1. Negative Adverts
As we approach the Election day, we are being deluged with adverts from Super PACs. These are groups liberated from funding and spending constraints by the Citizens United ruling from the Supreme Court.
As a consumer, I generally have little time for sales pitches that comprise "vote for me because The Other Guys are evil/useless/etc. etc." If you want me to buy your product, you had better have a positive message and case. So I was singularly unimpressed by a group named American Crossroads, which has been running a typically lachrymose ad featuring an angst-ridden mother complaining about spending, national debt that her children will inherit, lack of a plan by the POTUS etc. etc. There was no mention of the Republican Party in the advert, merely a large print disclaimer that American Crossroads is not affiliated the Republican Party.
I have two cynical conclusions about this advert:
1. Most Americans I have met didn't give a flying rat's patootie about the national debt until Barack Obama was elected president.
2. If you believe that American Crossroads is not affiliated to the Republican Party, I have a bridge near New York to sell you (and it's totally undamaged by Sandy...honest)
A quick search via SourceWatch soon lifts part of the veil on American Crossroads. This is a SuperPAC set up in 2010, with advisors including Karl Rove, which plans to spend $79m on ads attacking President Obama, and $9m on ads supporting Mitt Romney. That ratio os spending alone tells you all you need to know about the message. I find these numbers instructive, and they confirm my conclusion that the advert is yet another pile of negative crap which I will ignore.

2. Partisan supporter laziness
I am seeing a number of last-minute postings by supporters of both major parties.
Some of those postings contain slurs against The Other Side.
What really bugs me, however, is when partisan supporters post slurs and allegations against The Other Side that are not only crap, but easily disprovable crap. Today, I found a GOP supporter recycling the claim that President Obama had a student ID card from Occidental College in 1981 showing that he was an Overseas Student.
This claim has been around since February 2012, and I found the debunking of it at Snopes.com in less than 60 seconds via a Google search. As a forgery, it doesn't even rank as second tier. Anybody with a working knowledge of Google could have found the debunking in 5 minutes or less. Yet this was posted without any comment as if it were true. It's this kind of half-assed laziness that tends to confirm my view that the views of many partisans have limited credibility, as long as they can't be bothered to check that their claims are related to truth and reality.