Seen Juan, Seen ‘Em All

Lindaman writes:

As I'm sure you've heard, National Pubic Radio has fired commentator Juan Williams for comments he made on Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" that they felt were "inconsistent with its editorial standards and practices." What did Williams say that was so beyond the pale for NPR?

This.

Look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

Later in that same segment, Williams also took O'Reilly to task for his statement on "The View" where he painted Muslims as terrorists, saying Christians shouldn't be blamed for Timothy McVeigh.

First off, I'm not a fan of Mr. Williams' politics by any stretch of the imagination. But I will stand behind him on his firing because, in truth, his "offense" was taken out of context. When combined with his statement about Christians not being responsible for McVeigh (an odd comparison to make, but that's a blog post for another time), Williams doesn't come off as bigoted as NPR seems to think he is.

It's not unlike the Shirley Sherrod situation where her comments were taken out of context

By a right-wing website.

and used as justification for her to lose her job with the Department of Agriculture.

“Used as justification”? What are you implying here?

Personally, I think Sherrod should have lost her job for reasons other than the comments she made at a meeting of the NAACP, but that's neither here nor there. The Juan Williams situation bears an eerie resemblance to the Shirley Sherrod situation in one important way.

Shirley Sherrod tells a story about how she had a change of heart and abandoned her justified racism and is fired hastily based on an edited tape and for that, she is racist. Juan Williams on the other hand says a personal, bigoted statement with the credentials of a corporation (NPR) in a public forum in full context and is fired by his company, but he’s not a bigot? Must have been because the former was about white people while the latter about Muslims, who we all know are not people, right? Funny, i didn't hear clapping (like that dipshit Breitbart said repeatedly) in that edited video.

The Agriculture Department fired Sherrod before they had the full story. Sherrod's comments were made at an obscure event, and the full video didn't emerge before Sherrod was asked to resign. Thus, they made their decision based solely on the out of context clip posted on the right-wing Breitbart's site (and Fox News.com). By contrast, Williams made his statement on a national cable broadcast -- NPR had access to as much context as they wanted.

It was white Leftists doing the firing in both cases.

Seems our lily white friends on the Left have no problem dumping a person of color when they become "radioactive," even when the comments in question are taken out of context and whipped up into a frothy glass of self-righteous indignation. But Leftists never take someone's words out of context and creates straw man arguments out of them, right? I mean, aside from Media Matters...and the Huffington Post...and DailyKos...and DemocraticUnderground...and MoveOn.org...okay, you get the picture.

This comment by Lindaman is pretty funny, considering when asked to prove Media Matters was dishonest, he had to use a proven Anti-Semite (Andy Martin) as a source… because Media Matters said he was, well, an Anti-Semite.

As of this posting, our good friends at the NAACP have yet to weigh in on the Williams firing, but I'm sure they're working on their statement as we speak. Unless, of course, they're too busy whipping up more racist lies about the TEA Parties. Then, their response might be delayed, but I'm sure it will be lightning fast when they do it.

“Racist lies?” Do tell!

- Virtually no demonstrated Teabagger anger at GW Bush
-The Mark Williams letter
-Teabagger Sarah Palin attacks the NAACP and makes no mention of Williams' letter
-Tea Party Gingrich/Beck embrace D'Souza’s racist article
-Paladrino racist emails
-Rand Paul’s anti Civil Rights position
-VA Beach Teabagger Republican racist black dog email
-Texas Tea Party voter intimidation against minorities
-POTUS attacked as "angel of Death” by Colorado TP group
-Dick Armey accuses Democratic Minority early voters of voter fraud
-Several racist Billboards against POTUS this year
-Viral attacks against NAACP for seeing racist elements in TP
-TP racism always denied by TP leaders( ex M. Williams)
-TP defends Breitbart and O'Keefe
-TP only sees racism in NAACP,POTUS,Holder,Sotomayor, Michelle Obama

While I'm sure Mr. Williams isn't holding his breath waiting for the NAACP's statement, plenty of people from both sides of the aisle are upset with NPR's rash action, as we should be. Williams was fired for nothing more than expressing an honest personal opinion within the context of a larger conversation, a conversation I might add that the Left doesn't want. NPR's actions reek of the same reflexive desperation that Shirley Sherrod faced from the Department of Agriculture, and I see the same result coming. The white Leftists will eventually cave and give Williams his job back in the hopes that everything will be forgiven and forgotten.

