After Spectacular Unbroken Series Of Failures, Freedom's Watch Goes The Way Of The Dodo

A few weeks ago the news broke that extreme right lunatic/billionaire/gambling impresario "Cockroach" Sheldon Adelson was on his way to bankruptcy. One of the most destructive and negative forces in American politics, Adelson is probably the single biggest paymaster to extreme right and neo-fascist organizations in America. One of the most vicious projects he funded, the extremist Freedom's Watch GOP front group, folded it's tents yesterday and slinked off into the sewers.

Freedom's Watch, bankrolled by Adelson and run (ineptly) by Ari Fleischer lost on virtually every big bet it made in the last cycle, despite spending as much as a quarter billion dollars. Their most vicious attacks were launched against Jeanne Shaheen and Carol Shea-Porter in New Hampshire, Mark Udall in Colorado, Jeff Merkley in Oregon, Dina Titus in Nevada, Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall in New Mexico, all of whom won their races, but Freedom's Watch was involved with dozens of congressional races, pretty much losing all of them. They won't be missed-- by anyone, except, I guess, the right wing operatives, who were on Adelson's gravy train.

Carol Shea-Porter Under Attack By Republican Front Organization, Freedom's Watch

Carol Shea-Porter is one of the few members of Congress who doesn't take special interests money and wind up in the pockets of industries whose only goal-- only goal-- is to get more of our money into their hands. This isn't a Republican or a Democratic position. It's a clean government position and it's one of the reasons we admire Carol so much. Remember, for every corrupt, bribe taking Republican in Congress, there's a corrupt, bribe-taking Democrat. You can put Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer up against any Republican if you want to find corruption taken to ghastly extremes. If you're wondering why Democrats aren't going on a jihad against Republicans who have filled up on Big Oil bribes and then voted for policies that are making it harder and harder for regular American families to fill up their tanks... well, granted 75% of the $220,438,183 Big Oil has given federal candidates since 1990 has gone to Republicans but let's not forget that even if Democrats haven't gotten pay-offs like Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX- $2,126,025), Phil Gramm (R-TX- $1,679,314), John Cornyn (R-TX- $1,313,825), John McCain (R-AZ- $1,259,645), Joe Barton (R-TX-$1,246,411), James Inhofe (R-OK- $1,076,573), Don Young (R-AK-$954,013), Tom DeLay (R-TX-$698,840), Steve Pearce (R-NM- $596,324), Mitch McConnell (R-KY- $649,011), Democratic Big Oil shills Mary Landrieu (D-LA- $612,244), Dan Boren (D-OK- $363,210) and Nick Lampson (D-TX- $174,942) have been happy to slurp up the leftovers and vote with the Republicans to give big oil billions of dollars in tax cuts. Whose side are they on?

I think you know whose side they're on. And it isn't ours. Even virulently anti-union Wal-Mart is now giving as much money to congressional Democrats as it is to congressional Republicans making it "more difficult for the company’s critics to demonize the corporate giant."

In an age where taking money is synonymous with doing someone’s bidding, more and more Democrats, including party leadership, are cashing Wal-Mart’s PAC checks. Apparently Wal-Mart is not the devil it once was.

Through June, Wal-Mart’s PAC had contributed to 86 House Democrats this cycle, amounting to just more than one-third of the Caucus. That’s more than the 77 House Democrats Wal-Mart supported in 2006 and the 62 that received PAC money in 2004.

Since 2004, Wal-Mart has given $27,500 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.), $22,500 to House Majority Whip James Clyburn (S.C.), $12,000 to Chief Deputy Whip Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), and $20,500 to House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (N.Y.).

But you're not going to find Carol Shea-Porter on the lists of congressmembers who take special interests money and then vote for them instead of for her constituents. Her predecessor, Jeb Bradley, always did-- and now those same big special interests are back shoveling money into his campaign, trying to help him reclaim his old-- their old-- seat. Carol's voting record is clear as a bell; she votes in the interests of her constituents. Period. She doesn't have millions of dollars in corporate money hanging over her head as an incentive-- or a threat-- to vote for special deals for corporations.

The down side of that is that she is being targeted by Republican front organizations like Freedom's Watch, which is running tens of thousands of dollars in radio ads against her every week or so, distorting her positions and filling the airwaves with lies. As you know, I'm not the biggest DCCC cheerleader in the world but I applaud their efforts to set the record straight today for Carol by running this ad on New Hampshire radio:


 
If you can afford to help out, please donate to Carol's all grassroots re-election campaign on her Blue America page. We sent her to Congress to work for regular folks-- and that's what she's been doing. Let's keep her there.

Big Oil Wants Their Gal Heather Wilson Back In The NM-01 Congressional Race-- Will Darren White Step Aside?

Today when I was going over the Freedom's Watch targeting I saw that one of the Blue America candidates they are going after with their vicious campaign of lies is environmental innovator and former Albuquerque City Council President Martin Heinrich. The malicious and wildly distorted attack on Martin comes as the GOP tries easing his hapless opponent, extreme right wing Bush supporter, Darren White, out of the race to make way for Heather Wilson, a notorious Big Oil shill. Wilson is the incumbent and she just lost her Senate primary to far right nut-job and oil industry former exec Steve Pearce. She wants to run for "her" House seat again and GOP officials, seeing White's pathetic campaign so far, would like to push him out of the race.

