Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68 was doing well when he

Originally Posted by in response to Kiff '61, who

I have to ask, HC, why in the world you would sit through something like that, especially if you found it so personally nauseating.

Why not just change the channel?

I didn't sit through all of it, Kiff. I caught as much of it as I could stomach, and that was enough. Today, everything I've read, heard, and seen in rerun matches what I was seeing last night.

FWIW, I was pretty nauseated too, and I'm much more likely to agree with both Wellstone and Mondate than HC. It was tasteless and stupid.

Originally Posted by ... then he returned to partisan form when he

... I do sometimes pay attention to things like that, though, because I know from past experience that part of the way people like Clinton and Clinton and their associates (McAuliffe comes to mind) get away with the stuff they do is that people turn away and tune out.

This was tacky poitics, but it was local tacky politics. I doubt either McAuliffe or Clinton had even a small hand in the affair.

Originally Posted by David '47

This was tacky poitics, but it was local tacky politics. I doubt either McAuliffe or Clinton had even a small hand in the affair.

While the former is true, the latter comment represents the sort of denial that pervades the Democratic Party of the present-day. A denial, I believe, that may very well result in the destruction of this party, and quite possibly the entire nation, as well.

From USA TODAY:
Democrats shun party label in the South Considered a handicap in effort to retake the conservative region

"Waving a liberal banner may work in Minnesota. There, former vice president Walter Mondale, who lost 49 states in the 1984 presidential election, has taken over the late senator Paul Wellstone's left-leaning campaign. But it doesn't get candidates very far in the South. Since Hubert Humphrey ran for president in 1968, Democrats here have become skilled at running away from their national party's leaders. This year, most are keeping their distance from former president Bill Clinton and Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota."

Originally Posted by Marc Lamb

Originally Posted by David '47

This was tacky poitics, but it was local tacky politics. I doubt either McAuliffe or Clinton had even a small hand in the affair.

While the former is true, the latter comment represents the sort of denial that pervades the Democratic Party of the present-day. A denial, I believe, that may very well result in the destruction of this party, and quite possibly the entire nation, as well.

True to form, the hubris of the right weighs in, which is pretty tacky in its own right.

Originally Posted by Marc Lamb

From USA TODAY:
Democrats shun party label in the South Considered a handicap in effort to retake the conservative region

"Waving a liberal banner may work in Minnesota. There, former vice president Walter Mondale, who lost 49 states in the 1984 presidential election, has taken over the late senator Paul Wellstone's left-leaning campaign. But it doesn't get candidates very far in the South. Since Hubert Humphrey ran for president in 1968, Democrats here have become skilled at running away from their national party's leaders. This year, most are keeping their distance from former president Bill Clinton and Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota."

... and someday, the people of the snow belt will look back and realize that they have been played for fools, knowing that evey elected President since Kennedy has hailed from the sun belt. At which point ...

Here is a Democratic view of things:


How Dare They Tell us How to Mourn
November 1, 2002
By Monica Friedlander

For more than a year they've been telling us what we're supposed to think, what we're supposed to feel, what we're allowed to believe in as Americans. And now, while we grieve the loss of one of our best, they have the chutzpah to dictate to us how we're allowed to mourn?!

And to punish us for not doing even that by their rulebook, the holier-than-thou governor of Minnesota is going back on his word and will not appoint a Democrat in Wellstone's stead. That is a slap in the face of Paul Wellstone, his family, Minnesotans, and other good people nationwide still grieving. How dare he and the Republicans take advantage of our grief and berate us for how we choose to express our sorrow?

No, we will not apologize for remembering Paul Wellstone by exhorting his ideals, crying out for justice, and reminding people of the cause for which this man gave his life. This is how Paul Wellstone's family chose to celebrate his life. How dare they stand in judgment? How dare they sit in their ivory towers and tell us that we have no right to invoke the cause championed by the man we mourn?

That, while the unelected Republican president campaigns for Wellstone's opponent at taxpayers' expense in Air Force One. That, while Newt Gingrich not only attacked Walter Mondale before he even decided whether to run, but shamelessly lied about his record and his stands.

They, whose leader has taken the reigns of government not by popular vote but by appointment by a partisan Supreme Court, have the nerve to tell us that we're too partisan!

They, who stand to gain from this tragedy, have the nerve tell two grieving sons who lost their parents and sister how to remember their loved ones!

And they, who have called Wellstone unpatriotic for daring to vote his conscience, are striking back at his memory by attacking a memorial service!

Republicans control every branch of government but the Senate. They rule with an iron fist, allowing no dissent, putting our Constitution through the shredder, intimidating people from voting, and starting wars in our name. Don't Democrats have a right, on the occasion of this devastating tragedy, to came together under one roof and remind us that this is not what Paul Wellstone stood for?

Wellstone's friends and family, overcome by grief and emotion, asked but one thing: that we continue his legacy, and that we win one more election for Paul. How many times have Republicans asked people to win one "for the Gipper"? And now, in our hour of grief, we are demonized for asking Democrats to win one for Paul.

