Author: chriscol

As Sara Robinson posted recently at Orcinus, one of the best ways to widen the “cracks in the [wingnut] wall” is to “Stand on Common Ground [and] Keep the conversation focused on the things you agree on.”

A new Zogby poll highlights what is probably the biggest common ground that has yet been handed to Democrats, and we need to claim it for our own!

92% of Americans support transparent elections, where full information is available to citizens about the vote counting process and the vote results.

Why this matters and what we can do with it below the fold.
Graphics and more are posted on bradblog.

Following is the text of an email to activists sent out by Paul Lehto, the lawyer who commissioned the poll.

Folks, Please set your informational distribution systems like email forwards, listservs, press releases, phone calls, and networking to the setting equivalent in your system to “CodeRedWhiteBlue/CodePaul Revere/Spam the Universe” Distribution Setting! Thank you!

Here’s the key: The 92% support for public observation of vote counting and obtaining information about it is AMONG THE HIGHEST POLITICAL VALUES EVER MEASURED.
*It’s higher than people who wouldn’t mind a free tax cut.
*It’s higher than any Bush approval after 9-11.
*It’s higher than the approval ratings of any dead President.
*It’s higher than the approval rating of any senator, governor or President since WWII, at any time.
*It’s higher than the percentage of people who can get a basic math multiplication problem right.

So let’s do the TRANSPARENCY MATH:  We are on very solid ground, and we are WINNING whenever we frame things in terms of (1) anti-secret vote counting (2) public’s right to know and observe/supervise ITS elections (3) public right to obtain information about vote counting.

This data can and should give people the confidence to talk to ANY political group of any persuasion, in these nonpartisan terms. (Of course, once election results are announced, we all know which side to argue for, or many of us do, so the common agreement then breaks down in more partisan terms…).  The winning side in the political equation is the group willing to GET OUT THERE and TALK IT UP with people outside the usual SAFE CIRCLES.

It’s up to you if you want to play to win in this great debate over transparent democracy.  Consider what’s at stake, 92% is political invincibility and it’s not too much to ask to spread this data far and wide, because all Americans agree.

FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions

1. What about the 8% that seemingly don’t agree with this?  
ANSWER: There’s no such thing as an 8% opposition. The 8% figure is arrived at by subtracting the transparency total of 92% from 100% and assuming the difference is the opposition to transparency, but this is not so.  A big chunk of the voters outside the 92% is undecided or unsure or didn’t understand the question. A few surely are just contrarians, others perhaps are highly trusting persons who perhaps know a reputable pollworker and simply “trust” them but don’t realize our system is based on checks and balances, not trust.  By no means should we focus on the few percent in the negative when we have one of the strongest political values ever measured ON OUR SIDE.

2. Are we sure that the polling question is worded fairly?
ANSWER: It simply doesn’t matter, though the question is worded by the professionals at Zogby to be nonmisleading and fair. That being said, the point is that if you word it in this “unfair” or “slanted” way, essentially EVERYONE AGREES WITH IT. So, we’re looking for a successful way to present what we believe, and this works and gets extremely high levels of acceptance: public witnessing of vote counting and public rights to get information about vote counting.

3. Can politicians run on numbers like 92%?
ANSWER: This question should answer itself.  Even a bad campaign could benefit.

4. Won’t the other side be able to lower these numbers?
ANSWER: If they dare to attack transparency, they might make a dent in 92% but in democracy remember that 50.1% is all it takes to win, so there’s a huge margin. But they would also pay a high price for attacking public transparency and the public’s right to know, so they will hesitate to do so in the first place.

5. Does it matter that in some or even many states these public rights on vote counting are not the law on the books or are being negatively impacted by invisible electronic voting?
ANSWER: This is the debate, but what we are measuring are NORMATIVE political values about what should be, or what the public prefers or agrees with. We can then use those normative values to show how particular situations or public “servants” are out of touch with the public’s views and mood.

6. What is the key to handling other objections to this?
ANSWER:  Don’t let anyone, even a friend, let you get your eyes off of this prize: the power of the 92%. The numbers are real, but even if they weren’t, the momentum and shot in the arm that the public will get from re-asserting its rights in our democracy is so valuable that it is ALWAYS a strategic mistake to focus on the negative when the positive is so much better to focus on AND propels us forward….  Anyone who, in effect, wants to focus on the negative is really saying that so long as there is ANYBODY in opposition to public transparency, we should all sit on our hands or otherwise feel bad, feel powerless, and feel impotent.  That will be the most promising line of attack for folks like Ken Blackwell. Don’t let the b’tards get you, or democracy, down. It’s time to celebrate victory that occurs when everyone knows that we have this powerful commonality here with all political persuasions. It’s one of the things that it means to be a citizen in American democracy. Nontransparency therefore can not, and will not, stand.

