The Mother Night Problem

I signed up at www.johnmccain.com using the name Ahmed Singh and chose "Alternative Energy Advisory Coalition" and "Muslims for McCain" as my coalitions. So far no email from Team McCain welcoming me aboard.

I found out that one way to get points is to refer friends to the site (they have to sign up).

This brings up the Mother Night problem: What if I get 5 friends to sign up,and somehow the site changes their political views and gets them to support McCain? And they, in pursuit of the desirable points, get 5 friends, etc. so that eventually millions of people who would have voted Democrat (or Green, or Nader, or Frank Moore) switch to the dark side, and McCain wins because of my help (or perhaps mine and Diebold's)?

But nothing I've seen on the site would, I believe, convince an ardent non-McCainite to vote Republican--it's pretty much preaching to the choir. Maybe I'm safe in that respect.

Unfortunately there's another Mother Night problem: what if I get so caught up in my political satire that I wind up just another dirty trickster? What will separate me from the campaign that uses this graphic

on a pseudo online poll that asks the question
"Is it ok to unconditionally meet with anti-American foreign leaders?"

So as a clean trickster, I vow here never to attribute any statement or belief to John McCain that I haven't found to be substantiated by reliable media. And I'll cite sources whenever appropriate.