August 28, 2004
A '527' Group For Truth
I am proud to declare, that I have been a card-carrying member of MoveOn.org since it’s inception during the Clinton/Lewinsky Inquisition period. And, ever since, they have been a powerful, articulate and savvy voice that perfectly represents me, and many others on the Left. Those on the Right have insisted at every turn that this organization is ‘radically Liberal’ (and ‘controversial’, according to CNN), hoping to marginalize its impact. And, in the same breath, they’ve used the so-called anti-Bush ‘Hitler Ad’ controversy as proof, never bothering to explain the details and facts involved.
Executive Director Eli Pariser was absolutely correct, when he said (proudly) that this proves the effectiveness of MoveOn.org efforts, whereas drawing fire from the Conservatives have helped establish them as a major player in the country’s political discourse. MoveOn.org was Joe Trippi, before he utilized the Internet to establish Howard Dean, and create an energized movement. But, even for a moderate Democrat like me, I’d found two voices that were unequivocal and would not tolerate being drowned out by the Conservative echo chamber and their supplants in the media.
With the recent controversy over ‘527’ groups, many have mocked, while some have even pronounced the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act, a failure. However, am I the only one who believed that when President Bush (reluctantly) signed the bill, it was a good initial stop plug, but was bound to spring a few leaks?
Oh, and by the way, do not expect me to apologies for the lopsided expenditures of anti-Bush ‘527’ groups vs. anti-Kerry ‘527’ groups. Remember, pre-McCain/Feingold, Republican opponents insisted campaign contributions were free speech, confident in the knowledge they will always be able to afford many more bullhorns, than the Democrats. So far, TV ads ran by MoveOn.org have been, for the most part, credible and truthful. However, these ads have only succeeded in helping level the playing field in this Presidential election. On the other hand, the Swift Boat Veteran’s smear campaign has apparently succeeded in moving polls back into Bush’s favor.
To all those readers not already of an anti-MoveOn.org partisan mindset, this group will now fill this entry’s comment thread with claims of ‘smear’, ‘propaganda’, ‘Liberal hate’, or the old stand-by, ‘Bush bashing’. They will not provide any specific examples of such devious behavior on the part of MoveOn.org, then again, they also believe John Kerry has not yet ‘effectively refuted’ the claims of the Swift Boat Veterans. However, if you are of an open mind and/or would like to learn more about MoveOn.org, like me, I hope the only opinion you really trust, is your own.
(I’d also encourage a visit to MoveOn PAC’s ’10 Weeks’ campaign, to view some powerful new TV ads.)
I just still find it funny that the genesis for Moveon.org, to “get beyond” the Clinton blowjobs and lies, is now the main force for dragging on every half-baked, few-bricks-shy-of-a-load, half-a-bubble off-plumb conspiracy theory about President Bush. When will THEY move.om?
Just curious.
Posted by: Pinch at August 28, 2004 09:21 PMMove on was founded to get the country to move on and stop talking about Monika and President Clinton. That was a laudable goal because the country had gone into a fruitless debate about what the President said, what he knew and when.
Some of our current debate is similarly barren. I read both of the Bob Woodward books about the Bush presidency. They show a president who believed Iraq to be a threat. When President Bush asked CIA director Tenet about WMD, Tenet, a Clinton holdover, told him that the case was a slam-dunk. Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan warned us that Saddam had and would use WMD. Vladimir Putin, the ex KGB office, believed it too. We know he had WMD in 1998; we don’t know what happened to it. This is the frightening thing. By the way, John Kerry was on the Senate Intelligence committee before Bush was president and was as deceived as anyone else.
Saddam was good at deception and his whole state apparatus was organized to trick his own people and the world. He was working very hard to deceive us and he evidently did a good job. Why he did such a self-destructive thing is open to debate, but he also deceived every other intelligence agency in the world. Bush didn’t lie. Based on what he knew at the time, his decision was reasonable. This is an intelligence failure. Intelligence is never perfect. They call it “intelligence” not “news.” That’s why. You guys should MOVE ON.
