Ted Danson Backs Wesley Clark in N.H.

The Associated Press

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - The star of "Cheers" — where everybody knows your name — had some trouble Saturday remembering the name of his wife's new television series.

Ted Danson, who played Sam Malone on "Cheers" for 11 seasons, and his wife, actress Mary Steenburgen, have been campaigning in New Hampshire for retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark.

Introducing his wife at a rally Saturday afternoon, Danson mentioned that she's the star of the movie "Elf" before coming up blank.

"Oh my God, I can't believe this," he said, struggling for a few seconds before blurting out her TV show, "Joan of Arcadia."

"He will soooo pay for that later," Steenburgen said as she took the microphone.

Steenburgen's mother and Clark's mother were friends and co-workers at an Arkansas bank who used to brag about their children.

"He's not a braggart, that's why his mom had to do it. " Steenburgen said of Clark. "Now that she's not here, that's what I'm for."

Not really into politics....
but its good to hear about the cast once in a while.

Despite that, I still like him.

All I have to say is: Why, Ted, Why?

Awwww !!! That so cute!!! :lol: I wish I could have seen that! haha, that's not that bad he just spaced out for a few seconds...wow that must have been embarrassing...i'm sure he did pay for it later....poor guy.

I dunno...I really hate it when celebs get into politics. :o

:lol:

Wesley Clark has dropped out of the race-Sorry Ted & Mary! @ this rate, there's won't be any1 left 2 run except Kerry, Sharpton, Kucinich & Edwards. They all irrate me.

Tiff7

I like Kerry! I want the Democratic ballot to be Kerry for Pres. and Edwards for Vice.

Dean was cool.... but he dropped out.
Im all for Kerry.


Basically.... I just dont want Bush.


IMO.... the President of the United States.... should know how to SPELL "The President of the United States"

i wanted howard dean to win but he dropped out as you said. i agree i'm going with kerry now

Bush all the way, baby! Sorry people that want Kerry 2 win-yuck! Have a gr8 weekend y'all! :) Please no bashing the Pres.

Tiff7

Bush sucks.



Clinton was the best president America ever had.

Sure, he slept around.
But its better that happen.... than 1000s of soldiers die off in a stupid war.
Bush deserves to die, if he supports the war so much.... he should be out there fighting.

Hey Barwars- just how was Clinton the best President this country has had??? Osama was handed to President Lewinsky on a platter and he did nothing about it!! 3 times he was offered Osama but he would not go and get him! Just think-if he had gone and got him 3000 American people would still be alive today!! Barwars-you need to grow up. I know you are only around 16 but come on-Bush deserves to die??? Why do you hate him so much?? Because of WMD's?? Well your great President Clinton sure thought Sadamm had them. So did Al Gore and pretty much everyone in the Clinton addministration. Clinton was the one who started the policy of leadership change in Iraq. He was just too much of a candya$$ to do anything about it. Quit listening to your liberal teachers who only worry about what's good for their teachers union and start doing some research on your own. So far all I've heard is "Bush sucks" and Bush deserves to die".

Bush always sends us pictures of himself. I think my dad gives him money....

Anyways, since my family is all republican I say Bush. Although, I know absolutely nothing about politics. :)

Originally posted by barwars88
Clinton was the best president America ever had.

Sure, he slept around.
But its better that happen.... than 1000s of soldiers die off in a stupid war.
Bush deserves to die, if he supports the war so much.... he should be out there fighting.

I definately support the war. I hate when people think Bush is having this war for his pleasure... because that's not the case. I may not be a political person, but I do know this war is justified. We can take action, or we could sit around and wait for another 9/11.... it's our choice. Think about it, if we wouldn't have had this war Saddam probably wouldn't have gotten caught. Besides, when Americans enroll in the Army they know that there is a chance they may have to go to war.. and it's their choice to take the risk. That has nothing to do with Bush, really. If they die, it's terrible... but it is what they signed up for.

Originally posted by OU812
Hey Barwars- just how was Clinton the best President this country has had??? Osama was handed to President Lewinsky on a platter and he did nothing about it!! 3 times he was offered Osama but he would not go and get him! Just think-if he had gone and got him 3000 American people would still be alive today!! Barwars-you need to grow up. I know you are only around 16 but come on-Bush deserves to die??? Why do you hate him so much?? Because of WMD's?? Well your great President Clinton sure thought Sadamm had them. So did Al Gore and pretty much everyone in the Clinton addministration. Clinton was the one who started the policy of leadership change in Iraq. He was just too much of a candya$$ to do anything about it. Quit listening to your liberal teachers who only worry about what's good for their teachers union and start doing some research on your own. So far all I've heard is "Bush sucks" and Bush deserves to die".


