Obama vs GOP on #Bergdahl — #Swiftboating vs Kumbaya-singing

A no-links post, other than Wikipedia. You're either familiar with the trade of five Taliban-connected prisoners from Guantanamo Bay with Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who went apparently AWOL from his base in Afghanistan and was captured and held by the Taliban-aligned Haqqani group, or not. Likewise, you're either familiar with the shitstorm that followed, originally between the Obama Administration and the Congressional GOP/Faux News/Tea Party, and is expanding as I speak to include some Democrats, or you're not.

A Facebook friend of mine noted a few days ago that a higher-level member inside Dear Leader's White House staff said on NPR that Team Obama was surprised it got swiftboated on this issue. And THAT is what this post is about.

This is yet another reason for me to tell Obamiacs and Obots, "I didn't vote for the guy. Either time."

For those who point out the history making of 2008 election, and the 2008 primaries, I say that in 2008, "I voted for both the black and the woman, in the same person." That would be 2008 Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney.

Dear Leader's summer 2008 flip-flop on legal immunity for telecommunications companies suspected of helping the National Security Agency on snooping on Americans was more than the last straw. (And we see now just how damned big of a straw it was in Dear Leader's hands.) Before that, I was already reading between the lines on his late 2002 "just war" speech in Chicago and waiting for him to further parse it. I'd already realized that far from being a radical community organizer in Chicago, under the Svengali spell of Saul Alinsky, his compromises with conservatives in graduate school on the Harvard Law Review were a more true indicator of who he was politically. Since that time, I've learned more about just how non-radical he was on community organizing, and in fact, how non-activist he was on that in general.)

As to the staffer's, or staffers' surprise? Even if you've not worked for the Obama White House, or some combination of that, one or both of his presidential campaigns and the Democratic National Committee nonstop since 2008, you've been active enough in Democratic politics to be working for Dear Leader.

And you're surprised about getting swiftboated? For what, about the 100th time? If not by the Congressional GOP, then by either Faux News or the Tea Party, in either less or more inchoate forms.

Let's just list some of the major ones, in rough chronological order.

1. The birther rumors
2. Von Jones
3. "Death panels" and other lies as part of Obamacare debates
4. "Socialist" comments and other lies
5. The secret Muslim rumors
6. The ongoing subcurrent of racism
7. James O'Keefe doing his pimp daddy fakery on ACORN
8. O'Keefe later doing similar fakery on Shirley Sherrod

And, I'll stop there, because that's just from 2009, with the exception of Sherrod, which happened in 2010. And, that's just the major incidents, not all of them

And, you, whomever, a White House staffer, or multiple ones, including a Pentagon spokestwit, are fucking surprised about once again being swiftboated? Per Michael Dukakis, a fish rots, or starts blindly singing Kumbaya nonstop, from the head down.

Actually, I will add one more link in a minute. Per some of the early stories, there's no indication that Bergdahl's fellow soldiers are associated with any organized swiftboating, so Team Obama should have been careful in focusing on organized opposition. Second, and here's your link, it blew it by touting him as a hero.

Much more than the idea of a "war room," Dear Leader and his minions got the idea of a "24-hour news PR cycle" from Slick Willie. And yet, you think you can't get out-spun.

Even more than him not being that liberal, although I didn't know it in 2008, that's perhaps a better reason to tell Obamiacs why I didn't vote for him.

He's that fucking stupid.

He and his staffers are that stupid to think they'd never be swiftboated over this.

They're that stupid to have had anybody tout, and nobody shoot down, the idea that Bergdahl was a hero.

For a group with two online-driven presidential campaigns, they're that stupid for not doing advance research on exactly how the swiftboating might play out. Or if anything else iffy, like Bergdahl's dad, might turn up. (Liberals are right in defending his beard;  defending his Gitmo Tweet is a bit more iffy, at least.)

They're that stupid for thinking that, even if they didn't tout Bowe Bergdahl as a war hero, and did their advance research, they wouldn't get swiftboated.

They're that stupid for not doing the research that plenty of others have done, pointing out that from George Washington with the Barbary pirates on, US presidents have negotiated with people at the edge of "terrorism" or beyond, and having this ammo ready to fire.

Those of you who read me regularly know I rarely use four-letter words. But, when he's not spying on us or neoliberally kowtowing to big business, the man, per Teddy Roosevelt, has the backbone of a chocolate eclair combined with, I think, some quasi-New Agey mush in his brains.