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Last week, after the Romney campaign released its first ad attacking our failed president’s failed leadership of his failed economy, you would’ve thought the former Massachusetts Governor closed the ad with, “I’m Mitt Romney and I approve of eating Obama’s children.”

The ensuing media storm over the ginned up accusation that the ad took Obama out of context lasted two days, and still this week I hear left-wing pundits disguised as objective pundits talking about how “it might hurt Romney’s credibility.”

It was pure nonsense and merely a way for the MSM to create the phony outrage needed to protect Obama from a pretty effective salvo against his failed record — which is what they intend to do throughout this campaign. The Romney ad was merely making a point in attributing those words to Obama, not playing gotcha. The only ones playing gotcha her were Obama’s Media Palace Guards.

But take a look at the ad above, which was just released by the Democratic National Committee. The DNC actually does take Romney out of context in trying to make it sound as though he was in favor of Obama’s failed stimulus when he most certainly was not. When you’re talking about out-of-context within the realm of  intentionally attempting to mislead, there is no better example.

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For a month or so I’ve had this analogy kicking around in my head based on the old medical practice of blood letting.

If a patient was sick with just about anything, the answer was to bleed them, literally, and this was supposed to make them better. Problem was, more often than not this process actually made the patient sicker. Rather than question their methods, the physicians would “double down” and bleed the patient more and more until eventually, the patient died.

(Perhaps some readers will remember a recurring bit from the early days of Saturday Night Live, with Steve Martin playing Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber.)

The Keynesian approach of “stimulus” in which increased government spending is supposed to “help” the economy get restored back to health strikes me as the economic version of bleeding a sick patient. It doesn’t work. Not only does it not work, but it makes the economy “sicker”. Just like the ill informed physicians of the past, Keynesian politicians and economists ignore this failure and insist on doubling down. The solution to these people isn’t to change strategy, they think we haven’t bled enough to cure what ails the economy and they demand another round of the same failed policies, only on a grander scale.

Yesterday I saw that Paul Krugman has written an op-ed in the New York Times using this analogy… only he uses it to say calls for “austerity” are akin to the blood-letting physicians of yore. He has stumbled upon the perfect analogy to highlight his own failure as a Keynesian, but he completely misses the point. We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem, and it’s the out of control government spending that is analogous to bleeding. We need to staunch the bleeding with bandages and a tourniquet (which would be “austerity”) before we get any weaker from the loss of taxpayer dollars that have been spiraling down the drain of inefficient government.

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As a communications professional, my assessment of the Obama Administration’s communications strategy is that it may be the most inept performance I have ever seen of any political regime.

Crisis communications is not a silver bullet.  Some thing simply cannot be repaired.  The whole point of communications in general, however, is that the job should never be challenging if the entity the communicator works for doesn’t provide fodder for the opposition.

The Obama Administration has repeatedly handed its opposition ammunition — not 9mm bullets, but everything from Stinger missiles to bunker-busters.  The result is the appearance, to this citizen, of a White House on the verge of panic.  I’m not the only one.  When legendary far-left blabbermouth James Carville tells the White House it’s time to panic, it’s time to panic (That’s no diss on Mr. Carville.  I love watching him.).

Almost none of this has to do with the truth or facts of any given situation.  It has to do with how it all appears.  Generally, it makes Mr. Obama appear like an amateur politician.

It Started Out So Well!

The Obama campaign had it made in 2008.  The GOP had put up the Grumpy Old Troll against a PR juggernaut — the first viable Black presidential candidate.  Young and slick vs. old and creaky.  The backlash against the Bush presidency had peaked — people were tired of the war in Iraq, gasoline had hit $4, and the mainstream media so controlled the political narrative that it would’ve taken a literal disaster to push the Obama campaign off-message.  Not only did the GOP face an uphill battle anyway, but now they were facing a wave of messaging that was hard to ignore: hope and change.  So powerful was this message that, despite it and the candidate it spoke for being utterly lacking in substance, it swayed enough of the electorate to create an historic moment for America.  The country had elected a God.  I don’t need to tell you how this photo comes off:

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Friday night I was joined by Team Breitbart in L.A. at CBS Studios to appear on “Real Time with Bill Maher.” It was exactly what I thought it would be except for one thing: I was taller than most of the men on the panel. Maybe it was the heels, but I positively towered over a couple of them when I went to shake hands and I’m not a particularly tall woman.

Originally we were to discuss the Chamber of Commerce, Christine O’Donnell, over-population, and the Nobel Prize to the pioneer of in-vitro fertilization; topics changed a bit shortly before the show which was fine except that I was really hoping to see where my fellow panelists stood on free speech and the CoC because that could’ve been a party.

