dangerous liberty

My good buddy Terry McAuliff sent me the following important email a few days ago:

This letter to the Democratic base raises a few questions in my mind, the first of which is “They really must think their base is DUMB”.

Over at the DL forum, Tumultuous Cogitations, a left of center poster asks of this ad: Will the right-wing partisans condemn THIS?

Well, no, this right-wing partisan will not, because the entire premise of the DNC “Action Alert” is a BIG FAT LIE.

The ad is SO specific, I really have to wonder how stupid the folks at the DNC think their base is!

To recap the ad (indented text are scenes from the ad):

The following video contains remarks made by and images from ads sponsored by Kerry Supporters.

(I bolded the parts that should give us the first clue)
The ad tells us straight off the video has ad images.

John Kerry has denounced our use of these ads attacking the President.

John Kerry doesn’t like this ad

He has not denounced liberal supporters like Al Gore, George Soros, and many other who have made speeches comparing the President to Adolf Hitler.

Ah, but Kerry doesn’t distance himself from supporters who have characterized Bush as Hitler publicly.

Note the bolding above - the ad further informs us of Kerry supporters who compare the president to Hitler.

The Faces of John Kerry’s Democratic Party

The Coalition of the Wild-Eyed

---

Al Gore: How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein’s torture prisons? [wild applause and cheering]

Well, he looks pretty wild-eyed in this clip!

Ad Clip text, with Hitler in the background: “What were WAR CRIMES in 1945?”

Switch to “Our Foreign policy 2003″ with Bush in the background, then:

“Sponsored by Moveon.org”

Hey! What do you know! Here are some IMAGES from an AD, just as promised at the beginning!

Howard Dean: I want my country back.

Wild-eyed, frothing.

Mike Moore: We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictious reasons

Sweaty.

Dick Gephardt: This president is a miserable Failure

Grim. Skeletor.

Image of Hitler (with Hitler speech as background audio), text reads “God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them,” (Bush/Cheney overlay text: “Images from MoveOn.Org ad“)

Oooh! A specific reference to “ad images”!! Can you feel the light?

Same ad, switch to image of Bush, Text: “and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did”

Look at that! Another image of George Bush! Now how did that get in a video comparing Democrats to Hitler??

Oh yeah, the ad told us how in the first few scenes!

Al Gore: He betrayed this country, He played on our fears

Close throated sputtering.

John Kerry: Today George Bush will lay off your camel, tax your shovel, kick your ass and tell you there is no promise land

This is about the most incongruent clip in the whole ad. All it shows is that Kerry tells a very, very FLAT joke…

This fades to Bush/Cheney text “This is not a time for pessimism and rage…”

Democratic base activists should listen to the president, he gives good advice right there, for an incompetent dumbass.

UPDATE: John Cole with a well done wrap-up, (hat tip, Ipse Dixit) giving us the Republican response to the faux outrage:

On Thursday, the campaign launched a web video titled Kerry’s Coalition of the Wild-eyed. The video featured Democrats who support John Kerry making negative and baseless attacks against the President. Interspersed in the video were segments of two ads that appeared on a website sponsored by MoveOn.org - a group campaigning for Kerry - in January.
On Friday night, John Kerry’s campaign denounced our use of these ads, and called that use “disgusting.”

The Kerry campaign says, “The use of Adolf Hitler by any campaign, politician or party is simply wrong.”

We agree. These ads, like much of the hate-filled, angry rhetoric of Kerry’s coalition of the Wild-eyed, are disgusting.

- Where was John Kerry’s disgust when he hired Zack Exley - the man responsible for encouraging the production of these ads as part of a MoveOn contest - to run the Kerry campaign’s internet operation?

- Where was John Kerry’s sense of outrage when Al Gore, just yesterday afternoon, compared the Bush Administration to the Nazis saying, “The Administration works closely with a network of ‘rapid response’ digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for ‘undermining support for our troops.’”

