SwiftBoater Welshes on Bet
T. Boone Pickens, who bankrolled the SwiftBoat Liars and their actions in the 2004 election cycle, promised he would pay $1MM to the folks who could disprove SwiftBoat charges. Some Vets stepped to the plate and successfully disproved those charges, but Pickens has some whiney excuses why he won’t pay up on his bet.
T. Boone Pickens famously bet that nobody could prove that the charges of the SwiftBoaters against John Kerry, charges that arguably decided an election and let us in for four more years of Bush failure. Pickens said at the time that he’d pay $1,000,000 to the person or person who disproved the SwifBoat Vets charges. Pickens, like a true Republican, is now weaseling on his word, welshing on his bet, and lying in general. Hey, he’s the one who bankrolled the SwiftBoat Liars, so he’s confortable with lying. No, this isn’t very surprising, and I’m sure the folks who challenged Pickens knew they were not going to get the cash…
Here’s an outline of T. Boone Pickens and his weasely excuses from The Caucus at the New York Times:
Mr. Pickens replied with a one-page letter, thanking the veterans for their research and their service, but politely saying there had been a misunderstanding. “Key aspects of my offer of $1 million have not been accurately reported,” he wrote.
When he offered the reward at an American Spectator dinner in November, blogs sympathetic to Mr. Pickens reported that he challenged anyone to disprove “anything” the Swift boat group said.
In his letter, Mr. Pickens explained that his bet actually applied to only the television ads the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth bought, and not to their bestselling book or the media interviews that generated more attention than the ads themselves.
“In reviewing your material, none of the information you provide speaks specifically to the issues contained in the ads,” he wrote, “and, as a result, does not qualify for the $1 million.”
It was pretty much the same response he had given to Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, who seized the challenge immediately after Mr. Pickens made it last year.
We’ve seen this sort of whiney excuse, this weaselly welshing before, and it is something we have come to expect from Republicans such as Mr. Pickens. If Pickens were a real man, he’d not only pay what he promised when he made the challenge, but apologize publicly for bankrolling the spreading of lies. No, he thinks politics is a game with no relationship to honor and ethics, just as Karl Rove and Abramoff and dozens and dozens of other Republicans think. Yeah, that kind of behavior is the true core of the Republican Culture of Corruption. So, no, this is not surprising behavior.
What someone should do is sue the guy for taking part in defrauding the American public. My legal counsel says that wouldn’t go anywhere, but it sure would be fun to see somebody try.
More on dirty tricks being served up for the fall, though, all designed to “swift Boat” obama
threat of racially-based ads against obama:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25325550/
anti-obama book due in august:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11263.html
claims about 527s disputed:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11220.html
recent events give us more on “swift boating”, or rather, the lack of it.
in his rolling stone interview — http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/the-inner-obama/ — where obama declares “I don’t do cowering”, we get a sidelight about how, maybe, the chemistry has changed: Obama isn’t cowering!
And here out West, we know that Oregon is a genuine blue state, not a so-called swing state, as claimed by msnbc first read (pasted below).
the gop gordon smith’s actions — embracing obama — evidently is having a strange chemistry on the mccain campaign
http://www.FirstRead.MSNBC.com:
Hitting Obama And Gordon Smith? McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt started the morning off — at 6:45 am ET! — with a memo contrasting McCain and Obama on the issue of bipartisanship. “There has never been a time when Barack Obama has bucked the party line to lead on an issue of national importance,” Schmidt wrote. “He has never been a part of a bipartisan group that came together to solve a controversial issue. He has never put his career on the line for a cause greater than himself. We don’t need to trade Republican partisanship for Democratic partisanship. We need to put our country first and put our politics second. That is what John McCain has done his whole life, and that is what he will do as president.” While it’s not a memo that says it’s designed to be a response to Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith’s (R) ad touting his work with Obama across the aisle, it certainly reads that way. Smith did not do McCain any favors with this TV ad, as it ends up rebutting McCain’s frequent attacks on Obama that his bipartisan rhetoric is just that — rhetoric with few actions to back it up. And now Smith’s actions are getting national attention and serve as too easy of a rebuttal to Schmidt’s memo. Smith’s decision in Oregon (a supposed swing state, folks, not just some deep blue state) also counters the national GOP committees here in DC that have been trying to paint Obama as out of touch. The Washington Post reports that House GOP strategists are now backing off their attempts to demonize Obama; clearly some GOP senators running for re-election aren’t ready to run against Obama, and that leaves McCain going it alone. Not helpful to the McCain cause.