Yes, the public memorial service for Paul Wellstone resembled a rally. Few would deny that. Paul Wellstone wouldn't have had it any other way. Maybe emotions ran higher than they do at most memorials. But we are not living normal times and this was not a memorial like all others.

Every person in that crowd hurt desperately, not just for the loss of those they loved, but for having lost their voice in Congress, for having lost someone to stand up for them, for having lost their senator only two years after their vote for president was voided.

There was real pain and anger in that hall -- despair almost at times. These were real feelings. How dare they put us down for hurting? It was one of our heroes who died. Can't they show Paul Wellstone enough respect to allow his friends, family and supporters to mourn their way?

Tuesday night's event was a time for those who loved and respected Paul Wellstone to come together and be themselves. This was one event that could not be orchestrated or ruined by Republicans. So much so that the family asked that Vice President Cheney stay away. This was not the GOP's event, and no one asked their opinion on how to run it.

The Republicans stand to benefit from Wellstone's death by having this resounding voice for reason and common sense silenced. They didn't wait until Wellstone was in his grave to start attacking his successor. And they have the nerve to tell us there's only ONE proper way to mourn?

They tell us all this was inappropriate. We ask: TO WHOM?

Tens of thousands of people came to pay their respects. None but a handful who never understood what Paul Wellstone was all about found anything disrespectful about the memorial. They had one last chance to recall his ideals and share the stage with the Democratic Party's best, those whom Wellstone most admired: Gore, Kennedy, Clinton, Harkin, Mondale, and others who championed his ideals.

To Ventura, and the Republicans, and the media who stand in ruthless judgment, to them all we now say unequivocally and unapologetically: We will mourn any way we like. In Paul Wellstone's name we will continue to fight his fight. And yes, in his name we will ask voters to elect other people like him, who stand up for the old and the poor and the sick and the disenfranchised. Those who try to deny us our right to mourn sure as hell will not. In Paul Wellstone's name, we will, as his friends asked us, stand up and keep fighting.

Originally Posted by Stonewall Patton

Republicans control every branch of government but the Senate. They rule with an iron fist, allowing no dissent, putting our Constitution through the shredder, intimidating people from voting, and starting wars in our name.

:-? Dissent? What dissent? I can only think of two names, and neither of them is in the Senate (and one is a Republican).



hee hee hee on the "intimidating people from voting," though :wink:

Originally Posted by DMMcG

Virgil, I am very disappointed in you. I thought you better than that. Before church on sunday next, I would recomend Amos from the Jeroboam Crisis ca. 786-753 B.C.. HTH DMMcG

I am sorry that I did not fill your expectations of proper Blue Zone Progressive behavior...perhaps we will have booing in church quite soon. We had a funeral in Duluth with union pickets so it would not be out of the question. HTH

Stonewall, thanks for posting that. That was a great piece of comic relief.
Truely.
It took about 2 paragraphs for the smile to creep across my face, and a couple more before I truely laughed out loud.

That is indimidation at it's finest form. Pretend (or perhaps not pretend)
indignation while daring the dis-beliver to make a comment. That woman
fired that off, said to herself, "THERE! Speak out against that!"
It was ment to silence her critics. It was a pack of lies.

.....governor of Minnesota is going back on his word and will not appoint a Democrat .... That is a slap in the face of Paul Wellstone, his family, Minnesotans, and other good people nationwide still grieving. How dare he and the Republicans take advantage of our grief and berate us for how we choose to express our sorrow?

Let's be honest no body is grieving except close friends and family.
Good people nation wide are grieving? I think not.
...express our sorrow is now = to clapping, cheering, laughing etc...

That, while the unelected Republican president campaigns for Wellstone's opponent at taxpayers' expense in Air Force One.

LIE

attacked Walter Mondale before he even decided whether to run,

LIE

by a partisan Supreme Court

LIE

are striking back at his memory by attacking a memorial service!

LIE

Wellstone's friends and family, overcome by grief and emotion, asked but one thing: that we continue his legacy, and that we win one more election for Paul. How many times have Republicans asked people to win one "for the Gipper"? And now, in our hour of grief, we are demonized for asking Democrats to win one for Paul.

BE ASHAMED!!!

Every person in that crowd hurt desperately, not just for the loss of those they loved, but for having lost their voice in Congress, for having lost someone to stand up for them, for having lost their senator only two years after their vote for president was voided.

The despair was RAMPANT I saw it on every face.

There was real pain and anger in that hall -- despair almost at times. These were real feelings. How dare they put us down for hurting?

STRAWMAN

This was one event that could not be orchestrated or ruined by Republicans. So much so that the family asked that Vice President Cheney stay away

Don't Democrats have a right, on the occasion of this devastating tragedy, to came together under one roof and remind us that this is not what Paul Wellstone stood for?

Yes, the public memorial service for Paul Wellstone resembled a rally. Few would deny that.

.

Excerpted from 3 paragraphs, read them together.

They didn't wait until Wellstone was in his grave to start attacking his successor.

LIE, buried Friday morning. Rally, Sunday night.