Clinton was better than Bush for one reason -- no war.
Ive read that when Clinton was the president, the country was in the best shape ever.
But with Bush -- people die every day off at war.


You're right that I shouldnt have said that "Bush deserves to die".... I just hate when political leaders support wars, then sit back in the homeland while nameless (to him) men and women die off in *his* war.

Its the Bush name, and if Gore had been President (which he should be if the system wasnt rigged), I dont even think that the attacks on 9-11 would have even happened.

Saddam hates the Bushs.
The Bushs hate Saddam.


But with Clinton -- nobody was dying for it.

The country was in the best shape economicly(?) because of a republican congress that was in place when Bush senior was in office and an over-inflated technology market. The current recession that the country is in started at the end of Clintons term. If Gore were in office right now he would be facing the same thing. This is what happens to the economy. It goes up and it goes down.

And what do you expect a leader of a country to do-go and have an arm wrestling match with the other leader?? War how this country came to be. No one wants war. But I would rather go and get the terroists than for them to come over here and harm us(9/11).

The president of our country is elected by the electoral college. Not by the popular vote as the Democrats would have liked. The election was not rigged. The voting methods that they used in Florida have been used all over the U.S. If a person can't tell who he or she is voting for on a piece of paper, then maybe they ought to ask for help. And by the way-did you know that the Demorats did not want to allow the votes of our armed forces from over sea to be counted when all of the stink about Florida came up??

We can only hope that 9/11 would not have happened if Gore was in office. But that is merely speculation. What you don't understand is that Osama and his crew could care less about who was in office. They just hate us for being us!!! That's it!! Clinton was in office when they bombed the World Trade Center the first time and when they attacked the USS Cole. And what did he do?? He bombed an asprin factory in Iraq. He got on T.V. and said that "we will do this" and "we will do that" but he did nothing.

You say that with Clinton no one was dying. Maybe not on his watch. But, if he would have gotten Osama when he had the chance maybe 3000 Americans would still be alive today. Indirectly you could lay the blame on Clinton.

And you are a good man for retracting your "Bush deserves to die" statement. Now if only we could get you away from "the dark side!!!" :D

Originally posted by OU812
Hey Barwars- just how was Clinton the best President this country has had??? Osama was handed to President Lewinsky on a platter and he did nothing about it!! 3 times he was offered Osama but he would not go and get him! Just think-if he had gone and got him 3000 American people would still be alive today!! Barwars-you need to grow up. I know you are only around 16 but come on-Bush deserves to die??? Why do you hate him so much?? Because of WMD's?? Well your great President Clinton sure thought Sadamm had them. So did Al Gore and pretty much everyone in the Clinton addministration. Clinton was the one who started the policy of leadership change in Iraq. He was just too much of a candya$$ to do anything about it. Quit listening to your liberal teachers who only worry about what's good for their teachers union and start doing some research on your own. So far all I've heard is "Bush sucks" and Bush deserves to die".

The Blame America's Ex-President First Crowd

An excerpt from Al Franken's best-selling book Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair And Balanced Look At The Right (Dutton Publishing; 2003):

Six months after 9/11, the Gallup Poll of Islamic Countries found that an overwhelming majority of those surveyed believed the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had not been the works of Arabs. Well-educated Egyptians and Saudis believed that the Israelis were behind the murder of three thousand innocents on 9/11, in large part because of articles in their countries' official state newspapers. One of the widely disseminated stories was that no Jews died in the collapse of the Trade Towers because they had received calls telling them not to go to work that day.

To tell you the truth, I got the Jew call. I had an office in the Trade Center where I used to do most of my writing. The call came from former New York mayor Ed Koch. "Al," he told me, "don't go to work on the twenty-third day of Elul."

Actually, I watched the events of that awful day from Minneapolis, where I was visiting my mom. Mom's in a nursing home, so I was staying at a hotel. That morning, as I grabbed some coffee, I noticed people huddled around a TV. A plane had hit the World Trade Center. Must have been a commuter plane. Maybe the pilot had a heart attack or something. Then the second plane hit. It was sickening. We were under attack.

Somehow, I got through to my wife in Manhattan. She was fine, at home on the Upper West Side, about five miles north of the Trade Center. My son was at school on the Upper East Side. My daughter was away at college. As I watched the first tower collapse, I was stunned. But I still couldn't register the magnitude of what was happening, even as the second one went down.

I spent the rest of the day at the nursing home watching TV with my mom. She didn't understand what had happened--as if any of us really did. A friend of mine watched with his elderly mother in Queens. As he left that evening, she said to him, "At least no one was hurt."

