BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
THERE is a horrifying possibility, if donald drumpf (trump) is elected president, that the world could again experience nuclear war. He is that deranged, that dangerous, and our only hope would be that the Pentagon would refuse to follow his order to use nuclear weapons. We can not risk this scenario, must not be stupid enough to allow drumpf access to the nuclear codes. We must elect Hillary Clinton president of the United States for the preservation of our Republic! From +Mother Jones .....
A new ad, reminiscent of the 1964 "daisy" ad, says Trump can't be trusted with nuclear weapons.
PATRICK CALDWELLSEP. 6, 2016 11:27 AM
Carlos Tischler/ZUMA
At almost exactly this point in the 1964 presidential election, Lyndon Johnson shook up the race against Barry Goldwater with his controversial "daisy" ad implying that Goldwater couldn't be trusted with national security in a nuclear world. Fifty-two years later, a pro-Hillary Clinton super-PAC is reprising that theme, releasing a new ad suggesting that Donald Trump would lead the country into nuclear war.
According to NBC, the ad is set to run in the swing states of Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, and Ohio. Priorities USA, the super-PAC that created the ad, is investing $5 million in airing the TV spot.
The commercial opens with Trump saying, "I'm really good at war, I love war," and transitions into footage of nuclear explosions as Trump talks about his willingness to use nuclear weapons. It's far more explicit than the daisy ad, which never actually mentioned Goldwater but was pulled from the air after just one broadcast, on September 7, 1964, amid controversy. In the escalated campaign rhetoric of this race, though, the new anti-Trump ad is unlikely to attract the same kind of notice.
PRESIDENT OBAMA is Commander in Chief, and it was on his watch we finally got osama bin laden. If Pres Obama hadn't made the decision he did then the repiglicans and tea-baggers would be attacking him over that. So I agree with the vets and say tough shit to anyone who has a problem with Obama using this in his campaign!
WASHINGTON -- For veterans of John Kerry's
2004 presidential campaign, the past week of debate over the fairness
of making political attacks out of national security issues has brought
about a bit of nostalgia and, in many cases, the chance to sit back and
smirk.
The Massachusetts senator was famously submarined by attacks over his
own personal service and his capacity to handle modern terrorist
threats. At the time, aides to Kerry cried foul, arguing that former
President George W. Bush's re-election campaign and allied groups were
playing on people's fears for electoral gains. With the shoe now firmly
on the other foot -- and Republicans griping over an Obama campaign web
ad suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn't have approved the raid that
killed Osama bin Laden -- the collective response from the Kerry crowd
is something akin to: "tough shit."
"That was then, this is now," said Steve Elmendorf, Kerry's 2004
deputy campaign manager. "This is what people do with challengers. One
of the advantages of incumbency is you get to do the job and make the
tough decisions and you get to make suggestions about whether the
challenger is up to the job."
There is a lengthy history of presidential campaigns using the threat
of terrorism, war or even nuclear annihilation to raise questions about
their opponent. The most infamous remains the Daisy Ad,
run just once by President Lyndon Johnson against Republican Barry
Goldwater in 1964, but forever memorialized as the dawn of airwave
campaigns.
Bush's re-election team brought the practice to a heightened level. The president's advisers produced the infamous Wolves ad, warning voters about the nebulous threats on the horizon. His campaign attacked Kerry as un-appreciative of the troops and unwilling to make tough wartime decisions. Allied groups openly wondered
if Kerry could have shown the leadership needed to respond to 9/11. The
genre turned into outright character assassination when the group Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth began raising doubts about the senator's record
from Vietnam.
It is that latter attack that serves as a line of demarcation for the
Obama campaign, which has argued that it's not engaging in the same
tactics that Democrats once decried.
"The difference here is that we won't be swift boating Mitt Romney,"
Stephanie Cutter, Obama's campaign manager said in an email. "We are
sticking to actual facts, not dishonest attacks and distortions. Romney
said he wouldn't go into Pakistan to get Bin Laden, and then hit one of
his opponents Mike Huckabee when he said that he would. That's important
information to voters, because it shows a lack of judgment and a lack
of strength, particularly if Romney is now saying that he would have
given the same order the President did to get Bin Laden. He had a chance
to get it right, without the enormous pressure of being the Commander
in Chief, and he got it wrong."
Romney, on Tuesday, stressed that his opposition had never been to
going after bin Laden in Pakistan but with announcing that policy
publicly. "We always reserve the right to go anywhere to get bin Laden,"
he said, echoing the clarification he had offered back in 2007 when he first said he wouldn't move "heaven and earth" to find the al Qaeda chief.
As communications director for Kerry's '04 campaign, Cutter was a
direct witness to the damage done when questions about a candidate's
commander-in-chief bonafides go unanswered. The episode was scarring.
And for her and other veterans of that election, as well as the
Democratic Party at large, the result was an implicit pledge to never
get out-macho-ed again. In 2008, that meant pledging renewed attention
and resources to tracking al Qaeda as well as campaigning on a beefed-up
military presence in Afghanistan. Four years later, it means
contrasting successes against the opponent's blank foreign policy slate.
"This year's discussion," said David Wade, a member of the Kerry
campaign press shop and now the senator's chief of staff, "is firmly
rooted in Romney's record and his own words on an issue that's
fundamental to being Commander in Chief. This is a debate about judgment
not a false attack on the most personal and fundamental elements of a
nominee's character ... No one should mistake 2004's low road for the
substantive questions being asked of Mitt Romney eight years later."
Kerry himself was out of the country and unable to comment for this article.
The complaints with Obama's web ad, however, are not strictly that
he's over-bragging about the political braveness in ordering the raid
but, as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) noted at an event
with Romney, that he's using it "as a source of negative campaigning."
Those concerns, of course, didn't surface eight years ago when the
roles were reversed. Wade, for one, noted that Vice President Dick
Cheney suggested a Kerry win would result in a terrorist attack, while
former Georgia governor and Sen. Zell Miller (D) said the troops would
have only spitballs to use as defense with Kerry as Commander in Chief.
"Romney didn't say a peep," Wade added.
But Democrats certainly did, calling Cheney and Miller's comment
beneath acceptable political rhetoric. For some Kerry veterans, it's
impossible to deny the irony in the fault lines developing around the
current web ad uproar. They just don't care. It's nice, after all, to be
the aggressor.
"The hypocrisy goes both ways," acknowledged Matthew Butler, a deputy
campaign manager for Kerry and now a top official at Media Matters.
"They will politicize the hell out of foreign policy and then complain
when we do it. And we will complain about them doing it and then do it
ourselves. But I don't think foreign policy should be out of bounds when
it comes to electing a president. How can you not question the fitness
of a candidate to lead the country in foreign policy crisis?
"Obama would have been killed if something had gone wrong with that
mission," he said. "The fact is it is perfectly fair game to tout its
success." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/01/kerry-obama-osama-bin-laden-vets_n_1468551.html