- Where was John Kerry’s anger when Al Gore in May spoke of “Bush’s Gulag”?

- Why has John Kerry not denounced billionaire and Democrat Party donor George Soros for comparing the Bush Administration to Nazis. Soros stated, “When I hear Bush say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,’ it reminds me of the Germans. It conjures up memories of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit (’The enemy is listening’).”

- Why has Kerry not spoken out against filmmaker Michael Moore who last October compared the Patriot Act to Mein Kampf. “The Patriot Act is the first step. ‘Mein Kampf’ - ‘Mein Kampf’ was written long before Hitler came to power.”

We created this web video to show the depths to which these Kerry supporters will sink to win in November.

Is this the Democratic Party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who reassured his countrymen we have nothing to fear but fear itself?

No. This is John Kerry’s Coalition of the Wild-eyed, who have nothing to offer but fear-mongering.

Sincerely,

Ken Mehlman
Campaign Manager

Update: Kevin Drum, continues the kvetching about this ad. I wonder if he’s actually seen it? Since images of Bush are also in the ad, is the Bush campaign comparing Kerry and Democrats to Bush, too? Can anyone see how odd this reasoning is?

PS: Check that forum thread, it has grown today (7/1).

Recent news stories detailing a call up of ‘retired’ military from the Individual Ready Reserve seem to leave out some important information - namely that the IRR is a part of a soldier’s overall service contract and, especially in times of war, should be expected to be put in use.

Military Bloggers are all over it and much more knowledgeable than I: Sgt. Stryker, and Blackfive both illuminate “The rest of the story”.

I don’t know if it is generous or not, but I’ll believe the media is just lazy on this one. Too lazy to double-check stories which tickle their anti-war fancies, anyway.

Ali comments from Iraq on Bremer’s last speech and the reaction of his friends, some of whom are Anti-American.

This is a great! read… Iraq looks less like a mistake when I hear reports of this nature…

I think Bush’s optimism is well placed. The US has made mistakes, but under Bush, we aren’t going back on our promises or leaving people hanging, as the first President Bush did in 1991.

Andrew Ferguson asks “Will `Fahrenheit 9/11’ Burn the Democrats?”

I certainly hope it does, but based upon my interactions with some die hard liberals, it certainly won’t burn them with their base.

I note a stark difference between the way the right wing nuts who produced the Clinton Chronicles were treated by the major party establishments and the way Moore’s dishonesty is treated today.

Feguson notes (and this matches my own recollection):

Polite society, especially the mainstream press, recognized the producers of “The Clinton Chronicles,’’ a California-based group called Citizens for Honest Government, as the fools they were. After hawking the film on his TV show, the televangelist Jerry Falwell never quite recovered what little reputation he had once enjoyed. Years later, he was still apologizing in TV appearances for associating himself with the movie.

Now, however, the paranoid strain has so thoroughly saturated U.S. politics that Moore’s cinematic slander can be feted and extolled—not only by mainstream movie reviewers but, more ominously, by the same Democratic Party establishment that Moore accuses of colluding with President George W. Bush.

At the Washington premiere of “Fahrenheit 9/11’’ last week, Moore was conspicuously greeted for the cameras by Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

“There might be half the Democratic Senate here,’’ Senator Bob Graham of Florida told the New York Times.

Unlike the Democratic Party, Moore has always prided himself on his radicalism. So who’s changed—Moore or the Democratic Party?

Answer: The Democratic Party.

The willingness to believe every bad thing about Bush, despite cogent arguments and evidence to the contrary, from swallowing whoppers about a fixed/stolen election to continued claims Bush lied to get us into war, says a great deal about the intellectual and ethical bankruptcy of modern Democrats.

Look at how they are spinning the latest Bush ad, showing how unhinged the party is and associating Kerry with his base at moveon.org! I interact with liberals arguing that the ad compares Democrats to Hitler when it is crystal clear the ad was showing THEIR COMRADES comparing Bush to Hitler.