That night, like all Americans, I just kept watching. Giuliani was masterful. Bush seemed a little shaky.

On Wednesday, I couldn't reach my family. I desperately wanted to be home in New York. The airport was closed, of course. But Northwest said they'd start flying on Thursday, so instead of driving back, I played golf. In the charity tournament for my mom's nursing home where I had been billed as the celebrity guest. It was a very weird day for golf. Everyone was there to support the nursing home, but we all felt funny enjoying the beautiful day after the ugliest day in American history. At the closing ceremony, as I thanked the nurses who take care of my mom (she can be difficult), I started to choke up.

Thursday, I got a reservation on an afternoon flight to LaGuardia. Dropped my rental off at the airport Hertz. Just as I got to the Northwest ticket counter, they announced that the airport was closing down because of a security threat. I did a one-eighty and ran back to the Hertz counter, where I was told they were now charging $300 a day for cars. The world was falling apart, and I was being bilked.

"So, let me get this straight," I said. "Hertz is taking advantage of a horrific tragedy to jack up the price of your cars?" Yes. But the woman recognized me as the guy who had just turned in his car rented at the pre-terrorist-attack rate. So she gave me the same rate, plus a reasonable drop-off fee in New York. America was pulling together.

It was late afternoon. I left the Twin Cities, determined to drive straight through, listening to local radio and NPR. On September 11, 2001, NPR had more foreign correspondents abroad than any other network news organization in the United States. Americans, so the other networks thought (probably correctly), had lost interest in the world.

Listening to twenty straight hours of coverage as I drove alone through the heartland, I was overwhelmed with the enormity of what had happened. Friday afternoon, I pulled into a truck stop in Eastern Pennsylvania to watch President Bush lead a memorial service at the National Cathedral. For twelve bucks, I got a room with a bed, a shower, and a TV. I showered, changed into some clean underwear, and, lying in bed, watched the memorial and wept.

In times of crisis, people often respond by instinctively doing the things they find most comforting. For many Republicans, then, it is hardly surprising that their way of coping with the horror of 9/11 was to attack Bill Clinton.

Some attacks were more instinctive than others. A clearly rattled Orrin Hatch was all over the news that day, blaming Clinton because he had "de-emphasized" the military. Hatch was also the first to confirm al Qaeda's involvement by disclosing classified intercepts between associates of Osama bin Laden about the attack. Asked about it on ABC News two days later, a miffed Donald Rumsfeld said Hatch's leak was the kind that "compromises our sources and methods" and "inhibits our ability to find and deal with the terrorists who commit this kind of act." Thanks, Orrin.

So if it hadn't been for Hatch, we probably would have gotten bin Laden right away. The disclosure that al Qaeda was responsible did allow representative Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) to identify the "root of the problem" just hours after the attack: "We had Bill Clinton backing off, letting the Taliban go, over and over again."

The right-wing media followed suit. The Washington Times blamed Clinton. The New York Post blamed Clinton. You know who Rush Limbaugh blamed? Clinton. The National Review's White House correspondent Byron York wrote that Clinton's "record is a richly detailed manual of how not to conduct a war on terrorism." Newt Gingrich was blaming Clinton for the attacks because of his "pathetically weak, ineffective ability to focus and stay focused." You really got to give Gingrich credit for how hard he tried to disrupt Clinton's focus: His Republican-run House conducted dozens of hostile investigations against the President.

But it had been kind of a waste of Gingrich's time. Clinton, as I will demonstrate below, focused more on terrorism than any previous president. A month before Clinton left office, his administration was praised by two former Reagan counter-terrorism officials. "Overall, I give them very high marks," Robert Oakley, who served as ambassador for counter-terrorism in the Reagan State Department, told the Washington Post. "The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama, which only made him stronger." Oakley's successor in the Reagan administration, Paul Bremer, disagreed slightly. Bremer, who is currently the civilian administrator in Iraq, told the Post he believed the Clinton administration had "correctly focused on bin Laden." Notice the word "focused" next to the words "on bin Laden." I'm talking to you, Newt. And all of you "Blame-Clinton-Firsters."

Right-wingers like to call us the "Blame-America-First Crowd." But they've blamed Clinton, who's not just an American, but was the President, virtually nonstop. And Clinton was not just the President. He was the last elected president, who received more votes than any other candidate running against him. In two straight elections! So who's blaming America? The left, which is blaming terrorists? Or the right, which is blaming a twice-elected President of the United States?

But, you know what, I don't want to get into a whole partisan politics thing here. Not in this book, anyway. We'll leave that for my next book, I ****ing Hate Those Right-Wing Mother****ers!, due out in October, 2004. I'm hoping it will "fire up the troops" for the final weeks of the campaign season.

