#swiftboating

[porterdavis]

[janedrewfinally]

"Since the announcement he would join Vice President Kamala Harris atop the party ticket, Walz has come under sustained fire over his decision to retire following 24 years of service in various Guard units while his battalion was allegedly under orders to deploy or set to soon receive orders, and over his use of the Command Sergeant Major rank in campaign messaging.

However, according to information shared by multiple official sources within the MNG, Walz earned that rank and would need either the gift of prophecy or a time machine to use the deployment as an excuse to leave the service, as his May 2005 retirement date came months before the 1-125th Battalion of the 1st Brigade Combat Team learned they would mobilize and most of a year before the unit was actually deployed to Iraq for what would become a historically long, 22-month tour.

According to Lt. Col. Kristen Augé, the MNG’s State Public Affairs Officer, Walz “served from April 8, 1981, to May 16, 2005″ during which time he “held multiple positions within field artillery such as firing battery chief, operations sergeant, first sergeant, and culminated his career serving as the command sergeant major for the battalion....

Walz’s official May retirement date came almost two full months before the 1-125 Field Artillery found out they would likely mobilize. An official order was not issued until a month after that, about 90 days after Walz left the service, according to information provided by Lt. Col. Ryan Rossman, the MNG’s Director of Operations.”

[gothicvalentine]

Let's talk about Walz and what the only source that matters says....

Here is the timeline of Walz’s service. Don’t allow the Republicans to swiftboat Walz like they did presidential candidate John Kerry. 

BTW, important info: the man behind the Walz lies is the man behind John Kerry’s swiftboat lies attack that cost him the election.

[democracyunderground]

"The year was 2004. U.S. Senator John Kerry was the Democratic presidential nominee running to unseat President George W. Bush. The Iraq War was a major campaign issue and Sen. Kerry campaigned against it by accurately attacking his Republican opponent.

"Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so. And proclaiming mission accomplished certainly doesn't make it so," Kerry declared upon accepting the Democratic nomination.

Backed by GOP donors, veterans – some with grievances against Kerry – formed a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), falsely attacking Kerry's Vietnam War record. It was a massively-funded multi-million dollar machine that helped President Bush win re-election by destroying Senator Kerry's military record, and the term "swiftboating" – an organized political and personal smear campaign leveling false accusations – came into being as a result.

It's first ad was released on August 4 or 5, 2004 – almost 20 years to the day when the Trump campaign began its attack on Governor Walz.

On August 31, 2020 Politico ran an exclusive report: "Swift Boat mastermind to launch massive super PAC to boost Trump."

"The new organization, Preserve America, is poised to begin a $30 million advertising blitz," Politico detailed, adding that it "will be overseen by Chris LaCivita, a veteran Republican strategist who orchestrated the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth takedown of John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race."

Today, Chris LaCivita is the top advisor to Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.

On Thursday, amid the swiftboating of newly-minted Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, The New Yorker's award-winning Jane Mayer wrote: "Remember when John Kerry was Swiftboated by Chris LaCivita who is doing it to Tim Walz now? Guess who funded it? Harlan Crow, the billionaire who has been lavishing freebies on Clarence Thomas."

Back in 2004, that massively-funded multi-million dollar machine, or "millions of dollars in shadowy contributions," as New York Magazine explains it, spent $22,565,360, according to Open Secrets. (That's about $34 million in current U.S. dollars.)

One of Swift Boat's top donors was conservative GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, the Texas billionaire whose financial relationship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been the subject of numerous bombshell investigative reports. Recently, Senate Democratic Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden detailed some pf Crow's alleged gifts to Justice Thomas. Legal experts have called for Justice Thomas's resignation, and some legal experts have called for the U.S.. Dept. of Justice to open an investigation into Thomas.

(Crow's funding of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was made via his privately-held company, Crow Holdings. According to Open Secrets, Crow has made 1193 donations to candidates, PACs, and political parties since 1989.)

Last year, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) reported, "One of Crow’s first forays into large donations was by providing some of the initial financing of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an organization that spent millions running attack ads in 2004 against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and was later fined nearly $300,000 by the Federal Election Commission for failing to register as a political committee."

"Even as the Supreme Court was deliberating Citizens United," CREW continued, "Crow reportedly provided the major funding for Liberty Central, another dark money group, this one with links to Justice Thomas."

Citizens United was the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case that – in a 5-4 decision – declared, effectively, money is speech, opening the floodgates to dark money groups that have poured untold billions of dollars into U.S. politics.

"Liberty Central was a 501(c)(4) organization founded by [Justice Thomas's spouse] Ginni Thomas in late 2009 that counted Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo as a board member," CREW's report states. "Ms. Thomas served as president through November 2010 and was paid a salary of more than $120,000. According to Politico, of the $550,000 in anonymous start-up funds the group received in 2009, $500,000 came from Crow, who also held an event for the group at his Dallas home a few months after it launched."

"In helping bankroll the Republican network of dark money groups following Citizens United, Crow has taken full advantage of the diminishing transparency laws around our politics—which Justice Thomas has been instrumental in dismantling," CREW concluded.

