Negative Campaigning - I give up!

I can't keep up. There are two reasons I'm not going to finish my previous blog entry about all the campaign ads.

The first reason I'm not going to finish my previous blog entry about all the campaign ads...

I saw a video on the FOX News website called 'Attack Tactic' ( http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?maven_referralObject=3096259&maven_referralPlaylistId=&sRevUrl=http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008Sep18/0,4670,EUSpainMcCain,00.html
discussing campaign ads going negative. Well - this is right up my alley since I've been looking at all the ads from both camps since June 2008. Great. I'll actually know the truth when I watch this piece. I know FOX News lies - but this time I'll have my own proof from my own research! Yay!

According to FOX the study was first not named and then the anchor kinda said it was from a university. The study says that since the Republican Convention, Obama has 77% negative ads and John McCain 56% negative ads.

Having just watched many of the ads, I think - wow, that seems odd. I think Obama has been much less negative than McCain.
There must be something about the study I'm not understanding. I have to make sure I'm comparing apples to apples.

I look around the Internet for a short time and fairly easily find a blog entry about the study on The Nation website.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/362117/op_ad_obama_more_negative_than_mccain

According to this blog entry from The Nation magazine, the study was done by the Wisconsin Advertising Project. They deem the ad 'negative' when the other candidate is mentioned in the ad. If a Barack Obama ad says "John McCain does not agree with me" that would be considered a 'negative' ad in this study.

I go to the Wisconsin Advertising Project and I'm not seeing the actual study or press release about the study. So, I do some more digging on the Internet. Again, without too much trouble I find another website that mentions the study and although they originally couldn't find the study either, they now have a link to the study. Of course, I can't find that website anymore.

Anyway - here's the link to the study.
http://wiscadproject.wisc.edu/wiscads_release_091708.pdf

The bottom line is that somebody else has already gone through and done all the researching I was trying to do. And better. Now, I know I was happy to have done it myself so I could know that I had the proof. But, it makes no difference because even if I have the proof, I have to go to the trouble to find out all the particulars of what someone else says because simple word choices are a loophole.

The second reason I'm not going to finish my previous blog entry about all the campaign ads...

I've had a lot of trouble with Blogger today and yesterday. I sat and watched a bunch of the ads, made my comments about them, saved the blog, and then closed out. And it didn't save my stuff. That happened a few times. It was really irritating.
Also, Blogger is hard to format for me. I don't know html so I just type these words and bold some and italicize some and sometimes make the font bigger.

I'm discouraged.