Now We Sit Back and Watch It Get Famous

Extreme Mortman should be named to the Obama Transition team; his suggested government expansion is genius.

Extreme Mortman: Why The Government Needs A U.S. Department Of Irony

Like most Americans, we’ve been actively following the latest Charlie Rangel news as presented on Instapundit (an update even today).
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So imagine our keen interest to see Time magazine’s list of Top Ten Outrageous Earmarks of 2008 (via the wonderful Daniel Kurtzman at Political Humor) — and this gem listed at number 2:

$1.9 million for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service: It’s been dubbed the “Monument to Me” — a planned $30 million academic center supported by longtime New York Rep. Charles Rangel and named, not so surprisingly, for Rep. Charles Rangel. The Harlem Democrat raised hackles after securing a $1.9 million earmark for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York. When a more junior colleague objected to the idea of lawmakers sponsoring things bearing their own names, the 78-year-old Congressman responded “I would have a problem if you did it, because I don’t think that you’ve been around long enough….” Rangel ruffled more feathers by reportedly soliciting donations for the center from companies with business before the powerful Ways and Means Committee — which he chairs. He also stands accused of working to preserve a tax shelter for an oil drilling company whose chief executive pledged $1 million to the center; Rangel says his support for the legislation had nothing to do with the company or its executive’s pledge. It hasn’t helped Rangel’s case that he’s been caught up in a number of ethical and legal tangles in recent months, including his failure to report $75,000 in rental income from a villa in the Dominican Republican, alleged violations of New York regulations on rent-stabilized apartments, and reports of inappropriately taking a tax break on a home in Washington, D.C. Rangel has acknowledged some oversights but insisted he’s “done nothing morally wrong,” and welcomed a House ethics investigation that’s expected to wrap up early in 2009. But it seems his patience for scrutiny into the subject has a limit: pressed by a reporter on his fundraising tactics for the academic center, Rangel responded, “I really think you’re being annoying now.”

Extreme Mortman: We knew about the Center. Now we sit back and watch it get famous.

1600 Twitter Ave.

While Democrats continue having meetings which involve, leadership, legislative agendas and the future of this country-  one reader wrote in and asked, “what are conservatives doing?”

Funny you ask.  Last time we checked they were busy running up the social network scoreboard.  Apparently the road to the White House in 2012 goes through 1600 Twitter Ave. [time well spent]

On Facebook, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell leads with 3,358 friends.  While Blackwell has “friends,” former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele has “supporters” – 3,008 supporters, to be precise.  Michigan GOP Chair Saul Anuzis has 2,572 friends.  I couldn’t find former Huckabee campaign manager Chip Saltsman’s Facebook page, but “Draft Chip Saltsman for RNC Chairman” has 501 members.  South Carolina GOP Chair Katon Dawson has 486 friends, but there’s also a “Draft Katon Dawson for RNC Chair” page (377 members), and a “Katon Dawson for RNC Chair” page (306 members).

Speaking of Twitter, we do that too.  Seriously, it’s like crack.  Try it out.

Pay-To-Poke: “Senate Seat For Sale” Facebook Group

A reader wrote in a few minutes ago and asked, “How long until we see “Obama’s Senate Seat For Sale” Facebook Group?”

Our answer, “it already exists…”

*Click on image to enlarge.

UPDATE: Lead web investigator Extreme Mortman reports that the seat is also available on Ebay.

UPDATE:  Slightly-used Senate seat also found on Craigslist.

Better Than We Could Do

We should note, while the editors of FDC aren’t necessarily wordsmiths, several of our loyal readers are. This is a comment that was posted a few days ago and we thought it deserved a little front page action.

We hope you enjoy PhoenixSunsPhan’s post from election night:

