Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
On the subject of President Obama turning fearmongering into an art form — this is a great time to take some notes on how gargantuan numbers of people are swindled into dumbass things. True, you can see these methods at work any ol’ time just by sitting in a committee meeting, or watching someone buy a used car.
But we get an especially clear vantage point when the democrat party has a lock on the government, a situation that has not existed since 1994.
Hey, if you had a solar eclipse every fifteen or sixteen years you’d still be taking pictures, right?
So I’m keeping a running list of what I’ve seen President Obama do to make dumb ideas look like smart ones. Note, very few of these items have anything to do with democrats or Republicans. In fact, they have very little to do with looting the public treasury. Rather, they make use of flaws we all have in our programming, flaws that make it harder for us to think logically.
You could take this as a timeless list of How To Make Large Numbers Of Some Reasonable People Do Dumb Things, Without Taking Any Responsibility For Telling Them To Do Any Of It.
1. Every tactic you use, should exploit the gap between the flawed human genome, and logic — the one most people aren’t willing to admit is there;
2. Socially stigmatize whatever is the opposite of what you want done;
3. Switch moderation and extremism with each other, by using the words “always” and “never” to describe any alternatives to your idea;
4. Make a big show out of conceding points that don’t really mean anything;
5. Talk a great deal about everybody “coming together to do this” without describing “this”;
6. Talk a whole lot about sixth-grade-math, while ignoring third-grade rules of logic;
7. Find out what people want that they do not have, and find a way to connect it, however nonsensically, to what you’re asking them to do;
8. Accuse your audience of something, taking special care that they aren’t guilty of whatever it is, so they have something to prove;
9. Inject a Snidely Whiplash into the situation, even if it doesn’t really have one;
10. Most important of all, inject a victim into it as well. Who-rightfully-owns-what decision, is the first thing people forget when there’s a victim.
And I would say with the SotU Tuesday night, the one item I saw kick into high gear was #6. That meme, repeated over and over again, about “ninety-five percent of taxpayers” seeing their taxes go down…
…I am simply amazed that all this time has passed on by, and not one single time within the pool of knowledge that has come to my attention (I think I’d have found it by now) has anybody nailed The Annointed One down on whether His use of 95% is intended to be figurative or literal. It’s more than reasonable to interpret it as figurative. How many times have you said to yourself “I need to pitch that thing, it takes up lots of space and when I need it, 95% of the time I end up using something else“? It’s a popular phrase. It means, not all, but might-as-well-be all. And that would fit in with Our Holy Savior’s intended meaning just fine. He’s going to ratchet up taxes on some people who don’t really count.
So throw some numbers out there, is what #6 means. Throw out numbers, make people feel like they’re making good use of that middle-school education in mathematics — and forget about whether the numbers make any sense. When people see you’ve given them the “respect” involved in throwing fractions and decimals at them, they won’t bother to check up on whether your figures make sense or not. They won’t even stop to think if you’re trying to say “not all but might as well be all,” or whether you really do mean nineteen-out-of-twenty.
Sometimes, you watch people, and you wonder how it is we ever got out of caves. Actually, a lot of the time. Think about it: Resolving our problems without passing on debt to the next generation, is truly a bipartisan concern. Telling Saint Obama to stop spending so much goddamn money, is not. Doesn’t that pretty much sum up the problem?
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