posted on October 26, 2002 05:53:21 PM new
Gaaah. That wasn't my objection. Geeze, if I could come up with, or come across, a clever and totally tasteless joke about it, I'd laugh about it and share it with.. well, if not anyone here, other people who share my warped sense of humour.
My objection is the continuous, and, seems to be, growing, tendency of people here and elsewhere to mindlessly pigeonhole everyone to a group and then assign uniform thoughts to the whole group. Why pretend to have a discussion? Everyone can save time by doing this - Pick a side and follow the script:
Guy A: You Liberal!!
Guy B: You Conservative!
Guy A: Democrat!
Guy B: Republican!
Guy A: !!!
Guy B: !!!
posted on October 26, 2002 05:55:37 PM new"Helen....free speech remember? You the new thread monitor? Krs didn't start this thread for people to show their respect for Senator Wellstone, but rather to viciously smear a group of people with statements he can not prove."
There you go again, Linda, speaking for other people and stating their motives. How do you presume to know how krs feels about Senator Wellstone?
posted on October 26, 2002 06:08:28 PM new
Donny - That's the thing I do enjoy about reading here. I enjoy when saabsister, bunnicula, gravid, Reamond or you share your opinions. You [all] present your side and 'facts' and then are open to the issue being debated. To me, you [and others] appear to at least enjoy the debating of issues, rather than the constant insult throwing because one holds differing beliefs/opinions. I respect that in a person. It's a quality I admire.
For months this board only had the democratic side presented. They questioned where all the republicans had gone. Each time any person siding with any republican way of thinking comes on here and posts ....no matter the issue...they're blasted and called names. [not by you or the others I have mentioned.] There's no debating....just mud throwing. It doesn't appear to 'be allowed' to hold a differing opinion on this board.
posted on October 26, 2002 06:13:50 PM new
For those who think it is 100% impossible that that would happen I will remind you of the principal of human nature shown in a joke.
A fellow goes into a bar and sees a pretty woman and makes a pass at her which she turns away. He then makes it a commercial offer and asks her to come up to his room for a million dollars. She says "You don't HAVE a million dollars!" Well he says will you come up to my room for $100 dollars? "I'm not that sort of girl." She protests. No no no he says - you don't back up in negotiations. We already established what sort of girl you are when you didn't protest you are not that sort of girl at a million dollars. Now we are just dickering price.
It's true some moral issues are absolutes.
The current administration has shown with the willingness to kill Saddam, Ommar and those arrested in secret and subject to death penalties in Star Chamber procedings what sort of girl they are. they deal in assassination instead of judicial process or declared war.
Once it was unthinkable to target individuals as targets for death even when a war was being conducted. Say the Emperor of Japan in WWII.
We just don't know how much their price is.
Control of Congress? Winning the next election? hard to tell yet. But they will deal in blood.
posted on October 26, 2002 06:14:36 PM new
I believe I said it was the first thing I thought of ~ not that I thought it was necessarily true. I just think it is so sad that such a large portion of the population would even have that thought cross their minds. Doesn't say much for the state of our Union does it?
posted on October 26, 2002 06:20:55 PM new
rawbunzel - No, it sure doesn't. I guess that's what saddens me the most. I suppose some of it's very healthy...keeps a lot of issues in check.
And just to clarify...saying that's the first thing that came to ones mind...isn't the same as making an out and out accusation.
gravid....these days I don't think many can be 100% 'sure' of anything. I know I'm not.
posted on October 26, 2002 06:31:04 PM new
Linda_K, I suppose the reason that I'm willing to entertain the idea that something underhanded could happen is my experience with someone in one of the intelligence agencies telling me what her friends were willing to do (in an incident that was merely a neighborhood dispute). I'm sure Bush Sr. still has some strong ties there. I'm not saying that he's involved at all, just that there are some rogues out there.
posted on October 26, 2002 07:11:07 PM new
saabsister - Again, I appear not to be making my point. Sorry.
My observation is that when a totally UNPROVEN accusation was made here ....only junquemana thought everyone was kidding. When others make statements of TRUE proven facts....they get slammed.
I don't know how to say it differently. 'Thinking' something is not the same as making a statement of 'fact'. To me that's slanderous. And believe me, I don't use that word lightly.
Rawbunzel is right in her 'take' on our nation, we are so divided. And that's a personal issue I struggle with. To me it's like family [our country] it's okay for us as sisters to fight....but when an outside neighbor girl picks on my sister...she'd better be ready to see us stand united...as a team. That's my personal struggle with a lot of this. I'm working on it.
posted on October 26, 2002 09:16:50 PM new
Linda K.....I didn't get the nickname of "BEAR" by being a thin skinned LIBERAL.
Using the Merriam Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary I looked up the defination of "liberal".
