Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

News & Supplemental  

Free advice for a multimillionaire, Part 2: Lies, damned lies, and surrogates

In our sec­ond edi­tion of “Free Advice for a Mul­ti­mil­lion­aire”, we’re going to be look­ing at one of peren­ni­al chal­lenges in polit­i­cal cam­paigns: how to lie with sur­ro­gates. Sur­ro­gates are one of those “must have” assets in the media land­scape because they can say the things a cam­paign wants peo­ple to hear but does­n’t want to get caught say­ing. You know, things like lies. Because when cam­paign staff lies, peo­ple notice.

So it was not sur­pris­ing to see a num­ber of sur­ro­gates in the media this week­end attempt­ing to quell the grow­ing num­ber of ques­tions over Mitt Rom­ney’s mag­i­cal mys­tery “retroac­tive retire­ment” from Bain. Well, that plus some oth­er stuff.

Now, on to Mit­t’s free advice:
First, always remem­ber that in pol­i­tics the best defense is a good offense. And one of the best ways to go on the offense is to use some good ‘ol fash­ioned polit­i­cal jujit­su. You need to turn those attacks on all these issues into the issue. Now, there are good ways and bad ways to go about this. For instance, if you’re going to demand an apol­o­gy for these out­ra­geous attacks, you first need to explain why they’re out­ra­geous. Oth­er­wise you might just end up look­ing guilty, decep­tive, and fool­ish.

So if your going to ask for an apol­o­gy, you need to first lead with a counter-attack and only after it’s clear that the counter-attack will “stick” should you ask for an apol­o­gy. Now, how do you craft an effect the counter-attack when even your own par­ty thinks the charges against have sub­stance? Well, one way is to attack the attack­’s style. This is pol­i­tics. Style trumps sub­stance every time. And feel free to use a sur­ro­gate because you want it to seem like even impar­tial out­side observers agree that the attack is a shot below the belt. But if you do take this approach, one thing you must absolute­ly avoid is using a sur­ro­gate that was a trail­blaz­er in the dark arts of pol­i­tics. They prob­a­bly don’t make the best mes­sen­ger boys in this instance:

TPM
Karl Rove: Oba­ma Mak­ing A ‘Big Mis­take’ By Sug­gest­ing Rom­ney May Be A Felon
9:48 AM EDT, Sun­day July 15, 2012
Report­ed by Sahil Kapur

Repub­li­can strate­gist Karl Rove on Fox News Sun­day advised the Oba­ma cam­paign to stop sug­gest­ing that Mitt Rom­ney may be a felon over alleged­ly inac­cu­rate state­ments he made on his SEC forms regard­ing Bain.

“The fact of the mat­ter is that if the pres­i­dent con­tin­ues to make this charge — this out­ra­geous charge that his cam­paign had that Mitt Rom­ney is guilty of felo­nious activ­i­ty, could’ve com­mit­ted a felony — that’s a big mis­take,” Rove said. “Remem­ber who’s up for grabs in this elec­tion: inde­pen­dent vot­ers.

Rove, who runs the GOP super PAC Amer­i­can Cross­roads, said inde­pen­dents were drawn to Obama’s promise to tran­scend pol­i­tics as usu­al in 2008 and pre­dict­ed the felony charge won’t work with them. “This is gut­ter pol­i­tics of the worst Chica­go sort,” he said.

Now, while sur­ro­gates like Karl may not be the best choice as the water car­ri­er in this sit­u­a­tion (they tend to poi­son the well first), that does­n’t mean they don’t have some good advice too. Inde­pen­dent vot­ers don’t real­ly like attack ads. Sure, vot­ers are fre­quent­ly per­suad­ed by them, but they don’t like being remind­ed of that. So if you have to counter-attack, and it’s a base­less counter-attack, you might want to use a sur­ro­gate. For­tu­nate­ly, in our post-Cit­i­zens Unit­ed world, that’s eas­i­er than ever.

Keep in mind, though, if the orig­i­nal attack on you has enough sub­stance the “gut­ter-pol­i­tics” counter-attack may not have the required “sting” to throw your oppo­nent off. But don’t fret. There are still options. For instance, you could always try the Jedi mind trick (i.e. “These aren’t the droids polit­i­cal issues you’re look­ing for”). For that, first you need a Jedi. And if no Jedis are avail­able (they tend to avoid the Dark Side), any ol’ Sith Lord will prob­a­bly do. So pick your sur­ro­gate Sith, pick your trick, and start dis­tract­ing:

TPM
Ryan: Romney’s Assets In A ‘Blind Trust For Pete’s Sake’
3:25 PM EDT, Sun­day July 15, 2012
Report­ed by Pema Levy

Rom­ney sur­ro­gate and VP con­tender Rep. Paul Ryan (R‑WI) said on Sun­day that the Oba­ma cam­paign using Bain Cap­i­tal and the issue of Romney’s tax­es to dis­tract the coun­try from the issues peo­ple real­ly care about.

“Peo­ple are not wor­ried about the details as to when Mitt Rom­ney left Bain Cap­i­tal to save the Olympics or the details about his assets, which are man­aged by a blind trust for Pete’s sake,” Ryan said on “Face the Nation.” “They’re wor­ried about their jobs and their family’s future.”

See how sim­ple that was? Vot­ers aren’t con­cerned about Mit­t’s his­to­ry as out­sourcer-in-chief. They con­cerned about Amer­i­can jobs. Bril­liant! Who cares about the his­to­ry of Mitt any­more? Now they just care about his planned poli­cies!

But if you now have vot­ers fret­ting about their own futures instead of your own past, does­n’t that mean you need to have plans that won’t destroy the future? NO. Can you real­ly talk about all those plans in pub­lic? YES. And how is that pos­si­ble? Because the cra­zier your plans sound, the more they’ll like you. And you, Mit­tens, have some craaazy plans. Here’s why: the kind of planned devi­ous­ness that the mod­ern day GOP calls “pub­lic pol­i­cy” is incom­pre­hen­si­bly bad. It’s so incom­pre­hen­si­bly bad that peo­ple just assume your emot­ing your deep inter­nal resolve to get the bud­get under con­trol. It’s meta-pol­i­tics at work: The more you say you’ll destroy their futures, the less they’ll believe you and the more they’ll like you. Vot­ers can be weird like that:

Moth­er­Jones
Nobody Takes Con­ser­v­a­tive Wingnut­tery at Face Val­ue

-By Kevin Drum
| Fri Jul. 6, 2012 10:05 AM PDT

Jon Chait calls our atten­tion to Robert Drap­er’s piece in the New York Times Mag­a­zine this week about Pri­or­i­ties USA Action, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic super PAC run by Bill Bur­ton and Sean Sweeney. Here’s a love­ly lit­tle excerpt:

Bur­ton and his col­leagues spent the ear­ly months of 2012 try­ing out the pitch that Rom­ney was the most far-right pres­i­den­tial can­di­date since Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter. It fell flat. The pub­lic did not view Rom­ney as an extrem­ist. For exam­ple, when Pri­or­i­ties informed a focus group that Rom­ney sup­port­ed the Ryan bud­get plan — and thus cham­pi­oned “end­ing Medicare as we know it” — while also advo­cat­ing tax cuts for the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans, the respon­dents sim­ply refused to believe any politi­cian would do such a thing.