Let's hope Juan Williams forgives, but never forgets.

It's about time NPR fired Juan! Long overdue.

The 9/11 hijackers weren't dressed in "traditional Muslim garb" (whatever THAT is). They blended in. Too bad bigots like Juan don't understand that.

Juan's comments are the equivalent of "If I see a black man dressed in a way I don't like, I get nervous when I'm near him." I guarantee you if a white liberal candidate said that, Fox and right-wing bloggers would be all over him.

Fox is upset about this, of course. Fox is mad because Juan appeared on Fox frequently (being Bill O'Reilly's little bitch), thus Fox could claim they had a black "Democrat" on there. Liberals knew better, of course. Now Juan's credibility is gone, and Fox has lost even more credibility.

Williams was not a "commentator" like Glenn Beck, therefore he has to have journalistic integrity. Williams knew the rules at NPR on how to conduct himself. Williams had been previously warned about making statements which were in violation of NPR rules. Juan's recent comments destroyed any sense of impartiality he may have had, and his statements damage the integrity of NPR. They had every right to fire him.

And before right-wingers try to say it: No, NPR is not federally funded. It's public and privately funded. It's a non profit, private organization, not a government one. The ONLY government money they get adds up to less than 2% of their budget, and comes from federal grants, which they compete for, to support specific programs. Similar to what happens with faith-based initiatives. Even if NPR gets a small amount of public financing, much like a church that receives public money through faith based initiatives, it is not a government entity for purposes of the First Amendment. Getting fired by your employer for saying stupid, bigoted things is not a threat to free speech. That's why it's called the free market, you bootstrappers.

And now Juan is in bigot heaven: Fox News, where credibility and integrity do not matter.

Just like the Sherrod situation, right-wingers are red-faced and absolutely pissed because "leftists" aren't tolerating bigotry and are quick (in Sherrod's case, TOO quick) to dump their trash.

The "leftists" dump bigots, while the right-wingers put them on a pedestal and give them multi-million dollar contracts.

Naturally, right-wingers are going to say NPR is intolerant for being intolerant of intolerance.

Right-wingers sticking up for (and in this case, actually hiring) bigotry yet again. Gotta love it!

Rally… Really?

Lindaman weighs in on the One Nation Coming Together rally. First by making what he calls a “sign”, since he still hasn’t quite figured out how to make Demotivational Posters. Then in his next post, he posts this picture and proceeds with:

Remember when Leftist talk show host Ed Schultz claimed he could get 300,000 people at a rally in Washington, DC, with six months of promotion?

Well, back in June of this year, African-American leaders started talking about organizing a rally to counter Glenn Beck's 8/28 rally. Let's see...late June to early October is...right around 3 1/2 months.

You’re going by the first announcement? Glenn Beck first announced his August 28th, 2010 rally on November 21st, 2009!

Howzabout talking about when they actually publicized it? Ed Schultz first talked about the October 2nd, 2010 rally on MSNBC September 3rd, 2010!

One Nation themselves didn't announce it on their site until September 17th, 2010!

Even with unions and the NAACP busing people in for the rally,

Uh… so? Beck bused people, too. He even bragged about it on his Twitter:

There are free buses for practically every rally (some organized by the event planners, most not). Don't be so naive to think that each and every individual in every rally got there under their own power, at their own expense, from locations all across the US. Any planned event of sufficient size and funding has also taken care of a proportional amount of its attendees' transportation needs.

