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FEAR PORN WATCH: Keeping tabs of conservative writers who will claim “The Hurricane Has Saved Obama!”
HillBuzz
Kevin DuJan
10/30/2012
Excerpt:
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Folks, you need to understand that political reporting is a business for 99% of the people out there…and staying in business means pushing traffic higher and scoring more ad money. So every day, most sites have some terror-inducing piece up that was typed with frost-fingered fear…and this is just a gimmick to draw controversy and eyeballs to that site, as opposed to people reading something else that day. The scarier and more apocalyptic the better…with no concern at all for it being completely apocryphal. Welcome to the business of political writing.
Case in point: the fear porn du jour seems to be that “Hurricane Sandy has saved Obama and he’ll win the election now!”. This is what Ace will no doubt tell you when he’s back from whatever the heck he’s doing right now (licking his wounds?)…and I’m sure Allahpundit and Ben Shapiro will chime in on this meme too. Let’s play a game and see how long it takes them to do it. Please know that I am watching and counting and keeping track of all the fear mongering these guys do in the lead up to November 6th and will be demanding professional consequences for all of them for needlessly freaking Romney voters out every few days just to score web traffic for their sites.
Let’s take a realistic look at exactly how Hurricane Sandy impacts the election:
* THE ELECTION WILL NOT BE POSTPONED OR SUSPENDED BECAUSE OF A STORM. No election in American history has been postponed…not during WWII, not because of anything happening in the Cold War, not during previous big storms. American elections are held in the middle of hurricane season and happen every four years (for president) and every two years (midterms) the first Tuesday of November. Like clockwork. There is no chance in an exasperated Heaven or a conniving Hell that this election is being postponed or suspended. There is plenty of time for people to get to the polls and vote on November 6th and there is no way for any state to extend voting after November 6th because all states must vote on the same day for President. That’s the law, and it would take an act of Congress to change that…and this is not going to happen, folks. If you read anyone claiming the election will be altered because of a storm you need to call that person a fear-pornographer.
* Romney voters are “broken glass” voters and will not be impeded from voting due to a storm; Obama voters are largely unmotivated and may actually stay home if the storm damage is too much by November 6th. I actually think if anyone sits home on election day it will be Obama voters who use the storm as an excuse, claiming it was too hard to get to their polling places to vote…or they were too busy cleaning up storm damage to vote. None of this is true, mind you, but people love making excuses for being lazy or not doing something that others think they should do. My boyfriend Justin does this ALL THE TIME and will use any excuse out there to get out of doing something he knows he’s supposed to do. If it drizzles a little, Justin declares the roads are bad so he won’t have to do something I asked him to do that requires driving…but magically, after it’s too late to do that thing, Justin thinks it’s perfectly fine to drive to the store for beer if he wants it a few hours later. Classic. Do not believe the fear porn peddlers: if anyone loses votes as a result of Hurricane Sandy, it will be Obama because the storm just gave millions of disenchanted Obama supporters an excuse for not bothering to vote.
* There is no rally-around-the-flag effect with a Northeastern hurricane. This is a big fear porn meme today…that “Obama looks presidential because of the hurricane!!!!!!!!!”. The people who subscribe to this add way more exclamation points than I put there, but you get the idea. Barack Obama has had four years to look presidential and has failed consistently. A hurricane is not going to remedy this for him. Yes, he gets to go and survey damage…but visually that amounts to Barack Obama walking amongst ruins. This does not make him look presidential…but instead depicts him as a man surrounded by the ruin he’s made of this country in the last four years. This is not going to help him, but is instead going to reinforce the image people have of him of a president who stood by and allowed this country to go to seed since the 2008 election. Standing in a burned out building or being photographed in front of a pile of destroyed cars just underscores the fact that all the “Hopeychange” we were promised four years ago left us in ruin and debt that will take a long time to dig out from.
