What will the likes of the Swift Boaters cook up as attacks this election year?

We’re seeing it now in the bizarre attacks by the Right on contraception. Not abortion, contraception. Rush Limbaugh is finally losing advertisers after making a personal attack on the sexuality of a student. And people are starting to wonder just why Republicans hate women so much.

Once they have a candidate, I’m sure the same old race-baiting will start up again. But I think the truly outrageous stuff will be in local elections. Barack Obama is a pretty known entity now, and we’ve spent the last four years reading fact-finding about his past. So there’s nothing left to make up.

Birthers again, anyone? Socialist, commie, religion-bashing, pinko darkie?

They won’t have to. Obama’s last 3 years provides enough ammo that the right won’t have to make stuff up.

On the contrary. Obama’s last 3 years provide enough achievements for him to sail swiftly to his 2nd term. He just needs to advertise them loud enough over the rep’s brown noise.

The right wont have to make anything up, for that matter, neither will the left….all of the politicians seem to be bent on looking incompetent and ill-informed.

@Cruiser You seem to assume that the Right is rational. If they were then they would try to spin the last three years to their advantage…. though that is difficult since the last three years condemn the Republicans more than they do Obama.

@Tuesdays_Child Too true.

Obama’s last three years of achievements are motivating the opposition to mount unprecedented expenditure and tactics to attempt to convince people against them.

Are you kidding? They can come up with something in 2 minutes and people will be compelled to go out and vote against Obama. Hell, there is a large part of the population that will not piss themselves laughing if someone calls Obama a socialist. A socialist! They could sell 50% of the country on something like, “Obama administration is hiding Obama/Hugo Chavez sex tape”.

@jerv Don’t worry yourself the Right will as you put it “spin” the last 3 years much to their advantage. Tarp, auto bailout, Afghan war, finance “reform”, health care bill, failed foreign polices….oh there is so much more and so much to choose from. Where to begin??

@Cruiser: “Tarp, ...”

If TARP is on the agenda, this could get real interesting – especially since this was signed into law by George W. Bush.

Where to begin, indeed.
Success, success, bush, no teeth, medium success, general success (libya-success, egypt-success, bin laden-success, iraq-winding down->success, increased international popularity-success)
Then there is the end of “don’t ask don’t tell”. Which you probably do not like.
For the negatives, the Guantanamo concentration camp is still open. Which you probably like. Gay marriage still not legalised. Which you probably like as well.
Patriot act still in place. You probably like that. Signed the NDAA. That one too. You probably also support his assassination of american citizens on suspicion of terrorism.

@Cruiser But can they spin it without easily disproven pseudo-facts? I mean, it’s one thing to fudge around in the grey areas, but the people referred to in the question are not the rational Conservatives; they are the type of people that make shit up and make Conservatives look like absolute morons.

Well, the Republicans are already blaming the increasing gasoline prices on Obama’s energy policies. And the Sheriff who got in trouble for hassling the Latinos in his county has announced that Obama’s birth certificate was electronically created. Santorum has said that Obama believes in the wrong ideology – so he (Obama) is not as “Christian” as he should be. Gingrich has said that he can get gasoline down to $2.50 per gallon & this might get him some extra votes. Gingrich has also said that we should colonize the Moon, which would mean reopening the US Space Program (which would entail jobs opening up) & this might get him some extra votes. Ron Paul wants to shut down the War On Drugs & this will not appeal to the ultra-religious right wing conservatives & he also wants to bring home all of the military personnel we have in Afghanistan (something else that will not appeal to the right wing conservatives). So, it looks like Romney will win the nomination by default. He has a lot of big money backers who specialize in political ads that do not have to be true – they only have to be blatant & quotable. So…... there is no telling what they will come up with, but you know that they will put a great deal of thought into whatever it is that they decide to do.

Here’s a list of nonsense that has been going around for a few months. I’m sure they will dust it off and send it again and again. Might as well be prepared.

