Advertising Becomes Even More Evil

There’s a scene in the original, 1960s version of Bedazzled in which Peter Cook (the devil) is complaining to Dudley Moore about what a slump he’s been in lately.

“Take the seven deadly sins,” he says. “I thought those up in one afternoon. The only thing I’ve come up with lately is advertising.”

How true!

Well, the devil seems to have been tweaking the concept of advertising lately to try to make it imitate the infectious properties of a virus.

The idea is to give you something neat bundled with advertising so that you’ll become “infected” and share the infection with your friends and loved ones, allowing the advertisers to exploit your personal social network and infect those you know and love.

Things like this have been going on throughout the history of advertising, and I don’t mind in principle advertisers providing you with something entertaining or valuable in exchange for the chance to pitch their product to you. Heck, that’s the principle on which commercial TV and radio work. So individual viral marketing tools may be fine in and of themselves.

What I am annoyed by is the dehumanizing attitude displayed by the ad executives who have framed “viral marketing” in this manner. Advertising frequently involves a dehumanizing manipulation of the masses, and consciously modelling your techniques off of viruses is an expression of this attitude.

LEARN ABOUT “VIRAL MARKETING.”

AND LEARN ABOUT ONE VIRAL MARKETING TOOL: “THE SUBSERVIENT CHICKEN.”

Oh yeah, ALSO LEARN ABOUT “ASTROTURFING.”

Pro-Abort Victory in 2004 = 24 MILLION DEAD BABIES

READER INVITE: I STRONGLY encourage fellow pro-life bloggers to link to this item! I also strongly encourage folks to e-mail a link to friends and post a link to this piece on web boards.

A while back I did a couple of posts pointing out the cost in babies lives every time a pro-abort president is elected.

HERE’S THE FIRST (AND LONGER) ONE.

HERE’S THE SECOND (AND SHORTER) ONE.

Those posts used numbers based on how many kids will be killed on average by electing a pro-abort president who will nominate pro-abort Supreme Court justices who will continue the abortion holocaust.

But all elections are not equal. Now I want to do the numbers on how many kids will get killed as a result of a pro-abort victory in this election.

With some help from Steve over at Southern Appeal, I did some number crunching and determined how many Supreme Court nominations the next president is likely to get. The answer is three or four.

Here’s how that works: The average age at retirement among SCOTUS justices of late (meaning, the generation of justices that just retired) is 78. The current batch of justices has three members (Rehnquist, Stevens, and O’Connor) that already are past that age or will be within the next four years. Two of these three (Rehnquist and O’Connor) have had significant health problems. In fact, Rehnquist will almost certainly retire at the end of this year’s term if he doesn’t do so before then.

In addition to these three, there is a fourth member likely to retire: Ruth Ginsburg, who won’t hit average retirement age until 2011 but who also has had health problems.

How will this affect the abortion holocaust?

Currently there are three votes on the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade: Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas. There need to be five votes to overturn and let the process of ending abortion in America to begin.

What will happen to that if a pro-life president is elected tomorrow?

Assuming the right replacement justices are picked, we would get five votes to overturn in the next president’s term: Rehnquist would bow out but get replaced with another vote to overturn. So that would still leave us with three. Then Stevens and O’Connor (both refuseniks on overturning Roe) and get replaced with votes to over turn. O’Connor would be expected to retire last, in 2008 unless health concerns intervene.

THAT’S FIVE.

If Ginsburg retires and is replaced with another anti-Roe justice, that would be six.

Add a year to let an appropriate case come before the Court, and we could have Roe overturned around 2009.

If a pro-life president is elected Tuesday then there is a good chance that the abortion holocaust can begin to be ended in the next four years by the removal of the chief legal impediment to ending it (i.e., Roe v. Wade).

But what if a pro-abort is elected?

Rehnquist goes and is replaced with a pro-Roe justice, reducing the number of votes to overturn. Stevens, O’Connor, and possibly Ginsburg also go and are replaced by pro-Roe justices, leaving the number at two.

The next batch of SCOTUS retirees wouldn’t be expected to retire until 2014 (that would be Scalia and Kennedy) with another in 2016 (Breyer), one in 2017 (Souter), and one in 2026 (Thomas).

