BS: False advertising by the RNC

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: artbrooks
Date: 08 Jan 04 - 05:02 PM

Did I somehow miss the evidence, or a link to the evidence, that Prescott Bush was either a member or a supporter of the National Socialist German Workers Party or profited improperly from the war? It certainly wasn't in the lengthy article/letter that Terebus quoted. And if he did, this has exactly what to do with George Dubya? He has quite enough of his own issues to answer for without people trying to wish the alleged sins of his great-grandfather on him.

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jan 04 - 04:44 PM

DougR:

That is not what war profiteering means.

All businesses try to operate at a profit in peace or in war.

"Profiteering" directly implies taking undue advantage of the situation to make excess profit -- i.e., rates of mark-up that would be inordinate except for war. The reason it is immoral is not simply because of the profit as such but because it drains the resourc of the nation while it is at war thus reducing its chances at winning the war. As such it is viewed in extreme circumstances as a treacherous act of self-aggrandizement.

That is very different from continuing to do business at a reasonable profit during war time.

A

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: DougR
Date: 08 Jan 04 - 04:36 PM

Sorry to disappoint you. I see nothing wrong with a company or an individual making a profit so long as it is legal, in war time or not.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: GUEST,guest from NW
Date: 08 Jan 04 - 04:08 PM

i don't think there are posts accusing P. Bush of being a nazi, either. i think they are accusing him of being a war profiteer. that's pretty shameful, if true, wouldn't you agree dougR?

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: DougR
Date: 08 Jan 04 - 03:46 PM

Bobert: I read Don's post. He has a right to his opinion, and a right to write it. What else can I say?

As to the Nazi connection with the Bush family, some people will believe the worst of anybody, and proof doesn't necessarily have to be present. As the article posted by Teribus explains, a lot of well-known American businesses probably provided funds that helped the Nazi party when it began. It is my recollection, though, that the Nazi Party did not become the hated party that it became until later in the 1930s, after the invasion of Poland. Lindburg, for example, gave Hitler strong support, as did John F. Kennedy's father prior to 1939. Kennedy at the time was Ambassador to Great Britain and urged Roosevelt not to side against Hitler.

Yet I don't see any postings by Don, Bobert, or anyone else on the Mudcat accusing Kennedy or Lindburg of being Nazis.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jan 04 - 03:14 PM

Edward Feser, writing for TechCentral.com, promotes this fallacy about MoveOn as truth in an article entitled The Mustache on the Left. I wrote in to call him on it, but it may or may not have any effect.

It is intellectual dishonesty to subscribe to this sort of reality-distortion just because one feels strongly about an issue.

A

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: Nerd
Date: 08 Jan 04 - 02:00 PM

So, Teribus,

your argument is he DID have ties to the Nazis, and DID make money off of Nazism, but not as much as lefties sometimes claim; and that other industrialists did too. Ooh, glad you mounted such a great defense! Why, Prescott Bush was a real American hero!

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: GUEST,Teribus
Date: 08 Jan 04 - 01:06 PM

Bobert,

Hey, what's wrong with telling the truth about the association of the Bush's and Nazis?

This from The Straight Dope site.

Was President Bush's great-grandfather a Nazi?
14-Feb-2003

Dear Cecil:
I read in the New Yorker that George W. Bush's grandfather and great-grandfather worked for Brown Brothers Harriman, and had clients who funded the building of the Nazi regime. I searched the Net and found hundreds of sites giving volumes of details and listing sources like the New York Times and the Library of Congress. Conspiracy theories aside, what's the truth about our president's family? --Matt Tiegler

Cecil replies:
Remember how during the Clinton era there were all those rabid EOBs (Enemies of Bill) who seemingly devoted their every waking hour to propagating scurrilous stories about the president and his family? Well, an equally dedicated crew is now spreading sensational allegations about Dubya and his forebears. (Sample: the president's grandfather not only financed the Nazis, he used concentration-camp prisoners as slaves.) So each side gets a chance to drag the other through the mud. Is this a great country or what?

