Fox News has a good headline today . . .but, not good enough . . .

House Republicans Find 111 New 'Bureaucracies' in Health Care Bill

"111 new boards and commissions" looks good as a battle cry. "111" is a big number and a good number to use.

111

But . . .the good folks in the middle will look at "111" and then they'll realize that their medical bills are even bigger numbers. "111" won't do the trick.

Less coverage. Higher taxes.

Death Panels. Longer Waits.

All of that is true. None of it is sexy enough.

You gotta give 'em a hook:

Just Say "NO"

Nancy Reagan nailed it a long time ago.

Just say "NO" and then go on to sell what John Boehner put into his radio address on Saturday and what I rewrote for him (see below, Nov. 1 entry):

“Medical care is your medical care. The issue is to lower health care costs and make it easier to obtain high quality, affordable coverage without imposing a massive burden on individual families or impossible debt on all of us together.”

Be careful. Go slow.

It’s your healthcare.

And, it can’t be free.

Ultimately, this isn’t about healthcare. That’s why today’s election is so very important.

It’s about power.

The GOP leadership hasn’t done a very good job of recognizing that. And, I’m surprised that Newt failed to recognize the importance of this situation.

Those folks who backed Doug Hoffman were fighting this battle against ObamaCare, too.

Don’t call it PelosiCare because general voter outrage is only a vague threat to Nancy Pelosi, where it is an enormous threat to The Won.

Aesthetics . . .Memetics . . .& . . .Mammon

The card above is a typical business card. Perhaps the name is overly large, but this is a sole proprietorship and the proprietor has both the right and the role to play.


How, then, does the card on the right differ? It gets in your face, as they say. Your eye remains on the card, rather than falling off the bottom as one's eye does with the card above (and with most cards, because of how the white space dominates).

The typeface on the card on the right is called Broadway and it conveys the legendary energy of the theater and of New York. It fills the space - all of the space. The placement of the symbols in the corners (just outside of the vertical line of the name) keeps your eye on the card. The contrasts of black, grey and bright colors imply a variety of activity and information.

At the top, the typeface is sans-serif - modern and cool, understated, sophisticated, if you know the code. If you don't, it's just another card.

Here, on a 7 sq.in. piece of paper, you have an example of how information can be communicated . . .or not.

Scale these insights to the United States' 300 million people, whose differences emanate from age, education and culture, and the fracturing of "mass communications media" to the point where what remains "in common" demands attention.

Consider the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on advertising and politics - most of which pass by most people completely unnoticed. Consider what that people "know" and act upon without ever realizing where the "information" originated.

Introducing . . .ta! da! . . Memetics & Marketing!