So there you have it. Vot­ers sim­ply refused to believe that the bare facts about the Ryan plan could pos­si­bly be true. Chait is cau­tious about what this means: “I wouldn’t over­read this and assume that the Repub­li­cans have found the ulti­mate worm­hole, advo­cat­ing poli­cies so out­landish­ly unpop­u­lar that oppo­nents can’t per­suade vot­ers they’re real.”

I agree. Sort of. But I do think that it points to some­thing real: Over the past cou­ple of decades, Repub­li­can lead­ers have become such stone ide­o­logues, and have made out­ra­geous pro­pos­als such a stan­dard part of their stump speech­es, that a lot of vot­ers just don’t take them seri­ous­ly any­more. They view these things less as actu­al plans than as state­ments meant to show group affil­i­a­tion. As the bar gets raised year after year, Repub­li­cans have to say ever more out­ra­geous things to demon­strate that they’re real con­ser­v­a­tives, but it’s still just blath­er. They don’t actu­al­ly intend to do any of this stuff if they get elect­ed.

Inde­pen­dents might dis­cov­er — too late — that they’re wrong about this. But I sus­pect that’s how they treat a lot of this stuff: as mere rote cat­e­chisms, pro­fes­sions of faith not meant to be tak­en lit­er­al­ly.

As you can see, oli­garch pow­er-bro­kers aren’t the only group out there that gets to say “we cre­ate our own real­i­ty” any­more. Inde­pen­dent Real­i­ty-Denial­sts Unite! It’s a brave new world, Mit­tens, and you’re run­ning to run it. So you had bet­ter under­stand it.

But don’t you wor­ry. While you may have some new com­pe­ti­tion on real­i­ty-cre­at­ing front, you still have some of the great­est myth-mae­stros in the plan­et work­ing for you and that stuff still works. Just makes sure to use a sur­ro­gate:

Medicare Scare Ad Makes False Claim of $500 Bln Cut to Seniors
Hei­di Przy­by­la, ©2012 Bloomberg News
Pub­lished 02:18 p.m., Fri­day, June 29, 2012

June 28 (Bloomberg) — Flori­da seniors will be liv­ing a “night­mare” because Sen­a­tor Bill Nel­son vot­ed for $500 bil­lion in Medicare cuts, the anony­mous voice warns in the most-aired ad in his re-elec­tion race — a mes­sage repeat­ed in sim­i­lar spots tar­get­ing oth­er Democ­rats across the coun­try.

It’s also wrong, accord­ing to a Repub­li­can health-care expert and inde­pen­dent ana­lysts.

“There are no reduc­tions in the Medicare ben­e­fits promised in law,” said Gail Wilen­sky, who served as admin­is­tra­tor of the Cen­ters for Med­ic­aid and Medicare under Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush and is a senior fel­low at Project Hope, a health-research orga­ni­za­tion in Vir­ginia.

The non­par­ti­san Con­cord Coali­tion, a bud­get research group, says the ads assume insur­ers will cut Medicare ben­e­fits to com­ply with Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s 2010 Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act, which scales back pay­ments to Medicare Advan­tage plans, an alter­na­tive to tra­di­tion­al Medicare.

The law, its con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty to be deter­mined today by the U.S. Supreme Court, also slows the growth of Medicare pay­ments to hos­pi­tals and oth­er health providers. Seniors’ ben­e­fits weren’t reduced in the leg­is­la­tion.

That hasn’t deterred Repub­li­can-aligned groups such as Cross­roads Grass­roots Pol­i­cy Strate­gies and the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce from the ben­e­fit-cut asser­tion in cam­paign tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials tar­get­ing the law that have out­num­bered pos­i­tive ads by a 3‑to‑1 ratio since mea­sure took effect, accord­ing to data pro­vid­ed by Kan­tar Media’s CMAG, which tracks cam­paign adver­tis­ing.

...

Vouch­er Plan

What’s more, Repub­li­cans assume the same sav­ings in their own bud­get blue­print craft­ed by House Bud­get Com­mit­tee Chair­man Paul Ryan, a Wis­con­sin Repub­li­can. The plan would con­vert Medicare to a vouch­er plan, a pro­pos­al that’s drawn scorn from seniors’ groups includ­ing the AARP because it would end Medicare as a defined-ben­e­fit pro­gram. While the cur­rent law plows its pro­ject­ed sav­ings back into sub­si­dies to help low-income indi­vid­u­als buy insur­ance, the Ryan plan counts the mon­ey toward debt reduc­tion.

“Cross­roads Grass­roots Pol­i­cy Strate­gies”. Heh, don’t you just love pro-oli­garch polit­i­cal groups with the word “Grass­roots” in the name. That’s the Rov­ian-touch we’ve all come to know and love. Well done Karl. You nev­er dis­ap­point.

Feel­ing bet­ter yet Mit­tens? You’ll be out of your son’s base­ment that cramped space and into a nice big Oval Office in no time.

One last bit of advice:
There’s still the issue of what you’re are going to do if the inde­pen­dent vot­ers actu­al­ly vote vou into office and we end up with the Ryan plan. At some point those inde­pen­dents are going to get a seri­ous ill­ness — let’s say a brain tumor. Stand­ing there with a vouch­er in their hands and tumor in their head is going to make the awful­ness of your poli­cies a rather unde­ni­able real­i­ty. That could be a prob­lem in 2016. So if THAT ever hap­pens, call Frank.

Discussion

19 comments for “Free advice for a multimillionaire, Part 2: Lies, damned lies, and surrogates”

  1. Accept­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars from a shady casi­no-mag­net with ties to a noto­ri­ous under­world crime syn­di­cate. An off­shore noto­ri­ous under­world crime syn­di­cate, no less: What could pos­si­bly go wrong?

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 16, 2012, 10:15 pm
  2. The far-right’s WMD of choice: retroac­tive­ly retir­ing the Enlight­en­ment:

    TPM
    GOP Stonewalls Cli­mate Hear­ing Amid Extreme Weath­er

    Sahil Kapur July 17, 2012, 5:38 AM

    House Repub­li­cans are block­ing Democ­rats’ push for a hear­ing on the extreme weath­er that has rav­aged the nation, from record heat­waves to severe storms.

    ...

    A new report by the Nation­al Cli­mat­ic Data Cen­ter deter­mined that the odds of this year’s extreme weath­er being a fluke — as opposed to the con­se­quence of man­made car­bon diox­ide emis­sions — are extreme­ly low.

    “Will­ful igno­rance of the sci­ence is irre­spon­si­ble and it is dan­ger­ous,” the Democ­rats wrote.

    Late Mon­day, Karen Light­foot, a spokesper­son for Democ­rats on the com­mit­tee, told TPM that Repub­li­cans “have not yet respond­ed to our let­ter.”

    A com­mit­tee spokesper­son for Ener­gy & Com­merce Chair­man Fred Upton (R‑MI) told TPM that Repub­li­cans had already addressed the issue in a March 2011 hear­ing.

    “The com­mit­tee held a hear­ing last year to exam­ine relat­ed issues includ­ing extreme weath­er events, pat­terns of warm­ing, and the attri­bu­tion of cli­mate change to human activ­i­ty,” the aide said. “With 41 con­sec­u­tive months of high­er than 8 per­cent unem­ploy­ment, the committee’s focus con­tin­ues to be on jobs and pro­mot­ing com­mon­sense solu­tions that pro­tect both the envi­ron­ment and the econ­o­my.”

    Trans­la­tion: “Calm down. We already addressed this year’s unprecen­dent­ed freak weath­er last year”.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 17, 2012, 8:10 am
  3. Here’s some more free advice for Mit­tens: Retroac­tive­ly retire this response.

