If the Republican Party paid every voter in America $100 for their vote, you would want the Republicans ridden out of town on a rail, but that's exactly what they are doing....buying our votes. Of course, the Republicans will claim that the Democrats have been buying our votes for years with their social programs and their pandering to special interest groups and is there really any difference.

Well, yes, there is, if you believe that honest discourse matters and that dishonest misrepresentations of facts not in evidence will eventually replace objective truths about our world with a fabric of intricately fabricated lies.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Thu, 31 May 2012 13:05:29 -0400

I just donated $19 to the Obama Biden campaign. I want to tell you why. As a matter of fact, I've already told everyone on Facebook why I am parting with $19 to put Obama back into the White House for four more years. Contrary opinions will be graciously tolerated.

Put your money where your mouth is.

If you don't want to see the 2012 election bought cheap by the Radical Right, then, please, skip a couple of trips to Starbucks and contribute to the Obama Biden campaign.

Sure, there are Bill Mahers out there who can pony up million dollar gifts, but liberals don't contribute as much as conservatives do. That's because conservatives are trying to buy something, while liberals are trying to prevent something from being bought. They just aren't as motivated....but here's the really important thing: everyone in the media is looking very closely as the fundraising totals that Romney and Obama are racking up because they believe that reflects the relative degrees of support among people who are actually likely to vote.

The more we contribute, the more the polls will reflect that strength because, once you contribute to a candidate, you become more committed to that candidate's success. It's rather like betting on the home team....you pay more attention to the game when you have a bet riding on the outcome.

The degree to which your vote counts on election day has a great deal to do with where you live. In Florida, folks, my vote is much more important than it would be if I lived in New York. Living in Palm Beach County, my vote probably has even greater impact than it would anywhere else in the state, because Palm Beach County is where Gore lost the 2000 campaign.

Right now, Governor Rick Scott is trying to throw people off the voter rolls for real or imagined defects in their qualifications. 180,000 are on the list in Miami-Dade. Around the country, other Republican governors are doing similar things.

Here's the rub: Today, your contribution may count MORE than your vote will in November, especially if you live in a state that has already been conceded to the Republican Party. (Consider moving to a swing state until after the election. I would, if I weren't already right in the middle of the main battleground.)

You know that I've put my money where my mouth is....because that's the only way I could post this comment on behalf of the Obama-Biden campaign....but let me give you a tip that the OB campaign won't like:

Give early and often....but give the smallest possible amount so you can afford to give again. The media see the number of contributions and the amounts, so giving $20 five times is a more potent statement than giving $100 once.

It's called momentum, and momentum is what's going to decide this election.

Sure, you can carp against Obama for the mistakes he's made....and I have deep reservations about many of his decisions....but I also know that we would be much worse off if the Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House because there would be no checks or balances on their rapacious intentions.

It has become abundantly clear that the Republican Party is being controlled by people who don't understand economics because they are ABOVE economics. They are too rich to ever suffer the consequences of the punitive measures the Republicans will enact against the economic, social and medical safety nets we have now. Weak as they are, they are better than nothing. (I live on one of them and another will soon start picking up my absurd medical costs.)

In the final analysis, this election comes down to one question: Two of the next three Supreme Court justices who are most likely to retire are liberals. If either of them is replaced by a Republican President, the Republicans will have a solid majority on the Court for the next 10 to 20 years.

Isnt' it worth a couple of cups of overpriced coffee to help make sure that won't happen?

(Excuse me for preaching, but you know what happens when men of good fwill do nothing.....)

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