Posts Tagged ‘CARLY FIORINA’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Humor, Politics, Social commentary on September 11, 2025 at 12:10 am
Pulitzer-Prize winning author David Halberstam summed up the effectiveness of 1950s Republicans’ smear tactics in his monumental 1972 study of the origins of the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest:
“But if they did not actually stick, and they did not, [Joseph McCarthy’s] charges had an equally damaging effect: They poisoned. Where there was smoke, there must be fire. He wouldn’t be saying these things [voters reasoned] unless there was something to it.”
Joseph McCarthy
As a whole, Democrats have proven indifferent to or ignorant of the power of effective language.
Donald Trump solicited Russian Communist aid to win the Presidency in 2016 and Chinese Communist aid to retain it in 2020.
Yet Democrats refused to directly accuse him of treason, as in:
- “TrumPutin”
- “Commissar-in-Chief”
- “Putin’s Poodle”
- “Red Donald”
- “Putin’s Puppet”
The Kremlin
Similarly, the news media has not dared state the obvious: That Trump moved boxes of classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate to sell them to America’s enemies in exchange for huge sums to pay his upcoming legal bills.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump repeatedly lied about its lethality and opposed the use of masks and social distancing to combat it. As a result, 400,000 Americans had died by the time he left office.
Yet no Democrat has dared label him “Coronavirus-in-Chief.”
Nor has the news media directly held him accountable for those deaths.
Tyrants are conspicuously vulnerable to ridicule. Yet in this YouTube-obsessed age, Democrats have proven unable or unwilling to make use of this powerful weapon.
For example, Trump’s well-established “bromance” with Vladimir Putin could be turned into a parody of the famous song, “Johnny B. Good”:
Way back inside the Kremlin where the lights glow red
There ruled a man named Putin who would poison you dead.
He came up with a plan to make his Russia great
And all it took was bribes and Republican hate.
And Trumpy was a man who couldn’t read or spell
But he could sell out his land just like he’s ringing a bell.
Many of Trump’s fiercest defenders in the House and Senate have taken “campaign contributions” (i.e., bribes) from Russian oligarchs linked to Putin. They could be pointedly attacked by turning the Muppet song, “The Rainbow Connection,” into “The Russian Connection.”
Why are there so many tales about Russians
And Right-wingers taking bribes?
Russians are Commies and have lots of rubles
For traitors with something to hide.
So I’ve been told and some choose to believe it
It’s clear as the old KGB.
Someday we’ll find it
The Russian Connection—
The bribers, the traitors—you’ll see.
Kristi Noem, Trump’s Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, became infamous in 2024 for bragging about shooting her 14-month-old wirehair pointer, “Cricket.” A parody of Marty Robbins’ hit “Big Iron” could easily be turned into a musical indictment of animal cruelty:
Now the woman started talking
Made it plain to folks around
Was a South Dakota Governor
Wouldn’t be too long in town.
She came here to take a doggie
On a hunt or shoot it dead.
And she said it didn’t matter
She was after Cricket’s head—
After Cricket’s head.
A continuing theme among Republican politicians is that they are paragons of religious virtue, while Democrats are champions of Satan.
Yet Democrats have done nothing to publicize such truths as:
- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is a serial adulterer.
- Former Speaker Dennis Hastert is a convicted sodomizer of teenage boys.
- Josh Duggar, a Right-wing star of the high-rated “reality” series, 19 Kids and Counting, has been sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment for possessing child pornography.
- Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, has boasted: “Marriage is a wonderful thing and I’m a firm believer in it.” Yet she engaged in open affairs with at least two members of her local gym—for which Perry Greene has divorced her.
Most Americans don’t follow political news closely—and know nothing of such revelations.
Moreover, Democrats need to repeatedly advertise such facts—to counter Republicans’ constant claims of being the moral arbiters of America. And this needs to be done through major advertising campaigns on TV—where most Americans get their news about politics.
Throughout 2016, liberals celebrated on Facebook and Twitter the “certain” Presidency of former First Lady Hillary Clinton. They were cheered on by First Lady Michelle Obama’s naive advice on political tactics: “When they go, we go high.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump planned to subvert the 2016 election by Russian Intelligence agents and millions of Russian trolls flooding the Internet with legitimately fake news.
History has proven which tactics proved superior.
It’s long past time for Democrats to accept that they—and the country’s democratic traditions—are engaged in a death-match with their Republican opponents.
Only certain defeat is guaranteed by adhering to Marquis of Queensbury when your enemy is using brass knuckles.
For Democrats to win elective victories and preserve America’s democratic traditions, they must find their own George Pattons to confront the Waffen-SS generals among Republican ranks.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on September 10, 2025 at 12:18 am
Donald Trump is furious. The man who sticks humiliating nicknames on people he hates has had one stuck on him: TACO.
Or: “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
The TACO nickname was coined in May, 2025, by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong. It refers to Trump’s practice of spooking the market with his tariff threats before ultimately backing off, prompting them to rebound.
The nickname went national on May 28, when CNBC’s Megan Casella alluded to Trump’s repeated tariff threats while asking him about the “TACO trade” theory:
“Mr. President, Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the TACO trade. They’re saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats and that’s why markets are higher this week. What’s your response to that?”
“I’ve never heard that,” said Trump. “You mean because I reduced China from 145 percent that I set down to 100, and then down to another number, and I said you have to open up your whole country? And because I gave the European Union a 50 percent tax—tariff—and they called up and said, ‘Please let’s meet right now.'”
And then came the explosion: “But don’t ever say what you said. That’s a nasty question. To me, that’s the nastiest question.”
According to an unidentified source for CNN: “It clearly bothered him, primarily because it demonstrated a lack of understanding about how he actually utilizes those threats for leverage. But obviously he’s not a guy who looks kindly on weakness, so the idea anyone would think that with respect to his actions isn’t received well.”
Republicans generally—and Trump in particular—aren’t used to being insulted. This is primarily because Democrats lack the courage and/or imagination to fight fire with fire.
For example:
On May 27, 2016, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks analyzed the use of insults by then-Republican Presidential front-runner Donald Trump. He did so with his then-counterpart, liberal syndicated columnist, Mark Shields, on The PBS Newshour.
DAVID BROOKS: “Trump, for all his moral flaws, is a marketing genius. And you look at what he does. He just picks a word and he attaches it to a person. Little Marco [Rubio], Lyin’ Ted [Cruz], Crooked Hillary [Clinton].
“And that’s a word. And that’s how marketing works. It’s a simple, blunt message, but it gets under.
“It sticks, and it diminishes. And so it has been super effective for him, because he knows how to do that. And she [Hillary Clinton] just comes with, ‘Oh, he’s divisive.’
“These are words that are not exciting people. And her campaign style has gotten, if anything…a little more stagnant and more flat.”
Donald Trump
MARK SHIELDS: “Donald Trump gratuitously slandered Ted Cruz’s wife. He libeled Ted Cruz’s father for being potentially part of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of the president of the United States, suggesting that he was somehow a fellow traveler in that.