So why are right-wingers acting like the One Nation busing is so sinister? Just kidding, we get it… the NAACP is evil because they advance colored people, and unions are evil because they protect the working class.

Beck's “grassroots” rally wasn't funded by NewsCorp, MetLife, and the Koch brothers?

Leave it to right wingers to imply that Beck specifically forbade anyone from getting there any other way than walking on their hands.

estimates have the 10/2 rally at around 150,000 people.

What estimates? There were no professional crowd estimators. That number is probably too high.

Oh, I'm sure Ed will come out with an excuse that "we didn't have six months to promote it like Glenn Beck did,"

Six months? I thought you were starting the clock at the first announcement?

but the point is still that they had the time to promote it heavily, and they failed. Even with the "star power" of someone like Ed Schultz,

Ed Schultz has “star power”? *snicker*

they couldn't muster much more than half of what Beck's 8/28 rally garnered.

Are you saying Beck’s rally was 300,000? Beck said it was 500,000! Are you calling Glenn Beck a liar?? Why do you hate America??

(And, no, I don't believe the 87,000 number CBS put out because I've been to the Lincoln Memorial twice now. The length of the reflecting pool alone could accommodate that many people as densely populated as it was at the 8/28 rally.)

So in addition to being an expert on global warming, Lindaman is now a professional crowd estimator?

I do like how you just said “CBS put out”. Funny. “Remember Dan Rather? You can’t trust CBS!” Instead of stating there were actual neutral crowd estimators. We’ll get to that in a minute.

But, I guess it bears repeating. There are only two words that fit yesterday's rally in DC: epic fail.

Then Lindaman posts this picture. Hey, he finally did it! It looks like a Demotivational Poster! Oh, wait… that’s a stolen image, not his.

First, just as a joke, let’s pretend the numbers Lindaman states are correct. Let’s live in an alternate reality where Beck’s crowd attendance was 300,000 and One Nation’s rally was 150,000.

The first television announcements to Beck’s rally was at least six months prior, and had tons of media coverage (especially Fox News). The One Nation rally was first announced on MSNBC less than a month prior, and MSNBC is far less popular than Fox News. So with six times more time in publicizing, with far more televised media publicity, with both rallies having busing, with the One Nation rally being subordinate to the Stewart/Colbert rally, and Beck having media darling Sarah Palin as opposed to washed up singer Harry Bellafonte… Beck was only able to get 300,000 vs 150,000? What a failure!

Okay, enough silliness. Now to the actual reality.

Warning: Reality below. Reality has a liberal bias.

First, what about Schultz vs. Beck? The reality is that Ed Schultz is not nearly as popular as Glenn Beck. Nobody is disputing that. Ed Schultz is relatively unpopular, even among liberals. Most people don’t even know who he is. Idiot or not, Beck is popular. He's a household name, is spoofed in pop culture often, and his followers are so devoted that they leave their churches if their pastor disagrees with Glenn Beck. Why? Because Beck told them to. And they listen unquestioningly. He convinced them social justice is evil even though that's what MLK spent his life fighting for. So of course when he tells them he's "reclaiming the civil rights movement to change the world" they’ll follow. Seems like it’s only right-wing bloggers that are elevating Schultz. Are you going to deny that Beck is more popular than Schultz?

Second, what about media coverage leading up to the rallies? The reality is that Beck's rally had plenty of coverage, not just on Fox, but on all the networks. Not only that, the date alone gave it controversy, which gave it additional publicity. You couldn't go ten minutes without hearing about the Beck rally. The One Nation rally, very little coverage. Are you going to deny that?

Third, what about the fact that the Colbert/Stewart “Restore Sanity” rally was being held the same month? Which rally do you think people were going to travel to see? There have been some pretty damn small Tea Party rallies before the big Beck rally, so it's a pretty unequal comparison to take a random liberal rally that most liberals didn't go to because they'd already made plans to go to a different one a few weeks later. The real competition for the One Nation rally is The Rally to Restore Sanity. One Nation only got the folks who are willing to do two rallies in a month. Are you going to deny that?