Famous DC gurus - I’m watching the market tank, have no long calls that will be executed this morning, won my lucrative bet with a naive politico on who would be the next president and am waiting to sell short when my stock analysis software tells me to.
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In the meantime, I have absolutely nothing to do - my gf is at work - except write about the subject presented in this post. I want to talk about why R’s are losing their jobs and why Obama won. It’ll all make sense, I promise. I’ll also give you permission to email, fax, print and make paper airplanes out of my post. Here it is:
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Monday Morning QB: “Obama and why R’s need to call “Dr. Phil”
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MYTHS are narratives that enable a politician to connect with common people about their plight and aspirations. The Republican political geniuses of Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt should have opened their eyes from the “I have a lot of experience in communications so I must be an expert” trance to see the world as it really was. Modern society keeps getting fractured into smaller units, with communities becoming less cohesive. Wallace and Schmidt should have known that because of society’s fractured sense of community, also known as the problem of modernity in academic circles, people feel an inner conflict due to this fracture. People want to feel included in something, since most Americans are nameless SSNs floating in a sea of the anonymous American masses (ask yourself, do you know at least three of your neighbors? What about one? When did you talk to them? Right, I didn’t think so).
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Barack Obama created a MYTH of identification. He (along with Plouffe and Axelrod) created a narrative that catered to the identities and plight of a large group of diverse people. Axelrod and Plouffe pulled on Obama’s puppet string and used vagueness to their advantage. This meant LESS talk on details and boring statistics, and more on VISION, character and values. It doesn’t matter if you agree with his vision my GOP comrades - it’s the fact that there was a narrative that incorporated this vagueness that matters. Vague words like “hope” and “change” - along with inspiring speeches, though “empty” in the opposition’s eyes tugged at the emotional state of people. The key is to appeal to the HEART not to the brain. (When was the last time you won an argument with your gf or wife using logic? JK. It doesn’t work, though.) Humans are emotional creatures, though we want to believe we are fully rational, we are not. We’d be computers then spouting out binary code.
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Plouffe and Axelrod crafted a strategy that messaged speeches and general rhetoric that made people dissatisfied with the current status of things (Bush, economy, Iraq, whatever…) and proposed their “solution” to people’s “unhappiness” with themselves and their lives. In ad-psych, this is called an “identity shift” where an actor ingratiates their message as a new “identity” for people to substitute for their problems. “Change” and “hope” are vague enough to fit any demographics dissatisfaction and become the solution. In order to achieve this “Change” and get “Hope” they needed to listen to the unfolding narrative of Obama for the answers. This is brilliant ad work. Let me rephrase - GENIUS advertising work.
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Obama then reinforces the idea with easy slogans that have emotional appeal (pickup up a book on neuro-linguistic programming and writing, you’ll be surprised.) Since people care about themselves more than others, people identify with slogans that subconsciously appeal to THEM and THEIR situation. “Change” and “hope” are vague yet effective enough to have that EMOTIONAL resonance that makes people think that they will have their own CHANGE in their lives if Obama (the solution) becomes president. (People rarely admit to others that we humans actually care about ourselves more than others - heck it’s an evolutionary mechanism of survival (if you believe in biology and other “intellectual” stuff.)
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The more Republicans attacked the big Obama narrative myth of “change” - the more it worked FOR Obama, since attacking such a “great” and “grand” myth makes the attackers look petty. Instead of hiring former software execs and pudgy staffers to “brand” one of the most powerful political parties on the face of the planet that represents millions upon millions of people you need to hire a real firm. “Country first” was a slogan that had no emotional resonance with the individual. In fact, “Change” was such a good slogan that the GOP tried to jujitsu the Dems and take the Change slogan and qualify it with a line from a former anti-depressant drug (seriously… who didn’t Google search that?) This is similar to a company stealing the Nike Swoosh symbol from Nike calling themselves “Nikke” and adding a second tail to the swoosh. Your generic shoes will be sold at K-Mart for ten bucks, not Foot Locker for $150. Your brand is devalued that way.
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McCain should have made a full frontal assault on Bush’s policies or modify. He should have thought more about human nature and their need to group around ideas and beliefs (remember Reagan… yeah, he did a lot of what Obama did.) He needed to create a narrative for himself, rather than having himself defined by others or not maintaining consistency in his political narrative.
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YO, WHERE’S DR. PHIL?
Instead of bickering over leadership positions or who did what, Republicans are advised to plan their “re-branding” now (the first “branding” didn’t work). They need to think like a Madison Avenue advertising firm - which is what Obama, Axelrod and Plouffe did. They need a cohesive strategy utilizing all the psychological advertising techniques that worked for Obama and major corporations. Hell, even I was inspired by his sight and I don’t even know why (maybe it was that radiant sun across his face, or the “powered by Hope” at the bottom of his site.) I remember when I was working an election and a prominent staffer said: “We don’t do blogs,” and I thought to myself: “time to polish the resume.” That’s not how you stay competitive in today’s political environment and that’s how you get staffers from losing their jobs. That’s how you make jobs.
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And the market lost another 30 points… might be time to put in a long call.
-PhoenixSunsPhan

