Why Is Hillary Clinton So Unpopular With #FeeltheBern Supporters?

Election campaigns. They can get so ugly. They stir passions, unleash old frustrations. Test your commitment to seeking truth. Illustrate how out of control your need to vent can get. They're a breeding ground for conclusions based on the unsubstantiated. A case in point is the Bernie Sanders supporters' demonizing of Hillary Clinton. The internet is inundated with memes carrying derogatory statements about her. 

The wonderful thing about memes is that you can take something from a person’s history that looks terrible on its own and leave out the broader context or even the truthful elements that will exonerate the alleged criminal. 

Hillary Clinton was on the board of Wal-Mart! Bad, bad, bad! She’s taken money for speaking to big banks, which categorically and indisputably means they own her! Evil, evil, evil!

She’s accumulated a lot of money: Corrupt capitalist! She’s changed her mind and become more left-leaning: she’s just manipulating people, she’s a terrible human being! She’s made mistakes! There is nothing good about her. She’s unpopular, unelectable, untrustworthy, a corrupt soul through and through.

Yet, to quote Frank Newport writing for Gallup in 2012, “Clinton's favorable ratings have been above 60% in all five Gallup readings since January 2009, including the two 66% readings over the last two years—thus representing the longest period of high ratings she has received since entering the national spotlight.” It is true that her ratings went up and down but it’s also true that in 2012 “Clinton received a 91% favorable rating among Democrats, 65% among independents, and 41% among Republicans.” 

At that point she was well known. People knew about her and they liked her. 91% favorable rating among Democrats. I wonder how many Democrats who decry Clinton today as the worst of the worst kind of human being were part of that 91%? And how many Independents were part of that 65%?

Statistically… 

I know, you get it. In 2013 her ratings were plummeting. What happened then? Did she suddenly change into the monster that she allegedly is today?

Well, not quite. What happened was the GOP campaign against her which was part of the broader campaign against President Barack Obama. Because of Clinton’s high profile the campaign against her got a lot of media attention.

  

Some Democrats are fond of saying that Republicans are brainwashed by Fox News and some Republicans swear that Democrats are brainwashed by the liberal media. I think we’re all brainwashed to some extent and our shorter concentration span, together with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, has created a culture of sharing bits of information taken out of context. They spread like wildfire and before you know it they have become accepted truth.

Take the Wal-Mart story. Yes, it’s a hideous company that has traditionally discriminated against women and paid terrible wages. Yes, Hillary Clinton did agree to be the first and only woman on the Board. And yes, she got paid for it. I went to Google for more information. It was in 1984. Thirty-one years ago. Show me the wise man or woman who has not made mistakes.

But was she so bad that her mistakes are unforgivable? I found a Huffpost article with a short bit about her time on the Board saying simply that she stayed silent re the unions. It was written in 2008. There's nothing about what she did achieve. I recognized a whole slew of blogs post as originating from that Huffpost article. That’s how it works. An ill-researched article masquerading as truth is nothing more than an ill-researched opinion piece, no matter where it’s placed. But it’s repeated as truth if printed in a respected news outlet.

I found a 2007 New York Times piece that told a wider story. Hillary Clinton wasn’t totally silent about Wal-Mart’s anti-Union stance. She didn’t avidly fight for them but she wasn’t silent. And by 2007 she had recently brokered a meeting between a Wal-Mart exec and a union. Why didn’t the later Huffpost article state that?

In her time on the Board Clinton did fight for women—and was overridden. She pushed Wal-Mart to be more environmentally conscious, introducing recycling for consumers, reduction in suppliers’ packaging, and stores with skylights to reduce the need for artificial lighting.

That was in the 1990’s, an era singled out by history so far for corporate consciousness of the environment. Or not.

Why didn’t Clinton fight for the unions? I don’t know, I haven’t had the opportunity to talk to her. The NYT contributor surmised that it was because even back then she was the kind of person who preferred to participate in a contentious environment and do some good. If she had defended the unions she might have weakened her standing on the Board so she couldn’t be effective at all. Or she might have tried and been shut down.

So the ‘fact’ that she just took money to be on Wal-Mart’s Board but did nothing is an outright lie. But the Facebook memes keep coming and not from Republicans. From Bernie Sanders supporters.

Who also accuse her of not writing about this Wal-Mart episode in her autobiography and deducing it’s because she’s guilty. Except that she isn’t. In any case people often don’t write about everything in the account of their life. It wasn’t a history book; she was allowed to write whatever she wanted. And let’s face it, Bernie Sanders didn’t broadcast certain things in his life that would make people think less of him.

