What Happened to Mr. Guckert?

James/Jeff Guckert/Gannon has moved on. He's bloggin' now:

http://www.jeffgannon.com/

It appears he's doing more writing now than he did while he was working for Talon News.

posted by Stash @ 9:10 AM

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Maureen's View

I Spy a Screw-Up
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Like the new Woody Allen movie, "Melinda and Melinda," it is possible to view today's big story on the tremendous intelligence failures before the Iraq war as either comedy or tragedy, depending on how you look at it.
For instance, on the comic side, The Times reported yesterday that administration officials were relieved that the new report by a presidential commission had "found no evidence that political pressure from the White House or Pentagon contributed to the mistaken intelligence."
That's hilarious.
As necessity is the mother of invention, political pressure was the father of conveniently botched intelligence.
Dick Cheney and the neocons at the Pentagon started with the conclusion they wanted, then massaged and manipulated the intelligence to back up their wishful thinking.
As The New Republic reported, Mr. Cheney lurked at the C.I.A. in the summer of 2002, an intimidating presence for young analysts. And Douglas Feith set up the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon as a shadow intelligence agency to manufacture propaganda bolstering the administration's case.
The Office of Special Plans turned to the con man Ahmad Chalabi to come up with the evidence they needed. The Iraqi National Congress obliged with information that has now been debunked as exaggerated or fabricated. One gem was the hard-drinking relative of a Chalabi aide, a secret source code-named Curveball, who claimed to verify the mobile weapons labs.
Mr. Cheney and his "Gestapo office," as Colin Powell called it, then shoehorned all their meshugas about Saddam's aluminum tubes, weapons labs, drones and Al Qaeda links into Mr. Powell's U.N. speech.
The former secretary of state spent four days and three nights at the C.I.A. before making the presentation, trying to vet the material, because he knew that Mr. Cheney, who had an idée fixe about Saddam, was trying to tap into his credibility and use him as a battering ram.
He told Germany's Stern magazine that he was "furious and angry" that he had been given bum information about Iraq's arsenal: "Some of the information was wrong. I did not know this at the time."
The vice president and the neocons were in a fever to bypass the C.I.A. and conjure up a case to attack Saddam, even though George Tenet was panting to be of service. When Mr. Tenet put out the new National Intelligence Estimate on Oct. 2, 2002, nine days before the Senate vote on the war resolution and after our troops and aircraft carriers were getting into position for battle, there was one key change: suddenly the agency agreed with Mr. Cheney that Iraq was pursuing the atomic bomb.
Charles Robb, the former senator and governor of Virginia, and Laurence Silberman, a hard-core conservative appeals court judge, headed the commission. Unlike Tom Kean, Judge Silberman held secret meetings; he made sure the unpleasantness wouldn't come up until Mr. Bush had won re-election.
It is laughable that the report offers its most scorching criticism of the C.I.A. when the C.I.A. was simply doing what the White House and Pentagon wanted. Isn't that why Mr. Tenet was given the Medal of Freedom? (Freedom from facts.)
The hawks don't want to learn any lessons here. If they had to do it again, they'd do it the same way. The imaginary weapons and Osama link were just a marketing tool and shiny distraction, something to keep the public from crying while they went to war for reasons unrelated to any nuclear threat.
The 9/11 attacks gave the neocons an opening for their dreams of remaking the Middle East, and they drove the Third Infantry Division through it.
The president planned to announce today that he would put into place many of the commission's recommendations, including an interagency center on proliferation designed to play down turf battles among intelligence agencies.
As Michael Isikoff and Dan Klaidman reported in Newsweek, in the three and a half years since 9/11, the intelligence agencies still haven't learned how to share what they know. At the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the Homeland Security guy complained he was frozen out by the F.B.I. and C.I.A.
Like "Melinda and Melinda," the other side of this wacky saga is deadly serious. There are, after all, more than 1,500 dead American soldiers, Al Qaeda terrorists on the loose and real nuclear-bomb programs in Iran and North Korea that we know nothing about. No laughs there.

posted by Stash @ 8:46 AM

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U.S. Court Again Rejects Schiavo Appeal

U.S. Court Again Rejects Schiavo Appeal

posted by Stash @ 3:24 PM

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Buzzflash on Schiavo

Terri Schiavo Was Just An Innocent Bystander To A Political, Elmer Gantry Circus Of GOP Political Opportunists And Religious Hucksters