And they have the nerve to tell us there's only ONE proper way to mourn?

LIE

Oh my God! Guess what? That bogus voter "purge" list which disfranchised all those black Democrats in Florida in 2000 is still in operation! Conveniently, it will be fixed early next year...AFTER Jebbie's planned 2002 reelection! If this thing (among other things) costs McBride the election, there is no way in hell the Democrats can concede. Or can they? If we have a repeat, will they do something about it this time? Or do we get another dog and pony show while tens of thousands of Americans are unlawfully disfranchised? Dear God, just leave people alone and let them vote! Pure vermin.



http://www.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=10360

(For educ. and discussion)


Jeb Bush's secret weapon
94,000 people on a voter "purge" list -- half of them African-American -- continue to be banned from voting in Florida, even though the state knows the list is wildly inaccurate.
http://www.salon.com/politics/featur...sts/index.html
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Greg Palast

Nov. 1, 2002 | In December 2000, we reported that Florida's use of a faulty and politically questionable list of felons and dead people "scrubbed" from voter rolls -- half of them African-Americans -- may have cost Al Gore the 537-vote margin of victory claimed by George W. Bush in Florida.

Fast-forward two years. There's another close race in Florida. This time, younger brother Jeb is fighting to fend off a challenge from Bill McBride for the governor's race. The Nov. 5 face-off could again come down to thousands, if not hundreds, of votes.

And even though the list has been widely condemned -- the company that created it admits probable errors -- the same voter scrub list, with more than 94,000 names on it, is still in operation in Florida. Moreover, DBT Online, which generated the disastrously flawed list, reports that if it followed strict criteria to eliminate those errors, roughly 3,000 names would remain -- and a whopping 91,000 people would have their voting rights restored.

Eventually the list will be fixed, state officials have promised, in accordance with a settlement with the NAACP in its civil rights suit against Florida following the 2000 election. But not until the beginning of next year -- and after Jeb Bush's reelection bid is long over.

Florida is the only state to have paid a private company to "cleanse" voter rolls. The state signed a $4 million contract with DBT in 1998 (since 1999 a division of ChoicePoint of Atlanta) to create the scrub list, called the central voter file, which was mandated by a 1998 state voter-fraud law. That followed a tumultuous year that saw Miami's mayor removed after an election in which ballots were cast in the names of dead people. The voter-fraud law required all 67 counties to purge duplicate registrations and deceased voters from voter registries, in addition to removing felons, many of whom, but not all, are barred from voting in Florida.

DBT was instructed to list all voters whose names, birth dates, genders and races closely (but not exactly) matched those of ex-felons throughout the United States. But those matches were purposefully broad -- and imprecise.

During congressional hearings in April 2001, ChoicePoint vice president James Lee testified that the company had warned Florida election officials that the results would not be completely accurate. "DBT told state officials that the rules for creating this list would mean a significant number of people who weren't dead, who weren't registered in [in a Florida county], and who were not convicted felons would be included on the list," Lee said, adding that while "DBT made a lot of suggestions to the state on ways to reduce the number of eligible voters on that list," he quoted a Florida official who told them that they "want[ed] to capture more names that possibly aren't matches" and let the county supervisors determine if they were the right person or not.

Since that experience, ChoicePoint has gone out of the business of scrubbing lists. Lee said that "although we had been approached by other states to perform similar work, ChoicePoint has declined to perform voter registration for other states" because "when comes to performing work which may impact a person's right to vote, we are not confident that any of the methods that are used today will guarantee that the legal voters will not be wrongfully denied the right to vote."

Florida, however, seems to have decided to keep using those methods. Even when they're laughably inaccurate.

The state's list, most of which has been obtained and reviewed by Salon, contains such alleged criminals as Thomas Cooper, whose inclusion on the list represents either the dawning of a "Minority Report"-era of predicting criminal behavior -- or a glaring error. According to the list, Cooper is listed as a felon convicted on Jan. 30, 2007. In all, the list includes more than 400 people whose crimes were apparently committed in the future. More than 8,000 on the list have no conviction date at all. And eight, remarkably, appear to have been convicted before they were even born.

In 1998, elections officials with the secretary of state's office secretly directed DBT to use "fuzzy" matches of first names such as John, Johnny and Joan. As a result, voter Johnny Little of Leon County was not allowed to vote in 2000, because of a crime committed by one Johnnie Little of "locale unknown." In this case, the legal names did not match, but the two Littles' birth date and race (both are black) did. Johnny Little was tagged for removal from voter rolls. Also, the state, over the objections of DBT, also ordered the company to ignore suffixes such as "Jr." and "II," and mismatches of middle initials.

As part of the NAACP's suit against Florida, ChoicePoint agreed to review all the scrub lists. The company's report, dated Aug. 19, 2002, indicates that of the 94,000 names on the lists, only 3,000 match the nine key criteria (including social security number) that experts -- including DBT's senior vice president, George Bruder -- have stated is necessary to avoid misidentification.