Now, I can understand Democrats not liking the Bush campaign associating them with their base, but the truth is, if they forcefully repudiated these frothing Nazi comparing nitwits, they’d lose a good deal of their energetic support.

With younger blacks moving away from the party and dead folks and felons being purged from voter rolls in Republican run states, the Democratic party needs every vote it can buy!.

This is confidence building stuff, here. I hope Iraqis take advantage of these moments.

Carpe diem.

Yahoo! News - Iraqis Rejoice on Talk Radio Airwaves

Michael Rubin offers a very balanced look at the situation in Iraq as the CPA loses its “A” and the Iraqi Governing Council takes the reins.

I find it disturbing that the CPA has been dominated by Foggy Bottom and not surprising at all that they would back Bremer’s order to hold party slate election and push for neutrality among factions, leaving the floodgates open for Iranian mullah moolah to support extreme factions and starving the true liberals from any fiscal support.

Dangit! WE ARE SUPPOSED TO TAKE THE SIDE OF LIBERTY!!

Andrew McCarthy explains the particulars of the NY Times recent corrections on NRO.

$$$:

Even now, the Times feebly endeavors to minimize the importance of the collaboration evidenced by the newly reported document. It says the information indicates “that Iraq agreed to rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda, and that a request from Mr. bin Laden to begin joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia went unanswered. There is no further indication of collaboration.” (Emphasis added.) Nevertheless, the reader who has the patience to wade through several paragraphs of the Times disingenuously letting itself off the hook for refusing for weeks to report on this document will learn that what the newspaper really means when it says bin Laden’s suggestions “went unanswered.” In actuality, “the document contains no statement of response by the Iraqi leadership under Mr. Hussein to the request for joint operations[.]” Translation: Maybe there was a response and maybe there wasn’t, but this document does not tell us one way or the other.

Why is this important? Because it is the continuation of a pattern — another instance of an effective but misleading tactic repeatedly used by the Times, the intelligence community, the 9/11 Commission staff, and all the Iraq/Qaeda connection naysayers. To wit: When they can’t explain something, they never say they can’t explain it; they say it didn’t happen — even if saying so is against the weight of considerable counterevidence.

Too right. argumentum ad ignorantiam reigns supreme!

The Big Trunk discusses an aspect of Mark Steyn’s review of Clinton’s new book, namely that of the story Hillary was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, even though his fame rose some 6 years after Ms. Rodham’s birth.

It could well be that Hillary Clinton’s mother told Hillary this little lie for whatever reason a mother might have to build esteem, etc, etc.

Of course, I quit giving either Clinton the benefit of the doubt after seeing them operate over eight long years…

Bill Clinton Was Right.

Indeed.

a school yard blog: Lunch with the Soldiers.

Do read this - it is worth the effort.

He agreed with a General who spoke that the battle going on is not with Iraqi’s as much as it is terrorists streaming in from other countries. At this point he stopped speaking, collected himself, and said he had only been home two weeks. He stopped again, choked with tears and said 49 from his unit didn’t return home. He asked us to remember the good we are doing in Iraq, but to please not forget the cost. At this, he was given a standing ovation.

For me, and everyone else in the room, this was no longer a luncheon, but an event. I went home older, and confused. As I walked the room shaking hands I noticed their eyes. It has been some time since I have seen as much driving, true, honest and sincere eye contact. And the warmth and strength of the handshake. It really hit home for me that these men in uniform are doing a duty their country has asked them to do. For that, no number of handshakes or words of thanks can suffice. It didn’t matter for a moment who I was voting for or what I think about political affairs or education or anything else.

The soul searching started on the way home.

Could I send a son to battle?

Would I go to battle? And what for?

Would I give my life? And what for?

I can only say that I will encourage my sons to serve our Nation in this next great struggle against global evil. Let us hope the partisan anti-war propaganda is kept in check, so those lives lost are not lost in vain.

And I too, am willing to serve as needed, although right now, my best service to the nation is being home for my children.