OMIGOD! This is a huge scandal! My knickers in a twist just as much as yours are. So very misleading! And he didn't get a permit to do the filming? I share your breathless hysteria. Thanks for exposing this fraud!

At least hes trying to protect Mt Hood, it would be nice if he did more but its a start.

Don't see anything wrong?

Walden is running an ad saying "I'm so wonderful! I'm saving Mount Hood, won't you help me save places like this?"

Only he has no intention of saving the place in his ad. He wants to see it left on the chopping block for logging. And this from a guy with one of the worst environmental records in Congress, who happens to be ok on just 1 issue (Mount Hood Wilderness).

Sorry, lying is wrong, even if you are a Republican politician. Either put it in the damn bill and apologize, or pull the false advertising (and also apologize).

How does Walden explain his falsehood? It's not a lie, you see, it's a... it's a... it's a...

Uh... it's just plain not a lie, or falsehood. Period.

It would be great if Tamanawas Falls was protected, sure. So if you want to blast him for excluding it, knock yourself out.

But he didn't say that his bill would protect that specific area. He said it would protect areas like that specific area. Are you suggesting that it won't?

Must be a really slow news day...

No one is getting their panties in a bunch here. It's just that it's misleading. It would be no different if a pol stood in front of a factory that pays middle class salaries and benefits and said "help me save good paying American jobs" and then turned around a voted for NAFTA or CAFTA, bills that would have led to the closure of the very factory the pol was standing in front of. And of course, he would have "workers" standing next to him in the ad. But the factory was just a metaphor... right?

So lets say a Democrat runs a tv ad on new education legislation. In it they feature a small child, and the candidate says "my bill will protect kids like this!"

Only the bill actually wouldn't help that kid.

I presume the Walden apologists would give that Dem a pass? Yeah, right.

This is perfect! Let's get caught up in details that dont matter (where a campaign spot was filmed, if there was gasp a permit or not, etc.) and push Walden right off the edge so that we can end the year with nothing at all. We find a republican who may be willing to show some "green" and instead of welcoming him to the fold we marginalize him with trivial issues. Brilliant.

Come on... We always allow this kind of leeway in political ads.

I'm fond of the fact that I was in (the background of) a Kulongoski commercial in 2002 with a "son" who was 10 years younger than I was. Was it false advertising because the "families" in the background weren't families at all? Was Teddy-K saying that it was okay for 10-year-olds to have sex?! Of course not.

Here's some other shockers: - Doing anything with your SUV that they show in the commercial will void your warrantee. - Drinking Fanta does not magically transport you to a volleyball tournament. - Using the Yellow Pages does not mean you get martial arts training by David Carradine.

No, drinking Fanta doe not magically transport you to a volleyball tournement. But neither does running a misleading ad on Mt. Hood Wilderness magically do away with Walden having one of the worst environmental records in Congress.

I'm glad he is supporting some new Wilderness. But I am under no illusions as to why he is doing it (or why he is running this ad in Portland).

Bottom line -- if you are going to show an ad with an area on Mt. Hood that is currently on the chopping block for logging and development, and say "help me protect places like this", that place ought to be in your damn bill.

Sid,

This ad isn't remotely like the hypothetical situation you cited, even assuming your premise that NAFTA/CAFTA would have caused that specific factory's jobs to be lost.

Sam,

Your hypothetical is almost exactly like Walden's ad, as far as it goes. And yes, such a Democrat would absolutely get a pass on that as well, at least as far as I'm concerned.

But what the hell do I know. I generally give people the courtesy of accepting the actual meaning of the words they say. How foolish of me. ;-)

I would think a true environmentalist would be glad that Walden and his film crew didn't go tramping across a "protected forest, meadows, streams" do do a film shoot. My god!

Thanks for posting on this Kari!

