The 2006 Senate Race

The 2006 New York Senatorial Race

The new york senate race between former Yonkers Republican mayor John D. Spencer and current new york senator Hillary R. Clinton is a spicy one.

Senator Clinton is the front runner fro several reasons, she is the current senator she has done a good job and new york is a democratic state. Her television ads all are positive saying how she is for the people of new york and interviewing common new yorkers who agree with this statement, one of her ads start off with her saying how the government was wrong for saying the air was clean in new york after 9/11. but although Hillary is a clear front runner for the senate position she has her sights set on something bigger ….. her 2008 presidential election so now on top of pleasing the democrats of new york state she has to please the other parties of the state also. So although she is the front runner of this election (the polls clearly show Election Polls 2006: New York Senate) she has to win a lot more than the democratic vote for this to be a complete success for her.

While her Hillary has taking the positive road her opponent John Spencer has taken the utterly negative one. Spencer looks for any opportunity to bash his opponent. He as Leighley states in chap 8 goes on the attack version of negative advertisement. The majority of his television ads(The Spencer Blog :: Multimedia) are against Hillary saying how she is pro terrorism and doesn’t care for new york. In a recent radio interview he spent the whole time bashing his rival. Another thing he did was raise the issue that Hillary wouldn’t debate him but this went away after she agreed to do it (oct 20th). He also says that since he won the mayor position of Yonkers which is a Democratic city and new York’s third largest while he is a republican it isn’t so far fetched to say that he will win new York’s senate position.

So the question is how does Hillary respond to all this negativity ? quite well she in fact belittles it by putting it on her website(HillaryClinton.com - Press Releases - View Release)
her theory is that if the best Spencer can do is negativity than he can’t do much. Negativity is only good until a certain point then it looks pathetic which is the point that Spencer reached when he started to bash the fact the Hillary’s husband former president Bill dodged the draft unlike him who is a Viet Nam vet.

This election has been over since the day it started John Spencer has a slim chance and he knows it. Hillary will likely win and then start campaigning for the 2008 presidential elections.

This election is election is a perfect example of why negative campaigning is only good to a certain point because only saying badly about someone else shows you have nothing good to say about you.

Steve Aftergood

On Monday night we had the privilege of having Steve Aftergood who is the Director of the Government Secrecy Project of the Federation of American Scientists speak to us about the issues of government secrecy. He showed many examples of how the government over classifies. For example he showed us the One World War I document that was just declassified which was about the military preparations necessary for the U.S. if they were to enter the war in 1917; apparently this was a very big deal that the government was hiding this from us. He then said how the government spends billions dollars on classifications and hiding government secrets every year. This he said was a waste of money. But the question here is why these issues need to be known. If the government is going to do something that it wants to keep a secret then clearly they are doing it for a reason. If they let everyone know what they were doing then it would be total chaos. Things need to be classified for our safety. And let’s say they told us about Osama before it happened what would we have done? Would we have stopped him? Would we have done anything? The answer to this is no.

While I admire what Steve Aftergood does because it seems like a tough job and many people read what he writes unlike me, I still am lacking understanding for the purpose in what he does. It’s not like they don't inform us of anything either. They tell us when we go to war or when they make a new bill etc.....but to inform us about things that they don’ want other countries knowing and us knowing for practical reasons I just don’t see a need for it.

Blogg about Blogg

Cheney on Iraq and "what if" by John in DC - 9/12/2006 08:16:00 PM
From Hotline's blog:
Cheney on going to war with Iraq: "If on 9/11 they'd had a nuke instead of an airplane, you'd have been looking at a casualty toll that would rival all the deaths in all the wars fought by Americans in 230 years. That's the threat we have to deal with, and that drove our thinking in the aftermath of 9/11 and does today."
You know, I've often felt this way about my neighbor. If he had had a nuke instead of a really loud stereo, I'd be looking at millions of deaths instead of simply being woken up early this morning.So, can I kill my neighbor?

This person who wrote this block clearly didn’t think much before he wrote this. Although America does like to poke fun at Cheney for man things that happen to him or many things that he says, what he said here wasn’t so crazy. After 9/11 America did have to be cautious and had to think of even the most crazy threats and Osama hitting us with a nuke isn’t so far off. Yes you can say nobody would bomb us with a nuke but before 9/11 everybody said nobody would crash to plains into the WTC (not exactly in those words but u know what I mean). All Cheney was saying is that the after math of 9/11 made them the think of the worst possible situations and that he needs to prepare defense to them. I definitely don’t agree with this person when he says “so should I kill my neighbor” it was a terrible analogy because his neighbor never bombed anybody and was never a threat too, the fact that he wakes him every morning with his stereo is totally irrelevant. This person may have political knowledge but definitely lacking in the intelligence dept. His analogy doesn’t make sense although his point is pretty clear this person clearly likes to complain about anything. He represents a spiteful democrat, this is a person who isn’t happy that his party lost and has looked at everything the republicans have said or done since then and complained about it. I guess now days we would call him a sore loser. Yes the bush administration has its flaws but this is defiantly not something to gripe about.



http://americablog.blogspot.com/ its the 11th one

Press

http://releases/2006/09/20060910-1.html

This was a press conference regarding 9/11. The questions initially started off in reference to the activities and ceremonies that were going to take place the following day, then immediately after the second question the media went right too the non 9/11 questions. Most of them were regarding the situation in Iran some you can see that Snow was ready for a lot of them but there were a decent amount were he wasn’t ready for. He answered snidely and sarcastically. clearly he wasn’t ready for them a majority of the bin laden question s he wasn’t so sharp on, there was one that you knew right away he expected and there were some when he just had good answers off the cuff. This press conference was an example of what Leighley called partially controlled news. He expected most of it but there some unanticipated questions and they were fairly obvious