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Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.
-- Blaise Cendrars
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I was on TV recently. Steve Karlin and Mike Sims did an amazing job assembling this video... absolutely top-notch. You can view the video here. Pretty cool. |
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How We Get Our Country Back |
The title of this post applies whether Obama or McCain gets elected. America has moved a long way from its independent roots, and its health is planted in self-reliant individualism, not mutually dependent collectivism. Neither McCain nor Obama will move far from a collectivist government. The only difference is that McCain wants to spend less on it. Institutions, such as TV, newspapers, colleges and universities, and government, all lean pretty substantially toward collectivism and these institutions promote any material or person that supports their point of view. Late night TV criticizes Republicans more than Democrats by a 7-1 ratio. The Daily Show? Colbert? Lampooning the right as much as possible. The ratio there is likely even more lopsided. Libertarians, conservatives, and any other non-liberal/non-progressive types won't get hired into those domains to make any dent in this institutional thrust to the left. The one area where libertarians and conservatives do have a dominance is radio, and the Democrats want to revive the Fairness Doctrine, a mandate that would require radio stations to give equal time to the right and the left on the air. Except that the left won't apply this same standard to TV, newspapers, colleges and universities, or the hiring of government employees. It's a narrow space these days to have a freedom-loving voice. In the election cycle, Republicans employed brute-force marketing. Robocalls, door-to-door visits, mail, email, TV commercials, radio spots, and sound bite debates that don't inform at all. Is that the way to do this? Does it help? I'd say no, that a smooth-talking, inexperienced, anti-American-friendly candidate stands a good chance of beating a guy who is uber-qualified to be president. Republicans suck really bad at marketing and communication. So how to do it better? Let me ask it a different way... would you want any of the following done to you: - Robocalls?
- Someone coming to your door to talk about the election?
- Incessant mailers?
- Email?
- Non-stop TV commercials with menacing tones?
- Radio spots with menacing tones?
- Watching sound bite debates that don't inform anyone?
Isn't the goal of an election to attract people to the candidate? So what's attractive in the list above? Who would sign up to receive any of that?That right there ought to be the standard for any communication. That's Marketing 101. So what is attractive? - Humor
- Entertainment
- Amazing feats
Forget trying to get the news networks to grant an interview like they would give the other guy. Ain't gonna happen.Instead create things that attract people to them, that can be enjoyed at a time convenient to them, that they want to show their friends and family. It's why I've started doing cartoons. I'm not saying I'm good at it, but I am applying myself to it. A cartoon can be absorbed in 10 seconds, and if it's funny or entertaining or amazing, it can be forwarded instantly via email to others. Remember the popularity of JibJab in the 2004 election? How about YouTube in this election? The MyObama blog network was good for Obama. I don't think Americans are stupid. I do think Republicans are stupid at marketing. When you think of a marketer, is he or she a Democrat or a Republican? You guessed correctly - thanks for playing. Let's be attractive and educate an attracted audience. Rush and Glen Beck do it every day. I listen to them because they're funny and entertaining and they're educational. I don't listen to Hannity because he's nothing but a big negative ad that repeats the same five phrases over and over. I don't learn anything except how to shut off my radio. Glenn Reynolds is an expert editor, highlighting just enough of others' work to make it interesting yet he's informative enough to help you decide whether to click through for more detail. And he's headed in the right direction with PJTV online. So what if we had a creative bank of people to help attract an audience? Video, cartoons, art, photos... and what if we made it all accessible, easily shared and forwarded? What if there was a -gasp- cultural community among the right? There's an old saying in retail: the longer they're in the store, the more likely they are to buy. It's why I have a number of different things to do here on beatcanvas. You can create and send an e-card, browse the gallery, browse and participate in the blog, play a word game, see how many days you've been alive... To help interest people, we need to be more interesting. At their speed, not ours. Not lectures, but discovery. And we need to let them participate once they come in. How does the right organize a community that attracts others to it? Because frankly, we can laugh at a community organizer - until what he's accomplished isn't funny any more. Time to get serious about the game of attraction. Casually aloof doesn't help get our country back. |
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Drawn on Hoss' Verizon LG Dare Drawing Pad:  Since I started doing art on my phone and putting a couple of videos out there, I've had a few of people send me their LG Dare artwork. Hoss is a guy I've never met, who has told me that he doesn't know much about art, but likes doodling on his phone. When he finishes something he likes, he sends it to me. For a guy who "doesn't know much" about art, his water in the picture above beats any water I've done on my phone. Kudos to him for an excellent job. And the sky is pretty amazing as well. It just goes to show that it's not the destination, but the journey. I'd say Hoss is well on his way :) (You can sign up to have a new drawing sent to you daily by picture message.) |