7. What can I/we do to reinforce this poll?
ANSWER: Talk it up, email to listservs, point out in your own words the tidal wave trend toward nontransparent and invisible and secret vote counting in contrast, call radio shows, suggest to columnists, bloggers and OpEd writers that they write on this or interview folks on this such as attorney Paul Lehto (lehtolawyer(at)gmail(dot)com; cell: 425-422-1387) who commissioned the poll with help from Democracy for New Hampshire and Michael Collins of electionfraudnews.com. Read the links that are in the bradblog article.

Contributions to help fund the poll may be sent to:
Paul Lehto, Attorney at Law
PO Box 254
Everett, WA 98206
(Any excess funds over costs will be donated to CA 50 –www.nosleepovers.org ) If you need to donate via Pay Pal rather than snailmail & check, please go straight to the CA 50 website and note “Zogby” (or if not possible to note, add .02)
Paul has just posted an updated version of the above FAQ at Black Box Voting.

(From the diaries by susanhu.]

(cross-posted at dKos)

If anyone should know about FISA shortcomings, you’d think Coleen Rowley would be that person.  But she has no problems with FISA itself, only with the way it was ignored by Ashcroft during 2001.

An op-ed in the Washington Post triggered a scathing LTE, but Coleen had more to say than would fit the format, so she asked me to blog her full response here, below the fold….
This last week, we learned President Bush secretly ordered the National Security Agency to conduct a domestic spy program that entails no judicial oversight. In defense of this controversial program, a number of Republicans rely upon the case of Zacarias Moussaoui as justification for Bush’s attack on our privacy and civil liberties.

Moussaoui is the only individual to be charged in connection with the 9-11 attacks and has pled guilty but is fighting the death penalty. He contends that he was not directly involved with the attacks on 9-11 but was instead to participate in a second-wave attack.  He awaits a “death penalty phase” hearing.  Although detained on immigration charges since August 16, 2001, the FBI failed to sufficiently investigate Moussaoui pre 9-11.  If searches of his personal effects and laptop had been authorized, Moussaoui’s connections to the 9-11 hijackings may have emerged and it is possible that 9-11 could have been prevented.

Republican commentators such as William Kristol and Rush Limbaugh claim FISA procedures, and the legal impediments they impose, prevented FBI agents from acting. Consequently, they maintain President Bush is justified in abrogating FISA law to order the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans.

As legal counsel to the Minneapolis FBI Division and witness to the entire Moussaoui case, I can tell you that these assertions are not just factually wrong, they miss the real problems that existed within our intelligence gathering superstructure. I wrote a 13 page memo and testified before Congress on these very failures, yet some individuals continue to misapply and misrepresent what I said.

Myth #1: The Justice Department decided there was not sufficient evidence to get a FISA warrant to allow the inspection of Moussaoui’s computer files.

No evidence whatsoever was presented at any time to the Justice Department of Moussaoui’s suspicious flight training and ties with terrorism. The Justice Department’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, which handles FISA matters, was never contacted. Furthermore, no contact was made either with criminal attorneys in the Department of Justice or with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Therefore, no decision was ever made by Department of Justice personnel regarding the given evidence and its application to FISA or criminal standards.  

In fact, the subsequent intelligence committees’ inquiry, Inspector General investigation, and 9-11 Commission all decided that a sufficient connection between Moussaoui and a foreign power (or international terrorist group) did exist to have satisfied the FISA standard. Likewise, criminal prosecutors advised (after the fact) that they would have proceeded forward to seek a search warrant of Moussaoui’s belongings based on the information known in August 2001.  

As it turned out, faulty interpretations and widely-varying perceptions of FISA procedures, especially what the “FISA wall” entailed, played a big role in the FBI’s determination not to contact DOJ, and not to move forward until after the 9/11 attacks occurred.  There was also the little problem that the FBI’s national security law unit lawyer had not actually read for himself the facts that Minneapolis agents had provided but, instead, had relied upon a short, verbal briefing by the first-line supervisor.  When 9-11 happened, however, and it was painfully clear in hindsight that the FBI had botched it, this same lawyer’s (the lawyer who had not read it) pronouncement of insufficient probable cause served as a convenient blanket defense to protect all of the underlying governmental incompetence.  My 2002 memo punched a hole in that blanket defense and led to some truth being unraveled.)  The bottom line is that the FISA law itself was not the reason the FBI failed to inspect Moussaoui’s personal effects and computer files.  Rather, the faulty interpretations and failure to share and analyze
intelligence sufficiently is what enabled Moussaoui to escape further investigation.

Myth #2: Rowley depicted the legal mechanism for security warrants under FISA, as burdensome and restrictive, a virtual roadblock to effective law enforcement.

It’s true that the “FISA wall” problem did play a role in preventing the effective sharing and analysis of information pre 9-11.  But to the extent that the “FISA wall” issue was problematic, (and in fact, there is no denying it was a problem, even if it all turned out to be more a problem of misperception and faulty interpretations), it was remedied when the Patriot Act brought down the “wall” shortly after 9-11 that prevented effective sharing of national security intelligence with criminal investigators and/or criminal attorneys.  

