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Blogger Launches 'Google Bomb' At McCain
hhavensteincw writes "A liberal blogger has launched a 'Google bomb' project aimed at boosting Google search results for nine news articles showing Sen. John McCain in a negative light. The Computerworld article notes: 'Chris Bowers, managing editor of the progressive blog OpenLeft, is launching the Google bombs by encouraging bloggers to embed Web links to the nine news stories about McCain in their blogs, which helps raise their ranking in Google search results. Bowers is reprising a similar Google bombing effort he undertook in 2006 against 52 different congressional candidates. "Obviously, it is manipulating, but search engines are not public forums and unless you act to use them for your own benefit, your opponent's information is going to get out there," Bowers said.'"
google bombs away!
prepare the survey weasels.
. . . unify the country.
Hmmmm I couldn't find the links to the original 9 articles. Could someone post them here? ;)
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I find the practice of SEO to be a bit questionable in any event, but soliciting volunteers to essentially manipulate google search results in order to favor a given political agenda just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. Sure, it can argued that the right fights dirty, but where is the honor in stooping to this sort of thing?
Well, I am old enough to remember the sixties -- maybe I'm just becoming obsolete.
Caveat Utilitor
Honestly, the generation that gets their information from the internet (instead of cable or newspapers) is going to have a much more liberal bias in general. All you have to do is look at age group demographics for any polling done and you'll see the heavy liberal skew to the younger ages.
With that being said, there are already going to be many, MANY more blogs with a pro-Obama, anti McCainb standpoint than the alternative already. Having a few more people bump some anti-McCain articles may bump them up a couple slots, but I guarantee with the demographics of internet users, those articles probably weren't doing badly on their own.
Besides, republicans already have their propaganda machine too *cough* Fox News *cough* Ann Coulter *Cough*
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Isn't one of the tenants of democracy that everyone have access to all information and then they decide who's best for themselves? This is poisoning the available information so citizens don't have all of the information about a candidate.
Pretty surprising come from the left, you know, with their morals and such.
I see excellent things like openSSH, and openOffice. Why choose "OpenLeft", instead of "openLeft"?
The articles portraying John McCain in a negative light just show him smiling.
A negative image to be sure, a picture of John McCain smiling is not a "Google Bomb".
This is fantastic. How dare an opponent's "information" be spread. American democracy is built on the prevention of open dialog and the containing of messages that opposes one's own propaganda.
Yeah, it's always a lot better to make sure that you taint the conversation.
This is an excellent example of the juvenile "us vs. them" mentality that national US politics has devolved into. I'm a bicycle-riding urbanite liberal stereotype, I still find this sort of idiocy appalling. Let people make up their own minds and hunt for their own information.
--saint
This is not a valid way to promote Obama.
Just let people figure it out themselves.
It's very simple. Do you want something at least SLIGHTLY different than the past eight years? No matter what you want to say against Obama, you are guaranteed something different than the past eight years. With McCain it will be virtually identical except we'll be bombing Iran (and anti-choice for women).
Obviously, it is manipulating
bingo
I'm from Finland and on that chart at coordinates -8, -8... As a foreigner following the presidential campaigns I must agree with your analysis: neither of the major candidates are where I stand.
However, in U.S., the president has too much influence over the political discussion; in Finland she's just a figurehead with some powers in foreign affairs.
As it is now, if I were U.S. citizen, I'd gladly vote for the lesser evil, or Obama. I don't think he could change much, or would want to, but it is a step in the right direction anyway.
You have to love how the left bloggers love to cry fowl at every little turn. Yet, when they attempt to rig search engine results it's somehow okay. Regardless of a person political affiliations this type of action should be frowned upon and they people partaking in the event should be shunned by their readers.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
While the lefties have started a "Fight with smear" campaign.
How can we spin this so we can make those evil Republicans look bad?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Since this is now on the front page of Slashdot, do you think Google may put a stop to it?
Or better, come up with a heuristic that prevents this kind of crap in general? A tough problem, for sure, but those Google guys can be crafty.
Seems to me that this is basically a result of this asshole believing Obama can't win without such underhanded tricks.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I thought Google had put in place controls to prevent exactly this kind of thing from tainting search results. Even if he does get a lot of people linking, it seems like Google's own corrective algorithms would prevent it from really making an impact on search results.
It might be interesting to see what degree other search engines end up being affected as well, as a study in how manipulatable the various engines are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apparently Google already has protection against such "bombs":
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/01/quick-word-about-googlebombs.html
I have no idea how the algorithm detects such a bomb, but it appears to be pretty effective.
I.O.U One Sig.
This sort of stuff just makes the side doing it seem more juvenile and reactionary... which is an image the democrats need to overcome, not encourage.
I think if they could have shut up their most ardent supporters, the Democrats would have won the last election.
We had the same kind of almost religious "renewal" here in UK about 12 years ago. It was called new labour. Now everyone hates the guy...
To me Obama is a bit GW Bush but mostly Tony Bliar .. er .. make that "Blair"
Why is this tagged 'Republicans' when it's a Democrat doing the deed?
I expect both sides will engage in this kind of thing though to be honest.
True - we've got two major parties in the U.S., one representing the center of the right wing, one representing the right wing of the center.
