Its seems hardly worth mentioning, but Mr. O’Neil’s claims to a non-partisan political history turn out to be Bushwah. He has a verifiable history of contributions to the Republican Party and has tried to weasel that by claiming them to be contributions from his similarly named law partner. (Statements and references available at the decidedly partisan Media Matters website, http://mediamatters.org/items/200408180004.)
And this, from Sen Kerry:
“…And the fact that the President won’t denounce what they’re up to tells you everything you need to know—he wants them to do his dirty work…”
Still waiting, of course, for GeeDubya to forthrightly condemn these repulsive actions commited on his behalf. Still waiting for him to pay at least lip service to John McCain’s demand that the White House publicly deplore the Swifties campaign. Still wondering how many times the White House will bend McCain over for a jolly good rogering before he finally “Cheneys” them. Run! John, run! Run while you still have a scrap of dignity left, run before they subject you to one more public buggering on behalf of a man not fit to carry your pencils.
I’m afraid it’s too late. McCain doesn’t expect any political favors if Kerry wins and it would seem he doesn’t want to burn any bridges in case Bush does.
Respectfully disconcur. It looks as though McCain is entirely content to remain Sen from Arizona till Gabriel blows. He is widely respected amongst Dems, and is personally very friendly with Kerry. If he wanted a post within a Kerry admin, I’ve little doubt he could have it, esp. Defense, maybe State.
McCain has a high regard for loyalty. In my estimation, too much loyalty for entirely the worst people. But there’s no denying he has it.
I didn’t mean a political favor in the form of an office. Support for legislation that benefits Arizona is also on the list of possible political favors. Ambrose Bierce defined adherent as: A follower who has not yet obtained all he expects to get.
Loyalty isn’t an absolute good irrespective of circumstances. The number of people loyal to the worst of dictators proves it. And I would guess that many of them were loyal for what was in it for them.
For the record, I wish to state that I did my research into John “Life-Long Democrat” O’Neill’s campaign contributions on my own, without stealing either the data or the idea from Brit Hume or anyone else. So far as I can tell, that sumbitch owes me a cite.
And clearly, we can reasonably consider O’Neill to be a complete and utter liar who’s more interested in maintaining his facade of non-partisanship than the truth. Ironic, considering the name of his organization.
“My law partner donated all that money. Even though it has my name on the donations, and my law partner’s name is on completely separate donations.” Right, whatever you say, Mr. O’Neill.
O’Neill was on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer tonight (19 August) along with Tom Oliphant. Oliphant pointed out that O’Neill was one of those who sprang into action when the Nixon administration tried to discredit Kerry during his anti-Vietnam war activities. Oliphant covered that story. Oliphant also pointed out that Nixon had the Navy Dept., in the person of then Under Secretary of the Navy John Warner, examine Kerry’s Vietnam record in detail at that time and found nothing to support a charge of misrepresentation of Kerry’s service record. And Oliphant further pointed out that this issue has been raised by O’Neill and others in every one of Kerry’s politcal campaigns so O’Neill is merely rehashing his old bilge. When the O’Neill/Oliphant discourse becomes available at the {i]News Hour* on line, a cite will be forthcoming.
OLIPHANT: “… when Mr. O’Neill first surfaced in politics in 1971 after Kerry’s anti-war demonstration, it was very hard for many of us covering him to figure out where the Nixon White House ended and he began.”
OLIPHANT: "The point that I was trying to make, Jim, was at the time that Kerry first became a public figure, the very first thing that happened in the Nixon White House, aside from the support given to Mr. O’Neill and his cause, was to look back to see if there was anything in Vietnam they could use against John Kerry.
And Chuck Coalson’s office and other people involved politically with President Nixon did that back then.
…
The navy secretary, the second navy secretary for the Nixon administration was an elegant gentleman from Virginia by the name of John Warner. Today he is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has a view of this that is quite similar to Sen. McCain’s. And it was his department that reviewed the documentary and other evidence at the time. Nixon was desperate to get this guy."
OLIPHANT: “This has happened before in Sen. Kerry’s political campaigns: in '84, in '90, in '96. It comes and it goes with regularity.”
Oliphant is a columnist for the Boston Globe and has covered Massachusetts politics for years so he knows about Kerry’s campaigns.
And a correction. John Warner was Secretary of the Navy and not a mere Under Secretary.
Entirely inappropriate and irresponsible political speculation…
As many of you already know, the Swifties are due to come out with a new! improved! ad tomorrow a.m. Speculation abounds (boing!) about what new shattering revelation/Crock o’ Shit is about to be unleashed. Noodling about the net, I pick up rumors that they plan to insinuate that Kerry’s wounds were deliberately self-inflicted to get his wimp ass out of The Shit!
Impossible? They dasn’t! After all, it was a fuckin’ grenade, fer Chrissake!
Item: the estimable Ms. Michelle Malkin…(Anybody else remember Screaming Yellow Zonkers?..) on Hardball making just exactly that insinuation. Rumor has it that he tore her a new one on the spot, but who the fuck watches Hardbull?
(They say this link plays the clip, but not for me…)
I’ve heard these guys use the term “self-inflicted” any number of times, saw the same PBS Dave saw, and Lehrer is the first person I ever saw call O’Neill on it, make him say that he wasn’t even about to insinuate that it was a deliberate self-injury, but he was clearly sorry to have to eat that implication.