Even before the 2000 election, some county election officials, interviewed by Salon two years ago, had disobeyed the order of the secretary of state's office and disregarded the lists, deciding they were faulty. That included Madison County's election supervisor, Linda Howell, who found her own name erroneously among the "felons."

But many others did use the list -- and are likely to use it this year as well, because the state has not instructed them otherwise.

So what's the delay in yanking the faulty lists? Salon asked former Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who is also a congressional candidate this year. But calls to her attorney -- the ironically named John W. Little III, of Palm Beach -- went unreturned. Calls to the Florida Department of Elections were also not returned.

The racial bent of the scrub list - and its particular bias against Democrats - was a foreseeable result of the purge methodology. African-Americans account for approximately 46 percent of felony convictions in the United States, so it's no surprise that ChoicePoint's report for the NAACP on its scrub lists found that less than half of those on the Florida list are identified as white. (The Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires Florida to ask voters to state their race on registration forms.)

Florida's black voters are expected to cast ballots by at least 4-1 against Jeb Bush on Nov. 5, according to a recent St. Petersburg Times poll. And a University of Minnesota study indicates that nine of 10 ex-cons, on leaving jail, vote Democratic, no matter their race.

Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way Foundation, which represented the NAACP in its suit, is disturbed by the state's foot-dragging. "They've known about the flaws in the list for at least two years, yet they come up with every excuse for not getting these names back on." Florida's slow efforts contrast markedly with the initial rush to purge those voters, accomplished in a matter of weeks. That first cleansing of the voter rolls occurred in 1998 under Harris' predecessor as secretary of state, Republican Sandra Mortham. At the time, Mortham overruled the objections of county elections officials in order to rush the purge's completion in a matter of weeks, just in time for Jeb Bush's first successful race for governor.

While some on the list were never scrubbed, tens of thousands of other citizens not on the purge list nevertheless lost their vote. They were wrongly denied the right to register. A directive from Gov. Jeb Bush's office dated Sept. 18, 2000, six weeks before the presidential election, ordered county officials to deny the vote to those convicted of felonies in other states. Two court rulings prior to the election directed the secretary of state to cease denying the civil rights of ex-cons who had relocated to Florida. Bush's clemency office corrected this error, affecting at least 40,000 citizens, but only on Feb. 23, 2001, after the presidential election.

The DBT purge list includes 2,800 such out-of-state felons whom Harris and Roberts, in the settlement with the NAACP, acknowledge should never have been purged.

That failure to restore those voters' rights in time for the governor's race especially troubles Larry Ottinger, co-counsel for the NAACP. "We should never have had to litigate this. They've admitted their error. There's simply no excuse for not returning this group of 2,800 to the rolls right now." The NAACP has been told that the state is waiting for reports from eight states to determine if any of these persons are still in jail or serving probationary sentences.

Florida paid DBT $4.3 million over three years to help identify felons illegally registered to vote, replacing a company that had charged the state only $5,700 per year for this work. DBT was chosen because the giant database operator, which aids the FBI on manhunts, offered to verify the accuracy of the list using several of its 1,200 databases, including change-of-address and driver's license records. DBT was also paid to verify the data by telephone calls, an arduous, costly, but necessary task where civil rights are involved.

State records show DBT was paid the millions to conduct the verification work. But, with the state's permission, DBT skipped those costly cross-checks. Last February, when asked to explain why DBT was paid for verification work not done, Florida Elections Division chief Clayton Roberts ended an agreed-upon interview with this reporter, locked himself in his office, and called in state troopers to remove this reporter from the Florida capitol building in Tallahassee.

This September, Roberts also signed a settlement with the NAACP, agreeing to reform the purge list. Roberts' explanation for why the list has not been dumped? He's not returning phone calls, either.

Originally Posted by justmom

Let's be honest no body is grieving except close friends and family.
Good people nation wide are grieving? I think not.

I grieve. I don't even live in Minnesota, and I grieve. A good man is dead.

The writer of this article is angry, and I don't blame her one bit. Feelings don't lie.

Ronald Reagan is in the latter stages of Alzheimer's disease. It is a cruel way to see a fellow human being waste away like that. I did not agree with Mr. Reagan on many issues, but I grieve for him and his family.

The memorial service was for friends and supporters of Paul Wellstone to celebrate his life. If people are disturbed by how these feelings were expressed, maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe we're too afraid of raw emotion and deep conviction, and that's why we rationalize about it afterwards, and then make fun of it.

Because otherwise we might actually have to feel something. And maybe that's too much for certain people to handle.

Originally Posted by David '47

Originally Posted by Marc Lamb

Originally Posted by David '47

This was tacky poitics, but it was local tacky politics. I doubt either McAuliffe or Clinton had even a small hand in the affair.

While the former is true, the latter comment represents the sort of denial that pervades the Democratic Party of the present-day. A denial, I believe, that may very well result in the destruction of this party, and quite possibly the entire nation, as well.

True to form, the hubris of the right weighs in, which is pretty tacky in its own right.

Seems I did get a little overly hubristic with my confirmation of your "it was local tacky politics".

Indeed, it turns out not to have been "local tacky politics" at all, but rather the whole thing came striaght out of DNC headquarters in Washington.

