It looks obvious

One of the few benefits of being sick at home is that one has time to watch and read things that require more time. I recommend freeing an hour an half and watch this fascinating discussion about lingual images and the use of them in election campaign:

This panel, "Deceiving Images: The Science of Manipulation" features three experts in the field of communication - George Lakoff, Frank Luntz and Drew Westen - who are joined by moderator Nicholas Lemann, and asks whether the age of propaganda is over or if politicans and pundits are just refining the techniques of manipulation. These panelists from both the left and right reveal their secrets about how politicians manipulate the public.

As a side note, I’m reading now one of the panel participants book, he Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation , which I enjoy very much. 

There is an old story about an extra soldier in british Artillery batteries. The reason for this extra soldier is that his job was to guard the horses - a function not needed for many years. I don’t know how accurate is this story but I heard it in reference for checking of the status of military units, in IDF, that were built to solve specific problem, or situation. And while the problem was long solved the temporary units were still existing. Professor Andrew Bacevich, in a column in the LA Times, argues that the only thing left from, once mighty, NATO is its bureaucracy. The problem NATO aimed to solved doesn’t exist anymore but the organization, not needed and unsuccessful as it is, is here to stay: 

Urged on by Washington, alliance leaders simultaneously began to look "out of area" — projecting power to enhance security beyond NATO’s boundaries. Behind this concept lay the vague notion of the alliance providing a posse of sorts to help the world’s superpower-sheriff enforce global law and order.

The Balkan wars of the 1990s provided a preliminary opportunity to test this idea. The results were less than reassuring: In 1999, it took 11 weeks of ever-intensifying bombing for mighty NATO to pry Slobodan Milosevic’s two-bit army out of Kosovo. An allied reluctance to contemplate anything approximating close combat became apparent.

[...]

In Afghanistan, NATO is failing. Nominally, all 26 alliance members are contributing to the war effort, with some 43,000 total troops deployed. In reality, stripping away the forces provided by the United States, Britain and Canada, the alliance has fielded barely 20,000 soldiers — this to pacify a country that is 50% larger than Iraq. Many national contingents, Germany’s being the most prominent, operate under restrictions that make them unusable except in areas where relative security exists

Few days ago a song inspired by Obama’s speech “Yes, we can” was released on YouTube and since than enjoyed more than 3 millions views. The parodies were not late behind, here is a good one - on McCain’s account: