What Do You Get When You Cross Math Impaired Liberals With Irony Impaired Liberals?

Obviously, you get Move On Dot Org!


The Move On Webley

Consider the following email:

Dear MoveOn member,
We've developed a breakthrough strategy to destroy the National Rifle Association's credibility in Washington: gun owners committed to fighting for gun control.
You see, the truth is that only a tiny minority of gun owners actually belong to the NRA—and most of them don't even agree with it. If the silent majority of gun owners who support gun control speak out, they'll blow the NRA's cover, so we can finally take action to prevent gun violence and save lives—including by helping President Obama issue an executive order this month to close the background check loophole.
Here's our plan: After the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon last month, MoveOn launched Gun Owners for Gun Control, which now has 32,260 members. Next week, we're bringing 15 of them—thoughtful, experienced, and responsible gun owners, including former NRA members—to Washington, D.C., for meetings with the White House, members of Congress, and the media.
But we still need to raise the money to cover the cost of the gun owner delegation, to take the message they deliver in D.C. and get it out across the country, and then to continue organizing this incredibly powerful group of MoveOn members...

The NRA says it has 5 million dues-paying members, which may be inflated, but still is just 6 and 7 percent of U.S. gun owners..."

Math impaired? Irony impaired? Both?

According to Mooooooove On, the NRA is supposedly an illegitimate organization to represent all gun owners, because at 5 million members, give or take, they only represent 6-7 per cent of American gun owners. If we believe Move On's numbers, that would mean roughly 83 million gun owners they want to disarm, (with an average of about four to five guns each). So if the NRA doesn't represent the American gun owner, who does? Why, that would be Gun Owners for Gun Control, of course, with 32,260 members (stop laughing!)...15 of which are going to testify at meetings of math impaired Congress Critters who will be suitably impressed. The entire membership of Moooove On's anti gun organization is approximately .00388 % of that 83 million. And 15 is .04649 % of .00388 %.

You see where this is going? Five million is way too small a group, not at all representing all gun owners, so let's choose a much smaller sample! And those fifteen hand picked Move On shills will represent all of us! As long as they espouse a liberal agenda, they must be the real deal!

Oh, and they're going to destroy our credibility? Full disclosure: I am a Life Member of the NRA, have been for years.  I'm the NRA, and I have the solution. Since five million is too small a sample and thirty two thousand is better, I have started an organization of gun owners consisting of just me and my grandmother! Since poor grannie passed away some years ago, it's just me to be the final arbiter of all things guns. I will determine what is and what is not "common sense" when it comes to gun laws.

But we still need to raise the money to cover the cost of the gun owner delegation (ME), to take the message I deliver (actually, it's more of a pronouncement) in D.C. and get it out across the country, and then to continue organizing this incredibly powerful individual, who is both an NRA and MoveOn dot org member. (I must be a member! That's how they address me in all their emails to me!)

Behold the only man to stand in the gap between these two diametrically opposed groups. And be sure to send in your dough! I ain't flying to DC in coach!

Move On Dot Org: Flaming Hypocrisy or Selective Amnesia?

Got an email from Moooove On dot org this AM. And "Flaming Hypocrisy or Selective Amnesia" (or both) came to mind. Actually, there was an "L" word in there too, but in the Spirit of the Season, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt!

Dear MoveOn member,

Yesterday the tea party-led House voted mostly along party lines to increase taxes on 160 million people starting January 1.1 In other words, "Happy Holidays from the Tea Party." Bah, humbug!

Republican members of the House have caused the "Tea Party Tax Increase" of 2012 by ignoring the needs of the 99% in order to score political points. They rejected a bipartisan Senate compromise that extended the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance, and prevented cuts for doctors who care for Medicare recipients.

Now they've left Washington for their holiday vacations, giving middle class families a tax increase for the holidays. It's critical that Rep. LaTourette hear from you today before his office closes for the holidays. If he doesn't act, the Tea Party Tax Increase of 2012 goes into effect on January 1.

But, let's jump into the Way Back machine and go all the way back...twelve whole months ago and try very hard to remember if there was a similar amount of faux outrage directed towards...Barack Obama.

Barack Obama, if you recall, was leading the charge to let the Bush tax cuts expire, so that he could raise taxes on the rich, but incidentally, on everyone else as well. The fig leaf he tried to use for cover was, "Oh, he's not raising taxes, he's merely letting the 'tax gift to the wealthy' expire!" Yeah. Right!

