The Smear Campaign Against Kerry

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Bush has been a target longer because we knew he would be the Republican canidate for this year's election since the end of 2000. It wasn't decided who the democratic nominee would be until this spring (yes, the convention was formally in July and September for the two parties, but who will be nominated is clear long before then).

Let's put it this way - if Kerry wasn't the Democratic presidential canidate, no one would try digging up dirt on him. However, Bush is the president, so he has been in the public focus much longer. I do not deny that 527s have been after Bush for much longer and have spent much more than 527s have been after Kerry. But that's because we're comparing 4 years to 6 months.

 

Actually, the "Bush-Cheney 2000, Inc-Recount Fund" was a 527 (this was the one that paid for all the legal fees in Florida and other contested areas...)

So, did Bush "flip-flop" on 527s, or is he talking out of both sides of his mouth?

 

Wow, the Swift Boat Vets just keep hammering away. See the latest ad here

 

Yeah, and they'll be taken about as seriously as Dan Rather at this point. Now that the Navy's investigators have concluded that Kerry's medals were legit and these jerks are full of it (not to mention everyone else), their credibility has evaporated. They won't swing any voters by showing ads with Hanoi Jane in them. What a bunch of sad, bitter old nuts. It's a good thing they don't represent most veterans, only themselves.

edit - Snook, please tell me you're not still taking these nuts seriously.

[ September 22, 2004, 22:56: Message edited by: Death Rabbit ]

 

Seriously- no

Totally discrediting them- no also

I kind of put them in the same situation as Dan Rather. The evidence doesn't support the story, but the story probably has some truth to it.

 

What I find especially amazing is this:

Whatever you believe about what Kerry did or did not do in Vietnam, one thing is clear: the men who are denouncing his record, his wounds, his medals, are angry about the very public antiwar stance he took 33 years ago.

Take John E. O'Neill whose hate for Kerry, a feeling of intense dislike that survives that long can reasonably be summarised as that - without doing Mr. O'Neill injustice, has survived 33 years. For me the whole discussion about Kerry's time in Vietnam has something pointless, surreal and absurd.

O'Neill resurrected his old and dead pro-Nixon campaign against Kerry after some 30 years, because the old tales (as that was under Nixon, maybe lies?) could damage him again today. Now that's what I call zeal: For O'Neill - I imagine - Kerry must have been, and probably still is, a subversive "traitor", daring to speak out against the Vietman war.

 

From an interview with Jimmy Carter:

'nuff said, 'cept for that:
The US right has gone rabid a while ago. They IMO poisoned the public climate. Take that sorry bitch Anne Coulter who actually thinks Senator McCarthy was a cool guy and that what he did was so good that he should be resurrected ASAP and go to work where he stopped in the 1950s - hunting traitors in his "Volksgerichtshof" hearings.

What happened to: "Hey, it's a free country!"? It certainly is not a slogan of the right anymore. If you look around, the cherished idea of free speech is starting to look a bit endangered — it gradually becomes a punishable offense.

The Federal Communications Commission has decided that the airwaves are going to be severely monitored and regulated, and violators will be fined into bankruptcy. Political demonstrators are herded like cattle into pens and anti-Bush picketers are being questioned by police and Secret Service agents if they dare show up at one of the president’s speeches. There is a pattern here, that makes me uneasy. You can speak freely, but it might cost you our life’s savings, and it might get you questioned by the authorities. Huh?

But then, let's sing with Anne: "But you don't have to fear the authorities when you're not guilty, right? Questioning the authority of the government in times of crisis like these undermines it's ability to protect you from the perils of terrorism - by criticising you're aiding the terrorists! Now shut your trap, you @#~$%&§!"

 

**groan**

Ragusa...you discredit yourself.

Can't you see by your attack against Ann Coulter that you seek to deprive her of Freedom of Speech?

Can't you see by your use of female canine descriptive you enact violence against her or any other woman?

I don't always agree with the Right, but I continue to be amazed that the ravings of the left demonstrate the very injustices that they decry.

That's why I left the Democratic party. That's the great flaw of Liberalism...they scream tolerance and equality but offer none.

 

Well, as for me Annie can rant and rave as she likes. But it is one thing to say your opinion, even in a pointed way - the simple fact that she get's away with defaming, insulting and slandering others on a regular basis referring to her freedom of speech is something quite different.

That isn't exactly how I understand freedom of speech.

Who in the US would accept a guy raving about n*ggers and that they are an inferior race? Well, it is of course utter bullsh*t and he would rightly be regarded as the sorry a**hole he is.
How about somone wrongly accusing Clinton to be a murderer, fraudster - whatever - and then it is, even though as wrong, free speech? Is defamation free speech?

What is when people use the constitutional rights in a way contradicting their values?

Freedom of speech is a crucial right in a democracy. But it isn't limitless. Freedom rights end where they collide with the rights of others - like personal dignity, honour - minor point. And - explicitly - that is my problem with Annie and the US right.

Maybe Annie thinks as she lacks all that she can as well attack it on others - they cannot pay her back in same coin. One can't hurt a fembot that way, I doubt she feels anything else but fury anyway.