It's no wonder that, until this charismatic upstart Obama came along, the "sure winner" of the Democratic primaries was a woman who had been the president of her campus's chapter of the College Republicans, and whose husband was called "the best Republican president we've had in a while" by Alan Greenspan.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
its relevant
its not just rant
I'd organize the same for Obama in response, but that would be racist and undemocratic.
How very 'progressive'.
A lot of the comments in here complain that these are underhanded, manipulative tactics.
They are not. This is no different than the advertising both sides spend millions on. The whole point of the google search engine, that made it beat the other search engines with their paid results (remember the days of going to four different search engines, and diging down through pages and pages of results, to find something ?) is that google ranked according to what the public expressed as important, via the links they created on web pages. If google didn't rank those stories higher after eveyone started talking about them, then google would be less useful, and start facing competition again.
If these stories were simply untrue, or at least contested, that might be a valid objection. But they are denied in any way by McCain. This is not a "swift boating" or the campaign McCain was victim of in North Carolina to make it seem he had had a child out of wedlock. Citing facts is always fair game in a debate.
I think the Obama supporters might choose better stories, however. While these stories might outrage people who will already vote for Obama, those who are already supporting McCain are unlikely to be moved by them. Perhaps links to McCain's involvement in the Savings and Loan Scandal might be better.
I would like to see what stories the McCain folks would google bomb about Obama. If they are all basically untrue or speculation about his religion or some shit, I think that would tell you who is going to win. Before I participate in this google bombing campaign, I will collect several factual articles about Obama's involvement with that real estate guy, and the ear mark or whatever funding it was that he got for the hospital where his wife worked, and any other well established, factual dirt on Obama. Then I would mix in a link to McCain's POW internment, which I view as a plus on his side, and a few articles on some of the good positions he has taken. On Obama's plus side, I think I would link "Obama isn't in this list" to a list of who voted for the Iraq war; that is the reason why Obama will win the election.
John McCain "died in a blogging accident"
Just another Oberman - O'reilly hate monger, People are smarter than that, ...yawn
I was under the impression that it was the sworn duty of every news person to always portray republicans in a negative light. Why are there only nine articles and why must they be highlighted?
Google Bombing is when you try to get a site (or sites) to rank for keyword terms that are not in that specific page. At this time Google has prevented all new literal Google Bombings from occurring, however, it can still be done partially.
The article talks about bring up articles to rank for "John McCain" and last I checked... those were not obscure terms for him (unless he recently went to change his name to something else entirely).
So what is he doing then? As I've mentioned, it's not Google Bombing, but instead it's really the opposite of brand reputation management--he's just trying to produce more negative results for his name.
Wouldn't the most patriotic move in the universe be to get away from a 2-party system/hegemony once and for all? Why can't a good google bomb get rid of all references to McCain and Obama and start promoting the other candidates no one gets to hear about in traditional media?
If you have a political blog and you are linking to articles about a political candidate on other web sites, how is that Googlebombing? Isn't that actually the way the web is supposed to work?
just call someone at google and ask them to make sure those links appear in the top 20. I mean, how many friends does john mccain have at google? Probably not too many.
The bomb Iran song.
On topic, Getting your friends to link to you is not a Google bomb. Making a farm of fake blogs is. Google does what it can to tell the difference.
This is just another example of the socialistic ideologies that have taken over the democratic party. This sounds similar to information control, like that which is seen in North Korea and China.
I also like the part where Bowers says there's no bias, but yet only focuses on the negatives of McCain. If he's unbiased, then an anti-Obama Google bomb will be announced in the coming week. Yeah right.
CAPTCHA: unified
I'm a little confused. How exactly is a search engine not a public forum? I can't think of anything off the top of my head that is used or seen by more of the general public then Google is.
That dishonorable jerks exist across the entire political spectrum. Regardless of your political affiliation, restrict the "fights dirty" label to individuals. Do not generalize the distasteful actions of a few to the entirety of your political opposition simply because it makes things more convenient for you.
If you don't believe and work for this, you will never have it.
Intellectual property was the desert property of the twenth century.
One vote for the democratic party of america is one less vote for the republican party of america, but is it really a vote to the left?
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that most all left vs. right discussions are meaningless and religeous in nature. Unless, of course, they're engaged in by political science majors, historians or otherwise learned observers whose outlook isn't so narrow as to be constrained by US geography or the day's headlines, and whose vocubulary extends beyond buzzwords. Thankfully, in this election cycle, most of the idealogues and nutcases have retreated or otherwise dispersed, leaving the rest of us with the ability to focus on real issues for a change.
That said, I'll postulate that a vote for the Republican party, at since Nixon's time, has become a vote for folks who, if elected or given power, tend to be very dangerous people. McCain would fit in nicely with that illustrious group.
You aren't describing conservatives, you are describing the Republican Party. The Republican Party are not conservative in any way, shape or form. Conservatives would be against the Iraq war. Conservatives would be against increasing the size of the government. Conservatives would be against wiping their asses with the Constitution. Conservatives would be against spending far more money than the country has.
"But now they seem to be feeding you the idea that all parties should be striving for the same thing"
And the value you should see there for "same thing" is "good of the American people".