My original memo to FBI Director Mueller contained a description of “probable cause” as meaning more probable than not, or if quantified, a 51% likelihood.  I believed that the information gathered in August 2001 about Moussaoui satisfied the probable cause standard because a federal district judge did, in fact, find ample probable cause to grant a criminal search warrant on September 11th, the day of the attacks.  The only material additions were the 9-11 attacks.  When I testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee in June, 2002, Senator (and former U.S. Attorney) Arlen Specter made sure I was aware that probable cause, as viewed in the Gates “totality of the circumstances” test, could be seen as even less than a 51% likelihood.  The more expansive view of probable cause was subsequently incorporated into FBI General Counsel legal opinions, which means that the minimum threshold of probable cause is even lower than I, and other legal commentators, would have previously thought.  

Myth #3:  The FISA process is not quick or flexible enough to detect and thwart terrorists.    

The FISA process has always been a secret process which contains effective emergency provisions.  These emergency provisions allow the attorney general enormous power to authorize secret “emergency” electronic surveillance and searches before any court order is granted, or an application is made, for up to 72 hours.  No application is even necessary if the surveillance is terminated before the 72 hour “emergency” period ends. In fact, Minneapolis agents were so convinced of the urgency of the situation involving Moussaoui that they requested use of this emergency provision, not the regular FISA process.

Unfortunately, this would have required Attorney General Ashcroft, who had just ranked terrorism as his lowest priority in early August 2001, to appreciate the danger and sign off on the “emergency.” And it would have required then FBI Acting Director Pickard to take the emergency request to Ashcroft after he (Ashcroft) had rebuked him (Pickard) earlier that summer, as Pickard testified to the 9-11 Commission, saying “he (Ashcroft) didn’t want to hear any more about terrorism.”  Given these circumstances, FBI Headquarters quickly gave up on Minneapolis’ request to seek AG approval for use of this emergency provision.

But myths aside, Moussaoui did not escape inspection because the FISA law was not permissive enough. And with the further changes wrought by the Patriot Act, bringing down the FISA wall and making the FISA process even more permissive, it is certainly not a good argument for Bush to skirt the law now.
—Coleen Rowley

Remember her?  The FBI agent who put Moussaoui behind bars BEFORE 9-11?

She’s retired now, and running for Congress on a shoestring.  The incumbent is Minnesota’s John Kline, who got in thanks to an under-the-radar off-peak election and who owes Tom Delay big-time for financial aid.  The seat is very winnable.
Her primary theme will be “ethical leadership”.
And she’s a “pro-life Democrat” that I can live with–she has gone on the record that she does NOT want to “criminalize abortion” because (like prohibition) doing so will cause more problems than it will solve!

At the moment, she needs to raise enough money to pay a campaign manager — and she needs to find a good one! You can make donations at her website http://www.coleenrowley.com and you can learn more about her there.

You can also reply to this post with campaign suggestions.  Coleen readily admits that she is not blog-savvy but she is willing to learn. She is very interested in getting more publicity for her op eds, etc., and she will be reading your suggestions.

(Where have I been?  Executing my dad’s estate. A dental abscess. And on a long vacation to Canada. I’m back, now.  Verbal Self-Defense diaries will resume later this week.)

For example, some Pattern #6 attacks might be…

“A candidate who REALLY cared about winning elections would take the time to learn some basic Verbal self-defense.”
“Any Senator who REALLY wants to stop terrorism will back the president’s plan.”
“Any Christian who REALLY believed in the Lord would have voted for the president.”

Do we take the bait and protest that “Of course we want to win, if we didn’t, we would….?

Or do we put in the time to learn an effective response?

The deceptive simplicity of Pattern #6, “(A person who) (X) (Y)” is one of the reasons that it is so difficult to counter.  Unfortunately, Democrats who fail to counter verbal attacks–lose elections.

The first part of the sentence may be either a generic “person” or a generalized description of some group which includes the target of the attack.  

Some ways to fill (X):   A person who…

• really wanted to (Z)…
• has serious emotional problems…
• doesn’t even CARE about (Z)…
• has limited perceptions…
• always puts other people last…
• has no interest in pursuing justice…

And for the (Y):  A person who really cared about public opinion…

• would be careful to always know his facts.
• would never make statements that are unsupported.
• would realize that appearances are important.
• can be expected to put on a good show.

You get the idea.  This kind of attack sounds perfectly cordial, but can carry layer upon layer of killer presuppositions.

IF the overt statement is truthful, there there is ONE-AND-ONLY-ONE effective response, which comes in two levels of expertise:

basic: “That seems perfectly reasonable.”

    Huh?  How does he lose if I agree??  

    Well, think for a minute here…. What were the presuppositions?

Attack: “A candidate who really cared about winning elections would take the time to learn some basic Verbal self-defense.”

