Conservatives Wingnuts are very adept at repeating falsehoods over and over so that a bogus meme becomes "fact" (i.e., Gore invented the Internets, Clinton’s $10,000 haircut held up airline traffic at LAX, Bush didn’t blow off his Guard duty). It’s very important that we push back when they engage in this kind of dishonesty because they’re shameless revisionists, and they’ve racked up quite an extensive track record for successfully distorting the historical record.
Witness Austin Bay in today’s Statesman:
John Kerry’s "Christmas in Cambodia" yarn ignited the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Whatever your memory of the 2004 presidential campaign, Kerry’s sudden silence about a wartime Christmas "seared" in his memory was a rare example of a citizens group publicly backing down a powerful U.S. senator and a major-party presidential candidate.
Let’s count the factual errors/distortions/lies in this one paragraph. Which do you think is the biggest whopper?
- That the Swift Boat Liars, bankrolled by fat Texas Republican wallets with extensive ties to the Bush campaign, are characterized as a lowly "citizens group" taking on the big, scary Kerry?
- That Bay claims Kerry’s "yarn" about being in Cambodia "ignited" the group (in fact, the Kerry/Cambodia story wasn’t brought up by the Swift Boat Liars until their third ad)?
- That Kerry’s memory of being in Cambodia was largely vindicated?
- That Bay doesn’t mention that the Swift Boat Liars have been exposed as a bunch of frauds (even more here) and were so out of bounds that even John McCain denounced them?
So what? This is 4 years ago, right? Who cares what Bay says? Wrong.
We need to challenge these people aggressively, consistently, every time they make shit up, because the media (in this case, the Statesman) doesn’t. They play right along. And before you know it, Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet and the Swift Boat Liars were a ragtag nonpartisan grassroots organization that came together to tell the truth.
Please politely tell the Statesman to correct the record.
You can use this online form here.
And feel free to write Austin Bay here.
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SO?
True dat.
Hey BT!
But isn’t it impolite to call liars by their true names? /s
is this paper a rethug outpost? and do they pay attention to criticism?? just wondering….
I sent Austin a little note asking for some Journalistic integrity.
To bad the truth “reiterated” does not have the same value as redundant lies!
Yes, they should now be referred to as Mis-speakers. :-)
Nope, it’s not a wingnut rag at all. But they love Bay, who’s apparently allowed to just make shit up.
The most interesting “Swiftboating” of Sen. Obama is being covered at Phil Weiss’s blog, mondoweiss. One of Obama’s advisors, a Gen. McPeak, had the temerity to suggest in an interview five years ago in the Portland Oregonian, that:
and ….. snip….
McPeak is being pinned by a GOP group called the Republican Jewish Coalition is behind it.
You’re absolutely right BT. We have to let them know they’ll pay a price everytime they engage in dirty manipulative behavior. Shine the spotlight brightly on them!
- Tom
BT,
Who is Austin Bay? Is this a real name and is this person a regular AAS columnist?
What, like cow dung! Holy “bat crap,” Batman!!
Just in case anyone thinks their voice isn’t heard, witness the release from solitary confinement after thirty five years of two prisoner in Louisiana after the public found out and all hell broke loose.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/m…..62008.html
Yesterday afternoon on MSNBC Joe Scarborough said that Al Gore was so prone to make up exaggerations about himself it made everyone inclined to believe that he had claimed to invent the Internet. IIRC, Rachael Maddow was there but didn’t challenge him.
He’s one of Putz’s (Glenn Reynolds) favorite bloggers/columnists. He’s got a long track record of engaging in these types of typical wingnut distortions. Huge war cheerleader.
Google him, and you’ll see pretty quickly what he’s all about.
He’s Very Serious!
See? That’s the kind of bullshit we’ve got to kill. They’ll just keep doing it again and again otherwise.
done and done.
what a schmuck Austin Bay is.
Obama already got rid of Brzezinski because right-wing zionists don’t like him.