All of these dates are after the 2008-2012 presidential term, so the president in that term likely won’t be able to make any adjustments to the SCOTUS lineup and the number of votes to overturn will be stuck at two. The abortion holocaust thus continues through 2012 if we have a pro-abort elected Tuesday.

When is the soonest it could end on this scenario? If President 2012 is pro-life then he could replace Scalia with an anti-Roe justice, preserving the number at two, then replace Kennedy with an anti-Roe justice, returning the number to three. He also might get a chance to replace Breyer with an anti-Roe justice, bringing the number to four. But President 2016 would have to be pro-life, too, before we could get the number up to five. That would be expected circa 2017. That’s the soonest it could be expected to happen if a pro-abort is elected Tuesday.

What’s the other possibility? What’s the worst case scenario? Assuming that Presidents 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 are pro-aborts, what would happen to the number of votes to overturn? We’d lose one with the retirement of Rehnquist in 2004’s term. Then we’d lose another with the retirement of Scalia in 2012’s term. The final anti-Roe justice on the court would then be Thomas, who would be expected to retire in President 2024’s term.

Beyond that it gets too hard to see when the needed four votes could be put on the court, though the most likely window is the term of President 2028, when the appointees of President 2004 start to retire. That would be the soonest we could get to five votes if 2004-2016 are pro-aborts.

So if President 2004 is pro-abort then the best case scenario involves extending the abortion holocaust until around 2017. The worst case scenario has it extending until circa 2031. Add a year to each of those to let an appropriate case come before the Court, and we have 2018 and 2032. Average these since the likelihood is that history won’t go either best case or worse case, and we have the year 2025.

So, if a pro-life president is elected Tuesday, Roe could be overturned around 2009. If a pro-abort president is elected Tuesday, Roe can be estimated to be overturned around 2025. That’s a difference of sixteen years.

How many kids will die in those sixteen years? With 1.5 million kids being killed by abortion on average (including emerging forms of abortion that are usually hidden, like via in vitro fertilization, stem cell research, and cloning), that would be TWENTY FOUR MILLION KIDS KILLED.

A normal election only results in six million kids dying due to a single pro-abort presidential term.

This time, because of the current composition of the court, the election of a pro-abort president is likely to lead to it’s twenty-four million additional deaths.

These are only estimates, of course, based on average lengths of time on the Supreme Court, but one has to reply on the best estimates available in order to make an informed decision about the gravity that must be given to this issue and what kind of reasons could be proportionate to it.

You’ll have to decide for yourself whether there is something proportionate to that. Nothing short of a theromonuclear war between well-armed nation states would do it. Terrorism isn’t even close. Nor is the War in Iraq or the whole War on Terror.

Vote pro-abort on Tuesday, and TWENTY-FOUR MILLION KIDS DIE.

(Oh, yeah: What’s Mine Is Mine.)

Weekends Are Funny

You may not have noticed, but weekends are different from week days. For example, you aren’t at work on weekends (not if you’re like most normal wage-earners, anyway). You definitely go to church on the weekend (whereas you may or may not during the week–your choice). Your kids (if any) are home from school (if you don’t homeschool) and probably whining to have you take them places. There are also sporting events you may go to on the weekends. So, y’know, they’re different.

That’s why we have a special name for them.

I see the difference every week in my blog traffic. It goes way down on Saturday and Sunday and then snaps right back to its usual weekday traffic level on Monday.

This is a regular, normal, predictable cycle.

It also poses an interesting challenge for political pollsters. Everyone’s schedule is different on the weekends than it is on weekdays, with lots of people out of the house or otherwise busy doing something other than watching sitcoms when pollsters call. But does this tend to tip the direction of the polling more one way than another?

Think about it: Kids. Church. Sports.

Are the red state folks or the blue state folks more into those three things?

You got it: The red state folks are. As a result, the red state folks are less available on weekends to take pollsters questions and every weekend the polls tip blue state. Then, come Monday morning, the sampling snaps right back in place, just like my server traffic.