Quote:
"That was the plan all along and it was one of the reasons we didn't want Cheney at the event," says one Democratic political operative who spoke only under promise that his name not be used. "It was a high stakes gamble but this is a campaign that demands high risks." The secret plan was developled at the DNC headquarters in Washington and approved by party chairman Terry McAuliffe, the source said. --Democratic operatives planned, engineered Wellstone political rally


You Democrats are not only "destructive", you're shameless.

Democrat Suckers

Here's a great story from the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. Fritz Mondale, basking in the afterglow of his acceptance speech that had featured the line, "Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did." Just as Mondale steps off the podium, Congressman Dan "Rosty" Rostenkowski walks up to him and whispers, "You've got a lot of balls, pal," and Mondale whispered back, as he gazed out at a sea of cheering Democrats, "Look at 'em. We're going to tax their ass off."

Democrat suckers, indeed!





SOURCE: Showdown at Gucci Gulch: by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Alan S. Murray (Knopf 1988)

This bears repeating:

Originally Posted by Kiff '61

Originally Posted by justmom

Let's be honest no body is grieving except close friends and family.
Good people nation wide are grieving? I think not.

I grieve. I don't even live in Minnesota, and I grieve. A good man is dead.

The writer of this article is angry, and I don't blame her one bit. Feelings don't lie.

Ronald Reagan is in the latter stages of Alzheimer's disease. It is a cruel way to see a fellow human being waste away like that. I did not agree with Mr. Reagan on many issues, but I grieve for him and his family.

The memorial service was for friends and supporters of Paul Wellstone to celebrate his life. If people are disturbed by how these feelings were expressed, maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe we're too afraid of raw emotion and deep conviction, and that's why we rationalize about it afterwards, and then make fun of it.

Because otherwise we might actually have to feel something. And maybe that's too much for certain people to handle.

A close look at the lowest rung of the human ladder and the politics it currently promotes. Machiavelli (and naturally Satan) lives:


November 1, 2002

Exposing Karl Rove

by WAYNE MADSEN

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen1101.html

Here is a comprehensive analysis from a Democratic perspective. He does conclude with Zogby's "values" argument in asking, is this the country we want for ourselves, our children and our children's children?



http://www.onlinejournal.com/Comment...ver103102.html

(For educ. and discussion)



Assassinations, phony wars, cooked polls, corporate crooks and stolen elections

By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher


From ghoulies and ghosties and long leggety beasties and things that go bump in Washington, good people, deliver us! ?with apologies to the Scots for paraphrasing their old saying.

October 31, 2002?Once again, despite cooked polls, it's all going badly for the junior George Bush. The economy becomes worse by the day. The corporate crooks go unpunished. His friends, Russian President "Pooty-Poot" Putin and Mexican President Vicente Fox, have deserted him. What really happened on 9/11 looms larger than ever and people are now even questioning whether Senator Paul Wellstone's death was an accident or murder.

Worse, the grand old man of the left, Gore Vidal, has joined with us "conspiracy nuts" in saying the evidence points to George W. either being complicit in or letting the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001, happen. Vidal, after pondering the obvious, has decided that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.

In a lengthy article, The Enemy Within, that appeared in Sunday's print edition of the UK's Observer, Vidal wrote, "Post- 9/11, the American media were filled with pre-emptory denunciations of unpatriotic 'conspiracy theorists,' who not only are always with us but are usually easy for the media to discredit since it is an article of faith that there are no conspiracies in American life. Yet, a year or so ago, who would have thought that most of corporate America had been conspiring with accountants to cook their books since?well, at least the bright days of Reagan and deregulation. Ironically, less than a year after the massive danger from without, we were confronted with an even greater enemy from within: Golden Calf capitalism. Transparency? One fears that greater transparency will only reveal armies of maggots at work beneath the skin of a culture that needs a bit of a lie-down in order to collect itself before taking its next giant step which is to conquer Eurasia, a potentially fatal adventure not only for our frazzled institutions but for us the presently living."

He goes on to follow the trail that Michael C. Ruppert, Michel Chossudovsky, Nafeez Mossaddeq Ahmed, and many others of us, all of whom have been trashed by the Establishment Left as nutty conspiracy theorists, have been following and concludes there is something very rotten in the Bush administration. Moreover, in any past administration, just the fact alone that the military failed to follow procedure in scrambling planes on that fateful monring would have resulted in courts-martial and impeachment.

Of the corporate media, Vidal said, "The media, never much good a analysis, are more and more breathless and incoherent. On CNN, even the stolid Jim Clancy started to hyperventilate when an Indian academic tried to explain how Iraq was once our ally and 'friend' in its war against our Satanic enemy Iran. 'None of that conspiracy stuff,' snuffed Clancy. Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth."

Indeed.

But while Bush and Dick Cheney labor to thwart any investigation into 9/11?much less a meaningful independent one ?their plans to grab the rest of Eurasia, now that they have (or think they have) Afghanistan, are coming unglued, or as the headline on Ruppert's Oct. 28 article reads: Wheels Come Off U.S. War Plans for Iraq.

