posted on March 5, 2004 05:01:43 AM new
LindaK, you say liberals will forget what happened on 9/11.
How about Rice refusing to testify before the 9/11 Comission that is investigating how 19 men were able to evade our defense system. Bush will give them an hour. Gee, he'll take an hour from his campaign fundraising. Wow. How about all the stonewalling by the Administration on the comissioners actually getting to see the info? How about making access to the info so difficult that the Comission needed more time to do its job, and while Bush made a ploy of finally relenting, his tame dog Hastert tried to block any more time. That didn't go over too well, did it?
Who's forgotten? Bush has forgotten, except when he wants to use the images for political gain.
You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on March 5, 2004 08:49:04 AM new
LOL - Yea, snowy, like clinton was so very willing to testify and just walked right down to do so. But it's different now?
-------------
Good point, replaymedia.
-----------------
And then those that find this so 'tacky' must surely have felt the same way when clinton did exactly the same thing when running for re-election in 1996 at the Federal building in Oklahoma City. There he gave an election year speech. So he must have been 'exploiting' that situation too.
posted on March 5, 2004 09:19:05 AM new
Replaymedia
"You want to stop terrorism? Then we have to kill every man woman and child who believes in Islam. They cartainly want to kill us. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?
Yes, it sounds about as evil as you can get.
Helen
ubb.ed.
[ edited by Helenjw on Mar 5, 2004 09:20 AM ]
posted on March 5, 2004 10:30:45 AM new
The main reason all you libs are protesting is that President Bush is using the topic before Kerry could.
Is 9/11 an Issue?
President Bush talks about his record, and Democrats demand that he shut up.
Friday, March 5, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
September 11, 2001, marked the worst foreign attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor--the bloodiest ever on the American mainland. It's certainly been the defining event of George W. Bush's Presidency. But according to Democrats and their media echo chamber, it now shouldn't be a campaign issue.
Yes, that was the message being peddled in yesterday's papers by reporters provided with outrage-laden quotes from a single firefighters' union and activist relatives of victims of the World Trade Center attacks. With a series of new campaign ads featuring fleeting images of Ground Zero, they charge, Mr. Bush is "exploiting" the tragedy.
"I'm disappointed but not surprised that the President would try to trade on the heroism of those fire fighters in the September 11 attacks," said International Association of Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger, who happens to have endorsed John Kerry way back in September. "It's a slap in the face of the murders of 3,000 people," said outspoken victims' family activist and litigant Monica Gabrielle. The theme was quickly picked up by television talkers.
Please. We write this from offices that are 200 yards from Ground Zero and were rendered uninhabitable for almost a year by the attack. (The photo below was the view from our windows.) The threat of another such assault, and how to prevent it, has dominated our politics for three years. From tax cuts designed to save the economy from the double-whammy of terrorism and recession, to the Patriot Act, to regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of Mr. Bush's "forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East," just about every recent major policy is inextricably linked to the event so mildly depicted in these Bush ads. Isn't an election supposed to be about such things?
Even Democrats know that it is, so they are manufacturing this outrage for a political purpose: President Bush still polls extremely well on his handling of the war on terror, and Democrats are trying to define the debate in a way that keeps him from playing to his strengths. The polls also show that Mr. Bush scores well as a "leader," so Democrats are also trying to stop him from reinforcing that image.
But what is Mr. Bush supposed to do, stop being President? Incumbency clearly has its large (and sometimes unfair) advantages. Yet try as we might, we can't seem to recall similar outrage about Bill Clinton's use of incumbency when he was running for re-election--at least not outrage that got any media traction.
Where, for example, was the tut-tutting about the former President "exploiting" the Oklahoma City bombing by giving an election-year speech there in April 1996? We'd also take the current handwringing a bit more seriously if we heard any similar worries about John Kerry "exploiting" his service in Vietnam.
One of the oddest things about the hullabaloo over the Bush ads is that these are precisely the kind of campaign spots the self-appointed media referees always say they like: positive, and focused on the candidate's message and record, not on tearing down the other guy. Despite Mr. Kerry's crocodile tears about the Republican "attack machine" and "smear" campaign, neither the President nor any other high-ranking Republican has so far taken a serious jab at either Mr. Kerry's character or his record.
Yet in case they eventually do, Democrats are also busy trying to take that off the table. When Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss recently talked about Mr. Kerry's Senate votes against most U.S. weapons systems, he was assailed for attacking Mr. Kerry's "patriotism." This is an extension of the Max Cleland-as-martyr myth, asserting that it was somehow unfair for Republicans to attack the former Georgia Senator and Vietnam vet in the 2002 elections for his vote against the Homeland Security department.
So the Bush campaign is being presented with something of a Catch-22: Any attempt to talk about the President's own record will be branded "exploitative," while any talk about Mr. Kerry's will be called an attack on his "patriotism." Our advice to Mr. Bush is to choose his message and ignore the whining.
As for Democrats, they'd be wise to get over the idea that Mr. Kerry's Vietnam biography will cover them on the defense issue. For most Americans, 9/11 was the defining event of a generation, and they'll want to hear a serious debate about which candidate has the best policies to keep them safer in the years ahead. The more Democrats complain about Mr. Bush running on national security, the more voters may suspect that Democrats don't have any serious anti-terror ideas of their own.