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

Terri Schiavo deserves our sympathy and our Godspeed.
She was just an innocent bystander to a political, Elmer Gantry circus of GOP political opportunists and religious hucksters.
The origins of the travesty and moral crime of exploitation was a family feud of sorts. It was about a wrenching decision made thousands of times a year by Americans about loved ones who are in vegetative states or terminal conditions.
But with the help of the infamous Randall Terry and the GOP hypocrisy machine, a case long ago settled by the courts, was hijacked to advance Republican fortunes and fill the pocket books of celebrity fundamentalist preachers.
Terri Schiavo, like anyone in her situation, deserves our sympathy and our empathy. She didn't ask for a three ring circus, but the Bush brothers and Tom "the Exterminator DeLay" could care less about her dignity or her life. She's only of use to them if her parents' campaign can help them further consolidate power -- or, in the case of DeLay, cling onto it amidst a rash of ethical and legal problems.
We are always a bit baffled when the mainstream media and centrist Democrats "concede" that the Republicans have some sort of monopoly on the "values issue." The only value that the GOP leadership seems to consistently embrace is hypocrisy. Virtually, everything else is brazen showboating by hardened sinners and liars, immoral opportunists and slick river boat gamblers playing the role of saintly pious men.
Take Tom DeLay as the Los Angeles Times did this week -- and as BuzzFlash has over the past five years. DeLay decried judges and anyone who would remove a feeding tube from Terri Schiavo as barbaric (even though it is done in such cases thousands of times a year). And that was just the beginning of his self-righteous fire and brimstone invective.
But it turns out that Tom "Hypocrisy Central" DeLay approved of removing life support from his father some years back. And, as for DeLay casting judgment on Michael Schiavo (who sat at his wife's bedside for years), Tom hasn't, according to the Washington Post, talked to his mother or siblings for years. He didn't even invite his mother to his daughter's wedding. If there is anyone who DOESN'T practice family values, it's Tom DeLay.
And then you have the Bush brothers. George W. Bush, who couldn't be bothered to interrupt his 2001 Crawford Ranch photo-op vacation to try and prevent 9/11 after receiving red alert warnings, flew back from Crawford to sign an unprecedented violation of the separation of powers law that would move the Schiavo case to the Federal Courts. The rather glaring hypocrisy here was that George W. Bush had signed a radically different kind of law while Governor of Texas, one that not only declared the spouse the person to decide (along with the doctor) if life support should be removed; he also allowed an option for doctors to remove life support from patients whose families did not have the means to pay for their care! Now, that's some hypocrisy!
And of course, Bush loved it when he set the record for executing people in Texas, killing more than 100,000 Iraqis, avoiding funerals of the 1500 plus GIs killed in Iraq, reducing health services to Veterans, and cutting Medicaid, among other deathly actions. But save one clinically brain dead woman and Bush is a hero to the people who are only for life for "saved" white Christians and unborn fetuses. Everyone else can pretty much rot in Hell. Heck, an infant was allowed to die in a Texas hospital under Bush's Lone Star State law -- against his mother's wishes -- while the Schiavo case was gaining full steam among the Republicans. Pook kid, if God wanted to save him, he would have been born a White Christian!
As for Jeb, his not so discreet angling for the 2008 presidential nomination, led him to send law enforcement officials to seize Terry Schiavo, according to the Miami Herald. Fortunately for the rule of law, the local police turned Jeb's troops away since they were violating a judge's court order. The next day Jeb denied the whole thing, even though the Miami Herald claimed three sources. Oh, and why is Jeb so interested in keeping a woman in a 15-year vegetative state from being at peace with her maker when he has decimated his state's Medicaid budget that helps keep kids and seniors alive and run a scandal-ridden department of children and family services? It's the Bush hypocrisy stupid.
Of course, heart surgeon Dr. Bill Frist once fessed up to rounding up stray cats during his medical school days, euthanizing them, and then practicing dissection on them. That was just the beginning of strange medical practices for Dr. Frist. He was able to diagnose, he claims, Terry Schiavo's condition from a videotape, even though the doctor appointed by Jeb Bush and all her attending doctors disagree with his rosy prognosis. It wouldn't be that Dr. Frist was looking to tie up the support of the loony wing of the religious right as he seeks the presidency in 2008, would it? Guess, if he wins, we won't have cats running loose around the White House.
And of course, unknown to most of the public, the Schiavo parents were being assisted by an army of PR luminaries from the so-called pro-life fanatics, including the infamous Randall Terry. A group of friars from Minnesota became one of the main visual images of the Schiavo parents' "religiosity." But, strangely enough, one of the friars admitted that they "pulled the plug" on the founder of their small group when he became seriously ill. Brother John Kaspari told the Tampa Bay Tribune, "He would have required intubation to keep him alive," Kaspari said. "We chose not to go that route. His lungs were full of fluid."
Are any of these religious right fanatics NOT hypocrites? Are they clinically delusional? Are they dangerous?
Perhaps, all of the above.
Judge Greer, who allowed the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, has received death threats and is under armed guard, even though he is a loyal Republican and observant Baptist. "Kill for Life," we guess. Just like the anti-choice terrorists who claim they are preserving the sanctity of life by killing doctors who perform abortions.
In a farcical side note on "the shooters for life" contingent of the GOP, one man was arrested after trying to hold up a gun store with a box cutter. He wanted a gun to shoot his way into "rescuing" Terri Schiavo. The gun store owner, with plenty of guns to spare, pointed a handgun at "Terri's savior" and told the guy to lie down like a good puppy.
We are a nation gone mad, aren't we?
After all, the man who pulled the plug on democracy in 2000, Antonin Scalia, is running around the country campaigning to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Even many Democrats praise his alleged "brilliance."
But we aren't impressed. First of all, he stole the presidency for George W. Bush. That's the work of a thug, not a genius.
Second of all, he thinks America lives under divine law. If so, he should be a Priest or legal counsel at his beloved Opus Dei, not a Supreme Court Chief Justice. This country is a democracy not a church.
Finally, he recently told a synagogue audience that Jews would be safer under a Christian nation. Uh, Antonin, didn't Hitler build up the Nazi era in Germany in the name of Christ? Just a lesson to you, Nino, the Jews didn't fare too well in that Christian nation. God, the guy ought to read a history book, instead of "Rapture."
And people think this guy is bright.
He's just another muscle guy for the GOP.
Terry Schiavo, you deserved better.
But when you have a nation run by a party whose ONLY real value is hypocrisy in pursuit of the maintenance of power, that's the Barnum and Bailey environment you get.
No one blames you for a thing. We just wish you final peace.
It's the rest of us who are daily at risk from this freak sideshow run amuck, with the carnival barkers operating out of the White House.