If you are the candidate, the presuppostions are 1) that you haven’t taken the time to learn Verbal Self-Defense, 2) therefore you don’t care about winning, and 3) You should feel terrible about this.  Just as soon as you agree with the overt statement, however, you have effectively spiked my attempt to label you as a care-nothing. Instead, you have presented me with a NEW presupposition–that these lazy ignoramuses who don’t care enough to learn Verbal Self-Defense–are out THERE somewhere.  I have to either accept your presupposition that I meant someone else was a lazy ignoramus, or I have to really make a fool of myself trying a much more direct (and therefore unsophisticated) form of attack.

advanced:  Again, you nod politely and agree, but you elaborate:  “The problem is, of course, deciding upon the most effective use of a candidate’s available time.” You want to leave the attacker confused–who is this mysterious other candidate with the problem–and (oh, yes) just what exactly was the problem, anyway?  
As soon as you have sown the confusion, you neatly disengage from the conversation, without offering the attacker any additional useful information.

But, you argue–I don’t want to agree with a false idea!  Fair enough.  Elgin doesn’t deal with the untrue supposition directly, but she does go on an enjoyable detour, the results of which offer some promising options:

Elgin recommends that everyone should invent a few similar paragraphs, suitable to their own fields of knowledge, to use in emergencies.  The joy of these is that they commit you to nothing, totally bemuse your listeners, and buy you time to think of a more effective response if you need it.  

And then…she offers the counter-move:

Those who recognize the original put-on will also notice that you are not taken in– and will score you a status point.  The innocents will credit you as being the more knowledgeable expert.  

It is this final strategy that offers a way to effectively handle an overt statement with which you disagree. For effective disagreement, however, your exception must be factual. Examples:

Attack: “A senator who REALLY cared about energy independence would vote in favor of the president’s plan.”

Riposte: “That seems reasonable, if the president has the better plan. Why do you think the president preferred drilling in the Arctic to improving gas mileage on the highway?”

Depending upon your audience, you may prefer to lead your attacker on until they cover themselves thoroughly with the BS they have just presented.  However, please remember that
irony will be MUCH more effective if you keep your voice mild and your tone reasonable. You don’t want to cross the line into sarcasm.

Attack: “Anyone who is a real Christian understands that nothing is more important than saving the innocent lives of unborn babies.”

Riposte12: “Of course.  A real Christian understands that the mother’s life is unimportant.”

Riposte: “That’s an interesting idea.  What do you think that ‘unreal Christians’ believe?”

I found this email (below) in my inbox this morning.
I thought I’d post it out here for now; I could cross-post at dkos, but my stuff there hardly gets a ripple, so I haven’t yet.

Not sure what else to do with this at present… (Minor snips from me to — hopefully — improve readability.)

Anyway.  Kathy Dopp calls it her birthday present to the US!….
—————————————–
Fellow Patriots & Colleagues,

Happy July 4th.

My birthday present to the U.S. is here:
http://uscountvotes.net/docs_other/dopp/AdviceReDiebolds.pdf

I worked on it for four days, full-time+ but this paper is really the culmination of a couple of years of research.  It is specific to Utah, but can be revised it for general use, upon request.

Please give it to your  local city and county attorneys, city councils, county councils or commissioners and election officials, and press, in
any state or county that is threatened by Diebold or Sequoia DRE touch-screen voting machines (& somewhat less so by ES&S DRE touch-screens because ES&S has demonstrated a method to count its paper rolls and provides an open source system for counting its paper rolls which are slightly more substantial than Diebold’s).

New York state, Ohio, California and some other states are now threatened by the adoption of DRE touch-screen voting machines with systems which have no demonstrated method of independently counting vote
counts to recover from errors, electronic failures or vote embezzlement.

I hope anyone who is threatened by possible adoption of Diebold or Sequoia touch-screen voting machines can make use of this paper’s outline and some of its content. (both Sequoia & Diebold use an OS which
needs constant upgrades to maintain security and neither vendor has, to my knowledge demonstrated any system for independently counting its paper rolls)

http://uscountvotes.net/docs_other/dopp/AdviceReDiebolds.pdf

Happy Birthday U.S.

BTW, we had a terrific Election Assessment Hearing in Houston, and were able to speak to Dr. Pastor, of the Carter/Baker Election Commission. Some in our group attended the Cater/Baker commission the next day and
spoke personally to Carter and the Commission, and all our testimony was turned over to the Carter/Baker commission.  We also need writers to help create an executive summary of it.

…would really appreciate your reviewing it to see if you can detect errors or find better ways to state anything in it.

Ron Baiman is USCV’s new VP.  USCV needs to add new board members and are looking for a Board member who would like to lead project management or pr and marketing materials development.

I presented USCV’s new recommendations, written with help from Ron Baiman,  for routinely independently auditing the paper ballots in every election and our recommendations for releasing data:
http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/
and
http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/election_officials/

(I can’t believe I’m the same person who, as a girl, would read 20 books for an assignment and could not write one page afterwards. I’m getting way too prolific.)

BTW, Ron Baiman and I still need statisticians and mathematicians to read our revised working paper on exit polls:

http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/exit-polls/USCV_exit_poll_analysis.pdf

…as far as Ron and I can tell, we’ve corrected all our errors.

Regards,

Kathy Dopp
http://electionarchive.org

Mission: The National Election Data Archive Project plans to create a nation-wide database of detailed election results, voter registration information, and demographic data, to be publicly available.

