AP: Dean had his OWN secret energy group.

[JohnT]

Unfortunately for that argument, the Wellstone memorial was broadcast as well as "quoted." We all saw the travesty it became, Che.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by JohnT
And, as a personal opinion, I much prefer an energy council made up of people actually knowledgeable about the energy industry . . .

Then why use CEOs?

Seriously though, every group who has an interest in energy policy needs to be included, not merely those seeking to make a profit (legally and illegally). Consumer advocates have an interest in energy policies. We use the damn energy after all. Environmentalists have an interest, since energy extraction and consumption are often destructive to the environment. Labor groups have an interest, since jobs are affected. And so on. Hen house policy should not be written by the foxes.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by GePap
My hatred of Bush is based on his policies, and it does not blind me to anything.

Fortunitelly, I have the "power" of making distinctions- given that I don't live in a black or white world.

Oh, and on Dean's other comments:

People critizice him for saying that catching Saddam has not made us safer-
Does anyone have any proof catching him has made the US safer? I have seen none at all given, and things in Iraq are going "normally" for this occupation. ?

Dean has stated that it DOES make American troops safer. Presumably therefore, he believes that it will help the progress of the occupation. Yet he also states that it does not make America safer. From which it logically follows that he does not believe progress in the occupation makes America safer. This causes me to question how seriously he would take "winning the peace" were he elected.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by JohnT


Unfortunately for that argument, the Wellstone memorial was broadcast as well as "quoted." We all saw the travesty it became, Che.

No, you all saw a ten-second clip from the "travesty" it became. Many of the commentators didn't even see that much, and only quoted the taking points given them. Truth is, out of many hours of a service, only about ten seconds of Wellstone's best friend's speech was partisan. The right made of a huge lie about what happened, and the media sold it, and the country swallowed it. The memorial is online somewhere. I'll see if I can track down a link.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The right made of a huge lie about what happened, and the media sold it, and the country swallowed it.

Jesse Ventura is now on the right? That must be news to him. Remember he walked OUT of the memorial because it became a partisan affair.

[chequita guevara]

He walked out right at that moment. Jesse is a loose canon, and flies off the handle very easily. Up to that point, the families of the dead had been speaking for several hours. This outburst came during the middle of Wellstone's best friend's speach. None of them were prepared, they were just speaking from their hearts.

The great irony is, had the Democrats done what they were accused of doing, i.e., planning the event as a partisan afair from the beginning, this wouldn't have happened, since they would have made sure to keep obvious politics out of it.

I should really hope that my political party isn't blasted for something my best friend says at my funeral.

Another example of a Republican lie around the memoril. Peggy Noonan (IIRC) made the rounsd saying that even the audience participation was scripted, as there was a large screen which showed the words [i]laughing[i] and clapping when the audience was doing those things. What she did not say, however, was that these appeared on a screen provided for the hearing impaired, so that they could read the speaches, and that the words laughing and clapping would appear after the audience was already doing these things.

[JohnT]

It was 12 minutes of Rick Kahns speech, all of Tom Harkins speech, and a number of others. C'mon, Che, I can Google like everybody else - why insult my intelligence this way?

Following is an excerpt of Harkins speech"\:

-- “We must continue Paul's journey for justice in America”
“Tonight I ask you all: Will you stand up and join together and board that bus? Say yes!”

-- “For Paul Wellstone, will you stand up and keep fighting for social and economic justice? Say yes!”

-- “For Paul will you stand up and keep fighting for better wages, for those who mop our floors and clean our bathrooms, for those who take care of our elderly, take care of our sick, teach our kids and help our homeless? Say yes!”

-- “For Paul, will you stand up and keep fighting for cleaner air and cleaner water, for a cleaner environment for children and our future? Say yes!”

-- “For Paul, will you stand up and keep fighting to end discrimination based on race, gender, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation? Say yes!”

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by JohnT
Following is an excerpt of Harkins speech"\:

Yeah, it's so awful to ask people at a memorial to keep the spirit of the guy alive. This isn't the stuff the Repugs were blasting. It was Kahn's speech which was always the one being quoted.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yeah, it's so awful to ask people at a memorial to keep the spirit of the guy alive. This isn't the stuff the Repugs were blasting. It was Kahn's speech which was always the one being quoted.