posted by Stash @ 7:13 AM

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Tom DeLay Awards Badge Of Honor

Tom DeLay Awards Badge Of Honor:

"Tom DeLay Awards Badge Of Honor"
by DANIEL RUTH

posted by Stash @ 12:14 PM

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The Bush Doctorin'

The Bush Doctorin', by Nancy Greggs - Democratic Underground: "The Bush Doctorin'
How the GOP Became Doctors and Ethicists in One Grandstanding Weekend
March 24, 2005
The Bush Doctorin'

By Nancy Greggs

posted by Stash @ 8:38 AM

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Can We Stop Feeding Bush?

We here at The Whirlpool are supportive of Mike Shiavo’s honoring his wife’s wishes in Florida. He should be commended for standing with her for these last 15 years rather than vilified as the Wrong Wing Republican Fundies have been doing. He could have taken the easy way out and abandoned her to her parents desires but, instead, continued to honor a commitment made long ago….the kind of commitment you make to someone you love and you mean it.

We’ve read that Terri Shiavo may get the peace she craved in two weeks or less now the feeding tubes have been pulled. Our thoughts are with her, Michael Shiavo and his family, and Terri’s family while they sort through this and try to find the peace that Terri will now have.

Now that this one is settled we want to know, can we pull the tubes from Dubya? Granted his brain is substantially more full of BULL SHIT than Terri’s is so he may last longer. But, one really has to ask the question: How long would a Brain Dead Republican President that talks to and for God survive without food or water?

Inquiring minds want to know…… don’t they?

posted by Stash @ 5:01 PM

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On Shiavo, by Dean

I care about words. This moved me.

The obscene hypocrisy of this administration has reached new heights in the ghastly exploitation of Terri Schiavo and her pathetic family. A woman whose brain is largely gone, replaced by spinal fluid leaking into the void is being used by a president who himself signed in to Texas law the right of hospitals to remove life support of patients on Medicaid or Medicare against the wishes of parents, spouses or legal guardians. Just this week a six month old infant was allowed to die under this law. President Bush did not reverse himself, the national legislature did not intervene, and most of the news media did not publicize this little death.