    Here’s anoth­er tip: Some­one that built a com­pa­ny that buys, guts, and sells oth­er com­pa­nies, prob­a­bly does­n’t want to “go there”.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 17, 2012, 10:27 am
  4. Re GW’s new book men­tioned in that arti­cle — The 4% Solu­tion; Bush report­ed­ly liked tor­tur­ing small ani­mals as a child and many researchers are set­tling on one in twen­ty-five as the num­ber of sociopaths extant in the pop­u­la­tion, so it’s an apt choice of title.

    Mitt reminds us that eco­nom­ics is so, so com­pli­cat­ed. I naive­ly thought off­shore accounts were vehi­cles to avoid scruti­ny and tax­es. Now he explains that they are a way of increas­ing invest­ment in Amer­i­ca. It took me a while to see that (I had to take lots of drugs). Now I’m enter­tain­ing the con­cept that Bain Cap­i­tal cre­at­ed jobs! It’s good to be open mind­ed, I guess, but I’m fast run­ning out of drugs.

    Posted by Dwight | July 18, 2012, 2:20 am
  5. And here we go again:
    Ok Mit­tens, you got prob­lems and you need solu­tions. This tax-return issue is not threat­en­ing to turn your off­shore accounts and $100 mil­lion IRA into a nation­al rorschach test, and that’s the last thing your need when intro­duc­ing your­self to the Amer­i­can pub­lic. I know, isn’t it crazy how every­one does­n’t already know how awe­some you are? I mean, you’re damn near an Olympian! No one ever said the lifestyles of the rich and famous was an easy one. *Sigh*

    Now, about those tax returns. You clear­ly get the basics: you have to say some­thing about the issue. But you can’t just say any­thing. In par­tic­u­lar, you can’t say that you won’t say any­thing. That’s not going to help with the rorschach test:

    NYTimes
    Rom­ney Stead­fast in the Face of Grow­ing Calls to Release More Tax Returns

    By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and TRIP GABRIEL
    Pub­lished: July 18, 2012

    Mitt Rom­ney has said it every way he can: he is not releas­ing any more of his tax returns.

    Mr. Rom­ney, the pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can nom­i­nee, is fac­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in sear­ing ads from Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and a ris­ing cho­rus from puz­zled Repub­li­cans, urg­ing him to reveal more of his finan­cial his­to­ry.

    But with each answer he gives, Mr. Rom­ney seems more deter­mined than ever that vot­ers will not see any of his tax his­to­ry before 2010.

    “In the polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment that exists today, the oppo­si­tion research of the Oba­ma cam­paign is look­ing for any­thing they can use to dis­tract from the fail­ure of the pres­i­dent to reignite our econ­o­my,” Mr. Rom­ney told Nation­al Review on Tues­day, explain­ing his oppo­si­tion to a broad­er release of his tax data. “And I’m sim­ply not enthu­si­as­tic about giv­ing them hun­dreds or thou­sands of more pages to pick through, dis­tort and lie about.”

    That fol­lowed an equal­ly emphat­ic state­ment on Fri­day, when Mr. Rom­ney brushed aside calls for him to make pub­lic more than the 2010 returns he has released and the 2011 doc­u­ments that he has said are com­ing soon.

    Those are the two years peo­ple are going to have, and that’s all that’s nec­es­sary for peo­ple to under­stand some­thing about my finances,” Mr. Rom­ney said in an inter­view on CNN.

    The defin­i­tive nature of Mr. Romney’s state­ments appears to have all but shut down any pub­lic con­tem­pla­tion from his close advis­ers of whether he might recon­sid­er. Kevin Mad­den, a senior advis­er to Mr. Rom­ney, declined to talk about inter­nal dis­cus­sions on the issue, but made clear who was in charge.

    “I would point you to the governor’s state­ments,” Mr. Mad­den said. “That guides the campaign’s posi­tion.”

    Anoth­er senior advis­er to the cam­paign said on Wednes­day that he had “heard of no divi­sion in the inner cir­cle on this.”

    ...

    Ok, yeah, no, this isn’t going to work. Sor­ry Mit­tens, but at this point your tax-return prob­lem goes far beyond the 1999–2002 peri­od and far beyond Bain. You see, your lat­est counter-attack — the “Oba­ma hates suc­cess­ful peo­ple” counter-attack — is kind of a giant mis­take:

    TPM
    Rom­ney Dou­bles Down On ‘You Didn’t Build That’ — Then Affirms Obama’s Point

    Ben­jy Sar­lin July 18, 2012, 4:24 PM

    Mitt Rom­ney con­tin­ued his attack on Pres­i­dent Oba­ma for recent remarks sug­gest­ing pub­lic invest­ments help build busi­ness­es Wednes­day, then all but admit­ted he agreed with Obama’s under­ly­ing point.

    Rom­ney, speak­ing in Ohio, said Obama’s speech last week “reveals what he thinks about our coun­try, about our peo­ple, about free enter­prise, about free­dom, about indi­vid­ual ini­tia­tive.”

    “I just want to say it exact­ly as he said it,” Rom­ney said. “Speak­ing about small busi­ness and busi­ness­es of all kind, he said this: ‘If you’ve got a busi­ness, you didn’t build that. Some­body else made that hap­pen.’”

    Rom­ney con­ve­nient­ly ignored the sen­tences imme­di­ate­ly before and after Obama’s quote, which made clear the president’s line referred to build­ing pub­lic infra­struc­ture like roads, bridges and the Inter­net that busi­ness­es uti­lize to their ben­e­fit. But Rom­ney didn’t stop there: As he tried to twist the knife on Oba­ma, he essen­tial­ly made the president’s argu­ment for him.

    After exhort­ing busi­ness own­ers to stand up and be rec­og­nized, Rom­ney said:

    I know that you rec­og­nize a lot of peo­ple help you in a busi­ness. Per­haps the banks, the investors. There’s no ques­tion your mom and dad, your school teach­ers, the peo­ple that pro­vide roads, the fire, the police. A lot of peo­ple help. But let me ask you this, did you build your busi­ness? If you did, raise your hand. Take that, Mr. Pres­i­dent.

    Here’s how Oba­ma described the rela­tion­ship between “the peo­ple that pro­vide roads, the fire, the police” and busi­ness own­ers in that speech Rom­ney cit­ed:

    Some­body invest­ed in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a busi­ness, you didn’t build that. Some­body else made that hap­pen. The Inter­net didn’t get invent­ed on its own. Gov­ern­ment research cre­at­ed the Inter­net so that all the com­pa­nies could make mon­ey off the Inter­net.

    The point is, is that when we suc­ceed, we suc­ceed because of our indi­vid­ual ini­tia­tive, but also because we do things togeth­er. There are some things, just like fight­ing fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imag­ine if every­body had their own fire ser­vice. That would be a hard way to orga­nize fight­ing fires.

    In short, Rom­ney: Yes, “a lot of peo­ple” help busi­ness own­ers, among them gov­ern­ment, but in the end, “you build your busi­ness.” Oba­ma: “We suc­ceed because of our indi­vid­ual ini­tia­tive, but also because we do things togeth­er.”

    ...

