Well, not exactly, but close enough.
Seriously, I am having a hard time keeping up with all these negative, and purposely distorted ads. Here's the latest in what will surely be many by the time November rolls around.
Obama didn't brush off the troops. The story is complex, but that's definitely not how it went down.
"Why do you think he didn't go?" Larry King asked Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Monday night, referring to Sen. Barack Obama's scrubbed trip to visited wounded veterans at Landstuhl Hospital in Germany.Nor did he brush them off and "make time to go to the gym" as this ad infers. Notice the stereotypical image of a loafing black man shooting a basketball in the background. Because what could be more stereotypically black than shooting basketball?
"I have no idea except that I know that according to reports that he wanted to bring media people and cameras and his campaign staffers," McCain said.
The part about wanting to bring the media is decidedly not true. There were never any plans for Obama to "bring media people and cameras." Never.
The issue was, according to sources in both the Pentagon and the Obama campaign, whether Obama could bring Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration (Ret.), an adviser to his campaign.
After the Pentagon told Gration he couldn't come, since he was officially seen as a campaign staffer and not as a former military man, that's when Obama scrubbed the trip.
He actually spoke to troops in a gym in Kuwait, not Berlin as this ad infers, before taking a quick moment to shoot a flatfooted three pointer, which he just happened to make on the first try.
No, really.
I wouldn't exactly call that brushing someone off and "making time to go to the gym".
Furthermore, if McCain cares sooo much about our troops, why did he vote down the GI Bill a few months back, and miss every hearing for the past two years of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Afghanistan? Obama can't hold a hearing on Afghanistan, being that he's on the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Europe.
Afghanistan isn't in Europe, last time I checked.
Maybe McCain should try doing as he says before he blames others for inaction.
Seriously, I knew the attack ads were coming sooner, rather than later. With the Olympics on the horizon, the race for the White House is about to take the backburner, so I guess this is Cotton Hill's awkward grasp at gaining some belated momentum. But is this really the way to go about it?
I thought McCain himself said he'd be beyond this sort of politricks.
Then again, desperation makes people do some truly odd things.
Like this other new ad that links Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. No, seriously.
And they also made Barry throw rapper Ludacris under the bus for this recent freestyle. No, seriously.
Spool32 and Daedalus, please tell me ya'll don't approve of such gutter tactics.
John McCain is thisclose to ending up on a future edition of People I Strongly Dislike.
Question: Do you think the McCain campaign is making a mistake by going negative so early? Attack ads have proven to work in the past, but do you think the America public is truly fed up with them?
McCain Camp Continues Unsubstantiated Inconsistent Attacks on Obama Over Germany Trip [ABCNews]
McCain Ad Links Paris Hilton, Britney Spears To Obama [HuffPost]
Ludacris Obama Video Denounced [HuffPost]
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I don't understand the purpose of them at all. If your game is tight and your politics are on point you'd never need to attack your opponent.
However, seeing that dude is behind in someone's poll doesn't have the star power, I'd say he needs to attack Obama every time Obama opens his mouth and a remix can be made of his words and actions.
Let's just hope people are intelligent enough to not believe everything they hear, read, or view without doing their research. But that would be a tall order to ask folk to do that. Many people like to be spoon fed, catered to.
I got spun on the Germany visit, I have to admit. Glad to see the whole story come out, because it looked super weird for him to visit soldiers in Iraq but not wounded vets at Landstuhl.
I think he should have ditched the general and gone anyway. All this arises because Obama was taking the whole trip under the cover of a "Senate fact-finding mission", a legal and campaign-finance song-and-dance bullshit routine designed to legally disguise the fact that the whole thing from beginning to end was a political maneuver. If it'd been a campaign trip, he'd have been prevented from doing much of what he did (Senators can go places that candidates cannot), and would have had to charge the whole thing to his campaign (with accompanying disclosure) rather than let his Senate Office (i.e. you and me) pay for it all. And he said he didn't want public funding for the election. ;)
This is why it sounded so odd to people in the beginning... everybody assumed the entire trip was political, so why would looking political keep him from going to Landstuhl? In truth, it was bringing someone who had no legal excuse for going on a Senate Fact-Finding Mission.
Still, that's dirty pool from the McCain camp. -1 from me.
I have to hold off on comments about Senate committee meetings and votes... neither Senator has been stellar. If I can come up with McCain's reasoning on the GI Bill, I'll post it.. that vote baffled me! It seemed crazy at the time.
Oh, and eff Ludacris. That was a weak freestyle anyhow... can he not rhyme? Where is his editor?