President Bush’s budgetary gutting of the already broken VA system is leading to the removal of 5,000 indigent, helpless veterans from the veterans’ nursing homes. With no place to go, no resources, no government intervention, what will happen to them? Let the states take care of them, cries the president. What will the states do for money?

Cuts in all social programs for the poorest, the sickest and the weakest have led to deaths of people who might have been saved. Those without health care insurance, and they are in the millions, are dying because they can’t afford to treat their cancers, or even see a doctor for early intervention to prevent further deterioration. Where is the concern of the president, the federal legislature, the press?

And yet, the carrion-eaters, the right-wing talking heads on television, the right wing politicos smack their lips over this unhappy case, and wallow in the misery of the family as they play out their anguished scene in front of the cameras. And now, the ultimate cynicism and willingness of the Republicans to politicize everything; they are vomiting out the putrid spewings of their kind, trying to somehow convince the gullible public that this is a political plot by Democrats to kill off viable human life. Is there no shame?

DDean

posted by Stash @ 10:41 AM

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Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq

By Christopher Scheer, AlterNet. Posted June 27, 2003.

LIE #1: "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." -- President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati.
FACT: This story, leaked to and breathlessly reported by Judith Miller in the New York Times, has turned out to be complete baloney. Department of Energy officials, who monitor nuclear plants, say the tubes could not be used for enriching uranium. One intelligence analyst, who was part of the tubes investigation, angrily told The New Republic: "You had senior American officials like Condoleezza Rice saying the only use of this aluminum really is uranium centrifuges. She said that on television. And that's just a lie."
LIE #2: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." -- President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address.
FACT: This whopper was based on a document that the White House already knew to be a forgery thanks to the CIA. Sold to Italian intelligence by some hustler, the document carried the signature of an official who had been out of office for 10 years and referenced a constitution that was no longer in effect. The ex-ambassador who the CIA sent to check out the story is pissed: "They knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie," he told the New Republic, anonymously. "They [the White House] were unpersuasive about aluminum tubes and added this to make their case more strongly."
LIE #3: "We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." -- Vice President Cheney on March 16, 2003 on "Meet the Press."
FACT: There was and is absolutely zero basis for this statement. CIA reports up through 2002 showed no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.
LIE #4: "[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." -- CIA Director George Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in that evening's speech by President Bush.
FACT: Intelligence agencies knew of tentative contacts between Saddam and al-Qaeda in the early '90s, but found no proof of a continuing relationship. In other words, by tweaking language, Tenet and Bush spun the intelligence180 degrees to say exactly the opposite of what it suggested.
LIE #5: "We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." -- President Bush, Oct. 7.
FACT: No evidence of this has ever been leaked or produced. Colin Powell told the U.N. this alleged training took place in a camp in northern Iraq. To his great embarrassment, the area he indicated was later revealed to be outside Iraq's control and patrolled by Allied war planes.
LIE #6: "We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States." -- President Bush, Oct. 7.
FACT: Said drones can't fly more than 300 miles, and Iraq is 6,000 miles from the U.S. coastline. Furthermore, Iraq's drone-building program wasn't much more advanced than your average model plane enthusiast. And isn't a "manned aerial vehicle" just a scary way to say "plane"?
LIE #7: "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established." -- President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address.
FACT: Despite a massive nationwide search by U.S. and British forces, there are no signs, traces or examples of chemical weapons being deployed in the field, or anywhere else during the war.
LIE #8: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council.
FACT: Putting aside the glaring fact that not one drop of this massive stockpile has been found, as previously reported on AlterNet the United States' own intelligence reports show that these stocks -- if they existed -- were well past their use-by date and therefore useless as weapon fodder.
LIE #9: "We know where [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat." -- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press.
FACT: Needless to say, no such weapons were found, not to the east, west, south or north, somewhat or otherwise.
LIE #10: "Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited." -- President Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally June 1, 2003.
FACT: This was reference to the discovery of two modified truck trailers that the CIA claimed were potential mobile biological weapons lab. But British and American experts -- including the State Department's intelligence wing in a report released this week -- have since declared this to be untrue. According to the British, and much to Prime Minister Tony Blair's embarrassment, the trailers are actually exactly what Iraq said they were; facilities to fill weather balloons, sold to them by the British themselves.

