Let's Talk Sense...

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Sunday, August 1, 2004 Volume XXIX, No. 4
Roswell, New Mexico
Readership this date: 23,619

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In this issue...

9/10 Democrats in a 9/11 World: The Boston Convention

Democrat Hypocrisy in Albuquerque: Richardson weighs in

Democrat Anti-Semitism Grows, Unabated & Unchallenged

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Boston Convention: 9/10 Democrats in a 9/11 World

The Democrats' Boston Message to the American People, condensed version:

1. The Republicans are right on all the big issues facing America.
2. We admit it. That's why all our speeches sounded like them.
3. We want to say everything they say, so you will believe we are strong.
4. We will do everything they say needs to be done, just better. Honest.
5. We really, really, really do believe what we are telling you. Seriously.
6. And we will do all of this stuff. Really. National security. Defense.
7. We regret being the party of the nuclear freeze movement.
8. We are sorry we advocated unilateral disarmament and gave up too soon.
9. We wish we had been able to be a part of the Cold War victory.
10. Trust us. We will stick it out this time. We promise. Don't we sound good?

It was fun to watch the delegates as different themes were enunciated by various speakers. When Al Sharpton or Howard Dean would talk about what Democrats really believe: big fat, mean-eyed hatred of Bush and all of his "failures," the delegates were ecstatic, some were way beyond teary-eyed and were simply boo-hooing uncontrollably, chests heaving with uncontainable emotion, moved beyond anything imaginable.

But when the scripted Democrats delivered paeans to "national security" and "getting the terrorists," the reaction was one of silent, stunned confusion. The crowd was obviously uncomfortable. You could see they were not "in on it," hadn't been briefed about the dual message component. They ended up giving a kind of collective "huh?" most of the time.

As the cameras panned you could sense that much of the Democrat message was being received on the floor in the same way adult voices are heard in a Charlie Brown special. The American people watching at home, all 825 of them, were getting meat, potatoes, tough-sounding, post 9/11 foreign and defense policy to fit the times. The delegates, though, were squirming. They were hearing the "whawhh, whawhh, whawhh" noise that is used to simulate the adult conversations in Lucy and Linus's living room. They did not like hearing the Democrats' new rhetoric, did not expect it, and had no natural reaction to it other than shock. Eventually, they came to understand the fraudulent nature of the expo and got ever so slightly better in their reactions, but it was still unwelcome right up till the closing benediction (or do they do those at DNCs?).

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Max Cleland as the next Willie Horton

There is something about the Democrats and the need for anger-generating myths. Some one, sometime back, recognized the need for this device. It literally drives them, drives the party, 24/7. You could run a small city just off the red-faced heat generated on the floor in Boston at the very mention of "Willie Horton," the Florida vote count, or "Max Cleland." As is always the case of course, truth is not a necessary---or even welcome---component of the energy-generating myth. (I guess that's why early propagandists popularized the "big lie" concept to start with.) The latest big lie is that Max Cleland, formerly a US Senator from Georgia was accused by the GOP of being "unpatriotic." Even Teresa Heinz was coached to expound on it, offering the "treatment of Max Cleland" as the reason she switched from Republican to Democrat. Hmmm.

Background: Max Cleland is a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran, made nationally famous by CBS in the 80s in a Sixty Minutes segment that has been repeated many times. According to most, he is an honorable man who lost both legs and his right arm in Vietnam. (The incident has various versions and is clouded in mystery. Most accounts have him unarmed in a secured area reaching down to pick up a fellow soldier's grenade that he saw on the ground. Many things about those simple facts as well as many other circumstances surrounding the event don't really make sense, but that is a story for a different day. Suffice it to say that Max Cleland is a hero and no one we know of disputes his service and sacrifice to his country.)

