Patterico's Pontifications

3/22/2009

TARP Funds Used for Campaign Donations

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 11:57 pm



Congresscritters are getting campaign contributions paid with bailout funds.

Hope and change!

Distracting distractions and the people who love them

Filed under: General — Karl @ 10:31 am



[Posted by Karl]

The other day, Michelle Malkin urged readers against being distracted by the $165 million in taxpayer-backed bonuses for AIG employees, in light of the trillions in ongoing bailout costs, as well as the $1.5 trillion the Fed announced it is printing this week and dumping from helicopters.

The independent thinkers on the JournoList coincidentally agreed, though only after realizing that the Obama Administraton’s botched handling of the issue could damage The One politically.

Left unasked in all of this is how stories like the AIG bonuses catch fire in the public imagination.

One answer is that the AIG bonus story is “made to stick” — simple, surprising, emotional etc. (okay, maybe not simple, but simple to sell).  Storytelling is an effective method of getting messages to stick, one to which the Left frequently resorts.  It is why the Democrats name bills after Lilly Ledbetter, Ryan White and so on — and wheel out Michael J. Fox to flack for funding embryonic stem cell research, or 12-year-old Graeme Frost to deliver an address on expanding S-CHIP.  Conversely, it is there in the Alinsky-ite formula of “Pick the target, Freeze it, Personalize it and Polarize it.”  It is there in Joe Stalin’s observation that “a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

On the road back to a majority, the Right might consider trying to become better storytellers and better debunkers of the Left’s stories.

–Karl

Three Oakland Police Officers Killed, Another in Grave Condition

Filed under: Crime — Jack Dunphy @ 12:07 am



[Guest post by Jack Dunphy]

The news story is here. Sergeants Mark Dunakin, Ervin Romans, and Daniel Sakai were shot to death on Saturday. Officer John Hege is reported to be in grave condition at an Oakland hospital.

Before I learned a thing about the man who had shot these officers, I told my wife he was most likely an ex-con who had shot people before. And sure enough, police have identified the shooter as Lovelle Mixon, 26, who was on parole for assault with a deadly weapon. He was shot and killed in a gunfight with SWAT officers.

May the angels receive those three brave men and guard over their comrade who yet clings to life.

And may Mixon burn in Hell.

–Jack Dunphy

UPDATE: Officer Hege was pronounced dead today at noon.


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