Our goal is to use the data to detect irregular vote counts worthy of investigation/ in time for candidates of any party to challenge the results.

Please donate to help get this project implemented:
http://electionarchive.org/fairelection/donate.html

Please print and pass out brochures explaining US Count Votes’ National Election Data Archive Project are here:
http://uscountvotes.net/docs_pdf/info/US/USCVbrochure.pdf

———————————
To unsubscribe, e-mail: uscv_programs-unsubscribe@uscountvotes.org
For additional commands, e-mail: uscv_programs-help@uscountvotes.org

Oh, sweet.  A candy-coated attack!

Examples (Nov 3, 2004):
    “Everyone understands why a woman your age might get emotional at a time like this.”
    “Everyone understands why the Democrats lost the election: values.”
    “All good Christians understand that nothing is more important than saving the innocent lives of unborn babies.”

Let’s see what’s happening here…..

“Everyone understands why a woman your age might get emotional at a time like this.”
mode:  phony leveling
presuppositions:

• You are the clueless one; every one else gets it.
• You are acting unreasonably.
• There is something wrong with being a woman.
• There is something wrong with being your age.
• Your feelings are invalid.
• Since the ‘something wrong’ is never stated, you are left to fill in the blank with your personal Achilles’ heel.
• And of course, those of ‘us’ who are so much more with it than ‘you’ will be happy to demonstrate our love and our superiority by forgiving you.

And the whole thing is poured over you in a syrup of fake concern and caring, so how can you possibly be angry at the speaker who cares so much for you?

So where is the bait that you must ignore?  
Right out in the open.  In this case: ’emotional’.
To neuter this attack you can’t discuss emotion and you can’t show emotion.
You will also have to fight dirty.

You don’t want to be too direct here–asking “Why?” is an excuse to have more garbage poured on your head.  But you can leave the speaker standing there, holding the trash can high overhead–with no place to dump it!

So… try the ‘humble gratitude’ maneuver.  Look mildly interested and reply gently, “I appreciate that.”

If you feel like returning some of the syrup, pour it on:  “The fact that everyone here can understand and offer their support to me is a rare  and special thing.  It is a real tribute to your leadership here.”

Note that you didn’t come right out and say, “You are a great leader.”  Instead, you turned the verb phrase (“are a leader”) into a noun (“your leadership”) and slipped the idea in as a presupposition.

“Everyone understands why the Democrats lost the election: values.”
    Mode: Computer
    presuppositions:

• You’re stupider than ‘everyone’ because you don’t get it
• You oughta feel even worse because you’re stupid
• There’s something wrong with [Democratic Values]
• You oughta feel bad about that, too.
• I am wise and kind and wish to help you by explaining this.

Do you want to argue who has the better values?
Do you want to argue WHY the Democrats lost?
Do you want to argue that the election was stolen?

If the speaker was willing to actually discuss any of the above, he would have asked you directly.  So……   LEAVE THE BAIT ALONE!

What you really want to do here is politely make the speaker look like a fool.
You do this by subtly highlighting the speaker’s arrogance.

“It’s interesting how often men in your situation use a global word such as “everyone” to make a personal opinion seem more weighty. Substituting quantity of opinions for quality is a temption hard to resist when one is in a hurry. It’s understandable, of course; people with your responsibilities rarely have the time to do personal research.”

Note that you HAVE NOT DIRECTLY STATED that your opponent:

• Has something wrong with them.
• Has opinions that are flimsy.
• Has made the logical mistake of substituting quantity for quality.
• Hasn’t done his homework.

He’s very likely to jump on any of the above, and you can simply shrug and look innocent.

As I’ve been working on these diaries, I’ve discovered some interesting things when working out political examples.  Sometimes these same verbal patterns can be used to exert pressure to conform, rather than being used as a direct attack.    When you are responding to pressure, what then?   

    “All good Christians (should) understand that nothing is more important than saving the innocent lives of unborn babies.”
Presuppositions:

• You are not a good Christian.
• You should feel terrible about that.
• Unless, of course, you vote on the single issue of abortion.
• The speaker has the right to judge
• The speaker has a pipeline to universal knowledge.

If you are the person spoken to, the ‘humble gratitude’ tactic should be pretty effective.
Depending upon the total audience, you may want to add butter and jam.

If the speaker is no longer present, and you are hearing the story second-hand, you have even more options.  

• You can ask why the speaker would expect people to vote for someone who says they oppose abortion but then puts in place family planning policies that cause the abortion rate to go up?
• If your informant believes that the original speaker was claiming scriptural support for his position, you might ask the informant if his own reading of scripture fully agrees.
• You can sympathize.  “You? Not good Christian? Should a true Christian leader make you doubt your faith?”

Homework–

“Every reasonable person understands why Ohio Democrats are so emotional these days.”

“All of us understand why you liberals are feeling so panicky about social security.”

Analyze….and refute.

