Free Republic

So you think the chorus of white hate groups is seething with rage that Barack Obama could become president? Think again. Members of the knuckle-dragging set are taking a rosier view, judging by their Internet posts. They say the possibility of a biracial president is helping their recruitment efforts.... Obama has a bigger immediate headache than [David] Duke and his allied dimwits. It's the rising chorus of anti-Obama attack books that don't always let truth get in the way of a good hatchet job. Leading the pack is "Obama Nation" by Jerome R. Corsi. It leads the New York Times...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It was September 1967, and Lt. Cmdr. John McCain was back from Vietnam on home leave. He invited Chuck Larson over for dinner, and during a late night game of bridge, McCain pulled his buddy from the U.S. Naval Academy and flight school aside. Larson recalls being stunned at what he heard. "You know Chuck, I might have to get out of the Navy," McCain told him. "And I said, 'Why is that John?' and he said, 'Well I want to be a serious naval officer. And when I go places now, people tend to not take...

RENO, Nevada (Reuters) - White House hopeful Barack Obama talked energy policy on Sunday with T. Boone Pickens, a billionaire oil investor who funded the "Swift Boat" attacks on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004. Pickens, a lifelong Republican, has endorsed neither his party's candidate, Arizona Sen. John McCain, nor Democrat Obama in the November 4 election and wants to make energy a top campaign issue. He has advocated a plan to cut U.S. oil use by converting cars to run on natural gas. Pickens funded efforts in 2004 by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which...

Barack Obama has yet to name a vice presidential nominee and some are wondering if he might turn to Massachusetts to round out the ticket. John Kerry for vice president? Don't dismiss the notion just yet. Some political insiders are telling WBZ it could happen. So why would Obama reach out to Kerry as his choice? Kerry brings more money and name recognition to the table than any other name on the Obama list so far. Americans do tend to love a comeback kid and this would be the most amazing political comeback since Richard Nixon came back from the...

Here come the goons, right on schedule. The "author," and I use the term loosely, whose vicious lies damaged John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign has crawled back out from under his rock to spew vicious lies about Barack Obama. Right-wing radio talk-show hosts are dutifully transmitting this concocted venom. This presidential campaign has officially gotten ugly. The "author" I'm talking about is a man named Jerome Corsi. In a book published last year, "The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada," Corsi claimed that George W. Bush was at the heart of a secret conspiracy to subsume...

Right-wing author Jerome Corsi hit it big in 2004 with a book attacking John F. Kerry. "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" soared to No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Now Corsi has done it again -- taking aim at a different Democratic presidential candidate. Corsi's latest, "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," will top the Aug. 17 New York Times hard-cover nonfiction bestseller list. The book lashes out at Barack Obama and alleges, among other things, that the politician has a secret radical Islamic agenda. But being...

Perhaps John Kerry and the New York Times should have adhered to the old adage to let sleeping dogs lie. It appears the Times' Kate Zernike used Kerry campaign talking points rather than the facts in her breathless account of how the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth "smeared" John Kerry over his Vietnam record during the 2004 presidential campaign. In her 1,283-word "Veterans Fight to Reclaim the Name 'Swift Boat,'" Zernike came across as a Kerry campaign spokesman rather than as an independent journalist.

The Republican party's attempts to portray Obama as arrogant could hurt him in the election. Presidential races generally hinge on character issues - as Republicans understand. That's why, the last two times out, the GOP has won the White House by hammering into voters' minds the idea that the Democratic candidate embodies a particular negative quality. In 2000, Al Gore was depicted (with the help of a lazy and compliant press corps) as a serial exaggerator. Four years later, John Kerry was portrayed as a weak-willed flip-flopper. Ultimately, it was these personal caricatures, far more than any specific policy prescriptions,...

INDEPENDENCE, MO. -- Sen. Barack Obama said Monday that no candidate should use patriotism as a "political sword" in the presidential race, vowing to push back against charges that he is not fervent about his country. Yet even as Obama repeated his call for a new brand of politics that avoids personal attacks, the day was dominated by an old-style clash over the military credentials of his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain. __________________________________________________________________ Air Force Col. George E. "Bud" Day, a Medal of Honor recipient who was McCain's cellmate in North Vietnam, said Clark's "backhanded slap" was "one of the...

Correction Appended Years ago, when William Miller talked about being in the Vietnam War — if he talked about being in the Vietnam War — he would tell people he served on a Swift boat. At least now they have heard of it. But not in the way he would like. “I was proud of what I did, and all the guys I was with,” Mr. Miller said. “Now somebody says ‘Swift boat’ and it’s a whole different meaning. They don’t associate it with the guys we lost. That’s a shame.” “Swift boat” has become the synonym for the nastiest...

