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"Ask Mike" to Stop Lying
It shouldn't come to anyone's surprise that a George W. Bush sycophant like Mike Bloomberg would lie. It only took three months of prodding to get noticed by the Democrats.
Freddy's Public School/Private School flap last week apparently spurred the Ferrer camp to not just factcheck their own site and fire the staffer who had been writing Freddy's diary, but also got them to do a little Oppo at Mike's place.
Where they found Mike's lie to me.
- Fred from Manhattan: How do you plan to get the homeless of this City permanent and secure places to live?
- Mike Answers: We're already bringing down the overall number of homeless New Yorker [sic]; that's why we were able to close the biggest family shelter in New York...
Gifford Miller shot back...today: “When Bloomberg can’t confuse New Yorkers with millions in television ads, he’s willing to downright lie about his record. In the ‘Ask Mike’ section of his website, which Bloomberg said he personally oversees and approves, he writes that he is already bringing down the overall number of homeless New Yorkers."
FACT: Under his four years as mayor, homelessness has skyrocketed a staggering 26%! And he knows it.
The man closed the largest homeless shelter in the city during a spike in homelessness. Jeebus. Perhaps when he says he's "finally addressing homelessness at its roots," he's means to say - homelessness is a reality, and to change homelessness, we need to change reality.
Typical Republican problem solving.
Clearly, Ferrer sent Gifford Miller to call Mike a liar because he was weak to a parry of "you lied on your website too."
But this whole thing does beg a few questions:
- Why the crap doesn't Ferrer have a well-maintained blog?!
- When will Democrats call a spade a spade? When someone lies, they are a liar.
Lesson: Sending a surrogate to lie (a la Swift Boats) works.
But sending a surrogate to call your opponent a liar doesn't work. It's totally ineffective. Who is running for what?
Ferrer should have said:
"I have spent most of my school years in public schools - like many adults who try to back to school while balancing families and jobs, we find it takes years to finish - people like us should not be punished for trying to better our educations.
I am sorry if my diary was unclear. But it was not a lie."
"Speaking of lies..." Then Freddy could have ripped Bloomberg on his homelessness delusions.
Who is running this campaign?!
Ferrer campaign, politicians and blogging
I have been pushing Dem candidates to participate more on blogs. I think the newer politicians dive into blogging, sometimes to the detrement of traditional campaign efforts. More old-school politicians don't quite get blogs, aren't sure how useful they are, and don't know how to handle them. I think Ferrer's campaign falls into the latter category. I have suggested a more active blog approach to the Ferrer campaign and the person I talked to wasn't sure what blogs were about, but he was very open to the suggestion. It may be too little, too late, but it also could be helpful to their campaign at a critical moment.