Max Cleland was elected to the senate in 1996 after 14 years as Georgia's Secretary of State, four years as Jimmy Carter's administrator of Veterans' Affairs, two years as a US Senate staffer, and five years in the Georgia Legislature. (Despite all this notoriety, an Albuquerque Journal columnist Saturday wrote that he had never heard of him. Oddly, despite just learning of his existence, that same scribe dutifully repeated, endorsed and even expanded upon the Democrat agitprop about Cleland. What else is new?)

2002 Election: By the time Cleland was up for reelection in 2002, he had established a liberal record in the Senate, 1) siding with Gay and Lesbian organizations, NAMBLA and others against the Boy Scouts of America, 2) supporting partial-birth abortion, 3) following his ally Ted Kennedy when Kennedy suddenly led a vicious attack on their former colleague John Ashcroft (and voted against his confirmation as Attorney General), 4) voting to allow school clinics to pass out morning-after abortion pills without parental notification, and 5) voting against the elimination of the marriage tax penalty. Cleland was far to the left of the average Georgia voter. LTS... projected him to lose his reelection bid (the only publication to do so by the way) based on our image imprint model, even as polls showed him continuing to lead right up till election day. He lost, by 140,000 votes. It was not a close election.

The campaign: During the campaign, the press, always supporting the liberal of course, attacked Cleland's opponent, Saxby Chambliss, for an ad that showed Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Max Cleland. The ad said Cleland had voted against the Homeland Security bill 11 times. He had. Homeland security of course involves fighting people like Bin Laden and Hussein so using their pictures hardly seems out of place. The votes were Cleland's, and he was the opponent, so seeing his picture was both normal and expected. Cleland voted against Homeland Security for much the same reasons other Democrats did: they wanted the national government employees' unions to get all the job guarantees, work rules, pay, retirement benefits, grievance procedures, and assorted "impossible-to-fire" provisions that this most important Democrat constituency always insists on. In other words, Cleland put the union bosses' demands ahead of national security.

The myth: In the aftermath of the loss, an angry Cleland immediately began whining that the Republicans had questioned his patriotism. This of course was untrue. No ad, anywhere, by any group, did so. The local liberal press, the Atlanta Constitution, and of course the liberal Washington columnists and talking heads picked up the theme. Now the whole Democrat establishment runs with it. (Oh, Cleland had hundreds of ads showing things that Chambliss had voted against in the House, but of course it's only an issue if Republicans talk about voting records.) To Max Cleland nothing was dirtier than showing his voting record to everybody in Georgia. It just wasn't fair. Those are the kinds of things that give politics a bad name. Voters are supposed to choose based on personalities and folksiness, not voting records, or issues.

Comment: The next time you hear the Democrats whining about "the way they treated Max Cleland," you will know they are lying. Just the same way they are lying about the 2000 election. (By the way, it was going to be just fine if the Florida Supreme Court had voted unanimously to allow all the hand-picked Gore Counties to have "newly-found" votes added in---while disallowing a simultaneous review of Bush counties---all the while preventing servicemembers' absentee ballots from being counted. But let the US Supreme Court, by 5 to 4 and 7 to 2 votes, disallow such illegalities, and the whole thing gets turned into a myth.) Willie Horton? Don't get us started! A Democrat fabrication entirely.

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Fox News: Youth Appeal and other issues

We long ago disputed the popular assessment led by the mainstream media of Fox News, i.e. that it is conservative. Nothing over the past four years has changed our reply to that assessment: Fox News only appears to be "conservative" because of its unique role in offering a wide variety of analysis. With Fox News you do get Fred Barnes, but also Mara Liason. You get Charles Krauthammer, but also Juan Williams. The same can be said of all their shows. Not so with the networks, or other cable channels for that matter. So, when a media type suddenly hears a different take, it strikes him as odd. "What's wrong with Fox News?" asks the "mainstream" commentator. They allow a conservative viewpoint as part of their reporting and analysis. That just isn't supposed to be a part of the formula.