“This is a libel. You don’t get over it….”
Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only Presidential candidate who proved unable to cope with Trump’s gift for insult. His targets—and insults—included:
- Former Texas Governor Rick Perry: “Wears glasses to seem smart.”
- Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush: “Low Energy Jeb.”
- Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders: “Crazy Bernie.”
- Ohio Governor John Kasich: “Mathematically dead and totally desperate.”
Trump has reserved his most insulting words for women. For example:
- Carly Fiorina, his Republican primary competitor: “Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?”
- Megyn Kelly, Fox News reporter: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
- California Rep. Maxine Waters: “An extremely low IQ person.”
- Then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “MS-13 Lover Nancy Pelosi.”
Only one candidate has shown the ability to rattle Trump: Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
As Mark Shields noted on The PBS Newshour.
“Elizabeth Warren gets under Donald Trump’s skin. And I think she’s been the most effective adversary. I think she’s done more to unite the Democratic party than either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.”
Among her attacks:
- “Donald Trump was drooling over the idea of a housing meltdown because it meant he could buy up a bunch more property on the cheap. What kind of a man roots for people to lose their jobs and be kicked out of their houses? What kind of a man does that?”
- “When Donald Trump says ‘great,’ I ask: ‘great for who, exactly? When Donald says he’ll make America great, he means greater for rich guys just like Donald Trump. That’s who Donald Trump is. … And you have to watch out for him, because he’ll crush you into the dirt.”
- ”Donald Trump is a bigger, uglier threat every day that goes by – and it’s time for decent people everywhere— Republican, Democrat, Independent—to say, ‘No more Donald.'”
Words are weapons—or can be, if used properly.
Republicans learned this truth after World War II.
- Richard Nixon became a United States Senator in 1950 by attacking Helen Gahagen Douglas as “The Pink Lady.”
- From 1950 onward, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and other Red-baiting Republicans essentially paralyzed the Democratic party through such slanderous terms as “Comsymps,” “fellow-travelers” and “Fifth Amendment Communists.”
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BERNIE SANDERS, BUZZFEED, CARLY FIORINA, CBS NEWS, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DAVID BROOKS, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DENNIS HASTERT, DONALD TRUMP, DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, ELIZABETH WARREN, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HILLARY CLINTON, JEB BUSH, JOHN KASICH, JOHNNY B. GOOD (SONG), JOSEPH MCCARTHY, JOSH DUGGAR, LIBERALS, MARCO RUBIO, MARJORIE TAYOR GREENE, MARK SHIELDS, MAXINE WATERS, MEGYN KELLY, MICHELLE OBAMA, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NANCY PELOSI, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NEWT GINGRICH, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RICK PERRY, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLANDER, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE RAINBOW CONNECTION (SONG), THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, X, YOUTUBE
In Bureaucracy, History, Humor, Politics, Social commentary on March 25, 2025 at 12:37 am
Words are weapons—or can be, if used properly.
Republicans learned this truth after World War II.
- Richard Nixon became a United States Senator in 1950 by attacking Helen Gahagen Douglas as “The Pink Lady.”
- From 1950 onward, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and other Red-baiting Republicans essentially paralyzed the Democratic party through such slanderous terms as “Comsymps,” “fellow-travelers” and “Fifth Amendment Communists.”
Pulitzer-Prize winning author David Halberstam summed up the effectiveness of such tactics in his monumental study of the origins of the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest:
“But if they did not actually stick, and they did not, [Joseph McCarthy’s] charges had an equally damaging effect: They poisoned. Where there was smoke, there must be fire. He wouldn’t be saying these things [voters reasoned] unless there was something to it.”
Joseph McCarthy
Democrats have generally proven ignorant of or indifferent to the power of effective language.
Donald Trump solicited Russian Communist aid to win the Presidency in 2016. He solicited aid from Chinese Communists to retain it in 2020.
He attacked countless Americans and world leaders—including those presiding over America’s NATO alliance. But he never even criticized Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Yet even with such clear-cut evidence, Democrats refused to directly accuse him of treason, as in:
- “TrumPutin”
- “Commissar-in-Chief”
- “El Dunce”
- “Predator of the United States”
- “Carrot Caligula”
- “Red Donald”
- “DJTraitor”
The Kremlin
Similarly, Trump got a free pass on treason from the news media. None dared suggest the obvious: That he moved boxes of classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate to sell them to America’s enemies in exchange for huge sums to pay his upcoming legal bills.
While Trump branded the news media “the enemy of the people,” no media outlet had the courage to hurl the same charge at him.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump repeatedly lied about its lethality and opposed the use of masks and social distancing to combat it. As a result, 400,000 Americans had died by the time he left office.
Yet no Democrat dared label him “Coronavirus-in-Chief.”
Nor has the news media directly held him accountable for those deaths.
Tyrants are conspicuously vulnerable to ridicule. Yet here, too, Democrats proved unable or unwilling to make use of this powerful weapon.
In this YouTube-obsessed age, Democrats could effectively assail Trump with a series of ridiculing videos. For example, Trump’s well-established “bromance” with Putin could be turned into a parody of the famous song, “Johnny B. Good”:
Way back inside the Kremlin where the lights glow red
There ruled a man named Putin who would poison you dead.
He came up with a plan to make his Russia great
And all it took was bribes and Republican hate.
And Trumpy was a man who couldn’t read or spell
But he could sell out his land just like he’s ringing a bell.
Many of Trump’s fiercest defenders in the House and Senate have taken “campaign contributions” (i.e., bribes) from Russian oligarchs linked to Putin. They could be pointedly attacked by turning the Muppet song, “The Rainbow Connection,” into “The Russian Connection.”
Why are there so many tales about Russians
And Right-wingers taking bribes?
Russians are Commies and have lots of rubles
For traitors with something to hide.
So I’ve been told and some choose to believe it
It’s clear as the old KGB.
Someday we’ll find it
The Russian Connection—
The bribers, the traitors—you’ll see.
A continuing theme among Republican politicians is that they are paragons of religious virtue, while Democrats are champions of Satan.
Yet Democrats have done nothing to publicize such truths as:
- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is a serial adulterer.
- Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert is a convicted sodomizer of teenage boys.
- Josh Duggar, a Right-wing star of the high-rated “reality” series, 19 Kids and Counting, has been sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment for possessing child pornography.
- Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has boasted: “Marriage is a wonderful thing and I’m a firm believer in it.” Yet she engaged in open affairs with at least two members of her local gym—for which Perry Greene divorced her.
Most Americans don’t follow political news closely—and know nothing of such revelations.
Thus, Democrats must repeatedly advertise such facts—to counter Republicans’ constant claims of being the moral arbiters of America. And this needs to be done through major advertising campaigns on TV—where most Americans get their news about politics.