Please explain why expecting both parties to strive for the good of the American people is "bullshit".
When we expect them to be unified, it's in pursuing what is best for our country, not fucking over the other party just to gain political advantage.
Perhaps if you were smarter you'd understand that.
John McCain was tortured in Vietnam and could change people's minds if he was not busy pandering to them. Leaders should rise above such stuff. He should also know better about war, tortue and trade with Communist China. What you are left with is a mystery - what changed McCain and how can we undo the damage?
So he thinks that McCain's information is so powerfully correct that the only way to beat it is by the suppression of it.
I am of the view that the only way to fight bad information is to use better information. He is admitting that his message is worse than McCain's, therefore he has to prevent people from seeing McCain's message.
Yeah, that'll work....
I think it's a bad idea to call this a "GoogleBomb". Bombs blow up people. Bombs have no place in politics.
This, however, is valid political discourse: people decide what information is important and relevant, and they link to it.
I hope both sides will continue to do this, for both positive and negative stories.
It's true that this could backfire, but it could also cause a massive arms race. If politics weren't messy and dirty enough already, imagine if both campaigns were spending massive amounts of time and energy to control the other side's Google results. McCain supporters would link to dirty articles about Obama, Obama supporters would link to dirty articles about McCain, and the whole Internet would be filled with even more political links than it already is.
Heck, a really smart campaigner would just outsource the whole thing to India and have thousands of staffers constantly building links to positive and negative results.
Politics might be the one thing strong enough to overcome all of Google's attempts to stop Googlebombs.
I'll even go as far as to say that the United States of America will be better off in any of the two possible outcomes.
Hey, I voted for Kodos.
$
I don't want to be unified with supporters of McCain.
I think anybody who votes Republican after the past eight years is morally bankrupt, lacks patriotism, and lacks a commitment to basic American values.
I thought Google had put in place controls to prevent exactly this kind of thing from tainting search results.
The problem is that the line is fuzzy. If I set up a blog talking about economic policy and then decide to add a link to a negative article about McCain's economic policy, how is Google to know whether its legitimate or purposely done to flood Google's link system? Google cannot read minds. (I bet they're working on it, though.) They can catch blatant stuff only.
Table-ized A.I.
Perhaps someone can help with his obit.
I sure hope that Obama has the decency to ask his supporters not to play tricks like this. While I don't support him, at the start of this race I at least respected him. Lately, I'm not so sure, and his supporters aren't helping his case. I thought this election might be civil. I was wrong.
Obama doesn't need 'Google bombing' to put himself in a bad light.
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
This is the essence of the obama method. If his own information ever comes to light, it will be both bereft of any real action as well as corrupt and manipulative as any other politician, directly contradicting his forum on "hope" and "change". He represents neither. At least you know where McCain stands and he has honorable intentions. Neither of these is the case for obama.
To me, this is just another indication of what this presidential race will be: a contest of who can convince people that their opponent is a worse choice. I see this as a symptom of the fact that American presidential politics has degenerated into a case of "vote for the lesser evil". Hmm - we've never seen this before... 1988, 2000, 2004 - and those are just the ones I'm old enough to remember. Why do the political parties consistently weed out the good candidates? Imagine if Abraham Lincoln tried to run for president in today's world. He wouldn't stand a chance, and that's really depressing.
1. Announce a Google bomb to the world.
2. Hit the Google blacklist in 3, 2, 1...
3. Links conveniently "gone" from Google.
He's either the most moronic SEO manipulator known to man or his goal is to get the links hidden entirely from Google.
Idiot. If I wanted my information to be pure propaganda, I'd watch the news. You're just making your party look bad (err, worse.)
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
Let me correct a couple phrases here:
That means they've chosen several biased articles which reflect their own political goals and are working to make them the top search results when one searches for "McCain" to the detriment of other, potentially disagreeing articles' exposure and readership. That's the goal; the blogger(s) know(s) it, you know it, and anyone with a shred of honesty will see and admit it.Then you have the temerity to say this:
The pro-McCain sites will still be there, on the interbutts, waiting for you to sign on. Similarly, the plans were on display, even if they were at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "beware of leopard" in a darkened basement with no stairway.That's an incredibly disingenuous statement. The goal of this action is to manipulate what information people see. The whole point of a search engine, from a user's perspective, is to provide the most relevant articles first, so they don't have to read through 50 articles. You're practicing doublethink when you say this is an "acceptable" tactic, because it is only "acceptable" for use on your enemy. Your response would probably be outrage and defiance rather than apologetics and complicity if this very tactic were used against a candidate/party/ideology that you favor. And it would still be dirty and underhanded, and shallow intellectualism.
They're gaming the system, and you know it because it's fucking obvious. It hinders, not helps transparency and the dissemination of relevant information to the public at large. If you'd rather have the "correct" guys in power by any means necessary no matter how crooked, fine; but don't misrepresent the fact. And please note also that that is exactly the current situation, but with the "wrong" guys in power. The problem here is not the game, but the players, including this blogger and, apparently, you.
That chart lists Gravel as a Libertarian even though he supports a national ID card, and universal health insurance, but Ron Paul is an authoritarian?