Okay, now let’s talk about the reality of the actual attendance of Beck’s rally. Beck claimed 500,000. Some bloggers claimed 1.5 million. Lindaman’s going with some of the news announcements of 300,000.

Right-wingers lying about attendance at their rallies is nothing new. Remember the 9/12 Teabagger march? Right-wingers claimed 2 million people showed up, when it was actually about 65,000. The right-wingers even showed wrong pictures on purpose:

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/142628/_freedomworks_lies%2C_inflates_d.c._rally_attendance_by_over_2%2C000_percent

Anyway, because the right-wingers knew the Colbert/Stewart rally was coming… the right-wing blogosphere got the word out to really chat up the lack of attendance at an event no one knew was happening.

"Well, the lieberal lamestream media sure gave it to us good when we fibbed about the 9/12 teabagger rally... so let's take this opportunity to remind everyone that no one showed up to an event that most didn't know about. But since it was left-leaning, clearly a trillion people should have been there because they have nothing better to do. If we're lucky, we can give this horse another whack in a month when the Comedy Central guys who are hosting an event clearly non-seriously on their day off while they happen to be in DC."

Glenn Beck’s rally was not 500,000. It wasn’t even 300,000.

Ed Schultz tried to be generous and thought it would be fair to split the difference between the professional estimation of 87,000 and some of the news announcements of 300,000, which would make the Beck rally approximately 193,500.

But sorry, Ed. The Beck rally wasn’t even 193,500.

300,000 was given by some news outlets because that’s what a “park service official” told them. But, the US Parks Dept. does not give crowd estimates and has not for the last 14 years (with the one exception for the Obama inauguration, since they could be reasonably sure the POTUS wouldn't sue them like Farrakhan did). Are you going to deny this? If a news service quoted a figure that they said was from the Parks Dept., they were wrong.

CBS News was the only media outlet to hire a professional overhead photography company that specialized in estimating crowd size. Their consultant used well-established methods in making his estimate, which was double and triple checked. They also do documented time-lapsed aerial analysis of people entering/exiting. They have done similar crowd estimates for Homeland Security in the past. They're as close to unbiased as it comes.

The other crowd estimates for Beck's rally were completely anecdotal.

All of the neutral professional estimators put the Beck rally at under 100k. The three professionals hired to estimate the crowd averaged out at 76k. The “liberal” CBS went with the highest estimate of 87,000.

Here's the methodology by AirPhotosLive. Try to dispute it: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20015214-503544.html

Here’s a really cool crowd estimator photo of the Beck rally to work with:

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=20e143f6-2e3c-43ce-ad35-7c91a7b25f56&m=false&i=0:0:23&c=-0.0326945:0.00564689:-0.155881&z=456.487753646045&d=3.20724838548858:-2.11638966347034:-1.35131803732056&p=0:0&t=False

The main problem is that most people have no idea of just how crowded 87,000 people are. They look at a lot of dots on a picture and say “Eleventy billion!”

So the Beck rally was between 70k and 90k. That’s a lot of people, no doubt. But no, that’s not good enough for right-wingers. They have to elevate it all the way up to 1.5 million. lol

There were anti-war protests during the Bush administration that were larger than anything Beck and the Tea Party have done. Some were covered by the media, but we certainly didn't see the level of coverage given to tea parties now.

Now, onto the One Nation rally numbers.

So, how many people attended the One Nation rally? Well, we don’t have an unbiased neutral professional estimator like AirPhotosLive at this rally. So any numbers being crunched would again be anecdotal. But it’s clear that Lindaman’s estimate of 150,000 at the One Nation rally is probably way too large.