No, this book, the one you are reading now, is about giving both sides a fair shake and getting to the bottom of the big issues that face us all as America transitions into the twenty-first century. Who was to blame for 9/11 other than the terrorists? It's an important question, one that serious-minded people want answered. It's also one that less serious people like Sean Hannity are curious about. And I think it's time to go to the record with an open mind and, more important, an open heart.

Anyone with an open mind and an open heart must admit that, as with the budget deficit, Reagan's anti-terror record was a disaster. Radical Islam terrorists killed more Americans during his administration than would die under Bush Sr. and Clinton combined. Between the 1983 embassy and Marine barracks bombings in Beirut and the destruction of Pan Am flight 103, nearly five hundred American lives were lost. Reagan's only direct response was a single bombing run against Libya in 1986.

To be fair, two days after the Marine barracks bombing, Reagan did invade Grenada. Although he cut and ran in Lebanon, which might have been interpreted as capitulation, I think his bold attack on Grenada sent a clear message to violent Muslim extremists: If you attacks us, we'll invade a Club Med.

The Great Communicator scored another direct hit in the fight against terror by supplying arms to violent Muslim extremists among the Afghani Mujahedeen, as well as to his friends in Iran and Iraq. Crazy, you say? Crazy like a fox, say I!

Now, the Gipper wasn't the kind of president who saw terrorism just in terms of black and white. No, Reagan distinguished between good terrorists and bad terrorists. He loved the terrorist death squads in Guatemala, El Salvador, and most of all, Nicaragua. Enough to violate the Constitution to support the Contras as they raped and tortured nuns. Bad terrorists, on the other hand, were those who used terror irresponsibly. See, Reagan saw the shades of gray, where a less nuanced politician may have only seen unmitigated evil.

On to Bush Sr. No huge terrorist attacks, thank goodness. And there was no way he could have known that Ramzi Yousef and a vast network of violent Muslim extremists were planning the World Trade Center bombing that would take place February 26, 1993. You may remember that no one blamed Bush Sr. for this bombing of the World Trade Center by radical Islamic terrorists. After all, it did happen on Clinton's watch. He had been president for thirty-eight days.

The only tiny little thing I fault Bush Sr. for is the way he handled Afghanistan. After he continued arming his violent Muslim extremist friends there, the Soviets eventually withdrew in early 1989. Bush promptly implemented the top-secret Project Neglect, which consisted of abandoning (or "neglecting") Afghanistan and allowing it to become a breeding ground for anti-U.S. terrorist training camps. As you will see, Project Neglect would prove a useful template for the far more extensive Operation Ignore put into effect during the first few months of his son's presidency.

In his four State of the Union speeches, George Herbert Walker Bush said the word "terror" only once, in the context of the "environmental terrorism" perpetrated when Saddam set fire to the oil fields. That was it. Bush Sr. cared even less about terror than he did about the economy. Stupid, stupid.

Thirty-eight days after taking office, when the World Trade Center was attacked the first time, the handsome, brilliant, young President Clinton learned a painful lesson about the consequences of ignoring a terrorist menace. He swung into action. No, he didn't invade a Carribbean nation. Though later he did help restore democracy to Haiti. The way Clinton responded to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was to capture, try, and imprison those responsible. Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah are all currently behind bars. You can visit them and ask them if they think Clinton was tough on terror. I hear they enjoy having visitors.

You can ask them, too, about the Clinton administration's ability to thwart planned terrorist attacks. They were involved in further plots to kill the Pope and blow up twelve U.S. jetliners simultaneously. But neither happened. And neither did the huge attack that was planned against the UN Headquarters, the FBI building, the Israeli embassy in Washington, the LA and Boston airports, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, and the George Washington Bridge. Why? Because Clinton thwarted them. He thwarted them all. Why, he even thwarted a terrorist truck bomb plot against the U.S. embassy in Tirana, Albania.

That's a lot of thwarting. How did he do that? Well, for one thing he tripled the counter-terrorism budget for the FBI. And doubled counter-terrorism funding overall. And rolled up al Qaeda cells in more than twenty countries. And created a top-level national security post to coordinate all federal counter-terrorism activity.

His first crime bill contained stringent anti-terrorism legislation. As did his second. His administration sponsored a series of simulations to see how local, state, and federal officials should coordinate their responses to a terrorist strike. He created a national stockpile of drugs and vaccines (including forty million doses of smallpox vaccine). He coaxed, cajoled, and badgered foreign leaders to join in the fight internationally or to do more within their own borders. And a huge long list of other stuff.

"By any measure available, Clinton left office having given greater priority to terrorism than any president before him," Barton Gellman reported in his definitive four-part series for the Washington Post. Clinton's, he wrote, was the "first administration to undertake a systematic anti-terrorist effort."