Of course it would be nicer and cleaner if Clinton had fought Wal-Mart tooth and nail. But it was 34 years ago! She was a young woman amongst a bunch of powerful, chauvinist, conservative men. That she did anything in that time and that environment is remarkable.

That she is not being remembered and respected for what she did achieve doesn’t say anything about her then or now. It says a lot about those who uncategorically slam her. 

Frank Newport ended his article in 2012 with “The fact that Clinton is almost universally known and at this point well-liked by Americans suggests that she would be a formidable contender were she to decide to run. At the same time, the history of Americans' ups and downs in their ratings of her raises the possibility that if she were to jump back into the political fray, her image would have a significant probability of becoming more polarized and more negative once again.”

No kidding. Hillary Clinton is flawed. Of course she is. She’s a human being. Bernie Sanders, for all his saintly status, is also flawed and for the same reason, oddly. For what it’s worth, I suspect that he wouldn’t be looking so cool and saintly right now if he had had her exposure and if he had been targeted the way she was and still is by Conservatives.

Here's a novel idea. Wouldn’t America be best off if Democrats all worked together towards unity and Clinton and Sanders worked together in the election? I reckon if they did they would get the outcome of Bernie Sanders' revolution if it was really cooking—which it isn’t.

There's irony for you.

The Republican Party Presidential Candidate Circus

Embed from Getty Images

It's been interesting (kind of) to watch popularity polls for the Republican Presidential candidates. First Donald Trump the rude, crude, unavowed materialist rose into the limelight. He lied about his wealth. Then he took a bit of a dive as Ben Carson the spiritual guy rose up into the light. He lied about his story. He's fallen away now. Or fallen asleep. Who knows.

Then Marco Rubio had a few minutes in the spotlight. He doesn’t know how to manage his personal finances. He’s not so high on the charts any more. DT started climbing again.

Now Ted Cruz is rising in popularity. One story that he tells is how he proposed to his loving wife Heidi that they liquidate everything to fund his Senate campaign. He says she said yes in 60 seconds [because she believed in him so much—how romantic]. She says she said let’s be sensible about this [perhaps she didn’t believe in him quite so much]. The picture he paints of her as the adoring, totally supportive wife who will risk everything for him is a little off. Her suggestion won the day. 

And he who says he’ll rid America of the scourge of big banks actually got loans from big banks that allowed him to liquidate without risk. One of the loans—low interest—came from Goldman Sachs who Cruz publicly criticized for getting special treatment from the government. I wonder what Goldman Sachs thinks of all this.

The penury picture Cruz paints is a little off too; the couple had interest-bearing assets worth millions that earned them around $400,000 that year. Ah well, what’s another tall story from another GOP candidate. 

While the spotlight shifts about on the stage, lighting up one after another of these wannabes  the Republican party scrabbles about for a real candidate to support. Because Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio (let’s face it, the others don’t have a shot in hell) aren’t real Presidential material, they’re 3rd rate actors starring in 3rd rate soap opera dramas they’ve written for themselves that they’re all convinced are documentaries. 

The GOP doesn’t want the Trumpeter who is uncontrollable; or Ben Carson who’s in a perpetual fall asleep state and knows nothing about politics and who the hell wants another black guy in the White House; or Ted Cruz who hates government; or Marco Rubio who can’t control his finances. 

What about Jeb! Poor old Jeb! They wanted him. They gave him money. But he just can’t get a foothold anywhere. And he does rather drag around a ball and chain. He should have changed his name. Oh, but then they wouldn’t have given him money.

Humor aside, the chickens have come home to roost for the GOP. When Obama won in 2008 there were a few sane voices in the Party saying that it needed to change because its voter base (very conservative, wealthier older whites) was a dying breed and the Party needed the support of minorities and women, and the middle class in general to survive.

To go more conservative was to go in the same self-destructive direction, right? Wrong. The voice of reason did not have its day then or even in 2012.

Instead the Republican party got the Tea Party crazies with Ted Cruz at the helm. They didn’t muzzle him, they enabled him. Remember John Boehner, the man with the orange face who never went near a tanning studio no? He couldn’t stand up to the crazies. You’d see him on talk shows saying how difficult his job was, and that the House was an unruly bunch. But when they pushed to shut the government down he let them. When Obama drew his line in the sand Boehner said “we fought the good fight”.

Personally I didn’t think he looked particularly proud of himself as he said it. He looked cornered. Blackmailed. Do what we say or we’ll get rid of you. Eventually they broke him anyway. And took the Republican party so far right that it fell off the planet.

