Thursday, July 10, 2008
annudder smartass Smiff (cont'd)
"I do like the nerve of this Texas oilman saying, 'We're out of oil, now let's do wind,'" said Thomas "Smitty" Smith (Smiff), director of Texas operations for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. "Part of this play is to create his legacy. It's also a part of his strategy to fill his own pocketbook."
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I saw his "ad". What a scumbag. John Kerry is still waiting for his MEEEEEEEllion dollars...
Kerry, Pickens, Vietnam veterans still feel effects of 'Swift boat' ads
Critics challenged to prove mistakes
By Kate Zernike
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
June 22, 2008
For most people, “Swift boat” has become a political verb, a synonym for the kind of attack that helped destroy the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry in 2004.
But for a group of Vietnam veterans at the center of the attacks, it is still a fresh fight.
On Friday, the group, who served with Kerry in Vietnam, sent a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman who helped finance the 2004 attack advertisements, taking him up on a challenge he issued last November: that he would give $1 million to anyone who could disprove a single charge the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made against Kerry.
The letter-writers served alongside Kerry during the events that the Swift boat group insisted he had embellished or made up to win his military decorations.
Identifying themselves as “patriotic, concerned veterans” they said the accusations of the Swift boat group damaged their reputations and deeply affected their families, “tarnished the sacrifices we made, called into question the medals we were awarded and challenged the authenticity of our service.”
The group is working with Kerry, who himself seized on the challenge soon after Pickens made it at an American Spectator dinner. In a letter, he offered to meet with Pickens to rebut the charges.
Pickens wrote back to say he was good for his money, but Kerry would have to provide his military record, the journal he kept in Vietnam and movies and tapes made in his tours there.
Pickens also qualified his challenge, saying he meant that someone would have to prove false things in the group's television advertisements – putting aside a best-selling book and extensive news media interviews that attracted the bulk of the attention.
He challenged Kerry back: If you cannot prove anything inaccurate, give $1 million to the Medal of Honor Foundation, a charity.
Wait a minute, Kerry wrote back, you said nothing at the dinner about just the ads. (At least that is how Pickens' challenge was reported by conservative blogs.) He said he would meet with Pickens – “no variations, no backpedaling, no retreat, no new bets, no changing the subject” – and direct his reward money to a charity that helps veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pickens didn't reply.
So Kerry's veteran allies took up the cause.
In a 12-page letter – with a 42-page attachment of military records to support their case – they rebut not one but several of the accusations of the Swift boat group.
The veterans offer to go through Kerry's record and the video with Pickens “page by page, frame by frame.” And they demand an apology, to them “and to the American people.”
None of this is new. Extensive news media accounts undermined the Swift boat charges in 2004, pointing out some of the Swift boat critics had written statements in Vietnam lauding Kerry for extraordinary bravery in the incidents they later said he made up.
One critic had himself received a medal for heroism during a hail of gunfire he later claimed Kerry had concocted to win his third Purple Heart.
But that did not blunt the political impact.
Kerry has remained determined to set the record straight. And the other side remains similarly fixed.
I did watch part of the "ad" too. $700 billion dollars, more than the Iraq war cost, the biggest transfer of "wealth" in history.
Now just wait a cotton-pickin minute. Transfer of wealth? Sounds to me like we're paying for gas that we use to, uh, I don't know, help produce all the stuff that makes the wealth that we are then able to spend on the gas. Also, when they make money, they can then spend it guess where? Here! Buying our planes to create Emirates or whatever that airline is. I'm sure a lot of that drilling stuff they use comes from here too. Ugh. What a moran.
Also, how does wind power reduce dependency on foreign oil? Wind produces electricity. Most of our electricity comes from coal if I'm not mistaken, not oil. We need oil to power those vehicles that aren't always connected to the grid. So why don't we develop the kick-ass battery first? Coz it seems that without that, wind power may be cleaner, but it won't decrease dependence on foreign oil.
I think what da Fungster is saying is here is dat T. Boone Pickens (does the T. stand for traitor?) is MASSIVELY FULL@S#IT.
Also, $700 billion is about what (or will, or has, who knows) the Iraq War has costed us. Mostly borrowed on our overseas credit card, and in order pay for Cheney-like vampies at the defense contractors.
What a country! Soon to be a far-flung back-water in the al Qaida caliphate...
There he goes again. The counter says we've only spent $535 beeelllion in Iraq. For a country of about 28 meeelllion people, that means we've liberated them all at a cost of just a little over $19,000 each (not counting the dead ones). Freedom isn't free pal.
Now I went to where he has a video with a better explanation. He wants to take the natural gas we use now for electricity, and use it to run cars, and use wind to cover what natural gas used to produce. Dat way we don't import as much oil.
I suppose that isn't as loopy as I initially thought. Though I don't know why the government should pay for it. If people are convinced by his arguments they'll go out and buy the NGV's and then there'll be more stations and it will just grow by itself. The shortfall in electricity should naturally lead to investment in other forms like wind. But to come out and say the government should spend like a trillion dollars on his idea because then we won't depend on foreign oil - who da phokk does he think he is? Da guy dat wants to really make da middle east really really really pissed off at us?
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