For most people, “Swift boat” has become a political verb, a synonym for the kind of attack that helped destroy the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry in 2004. But for a group of Vietnam veterans at the center of the attacks, it is still a fresh fight. On Friday, the group, who served with Mr. Kerry in Vietnam, sent a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman who helped finance the 2004 attack advertisements, taking him up on a challenge he issued last November: that he would give $1 million to anyone who could disprove a single...

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) today praised Sen. Barack Obama for denouncing his former pastor, but warned that Republicans will use the association to try to "Swift Boat" the Illinois senator if he becomes the Democratic presidential nominee this fall. Bayh, who is supporting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, said he hoped other issues -- the economy, gasoline prices, health care and the cost of college -- will drive the decisions of most voters in Tuesday's Indiana primary. Obama has struggled in other states to win the votes of white, working class voters, and they could be the deciding vote...

<p>Seeing Ghosts: Obama's ties to Ayers and Auchi are distant, but his foes plan to pounce .</p> <p>The Obama campaign is planning to expand its research and rapid-response team in order to repel attacks it anticipates over his ties to 1960s radical Bill Ayers, indicted developer Antoin Rezko and other figures from his past.</p>

If the words "swift" and "boat" must be combined and turned into a verb, then let us insist on its proper use. The word as a verb originates from the campaign undertaken in 2004 by the Swift Boat Veterans in response to the John Kerry presidential candidacy. The word means, or should mean, the exposure of a fraudulent autobiography of one seeking political office or public influence. It is the correction of a personal and professional record that has been selectively and dishonestly compiled, as the Swift Vets did so effectively to that of John Kerry. Although swiftboating may be...

LANSDOWNE, Pa. - Sen. John Kerry reached out to veterans here on Barack Obama's behalf Saturday, saying he believes Obama is more prepared to be commander in chief than Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were when they took office. Kerry told the crowd he did not think Obama would be victimized by GOP attacks the way he was in 2004 by the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth." Kerry took responsibility for not fighting the Swift Boat assaults more effectively, but he said advisors, including Bill Clinton, suggested he not defend himself aggressively. "We didn't lose to them, I didn't lose...

HILLARY: SWIFTBOATED!March 26, 2008 Hillary is being "swiftboated"! She claimed that she came under sniper fire when she visited in Bosnia in 1996, but was contradicted by videotape showing her sauntering off the plane and stopping on the tarmac to listen to a little girl read her a poem. Similarly, John Kerry's claim to heroism in Vietnam was contradicted by 264 Swift Boat Veterans who served with him. His claim to having been on a secret mission to Cambodia for President Nixon on Christmas 1968 was contradicted not only by all of his commanders -- who said he would have...

Last week, I had the chance to sit down with Jeff Beatty, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate for the state of Massachusetts. Beatty is currently rallying support in order to offer a strong challenge to the current seat holder, Senator John Kerry. Jeff, who was in town to receive the prestigious "Guardian Award" from the International Association of Counter-terrorism and Security Professionals (IACSP), left me confident that we are putting our best foot forward in November's race and that Kerry will be facing a worthy opponent. Jeff's unique background as a counterterror professional and businessman positions him well to unseat...

Texan and super-conservative Bob Perry formally endorsed Brian Klock for the Texas Congressional seat in CD-22. A Republican candidate for the District 22 congressional seat will be getting a lot of attention today with a very unique campaign ad. klockforcongress.orgIt's yet to be seen just whether it's negative or in his favor. Now in the private sector, Brian Klock remains a commander in the US Navy Reserve. He's an underdog candidate trying to gain new ground. Later Monday, his campaign will unveil a billboard (pictured above) on the Southwest Freeway near Fountainview. It shows crosshairs trained on downtown Houston, it...

A photo showing Barack Obama dressed in Somali garb is being circulated by campaign staffers working for Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, according to DrudgeReport.com. FOX News is working to confirm the report. The photo was taken in 2006 during a trip through Africa. Obama was dressed as a Somali elder during a visit to southwestern Kenya, said the Drudge Report, which said a Clinton staff member had provided the photo to the Web site.

Brian Klock has his cause and eats it, too. To show solidarity with U.S. troops, the commander in the Navy Reserve said he lunches every day on packaged "meals-ready-to-eat," the common fare for soldiers in the field. In the crowded race for the Republican nomination to take on Democratic U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, Klock is one of several contenders with military experience. He said he went on active duty to the Balkans and was deployed in support of American troops in Afghanistan....... Please read more here.