Posted on 08/23/2004 3:50:40 AM PDT by kattracks
A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIPOn Friday, Kerry campaign spokesman Debra Deshong was telling any reporter who would listen that there was a big difference between the negative advertisements being run by George Soros-funded MoveOn.org and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: "MoveOn.org is an independent organization that existed well before the Kerry campaign," she said, whereas the veterans group "is not an independent group."
Deshong denied that the campaign had any knowledge about MoveOn.org's financing or motives or plans in its almost $20 million attacks against President Bush. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has spent about $800,000 on its advertising.
In fact, according to a Kerry campaign volunteer, staff members and volunteers of the Kerry campaign in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles have been in almost constant contact with MoveOn.org staffers, including advanced viewing and reviews of MoveOn.org television commercials, online ads, and web content. As well, MoveOn.org staffers provided the Kerry campaign with opposition research within the past two months, as well as advance looks at speeches made by MoveOn.org speakers, including former Vice President Al Gore.
"We're always running into those guys," says a Kerry campaign volunteer in Washington, about MoveOn.org staffers. "We socialize with them, we see them at meetings, we can't avoid it. And of course we talk about the campaign. In some cities, we get our volunteers from MoveOn. No one has ever raised an issue about it."
In some cases, it isn't just volunteers that the Kerry campaign is getting from MoveOn.org. They are hiring them too. In April, the Kerry campaign hired MoveOn's special projects and research director Jack Exley to oversee Kerry's campaign's website. At the time, the Kerry campaign made a point of saying that Exley was joining the campaign with not a single scrap of paper or computer disk from his time with MoveOn.
But Exley didn't need to bring much. According to another Kerry adviser, there were already so many back-channel relationships between the two organizations, Exley's presence to foster more was unnecessary. "As soon as it was clear Kerry had the nomination, we began coordinating. It's all done through the DNC and the AFL-CIO, which is financing many of the other groups out there running anti-Republican advertising. We will sit on conference calls, but we won't take part. We just take notes, then confer with our folks inside the DNC. That's the way it's done."
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An accurate statement. When translated from the Clintonese it reads:
...file cabinets full of paper, and hundreds of computer disks.
What was the point of this "aren't they barbaric!" story?
At least the Afghani people in Marc Manson's story have the guts to be honest with themselves about their justice system.
What's worse: cutting off someone's hand for a petty theft, or locking someone up for decades for a crime they did not commit, or for something that no rational person would consider a crime? In our enlightened country we have tens of thousands of people in jail with sentences of 10 years or more for drug crimes they didn't commit, or for things like possession of pot, which clearly does not deserve jail time whether it's a crime or not.
For details on this one great source is Frontline's web site 'Snitch': http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/ They do a great job of explaining how our drug laws put people in jail for the drug crimes of others, while letting off the people who actually committed the crime.
Our justice system is just as public and inhumane as the one described in Carl's post. If we are more enlightened than those Afghanis, what good does it do if it doesn't cause us to even try to stop our own barbaric human rights abuses?
Another angle on this would be to look at the Gulf War as a form of justice. We punished the Iraqi people for the invasion of Kuwait. We bombed the land where "an eye for an eye" was invented, but we took that principal much further. For invading a country of 250,000 people (extremely rich people, most of whom were on vacation) we killed 500,000 Iraqis--mostly soldiers during the war.
Then, we continued to punish the people, and by established estimates a million or so people, mostly children, have died as a result of the sanctions which for a while didn't even let medicine, like penicillin, into the devastated country.
Isn't that justice more barbaric than anything the Taliban have done? A million and a half lives for the crime of invading a country of 50,000. --Especially considering that we committed the same crime by invading Panama only a couple years earlier.
Well, this may seem all a bit out of line. But perhaps people will think it is something worthy of discussing. The left these days is very obsessed with the crimes of other countries like China, and Afghanistan. And it just seems a shame that there is so little energy in comparison, these days, going into stopping the worst human rights abuser: ourselves (i.e. America).,/i>
-Zack
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I've been a loyal reader of the website. And write editorals to reelect our president. I'm new at posting!!!! Please
pray for the reelection of Pres Bush. Everyone at 10pm!!!
Someone should ask Jean if he agrees with Exley that the US is the world's worst human rights abuser.
Bumping for later read.
With Michael Moore sitting with Jimmy Carter at the DNC convention, with Soros spending millions and shooting off his mouth, with MoveOn.org being the media wing of the Democrat party, for Kerry to then file an FEC complaint against Bush was unbelievably shameless. How incredibly Clintonesque!
Will the Republicans chose to once again roll over and do nothing to answer the Democrats just like during the Clinton years?
You said it best!!!
One month they work for the 527's the next month they work for hanoi john, then they switch out again.
Do as they say, not as they do...
cool, that's so simple.
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