    Ok, Mit­tens, are you try­ing to throw this? Not only can you turned into a lying liar in under 30 s with crap like this (the ads write them­selves), but being a bla­tant huck­ster is the last thing you want to do right now. Espe­cial­ly with the “Oba­ma hates suc­cess­ful peo­ple” con. Things might seem bad now but they could get a lot worse with stunts like that. Peo­ple are most­ly only focus­es on your shenani­gans in 1999–2002. You’ve only released 2010–2011. Peo­ple might start ask­ing for that whole 2003–2009 peri­od. You know, when the finan­cial sys­tem grew into a giant green greed mon­ster and tore the glob­al econ­o­my apart. And then got bailed out. It was an ‘inter­est­ing’ peri­od.

    And while you might have some sort of “I was the gov­er­nor, it was a blind trust” excuse in terms of what hap­pened with your tax­es dur­ing most of that peri­od (and who knows what trou­ble you got your­self in...$100 mil­lion? Serous­ly?), there’s still the fact that the giant green greed mon­ster tapped you to be its avatar in the 2012 con­test. Yes, the amount that Oba­ma has allowed Wall Street to get away with has dis­ap­point­ed just about every­one except your own base, but that’s not actu­al­ly good news for you. That’s because your base is Wall Street and the Tea­vanel­i­cals and only Wall Street real­ly likes you. And a lot of the Tea­van­gel­i­cals hate Wall Street near­ly as much as they hate Oba­ma.

    So when you bring up Oba­ma’s appar­ent attack on “suc­cess” as a cam­paign issue, but do it using bla­tant con, that’s awful­ly close to an what Wall Street just did to the nation: lie shame­less­ly and pret­ty much con­tin­u­ous­ly. You real­ly don’t want to make your first impres­sion as the sleazy Wall Street guy on all those unde­cid­ed vot­ers out there that haven’t bare­ly paid any atten­tion so far. Oba­ma mere­ly has to point to recent­ly “suc­cess­ful” folks like John Paul­son and Lloyd Blank­fein to make it clear what kind against “suc­cess­ful peo­ple” the rest of us are upset with right now. Untouch­able finan­cial scam artists and oli­garchs. Job destroy­ers. And you’re the job destroy­ers’ avatar in this con­test. You need­ed a dis­trac­tion, yes, but “watch me lie” isn’t the kind of dis­trac­tion you’re look­ing for. Remem­ber...sur­ro­gates.

    One final note regard­ing your upcom­ing choice for VP: Come on, you know you want it. Now THAT’S a dis­trac­tion!

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 19, 2012, 7:05 am
  6. @Dwight:
    You might want to talk to Mitt about your drug prob­lem. He knows some peo­ple that can “help”.

    This advice, of course, only applies after you’ve killed your stash. Until then, keep on keepin’ on!

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 19, 2012, 7:35 pm
  7. Ha! So it turns out that Chris Christie was sort of chan­nel­ing Machi­avel­li in his GOP con­ven­tion speech:

    GOP DEATH WATCH
    Chris Christie, Rick San­to­rum, Ann Rom­ney: Only One of Them Remem­bers Mitt at the GOP Con­ven­tion
    queerty.com

    John Gal­lagher
    Aug 29, 2012

    ...

    By con­trast, Chris Christie, the husky gov­er­nor of New Jer­sey, offered a broad­er vision for the party–broader not just because of his girth but because he seemed to have been pitch­ing him­self as the party’s future. Christie is a Tea Par­ty favorite for his blunt­ness, and Tues­day night he used the bul­ly pul­pit of the keynote address to posi­tion him­self as, well, a bul­ly. “The great­est les­son Mom ever taught me, though, was this one: she told me there would be times in your life when you have to choose between being loved and being respect­ed,” Christie told the del­e­gates. “She said to always pick being respect­ed, that love with­out respect was always fleet­ing — but that respect could grow into real, last­ing love. Now, of course, she was talk­ing about women.”

    In oth­er words, bet­ter to be Tony Sopra­no than Jesus Christ.

    ...

    “...bet­ter to be Tony Sopra­no than Jesus Christ...” LOL! Yep, that sounds like Christie. And at least he was just chan­nel­ing Machi­avel­li.

    It could have been worse. He could have chan­neled Joseph Goebbels. Even worse, he could have chan­neled Goebbels incom­pe­tent­ly (I’m look­ing at you Paul). You know you screwed up your attempt at the Big Lie when the pri­ma­ry thing the press talks about after your big speech is how many big lies it con­tained(even when it was unin­ten­tion­al crit­i­cism). While Paul’s big­gie-sized lies may seem like a source of con­cern for your big speech tonight, Mit­tens, don’t wor­ry. This whole con­ven­tion is about one man: Mitt Rom­ney Ronald Rea­gan. And that leaves you with one task: con­vince the coun­try that you’re “Rea­ganesque”. And YOU, Mit­tens, are an extreme­ly Rea­ganesque fel­low. So does that mean you’re lik­able? Nope. How about sin­cere? Not even remote­ly. But still Rea­ganesque? Oh yes. So don’t wor­ry, Mit­tens, you got this one. No Big Lies required.

    Ok, I may have been kind of lying at the end there. You still might want to use some Big Lies. Just keep in mind, the big­ger the bet­ter but don’t assume that any ol’ Big Lie will do. You want your lie to be “out of this world” big, but not TOO “out of this world” big. Remem­ber Mit­tens, lie, lie big, but lie wise­ly.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 30, 2012, 1:34 pm
  8. When the elites’ ass­hole ids emerge it ain’t pret­ty. Here’s a bit of advice for the Cameron gov­ern­ment: When you’re run­ning a gov­ern­ment that’s wag­ing a war on the poor, don’t use the phras­es “Best you learn your fuck­ing place,” “You don’t run this fuck­ing gov­ern­ment”, or “You’re fuck­ing plebs”. And you definet­ly don’t want to use those phase all at once. It total­ly piss­es the plebs.

    Now that Mit­ten­s’s night­mare of a cam­paign con­tin­ues to reveal itself to be a ser­i­al sur­re­al gaffe-machine, it’s a lit­tle sur­pris­ing that the Rom­ney cam­paign has­n’t some­how used a sur­ro­gate to push the above “plebs” sto­ry as part of a “hey, at least we did­n’t do that”-defense. But it’s real­ly only a lit­tle sur­pris­ing...for a lot of rea­sons.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 24, 2012, 10:18 pm
  9. Mit­tens, just a few quick thoughts: First off, great job, that was one hell of a job. Seri­ous­ly, you’ve total­ly changed the momen­tum of the race overnight and that was exact­ly what you and the GOP need­ed to do. You’ve gone from Mitt the Los­er to Mitt the Smoother in under 2 hours and that was a big frig­gin’ deal. It’s espe­cial­ly impor­tant that you were smooth because OMG did you bla­tant­ly lie a lot. That was mas­ter per­for­mance of “hid­ing the nee­dle in the needlestack”. Because your were Mitt Smooth­mey it’ll all gonna be good. Don’t lis­ten to those naysay­ers:

    TPM
    My Quick Read
    Josh Mar­shall Octo­ber 3, 2012, 11:31 PM

    Two things hap­pened in this debate. Rom­ney had the ener­gy and focus, a long series of argu­ments packed and tight to dish out in the debate. He didn’t get dis­tract­ed. He had a game plan he stuck to. What struck me a lot of times through the debate was that Oba­ma seemed pained. He didn’t seem hap­py. And peo­ple like see­ing hap­py peo­ple.

    Pres­i­dent Oba­ma almost seemed like he came to have a dis­cus­sion. But debates like these aren’t dis­cus­sions. You come in know­ing what you’re going to say. And you find ways to say it. That’s what Rom­ney did.