@jerv There will be plenty of facts that will stand the push back of even the most zealeoud Democrat. Yep get ready for the foot stompin handwaving we saw in 2008 only this time there will be no denying the facts. I can’t wait to hear how BO spins Solyndra and the auto bailout with the crowning acheivements there of giving away Chrysler to a foreign corporation for pennies on the dollar. We lost BILLIONS there and that is a fact sir. Plus this Chevy Volt fiasco was toast before a car was even sold yet Obama wants to keep throwing money at it and he even wants to increase the Fed subsidy of that POS to $10,000. Normally you could put lipstick on that one and call it a stimulous package for the green movement but in reality it is a tax BREAK for the wealthy as the average income of a Chevy Volt is over $170,000. Funny how politics works especially how this Democratic administration can spend money on cronyism BS projects like this one when the money is not theirs. It’s ours and I can’t for the life of me see how any American can sit and endorse this kind of boondoggle going on with OUR MONEY!

Yeah…go ahead and waste you vote on 4 more years of this bullshit…and the only spin being done will be Obamas wheels in reverse and he tries to backpeddle over all his miscues and there are a LOT that cost us dearly. Just wait…the REAL fun is about to begin! XD

@Cruiser Say what you will, but if the current crop of GOP contenders is any clue, Obama is far better. If the Conservatives wanted to get rid of Obama then they would nominate somebody who isn’t batshit insane, like Buddy Roemer.

@Mamradpivo Yes, I can only hope the advertiser boycott doesn’t lose steam in the wake of Rush’s phony apology, where he repeated his Big Lie that Sandra Fluke wanted taxpayers to pay for her birth control because she had so much sex.
1—She actually testified about the cancer preventing propertied of birth control pills, and how prescriptions for this need were being denied on “moral” (just let the bitches die) grounds.
2—Georgetown’s student healthcare program is not payed for by taxpayers, but by the individual students.
3—Rush is an idiot if he thinks women have to take more birth control pills when they have more sex. Everyone on the prescription, even if they are celibate and taking it on their doctor’s orders to prevent ovarian cysts that may become cancer, take 1 pill a day.

@janbb They are all already back on the front burner. Racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio is back in the headlines with “proof” that the birther conspiracy, tossed out of court again and again across tis land, is “fact”.

@Cruiser Thanks for already providing your pathetic list. As pointed out, though right-wing memories fall apart in the onslaught of with wing propaganda, George Bush pushed through and signed the TARP. And it has been fully repaid with interest. The taxpayers actually made money on that, and it probably kept us from another Great Depression. I hate to praise Bush, since most everything he did, like his economic policies that collapsed the economy, and his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were miserable failures that Republicans seem determined to repeat. But he actually was right in arguing for TARP. Oh and we would be so much netter off in millions of auto manufacturing jobs and support industry had been lost by refusing to save GM and Chrysler. That would have doomed the support industries as wll, which would have brought down Ford and drastically depressed the economy Bush ruined. And just how was Bush’;s foreign policy superior to Obama’s? Flunk on every ridiculous charge. As @@ragingloli points out, you are going to need to craft a better set of lies. The truth certainly won’t do. The current proposed Republican policies are all massive failures, and they will fail again and again as often as you apply them.

@ragingloli Very true.

@Tuesdays_Child There is too much truth in that for comfort. But since these are our choices, teh right path for the future of America is clear.

@dabbler Even though the corporatist have their meat hooks deep into Democrats, they will spare no costs (and they have boatloads of money to spend) to elect a Republican; as they are solely committed to enriching the CEOs of multinational corporations and multinational billionaires.

@tom_g You are so right. The Big Lie machine has been calling Obama a socialist for 3 years now. Most of their base has no clue what the word actually means, so it’s an easy charge to level. And it is so easy to launch smears when they don’t have to be connected in any way to truth, and your base will believe them anyway. But that won’t win the middle.

@jerv It does seem people are beginning to notice.

@Linda_Owl Yes. I am expecting that Romney will end up with the nomination, and that billions in attack advertising will flood the airways in an attempt to secure a victory for fascist corporatism. If they can pull it off, it will pay back those billions with trillions in plunder.

