Blogger Launches 'Google Bomb' At McCain 545
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.'"
I have to say it (Score:2)
Re:I have to say it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I have to say it (Score:5, Funny)
Not sure how this is a bomb (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not sure how this is a bomb (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. It's a pretty shitty thing to do, although, with all the people saying things like "McCain WANTS troops to be in Iraq for 100 years", it's not surprising.
Re:Not sure how this is a bomb (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, let's forget about getting balanced results and letting people make up their own minds when presented with ALL the facts.
Nobody ever gets ALL the facts. You have a finite amount of time on this mudball and most people do not want to spend it studying the minutia about the two idiots who happen to be running this year (and, yes, I have a clear preference, but after the FISA debacle, he's still an idiot). Google's page rank reflects the reality of the situation vis a vis relative web link importance at a particular current point in time. If McCain's opponents are more web-savvy or more energetic, they will have an advantage in this arena and they will have earned it. If you want more "balance", get McCain's people as motivated as Obama's. If they can't be as motivated, maybe that says something about his importance.
The bottom line is that bitching about the lack of some mythical "balance" on the web is about as useful as complaining about the lack of a mythical immortality for people. It may make you feel better in some strange, warped way but, in the long run, it makes no difference. People have finite time and have only finite means for managing the information they take in over this finite time. Deal with it.
Re:Not sure how this is a bomb (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when has that become the goal of politics?
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
The goal of politics should be to do what's best for the country. The goal of politicians is to gain power. So apparently the liberal blogger in question is a politician because he's doing what's best for his candidate, not what's best for the country. Making it hard to find the best information (even if it's not information the liberal blogger wants people to see) about a candidate is not in the spirit of a free society and democracy. Basically, this liberal blogger is decreasing the signal to noise ratio rather than providing useful and compelling reasons to vote for his own candidate.
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.
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Politics aside, I agree with everything you just said.
I can see this backfiring on him though. What happens when a search for John McCain starts turning up a story about how one side is attempting a political smear as the number one result. I mean it would sort of make McCain the underdog and create some sympathy towards him along with making some potential Obama voters question why they had to resort to that type of tactic.
Of course some 527 group could just buy an advertising spot and put the story there on any McCain search from a common search engine. All the search engines list the advertisements at the top so it would be the first result. The good thing about it is that they could link to all the sites promoting the google bomb efforts to wow any undecided voter into thinking Obama has something to hid if they had to resort to something like this.
Arms race? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's true that this could backfire, but it could also cause a massive arms race [reputation...erblog.com]. 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 [searchengineland.com].
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
The validity of you statement depends strongly on the quality and accuracy of the articles in question. If the articles are mostly just "noise" then yes you are quiet right, but if the articles contain information pertinent to gaining a better understanding of the true character of a presidential candidate, information which might otherwise get buried by the whims of Big Media, then these bloggers are providing a service where our "free press" has failed us.
As to whether this is smearing or not, is again dependent on the accuracy and relevance to the qualification and quality of the candidate. If Obama had pushed an earmark through that funded eugenics research, pointing that out loudly and repeatedly would not be smearing. If someone wearing an Obama '08 shirt threw a brick off an overpass at McCain's motorcade, trying to proclaim that as a gauge of Obama's character would be a smear.
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently he's miffed that we didn't all jump up and thank him for his stunt. [openleft.com] I have zero respect for zealots like this guy, regardless of whether they are left or right. It's not because I disagree with his views (I do, but I can live with that), it's because there's just no reasoning with people like this. He's smarter than everyone else, so he's going to tell us all how to think by skewing the information we receive. Our country's politics have been poisoned by weasels like this. I hereby find him guilty of being a jerk, and sentence him to eternity handcuffed to Karl Rove. Oh yeah , and his internet access has been revoked, or at least restricted to something to help him with his manners. [pbskids.org]
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
So your argument is that one misguided follower serves as an indictment of Obama himself?
I'm sure you could dredge up plenty of assholes on McCain's side too. Here's one [dailykos.com] now.
So I'm guessing your vote in November will be "none of the above"? Or possibly Montgomery Brewster? (Bonus points if you get the reference.)
Everybody's got idiot followers with misguided ideas about how to promote them.
From the United States Declaration of Independence (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't believe and work for this, you will never have it.
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Anti-Slash hasn't been active since mid-2005 that I can see from their comment database.
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Unify the country? Why is that considered a good thing? A significant portion of the American public are in favour of the Bush administration, the Iraq war and torture. You aren't going to change their minds. The only way you will unify the country is to meet them half-way. Is that a good thing?