I was multitasking but was quite surprised someone didn’t nail him.
This is why I jump up every time someone starts with the Pow-Mia League of families and Mc Cain. There is plenty to go after him for without supporting these people. The SWBVFT, Ted Sampley, Gathering of Eagles and the Pow-Mia shit heads are one in the same.
Their MO is to pile on lie after lie till you’re overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of them. There isn’t enough time in the day to track down and correct all of their lies. After awhile you just have to give up due to sheer exhaustion.
Done and done.
Three vital points on this issue.
1) There were Swiftboat crews that did enter Cambodia. This was done at the behest of Adm. Zumwalt.
2) Newsweek actually sent reporters to investigate the incident where Kerry’s crew came under fire by an RPG-weilding unit of VC. This is the event where the Swiftboaters accused Kerry of shooting an unarmed civilan teenager in the back. The villagers recalled the incident and said that the individual killed was armed and was not a teenager, but a much older commander of the unit.
3) The Swiftboaters likely received money foltered through the Treasurer of the RNCC, a man currently being investigated for embezzling millions of dollars from the Republican National Congressional Committees coffers. Turns out he worked as chief financial officer of the Swiftboaters, as well.
As soon as I get home from work, I’ll send my little note along to Austin. In the meantime, it appears that St. John can’t even make up his own shit-he’s gotta steal it.
Oops, linky-poo:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/…..lagiarism/
Busted, the ‘tipping point’ is coming.
Thanks fot that link.
John Conyers has had a pretty steep ‘learning curve’ of late, ‘Directive 51′ and now ‘this’.
Maybe, just maybe the light’s adawning …
Those are all excellent points. The idea that somehow the SB liars got together because Kerry said he was in Cambodia is so bogus, it makes bogus claims look bad.
Oil up a buck because of oil pipelines blown up in Iraq? Nice having out “testicles,” economics livelihood, and standard of living in the hands of speculators!! What a system!!!!!
Fuck em. Where’s southerndagon, he operated there. I can tell you from being on the damn roads in the Delta it was hard enough to figure out where you were without being in those canals and rivers.
Here’s some good news
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Defense Secretary Robert Gates has formally ordered the Air Force, Navy and Defense Logistics Agency to conduct an inventory of all U.S. nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon-related materials to make sure all items are accounted for, according to a Pentagon memo released Thursday.
All Rachel would have to say is Al Gore has a Nobel peace prize to show for his work and you have a morning talk show.
Exactly. What, is there a big sign on the border that says, “YOU ARE NOW IN CAMBODIA”? Assholes.
OK Tweety, there’s your show for tonite.
Not to mention ‘homes’ for some unlucky ones.
The ’speculators’ done been playin’ fast and loose with our lives, our hopes, and our future.
Enough!
More than enough …
My question for Gates – Why the fuck don’t we do that 24X7 in REAL TIME?!!!
Yessir, time to close that barn door and count how many horses are gone.
No, I think it said
Go tell the Spartans, oh stranger passing by
That here, obedient to their laws we lie.
Yea, well since 9/11 we’ve really gotten our shit together on account of we are in this big war on terror.
from today’s article linked above – in defense of McBush Iran/AQ bs -
ok, who wants to go first ?
does this mean they aren’t regularly audited? That they aren’t completely sure all the noses are counted and accounted for?
OT, sort of, but speaking of Louisiana: Psychos with Chainsaws.
Wow. What do you suppose the media coverage would look like if it comes out that there is a nuke or two missing? Maybe one of those boosted-fission dial-a-yield ACM’s from Minot, like the ones that somehow attached themselves to a B-52 and flew to Barkesdale by accident last year…
When I handled classified materials in the 1980’s, I was expected to be able to account for any item registered to me on demand. This means that security could walk in unannounced and say “Where’s document number so-and-so”? And I’d better have it in my possession AND control or have a slip indicating that it had been properly handed off. And what I handled was certainly NOT nuclear weapons.
