Younger voters are far less convinced than their elders that the protests at U.S. embassies in the Middle East have been planned in advance. Female voters are not as sure of that as male voters are.
I'm guessing that the more you like President Obama, the more you've been influenced by the administration's propaganda about the "Innocence of Muslims" video.
The government last week spent $70,000 in Pakistan to run a television ad featuring President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denouncing the video in hopes of limiting protests there.
They don't have to run that ad in the United States, where the mainstream media carries their message free of charge. Here's what they showed in Pakistan:
What's that red flag with the pentagram behind her? It seems kind of Satanic. Is it this:
What's going on there? And, more importantly, should we fly into a rage and take to the streets?
Obviously, Obama said those words, and Romney supporters have seized upon those words. Rush Limbaugh has been playing and replaying that line. Charles Krauthammer said: "I think Obama has made the gaffe of the year when he said if you created a business, you didn't build it. That phrase, 'you didn't build it' should be hung around Obama until the end of his presidency."
And now, here comes the Obama campaign not only running Obama's self-damaging words but showing Romney repeating them with a critical edge. This takes nerve... nerve or genuine, outright fear that Obama's garbled statement will be used to destroy him. They must confront it and take some of the edge off it. And maybe they've decided they shouldn't worry about breathing more life into it. It's alive and on the loose and they need to give chase.
The idea of the ad is to get us to see that despite the awkward line that's so useful to his opponent, Obama was mostly saying something we agree about: That people don't succeed entirely on their own, but benefit along the way with the help of others. The ad has text on screen that says: "Mitt Romney is launching a false attack," after Romney quoting the quote "That's not what [Obama] said," and after showing Obama saying the quote, "Mitt Romney will say anything."
You could say if you listen sympathetically to Obama saying the quote, you could understand the quote in a way that's not ridiculous and disturbingly left-wing. And if you get that far, then Romney's use of it could be understood as "a false attack." [But false is still the wrong word.] But why would Romney not use that quote for all it's worth? Since when does decency/integrity/honesty require that a politician interpret his opponent's words in a sympathetic light and give him the benefit of the doubt? The quote is a gift to Romney and he's accepted it.
It's like Romney saying "Corporations are people." That's a gift to Obama's people and they are using it. They don't feel any ethical compulsion to stop and say we understand what he really meant. I mean, I love the way the new Obama ad — trying to get us to understand — includes this additional part of the context: "We succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."
When I heard that the first time, I said: Yeah, corporations are people. We do things together. Sometimes when people succeed doing things together, they form a corporation as a way of working together. But you'll never hear Obama say that. He will use the 'Corporations are people' line for full mockery effect, never admitting that he knows why it makes sense and why it really isn't anything we disagree about.
In these last few days before the April 5th Wisconsin Supreme Court election, third party ads dominate. Here are 2 that were put up on YouTube today by a group called GreaterWisComm. I got to the first one via Dave Weigel, who doesn't express any opinion other than that the ad uses video of "Prosser looking like Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon." The ad exploits the incident, which we talked about here, in which Prosser, in private, called Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson a "bitch." The video looks like it comes from long ago when Prosser was a state legislature.
It's up to the viewer to figure out what the context of that is, but obviously, it plants doubts and stirs up emotions.
The next one I discovered after clicking through to the YouTube user's page. It's quite long and begins with cheerful music and happy images of the recent protests here in Madison. Purported misdeeds of the Republicans are cited, Prosser is linked to the Republicans, and his opponent JoAnne Kloppenburg is presented as a political solution:
Again, it's a confusing ad. It does a good job of putting a happy face on the protests. Where's the corresponding ad that makes the protests look nightmarish and portrays the protesters as intent on overturning the results of the last election by installing Kloppenburg on the court?
Ads like this are deplorable, but they probably work, and with third parties putting them up, the candidate has deniability.
So... if Christians are really that touchy, maybe you shouldn't even be using the expression "irredeemably offensive." Don't be having any fun with The Redeemer.
Well done... but now this is the end of denouncing those terrible Tea Party antagonists who use the term. How dare they! Was that better than owning the term and flinging wet bags at stacks of legislation and distorted photographs of Nancy Pelosi? Go on the offensive and stop sniveling, presumably?
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