A few things:

1. My fact resolutely stands on my statement that we spent MORE in stimulus than in Iraq. Saying “nu-uh” doesn’t change this. The stimulus adds up to $862 billion dollars, $100 billion MORE than Iraq. Really, I could be a total and correct brat and argue that the stimulus is further beyond even this figure – factor in the second stimulus, the EduJobs bill (a $26 billion-dollar payoff to unions as we had $38 billion in unspent stimulus allocated specifically for this same purpose laying by the wayside), additional billions added for food stamps and unemployment, Cash for Clunkers – all of it an artificial mechanism to stimulate the economy to some idiotic Keynesian economic principle by spending cash we don’t possess. Correction: spending CHINA’S cash. I know how the left loves to pass cash with China, but this is becoming ridiculous.

For argument’s sake, let’s say that the stimulus (minus all the other stimulus projects I mentioned above) didn’t cost $100 billion more than the cost of Iraq. Iraq was a success. The stimulus was not. (more…)

You won’t hear Katy Couric, Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer, and Anderson Cooper reporting this story, but it’s perhaps the most defining narrative of this election cycle. Since the Ruling Class Democrats aren’t able to make much progress with the electorate by defending the policies they enacted into law (the Stimulus and Obamacare remain hugely unpopular according to all polls) they have deployed the only strategy they have left—using rhetorical dirty tricks and clever manipulations.

Alan Grayson is only the most visible example of Democratic incumbents using that age old dishonorable tactic of lying. Grayson’s lie was easy to catch in Florida’s 8th Congressional District race.  He took video of his opponent, Daniel Webster, saying “don’t rely upon the Bible verse that says wives, submit to your husbands,” edited out the word “don’t,” and ran a television commercial claiming Webster supported something he had clearly advised against.

In New Jersey’s Third Congressional District, incumbent Democrat John Adler and his friends have confessed to cheating—they’ve put a faux Tea Party candidate on the ballot, a desperate effort to keep Tea Party supported Republican challenger John Runyan from winning. (more…)

It’s not exactly surprising to see a writer for the Apparatchik Press — er, the Associated Press — compose an in-the-tank item sympathetic with the Obama administration.

But Ben Feller’s unlabeled analysis Monday morning (“Obama’s challenge: Anger is replacing hope”; saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) is so over the top and totally backwards that it may merit its own place in the journalistic Hall of Shame.

Feller’s fantasizes that the problem Obama faces is not that his policies and proposals are unpopular. No-no-no. Instead, the president merely has to overcome a “complex communications challenge” to deal with the growing anger out here in the real world and get people over his side.

Here are key execrable excerpts: (more…)

A major provision of the “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002″, aka McCain-Feingold, was largely dismissed by the Supreme Court on January 21, 2010. President Obama’s reaction was swift and almost comically over the top.

With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington–while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates. That’s why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.

Uh-oh! Whenever they use the term “bipartisan” you know they’re trying to sucker us. It’s become as transparent as their disingenuous names for bills like the so called “Stimulus” which was supposed to fund “shovel ready jobs” and instead went to non-existent zip codes. Our unemployment rate went up dramatically.

But why is Obama so upset about the decision? He’s upset by unions and special interests donating large sums of money to candidates? This is the president who took $60 million from SEIU members and was visited by its head, Andy Stern, more than any other person last year. Obama’s “outrage” deserves a closer look. (more…)

Today is the day that I have been invited to go on MSNBC for the very first time.  At no point during the ACORN story was I put on the hot seat to defend the work of James O’Keefe.  My thesis from day one has been that the mainstream media is biased in favor of the left and MSNBC is its most obvious case study.

So when MSNBC led the charge on Tuesday against James O’Keefe when he and three others were arrested in New Orleans at Senator Landrieu’s office, it came as no surprise that the cable network seized upon a narrative that presumed O’Keefe’s guilt, falsely extrapolated that he was being charged with felony wiretapping and instantaneously coined and repeated endlessly the new buzz phase, “Watergate Jr.”

Thus it came as no surprise to me that Keith Olbermann’s super sub, David Shuster, called me early Wednesday.  ”Watergate Jr.” pushed MSNBC to send Shuster down to New Orleans to own the destruction-by-media of James O’Keefe and anyone in his proximity.  I immediately told Shuster that I had been getting emails about his absurd, over-the-top and rush-to-judgment journalism.  He told me that I had him confused with Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, that he has “no horse in this race.”  He asked that I come on his show and that he would give me a fair interview.  He proceeded to send me the following emails to formalize the request.  See below (emphasis mine):

As you see, Shuster is attempting to lure me into this story based upon the false premise of his objective neutrality.  Notice he says, “As I said, I don’t have a horse in this race.”  A simple Google search of David Shuster and James O’Keefe immediately finds that Shuster went into a Twitter frenzy to tar and feather James O’Keefe and propagated what are now provably false lies about the Landrieu case.

See below:
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What else is there to say?

FALLS CHURCH, VA – JANUARY 19: U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the ‘Race To The Top’ program at the Graham Road Elementary School January 19, 2010 in Falls Church, Virginia. The President is announcing his request for an additional $1.35 billion in 2011 for the program that was created as part of the economic stimulus bill signed into law last year. He is joined by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

UPDATE: Apparently he didn’t need the prompters for the kids.  Just the media.  According to The Weekly Standard: (more…)