But a few things can be said regarding comparing the Beck rally to the One Nation rally: Beck's rally didn't include the steps and areas immediately surrounding the Lincoln Memorial. The entire Lincoln Memorial was packed at One Nation and there were no Becksters in that area during his rally.

Now, what about the copy/paste photo of the two aerial photographs that right-wing bloggers like Lindaman are using?

The aerial photograph of the One Nation rally does not have a time stamp. So we don’t know when the photo was taken. The shadows are harsh, which indicates it was either very early or very late. Not at the rally’s peak time.

If we had a professional neutral crowd estimation service like AirPhotosLive at the One Nation rally, then we would have something to work with. But we don’t.

You want to talk about rally photos? Okay, but it won’t be in a way that you like.

Here’s a typical photo of the attendees at the Beck rally:

Here’s a typical photo of attendees at the One Nation rally:

Slightly more diversity there, wouldn’t you say? Get it, yet?

There’s another thing I want to bring up: You right-wing bloggers bitched endlessly that the Beck rally was “non-partisan” and was “not a Conservative rally.” So why are these same right-wing bloggers now going “Ha ha epic fail!” and comparing the Beck rally to a liberal rally?

It’s because the right-wing bloggers were lying. The right-wingers are now accidentally admitting the Beck rally was indeed, a Conservative event. Thanks for finally telling the truth, guys!

Beck probably had more people at his rally, for the simple fact that Sarah Palin was there and it had a lot more publicity. But 150,000 more? No way.

But hey, leave it to right-wingers to say this shitload of people at One Nation, with little publicity and with the Colbert/Stewart rally coming soon, is an “epic fail”:

So, Lindaman… if you consider that an epic fail, what would you say about a pundit that publicized himself for years and years… and absolutely nobody came? That would be a most epically epic fail of epic proportions, right? The biggest epic failure in the history of mankind, correct? Who could that biggest epic failure possibly be?

Now, let’s move on to the real rally that truly was the counter-rally of Beck’s: The Rally To Restore Sanity by Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.

How many people attended The Rally To Restore Sanity?

Once again, we can’t go by anecdotes. We have to use neutral professional crowd estimators. And guess what? AirPhotosLive, which gave the 87,000 estimate of the Beck rally, also gave estimates of the Restore Sanity rally.

What was the professional estimate? 215,000!

That’s right, folks. The actual counter-rally had nearly two and a half times the number of people that were at Beck’s rally.

So just wait! The right-wingers will say that obviously AirPhotosLive, just like all those climatologists about manmade global warming, is liberally biased. Damn those liberals and their fully documented scientific analysis!

Beck's rally was big (70k-90k people ain't small), but it was smaller than one by liberal comedians. Presumably because more Americans believe in their message than his, right? lol

What was that about an epic fail?

The lesson to be learned here: Don’t try to dick wave, it’ll come back to haunt you.

A Good Post (No Sarcasm)

Lindaman wrote an article regarding the bullying situations that have been in the news recently.

It’s a very good article. In fact, it’s one of his best. I say that with no sarcasm or snark. No rebuttal here, as I agree with it 100%. You can read Lindaman’s article here.

That being said, there are other issues regarding bullying gay teens that need to be dealt with. This is touched on in a different article here.

But still, I give credit where it's due. Well done.

Issues, Shmissues

Lindaman writes:

Michael Moore recently put out five keys to a Democrat victory in the midterm elections on his website. His winning keys ranged from "growing a backbone" to "supporting a moratorium on foreclosures."

And of course, Lindaman doesn’t link to the actual source.

Moore’s five suggestions were:

1. Deliver a blunt, nonstop reminder to the American people about exactly who it was that got us into the mess we're in.
2. Declare a moratorium on home foreclosures.
3. Prosecute the banks and Wall Street for the Crime of the Century. 4. Create a 21st century WPA (hire the unemployed to rebuild America).
5. Pledge that no Dem will take a dime from Wall Street in the next election cycle.

