I linked to this chart in a post yesterday but it really deserves it's own post.



As I mentioned in this post below, the NY Times played the Kevin Bacon game to weave together a vast right wing conspiracy of support behind Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In response, Blogs for Bush put together the above chart to show who is really coordinating with 527 groups. When you look at the amounts donated on the chart, compare that to the measly $250,000 the Swift Boat Vets have. You can click on the chart to enlarge it.

Jay at Wizbang has more:

I decided to poke around the web and see what I could find out about the world of 527's and how they work in campaigns. My first stop was here, where I found out that so far a grand total of $94,049,072 had been raised by 527's this year, as of last Sunday. Of that money, a whopping 6.3% had gone to groups supporting Republican causes, and less than 2.7% of THAT amount had gone to the Swifties.

Here's the breakdown in a nutshell
Pro-Democrat 527 groups: 17
Pro-Republican 527 groups: 7

Pro-Democrat 527 groups, total receipts: $88,236,434
Pro-Republican 527 groups, total receipts: $5,912,638

Number of the top 25 527 donors who gave to pro-Democratic groups: 24
Number of the top 25 527 donors who gave to pro-Republican groups: 1
Ranking of top pro-Republican donor: tied for 10th

Then I went digging into the charges of ties between the Bush campaign and the Swifties. Apparently the extent of it is that several of the initial donors have also given a lot of money to the Bush campaign. Once I got over my initial "well, duh, what were you expecting?" reaction, I started looking around for similar ties between the Kerry camp and anti-Bush 527's.

Luckily for me, the inestimable Suzy Rice had already found my answers, over at blogsforbush.com (which I have never visited before, but might now have to take a peek or two). There we find such people as Zack Exley, former Internet director of moveon.org, now serving as Kerry's Internet director; The Media Fund spokesman and former Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan; and campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, close friend of Harold Ickes, former Clinton administration official and driving force behind The Media Fund.

But what about the charges of collaboration between the Bush Campaign and the Swifties? Surely that's unprecedented. Again, Suzy and blogsforbush.com are way ahead of me. They have a screen shot from the Democratic National Committee's official web site that states clearly that "The Democratic Party is partering with MoveOn.org, People for the American Way, Campaign for America's Future, and dozens of other groups" to "organize a massive public mobilization."

When Kerry first started whining and squalling about the Swifities and begging Bush to call them off, the President asked Kerry to join him in renouncing and condemning all the 527 groups. Kerry studiously ignored that request, and no wonder; when one is getting nearly 95% of the benefit from a loophole in the law, it's much more convenient to squawk about that tiny percentage that is against you than to simply stop all the abuses.

Also see this post at QandO that details some examples of the coordination between Kerry and these groups.

How long do you think it will take for the NY Times to print the above chart?