In 2007, Newsweek published a deeply sourced, 7000-word report on what went on behind the scenes in the Kerry campaign and how it failed to adequately respond to the swiftboating. Essentially, the report suggests, the campaign reacted too slowly, tried too hard to play nice, and did not immediately attack with full force."

[steve-pift]

[qupritsuvwix]

There is no such thing as an “ex-Marine”.

[filosofablogger]

We Cannot Sit Back And "Hope For The Best"!!!

Thom Hartmann is among my favourite political writers, and he has a way of analyzing and explaining issues with a bit of dry humour thrown in to keep it interesting.  The following piece is from nearly two weeks ago, but it’s worth sharing even now …  (Note:  all links open in a separate tab) The Swiftboaters are Back with the Biden Impeachment Slander campaigns like this must instead be hit…

[alex51324]

For further information, a Swift Boat is the type of small vessel that the US Navy used in Vietnam. John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for President in 2004, had commanded one, and received medals and awards for his service.

The allegations--made in TV ads, during his campaign, 30+ years after Kerry's military career had ended--were that there were discrepancies in the documentation supporting his nomination for these medals. This, they said, made his medals "stolen valor," and him unfit to be Commander-in-Chief. About 200 former sailors, calling themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, signed on to a statement condemning him.

They were 200 out of about 3600 total Swift Boat personnel; exactly one of them had ever served on Kerry's boat, and he was not present during the events for which Kerry was awarded the medals, and that the controversy was supposedly about. A handful of others were on other boats participating in the operation for which Kerry was awarded one Purple Heart and the Bronze Star; the majority had never been anywhere near him.

Meanwhile, the other members of his former crew supported him, supported the version of events that got him the medals, and several actively campaigned for him.

The Navy reviewed the whole thing in late September of 2004--so, a little over a month before the election--and found that everything was in order. By then, however, Kerry's alleged dishonesty and "stolen valor" had been in the headlines for months.

As Griselda said, Kerry, unlike his opponent George W. Bush, was an active-duty military veteran, and normally the Republicans would be all over that--and some veterans, who normally vote Republicans, might have considered crossing the aisle for that reason.

But, with this stolen-valor story that was, I emphasize, spun up out of absolutely nothing, they managed to alienate him from his fellow veterans, and simultaneously shine a spotlight on a part of his career in public service that the progressive wing of the Democratic party would find distasteful*.

(*To be clear, Kerry was not accused by anyone of having any involvement in any of the numerous war crimes that the US committed in Vietnam; it was just that those events loomed so large in the Left that Kerry's Vietnam war service tainted him by association.)

And the reason this is important, right now at this moment, is that Kamala Harris was Attorney General of the state of California, and Republicans love law-and-order almost as much as they love decorated veterans.

And progressives...well, you know. We already went through the whole "Kamala is a cop" thing four years ago; if she does end up being the nominee--which, again, is looking increasingly likely--watch for them to find something she did where they can put her in a similar situation.

The stolen valor aspect is a bit of a red herring; the key thing about this technique is that you find, or make up, a story where if you spin it one way, it looks bad to centrists/potential Republican crossover voters, and the other way it looks bad to progressives. And then you just flood the zone with both versions, until everybody is sick of hearing about it.

I don't know what Kamala Harris's Swift Boat incident is, but again, given her history as Attorney General, I'd be shocked if there wasn't something.

Swift Boating

I mentioned remembering John Kerry's presidential campaign in a recent post and then realized that some of y'all don't remember that. In fact, some of y'all might not have been alive for that!

Okay, so in 2004, Americans were scared. There'd been a terrorist attack, and the news had color coded alert warnings for how likely the U.S. was allegedly to be attacked again. I'm sure you'll be shocked that those warnings disappeared as soon as Bush was reelected. 🙄 Anyway, America was At War and Osama bin Laden was At Large, so that was what the election was about.

And John Kerry was the Democratic Party's attempt to thread that needle. Kerry had a history of anti-war activism BUT he was also a decorated war veteran who'd keep America safe and guide the country through this difficult time.

He got Swift Boated. And yes, if you've heard that term, the 2004 election is where it originated. Ye gods, it was so bad that the election laws were changed afterwards. That's why political ads tell you who paid for them now.

But anyway, they called Kerry a liar and a coward and said that he didn't deserve his medals.

He was a war veteran - the type of person the GOP usually faps over - and they tore his public image apart.

So, yeah, it doesn't matter who the Democratic presidential candidate is. The opposition will find something, and if they can't find something, they'll make something up.

It can't be avoided. It can only be countered.

[tomorrowusa]

After losing the debate, Trump got Swiftboated.

Trump boat parades ain't what they used to be.

Some news from Thursday...

Kamala Harris Taunts ‘Chicken Man’ Trump After He Dodges Another Debate

We wonder why. 🤔

[djkerr]

Diane: So, you coming with me? Liz: Oh, your leftie rebellion? Diane: Mm, trust me, Liz, you'll be impressed.