@LuckyGuy That’s a good starter list.

@Cruiser You are right about the sting of Solandra, even though you are totally wrong about the conclusion you and your right-wing friends draw from it. China is investing hundreds of billions in being the renewable energy supplier of the future. The future is not with fossil fuels, it is in renewable, clean energy. And when you invest in R&D, not everything works. If we rely on Bain Capital to take us into the energy future while China spends hundreds of billions in government R&D, we will end up being shut out of the next great market explosion. We;ll import all our energy from China instead of the Middle East. And the Volt just suspended manufacturing fir 5 weeks.

But yeah. Subtleties like those are hard arguments to sell, while demagoguery and BS is easy to market. The only problem is demagoguery and BS don’t actually work. Understanding the nuances and planning based on reality do.

@jerv Buddy Roemer would have my vote. But the Con Men aren’t even willing to let him onto the debate stage. They still prefer Big Lie politics, and still believe that nature will succumb to the lies.

@ETpro Screw the Volt; I want the Tesla Model S!

@ETpro you are dead on about China and their R & D for alternative energy sources and their push for off shore windfarms is epic in size, scope and funding. It’s a beautiful thing to be a communist country, spend all the money you want and do as you please, abuse your citizens abd your environment and not worry about the push back from constiuents who all say “Not in MY backyard” to these alternative approaches to conventional fossil fuels.

@jerv I could see driving one of them as well.

@Cruiser Ha! Dictatorship does have its strong points, but I suspect we both agree we’d rather muddle through with the messiness that is democracy. Of course, when it comes to my back yard, I don’t really want an oil well there either—unless I own the sucker!

@Cruiser
Yeah, it is just like a corporation unfettered by regulations.
That is why it is not Communist but, as Friedrich Engels predicted, State Capitalist.

But @ragingloli….there is a very simple “Democratic” solution to our energy crisis and the green alternatives to generating public support for these initiatives and that is to maintain gas at at least $4.00/gal or more USD. Just a short 2 years ago we endured a stretch of time where gas was over $4.00 and sales of SUV’s plummeted, purchases at the pump dropped AND the gas supply line got servely backed up with surplus gas. Soooo, the consumer does have a say so in how we can go forward here but you and I know damn well the consumer will always demand cheaper gas first and foremost and the Politicians know this too and will campaign on the side of what will get them votes.

I admired Obama for his desire to pursue alternative energy but he continues to pander to the Big Oil companies and this will get us nowhere fast. We need a leader who will take the hard line and unpopular stance to implement the change that is needed to move forward on alternative energy sources in earnest. IMO Obama lacks that moxie to do so.

@Cruiser, my friend, and I agree on something political! Red Letter Day – mark your calendars!

@Cruiser The latest studies I saw indicate that $4 gas no longer fazes new car buyers. Time moves on, things change.

@jerv I would question the scope of that study as I don’t know of too many people these days that have extra cash for much of anything let alone buying a new car. Again I suspect a sampling done on the purchasing habits of the “haves” and corporations.

@Cruiser Talk about the haves and the have-nots, I just heard some disturbing statistics today. The top 1% in America did fabulously well in 2010. 93% of the income gains went to them. The average household in the top 1% gained $105.627 in income in 2010. The bottom 90% actually lost $127 per household. We need to get some earnings back in the hands of the middle class if this economy is ever to fully recover.

@Cruiser Fair point, but that also brings up other issues, one of which @ETpro mentions. And if nobody can afford new cars, that means less will be made, which leads to fewer jobs, but the CEOs will still get paid…
Anyways, you are right to take studies with a grain of salt. I take just about everything with a grain of salt. But also note that high gas prices raise the price of smaller economy cars (new or used) due to demand while used SUV prices drop. There may come a time when the SUV plus a year’s worth of gas is cheaper than a Civic.