In that process though, the voters did something strange. They knew they were dissatisfied with the Republican party. They wanted something new.

They settled for GOP candidates who are so much further to the right that they don’t even seem connected to the old Republican Party. Why have voters who had the good sense to be unhappy with the Republican Party been seduced by blusterers, liars, cheats and egomaniacs? That’s pretty much the definition of snake oil salesmen, not potential Presidents.

Everybody has their theory and this is mine: Snake oil salesmen will always have some kind of audience, not because people are generally stupid but because they’re generally vulnerable and it’s hard to penetrate the con. It’s impossible to do it if you live off misinformation and you’re prey to the kinds of fears that give rise to prejudices that make you inflexible and shut down your capacity to reason—and if your world is in disarray.

The Republican party turned its back on the middle class and left the lives of the majority of Americans in disarray. That created a fertile breeding ground for snake oil salesmen.

It’s an old dynamic. When people are in need, swoop in and give them a message that relieves them of the burden of thinking too much and of taking responsibility in their own lives. And give them a hero to project onto. Christian missionaries use it, fundamentalists use it. The needy are miraculously transformed into inflexible worshippers. It’s a mistake to think that everybody understands the complexities of why our lives end up in discomfort, as individuals, communities and society as a whole. A lot of people just want a quick fix. And they want to be entertained by whoever’s offering it.

In an era where “reality” shows predominate, where special effects that pound the senses are off the charts, where everything is big and distracting, where truth is a small word and barely has a voice, and where people are truly suffering, it’s easy for snake oil salesmen to get an audience.

Now the original Republican Party, which is almost looking sane in comparison to this crop of candidates who are utterly dissociated from reality, is lost. Where can it turn? Who can it support?

We tend to ignore hairline cracks in a wall or small frustrations in a relationship. We very rarely look at them and say “If I don’t fix the crack it will widen, if I don’t address my frustrations they’ll get worse until we fall apart.” Years later our house has fallen down and we’re locked in acrimonious or not but still very painful divorce. And we look back and say “why didn’t I do something when I could?”

In the Battle of Good vs Evil: the Two Faces of America

These days it seems that America is in the grip of a battle between good and evil of mythical proportions. We see more ‘evil’ so it’s easy to believe it outweighs the good, that this is about David and Goliath and Goliath is on a winning streak. Far right conservatives and Christian fundamentalists, the NRA, the military industrial complex have a lot of power and a massive, well-funded, very vocal, very visible right wing media to disseminate the ideas they uphold.

Massacres happen with increasing regularity. Instead of diminishing the power of the far right conservative ideal they feed that angry, fearful, voracious, rapacious beast. When the horrific shooting at Colorado Springs happened, my first thought was, killing three and wounding nine others is justifiable but an abortion isn’t?

Far right conservatives (rightly) condemn jihadists for slaughtering innocent people and have graduated from that to condemning all Muslims and to treating as a hero Republican GOP candidates who manically espouse and promote bigotry of the worse kind to such an extent that people around the entire world are outraged. Yet these same conservatives don’t even ask the religion of American citizens who massacre fellow citizens with assault weapons, let alone call for them to be persecuted and/or thrown out the country.

Christian fundamentalist Kevin Swanson rabidly calls for gays to be executed at a National Religious Liberties Conference which three GOP Presidential candidates—Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal—attend. How is that different to jihadists and their supporters?

Massive CIA, FBI and police resources are sunk into identifying jihadists and I’m very grateful for that. But nothing is done to follow the movements of Americans obsessed with accumulating assault weapons even though they kill far more Americans than jihadists. And fundamentalist Christians such as Swanson and his followers and those three GOP candidates aren’t even brought in for questioning.

Fundamentalist Muslims who call for and/or commit atrocities under the name of Allah are (rightly) recognized for being a scourge on the planet but fundamentalist Christians who call for and/or commit atrocities under the name of Jesus are elevated by many. Some Muslims are fundamentalists therefore all Muslims are condemned as evil. But the same logic doesn’t apply to fundamentalist Christians. Or to American citizens, Catholics, Protestants, Atheists, all of whom have committed terrible crimes. So the real source of the problem isn’t dealt with.

Presidential candidates are worshipped for their maniacal xenophobia in a country that was built by immigrants.

Women have to fight incredibly hard for their rights but conservative women support Presidential candidates and far right politicians who want to keep them down.

People fight for the right to carry and use as many assault weapons as they want and don’t recognize how they’re being manipulated by the military industrial complex, or how that undermines them.

