Rick's Cafe Americain

Whether you buy that it was intentional or not, Scout over at the always-excellent And Then . . . points out striking similarities between a seemingly arbitrary (and illogical) Bush-Cheney campaign image and an image of the 9/11 fireball.

Continuing a tradition here at Rick’s of commenting on one’s own post, I’d like to make this as meta as possible by linking to someone else’s comment on another blog.

Cube’s comment (taken completely out of context) on Dawn’s blog captures the quintessential Bushie mindset:

I will think what they want me to think while i am on their dime, do what they want me to do as long as i get paid well.

Glad I started a tradition...but I think the banner/explosion link is tenuous at best.

However, have you played the flip/flop olympics on Bush’s site?  Unreal.

I find it believable.  Advertising people do it all the time—lots of very subtle symbols in ads, meant to affect the viewer unconsciously.  If BC04 hired an ad specialist—and of course they must have—that person may well have done it deliberately.  If Fedex can do it, BC04 certainly can.

Flip flop olympics—what a crock!

1. Since when is whether Kerry owns an SUV an “important issue facing our nation”?

2. He was for the no child left behind legislation, and then was disgusted (like many others) when Bush pulled the funding for it.  Hardly flip-flopping.

3. There is, in fact, a difference between “raising taxes” and “repealing tax cuts”.  A distinction unavailable to the Elder Bush and his lips.

4. On the Iraq $87 million issue, Kerry and his campaign have totally mangled a vote record that might have been defensible.  I’ll concede this one.

However, what’s lost here is that “flip-flopping” is a pejorative-sounding term that the campaign is using generally as a pejorative for “having a complex response to a complex issue”.  It amazes me that this administration has turned the ability to think analytically and abstractly into a vice.

But, if you want to see some real “flip-flops”, go here.

Complex responses are for pussies and a pussy wouldn’t have liberated Iraq.  A narrow minded simpleton on the other hand…

Is anyone else disturbed by the blatently anti-French message in the Kerry olympics, considering this “game” is on the official website of the President of the United States?

Oh, I wouldn’t call it “blatant”.  Are you picking up on subtleties?  are you thinking with sophistication?  Then you must be an anti-American French-loving terrorist!

This seems like a specious connection, especially when there are more obvious plays on fear going on…

I agree its hardly the most blatant move, but can you otherwise explain the picture?  Why are they all wearing red?

So wait a second, are you now suggesting that not only are they using this picture to make it look the explosion but that they posed the picture; i.e., got together people in red with the idea of taking this picture and then using it in the way you suggest, rather than capitalizing on a picture they came across.  That seems really weak, but if you then take it a step further so that your argument for this being a plant is why else would they be wearing red, then, well, I have to wonder about what might be in the water out there on the left coast.  There are plenty of reasons why they might be wearing red...red is the color associated with Republicans after all.

No, that’s not what I’m suggesting.  I’m suggesting that they took a picture of people at some sort of rally or event and Photoshopped it to achieve the same color distribution as the fireball.

And although red has often been associated with Republicans on ballots and electoral maps, I’m not aware of Republicans wearing red as a group.  If they do, however, I would be willing to accept the color distribution as a bizarre coinky-dink (but would still bet on it having been intenionally done).