Seriously though, who gets so worked up by the differences between US presidential candidates? They are so slight they are almost imperceptible.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
People don't seem to understand that the Rove is like the Vorta, except that the Vorta had more than one model, all of them more attractive than the Rove.
Of course McCain has one.
Loose lips lose spit.
Apparently Google's algorithms are withstanding the force of this Google Bomb. The articles aren't moving up in the search result list anymore; they're slowly sliding down.
"it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
Greenspan is referring to Clinton view on National Economic Policy.
... of how dishonest liberals will do ANYTHING to seize power.
Obama's communist revolution should be interesting.
1) Democrats invent some 'neat' new propaganda tactic.
2) End justifies the means, so they launch it.
3) Smugly announce the ends justify the means.
4) Republicans outraged. SWEET JESUS HOW DARE YOU.
5) 4 years later (more or less), Republicans take this tactic, perfect it, make it even more evil, use it to brutal effect.
6) Outraged screams of anguish from Democrats. HURF BURF HOW DARE YOU what kind of MONSTER would use such a tactic?!?
7) Back to step one.
Christ people, how many times does this have to happen for you to see what you're doing? I know, I know, you'll never see it because you're blinkered by the two party system's Us or Them. It's working as intended. You tools.
Ok, so I see three theories what would explain this.
First, you might be looking at the wrong axis. There are many political issues and any one candidate may fall at many different places on those issues. Just because all the parties happen to align on certain issues (e.g. economy, etc.) they can often be quite disparate on other issues (e.g. death penalty, abortion, etc.). Saying that the Democrat's are right wing might be true on some issues (e.g. both Dems and Reps would say they reject socialism), on the issues that most politically aware Americans pay attention to maybe they are not.
Second, keep in mind that political parties do shift from time to time. At one time the Republican's were a liberal third party and Democrats got the religious vote. (I don't know maybe back then it was called the "religious left" instead of the "religious right".) If you think the Democrat's are moving right, then look for either the Republican's or a third party to move into the political niche that is being vacated.
Third, using game theory if we assume:
Then the equilibrium solution will put both parties in the dead center only a hairs breath apart so that they both get 50% of the vote. In some sense this is a good thing as the government will then always represent the median position of the entire nation. It may not be what you think of as center or moderate, but it will be the median.
(The above are theories, I share them so that others may improve, refute or refine them. Flames don't accomplish that.)
The free ride for workers is over. You've been stealing money at your boss'es expense by renting & getting steady paychecks while your bosses have been getting soaked by real estate deflation. It's time to put that money back into real estate where it belongs.
Quote: "The goal of politics should be to do what's best for the country. The goal of politicians is to gain power."
If a "politician" is one who engages in "politics", then that statement is false. The goal of a politician should also be to do what is best for the country.
The fact that relatively few have been doing so is irrelevant. That is still what they SHOULD be doing.
And the Democrats, who want to save the world from the nasty Republicans, have been shooting themselves in the feet.
Gas prices? That was sure a big political issue, until the Democrats gained power in Congress. Now... silence. Thanks, Dems.
Democrats: "Hey, let's just go ahead and pass this Fascist Telco Immunity bill! It's not so bad!" F***ing idiots.
Democrats: "Hey, let's dishonestly manipulate the media just like the Republicans have been doing!"
Save the world. Yeah, right. Sounds like the same sh*t, different day.
As much as I hate modern Republicans, if the Democrats want my support, they are going to have to demonstrate that they deserve it... instead of what they HAVE BEEN doing!
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Exactly. Being from Europe but having lived in the US for a long time, I was always surprised what is considered 'left' in the US. As you said: The US voters have the choice between a far-right and an extremely far-right party. At least when compared to the political spectrum you can see in Europe.
Having said that, there are significant differences of opinion even within the two major US parties. It's just that for some reason both sides think they need to always cater to a particular 'majority view', which seems to force them to these right-leaning official positions on everything.
The reason the liberal left will not try to help Barr is because they know he can hurt them just as much....not all of Barr's support will come from McCain.
You already posted in this article with three different accounts. Would it bee too much to ask to only use one? Is it really that difficult to make your point without pretending you're multiple people? Why do you insist on gaming Slashdot this way?
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
...against Obama. Googlebomb his name with Links to "Saddam Hussein" and "Islamic Fascism" on wikipedia. Sure, it may not be true and a load of crap, but boy, it would sure be fun.
He's trying to manipulate google, sure, but in a more legit way than doing this: warmongering douchebag. The guy in the article is simply promoting 9 specific articles about McCain and suggesting that others link those articles as well to make sure they climb the search results. It's not that different from just passing the links around and telling people to make sure everyone they know reads them. Whereas doing this charming imposter doesn't just get more people to go to a link; it makes a clear association between that link and a phrase denigrating the object of the link.
... There are no Google Bombs. Once it is out in the open, it is gone. So, does it ever exist? Perhaps, for a brief moment in time.
I know for a fact that Google has a small team dedicated to this sort of thing now. Google bombs, if they do materialize, are immediately squished. Google searches blogs and popular websites such as Slashdot for news items discussing "glitches" in their ranking algorithm. If there is a "bomb", it is extinguished immediately.
Is an option that I'm seriously considering. Obama and McCain both leave me pretty flat.