Throughout 2016, liberals celebrated on Facebook and Twitter the “certain” Presidency of former First Lady Hillary Clinton. They were cheered on by First Lady Michelle Obama’s naive advice on political tactics: “When they go low, we go high.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump planned to subvert the 2016 election by Russian Intelligence agents and millions of Russian trolls flooding the Internet with legitimately fake news.
History has proven which tactics proved superior.
Many Democrats echo former President Dwight D. Eisenhower on Joseph McCarthy: “I’m not going to get into the gutter with that man.”
The result: A series of lost elections.
Democrats need to accept that they—and the country’s democratic traditions—are engaged in a death-match with their Republican enemies.
Only certain defeat is guaranteed by adhering to Marquis of Queensbury when your enemy is using brass knuckles.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BERNIE SANDERS, BUZZFEED, CARLY FIORINA, CBS NEWS, CNN, COMMUNISM, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DAILY KOZ, DAVID BROOKS, DAVID HALBERSTAM, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DEMOCRATS, DENNIS HASTERT, DONALD TRUMP, ELIZABETH WARREN, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HELEN GAHAGAN DOUGLAS, HILLARY CLINTON, JEB BUSH, JOHN KASICH, JOSEPH MCCARTHY, JOSEPH R. MCCARTHY, JOSH DUGGAR, LANGUAGE, LIBERALS, MARCO RUBIO, MARJORIE TAYOR GREENE, MARK SHIELDS, MAXINE WATERS, MEGYN KELLY, MICHELLE OBAMA, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NANCY PELOSI, NATO, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NEWT GINGRICH, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RICHARD NIXON, RICK PERRY, RUSSIA, SALON, SATIRE, SEATTLE TIMES, SLANDER, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, X, YOUTUBE
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on March 24, 2025 at 1:00 am
In 1996, Newt Gingrich, then Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, wrote a memo that encouraged Republicans to “speak like Newt.”
Entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” it urged Republicans to attack Democrats with such words as “corrupt,” “selfish,” “destructive,” “hypocrisy,” “liberal,” “sick,” and “traitors.”
Even worse, Gingrich encouraged the news media to disseminate such accusations. Among his suggestions:
- “Fights make news.”
- Create a “shield issue” to deflect criticism: “A shield issue is, just, you know, your opponent is going to attack you as lacking compassion. You better…show up in the local paper holding a baby in the neonatal center.”
Newt Gingrich
This is in line with the advice of Florentine statesman Niccolo Machiavelli: “For men in general judge more by the eyes than by the hands; for everyone can see, but very few have to feel. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are….”
In the memo, Gingrich advised:
“….In the video “We are a Majority,” Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning.
“…We believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases….
“This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media.
“The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.”
Here is the list of words Gingrich urged his followers to use in attacking “the opponent, their record, proposals and their party”:
- abuse of power
- anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
- betray
- bizarre
- bosses
- bureaucracy
- cheat
- coercion
- “compassion” is not enough
- collapse(ing)
- consequences
- corrupt
- corruption
- criminal rights
- crisis
- cynicism
- decay
- deeper
- destroy
- destructive
- devour
- disgrace
- endanger
- excuses
- failure (fail)
- greed
- hypocrisy
- ideological
- impose
- incompetent
- insecure
- insensitive
|
- intolerant
- liberal
- lie
- limit(s)
- machine
- mandate(s)
- obsolete
- pathetic
- patronage
- permissive attitude
- pessimistic
- punish (poor …)
- radical
- red tape
- self-serving
- selfish
- sensationalists
- shallow
- shame
- sick
- spend(ing)
- stagnation
- status quo
- steal
- taxes
- they/them
- threaten
- traitors
- unionized
- urgent (cy)
- waste
- welfare
|
And to the dismay of both Republicans and Democrats, Donald Trump has learned his lessons well.
On May 27, 2016, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks analyzed the use of insults by Republican Presidential front-runner Donald Trump. He did so with his counterpart, liberal syndicated columnist, Mark Shields, on The PBS Newshour.
DAVID BROOKS: “Trump, for all his moral flaws, is a marketing genius. And you look at what he does. He just picks a word and he attaches it to a person. Little Marco [Rubio], Lyin’ Ted [Cruz], Crooked Hillary [Clinton].
“And that’s a word. And that’s how marketing works. It’s a simple, blunt message, but it gets under.
“It sticks, and it diminishes. And so it has been super effective for him, because he knows how to do that. And she [Hillary Clinton] just comes with, ‘Oh, he’s divisive.’
“These are words that are not exciting people. And her campaign style has gotten, if anything…a little more stagnant and more flat.”
Donald Trump
MARK SHIELDS: “Donald Trump gratuitously slandered Ted Cruz’s wife. He libeled Ted Cruz’s father for being potentially part of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of the president of the United States, suggesting that he was somehow a fellow traveler in that.
“This is a libel. You don’t get over it….”
Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only Presidential candidate who proved unable to cope with Trump’s gift for insult. His targets—and insults—included:
- Former Texas Governor Rick Perry: “Wears glasses to seem smart.”
- Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush: “Low Energy Jeb.”
- Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders: “Crazy Bernie.”
- Ohio Governor John Kasich: “Mathematically dead and totally desperate.”
His victims, in turn, struggled to respond. Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio tried to out-insult Trump at the Republican Presidential candidates’ debate on March 3, 2016.
“I call him Little Marco. Little Marco. Hello, Marco,” said Trump.
Rubio retaliated with “Big Donald.” Since Americans generally believe that “bigger is better,” this was a poor choice of insult.
A better choice, given Trump’s “bromance” with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin: “Red Donald.”
Trump has reserved his most insulting words for women. For example:
- Carly Fiorina, his Republican primary competitor: “Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?”
- Megyn Kelly, Fox News reporter: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
- California Rep. Maxine Waters: “An extremely low IQ person.”
- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “MS-13 Lover Nancy Pelosi.”
Only one candidate has shown the ability to rattle Trump: Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
As Mark Shields noted on The PBS Newshour.
“Elizabeth Warren gets under Donald Trump’s skin. And I think she’s been the most effective adversary.”
And David Brooks offered: “And so the tactics…is either you do what Elizabeth Warren has done, like full-bore negativity, that kind of [get] under the skin, or try to ridicule him and use humor.”
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BERNIE SANDERS, BUZZFEED, CARLY FIORINA, CBS NEWS, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DAVID BROOKS, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DENNIS HASTERT, DONALD TRUMP, DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, ELIZABETH WARREN, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HILLARY CLINTON, JEB BUSH, JOHN KASICH, JOHNNY B. GOOD (SONG), JOSEPH MCCARTHY, JOSH DUGGAR, LIBERALS, MARCO RUBIO, MARJORIE TAYOR GREENE, MARK SHIELDS, MAXINE WATERS, MEGYN KELLY, MICHELLE OBAMA, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NANCY PELOSI, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NEWT GINGRICH, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RICK PERRY, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLANDER, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE RAINBOW CONNECTION (SONG), THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, X, YOUTUBE
In Bureaucracy, History, Humor, Politics, Social commentary on March 12, 2024 at 12:50 am
Words are weapons—or can be, if used properly.