I still don’t think that the B52 incident was an accident. That’s simply asking too much of coincidence. I DO think the shipment to Taiwan was an accident.
But it’s good they’re taking an inventory.
Boxturtle (Does Cheney’s personal F-Bomb count? :-) )
Greetings, Raven;
You don’t suppose this is preparatory to their ‘use’ do you?
Maybe we could write sweet nothings on them in a language suitable to the Iranian people.
‘America’ or its ‘leadership’ wouldn’t be foolish enough to do that would they?
‘Course I know wee Georgie’s outgrown frogs.
barf. barf. barf.
I don’t think that B-52 inciident was an accident either. Someone had to authorize the release of those weapons, go through the security, and order them mounted on that plane. This does not happen by accident.
Speakin’ of media, BT, I mentioned in earlier threads today Matt Taibbi’s take on media etc on Imus. They finally got a link up at WABC, and it’s worth a listen. You can get to it thru my nom de blogs or this link….
Prairie Today: Rights of Spring
I guess I hope not.
I’ll add my hope to your’s.
Shouldn’t that be “bark. bark. bark.”?
si.
Accident? Didn’t the sargent who was checking the “duds” note a loose label? The identification is supposed to be painted on. That mislabeling was no accident.
Spot on. Bay’s method is being practiced daily, to ever greater effect. As Glenn Greenwald points out today, Kagan, Kaplan and O’Hanlon were using the same method on Monday to tell us that the civil war in Iraq – IS OVER! Never mind that little tete a tete going on in Basra just now. That’s just a little voluble disagreement; nothing to worry about.
Imagine the “yarns” the army of Bays will come up with to populate the Bush library.
A LOT more than that had to happen. If one assumes that it was an accident, you have derelection of duty on at least a dozen people. Somehow, the nukes got “unowned”. That shouldn’t be able to happen. Then the nukes got misstored and nobody caught it on any inspection. Then the nukes got removed and nobody caught it. Then they got mounted and nobody caught it. All the while the nukes remained “off books”? I don’t know everything about Nuke security, and I know there are other checks though I don’t know what they are. But the failure of the checks above, never mind the others, requires much more belief in cooincidence and bad luck than I possess.
I think the crew chief at Barksdale may have prevented an “accident”. I’d consider giving him a medal.
Boxturtle (And I suspect Cheney was foaming at the mouth for the next week)
she rolled her eyes!!
Yes. I was trying to be concise…with the fail-safes and multiple redundancy checks, the odds that that could have all happened “accidentally” is near zero. VERY near zero.
I think the crew chief at Barksdale may have prevented an “accident”. I’d consider giving him a medal.
It might come back to haunt him ya know?
They’re supposed to
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/…..4540_5.htm
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/…..45405m.htm
Which is why the story that it was a “mistake” doesn’t pass the smell test
My comments to the paper:
Your paper has a right to publish unvarnished falsehoods. Whether your exercise of that right has the effect of extending those falsehoods’ shelf life through repetition, or diminishing your paper’s credibility by association, depends on your readers’ discerning intelligence, on whether factual truth vs. demonstrable lie equals merely “differing opinions” or something larger and more offensive.
Austin Bay’s most recent diatribe has too many falsehoods to list here. To begin at the beginning, the term “Swift Boating” is already recognized shorthand for fabricating and disseminating disingenuous falsehoods at the behest of a powerful threatened interest. If the Swiftboaters were “a citizens group”, then Moqtada Al Sadr’s militiamen are “neighborhood activists”.
Implying otherwise as Mr. Bay does either insults your readers’ intelligence, or else panders to the “One Born Every Minute” demographic. In either case, your choice to publish Mr. Bay’s writing sends a clear message to those for whom truth and accuracy trump contentiousness and hogwash. Yours and Mr. Bay’s message to those readers: “Read something else”.
Yeah. He might get a medal-informally, in the back of the head. Probably not, though. Easier and safer just to ruin the poor bastard’s life.