Now, you know how Washington is. It's almost impossible to get anything done unless both parties are willing to put politics aside and work together. So, on this counter-terrorism stuff, you're thinking the Republicans must have been cooperating the whole time. Isn't that what you're thinking? If so, I wish I lived in the same fantasy world as you. No, once the Republicans took hold of Congress, they fought Clinton with the same bitterness that the hostile Whig Congress fought President Polk during the storied second half of his first term.. I still get angry thinking about that.

Just as the Whigs fought Polk every inch of the way on tariff reform, so did Republicans fight Clinton on counter-terrorism spending. When Clinton asked for more anti-terrorism funding in 1996, Orrin "Loose Lips" Hatch objected. "The administration would be wise to utilize the resources Congress has already provided before it requests additional funding."

The year before, after the horrific Oklahoma City bombing, Republicans rejected Clinton's proposed expansion of the intelligence agencies' wiretap authority in order to combat terrorism. Speaker Gingrich explained his opposition by questioning the FBI's integrity. On Fox News Sunday, Gingrich said, "When you have an agency that turns nine hundred personnel files over to people like Craig Livingstone . . . it's very hard to justify giving that agency more power." Gingrich, of course, was making a remark about Filegate, one of many Fox-hyped investigations that yielded zip and then fizzled out. It is unusual to see a man of Gingrich's integrity compromise national security in order to score a cheap political point. Just proves that even the finest of our public servants can slip now and then.

Gingrich was more supportive in 1998, when Clinton struck targets in Sudan and Afghanistan with Tomahawk missiles in retaliation for terrorist strikes against our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. "The President did exactly the right thing," said Gingrich. "By doing this we're sending the signal there are no sanctuaries for terrorists." See? He's not so bad.

And that's why I just know there must be some good explanation for why, on September 13, 2001, Newt said on Fox, "The lesson has to be that firing a few Tomahawks, dropping a few bombs is totally inadequate" and implored Bush to "recognize that the Clinton policy failed." On the surface, this might seem to be a spitefully worded direct contradiction to his earlier position. But I think maybe Newt was having some trouble at home with his new wife, the former staffer he started porking while he was still married to his second wife. I mean, when good people say hurtful things, there's always something going on inside that none of us can truly know.

Immediately after the embassy bombings, Clinton issued a presidential directive authorizing the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Assasinate bin Laden? Amen, I say. Sean Hannity, though, has devoted a substantial amount of time, both on the air and in his book, to pretending this never happened and criticizing Clinton for not having the balls to do it. On his show, he yammers a lot about Reagan's Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the assassination of foreign heads of state. Watch Hannity on TV, or listen to him on the radio. He'll bring it up. It's one of the eleven things he knows.*

The fact that Osama isn't actually a foreign head of state and that Clinton issued his presidential directive to assassinate him didn't stop Hannity from writing in his book about a February 2001 episode of Hannity and Colmes on the topic. Guest racist David Horowitz is quoted as saying "We can protect ourselves from terrorist threats like Osama bin Laden. It would be nice if the CIA were able to assassinate him."

Hannity writes about his own reaction: "Amen, I thought."

What is his deal, anyway?

The final al Qaeda strike of the Clinton Era came on October 12, 2000. Al Qaeda terrorists attacked the USS Cole, killing seventeen of our sailors. Clinton decided to take the fight against al Qaeda to the highest level possible. Instead of funding and arming them like Reagan, or ignoring them like Bush, Clinton decided to destroy them. He put Richard Clarke, the legendary bulldog whom he had appointed as the first national anti-terrorism coordinator, in charge of coming up with a comprehensive plan to take out al Qaeda. What unfolded became the subject of a shocking cover story in the August 12, 2002 Time magazine, which I will now take credit for having read.

Working furiously, Clarke produced a strategy paper that he presented to Sandy Berger and other national security principals on December 20, 2000. The plan was an ambitious one: break up al Qaeda cells and arrest their personnel; systematically attack financial support for its terrorist activities; freeze its assets; stop its funding through fake charities; give aid to governments having trouble with al Qaeda (Uzbekistan, the Philipines, and Yemen); and, most significantlty, scale up covert action in Afghanistan to eliminate the training camps and reach bin Laden himself. Clarke proposed bulking up support for the Northern Alliance and putting Special Forces troops on the ground in Afghanistan. As a senior Bush administration official told Time, Clarke's plan amounted to "everything we've done since 9/11."

Remember how I mentioned that the National Review's Byron York wrote that Clinton's "record is a richly detailed manual of how not to combat terrorism"? Well, if you take out the word "not," you get a pretty good description of the plan: "a richly detailed manual of how to combat terrorism." So Byron was just one word away from understanding the Clinton anti-terror legacy.

