by James Glaser
October 28, 2004

Minnesota is a swing state in this election and it is making life miserable. You can't watch TV or listen to the radio without having to watch or listen to constant attack ads from one candidate or another.

I thought I could listen to Minnesota Public Radio, but no you can't, because they have constant election coverage or news about the candidates. (Sound Bites)

Today I gave both Bush and Kerry a chance and tried to listen to their speeches. There is less than a week left to campaign and both men stayed on the attack. Bush spent his whole speech trashing Kerry and distorting many of the things he said Kerry has done or said. Kerry spent his whole speech trashing Bush and distorting many of the things he said Bush has done or said.

Neither man said much at all about what they want to do or what they will try to do. It was like two school yard bullies shouting at each other. It seems like neither man has ever thought about the word, Integrity.

I think the ads are the worst. When these two men say that "they approve this ad," you know how really rotten they are. They have no integrity, when they approve things that are false and they keep them on the air even after that is pointed out to them.

In one ad, Kerry falsely claims, "Bush has a plan to cut Social Security benefits by 30 to 45 percent." That's false according to www.factcheck.org. Bush has proposed no such plan and the proposal Kerry refers to would only slow down the growth of benefits. On top of that, the ad says nothing about what Kerry would do to fix the Social Security problem.

Not to be out done in the dishonesty field, George Bush spent $8 million on two false ads "A Bush ad called "Thinking Man" ran at saturation levels last week in 42 cities at an estimated cost of $2,5 Million. A parallel ad called "Clockwork" ran even more in 44 cities at an estimated cost of $5,4 million." The two ads ran 9,118 times in the week.

According to Factcheck, "Both ads make statements about Kerry that are misleading or downright false on several counts." One about Kerry voting to raise gas taxes ten times is wrong. "Even the Bush campaign's own list of votes doesn't back that up. The other ad claims Kerry has "raised taxes on middle-class parents 18 times. None of Kerry's votes would have raised taxes on the Middle-class "above what they were at the time."

At the end of these ads each candidate says, "I'm George W. Bush or I'm John Kerry and I approved this message." That means that both of the prime candidates have approved totally false ads. And these are just examples of some of the many false ads each has put out.

I hope you know that these ads are not only false, but worse that that, it means that both of these men will lie to the nation to get what they want.