I like this. Kerry’s campaign is going after Regnery, saying that they should withdraw the book because it is a hoax.
The Kerry campaign has told Salon that the publisher of “Unfit for Command,” the book that is at the center of the attack on Kerry’s military record by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is retailing a hoax and should consider withdrawing it from bookstores. “No publisher should want to be selling a book with proven falsehoods in them, especially falsehoods that are meant to smear the military service of an American veteran,” said Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton. “If I were them, I’d be ducking under my desk wondering what to do. This is a serious problem.”
Now, Regnery will do no such thing, of course. But, the frame is obvious.
Bush supporters insisted that James Hatfield’s book Fortunate Son, be pulled because of what they claimed were false assertions ofGeorge W. Bush’s alleged cocaine use. The editor in chief of St. Martin’s Press, Robert B. Wallace, resigned over the controversy. Surely, this swift boat book, based upon one proven lie after another, should be dealt with the same way.
Some on the other side will point out that Hatfield’s book was eventually withdrawn not because of its allegations that George W. Bush had used cocaine but because the author had been convicted of hiring a hit man on his boss. But if the character of the author is the prevailing question, then it cannot be ignored that one of the authors of Unfit For Duty has recentlyadmittedto writing a long litany of noxious swill including references to the pope and little boys, Islam as a satanic religion and Katie Couric as “Little Katie Communist of the NBC Today Show” Indeed, it seems that this author believes that many in the media are communists. Is that the kind of author a publisher should stand behind when the facts in the book are called into question?
St. Martin’s Press withdrew their controversial book when the character of its author was revealed to be suspect and the charges of George W. Bush’s cocaine use in 1972 were refuted by a man in Texas. Now, we have a similar situation in which the character of the author ofUnfit For Dutyhas been called into question and numerous facts contained within the book have been fully exposed as false, most recently in an article today in the Washington Post. Regnery Publishing, despite its Republican ties, should do the right thing and withdraw this book.
Isn’t this gilding the lily just a little bit? I’m not sure that those elusive swing voters are going to be all that impressed with a guy who is openly and obviously stabbing his own party in the back with singular relish. It’s not the way stand up guys behave. You quit your party before you go this far.
I think they just overplayed the “Zell” card, but it depends on how the media play it. I’m fairly sure they’ll present it some sort of metaphor for the deep discontent within the Democratic party and the “loss” of the south. Demo talking heads had better be prepared with some zippy zingers about good ole Zig Zag Zell.
I know that bashing the Democratic establishment is good fun, but I think today we should show them some love. Their hardball approach to the Nader problem has been excellent. They are working on the ground in all these states making it tremendously difficult for the Republicans to get Nader on the ballot.
It isn’t pretty and I’m sorry it came to this, but the stakes are too high and it had to be done. The Democratic party deserves some praise for learning from the past and getting people all over the country to do the tiresome, nitty gritty work involved in fighting this covert GOP operation.
May I just say how comforting it is to know that this man has been advising George W. Bush on how to court Catholic voters. Who says that having ever more religion in public life won’t improve the moral climate?
I love Dahlia Lithwick (really) and I’m greatly looking forward to her next column in which she takes the right wing to task for calling Kerry a delicate, effete “frenchman” who isn’t a Real Man. I imagine she’ll agree that’s bad because it makes them look like crude barbarians who think that all Democrats who might vote for him are cowardly and effeminate. I’m sure it will be excellent.
Update: I think Yglesias has the right of it. Just because it might not be a good strategy to run against Bush the moron, doesn’t mean that Bush is not a moron. (Stirling Newberry also has an interesting riff on pundits dumbing down arguments.)
John Kerry is not running his campaign saying that Bush is too stupid to be president. But that does not make it wrong that vast hoardes of average Americans know that what they are seeing on their television screens is a dullard of the highest order. It is simple reality. The man speaks in gibberish. He behaves with emotional immaturity. He betrays a sophomoric insensitivity (“please don’t kill me”) and a lack of gravitas that is frightening (“History? Who knows, we’ll all be dead.”)
Lithwick seems to be tut-tutting the regular folks like those who sent ads to MoveOn or fans of Michael Moore who have the bad manners to point out the turd in the punchbowl — or bloggers like me. But, what she is really doing is speaking out in favor of the sort of cognitive dissonence that has become the hallmark of the other side. “You can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes.”
Perhaps Bush isn’t really a puerile dumbshit but merely a great actor. But, what I see is what I see. And standing before me as president of the United States appears to be an intellectually deficient and childish man by any standard, much less that which we would normally hold for a president.