Verbal Attack Patterns so far:
Pattern #1: “If you REALLY X, you’d Y.”
Pattern #2: “If you really A, you wouldn’t WANT to B.”
Pattern #3: “Don’t you even CARE about X?”

The new twist with Pattern #4, “Even X should Y!”, is the modal verb, “should”…. Toss in the many descriptors of “you” that can replace ‘X’, and this can be a pretty intimidating attack.
Besides ‘should’ and ‘ought to’, likely modals are ‘would’, ‘might’, ‘can’, ‘may’, ‘must’, and ‘will’. They always go with another verb and carry heavy presuppositions.

“John should” – implies that the speaker is a legitimate judge of John’s behavior.
“John must” – implies that the speaker has the right to order John to do things.
“John can” – implies that John has the ability to do, or the option to do something.
“John could” – implies the same as can if certain conditions are met.
“John will” – implies that the speaker knows with certaintly
“John would” – implies that the speaker knows what would happen if certain conditions apply.

As long as the modal reflects the present or the future, it implies that the speaker has special status.  This is bait.

Let’s look at some examples:

“Even a Democrat should support fixing Social Security.”
“Even a freshman senator ought to show respect for America’s leaders.”

So what responses work best?

Take a minute to identify the bait(s) and the obvious suppositions.
In sentence 1, there are two baits.  The first one is that the listener does not support something.  The second one is that the speaker has the right to judge the listener.

By this time you probably realize that the fish who takes the bait (that is, tries to prove they do support, or do know better than) will always end up hooked, dangling on a string in mid-air, and gasping for oxygen.

Leave the bait and go for the presupposition.

A direct “Why?” may work. If you are lucky, you can get the questioner to spend 10 minutes lamely showing you that he has no idea why social security needs fixing.

If you prefer being more subtle….

“I’ve heard the idea that Democrats are inferior to Republicans floated by irresponsible talk radio hosts, but I’m surprised to hear it from you, Mr. Matthews.”

You’ve actually finished this with a compliment of sorts–that Matthews is better than Limbaugh–but Matthews is also stuck trying to justify his implied insult to Democrats.

“The opinion that Democrats are inferior to Republicans is fairly common among newspeople in your situation, Mr. Matthews.  In your case, it’s probably nothing to worry about.”

Ouch! You’ve just implied that Matthews is in some kind of ominous ‘situation’–and then reinforced the idea by suggesting that he ‘probably’ wouldn’t be hurt by it.  It’s hard to predict how Matthews will respond to this, but he’s not likely to go after Democrats and Social Security! (He’s also not likely to invite you back!)

Another presuppostion you might go after (depending on the details and facts of the conversation) is the validity of equating [something the listener has done or not done] with “being supportive” of “fixing social security”.

Try it yourself!  What are the baits and presuppositions in the second example?
Can you come up with some good “I’m suprised at you” replies?

Verbal Self-Defense is even more important among friends than against enemies.

Take a minute and imagine the rest of the conversation…

If we want to learn how to avoid internal pie wars–and how to fight the external ones effectively–we need to better understand how we use language.

I actually went back and checked the early stuff– NO person actually made an attack like this.  However, IF a person had cause to interpret the original diary as an attack, this is the flavor of attack that would have been perceived…..

And now we get to the reason this is a new diary.

Had a complaint been posed as a verbal attack in the “Don’t you even CARE about…” format, it would break down thusly:
    mode: Blamer.  
    presuppositions:
    * You don’t care about women’s issues.
    * You should care about them; you’re rotten not to.
    * Therefore, you should feel terrible about this.

Two kinds of responses were suggested earlier
    Leveler mode: “No. Why?”
    Computer mode: some kind of technical query relating to the presuppositions

In this case, it could have been a question about why “women’s issues” should be more important than something else.

Kos responded as though to a complaint–but he ignored every rule in the book for effective self-defense. His response might be paraphrased as “Why should I care?”

Those who have read earlier diaries know that a basic truth of verbal interaction is “that which you feed, grows.” A response in either leveler mode or computer mode would not have fed the argument.

But kos instead shifted into blamer mode and  went on the attack.

Note: cool down, everybody–this is not a rehash of the original arguments. I’m going to snip liberally, because I want people to think about the form of the interaction, not its contents.

In one sentence, kos wrapped his main point into a presupposition and added an irresistible bait:

“I find such … knee-jerk reactions, to be tedious at best….”

The bait words were “tedious, etc.” A lot of piscine kossaks swallowed them. Unfortunately, in responding to the bait, they let the presupposition alone.

Others responded to the attack itself. Next thing you know, mud (and smellier stuff) was flying faster than the original pies.

But nobody followed the rules!

1. Identify the mode
2. Identify the presupposition(s)
3. Respond in NEUTRAL Computer mode TO THE PRESUPPOSITION ONLY
4. Stay in Computer mode.
1. mode: blamer
2. presuppositions (“knee-jerk reaction” implies…what?):

    a) the response to the ad was reflex, not thought out
    b) the “offense” was trivial (the tap of a rubber hammer) and
    c) the response was way out of proportion to the trigger.

