Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
…that Republicans won’t ever be innocent of these charges of “mudslinging,” until they actively campaign for democrats?
It’s disheartening to see the 2008 presidential campaign sink into smear tactics. This raises ugly echoes of the false Swift Boat accusations of 2004 and the racist Willie Horton ads of 1988.
Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin stooped to mud-slinging by saying Democrat Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists” because he served on boards with Dr. William Ayers, a 60-year-old University of Illinois distinguished professor who was a youthful leader of the radical Weather Underground one-third of a century ago, opposing the Vietnam War in the 1970s when Obama was a tot.
The McCain-Palin ticket should beware of such hatchet jobs, because both GOP nominees are vulnerable to counterattacks.
McCain betrayed his crippled first wife and lived with beer heiress Cindy Hensley, whose father had been convicted of mob bootlegging charges. McCain used Hensley money and connections to succeed in Arizona politics. He nearly sank politically because he pulled Washington strings to help crooked financier Charles Keating, who went to prison after his savings-and-loan chain cost U.S. taxpayers billions.
Palin is vulnerable because she has spent her life in Pentecostal churches where members speak in tongues, cast out demons, await the Rapture, practice faith healing and try to ward off witches. So far, the Obama-Biden campaign has declined to question her fitness in this regard.
Really, they have? They have so declined? The “in this regard” must be the magic loophole here. “Ah yes, we’ve questioned Sarah Palin’s fitness in the regard of being pro-life, of having five kids, of having not gone to Wellesly or Yale, of wearing porn-star hooker glasses, of buying a tanning bed, of being Governor only as long as our Messiah has been a Senator, of leaving herself vulnerable to her personal e-mail being illegally hacked, of her husband getting a DUI twenty-two years ago…but not specifically in the regard of speaking in tongues and handling snakes!”
Millions upon millions of voters this year are voting not quite so much for McCain, but against Barack Obama. Depending on your personal issue priorities, that’s quite a legitimate position to take — just as it’s quite a legitimate position to vote for Obama because you want the war to end (just, in my humble opinion, misguided…nevertheless, legitimate). If it’s legitimate for people to vote for McCain for this reason, that his opponent is unacceptable, it is quite legitimate for McCain to remind them of this, and to go after converts under the same rationale.
The editorial goes on to state…
After eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration, America faces a nightmare. The national debt has leaped past $10 trillion, with no stabilizing in sight. Three-quarters of a million U.S. jobs have been lost so far this year, including 159,000 last month. The stock market plunge has wiped out trillions in personal savings. The unnecessary Iraq war has killed more than 4,000 young Americans.
McCain is tied tightly to the Bush-Cheney agenda because he supported invading Iraq, supported deregulation that brought the Wall Street financial meltdown, and supported trillion-dollar tax giveaways to the wealthy that wrought monster deficits and the soaring national debt.
These are the overriding concerns of the 2008 presidential campaign. They mustn’t be camouflaged by petty mudslinging attacks.
Which raises my question — what is there for the McCain campaign to do, exactly? What if the McCain campaign woke up one morning and decided “Hey, let’s not do anything the esteemed editors of the Charleston Gazette don’t want us to do”? What then? Would the esteemed editors remain unsatisfied in their thirst for a civil tone, until the McCain headquarters started handing out Obama/Biden buttons?
From where I sit, that’s very likely to be the case. It’s like the joke of the corrupt defense attorney saying “I object, Your Honor, when the prosecution says he intends to prove my client’s guilt! It prejudices the jury for him to prove my client’s guilt!”
I jest, but only slightly. Insignificantly, in fact. We seem to have truly arrived at that moment in history at which Republicans are thought to engage in “smear tactics,” simply by pointing out the reasons why voters should choose them as opposed to the other guy.
Meanwhile, you ask Barack Obama what kind of syrup he wants to put on his waffles on any given morning, he can’t answer your question without going into some meaningless litany about how Bush has screwed something up. You know, in my world, if that’s not connected in some way to the question you were asking him…that adequately qualifies as “mud-slinging.” So from where I sit, he’s been doing that, and very little else, all year. Am I figuring that wrong? If so, where? And if not, when do we start going after the Obama/Biden ticket to start engaging a more civil tone and start answering our damn questions?
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If it’s negative and irrelevant (it has to be both), its mudslinging. It’s REALLY mudslinging if it’s also exagerated or misleading.
If it’s negative, relevant, and not misleading, it ain’t mudslinging.
It’s that simple. Can I get that out there in an ad somewhere?
- philmon | 10/09/2008 @ 23:07It’s only mudslinging if it’s tossed and washes easily off. (And/or the media doesn’t bother covering it.)
It’s not mudslinging if it’s thrown and it sticks, doesn’t come off no matter how hard the scrubbing.
- tim | 10/10/2008 @ 12:45