White may even be cooperating. He claims to have fallen off his treadmill hurting his back badly enough to keep him off the campaign trail for "a few weeks." Wilson has been acting as a campaign surrogate for her pal McCain, running hither and thither and screaming about Obama not being experienced or "sophisticated" enough. Big Oil will spend whatever they can muster to distort Martin's responsible, environmental record and try to make it look like he's somehow responsible for decades of GOP politicians carrying water for Big Oil. Heather Wilson has taken $531,820 from Big Oil and has rubber stamped every single piece of legislation they have ever wanted. Their policies have led directly to high prices at the pump, no matter how Freedom's Watch and other Republican front organizations try to shift blame to progressive Democrats. The irony of this attack is that Martin is known in Albuquerque as a leader in trying to develop alternative sources of energy. Big Oil has already focused in on Darren White as a budding shill for their policies and has dumped over $13,000 into his campaign so far.

Now they're waiting to see if he actually runs or drops out before sending more money to him or to Wilson. In either case, Martin's going to need all the help he can get. Please take a look at his live blog session from March at Firedoglake and consider contributing to his campaign so he can defend himself from these Freedom's Watch slams.

Listen to the GOP/Freedom's Watch Attack ad against Martin:

BLUE AMERICA PAC TAKES ON BUSH REGIME'S FREEDOM'S WATCH BILLIONAIRES

What do you know about the shady Republican swiftboat operation going under the name "Freedom's Watch?" Well, they registered as a lobbying organization and the group seems to be divided between a coven of second and third rate Bush Regime operatives-- Ari Fleischer, Bradley Blakeman, Matt David, Carl Forti-- and a gaggle of Neocon billionaires, many with ties to the Likud and the uber-reactionary Republican Jewish Coalition, willing to provide a virtually limitless slush fund for the most vile attacks on Democrats that even the GOP wants to keep at arms length-- or wants to appear to be keeping at arms length.

They fancy themselves a MoveOn.org of the right, except, as MoveOn's Eli Pariser points out, "the main difference is that MoveOn is a group of 3.3 million. Freedom's Watch is a few mega millionaires." Among the super-rich far right-wing supporters of Freedom's Watch-- all of whom are obsessed with keeping the Iraq war going and expanding it into Syria and Iran-- are Mel Sembler, who helped finance GOP activities disrupting the 2000 Florida recount, Las Vegas casino operators William Weidner and Sheldon Adelson, Matthew Brooks and Richard Fox of the RJC, John Templeton, Jr., Kevin Moley (a very close Cheney crony), Howard Leach, Anthony Gioia, and Gary Erlbaum.

Last September Armchair Generalist tried explaining the essence of the organization on the day they launched a $15 million media blitz whose purpose was to persuade Americans that Iraq was somehow responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center.

In George Orwell's 1984, there was an organization known as the Ministry of Peace, whose purpose was to promote perpetual war. The Wiki definition explains that "If the citizens of Oceania have a well-defined enemy, Eastasia or Eurasia, then they know whom they hate, and constant homeland propaganda helps to convince them to vent all their unconscious rage for their own country against the opposing one. Since that means the balance of the country rests in the war, the Ministry of Peace is in charge of fighting the war (mostly centered around Africa and India), but making sure to never tip the scales, in case the war should become one-sided."

That definition has come into fruition with Ari Fleischer's "Freedom's Watch" organization. While not a government agency per say, certainly it is doing the White House's bidding by overtly connecting the war in Iraq to 9/11 in an attempt to influence the American public into "staying the course."

Since then, the outfit, widely believed to be controlled by Cheney, has launched a series of media buys targeting Democrats in congressional districts around the country. Recently they illegally ran ads scripted by the NRCC against Democratic candidates in Louisiana and Mississippi. Their negative ads lacked any credibility and are widely believed to have actually helped Democrats Don Cazayoux and Travis Childers win those two races in heavily Republican districts.

It is worth noting that Cazayoux and Childers have bent over backwards to please Freedom's Watch and fellow travelers since getting into Congress and each has one of the most astoundingly Republican voting records ever compiled by a Democrat. They are already the fifth and eighth most Republican-voting Democrats-- on substantive issues-- in the House. But this hasn't pacified Freedom's Watch. Even though both Childers and Cazayoux both dutifully voted to continue the occupation of Iraq and each voted to grant retroactive immunity to illegal corporate wiretappers, Freedom's Watch has just launched a vicious and deceitful campaign of robocalls against them, accusing them of causing high gas prices. In fact, Freedom's Watch has launched their poisonous robocalls against nearly 20 Democrats, somehow hoping to convince people that the Big Oil agenda relentlessly pursued by Bush, Cheney and their Republican rubber stamps for the past 7 years-- including the war in Iraq-- had nothing to do with the rise in gas prices from $1.51/gallon, when Bush took over, to a rapidly increasing figure closer to $5.00 a gallon than to $4.

To be honest, I thought Cazayoux and Childers and some of the others from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party were getting just what they deserved. Vote with the Republicans and they pay you back by attacking you like mad dogs. But then we noticed that also on the list are solid progressives, Democrats who stand up for progressive ideals and values and stand up for working families over the demands of the special interests these Republican billionaires represent. When we saw the unfair and unwarranted attacks against Tom Allen (D-ME), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Linda Stender (D-NJ), John Adler (D-NJ) and Steve Kagen (D-WI), we knew we should respond and get their backs. They deserve it. So Jane and John went into overdrive and put together an incredible team to write, produce and deliver calls to every person Freedom's Watch has called in these districts. And they got Mike Farrell as the voice of a message that sets the record straight. Please give it a listen (and a look) and then please help us pay for these calls with a donation at Blue America vs Freedom's Watch. In today's Washington Post Chris Cillizza asks if this will get any traction: "It remains to be seen whether Blue America can put together the financial firepower that would allow it to compete with Freedom's Watch in congressional districts around the country over the next four months... Is Blue America's robo-call campaign the start of something bigger or just a lone voice in the wilderness?"