See why Lindaman didn’t link to the actual source?

In that spirit, I wanted to give Republicans five keys to victory.

Don’t forget, folks! Lindaman is an “Independent(tm)” and totally not a Republican.

Oh, and I thought writing rebuttal articles are a sign of unoriginality, remember? You keep saying that yourself!

And unlike Mike, mine actually might work.

Because it’s better to listen to a fat loser, than a fat winner.

1) Let the Democrats go negative, but respond with a positive. In judo, a student learns to use an opponent's force against himself/herself.

So in addition to being a global warming expert and a crowd estimator expert, he’s now a judo master!

This election season, the Democrats are facing an uphill battle, so their natural inclination (having exhausted the possibility that they might run on their records)

We’ll go to records in just a minute.

is to go negative. However, that doesn't mean the GOP needs to follow suit. Running a positive ad after a negative one from the Left will have a positive effect, in my opinion. Take Christine O'Donnell's ad responding to what Leftists like Bill Maher have said about her.

“Said about her?” He used her actual video!

It was simple, to the point, and barely referenced politics at all. Even an ad with a "soft negative" like Carly Fiorina's ad using footage of Barbara Boxer asking a soldier to call her "Senator" instead of "ma'am" would work.

Well, we saw how well Christine’s ad worked. Her numbers are lower than ever. But at least we got a good remix out of the ad.

2) Don't assume the TEA Party will vote Republican. A common theme with the Right these days is to call for "party unity" over voting for a TEA Party candidate we can support. That's what gave us McCain/Palin 08, another victory for Arlen Specter, and moderate Republicans getting control of the party. Yeah, how'd that work out for ya? The TEA Party may be made up of Republicans in great numbers, but that doesn't mean they'll vote Republican out of reflex. The GOP needs to take some stock in what the TEA Parties represent and work that back into the platform going forward. Saying you're a "compassionate conservative" that votes for continued funding of the Department of Education is nice, but making it so that parents have more say over curricula than some bureaucrat in Washington, DC, is nicer.

The Teabaggers won’t vote Republican? Right. That's why the tea party doesn't actively criticize Republicans. That’s why the people leading the tea party movement are all former Republicans. That’s why their head spokesperson was the Republican VP candidate not even two years ago.

3) Make the Left run on the issues. You know the Left is going to go personal this year, but that's because they're desperate to avoid talking issues. With an electorate looking for more than typical politics, give them issues to discuss. Make a Democrat Representative like Alan Grayson defend his stance on health care reform. Make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid explain the benefits of the stimulus package. And watch as they will do anything in their power to avoid giving a straight answer. They have no substance, folks. Time to step up and make the campaign about what the American people want.

You right-wingers are the last people on planet earth to make comments about going personal and “avoiding the issues.”

Fucking Swift Boaters.
Death Panels!
Willy Ayers!
Jeremiah Wright!
Communisms!
Statists!
Socialisms!
Muslins!
Entitlement Programs!
Obamacare!
Redistribution!
Government Takeover!
Birf Certificat!
Carter!

4) Take command. Democrats love to say the Republicans are the "Party of No" because Republicans haven't done a good job at widespread articulation of their alternatives. It's almost like Republicans are ashamed to engage in the exchange of ideas, mainly because the Left has done such a masterful job at twisting the truth.

Let’s hear it!

In situations like that, you don't get frustrated and cede the battleground to the enemy. You charge ahead and you fight for the ground you're standing on. Democrats counted on Republicans to be lazy and still cowed by their connections to George W. Bush, but with an electorate that no longer cares what Bush did by and large and a Democrat Party

“Democrat Party”… Lindaman is totally not a Republican, folks!

For pete's sake, it took four years to undo the Reagan recession and nearly twenty years to recover from the Great Depression. What do you want in two years? Job growth? We have that. GDP growth? We have that. Financial reregulation? We have that. Health care reform? We have that. Manufacturing is growing, exports are growing (and I'll fully admit that so are imports), and we're ramping up our investment in green tech, which regardless of whether you believe in science or not is a growth industry.