FDC Twitter Round Up

• fugees on stage….fraz….no lauryn hill….talking about skid row in los angeles #
• praz wants to close the gap….”something is happening…” #
• more security than delegates…. #
• can we go to another brunch? YES WE CAN #
• is every street in denver shut down? #
• too much change, not enough AC. hot!! #
• ritz camera sold out of blackberry chargers….dc is most def in denver #
• just met THE Capt. Morgan. he’s totally running for President. we’re on board #
• obama and mccain flip-flops for sale…what will they think of next? #
• bar = open #
• conventions = open bars, politics, name badges, name dropping and event swag. america! #

Shoot, Ready, Aim

Anxiety 101:  If you’re a reporter, and you have a story that might put fire to sleep - there are tricks that can be used in order to spice up your piece. [Journalistic integrity]

Each journalist uses different techniques - some fair, others not so much.  In the case of a Roll Call piece that ran today, we’ll let you decide if reporter John Stanton took “out of context” liberties in an attempt to spice his piece. [$ubscription]

From the Politico’s Huddle:

COORDINATED ATTACK: Roll Call’s John Stanton sees Republicans in the House and the Senate making some gains by synchronizing their messages on gas prices.
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‘House Republican leaders kicked off the last week with the ‘Pelosi Premium’ message, seeking to link Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and her fellow Democrats to spiking gas prices. Unlike many similar efforts cooked up by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) that have gone unconnected to the Senate, the upper chamber’s GOP leadership jumped on board. . . .
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Says Michael Steel, with a firearm metaphor he may live to regret: ‘Particularly in a presidential year, when it’s very hard to drive a message from Capitol Hill, we naturally improve our chances of the American people hearing us if we’re all rolling in the same direction … we do our best work when our guns are pointed in the same direction.’

If you’re a reporter looking to fill the inbox of the press flack interviewed in your story, the best way to accomplish that is to casually toss in an ellipsis right in the middle of that person’s quote.  Flacks love the ellipsis.  It always does them right.

Ellipsis (plural ellipses; from Greek ἔλλειψις ‘omission’) in printing and writing refers to a mark or series of marks that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word or a phrase from the original text.

It’ll be forever unclear as to what this Republican flack actually said, but that’s not important - Roll Call editors already got exactly what they wanted out of an otherwise boring story.  I’m sure they also got a cheerful phone call from Mr. Steel earlier this morning.

Google teams with GOP

Google Inc., YouTube Combining Forces with GOP to Create Tech-Savvy Convention

FamousDC Poll

HYPER HILL [you email 'em, we link 'em]

Celebrity Real Estate Losers [CRASHED]

Nolan Ryan to be Texas Rangers president [5,714 Ks]

Super Tuesday Winners and Losers [The Fix]

McCain/Huck ticket [inevitable?]

Mellencamp asks McCain to stop using tunes [fair use]

Watch your speed in MD [bacon]

Big Announcement at WaPo tomorrow? [fishbowlDC]

Euros accepted in NYC [your money is good here]

Gasoline prices could….drop? [50 cents by spring]

Climate-control bill could move quickly [what the hell is a carbon credit?]

Surfing Cats [feline fun]

Extreme Mortman: No One Reads the Internet [Al Gore disagrees]

Worst Headline of the day? [sad]

JoMa wants to call it the Chesapeake Primary [Crabcakes and Politics]

*If you have a link, send it to us at tips AT famousDC dot com

Nancy, can you hear me now?

Is Al Green on hold with Rahm, or does he just not care that Queen Nancy’s house rules clearly state, “refrain from using electronic equipment, including cellular phones or lap top computers, on the floor?”

Watch the video below and look for Green’s Bluetooth device in his ear…

With big business making quick friends with Nancy, it comes as little surprise that Nancy probably won’t reprimand Green’s gaffe. It’s also interesting to note that a certain cell phone carrier has already given Green $3K this cycle.

Democrats promised change – but as the American electorate has quickly found out, it’s business as usual back in DC.

A Presidential shine

President Bush, gives Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) a quick shine before his SOTU address. (By Rich Lipski — The Washington Post)

Kimora Primary

Politico: Kimora Lee Simmons Endorses Hillary Clinton

Hotline: The Highly Coveted Kimora Lee Simmons Endorsement

Sad

RIP Bobby Fischer

Timing is everything

The art of the well-timed sports pic. (Top 30)

Blind Item

Which conservative blogger (and Red State regular) is rumored to be signing on with a surging WH 08 campaign?

Nice try…

But did they really think this would work?

Union-backed jokes?

Bearded Letterman returns with union-backed jokes