Friday Mashup (8/7/09)

Gosh, what do you know? It looks like those dastardly Dems have been revealed for the troublemakers they truly are. Horrors!

Well, so says John McCormack of The Weekly Standard here. And do you want a sample of their fire-breathing rhetoric? Maybe the faint of heart out there should avert their eyes, lest they be overcome – here it is…

I wanted to send you an urgent invitation to an important Town Hall with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen on Thursday morning. She'll be talking to constituents and gathering feedback -- this is an ideal opportunity to make sure your support of health insurance reform is seen and heard at exactly the right time to make a huge difference.

Our congressional representatives are back home this month, and they're facing more and more pressure from special interests on health insurance reform. It's critical that we get out there and show them where we stand.

Aren’t you just quaking in your shoes at this moment, my fellow prisoners?

Our representatives are under attack by Washington insiders, insurance companies, and well-financed special interests who don't go a day without spreading lies and stirring up fear. We need to show that we're sick and tired of it, and that we're ready for real change, this year.

Please come to the Town Hall, and make sure that the most powerful voices in this debate are those calling for real reform, not angrily clamoring for the status quo.

Pardon me while I splash myself with some cold water – I need to be revived from such a scary verbal onslaught! And the flyer attached to the Email says “Thank you” on one side, and “Standing Together for Health Insurance Reform” on the other. How brazen can you get!

(OK, snark mode off…)

Oh, and McCormack accuses the Democrats here of “astroturfing,” which is really a stretch to say the least because, as Source Watch tells us here…

Unlike genuine grassroots activism which tends to be money-poor but people-rich, astroturf campaigns are typically people-poor but cash-rich. Funded heavily by corporate largesse, they use sophisticated computer databases, telephone banks and hired organizers to rope less-informed activists into sending letters to their elected officials or engaging in other actions that create the appearance of grassroots support for their client's cause.

And as any Dem will tell you, our party is hardly “rich” (at least on a local level).

I suppose, though, that we Dems are mere pikers when it comes to “astroturfing” for real (unlike the Repugs and Dick Armey, pictured above, head of "FreedomWorks"), as BarbinMD of The Daily Kos reminds us here (gee, encouraging our opposition to commit suicide and hanging people we don’t like in effigy? Sounds like our side has to “get with the program” a bit).

(Ok, snark mode off again…)

And while journeying through the Weekly Standard (those hip waders sure came in handy), I found this link to the AEI’s blog (yes, they have one), from which they tell us the following…

In January, 75 percent of (young people) approved of the job Obama was doing as president. That’s now 58 percent, a 17 percentage point drop (according to the latest Gallup poll).

I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I will tell you that all I could find was a link to this Gallup poll dated August 3rd (presumably the latest), and there’s no mention of am age breakdown concerning those polled (and of course, AEI pundit Karlyn Bowman doesn’t provide a link in her post – also, a Quinnipiac poll has Obama at 50 percent, but they don’t bother to tell us how many of those polled were Dems, Repugs or Independent).

As for Newsweek, they tell us the following (here)…

Gallup just announced that the President's job approval has slipped to 58%, an all time low for him in Gallup's daily tracking poll. Obama's approval rating has averaged at 63% since he took office, peaking at 69% early in his presidency. He's only dipped below 60% on three other occasions this year. The drop seems to be attributable to respondents identifying as Republican or Independent. Around 92% of Democrats approve of how Obama is doing the job.

Although this latest number is slightly lower than Obama's average, it is still high by historical standards.

I believe that Obama’s approval rating at this point is slightly higher than that of Bill Clinton at this point of his first term (noted here more or less, with more independent support for Clinton), just to provide some perspective (and all the Big Dog had to deal with from his predecessor “Poppy” Bush was an economic downtown, significant though it was, as opposed to the near collapse handed to Obama by Poppy’s foul progeny, to say nothing of two wars as well).

I readily acknowledge that snapshots of data like this don’t really tell us a whole hell of a lot, and that trends are what matter. And with that in mind, I should tell you that my informal poll has informed me of a 100 percent probability of ongoing corporate media stupidity.

Update: I would consider this to be at least slightly more reliable data.

Also, a year ago yesterday, our government declared that Army scientist Bruce Ivins was solely responsible for the anthrax attacks that killed five and rattled the nation in 2001 (Ivins had committed suicide on July 29.)

As noted here however, Dem Congressman Rush Holt of New Jersey (whose district includes the postal facilities that were used to mail some of the letters containing anthrax bacteria) has been pushing for a “broader inquiry” into the case, thus trying to keep this issue on the media radar, if you will.

Keep up the good work, congressman (the “good Rush,” if you will).

And finally, this Sunday marks the 35th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s resignation from office over the Watergate scandal. And to consider just how long (and dark) a shadow Nixon continues to cast over our politics, I give you the following from Paul Krugman’s column today in the New York Times…

…the driving force behind the town hall mobs (trying to stifle the health care debate) is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the “birther” movement, which denies Mr. Obama’s citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don’t know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it’s a substantial fraction.

And cynical political operators are exploiting that anxiety to further the economic interests of their backers.

Does this sound familiar? It should: it’s a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites.

It’s almost ironic beyond words to consider this given that Nixon, in what I believe was his courageous farewell speech (believe it or not), said the following…

Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

I wonder how much our discourse would be heightened if the mobs trying to shut down the health care forums and/or scream about Obama’s birth certificate would actually read Nixon’s words instead, realizing that the price paid by our 37th president is one they will all pay in one form or another if they continue on their current path.