The election is over. The campaign was the easy part. Gary Kasparov’s new editorial, though, underscores the biggest problem our freshly-minted President will have to face.
It’s not the economy, or the war, or terrorism, or taxes, or the deficit; these all look simple when compared with the real problem. The shortage of patience.
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Just a few weeks after Time magazine writes about Exposing the “Jesus’ Brother” Hoax we get treated to this: the trial judge in the alleged forgery case recommended the prosecution, um, “reassess its position.”
(Jerusalem Post / San Francisco Chronicle)
What both of these stories omit is that one of the “experts” who claimed “the inscription on the ossuary cut through the ancient limestone box’s patina, a thin coating acquired with age, proving the writing was not ancient.” (quote from JP story) had to admit under oath that indeed there was original patina in the inscription after all. (Hat Tip: Ben Witherington)
OK, the election is upon us. It’s the only time our government is required by law to listen to us, yet so few of us take advantage of it. One reason may be the success of negative campaign ads. According to the latest numbers from the University of Wisconsin’s Advertising Project (and injecting my own reasonable assumption that negative ads cost the same amount of money to make and broadcast as positive ads) in the last full week of the campaign, John McCain spent just under $6M just to convince me not to vote for Barack Obama. During the same time period, Mr Obama spent about $13M (a little over twice what Mr McCain spent) just to convince me not to vote for Mr McCain. (Based on 63% negative ads for Mr Obama and 79% negative ads for Mr McCain – Story Source – Advertising Project Home Page)
The process reminds me of a story from Wisconsin’s history, a story about two frontier towns: Sauk City and Prairie du Sac.
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