Democrats' Amygdalae Problem: Cold and Calculating as A Town Drunk

The Right Wing Queen of Mean, Michelle Malkin, relates the contents of an internal Democratic Party memo, courtesy of The Hill. The memo states the hypothesis: Democrats' Message Doesn't Appeal to Emotions. An excerpt:

Democrats are losing the battle for voters’ hearts because the party’s message lacks emotional appeal, according to a widely circulated critique of House Democratic communications strategy.

“Our message sounds like an audit report on defense logistics,” wrote Dave Helfert, a former Appropriations spokesman who now works for Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii). “Why are we defending [the State Children’s Health Insurance Program] instead of advocating a ‘Healthy Kids’ plan?”

His memo is sharply critical of Republican policies but also suggests a neurological explanation for Republican message success: By using emotional appeals and warning of dire threats, Republicans can trigger neurons called “amygdalae” in the temporal lobe, which is the seat of the “fight or flight” response in the brain.

To which MM replies:

This is high-larious.

Malken goes on to conclude:

The Democrats’ problem isn’t understimulation of the amygdalae. It’s overstimulation. Perhaps a political lobotomy–separating the nutroots lobe from the party’s thalamus–might be a far more effective prescription.

One only has to recall the Code Pink members of the Democrat base being dragged, screaming, from the room during the Patraeus hearings to understand the cold analysis of the Dem's arguments. Too much logic and resorting to facts; not enough emotion is the problem alright.

Democrat leaders would have had to douse themselves with gasoline and strike a match to get anymore emotional than they were during the SCHIP debate. Every time questions arose about this expansion of government, Democrats would haul another ailing child in front of the cameras and scream "Why do you hate the kids?" Have to admit that prompted visions of a party of CPAs at work.

The Hill had it right: the Democrats' message is a problem with voters. It's the same problem a college student has when faced with the dilemma of a weekend of binge drinking: sure it'll be fun, but you're going to feel like hell when you come to on Monday morning.

The Democrats are as cold and calculating as a town drunk.

The Code Pinks, the welfare lobby, the big-government types of the Democrat base are binge drinkers. But it's the voters, their children and grandchildren, who are going to be paying for their financial debauchery.

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Randi Rhodes: Still Not Mugged Air America: Still Not Credible

[NY Daily News]
by Mondoreb

Randi Rhodes got more attention for something she didn't do off-air than she ever got on-air as an Air America personality. First, she was mugged. Cue up liberal outrage, shock and condemnation of, you guessed it, conservative Nazi brownshirt bastards.

Then, she wasn't mugged. On the conservative side, eyes were rolled: just another day in the conservative blogosphere. Where you're guilty of a "jihad" and "smearing" a kid when you ask questions; when not being accused of being a fascist, brownshirted Nazi knuckle-dragger means you're not trying.

So the truth came out yesterday, after the usual Leftist pleasantries. From the New York Daily News:

Rhodes’ lawyer told the Daily News she was injured in a fall while walking her dog. He said she’s not sure what happened, and only knows that she fell down and is in a lot of pain. The lawyer said Rhodes expects to be back on the air Thursday. He stressed there is no indication she was targeted or that she was the victim of a “hate crime.”

Thank goodness! We found out she wasn't mugged, but not before being soiled by the slime that passes for left wing thought.
Rhodes' Air America comrade, displaying the objectivity Air America is famous for contributed the following.

“Is this an attempt by the right-wing, hate machine to silence one of our own?” he asked on the air, according to Talking Radio, a blog. “Are we threatening them? Are they afraid that we’re winning? Are they trying to silence intimidate us?”

Michelle Malkin, fresh off winning the coveted Liberal-Whipping-Girl-of-the-Week Award, summed it up nicely by displaying on her site this proud reminder of the Randi Rhodes non-story:
So Randi Rhodes got some attention, the Left got to fling poo and conservative eyeballs got another work-out, rolling their way around and 'round watching liberal heads explode all across America.
VIDEO: Randi Rhodes at HempFest.
REACTION: at Which Up?
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Post-Email, Michelle Malkin Still Going StrongMuch Pooh About Nothing

[photo: Baltimore Chronicle]
by Mondoreb

You know you've struck a nerve when the Left starts calling you names. You know you're really making a difference in opinion when your every move is tracked; when hours are spent blowing gassy vapors in the absurd attempt to construct political balloon attack animals.

The latest proof that Michelle Malkin has risen to the upper tier of conservative opinion-makers is the Left BlowhardFest over Malkin's decision to forgo hosting anymore Bill O'Reilly shows. The decision, the result of a on-air flare-up, resulted in more calls to San Francisco emergency rooms for hyperventilation treatment than any time since Nixon was president.

MM chronicled the fortunes of the Frost family and their use by Democrats in the Schip debate. Once exposed, nothing was done to refute Malkin's findings: what could be done, really? Instead, another round of "attack the whistleblower" was quickly organized by Leftards the Internet over. Nothing was said about the comic attempts to use an obviously comfortable family as an example of Republican coldheartedness toward the poor. So they focused on a pin to dance on.

It all resulted from this email, found on Michelle Malkin's site:

Thanks so much for your kind words. Much appreciated. I made the decision to quit appearing on the O’Reilly show in response to the poor handling of the Geraldo Rivera matter (in case you hadn’t heard, he threatened to spit on me because of my views about illegal immigration and his staged “apology” on The Factor was a complete farce). I won’t go into details, but please know that your support means a lot to me. You can catch me on other Fox News shows and read my daily blog posts and weekly columns at MichelleMalkin.com.

