He has to. John McCain lied about running a clean campaign. Obama really hasn't done anything that dirty. Attack ads happen every time, but McCain's are flat-out lies.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/attacks/
Pretty much every Obama ad is Half True or Mostly True. McCain's last two ads have been blatant lies.
Obama has to fight back. It's not dirty politics if it's true. Right-wing bloggers posted some obscure story 8 years ago about how McCain could not type because of injuries to his hand that required a comb. This somehow got on Drudge, which ended up being a great thing for Obama. Drudge follows all news leads and this will play well for Obama.
Here is the Freeper post. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2081279/posts
It's trying to make the McCain/Biden camp look like a young guy and and old guy who hate "disabled people."
Here's Biden's story:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/11/america/biden.php
That seemed like an honest mistake. He wasn't paying attention and then realized it made him look bad. I don't like Biden. I think the Virginia Gov. would have scared the shit out of the Republicans, because Obama had someone considered more Southern. But we're stuck with Biden and he will be okay, I suppose.
Here is the Forbes article from 2000. http://www.forbes.com/asap/2000/0529/053_print.html
And the Boston Globe article from earlier that year .
http://graphics.boston.com/news/politics/campaign2000/news/McCain_character_loyal_to_a_fault+.shtml
The right-wing bloggers are spinning this as a young whippersnapper who doesn't apperciate the service of McCain. These are the same people who believed the Swift Boat story, which was like. John Kerry had a firefight with Viet Cong, threw a grenade, killing like 3 of them, and he had some shrapnel and they're not aware where it came from. Of course, if you accidentally have shrapnel in your arm a grenade you threw and killed three Viet Cong, that would still deserve a Purple Heart. And John McCain agrees. Maybe he wouldn't now. Or he probably still does, but his masters have told him to stay quiet and just say "I'm John McCain, and I approved that message."
Or maybe they told McCain that they will "Attack" and he doesn't even see his own ads...
But back on the topic. The right-wing spin almost worked. It saddened me. But then I thought about it. That was 2000. And the media loved McCain. He had a huge internet campaign that if it had not been for Karl Rove, could have rolled what was REALLY the Straight Talk Express. And he probably would have beaten Gore, since he was truly a moderate.
If we had McCain in 2000, we'd be a lot better off now. I think if there had been an Iraq war, McCain would have managed it better than Bush. It might even be over by now, and we'd have someone, maybe even Obama, having an honest debate about supply-side vs. Demand-side economics with some random Republican.
Sadly, that never happened. If I could go back to 2000 and tell Nader to GTFO of the race (causing Gore to win) or help McCain run over Bush with the Express, I would do so.
But anyway, the right wing smear worked on me at first. I was saddened that Obama would attack McCain for being a POW. It didn't seem consistent with anything he had said ever before.
And I watched the entire Yahoo/Politico.com segment where they had Huckabee and Paul saying they used PCs, and then Romney saying PC and then saying he'd convert to Mac because his kids loved them. And then John McCain said his famous line. Nowhere did he mention things like "Cindy reads my emails to me and I dictate a response."
That was most likely the media trying to spin a moderate sensible experienced senator with a very moderate bi-partisan record to win the Republican nominaton instead of the drunken son of a former president. Sadly, it didn't work, and neither did the spin today.
Because Huffington Post caught on to it, after someone there found it on Drudge.
Matt Drudge plays a huge role. He's not really anti-Democrat. He just despsies the Clintons, and when Obama takes them on and defeats them with a campaign funded by small donors, the "Drudge-Obama crush" is a reality. You'd see it more before. Drudge would have a picture of McCain with a mole and saying "Does McCain have cancer again?"
Here's what happened. Jonah Goldberg of the National Review uses Lexis-Nexis and finds a couple of articles praising McCain 8 years ago. This gets out to all the right-wing bloggers, and someone decides to give it to Drudge.
See, everyone reads Drudge. The Huffington Post reads Drudge.
And here's what happens to this attempt at smearing Obama by the right-wing bloggers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/12/yes-mccain-can-use-electr_n_126130.html
The Huffington Post is clearly liberal, but it is a lot more coherent than the Freepers who think Libertarians are all people who only want guns (when it shows that Social Liberal/Fiscal Conservative support Obama) and most right-wing blogs.
This right-wing lie has been exposed, and Obama does not have to apologize to anyone. Neither does McCain, of course. Though McCain should apologize for all the attack ads he's done, or admit he's decided to stay out of those and campaign instead.
What really pisses me off is how the right-wing tries to make Obama look bad. Old people use computers. Most of them do. My grandpa is 16 years older than McCain and he edits Wikipedia when it is inaccurate on chemistry articles. Most people older than McCain can use Google and check email. The fact is, the two articles about McCain were just trying to make him look good, and have been disproven.