    Romney’s focus though came at the cost of a few key things.

    He basi­cal­ly tossed aside his own tax plan or said he would if his num­bers didn’t add up. But then he insist­ed that he could find enough loop­holes to close to afford a $5 tril­lion tax cut for upper income earn­ers. These are more num­bers on the table. That’s real­ly what most of the debate was about — bud­get num­bers. Rom­ney insist­ed with a straight face that up was down.

    ...

    The num­bers sim­ply don’t add up. Over a few news cycles that can build up real­ly fast. He says he’ll push mas­sive upper income tax cuts and those have to come at the cost of much high­er deficits or big tax hikes for mid­dle income peo­ple. His cam­paign agen­da is based on a mas­sive decep­tion.

    That’s the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty Rom­ney brings out of this debate. And it may be big­ger than peo­ple real­ize.

    Don’t lis­ten to any of that Mit­tens. You lied big repeat­ed­ly...exact­ly how you’re sup­posed to do it.

    Mitt ‘Trust Me’ Rom­ney. Nice. It’s Rove 101 but that’s still potent stuff.

    The Force is strong with this one.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 3, 2012, 11:09 pm
  10. Remem­ber: It’s not “flip-flop­pingwhen you have MPD.

    This pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment was brought to you by “Brain­wash­ing Vic­tims for Pros­per­i­ty”.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 11, 2012, 1:29 pm
  11. Mit­tens, you’re prob­a­bly super busy right now fill­ing your head with “facts” in prepa­ra­tion for the big debate tomor­row night and you don’t have any­more space left in that head of yours for any more extra­ne­ous info. But here’s one last bit of info worth cram­ming in there: It’s not just about hav­ing all the zingers and “facts” at your dis­pos­al. Some­times it’s what you don’t say that mat­ters the most. Because there are cer­tain “aha” moments you real­ly don’t want the audi­ence to have, even if only by acci­dent.

    What are some high pri­or­i­ty aha’s to avoid? Well, first off, you don’t want to remind vot­ers that your nation­al tax is now shock­ing­ly close to your per­son­al tax plan. That whole “off­shore tax haven” thing did­n’t exact­ly go over well. And it’s not exact­ly resolved. Plus, there’s the Bain “off­shore” con­nec­tion. So, unfor­tu­nate­ly, you real­ly just want to avoid talk­ing about tax­es alto­geth­er. It reminds peo­ple too much of, well, you, at this point in the cam­paign and that’s real­ly not help­ful. Mit­tens, you are unfor­tu­nate­ly a walk­ing metaphor for the elite mis­man­age­ment of our era.

    Grifter oli­garch move­ments can’t con­vince the pub­lic that we all can’t afford things like an edu­ca­tion or retire­ment if it’s con­stant­ly remind­ed of all the grift­ing. You can’t run a grifter-econ­o­my with­out mass grift­ing and real­ly con­fused vot­ers. Grifter economies don’t run them­selves. So please Mit­tens, just go out there say what you have to say, but do NOT, under any cir­cum­stances, remind any­one that this is “Mitt Rom­ney” talk­ing to them. We real­ly need this Mitt-men­tum to keep going.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 15, 2012, 8:05 am
  12. Remem­ber Mit­tens: You aren’t the “Etch-a-sketch” can­di­date. You are a bril­liant bat­tle­field tac­ti­cian and mas­ter of illu­sions. “Steady...hold...hold...hold... lie!”:

    Ana­lysts: Rom­ney bol­stered by right-wing ‘lean­ers’
    By Tom Cohen, CNN
    updat­ed 5:27 AM EDT, Tue Octo­ber 16, 2012

    Wash­ing­ton (CNN) — Maybe Mitt Rom­ney’s cam­paign team isn’t so bad after all.

    After months of crit­i­cism, much of it from fel­low Repub­li­cans, the machine man­ag­ing Rom­ney’s pres­i­den­tial bid has him gain­ing sup­port in the final weeks of the race.

    ...

    Rich Galen, a con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor who worked in the past for for­mer House Speak­er Newt Gin­grich, said the rise in Rom­ney’s favor­a­bil­i­ty num­bers was due part­ly to sup­port from right-lean­ing vot­ers who don’t like Oba­ma but weren’t yet sold on the Repub­li­can until the first debate.

    ...

    To Galen, one rea­son for the turn­around was a patient strat­e­gy by the Rom­ney cam­paign that wait­ed until the home stretch to unveil a long expect­ed shift toward the mid­dle by the can­di­date who described him­self as “severe­ly con­ser­v­a­tive” dur­ing the pri­maries to try to appeal to the right-wing base.

    “They hold their fire, hold their fire, hold their fire, and then they sprint to the fin­ish,” Galen said, refer­ring to what he called a “change in what he’s say­ing and how he’s say­ing it.”

    The shift “tells me that they had planned for a late-game surge,” he said.

    Oth­er fac­tors point to such a tac­tic. For exam­ple, Rom­ney could have used the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion, when he and the par­ty were the focus of the nation­al polit­i­cal debate, to move toward the mid­dle.

    Instead, he wait­ed until the first debate, when he also had the full force of cam­paign fund­ing avail­able after being lim­it­ed to pri­ma­ry con­tri­bu­tions only until after he for­mal­ly accept­ed the nom­i­na­tion at the Tam­pa con­ven­tion in late August.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 16, 2012, 7:52 am
  13. Hey there Mit­ty Mitt? Big Guy. Pal. Why the long face? Oh, that’s right.

    Well, Mit­tens, cheer up. You did­n’t win the “Wait Like William Wal­lace Award” for last night’s debate (that one goes to the pres­i­dent) but you were still the best Mit­tens you could be. So buck up. There’s still hope for Pres­i­dent Mit­tens in 2012. And if things don’t work out this year look at it this way: The nation isn’t ready for an Etch-a-sketch pres­i­dent. But it will be. Some­day. Romney/Cthulhu 2050! (BTW, you might need to call Madon­na)

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 17, 2012, 11:41 am
  14. One last thing bit of advice before the big debate tonight: Mit­tens, it’s clear now that you need some help with the ladies. Your wing­man just isn’t help­ing in that depart­ment. And it’s not just Paul’s “tough love” approach to the ladies that’s turn­ing them off. It’s a gen­er­al trust issue. You need to con­vince the female vot­ers — espe­cial­ly the over­worked, hyper-stressed sin­gle mom — that you will be there for them. You need to show that you care for them Mit­tens. You need to be that big glove of love and secu­ri­ty that they’re miss­ing in their lives and you need to do that tonight Mit­tens.

    Now, how are you going to emote the required lev­el of car­ing dur­ing a for­eign pol­i­cy debate? After all, many of the issues the sin­gle mom is going to be most imme­di­ate­ly con­cerned about are issues like a lack a health insur­ance, col­lege unaf­ford­abil­i­ty, and yes, cre­at­ing jobs, you’re sig­na­ture “thing”. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, these sin­gle moms want a pres­i­dent that cre­ates good jobs with things like health insur­ance, and most of them could nev­er afford a col­lege edu­ca­tion to get those “good” jobs that have become a thing of the past. You’re going to have to find a way to explain to those blue col­lar sin­gle mom — women bur­dened with rais­ing kids on their own but lack a col­lege edu­ca­tion and any mean­ing­ful long-term career prospects — how you’re going to cre­ate an econ­o­my and soci­ety that pro­vides those moms and their kids with a decent future. You’ll also need to give them some sense of long-term secu­ri­ty in an increas­ing­ly “flat” world where these sin­gle moms are going to be com­pet­ing direct­ly with under­paid for­eign man­u­al labor­ers robots capa­ble of super­hu­man feats. So, basi­cal­ly, you’re going to have to explain to the sin­gle moms how you’re going to cre­ate for them a real chance at a dig­ni­fied life.

