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Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The Obama Infomercial
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Does anyone know if Ron Popeil’s Ronco knives set as good as advertised in the Infomercial?” a potential purchaser asked on Yahoo.
The response was vague. Sort of: If you have doubts, that answers your questions.
Spending an estimated three million dollars on a Ginsu-knife-like Infomercial, Barack Obama reminded America that he’s an over-the-top kind of guy, excessive, pompous and eminently phony. The Oval Office-like set for Wednesday night’s Infomercial is, in the manner of Barack Obama, entirely too much. It’s cheesy.
The narratives, too, are Hollywood goes presidential. The story-line here is that if you can tell a story memorably, people can be led to any emotion or any action — including voting for the narrator as President of the United States.
This is an example of what happens when there’s too much money in politics. Obama spent an estimated three million dollars on a phony Oval Office Infomercial to convince the nation that he’s as capable as anybody on West Wing of leading the nation.And that’s probably true.
There’s way too much money in politics. He’s a guy who may spend three-quarters of a billion dollars or more on politics, on a campaign to win public office, a guy who has so much money that he can afford to spend $3 million on an Infomercial set in a pretend Oval Office.
Are we headed for the Ronco Presidency, the ginsu-knife Infomercial to sell the presidency in the same way we sell Chinese kitchen gadgets? Heaven help us if this is what the national debate over the Future of America has become.
The guy with the fake Presidential Seal has addressed the nation from the fake Oval Office in a Infomercial fake. God save us.
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Go, Ted. Go John!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
UPDATE: See new post on the Obama Infomercial
OK, Ted, go.
Quit. The Bridge to Nowhere Republican from Alaska is a reminder to all fiscal conservatives of what’s been wrong with the Republican Party. When it governs, it fails to delineate a clear difference between itself and the party of favors and pork that is now the majority in the House and Senate. Ideally today or tomorrow at the latest, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, convicted on seven counts of taking gifts in the form of unbilled improvements on his chalet in Alaska, will promise to resign if he wins reelection next Tuesday.
Otherwise, it’s a Democrat win and a possible filibuster-proof Senate.
But, hey, if Democrats come to power by ousting corrupt and/or pork-barrel Republicans, I’ll wave them in graciously and with good cheer.
Stevens does need to declare promptly, as John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin have asked. Quit. Go. Take the Road to Nowhere. And soon.
McCain can win. The Obama campaign and its media supporters have begun to treat an Obama landslide as inevitable. A new Gallup poll of likely voters puts the gap at two percentage points, 49-47. Zogby has it at four, 49-45, with a 2.9 percent margin of error.
If, in fact, undecides are locking down now in the days leading up to next Tuesday, it could be good news for McCain-Palin.
In the last days, it’s becoming obvious —- Joe Biden even acknowledges it — that the tax consequences for ordinary Americans of the Obama spending proposals will be far greater the campaign has previously admitted.
Biden said Tuesday in an interview with a Pennsylvania television station that Obama’s not trying to redistribute wealth, he’s trying to change the Bush tax cuts. “What we’re saying is that $87 billion tax break doesn’t need to go to people making an average of $1.4 million. It should go…to middle-class people — people making under $150,000 a year.”
“At this rate,” McCain responded, “it won’t be long before Sen. Obama is right back to his vote that Americans making just $42,000 a year should get a tax increase. We can’t let that happen. We won’t let it happen.”
The best summary of the impact on all of us of Obama’s tax and spending proposals is still the explanation delivered by former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson at the GOP convention. Said Thompson:
“We need a president who understands that you don’t make citizens prosperous by making Washington richer, and you don’t lift an economic downturn by imposing one of the largest tax increases in American history.
“Now our opponents tell you not to worry about their tax increases.
“They tell you they are not going to tax your family.
“No, they’re just going to tax “businesses”! So unless you buy something from a ‘business,’ like groceries or clothes or gasoline, or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small ‘business,’ don’t worry, it’s not going to affect you.
“They say they are not going to take any water out of your side of the bucket, just the ‘other’ side of the bucket! That’s their idea of tax reform.”
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