Anyway, you heard it here first. Maybe. Unless you told me.
I watched Hardball tonight, and both Malkin and Larry Thurlow were awful. But so was Matthews. He was barely in control of himself.
Malkin made a stupid error by not doing her research. She assumed that ‘self-inflicted’ means intentionally shooting yourself. When Matthews attacked her on that, she dissembled rather than coming clean about her lack of knowledge, which dug her a deeper hole.
Thurlow made a classic mistake - Matthews trapped him by asking for his personal opinion about why Kerry did what Thurlow claims he did, and Thurlow took the bait and went off on some tangent about how he thought Kerry had some sort of master plan. Matthews rightly ripped him a new one over that.
On the other hand, John O’Neill was on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour, and he did very well.
What I still don’t understand though is this notion that Bush should pick up the phone and order these guys to pull their ads. Matthews kept repeating that. It’s dirty politics, and even if Bush isn’t behind it, he should call them and tell them to stop.
But I thought that would be a violation of the law. I thought there was absolutely no coordination allowed between a ‘527’ and the candidate. What if Rove lets this thing continue until his internal polling shows that the gains are gone and Bush is starting to get blowback, and THEN Bush calls them and tells them to stop?
Just one more reason why campaign finance reform was a horrible idea.
In any event, I believe the Swiftvets will have to pull their ads soon anyway, won’t they? Doesn’t CFR demand that any ads that mention a candidate by name cease within 60 days of the election?
I see, its a legal issue. Kerry disapproves of the MoveOn.org ad about Bush, publicly objects to it in no uncertain terms, and the ad stops like it was shot in the head. But poor ol’ GeeDubya, however tormented his tender Methodist conscience may be, can’t do anything like that, because he’s the President. Boy, what a nasty Catch-22 for him, huh? Sometimes rich and powerful people just can’t catch a break, ya know? He should go clear some brush, he’ll feel better.
Here you can read the transcript of the interview with Thurlow and Michelle Merkin. Wherein Thurlow discusses how he intuited that Kerry had a “plan”, and how he closely observed its execution.
I fear Mr. Thurlow has overlooked the single crucial factor in aluminum haberdashery: the foil must be folded in alignment with true magnetic north, or it is useless in shielding against telepathic rays…
No one’s saying Bush should literally order them to stop airing the ads, they just want him to publicly condemn and disavow them. It is pretty chickenshit of Bush to try to reap political benefit from such a patently sleazy attack campaign while pretending to have clean hands about it.
John O’Neill has long been exposed as a lying sack of shit and long time professional Kerry hater since he was a hired punk for Nixon. I don’t know why you keep holding this guy up as some sort of exemplar, Sam. He’s Neidermeir from Animal House thirty years later. Do you have any response to the fact that he was lying about not being a partisan Republican, or do you think that non-partisan Republicans habitually donate thousands of dollars to exclusively Republican candidates over a period of over a decade?
In other news, here’s an intriguing now being teased on Drudge.
Oh my. I do hate to get involved in these things. For one, several dopers who have appointed themselves as “Snakespirit’s Detractors” are present in this discussion (You’ll be able to ID them presently), second, I hate politics.
So why am I here? Masochism? perhaps… Or perhaps I just want to share the perspective of one who was there and experienced it.
By Thanksgiving of 1968, missions into Cambodia and Laos were somewhat commonplace. Line troops were not generally told where we were going, opr why, but there were enough of us who knew how to read maps that we could figure it out. Map reading was a significant part of my training.
We were not supposed to be in Cambodia or Laos, and the Johnson administration lied about our presence to the American Public. We were there.
Now, about medals.
Officers were routinely awarded at least the bronze star just for not fucking up, and the fact they were officers. Enlisted personnel got the ARCOM for the same reason. Each citation was written up with standard explanations equivalent to the level of the award whether or not such conditions really existed. You can read bronze star, silver star, etc., citations and it’s like a list of ingredients on a cereal box. Officers not only got citations that were deserved by enlisted men under their command, the same level of effort by an officer got a higher award than the same level of effort by an EM or NCO. It’s just the way it is, it’s a system that supports eliteism.
Purple hearts were awarded for injuries sustained directly or indirectly by enemy action. If, during a firefight or engagement, JK fired an M-79 and got hit by a piece of schrapnel and the enemy was or had been returning fire, a Purple Heart was appropriate. You can’t keep track of every piece of metal. Deliberately Self-inflicted wounds or wounds due to accidents or as a result of friendly fire are not awarded a Purple Heart.
Whether enemy fire was occurring at the time is irrelevant; the level of the medal awarded required that it be said so, and so it was. Plus, in any situation such as the one described you will get contradictions. There may have been H&I taking place, there may have been incoming, there would surely be differences of opinion.
JKs description would certainly be factored in to whether medals would be awarded, and to whom. These recommendations were made by the field OIC, with input from other levels of command, another reason for the disparity between medals for enlisted and officers.
“…He’s Neidermeir from Animal House thirty years later…”
No. Neidermeir was fragged by his own troops, Poon Tang Province, Viet Nam, 1969. All that stuff is at the end of the movie, Dio. You were probably in a hurry to get out of the theater before the lights came up, and people could get a look at your date.