From the reaction of the Socialist side of the Blogosphere, you'd have thought MM called for the seizing of Starbucks' assets.

Such as this:

I think one of the funniest aspects of the political sphere today is that some of the toughest talking folks in the business really turn out to be big, fat, tear leakin’ wimps.

Or this:

WAAAAH!!
Pauvre Michelle. Booted off a FOX News show? Even better, booted off O'REILLY'S hatefest? That's quite the feat.

In a world where there's not enough news to justify the billions of pixels slaughtered daily on the blogosphere, non-events are just an excuse to unload your favorite pejorative on those you disagree with. And no brain cells were harmed in the making of the reactions of the blogo-pathological side's posts: none were used.

Michelle Malkin's a big girl: she can handle the slurs and arrows of the midget class. She makes arguments for and against important issues based on facts. It's a skill her opponents might try taking up instead of calling her names.

For at this moment, Leftist wordsmiths are busy coining new terms of derision for conservatives. If only they spent half as much time trying to answer our arguments, they could get out of the balloon animal business.



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Graeme Frost, HillaryCare, and "Meanies":Questions & Super Bugs in the System

[graphic:RidesAPaleHorse]
"You may remember that we tried to do that [pass her health care bill] in 1993 and 1994. We weren't totally successful, but I did not give up."

by Mondoreb

The headline didn't have the sensationalist bite that "Brain-Eating Microbes Kill Boy in Arizona Lake", but it did catch my attention.

Super Bug Kills 90 in UK

From CNN:
LONDON-- Nurses who didn't wash their hands and left patients lying in soiled beds were cited in an official report blaming mismanagement for the deaths of 90 people who contracted a bacterial infection in hospitals in southern England.

"Significant failings" at all levels contributed to infections of more than 1,000 patients at three hospitals, the Healthcare Commission said Thursday.

The patients were infected with Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, which can cause diarrhea, colitis and other intestinal problems, officials said.

"The Healthcare Commission has passed the copy of the report to us and that is being reviewed," said a spokesman for Kent Police, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with force policy.

One notices the "Healthcare Commission", is a government entity in the U.K. charged with providing Britons with the English version of HillaryCare. While reading the story, a question arises: Why would trial lawyers support socialized medicine? One of the plaintiffs' bar's most lucrative scams is endlessly suing members of the medical profession over every unfortunate outcome even slightly connected with medicine.

Socialized medicine will substitute Il Duce Hillary for Doc Jones. When Clostridium difficile strikes in the U.S., where will the loved ones of the deceased turn for succor under HillaryCare 2.0? Trial lawyers won't be able to pay their 'faux-expert witnesses' on what they'll make attempting to sue the United States government. No answer quickly came to mind as to why the ambulance-chasing community would continue to write checks to a candidate taking the food off their table.

Back to Super Bug:

The report into the spread of the highly contagious bacterium said nurses at three hospitals run by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust were often too busy to wash their hands and left patients in their own excrement.

In recent years, Britain's superbug infection rates of bacteria like Clostridium difficile and MRSA have skyrocketed. In the 1990s, only five percent of in-hospital blood infections were from MRSA, the deadly bacteria resistant to nearly every available antibiotic. In past years, that figure has jumped to more than 40 percent.

A single snapshot from the European system that HillaryCare, EdwardsCare and other Democrat socialized health care schemes would have Americans believe is the latest ticket to a Socialist Workers Party paradise. And to any who offer evidence that government is not a solution here: the same dreary, droning chorus about how such evidence is the product of malevolence personified. Scratch the surface of any person questioning Dem poster child, Graeme Frost, and you'll find a--what? Another question?
Scratch the surface and perhaps you'll find Michelle Malkin:

To review quickly: We are now “meanies,” “hypocrites,” “slimers,” and “mobsters” for challenging the wisdom of taking money away from taxpayers of lesser means who are responsible enough to buy insurance before a catastrophic event in order to subsidize two-property, three-car families with four children in private schools and two parents who work “intermittently” and “part-time” who didn’t have the foresight or priorities to purchase insurance before a tragic auto accident.

Malkin couldn't possibly differ philosophically with the goose-stepping, "it's-my-right" hordes of lazy-thinking HillaryCare toadies. There are no questions here to be answered. One advantage of voting Democrat is that all your thinking is done for you: reduced into easily-remembered sound bites for the mainstream media. When you have the Left writing the rebuttal to any argument in American politics today, the script leans heavily on invective, inventive and otherwise.

Ultimately, it boils down to that same old questions, "Can the federal government run my life better than I can?" and "Why does anyone think that a government that has trouble delivering Uncle Frank's birthday card can deliver Uncle Frank's kidney operation?" As Mark Steyn put it:

Ultimately it's a reductive notion of liberty to say a free-born citizen can choose his own breakfast cereal and DVD rentals and cable package and, in the case of the Frosts, three premium vehicles, but demand the government take responsibility for all the grown-up stuff.

This week, stories of Super Bugs, trial lawyers, Graeme Frost, and left wing pejoratives provoked questions. But all one heard in the mainstream press was the music of the merrily-marching minions of socialized HillaryCare and its clones.

Don't look here for answers to those questions: a college football game beckons this afternoon and pigskins, not polemics, will be the main concern. No answers, but two more quotations will join the quote opening this post. One, by Hillary Clinton, is about how politics works. The other, by Tennessee Williams, is about how magic works.
Read them both and the reader may arrive at his own answers.

"The challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible."

"Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. [A stage magician] gives us illusion that has the appearance of truth."

[HillarySlash graphic:Salon]
Hillary quotes & more here.
Tennessee Williams quote
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