US personnel being told to keep their asses in the bunkers in the “International Zone”!
I think he wants to know if Deadeye Dick has absconded with a Mushroom Cloud Maker.
-G
OT: On Monday, Father of the Surge, AEI’s Fred Kagan, proclaimed the Iraqi civil war over. Less than 24 hours later all hell broke loose in Basra: http://www.salon.com/opinion/g…..index.html
“The International Zone”-that would be funny, were it not for the lives at stake.
That is mulch too mulch.
And stoopid too.
Who knee(ds) cypress trees anyway, why I ‘member when our own dear Saint Ronnie told us that trees were the problem, create air pollution, you know.
No joke.
Was in New Orleans in late February, saw the Ninth Ward and checked out the Pearl River. Simply incredible, but the ‘response’ was, in a word, ‘unbelievable’. Many of those neighborhoods, especially in the lower Ninth, will never come back, nor will many of the people who left.
Really saw economic ‘class’ at ‘play’, big time. Quite sobering and disgusting.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought any orders relating to nuclear weapons had to come from the C-in-C? So how did those nukes get attached to aircraft without someone noticing?
Great letter, poliwog
More …
Defense Department
Nuclear Doctrine and Policy
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/…..index.html
nice!
We had a lot of conversation about that with a commenter called Althespook (Alfred Kelgarries, IIRC). He hasn’t commented here for quite some time, but TexBetsy and some other pups are still in touch with him. He didn’t think it was any accident either.
Nice Job. Entertaining and well-worded. A+
Thank you for this Blue Texan –
have been writing the Statesman about this guy and his inartful bs the past 4 years
Uh — you don’t think that Gates calling for an inventory has something to do with Cheney’s recent trip to the Middle East do you?
(My mind conjures visions of tactical nukes squirrelled away in the belly of Air Force Two…)
I miss him so much. His insights into how the government worked were priceless. Much less the bigger picture of the way things go, when you have to ‘game’ the way he did.
Seconded!
Also seconded!
new post upstairs!
Al the Spook’s piece on the B-52 incident
Can anyone besides me imagine Dubya literally stroking the football in a style and attitude similar to that of a ten-year-old boy? Now imagine that this guy is the President. Oh wait, he is the President! OMFG! What sick joke hath the Rethuglicans unleashed on the world?
Oooh, that’s brilliant! One would think they’d be doing such inventories at least annually. That’s how it’s done in every private business i8n America, after all.
I thought I could find some of the old FDL threads, but a sesrch came up empty. I forgot about his blog, although I had it bookmarked. He doesn’t post on his own blog any more.
Put the two together…the defense on the mis-shipped nukes was “it’s not a big deal, they didn’t have triggers”, and then we learn that nuclear triggers are also being “lost”.
This is just the sort of stuff that we are screaming at the former Soviet States about. I just pray that Gates’ inventory doesn’t discover that someone has worked out getting both a trigger and a bomb out sometime during the Bush Administration.
I recall that loads of high-end weaponry has been smuggled out of our military into the hands of the militia movement.
They were supposed to be “dummies”…the “weapons” not the military people involved, I mean.
Email and LTE sent, thanks Blue Texan.
I handled nuclear weapons while in the Army in the early 90’s. We pulled inventory constantly.
Apperantly, Dumsfeld decided that modernizing and streamlining the military meant that being extra, super careful of nuclear weapons was too inefficient.
Bush can fuck up the country. He can mangle the Constitution. He can be the biggest failure to ever sit in the Oval Office. But nuclear weapons can really ruin everyone’s day – forever.
Never forget the triumvarat of Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush have since at least the year 2001 when they took power have done all they could to destroy the liberty and freedoms of the entire world. These three are evil. Cheney is just plain evil, Rumsfeld is delusionally evil, and Bush is just plain stupid evil.
Will there be a peaceful transition of power 1/20/2008???