Campaign Jiujitsu

It seems that some Freepers have been complaining that Dubya's AWOL problems are getting all the press, while charges that Kerry had an affair are not being investigated equally. (Strangely, some of them are levelling such charges on Calpundit, who -- to the best of my knowledge -- never claimed to be a non-partisan observer.)

Well, if they want to go into the "inconsistencies" of the right-wing slime attack, I say -- bring it on!

In a separate statement in the US, her parents, Terry and Donna Polier, dismissed the "completely false and unsubstantiated" allegations about their daughter.

The statement did not address purported quotes by Ms Polier's parents in the British tabloid The Sun that were harshly critical of Senator Kerry. But in a later statement, Terry Polier said he was misquoted by the newspaper and that his wife never talked to the reporter.

So much for the "sleazeball" quote.

Please, Freepers, do keep this story going. All of us on the left are truly eager to follow it to its actual source. Thanks muchly.

Kudos to Counterspin for keeping a spotlight on the story behind the non-story.

(/) Roland X
Look! Out in the blogosphere! It's a pundit! It's a columnist! It's...
CAPTAIN ABBA!

Intelligence Inquiry Explodes

Bush is now officially in for a world of hurt:

WASHINGTON - In a blow to the Bush administration, the Senate Intelligence Committee said Thursday that it planned to investigate whether White House officials exaggerated the Iraq threat or pressured analysts to tailor their assessments of Baghdad's weapons programs to bolster the case for war.

The move puts claims made by President Bush and other senior officials in his administration squarely in the sights of the committee's investigation, and could add to the White House's political troubles as it tries to keep questions about the war from becoming a drag on Bush's reelection campaign.

Bombshell. There is simply no other word.

But Dean screamed, and Drudge said Kerry had an affair, and Gillespie went crying to mommy that the Democrats are being mean...

Oh yeah, and Edwards is a lawyer. Gasp.

This is more than blood in the water. The Rove/Cheney administration is being dismembered.

Expect indictments by the Plame grand jury soon. Is Dick Cheney Dubya's Spiro? Only time will tell. *EG*

(/) Roland X
Ah, it's good to have a press that does its job...

Drubbed Drudge

Conason annihilates Drudge sludge peddling (note: Salon articles require either subscription or ad view for day pass):

"The comments attributed to me [Craig Crawford -- R.X.] are from a private email to television news associates based on conversations with Democratic campaign operatives. I did not consider any of it confirmed enough to report or publish. I can only verify that Chris Lehane's rivals in other Democratic campaigns made these claims and I have found no independent source to confirm it. Which is why we did not go with the story. But then someone sent my email to others, which is the only reason it got into the public domain." In other words, there is no proof that Lehane circulated the rumor, let alone that the rumor has any basis in reality.

...

Journalists must ask themselves why the rumor of a private peccadillo deserves their attention and resources in the 2004 campaign. The press faces a more important issue: learning from its own failure to report the false rationale and abused intelligence that drove the nation to war.

Poor Sludge. I mean Drudge. Peddling sleaze used to be so much easier. A pity for him the left woke up.

Now, about those National Guard documents...

(/) Roland X
Back to the real scandals, 'kay?

More defending Kerry

Via Counterspin, this is the sort of activity the right-wing is trying to smear Senator kerry for:

I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term Winter Soldier is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriots and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.

We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.

...

We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.

...

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

This is what the right-wing slime machine is calling an "attack" on his fellow veterans -- forces he was trying to save from a horrific meat grinder he knew all too well (three Purple Hearts). Senator Kerry's courageous stand is being spun into deluded undermining of freedom in Vietnam, as if South Vietnam hadn't been ruled by one of our pet dictators. This is the man who they're trying to accuse of being a flip-flopping coward -- a man who faced not only bullets and shrapnel but the full might of the Nixon political machine. He fought for what he believed in.

You know what? He's still at it. If the Republicans try to make an issue out of his anti-war activism, my hope is for a simple answer: "Bring it on!"

(/) Roland X
Though we do still have this primary thing to run...go Dean go!

Defending Kerry

Hopefully, this will help persuade my fellow Deanies to stop throwing fits about Kerry. I'd rather spend my time promoting Dr. Dean than defending Senator Kerry's reputation.

Nevertheless, as long as our front-runner is being attacked by our own -- and let's be honest, he is under attack -- I am going to defend him. Let's start with the basics: Kerry is a moderate liberal (yes, Virginia, there is such a thing) with a firm grounding in social justice and the importance of civil rights, as well as a stellar record on abortion, the environment, and education.