This is a story today because it’s Monday and the polls being released today are based on samplings taken over the weekend, when the polls get blue-shifted. Since today is the day before the election, though, that normal, predictable weekend tinting will get portrayed as Kerry “surging” and “closing the deal” and a lot of other similar-sounding thing among blue-ish pundits and spinmeisters.

That’s what I told a friend who called today who very much wants Bush rather than Kerry to win and who was concerned by Kerry’s apparent upward bump in the polls over the weekend.

I don’t claim to know who’s going to win tomorrow (or whenever), but I do know about the weekend polling effect that happens because red state folks are out with their kids, in church, and at sporting events. I’ve read the weekend blue-shift is as much as three percentage points.

Professional pollsters (as opposed to hungry blue pundits) therefore look askance at polls based on weekend data.

READ MORE ABOUT IT HERE.

Attending Mass Today Not Required

Today is All Saints Day (hence last night was Halloween–All Hallows’ Eve, a “hallow” being a saint).

Normally this means that one must go to Mass, as All Saints Day is a holy day of obligation.

But when it falls on a Saturday or a Monday, it isn’t.

Since today is Monday, you are not required to go to Mass (though doing so is still a great thing).

HERE’S THE RELEVANT LEGISLATION.

Political Party Potpourri

This weekend I went to the registrar of voters to pick up a ballot so I could vote early (or at least avoid filling it out at the polling place this Tuesday).

Turns out that here in California there are way more than Bush and Kerry on the ballot. In fact, there are six different pairs of candidates on the ballot representing different parties.

Had to confess that I hadn’t heard of all of the individual parties they represented.

And there’s way more minor political parties out there in America than just these six.

HERE’S A LIST OF HISTORICAL AND PRESENT U.S. POLITICAL PARTIES, LINKED TO INFO ABOUT THEM.

HERE’S A CONSICISE LIST OF PRESENT POLITICAL PARTIES AND BASIC INFO ON THEM.

I had no idea many of these folks existed.

Most of them are nuts.

A few actually sound good (that’s sound good, you’ll note; I’m suspicious of what every party says about itself).

Of Crises Past

Regarding this morning’s post, What Bill Clinton Hath Wrought?, a reader writes:

In all fairness to Clinton and Gore, Gore wasn’t the first presidential candidate to put self-interest before the good of the nation. Aaron Burr had that dubious distinction in the presidential election of 1800. But it is notable that it was exactly two hundred years before another man decided to plunge the country into a constitutional crisis rather than graciously concede defeat for the greater good of his country.

Small correction: Burr was the candidate for vice president, not president; so I guess it is fair to say that Gore was the first legitimate presidential candidate to plunge the country into constitutional crisis. Although, come to think of it, wasn’t there some controversy surrounding Hayes’ election in the nineteenth century? Maybe every hundred years, give or take, we’re simply burdened with public figures who cannot put the good of their country before the temptations of power.

She also provides two very helpful links:

ONE TO A DISCUSSION OF THE ELECTION OF 1800

AND ONE TO A DISCUSSION OF RUTHERFORD B. HAYES

Read ’em! They’re good!

I should perhaps explain the nature of the thesis I was proposing, though. It wasn’t that Al Gore was the first presidential candidate to plunge the nation into a constitutional crisis or that Bill Clinton was the first such candidate to put self-interest ahead of the good of the nation.

Unfortunately, American history is tumultuous enough and populated with enough rogues that neither of these men were first of their kinds.

Previous presidential (and, as the reader points out, even vice-presidential) candidates, including some very famous ones, have put naked ambition and self-interest ahead of the country, both in ways that led to previous constitutional crises and other grave disasters for the country.

My thesis is therefore rather more restricted. It is that, (1) after a period in which several presidents and presidential candidates displayed the statesmanship to put the good of the party and the country ahead of personal ambition, we now have entered a period in which once again the nation is being harmed by naked ambition and self-interest being put ahead of the common good, and (2) Bill Clinton may have played a key role in the historical genesis of this era.

In other words, we’ve regressed.

What Bill Clinton Hath Wrought?

AndorianYesterday the San Diego Union-Tribune published a very worthwhile editorial by Joseph Perkins on the impact that Al Gore’s decision to contest the 2000 presidential election had on the country, how it created the situation we are in now, and how it may do long-term damage to American democracy.

