Now a backlash has occurred that threatens Obama's facade. The piercing of this fraud has begun. Here's the first video I've seen.*
This was produced by http://www.americanissuesproject.org/.
Naturally the Obama campaign was outraged. They responded by having its lawyers send a threatening letter to all the major TV stations in the country. They demanded the Department of Justice to stop the ads.** They also produced a counter ad. (Obama is also calling for the same against McCain's ads.)
The lawyers for American Issue Project (AIP) were ready since AIP had done its research and written a 160 page report documenting every aspect of their ad before they aired it. The lawyers responded to Obama's letter to the TV stations with their own letter to those stations by showing that the Obama campaign had not proved its claim that the AIP ad was false or misconstrued in any way.
If this story interests you, go to No Quarter. Or Politico.com.
Obama prefers to quash the Individual Right to Free Speech than to blow his created cover. He is simply unwilling to confront the question asked and answer it with verifiable facts. What we are seeing is a Dictator in the making. Not willing to use reason and facts as the final arbiter of his claims, he has no choice but to use force. And he will. If he doesn't get it done now, he will if he is President. Count on it.
* There have also been books, the most extensive documented one that I have run across being Obama Nation by Jerome Corsi, Ph.D. Obama thought it worthy to attempt destruction of this salvo. He published a rebuttal of 40 pages on his campaign website.
**This action is an attempt to prevent Swiftboating. The Swiftboat ads sunk John Kerry in 2004. The Democrats have tried to turn the Swiftboat ads into some kind of evil campaign technique which they call Swiftboating. It was nothing of the kind. It was a group of fellow soldiers of Kerry who knew him and his character and did not think he was of a quality that would be a good President. They exercised their freedom of speech and put together the ads.
The truth is Kerry could have answered the Swiftboat ads with verifiable countervailing facts. He never did. The best he could do was smear the Swiftboaters. The Swiftboat claims stood and Kerry's showboat sunk like a stone. Swiftboating is the most fearsome technique a person can use. It amounts to an assertion based on facts and authenticity that requires countervailing facts to stop its power. Without verifiable facts as the basis for rebuttal, the rebuttal gains no traction.
See "'Extremism' or the Art of Smearing" by Ayn Rand in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal published by The New American Library, 1967, for an analysis of this method of "warfare."
The smear does its damage by initiating a story that is not supported by the facts. By the time the facts disproving the story are assembled, the story has reached a wide audience. On the other hand, if a story is grounded in fact in the first place, it is not a smear. Further if some minor and non-essential facts are discovered to be incorrect, it does not change the essential point of the story.
A smear does not work in the first place nor as a defense against a real story. Although it may do damage, ultimately it destroys the "smearer's" credibility.
2 comments:
This from DCExaminer.com.
Editorial: Does Obama support free speech or not?
Examiner Staff Writer 8/27/08
Democrats such as Barack Obama are increasingly showing a disturbing eagerness to invoke the power of the state to silence critics. The latest example of this growing anti-First Amendment mentality is Obama’s heavy-handed response to a television ad by an independent nonprofit that raises some very basic questions about the Illinois senator’s relationship with William Ayers, the unrepentant 1960s terrorist bomber.
Obama’s campaign has encouraged supporters to flood television stations with protests whenever they see the ad. Nothing wrong with that, but the other thrust of the Obama response was to ask the Justice Department to intervene to stop further airing of the ad. That’s where Obama crossed the line and raised a question of fundamental importance — does he or does he not believe the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech?
The ad was produced by a tax-exempt nonprofit, the American Issues Project, whose primary donor is an individual previously associated with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the controversial group that ran television ads in 2004 questioning Sen. John Kerry’s account of his Vietnam service. Fox News and CNN have declined to air the ad, but it has appeared on numerous other stations.
Here’s the key portion of the ad’s text: “Barack Obama is friends with Ayers, defending him as, quote, ‘Respectable’ and ‘Mainstream.’ Obama’s political career was launched in Ayers’ home. And the two served together on a left-wing board. Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it? Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama?”
The Obama campaign describes the ad as “false, despicable and outrageous,” according to The Associated Press. If the ad is false, the Obama campaign should have no trouble refuting it, which would likely be sufficient to persuade stations to decline the ad. Yet we’ve seen no such refutation.
More worrisome is Obama’s claim in his letter seeking Justice Department intervention that the American Issues Project is willfully violating campaign finance laws. The reality is that the AIP appears to have satisfied all applicable federal regulations.
Any request by any political campaign that federal officials intervene to stop the airing of legitimate political opinion ought to throw up red flags to everybody who cares about protecting the First Amendment. Obama would do well to provide credible answers to the questions raised by the AIP ad. And he should make it unequivocally clear that he supports freedom of speech for everybody, including his critics.
So Swiftboating is the antidote to Showboating. I get it.
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