Bob Perry and other swiftboat billionaire sponsors infuse money into this year's elections

[ray of light]

From TPM:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/005103.php

(more at link)

We spent a good deal of time in the 2006 elections tracking the activity of third party groups on the right, groups with anonymous names like the Economic Freedom Fund. Funded by the most part by millionaire home-builder (and former Swift Boat patron) Bob Perry, the groups swooped in to attack Dem candidates throughout the country, airing radio, TV, and print ads and calling hundreds of thousands of voters with push polls.
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But Perry only gave about $9 million to such groups that year. Freedom's Watch, with its close White House connections and network of Bob Perrys, is a whole new breed.
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The group aims to raise and spend approximately $250 million for the 2008 cycle, a vast amount of money they apparently plan to use not only on the presidential election, but to greater effect in numerous House and Senate races throughout the country, where six figures can go a long way.
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To review the White House connections: the group is headed by Bradley Blakeman, a former Bush White House official, Mel Sembler, a millionaire former Bush admbassador to Italy, and Ari Fleischer, who serves as the group's spokesman. Much of its support so far has come from Sembler and casino magnate and billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the sixth richest person in the world. (The group intends to "broaden its base" as time goes on, Fleischer says.) The group got off the ground with a $15 million effort to support the president's surge strategy in August, but it's sticking around for the long haul.

Clearly the neoconservatives, the billionaires, and the White House don't intend to give up in 08.

[rox63]

1. Here's the WaPo article

We'd better be ready for war this fall - and I don't mean the kind that uses guns and bombs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/19/AR2008011902309_pf.html

[Island Blue]

2. Next up on Home & Garden Television ...

That special room in hell is renovated and enlarged.

:puke:

[TayTay]

3. HuffingtonPost pubs article from group paid for by RW interests

This is a really good science blog entry debunking a post put up at Huffington Post (of all places) that trashed the science stories this year dealing with the dangers of phthalates, among other things.

Treehugger does an excellent dissection of why this story was written and which RW interests are backing the writer.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/01/huffington_post.php