I've never heard of this "unification" nonsense until the Republican Party started becoming unpopular. Until then, in pretty much every democratic country, it was understood that there is room for disagreement in politics and that this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. But now they seem to be feeding you the idea that all parties should be striving for the same thing (which is basically no different to a one-party system) and the American public seem to be lapping this bullshit up and asking for seconds. WTF is up with that? Can you really not see that it's just a desperate lie told by people who fear losing power in the near future? It's not transparently obvious to you?
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Our greatest presidents are the ones that could unite the people behind a common cause and make us proud to be Americans. FDR, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Reag
Re:It doesnt work (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Conservatives can be for the Iraq war (Score:3, Interesting)
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 s
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want a unified country.
I want a just, upstanding, ethical, and prosperous country.
If "unity" means "agreeing with people who advocate theocracy", then I'm against it. If it means "Americans working together to make their country and the world a better place", I'm for it.
Unity isn't something that you *make* happen. Unity is something that happens as a result of good governance and an educated and civic-minded citizenry.
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, much unlike those warm, loving, caring exemplars of humanity and civil service, Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
The faults of some candidates do not, by themselves, make other candidates worthy. It's about time we learned that.
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:5, Funny)
*Badoom Crash!* Thank you, I'll be here all week. Be sure to try the quiche!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Try an instant rimshot [instantrimshot.com] next time for added pizazz.
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Let me actually take a moment to say something here, because I do think it's important: John McCain is probably the man with the strongest integrity of all the candidates. He has had one hell of a life, but he has lived it fully in the service of others. There is a lot to be proud of there.
That being said, he scares me as a presidential candidate. The same drive and determination that has brought him through h
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at this;
This is a list of crap email received on Obama. Note the themes and quantity of emails... Really a bit telling to the mentallity of the people sending them out, as well as the people who forward them on and on.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp [snopes.com]
Now; Here's the same for McCain.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/mccain/mccain.asp [snopes.com]
That said, I'm more then a little pissed at this idiot for the google bomb. These were funny once, but trying to manipulate politcs with them isn't. I view the 'good guys' as being above this.
That said however, I'm at the point where I'd sacrifice some of my personal views on that to prevent what happened in 2000, and then 2004. If that's the only way to get the idiot vote, go for it... because at this point the idiot vote has to be 50%
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It's typical of the obama campaign in that they consistently tout the negatives of their opponents (either directly, or through surrogates) while simultaneously denigrating their opponents for being negative whether they are or not. obama is not about "change", he is about perception. That is what is "typical" about this.
If you would sacrifice your beliefs to make something happen that isn't quite what you believe in, then again you get the leader you deserve. Hold them all accountable or hold none. Oth
Re:Yeah, that'll help . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
I also have to wonder how many of those Obama-bashing emails were sent out by Hillary supporters.
I'm a little fed up with the whole thing - here we are are again with no choices - only the lesser of 2 evils - to vote for in the presidential race. I think the idiot vote will be well over 50% this year, because only an idiot would vote for either one of these globalist elite career politicians.
Links? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Links? (Score:4, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I am a Libertarian and I hate the two main political parties.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Oops!
(*whooosh*)
Re:Links? (Score:5, Funny)
Article 1 [aol.com]
Article 2 [msn.com]
Article 3 [nwsource.com]
Article 4 [latimes.com]
Article 5 [motherjones.com]
Article 6 [cnn.com]
Article 7 [salon.com]
Article 8 [usatoday.com]
Article 9 [cbsnews.com]
Hope that helps
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Now there is a list of upstanding, unbiased, ethical organizations...not.
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Articles in Salon and Mother Jones cast McCain in an unflattering light? No way!!!
Next we'll be reading that the evil "Far Right" Republican bloggers are Google-bombing articles from foxnews.com. ;-D
It is not Gogglebombing! (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Open left of what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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),
Raises tough questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I am old enough to remember the sixties -- maybe I'm just becoming obsolete.
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I certainly hope you don't think you can counter the likes of Karl Rove simply by being honorable...
Had Rove been in the cast of "To Kill A Mockingbird", Atticus Finch would be whispered for being a gay single parent, Tom Robinson would have been fathering children of white women all across the south, and Boo Radley would be president. Oh, wait...
Re:Raises tough questions (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Raises tough questions (Score:4, Insightful)
The McCain of today isn't the McCain of then.