Republicans learned this truth after World War II.
- Richard Nixon became a United States Senator in 1950 by attacking Helen Gahagen Douglas as “The Pink Lady.”
- From 1954 onward, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and other Red-baiting Republicans essentially paralyzed the Democratic party through such slanderous terms as “Comsymps,” “fellow-travelers” and “Fifth Amendment Communists.”
Pulitzer-Prize winning author David Halberstam summed up the effectiveness of such tactics in his monumental study of the origins of the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest:
“But if they did not actually stick, and they did not, [Joseph McCarthy’s] charges had an equally damaging effect: They poisoned. Where there was smoke, there must be fire. He wouldn’t be saying these things [voters reasoned] unless there was something to it.”
Joseph McCarthy
Democrats have generally proven indifferent to or ignorant of the power of effective language.
Donald Trump solicited Russian Communist aid to win the Presidency in 2016. He solicited aid from Chinese Communists to retain it in 2020.
He attacked countless Americans and world leaders—including those presiding over America’s NATO alliance. But he never even criticized Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Yet even with such clear-cut evidence, Democrats refused to directly accuse him of treason, as in:
- “TrumPutin”
- “Commissar-in-Chief”
- “El Dunce”
- “Predator of the United States”
- “Carrot Caligula”
- “Red Donald”
- “DJTraitor”
The Kremlin
Similarly, Trump got a free pass on treason from the news media. None dared suggest the obvious: That he moved boxes of classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate to sell them to America’s enemies in exchange for huge sums to pay his upcoming legal bills.
While Trump branded the news media “the enemy of the people,” no media outlet had the courage to hurl the same charge at him.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump repeatedly lied about its lethality and opposed the use of masks and social distancing to combat it. As a result, 400,000 Americans had died by the time he left office.
Yet no Democrat dared label him “Coronavirus-in-Chief.”
Nor has the news media directly held him accountable for those deaths.
Tyrants are conspicuously vulnerable to ridicule. Yet here, too, Democrats proved unable or unwilling to make use of this powerful weapon.
In this YouTube-obsessed age, Democrats could effectively assail Trump with a series of ridiculing videos. For example, Trump’s well-established “bromance” with Putin could be turned into a parody of the famous song, “Johnny B. Good”:
Way back inside the Kremlin where the lights glow red
There ruled a man named Putin who would poison you dead.
He came up with a plan to make his Russia great
And all it took was bribes and Republican hate.
And Trumpy was a man who couldn’t read or spell
But he could sell out his land just like he’s ringing a bell.
Many of Trump’s fiercest defenders in the House and Senate have taken “campaign contributions” (i.e., bribes) from Russian oligarchs linked to Putin. They could be pointedly attacked by turning the Muppet song, “The Rainbow Connection,” into “The Russian Connection.”
Why are there so many tales about Russians
And Right-wingers taking bribes?
Russians are Commies and have lots of rubles
For traitors with something to hide.
So I’ve been told and some choose to believe it
It’s clear as the old KGB.
Someday we’ll find it
The Russian Connection—
The bribers, the traitors—you’ll see.
A continuing theme among Republican politicians is that they are paragons of religious virtue, while Democrats are champions of Satan.
Yet Democrats have done nothing to publicize such truths as:
- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is a serial adulterer.
- Former Speaker Dennis Hastert is a convicted sodomizer of teenage boys.
- Josh Duggar, a Right-wing star of the high-rated “reality” series, 19 Kids and Counting, has been sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment for possessing child pornography.
- Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has boasted: “Marriage is a wonderful thing and I’m a firm believer in it.” Yet she engaged in open affairs with at least two members of her local gym—for which Perry Greene divorced her.
Most Americans don’t follow political news closely—and know nothing of such revelations.
Thus, Democrats must repeatedly advertise such facts—to counter Republicans’ constant claims of being the moral arbiters of America. And this needs to be done through major advertising campaigns on TV—where most Americans get their news about politics.
Throughout 2016, liberals celebrated on Facebook and Twitter the “certain” Presidency of former First Lady Hillary Clinton. They were cheered on by First Lady Michelle Obama’s naive advice on political tactics: “When they go, we go high.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump planned to subvert the 2016 election by Russian Intelligence agents and millions of Russian trolls flooding the Internet with legitimately fake news.
History has proven which tactics proved superior.
Many Democrats echo former President Dwight D. Eisenhower on Joseph McCarthy: “I’m not going to get into the gutter with that man.”
The result: A series of lost elections.
Democrats need to accept that they—and the country’s democratic traditions—are engaged in a death-match with their Republican opponents.
Only certain defeat is guaranteed by adhering to Marquis of Queensbury when your enemy is using brass knuckles.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BERNIE SANDERS, BUZZFEED, CARLY FIORINA, CBS NEWS, CNN, COMMUNISM, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DAILY KOZ, DAVID BROOKS, DAVID HALBERSTAM, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DEMOCRATS, DENNIS HASTERT, DONALD TRUMP, ELIZABETH WARREN, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HELEN GAHAGAN DOUGLAS, HILLARY CLINTON, JEB BUSH, JOHN KASICH, JOSEPH MCCARTHY, JOSEPH R. MCCARTHY, JOSH DUGGAR, LANGUAGE, LIBERALS, MARCO RUBIO, MARJORIE TAYOR GREENE, MARK SHIELDS, MAXINE WATERS, MEGYN KELLY, MICHELLE OBAMA, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NANCY PELOSI, NATO, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NEWT GINGRICH, NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RICHARD NIXON, RICK PERRY, RUSSIA, SALON, SATIRE, SEATTLE TIMES, SLANDER, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, X, YOUTUBE
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on March 11, 2024 at 12:19 am
In 1996, Newt Gingrich, then Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, wrote a memo that encouraged Republicans to “speak like Newt.”
Entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” it urged Republicans to attack Democrats with such words as “corrupt,” “selfish,” “destructive,” “hypocrisy,” “liberal,” “sick,” and “traitors.”
Even worse, Gingrich encouraged the news media to disseminate such accusations. Among his suggestions:
- “Fights make news.”
- Create a “shield issue” to deflect criticism: “A shield issue is, just, you know, your opponent is going to attack you as lacking compassion. You better…show up in the local paper holding a baby in the neonatal center.”
Newt Gingrich
This is in line with the advice of Florentine statesman Niccolo Machiavelli: “For men in general judge more by the eyes than by the hands; for everyone can see, but very few have to feel. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are….”
In the memo, Gingrich advised:
“….In the video “We are a Majority,” Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning.
“…We believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases….
“This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media.
“The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.”