It’s a fascinating read.

READ THE EDITORIAL.

Now I’d like to carry his analysis one step farther.

Perkins traces the potential crisis in American democracy to Al Gore’s refusal to put his own personal interest in winning ahead of the good of the nation. That created a crisis where none should have existed and put the nation through a tremendous convulsion that, despite the interposition of 9/11, has left the nation in an extraordinarily divided and partisan state.

Fair enough.

But can the chain be traced back further than Gore? Is there a reason why he, at that moment in history, decided to throw the nation into a constitutional crisis? Was it simply his own volition or can it be traced to other causes?

It seems to me that a case can be made that the reason he did so may be that he had just spent four years under the political tutelage of Bill Clinton.

Now, I am not one to try to blame every evil under the sun on Bill Clinton. As evil as Clinton was, I am not seething with rage against him. To me he has become a joke–a self-parody–who occasionally turns up in the news and who I greet with little more than indifference.

But it strikes me that Clinton may have been a significant influence on Gore that either explicitly advised Gore to contest the election or who implicitly set the example that Gore followed in doing so.

As evidence for this, I would point to a moment that occurred during the impeachment brouhaha. As later reported by one of the participants, there was a meeting between Clinton, James Carville, and George Stephanopolous. This meeting took place at a moment when it was clear that the chief executive of the United States had lied under oath in a court of law. The fact that he had lied in order to cover his sexual misdeeds was a fact that members of his party would use to distract the public (“It’s all about sex!”) from the fact that the chief executive of the nation–a man sworn to uphold the laws of the land–had just violated one of the most sacred of those laws by offering false evidence to the judiciary.

At this particularly dark moment in the history of the Clinton presidency, George Stephanopolous was overcome with the magnitude of the problem, the fact that the president could well be impeached by the House and possibly even convicted in the Senate, which would result not only in the humiliation of Clinton himself but also in putting the nation through a horrible national crisis.

Moved by these considerations, he wondered aloud whether Clinton might ought to do the statemanlike thing and consider resigning, for his own good and the good of the nation.

This would not have been an unprecidented thing. When faced with impeachment President Nixon had mustered the statesmanship to resign and cut short the Watergate crisis that was tearing the country apart. Other presidents, such as Lyndon Johnson, had crises come upon them late enough in their terms that they decided not to run for re-election for the good of themselves, their party, and the nation. They willing let go the reigns of power for the greater good.

George Stephanopolous suggested that Clinton consider doing the same.

Clinton and Carville looked at him as if he had just transformed into an Andorian.

It was inconceivable to them that anyone would voluntarily give up power. They had been schooled in a political philosophy that involved winning at all costs. Power was something to be relinquished only when it was pried from one’s cold, dead fingers. (This incident also served to them as proof that Stephanopolous was weak and didn’t “get it.”)

And so Clinton didn’t resign.

And the opposing party fell into the “It’s all about sex!” trap and didn’t keep the public’s attention adequately focused on the fact that the chief executive had lied under oath.

And he wasn’t convicted in the Senate.

And the nation went through a huge, polarizing crisis.

This crisis set the stage for the bitterness of the 2000 election. It left both the Democrats and the Republicans out for blood, both seeking vengeance and payback for what had happened with the Clinton fiasco. This is indisputably one of the ways what happened in 2000 can be traced to Clinton.

But perhaps there is another way.

Perhaps that “win at any costs” mentality that shaped Clinton’s political outlook was something that he transferred to Gore. Perhaps he counseled Gore to contest the Florida results. Perhaps he had just mentored Gore long enough that Gore did it on his own. Gore was never an especially strong and decisive man, and whether by counsel or example, perhaps it was the influence of Clinton that pushed him over the edge in the decision to contest the 2000 Florida results.

From that, one domino after another fell, until we now end up with a still bitterly-divided nation, with countless lawyers lined up on both sides. If the vote is close come Tuesday, we may not have just one Florida, but six or seven, throwing the nation again into a Constitutional crisis and doing further grave and lasting harm to American society.

Bill Clinton is not the cause of every evil under the sun.

But he just may have been the cause of this one.

That, historians may determine, may be a key part of the Clinton legacy.