Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
It’s common knowledge that Mitt Romney massively lied during the first Presidential debate on October 3rd. Now it seems he’s blatantly lying in his campaign advertisements. One in particular, running in my neck of the woods, claims a source for some tax data is non-partisan when in reality the American Enterprise Institute is far from non-partisan.
Here is the ad:
State Issue 2 will be on the ballot in Ohio to reform the way congressional districts are drawn after each census. A cross section of groups from the League of Women Voters to the Ohio Libertarian Party support the amendment. The Republicans and those wanting to keep the power to draw district lines are opposed. The opponents recently started airing a commercial that attempts to mislead the voters about State Issue 2.
Before I talk about why the opposition’s ad is misleading, I want to explain why State Issue 2 is needed.
In a Pew Survey taken on September 16th, the Religious Unaffiliated registered voters supported President Obama over Mitt Romney 65% to 27%. The full survey has Obama leading by 9 points with less than two months remaining until election day.
An amateur anti-Muslim video posted on YouTube triggered a riot in Egypt and Libya and gave cover to a militant Islamic militia in Libya to murder the US Ambassador to Libya and three other foreign service workers at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11th. There have been problems with reactions both politically and in general to the violence. The last thing we need to do is to censor the Internet or “turn the other cheek”.
I discovered today that the local station political ad buy forms the FCC required to be put online and the broadcasters fought, are available to search. The database went online on August 2nd but didn’t have to include any information before that date. But even the short time it has been collecting information there is a lot you can learn from the information if your station is in a battleground state like Ohio. Here is a brief tutorial on how to find information if you want to find it.