Far right conservatives and Christian fundamentalists foster a culture of hatred, prejudice, entitlement to kill and destruction of human rights. Massacres like that in Colorado Springs are a direct result. Pus oozing from a rotten and festering wound created by an ‘ideal’ that is counter-intuitive to all that is good in humanity, the Bible and true Christianity.

This is a dark, depressing picture. But I still love America and I don’t think of the far right as representing the country in its entirety. Am I clinging to a fantasy? Am I the perfect example of how love is blind?

My first experience of the US was attending a Catholic school in Zimbabwe run by American nuns. Marymount College. Judging by Facebook, a good time was had by most. Not by me, though, which none of the nuns noticed. They registered that I failed and criticized me for being lazy. They didn’t think to look for a deeper reason or see how their judgment traumatized me further. I fell through the cracks and nobody reached out a hand to stop me falling.  

You’d think I’d have developed an antipathy towards Americans. Somehow I didn’t. I guess I separated ‘American’ from individuals’ lack of empathy towards emotionally wounded children namely me. That, and I blamed myself for my unhappiness.  

In my very naive early twenties I flew with my then husband to New York with our bicycles, planning to ride from there to Key West. I’d heard only romantic things about the Big Apple. We landed at Kennedy Airport in the early evening and headed for Manhattan on our bikes but got lost and took an unintentional detour through Harlem where we stopped to buy an ice-cream.

What did I know about Harlem? The guy who sold us the ice-cream said “What are you doing here? You crazy? You fixin’ to die tonight?”

He told us to get out of Harlem and fast. I had no frame of reference with which to believe him. But we took a subway smothered with angry graffiti that made me think maybe he knew what he was talking about. It was terrifying. Then we got thrown off the train. Man. We reached downtown Manhattan at midnight. I was tired and scared out of my wits. A guy approached me and asked me casually if I wanted to buy heroin. I sat on the pavement and burst into tears. I wanna go home.

Again, not a great experience of America. But then another guy noticed my distress and asked me if I was okay. I told him. He was full of concern and said we must stay with him. And I fell in love. Not with him, but with America.

That guy’s generosity is what has life in my heart. When I think about it, it fills me with a feeling of light, of life being generated, of grand possibilities. Of the other stuff—including my childhood experiences of Americans—some created wounds but they’re healing. The rest doesn’t have any power over me. The moral of the story is that one tiny bit of generosity of spirit outweighs a mass of meanness of spirit or absence of consciousness. 

Which is why, to use archaic imagery, good always wins over evil. Sometimes the dark stuff is really in your face. But that’s when it’s hardest and most important to remember the light and believe in it. 

Contemplating that took me to thinking about the Americans I know now, none of whom have a manically far right conservative atom in their body.

All of them are generous spirited. They’re all outraged by crimes against humanity committed in the name of Jesus and/or the GOP and intensely frustrated by the illogic, lack of intellectual independence and integrity of the far right.

That’s a lot of good. It doesn’t make as much noise as ‘evil’ does but it's life promoting and has longevity; not enough yet to prevent the horrible tragedies happening with such horrifying regularity or the suffering they engender. But I believe there’s more good than seems apparent and it is enough to ensure that ‘evil’ won’t ultimately win in America. Good can’t be destroyed. ‘Evil’ can be overcome.

The painting is by Luca Giodano (1634-1705) Massacre of the Children of Niobe 1685

Houston's Heroes Lose Their Battle But The War for Equality Continues

Prejudice. It’s a cancer fed by a limitless torrent of angry, fearful, unresolved energy. It infiltrates your logic, erodes your capacity to be rational. A mean-spirited, mindless, megalomaniac beast, it thrives on crushing others, denying their right to be loved, protected, nurtured and celebrated.

Beware of feeding the beast! It will turn on you. You can anesthetize yourself to that pain but anesthetics get less effective with time, so you’ll face great discomfort at some point. But you can live most of your life in blissful ignorance. Your victims, however, don’t have that cozy option.

In May 2014, the Houston City Council approved the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), “…prohibiting discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics in city employment, city services, city contracting practices, housing, public accommodations, and private employment; containing findings and other provisions relating to the foregoing subject; declaring certain conduct unlawful; providing for a penalty; providing for severability; and declaring an emergency.”

The ordinance had support from President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Sally Field, and even Apple CEO Tim Cook. In reality it protected 15 classes of people, from African-Americans and women to veterans and disabled people. 

