Wednesday, January 16, 2008

A Dirty Trick by the Ron Paul Campaign?

While looking at my blog traffic, I noticed that I got some hits from a website called "Know Before You Vote." It is a single page website with external links to news sites, blogs, and crap.
It purports to give an objective, side-by-side comparison of all the candidates, Republican and Democratic, running for President. It doesn't. And whether you are a Clinton supporter or a Romney supporter or an Obama supporter or a McCain supporter or an Edwards supporter or a (God forbid) Thompson supporter, you should really take a look at this and ask some questions, because there's a whole lotta mis-representin' goin' on...
For instance: In one category called, "Understands the effects of blowback," All the candidates are listed as "NO" except Paul and Obama, who are listed as "YES." As an explanation of what "blowback" is, there are two links, one to an article in an on-line magazine published by a Canadian college. The other is to an article on Military History Online, a privately-owned website. I have no problem in principle with either article. But in support of "Know Before You Vote's" accusation that John Edwards does not understand the effects of blowback is a posting from IN THE DARK from March 18 of 2007. In this posting I talked about how Edwards said that we need to fight global poverty as a means of fighting terrorism; in other words, that poverty is a (not the) root cause of terrorism. This position has been championed by Peter Munya, the US Conference of Catholilc Bishops, John Edwards, Hugo Chavez, Fernando Lugo, Desmond Tutu, Charles Dickens, Muhammed Yunus, myself, and even Pakistan dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf who have been saying that you can't win a war on terror if you don't fight a war on poverty. For the record, the late Holy Father Pope John Paul II believed this too.
The website has no identification whatsoever that ties it to either a campaign or a political action committee or a voter education organization like Project Vote Smart (a non-profit, non-partisan website that allows you to find voting records, issue positions, campaign finances, etc.). I have found that the website is registered to 1&1 Internet, Inc., at 701 Lee Road, Suite 300, in Chesterbrook, PA. I have called them and e-mailed them (click the link and you can too) to find out who the owner of this website is. So far I have not received a response.
I find it very curious and a bit disturbing. I would be interested in hearing from both Democrats and Republicans who think their candidates positions have been misrepresented on this website.
By the way: I'm sure it is pure coincidence, but Ron Paul gets all the positions listed on this website CORRECT...

1 comment:

Zachariah Wiedeman said...

I just linked here from your site and I would agree that the stretch of saying Edwards doesn't understand "blowback" because of this article is a stretch and a half, indeed! I think the site creators must have gotten the message as well, because when I was on the site, it rephrased it as Links Terrorism to ''Blowback'' in Middle East - of course, they're still pushing for a ''NO'' on Edwards... I dunno... I did a Google search on ''John Edwards'' and terrorism and didn't come up with anything conclusive... When I do, I'll let you know! =o)