Maybe John Kerry can’t say it because some idiot swing voter thinks voting means he gets to drink beer with president and he’d prefer to be towel snapped by Bush than Kerry. I understand that. But, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
You’ve got to hand it to the Scumbags for Truth. They smear Kerry’s war record because they don’t like his VVAW activity, then they smear the navy because it’s the only explanation as to how all these glowing fitness reports and commendations could be given to a coward and now they are even smearing themselves. These guys will do anything, even sully their own war records, in their quest to get Kerry.
And, like the good Republicans they are, they then sniffle like little girls about how unfair it is that they are getting the same treatment they so enthusiastically mete out to to others.
Last month, Thurlow swore in an affidavit that Kerry was “not under fire” when he fished Lt. James Rassmann out of the water. He described Kerry’s Bronze Star citation, which says that all units involved came under “small arms and automatic weapons fire,” as “totally fabricated.”
“I never heard a shot,” Thurlow said in his affidavit, which was released by Swift Boats Veterans for Truth. The group claims the backing of more than 250 Vietnam veterans, including a majority of Kerry’s fellow boat commanders.
A document recommending Thurlow for the Bronze Star noted that all his actions “took place under constant enemy small arms fire which LTJG THURLOW completely ignored in providing immediate assistance” to the disabled boat and its crew. The citation states that all other units in the flotilla also came under fire.
“It’s like a Hollywood presentation here, which wasn’t the case,” Thurlow said last night after being read the full text of his Bronze Star citation. “My personal feeling was always that I got the award for coming to the rescue of the boat that was mined. This casts doubt on anybody’s awards. It is sickening and disgusting.”
Thurlow said he would consider his award “fraudulent” if coming under enemy fire was the basis for it. “I am here to state that we weren’t under fire,” he said. He speculated that Kerry could have been the source of at least some of the language used in the citation.
In a telephone interview Tuesday evening after he attended a Swift Boat Veterans strategy session in an Arlington hotel, Thurlow said he lost his Bronze Star citation more than 20 years ago. He said he was unwilling to authorize release of his military records because he feared attempts by the Kerry campaign to discredit him and other anti-Kerry veterans.
The Post filed an independent request for the documents with the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, which is the central repository for veterans’ records. The documents were faxed to The Post by officials at the records center.
So this idiot is actually saying now that his own bronze star for the same action that Kerry received his, unbeknownst to him, was given to him fraudulently and Kerry is probably the guy who perpetrated the fraud. This guy is one step away from the mentality of a suicide bomber — right down to the whining victimhood.
Let’s add up the discredited Scumbags, shall we?
Nixon hatchetman O’Neill gets caught in serveral lies about his recent Republican ties — makes complete fool of himself trying to claim that half of the money he gave to the GOP was actually given by someone with a similar name.
Jerome Corsi is revealed as an insane Freeper bigot.
George Elliott can’t decide from day to day which affidavit about Kerry’s silver star is correct and makes the strong point that his own documentary evidence of 30 years ago was likely wrong because he can’t think of a reason why these guys would lie 30 years later.
Now we have Thurlow.
These guys are a joke and the mainstream press needs to do its job and hammer on this. The campaigns are caught in a he said/she said that cannot properly put this to bed. Good for the Post for following up this story.
One little note about the Deborah Orin’s New York Post story today about the success of the Scumbags for Truth ad. This “study” she and the mediatools like Scarborough are crowing about was a national on-line poll. It did not survey the voters in the 3 battleground states who saw the ad, but rather asked a group of pre-selected voters to view the ad and register their response. If you go to the web-site it appears to be part of an on-line political survey experiment.
According to Orin:
The Swift Vets study used 1,275 participants, including 371 independents, who watched ads and registered their reaction at every second using technology normally used to rate product ads. Half viewed the Swift Vets ad and the other half saw a pro-Kerry ad based on his convention speech, which was rated less persuasive.
[…]
The ad planted doubts in the minds of 27 percent of independent voters who planned to vote for Kerry or leaned pro-Kerry. After seeing it, they were no longer sure they’d back him, the study found.
It could be significant that the ad has the potential to affect 27% of pro Kerry independents. But,the ad only had a 500K buy in three swing states so it’s unlikely that that many people have actually seen it in its entirety. If people have seen the ad on the news, they have also heard at least something of the other side of the story.
The bottom line is that in the future, it’s possible that if a lot of independent voters who are leaning for Kerry see this ad, and never watch the news, a third of them might develop doubts right after seeing it. That’s assuming that this online survey measures anything valid in the first place.
I think the endless mediawhore flogging is the real threat. But, I doubt there’s much anyone can do about it. It’s now a war of attrition. Kerry’s reputation will always be scarred but the funny thing is that this little campaign is taking down his critics reputations too. John Kerry is not only a Vietnam veteran, he’s a political veteran too. Whoever is left standing on election day will win this last chapter of the Vietnam saga and I’d put money on him. He’s got a lot thicker skin than these guys.