IMO the biggest trick of the US right was to sell the American people that everything has two equally valid sides. That is, unfortunately, wrong - like some things are simply wrong, unfounded, baseless, nonsense. A fact of life.
When everything has two sides that are equal - what point has a substantiated and constructive debate on facts? That all pushes the actual decision of a dispute to the emotional field, and no one in the US plays that flute better than the right.

By selling their slandering as a reaction to a fictious liberal bias they can be practically be as slanderous and unfair as they like.

Goebbels said, referring to the Jews, that if they weren't there, they would need to be invented, great scapegoats that they were.
The liberal media bias is the other way round - it needed to be invented because it wasn't there but so darn handy. So they simply argued as if it was there - and it came to life. Pure magic.

And best of all, it pushes the 'liberals' on the defensive - too busy to take care not to sound 'biased' they sound lame and dull - much unlike the polemists on the right who have a free way. The US right is simply much more agressive than the liberals, and admittedly successful.

 

There's a trade-off between freedom of speech and vilification. Everyone should be entitled to freely express their opinions, but the issue is one of where to draw the line. I'm only nominally aware of Anne Coulter's stock in trade, but it sounds similar to the venom that One Nation spits out over here in Australia. The problem isn't that she's allowed to say it; the problem is that some people buy it unquestioningly. This means the next step has to be identifying why this occurs. The political climate has been masterfully manipulated by conservative governments in recent years (in Australia, they capitalised on asylum seekers, terrorism and the need for stability). After years of lies, scandals and conflicts of interest, though, the United States seems less interested in looking for the failings of the current administration for than they were for Bill's cigars. What's more important: that the President lied to Congress and the public about a relationship with an intern, or that an administration misled Congress and the public about a threat from a country halfway round the world?

To the credit of the American people, most people weren't clamouring for Clinton to be summarily removed from office. IIRC, his approval rating went up. But we (and by we, I mean the general populace) have been fed exactly what we would respond to, and the majority of people don't want to face the ugliness of what's behind it because it's too damn difficult. We just want our elected leaders to make sure we can get on with our lives. The important issues to us aren't of foreign policy or economics, because most of us don't understand them. It's all about what benefits us the most. The people who look a bit further than themselves and their immediate circumstances realise some pretty terrible things. I feel sorry for John Kerry (and plenty of others, too) - he's trying to get people to think about what's going on, and to see why it's so bad. And just like everywhere else, people don't want to be told that they may be a part of the problem, so they just don't listen any more.

(deep breath, steps off soap box)

@ Hacken Slash: You raise a good point - the militant ravings of the radical left and right should be treated with the contempt they themselves tend to display. If anything, though, I believe that the right (both here and in the US) is much better at playing "media rules lawyer" and discrediting their opponents than the left. My biggest problem with your argument is that by and large, everything is happening on the right's terms. They control the apparatus, and they have an advantage over their opponents. The incumbent is able to do things by stealth that any opposition must do openly, and for which that opposition can be discredited. Given the conservative right's propensity for playing dirty, I don't think it's an advantage they need or which will be turned to anyone's gain but their own.

Of course, who's to say the same won't happen in reverse if the Democrats/Labor don't get in? I used to be a conservative supporter, but the current administration in both countries are too compromised to be trusted any longer.

 

This I found really funny. This might actually cost Kerry Wisconsin as those people are rabid for their Packers.

 

Huh.

Kerry says something somewhat stupid about a somewhat irrelevant issue, once, and it costs him a state.

Bush says something incredibly stupid about incredibly important issues, daily, and is fanatically adored.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to pay our last respects to irony.

 

They may also be fans of healthcare, keeping their jobs and getting an education. They may also want to retire from their jobs one day. Perhaps they believe the US Constitution is still an important document, one which our leaders should respect. Perhaps they even want a leader who knows the difference between a "mistake" and a lie. That would be refreshing. If they are in favor of any of those things they may want to reconsider. Oh, yeah, truth in football...riiiiiiight.

 

Anyone besides me who a) saw eveything in that link as being totally tongue-in-cheek, and b) thinks that Snook's posting of the link and his related comments were in the same vein?

 

It probably was, Splunge. But the fact that he's correct and Kerry's numbers did indeed dip slightly in Wisconsin recently because of that - that people would actually change their vote from Kerry to Bush because he mispronounced the name of a sports landmark, when Bush says stupid sh*t like "the right track/wrong track polls are actually better in Iraq than they are in the US!" - isn't funny, it's nausiatingly sad.

 

Time for some clarification

Splunge is correct that it was a very tongue-in-cheek post. However, Death Rabbit is correct that it might actually be true.

It is one thing to say something stupid that the ordinary citizen doesn't understand or care about. It is another thing to screw something up that they do understand and care about.

Anybody remember potatoe?

 

OMG! You mean that people might actually vote against Kerry because of this?

Wow, Americans really are nuts!

 

This is getting a little off topic, but I don't think it is a profoundly American trait. What would happen in Canada if someone running for Prime Minister would say the greatest hockey player of all time was Splunge Gretsky?