The main take home point here is that Walden has been caught doing what he always does on these types of issues - misleads, confuses and obfuscates. He's always trying to greenwash his overall horrible environmental record through selective phrases that imply something completely opposite of what he's actually doing. Here are just a few recent examples:

Walden earlier this year passed a bill that would cut the heart out of the Endangered Species Act in part by no longer requiring that species, like salmon, have their habitat protected or that the best available science be used to recovery them to healthy populations - but Walden's press release and public statements about his bill claim his effort is merely 'strengthening' the ESA.

Walden recently passed another bill that would fast track logging of ancient trees in roadless areas, old growth forests and sensitive drinking watersheds after fires or if they are damaged by insects or drought - but Walden insists that such destructive logging is merely 'restoration.'

In today's article, Walden didn't just say he was protecting places 'like' Tamanawas Falls as Wilderness, he went on to assert that by NOT protecting it as Wilderness he was really 'preserving' the area so it could be 'managed properly' including by logging. Walden's savvy enough to use the word 'thinning' but that's not necessary what's in store for the areas he deliberately left out of his Wilderness bill at the timber industry's behest.

Overall, the Wilderness bill is a good idea, despite Walden's extensive efforts to obscure his overall 'polluters come first' agenda.

But the other big truth here is that Walden is the main reason the Mt. Hood bill is so small in the first place. It seems like everyone else wants a bigger bill with real preservation for the last wild places around Mt. Hood. But Walden just doesn't have the spine to stand up to the big logging company CEO's and lobbyists, or to out-of-state politicians like California Congressman Richard Pombo who calls that shots on everything from oil drilling in the Arctic to how much protected Wilderness we can have in Oregon.

Hopefully voters from Hood River and Bend to LaGrande and Medford will vote for Carol Voisin this year and not be fooled by Greg Walden's doublespeak.

That's it, beat up on the guy for creating a bi-partisan effort to protect wilderness areas. And I thought Randy's recent post about his birthday was going to be Blue Oregon's biggest waste of time for the week. Man was I wrong.

Well, let's have an argument over something that is not at all important!

What is important (don't look at that man behind the curtain) is that Walden doesn't give a rip one way or the other about this Mt. Hood issue. He wants us not to notice his votes for oil interests. He wants us not to notice how he doesn't vote for his own Districts interests in social services, health care, infrastructure, taxation, PILT, etc. etc.

He would love it if we spent all of our time following this red herring out to sea.

Every minute of time spent not focusing in now how Walden is so bad for his District and our State is a wasted minute.

Greg Walden got caught running a misleading ad. Many of the posters here seem to think the fault lies with the people pointing that out, not with Walden for telling the fib.

And we wonder how Bush and Rumsfeld get away with the whoppers they tell.

Torrid,

Then why didn't he just go to a spot that was in the protection plan instead of one that enviros specifically requested to be protected but he specifically left out (with an exception for his ad, of course.)

Isn't that the problem with the public's perception of pols these days... that they're a bunch of pandering fakes?

Rep Walden was just using the Dan Rather "real but fake" school of communicating. And I don't think it worked out in Dan's favor either.

You can't intrude into an area you are trying to protect, then plaster it all over the media, then claim you are protecting it. I'm glad this very important subject is being discussed.

Wait a minute If Walden never said Tamanawas Falls would be saved and the ad never had Tamanawas Falls on it how would anyone know it was anything but a random waterfall demontrating what could be saved?

Seems the only way people know is by the reports by hypercriticals and left wing blogs making a big deal out of nothing at all because of the R after Walden.

Are you kidding? Have you seen the ad? It's freaking TAMANAWAS FALLS! It's as plain as day.

OK. I've seen the ad. The falls aren't labeled. I'm a freakin' 7th generation Oregonian and lived in the state all but a few years of my life, and until today I'd never heard of Tamanawas Falls. I sure as heck wouldn't recognize it by sight.

Of course I would recognize Multnomah Falls. I'd recognize Willamette Falls. I might even take a stab at Silver Falls (seen pictures, though I've never been). But obviously I wouldn't be able to pick Tamanawas Falls out of a lineup.