Ruppert wrote that "Bush administration responses to recent events appear to be moving a tense international situation into a new phase where chaotic, scattered and increasingly bloody violence may spread risk to civilian populations and the estimated 80,000 to 100,000 U.S. troops that have been forward-deployed in anticipation of the attacks for months. U.S. troop deployments in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Djibouti, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and a Kurdish controlled region of northern Iraq?once offensive staging points or strategic postings ?are now becoming vulnerable defensive liabilities as world sentiment mounts against the U.S. invasion. Britain is also reported to have troop deployments in Oman on the Southeast tip of the Arabian Peninsula."

A reported recent coup attempt in Qatar, "perhaps the most vital country to a successful U.S. invasion plan, has raised serious questions about whether the administration can afford to wait much longer without risking the entire collapse of both its prestige and a plan which has recently been shown to be years in the making."

Adding to Junior's woes, Brazilians delivered another slap in the face to the Bush administration by electing, in a landslide, Worker's Party candidate Luis Inacio "Lula" de Silva, a former Marxist, president of the largest democracy in South America. That follows on the heels of a second coup attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has dared criticize Bush policies in Latin America.

In the midst of the Republicans bearing their fangs and unleashing every dirty trick in the book in the hopes of assuring themselves of controlling all three branches of the federal government, comes the very convenient death of Minnesota's Paul Wellstone, one of the last liberal Democrats in the US Senate. Wellstone was a bad boy in voting against the resolution that gave Bush authorization to wage war on Iraq. He was the only incumbent up for reelection to vote no.

The twin-engine Beechcraft King Air A100 carrying Wellstone, his wife Sheila, daughter Marcia and five others crashed and burned under mysterious circumstances last Friday, just two miles short of the Eveleth, Minn., airport where it was to have landed, killing all aboard.

In 2000, the Democratic governor of Missouri, Mel Carnahan, who was battling John Ashcroft for a US Senate seat, also died in a small plane crash. The difference was that Carnahan's wife, Jean, was not with him. Jean agreed to fill the seat for her late husband should he win it and Missouri voters delivered a blow to Ashcroft, now Bush's attorney general, by casting their votes for a dead man.

Coincidence? Possibly. But Wellstone's death comes at a time when too many strange things are happening in this country. Also bear in mind, Junior declared that anyone who isn't with him is the enemy.

The World Socialist Web Site put it this way: "One might say, paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, that to lose one senator is a misfortune, but to lose two senators, the same way, is positively suspicious."

Besides all these goings on and the unrelenting effort to keep Americans in a constant state of fear?relentless announcements of alleged imminent, but unspecified, terror attacks and the Washington-area sniper shootings (which may be hung on our latest Lee Harvey Oswalds)?George W. has the all important task of helping his equally criminal brother, Jeb, get reelected as governor of Florida or suffer his greatest humiliation, that is, if Junior is capable of suffering anything other than temper tantrums.

Of course, it helps when the voting equipment being used not only in Florida but throughout much of the country is provided by Republican-controlled companies. Florida Republicans also get a boost from the fact that the tens of thousands of black voters wrongly deemed felons and purged from the voter rolls in 2000 will not have their voting rights restored until the beginning of 2003?long after the race between Jeb and his Democratic opponent, Bill McBride, is decided.

Yet, the Florida corporate media are telling voters what a great guy Jeb Bush is, while again burying his criminal past and erasing from their memory banks Jeb's hand in helping brother George steal the Sunshine State's 25 presidential electoral votes.

Then there are the dirty tricks. Had it not been a mistaken call to Florida Democratic Chairman Bob Poe, few people would know that someone is phoning registered Democrats and urging them to cast absentee ballots on Nov. 10?five days after the election.

In a letter to US Attorney John Ashcroft, asking him to investigate the misleading call, Poe wrote, "When I questioned the caller about the November 10th election date, he was adamant that I wasn't to cast my absentee ballot until November 10th. When I inquired about whom he was making the call for, he said 'the McBride campaign'?apparently unaware he was speaking with the chair of the Florida Democratic Party. When I asked what company he worked at, he said 'California' and then said something I couldn't understand. Upon asking him again, the caller said he was calling from 'CSS.' When I asked to speak to his supervisor, he disconnected the call."

Jeb and the Florida GOP have been running patently false ads to paint his opponent, Bill McBride, as a "tax and spend" Democrat, when McBride has made it clear that the only new tax he would impose is 50 cents on a pack of cigarettes to pay for additional public school construction, should the smaller class size initiative on the ballot pass.

Yet, stuck in the back pages of a local paper is an article that Jeb's brother Neil?the same Neil who got a slap on the wrist for his part in the Silverado Savings & Loan debacle?is hoping to sell Florida schools software made by his company, Ignite, Inc., to allegedly help students prepare for mandatory the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), championed by Jeb as a measure of school performance.

What was left out of the Associate Press article is the fact that Ignite surreptitiously promotes a right wing Christian approach to education.