But it was spearheaded by Mayor Annise Parker, who is a lesbian, much loved by liberals for good reason; much hated by conservatives for no good reason. The ordinance also included LGBT protections. So it was cast as a gay rights measure. 

It was challenged in court and the Texas Supreme Court ruled in July that Houston City Council must repeal the ordinance or place it on the November ballot. And all of Houston’s finest conservatives came out in droves. One of the rights was for transgenders to be allowed to use women’s public restrooms. Conservatives focused on that, flighting TV ads to generate fear, the main message being that women and children would have no protection from perverts masquerading as transgenders. The fear-mongering campaign was very effective. A referendum held on Tuesday yielded a 61.9% vote to repeal.

This despite that some 200 cities in the US (Houston is the fourth largest) have passed similar Ordinances, including all the major cities in Texas.

I learned about the Ordinance from the NewYork Times. I was in a hurry, and skimmed through the article. In retrospect I see that I only registered one aspect—the paragraph about the opposition’s focus on women and children now being under threat in public spas—and took that to be the whole. I was actually thinking about public saunas and locker rooms. 

I understand if people are afraid that heterosexual men will now have access to women and girls in locker rooms and spas. I'd be afraid too, or at the least, uncomfortable. 

It's not about intolerance, it's about my need to not be naked around heterosexual men I don't know. If there was a way of knowing that someone was a Transgender I'd be fine. But there's no way, without subjecting the person to scrutiny. And how does that work for a Transgender? It totally doesn't. So as far as this small aspect of the Ordinance is concerned, I think it's a lose-lose.

I don’t want a society where any group is punished for who they are. And nor do I want a society that in any way enables perverted heterosexuals. If one little girl or woman or Transgender gets molested or raped because of this aspect of the Ordinance is that acceptable collateral damage? Not if you’re the woman or Transgender or little girl or she's your daughter/sister/friend. It would be different if molestation or rape were a rare occurrence. But it's not. This is a complex issue needing a complex solution.

Is it grounds for the entire Ordinance to be opposed and thrown out? Of course not. It's grounds for that one aspect to be looked at and for some kind of win-win solution to be found; one that may require compromise on both sides.

But the Opposition has blown up this element drastically and made out that it's the entire Ordinance. It's cheap fear-mongering; a thin veil for hatred and prejudice.

It was a shock to realize how easy it would be to manipulate me. I’m a liberal but I have fears from early experiences that shadow me sometimes so when I didn’t take the trouble to read the NYT article properly I quickly drew the wrong conclusion. I realized my mistake later, but it gave me insight into how easy it is to manipulate people through their fear. Especially people who aren't looking for the whole truth. And it was a wake-up call for me.

As for liberal Houston’s fight for quality life for everyone, I believe that ultimately they’ll win. Because they won't ever give up. But it’s tragic and heartbreaking that so many have to be sacrificed for that to happen. 

Click here to read and/or download the full text of the Ordinance.

Fox News’ Roger Ailes Calls Trump ‘Disturbing’

Chris Christie and Donald Trump have a lot in common. They’re both intellectually challenged, over-entitled/-indulged/-enabled and heavily insecure. They’re both bullies with an unhealthy lust for absolute power, attention and permission to do what they want, say what they want, when they want. Both are a seething mass of neuroses that multiplies like a group of cancer cells in the pancreas and neither can conceive of the possibility that their adoring audience might tire of them or that they might meet somebody who can take them down.

Sociopaths of this sort always amass a lot of rope. An can’t resist hanging themselves. Their fathomless insecurity can never be sated; the more they get the more they crave and the less self-control they have. Pushing boundaries is the drug for them. The more attention they get the more they truly believe they’re infallible, and the more reckless they become.

Christie destroyed his political career when he was close to the top of his game. Now the Donald, although much more potent and sinister than Christie and with a huge fan base and a real political chance, is slipping on the banana skin of his own ego.

A few weeks ago at the first Republican debate, Fox News reporter Megyn Kelly asked him some straightforward questions about his attitude and treatment of women. Being confronted always hits a nerve with him and he blew a fuse, insulting Kelly then and afterwards for days on Twitter, causing an uproar. Kelly wasn’t intimidated by Trump and didn’t back down. She’s a star at Fox News with her own big fan base and influence. 

But Fox News Top Dog Roger Ailes made peace with Trump. Of course he did. Trump is the best thing since sliced bread for Fox. Kelly went on unexpected leave for eleven days and everything settled down.

So Trump got away with it, but not without damage under the surface , which is the dangerous kind. And if you touch the nerve of a egotist with the kinds of living, breathing neuroses that dominate Trump they can’t forget. He couldn’t leave it alone.