📷 @thegoodfightfp X | imdb

TGF 03x04 The One with Lucca Becoming a Meme

[subliminalbo]

It's genuinely insane that

There have been 8 presidential elections since 1992

Republicans have won 3 of those elections

And have won the popular vote exactly 1* time

It's like if Brady had won five of his seven Super Bowls on some tuck rule bullshit

[cleoselene]

Did you know?

Democrats have won the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections going back to 1992? The only time the GOP has won the popular vote in the last 36 years in a presidential election was in 2004, and it was a pretty narrow margin. This was a wartime election and the first election post-9/11. The Democratic candidate was the unfortunately uninspiring John Kerry, who had been lied about. You know how in politics we say someone has been "swiftboated" when a successful lie is told about them? That term originates with the 2004 election because a bunch of people concocted an elaborate lie about John Kerry's military service. He wasn't super inspiring as a candidate, but that was the worst thing he did. He wasn't a bad guy. He was just running in a very gross, jingoistic time after the worst terror attack in American history, and had a bunch of successful lies told about him to the point where a whole word about a specific kind of lie was invented about it. THIS is the only time since 1988 that the Republican party has won the popular vote. George W. Bush did not win the popular vote in 2000. The Supreme Court ordered that votes stop being counted in Florida and handed the victory to Bush.

Donald Trump has never ever won the popular vote. The electoral college handed him the victory in 2016, less than 15,000 votes across three states decided the election. Hillary Clinton in total won about 3.7 million more votes than Donald Trump. Trump HATES hearing this number. He hates even more that Joe Biden got about 7 million more votes. He hates even more that you bring up the fact that he lost his midterm elections for his party in 2018, badly. And that the "Red Wave" in 2022 did not happen because of backlash at his Supreme Court. Or that in 2023 voters continued to reject his Supreme Court at the polls.

He knows, the Republicans know, that if more people vote, they lose. They don't want small d democracy. They want authoritarianism. They want to suppress it.

So when you get cute about not wanting to vote, you're not doing activism. You're surrendering.

[paulsemel]

Fifty-six years after it happened, Vietnam vet Raúl Herrera is telling the story of how he, a Mexican-American from Texas, ended up on a Swift Boat during a heroic mission in his new memoir "Capturing Skunk Alpha." To learn more, check out this Q&A. 📖���

[cleolinda]

Re: Couch fucking

Since people saw “JD Vance fucked a couch” mentioned in the “Tampon Tim: He’ll stop the red wave” post and went “What? JD Vance fucked a couch?,” no, he did not fuck a couch in his youth. The rumor was started by a random shitpost on the service I will continue to call Twitter until the heat death of the universe:

(Archived by Snopes, now view-limited by the author)

@rickrudescalves

can't say for sure but he might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to fucking an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (vance, hillbilly elegy, pp. 179-181)

7:58 PM • Jul 15, 2024 • 1.8M Views

No draft or edition of Vance’s book Hillbilly Elegy ever said any such thing, but the inclusion of page numbers made “JD Vance fucked a couch” look very truthy (file this away as a tactic to look for in other propaganda you see). Neither Vance nor the Trump campaign can fully deny this because that would only draw more attention to the concept of “Vice presidential candidate JD Vance fucked a couch.” In great frustration, a campaign spokesman has finally said,

"We're not going to talk about couches or coconuts or whatever weird fetish KamalaHQ is into. When we have something to say, we'll say loud and clear. If Kamala is a coward, we'll call her a coward. If Tim Walz is a liar, we'll call him a liar.”

JD Vance then proceeded to lie about Tim Walz’s 24-year military record, calling it “stolen valor.”

As much as people enjoyed Walz’s quip that he would love to debate Vance if Vance would be “willing to get off the couch,” I do agree that Democrats should not stoop to such Republican tactics as (off the top of my head)

Telling lies about presidential candidate John Kerry’s military service (which inspired the general term “swiftboating” “to describe an unfair or untrue political attack”)

Claiming that then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was born in Kenya and not an American citizen, which would disqualify him, leading to an entire “birther” movement headed by Donald Trump

Accusing Democrats of trafficking children in the basement of a pizza parlor that had no basement, leading one man who sincerely believed this to “[travel] to Comet Ping Pong to investigate the conspiracy and [fire] a rifle inside the restaurant to break the lock on a door to a storage room during his search”

Claiming that North American schools keep kitty litter on hand for students who “identify as cats,” a “joke” meant to target protections for transgender students

And, as mentioned, splitting hairs over exactly what rank Tim Walz had vs what he retired at, elevating this to a far more serious accusation of stolen valor. In fairness, this is probably revenge for the couch thing.

So yes, I agree, we shouldn’t use the same tactics that the Republicans have been using for decades. It’s tasteless and it does not make us look better. I would perhaps remind you of the saying “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” but yes, we should stop confusing people into thinking that JD Vance fucked a couch. No couch was ever fucked by JD Vance. I endorse this message.