We approve of Fox's contribution. However, we have just become aware of a part of their efforts we do not appreciate. It is called the Youth Appeal

We have seen the content-less programs led by a Mr. Shepard Smith and always considered him boring, but relatively harmless, especially since we can't stay with him more than about two minutes. During the Democrat Convention however, Mr. Smith continuously talked over Michael Barone, uttering inane comments while Barone was trying to offer insightful commentary. One time when Mr. Barone was remarking on the relative "fairness or unfairness" of some particular event, Smith interrupted him to tell no one in particular, "It's unfair how much you know." This led to uncontrollable cackling by Smith himself and his female co-host. Then they went to a break. Mr. Barone never got to finish his point. Many of us who admire Mr. Barone's unparalleled expertise in American political history, and its political demography, actually wanted to hear what he had to say, rather than have some moronic interruption just so some ignorant fellow can tell us that he has never read much.

Now I am given to understand that Fox, like all TV channels, strives to have programming that appeals to the so-called youth demographic. Unfortunately, marketers apparently believe that the youth demographic is synonymous with "airheads." Fox would do better to try to raise the level of programming with smart young people and not simply dumb down the commentary so that people like Shepard Smith can play a role.

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Democrat Hypocrisy in Albuquerque

Vice President Dick Cheney made a campaign stop in Albuquerque last Friday. Leading up to the event the local staff was receiving numerous calls from paid protestors asking for tickets to the Cheney event. At least one of the calls came from Courtney Hunter, a leading staffer for "America Coming Together." America Coming Together is one of the hard core Bush-hating groups like MoveOn.org, Bushbusters, WeHateBush, F---Bush.com and scores of others.

After it became clear that paid protesters were trying to organize to disrupt the Cheney even and very likely vandalize Rio Rancho Middle School---with motor oil, obscene graffiti or other acts of violence, the Bush-Cheney New Mexico organization began asking people applying for a ticket to sign an endorsement of the Bush-Cheney ticket. The idea was to keep out the wackos who only wanted to disrupt the meeting. As is the case with other strictly political events, the Cheney---such as the Democrat National Convention---it was not open to the general public. The troublemakers, hecklers and vandals were in fact kept out of the Cheney event. They stood outside and showed their obscene signs, shouted the F-Word at the Vice President and anyone else who came by, poured motor oil on themselves, and generally behaved liked hoodlums

Not surprisingly, local media types took their side. Jeff Jones of the Albuquerque Journal interviewed scores of people getting tickets to the event. These were the regular people coming in off the street to see the vice president. Every one of them said they were glad measures were being used to keep professional protesters, vandals and wackos out of the event. The interviews were witnessed by a lot of people. But Jones did not use a single quote from those interviews. Instead, he and the entire Journal team, yet again, only quoted those people they could find---outside the building in question---whose quotes supported the spin they wanted to run. At the event, about two dozen protesters were turned into "over a hundred" by the Albuquerque Journal. Shea Andersen of the Albuquerque Tribune is about the only reporter who had anything accurate to say about the entire story

Then comes Bill Richardson, the guy who has his appointees to boards of regents sign unconstitutional personal loyalty oaths to him. Richardson has the audacity to criticize a piece of paper used to prevent vandalism of a public school, and to allow law-abiding citizens to get into a 45-minute event.

You have to be completely brain dead to miss the irony. The governor thinks nothing of the actual constitutional violations----which have been outlined in detail by a fellow Democrat Attorney General. But he is very concerned about a piece of paper that does not violate any constitutional provision at all. The Albuquerque media types and other Democrats who are feigning apoplexy over this event, have never said anything about the forced letters of resignation Richardson requires of appointees. Some very strange double standard.