* Disaster relief will be mismanaged and people will not have power for a week or more…and folks will get angry. I have to let you in on a secret about the New York/New Jersey area that the Ministry of Truth does not like to talk about, but the people who work in the union-controlled public services in these states are incompetent at best and deliberately lazy at worst. I have many good friends in New York City who observed this willful sloth and general union mentality when the big blizzard hit the city last year. The unions purposefully moved slowly to restore life to the city because they wanted to use the storm to extract concessions to their contracts. Also, the unions mandate that these workers be allowed to move at a snail’s pace, with many lunch breaks, and that no one can ever make them hustle. Not even the Mayor. Certainly not the President. The unions are not going to suddenly be able to make guys who have been trained for decades to take their time and move slowly suddenly do their jobs efficiently just because Democrats need to be reelected. This is not reality. Oh, Democrats will put pressure on the union bosses to make the work happen quickly. And the union bosses with squabble a little over that and demand concessions from Democrats…and then they’ll TRY to get their guys working faster…but the union boots on the ground will continue work at their usual snail’s pace because this is what union guys DO. The only way they’ll work faster is if they are directly affected by the damage…as in, they will clear their own street and repair their own power first…and then they will do their buddies’…and then sometime next week they will get around to you. Meanwhile, people will go without power and will be angry about it in no time flat. Angry people who still see a big mess and are wandering around in the dark by November 6th aren’t going to be singing Barack Obama’s praises. The Catch-22 for the current President on this is that even if things WERE restored fully to normal in just a day or two, people would still be angry because they were inconvenienced at all. It’s really hard for any politician to win with the general public when it comes to any disruption in their lives. People hold grudges for all sorts of things…and a tree that’s down and blocking their street for even a day is a tree that costs Democrats a lot of votes if Democrats are in power in that state. ”It took them a whole day to get rid of it and I had to find somewhere else to park and then my shoes got wet!”, I can easily hear these sorts of people crying. ”Screw them if they think I’m going all the way down to vote for these people!”.
.................................................. ..
View the complete article at:
http://hillbuzz.org/fear-porn-watch-...ed-obama-32169
HillBuzz
Kevin DuJan
10/30/2012
Excerpt:
.................................................. ............
Folks, you need to understand that political reporting is a business for 99% of the people out there…and staying in business means pushing traffic higher and scoring more ad money. So every day, most sites have some terror-inducing piece up that was typed with frost-fingered fear…and this is just a gimmick to draw controversy and eyeballs to that site, as opposed to people reading something else that day. The scarier and more apocalyptic the better…with no concern at all for it being completely apocryphal. Welcome to the business of political writing.
Case in point: the fear porn du jour seems to be that “Hurricane Sandy has saved Obama and he’ll win the election now!”. This is what Ace will no doubt tell you when he’s back from whatever the heck he’s doing right now (licking his wounds?)…and I’m sure Allahpundit and Ben Shapiro will chime in on this meme too. Let’s play a game and see how long it takes them to do it. Please know that I am watching and counting and keeping track of all the fear mongering these guys do in the lead up to November 6th and will be demanding professional consequences for all of them for needlessly freaking Romney voters out every few days just to score web traffic for their sites.
Let’s take a realistic look at exactly how Hurricane Sandy impacts the election:
* THE ELECTION WILL NOT BE POSTPONED OR SUSPENDED BECAUSE OF A STORM. No election in American history has been postponed…not during WWII, not because of anything happening in the Cold War, not during previous big storms. American elections are held in the middle of hurricane season and happen every four years (for president) and every two years (midterms) the first Tuesday of November. Like clockwork. There is no chance in an exasperated Heaven or a conniving Hell that this election is being postponed or suspended. There is plenty of time for people to get to the polls and vote on November 6th and there is no way for any state to extend voting after November 6th because all states must vote on the same day for President. That’s the law, and it would take an act of Congress to change that…and this is not going to happen, folks. If you read anyone claiming the election will be altered because of a storm you need to call that person a fear-pornographer.
