Hillary's comments - what are they saying?

Now that many of us are wising up to the issue of framing, the politicos come off as if they have also caught on, but they haven't. I would maintain that the vagueries (this is tough stuff to understand so first let me reask your question to include the jobs angle) , the futuretalk (we need to work on, we've got to do something) and the patronizing tone (since you won't bother, I'll refer you to my website for any actual facts) are all strict father frames.

Without making a character judgement, just look at the words and imagine if Prez. W were set up with the exact same question. How much would his words vary?

Many Dems (not just Hillary) act like they've got it because they've stopped saying 'don't think of an elephant' or its equivalent. They didn't read the rest of the books about the deep innate frames to conjure up within people's conscionceness.

Or maybe they did get it and they are conjuring up exactly the frames they want and hoping their lipservice will (once again) force lots of Progressive minds to vote for them?

did I walk the line ok for talking about politicos?

How about that plug for GE - not for anything specific mind you, just at their facility, she " saw what we can do if we use our imagination and our know-how" and just leaves one pining for the day GE will come and sweep our energy problems under the rug for good. Of course GE is the solution, why didn't we think of that?

GE also just put out their own PR self-regulatory wanna-be initiative asserting their green attitude within the last few days. Kind of Ironic that she mentioned them by name.

You know, if she was answering this question in a Junior High School gym, off the cuff, without her notes - fine, I might not get in a twist over the verbage. But no, this fine piece of self produced Hillary-ed, is a pre-cooked webcast. It's not like the questions were late breaking, she has had all the time in the world to create them and this is what we get. The inauthenticity is the problem. The language is saying more about what she will not change, what is fine to stay the same, what is, of course, status quo - meaning the frames are just fine where they are thank you very much, and yes, we did specifically choose those words.

This is the line that many Dems are looking at - can they afford to really be real? Seems like showing the human side is sure to cast them as unelectable. Can they afford to be fake? The Progressives are really full of themselves these days (talkin' principles and values). You'd think they'd all be running for federally funded campaigns, just to avoid becoming StretchArmstrong.

Ironically, Hillary said (sorry don't have the link or exact quote) about the field of potential Dem candidates, 'I'm sure at least one will go down due to a cell phone camera at an inopportune moment'. I'm paraphrasing. You know she is probably right, but then you also think about the sinister side of that comment. The Macacadebacle taught us to be on guard as a speaker, but also that any of us could change political history with the help of our pocket technology.

My problem actually is less with Hillary, or any specific candidate, it is more with the product. I guess these campaigners (a.k.a. public servants) get so used to taking money from big business that they think their constituents actually like getting sold soap.

I never get in any real world conversations where one of us spent hours in a makeup chair and all of my questions set up the other's pitch.

I think that is why I love candidates that show their real humanity, their flaws. For instance, let's say that Hillary really wants to jump on the blog wagon but doesn't have the time or inclination to really be involved - please just say so. Imitating the President's canned Q&A with the regular people evokes... George W Bush! I wish she would just say, 'blogs are great tools, gosh technology is moving fast, it is hard to keep up, thank goodness Crystal's here to help me. Now, about foreign oil, let me tell you the scoop on this piece of legislation I am co-sponsoring'.

Your cell phone line is a pointer to a problem: the way the right media sifts through everything a candidate says to find something that be blown up and used as a weapon. Liberal politicians especially try to keep tight control on what they say.

Recall the Durbin remark about torture: what he was saying, really, was that it was unAmerican and contrary to what one would expect from the US military. It was sort of thing Nazis would do, not the US military! It was a great deviation from US military standards. Yet the right wing twisted that, saying Durbin said the military were like Nazis

just the opposite of the purport of what he said.

"Take no risks!" And yet, the same smear machine also just makes things up -- like the current attacks on Obama as being educated in a Madrassa. Then there was the Kerry swiftboating (now a new verb). Consequently, candidates are like knights in armor about to enter into combat, having their pages (speecwriters and spin doctors) checking to see there is no area exposed where a poison arrow might hit their Achille's heel. (take a look at http://mediamatters.org/ -- I'm on their email list and I must get at least a half dozen reports a day about the smears from the media -- often many more.)

There are smears from the left wing too, but thay have been largely confined to a few left leaning websites and message boards, with a rather small readership, and it's not a "machine". Many lefty sites, however, try to be fair -- part of the progressive common value set. In fact, more than a few bend over backwards and fail to be critical enough. Of course many of the left wing sites and commentators are not really very "left" anyway, but moderate liberals -- we don't have a real left wing in this country, which is why what Chavez, and even George Galloway, says seems so shocking. When is the last time you heard a major liberal say Bush is a war criminal, terrorist, or traitor? Yet that sort of accusation against liberals has been often used by the right wing -- event the Friends, the Quakers, have been called terrorists, as have the NEA, the teachers union.

Most liberal leaning candiates have mostly not countered such accusations or confronted their accusers, but have instead drifted to the right and self-censored what they said. This is a danger with "framing": trying to change one's speech to appeal not just to the common folk, but to the extreme right. This has become almost fufilling the acuusation of liberals as "wimps", and is harmful. Galloway may have come under fire from the right for what he said at the senate hearing, but he rallied the liberals, who enthusiastically applauded what he said. I doubt we will hear anything close to that from the vast majority of liberal-leaning politicians -- they seem not to understand the power of "righteous anger" and bare truth.

If you listened to the New York NPR interview of Dr. Lakoff, you heard him clarify the "dependence on foreign oil" as the conservative frame. The progressive frame is "dependence on oil." Later this week (It's all a blur. Can anyone help with the source?) I heard that the major oil companies have signed a contract with the current Iraqi government (our puppet) to give those major western oil companies exclusive rights to produce oil and give those companies 75% of the profits and the Iraqi's 25%.

So blah blah blah ... let's focus on foreign oil because Iraqi oil is now OUR oil.

Hillary says, "I support all kinds of ethanol."

http://www.glrc.org/story.php3?story_id=3092

This link will take you to the National Academy of Science report entitled "Environmental, economic, and energetic costs and benefits of biodiesel and ethanol biofuels."

Hillary mentions an "apollo plan" toward energy independence, but ethanol REQUIRES LARGE AMOUNTS OF OIL to produce.

I'm not sure what the frame is here. It would seem the progressive values under assault are "trust, honesty and open communication."

A wise friend told me once that one can trust everyone; you just have to know what you can trust them about. For Hillary, it's all about Hillary, it's not about the rest of us. She is not honest with us and her communications are guraded, calculated and NOT open.