We know about your sockpuppets and your shilling and everything else. You can stop now.
Now this takes the cake for bullshit. The democratic party is _far, far left_ now that they have fallen in line with the black liberation movement. If nobama is elected, my children's children will be paying to have supported (note the tense) the most socialist entitlement programs in our country's history in the next four years. I'm a liberal when it comes to social policies but the madness has to stop somewhere when the finances don't support it. Combine broad social entitlement with increased taxes leading to economic slowdown and you have ... the Great Depression.
Probably for the same reason as he's started accusing everyone of being from Anti-Slash.
Somebody should point out to him that Anti-Slash hasn't been updated in months, and that there's really no global conspiracy to mod him down... no, wait, I already did that and he's still being a cunt.
Ah well.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Then you haven't been listening very well. It was not the Republicans who came up with any of this. It was, and continues to be, Democrats who are always about "unifying the country".
It started in 2000 with the disputed election. George W Bush won, but because the popular vote went to Al Gore, Democrats argued there should be some sort of concessions given to them, or some sort of power sharing agreement put into place, in order to unify the country (since the claim was that Bush didn't really win the election or represent the will of the people).
The Democrats continued to make that argument as well (again in 2001) when the senate was split 50-50 among Democrats and Republicans after so called "jumping Jim Jeffords" suddenly left the Republican party, declared himself an independent and voted with the democrats for organizational purposes. Instead of being 51-49 as it was after the election, it was now 50-50, and Democrats argued that there should be some kind of power sharing agreement set up to unify things (despite the fact that Republicans still had the technical majority since Vice President Cheney could break ties).
Democrats continued to call on Republicans to help them "unify" the country the whole time they were out of power, and constantly said Republicans needed to cave in order to represent "all Americans".
Finally, this argument continues today, and is being played in the news media constantly (which is probably why you are getting sick of it). However, it's not Republicans saying it if you listen closely. It is again coming from Democrats, and they are constantly talking about their need to unify the country around Barack Obama after the divisive nominating contest. In this case though, when they reference "the country" they are talking about the democratic party nationwide needing to unite.
So in conclusion, don't blame Republicans for all this craziness. I think most Republicans, including myself, understand that there are going to be political differences. Deep down, I think most Democrats do too, but they were out of power so long that begging Republicans to "unify the country" was about their only shot at getting their way. And you can't blame them for trying.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Much like bigotry and intolerance, sabotage is acceptable when you agree with the motivation.
The only thing better than a /. car analogy, is a /. marijuana analogy.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Ahhh - reminds me of my favorite political Google bomb - the single word Santorum. Still numer 1 even after he was voted out of office.
Anti-Slash hasn't been active since mid-2005 that I can see from their comment database.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
"Obviously, it is manipulating, but search engines are not public forums and unless you act to use them for your own benefit, your opponent's information is going to get out there," Bowers said
Isn't this the definition of a Fascist?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
While much of the recent whining has been about "neoconservatives", meaning people who tend to advocate economic freedoms but yet are for big government, there has long been "liberals" that are the same way. Back in the days of the USSR they'd have been called communists since their views matched with how things were run over there, but that's not really accurate (the USSR was never very communist, despite what they claimed). So hell, use the term "neoliberals". Basically it is a view of "You can have any opinion you like, so long as it agrees with mine. I am for free and open discussion, of ideas I agree with."
It's a position that is basically identical to the extreme right position in terms of substance, just different on the particulars. In both cases they believe their side is absolutely right. Well, because they are absolutely right and doing "what's best for everyone," that makes whatever they do ok. They are just trying to guide the poor misguided people to what is best, so no matter what is required it is justified since it will be better for them in the end.
It is a stance that in and of itself isn't a left/right position. It is a totalitarian "Our way or the highway," thing. As I said, you'll find the over all position is the same, just the specifics vary. The funny thing is the people who take this position most fervently hate those who take the same position, but with the different specifics.
So don't get confused by the overall rhetoric. Just because someone claims to be "left or right" "liberal or conservative" doesn't mean they subscribe to what that classically or popularly means. In many cases, it is some moron like this who thinks they and their side are the One True Way(tm) and thus it is ok to do anything to save the ignorant masses from themselves.
So what militia do you belong to ibane, and when can we expect to hear about your rebels on the news?
Or are you just yet another anonymous coward?
They probably enjoy Slashdot. By the way "deadzero", I saw you on the Vagina.. er, twitter monologues.
The other things you mentioned about Conservatives - smaller government, originalist intent to the constitution, reduced spending - check.
But you CANNOT be a conservative, look at the big picture in the middle east, and be against the chance to have a stabilizing influence there (stable Iraq government with perhaps some US presence as in Germany or Japan). You might say we are spending a ton of money now, but if the middle east devolves into chaos we will all pay a far higher price - in capital and human suffering - than we are today.
To shorten that, I cannot imagine you could be a conservative and take only short-sighted views that may in the end result in greater impacts on your economy than if you had not acted.
As a Libertarian as much as a conservative, I also take the view that a proper role of government is rather like that of the individual, with the world being a small neighborhood. A libertarian would rather neighbors help each other - well on the world stage, nations are neighbors and we are all too connected to sit idly by while governments treat whole groups of citizens unjustly.