Shows how much you know . Harkin's speech was also causing the outrage. Yes the 'stand up and do these Democrat things' ain't political at all. Face the facts, they turned it into a political rally.

[chequita guevara]

I can't seem to find a text of Kahn's speech.

[JohnT]

Neither can I... but it just wasn't Kahns speech, it was others. It was also the crowds reaction, booing Repubs (and Ventura), cheering only Democrats.

Don't forget the thing was broadcast on TV... C-Span, iirc. (but don't quote me on that).

[chequita guevara]

From Al Franken (not an unbiased source, in case you were wondering)

At a wake you tell funny stories about people, and laugh and celebrate their life. There was a lot of that, and there was also a lot of weeping and sobbing, and cheering. And it was interesting to see that someone like Joe Klein in the New Yorker wrote a piece about it, and his was a more straight-ahead understanding of what happened, what it was. And it was a reflection of Paul. Paul was an advocate for the dispossessed and the poor, and that’s what this thing was about. It looked like a campaign thing, but it was just really, “Carry forward what Paul believed in.” The only actual campaigning—“We’re gonna win,” that kind of thing—came from Rick Kahn and from Mark Wellstone. And Mark Wellstone lost his dad. Lost his mom, and lost his sister.

What was disgusting was that the Republicans kept saying this had been planned to fool everyone. “It was advertised as a memorial but it was just a political rally.” And that they had planned it. Limbaugh was doing a whole thing like this had been planned. Like it wasn’t what it was—which was an event that the kids had a huge part in planning, an event that the speakers who spoke eloquently about all the people who were lost in the crash, the closest people to Paul, his surviving sons—who had just gone through this trauma—had basically organized, approved of everything, and it was a spontaneous thing. Twenty thousand people came to this thing because they wanted to express their grief, and their joy about his life, and celebrate their lives, and that’s what it was. And people like Limbaugh literally said that people had been bused in. That the audience had been planted. He literally said this. “This was a planted crowd.” And what happens is, there is a right-wing media, Fox and Rush Limbaugh, the Washington Times and the New York Post, and they report this horrible outrage. And especially talk radio.

They get people to complain, and that becomes the story, the complaining. And you know, you have someone in Minnesota, Sarah Janecek, who added to the distortion, saying that it was all scripted, and that the proof was that it was on the Jumbotron, what everyone was saying, and that the people were even cued to laugh and applaud. And of course she was referring to the simulcast. She either didn’t understand what a simulcast was, or she didn’t understand what closed-captioning was, which I think is hard to believe, or she was presenting it as something that it wasn’t. Which is sort of in keeping with all the kinds of distortions I heard in the aftermath of the memorial. There’s something very unspiritual about that kind of taking a tragedy and exploiting it. And that’s what they accused the Democrats of doing, but the only way they could accuse the Democrats of doing that was by distorting what happened.

Let me say something positive. There are definitely people of good conscience on both sides who do try to talk to each other. I have a number of friends who are on what I consider the religious right. One of my best friends might say he’s a Christian conservative or a cultural conservative. He and I probably disagree on almost every social issue. But we’re friends. And I’ve been trying, with not a great deal of success, to get him together with people, for example, from the gay and lesbian community, to get him just to see them more as human beings. And I think he would say that gays and lesbians should have basic rights—not be discriminated against in employment and things like that. But you know, he won’t go that far on things like adoption, and that kind of thing, and that’s because of his deeply felt religious views. I disagree with him. But we can have a civil conversation. And I think he’s a sincere and serious person.

I think that there are sincere and serious people on all sides. Like Paul Wellstone went together with Senator Pete Domenici on certain things. There are people on both sides of the political spectrum who can get together and seriously come to a consensus on things and not do the kind of things that Limbaugh does.

[JohnT]

Again, an opinion piece gets presented as evidence.

[JohnT]

There are people on both sides of the political spectrum who can get together and seriously come to a consensus on things and not do the kind of things that Limbaugh does.

Coming from a man who wrote a book entitled "Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot."

[Ned]

Che, that was a long litany of "lies" by the administration. I assume the basis for this litany is "factual?"

For example, what was it administration's lie about Cheney and Halliburton?