Here is the list of words Gingrich urged his followers to use in attacking “the opponent, their record, proposals and their party”:
- abuse of power
- anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
- betray
- bizarre
- bosses
- bureaucracy
- cheat
- coercion
- “compassion” is not enough
- collapse(ing)
- consequences
- corrupt
- corruption
- criminal rights
- crisis
- cynicism
- decay
- deeper
- destroy
- destructive
- devour
- disgrace
- endanger
- excuses
- failure (fail)
- greed
- hypocrisy
- ideological
- impose
- incompetent
- insecure
- insensitive
|
- intolerant
- liberal
- lie
- limit(s)
- machine
- mandate(s)
- obsolete
- pathetic
- patronage
- permissive attitude
- pessimistic
- punish (poor …)
- radical
- red tape
- self-serving
- selfish
- sensationalists
- shallow
- shame
- sick
- spend(ing)
- stagnation
- status quo
- steal
- taxes
- they/them
- threaten
- traitors
- unionized
- urgent (cy)
- waste
- welfare
|
And to the dismay of both Republicans and Democrats, Donald Trump has learned his lessons well.
On May 27, 2016, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks analyzed the use of insults by Republican Presidential front-runner Donald Trump. He did so with his counterpart, liberal syndicated columnist, Mark Shields, on The PBS Newshour.
DAVID BROOKS: “Trump, for all his moral flaws, is a marketing genius. And you look at what he does. He just picks a word and he attaches it to a person. Little Marco [Rubio], Lyin’ Ted [Cruz], Crooked Hillary [Clinton].
“And that’s a word. And that’s how marketing works. It’s a simple, blunt message, but it gets under.
“It sticks, and it diminishes. And so it has been super effective for him, because he knows how to do that. And she [Hillary Clinton] just comes with, ‘Oh, he’s divisive.’
“These are words that are not exciting people. And her campaign style has gotten, if anything…a little more stagnant and more flat.”
Donald Trump
MARK SHIELDS: “Donald Trump gratuitously slandered Ted Cruz’s wife. He libeled Ted Cruz’s father for being potentially part of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of the president of the United States, suggesting that he was somehow a fellow traveler in that.
“This is a libel. You don’t get over it….”
Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only Presidential candidate who proved unable to cope with Trump’s gift for insult. His targets—and insults—included:
- Former Texas Governor Rick Perry: “Wears glasses to seem smart.”
- Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush: “Low Energy Jeb.”
- Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders: “Crazy Bernie.”
- Ohio Governor John Kasich: “Mathematically dead and totally desperate.”
His victims, in turn, struggled to respond. Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio tried to out-insult Trump at the Republican Presidential candidates’ debate on March 3, 2016.
“I call him Little Marco. Little Marco. Hello, Marco,” said Trump.
Rubio retaliated with “Big Donald.” Since Americans generally believe that “bigger is better,” this was a poor choice of insult.
A better choice, given Trump’s “bromance” with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin: “Red Donald.”
Trump has reserved his most insulting words for women. For example:
- Carly Fiorina, his Republican primary competitor: “Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?”
- Megyn Kelly, Fox News reporter: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
- California Rep. Maxine Waters: “An extremely low IQ person.”
- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “MS-13 Lover Nancy Pelosi.”
Only one candidate has shown the ability to rattle Trump: Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
As Mark Shields noted on The PBS Newshour.
“Elizabeth Warren gets under Donald Trump’s skin. And I think she’s been the most effective adversary.”
And David Brooks offered: “And so the tactics…is either you do what Elizabeth Warren has done, like full-bore negativity, that kind of [get] under the skin, or try to ridicule him and use humor.”
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BERNIE SANDERS, BUZZFEED, CARLY FIORINA, CBS NEWS, CNN, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DAVID BROOKS, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DENNIS HASTERT, DONALD TRUMP, ELIZABETH WARREN, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HILLARY CLINTON, JEB BUSH, JOHN KASICH, JOHNNY B. GOOD (SONG), JOSEPH MCCARTHY, JOSH DUGGAR, LIBERALS, MARCO RUBIO, MARJORIE TAYOR GREENE, MARK SHIELDS, MAXINE WATERS, MEGYN KELLY, MICHELLE OBAMA, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NANCY PELOSI, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NEWT GINGRICH, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RICK PERRY, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLANDER, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE RAINBOW CONNECTION (SONG), THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, YOUTUBE
In Bureaucracy, History, Humor, Politics, Social commentary on October 27, 2022 at 12:10 am
Words are weapons—or can be, if used properly.
Republicans learned this truth after World War II.
- Richard Nixon became a United States Senator in 1950 by attacking Helen Gahagen Douglas as “The Pink Lady.”
- from 1954 onward, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and other Red-baiting Republicans essentially paralyzed the Democratic party through such slanderous terms as “Comsymps,” “fellow-travelers” and “Fifth Amendment Communists.”
Pulitzer-Prize winning author David Halberstam summed up the effectiveness of such tactics in his monumental study of the origins of the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest:
“But if they did not actually stick, and they did not, [Joseph McCarthy’s] charges had an equally damaging effect: They poisoned. Where there was smoke, there must be fire. He wouldn’t be saying these things [voters reasoned] unless there was something to it.”
Joseph McCarthy
As a whole, Democrats have proven indifferent to or ignorant of the power of effective language.
President Donald Trump solicited Russian Communist aid to win the Presidency in 2016. He solicited aid from Chinese Communists to retain it in 2020.
He attacked countless Americans and world leaders—including those presiding over America’s NATO alliance. But he has never even criticized Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Yet even with such clear-cut evidence, Democrats refused to directly accuse him of treason, as in:
- “TrumPutin”
- “Commissar-in-Chief”
- “Putin’s Poodle”
- “Red Donald”
- “Putin’s Puppet”
The Kremlin
Similarly, Trump has gotten a free pass on treason from the news media. None have dared suggest the obvious: That he moved boxes of classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate to sell them to America’s enemies in exchange for huge sums to pay his upcoming legal bills.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump repeatedly lied about its lethality and opposed the use of masks and social distancing to combat it. As a result, 400,000 Americans had died by the time he left office.
Yet no Democrat has dared label him “Coronavirus-in-Chief.”
Nor has the news media directly held him accountable for those deaths.
Tyrants are conspicuously vulnerable to ridicule. Yet here, too, Democrats have proven unable or unwilling to make use of this powerful weapon.
In this YouTube-obsessed age, Democrats could effectively assail Trump with a series of ridiculing videos. For example, Trump’s well-established “bromance” with Putin could be turned into a parody of the famous song, “Johnny B. Good”:
Way back inside the Kremlin where the lights glow red
There ruled a man named Putin who would poison you dead.
He came up with a plan to make his Russia great
And all it took was bribes and Republican hate.
And Trumpy was a man who couldn’t read or spell
But he could sell out his land just like he’s ringing a bell.
Many of Trump’s fiercest defenders in the House and Senate have taken “campaign contributions” (i.e., bribes) from Russian oligarchs linked to Putin. They could be pointedly attacked by turning the Muppet song, “The Rainbow Connection,” into “The Russian Connection.”
