Rosa Brooks: The Lunatic Right Returns (LA Times, via CommonDreams)

[marmar]

Published on March 2, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times
The Lunatic Right Returns
Bad News For Republican - Leading Conservatives Are Embracing Former Swift Boaters.
by Rosa Brooks

IF YOU HATED IT the first time, you might like the sequel better.

Remember Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the right-wing goon squad whose defamatory insinuations helped sink John Kerry's presidential campaign? They're back! This afternoon, key Swift boaters George "Bud" Day, Mary Jane McManus and Carlton Sherwood are holding a little reunion, in the guise of a panel discussion at the American Conservative Union's annual Conservative Political Action Conference. The panel topic? "The Left's Repeated Campaign Against the American Soldier."

It's not hard to visualize the right-wing talking points that will emerge from this. The Swift boaters will be dusting off their 2004 scripts and reaching back still further to dredge up their Vietnam-era notes. Expect to see all the old myths revived: The antiwar left spits on returning troops and gives aid and comfort to the enemy. Oh, John Murtha, why do you hate our brave troops?

The reemergence of the Swifties is depressing, but not because they're likely to do much damage to progressive candidates in the next election cycle. "Swift Boat II: The Sequel" will have a different ending from "Swift Boat I" because Americans just aren't that dumb.

Polls show the American public — and the troops themselves — to be deeply critical of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq and concerned about the war's devastating effect on the American military. We've watched the situation in Iraq go from bad to worse, from worse to worst and then from worst to unthinkably awful, as "insecurity" morphed into "sectarian violence," then into chaos and civil war. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0302-26.htm

[Peace Patriot]

1. "...whose defamatory insinuations helped sink John Kerry's presidential campaign." Not.

Read this other piece at Common Dreams, and ask yourself, what REALLY sank John Kerry's campaign?

"The Stolen Election of 2004
by Michael Parenti

(snip)

"Some 105 million citizens voted in 2000, but in 2004 the turnout climbed to at least 122 million. Pre-election surveys indicated that among the record 16.8 million new voters Kerry was a heavy favorite, a fact that went largely unreported by the press. In addition, there were about two million progressives who had voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 who switched to Kerry in 2004.

"Yet the official 2004 tallies showed Bush with 62 million votes, about 11.6 million more than he got in 2000. Meanwhile Kerry showed only eight million more votes than Gore received in 2000. To have achieved his remarkable 2004 tally, Bush would needed to have kept all his 50.4 million from 2000, plus a majority of the new voters, plus a large share of the very liberal Nader defectors.

"Nothing in the campaign and in the opinion polls suggest such a mass crossover. The numbers simply do not add up."

(MORE)
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0302-21.htm
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x266153

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I don't trust political analysts who attribute Bush's "win" to this or that, but fail to note the Bushite corporate takeover of our election system between 2002 and 2004, with electronic voting machines run on "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls.

It's staring us in the face--yet the combination of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, Bushite criminals, and the collusion of the Democratic Party leadership with the $3.9 billion electronic voting boondoggle, make this plainly fraudulent election system hard to see.

Wake up, my friends! You wonder how Dick Cheney can be planning a SECOND war in the Middle East, with his personal approval rating at 18%, and Bush's at 29%? And with EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT of the American people opposed to any U.S. participation in a widened Mideast war (poll posted here at DU last summer)? And 74% wanting the current war ended?

It's because they feel NO accountability to the American people. And why is that?

If you are going to perpetrate an illegal, unjust, heinous war, in a democracy, you have to fix the elections. That's what they did.

Do you have any idea who "counted" 80% of the votes in the 2004 election, what their political associations are, HOW they "counted" the votes, and how this all came about? If you don't know, you really need to investigate this matter. Political analysis based on blindness to the central reality of the 2004 election--its condition of near total non-transparency and rightwing corporate control--will inevitably result in failed strategy. Our strategy must first of all be aimed at restoring transparent elections, or we will never get our democracy back. We can argue with wingers until we are blue in the face, and nothing will change if we don't attend to the mechanism of democratic power: how our votes are counted and by whom.

This is not to say that winger control of the media should be ignored, nor that articulating leftist, democratic and common sense views and principles should be abandoned. Of course we need to attend to both things. But without transparent vote counting, we don't have the power to change things. The wingers can yammer on, in their complete domination of our public airwaves, as if their views merit such a monopoly. And we can't change that, or any public policy, if we have to outvote their machines, just to get a half-decent Congress.

Attend to the mechanism of power: transparent vote counting; vote counting that everyone can see and understand, in plain view of the public. We have LOST that, and we MUST get it back.