@ETpro Nice chart but all that does is illustrate and confirm that EVERYBODY was taking a hit….a BIG hit in income. Whether 1% or 99% both participated in a downward trend of income growth and granted the 90% saw a drop in income and not by catastrpohic amounts either. And for anyone to begrudge a business owner or Top Gun producer for a mega corporation both of who take risks and make things happen in the business world better move to a different country because they take 100% of the risk reward cycle and if you look at your number all they are getting is a `10% boost for shouldering that awesome job of keeping a business running in the worst economy in history??

Lets face reality, the 1% makes things happen and provide the jobs. Those peoples hands have been tied by horrendous decisions by our current administration that has prolonged the worst recession 2–3 times longer than it should have. Now just how long do you think the 99%‘rs and even the 1%‘rs can continue to tread water before more casualties pile up?

My customers are at the end of their rope, many are out of cash and begging for business and longer terms. This is just was too slow of a response from our Congress to get this economy back on track. I hope 2012 is the year it finally happens.

@Cruiser If you want Obama out then nominate a VIABLE candidate to oppose him!

The closest the GOP has right now is Romney, but he’s a Republican so he won’t get votes from the Democrats or left-leaning swing voters, “Romneycare” has already lost him many Conservative votes, and his opposition to gay marriage will probably cost him the LGBT vote as well. Once you take out that many demographics, I don’t see there being enough voters left to put him in the White House.

Santorum is a homophobic Theocrat who also opposes Libertarians; take everything bad about Romney, give it a horse-dose of PCP and steroids, add a direct conflict with a key segment of Conservative voters, and you have somebody who will make even many Republicans vote Obama. There are reasons he is trailing Romney about 3–1.

Roemer lacks the publicity or funding to run effectively. And we won’t even get into the bat-shit insane except to say that it’s a good thing most of them already dropped out and thinned the herd.

Realistically, I don’t see Obama leaving until 2016.

do not underestimate the electorate’s stupidity. Santorum just won in Kansas

@jerv I am not so sure we need to knock Obama out as he has really done a 180 as of late. I don’t want to get into a nitty gritty detail tit for tat but when you do evaluate Obamas campaign promises to the percentage he actually accomplished THEN review those things he did get done and they are mere shadows of the Liberal agenda he promised and got elected on. And that is not all bad either as it means he as well as the Dems AND repubs compromised. So IF Obama even begins to campaign on accomplishments he will have a lot of currency with the Centrists who like myself are OK with renewing the Bush tax cuts and various other compromises he made. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he actually throws in a tax cut or two in the next 6 months just to insure his re-election.

@Cruiser When Obama the campaigner made economic promises, they were based on preliminary projections that the economy would shrink by about 3.5% in 2008. When the final numbers were available, it turned out to be almost 10%. They had already proposed the stimuluis based on the underestimate of what they needed to fix. The stimulus did help, just nowhere near enough. It actually needed to be far bigger to do the job. Water over the dam now.

@ETpro That is the problem I have had all along with political projections as they are always based on best case scenarios and all through Obamas campaign I was throwing shoes at my TV because I knew then as we now all know now that there was and is NO MONEY to pay for all those gradiose programs and policies he tendered to a bruised and beaten American populace in 2008. He has an uphill battle now as there is a smarter better informed public who like me is paying more attention to the details of what is being offered as solutions. So far Ron Paul was the only candidate to offer real sensible albeit painful solutions to the problems we face. RP is too extreme for both sides of the isle but I bet my farm we see a closing of the gap both on the GOP side and Obama’s camp after the GOP candidate is selected and both sides get down to brass tacks.

@Cruiser I see a couple of errors there.

1) There hasn’t been enough money to pay for the grandiose schemes of politicians from both sides for a long time, so I don’t see that as a weakness unique to Obama.

2) Just because there is more biased disinformation out there that more people believe more passionately, that does not mean they are smarter or better informed, merely more vocal, active, and polarized.