This is the result:
Main Entry: 1lib·er·al
Pronunciation: 'li-b(&r&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin liberalis suitable for a freeman, generous, from liber free; perhaps akin to Old English lEodan to grow, Greek eleutheros free
Date: 14th century
1 a : of, relating to, or based on the liberal arts <liberal education> b archaic : of or befitting a man of free birth
2 a : marked by generosity : OPENHANDED <a liberal giver> b : given or provided in a generous and openhanded way <a liberal meal> c : AMPLE, FULL
3 obsolete : lacking moral restraint : LICENTIOUS
4 : not literal or strict : LOOSE <a liberal translation>
5 : BROAD-MINDED; especially : not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms
6 a : of, favoring, or based upon the principles of liberalism b capitalized : of or constituting a political party advocating or associated with the principles of political liberalism; especially : of or constituting a political party in the United Kingdom associated with ideals of individual especially economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reforms designed to secure these objectives
- lib·er·al·ly /-b(&r&-lE/ adverb
- lib·er·al·ness noun
synonyms LIBERAL, GENEROUS, BOUNTIFUL, MUNIFICENT mean giving or given freely and unstintingly. LIBERAL suggests openhandedness in the giver and largeness in the thing or amount given <a teacher liberal with her praise>. GENEROUS stresses warmhearted readiness to give more than size or importance of the gift <a generous offer of help>. BOUNTIFUL suggests lavish, unremitting giving or providing <children spoiled by bountiful presents>. MUNIFICENT suggests a scale of giving appropriate to lords or princes <a munificent foundation grant>.
I especially like #5 as it seems perfect for the CLINTON era of liberalism..
Now back to the debate...
I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I consider myself to be more of an independent. I will not be swayed by public opinions. I am my own person.
I will not say that all Democratic policy is wrong, nor will I say it is all correct.
I will not say that all Republican policy is wrong, nor will I say it is all correct.
I draw my own conclusions, and will not be led along like a sheep to the slaughter house.
As far as conspiracys go, I do believe there was a conspiracy in the death of JFK, MLK & RFK,
I beleive there was a conspiracy involving Teddy Kennedy in the coverup of the death of Mary Jo.
I beleive there was a conspiricy to coverup the Roswell incident.
I also beleive there is a conspiracy to turn the U.S. into another Canada and Australia & deny law abiding, God fearing Americans the constitutional right to firearms.
posted on October 27, 2002 06:19:12 PM new
When I read of the Wellstone plane crash not only was I deeply saddened but also suspicious. Several somewhat distinct, but inter-related, possibilities came to mind. As I've been out and about to businesses, a restaurant, a quasi-social/civic event, etc., the last three days, quite a few people, democrats, republicans, and independents, also have an uneasy feeling about the "accident." There have been entirely too many remarkable coincidences lately.
Selfless, honest, moral, and courageous, Wellstone, as much by who he was as what he did, would have been viewed as the enemy by anyone whose motivation was to misuse government to satisfy his own insatiable lusts for money and power.
David Broder wrote an excellent tribute to Wellstone:
Senator Without Airs
By David S. Broder
Sunday, October 27, 2002; Page B07
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- When I found myself standing among the thousands of candle-carrying mourners, gathered in a cold drizzle on the steps of the state capitol Friday evening to memorialize Sen. Paul Wellstone, my mind turned back 10 years to an incident on the Senate subway.
The diminutive Minnesota Democrat, dressed in a rumpled suit he had brought from his old life as a Carleton College professor, and I were seated opposite a tourist family also headed from the Hart Senate Office Building to the Capitol. "Hi," he said to them, "I'm Paul Wellstone," omitting the title almost any of his colleagues would have used. "Where are you from?"
They gave their home town and asked, "Do you work here?" He laughed, and said, "Yes, but not as hard as most people. I'm a senator."
That self-deprecating comment, which was as consistent with his character as his notoriously shabby wardrobe, was one reason he stood out in a Senate filled with millionaires and giant egos. The other, as many of the mourners could testify, was his unusual combination of ideological consistency and personal warmth.
His dogged liberalism made him wary of "new Democrats" and their pro-business economics, and he broke with President Clinton over welfare reform and other issues, even before he despaired of Clinton's personal ethics. But in a conversation during the 2000 campaign, Wellstone explained why he could never condemn Clinton personally.
Two years earlier, Wellstone said, Clinton came to Minnesota at the end of a long day of stumping for Democratic candidates in three states. Wellstone had sent word to the White House that he would have with him, in the airport receiving line, a constituent who was a great political buff and was now facing terminal cancer. If the president could spend a minute with him, it would be wonderful.
It was near midnight when Clinton came off the plane. Wellstone introduced the constituent and the president said he would be right back. "And then," Wellstone said, "he took us into the holding room in the hangar, and for 45 minutes, at the end of a day that had started before dawn for him in Washington, they talked. Clinton never said a word about his illness, but he talked about every issue in the news and listened to everything my constituent had to say. It was the greatest gift he could have given him."
That appreciation for the human quality in others was reciprocated by Wellstone's colleagues. Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, prompted by an affliction in his own daughter, joined with Wellstone in seeking parity in treatment for mental illness. He broke down in tears and was unable to speak to the TV cameras when paying tribute to the Minnesota liberal.