Unlike Bush, he's actually capable of admitting his mistakes:

Kerry has walked away from some of his 1984 campaign proposals to cancel weapons systems that have become central to the U.S. military arsenal unleashed on Afghanistan and Iraq while defending his overall record as a senator. Kerry told the Boston Globe earlier this year some of the proposed cancellations were "ill-advised" and "stupid," blaming his inexperience as a candidate and a campaign that drove him to the left politically.

Will the GOP try to use these votes against him in the general campaign? Obviously. Should we let them? You tell me.

Yes, he voted to give Bush his authority in the Iraq war. Yes, he shouldn't have done it. But do you really think that a President Kerry would do anything so dangerous, stupid, and immoral? Do you truthfully suspect that our freedoms, our environment, our justice system, and our alliances will be in nearly as much danger with President Kerry as they are now? Do you really believe that gigantic companies will be able to rape our land, endanger our armed forces, and run roughshod over our lives the way they do under this administration? Are you convinced that it's even plausible that a Kerry administration would appoint wild extremists like John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, Daniel Pipes, David Hager, or pretty much anyone Bush would send to the Supreme Court given half a chance?

If so, then I guess you're not going to be voting for Senator Kerry no matter what I write. Personally, I'm with Dean for as long as he's in this thing. I hope he wins Wisconsin, and if he does, I truly believe that he can turn this thing around on Super Tuesday. But he's said that if he doesn't win Wisconsin, he's withdrawing from the race. If he drops out, I'll have to take a long second look at all the candidates, and from what I've seen of him, Kerry just might get my vote.

(/) Roland X
ABBA, dammit!

Word of the Day

Demonstrably. Adverb. That which is capable of being demonstrated and/or proven.

Someone get RNC chair Gillespie a dictionary:

"This is a demonstrably false and malicious charge that would be slanderous under any ordinary circumstance."

For the record, Mr. Gillespie, you could clear this up in about five minutes by, you know, demonstrating that it's false, which you just said you could. [Edit: In case you missed it, the "malicious charge" refers to Bush's missing service time in the Air National Guard. During Vietnam. While Senator Kerry and General Clark were getting shot at -- and in Clark's case, actually getting shot.]

If he can't find attendance records, here are some other resources he can use to demonstrate how false this charge is.

Unless this isn't an ordinary circumstance because it's, you know, the truth. We certainly all understand how that would be considered extraordinary by someone with a position of authority in the Republican party.

Don't we?

(/) Roland X
Helping Republicans with their English lessons since 2003

Pass it on

Kos posts the following message:

Message to Blog Community from DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe

As we get closer to the day that our Democratic nominee for President emerges from the primaries, I wanted to give you an update of what we've been building, doing and creating at the DNC to help defeat the Republicans on November 2 and win back the White House for ordinary working families.

Since the day I became Chairman in February 2001, the Democratic National Committee has been preparing for the moment that our nominee emerges.. Our No. 1 job at the DNC is to ensure that our candidate has the support he needs as he comes out of the primary battle.

A lot of what we do to accomplish that goal occurs below the media radar. These activities don't make for a compelling news story, but they are absolutely vital to our success. Here are just a few examples of what we've built to prepare for our nominee:

• A Presidential Fund which will have raised $15.3 million in 441(a)d funds, which will be available to our nominee immediately. This is the earliest these funds have ever been available to the nominee.


• A 2 million-strong list of email activists and donors -- up from just 70,000 names in 2000. (And if you aren't receiving our action alerts, campaign updates, and Democratic news emails, click here to sign up.)


• A voter file containing 166 million voters -- Democrat, Republican, and Independent. Attached to the national voter file are powerful analytical tools that are helping us find new voters more cost-effectively than ever before. The voter file is also key to our mobilization, organization, communication and fundraising operations.


• A media and research operation focusing on targeted 2004 battleground states, organizing news conferences and building media operations in state parties.


• A radio operation that aggressively books Democratic surrogates (including me) on both talk radio and news stations nationwide, with an emphasis on targeted states.


• A detailed review and analysis of Bush's policies and record.


• Daily tracking operation that keeps comprehensive records of where he travels and everything he has said publicly, as well as the activities of the RNC and Bush campaign staff.

But the DNC is just part of the picture. Your grassroots activism will be the key to our victory in 2004. And the leadership of Kos and others like yourselves in the blogosphere has truly transformed our Party. I thank you all for helping make our Party better, stronger and more responsive to grassroots America.

The political machine may have some broken springs and loose gears, but they're the only one we've got -- unless, that is, you want to see four more years of Dubya. And they've gotten a lot better over the last several months (thanks to a house call from a doctor who shall remain nameless).

ABBA in '04. (Note: Shameless plug added by Mrs. Roland X. *g*)

(/) Roland X
Super Tuesday coverage to come