    Well Mit­tens, you may feel like you’re in a bind when it comes to con­nect­ing to women but it’s eas­i­er than you might think! Look, just ask your­self, “what is it that women want?” Don’t actu­al­ly answer that ques­tion (that might not end well). Sin­gle moms don’t wants a man that comes into their lives and just say “change this, improve that, work hard­er and why can’t you pull your­self up from your own boot­straps”. No, they want a man that will love them just the way they are. That’s dig­ni­ty, Mit­tens. And you, Mit­tens, do love all the under­paid, over­worked, and gen­er­al­ly freaked out sin­gle moms just the way they are. The sin­gle mom with­out health insur­ance or any retire­ment fund isn’t a prob­lem soci­ety needs to face togeth­er. She’s the mod­el for you’re vision of tomor­row. She’s ... Ms. Mittmer­i­ca and she does­n’t need to change a thing. It’s the rest of the coun­try that needs to become more like her and under of Mit­tens admin­is­tra­tion, it will.

    Just fol­low this advice, Mit­tens, and you’ll have the ladies lin­ing up to vote for you on elec­tion day! And don’t pan­ic if you strike out tonight. There are oth­er ways we can cre­ate those lines...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 22, 2012, 9:09 am
  15. Well hey there Mr. Pres­i­dent. Mr. Pres­i­dent Mit­tens. No, this isn’t one of your con­fused Senor moments senior moments. You are total­ly going to be pres­i­dent. Why? Well, you lost the debate, yet still won. Your son bought a major elec­tron­ic vot­ing machine com­pa­ny and no one cares. Your own cam­paign staffer actu­al­ly told the world that you’re going to “Etch-a-sketch” the cam­paign, which you then pro­ceed­ed to do repeat­ed­ly with gus­to, and NO ONE CARES. Noth­ing you do mat­ters Mit­tens. You’re gold­en. Dude. Mit­tens. You are so total­ly the next preznit! Preznit Mit­tens! You’re going to be the coolest pres­i­dent ever!

    Now, if you real­ly want to steal the deal seal the deal you need to start walk­ing the talk. That’s right. Don’t spend these last two weeks cam­paign­ing. That’s what poten­tial losers do. It’s time for a vic­to­ry tour. An anti-apol­o­gy tour that can show the world what a Mit­tens admin­is­tra­tion would look like. And it’s not just a vic­to­ry for you. It’s a vic­to­ry for your entire base. Yes, it’s time for “Mit­t’s ‘Job Cre­ators’ No Apolo­gies Vic­to­ry Tour”. And don’t wor­ry about the logis­tics of orga­niz­ing this on such short notice. Your job-cre­at­ing friends are already on the case. No truth. No jus­tice. No account­abil­i­ty. No apolo­gies. Pure lead­er­ship:

    Bloomberg
    How to Crash an Econ­o­my and Escape the Scene
    By William D. Cohan Oct 21, 2012 8:31 PM CT

    Is it time to put the Great Reces­sion behind us?

    Not in terms of the econ­o­my — which remains bogged down with high unem­ploy­ment, low growth and oth­er after­shocks — but rather when it comes to demand­ing a rig­or­ous effort to hold Wall Street bankers, traders and exec­u­tives account­able for their role in caus­ing the finan­cial cri­sis.

    Should we just chalk it up to such sim­pli­fied expla­na­tions as “ani­mal spir­its ran amok” and “these things hap­pen occa­sion­al­ly”? Or should we con­tin­ue to expend scarce polit­i­cal and law-enforce­ment resources try­ing to get to the bot­tom of what hap­pened, and why, with a goal of hold­ing the right peo­ple legal­ly and finan­cial­ly account­able?

    It’s a conun­drum, espe­cial­ly since many Amer­i­cans have lost enthu­si­asm for the fight. But the path we ulti­mate­ly take will reveal to us and the world much about who we are as a peo­ple and what ethics, val­ues and moral­i­ty we stand for. It will also have seri­ous last­ing impli­ca­tions if we hope to avoid a rerun of what hap­pened over the last five years.

    At the moment, the mes­sage we are broad­cast­ing far and wide is: There will be no jus­tice; there will be no account­abil­i­ty; let’s return to the sta­tus quo as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.
    Mov­ing On

    There are, not sur­pris­ing­ly, pow­er­ful and artic­u­late voic­es in favor of mov­ing on. In his book “Unin­tend­ed Con­se­quences,” Edward Conard, a for­mer Bain Cap­i­tal part­ner of Mitt Rom­ney (who is will­ing to say the things Rom­ney wouldn’t dare and has giv­en $1 mil­lion to a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee that sup­ports the Rom­ney cam­paign), argues force­ful­ly that occa­sion­al mar­ket col­laps­es such as 1929 and 2008 are a small price to pay for a sys­tem of cap­i­tal allo­ca­tion that has pro­duced vast sums of wealth, extra­or­di­nary tech­ni­cal and finan­cial inno­va­tion, and an incen­tive sys­tem that rewards peo­ple hand­some­ly for tak­ing risks.

    For bet­ter or for worse, Conard writes, this is the coun­try that pro­duced Apple Inc. (AAPL), Google Inc. (GOOG) and Face­book Inc. (FB), among the most admired cor­po­ra­tions in the world. Conard believes the soon­er we get back to unteth­er­ing Wall Street’s ani­mal instincts the bet­ter. That means mod­est reg­u­la­tion, at best, and an end to any efforts at met­ing out jus­tice for those per­son­al­ly respon­si­ble for the finan­cial cri­sis because, hey, stuff hap­pens.

    Like­wise, in a recent speech at the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions in Wash­ing­ton, Jamie Dimon, the chair­man and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of JPMor­gan Chase & Co. (JPM), returned to many of his favorite themes. One was how lit­tle he cares for much of what is in the Dodd-Frank law and the pro­posed Vol­ck­er Rule which lim­its banks’ abil­i­ty to trade for their own account. He reit­er­at­ed his belief that the right kind of finan­cial reg­u­la­tion is nec­es­sary, in the vein of laws pre­vent­ing drunk dri­ving. But, like Conard, Dimon said the new reg­u­la­to­ry envi­ron­ment is hold­ing back eco­nom­ic growth.

    He said he had dis­cussed the top­ic with busi­ness own­ers and exec­u­tives around the coun­try: “They all say it’s ter­ri­ble. So it’s not just banks. We’ve done it to our­selves, folks. We’re shoot­ing our­selves in the foot and we’re doing it every day. Get rid of that wet blan­ket and this thing will take off.”

    Even Lloyd Blank­fein, the chair­man and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Gold­man Sachs Group Inc. (GS), has start­ed to make noise again after a few years of lay­ing low. As part of what the press has nick­named his No Apolo­gies Tour, which has tak­en Blank­fein to forums and media out­lets across the coun­try, he has also called for jet­ti­son­ing the wet blan­ket. “Get­ting rid of some reg­u­la­tions and rules that are impair­ing peo­ple from invest­ing vast pools of liq­uid­i­ty that are on the side­line, that are not owned by the gov­ern­ment, that are theirs to invest but are just sit­ting on the side­line” will help get the econ­o­my hum­ming again, he told CNBC.
    ...