Of course we will see a choosing of the gap once the while “anybody but Obama” crowd rallies behind one candidate instead of four, but that probably won’t be enough, especially if the people on that side of the fence keep stretching and looking like idiots. As it stands, Obama doesn’t need to open his mouth since the Conservative side is doing everything they can to look like delusional bigots, so even with all of the broken promises, i don’t see it getting much closer than 60/40 barring some major scandal.

@Cruiser I was throwing shoes right along with you. I knew that their plans were tragically short and would not achieve the stated results. I didn’t have any high-flying statistics to confuse me, I just looked around at the foreclosure signs and the drop-off in disposable income. But I also knew that Obama was FAR better equipped to get things back on track than McCain.

@jerv is absolutely right about the deficit problem. Our debt spiked at the end of WWII at 120% of GDP. We invested in saving the free world, so that spending made perfect sense. From that time till 1980, we continually paid the debt down as a percent of GDP. Ronald Reagan and the :“conservative” revolution destroyed all that fiscal responsibility. Reagan tripled the debt in 8 short years, and except for the Clinton years, it has been going up ever since.

When Obama took office, we were in the deepest recession since the Great Depression and we were hemorrhaging 750,000 jobs a month. Obama had this choice. Slash government spending drastically and let the economy slide into full depression, or spend to get it restarted. He didn’t build that conundrum. George Bush did. If he doesn’t get us back on firmer financial footing in the next 4 years, I will be railing against him for that missed opportunity as well.

@ETpro My biggerst complaint is and has been that the very people/corporations that caused this mess got bailed out and didn’t have to cough up a dime for their mistakes. The housing market is at the heart and center of this mess and shoring up the banks who made crappy loans with the encouragement of mismanaged Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. Of course who would have thunk back in 2005, 2006, 20007 that shit would hit the fan with hurricane force. Those were the good old days of 0% down first time buyer home loans with ridiculous qualifying income/expense ratios and even a 300 credit rating was good enough to get a home loan. Who was engineering the demand for these home loans?? The Liberals we want our piece of the American Dream NOW! Our countries biggest problem now is this shift to have now pay later mentality. When I was a kid our family NEVER bought anything other than our home on credit. It was a save save save and then buy mentality that kept this country solvent and strong. Now we are upside down and nobody in Washington has the guts to be the bad guy and simply say “Sorry….the free ride is over” It’s time to stop the hemorrhaging and all we need is a leader and a Congress who has the balls to do it.

@Cruiser I thought it was W who pushed the, “Spend more so that our economy may flourish!” thing, and before that it was Reagan who basically taught people my age that debt and deficit spending don’t matter because we can always pass the debt on to the future.

@Cruiser My poor, misguided friend. You’ve bought the GOP excuse making; lock, stock and barrel. The Party of No Personal Responsibility—their only responsibility is to figure out how to scapegoat their opposition every time their free-market, casino capitalism blows up in their faces, ans it has done again and again. The Great Depression, the two Reagan Savings and Loan bailouts, and now the Great Recession.

The truth is that only 15% of the loans that defaulted were true sub-prime. 85% were stated value loans to flippers speculating in real estate and to homeowners refinancing to take cash out of their homes like you do from an ATM. The GOP’s Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act made it all possible, and the Bush Administration was the chief cheerleader for the real estate bubble, because it made his abysmal job on the economy (lowest job creation since Herbert Hoover) look like success.

The big banks were TOTALLY for the lending. They repackaged those high-risk loans into derivative debt. As we closed in on the crash, the US derivatives market hit $72 trillion per year. That is enough money to get even the most jaded bankster interested.

I am not suggesting that Freddie and Fannie had no role, or that liberal Democrats were not cheering for home ownership for minorities. There is guilt to go around. But this was in no way a Democrat [sic] Congress disaster. Think for a minute. How did Democrats force a Republican House, Senate, Executive Branch and Judicial Branch to inflate that infamous real estate bubble from 2,000 to 2006? Did the evil Democrat [sic] congressmen have a time machine? Do they really use fluoride in the water for mind control?

@ETpro No, no, no , NO!! It was orbital mind control lasers :D