Post-Obama TV Orgy OPEN THREAD for Watchers/Non-Watchers and THE CHICKEN BUTTON

This is our first-ever OPEN THREAD.  After the response to Grail Guardian’s post yesterday warning about what Obama would be trying to do, we’re interested in hearing comments from those who took heed of her call not to watch…and from those who braved the performance!!  And feel free to discuss anything else that’s on your minds….

Go for it…

PS…did you see the CHICKEN BUTTON ad??? GO to http://www.neverfindout.org/ and look down to the second line of videos from the bottom…the one on the far right of that line!

It’s a fabulous ad calling out Obama on his “Present” votes….AKA…the CHICKEN BUTTON!

Part 3–Independent Thinking: STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Editor’s Note: This post concludes a three-part series. For previous posts see Part 1–Independent Thinking: PARTISAN NO MORE and Part 2–Independent Thinking: THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY/LATRINE NEEDS THE TY-D-BOL MAN .

Strange Bedfellows

~~By Grail Guardian

I met some great new friends the other day over at Uppity Woman’s place, courtesy of Hang Right Politics. Republicans. Republicans that think PUMAs are brave and patriotic. Many of them came to Uppity’s site and commented about our struggle of country before party, and it started me thinking about how much things have changed over the past political season.

I live in a rather conservative area of upstate NY, and frequently find myself at odds with many neighbors, co-workers, and family members when it comes to politics. This year, for the first time in, well, ever, I find myself having comfortable, agreeable conversations with these former opposites. I can sit in a restaurant and actually discuss the election and the economy without getting into a heated argument (just getting heated up in anger). I even watched the VP debate with my father, a long-time Republican who cringed when I registered as a Democrat in my 20’s.

Conversely, I find myself at odds (and often holding my tongue) with friends and associates I used to agree with almost all of the time. We used to mock conservatives and blame George W. Bush for just about everything. We believed in the same things, or so I thought, until this year. I find I risk a friendship here, a working relationship there by being honest about how I feel, yet these people who I had so much in common with have not the slightest compunction about offending me or even calling me a racist. Me! Can you believe it? Me, who has always had minority friends; me, who has always been tolerant of everyone, no matter how off the wall; me, who has defended the rights of others at my own expense and fought to make those who felt outcast welcomed and loved.

But I’ve also been noticing that I’m not the only one experiencing this phenomenon. The world has gone topsy-turvy with no real explanation. People blog that they’ve lost lifelong friends over this election. Twenty, thirty, even forty year Democrats have left the party and registered as Independents or even Republicans. People that had diaries on Daily KOS and other liberal sites long before I’d ever visited a blog were thrown off for stating the most innocuous of truths. The media I’d depended on for my entire lifetime for news suddenly offered nothing but commentary and opinions. Places like NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN became mouthpieces for a single candidate long before it was prudent to do so, and I found myself unable to trust anything they reported. I was basically raised on broadcast media, and now I barely even watch TV or listen to radio other than music. (I lunge for the station buttons in my car whenever a DJ starts to speak, because I know they cannot avoid discussing politics.) I found myself reading Lyndon Larouche and agreeing with some of what I read. The Fox network became the least partisan news on TV. Conservative web sites featured stories I agreed with and often quoted.

Then the unthinkable happened. It became crystal clear that the Democratic Party had sold the country for a few shekels and didn’t want my vote anymore. They violated the rules (and I felt the law) on May 31, 2008 and didn’t care that their constituents didn’t like it. They bulldozed over Hillary Clinton like she was an unqualified poseur, and started to sound like Republicans of old when they attacked her and demanded she quit the race. Then on one life-altering day in early June, Hillary abandoned me and 18 million of my closest friends and quit. Worse still, she began to actually campaign for the evil she had sworn to defeat, namely Barack Hussein Obama. Well, I guess she had to keep her promise to campaign for him, but I can always count on the Big Dawg, right? Holy crap! Is that Bill Clinton, the man Barack Obama labeled a racist for the rest of his life, campaigning for this sham of a Democrat too? WTF? Wait, the next thing you’ll tell me is that Karl Rove is giving advice to Obama. Aw, come on now! This can’t be real! What’s that you say? The Republicans have selected a female Vice Presidential candidate that’s got more experience than the Democrat’s Presidential candidate? The Republicans are going to put the first woman in the White House? Huh? Wait, what do you mean the Democrats are calling her a C#$%???? Well at least we can count on the Republicans to launch all kinds of nasty 527 ads, right? What do you mean there aren’t any? But good old Bill O’Reilly will tear Obama to shreds, right? Right? What? O’Reilly shilling for Obama, McCain saying there’s nothing to fear with an Obama presidency??? What now, Democrats rigging the elections like the Republicans did in 2000 and 2004? What?? Who the hell is ACORN, anyway?

Suddenly there was a crisis on Wall Street. Isn’t this the one Hillary was talking about months ago? The one John McCain tried to fix years ago? Well that won’t go well, since we all know Bush caused the crisis, right? What? It was the Democrats that sank the economy and caused the sub-prime problems? And Hillary was tanking her own solution to the housing crisis just because McCain used it? Exactly what is going on here?