Though the Bush family's detractors are legion, one of the most prominent is John Loftus, a former federal prosecutor and past president of the Florida Holocaust Museum in Saint Petersburg. In 1994 Loftus coauthored a book with Mark Aarons entitled The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People. The book alleges various misdeeds by George W.'s father, George H.W., his grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker. Since space is limited we'll focus on the accusations against Prescott Bush, which in my opinion are the most serious.

The central charge against Prescott Bush has a basis in fact. In 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act, the U.S. government seized several companies in which he had an interest. Prescott at the time was an investment banker with Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), which had funneled U.S. capital into Germany during the 1920s and '30s. Among the seized companies was the Union Banking Corporation (UBC) of New York, which was controlled by German industrialist Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen had been an early financier of the Nazi party--in fact, in 1941 he published a book entitled I Paid Hitler. Ergo, Prescott helped finance the Nazis.

An article by journalist Toby Rogers posted on Loftus's Web site makes an even more explosive charge. Another company in which Prescott and his associates had a stake was the Silesian-American Corporation (SAC), which owned several industrial concerns in Poland. The Auschwitz death camp was established in a district where SAC already had a steel plant. The plant allegedly used forced labor from Auschwitz during World War II. The article asserts that "a portion of the slave labor force in Poland was 'managed by Prescott Bush,' according to a Dutch intelligence agent." (See www.john-loftus.com/Thyssen.asp.)

The slave labor charge is easy to dismiss. SAC plants in Poland were taken over by the German government after the Nazi invasion of 1939, and the Auschwitz prison camp wasn't established until 1940. No one can seriously claim that Prescott Bush managed camp inmates in any of those plants.

Prescott's involvement with Nazi finance is more complicated. Though Thyssen had been an ardent backer of the Nazis in the early days, he broke with them in 1938 after the Kristallnacht pogrom against the Jews. He fled to Switzerland the following year, and Hitler confiscated his fortune and stripped him of his citizenship. In I Paid Hitler Thyssen confessed his role in financing the Nazis and denounced the Führer. Arrested in Vichy France, he spent the balance of the war as an Axis prisoner. Prescott Bush, for his part, owned a single share of stock (of 4,000) in UBC, the Thyssen bank. According to a 2001 Boston Globe piece, the New York Herald Tribune ran a story in July 1942 headlined "Hitler's Angel Has 3 Million in US Bank," in which Prescott and other BBH partners "explain[ed] to government regulators that their position [as directors of UBC] was merely an unpaid courtesy for a client."

So, did Bush and his firm finance the Nazis and enable Germany to rearm? Indirectly, yes. But they had a lot of company. Some of the most distinguished names in American business had investments or subsidiaries in prewar Germany, including Standard Oil and General Motors. Critics have argued for years that without U.S. money, the Nazis could never have waged war. But American business has always invested in totalitarian regimes--witness our dealings with mainland China.

Loftus tells me there's more to it than that. He says that the value of German industrial assets in which Bush and friends invested increased during World War II, in part due to slave labor, and that Bush benefited from this increase when the assets were returned--supposedly he got $1.5 million when UBC was liquidated in 1951. I'll buy the claim that Bush got his share of UBC back--it was an American bank, after all--but the idea that his German holdings increased in value despite being obliterated by Allied bombs is ridiculous.
--CECIL ADAMS

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: Bobert
Date: 07 Jan 04 - 09:07 PM

Excellent piece of observation and writing, Don. Unfortunately, the folks you have framed so well won't read it because they know exactly what's going down and they don't want to be reminded that they are on the anit-human, anti-earth side of the equation.

I dare any of you right wing Bush apologists to read Don's post!!!

No, didn't think so... You don't want to hear it.

If I wanta get dem nigga's back on mah plantations, pickin' mah cotton, den you commie's ain'ta gonna stop me!

Oh yeah, like 1927, you'll melt it down an' ya better hope they'll be a FDR to save yer right winged asses next time 'round 'er it could easlily be blood bath: yours!

Jus' think about it...