But the plan was never carried out. In its place Clinton's successor, George W. Bush, and his national security team would conceive and execute a different plan entirely. A plan called Operation Ignore.

*The other ten are: 1.) Cutting taxes doubles revenues. 2.) Democrats who oppose tax cuts for the rich are waging "class warfare." 3.) Reagan won the Cold War by putting the Pershing II missiles in Europe. 4.) Democrats are on the wrong side of history. 5.) Democrats, not Republicans, are the party of "race baiting," because Democrats accuse racists of racism. 6.) A higher percentage of Republican than Democratic senators senators voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which means that the Republicans are the party of civil rights. 7.) All education problems will be solved by vouchers. 8.) Clinton gutted the military. 9.) He's not going to sit here and listen to your talking points. 10.) Clinton had a chance to get Osama bin Laden, but blew it. (See post below.)

For more on conservatives, including Dana Rohrbacher, blaming Clinton after the terrorist attacks, see "Conservatives Sound Refrain: It's Clinton's Fault," in the October 7, 2001, Washington Post.

The Byron York piece that came within one word of describing the Clinton counter-terrorism is "Master Of His Game," appearing in the October 15, 2001, National Review.

Robert Oakley's comments were printed in "Planed Jan. 2000 Attacks Failed or Were Thwarted," in the Christmas Eve 2000 Washington Post. As were Paul Bremer's.

Barton Gellman's exegesis of Clinton's counter-terrorism efforts appeared in a series in the Washington Post under the headlines "Broad Effort Launched After '98 Attacks," on December 19, 2001, and "Struggles Inside The Government Defined Campaign," on December 20, 2001.

Reliable Sources

In Let Freedom Ring, Hannity outlines a charge that he frequently makes both on television and on the radio: that Clinton let bin Laden slip from his grasp. He writes:

It's truly astonishing. Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and their liberal allies on Capitol Hill were offered Osama bin Laden by the Sudanese government, and they turned the offer down. They could have taken him into custody and begun unraveling his terrorist network almost six years ago. But they didn't. And now more than three thousand innocent Americans have paid with their blood.

That is astonishing. Hard to think of a more serious charge. You want to be damned sure you have that one locked down pretty tight before you put it in print.

But knowing what we already know about Sean Hannity and the standards to which he holds himself, what are the chances that this whole charge is baloney?

His entire case comes from a guy named Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American who claims to have transmitted the offer as a middleman between the U.S. and Sudan. I got the story on Ijaz from former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and from Daniel Benjamin, past director for counter-terrorism on the National Security Council and now senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Berger only had to meet once with Ijaz to determine that he was an unreliable freelancer, pursuing his own financial interests. Ijaz was an investment banker with a huge stake in Sudanese oil.

Ijaz had urged Berger to lift sanctions against Sudan. Why the sanctions? Because Sudan was and remains a notorious sponsor of terrorism, harboring Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda. Also, the Sudanese regime is the leading state sponsor of slavery and is considered by many to be genocidal. And totally untrustworthy. Ijaz, however, was arguing their case. As Benjamin said of Ijaz, "Either he allowed himself to be manipulated, or he's in bed with a bunch of genocidal terrorists."

Ijaz said that Sudan was ready to hand over bin Laden. The U.S. does not conduct diplomacy through self-appointed private individuals. When the U.S. talked to Sudan, there was no such offer. The U.S. pursued every lead and tried to negotiate. Nothing.

The story does have a happy ending. Ijaz now has a job as foreign affairs analyst for the Fox News Channel.

For more on the Sudan story, see Gellman's article in the October 3, 2001 Washington Post, entitled "U.S. Was foiled Multiple Times in Efforts to Capture bin Laden or Have Him Killed." Sandy Berger wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about the Mansoor Ijaz story. The piece, "Skeptical About Sudan," was published on July 13, 2002. And for more on Monsoore Ijaz, see Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon's The Age of Sacred Terror.

I've often wondered-how does a comedian and an actor like Fraken have more inside information than the American Intelligence Community.

Once again-Indirectly you could lay the blame on Clinton. No. He did not fly the plane into the Trade Center but he had an chance to get Osama and did nothing. He may not have even succeeded and things could have played out the same. If something were to happen today Bush would be responsible. Why?? Because he has done nothing to close our boarders.