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Anti-Semitism rampant in Democrat Party

Georgia's Cynthia McKinney Makes Gigantic Comeback:
Georgia's Hatemonger Returns*

Incredible as it may be in the 21st Century, last week Georgia Democrats nominated the
a virulent anti-Semite for one of their 13 U.S. Representatives. Here are the results of the
Democrat Primary for Georgia's 4th Congressional District:

Cynthia McKinney 48,512 50.8%
Liane Levetan 19,723 20.6%
Cathy Woolard 18,164 19.0%
Three others 9,189 9.6%

The Georgia 4th CD situation perhaps best illustrates the sharp contrast in the two major parties' attitudes toward race, religion and tolerance. In 2002, McKinney had seen her 10-year congressional career come to an abrupt end at the hands of Denise Majette, a DeKalb County Circuit Court Judge. Many observers, including LTS..., believe McKinney was ousted by Republicans---yes, in the Democrat Primary. We will explain.

As is the case in about half the states, Georgia has no voter registration by party. No one can ever know how many actual Republicans and Democrats there are in the state. (In New Mexico and some 20 other states, by contrast, the parties are more or less "clubs"

---you may vote in one of the "closed" primaries only by virtue of membership, which one declares on a registration form.) When Georgia primaries are held registered voters may choose to participate in either of the major parties' nominating contests. By the time of the 2002 primary, McKinney was an embarrassment not only to Georgia but to America at large. She had:

---supported the Palestinian intifada, which she called a "great struggle"

---refused to join the U.S. delegation in walking out of the rabidly anti-American and anti-Semitic "World Conference Against Racism" in Durban, South Africa. Instead, she issued a press release calling her country's behavior at the conference "obnoxious."

---charged President Bush with not acting on "prior knowledge" of 9/11 (so that the elder Bush's friends' stock portfolios would gain value)

---witnessed Senator Zell Miller calling her disgraceful for the fawning support she had shown a Saudi prince whose $10 million gift to New York City had been turned down by Mayor Giuliani (Miller called her "loony" and wrote a $1,000 check to her opponent)

---received over 1/3 of her donations in the previous five years from Muslims or Islamic organizations, 18 of which were under investigation by the FBI for terrorist ties

---seen her own father call her previous opponent a "racist Jew"

---witnessed her father say that the "Jews have bought everybody. Jews. J-E-W-S"

---charged that "thousands of Muslims and Arab Americans...have been detained on secret evidence, no evidence, no charges," as a result of the War on Terror, blaming American sanctions for causing "the death of over one million innocent Iraqis."

---accepted $3,000 from Abdurrahman Alamoudi, founder of the Washington-based American Muslim Council(Alamoudi was arrested and charged with engaging in illegal financial transactions with the Libyan government. Court documents allege he's given financial backing to Hamas and al Qaeda.)

---received $1,000 from Sami Al-Arian and $1,000 more from his wife. (Al-Arian is the former University of South Florida professor who was indicted last year on charges he served as North American leader of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

---accepted substantial donations from individuals linked to the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Benevolence International Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation—three Muslim "charitable" organizations now labeled Specially Designated Global Terrorist entities by the U.S. Treasury Department.

---called Rabih Haddad "a prominent community leader and religious cleric." (Haddad was deported to Lebanon from the United States in 2003. He's a co-founder of the aforementioned Global Relief Foundation, which the Treasury Department has said provided financial support to al Qaeda. He also worked for Makhtab al-Khidamat (MAK) in Pakistan in the early 1990s. MAK was a precursor organization to al Qaeda that was co-founded by Osama bin Laden. )

---voted against the Iran-Libyan Sanctions Act—which passed by a 409-6 margin and was designed to punish Iran and Libya for supporting terrorism

Naturally McKinney was endorsed by Louis Farrakhan and the nation of Islam, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King III, Joseph Lowry and a host of prominent Democrats and "Civil Rights leaders."

She lost anyway, 58 - 42%. Her father, the Jew-hater, also lost in his bid to extend his 30-year legislative career one more time.

McKinney blamed Republicans (again, unidentifiable in Georgia, therefore an unknowable charge) for voting in the Democrat Primary and giving Majette her 19,000-vote margin of victory. It seems a likely proposition. Georgians can be forgiven for concluding that their Democrats---and oddly enough, especially black Democrats---seem increasingly drawn to anti-Semitic rhetoric, histrionics and ultimately public policy. While we don't make a conclusion ourselves, we find the whole phenomenon both mysterious and disturbing.