So perhaps it's not quite as plain as day to many viewers (and I would strongly contest the assertion that it's the 2nd most recognizable falls in the state). In fact, when I watched the ad I thought "random scenic waterfall", could have been just about anywhere in the Pacific Northwest.

And it doesn't remotely detract from the basic message of the ad, which is about preserving wilderness areas around Mt. Hood. I have no reason to either support or detract from Walden, so I simply viewed the ad at face value. How anybody who isn't looking for reasons to pick apart this ad could consider it so misleading is really, honestly beyond me.

Perhaps this bill isn't all you'd like it to be. Perhaps Walden is 99% anti-environment. Perhaps the representative backdrop for the ad isn't literally included in the bill (or it's specifically excluded). But it's quite a stretch to claim that the ad is false or even misleading because of any of that.

Jumping on the guy for (potentially) not getting the correct filming permits -- eh, you might have a point there. Calling the guy a liar and demanding that he pull the ad is frankly just crazy.

And if you're going to parse out phrases that carefully, Kari, note that even your clarifying term "such as" does not always imply inclusion of the example (i.e., it's not always distinct from "similar to"). There are only a few of the many shades of "like" that support your argument. You're really twisting there to try to make your point. The context of the ad is certainly ambiguous enough (for an unbiased observer) to make these complaints seem like much ado about nothing.

What everyone ought to be talking about is the significance of this advertisement as Walden's first for the campaign season. As several people already pointed out, Walden's environmental record sucks. The only piece of legislation he can flaunt is one his own actions have threatened to derail by taking campaign contributions for a land swap. Clearly, Walden feels his environmental record is a potential weakness in this campaign. So let's not forget that it is Carol Voisin who received the endorsement of the Sierra Club. And when we elect Carol to office, she'll work to protect a lot more than 77,500 acres of Mt. Hood.

Seems that all the Walden-defenders here are relying on a careful reading of the word "like" -- as in "places like this".

A "careful reading"? Like means "similar to."

One has to strain severely to make an issue out of this. Doesn't speak well for the fairness and sobriety of the poster.

I am a dyed in the wool Democrat, but stupid sh#t like this just pisses me off. Don't you have ANYTHING else that you can write on besides this?!! There are so many other things that Republicans are doing that you could use your energy exposing. For dems/enviros to get pissed off about the fact that he's standing in front of falls that AREN'T included in this wilderness bill is stupid/silly/meaningless. The fact of the matter is that protecting 77,500 acres of Mt.Hood should be celebrated. Instead all enviros can do is say "it's not enough". This is the kind of crap that makes me swing from the left to the middle on things involving the environment. Enviros just push me away.

FYI "Give Me a Break", Senator Gordon Smith (R) and Ron Wyden (D) have introduced a Wilderness plan that is nearly twice the size of Walden's (125,000 acres vs. 77,500). The enviro's are pretty happy with it. The only guy who seems not to be happy about protecting more of Mt. Hood is Greg Walden.

Just enough to take credit, not so much as to piss off the base. I guess that text wouldn't have made as good of a visual for the ad as footage of Tamanawas Falls.

<h2>"Clack", you obviously don't understand the dynamic that currently exists in the House of Representatives. Do you even realize who chair's the House Resources Committee? That answer would be Richard Pombo. He also happens to be one of the most anti-environmental members of congress and somebody whose sole reason for being in Congress is to "reform" the ESA (i.e. kill the ESA). Not exactly the type of guy that's supportive of further wilderness protection. For any bill to get out of the Resources Committee it has to have Pombo's support. Blumenauer and Walden worked 3 long years to come up with a bill that would protect the greatest amount of acreage and still garner Pombo's support. Wyden & Smith's bill would not double the acreage, but it would provide an additional 50,000 acres of wilderness above and beyond the Blu/Walden bill. Does it really have a chance to pass both the Senate and House? Who knows. But since both the good senators decided to not really get involved with this until after the August recess it really puts this entirely process at risk. Their proposal will have little time for any public input or compromise.</h2>