posted by Stash @ 4:34 PM

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Democrats asleep at the wheel

Democrats asleep at the wheel
By Robert Kuttner | March 16, 2005

THE REPUBLICANS just did it again. They pushed through Congress a bankruptcy ''reform" bill written by credit card companies. The bill makes it harder for ordinary people crushed by debt (often medical debt) to start anew. It leaves intact dodges used by wealthy people, such as asset-hiding trusts, and the corporate ability to use bankruptcy to slash wages, evade pension responsibilities, and stiff creditors.

There's a larger story here. Time after time, Bush administration policies do real economic harm to ordinary people, yet the Democrats can't seem to turn that reality into winning politics. Why not? Other recent examples include:

Stealth Tax Increases. While the Bush administration has bestowed immense tax cuts on the richest 1 percent, the upper-middle class is getting socked by the alternative minimum tax. This provision was enacted to make sure that wealthy people did not avoid taxation entirely by piling up multiple deductions. But thanks to inflation, the tax now denies such basic deductions as local property taxes to some families making under $100,000 a year. It costs them more in higher taxes than Bush's tax cuts save them. Bush also raised taxes for low-income families by reducing the effective child tax credit. Yet another stealth tax increase is rising state and local taxes and changes, made necessary by Bush's reduced aid to states.

Surging Drug Prices. Bush's Medicare prohibits the government from negotiating bulk pricing discounts. Every national health plan in the world negotiates bulk discounts with US drug companies, but Medicare will pay retail. Excuse me, senior citizens will pay retail, because for most, the Bush program will pay less than half the cost of their prescriptions.

Rising Interest Rates. If you have credit cards, home equity loans, or just bought a house, you noticed interest costs going up. There's one big reason for that -- the increasing federal deficits that are mainly the result of Bush's tax giveaways to the very wealthy.

Children Left Behind. The Bush education bill imposed high-stakes testing on states and local school districts, but shortchanged the money to help teachers teach and children learn. Bush is also underfunding programs like Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, leaving more working families without adequate health insurance.

The point is: Bush's economic program harms ordinary people. And a majority of voters notice.

A New York Times/CBS poll last week reported that 63 percent of respondents felt that Bush had different economic priorities than those of most Americans. A majority (51 percent) opposed Bush's Social Security privatization plan, and that rose to 69 percent when respondents were informed that the shift would cut the basic guaranteed benefit.

People understand what Bush is up to. So why are Democrats failing to turn this into a winning politics? Five reasons.

First, dozens of Democratic legislators vote with Bush, usually to curry favor with organized corporate business interests that write these bills (and campaign checks). Eighteen Senate Dems even voted for the bankruptcy bill. This blurs the distinction between the parties and leaves the impression that Democrats don't know what they stand for. Nobody wants to follow a wimp.

Second, center-right Democrats urge their party to avoid ''populism." But sticking up for the economic interests of ordinary people is not populist in the sense of class warfare. It's the essence of what once made Democrats the majority party. Nor is it ''antibusiness" to defend a fair tax system, adequate social outlays, and regulation to protect consumers and investors.

Third, Bush is a master propagandist, with tame or intimidated media eating out of his hand, while the supposedly liberal press bends over backward to be evenhanded.

Fourth, the cultural conservatism of many moderate-income Americans attracts them to Republicans who don't serve their economic interests. But cultural moderation will not save the souls of Democrats unless they start delivering the goods economically.

Finally, there's a war on, and people generally support a wartime president.

Democrats need to challenge Bush on the best strategies to keep Americans safe, but they are not maximizing their advantage on the pocketbook issues where they should be eating Bush's lunch. The one happy exception is Social Security, where Democrats have managed more unity than usual, and they may prevail. There's surely a lesson here.

posted by Stash @ 11:26 AM

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An Announcment to the White House CRAP

I thought it was important for The White House Committee Responsible for Advancing Propoganda (CRAP) to know that help is on the way! The Whirlpool has been adamently opposed to pretty much everything the GOP and Dubya... I mean President George W. Bush have proposed. However, that was before we understood the lucrative opportunities CRAP offered.

Knowing that Armstrong Williams was paid a small fortune by The Whirlpool's standards to perpetuate CRAP memoranda suggests all kinds of new exciting options.