When you have gotten enuff of "Southern Man's" maxed out and outta work cause you sent his job overseas, he'll have something fir ya that don't resemble the "Southern Stategy Pea-Under-The-Shell" crap you been feedin' him since Reconstruction...

Like I said, you'd better give what Don's talkin' about some thought before its too late fir ya. Yer way, way, way outnumbered and the way yer screwing over our Vets, push come to shove, they'll be gunning fir ya too...

Don't think so? Think about what has gone down in just 3 short years and mirror that into the future...

Better think twice...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Jan 04 - 08:39 PM

Actually "the masses", in America and increasingly in England, don't seem to buy much of this stuff, as evidenced by the fact that they sit in their hands and don't vote.

In fact it wasn't "the masses" who went out and voted for Hitler, it was the respectable upright uptight people. Not so much because they were stupid as because they were looking after number one, and saw Hitler as someone who would put the rough common people and those clever Jews in their place. The kind of people who, still today, if they feel they are among friends, are liable to mutter things like "Well of course Hitler went too far - but he had some good ideas..."

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: akenaton
Date: 07 Jan 04 - 07:50 PM

There is also a mass perception of politicians ,Republican, Democrat,Labour ,Conservative,as being, manipulative, devious,self serving scum and who could argue with that...Ake

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: akenaton
Date: 07 Jan 04 - 07:41 PM

Typical of my left wing comrades to level accusations of stupidity at the masses.This is the way to political organisation for the "common good" by people who know whats best for everyone else ,and leads to "State capitalism " and many other horrors ,finally to Pol Phot and the reoganisation of Cambodia.
In my opinion when the masses take in issue on board seriously,like opposition to the Iraq War, Against most of the media, they are invariably right.
This has been uncomfortable for me on some occasions given my left wing views,but iv come to accept that there is a mass perception at work which will not be fooled by Capitalists ,Communists Or any other.,...Ake

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Jan 04 - 06:48 PM

I just read through the Michael Moore thread and was about to post a long screed, but maybe it belongs here instead. Anyway, here it comes (as I deftly click on "paste").

The problem with the Democrats is that too many of them don't have a clear idea of what they are about, whereas the Republicans (under the thumb of the neo-cons) know exactly what they want, and are willing to stop at nothing to get it. And that the Democrats are much too polite for the current political climate. But there are people like Michael Moore who don't mind being a bit rude now and then. Therein, perhaps, lies our hope.

When this harsh political climate blew in, I'm not too sure, but I think it happened during the Reagan years. Reagan was determined to return the United States to the conditions that existed prior to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration back in the Thirties. Roosevelt brought the country out of the worst depression it ever had (25% unemployment) and averted a possible Russian-style revolution that was looming due to the vast discrepancy between the rich and the poor (the middle-class had dwindled to near non-existence). He did this by initiating regulations stopped the most flagrant abuses of corporate corruption, initiated a social safety net (things like Social Security), and put people back to work directly, on government projects such as building infrastructure (WPA)—rather than letting them starve while waiting for tax cuts for the wealthy to "trickle down." He also established the SEC to oversee and prevent the kind of insane speculation that led to the 1929 stock market crash, and the FDIC to keep people from losing their savings when banks went broke. Opponents cried "socialism!" But if one understands what socialism actually is, one would realize that what Roosevelt did can hardly be called socialism. It was (and still is) a handy epithet. But be that as it may. Roosevelt did save the country from sinking into the chaos that the prior twelve years of Republican administration had allowed to grow unrestrained.

But what has rankled in the right-wing conservative craw for the past seventy years are those pesky restrictions on corporate robber-baronism. And the fact that the social safety net was not allowing the weaker or less fortunate members of society to fulfill their Social Darwinian destiny by dying off and thereby improving the gene pool (And some of these folks keep insisting that this is "a Christian country." To them I say, see Matthew 25:35-41).