Step 3, then, requires a decision–which presupposition to respond to.

We could have chosen a) — but most of us recognized that the negative reactions to the pie ad WERE reflexive. There isn’t much point in arguing with a truthful remark.

If we chose b) we would have had to tell kos that the pie ad itself was offensive to us–and many of us did not find it so.

Which leaves us with c)–and unless we find a better metaphor than “knee-tapping”, we aren’t going to get very far.

We need to find a metaphor where a thoughtless but not ill-intentioned action will trigger a strong response that takes the first person by surprise.

How about a slap on the back?

Under normal circumstances, even if the slap is uncomfortable, it is taken in good part.

There is one exception, however…. If the person slapped has some sort of injury.  

A bad sunburn, dislocated shoulder or upper-arm injury would all earn the clueless back-slapper a royal dressing down.

Given such a sunburn, a reflex reaction to a slap on the back might range from a punch in the nose to a clobber over the head with any weapon at hand.

And that was kos’ mistake–he failed to recognize that a sizeable portion of his audience had been burned. People reacted, not to kos’ intent in posting the ad, but to its effect on them! I think it’s fair to say kos is not a sadist, and he would not deliberately hit a sunburned friend on a very sore back.

Had kos followed the rules for verbal self-defense, the pie wars would have quickly died out.  But when he buried his real concern in a presupposition, and framed it as an attack, several bad things happened.

1. His misperception of the protesters was not addressed.
2. Many people who correctly perceived the protests then perceived kos’ response to be an unjustified attack. This is where the whole “respect” them was coming from.
3. Finally, no one YET really knows what was actually going on inside kos’ head, to cause him to interpret the protests against the ad as an attack on kos, personally.

Which leads me to my final points:

• We REALLY are ignorant about Verbal Self-Defense
• Our ignorance is HURTING us and our cause
• Fixing our ignorance is easy, and IMPORTANT TO DO QUICKLY!

OK–Can I get some readers? And some feedback?

This is essentially a repost of an earlier kos diary. However, I’ll be revisiting the theme in light of the pie wars shortly.

“Don’t you even CARE about winning the war against terror?”

Pattern #3, “Don’t you even CARE about X?”, carries at least three suppositions, can support multiple levels of attack, and can be handled in several new and interesting ways….

Evaluating “Don’t you even CARE about winning the war against terror?”, we get the following:
    mode: Blamer.  
    presuppositions:
    * You don’t care about winning the war against terror.
    * You should care about winning the war against terror; you’re rotten not to.
    * Therefore, you should feel terrible about this.
It’s the word ‘even’ and the stress on the word ‘care’ which identify this as an attack, rather than a leveler’s simple search for information.
Another feature of this attack is that all three presuppositions are linked together.  If, indeed, you DO care about winning the war against terror, the second and third presuppositions are irrelevant.
But this is phrased as a yes/no question.  So you have an interesting option available.  

    Leveler response 1): “No. Why?”

Like a chamberpot over the head, much of the charm of this sort of response is it’s utter unexpectedness.  And from here on, you can simply wait silently while your opponent spins his wheels.  By the time he finally does get all four wheels on the pavement, he will have completely forgotten that the original goal was to run you down.

The downside to this response is that it will be remembered. You won’t be able to do it twice to the same person or in the same group.

Like most attacks, there is a sucker-bait.  The attacker hopes to get you tangled up in defending how much you really care. No matter HOW much you care, IGNORE THE BAIT and deal with the presupposition.

    Computer response 1): “Why do you think that we needed a war just to arrest a gang of criminals?”
    Computer response 2): “Tell me, Mr. Russert, do you believe that the president’s purpose in confusing a criminal organization (like Al Quaeda) with a legal government (which could declare war), was to distract public attention from his failure to secure the ports, or does he have some other motive?”

Note your reaction to the two computer responses.
In basketball, the first one is a free throw and the second is a three-point shot.

Elgin makes a very interesting side discussion on the differing ways that men and women often react to verbal fencing.

Men, Elgin asserts, are trained from boyhood to use verbal fencing as a human substitute for puppy-wrestling. They keep score, but they don’t take a defeat personally.

Girls do not play games like this. A woman who has been on the receiving end of a verbal attack will feel typically feel battered, not energized.  Even if a woman has learned to fence with men, she still may lose her balance if a second woman joins on the opposing side.  

Only the politics-as-game paradigm can explain the successful marriage between James Carville and Mary Matalin.

In addition to the above points, Elgin takes the time to detail how power imbalances (parent/child, patient/doctor) can alter the game, creating unique hazards and opportunities.

Most of them can safely be left for readers of the book, but there is one variant of this attack that Democrats particularly need to avoid, because it leaves them open to a deadly counter-attack.

It happens whenever X is particularly awful and could possibly be quantified

    Dem: “Don’t you even CARE about the genocide in Darfur?”
    Hannity: “Do you refer to the Irskine report, or the study by the Pan-African Analysis Group?

By the time our Dem figures out that there never was an Irskine report or a Pan-African Analysis Group, the interview is long over.