So, let's examine the principle that Move On is using (stop laughing!):

Obama letting a tax cut expire is not raising taxes, but Republicans letting a tax cut* expire is raising taxes. Got it! No hypocrisy there! But if this is the Tea Party Tax Increase, then what did you write about the Barack Obama Tax Increase of 2011? *crickets chirp*

I put an asterisk next to the "tax cut" today, because there is some debate that goes all the way back to FDR on whether or not this is really a tax. For big government types like FDR and BHO, it's a tax when it's in their best interest to be a tax and not a tax when rhetorically it doesn't fit the populist BS they feed their constituents.

If the payroll "tax" is the means for funding one's Social Security account, then taking money away from an already underfunded system doesn't sound like a long term solution to insure your retirement funds will be there. But, let's give them the benefit of the doubt again, and say that SS is so screwed up, a few million here or there won't be missed and we really need to stimulate the economy. (Again, funny how Obama gave lip service to this, yet tried to raise taxes let tax relief expire last year anyways!)

Okay, the economy is in bad shape, and letting people keep a little more of their money earmarked for retirement is a good thing, (unless you're talking about letting them keep a little more of their money earmarked for retirement and directing that investment themselves. Then it's the End of Civilization as We Know It!), then why, if Obama is asking for a two month extension does it mean the Republicans are intransigent if they offer him a deal for six times as much? If two is good, wouldn't twelve be better? It certainly would be for those having to track these changes and rewrite software to make the proper deductions for a brief two month period**, not to mention all those middle class families Mooove On was lamenting over.

We have noted in the past the schizophrenic tendencies of Barack Obama. And we know he is also famous for berating Congress to pass an imaginary jobs bill that hadn't been written yet, because "there's no time to waste" in putting Americans back to work!

On the Canadian pipeline project, that would immediately create 20,000 jobs, with more to come over the years, Obama didn't want to sign, saying the jobs would be there in a few years. Really? What happened to "we can't wait"? And the very real possibility that the Canadians might build the pipeline in another direction and sell that oil to someone else means that the jobs deferred would be more jobs lost under this president.

So, if the House Republicans coupled the win/win of new jobs, less dependence on Middle Eastern oil, with tax relief six times greater than the president asked, why are they the bad guys in this scenario? And if Obama will only accept bills that are submitted to him with his own very narrow minded views of what is acceptable, no more no less, why is it the Republicans who refuse to compromise?

Last time I looked, compromise went both ways. Or is Mooove On's agreement with the president not hypocrisy at all, but rather a folie à deux - a delusion shared by two?

**People have been telling BO for three years that one of the biggest things crippling the economy is the uncertainty of what a business's cost might be for the next twelve months, much less a time frame that would accurately allow them to project profit and loss for say five years. Having to waste resources preparing for a change in payroll taxes that might hit them in sixty days or might be renewed again indefinitely only adds to that uncertainty.

Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

"Move On" Whistles by the Graveyard - "Wow"

Some of you new to Proof Positive may not know it, by I am a member of "Move On dot Org". I know I'm a member, because they keep telling me I am! (Typically, before they ask me for more money.)From their latest email:

Dear MoveOn member,
Wow. The energy around today's Rallies to Save the American Dream has exploded in the last 36 hours.


What started as just an idea on Tuesday morning has turned into 30,000 people signed up to attend the Rallies to Save the American Dream in 66 cities—including every state capital.

It'll be an amazing show of solidarity with the people of Wisconsin. And it'll put the right-wing on notice that we're fired up and ready to take them on united, as a nationwide movement.

(emphasis mine)

See. This is why I think that Moooove On appeals more to the typically math impaired liberal (but, I repeat myself). The "explosion" you just heard was more like a Greenie Stickem cap* that was left in your jeans, after your Mom washed them.

Thirty thousand people in sixty six cities works out to about 454 people per city. Imagine four hundred and fifty of your neighbors rallying for anything in your fair city. Unless the population of your town is five thousand or less, I'm thinking that's not much of an "explosion". If all 30,000 of them were in one city, like New York or L.A., it might be newsworthy, but still not that big a deal! And that's "signed up", that's not even "shown up" yet.

To quote my estimable friends in Mooove oN (in my best Ben Stein impression): "Wow". Color me unimpressed.

Update: FYI, 30,000 people in a population of 308.7 million is .00971%
Less than one tenth of one percent. Again: Wow.


*For those of you too young to know what a Stickem cap was, we present the following educational video:



Cross posted at Say Anything
More at Legal Insurrection, Memeorandum