    Sad­dle up, Mit­tens. There’s work to be done.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 23, 2012, 1:04 pm
  16. Bat­ten down the hatch­es, Mit­tens! The storm is almost upon you! No, it’s not THAT ol’ wind bag. Or that one. It’s the “Mit­t’s a lying liar” pres­sure build­ing up that you have to wor­ry about because all your hot air has caused that dan­ger­ous polit­i­cal weath­er sys­tem to pick up strength. Again. And to make mat­ters worse, there’s an old cold-heart­ed front that’s final­ly hit­ting that hot air pock­et and threat­en­ing to turn the whole thing into a full blown shit storm!

    As always, Mit­tens, stay calm. Like any storm, the most impor­tant thing to do is find shel­ter, lay low, and pre­pare your­self to deal with the after­math. First off, just don’t do any­thing that reminds the pub­lic that you’re a ser­i­al liar. That does­n’t mean you stop lying. Quite the oppo­site. But you have to be sure to avoid say­ing any­thing that reminds the peo­ple of the fact that you’re con­stant­ly lying to them. In oth­er words, you need anoth­er dis­trac­tion. And boy oh boy do you have a dis­trac­tion. Just last week you man­aged to snag a crit­i­cal endorse­ment that could be the per­fect prop for not only deflect­ing those pesky reminders that you thought pri­va­tiz­ing FEMA was a good idea but also dis­play­ing to the nation why a Pres­i­dent Mit­tens is exact­ly who we want in the White House. Acclaimed direc­tor Joss Whe­don filmed a pow­er­ful endorse­ment of a Mit­tens Pres­i­den­cy and based it on a top­ic that real­ly cuts the heart of why peo­ple sup­port you and your par­ty: our soci­ety’s deep desire to live through a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse. It’s like the rap­ture where EVERYONE gets left behind. What fun! And you, Mit­tens, are just the guy to pro­vide it.

    Now, Whe­do­n’s endorse­ment mere­ly recounts how your “gov­ern­ment is the prob­lem, let’s trust the mega-cor­po­ra­tions” approach to gov­ern­ing and gen­er­al nihilism is the type of ide­ol­o­gy that destroys infra­struc­ture, shreds the fab­ric of soci­ety, and leaves a coun­try com­plete­ly unpre­pared to deal with mass cat­a­stro­phe. In oth­er words, A Rom­ney admin­is­tra­tion will give the peo­ple just what they want, sans zom­bie. Maybe they don’t want this apoc­a­lyp­tic fate con­scious­ly, but deep down don’t we all want to be a lit­tle smarter and tougher? Sure we do, and embrac­ing a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse is exact­ly the way to do it. You know it, Joss knows it, and now it’s your job to make sure the rest of the coun­try knows that the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse is what they want too and thhat Mit­tens is the man to guidesham­ble them to that dark, decay­ing city on the hill. You already have the zom­bie vote. Now is the time to snatch that pro-zom­bie. You have the apoc­a­lyp­tic hell-scape poli­cies and the only thing miss­ing is the actu­al zom­bies.

    So how are you going to con­vince that pub­lic that you are the man to ush­er in an era when the dead rise again? Sim­ple, you just need to clear­ly explain how it is that your poli­cies will pro­vide the pub­lic not just with the death, decay, anar­chy, and gen­er­al excite­ment of real zom­bies. And not just reg­u­lar zom­bies. No, Mitt, you’re going to deliv­er SUPER-SIZED zom­bies! They’ll be run­ning to the polls to vote for you! And the best part is that you don’t even need to lie! (Note, if telling the truth might feel a lit­tle weird and unnat­ur­al at first here’s a trick: just pre­tend your lying). So here’s how you do just that in three easy steps:

    1. First, and this is the easy one, just reit­er­ate your health care plans. Make it clear that a large num­ber of vot­ers sim­ply won’t have access to the kind of health care required to addressed long-term chron­ic dis­eases in the future after you voucher­ize medicare. This is an impor­tant part of cre­at­ing the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse so don’t hold back.

    2. Next, you need to explain where the zom­bies are going to come from in the first place. Well, it just so hap­pens that recent stud­ies have come out high­light­ing the grow­ing under­stand­ing of the under­ly­ing link between dia­betes and Alzheimer’s. And what do we have lots of in this coun­try? That’s right, dia­betes. And what does Alzheimer’s do to the brain? It rots it! And what does that leave us? Super-sized dia­bet­ic zom­bies! At least there should be super-sized zom­bie in the future...as long as it’s a future with­out health­care for things like dia­betes. It’s all com­ing togeth­er Mit­tens:

    NY Times

    Mark Bittman Sep­tem­ber 25, 2012, 9:52 pm
    Is Alzheimer’s Type 3 Dia­betes?
    By MARK BITTMAN

    Just in case you need anoth­er rea­son to cut back on junk food, it now turns out that Alzheimer’s could well be a form of diet-induced dia­betes. That’s the bad news. The good news is that lay­ing off soda, dough­nuts, processed meats and fries could allow you to keep your mind intact until your body fails you.

    We used to think there were two types of dia­betes: the type you’re born with (Type 1) and the type you “get.” That’s called Type 2, and was called “adult onset” until it start­ed rav­aging kids. Type 2 is brought about by a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors, includ­ing overeat­ing, Amer­i­can-style.

    The idea that Alzheimer’s might be Type 3 dia­betes has been around since 2005, but the con­nec­tion between poor diet and Alzheimer’s is becom­ing more con­vinc­ing, as sum­ma­rized in a cov­er sto­ry in New Sci­en­tist enti­tled “Food for Thought: What You Eat May Be Killing Your Brain.” (The graph­ic — a choco­late brain with a huge piece miss­ing — is creepy. But for the record: choco­late is not the ene­my.)

    The stud­ies [1] are increas­ing­ly per­sua­sive, and unsur­pris­ing when you under­stand the role of insulin in the body. So, a brief les­son.

    We all need insulin: in non-dia­bet­ics, it’s released to help cells take in the blood sug­ar (glu­cose) they need for ener­gy. But the cells can hold only so much; excess sug­ar is first stored as glyco­gen, and — when there’s enough of that — as fat. (Blood sug­ar doesn’t come only from sug­ar, but from car­bo­hy­drates of all kinds; eas­i­ly digest­ed car­bo­hy­drates flood the blood­stream with sug­ar.) Insulin not only keeps the blood ves­sels that sup­ply the brain healthy, it also encour­ages the brain’s neu­rons to absorb glu­cose, and allows those neu­rons to change and become stronger. Low insulin lev­els in the brain mean reduced brain func­tion.

    ...

    Dia­betes caus­es com­pli­ca­tions too numer­ous to men­tion, but they include heart dis­ease, which remains our No. 1 killer. And when the cells in your brain become insulin-resis­tant, you start to lose mem­o­ry and become dis­ori­ent­ed. You even might lose aspects of your per­son­al­i­ty.

    In short, it appears, you devel­op Alzheimer’s.

    A neu­ropathol­o­gist named Alois Alzheimer noticed, over a cen­tu­ry ago, that an odd form of pro­tein was tak­ing the place of nor­mal brain cells. How those beta amy­loid plaques (as they’re called) get there has been a mys­tery. What’s becom­ing clear, how­ev­er, is that a lack of insulin — or insulin resis­tance — not only impairs cog­ni­tion but seems to be impli­cat­ed in the for­ma­tion of those plaques.