Kelly got back from vacation. Out of the blue Trump started tweeting rank insults about her again, calling her a bimbo and a lousy journalist. Roger Ailes didn’t try to make peace this time. His official response was; “Donald Trump’s surprise and open attack on Megyn Kelly during her show last night is as unacceptable as it is disturbing.” He went on to say that FOX News supports and values the work that Kelly does in asking candidates questions they find difficult to answer and that Trump should apologize.

The word ‘disturbing’ is the one Trump should be careful of. The inference is that he’s not firing on all cylinders. Well hello. Of course this all could be a ploy by Ailes to keep the war alive because of its impact on ratings. But maybe it's not. If Fox withdraws its coverage of Trump can he survive?

Without the kind of glutinous media attention Fox provides, people will forget him. He’ll get more and more reckless and obnoxious to try and get their attention back. And the show’s over, folks.

That’s not all. A few days ago Trump held a press conference in Iowa. When Emmy Award-winning journalist Jorge Ramos asked an inconvenient question without being selected—because Trump refused to select him—Trump wouldn’t answer and said, “Excuse me, sit down, you weren’t called, sit down. Sit down. Sit down.” Ramos refused to sit or be silenced. He wasn’t shouting or screaming or being unreasonable, he was simple speaking, in a very even tone. Trump told him to go back to Univision, addressing him like a man who isn’t an animal-lover would command a dog.

The incident was captured on video, of course. Trump looked over to the side, nodded his head to somebody and said “Go ahead”. A huge security guard walked behind him and ‘escorted’ Ramos out the room. He went protesting, but again still not shouting or screaming. The man has dignity.

Something Trump doesn’t know the meaning of. On being asked why Ramos was removed  he said “I don’t know really much about him. I don’t believe I’ve ever met him—except he started screaming—I didn’t escort him out; you’ll have to talk to security, whoever security is…”

Jorge Ramos, who works for the Spanish language channel Univision, made the cover of Time Magazine’s World’s Most Influential People Issue. He came back in 15 minutes later and jousted with Trump, neither giving way.

Trump has already lost 75% of the Latino vote with his racist ranting about all Mexicans being rapists and thugs and wanting to deport everybody who’s undocumented regardless of how it shatters even children’s lives. And then there’s the Wall… Clearly he believes he can win without the Latino vote. But then, he believes he could strong-arm Iran into signing an agreement that makes them absolute slaves to America and that he could bomb the whole of ISIL out of existence.

The man's a lunatic. He’d be entertaining if he weren’t so ugly. If he hadn’t destroyed so many lives and done it with such pleasure and ease. Nothing entertaining about that.

But it is fascinating to watch sociopaths take themselves down. That it always happens gives me faith in being human. We’re not built to abuse others so when somebody does they can’t sustain the internal culture that drives their abuse. Along the path of their own destruction, though, they take an awful lot of people down with them. That’s the hard part. 

I must say, though, for Roger Ailes to call Trump 'disturbing' is more than a little ironic. What a circus.

AFP (Koch Funded?) Invests in Blatant Anti-Obamacare Propaganda

Last month Americans For Prosperity, funded who knows to what extent by the billionaire conservative Koch brothers, released an ad calling on voters to speak out to Senator Mary Landrieu about how much Obamacare is hurting Louisiana families. 

The ad starts with a middle class Mom on the porch and two gorgeous middle class kids running out to the post box, laughing. A very sad, kind voice over says “Dear Mrs. Kelly; your family plan is no longer available under the Affordable Care Act.” as the kids pull the letter out the box. Cut to a young middle class African American woman coming into her apartment, opening up her letter box. The same voice says “Dear Ms. Davis, we can no longer offer you the same policy; your doctor is no long in the network due the Affordable Care Act.” She looks devastated.

Cut to a father and his daughter on a farm standing at the letter box. She’s adorable. He’s the poster boy for responsible, down to earth Dad. The same voice says “Your monthly premium has increased…” at which point Dad looks at adorable daughter with great distress, “…no longer covered due to the Affordable Care Act”. One more shot of a woman opening her letter box and the final message is “send Senator Landrieu a message. Obamacare is hurting Louisiana families.”

When Americans for Prosperity was pinned down on the veracity of the ad a spokesperson admitted the characters were all actors. There wasn’t any truth in even a second of that footage.

In February the AFP made another ad and they used a real person for this one: a Julie Boonstra who was diagnosed with leukemia 5 years ago. Ms. Boonstra speaks directly to the camera,  looks sincere and her words are heart stopping. 

