Posted on 07/10/2008 9:55:35 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Sticks and stone may break your bones - but words can destroy.
Think about the Swift Boat campaign and what it did to John Kerry in 2004 and what rumors of a secret love child did to John McCain's bid for the White House in 2000.
~~snip~~
The Internet is making it easy to set these little fires and fan them into a blaze of untruths, and this election has become so intense that groups wanting to undermine the other guy have sunk to a new level.
Unregulated attack groups like the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, called 527s after the section of the Internal Revenue code that allows them to raise unlimited cash, fool people into believing outlandish things that go unchallenged across the Internet.
~~snip~~
In a recent article in The Washington Post dealing with the new brand of high-tech smear tactics, political theorist Danielle Allen at Princeton University spoke about her determination to go to the source of the vitriolic THIS DEFINITELY WARRANTS LOOKING INTO e-mail messages. She was able to track it back to a posting on the Web site FreeRepublic.com, and a man named Andy Martin, a former political opponent of Obama's who first got the idea while trying to launch a Senate bid against Obama.
~~snip~~
It is almost impossible to quell such blasphemous and damaging rumors. The FEC found the Swift Boat attack was way out of line and chastised them for it, but the damage was done. And there are still those who take what they said as gospel.
The big lie keeps churning.
It is always interesting how these ‘unfounded attacks’ never have an ‘absolute denial’ which includes ‘incontriverable proof’ attached to it. Has John Kerry released his unedited record yet?
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Thank goodness we have our peerless print urnalists to keep those nasty upstarts on the Intermets in line ;’}
Blasphemous? It is vitriolic to say Obama was a Muslim? I wonder what Muslims think about that? He might have been exposed to Islam in his childhood, but he isn’t a Muslim. What Obama is; is everything and nothing and a member of the Universal Church of Oprah.
Who's smearing who? The mainstream media is waging a preemptive war against Free Republic to protect the Obamessiah from being exposed by the expert B.S. (Barbra Streisand) detecting Freepers.
Oh really...I guess she can't be any more specific?
To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever disputed the truth of SBVT.
Has he released it yet, YOU MUST BE JOKING that ASSWIPE WILL NEVER SIGN THE 180, and the world will never see what a real scumbag he is.
The Swift Boat Vets bought TV ad time, appeared on talk radio, published a book, appeared on MSM news shows, etc. On the Internet we talked to each other about what we saw in the mainstream. The Internet as bogeyman don’t hunt.
The only thing they did was remind me how much the left and Democrats wanted McCain. They started the rumors.
The FEC found the Swift Boat attack was way out of line and chastised them for it, but the damage was done. And there are still those who take what they said as gospel.
The FEC said nothing about the veracity of the Swift Vets' charges, of course. That isn't their job. They did write this:
"Following an investigation, the Commission concluded that SwiftVets did not unlawfully coordinate its activities with, or make excessive in-kind contributions to, any federal candidate or political party committee...As they did with virtually all the major 527 organizations active in 2004, the FEC ruled that the Swift Vets intended to affect the election (duh), and therefore should have formed as a political action committee. Former FEC chairman Bradley Smith accused the commission of punishing such groups not for making errors in how they filed, but for "criticizing politicians."
The implication in this article that the FEC somehow refuted any of the Swift Vets' charges against Kerry is, quite simply, a lie.
My Sargent asked what was wrong with me and I told him that he must not have heard that I had a complaint filed against me, he said "yeah, so?". He then explained the true nature of the world in on sentence: " If they aren't bitchin' about you I would assume you aren't doing your job".
Looks like you're doing your job Jim!
Another attempt to discredit the truth seekers at Free Republic. They can if they saturate, which might be their intent, but it would take too much time from their other propagandizing. They’ll probably assign a couple of journalists to this project to minimize their expense and maximize their other persuits, however those couple of journalists will soon wear out their cries of “wolf”.
They’ll be off on somebody, something else soon enough.
The FEC is not a trier of fact, except as it relates to Federal Election Law, therefore, any action against the SBVT would have nothing to say about the truth or falsity of their position, a fact she probably knows full well.
The FEC ruling also included MoveOn.org and The League of Conservation Voters, a fact which didn't push the media template of her little hit piece. All parties settled out of court... yawn.
So what was the posted and who posted it?
For a "gotcha" moment, this story is long on words and short on facts.
Where's the beef?
This is nothing more than what's been with us from the beginning.
"A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on." Mark Twain.
For any part that is indeed lies let them argue that issue and not make free speech the "issue."
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You claim that "The FEC found the Swift Boat attack was way out of line and chastised them for it, but the damage was done. And there are still those who take what they said as gospel."