The Democrats passed credit card, financial, health care, and fair pay reform all in two years. What did you guys do when you had all the control?

so eager to bring up Bush in lieu of talking about the current President, now is a golden opportunity to take back the intellectual and rhetorical high ground.

Take it back? Like you guys ever had it?

What’s the current list of conspiracies against the Republicans again?

Liberals
Democrats
Socialists
Geologists
Biologists
Climatologists
Meteorologists
Atheists
Muslims
Jews
ABC
NBC
CNN
CBS
PBS
All of cable except FNC
The New York Times
The LA Times
The Washington Post
The Associated Press
Reuters
BBC
The Guardian
Black People
Mexicans
Human Rights Activists
SCOTUS
Europe
Movie Industry
Television Industry
Environmentalists
ACLU
The United Nations
Labor Unions
Colleges
Teachers
Professors
ACORN
National Endowment for the Arts
Gays
Judges
NPR
Paleontologists
Astrophysicists
Museums (*except Creationism Museums)
WHO
WTO
Inflated tires
The Honolulu Advertiser
The Star Bulletin
Teletubbies
Sponge Bob and Patrick
Nobel Prize Committee
US Census Bureau
NOAA
Sesame Street
Comic Books
Dogs
Karl Rove
Electronic Arts
Punk rockers

5) Fight for every last vote. Conventional thinking on the Right has it that certain groups won't vote Republican, so they're written off (case in point: blacks). Yet, even with overwhelming odds like that, there are people seriously rethinking their support for Obama and Democrats in general. That's a good sign for the GOP, especially going into 2012. Closer to home, as it were, you might be able to sway some votes from the Independent and conservative Democrat side by engaging them, giving them some kind of sign that you might actually care about this country and have ideas on how to fix it. Even if a voter is 99% sure he or she is going to vote Democrat in November, there's still 1% that can be used as a foothold.
It may be short notice for the GOP, but using these ideas in the home stretch could mean the difference between victory and defeat in several close races across this country.

Republicans only have three strategies on how to court black voters:

1) Show them pictures of black Republicans--no matter how dumb they are. Republicans think when black people see other black people, they will naturally want to connect with them in order to maintain the "hive mind." Kinda like how dogs are supposed to freak out when they see other dogs on TV.

2) Call them SLAVES... to the Democratic party. They think that since black people have a visceral reaction to the word "slave" and if they accuse the Democrats of holding them slaves, they will naturally flock to the Republicans. If they ask the Republicans for evidence or reasoning, just call them SLAVES to the Democratic party again. That should get the job done, right?

3) Claim that the Republican Party has always been the party of civil rights... and hope none of the black people have access to a history book.

They rotate these strategies over and over again. And when black voters tell them to fuck off year after year, they can just fall back on the same excuse: "THEY don't know what's good for them. There couldn't possibly be anything wrong with US. WE'RE doing everything right." Sweet, soothing denial.

If you look at the way blacks almost never vote Republican, it becomes obvious that they are the most politically intelligent group in the country. Meanwhile stupid white trash keep screwing themselves by voting Republican while claiming they're smarter than black people.

If the GOP really wanted to appeal to minorities, they'd be decrying the racism in their own party first, but they won't -- they know there are far more rednecks than blacks that will vote for them, and they're not about to alienate the racism vote right now when the target is the President.

Republicans trying to court black people remind me of this site:

http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/

Don’t believe me? Take a look at this billboard, hilarious stuff:

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/10/gop-is-the-new-black-billboard-targets-african-american-voters.php?ref=fpb

Now, about issues:

Imagine if the Republicans weren't actively working to bring those blue bars down. You know, imagine if the Republicans were actually working to make our country better regardless of who gets the credit.

