Michelle Obama: name Hussein is 'the fear bomb' - Page 2

No, I'm saying she would have done his if his middle name were Alfred.

because it reflects thinking that was already there with the names Barack and Obama and is simply icing for the cake as it were. She wasn't going to vote for him. The people who would come see her speak were not going to vote for him. There are not votes lost by anyone using his middle name.

It isn't stupid selective logic. I have no doubt that if someone were to discuss Obama's race as a means of disqualifying him from office, it would be called racism. Yet there are already plenty of Democrats declaring they won't consider McCain because he is a "white guy." It is still racism.

This is about who has a policy you want implemented in government. However on the Democratic side they all basically mirror each other with policy. So it has become about how women are abandoning Clinton to vote for Obama because they'd rather fantasize about having sex with him than listen to Clinton "bitch" about getting the first question, or drone on about health care minutia.

These same wonderful "deep" considerations are the folks who get concerned about a middle name and will gladly call McCain someone who can't be president because he is an "old white guy."


I don't recal this request. Perhaps it was in the middle of your last "brutal ad-hom" and thus I ignored reading it and likely the whole response.


The point is uninformed voters, the ones who are going to vote for Obama because he represents "Change" or because he makes their panties wet, or those who are going to vote against him because he is black or might have a non-western historical background based off his name aren't going to change anything based off his middle name. There is no additional checkbox of criteria informed or ill-informed that his middle name meets that all other information about him doesn't meet.

No but the people that disagree with her on political matters and watch her aren't going to suddenly agree with her on who to vote for based on the recitation of Barack Obama's middle name.


I believe attempting to negatively advertise someone's middle name is a complete waste of money. If you ran 30 million dollars of ads noting that Barack's middle name was Hussein, I don't think it would change a single vote from what it would have been prior to that ad.


A lot of political discussion on television isn't political discussion at all and that is why I and you shouldn't watch it. It is people talking past each other instead of to each other. As John Stewart said of Crossfire, "Stop hurting America." People can listen to whoever they desire but it doesn't mean the arguments will be persuasive. I have listened to the argument of mentioning a middle name and it inspiring fear. Does any particular middle name inspire any fear in you Hassan? It isn't a persuasive argument and it doesn't matter if it is made by the right or left.

You are quite wrong. Your view of this is alarmingly binary. Wow that is fun. I'll have to do it more often.


I've not said that negative ads cannot have an affect. I've simply said that I do not think mentioning his middle name is some trigger that will yield any additional gain.

For completely ignorant and uninformed people as you mention, Barack Obama already sounds like a terrorist name. He clearly looks non-anglo and his name isn't a John, Bill, Al, etc. I acknowledged from the onset that such people exist and based their thinking on such ignorant criteria. I simply asked, how many MORE of them do you think were Obama supports who now decided not to support him due to his middle name?

Hell you could run ads with Obama in a pimp suit slapping white women and eating Popeye's chicken. It would indeed have an affect among totally uninformed racist people. However my contention is that there would not be anymore of these people left over who were supporting him and now, when his middle name is repeated, suddenly would say... oh no... that crosses the line. All these other items didn't poison the well, but this one did.

Let me slap the quote up there again so the goal posts can stay where they ought to be.


This clearly mean that she believes there is some group of people out there that, just as I suggested weren't afraid of "different" as represented by 6'2" black man name Barack Obama, but are somehow scared of the middle name "Hussein."

So PLEASE stop trying to generalize this. Her statement doesn't reflect that. My contentions do not reflect that. I am not arguing that there is no such logical fallacy as poisoning the well. I'm arguing that the middle name poisons it to no further degree. It gains nothing. Everyone who was going to buy into that fallacy already did so before knowing his middle name and the name itself won't change any ADDITIONAL minds.

Yeah that is what I meant by no additional gains.


Well thank goodness we have as proof your authoritative tone and nothing more.