In the last two years McCain has solidly thrown his lot in with Bush.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Rove seems to be involved [crooksandliars.com] in McCain's campaign.
Re:Raises tough questions (Score:4, Interesting)
In 2000, yes, but not in 2004.
In 2004, despite those of us who supported him earlier urging him not to, McCain abandoned his previous policies and swung in line solidly behind Bush.
He has been there ever since.
At the time, I suggested that he'd probably made some kind of deal with the Republican central committee that he'll support Bush then and they'll make sure he's the nominee in 2008.
Nothing I've seen since has convinced me otherwise.
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Point of fact, Rove may not be McCain's campaign director, but he is advising McCain [politico.com].
Re:Raises tough questions (Score:4, Insightful)
The trouble is, because the idiot vote in the USA is so large, you're never going to get anyone elected who *doesn't* make some attempt to be underhanded.
That doesn't justify it. That doesn't make it honorable, or the right thing to do. But, depending on how pragmatic you are, it just might make it inevitable.
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Doesn't Google have the tendency to lower the page ranks of sites that participate in Google bombs?
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If I understood it correctly, they altered the algorithm to promote pages which *discuss* a googlebomb, rather than the target pages themselves. Which is pretty cool, as it gives the victim the context they need. Presumably it detects a googlebomb when the links are consistently out of context with the rest of the targeting page.
There's a bigger lesson in this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The right wing conservatives manipulate the public view using Fox news and their method of twisting and distorting facts, and informing the viewers with their personal 'paid for' opinions.
[sarcasm]What!?!? You mean conservatives have a whole *one* network that doesn't act like they're incapable of being non-evil in anything they say or do!?!? How can the liberal left ever expect to convince anyone of their views with such uneven, unfair odds?
After all, all the poor under-represented-by-media Democrats/liber
Seems like this is a Match on a Fire (Score:3, Informative)
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*
Re:Seems like this is a Match on a Fire (Score:4, Informative)
So I don't fear for the conservative parties of the world just yet.
Re:Seems like this is a Match on a Fire (Score:5, Interesting)
Big picture, on a global scale, that's true: politics have been getting steadily more liberal ever since the Middle Ages, and so those who hold to political views acquired in their youth always seem more conservative as they age. The interesting thing is that in American politics over the last couple of generations or so, the opposite is true. Eisenhower would be considered a mainstream Democrat these days, while Nixon, seen at the time as representing the hard right, would today be a "Blue Dog" Democrat or maybe a "RINO" Republican. Conversely, both Clintons, and Obama, support policies largely in accord with the Republican party of Eisenhower's day. Carter is remembered today as an extreme leftist, but by the standards of the day, he was actually seen as a solidly conservative Democrat. Even Saint Reagan, no matter how much today's Republicans venerate him, would be considered suspiciously leftish by modern Republicans if he were a new candidate running for office today.
It's a blip, of course, kind of like in the stock market. In the very long term, stocks always go up. But they do so on a jagged line, and those downward dips sure can make a lot of people's lives miserable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Seems like this is a Match on a Fire (Score:5, Interesting)
The unfortunate side of all this, all of these talk machines, including Boortz, Rush, Hannity, etc will be repeating, over and over, about how this is a fine example of leftist propoganda, the liberal conspiracy, etc.
Don't get me wrong. I think Bill Maher and the rest of the leftist paid-to-talk types are complete twits as well. Nothing like seeing someone from either side ignorantly pressing points only for the sake of them being right, left, or endlessly playing devil's advocate.
Too bad there isn't a fiscal conservative, socially liberal person to vote for. Too bad there isn't a news network without slant anymore. I recognize slant was always there, but CNN learned a little from Fox's ratings and starts coming across as ridiculously liberal when elections near.
Re:Seems like this is a Match on a Fire (Score:4, Insightful)
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Against the Principles of Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Huh? It's hardly "poison" to tell the truth.
They're Google-bombing. That means they've chosen several informative articles and are working to make them the top search results when one searches for "McCain". It does not change anything about what is accessible. The pro-McCain sites will still be there, on the interbutts, waiting for you to sign on.
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Perhaps they see this as a counter to the big-money support of the right (and the status quo) by the 'main stream media'?
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Senator Obama is crushing Senator McCain in that regard. Also, it is Obama who is refusing public financing, and McCain who cosponsored Feingold-McCain.
Re:Against the Principles of Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
If 10 million people give $10 each, that's $100 million of democracy.