The question is, can we trust our president’s judgments about threats?
Intelligence may never be perfect, but that’s no excuse for what happened in Iraq.
Go back and read the passage that concerns the “slam dunk” Now, to some it might seem exculpatory, because Bush does question it, but I want you to notice what Bush doesn’t do: Ask for a better picture. Instead, what he does according to the book, is hand the case over to Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Stephen Hadley to get the trial lawyer’s treatment. The book goes on to say that there is so much unsound information in the result that Colin Powell and his Deputy Richard Armitage feel it necessary to “field strip” the case, the metaphor here being the destruction of cigarette buts that the enemy might otherwise track them by. Putin, who only spoke of such information post-invasion, never made himself a part of the Coalition of the Willing, despite this grave information.
Whatever else anybody thought, nobody in the Clinton administration posited an unprovoked invasion of Iraq as an option. It took Bush to invade a country based on intelligence alone, and there he turned the groupthink of the CIA into a lethal foreign policy mistake of the first magnitude. Bush is the one who rushed in where angels feared to tread. And Bush is the one who has made sure that for the foreseeable future, we as a nation will have no option to move on from Iraq. If that is the case, Bush should be given no option to retreat from it either. Our boys and girls are dying over there for his mistake, his miscalculation.
We need a president who can ask questions of his own beliefs, of his own conclusions. We need a president who asks his underlings to take a different look at the issues. we need, in short, a president who can throw away bad ideas, even if they’re part of the party platform.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at August 28, 2004 10:14 PMDon’t worry Pinch, after Bush is booted out MoveOn will move on. Hopefully, that will be in November.
Posted by: Greg at August 28, 2004 10:42 PMSince when is MoveOn.org a 527 for truth? In less than two minutes I found three cases of MoveOn.Org’s deceptive ads just in the last two months:
I find it funny that those of you on the left need a “powerful, articulate and savvy voice” when you already have the New York Times, Washington Post, three major network newscasts and two cable news networks speaking for you.
As for the slam dunk stuff, I guess Bill Clinton lied to us for all those years about Iraq having WMDs. Every major world power also knew that Iraq had WMDs; hence, all those UN resolutions Iraq ignored for all those years. I, for one, am tired of seeing the fallacy of the appeal to ignorance on this topic. Basically, that fallacy is an argument that something is false because it has never been proven true. Just because we didn’t find the WMDs in the quantities we thought we would is not a surprise; after all, Iraq had 11-12 years to hide the stuff or move it. And, yes, we have found some stuff, I forget at the moment what (sarin?), which Iraq was prohibited from having.
While it would be nice to have a President question his own beliefs, at least we now have one who has some beliefs. He doesn’t have more waffles than the International House of Pancakes. And Clinton led by opinion polls. His response to terrorism was to fire off a missile, and then return to putting out all the fires breaking out all over his administration. Kerry’s history, after the four months he highlights in Vietnam, has been one of reducing our military, reducing our intelligence and appeasing everyone around the world. We need a President who will put America first, not cave in to world opinion. Majority doesn’t rule when it comes to our security because, without security, nothing else matters.
Ahh.. the tired old claim of the weakened and wounded Republican party, the liberal press won’t give us a break. What a laugh! We have ample press bias on all sides for anyone who wants to read, view, or listen to it. What a copout for rational debate of the issues - everyone in the media picks on us….. Ugh!
Posted by: David R. Remer at August 29, 2004 12:22 AMI’m actually ready to agree at least partially with David on this (which means there’s a two-headed calf being born somewhere under a blue moon).
I think that we conservatives can start to relax somewhat about media bias. Not because the NYT, CNN, and the three “old media” stations aren’t frightfully biased, but because their relevancy has been dramatically eroded. For all the talk about the Dean campaign effectively harnassing the internet and alternate media sources (before they got creamed), it looks to me that conservatives have really proven the most effective at using new technologies to influence and frame the national debate. The swifites, with a mere couple of hundred thousand dollars, would have gotten nowhere without the internet and conservative blogs. The influence of old media persists, but no longer holds a monopoly. Now, especially when something is the truth, Big Brother won’t be able to grind into oblivion beneath his boot! Viva the revolution! Conservatives are speaking truth to power.
