VOTE BLACK THUNDER
Sorry for yet another YouTube video, but this is one of the best comedic commentaries on campaign attack ads I've seen.
Absolutely hilarious.
In a related matter, here's the NY Times' Tom Friedman, someone I usually think is a fatuous blowhard, a guy who initially supported the Iraq war and made lame excuses for it for much too long. He's finally come around, actually making a good pitch for the Democrats in the upcoming election:
Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal for the 21st century — to bring out the best in us. His “genius” is taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country.Indeed we will. Let's just hope the voters aren't as stupid as the GOP thinks they are (and that the voting machines are registering the correct results).
And Karl Rove has succeeded at that in the past because he was sure that he could sell just enough Bush cigarettes, even though people knew they caused cancer. Please, please, for our country’s health, prove him wrong this time.
Let Karl know that you’re not stupid. Let him know that you know that the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an administration that has — through sheer incompetence — brought us to a point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable.
Let Karl know that you think this is a critical election, because you know as a citizen that if the Bush team can behave with the level of deadly incompetence it has exhibited in Iraq — and then get away with it by holding on to the House and the Senate — it means our country has become a banana republic. It means our democracy is in tatters because it is so gerrymandered, so polluted by money, and so divided by professional political hacks that we can no longer hold the ruling party to account.
It means we’re as stupid as Karl thinks we are.
I, for one, don’t think we’re that stupid. Next Tuesday we’ll see.
UPDATE: Here's Matt Taibbi on how so called mainstream media moderates (like Friedman) ultimately enabled Bush to get away with murder.