“I was diagnosed with leukemia. I found out I only have a 20 percent chance of surviving. I found this wonderful doctor and a great health care plan. I was doing fairly well fighting the cancer, fighting the leukemia, and then I received a letter. My insurance was canceled because of Obamacare. Now, the out-of-pocket costs are so high, it’s unaffordable. If I do not receive my medication, I will die... This is serious. It’s not a game…”

The Washington Post runs a fact checker blog written by journalist Glen Kessler which grants a Pinocchio rating from one to four. One is a few errors, four is a whopping lie. When Kessler first reviewed this ad he had been told by the AFP that Ms. Boonstra had a Silver individual plan through Blue Cross Blue Shield but they didn’t give details of the actual plan. Still, Kessler was able to expose ‘contradictions’ so he gave Ms. Boonstra two Pinocchios. 

Why? Because Ms. Boonstra not only has a plan that saves her $571 a month, but she keeps that wonderful doctor she found. Kessler discovered also that the Silver plan doesn’t cover out of pocket (OOP) expenses, as her previous plan did, but it puts a cap on them of $6,350. The money she saves comes to $6,852.  Until they reach the cap those OOP expenses are unpredictable; they may be more than $571 a month, they may be less. When the lie that she’s lost her lovely doctor and that she’s going to die was exposed, Ms. Boonstra was forced to resort to saying, in another ad, that the unpredictability is the real problem and it’s making her life a nightmare. It didn’t have as much punch.

But that isn’t the end of the story. The Detroit News subsequently discovered that Ms. Boonstra has a Premier Gold Plan which has an OOP cap of $5,100. So in fact Ms. Boonstra saves $1,200 because of Obamacare. The lovely Ms. Boonstra’s reaction was to say “I don’t believe it”. Blue Cross Shield’s reaction was to say that they are available to help their clients understand policies; clients just have to pick up the phone. 

Kessler reviewed his first rating of the ad and now gives three Pinocchios. The end to this sad tale is that in fact Ms. Boonstra isn’t going to die or to lose her doctor, or lose anything at all  because of Obamacare. In fact she’s going to gain. Is she grateful? Nope. And millions of previously uninsured people are going to gain healthcare, perhaps for the first time in their lives. Many who are as sick or worse than Ms. Boonstra now have a chance at treatment and survival. Many who have previously been bankrupted or whose children have never been able to see a doctor now have medical care.

Not if Ms. Boonstra has anything to say about it, though. The AFP spent $30 million on ads attacking Democrats and Obamacare for the Senate races. The first ad has had over 400 000 views on YouTube and the second has had over 98,000 views.  

The constant Republican warcry that the ACA is unpopular and destroying people’s lives is believed by many because of ads like these. The frightening part of it all is that these believers don’t ask themselves why, if so many people’s lives have been destroyed, doesn’t the AFP show footage of them, and instead chooses to resort to actors and people whose stories can so easily be exposed as lies. The truth is clearly that nobody cares about the truth. 

Republican politicians and their backers and supporters know by now that as soon as they put out anything masquerading as information about Obamacare/ACA it’s going to be rigorously checked. They don't care. They know that they're exploiting an unreasoning, atavistic fear of an African American president. This kind of propaganda works on Republican voters. Last year a Public Policy Polling found that 29% of [polled] Republican primary voters in Louisiana blamed President Obama for the disaster in relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina struck and levees broke. 

Katrina happened in August 2005. Barack Obama took office in 2009.

Conservative Political Nonentity Sarah Palin to Close CPAC Today

And CPAC, “the granddaddy of conservative conclaves, a multi-day, big-budget ideological extravaganza put on by and for the unabashedly conservative wing of the Republican Party” (The Daily Beast) draws to a close today. 

Speakers have ranged from has-been-but-wanna-be-again politicians like Sarah Palin to gun toting multimillionaire politicians who nobody likes like Mitch McConnell – yes, he really did bring a gun to the Conference. Rumor has it that he brought it because he’d been told there would be a shooting range at the Conference and he had been practising like crazy, hoping he could improve his popularity if only he could hit the bulls eye. 

As it happens there is a shooting range – courtesy of the NRA of course - but it’s virtual only. Just kidding about McConnell’s motive for bringing the gun. He actually bought it for a buddy. 