Knowing that a male prostitute was given a job with a not yet created news organization and thereby garnered daily press passes to be within yards of the president because he possessed skills such as giving good question make us all think long and hard about how we might be able to stimulate national discussion.

Armstrong Williams received $250,000 for sucking up to the Presidential policies. James Guckert/Gannon got a job and a press pass for sucking something.

The Whirlpool is letting the White House CRAP know right now that we would be willing to write a positive article about any issue the White House CRAP thought necessary for fully half what they paid Armstrong Williams...... a measly $125,000 ..... heck ..... a flat one-hundred-grand and we'll be partners.

The Whirlpool and White House CRAP for $100,000 ......... do we have a deal?

posted by Stash @ 3:12 PM

1 Comments

Doug Giles is glad we had 9/11......what an ass!

Doug Giles: Bravery is back, baby!

posted by Stash @ 12:39 PM

1 Comments

Where in the hell are the Democrats?!?!?!

CNN.com - Dems: Bankruptcy bill unfair - Mar 3, 2005

posted by Stash @ 3:42 PM

1 Comments

Where'd that Ass Come From?

I thought this was very interesting, compliments of the DFL.

History of the Democratic Donkey

When Andrew Jackson ran for president in 1828, his opponents tried to label him a "jackass" for his populist views and his slogan, "Let the people rule." Jackson, however, picked up on their name calling and turned it to his own advantage by using the donkey on his campaign posters. During his presidency, the donkey was used to represent Jackson's stubbornness when he vetoed re-chartering the National Bank. The first time the donkey was used in a political cartoon to represent the Democratic party, it was again in conjunction with Jackson. Although in 1837 Jackson was retired, he still thought of himself as the Party's leader and was shown trying to get the donkey to go where he wanted it to go. The cartoon was titled "A Modern Baalim and his Ass."Interestingly enough, the person credited with getting the donkey widely accepted as the Democratic party's symbol probably had no knowledge of the prior associations. Thomas Nast, a famous political cartoonist, came to the United States with his parents in 1840 when he was six. He first used the donkey in an 1870 Harper's weekly cartoon to represent the "Copperhead Press" kicking a dead lion, symbolizing Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, who had recently died. Nast intended the donkey to represent an anti-war faction with whom he disagreed, but the symbol caught the public's fancy and the cartoonist continued using it to indicate some Democratic editors and newspapers.Later, Nast used the donkey to portray what he called "Caesarism" showing the alleged Democratic uneasiness over a possible third term for Ulysses S. Grant. In conjunction with this issue, Nast helped associate the elephant with the Republican party. Although the elephant had been connected with the Republican party in cartoons that appeared in 1860 and 1872, it was Nast's cartoon in 1874 published by Harper's Weekly that made the pachyderm stick as the Republican's symbol. A cartoon titled "The Third Term Panic," showed animals representing various issues running away from a donkey wearing a lion's skin tagged "Caesarism." The elephant labeled " The Republican Vote," was about to run into a pit containing inflation, chaos, repudiation, etc.By 1880 the donkey was well established as a mascot for the Democratic Party. A cartoon about the Garfield-Hancock campaign in the New York Daily Graphic showed the Democratic candidate mounted on a donkey, leading a procession of crusaders.Over the years, the donkey and the elephant have become the accepted symbols of the Democratic and Republican parties. Although the Democrats have never officially adopted the donkey as a party symbol, we have used various donkey designs on publications over the years. The Republicans have actually adopted the elephant as their official symbol and use their design widely.The Democrats think of the elephant as bungling, stupid, pompous and conservative -- but the Republicans think it is dignified, strong and intelligent. On the other hand, the Republicans regard the donkey as stubborn, silly and ridiculous -- but the Democrats claim it is humble, homely, smart, courageous and loveable.Adlai Stevenson provided one of the most clever descriptions of the Republican's symbol when he said, "The elephant has a thick skin, a head full of ivory, and as everyone who has seen a circus parade knows, proceeds best by grasping the tail of its predecessor."

http://www.dfl.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={61D2140D-3288-4B25-ABEE-14EC0BFF722C}

posted by Stash @ 1:04 AM

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Yahoo! News - Suspect Said to Admit Plan to Kill Bush

Yahoo! News - Suspect Said to Admit Plan to Kill Bush

posted by Stash @ 4:56 PM

2 Comments