    Suzanne de la Monte, a neu­ropathol­o­gist at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, has been work­ing on these phe­nom­e­na in humans and rats. When she blocked the path of insulin to rats’ brains, their neu­rons dete­ri­o­rat­ed, they became phys­i­cal­ly dis­ori­ent­ed and their brains showed all the signs of Alzheimer’s. The fact that Alzheimer’s can be asso­ci­at­ed with low lev­els of insulin in the brain is the rea­son why increas­ing num­bers of researchers have tak­en to call­ing it Type 3 dia­betes, or dia­betes of the brain.[2]

    Let’s con­nect the dots: We know that the Amer­i­can diet is a fast track not only to obe­si­ty but to Type 2 dia­betes and oth­er pre­ventable, non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, which now account for more deaths world­wide than all oth­er caus­es com­bined.

    We also already know that peo­ple with dia­betes are at least twice as like­ly to get Alzheimer’s, and that obe­si­ty alone increas­es the risk of impaired brain func­tion.

    What’s new is the thought that while dia­betes doesn’t “cause” Alzheimer’s, they have the same root: an over con­sump­tion of those “foods” that mess with insulin’s many roles. (Genet­ics have an effect on sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty, as they appear to with all envi­ron­men­tal dis­eases.) “Sug­ar is clear­ly impli­cat­ed,” says Dr. de la Monte, “but there could be oth­er fac­tors as well, includ­ing nitrates in food.”

    If the rate of Alzheimer’s ris­es in lock­step with Type 2 dia­betes, which has near­ly tripled in the Unit­ed States in the last 40 years, we will short­ly see a dev­as­tat­ing­ly high per­cent­age of our pop­u­la­tion with not only fail­ing bod­ies but brains. Even for the lucky ones this is ter­ri­ble news, because 5.4 mil­lion Amer­i­cans (near­ly 2 per­cent, for those keep­ing score at home) have the dis­ease, the care for which — along with oth­er demen­tias — will cost around $200 bil­lion this year.

    Gee. That’s more than the $150 bil­lion we’ve been say­ing we spend annu­al­ly on obe­si­ty-relat­ed ill­ness­es. So the finan­cial cost of the obe­si­ty pan­dem­ic just more than dou­bled. More than 115 mil­lion new cas­es of Alzheimer’s are pro­ject­ed around the world in the next 40 years, and the cost is expect­ed to rise to more than a tril­lion of today’s dol­lars. (Why both­er to count? $350 bil­lion is bad enough.)

    ...

    Make those last points clear­ly Mit­tens: “If the rate of Alzheimer’s ris­es in lock­step with Type 2 dia­betes, which has near­ly tripled in the Unit­ed States in the last 40 years, we will short­ly see a dev­as­tat­ing­ly high per­cent­age of our pop­u­la­tion with not only fail­ing bod­ies but brains. Even for the lucky ones this is ter­ri­ble news, because 5.4 mil­lion Amer­i­cans (near­ly 2 per­cent, for those keep­ing score at home) have the dis­ease, the care for which — along with oth­er demen­tias — will cost around $200 bil­lion this year”. Vot­ers need to under­stand that we can’t have the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse if we have a qual­i­ty health­care sys­tem and under a Mit­tens Admin­is­tra­tion we will not have a qual­i­ty health­care sys­tem. It won’t be fis­cal­ly pos­si­ble Just keep mak­ing that point.

    3. Final­ly, in order to con­vince the pub­lic that are you, indeed, seri­ous about the long-term com­mit­ments required to ensure a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse, remind vot­ers of the GOP’s cham­pi­oning of the right of school kids to stuff them­selves with as many calo­ries as they can shove down their gul­lets for lunch. Child­hood obe­si­ty isn’t just a loom­ing mas­sive health­care prob­lem for the adults of tomor­row. It’s our surest source of future zom­bies. If you want zom­bies tomor­row you need to over­feed you kids today. That’s just com­mon sense.

    Also, don’t ever men­tion this.

    And that’s it! That’s all you need to do to win the pro-zom­bie vote, and between the pro-zom­bie vote and the cur­rent­ly-a-zom­bie vote you should be a guar­an­teed win­ner on elec­tion day. You don’t rep­re­sent the par­ty of “Let him die”. You rep­re­sent the par­ty of “Let him die so that he may rise again and chase us around and make life excit­ing”. It’s the par­ty of “Rom­ne­sia for the rest of us!” and that’s a win­ning argu­ment Mit­tens.

    One final bit of Hal­loween advice: There’s inevitably going to be a tiny seg­ment of vot­ers out there that DON’T embrace a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse. Grant­ed, they’re prob­a­bly those wuss 47-per­centers that don’t appre­ci­ate your rugged inde­pen­dence and won’t vote for you any­ways, but it’s still worth at least a lie or two to try and snag some more votes. So, for those peo­ple that aren’t keen on get­ting chased by an obese zom­bie some time in the next few decades you can also point out that you, Mit­tens, have been blaz­ing the trail on pro­vid­ing the zom­bie cure! And how’s that? Well, you know how to kill a zom­bie, don’t you Mit­tens? You need to destroy the ner­vous sys­tem of course. And what bet­ter way to destroy an entire zom­bie hoard than with a lit­tle microbe that will do just that: attack and destroy the zom­bies’ brains. And, oh look, it just so hap­pens that a cer­tain for­mer gov­er­nor inex­plic­a­bly allowed a cer­tain com­pa­ny to secret­ly mass pro­duce a cer­tain microbe that attacks ner­vous sys­tems. Don’t wor­ry Mit­tens. Sandy has noth­ing on you. Noth­ing.

    Mit­tens Rom­ney: Zom­bie father. Zom­bie hunter. Zom­bie Pres­i­dent.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 31, 2012, 3:04 pm
  17. Ok, Mit­tens, I can’t believe I have to remind you of this at this point in the race, but here goes....

    Mit­tens, you don’t get to pass poli­cies that entrap and abuse the nation’s chil­dren until AFTER you win! I guess that was­n’t obvi­ous. *facepalm*

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 5, 2012, 10:44 am
  18. Well, I guess this is it, Mit­tens. It’s shock­ing, I know. But Mit­tens, also know this:

    It’s not your fault.

    It’s not your fault.

    It’s not your fault. Ok, that last one might actu­al­ly be your fault...for a vari­ety of rea­sons. Not that it should have been a prob­lem, but, you know, a soci­ety’s col­lec­tive moral fail­ings tend to skew elec­toral out­comes.

    Any­ways, to sum­ma­rize, it’s Kar­l’s fault
    *hugs*

    Seri­ous­ly Mit­tens, in ret­ro­spect, there was just no way you could win this elec­tion for rea­sons far beyond your con­trol. Sure, maybe you could have shown some leg every once in a while, but it’s not like you did­n’t try. Let’s face it, you could have been run­ning against Beelze­bub and you still would have lost!

    Let’s not focus on the past. You may not be the White Horse can­di­date, but you were my White Horse can­di­date, Mit­tens, and that’s how I’ll always remem­ber you: that strange stranger that rode into town, dropped a ton of cash, and then gal­loped off into the sun­set. Good times, Mit­tens, good times.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 9, 2012, 12:26 am
  19. bril­liant .......... sim­ply bril­liant

    Posted by latitude38 | November 12, 2012, 8:42 am

Post a comment