I never covered a Wellstone campaign, but I saw a lot of him when he was warming up the crowds in Bill Bradley's bid for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination. They were an odd couple -- Mutt and Jeff, the towering basketball player and the squat ex-wrestler. Wellstone, arms waving, voice rising, would work up the crowd to a full-throated chant of "Brad-ley, Brad-ley." And then the big, stoop-shouldered ex-Knick would shamble onstage and the oxygen would go out of the room.
Wellstone's secret weapons were the legions of young people he mobilized in his campaigns, and hundreds of them were on the capitol steps, wearing their green T-shirts with the legend, "Get on the bus for Wellstone," a reference to the old bus he used in all his campaigns.
One young supporter, John Gunner Tarpe, told me that he and Wellstone patronized the same video rental store in St. Paul, and that Wellstone had told him recently of a plan he and his wife had hatched for the immigrant couple who ran it. "Sheila and I are going in there one evening and taking over the cash register, so they can go out to dinner and have a night out for themselves."
Someone in the crowd of mourners had made a sign with a large Valentine heart, shattered by a jagged line through it. It bobbed above the huddled and bundled figures, as the voice of a cantor sang the plaintive Hebrew words of the 23rd Psalm, soon to be followed by clergymen of every faith and an Indian holy man who chanted to an accompaniment of pounding drums.
When the service ended, Joe Spencer, a Wellstone campaign volunteer, told me, "People say there are no political heroes left in the world, but we know better. We had one here."
posted on October 27, 2002 09:50:46 PM new
Let's not get carried away here.
To say that he'd be viewed as an enemy "as much by who he was as what he did" could be the same as saying he wouldn't be viewed as an enemy at all. Accolades for keeping his idealism, okay, but the guy was never a very effective Senator, by my understanding. Unless the suggestion would be that he was knocked off by the Democrats, that is. He would have been more of a thorn in the side of the Democratic Party than the Republican Party.
posted on October 28, 2002 09:42:10 AM new
From the Wellstone obituary in the NYT:
James W. Ziglar, a Republican who was sergeant at arms of the Senate from 1998 to 2001 and who is now commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, remembered today "the evening when he came back to the Capitol well past midnight to visit with the cleaning staff and tell them how much he appreciated their efforts."
"Most of the staff had never seen a senator and certainly had never had one make such a meaningful effort to express his or her appreciation," Mr. Ziglar said. "That was the measure of the man."
posted on October 28, 2002 10:04:49 AM new
Yes, he sounds like a good man, but he doesn't seem to have been politically effective. When you read about how hard he had to dig to come up with one piece of legislation with his name on it to use for his campaign (and he wasn't even the author of whatever relatively unimportant thing he had that had his name on it, perhaps a co-author, if that), it tells you he was way way out of the power circle in his own party.
"Playing politics" is how politics gets done, it's not just a phrase co-opted for other areas. When you don't fall in line with the party Whip, for the backroom dealings and give and take, you don't get the good committee assignments, you don't get a chance to push your own legislation. As a guy, he was fine. As a political force, he was ineffective. Minnesota has a proud history of good guys who were too good to be effective politicians. This makes for great eulogies. It doesn't make for political threat.
The only threat would have been in the closeness of the race, for the number balance in the Senate, not because of Wellstone's personal or political qualities.
My prediction - If the Democrats put in Mondale to replace Wellstone on the ticket, Mondale will win.
posted on October 28, 2002 10:27:18 AM new
Donny, I really wasn't replying to your post. Though I don't agree with your analysis of motivations nor the limitations that you place on political effectiveness, I really have no desire to argue about it.
I personally admire Wellstone very much and my principal intent was to express that admiration and my sense of loss for the country, as well as, in the first post, to convey that the crash raised suspicion with myself and others that I have talked with recently.
If you don't share those views, it's fine with me. I don't recall asking anyone to do so.
posted on October 28, 2002 10:35:49 AM new
Jessie Ventura for Senator.
Ow, that made me laugh and cringe at the same time.
Ventura's election was actually pretty interesting. While most of us probably saw it as a joke, it really does highlight how different the Minnesota political mindset is. Not that they value wrestlers, but their love of government reform - open government weighted more heavily than effective government. Sunshine laws were born in Minnesota.
Ah, I see, Antiquary. I misunderstood. You have something to say, but don't desire discussion. Writing these thoughts on Post-It-Notes and sticking them to your monitor might be more efficient.
posted on October 28, 2002 10:46:47 AM new
I'm glad that you finally understand, donny.
And if you are so good as to refrain from suggestions about how and when I should post, I promise not to interfere with your playing Nero.
posted on October 28, 2002 10:54:52 AM new
Empires rose and fell long before, and after, Rome, Antiquary, and they will again. Don't take it personally that not all of us haven't forgotten that.
I just think it is so sad that such a large portion of the population would even have that thought cross their minds. Doesn't say much for the state of our Union does it?
