Adrian @ 29: I completely agree. I also think it's based on a completely inaccurate perception of small towns as completely full of wholesome, honest, unsophisticated people. The reality is that small towns have their share of dishonest, conniving, Machiavellian people.
Down on the sea wall, Robert Shumake laughed when asked why he had not left the island. Walking with the American flag on a four-foot pole, Mr. Shumake said he had not broken his routine in seven years and, “by golly,†he was not going to deviate now.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, he said, he has not missed a day of his morning ritual of walking along the shore carrying the flag. “This is nature meets the proud United States of America, and my US of A is going to win,†Mr. Shumake said.
lorax @ 34: I haven't read anything by Lakoff, but I have heard him speak, and I would agree that narrative is important. (It is, after all, the traditional way to communicate values.) But I think there are a lot of low-information voters who have already adopted the progressive narrative but just don't know what the candidates really stand for.
FactCheck has come out with a refutation of the McCain education ad, too.
The McCain tactic seems to be to mislead low-information voters. Each of us probably knows some of these people: They don't read political blogs. If they get a newspaper at all, they glance at the front page and then move on to the comics or sports section. They get most of their political information from their local TV newscast or from 30-second TV ads. It's these voters we need to reach. You don't necessarily even have to encourage them to vote for Obama. It might be enough to gently point them to places where they can get objective, truthful information.
Hopefully, when people see the ad, they will go to FactCheck to check it out, and then they will see the top story on FactCheck is Brooks Jackson's article McCain-Palin Distorts Our Finding, which begins:They will hopefully read the rest of the article, in which Jackson describes the McCain ad as "less than honest". Finally, they will wonder why the McCain campaign continues to make assertions that can be refuted on the Internet in thirty seconds.A McCain-Palin ad has FactCheck.org calling Obama's attacks on Palin "absolutely false" and "misleading." That's what we said, but it wasn't about Obama.
Our article criticized anonymous e-mail falsehoods and bogus claims about Palin posted around the Internet. We have no evidence that any of the claims we found to be false came from the Obama campaign.
The McCain-Palin ad also twists a quote from a Wall Street Journal columnist. He said the Obama camp had sent a team to Alaska to "dig into her record and background." The ad quotes the WSJ as saying the team was sent to "dig dirt."
Update, Sept. 10: Furthermore, the Obama campaign insists that no researchers have been sent to Alaska and that the Journal owes them a correction.
As far as assigning blame goes, the appropriate question isn't "Who controls Congress and the White House?" The appropriate question is "Which decisions created this problem and who made them?" From my perspective, the two main decisions were (1) going to war in Iraq, which has proved incredibly expensive and (2) passing a bunch of tax cuts based on overoptimistic budget projections. You might also add (3) lax regulation of the banking industry, which allowed the subprime mortgage crisis.
The budget deficit isn't going to be solved overnight, regardless who we elect this fall. Even if he does the right things, it will take a while for the new president to fix the problems he inherits.
The Republican Party has proven, once again, that one of its core missions is to convince middle class voters to join their rich leaders in dumping on the poor.
Not like this spammer is ever going to be caught, but this has to be more illegal than 419 fraud.
*delurk*
I think blogs ought to consider adding a checkbox in the comment form that says "I am being compensated to post this comment", or something to that effect. It shouldn't stop you form commenting--I have seen political aides make good comments on blogs--but it should put a flag on the post so people are aware. Of course, the McCain spammers might still neglect to check the box, but at least it would be more clear to the less net-savvy why such tactics are wrong.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 10 |
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