If McCain can hold a cellphone to his ear, he can comb his hair, and he can easily type if he wants to.
He does understand the importance of blogs. I admit that. He reads them, though I imagine it's one of these scenarios:
His wife does a few bookmarks for him and makes them very easy for him to find.
So he has a few:
1. Drudge Report
2. His daughter's blog
3. Some news site.
Or worse he says
"Cindy, can you get me to that there Drudge site, I want to see if he got rid of the picture of me with my mole!"
And his trophy wife does it for him.
A lot of people say "the president doesn't need to understand computers" but it's about more than that. People who don't understand something usually fear it. Such as video games. McCain actually may be better than "For the childrens!" Hillary Clinton, who would have caused me to write in myself or Brian Holtz (CA-14, please look him up and spread his message for LP Reform) for President if she had been nominated.
The McCain camp (or more realistically, right-wing bloggers) are trying to make people bad for saying anything about their candidates. They have two "untouchables." A war hero/POW and a woman.
I say fuck them. Seriously. They attacked Hillary Clinton all the time, and you know what they did to John Kerry.
And as I was saying, someone who does not understand something will want to ban it or blame it for society's ills. Bill Clinton (or more likely Joe Lieberman) tried to blame Marylin Manson and "violent video games" for Columbine. You've heard all of that.
Games like Doom are "realistic" and train kids to be murderers. Now, it's GTA.
I think it'd be good if kids tried to act those games out literally. For most shooters, you'd have someone try to attack people. After killing one person and getting seriously injured, they'd run around looking for "Health Packs" or eat Food and wonder why they are not getting better.
If people actually tried to act the "violent video game" universe, there would be a lot of Darwin Awards.
My friend and I used to joke that I'd be a video game lobbyist. I'd say:
"Mr. Lieberman, how about we have some Kosher dogs and fried Matzo? I used to love that as a kid. I am half-Jewish, and I love the food even though the tradition died with my grandma. Want to try out some video games with me? I want to show you they are not as bad as violent movies."
What I'd like to see is more warning against Saw movies. What's worse: Running over people in GTA, which is very cartoonish-looking, or watching "real" fake torture?
Obama is the candidate for gamers and after hearing him talking to parents and his propsal to help autistic/AS kids, I am very excited for his campaign.
John McCain (or the bloggers) need to shut up about the POW thing. The Democrats have been nice enough not to pretend the "Songbird McCain" people were serious. It was probably a few extreme right-wingers who did not want a "moderate" in the White House, so they Swift Boated him.
No matter what you say, Obama is not doing "dirty politics." He is telling the people that John McCain is a liar, which any site FactCheck, etc will show you. He still talks issues on campaign stops while McCain likes to say things like "OMG OBAMA CAL PALIN PIG HE SEXIST."
The Republicans think that just screaming SEXIST because the VP is a woman will make all women abandon their belief in women's rights to vote for a Tina Fey lookalike that hunts moose.
The real issue with McCain is gun control. He's for it. More than Obama, I'd suspect. Obama just has some things he said as a state senator, but he also said that communities can make laws to control guns. I'm not sure if he meant States or just cities. Probably just cities, urban crime areas.
Neither of the men are strong with the gun-rights type, but neither of them are the "OMG GUNS BAD THEY KILL PEOPLE I WANT THEM GONE FOR THE CHILDRENS" that most Democrats before Obama said. Obama needs to make an ad about McCain's votes with the NRA/other gun sites, and explain his rational take on gun control.
The Republicans know that the Democrats could steal states like Montana. Obama had a 5 point lead a few months ago, then was tied, but now Obama has a lead. The reason: Palin.
People actually think Palin will do something. She's just there to get votes from the NRA and "moral values" voters. And moral values mean gay couples cannot adopt kids. Which is not moral, and if anyone held that value, I would never vote for them.
And it wasn't just Montana. Blacks had given Obama a lead in North Carolina. Even South Carolina was close. The Palin pick was not to get women, but to get the gun-rights vote.
Obama, or the gun-rights folk need to examine their records. There's very little difference between the two, and no one will take away guns from hunters. I hope Obama doesn't want to ban a Colt 45 which is a semi-auto. He might think of "automatic" guns as being big, so maybe he doesnt' realize the first was the Colt 45. If I had a criminal attacking me, I'd rather have a Colt 45 than a regular pistol. I could defend myself a lot better, but at the same time, a Colt 45 is not really that dangerous at all compared to assault weapons.
A lot of people think the "gun" vote is going Republican, but this is the LEAST gun rights friendly Republican, and the most gun rights friends Democrat since gun control became a big issue.
Obama will win. McCain can call Obama sexist all he wants, but that's only because he knows Obama will kick his ass in the debates.
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