"Yeah I said it cause Bush is mentally handicapped
Ball up all of his speeches and I throw em like candy wrap
Cause what you talking I hear nothing even relevant
and you the worst of all 43 presidents"
That is weak. The meter is all wrong! And just because two words have the same syllable count, it doesn't mean you can rhyme them. Relevant / president?
Weak sauce.
I know that one of McCain's senior people had threatened to leave during the general election if Obama won the Dem primary...I guess he knew it would get messy and lose anything remotely approaching class. McCain's campaign wants to make it clear that they will say anything and everything to get elected and then force the Obama campaign to prove them wrong every time
Anyone seen this:
http://gop.com/images/audacitywatch/audacitywatch.html
It's the "audacity watch" by the RNC...looks like the colored man is stepping out of line.
I'd like to see Ludacris do a freestyle expanding on his earlier theme... he could do one verse each on why Bush is worse than Herbert Hoover, Ulysses Grant, and William Howard Taft.
I double-dog dare you, Ludacris. And you can't look them up on Wikipedia either.
98 days left and this is the best McCain has? If he were really a maverick, he'd come up with something original. I don't think that the public at large is buying it. Ask Hillary how that strategy worked for her.
@gracie b:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-jenkins/obama-still-does-not-know_b_115671.html
great article.
@ebw
That was great - thanks!
McCain is grabbing at straws and clearly the negativity is going to only get worse. My problem, however, isn't with McCain. He's doing exactly what I expected for someone who didn't capitalize on several months advantage. But someone please tell me why Ludacris thought he was making a political statement instead of showing himself foolish. It remains best to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool...than to open it and remove any doubt. (Bible Basics 101 - as I resume my prayers for the multiple wars Barack will continue to fight in the name of foolishness.)
- Aimee Alaine @ ALlyds Work In Progress
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_07_27_archive.html#6257105392743451168
I'm leaning more on the side that McCain is going to regret this this early. But he has a big problem--not being interesting.
He's boring, he's dull, and frankly he's old news and again, running against a movement. Just like the Oldsmobile commercial, this is not your father's presidential race.
McCain's problem is the Olympics right now, and the Democratic Convention. I'm not sure if I had read it in that HuffPo article or not, but at this point negative news for McCain is still news nonetheless. He already got NO LOVE last week when Obama went out and "looked presidential" overseas, did what Republicans had dared him to do which was go to Iraq and Afghanistan, and now they're trying to find ANYTHING wrong with it, which they can't, and in the midst of Olympics news, McCain seriously faces not being a news item.
I mean, against Obama he's going to lose. Also, against the plethora of sports news with the Olympics and I'm quite sure news in general about China and pollution and free trade are going to take precedent over someone eating cheese at a German bar.
And then the Democratic Party Convention, which we all know completely shuts McCain out.
He's really scrambling right now, I don't blame him actually, but he's acting like he doesn't have time. He's putting Obama in a position to come off squeaky clean come the debates--moreover, McCain is better than this crap to use wrong information. It's one thing to spin a story, but it's another thing to concoct info to make your case.
Sadly, however, I don't think the American public is fed up with attack ads anymore than they are fed up with FoxNews, which clearly hasn't faced not one single FCC sanction that truly was worth something. If America was fed up with it, I think we would see a decline in McCain's numbers, and I'm not sure that that's going to happen.
Although, on a tangent, in circa 2008, I don't know how much stock I put in polls--its too many variables involved.
Actually Luda cut it up on that one and tha beat's knockin'
Hey Average Bro!
You did not put "beige boy" in the photo caption!!
*LOL*
I feel guilty laughing about it...
{frowns}
Lisa
To me it's business as usual for the candidates. Hopefully this will all come out right in the end.
@ebw,
Unfortunately, I dont think it's the public at large that these ads are aimed at; it's that percentage of die-hard-refuse-to-use-your-brain-and-swallow-everything-that's-on-tv-when-said-by-your-favorite-pundit group that they're aimed at. And we know they exist - how else can we explain Fox News? Negative campaigning has worked before when used, and that's why (@uppitynegro) your father's oldsmobile is still out on the street, trying to hustle in this race!
I used to work with and live among staunch conservatives and had some pretty ridiculous arguments thrown at me. Thank God not any more, but I'd really like to hear what the average conservative (not television personality) is using to argue for McCain. Haven't thought too highly of him for a while, but watching this downward spiral is disgusting and depressing!
Barak should have gone to visit them alone if he had to. That would have been the right thing to do, personally and politcally. I have yet to see a politcal ad thats 1000% correct from either side but because its Obama I suppose we have to ask is it racist, and then if we get past that, be hypersensitive and cast Barak as a hapless victim. Rollin my eyes at that. McCain is trying to win. He's got 5 1/2 networks against him. You gotta do what you gotta do.
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