This suggests that the FEC somehow refuted the Swift Vets' charges against Kerry, which is completely false. It isn't the FEC's job to validate the claims made by political groups, nor do they make any effort to do so. The FEC did note that the Swift Vets "did not unlawfully coordinate its activities with, or make excessive in-kind contributions to, any federal candidate or political party committee..."
The FEC also levied a fine against the Swift Vets, as they did to virtually all the major 527 organizations active in 2004, ruling that since they intended to affect the election they should have formed as political action committees.
If you're really concerned about honesty in political discussions, retracting your misleading characterization of the FEC's actions would be a fine place to start.
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I'll be surprised to see a retraction or correction. If Ina Hughs intended to write an honest article, she would have done so in the first place.
Woe is the gravitas of calumny.
Which leads me to believe that the purpose of the article is to suggest that only political hacks may make inferences, which then must be accepted as wisdom by the great unwashed.
In short, "the nerve of some people, encouraging others to think for themselves!"
These stories about 2000 seem to be an underhanded mehtod of RE-invigorating this lie that had no effect in 2000.
McCain was the Democrats choice. In 2004 he almost crossed parties. In 2006 Dean staffers started getting behind McCain2008. Crossover Democrats gave us McCain as the GOP nominee. But as uncomfortable as we may be with his liberalism, he is to the right of Obama on virtually every issue. This "ethics" rumor about a bastard child is a smear. the kind of smears that the Obama camp would never admit to using. But someone is spreading it in 2008. Wonder who. My bet is on the same people who ran a campaign against a "culture of (sexual) corruption" in the GOP back in 2006. Pelosi-Reid-Dean's Democrat Party playing the politics of personal destruction AGAIN.
I do recall that the subsequent congressional investigation into Foleygat revealed that both the DNC and the media outlets they colluded with KNEW more than the GOP earlier and “did nothing” but sit on it until late in the election cycle and then they bitched and moaned how the GOP knew and “did nothing” with less information in hand.
Culture of corruption. Dirty Politics more like it.
Assumes that free speech needs "regulation."
And of course, if the 527s were “unregulated,” how was the FEC able to fine them hundreds of thousands of dollars? You can find a lie in almost every sentence of this rant.
“He then explained the true nature of the world in on sentence: “ If they aren’t bitchin’ about you I would assume you aren’t doing your job”.”
Yep.
Yes, it is a leftist-identified "malady" called cyberbalkanization.
It's a bad thing, dangerous for our democracy when the little people "cling" to their beliefs and don't spend enough time educating themselves with the feeeeeeeeeeeeeeelings of the anointed ones.
"Republic.Com" written by an employee of the University of Chicago and very, very popular among the anointed ones argues that government should force the little people to stop being so narrowed minded.
I have not read the book but I've heard a couple of interviews with the author and read reviews of the book in the MSM. They loved it.
Thank you Interesting Times.
Now THAT would be a shocker. NOT!
She has contributed $900 to Obama’s senatorial campaign and $2,350 to his presidential campaign.
She is obsessed about the “Muslim” Obama stories, but steers clear of Obama’s relationships with communists, Marxists, socialists, terrorists, racist reverends and convicted swindlers — relationships that are easy to document.
She is Dean of Humanities and a Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Chicago (where Obama taught) and the UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), at Princeton. She is violating federal law by using tax-exempt facilities and her UPS grant money to do opposition research for the Obama Campaign.
Her goal is to make “calumny” a crime on the Internet. Calumny is the act of uttering false charges or misrepresentations maliciously calculated to harm another's reputation.
Dr. Danielle Allen, supposedly “a genius,” has traded her reputation as a scholar to become a shill for Barack Obama.
Sheesh. These leftist journalists trying to pose as objective truth checkers are getting whinier and whinier. Go get a box of kleenex to dry your river of tears, ya big baby.
"..In her 30 years as a newspaper columnist, Ina Hughs has focused on issues involving human rights, children, women's concerns, religion and the environment..."
What the left wants is a human right tribunal like Canada, any angle to stifle the Speech of the right.
This time the left won’t be satisfied with merely regulating free speech on the airwaves. They will come after websites, mark my words.
I believe what you meant to say was: "To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever DISPROVED the truth of SBVT." There have been lots of liberals that have insinuated that the charges were false....but stopped short of proving it.
T Boone Pickens offer of a reward comes to mind. I don't think anyone has collected to date.
Thanks for that link!
>.....and the world will never see what a real scumbag he is.<
Oh, but if he is elected, the world will get an eyeful! :(
T Boone Pickens offered a million dollars to Kerry to prove one thing wrong in the Swiftboat Vet’s ads. [cue ‘Silence is Golden’]
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