What is THIS Talking-Points-Repeating Joker Doing on Huffington's Site?

I'm all in favor of debate and inclusiveness, but I gotta wonder why, exactly, Ariana even bothered inviting Seth Swirsky onboard when the best he can do it recitation of hoary (and long-discredited) Republican talking points.

Case in point:

I voted for Al Gore in 2000. When he lost, I was disappointed, mostly in my fellow Democrats for thinking that the election had been "stolen" and in having forgotten their American history. The Electoral College has elected three other Presidents in our history: John Quincy Adams in1824, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, and Benjamin Harrison in1888. The rush to judgment by the now conspiracy consumed Left put me off. Where, I asked, were all the "disenfranchised" black voters who would have given Gore a victory in Florida? No one could produce a single name. And how exactly were the voting machines in Ohio "rigged" in 2004? I now refer to the Democrats as the Grassy Knoll party.

What's ironic about this is that only a few posts away there's a discussion of 2004 that notes that the GAO concluded that it was possible and, indeed, relatively simple for electronic voting machines to be rigged, but that it was unprovable due to the impossibility of audit.

Probably not a good idea to be writing this after Kennedy's Rolling Stone piece regardless, and that "no one could produce a single name" bit was just goofy, but it gets better.

Still, I approached the 2004 primaries with an open mind. I was still a Democrat, still hoping that leaders like Sam Nunn and Scoop Jackson would emerge, still fantasizing that Democrats could constitute a party of truly progressive social thinkers with tough backbones who would reappear after 9/11.

What's this obsession with Scoop Jackson about, anyway? He was a hawkish Dem. Great. That doesn't make him Ben Franklin, although it DOES make him a useful tool for the reflexively fearful.

I was wrong. The Left got nuttier, more extreme, less contributory to the public debate, more obsessed with their nemesis Bush -- and it drove me further away. What Democrat could support Al Gore's '04 choice for President, Howard Dean, when Dean didn't dismiss the suggestion that George W. Bush had something to do with the 9/11 attacks? Or when the second most powerful Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin, thought our behavior at the detention center in Guantanamo was equivalent to Bergen Belsen and the Soviet gulags? Or when Senator Kennedy equated the unfortunate but small incident at Abu Ghraib with Saddam's 40-year record of mass murder, rape rooms, and mass graves saying, "Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under new management, U.S. management"? What Democrat could not applaud the fact that President had, in fact, kept us safe for what's going on 5 years? What Democrat -- even those who opposed the decision to go into Iraq -- wouldn't applaud the fact that tens of millions of previously brutalized people had the hope of freedom before them?

Hoo nelly. Look, Mr. Swirsky, I've got a bunch of unreleased pictures and videos of Abu Gharib, a sheaf of horrifying stories about Gitmo and one HELL of an anti-terrorist tiger rock that I'll give you in exchange for never, ever going near these here internets ever again.

Honestly, this argument is pure 100% grade "A" stupid, farm fresh and ready for the table.

What made me leave the Left for good and embrace the Right were their respective reactions to 9/11. While The New York Times doubted that we could succeed in Afghanistan because the Soviets in the '80s hadn't, George W. Bush went directly after the Taliban and Al Qaeda and crushed them in short order. Although many on the Left claim to have backed the President's actions, the self-doubt leading up to it, crystallized my view of the Left as weak and terminally lacking in confidence.

Seth? There are a growing number of dead Canadians who would wish to strenuously disagree with your contention that th Taliban was "crushed". Pity that they can't, being dead and all.

Oh, and your savior buggered up Iraq, too. A little "doubt" might have served him well.

No, seriously, is this a Kaufman-esque trick of some kind? There's even better crap I omitted about how much "liberal Jews" suck, but I'm not going to belabor the point. Considering this guy's a New York musician, I'm sure he'll be enjoying plenty of attention from his colleagues on this soon enough.