it ain't the message

Associated Press:
...Obama is altering his message...
...White House is retooling its message...
...highlighting the upside of health overhaul...

Translation: "It walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck.  And beginning today, we're gonna start calling it a chicken, because calling it a goose hasn't been working."

This is the same statist crap that it was yesterday -- the same nonsense that it always is:  Politicians have decided what they want to take from you, and now they're just experimenting with different ways of selling it.

Think about it.  The White House could be announcing how Obama is rethinking certain elements of his plan in response to public outrage; how he's going back to the drawing board to address America's concerns that the healthcare legislation currently working its way through Congress is too intrusive, too expensive.

But no, they're not gonna actually change anything.  After all, the parts you dislike the most are the centerpiece of this legislation.  Instead, what we hear is how Obama's going to start rationalizing it a different way.   

Obama already knows what he wants to do to you, and now it's just a matter of coming up with a way of stripping your freedom that doesn't sound like stripping your freedom.  I'd like to think that's an impossible task, but then again we did vote for this idiot.

Comments

[Mitch Baker]

Not to go a little off-topic, but it was pretty much too late by the time we got to the general election. If "my guy" had won, it wouldn't be this bad, but it sure wouldn't be good, and we would be having a more difficult time getting fired up. In Jan '08, I had even told myself that I'd vote third party if McCain got the nomination (of course, when push came to shove, I decided to try to get the lesser of two evils). As the primary season went forward, I watched all of the the guys on my "don't hate" list fall off and was forced to pick my second least favorite at my caucus. Even he dropped off.

I don't mean to get ahead of things; we can't afford to wait until '10 or '12 to get our guys in at this point. But, we need to remember while fighting the not-so-creeping statism that we also need to be supporting whoever we think is the best candidate. We can't just wait and vote for whoever is opposite Obama.

[Hank Rearden]

For all their ridicule towards conservatives for being old-fashioned (think McCain and computer usage, their attitude towards coal and oil, family values, etc), this administration is stuck in an old-fashioned media paradigm. The major new networks and papers are sinking faster than you can say liberal bias, while radio and internet revenues are growing. The result? The traditional liberal media doesn't have the universal clout it once had, and the ubiquitous coverage from alternative media keeps ANYONE from “retooling” a message without public knowledge. To now assume they could pull a stunt like this without anyone catching on is either arrogant, or dangerously naïve. Or maybe both.

[Ragnar]

This is analogous to what is now called Social Security. Contrary to common belief, the bill was not very popular with the public at the time (it was seen as welfare). However, the benevolent leaders 'decided' it needed to be passed. In the 7 months it took to go through the legislative process, many names were floated based on opinion polls. Old Age Security, Old Age Assistance, even Social Insurance. The meat of the bill changed very little, but the marketing morphed for each demographic.

Oh, and the bill that actually passed was titled "Economic Security Bill of 1935". The common use of the term Social Security came later, after the masses became comfortable with the mandatory deductions...