Why are there so many tales about Russians
And Right-wingers taking bribes?
Russians are Commies and have lots of rubles
For traitors with something to hide.
So I’ve been told and some choose to believe it
It’s clear as the old KGB.
Someday we’ll find it
The Russian Connection—
The bribers, the traitors—you’ll see.
A continuing theme among Republican politicians is that they are paragons of religious virtue, while Democrats are champions of Satan.
Yet Democrats have done nothing to publicize such truths as:
- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is a serial adulterer.
- Former Speaker Dennis Hastert is a convicted sodomizer of teenage boys.
- Josh Duggar, a Right-wing star of the high-rated “reality” series, 19 Kids and Counting, has been sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment for possessing child pornography.
- Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, has boasted: “Marriage is a wonderful thing and I’m a firm believer in it.” Yet she engaged in open affairs with at least two members of her local gym—for which Perry Greene is now divorcing her.
Most Americans don’t follow political news closely—and know nothing of such revelations.
Moreover, Democrats need to repeatedly advertise such facts—to counter Republicans’ constant claims of being the moral arbiters of America. And this needs to be done through major advertising campaigns on TV—where most Americans get their news about politics.
Throughout 2016, liberals celebrated on Facebook and Twitter the “certain” Presidency of former First Lady Hillary Clinton. They were cheered on by First Lady Michelle Obama’s naive advice on political tactics: “When they go, we go high.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump planned to subvert the 2016 election by Russian Intelligence agents and millions of Russian trolls flooding the Internet with legitimately fake news.
History has proven which tactics proved superior.
It’s long past time for Democrats to accept that they—and the country’s democratic traditions—are engaged in a death-match with their Republican opponents.
Only certain defeat is guaranteed by adhering to Marquis of Queensbury when your enemy is using brass knuckles.
For Democrats to win elective victories and preserve America’s democratic traditions, they must find their own George Pattons to confront the Waffen-SS generals among Republican ranks.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BERNIE SANDERS, BUZZFEED, CARLY FIORINA, CBS NEWS, CNN, COMMUNISM, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DAILY KOZ, DAVID BROOKS, DAVID HALBERSTAM, DEMOCRATIC PARTY, DEMOCRATS, DENNIS HASTERT, DONALD TRUMP, ELIZABETH WARREN, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HELEN GAHAGAN DOUGLAS, HILLARY CLINTON, JEB BUSH, JOHN KASICH, JOSEPH MCCARTHY, JOSEPH R. MCCARTHY, JOSH DUGGAR, LANGUAGE, LIBERALS, MARCO RUBIO, MARJORIE TAYOR GREENE, MARK SHIELDS, MAXINE WATERS, MEGYN KELLY, MICHELLE OBAMA, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NANCY PELOSI, NATO, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NEWT GINGRICH, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RICHARD NIXON, RICK PERRY, RUSSIA, SALON, SATIRE, SEATTLE TIMES, SLANDER, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, YOUTUBE
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on October 26, 2022 at 12:10 am
In 1996, Newt Gingrich, then Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, wrote a memo that encouraged Republicans to “speak like Newt.”
Entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” it urged Republicans to attack Democrats with such words as “corrupt,” “selfish,” “destructive,” “hypocrisy,” “liberal,” “sick,” and “traitors.”
Even worse, Gingrich encouraged the news media to disseminate such accusations. Among his suggestions:
- “Fights make news.”
- Create a “shield issue” to deflect criticism: “A shield issue is, just, you know, your opponent is going to attack you as lacking compassion. You better…show up in the local paper holding a baby in the neonatal center.”
Newt Gingrich
In the memo, Gingrich advised:
“….In the video “We are a Majority,” Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning.
“As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: ‘I wish I could speak like Newt.’
“That takes years of practice. But, we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases….
“This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media.
“The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.”
Here is the list of words Gingrich urged his followers to use in describing “the opponent, their record, proposals and their party”:
- abuse of power
- anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
- betray
- bizarre
- bosses
- bureaucracy
- cheat
- coercion
- “compassion” is not enough
- collapse(ing)
- consequences
- corrupt
- corruption
- criminal rights
- crisis
- cynicism
- decay
- deeper
- destroy
- destructive
- devour
- disgrace
- endanger
- excuses
- failure (fail)
- greed
- hypocrisy
- ideological
- impose
- incompetent
- insecure
- insensitive
|
- intolerant
- liberal
- lie
- limit(s)
- machine
- mandate(s)
- obsolete
- pathetic
- patronage
- permissive attitude
- pessimistic
- punish (poor …)
- radical
- red tape
- self-serving
- selfish
- sensationalists
- shallow
- shame
- sick
- spend(ing)
- stagnation
- status quo
- steal
- taxes
- they/them
- threaten
- traitors
- unionized
- urgent (cy)
- waste
- welfare
|
Yes, speaking like Newt—or Adolf Hitler or Joseph R. McCarthy—“takes years of practice.”
And to the dismay of both Republicans and Democrats, Donald Trump has learned his lessons well.
On May 27, 2016, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks analyzed the use of insults by Republican Presidential front-runner Donald Trump. He did so with his counterpart, liberal syndicated columnist, Mark Shields, on The PBS Newshour.
DAVID BROOKS: “Trump, for all his moral flaws, is a marketing genius. And you look at what he does. He just picks a word and he attaches it to a person. Little Marco [Rubio], Lyin’ Ted [Cruz], Crooked Hillary [Clinton].
“And that’s a word. And that’s how marketing works. It’s a simple, blunt message, but it gets under.
“It sticks, and it diminishes. And so it has been super effective for him, because he knows how to do that. And she [Hillary Clinton] just comes with, ‘Oh, he’s divisive.’
“These are words that are not exciting people. And her campaign style has gotten, if anything…a little more stagnant and more flat.”
Donald Trump
MARK SHIELDS: “Donald Trump gratuitously slandered Ted Cruz’s wife. He libeled Ted Cruz’s father for being potentially part of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of the president of the United States, suggesting that he was somehow a fellow traveler in that.
“This is a libel. You don’t get over it….”
Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only Presidential candidate who proved unable to cope with Trump’s gift for insult. His targets—and insults—included:
- Former Texas Governor Rick Perry: “Wears glasses to seem smart.”
- Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush: “Low Energy Jeb.”
- Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders: “Crazy Bernie.”
- Ohio Governor John Kasich: “Mathematically dead and totally desperate.”
Trump has reserved his most insulting words for women. For example:
- Carly Fiorina, his Republican primary competitor: “Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?”
- Megyn Kelly, Fox News reporter: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
- California Rep. Maxine Waters: “An extremely low IQ person.”
- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “MS-13 Lover Nancy Pelosi.”
Only one candidate has shown the ability to rattle Trump: Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
As Mark Shields noted on The PBS Newshour.
“Elizabeth Warren gets under Donald Trunp’s skin. And I think she’s been the most effective adversary. I think she’s done more to unite the Democratic party than either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.