In 2008, we on average lost 317,250 private sector jobs per month. In 2010, we gained an average of 95,888 private sector jobs per month. That's a difference of nearly five million jobs between President Bush's last year in office and President Obama's second year.

In fiscal year 2009, which began on September 1, 2008 and represents the Bush Administration's final budget, the budget deficit was $1.416 trillion. In fiscal year 2010, the first budget of the Obama Administration, the budget deficit was $1.291 trillion, a decline of $125 billion. President Obama has cut the deficit -- there's a long way to go, but we're in better shape now than we were under the GOP.

On Bush's final day in office, the numbers of the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 closed at 7,949, 1,440, and 805, respectively. On October 29th, 2010, they were at 11,108, 2,512, and 1,183. That means since President Obama took office, the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 have increased 40%, 74%, and 47%, respectively.

Below is the prediction of US deficit when Obama took office. Graph assumes that all policies voted in during GWB administration were kept constant and all economic indicators remained unchanged.

As you see, the deficit was supposed to rise in 2009 and 2010.

August 2009 (http://www.france24.com/en/20090820-lower-budget-deficit-usa-crisis-banking-finance-white-house) - it was around 262 billion dollars lower than forecast, thanks to fiscal responsibility.

April 2010 - the federal deficit was running significantly lower than it did one year previously, with the budget gap for the first half of fiscal 2010 down 8 percent over the same period in 2009 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/12/AR2010041204364.html).

September 2010 - the deficit narrows 13%, thanks to rising tax receipts (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-13/budget-deficit-in-u-s-narrows-13-to-90-5-billion-on-rising-tax-receipts.html). Tax cuts don't cut the deficit, increasing revenue does.

So we were supposed to be around the $1.5 trillion mark. That was the forecasted deficit. Well, the gap for the fiscal year that started in October 2009 was $1.26 trillion (compared with $1.37 trillion last year at the same time).

As a percentage of GDP? 9.1 percent this year, down substantially from 2009's 9.9 percent last year.

Things are getting better. The private sector is adding jobs every month. The deficit is lower than the CBO predicted deficit. Congress has passed major pieces of legislation in the face of unprecedented obstructionism. And the Democrats shrank deficit spending.

Even if you guys got majority control of the House and the Senate, and even if you got a Republican president in the next major election… What are you guys going to say when abortion is not made illegal? And when Social Security is still not privatized? And when you still can’t put Creationism in school textbooks? And when the Republicans spend us into unprecedented debt on nothing that benefits the American people… again?

Democrats have created more jobs in the last two years than Bush did in eight, and the GOP made 2/3 of current deficits.

And even if none of this happened, there’s still a ton of reasons to never vote Republican:

- anti-gay rights
- draconian drug laws
- warmongering and lying to invade a country
- torture
- racism
- creationism
- religious intolerance
- Christian theocracy
- Biblical literalism
- evolution denialism
- anti-science
- anti-intellectualism
- anti-education
- a belief that all government is evil
- anti-socialized medicine (in spite of every other Westernized country having it and almost all of them being ahead of us in healthcare quality and life expectancy)
- censorship and anti-free speech
- overblown fear of terrorism, and the use of that fear to curb civil rights
- continued opposition to ANY gun regulation in a country where 10,000 people die every year in firearm-related homicides
- Sarah Palin

You right-wingers should be grateful, as most Americans are simply too ignorant to know that Obama gave people tax cuts. And they’re also too dumb to know he reduced the deficit. Blame the liberal media, I guess. Revenue rose and spending fell amid recovery from recession and Obama's Democratic administration’s emergency measures taken to restore growth. This is what you Teabaggers keep lying about wanting.

It doesn’t matter that white trash is going to vote some Republicans back in again, because it’s based on absolutely nothing. And Republicans will still have nothing. These are the issues. These are the facts. And they are undeniable. So you’ll just have to stick to the rhetoric.