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The Bottom-Up Economy, as Repurposed by the Thief-in-Chief |
Bottom up, citizen. That's right... bend over. I'm gonna share some of my personal history here. A real-life example... In 1990, I got out of the Army with a 30% disability. Feeling sorry for myself, I walked around with a cane and didn't work. I took food stamps and housing aid. I started college about 4 months later. But during this time, I lived off the government. I figured I was owed. Call it my own personal reparations. I was also a devout liberal at this time. I wrote editorials to the Des Moines Register protesting the Gulf War and President Bush. They were published, and I felt like I had a voice. I was just killing time until school started. I didn't mow my grass (I have a cane! My foot hurts!) and my neighbors thought ill of me. The guy next door flew a flag every day right outside his front door. I was a disgrace to him. He was a World War II vet. He would ask me why I didn't have a job and why I wouldn't mow my yard. I would explain my Army injury and he would shake his head. "You're not that hurt," he would grumble and return back inside his house. I moved, started college, and there I found a lot of like-minded folk - professors and students. I was an English major. I was married and had three kids. Every month was tough and we were barely scraping by. My foot was slowly getting better and the idea that I could not support my own family without government assistance began to grate on me. I could still hear that old man ask me what was so wrong with me that I couldn't work. I knew he was right. I started working for minimum wage at the college bookstore. Prior to joining the Army, I had washed windows, and so I found that if I walked a certain way, I could manage a ladder without hurting my foot. As I had done in the past, I went door-to-door, asking if people wanted an estimate for getting their windows cleaned. I made extra money that way, and our financial situation improved a bit. Here's the great question to ask: did the government assistance help me? Honestly, no, it hurt me. I rationalized the assistance, convinced myself that it was deserved, and propped myself pitifully and unbeckoned on the backs of others, expecting them to carry me and my family. It wasn't until I took my situation in my own hands and worked to earn my own way that I gained in self-esteem and confidence. I realized that it was easier to be lazy and rationalize my dependence. Too easy. But I couldn't trade away my sense of self for it. My self-respect was on the line, and the disgusted words of an old vet woke me up. While I received money from the government, I didn't create any jobs. I was a net drain on the economy. I made all of you pay my way. I'm sorry for that... It wasn't until I determined to take responsibility for myself that a job was created - when I went around creating my own work through window washing. Which later led to many late nights and all-nighters teaching myself how to work on computers. The government didn't do that. That was me again taking responsibility for myself. What's more, as people with money who created companies wanted to grow their money, they hired people like me who had expertise in skills that they needed. I went from working a minimum wage job in 1992 to making $75,000 in 1997. I had dropped out of college, so it wasn't the government or college that sparked my rise in income. It was me spending many late nights improving myself and rich people willing to hire me for my skills that increased my income. The term for this is called "trickle-down economics." The formula is: I made myself productive and attractive to people with money, and then they hired me to help them make more money. In the process, I made more money. Substantially more. Minimum wage sucks, and the government didn't help me out of that. Nor did a degree from college. Obama's using the phrase "bottom-up economics" these days. Former Clinton treasury secretary Robert Reich wrote about this recently: The long-term answer is for America to invest in the productivity of our working people - enabling families to afford health insurance and have access to good schools and higher education, while also rebuilding our infrastructure and investing in the clean-energy technologies of the future. We must also adopt progressive taxes at the federal, state and local levels.Call it bottom-up economics. The article he wrote is longer than that, obviously, but what's missing is a common sense accounting of where the money for all this comes from. He talks about investing in the productivity of our working people, and then lists buying health insurance for people, rebuilding infrastructure, and clean-energy technologies. What does any of that have to do with productivity? It's spending - spending from some magic bag of money. Oh yeah - greater progressive taxation, at all levels. There's the magic bag. That equals productivity? How does any of that lead to greater income for anyone? They're all busy reaching into the magic bag of money...Now here's the rub... the idea of a bottom-up economy was discussed before, but in a very different fashion: This new style of business, birthed by the Internet, is ignored at any company's peril. In an excellent new book, "The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers," authors C.K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy describe the consumer's new role: "from isolated to connected, from unaware to informed, from passive to active." In the bottom-up economy, presuming you know what the customer wants is the ultimate error. Prahalad and Ramaswamy instead call for "co-creation of value": The successful products and services from now on will be those developed jointly -- company and customer working hand in hand. These are very different concepts, but they could look similar to someone who wanted them to appear that way.- A bottom-up economy, progressive taxation-style: non-consented, co-owned wealth and property.
- A bottom-up economy, business/customer-style: consented, co-created value of products and services.