If one person gives $100 million, that's 'big money'
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I've always found both sides to be as equally immoral.
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That's why we have a representative democracy. Public elections are more about picking a representative you can stomach than they are about deciding issues in an informed manner (sure, there are all sorts of issues that go to the ballot, but they are rarely more about information than they are about 'feelings').
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While I can see the point you're trying to make, it has its flaws.
The problem is that once you remove folks from the decision making process, you open the doors for abuse of the system. Such a system that you suggest would have to be implemented with extreme care to prevent elites from disenfranchising voters to promote their own agenda.
Hod does the nation decide who is qualified to make decisions on what issues? How would you resolve disagreements about who is qualified to vote?
That said, I do not believe
What a dick. (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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Re:What a dick. (Score:4, Insightful)
If the left consistently acted in that way, they'd never elect another person to office, because the Right isn't going to stop doing what they're doing just because the left is.
Could you elaborate on what dishonorable attacks have been coming from the Right so far in this election? As far as I've seen, the vast majority of the attacks on Obama so far have been from the Clinton camp. McCain on the other hand has (somewhat surprisingly) been trying to take the high ground and has on a number of occasions criticized those who've tried to use spurious claims again Obama.
Re:What a dick. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What a dick. (Score:4, Informative)
Just the other day on Fox they were talking about how when Barack Obama bumped fists with his wife and they called him a terrorist (link)
Dishonest. She was talking about something someone else said.
Or how about that picture of him when he was dressed up in traditional Somali garb (=90% Christian),
You mean the picture that the Clinton campaign released?
But don't let the facts get in the way of your bias.
What about Obama claiming McCain wants 100 years of war, even after being called on it twice? Yes, McCain certainly wants 100 years of war when he says "as long as no one is getting killed." That's the candidate himself straight up lying in an attempt to smear. (But then again, Obama just went back on his public financing pledge. Do we sense a pattern?)
What about 90% of the shit coming out of MoveOn? Anyone who thinks they're not just a smear-machine needs to put the pipe down. They've also went out and used the 100 year war lie, recently in fact. Or the NAACP running an ad in Texas about Bush not sponsoring hate crimes legislation, using the murder of James Byrd, voiced over by his daughter? Bush didn't sponsor hate crime legislation, and in this case, it wasn't needed: two of the three men were sentenced to death and the third was sentenced to life. The NAACP ad didn't mention this, despite being made over a year after the men were sentenced. (Of course, you also don't see the NAACP out shooting to have the men who murdered Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom tried for hate crimes... and that is far worse than the Byrd murder, there's just not a chance to smear Republicans in it for them)
Trying to pretend it's just Rove and Republicans is fucking dishonest.
Re:What a dick. (Score:4, Informative)
what a douche (Score:5, Insightful)
bingo
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, in politics as with science
Re:what a douche (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what a douche (Score:4, Interesting)
And that differs from the Democrats how?
Hypocrisy at it's best (Score:3, Insightful)
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A vote of no confidence? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to me that this is basically a result of this asshole believing Obama can't win without such underhanded tricks.
Re:A vote of no confidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
And, so, his answer is disinformation?
Imagine the outcry if a conservative blogger made such a statement.
Informed Vote? (Score:5, Insightful)
Will this even work? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Defeated (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently Google already has protection against such "bombs":
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/01/quick-word-about-googlebombs.html [blogspot.com]
I have no idea how the algorithm detects such a bomb, but it appears to be pretty effective.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Although actually looking at the page, he does seem to be going at it in the same way: Linking "McCain" or "John McCain" to the articles. An earlier poster linked them as "article 1" and such, which might be less apt to trigger t
Backfire (Score:5, Insightful)
I think if they could have shut up their most ardent supporters, the Democrats would have won the last election.
Re:Backfire (Score:5, Insightful)
I think if they could have shut up their most ardent supporters, the Democrats would have won the last election.
That's a load of crap. It wasn't the ardent democrat supporters who lost the election, it was the ardent Republican supports being more underhanded. They turned "swiftboating" into a verb. Stuff like this doesn't backfire because the majority of the population just looks at the message and not the messenger.
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That's going to decide a lot in the next election. Whichever candidate can come off looking like less of a crackpot is going to get the swing vote. It's that simple. There's
Tag? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Tag? (Score:4, Informative)
True, he is a bit of a RINO (Republican in Name Only). He's hard to classify because his positions keep shifting.
This is progress? (Score:3, Insightful)
How very 'progressive'.
Clearly Works For McCain (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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