“I mean, she obviously—he can’t stay away from her. He is tweeting about her.”
And David Brooks offered: “And so the tactics…is either you do what Elizabeth Warren has done, like full-bore negativity, that kind of [get] under the skin, or try to ridicule him and use humor.”
A May 12, 2016 story on CNN—“Elizabeth Warren Gives Trump a Dose of His Own Medicine on Twitter”—noted: “Whenever Trump criticizes her, Warren fires right back at him, sometimes twice as hard.”
ABC NEWS, ABORTION, ALTERNET, AP, BEN BAGDIKIAN, BUZZFEED, CARLY FIORINA, CBS NEWS, CNN, CONTRACEPTION, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DEAN OBEIDALLAH, FACEBOOK, FOX & FRIENDS, FOX NETWORK, HILLARY CLINTON, HULU, MAGGIE HABERMAN, MEGYN KELLY, MERCEDES SCHLAPP, MICHELLE WOLF, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NELL SCOVELL, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PENTAGON PAPERS CASE, PETER BAKER, PJ MEDIA, PLANNED PARENTHOOD, POLITICO, RAW STORY, REUTERS, RICK WILSON, SALON, SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE GUARDIAN, THE HANDMAID’S TALE, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, TWITTER, TYLER O’NEIL, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, USA TODAY DONALD TRUMP, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS DINNER
In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Humor, Politics, Social commentary on May 2, 2018 at 12:10 am
On April 28, comedian Michelle Wolf skewered high-ranking Trump administration officials and members of the nation’s elite media.
She did so as the host of the annual White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C.
Traditionally, it’s been an occasion where Washington’s political and media elites enjoy dinner and trade barbed quips at one another.
But President Donald Trump chose to skip the dinner in 2017 and 2018. Trump—who repeatedly insults others—is too thin-skinned to accept even harmless jokes aimed at him.
That, however, didn’t deter Wolf. And she served up a series of barbed jokes aimed at the greed, deceit and hypocrisy of high-ranking Trump administration officials.
Michelle Wolf
For which, she has herself been attacked by defenders of the Right-wing Trump administration and some of the nation’s most prominent media.
Tyler O’Neil, a Right-wing commentator for PJ Media, was outraged at Wolf’s comparing White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to Aunt Lydia in the Hulu series, The Handmaid’s Tale.
“The premise of The Handmaid’s Tale, and the suggestion that Trump or anyone associated with him would ever countenance such a hateful submission of women, is bad enough,” wrote O’Neil, “but Wolf arguably compared Sarah Huckabee Sanders to the worst character in the novel and show.
“Aunt Lydia, played excellently by Ann Dowd, is not just part of the oppressive regime – she is the enforcer. She patrols the quarters of the ‘handmaids’ to ensure silence, she assigns handmaids to watch one another, and she leads the handmaids to carry out brutal punishments to anyone who steps out of line.”
The Trump administration has mercilessly attacked Planned Parenthood and championed rules allowing employers to not cover birth control on their insurance plans. Trump himself has said “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who get abortions.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think we advanced the cause of journalism tonight,” said Peter Baker, an MSNBC analyst and chief White House correspondent for The New York Times.
As Ben Bagdikian, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter, said in arguing for the Post to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971: “The only way to assert the right to publish is to publish.” Freedom of the press is not advanced by sucking up to those who—like Sarah Huckabee Sanders—routinely lie to reporters.
Much of the criticism aimed at Wolf centered on her joke about Sanders: “I actually really like [Press Secretary] Sarah [Huckabee Sanders]. I think she’s very resourceful. She burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.”
“That [Sanders] sat and absorbed intense criticism of her physical appearance, her job performance, and so forth, instead of walking out, on national television, was impressive,” the New York Times‘s Maggie Haberman tweeted.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Trump himself has repeatedly attacked women, often for their physical appearance. Among these:
- Hillary Clinton: “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy the country?”
- Carly Fiorina:” Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!”
- Megyn Kelly: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
And Sanders has blatantly lied countless times on behalf of Trump. Among these:
- “Everybody acts like President Trump is the one that came up with this idea. …There are multiple news outlets that have reported former President Barack Obama ordered wiretapping on Trump.” [In fact, Trump started this issue with his specific and libelous tweet.]
- “I can definitely say the president is not a liar. It’s frankly insulting that question would be asked.” [In fact, by January 10, 2018, the Washington Post reported: “Since taking office, President Trump has made 2,436 false or misleading claims and flip-flops.”]
“The reason [Sanders] does that is because her job is contingent upon her being a serial congenital liar in defense of Donald Trump’s latest outrages,” said GOP strategist Rick Wilson in November, 2017.
“She goes out and she tries to bury people in an avalanche of horseshit everyday, because this is her job.”
Rick Wilson
Mercedes Schlapp, a White House senior communications adviser, took to the Fox Network—the unofficial propaganda arm of the Republican party—to voice her outrage at Wolf.
Schlapp and her husband had stormed out of the correspondents dinner in protest. She told “Fox & Friends” that Wolf’s jokes were “so incredibly disrespectful.”
Dean Obeidallah, a columnist for The Daily Beast, responded: “The way I see it, a person in the Trump administration saying something was ‘disrespectful’ while defending a man who bragged on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape about grabbing women by the pu**y, has demonized Muslims and Mexicans and mocked a disabled reporter is truly hilarious.”
And as comedy writer Nell Scovell put it: Comedians are stepping up in a way that journalists aren’t—as in Wolfe’s jokes about Sanders’ lying.
“If the job of journalism is to get at the truth,” said Scovell, “they need to do a better job.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on June 21, 2016 at 12:01 am
Since the Supreme Court legalized abortion on January 22, 1973, the Republican Party has been committed to saving fetuses.
Even if this puts the lives of adult men and women in jeopardy.
In 2015, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released several videos that had been secretly recorded. These purported to show that Planned Parenthood (PP) was engaging in the illegal sale of fetal tissue.
The videos attracted massive media coverage. Congressional Republicans immediately started pushing bills to strip PP of Federal family planning funding.
Officials in Indiana, South Dakota, Kansas, Missouri, Georgia and Massachusetts investigated the charges and found no evidence that Planned Parenthood had broken any state laws concerning the collection of fetal tissues.
On October 8, 2015, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), stated that the GOP investigation found no evidence of any wrongdoing.
In fact, all of the videos were found to be altered, according to an analysis by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research company. Members of CMP have since been indicted by a Texas grand jury on felony charges for tampering with governmental records.
None of this, however, prevented Republican candidates for President from claiming that the videos were, in fact, legitimate.
Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, falsely claimed in the second GOP Presidential debate that the videos showed “a fully formed fetus on the table…while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”
Although Fiorina claimed to have seen that footage, she never produced any copy of it. Nor has anyone else found evidence to sustain her claim.
Carly Fiorina
Nor was Fiorina the only Republican candidate making this false claim. Others included Texas U.S. Senator Eduardo “Ted” Cruz, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Florida U.S. Senator Marco Rubio.