Posted by: Martin at August 29, 2004 01:03 AMWILL YOU PLEASE ADDRESS THESE QUESTIONS….
Twenty questions for John Kerry.
1. The Bush campaign maintains that you spent 20 years in the Senate with no signature legislative achievements. What do you consider to be the five most important pieces of legislation that you’ve authored?
a. What’s the most important piece of legislation regarding intelligence you’ve authored?
b. What’s the most important piece of antiterrorism legislation you’ve authored?
c. What’s the most important piece of health-care legislation you’ve authored?
d. What’s the most important piece of education legislation you’ve authored?
2. You’d agree that on paper, Dick Cheney’s experience and qualifications dwarf those of your running mate. Why would John Edwards make a better president during the war on terror than Dick Cheney?
a. It’s been widely reported that John McCain was your first choice as running mate. If true, why did you prefer Senator McCain to Senator Edwards?
3. Earlier this year you told Tim Russert that you’d release all of your military records, yet you’ve failed to do so and you refuse to release your Vietnam journal. Why shouldn’t the public infer that the contents of these documents would undermine your credibility or otherwise damage your candidacy?
a. When will you release the documents?
4. You’ve stated that you believe that life begins at conception yet you voted against the ban on partial-birth abortions. At precisely what point is a life worth protecting?
a. Is there any limitation on abortion (waiting periods, parental notification) for which you’d vote? If so, what?
5. You’ve promised to repeal much of the Bush tax cut and while in the Senate you voted to raise taxes an average of five times per year. If current economic trends remain largely unchanged during a Kerry presidency, would you seek additional tax increases?
a. How would you raise taxes and what are the highest marginal tax rates that you’d support?
6. You opposed the 1991 Gulf War even though Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, had invaded another country, and France and Germany had supported the war. In the current conflict no WMDs have been found, France and Germany oppose the action, and Saddam hadn’t invaded another country. Yet you recently stated that knowing what you know now, you’d nonetheless authorize the use of force — even though you voted against funding it. Could you please reconcile these positions?
7. You acknowledge meeting with representatives of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong in Paris in 1970. Afterward you urged Congress to accept the North Vietnamese proposals. Please explain how this wasn’t a violation of the Logan Act and, if you were still in the Naval Reserves at that time, how it wasn’t a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibiting unauthorized communications with the enemy.
8. In several speeches before black audiences you’ve stated that a million African Americans were disenfranchised and had their votes stolen in the 2000 presidential election. There are no official or media investigations that support that statement. What evidence do you have to support the statement and if you believe a million blacks had their votes stolen, why haven’t you called for criminal prosecutions and congressional investigations?
9. Do you dispute the National Journal’s assessment that you’re the nation’s most liberal senator? If you do, which senators do you consider to be more liberal and why?
10. Why did you propose cutting the intelligence budget by $6 billion in 1994?
11. As president, would you nominate anyone to be either an attorney general, FBI director, or CIA director who had been a leader and chief spokesman for a group that had discussed and voted upon a plan to assassinate U.S. senators (even if the proposed nominee had opposed such plan)?
12. You have consistently stated that you “never, never” attended the November 1971 Kansas City meeting of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War at which a plan to assassinate six pro-military U.S. senators was discussed. Several newspapers reported that when confronted with FBI surveillance reports, your campaign “all but conceded” that you were in attendance , but claimed that this was a mere “footnote in history.”
a. Were you there?
b. Did you discuss the assassination of U.S. senators? What did you say?
c. Did you vote upon such a plan? How did you vote? Were any similar plans discussed by your group at any time? What were they?
d. If the plan was voted down, what steps did you take to insure that supporters of the plan didn’t carry it out anyway?
e. Especially considering that this took place in an era of political assassinations and assassination attempts (Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., George Wallace, etc.), did you report the discussion to any law-enforcement authorities? If not, why not?
f. When did you resign from the organization?
g. Do you dispute reports that you continued as a spokesman for the organization for more than a year after the Kansas City meeting?
h. If this was a mere footnote in history why have you repeatedly and vehemently denied you were there?
i. Did your campaign, as alleged in several newspaper accounts, attempt to get a witness to change his story about your attendance?