Fraken is as far left as Rush is far right. There is no fairness or balance is his writings. It is all left sided. The world is a better place with al Qaeda broken into pieces and Sadamm and his sons out of power. Lybia has opened up it boarders to inspectors. Iran is slowly coming around. People say "but what about all of our soilders dying over there still". When we took down Germany is was 3 or more years before they even had their own currency flowing. Elections did not happen until even later. There was still Nazi loyalist still causing troble over there just like in Iraq. It just takes time. And I like Fraken saying that Reagan liked only certain terrorist groups. Yes he did help the Afgan rebels fight against the USSR but England was one time our enemy. Japan was our enemy in WW2 but are a good ally now. Unfortunatly you have to pick your friends depending on the situation.

Hey AKA-I've got $100.00 says Bush is more than a "one term President just like his daddy"

Let's please not turn this thread into a political debate.

Whatever you think of Clinton, the story that he had the chance to capture bin Laden and let him go has been debunked, and not by Franken (see the footnotes).

You don't have to read the entire passage, OU812. All I ask is that you read the red text.

Originally posted by Brian Damage
Let's please not turn this thread into a political debate.


I hate politics.









god save the queen.

Originally posted by OU812
Hey AKA-I've got $100.00 says Bush is more than a "one term President just like his daddy"

Why? Is he going to rig this election, too?

http://allafrica.com/stories/200112070235.html

They have been debunked by the left. This article gives Clintons side and the side that said he let Osama go. Think about it-If you were the ex-president and you were getting hammered for letting Osama go, don't you think you would say it's a bunch of lies?? It's just like Reagan saying he knew nothing about the Iran scandal back in the mid 80's.

Please tell me how he rigged the elections. I just love that excuse from the left. It's always good for a laugh!! Do you want the bet or not????

Originally posted by OU812
Please tell me how he rigged the elections. I just love that excuse from the left. It's always good for a laugh!! Do you want the bet or not????

http://www.bushflash.com/gta.html

A Very American Coup

By Michael Moore

THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE WAS INTERCEPTED BY U.N. FORCES ON 9/1/01, AT 0600 HOURS, FROM SOMEWHERE WITHIN THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT:

I am a citizen of the United States of America. Our government has been overthrown. Our elected President has been exiled. Old white men wielding martinis and wearing dickies have occupied our nation's capital.

We are under siege. We are the United States Government-in-Exile.

Our numbers are not insignificant. There are over 154 million adults among us, and 80 million children. That's 234 million people who did not vote for, and are not represented by, the regime that has placed itself in power.

Al Gore is the elected President of the United States. He received 539,898 more votes than George W. Bush. But he does not sit tonight in the Oval Office. Instead our elected President roams the country without purpose or mission, surfacing only to lecture college students and replenish his stash of Little Debbie's Snack Cakes.

Al Gore won. Al Gore, President-in-Exile. Long live El Presidente Albertooooooo Gorrrrrrrrrrre!

So who, then is the man that now occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? I'll tell you who:

He is George W. Bush, "President" of the United States. The Thief-in-Chief.

It used to be that politicians would wait until they were in office before they became crooks. This one came prepackaged. Now he is a trespasser on federal land, a squatter in the Oval Office. If I told you this was Guatemala, you'd believe it in a heartbeat, no matter what your political stripe. But because this coup was wrapped in an American flag, delivered in your choice of red, white, or blue, those responsible believe they're going to get away with it.

That's why, on behalf of 234 million Americans held hostage, I have requested that NATO do what it did in Bosnia and Kosovo, what America did in Haiti, what Lee Marvin did in The Dirty Dozen:

Send in the Marines! Launch the SCUD missiles! Bring us the head of Antonin Scalia!

I have sent a personal request to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to hear our plea. We are no longer able to govern ourselves or to hold free and fair elections. We need U.N. observers, U.N. troops, U.N. resolutions!

Dammit, we need Jimmy Carter!

We are now finally no better than a backwater banana republic. We are asking ourselves why any of us should bother to get up in the morning to work our asses off to produce goods and services that only serve to make the junta and its cohorts in Corporate America (a separate, autonomous fiefdom within the United States that has been allowed to run on its own for some time) even richer. Why should we pay our taxes to finance their coup? Can we ever again send our sons off into battle to give their lives defending "our way of life"--when all that really means is the lifestyle of the gray old men holed up in the headquarters they seized by the Potomac?

Oh JesusMaryAndJoseph, I can't take it! Somebody pass me the universal remote! I need to switch back to the fairy tale that I was a citizen in a democracy with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happy Meals. The story I was told as a child said that I mattered, that I was equal to every one of my fellow citizens--and that not a single one of us was to be treated differently or unfairly, that no one was to wield power over others without their consent. The will of the people. America the Beautiful. Land that I love. Twilight's . . . last . . . gleaming. Oh, say, can you see--are the Belgian peacekeepers on their way? Hurry!