Somewhere along the line, a coterie of right-wing extremists managed to take over the Republican Party. These people are so far right-wing that they even find many of the policies espoused by the late Barry Goldwater, considered to be the quintessential American Conservative, to be much too liberal. They were not all that happy with George Herbert Walker Bush, because he, too, was not sufficiently right-wing for their purposes. He did do much of their bidding, but it was a bitter disappointment to them when he stopped the Gulf War once the stated and legitimate goal of driving the Iraqi invaders out of Kuwait had been accomplished and did not go on to conquer and occupy Iraq as they intended he should.   

But determined to maintain their grasp on the tiller and hopefully bend George Herbert Walker Bush to their will, it was another bitter blow to them when Bill Clinton defeated Bush in 1992 after he had served only one term. This would never do! To try to insure that a Republican puppet (preferably more malleable than G. H. W. Bush) would be elected in 1996, or at least by 2000, they began a campaign of character assassination against Bill Clinton. And when it became obvious that she was going to be an active participant in his administration, Hillary Clinton became a target as well. Despite that fact that Clinton was at least a halfway decent president and left the country in good financial shape (by the way, many of the better presidents had trouble keeping their flies zipped, so I don't consider his little peccadilloes in that area to be relevant) and that Hillary is popular enough to have won a Senatorial election in New York state, there is a residue of unreasoning hatred for them, even among some Democrats, based on nothing more than accusation and innuendo—never any actual proof of anything.

Conservative interest groups, commentators, and self-appointed investigators (among them, undoubtedly Karl Rove, the right-wing's Character Assassin-in-Chief) went to work with a right good will to make the life of the Clintons as miserable as possible during their whole time in the White House, relentlessly and remorselessly firing accusation after accusation at them. None of them ever amounted to anything, but on the principle that "to be accused is to be condemned," which Joseph McCarthy used so expertly, and the belief that most people have that "where there's smoke, there's fire," they blew vast quantities of smoke. The truth of the matter in this case is "where there's smoke, there's a smoke-making machine."

George W. Bush has had a very cushy go of it so far. He and his supporters cavil at any criticism of him (often with accusations of lack of patriotism on the part of the critic, another tactic used by McCarthy—and people far worse!), but bitch though they might, Dubya has had it really easy compared to the ride he would have had if the Democrats and the liberals (they're not quite the same, you know) had in place an organized effort to pick up on the plethora of gaffs, goofs, sub rosa wheeling and dealing, promises without funding, ripping up the social safety net, outright lies, and general malfeasance that has been the main leitmotif of the Bush administration and call them to the attention of a press that is receptive, not just an administration lap-dog.

There are a few people who get occasional media coverage (often negative), such as Michael Moore and Al Franken, who level blasts at the Bush administration, generally couched in bitter humor. The only person in the media of any prominence that I can think of who could qualify as a serious critic is Bill Moyers. And he's pretty low-key. He quietly reports on stories that the right-wing would prefer that the public not know about, and let's you make up your own mind. But he's on PBS on Friday nights, competing with Hope and Faith on ABC, Ed on NBC, JAG on CBS, not to mention Stargate SG-1 on the Sci-Fi channel, Powder Puff Girls on the Cartoon channel, Celebrities Uncensored on E!, 100 Hottest Hotties on VH1—and, of course, Special Report with Brit Hume on Fox News Channel. Neither Democrats nor liberals have anything as nearly well organized as the right-wing propaganda machine that fired all those bon mots at the Clintons—and who are already at work on whoever emerges to oppose Bush in 2004.

Already there have been articles published in national newspapers attacking the Democratic candidates, particularly Dean, because he's the front-runner right now. The one they keep repeating like a mantra is that Dean is "unelectable." Don't they wish! If they can convince enough people that it's true and they succumb to defeatism, then that's one very dangerous candidate out of the way. Other cute comments involve referring to the broad base of Dean supporters as "Deanie-weenies" or "Dean's Internet Gestapo." One article accuses Dean of "shameless disregard of the First Amendment" because of the way he's gained support on the internet, but I'll be damned if I can see how that accusation applies. But Dean, apparently, is not the only one they regard as dangerous. There is one article (and this is a lulu!) that likens Kocinich's somewhat unruly hair to Hitler's. Get it? Dean=Gestapo, Kucinich=Hitler. Interesting, when you stop and consider. Pots? Kettles? Hmm? That's pretty much the level of political discourse that we can expect for the coming ten months.