13. You have criticized the Patriot Act. What portions would you repeal or amend and why? What evidence do you have of any abuses of the Patriot Act?
14. As president, what would you do about Iran’s emerging nuclear capability?
15. During your eight-year tenure on the Senate Intelligence Committee you missed more than thee fourths of all public meetings. It’s also been reported that you have skipped or delayed receiving intelligence briefings during the campaign. Why should the public believe that you’re serious about this issue?
16. What do you think is appropriate punishment for guards (and their superiors) found guilty of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib? Do you believe they should be stripped of command and receive dishonorable discharges and prison time?
17. On May 6, 2001, on Meet the Press, you stated that you had committed “the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers” in violation of the Geneva Convention. Specifically, you said you burned villages and “used 50-calibre machine guns, which [you] were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people.”
a. Who ordered you to use 50-caliber machine guns on people?
b. How many people did you shoot with the 50s and how many of them were killed or wounded?
c. When and where did these shootings occur?
d. What other atrocities did you commit and when?
e. Which village(s) did you burn down and when?
f. Were any of your crewmembers present during the commission of any of these atrocities?
g. Did you order them to participate in the atrocities? Did they follow your orders?
h. Why were there no reports of these atrocities? Did you order your crew not to report them?
i. Are any of these incidents described in your Vietnam journal? If not, why not?
j. Did you observe thousands of (or any) other troops committing atrocities? When, where and what kind? Did you report them? If not, why not?
k. In light of your admitted atrocities, if Abu Ghraib guards found guilty of abuse should receive prison time and be stripped of command, why do you believe you should be considered for commander-in-chief?
18. Who among the justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court would be a model for your nominees to the federal bench? Why?
19. In a speech before Drake University Law School you characterized U.S. allies in the war in Iraq as “some trumped-up so-called Coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted,…” Do you maintain that Great Britain has been bribed, coerced, bought, or extorted? What about Italy? Japan? Poland? Please specifically identify those members of the Coalition that have been either bribed, coerced, bought, and extorted and the officials who were bribed or bought.
20. You told George Stephanopoulos that you had a plan to get out of Iraq but refused to provide details. Would you consent to having your secret plan privately evaluated by an independent, bi-partisan panel of military experts who could report the plan’s merits to the electorate without divulging the details?
a. Would you also consent to privately revealing to an independent panel the names of the foreign leaders who secretly support you so that the panel can confirm your story to the electorate?
b. Ditto regarding the leaders whom you say have secretly told Senators Biden and Levin that you must win?
Obviously, there are a lot more questions — Social Security, health care, etc. Certainly there are tougher questions and those more artfully crafted. This is just a start. Feel free to add your own. TV-newsmagazine producers are welcome to use any of the above.
Alan Gluck
5138 Marlin Way
Oxnard, Ca 93035
805 985 7471 - Ventura Office
805 444 0295 - Cell
Alan, please write your own posts instead of cutting and pasting from other web sites.
At the very least provide a source credit (National Review). Thanks.
-Cf
Posted by: Christopher Fahey at August 29, 2004 05:16 PMWILL YOU PLEASE ADDRESS THESE QUESTIONS….
Twenty questions for John Kerry.
I stopped counting the question marks when I got to fifty (50). Maybe the same counting technique you use was used in Florida, circa 2000
Martin:
Conservatives are speaking truth to power.Cute, Martin, coopting a lefty catchphrase. Never mind that it presumes (in this instance) that the SBVL group speaks the truth, or that the media is the reigning force of liberal power. I will warrant that the media has a large but decreasing influence, and even that journalists from the three original networks have a slight liberal slant, but that is more than mitigated by the corporate ownership which sets the agenda about the emphasis of reporting. Posted by: Walker at August 30, 2004 10:29 AM