But I truly began to realize that I had somehow been transported from Kansas to Oz when I started to look at my former candidate (and current Senator) Hillary Clinton. Ok, at first I understood her fulfilling her campaign promises to “work my heart out” for the Democratic nominee. Heck, I even defended her. All any one had to do was watch her body language and read between the lines to see she was just doing her duty. But damn, does she have to keep doing it? She raised money for him; she stopped the roll call vote at the convention (which really pissed me off) to keep her own name out of nomination, and appeared wherever he asked her to go. Why is she still pushing for him? Why can’t she just support the down-ticket candidates? I agonized day after day, wanting to be loyal to the woman I felt was the most qualified Presidential candidate in years (if not decades), but she certainly wasn’t making it easy on me. Or any other PUMAs.

On Not Your Sweetie commenter Diana said:

What is Hillary doing? McCain gave her credit for the plan. She’s going to start chasing her own supporters off with this kind of stuff. Out and out lying for Obama? I can understand her having to campaign for Obama, I know she’s afraid of loosing her seat in the Senate, but this? Her supporters all know this was her plan. Most of us have seen the video.

Which caused Lee M. to note:

This is not the Hillary that I knew and loved.

And Cookiegramma observed:

It may not be the Hillary you knew and loved lee M., but it is now typical of the Democratic party that I am glad I quit.

Back at Uppity Woman, Typewriterstreaming said:

…After watching Hillary Clinton, (a women I have held in the utmost esteem) this morning on Fox TV stoop lower than ever and lecture PUMAS on the great qualities of Obama and to go further and say she is “disappointed” in Dems. who refuse to back the One,(she’s disappointed????)this post was really needed. I worked hard for Hillary’s campaign and after this morning will not vote for her next Senate bid. It is about Country first and I am shocked to see how far the Clinton’s can put themselves before everything. I am sorry to the people on this post that are Hillary supporters. I mean no offense to anyone. But I am stunned and outraged at what flies for the good of this country in Clinton land.

snip

And the nail in the coffin came from Deadenders:

Hillary Clinton has done the 18 Million that voted for her a great disservice. This is a disgusting display of party before country.

She was lying in the primaries or lying now. Take you pick either way she is supporting a fraud and trying to get him elected.

I’m sick of fellow pumas trying to decipher body language and vocal tenor to say that she is just acting. Well the casual political observer doesn’t see that, and believes only what they hear in the past 5 mins.
They hear Hillary saying he’s the one, and will vote for the bastard because of it.

Hillary has failed us.

Hillary has failed us. Wow. Now I was starting to hear the self-reproaching words of people like Kathy from Hang Right Politics:

Because today, I’m taking myself to the woodshed. I’m kicking my @$$. Why? For being foolish, for getting distracted, for forgetting that my country comes first.

And our own Kenosha Marge

Partisanship forces people to hang onto the most outrageous nonsense in an effort to avoid admitting they’re wrong. Some will refuse to see what is indisputable simply because they don’t want to see.

As much as I don’t want to believe it, I have to start questioning Senator Clinton’s motivations here. She started a movement, and then refused to leave the Democratic Party to lead the millions that gathered in her name. She promised to fight for us, and she did for a while, but then she didn’t anymore. Not even for me, a resident of New York (she voted for the Wall Street bailout fiasco, even though she knew it wasn’t the right solution). She fought misogyny in the primaries, and while she refused to be Obama’s attack dog on Sarah Palin simply because McCain selected a woman, did she really do enough to denounce the treatment her own beloved party gave to Governor Palin? The party she loved more than me and my 18 million friends?

This is a difficult call for me. I’ve supported Hillary vigorously since she was First Lady. I was thrilled when she came to New York for her Senate run. I defended her voraciously throughout the campaign, despite personal attacks and being called a racist until the word lost its meaning. But the words of Deadenders keep echoing in my head. “She was lying in the primaries or lying now.”

So here’s the million-dollar question: Can I vote for Hillary Clinton again?

I can only think of one answer: Country before personal loyalties.

Welcome to “Brainwave Analysis”–Where Brainwaves are “Taken, Analyzed, Cleaned-up, Processed” and the Metrics are “Extracted” (Coming to a Future Political Campaign Near You?)

I don’t listen to morning radio very often, but Tuesday (July 22) I was out early and happened to tune in to NPR’s “Morning Edition.”  I came in on the middle of an interview about something called “neurofocus” and thought it was related to a new medical finding. As I listened further, however, I realized that it had nothing to do with medicine.

The segment was actually about a company named NeuroFocus, Inc. (“Brainwave Analysis for Audience Engagement”) which is gathering data about how people respond to messaging in a new way which is problematical downright SCARY.

According to the company’s website:

NeuroFocus, Inc. is an innovative company applying the latest advances in neuroscience to the world of advertising and messaging. Leveraging a rapidly growing body of research and insights into how the human brain processes stimuli like ads, messages, and products, we are able to track millisecond-by-millisecond brain responses to messaging.

Our breakthrough techniques utilize advances in measuring attention challenges, emotional engagement, and memory/retention to measure the effectiveness of advertising. Our measurements are precise, unambiguous, and repeatable. The measurement method is established EEG technology, which is simple, non-invasive, non-influential, and comfortable for and familiar to consumers.

Their “Neuroinformatics Database” is a much different animal that the “Gallup Brain” project which I discussed briefly in a recent post, “Musings on Pollsters: Confessions of a Former Gallup Study Director…(Updated 1X).”  Gallup’s project merely involves a set-up that involves using millions of records from six decades of surveys.

No, what NeuroFocus is doing is entirely different.