Blatant Reality

Townhall.com blogger Patrick Ruffini’s list of the top ten lessons that have been learned so far by the candidates. Check out his #1 lesson; its shocking yet, at the same time, rings true.

Today, the Christian Science Monitor published an article on Fred Thompson’s presidential bid in South Carolina. Mr. Sabar, whom I met at a Thompson speech earlier this week, discovered that traditional issues, such as abortion, may be taking a back burner to current hot topics like Iraq and immirgration in the coming election.

Bruce Rochester, a paramedic, echoed a common view here in saying he didn’t care about small differences in candidates’ positions on abortion and gay marriage. “I just don’t think those are major problems now,” he said before a Thompson campaign stop at The Beacon Drive-In in Spartanburg. “The main problems are the war and immigration.”

The interesting thing about this statement is that I heard almost the exact statement from a women I was chatting with at the same Fred Thompson rally. She stated that she didn’t care about what a candidate’s stand was on abortion because the president has very little influence in that anyways. She continued by stating that she believed it was a state issue anyways. Now, keep in mind, this is South Carolina, home of the states’ rights movement but I do believe that a lot of the country (and a lot of conservatives) are giving more leeway to candidates’ position on moral issues. This could explain why Giuliani has become such a popular choice.

New photo evidence seems to add even more credence to the theory that Ahmadinejad was one of the captors in the takeover of the US embassy in Iran.

According the AIM.org, the Left is going to once again bring up the Fairness Doctrine in tomorrow’s hearing by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Fellow bloggers, I guess we better prepare for another battle for free speech or, more likely, against politicians thinking they are above reproach from their electorate. Good luck everyone.

The New York Time ran an article today highlighting the dangers of online advertising if candidates don’t pay attention to what sites their ads appear. Mitt Romney, whom the article claims has the largest online advertising presence, has had several ads surface on unlikely websites.

The Nielsen analysis shows Mr. Romney has most frequently advertised on the Microsoft Network and Bell South Internet home pages, as well as on The Drudge Report and FoxNews.com. He and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, have had a large presence on Iwon.com, a site that awards cash prizes to players of its casino-style games.

 

But his campaign aides were surprised to learn from a reporter last week that his banners had also showed up tens of thousands of times on FanFiction.net, according to Advertising.com, the ad network his campaign uses, and Nielsen. They noted that FanFiction was mostly composed of PG- and G- rated material. But it also includes some pornographic fiction.

 

The aides at first said they did not believe that Mr. Romney’s spots had ever been on Gay.com, but this weekend executives at Advertising.com confirmed that the spot had indeed run on the network over the course of two days in August. They said it was pulled down at the request of Gay.com.

Stuff like this makes me wonder sometimes at how serious these presidential candidates are taking the internet. From reading the article, it seems that a lot of the blame is being placed on Advertising.com for placing the ads there but, candidates should pay attention to where their ads are popping up. The internet is not like television; each site has a very specific audience and by advertising on a site, you are, in essence, trying to relate to that audience. This association can be very damaging to a candidate’s image if it is unsolicited and not remedied quickly. Luckily for Mitt Romney, Gay.com didn’t want this association any more than I’m sure Romney would have wanted it and, subsequently, took down the ad themselves.

However, the candidate might not be so lucky next time.

Michelle Malkin has an interesting take on Bill Clinton’s comparison of the critic’s attacks on Hillary to the swift boat ads in 2004. Check out Malkin’s article for it is sure to increase your conservative vocabulary. Also, Hot Air has a video clip of the debate posted along with pointing out that Clinton’s lead has dropped by a third since the debate.

Today’s New York Times has the article that spawned all this commentary.

Today, Fred Thompson spoke at the South Carolina State Capitol in Columbia in front of the War Memorial. Despite a couple a minor setbacks, such as people having a hard time finding the memorial and Thompson being roughly 45 minutes late (rumored to be due to bad directions), the speech went smoothly. He drew a fairly large crowd but, it was not nearly as big a crowd as Stephen Colbert. The media was, however, drawn out in force with reporters from local stations to national news agencies such as CNN. Even some of the faith based news agencies, such as the Christian Science Monitor and Faithlink Magazine, had reporters present.

Before Senator Thomson gave his ten minute speech, he was introduced by retired Major General James Livingston, a congressional Medal of Honor recipient along with having received three Purple Hearts. In Major General Livingston speech, he threw his full support behind Fred Thompson not only because he felt the Senator would be a good Commander in Chief of the armed forces, but because Livingston couldn’t “support another individual from Hope, Arkansas.” Sorry Hillary.

When Thompson finally took the stage, he started by thanking those veterans that were there today to support his campaign. Given that those veterans who were standing behind him during his speech had already been standing there for the full 45 minutes before he arrived, I believe that was the least he could do. He went on to say that he has been a pretty constant person.

“I’m the same person I have always been. My record is clear.”

From his speech, I got the sense that he is a very laid back guy that would stay the same. For some weird reason, he kind of reminds me of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, intelligent yet quiet, but without the being depressed part. Anyways, enough political comparisons to fictitious characters from my childhood, you can view his voting record here. See for yourself if you agree that his “record is clear.”

Since this speech was done in front of the War Memorial with veterans flanking Thompson on either side, it was only fitting that the main portion of his speech be concerning national security. He started off by stating how disappointed he is at the Liberals for always being the apologists.

“I get a little tired when some folks on the other side feel the need to apologize for the United States of America. I don’t feel that need and never will.”

He went on to say that he is basically for a strong military and the necessity of having leaders who understands the military. He made a statement that is was very sad that a 20 year old serviceman in Iraq could have a better understanding of our national security interests than a career politician of 20 years. He also went on to say that, if elected president, he would be sure that our troops got the support they need in the battlefield along with the support they deserve when they come home, specifically wounded vets. He believes that the government should support wounded vets as long as it takes, even if that is for the rest of their lives. This drew applause from the crowd in which there were several wounded vets present.

Thompson closed his speech by stating that he wished to bring people together so that we may prosper and “remain unified in the face of diversity.” If he winds up getting the presidential nomination and becomes president, unifying the country will definitely be a very important issue with which he will have his work cut out for him.

If you wish to watch the video of his whole speech, you can view it HERE on YouTube.com.

I stumbled upon this article concerning global warming from the April 2007 edition of The Atlantic Monthly in one of my classes. The article is by Gregg Easterbrook and analyzes what benefits there will be and who will enjoy them in a warming world. Given, he does state that there will be negatives to a warming climate but, since the negatives are all that most people hear about, it is interesting to read that there are some benefits as well. His article is definitely applicable when he talks about nations wanting to lay claim to the arctic considering the recent claims Russia, Denmark, Canada, and others have had on the north pole.

Ron Paul recently stated that he would do nothing if Iran gained nuclear weapons. Here’s Hot Air’s take on this. Even if you believe that full out military intervention wouldn’t be necessary, to say that Iran is “incapable of even attacking their neighbors” is ludicrous. Iran has been attacking their neighbors by supporting terrorist organizations. It takes some guts to say that you would do nothing if Iran had nukes but he is way off base here and I won’t be surprised if we see some political back peddling in the next couple days.

Gateway Pundit is calling on everyone to hold TIME magazine responsible for not retracting or at least acknowledging the false reporting concerning “20 headless bodies” story. If you go to his post, the email address of TIME magazine’s editor is given so you can express you disappointment in their lack of reporting integrity.