Politics has always been a matter of push-and-shove, give-and-take, a system of arguing, bargaining, and reaching compromises. A cumbersome, unwieldy system all in all, but it does have the virtue of making sure that in a system that at least works some of the time, changes that could screw it up totally are not going to occur without lots of discussion and debate. That's government. But the right-wing cabal is not interested any of this. They don't want discussion and debate. They don't want to compromise. They are not interested in governing. They want to rule.

Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. 2004 is gonna be one nasty campaign!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: Greg F.
Date: 07 Jan 04 - 05:57 PM

wipped up into a lather by the anti-government sentiments that the right wing has cleverly created

Whal, Bobert, ya see that there's a big part of the brain death problem- Joe 12-pak don't realize that the right wingers ARE the gummint......

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: Mudlark
Date: 07 Jan 04 - 05:55 PM

I agree, Stilly....Look what Fox did for Moore.

Altho I didn't look at a lot of the ads (load time too long on my slow machine) some of them were really good, some struck me as too far over the top to be anything but preaching to the choir. It will be interesting to see which ad finally makes it.

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 Jan 04 - 10:28 AM

Maybe the backlash will bring more attention to MoveOn--this story was talked about it on ABC news' Goodmorning America today. The winning ad will run during the week of the Iowa Caucuses, and perhaps people will pay some attention to it because news organizations are on the lookout for it.

One can always hope.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: Bobert
Date: 07 Jan 04 - 09:35 AM

Hey, what's wrong with telling the truth about the association of the Bush's and Nazis? Prescott Bush, GWB's, grand-daddy had close ties to the Nazis, both on a personal and business side... Then ahortly after WW II, former Nazi's started finding their way into influential positions in the Republican Party.

But realistically, Greg F is correct in that his observatation that the masses are "brain dead", or mighty danged near to it, and can easliy be wipped up into a lather by the anti-government sentiments that the right wing has cleverly created and the Nazi ad would certainly backfire.

Yeah, Joe 12 Pack will believe a Bush lie in a heartbeat rather than have to deal with the truth...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: Wolfgang
Date: 07 Jan 04 - 09:13 AM

We agree that the two ads in question were in poor taste and deeply regret that they slipped through our screening process. In the future, if we publish or broadcast raw material, we will create a more effective filtering system. (MoveOn)

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: Wolfgang
Date: 07 Jan 04 - 06:13 AM

The two clips have actually been available at the Move On website, though only for a short time.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: Greg F.
Date: 06 Jan 04 - 06:53 PM

Lying by the RNC. Dirty tricks by Republicans. Who knew? Shocking.

Any minute now they'll start the chorus of whining about "negative campaign ads" aired by the Dems. and the "Liberal Media".

And the damn brain-dead public will buy it lock, stock and barrel & come running back for more.

Whooda Thunkit?

Subject: RE: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: artbrooks
Date: 06 Jan 04 - 04:42 PM

Let me say first that my initial assumption is that any statement made by the Republican National Committee is suspect. However, the statements on the RNC website specifically refer to video clips of possible ads shown on the MoveOn website, and do not say that these have been distributed for TV by MoveOn or anybody else. There is no lie-they were there, and MoveOn has stated that they "slipped through our screening process." Whether or not the RNC is justified in making such an issue of it is something else entirely.

Subject: BS: False advertising by the RNC
From: GUEST,Frank Hamilton
Date: 06 Jan 04 - 04:24 PM

There has been criticism leveled at Move On for distributing
TV spots depicting Bush and Hitler by association. This is false. These ads were rejected by Move On when submitted in a recent contest. They are falsely being shown as an example of MOve On's political advertising. They do NOT represent Move On in any way. The ads Move On has selected are excellent and have nothing to do with what the RNC ads are claiming. Dirty politics once again. When will the lying stop?

Frank