In today’s line-up there are non-politicians like Dr. Ben Carson, Professor Emeritus, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and there have been lunatics like Donald Trump. Trump, in an interview with The Washington Times (not to be confused with the Washington Post or the New York Times whose script it imitates), said when asked if he was a Tea Party member “I certainly seem to be in a sense. They like me, and I like them. And we have very much the same principles. When I speak to the Tea Party, they have the biggest crowd of anybody.” I almost feel sorry for the Tea Party. Their only celebrity is Donald Trump who gets crazier by the day. He really takes himself seriously though. I’m not so sure that CPAC did, however. Go to the page on their website that lists confirmed speakers. Donald is last. In a row all by himself. 

In today’s schedule speakers will make themselves available to meet and greet. Dr. Carson, who wrote It’s One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America’s Future has a Special meet and greet. There’s one itty bitty little requirement: you have to have ordered or pre-ordered his book.  Hmm. As far as I can see from the CPAC programme, Dr. Carson is the only one to have a special meet and greet. And he’s not even a politician.  There are plenty of book signings and people who have written books meeting and greeting, though. Huh. Not a bad place to market your books. Not that that’s the purpose of the Conference. I don’t think so, anyway, but you never know with these Republicans. 

Chris Cox, Executive Director of NRA Institute for Legislative Action, speaks on “More Guns, Less Crime: How Law Enforcement is Beginning to Embrace a Well-Armed Civilian Population.” Well, that’s a relief. I'm trying to imagine cops armed to the teeth with assault rifles hugging civilians with pistols in their pockets and taped to their ankles, and one assault rifle in each hand. Oops. Did somebody's gun go off? Sorry my friend, my dear friend. I just shot you in the foot.

Dan Garza, Executive Director of LIBRE Initiative, has half an hour to elaborate on part 2 of  “Healthcare after ObamaCare: A Practical Guide for Living When No One Has Insurance and America Runs Out of Doctors.” I guess Garza prepared that talk back in 2010. Obviously hasn’t looked at the statistics lately. Poor sod doesn’t know that Obamacare popularity and functionality is on an upwardly mobile trajectory. 

For anybody worried about the environment, Alex Epstein, President & Founder of the Center for Industrial Policy, will reassure with a talk on his book Fossil Fuels Improve the Planet. 

As far as I can see there’s nobody talking about why women shouldn’t want equal pay, thank God. But the topic “Why Conservatism is Right for Women: How Conservatives Should Talk About Life, Prosperity & National Security” will be discussed by four women. That title looks like a bit of non sequitur to me, but who am I to say. Personally I don’t understand why any women vote Republican. Some kind of Pavlovian conditioning I guess. 

Ralph Hallow, Political Editor of the Washington Times (again, not to be confused with the Washington Post or the New York Times) will stimulate the serious politicos with “Clairvoyance and Hard Data: Electoral Trends for 2014, 2016 … and 2040.” Seriously?

There’s plenty of entertainment, most notable of which will be a screening of the movie Persecuted. Interestingly, if you go to CPAC’s website, there’s a rotating list of sponsors, in various groupings. Get to Associate Sponsors, though, and there’s only one. Koch Industries. Next to their logo is the logo for Persecuted. Subtle. Sinister. Frigging scary, actually. Oh, and did you know that Facebook was a sponsor? Yes, it really is. Along with organizations like the NRA, Koch Industries, and the series Amazing America with Sarah Palin. I knew there was a reason why I don’t like Facebook. 

The day, and the Conference, ends on a dramatic, politically earth shattering note with a 20 minute closing speech from The Honorable Sarah Palin who will be introduced by Chris Cox, who is, remember?, Executive Director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action. You go, girl. 

Well I’m sure it’s been fun. Whatever CPAC achieved, one thing it did illustrate perfectly. Nobody stood out, nobody shone, nobody said anything of particular importance. Some people said some pretty ridiculous things. For example, everything Donald Trump said. See The Daily Beast for some great satire on him. Then there was Paul Ryan who, earlier in the Conference reassured a crowd of adoring fans that the GOP isn’t falling apart; in fact the very opposite is true. All this “infighting” is nothing more than grand creativity expressing itself. Politico quotes Ryan as saying “What I see is a vibrant debate. We’re figuring out the best way to apply our principles to the challenges of the day. Sure, we have our disagreements, and yes, it can get a little passionate. I like to think of it as creative tension. For the most part, these disagreements have not been over principles or even policies. They’ve been over tactics. So I think we should give each other the benefit of the doubt.” 

I wonder what the moderate Republicans who want to get rid of the Tea Party extremists thought about that. And what are we to make of 26 competing candidates? As Dana Milbank of the Washington Post said in a great article on this topic, “When you have 26 conservative combatants, you don’t have war; you have mayhem.”