On November 27, 2015, Robert L. Dear, armed with a rifle, attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He killed one police officer and two civilians, and wounded five more officers and four civilians.
After a five-hour standoff, SWAT teams crashed an armored vehicle into the lobby and rescued several people trapped inside. At that point, Dear surrendered.
After his arrest, he gave a rambling interview to police. At one point, he said, “No more baby parts”–a direct reference to the false and inflammatory charges made by GOP members.
The latest case of Republican irresponsibility on the abortion issue came in March.
That was when the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives subpoenaed a list of names of doctors and researchers involved in fetal tissue research.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who chairs the panel, claimed that her investigation had uncovered evidence that StemExpress, a bio-medical company, and three abortion clinics, violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
In early June, Blackburn sent two public letters to the Obama administration.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn
These contained the names and contact information of researchers at StemExpress, university and hospital researchers, and Planned Parenthood staffers.
The unredacted letters were also posted on the select panel’s website. In an interview with Rewire, a representative for Blackburn said that the “staff just made a mistake.”
At the panel’s first hearing on March 2, Rep. Jerrod Nadler (D-NY) had warned Blackburn:
“The committee has no rules in place to protect the names of those subpoenaed–raising the possibility of Congress effectively painting targets on the backs of scientists and researchers for no particular reason other than the Republicans’ desire for a culture war.”
In another letter sent to Blackburn, House Democrats charged that Republicans on the panel may be feeding sensitive information to anti-abortion groups who wish to harm members of the reproductive rights community.
They noted that the panel had publicly released the name of a doctor who had previously been threatened by anti-abortion groups, along with the specific information about when he would appear before the panel.
“Assurances that you take seriously individual privacy and security concerns are insufficient,” the letter read.
“You reneged on promises to protect the individual privacy and security of a deposition witness. Just last week, Panel Republicans leaked letters to FOX News and posted documents on your website that contained names, contact information, and other personally identifiable information of doctors and researchers.”
Initially, some schools and organizations blacked out the names of researchers in documents provided to the committee to protect their researchers’ safety. But recent subpoenas issued by the committee didn’t allow for that security measure.
Scientists have warned that targeting fetal tissue research–and the researchers who work in that field–poses national security risks.
Fetal tissue research is invaluable for developing cures to diseases like Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis. It could lead to a vaccine for the Zika virus, which poses a serious risk to pregnant women.
Yet it is “desire for a culture war” that takes top priority for Republicans.
And Republicans know exactly what constituency they are arousing: Those masses of alienated, uneducated Americans who can be easily manipulated by inflammatory rhetoric.
Those men and women who stockpile weapons–and believe that God has empowered them to use violence to enforce their religious beliefs on others.
Essentially, Republicans are calling upon this constituency to achieve with bullets what the party hasn’t been able to achieve in court or at the ballot box.
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A LESSON FOR DEMOCRATS: WORDS CAN BE WEAPONS: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Humor, Politics, Social commentary on September 11, 2025 at 12:10 amPulitzer-Prize winning author David Halberstam summed up the effectiveness of 1950s Republicans’ smear tactics in his monumental 1972 study of the origins of the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest:
“But if they did not actually stick, and they did not, [Joseph McCarthy’s] charges had an equally damaging effect: They poisoned. Where there was smoke, there must be fire. He wouldn’t be saying these things [voters reasoned] unless there was something to it.”
Joseph McCarthy
As a whole, Democrats have proven indifferent to or ignorant of the power of effective language.
Donald Trump solicited Russian Communist aid to win the Presidency in 2016 and Chinese Communist aid to retain it in 2020.
Yet Democrats refused to directly accuse him of treason, as in:
The Kremlin
Similarly, the news media has not dared state the obvious: That Trump moved boxes of classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate to sell them to America’s enemies in exchange for huge sums to pay his upcoming legal bills.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump repeatedly lied about its lethality and opposed the use of masks and social distancing to combat it. As a result, 400,000 Americans had died by the time he left office.
Yet no Democrat has dared label him “Coronavirus-in-Chief.”
Nor has the news media directly held him accountable for those deaths.
Tyrants are conspicuously vulnerable to ridicule. Yet in this YouTube-obsessed age, Democrats have proven unable or unwilling to make use of this powerful weapon.
For example, Trump’s well-established “bromance” with Vladimir Putin could be turned into a parody of the famous song, “Johnny B. Good”:
Way back inside the Kremlin where the lights glow red
There ruled a man named Putin who would poison you dead.
He came up with a plan to make his Russia great
And all it took was bribes and Republican hate.
And Trumpy was a man who couldn’t read or spell
But he could sell out his land just like he’s ringing a bell.
Many of Trump’s fiercest defenders in the House and Senate have taken “campaign contributions” (i.e., bribes) from Russian oligarchs linked to Putin. They could be pointedly attacked by turning the Muppet song, “The Rainbow Connection,” into “The Russian Connection.”
Why are there so many tales about Russians
And Right-wingers taking bribes?
Russians are Commies and have lots of rubles
For traitors with something to hide.
So I’ve been told and some choose to believe it
It’s clear as the old KGB.
Someday we’ll find it
The Russian Connection—
The bribers, the traitors—you’ll see.
Kristi Noem, Trump’s Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, became infamous in 2024 for bragging about shooting her 14-month-old wirehair pointer, “Cricket.” A parody of Marty Robbins’ hit “Big Iron” could easily be turned into a musical indictment of animal cruelty:
Now the woman started talking
Made it plain to folks around
Was a South Dakota Governor
Wouldn’t be too long in town.
She came here to take a doggie
On a hunt or shoot it dead.
And she said it didn’t matter
She was after Cricket’s head—
After Cricket’s head.
A continuing theme among Republican politicians is that they are paragons of religious virtue, while Democrats are champions of Satan.
Yet Democrats have done nothing to publicize such truths as:
Most Americans don’t follow political news closely—and know nothing of such revelations.
Moreover, Democrats need to repeatedly advertise such facts—to counter Republicans’ constant claims of being the moral arbiters of America. And this needs to be done through major advertising campaigns on TV—where most Americans get their news about politics.
Throughout 2016, liberals celebrated on Facebook and Twitter the “certain” Presidency of former First Lady Hillary Clinton. They were cheered on by First Lady Michelle Obama’s naive advice on political tactics: “When they go, we go high.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump planned to subvert the 2016 election by Russian Intelligence agents and millions of Russian trolls flooding the Internet with legitimately fake news.
History has proven which tactics proved superior.
It’s long past time for Democrats to accept that they—and the country’s democratic traditions—are engaged in a death-match with their Republican opponents.
Only certain defeat is guaranteed by adhering to Marquis of Queensbury when your enemy is using brass knuckles.
For Democrats to win elective victories and preserve America’s democratic traditions, they must find their own George Pattons to confront the Waffen-SS generals among Republican ranks.
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