So if Jeb loses next Tuesday, it will be a blow to not only brother George and Jeb's hopes of succeeding him, but to brother Neil's pocketbook, as well.

In a series of efforts to make sure that doesn't happen, the state Republicans are mass mailing flyers containing whoppers about McBride's performance as the managing partner of the Holland & Knight law firm.

The Miami Herald, which endorsed Jeb's reelection, reported that the latest flyer, sent out over the weekend, "contains an unflattering photo of McBride, mouth open, and says he 'borrowed so heavily against the assets of his failing law firm he had to get out fast.'" It further claims, the Herald said, "McBride has begun to 'mortgage his own campaign' by making billions of dollars in promises demanded by the 'special interests' funding his campaign, and is promising new sales taxes."

Then there is the little money swap the National Republican Senatorial Committee engaged in with the Florida Republican Party. Despite the lack of a Senate race in the state this year, the NRSC sent the Florida GOP $3.2 in soft money to help Jeb, In exchange, the Florida GOP transferred $2.7 million in hard money to the NRSC to be used to help senatorial candidates in close races in other states.

Perhaps Jeb revealed the sleaze of the Bush family's character in a remark he made to whistleblower and former Office of Naval Intelligence officer Al Martin, who had been involved with him in Iran-contra. According to Martin, his attorney had sent him in February 1986 to discuss with Jeb his (Martin's) upcoming grand jury testimony in regard to Iran-contra. Martin said the meeting took place in the office of Jeb's Miami real estate business.

In an interview with author Uri Dowbenko, Martin contended, Jeb warned him about telling the truth with these chilling words: "The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit the truth in the bank. You can't buy groceries with the truth. You can't pay the rent with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross?all the way down to the homeless shelter. And if you think that the million or so people in this country that are really interested in the truth about their government can support people who would tell them the truth, you got another think coming. Because the million people in this country that are truly interested in the truth don't have any money." (Bushwhacked, P. 162)

Martin further told Dowbenko, "In the past, I've talked about George Bush Sr.'s famous quote that "truth will get you broke? or dead."

There is no honor among these thieves and their supporters. There is nothing they won't say or do to gain their ends. Is this the kind of country we want for ourselves, our children and our children's children? If your answer is no, the only means we have now of halting them is the ballot box if it isn't rigged.

No matter how angry or disgusted many of us are with the Democrats, this is not the time to stay home on election day or vote for a third party candidate, no matter how attractive that candidate may be. If the Republicans get control of both the House and the Senate, get used to living in a police state where you are nothing more than a worker ant?or a "useless eater" to be done away with if you can no longer work?and your offspring are looked upon as nothing more than cannon fodder for the Bush regime's endless wars.

And that's the truth?unspeakable or not.

While I know he's probably not a big fan of the great Pigskin Review, I post this one for Mr. Saari anyway:




"Shithole" WINS! Beats Workers Paradise: 34-3
"Shithole" Remains Unbeaten at 10-0

Story by: Marc S. Lamb, Pigskin Reporter
Saturday, November 2, 2002 7:45PM

It's been a tough week for the once-mighty Workers Paradise, one can only hope next week means Happy Day Are Here Again! when they vote to send Mr. "Look at 'em. We're going to tax their ass off" Mondale back to the U.S. Senate!




We can only hope, folks. :wink:

Originally Posted by Xer of Evil

I can't believe that the Wellstone memorial seems so important to you people. Outside of people from Minnesota, had anyone really heard of this guy before? And how did everyone have the time to watch the service? Wasn't anyone at work that day? Or are you all independently wealthy?

XoE

It's important in the way that a 10 car pile up on the freeway causes you to
slow down and look, even though you don't want to.

Originally Posted by David '47

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68 was doing well when he

Originally Posted by in response to Kiff '61, who

I have to ask, HC, why in the world you would sit through something like that, especially if you found it so personally nauseating.

Why not just change the channel?

I didn't sit through all of it, Kiff. I caught as much of it as I could stomach, and that was enough. Today, everything I've read, heard, and seen in rerun matches what I was seeing last night.

FWIW, I was pretty nauseated too, and I'm much more likely to agree with both Wellstone and Mondate than HC. It was tasteless and stupid.

Originally Posted by ... then he returned to partisan form when he

... I do sometimes pay attention to things like that, though, because I know from past experience that part of the way people like Clinton and Clinton and their associates (McAuliffe comes to mind) get away with the stuff they do is that people turn away and tune out.

This was tacky poitics, but it was local tacky politics. I doubt either McAuliffe or Clinton had even a small hand in the affair.

If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. :wink:

Keep in mind that this thing was big, well-planned, and set up to go out smoothly on local TV. The audience was packed specifically for the purpose of the rally. You can bank on it that McAuliffe was in on it up to his ears. And if McAuliffe is in on something, so is Clinton, since McAuliffe was appointed by Clinton with the specific intention of being his proxy to control the DNC.

Very, very little of significance occurs in the modern national Democratic Party that Bill and Hill are not involved in. That's not invective, just an observation of reality.

It's beginning to look as if this thing may have backfired, though, from a political standpoint.

