YouCampaign

One of the more unique parts of this general election is the ever-evolving access the common voter has to spread his own take on things, spread it to the ends of the earth, and with enough attention from the right places, it'll get more viewership than a high dollar campaign ad, with people actually seeking it out. The Drudge Report linked to this story about one such example:

The film, titled Dear Mr Obama, is the most-viewed election-related video on the YouTube website, attracting more than 11 million hits.

Made by an Iraq war returnee, it's an example of how ordinary Americans have used the website to get their voice heard.

Both campaigns have embraced the popularity and accessibility of YouTube as well, both for a cheap way to spread campaign ads via news coverage of them, or simply to boost the viewership beyond the tv markets. But some of the more compelling videos were made by individuals outside of the campaigns who have either put out personal videos like the one above, or simply called bullshit on some odious claim by stringing together prior statements contrasted with revisionist claims.

One of my favorite examples I dug back up when I was regularly dealing with Obama supporters who seemed to believe their preferred candidate was somehow not being hypocritical with accusations of dishonest smears. From a post earlier this year:

Meet the New Politics...
...Same as the Old Politics.

"Barack Obama stands for a new kind of politics -- a politics without partisan bickering and smear tactics.

You can help push back on the petty and divisive methods of our opponents." - Obama Campaign

(Hat Tip to California Yankee at RedState for many of the links)

Lying about the lies just seems to make this even worse.

If you fell for Obama's and the Howard Dean/DNC's smear campaign against McCain on this 100 years war nonsense, feel free to read the factcheck.org links above, or at Politifact, the NY Times, the NY Times again, the Associated Press, USA Today, the Washington Post fact checker, the Washington Post Again, or even CNN:

"Now, what both the candidates did was go after McCain. Barack Obama, after McCain's policy in Iraq, accusing McCain of wanting to be in Iraq for another 100 years. As you know, John, that is a distortion of what McCain said, and they push back very hard in the McCain campaign when they hear this."

It is, of course, nothing new to anybody who has been paying attention that Obama dropped the ruse of being a new kind of politician early on. As the NY Times reported last summer...

And while among Obama supporters it has become a sort of 'knownfact' that their candidate has run some sort of strikingly honest and new campaign, the facts show otherwise, and a long dig into the factcheck.org archives reveals that the DNC, Obama, and the Obama campaign have been throwing out debunked smears since well before the general election campaign began and continued to do so with false allegations that McCain attempted to cut Social Security checks in half (scare them old ladies!) and debunked accusations that McCain's opposition to one version of a GI Bill was based on some absurd notion that he didn't care about veterans enough.

As the NY Times link above points out, this behavior began between the Democratic candidates over a year before his supporters demanded he 'take the gloves off' with McCain, who he had been smearing with false allegations for most of the year by that point, using false or misleading attacks to paint him as anti-veteran, a warmonger, a threat to old ladies living on SS checks, gross distortions of numerous economy quotes ripped out of context, and sometimes hacked out of a single sentence, to depict the opposite of what McCain was saying. And while Obama and his supporters love to point to factcheck.org when it suits them, they've somehow missed all this crap on the same cite for the last year and a half. One can only assume intentionally at this point.

McCain has consistently faced opponents in this election who have had massive financial advantages and put those advantages to work with a deluge of negative ads on top of those merely touting themselves. As factcheck.org notes, none of the candidates has been a saint when it comes to accuracy or their claims adding up 100%. But to hear the Obama side of it, and strangely their hyper-sensitive supporters, it's McCain who is solely offering the deluge of negativity.

They point to ads with out of context quotes (a common tactic in Obama ads that got far more play in wider markets)

...and to ads that question his questionable associations (a tactic that both Obama and the DNC started long before the general election began)

...and of course distraction (a tactic they've employed constantly and dishonestly with some of McCain's gaffes long after factcheck.org noted that Obama had absolutely no economic experience to speak of while McCain has been a senior member of the commerce committee and sitting on its technology subcommittee).

One must appreciate the glaring irony in the accusations of 'distraction' when anyone uses his past associations to suggest he might be far more radical than his current rhetoric lets on, especially in light of an extremely short and flimsy record being used to assure voters on how he'll govern. The guy whining and moaning about guilt by association tactics who has made the bedrock of his campaign trying to equate McCain with Bush... a pretty stunning 180 from what Democrats generally argued as late as last year. Obama's VP pick in particular has done probably the most stunning and dramatic 180 out of political expedience from his comments earlier in the primary where he said he'd be proud to run on the same ticket with him.

Further one must truly wonder how Obama could condone his party attempting to tie McCain to the Abramoff scandal, a man who is now in prison greatly due to McCain's inquisition against him that also took down some corrupt members of his own party. Obama similarly has run ads doing the same before McCain ever started pointing to Obama's past associations casting doubt on his claims of centrism.

But at least the YouTubers are out there to help shine some light on this scam known as the 'new kind of politics' since the media seems to have adopted the Obama perspective on what counts or doesn't count when it comes to negative campaigning. As Obama said... you can pull up the video on YouTube, and on all of these matters, you can see how he's just another politician, lying and misleading his way to the pinnacle of our government, with less of a record than Dan Quayle. For Halloween maybe he'll go as a new kind of politician... it'd be nice to see, even if for a day.