Republicans, especially conservative and southern Republicans, provide the bastion for American Middle East policy which remains, thus far at least, supportive of the region's only democracy, Israel. Republicans, if they were in fact responsible for McKinney's defeat, should be justifiably proud.

Fast forward to 2004:

Denise Majette, the woman who beat McKinney in 2002, has foolishly chosen to run for U.S. Senate rather than seek reelection to the House. (Majette finished first last week's primary with over 41% of the vote, and faces a runoff on August 10. Her decision was foolish because neither she nor her Democrat runoff opponent has a chance to win the Georgia senate seat being vacated by Zell Miller. She would have done much better for her home, her state and for the country at large by keeping someone like McKinney from returning to national prominence.)

Two things happened in this year's congressional primary. 1) Republicans had a significant primary battle of their own, to replace Miller. They had to choose between voting in the U.S. Senate Republican Primary, or the 4th District Democrat Primary. Most voted in the Senate race. 2) More significantly, and much more troubling, Democrats, especially black Democrats, flocked to McKinney in droves. You see, McKinney's principal opponent in the Democrat Primary, Liane Levetan, is Jewish, J-E-W-I-S-H, Jewish. Emboldened by the national Democrats' refusal to distance itself from McKinney, or from Virginia Congressman Jim Moran's moronic anti-Jewish rhetoric, or from the continued embarrassment of Senator Fritz Hollings' Jew-bashing, Georgia's Democrat Party has swung whole hog back to McKinney.

McKinney faces Republican Catherine Davis in the general election in a district that voted 69-29 for Gore over Bush. Only a massive conscience-raising effort can prevent this national embarrassment, and stanch the seemingly inexorable move of the Democrat Party toward rampant anti-Semitism. Alas, the party appears to be without conscience.

*Title of a July 9th Article by Erick Stakelbeck, a senior writer at the Investigative Project a Washington, D.C.-based counterterrorism research institute. (Stakelbeck's article was the source for 8 of the 13 bulletpoints about McKinney.)

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Sesquicentennial

No, it is not a novel by James Michener.

2004 marks the Sesquicentennial of the Republican Party, the 150th Anniversary of the second oldest political party in the world. Senator Rod Adair is speaking around the state on the history of the Republican Party and its unique role in shaping America. The Grand Old Party was founded 150 years ago in such places as Ripon, Wisconsin and Jackson, Michigan and at least two other towns that claim it as its birthplace. It is difficult to sort out the first among firsts because the party literally sprang up, almost spontaneously.

The party's remarkable record includes:

1) The invention of the very concept of Civil Rights in America, 2) A commitment to an "internal development" program, including the building of roads, ports, the transcontinental railroad, the interstate highway system, land grant colleges and the settling of America through the Homestead Act; 3) The creation of the idea of conservation and the environmental movement (also invented by the Republican Party), the setting aside of national parks; 4) National policies that fostered the building of American industry, allowing its development at a critical time in our history, creating the biggest and strongest economy the world has ever known; 5) The construct of anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws to ensure a functioning economy based on private enterprise and fair trade rules and practices; 6) A not-to-be-denied determination to end slavery, and a century-long heroic struggle against the Democrat Party to end its vestiges: segregation, lynching, poll taxes, voting rights discrimination, and the intimidating power of the Ku Klux Klan; 7) Winning the battle for Women's suffrage, and many more victories in the realm of public policy.

All these accomplishments leading up to the Republican Party's role near the end of the 20th Century---by then alone in the struggle---in continuing a determined fight to win the Cold War; and into the 21st Century leading America and the world in the fight against global terrorism. If you would like Senator Adair to speak to your organization, please click here: SenatorRodAdair@dfn.com and let us know.

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