"An old, long-whiskered man once said to Teddy Roosevelt: 'I am a Democrat, my father was a Democrat, my grandfather was a Democrat.' Roosevelt then said: 'Then if your father had been a horse thief and your grandfather had been a horse thief, you would be a horse thief?'" --Will Rogers
posted on March 5, 2004 04:50:54 PM new
Replaymedia's comment from first page.
There is no amount of talking that is going to stop this. You want to stop terrorism? Then we have to kill every man woman and child who believes in Islam. They cartainly want to kill us. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? Got a better solution? Bush doesn't have it. Kerry doesn't have it. This is a problem that cannot be solved without GENOCIDE. And we either don't have the stomach for it or we have the morals not to do it. Either way, we cannot win this fight in the long term. Sometimes it really sucks to be the good guys. Man, I am GRUMPY tonight!!!
Replaymedia
NO Replaymedia. If you are saying that the only solution to terrorism is genocide, I certainly do NOT agree. It's like saying the solution to pain is death.
posted on March 5, 2004 08:33:20 PM newMan, I am GRUMPY tonight!!!
Helen, do you mean tonight is different from any other night.
"An old, long-whiskered man once said to Teddy Roosevelt: 'I am a Democrat, my father was a Democrat, my grandfather was a Democrat.' Roosevelt then said: 'Then if your father had been a horse thief and your grandfather had been a horse thief, you would be a horse thief?'" --Will Rogers
posted on March 6, 2004 09:18:42 AM new
Since this is titled 'Bush Ads Anger Relatives of 9/11 - I finally saw an ad for Bush last night. Must have been the short one. They went through the years -2000, (forgot what they showed 2001 They DID show about 8 seconds of the towers, and flags and a fireman, then 2002, with a spot on the stockmarket, then 2003, (forgot that one too ) but the one I saw showed a very short, short thing on 9-11.
I know there is a longer one, maybe thats what people are upset about?
__________________________________
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."- Carl Sagan
posted on March 10, 2004 10:27:24 AM new
Read a very interesting and informative article today speaking to the issue of the relatives who are opposing the President' 9-11 ads.
I have previously mentioned that they didn't support President Bush before 9-11, so I didn't find it surprising they were speaking out against his actions after 9-11.
Seems these relatives are/have been backed by groups like moveon.org, etc and use funding provided by the rich anti-Bush lefties. Even Mrs. John Kerry gives funding to these activist groups.
posted on March 10, 2004 01:19:19 PM new
and another - along the same line.......taken from today's Federalist.
"When voters are asked to evaluate their choices for President next November, they will have to weigh carefully the temperament, judgment and instincts of the man who will hold that office. Nowhere will these qualities be of greater consequence than with respect to the execution of his duties as Commander-in-Chief.
John Kerry's long record of extremely liberal Senate votes on national security-related matters offer ample grounds for concerns on all three scores. Unfortunately for Senator Kerry, those concerns will only grow as the electorate learns more over the coming months about the temperament, judgment and instincts his wife,
Teresa Heinz Kerry, brings to such matters, as reflected in the choices she has made in the course of years of multimillion dollar philanthropy. Of particular concern is one of the beneficiaries of substantial largesse from foundations controlled by the would-be First Lady: The San Francisco-based Tides Foundation and a spin-off called the Tides Center.
These entities in turn help distribute funds to and operate as clearing houses for policy-networking and coordination between a veritable Who's Who of radical Leftist organizations. The recipients share a hostility to what most Americans understand to be our country's security interests and the capabilities needed to protect them.
According to publicly available information, in recent years, Ms. Heinz Kerry's foundations have given at least $5.9 million to these entities. ...More troubling still is the fact that the investment Ms. Heinz Kerry has made in organizations who provide large sums -- and, in some cases, probably life-support -- to such groups is paying off for her husband's campaign.
Notably, when President Bush unveiled his opening salvo of political advertisements containing fleeting images of 9/11, a Tides-associated outfit called 'September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows' led a caucus of press-amplified denunciations of their exploitative 'insensitivity' to the victims.
The political impact was all the more extraordinary since, as the Post reported on March 9, '...[Peaceful Tomorrows] admits ... [it] has only a few dozen members and represents relatives of no more than 1 percent of the 9/11 victims.'
When the Soviets were running Left-wing influence operations, they used to call such things 'active measures' -- a term used to describe the spectrum from low-level propaganda and disinformation to covert operations, all designed to subvert one's opponents and advance your own agenda.
Themes that benefit Candidate Kerry's run for the White House have also been promoted by far more sophisticated, visible and better-funded active measures campaigns run by Tides-supported operations like MoveOn.org and International ANSWER, two of the prime-movers behind opposition to President Bush's War on Terror.
This is not to say that Senator Kerry or even his wife are directly running the operations supported by one of her favorite charities. ...Unless and until Senator Kerry formally disassociates himself from radical Leftist groups and agendas like those supported by his wife, it is not unreasonable to conclude that his public record on defense and foreign policy matters is only part of the problem with his bid to become Commander-in-Chief.
For such a renunciation to be credible, however, it should come now -- not towards the end of a campaign influenced by the active measures of his wife's political allies and philanthropic beneficiaries." --The Center for Security Policy
But it's different now?
There he gave an election year speech. So he must have been 'exploiting' that situation too.
2001 They DID show about 8 seconds of the towers, and flags and a fireman, then 2002, with a spot on the stockmarket, then 2003, (forgot that one too