All of you convention bloggers may want to program you Palm Pilots to be at Robert F. Wagner Park on September 1st at 6 pm. The Axis of Eve Coalition will be staging a very special protest.
More than 100 women will participate in the mass flash, which will showcase the group’s provocative line of protest panties emblazoned with such sexy admonitions as “give bush the finger,” “expose bush” and “weapon of mass seduction.
That ought to scare Gary Bauer right out of town.
For those who like their politics to be very personal the “panties with a purpose” are available here.
I love how Bush has suddenly adopted McCain-Feingold as one of his signature issues.He’s just appalled that these “shadowy” groups are undermining his fine achievement.
Q There’s a new ad by MoveOn.org that talks about — that criticizes Bush’s record in the National Guard. What’s your response to that, and what do you say to Harkin, who called Cheney a coward for not serving?
MR. McCLELLAN: We have been on the receiving end of more than $62 million in negative political attacks from these shadowy groups that are funded by unregulated soft money. And the President has condemned all of the ads and activity going on by these shadowy groups. We’ve called on Senator Kerry to join us and call for an end to all of this unregulated soft money activity. And so we continue to call on him to join us in condemning all these ads and calling for an end to all of this activity.
[…]
The President thought he got rid of all of this unregulated soft money activity when he signed the bipartisan campaign finance reforms into law. And so it’s another example of — the senator’s latest comments are another example of him saying one thing and doing another.
It makes you wonder why he signed the bill in private, allowed Mitch McConnell to promptly sue to overturn it and didn’t even ask McCain to attend the ceremony. And his shock at these “shadowy groups” is especially rich considering that one of his primary objections to the bill was the limitation on issue ads and unregulated soft money by individuals.
Without any fanfare, U.S. President George W. Bush signed the campaign finance overhaul bill into law in the Oval Office Wednesday morning before heading off for fund-raising events in South Carolina and Georgia, the White House announced.
[…]
“The president believes the legislation, while far from perfect, will improve our current finance system,” said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.
As expected, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the constitutionality of the new law.
McConnell’s legal team, led by former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams, plans to argue that the new law violates the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment because it restricts the political speech of political parties and interest groups, but not the news media.
Bush also has reservations
In his written statement, President Bush praised provisions in the measure that ban unions and corporations from making unregulated contributions to political parties and the provisions raising the decade-old limit on individual giving.
The Bush statement also says that while the bill goes “a long way toward fixing some of the most pressing problems in campaign finance,” the measure also has flaws.
In particular, the president wrote that he continues to object to the ban on unlimited contributions by individuals to political parties in connection with federal elections.
“The president believes the individual freedom to participate in elections should be expanded, not diminished,” Fleischer said.
He said the president also has reservations about the limitations on issue advertising. The bill bans unions and corporations from using “soft money” to broadcast what are known as “issue ads” that mention a federal candidate within 60 days of a general election and 30 days of a primary. Hard-money issue ads may run up to the election.
Fleischer said because of his concerns, Bush chose to sign the bill privately in the Oval Office as opposed to hosting a public signing ceremony at the White House.
Fleischer said it was the president’s view that a South Lawn ceremony “would not have the aura of consistency…befitting with his beliefs in the bill in its totality.”
His newfound concern for unregulated money in politics is quite touching. Who says he hasn’t grown in the job?
I wonder if you realize that your words on Meet the Press saying “‘sensitive’ is the kind of word a French candidate for president would use” were played several times by Rush Limbaugh on August 16 as evidence of Kerry’s essential “frenchness.”
While many of you in the press corps obviously find this “french” appellation hilarious, I’m sure you are also aware that this term is being used as a Republican code word in this campaign for cowardly and effeminate. As such, even though I know it is hard to keep from sharing those side-splitting one liners with the public, it might be more ethical to refrain from using these manufactured Republican punchlines. Of course, I’m assuming that you don’t wish to be used by a propagandist like Limbaugh to push GOP talking points. Perhaps I assume too much.
Lou Dobbs just had that con artist scumbag David Bossie on his show taking the Democrats to task for their “unprecedented” negative ad campaign comparing Bush to Hitler for over a year and a half.
And, in a most satisfying fashion, David Axelrod responded that Bossie was the guy who ran the Willie Horton ad, ran the 1992 ad with doctored tapes of Gennifer Flowers and was fired from the House for doctoring the Web Hubbell tapes.
Dobbs was shocked that Axelrod was personally attacking little Davy and interrupted. Bossie then decried negative advertising again.