Bush fascists trying to gag us
Two-thirds of those in a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup nationwide poll say that it's inappropriate for political candidates to run campaign ads using images from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as has "President" Bush in his "re"-election campaign -- but the 9/11 card is the only card that Team Bush has to play.
A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup nationwide poll shows Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry beating "President" Bush's sorry ass, 52 percent to 44 percent. (With Ralph Nader factored in as an independent candidate, Kerry still kicks Bush's ass, 50 percent to 44 percent.)
A recent ABC News/Washington Post nationwide poll similarly shows Kerry thrashing Bush's toasty ass, 53 percent to 44 percent. (With Nader as a choice, Kerry still gets 48 percent to Bush's 44 percent.)
Unsurprisingly, Bush does best in a FOX News poll, which has him tied with Kerry at 44 percent. (Bush always does best in FOX News polls, for some unfathomable reason.)
"President" Bush has presided over more job loss than any other president since Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression.
"Re"-election ain't looking so good for BushCheneyCorp.
So what do you do if you are on BushCheneyCorp's board of directors?
You have your lawyers try to stifle your opponents' right of free speech, just as you used your lawyers to subvert the will of the voters in Florida in late 2000.
(Fun ancient history tidbit!: Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 by more than 500,000 votes, and independent investigators have found that had Team Bush, with its accomplices on the U.S. Supreme Court [all five of whom were appointed by Republican presidents], not perpetrated election fraud in Florida, Gore would have been shown to be the clear winner of the state.)
Yup. They're at it again.
The New York Times reported yesterday:
Three advertising campaigns by political groups harshly critical of President Bush are getting under way in 17 states, in an effort to counter Republican commercials that began showing last week.
The largest campaign opens [today], paid with $5 million in unlimited donations that political parties can no longer collect. Republicans say the tactic is an illegal way to support Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, contending that it violates campaign finance laws.
Stepping in to help Mr. Kerry's campaign offset what has been Mr. Bush's 10-to-1 fund-raising advantage, these groups are part of a handful of committees that some critics call a "shadow" political party.
The groups, two of which say they already have a total of $70 million in pledges, have moved to set up expansive voter drives while at the same time fighting the president on television using issues like jobs, the deficit and health care policy.
The advertising campaign beginning [today] goes so far as to hit the president with a broadside, saying that "George Bush's priorities are eroding the American dream." This campaign, run by Harold M. Ickes, the former deputy White House chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, comes just days after Mr. Bush went on the air with his own $11 million ad campaign.
It also comes as President Bush has begun leading an orchestrated barrage of Republican criticism of Mr. Kerry intended to undercut him and define him as a waffler who is weak on security issues. The attacks are coming from an array of Republican elected officials and are to be amplified by an imminent sweep of hard-hitting television advertisements.
Mr. Kerry's advisers say they welcome harsh critiques of the president being broadcast by Democrats. But there is concern that because federal rules forbid the campaign or the Democratic Party to coordinate with these groups, the independent advertising could at times run counter to Mr. Kerry's own themes. "If their first flight of TV ads goes up and they are terrible and off-message, that would be a problem," a Kerry adviser said. "But it's a problem we can't do anything about."
On Tuesday night, Mr. Bush's campaign lawyers said they had filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission saying some of these commercials are illegal because they effectively oppose Mr. Bush, and were paid for with unlimited or "soft money" donations, which they say is a violation of campaign finance laws. They are calling for an investigation into Mr. Ickes's group, the Media Fund. "This is a blatant violation," said Tom Josefiak, Mr. Bush's general counsel.
Mr. Ickes calls those accusations baseless, saying: "Politically, we are trying to really highlight, underscore and push into sharp focus the policies of the Republicans. That may have a certain effect on the Bush or the Kerry campaign, but we are not involved in electing or defeating people. We are raising issues."
The debate over what these groups can legally do dates back to last year. Republicans in Congress have investigated them while other Republicans have appealed to the Federal Election Commission. But when it issued an advisory opinion last month, the commission put off any final decision until later this year, and its members have a full range of alternatives before them.
Several Republican officials said they would be watching closely for illegal coordination between the Kerry campaign and these groups. Officials with the groups said in interviews that they were keeping their distance from the Kerry campaign, and that they were by no means working in coordination with it.
"Everyone here is abiding by the prohibition against coordination with the campaign or party committees," said Jim Jordan, who was forced out as Mr. Kerry's campaign manager in the fall and who is now a consultant to Mr. Ickes's Media Fund.
Mr. Bush is getting his own outside help -- from Republican and conservative groups -- though not nearly at Mr. Kerry's level. One group, called Citizens United and headed by a former Republican Congressional aide who investigated President Clinton's 1996 fund-raising, David N. Bossie, began advertising this week. Mr. Bossie would say only that the ad campaign was costing in the low six figures. Another conservative group, Club for Growth, is expected to run advertisements against Mr. Kerry soon....
The Times article demonstrates, unsurprisingly, that the Republicans themselves are doing exactly what they're trying to stop us progressives from doing: Running political ads that easily could be interpreted as favoring a presidential candidate and/or political party. Such blatant hypocrisy of which they apparently are oblivious is a hallmark of the Republicans and conservatives.
There are only two viable political parties in the United States of America, one of them progressive and the other one regressive. So if a progressive organization wants to run advertisements critical of the Bush regime's ruinous, heinous policies -- the main point of which is to funnel more and more of hardworking Americans' money into the greedy hands of the already-filthy-stinking rich -- these ads easily could be interpreted as pro-Kerry and/or pro-Democratic Party ads.
Q: So what is the Republican Party's solution, then? To ban all independent advertisements that are critical of Bush and of the Republican Party?
A: Yes, that's exactly what the fucking fascists want to do.
The Bush regime's 10-to-1 fundraising advantage isn't enough of an advantage for the few plutocrats who want to rule this nation even more tightly than they already do; they want to exterminate the First-Amendment rights of the Bush regime's and the Republicans' detractors, claiming that public political speech that opposes them violates campaign finance laws. Meanwhile, with their 10-to-1 money advantage, they flood the populace with their political messages. Under their vision for the United States of America, only the very richest have a voice that anyone can hear.
The good news: The Bush fascists are pissing their pants, as evidenced by their increasingly desperate measures.
The possibly bad news: We let the Bush fascists steal the presidential election of 2000; it was the biggest blow to American democracy during my 36 years on this planet, if not in the entire history of our nation. We were tested; we failed.
We are being tested again: Will we pass the test or will we fail again by letting the Bush Nazis decide for us that public political speech that opposes the Bush regime and the Republican Party is illegal?
Donate to MoveOn.org, one of the progressive organizations that the Bush fascists are trying to gag: https://www.moveon.org/donatec4/creditcard.html
Donate to John Kerry for President: https://contribute3.johnkerry.com/contribute.html?team=53
For more on the Bush fascists' Orwellian attempt to silence opposition, see Ted Rall's latest column, titled "First They Came for the Shock Jocks: The Censoring of Howard Stern," in which he similarly concludes:
The Right is running scared. Their wars and economic schemes are revealed to be as fraudulent as their fake president, whose poll numbers are plummeting as he turns to face uncharacteristically unified Democrats. Because they have no record worth defending and no ideas anyone will believe, the new McCarthyites have only one line of defense left: censoring their opponents. The question this time is, will anyone stand up for free speech?
8:41:13 PM 
|
