How Did He Vote?

I did catch the news tonight but there wasn't much that I found really interesting.  It was very focused on hurricane Irene.  I certainly don't think it is unwarranted since the expected landfall is going to occur within the same area as hurricane Katrina.  And seven years later it is still recovering as well as recovering from the huge oil spill from a couple of years ago.  But what did catch my "fancy" was a political advertisement.


I don't remember what party was sponsoring the ad and what party they were attacking but it doesn't really matter.  This ad was attacking someone who lost the last election by a very slim margin and has won his party nomination for a congressional seat again.  The ad started talking about how the government asked congress for $800 million in new taxes and he "folded, voting with his party 96% of the time."  Wow, you don't say!  Tell the truth, who is really surprised by this?  I know I wasn't!

And that is what bothers me.  There doesn't have to be any truth to these ads provided the candidate doesn't sponsor them.  This goes back to one of my favorite quotes of all time, "50% of the time it works all the time."  Yep, you can spin any number so that people will be completely confused and not know what the truth is.  The truth in this instance may be that he voted 96% of the time along party lines and the net tax change while he was there could have actually been a decrease.  But by putting two different items in the commercial with no real facts presented to back them up makes it seem like all he did was increase taxes by $800 million.  The reason that opinions get so one sided is because if you don't watch all of the political commercials you only get one side of the story.

What I think would be nice is if we had a truly unbiased source of information to draw from.  It is easy to tell that ABC News is an Obama supporter, they constantly talk about him and too him.  I don't see equal coverage for the Romney campaign there.  Some might say that there are cable networks that are covering every aspect of the campaigns.  The problem is that there isn't any one show that is unbiased.  These people are making a living by being biased!

How about telling the whole story and not just what you want someone to hear?  Novel idea I know but it is the only way in which we will move forward.  Here's one for you, 96% of the time we are forced to select the less bad candidate rather then someone who will actually lead our country the way in which it needs to be.  Just my opinion, now tell me yours...