On http://www.barackobama.com

The opening words read: OBAMA BIDEN

Now what does that sound like?

Why Obama loses election: BARACK TOO BLACK

Obama finds new career: BARACK LAYER

Obama turns to drugs and prostitution: BARACK WHORE

-The end-

This has been a party political broadcast on behalf of http://www.mccain.co.uk/our-food/chips/

Of course, there will be some people around McCain reading the polls and thinking analytically. They realise how badly this stuff is playing out, and will argue against pushing it further.

Others will go with their belly instinct that they should have more fire in their gut, or something: damn the polls, call Obama names.

It is only effective with racists who would not vote for Obama anyhow.

Yes, I’d agree with you. Which leaves me puzzled why the McCain camp persist with this sort of thing, or more accurately, coded surrogates.

It is only effective with racists who would not vote for Obama anyhow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRqcfqiXCX0

As I said the White House threatened reporters with limited or no access if they asked George difficult questions so that isn’t a free press now is it?

Actually, yes, that is a free press. And so on…

You know when even the Daily Telegraph has a headline calling for an Obama Presidency that the right in the USA has gone too far!

Where did that come from??

with respect it isn’t free. As I said the White House threatened reporters with limited or no access if they asked George difficult questions so that isn’t a free press now is it?

The USA Administration has pressured foreign press agencies such as Al-Jazeerah so that isn’t a free press.

As a UK national I can’t buy a US News Channel but a a US Citizen can buy a UK Channel. So do you have a free press when you limit ownership?

The Bush Administration restricted access to photos of Abu Ghraib, Guantanmo Bay, bodies of US Service personnel killed in war etc. So is that a free press?

Short of making it a federal crime the Bush Administration made out that anyone questioning its policies was unpatriotic so is that free press when the press is pressured to keep quiet?

I didn’t say you didn’t have free speech I said the press isn’t as free as everyone implies. It has its limits and those have been restricted severely by the Bush Administration.

The legacy of the right if anything is that it shouldn’t be questioned and if you do you are:

a) Unpatriotic
b) Liberal

You know when even the Daily Telegraph has a headline calling for an Obama Presidency that the right in the USA has gone too far!

Hiding behind patriotism to stop anyone questioning its follies and excesses. The way America has gone is a disgrace.

BTW The right whingers here love Bush’s America so much love the place so much and abhor what they claim the left has done here but why don’t they pack up and leave to those lovely pastures they find so ideal?

The Bush White House has used essentially bullying to ensure that reporters do not ask difficult questions. it has hidden behind procedure to ensure that its actions are not open to investigation.

How the hell people see that as free media is bleedin hard. This is the Administration which denies access to reporters if they displease the administration and then talk of a free media. If it is free then why are reporters told they will lose their access to white house briefings if they ask difficult questions?

You can’t have both free media and denial of access.

In a democracy challenging the actions of the President and the military should be given and not an issue of loyalty to the state. In fact the attacks on those who challenged the Bush doctrine and actions in Iraq border on the criminal for doing essentially what is right.

The question is why the right whitewash all the actions of the Republicans and portray anyone who is liberal and being unpatriotic.

This is the false legacy and damn lies which are being left behind by an administration that has the worst excesses of totalitarianism under the guise of democracy.

The Bush White House has set back the cause of democracy by a generation and induced the American people to have little trust if any in their politicians. Hell of a legacy to leave behind.

It is great to see the neocon vultures blame everyone but themselves for the mess they created and profited from. Amazing how many neocons have sat on baords or as advisors to so many dodgy dealings.

What’s more, given that stupid people exist, and speak, if you stop using a term every time stupid people misuse it, eventually you will have no words left and will be reduced to trying to convey complicated political concepts through mime.

That’s a recipe for either powerlessness and apathy, or feudalism, government by personal relationships instead of laws (which don’t tend to work so well without words).

It’s probably easier, all said, to get your head around a concept they seem to have stopped teaching in schools a while back: ‘wrong’.

If someone says 2 + 2 = 5, they are _wrong_.

If someone labels something as a conspiracy theory, and so dismisses it, when all it would involve is half a dozen people meeting and agreeing to do something that it is plausible such a group of people might want to do, no aliens, cabals or mind control needed, they are _wrong_.

If someone has a definition of plausible that lets them think you could take 6 random US military types and get them to organise and conceal an attack New York, or a mosque-full of Muslims and get them cover up a politician’s membership, they are _wrong_.

Not everyone would agree: those who don’t are wrong.

“It’s no secret all the facts are rarely made public and, when they really want to do something dastardly and offer some bullshit justification for it, it’s convenient to dismiss anyone that disagrees (or dares to propose another more probable cause behind their actions) as a conspiracy theorist nutter.”

Spot on.

I used to rail against ‘conspiracy theories’, imagining myself to be some kind of protector of reason. But, of course, dismissing something because of its attatchment to a loaded term is about as irrational and incurious as one can get.

They want Obama to win. So when they engineer something that makes 9/11 look like a picnic in the park, they can reclaim the power, save the world and when they bomb Iran can say: ‘Shut up, we had a black president. America is the land of the free, innit?’

It’s like charles manson’s great plan of hiding his clan of white warriors in the woods, let black people take over the world, naturally fuck it up, then return from the woods and take over

But then I’m just a conspiracy theorist nut

Convenient.

You would need to create the first to deliver on the second.

The conspiracy would be to make muslims a target of vilification by a significant section of the population.

That would be one conspiracy. Another would be to tell a deliberate lie about a candidate in order to alienate him from your assumed racist target voter and thinik that that would be a useful tool in getting your man – McCain – elected. Whilst I don’t think the Bradley effect exists, it’s pretty plain that the Republicans do.

Obama is an Arab. Repeating that mantra often enough because you suspect that enough Americans will be put off of the candidate by that allegation is a conspiracy. In the sense that a group of people who do not want him elected see a propoganda campaign based on an untruth as an effective tactic. If that is not a conspiracy….

Anyway, you appear to contradict yourself @ 20 when you say:

The essence of a conspiracy theory is that the evidence of the conspiracy is said by its proponents to include the absence of evidence, or by evidence which is not really evidence.

I’d have thought the fact that Obama is not an Arab fitted that definition fairly well. There is really no evidence that he is an Arab………so, there is an absence of evidence, is there not? Which rather handily fits your definition of what a conspiracy actually is.

The difficulty in answering that question was the refusal of Saddam to allow inspectors in to verify that information. Therefore, the belief that Hussein had WMD was a hypothesis premised on evidence, rather than a conspiracy theory.

Really? I was under the impression that UN inspection teams were operating in Iraq, and had found nothing of consequence. So, one or the other of us is probably subscribing to a conspiracy.

O Rly?

conspiracy theory
–noun
1. A theory that explains an event as being the result of a plot by a covert group or organization; a belief that a particular unexplained event was caused by such a group.
2. The idea that many important political events or economic and social trends are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.