News & Notes from Das Vaterland
The Anti-Kerry Ad That “Makes Bush Look Like Hitler”
There's an anti-Kerry ad up on georgewbush.com
that is so odd, you really have to take a look at it. The ad,
called “The Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party,” features Adolf
Hitler alongside several Democrats, including Howard Dean, Al Gore,
Michael Moore and John Kerry.
The ad
is really more bizarre than anything else. Reaction from the Dean
bloggers the other day was mainly along the lines of, “It makes Bush
look like Hitler.” And it really does. The whole ad
features one attack after another on Bush, with cuts from Hitler with
his arm raised in the Nazi salute to Bush with his arm raised in a
similar fashion.
This
supposed anti-Kerry ad does make Kerry look bad in one respect:
it shows several dynamic and energizing snippets of Democratic speakers
next to a clip of Kerry seeming rather bland and whiny. Frankly,
I don't think that is quite the effect the Republicans were looking
for. I just can't figure how the Bush campaign thinks that
showing an entire ad focusing on valid criticisms of George W. Bush and
a ridiculous line about optimism and progress at the end can really be
that effective. Guess they are sending it out over the web to try
to energize their demoralized base.
Well, we can always invade Iran to try to cheer up the Bush supporters.
View the ad for yourself here:
http://www.georgewbush.com/
The Elephant in the Room
AlterNet.org
By
describing various parts — deregulation, media consolidation,
pre-emptive war — Americans fail to grasp the problem as a whole:
failed conservative politics.
Americans
have been ignoring the elephant in the room. It's that huge thing
that's in front of everyone, but that no one mentions by name. Most
people can't see it, while others intentionally disregard it, but many
people just have a hard time articulating what it is.
Even its
opponents direct little attention to the elephant itself; at best they
tend to describe its various parts. Its ears are deregulation, its
trunk trickle-down economics, its mouth media consolidation, its tail a
pre-emptive war in Iraq, its legs record deficits, and its feet
cutbacks in education, social security, America's safety net, even
veterans' benefits.
(more)
Veep bleep: Cheney curses at Leahy on floor of Senate
AZCentral.com
I'm sure
everyone has heard about this by now, but in case you've been out of
the loop working on that monstrosity of a Democratic State Convention,
here's the story about Dick Cheney cussing out Democratic Senator
Patrick Leahy of Vermont on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Cursing
on the Senate floor is forbidden, but since the Bush junta always seems
to find a way around the rules they don't want to follow, they are
grinning sheepishly and claiming the rules don't count since the Senate
was not officially in session at the time. Heck, why not just do
away with the Senate entirely? It would save so much time by
bypassing all that messy business of approval for fascist judicial
appointments who will gladly continue the gutting of the
Constitution. Oh, I forgot. They're already doing that.
Click here for the full story.
What 'October Surprise' might be in store for Americans this fall?
Citizen-Times.com
Fast
forward to mid-October. Bush continues to trail Democratic nominee Sen.
John Kerry in the presidential election polls, not so much because
Kerry has electrified the American electorate, but because he's not
Bush. Then it happens – the “October Surprise.”
The
original “October Surprise” was allegedly carried out in 1980 by
officials of Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign. Iranian militants
had stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, taking approximately 66
American hostages. President Jimmy Carter's administration pursued the
return of the hostages but had little success. Years later, former
Carter administration staffer Gary Sick attributed Carter's setback in
this matter to overtures made to the Iranian government by officials of
the Reagan campaign. By encouraging the Iranians to continue holding
the hostages beyond the November 1980 presidential election, the Reagan
supporters believed that their candidate would have a much better
opportunity to unseat Carter. Whether or not Reagan's entourage
actually convinced the Iranians to withhold the release of the hostages
is still rigorously disputed. What is beyond dispute, however, is that
Iran released the remaining hostages on Jan. 20, 1981, immediately
after Reagan took office.
So
if you were Karl Rove, Bush's top political strategist, and your
candidate was slipping in the polls, what election strategy would you
be cooking up right now?
(Click here to read about the vast array of possibilities.)
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