So how many "ignorant and uninformed" radical left-wingers are informed enough it not associate "Barack Obama" with terrorism but are ignorant enough to associate his middle name Hussein with terrorism.

If they associate Hussein with terrorism aren't they also going to believe that we should be in Iraq for example and already have disqualified him for standing against that vote?

What is obviously nonsense is believing there is this strange sort of selective prejudice and ignorance whereby a person is converted by one prejudiced factor when several other factors already all in the same area would not have activated his prejudice. Sure people can bring it up but that doesn't mean it has an affect.


That just doesn't make sense. If it doesn't cause any change in voter sentiment either for or against him, how does it bring a candidate down?


I appreciate how you associate me linking to an article that has a direct quote from the wife of the candidate making the claim as having "no basis" but sadly reality is against you on this one. I'm not just making it up. Michelle Obama has called it the fear bomb, a tactic that works when all other fail. It will poison the well when no other variable has, but that is just nonsense. There is not going to be any additional bit of support lost or gained due to his middle name.

Well I find your claim of common sense to be not so common in this instance. We witness countless campaigns every cycle that are loaded with money, but fail to convince with that money. What it shows us is that money can help a true premise reach more people and be more persuasive, but that a flawed premise can have loads of money tossed at it and still fail to persuade in any fashion. I'd probably call Mitt Romney the best example of that for this cycle. An analogous example would be how millions in marketing campaigns cannot sway folks to give their money to certain movies that are true stinkers and thus they become box office bombs.


You and I know that but then again you and I are informed and know that having a certain middle name doesn't mean anything either. We are talking about uninformed people who resort to stereotypes. We are talking about people who yell at sikhs calling them terrorists. We are talking about about someone who says, "I don't know what a Baa-rock is, but it certainly ain't American."

So I do deny it because people who are racist, who stereotype, who fill in the blanks with ignorance aren't going to let a little thing like knowing whether Barack or Obama have any true connection stop them. They know they are unconventional, and in their minds, that is enough. It isn't a John, Al or Bill. Claiming they will fill in the names Hussein with fact based information and ignore Barack and Obama because of fact based information is nonsense when you are dealing with ignorant fools who do not deal with facts but instead deal in prejudice and ignorance.


I know you have said that. I have said that there is no negativity checkbox that would be activated by the middle name that wasn't already activated by several prior pieces of information. It may be a fun dig to rattle someone but what it isn't is a piece of information that changes any previous decision making.


How many people have gotten emotional over a middle name? How many people have managed to generate massive negative emotion based off a middle name?

You cite these statements, but in no fashion attach them to what we are discussing. I'll tell you what. You find me an instance, any instance where someone was able to apply all the basic human psychology you cite above, to a middle name.

I understand, as I am sure you do that you can create a caricature of someone that is easier to defeat than the actual candidate. I understand that on the left this means calling every candidate out of touch and stupid and on the right it means calling every candidate weak and often elitist. I get that. The media loves discussing how a John Kerry went wind surfing or how George Sr. looked at his watch and didn't appear to understand a supermarket scanner. We all know it is fun to make Bill a womanizer and George W. a chimp. I just don't see how a middle name fits into this.

All those examples take innuendo and then attaches actions to it to poison the well. McCain had to make a bomb Iran joke so now we have to listen to the well being poisoned about a volatile temper. Obama doesn't wear a flag pin and sometimes seems to not cover his heart when saying the pledge. We all know that will become caricatured as "unpatriotic." Those however are actions, not a name.

Hello?!? I've said that already. I simply said that the people who are stupid would have already latched on the plenty of other reasons before this one. I've illustrated them so I will not repeat them. The middle name method would not even be effective with stupid people in that they would have already been converted to non-Obama votes. Ever hear of the law of diminishing returns?

Well there are plenty of equally stupid people converted to Obama votes. They know he will bring "Change" and that women faint at his rallies. They all know the Democrats will give them "free" health care that doesn't cost anyone anything.

As you said, different degrees of stupidity.