No new homework for now.  Just add this new attack pattern to the others you watch for, keep experimenting with your defense.

The Presupposition: Name calling without calling names.

The most primitive kind of verbal attack occurs in preschool–name-calling. Because adults on the attack rarely wish to appear childish, the skilful ones learn to disguise their insults by hiding them in a presupposition.

We’ve had a nice example of a presupposition in the news lately; from our good Mexican friend, Mr. Fox.  “They take jobs even a Black person wouldn’t take.”  

Now just why is that sentence so annoying? ….
Elgin’s definition: “A presupposition is something that a native speaker knows is part of the meaning of a language sequence, even if it is not overtly present in the sequence.”

You might say it’s the hole in the doughnut.

There are two presuppositions hidden in Fox’s sentence:
1) Black people have low standards and 2) those are pretty crappy jobs.

The part that has people upset, of course is #1.

Is there something we can do about attacks like this?  Besides whine?

Which leaves us with a problem: how do we become fully aware of when a presupposition is biting our tail?

Elgin’s approach was to gather together a group of language patterns that typically carry presuppositions as part of a verbal ambush.  In her later books, she calls them Verbal Attack Patterns.  

Elgin’s first book picks up on 8 different patterns of English speech in which a user can bury a presupposition–a hidden attack.  I’ve been trying to figure out how to transfer her ideas into diary form. In the book she begins with an overview of 8 patterns.  Then she goes into each of the 8 in its own chapter.

But me being abstract sequential, I couldn’t make sense of why she had chosen that arrangement.  I finally decided that she has chosen her sequence on the basis of difficulty.  Like any good jedi master, she’s started with the easiest pattern to learn, and offers practice in it before adding another one.

So I’m going to skip the detailed overview.  (If you want that, go get her book!) Instead I’m going to highlight what seem to be common features of these attacks, and jump into the first two. Since this diary is aimed more at political than personal verbal abuse, I’m going to use political examples if I can think of good ones, rather than Elgin’s originals.

Look for the following features when you suspect a Verbal attack:

• Unusual stresses within a sentence.
• Absolutes: never/ever/always/everybody/nobody
• The word “even”. (Unless you are leveling concrete or pinning a hem, the word “even” almost always is carrying some sort of emotional freight.)

Pattern # 1: “If you REALLY X, you’d Y.”  

“If you REALLY loved your country, you’d support your president.”
    mode: Blamer.  
    presuppositions: you don’t love your country; supporting the president = love of country
    Blamer response-to-avoid: “You always accuse me….”
    Placater response-to-avoid: “I supported the president when he….”
    Computer response 1): “You know, it’s interesting that so many Republicans have the idea that Democrats cannot love their country.”
    Computer response 2): “I wonder why people so often confuse loving the country with loving the leader…”
        Notice that both effective responses zero directly in on a presupposition. And neither of them uses “I” or “you”.

Pattern # 2: “If you really A, you wouldn’t WANT to B.

“If you really supported your President in this time of war, you wouldn’t WANT to oppose his tax cuts.”
    mode: Blamer
    presuppositions: You don’t support the president; opposition = non-support; your beliefs are so unimportant that you can change them at the president’s whim.
The new twist here is the assumption that deeply held feelings are unimportant and voluntary.

If the Blamer wanted to turn the heat up further, the sentence might look like this:
“If you really supported your President in this time of war, you wouldn’t even THINK of opposing his tax cuts.”
    (Yup, you can not think of an Elephant!)

    Placater response-to-avoid: “I supported the president when he….”
    Computer response 1): “Do you think he’d feel supported if I changed my party affiliation?”
    This kind of response would be great to a fellow Dem–you need to be sure that the other person will a) recognize it as a real gesture of support, and b) refuse it.
    Computer response 2): “I wonder why people seem to think that a senator needs to support a tax cut for Bill Gates in order to support our troops in Afghanistan.”
    Computer response 3): “Some people feel Democrats should change their values the way they would change a tie.”   

Since this is politics and not personal, perhaps you might want to get in a few subtle digs of your own.  I kinda like this one:
    Computer response 2a): “I wonder where people get the idea that doormats can support anything.”  You’ve snuck in a presupposition of your own– anyone who does support the tax cut is a doormat.  It’s particularly sweet if are talking to a fence-sitter about something Hannity just said, rather than responding directly to the blamer.

OK.  You now have two related but easily recognizable attack patterns.  

Your homework–

1. Listen and look for verbal attacks in political conversation.
2. Identify mode and presupposition(s)
3. If you have a knee-jerk response, identify its mode.  (Do you have a pattern?)
4. Think out several computer mode responses to the original presuppositions.
5. If you have paper handy, try to imagine how the other party would reply. Will the attack escalate, or damp down?
6. If the attack is made by public person A on public person B, and you are talking with bystander C, how can you reframe the attack so person C becomes suspicious of either the motives or the intelligence of person A.?  

Knee-jerk name-calling on your part is not allowed; you are not in nursery school anymore.