Governments should stay out of the affairs of the populace where possible. But they should also try to ensure that OTHER governments can be held away from the affairs of individuals as well.
You may not believe that costs now are lower than what we would face later, and that is a fine point to argue. But you cannot simply dismiss someone who disagrees with you as not being conservative because they disagree with a singular premise of your own.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Holy crap. Even your canidate McCain must be a pinko communist in your world.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
After all, all the poor under-represented-by-media Democrats/liberals/leftists have are ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, PBS, MSNBC, NYT, a~*snip*~
Seriously what the hell are you talking about?All you are doing is regurgitating the same propaganda the ding-bat-extreme right wing mouth pieces like Hannity, O'reilly, and Murdoch have been baselessly reiterating for ages ("If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.")
NPR hosts hannity, boortz, etc.. they are ALL conservative mouthpieces, but where's Al Franken?. Unless you are willing to pay monthly fees and hardware costs for XM to get Stern, radio is death valley for liberal viewpoints. For conservatives it's the thriving equivalent of the amazon jungle, lush with flora and fauna of the lying, bullying, fact distorting kind. (last time I dared to tune beyond my transpod I heard Boortz derogatorily equating Obama to american idol. That's liberal bias right?!)
The other networks you mention are centerist at best, but more like moderate right.
They happily tow the line for whatever the government wants to pass off on the public, reiterate corporate and republican press releases with no fact checking, qualification , or otherwise (they take plenty of time to dissect and rip apart democratic ones though), and quite happily bury anything which might reflect negatively on the government or its corporate cronies.
If you want to see true left wing media, watch G4's news shows. those are what real liberal media looks like. (see my journal entry on it)>
Oh, and to quote colbert: "Reality has a well-known liberal bias"
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Seriously what the hell are you talking about?
Something that, quite obviously judging by rest of your post, you will refuse to see no matter what I or anyone else says or does.
"There are none so blind as those that will not see."
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Seriously what the hell are you talking about?
Something that, quite obviously judging by rest of your post, you will refuse to see no matter what I or anyone else says or does.
"There are none so blind as those that will not see."
Cheers!
Strat
oh the irony of this post.continue in your right-wing delusions. I'm already making a 5 year plan to vacate to a sane nation.
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Sadly, the US is a deeply divided society, and if/when it comes to a situation where people rise up against the existing order, they are not going to agree on how things should be changed, so it will descend into the chaos of a civil war, not with just two sides, but with a large number of warlords. And due to the extreme ease of access to weapons, it will be bloody.
Seriously what the hell are you talking about?
Something that, quite obviously judging by rest of your post, you will refuse to see no matter what I or anyone else says or does.
"There are none so blind as those that will not see."
Cheers!
Strat
oh the irony of this post.
continue in your right-wing delusions. I'm already making a 5 year plan to vacate to a sane nation.
Fantastic! Don't be selfish though...take a few like-minded friends along. We'll do our best to muddle along without you.
We'll be fine.
Really.
Bon voyage!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
So what are the republicans if they're not conservatives?
I think your assumption of increasing liberalism is a bit naive.
liberalism expanded until this point because people were willing to accept responsibility, and understood that you have to exercise and protect those freedoms for them to continue.
The modern media, run by wealthy fat cats out to erode your rights to free speech and personal property out of their sense of "entitlement" to everything as copyright holders, has been increasingly passing off this idea that these freedoms are immutable like the laws of physics and are impossible to breach.
This allows them to continue to pursue their agenda while framing anyone pointing out the obvious and massive erosions of liberty as cooks and wingnuts.
Look at the way the ACLU and their ilk are treated today, not just in the us, but worldwide.
There were plenty of instances in history in which there were massive reversals on this regard.
Rome's transition from republic to empire, then Rome's fall and the onset of feudalism, and finally the imposition of thick layers of theocracy into that feudalism.
Rome might have had a seriously barbarous capital punishment system, but otherwise their society was initially not all that different from the modern western world. People had representative government, the empire itself was structured as a confederacy.. like the EU with tribute tacked on. People had a very similar degree of freedom then that they had before states rights went byebye in the us (no i'm not a state's rights fiend).
All of that vanished in a veritable blink of an eye, and did not even begin to return until the early 1800's.
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As a completely separate entity unconcerned with the US aside from as a subject of amusement, the BBC is pretty well objective.
Still, I think the bbc's recounts of "press releases" still don't have enough indicators saying "warning, this is a press release by a self interested organization, take this with a grain of salt"
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You could turn today's democracies into meritocracy on the order you speak of by simply requiring proper Ph.D. status before you are allowed to run for any state or federal office, and a BA in a serious field (history being the most nebulous you could pass with.. none of this "lesbian-beer-vending-machine studies" crap)
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And, so, his answer is disinformation?
Imagine the outcry if a conservative blogger made such a statement.
There is a difference between bias and "disinformation"disinformation involves dishonest misrepresentation of facts through omissions, embellishments, or outright fabrication.
Fox News engages in disinformation, this "google bombing" is introducing bias, but using actual, truthful information.
They are skewering him with his own words, and drawing attention to it in the process.
one is a legitimate, honest, but hard ball approach.
the other is dishonest, dirty propaganda.