Originally Posted by Xer of Evil

I can't believe that the Wellstone memorial seems so important to you people. Outside of people from Minnesota, had anyone really heard of this guy before? And how did everyone have the time to watch the service? Wasn't anyone at work that day? Or are you all independently wealthy?

XoE

I don't know if you're serious or not.

Anyone who follows politics had heard of Wellstone, who was one of the few Democrats who consistently voted his conscience, even when the national Democratic Party was trying to pretend not to be liberal. He was often wrong, but he tended to be sincerely wrong, and he made enough of a fuss to catch attention.

As for having time to watch the service, it was all over TV and film of it got reshown. It was hard to avoid seeing it.

As to why it's important, it reveals something basic about the people involved, and that something isn't pretty.

Originally Posted by Kiff '61

Originally Posted by justmom

Let's be honest no body is grieving except close friends and family.
Good people nation wide are grieving? I think not.

I grieve. I don't even live in Minnesota, and I grieve. A good man is dead.

The writer of this article is angry, and I don't blame her one bit. Feelings don't lie.

This is false. Feelings never lie or tell the truth, since they aren't statements. They most certainly can lead one wrong, and at times they can be self-deception.

As for the writer of the article, she systematically repeated every single one of the falsehoods and half-truths that the DNC routinely spin out to attack the GOP. Now, she may be furious, but if she is, she's also very confused, since that Memorial Rally was not about grief, nor even about Wellstone. It was a coldly calculated political maneuver, and my opinion of Wellstone's son fall sharply in response to his involvement in it.

The memorial service was for friends and supporters of Paul Wellstone to celebrate his life. If people are disturbed by how these feelings were expressed, maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe we're too afraid of raw emotion and deep conviction, and that's why we rationalize about it afterwards, and then make fun of it.

Kiff, that Memorial Rally was a calculated political/public relations manuever. I'm disturbed by it precisely because no real feeling was involved. I don't doubt there were genuine mourners present, or the pain his friends and family feel at Wellstone's death. That makes what was done worse.

I'm not making much fun of this, it's too pathetic and twisted for that. But I'm under no obligation to pretend that Rally was anything but what it was, either.

Originally Posted by Kiff '61

Originally Posted by cbailey

Thanks for posting,alias. I appreciate and value the first-hand account.

I do, too. Thanks, alias, for your report.

Don't be too grateful, Kiff. He's got it fundamentally wrong.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Keep in mind that this thing was big, well-planned, and set up to go out smoothly on local TV. The audience was packed specifically for the purpose of the rally. You can bank on it that McAuliffe was in on it up to his ears. And if McAuliffe is in on something, so is Clinton, since McAuliffe was appointed by Clinton with the specific intention of being his proxy to control the DNC.

HC, you Bush Republicans really need to find hobbies. A man died, and his family and those who cared about him held a memorial service. This happens all the time in America. How they conducted that service is their business...not yours, and not mine. Who attends is their business and what is said is their business. Not yours, and not mine. If you have a complaint about people being "exposed to it" on television, then you need to take up your grievance with the television stations and/or networks which covered it. You Bush Republicans are becoming nearly as despicable as the Bush crowd which you willfully support.

It's beginning to look as if this thing may have backfired, though, from a political standpoint.

No, actually seeing as millions and millions of Americans of all political stripes (Republicans included) stopped and actually considered for at least a moment that the man may have been murdered, things "backfired" for the Bush crowd whether they had anything to do with it or not. I have never seen anything like this in my life, where such suspicion has gone mainstream. This is not the 3T anymore.

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

As to why it's important, it reveals something basic about the people involved, and that something isn't pretty.

Yes, and your and all these other Bush Kool-Aid drinkers' despicable arrogance in presuming to dictate how others conduct their memorial service reveals far more about the depths of depravity to which you have willingly sunk by handing over your souls in supporting this Machiavellian human garbage in the White House. What this all reveals about the Bush Kool-Aid drinkers is far, far less pretty. In fact it is as ugly as things come on this earth. Please, find a hobby, stay out of other people's affairs, and quit exploiting other people's tragedies. You people are sick.

[quote="HopefulCynic68"]Now, she may be furious, but if she is, she's also very confused, since that Memorial Rally was not about grief, nor even about Wellstone. It was a coldly calculated political maneuver, and my opinion of Wellstone's son fall sharply in response to his involvement in it.

You presume to judge a son in the wake of his father's death. You people are absolutely despicable. Even if everything you say about the service is true, it only amouts to a "Win One for the Gipper." That is perfectly understandable. There is nothing wrong with that. Why don't you people find a hobby and keep your noses out of other people's drawers? Gross.

Kiff, that Memorial Rally was a calculated political/public relations manuever. I'm disturbed by it precisely because no real feeling was involved.

Absolutely despicable. HC, it is not your father who died. This is none of your affair. Get a hobby and mind your own business.

I'm not making much fun of this, it's too pathetic and twisted for that.

No, your audacity in going out of your way to traumatize a family in their moment of grief is what is pathetic and twisted. Get a life.