More than 40 years ago, President Lyndon Johnson used images of a little girl, a daisy and a mushroom cloud to urge people to vote for him, saying the “stakes are too high.”
Now, a group backing the ratification of a new arms treaty with Russia has created a version of Mr. Johnson’s famous “Daisy” ad, using the same images to warn against delay.
The new ad begins as the old one did: with a little girl picking petals off a flower and counting to 10. When she gets there, a menacing voice begins to count down to zero.
“In a world where terrorists seek to destroy everything we hold dear, Russia’s nuclear weapons cannot be left unmonitored,” an announcer says in a grim voice. As he speaks, a mushroom cloud erupts, reflected in one of the little girl’s eyes in grainy, black-and-white video, much as it did in the original ad.
The commercial, which is scheduled to run on cable television in states whose senators will be key to passage of the new treaty, is the work of the American Values Network. A countdown clock on its Web site indicates that it has been 349 days since the U.S. last inspected Russia’s nuclear weapons.
President Obama has started a concerted push to try and get the new treaty passed this year. Republicans, led by Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, have expressed resistance, saying that more time is needed to study the treaty that Mr. Obama negotiated with Russian leaders.
But like the original ad by Mr. Johnson, the group’s new version uses dramatic imagery to make their point. The threat of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of a third country — like, for example, Iran — is a real one. But no one on either side is suggesting that nuclear war with Russia is likely if passage of the treaty is delayed.
This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Afi Will Ferrell finds he is no match for JPMorgan Chase in Finra case. Will Ferrell played an over-the-top newscaster in the Hollywood hit “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.” Now the comedian is back in the news, as he lost a big arbitration case against JPMorgan Chase. Mr. Ferrell, his [...]
Federal law banned gender discrimination in the workplace in the 1970s, and for most purposes, it’s illegal outside the workplace, too. But a case that came before the Supreme Court this week shows gender discrimination still exists in immigration law in terms of residency requirements for unmarried fathers versus mothers. The Sacramento Bee describes the [...]
With the midterm elections in the rearview mirror, speculation about the 2012 presidential race is already heating up, and a new poll out Thursday finds Barack Obama trailing two members of a hypothetical GOP field but leading the one with the highest profile, Sarah Palin. The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey found no clear front-runner among [...]
Now that Republicans have taken over the House of Representatives, they’re itching to tamp down the new financial services regulations passed by Congress this summer. The latest example: a letter to the Treasury Department by Representative Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the probable new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, declaring that Dodd-Frank will “undermine [...]
BOISE, Idaho — If there’s one thing Walt Minnick hates, it’s being called a liberal spender. But as a lonely Idaho Democrat in a suddenly brutal re-election race, the charge was anything but unpredictable. At the City Club of Boise candidates’ forum here on Thursday, the Blue Dog Minnick worked to clear his name of [...]
Twitter
Facebook