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The idea of bipartisanship is a very common dream on Capital Hill, but it rarely happens.
As for unification, Democrats use pathos to "unify" the country; Republicans use ethos in their arguments to try and achieve the same goal.
Consider the following arguments and see if you can guess which party would argue them:
(Yay, a game!)
Think of the children.
Marriage = man and one woman.
Give a hoot, don't pollute.
No new taxes.
How does that make you feel?
Votes for women.
One nation, under God.
State's rights.
That's age-ism.
Anyway, I was just trying to have some fun here. If any of the above bothers you... you must have a very low tolerance for criticism.
John's just having another bad day!!!
Fascism is not a left/right stand. It's a style of life.
Same prob in Australia. If I had mod points you'd get them. Tsvangirai has the right idea, although I'm sure it will come to shit.
There's something wrong with him saying 'Your opponent will get his message out'. Are we suppose to be about free speech? Why is it that liberals never seem to understand that free speech doesn't mean you get to shout down your opponents. BTW, I'd be just as irritated by this if the conservatives were doing it -and they probably are. However, this sort of thing has LONG been a major part of liberal actions - you pretty much can't voice a conservative idea at a college without be shouted down - I find it very amusing that the 'bastions of new ideas' think it's ok to suppress speech.
We are so screwed.
EK
Shouting the opponent down is an ecumenical problem.
However, this sort of thing has LONG been a major part of liberal actions - you pretty much can't voice a conservative idea at a college without be shouted down
This isn't just a problem for conservatives, nor is THAT new. I've watched a left-wing rally at Berkeley of all places being upstaged by a conservative group, and that was over 20 years ago. I thought it was amusing, but then it wasn't my ox getting gored.
And that's the bottom line, you notice when your ox gets gored. You don't notice when it's doing the goring.
Its time to dismantle the republican media engine I am all for it.
Daleks.
They stuff the ballots, now they're stuffing the search results. And the difference?
Seriously... if Obama were as amazing as we were supposed to believe he is, it would be more than enough to promote his virtues rather than trying to smear the opponent. Guess Obama isn't all that great stuff.
When has Obama smeared McCain? And why are you trying to smear Obama by saying that? So far, it's one of the cleanest campaigns I've ever seen. Neither McCain or Obama have personally attacked the other, or been personally connected to groups that have. Both candidates in this race have reined in the usual suspects to prevent hatchet jobs and personal attacks. Both sides deserve respect for that, especially considering what a charged election this is going to be.The blogger is just one idiot trying to get other idiots to game the system. Connecting it to Obama is a cheap shot, and disingenuous.
No, seriously.
We have all this content-less mudslinging, the context-less word-twisting, the disinformation and outright lies, all of it courtesy the foaming partisans that have hijacked the parties on both sides and aided and abetted by a mass media that cares for nothing but ad revenue.
Couple all that with a electoral process systematically undermined by one side after another claiming the other side "cheated" when a vote doesn't go their way, and what do you have left?
Sometimes I wonder if this was how things got started in Bosnia.
Back during the 2000 election, I talked to a man from Haiti. He was astonished at how civilly everyone was behaving regarding the vote controversy. "Where I come from," he stated, "we would have had blood flowing through the streets by now."
"Yup; no-one's shooting at anyone," I replied. "Not yet, anyway...."
Regards;
That's by design, oh finnish commentator, to diminish the power of the legislative and judicial branches.
What's with this fad of verbing every noun?
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
This and many other strategies like-
"The Race Card"...lets use to race deem who is worthy of preferences and then having just asked you to consider race we know insist you ignore race in your presidential election while accussing the GOP and Conservatives of being Racist
"Innuendo Lies and Obfuscations"...the trinity for demoracts and liberals
"Revisionism"...a bastion of liberal academia
"Simplicism"...its the foreign policy stupid
"SSS"...screw the supply side economics, tax all into prosperity
All of the above are part of the Democratic, liberal, socialist, marxist, communist playbook and google bombing fits in right along side and is the strategy behind the liberal philosophy
"Truth or Consequences"...if given the choice we choose consequences and to hell with the truth, you wouldn't understand it anyway
A vote for Obama and any Democrat today is signing the death warrant for the future, enough damage already, 2 years of a Democratic House and Senate and look at what they have wrought
So, this type of manipulation is ok as long as it isn't big corp, big oil, Republicans, Ccientology, pro-life groups, creationists, etc?
Personally, I don't care either way. I'm just sick of hearing hypocrisy. Public financing was bad until Obama found himself the nominee. Amazing how different the world seems when you become successful. And I love all the excuses and backtracking his minions spouting now. If McCain had opted out of public financing the day before Obama did, the sky would be falling and there would be Congressional hearings. It's total BS.
I think everyone knows Obama has this election in the bag. No one can criticize Obama without being called a racist. Racism is the mantra for this election. If there can be no debate, there is no chance for McCain to win. This election will be won with pure propaganda, by good little Marxists who aren't even smart enough to realize they represent the losing side of the Cold War.
Let's see how everyone feels after 4 years of real tyranny. You won't even realize you have nothing left to live for.
Of course I do. That's the only conclusion a reasonable person could come to.
*rolls eyes*
Get lost, Twit.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
I'll verb your noun in a minute!
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Yes, but left/right refers to one specific axis: the axis of the aristocrats versus the commoners, or in modern terms, capital versus labor. Properly, one is not "left" or "right" on social issues, or foreign policy, or even on the amount of regulation and intervention the government should perform in the marketplace; one is leftist if one wants an economic system favorable to workers, and rightist if one wants one favorable to the owning class.
Both the Republicans and the Democrats favor policies that continue the accumulation of wealth into the hands of a small minority, the Democrats just favor a few small governors on that engine.
Which is why I usually vote Green, and probably will again this year. (Even if it's a write-in, and even if I might send money to or do some work for the Obama campaign. I live in a securely blue state with terrible ballot access laws, YMMV.)
Which they don't. You need at least four dimensions to make sense of of politics: personal liberty on social issues, labor versus capital, planned economy versus free market, and aggressive versus diplomatic foreign policy.
Believing in a one-dimensional continuum is how we've come to the mess we're in, where people vote to make sure that the wrong lizard doesn't get in.
Interestingly, they often don't - when you ask people their positions on issues, they're often at odds with which party or candidate they vote for.
It's just another way in which people are a problem: given a population of politicians skilled in manipulating people, and a population of powerful people with a great deal of influence with said politicians, notions of "democracy" and "limited government" are a very brittle things.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"unless you act to use them for your own benefit, your opponent's information is going to get out there,"
I find this quote to be one of the scariest things I have read in awhile. the idea that suppressing another persons opinions and views is a desirable goal. Personally I dislike both candidates. I find both of their campaigns to be hollow and wouldn't trust either enough to vote for them. I find Obama's views on gun control to border on insane. I would however fight to the death to preserve both parties right to there own opinions. This kind of attitude is exactly whats wrong with our country today.
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. - O'Toole's Corollary
Though "pointless" $500 billion expenditure sounds too neutral. The effect of the expenditure is disastrous. Better to have just lit that money on fire.
Neoconservatives.
Mind giving some examples of Obama's poor judgement? I am genuinely interested in the answer, because I support Obama precisely because I think he has demonstrated better judgement than other candidates.
Did McCain (or Hillary Clinton, for that matter) show good judgement in authorizing the attack on Iraq? In the Keating Five affair? In joking about bombing Iran (a country with a half-million strong military, sitting beside a major oil route and next door to Iraq, where our forces already have their hands full)? In embracing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy while the deficit is soaring? In flip-flopping on the question of turture?
Obama's career in the Senate has been brief, but he's shown a knack for working with Republicans on major issues that matter: worked with Richard Lugar on extending the nuclear proliferation framework, with Coburn on government transparency, and McCain (yes, that's right) on ethics reform. On many issues (Iraq, haebis corpus rights, torture) I feel he's shown much better judgement than the Republicans.
Most of the only "poor judgement" claims I've heard so far involve some variant of "he picks poor company" (i.e. Rev Wright, et al.) Fair enough, but I suspect this is true to some degree of any sufficiently well-connected person. In Wright's defence, he's done a hell of a lot of good in his life outside of making inflamatory sermons: helped the homeless and the poor, served in the Marines, etc. Most of us can feel superior in knowing we don't believe in the obviously idiotic things Wright believes, but on the flip side I suspect few of us have done as much good as he has.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
twitter, please tell us what this place "stands for". Please, I'd love to hear it from you.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
all the issues collapse down to a one dimensional continuum and
I liked the game theory except the above point. For every issue(feature) you increase the dimensionality unless you provide a way to collapse it. So that assumption is a bit excessive with out further explaination. There still would be a "middle", but it is not as simple, and hard to visualize after the 4th dimension (wlog).It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It would only be a trick if the people involved did not believe what they were saying or if they were creating fake blogs
So, you are against people creating additional online entities to repeat and amplify their message by appearing to have more support than they actually do, when in reality it's all just the work of one person?
Well, I agree with you, but I think you need to take it to heart yourself. That was one of the most hypocritical things I've read in a ling time.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
The goal of politics should be to do what's best for the country.
Nope, that's policy. Politics is the manipulation of public opinion to gain power.
Ideally politics would be irrelevant, and we'd have policy debates. Yeah, I'll go cry myself to sleep now.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Drat, I had a nice long explanation of how it works out in higher dimensions when my browser crashed. I'm too tired to rewrite it so here's the short summary: in higher dimensional Euclidean spaces it still works out even if the space is non-uniformly distributed or fills a complex shape. However it probably doesn't generalize to the very non-Euclidean landscape of the political world. (Though I ran across some research papers on this very topic.)
'when McCain was asked whether U.S. troops might have to remain in Iraq for as long as 50 years, he replied, "Maybe 100" -- explaining, "As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, it's fine with me"'
So McCann said 100 years is OK as long as no Americans are being harmed.
How about 1 year? Is he advocating immediate withdrawal since obviously Americans are being killed RIGHT NOW?
He sounds tough and committed --- as long as there is no cost!
Who is really shoveling polically motivated BS?
You guys are way too prickly about spelling... *grin*
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
He who controls Google controls the Internet