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Mike George (Edgerton, Kansas)

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Spin as a dis-service to America

By Mike George - Mar 8th, 2008 at 6:06 pm EST

I want to put so more emphasis on this blatant mis-representations and spin by the Clinton campaign about where Barack stands on Iraq.

Now representing someone else's position in your favor to try and persuade people to vote for Hillary or Obama is part of politics right now, fine. Sometimes it gets a little extreme, "Obama leaves 15,000,000 uninsured", "Hillary will garnish your wages to pay for healthcare" "McCain supports a 100 year in Iraq". All those quotations are exaggerated representations of each individual and their policies and positions.

But there is a line that can be crossed in the spin, where a statement is completely mis-represented, not exaggerated, but contorted. Basically, a statement is contorted to tell a lie and to then the lie is justified within the excuse that its a "possible interpretation" of the words that were spoken. We don't tolerate lies as much in America, but for some reason we tolerate these contortions and "possible interpretations" that completely mis-represent the evidence.

The Bush administration did it many times, a famous one :
We justified a war partly due to the classification of aluminum tubes found in Iraq as devices used as a means to enrich uranium. These classifications were done by people who had NO expertise to make them. And the Bush administration knew that, they where feeding a lie to the American people to justify themselves, they had to know, they were citing people with no expertise! But we don't do anything, or say anything because it's a valid "possible interpretation" of the aluminum tubes. Barack is not going to bring our troops home is a "possible interpretation" of the statement.

We can't let people off the hook for hap-hazardly mis-representing the truth and saying, "Oh well, we made a mistake." when we find out that they where lying. We can't have people who are willing to distort the truth to meet there personal gain, leading this country. One lie, cost us 3,800 soldiers and trillions of dollars in the past 7 years alone.

Any politician who is willing to campaign at that level has lost their way. And we have to be smart enough, attentive enough, to point those people out and have them clean up or get out.

It's not the lies that we should be focused on, its peoples willingness to lie to meet an end result, that we should be wary off.

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Use Obama's Gift

By Mike George - Sep 28th, 2007 at 2:47 pm EDT

Here's an email I sent to the Obama Campaign, tell me what you think?

Suggestion: Make DVD's that people (volunteers) can copy. Let them know they can copy it and distribute it.

Right now, America is voting for a Democrat among Democrats. What works about Obama is that HE inspires people. It's not his policies, positions, or experience, that make him inspiring, its an intangible, but very real, inspirational quality that he possesses that is so amazing. That is what has me involved and I think so many other people. And that is his greatest advantage. To exploit that, you need to get him in front of people, on TVs, monitors, or headphones so people can see /hear him in action.

So creating a new DVD is a way for people to get related to him, to see him. (I know about the Iowa DVD) And by making it something volunteers can legally copy, and distribute themselves, I think you can utilize an untapped method of distribution. Basically your reaching those people who you can't get to because since they don't follow the election, debates, or go online to look up candidates. And also the volunteers don't have to convince people that Obama is better than Hilary, they just need to give people the DVD so people can see him and judge for themselves.

Suggestions on the DVD:
- Make it applicable to the whole Nation, (not just the first 4 primary states) so that people can use it everywhere, including the first 4 states. If this thing blows up, you want everyone in America to feel like the Message is meant for them.
- Use whole speeches. Again, people need to see Obama, not somebody's media presentation about Obama. Because then people don't get to know him and that's what we're trying to get across. (I think his speech about faith is one awesome speech and show his capacity to understand and unite people)
- Possibly make an Audio CD of the DVD material too, that people can listen to him in the car or on an Ipod with MP3's downloadable from the website.. CD's are dirt cheap, and everybody has a CD burner.
- At the end, have Obama ask the viewer to give it to someone else so they can learn about Obama too, not to convince them, just so they can get to know who Obama is too.
- Make the front cover of a "Official DVD" look like a copied DVD. Kinda like the Borat DVD. So people get the idea right away. Maybe have the DVD called "Grassroots Obama"

I think this could be an awesome way to use technology and peoples inspiration in a whole new way. Basically let the volunteers run this election, empower them with tools like these, and then get out of the way. :)

Any other suggestions?

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