* Romney voters are “broken glass” voters and will not be impeded from voting due to a storm; Obama voters are largely unmotivated and may actually stay home if the storm damage is too much by November 6th. I actually think if anyone sits home on election day it will be Obama voters who use the storm as an excuse, claiming it was too hard to get to their polling places to vote…or they were too busy cleaning up storm damage to vote. None of this is true, mind you, but people love making excuses for being lazy or not doing something that others think they should do. My boyfriend Justin does this ALL THE TIME and will use any excuse out there to get out of doing something he knows he’s supposed to do. If it drizzles a little, Justin declares the roads are bad so he won’t have to do something I asked him to do that requires driving…but magically, after it’s too late to do that thing, Justin thinks it’s perfectly fine to drive to the store for beer if he wants it a few hours later. Classic. Do not believe the fear porn peddlers: if anyone loses votes as a result of Hurricane Sandy, it will be Obama because the storm just gave millions of disenchanted Obama supporters an excuse for not bothering to vote.
* There is no rally-around-the-flag effect with a Northeastern hurricane. This is a big fear porn meme today…that “Obama looks presidential because of the hurricane!!!!!!!!!”. The people who subscribe to this add way more exclamation points than I put there, but you get the idea. Barack Obama has had four years to look presidential and has failed consistently. A hurricane is not going to remedy this for him. Yes, he gets to go and survey damage…but visually that amounts to Barack Obama walking amongst ruins. This does not make him look presidential…but instead depicts him as a man surrounded by the ruin he’s made of this country in the last four years. This is not going to help him, but is instead going to reinforce the image people have of him of a president who stood by and allowed this country to go to seed since the 2008 election. Standing in a burned out building or being photographed in front of a pile of destroyed cars just underscores the fact that all the “Hopeychange” we were promised four years ago left us in ruin and debt that will take a long time to dig out from.
* Disaster relief will be mismanaged and people will not have power for a week or more…and folks will get angry. I have to let you in on a secret about the New York/New Jersey area that the Ministry of Truth does not like to talk about, but the people who work in the union-controlled public services in these states are incompetent at best and deliberately lazy at worst. I have many good friends in New York City who observed this willful sloth and general union mentality when the big blizzard hit the city last year. The unions purposefully moved slowly to restore life to the city because they wanted to use the storm to extract concessions to their contracts. Also, the unions mandate that these workers be allowed to move at a snail’s pace, with many lunch breaks, and that no one can ever make them hustle. Not even the Mayor. Certainly not the President. The unions are not going to suddenly be able to make guys who have been trained for decades to take their time and move slowly suddenly do their jobs efficiently just because Democrats need to be reelected. This is not reality. Oh, Democrats will put pressure on the union bosses to make the work happen quickly. And the union bosses with squabble a little over that and demand concessions from Democrats…and then they’ll TRY to get their guys working faster…but the union boots on the ground will continue work at their usual snail’s pace because this is what union guys DO. The only way they’ll work faster is if they are directly affected by the damage…as in, they will clear their own street and repair their own power first…and then they will do their buddies’…and then sometime next week they will get around to you. Meanwhile, people will go without power and will be angry about it in no time flat. Angry people who still see a big mess and are wandering around in the dark by November 6th aren’t going to be singing Barack Obama’s praises. The Catch-22 for the current President on this is that even if things WERE restored fully to normal in just a day or two, people would still be angry because they were inconvenienced at all. It’s really hard for any politician to win with the general public when it comes to any disruption in their lives. People hold grudges for all sorts of things…and a tree that’s down and blocking their street for even a day is a tree that costs Democrats a lot of votes if Democrats are in power in that state. ”It took them a whole day to get rid of it and I had to find somewhere else to park and then my shoes got wet!”, I can easily hear these sorts of people crying. ”Screw them if they think I’m going all the way down to vote for these people!”.
.................................................. ..
View the complete article at:
http://hillbuzz.org/fear-porn-watch-...ed-obama-32169