The first wants to even out wealth and reduce competition through compulsory participation. The latter wants to seek out competitive advantage by broadening volunteered consumer engagement.But they're called the same thing, unfortunately. Which is what happens when you want to change society: you begin by changing the meaning of its words. If elected, I'm sure that the Obama will work, as Hugo Chavez has worked, to re-educate us in his re-engineered words and phrases. Hence my cartoon yesterday, showing him searching for a phrase that can be turned into something more palatable than "spreading the wealth" and "patriotism" through higher taxation. "I believe in you," is seemingly at the heart of both definitions of a bottom-up economy. But Obama would act as the Thief-in-Chief in the progressive model - a model that lacks universal freedom of choice, as the second model does. It is truly, therefore, theft. Which is why it has to be stopped. Theft can never grow an economy, bottom-up or otherwise. |
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Drawn on my Verizon LG Dare Drawing Pad:  I get a phone call while at work today from Steve Karlin, a reporter from a local news station, KCCI. He wanted to do a story on my cell phone art.  While at the botanical center, I drew the picture shown above, and he interviewed me. How very cool of him and his camera guy to do this. I guess I'll be on the 6 o'clock news later... I'll try to get the video up on YouTube. (You can sign up to have a new drawing sent to you daily by picture message.) |
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Perfect news: the ultimately corrupt Republican Senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens, is going to jail. I love that. 1 down, 534 to go... |
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The weirdest thing has happened to me. Yesterday, I started getting email saying that racists attended Sarah Palin's rally here in Des Moines. I attended that rally. I recorded it. Racism? Not a hint. Not a whisper. So I deleted a comment left on my YouTube video of the rally, and answered the commenter saying that it was a ridiculous assertion. I get more email today, and one says this: Just saw your good video of the rally. Unlike some other videos you were further back. Partway during the rally, as she was talking economics some claim a woman yelled out in a rather quiet moment "he's a ("n" word"). I doubt that is what was said unless it was staged. Just wondering if you had anything to add. I wrote back, saying:I was there, recorded the whole thing, listened to it several times while splicing the video.I yelled, "Communism!" at one point, which is the closest phonetic equivalent of what you suggest. That's plain in the audio of my video. It was about when she remarked how the media and Dems were tearing into Joe the Plumber, which is exactly what China and Russia do to dissidents. Obama clearly hates free speech. Otherwise, if you know exactly where something racist was shouted, point me to the video and the and the minute:second and I'll compare it to my own. But I guarantee - had anyone there said it, the crowd would have beat the crap out of the bigot who uttered it. So the person responds:It's about 3:23 seconds after your video ends based on the following video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF8ZGo_DBeQ The comment is yelled in this video at about the 6:32 mark. So I watched the video, and someone in the crowd yells something, though it's a bit unintelligible. Off I go to my recording of the event.Now check this out, because this is how hard you have to work to be The Left these days, searching for racism in everything like some hardcore Christians used to spend hours spinning records backwards to find satanic and subliminal lyrics that weren't there at all. But they would tell you they heard it! I found the segment in my recording, amplified the woman's voice at the appropriate place, and then posted the video on YouTube. My splice/highlight is all of 19 seconds long. I'm not going to embed the video on beatcanvas. From a Kos Kid's transcription of the event: Palin: Obama...Barack Obama has an ideological commitment to higher taxes. The lessons I believe we have taught our kids would start to erode. Those lessons about work ethic, hard work being rewarded and productivity being rewarded...Women yelling off camera in audience: And he's a n-----! Palin: And...and......lessons about, um, the virtues of freedom and independence while being generous and compassionate with others. Let's imagine, for a moment, that someone actually yelled that. That doesn't even flow with the speech. To yell that is completely a non sequitur. Sarah's speaking about how we teach our kids a strong work ethic and the reward of hard work. What would that have to do with anything?I asked my son, Aaron, who was neither at the event, nor knew of what I did while I worked at our main computer, to decipher for me what the woman shouted. "A sinner?" I clearly heard "inner" as well. In context, I think it's clear that the woman was going along with Sarah and said "Be a winner!" Which makes much more sense. Try it now with that in the transcription: Palin: Obama...Barack Obama has an ideological commitment to higher taxes. The lessons I believe we have taught our kids would start to erode. Those lessons about work ethic, hard work being rewarded and productivity being rewarded...Women yelling off camera in audience: To be a winner! Palin: And...and......lessons about, um, the virtues of freedom and independence while being generous and compassionate with others. Makes a lot more sense...Here's the link to my 19-second, amplified splice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9QK_Np-rYg Listen with the sound turned down somewhat. I crank it up in the spot where the woman yells. There's no "gg" there. But here's the point of this ugly post: it is not those of us voting for McCain / Palin who keep bringing up race. Or slurs. Or anything remotely close to it. It's Obama's supporters. If there is an aspect of this election that has a tie to race, it is unfortunately that the person who might be the first black president will also be a socialist. It's a deeply regrettable association, and the necessary and ongoing fight against Obama, should he win, will no doubt bring more accusations of racism. Which is ridiculous, because it has nothing to do with his skin, but with his mind. It's how he thinks and what he believes that is offensive. And so race relations will be set back quite a bit for charges of bigotry being used as a strawman in the argument against his redistributionist agenda. It's too bad that the Kos Kids and the rest of the Left can't actually hear what Palin is saying, because she's right: Due to socialism, "the lessons I believe we have taught our kids would start to erode. Those lessons about work ethic, hard work being rewarded and productivity being rewarded, and lessons about the virtues of freedom and independence while being generous and compassionate with others." Lesson: Productivity and abundance brings generosity (unless you're Joe Biden), and socialism will negate that. That's a lesson that the Left will miss because they can't hear her for the manufactured racism they want to hear. Like the wacko Christians who used to s |
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Drawn on my Verizon LG Dare Drawing Pad:  (You can sign up to have a new drawing sent to you daily by picture message.) |
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