The coup began long before the shenanigans on Election Day 2000. In the summer of 1999 Katherine Harris, an honorary Stupid White Man who was both George W. Bush's presidential campaign cochairwoman and the Florida secretary of state in charge of elections, paid $4 million to Database Technologies to go through Florida's voter rolls and remove anyone "suspected" of being a former felon. She did so with the blessing of the governor of Florida, George W.'s brother Jeb Bush--whose own wife was caught by immigration officials trying to sneak $19,000 worth of jewelry into the country without declaring and paying tax on it . . . a felony in its own right. But hey, this is America. We don't prosecute felons if they're rich or married to a governing Bush.

The law states that ex-felons cannot vote in Florida. And sadly (thought I'm confident that Florida's justice system was always unimpeachably fair), that means 31 percent of all black men in Florida are prohibited from voting because they have a felony on their record. Harris and Bush knew that removing the names of ex-felons from the voter rolls would keep thousands of black citizens out of the voting booth.

Black Floridians, overwhelmingly, are Democrats--and sure enough, Al Gore received the votes of more than 90 percent of them on November 7, 2000.

That is, 90 percent of those who were allowed to vote.

In what appears to be a mass fraud committed by the state of Florida, Bush, Harris, and company not only removed thousands of black felons from the roles. they also removed thousands of black citizens who had never committed a crime in their lives--along with thousands of eligible voters who had committed only misdemeanors.

How did this happen? Harris's office told Database--a firm with strong Republican ties--to cast as wide a net as possible to get rid of these voters. Her minions instructed the company to include even people with "similar" names to those of the actual felons. They insisted Database check people with the same birth dates as known felons, or similar Social Security numbers; an 80 percent match of relevant information, the election office instructed, was sufficient for Database to add a voter to the ineligible list.

These orders were shocking, even to Bush-friendly Database. That would mean that thousands of legitimate voters might be barred from voting on Election Day just because they had a name that sounded like someone else's, or shared a birthday with some unknown bank robber. Marlene Thorogood, the Database project manager, sent an E-mail to Emmett "Bucky" Mitchell, a lawyer for Katherine Harris's election division, warning him that "Unfortunately, programming in this fashion may supply you with false positives," or misidentifications.

Never mind that, said ol' Bucky. His response: "Obviously, we want to capture more names that possibly aren't matches and let [county election] supervisors make a final determination rather than exclude certain matches altogether."

Database did as they were told. And before long 173,000 registered voters in Florida were permanently wiped off the voter rolls. In Miami-Dade, Florida's largest county, 66 percent of the voters who were removed were black. In Tampa's county, 54 percent of those who would be denied the right to vote on November 7, 2000, were black.

But culling names from Florida's records alone was not enough for Harris and her department. Eight thousand additional Floridians were thrown off the voting rolls because Database used a false list supplied by another state, a state which claimed that all the names on the list were former convicted felons who had since moved to Florida.

It turns out that the felons on the list had served their time and had all their voting privileges reinstated. And there were others on the list who had committed only misdemeanors--such as parking violations or littering. What state was it that offered Jeb and George a helping hand by sending this bogus list to Florida?

Texas.

This entire incident stuck to the high heavens, but the American media ignored it. It took the British Broadcasting Corporation to dig deep into this story, running fifteen-minute segments on its prime-time news program revealing all the sordid details and laying responsibility for the scam right at the doorstep of Governor Jeb Bush. It's a sad day when we have to look to a country 5,000 miles away to find out the truth about our own elections. (Eventually the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post picked up the story, but it received little attention.)

This assault on the voting rights of minorities was so widespread in Florida that it even affected people like Linda Howell. Linda received a letter informing her that she was a felon--and therefore advising her not to bother showing up on Election Day, because she would be barred from voting. The only problem was, Linda Howell wasn't a felon--in fact, she was the elections supervisor of Madison County, Florida! She and other local election officials tried to get the state to rectify the problem, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. They were told that everyone who complained about being prevented from voting should submit themselves for fingerprinting--and then let the state determine whether or not they were felons.

On November 7, 2000, as black Floridians flocked to the polls in record numbers, many were met at the ballot boxes with a blunt rebuke: "You cannot vote." In a number of precincts in Florida's inter cities, the polling locations were heavily fortified with police to block anyone on Katherine and Jeb's "felons list" from voting. Hundreds of law-abiding citizens looking to exercise their constitutional right to vote, mostly in black and Hispanic communities, were sent away--and threatened with arrest if they protested.

George W. Bush would officially be credited with receiving 537 more votes than Al Gore in Florida. Is it safe to assume that the thousands of registered black and Hispanic voters barred from the polls might have made the difference if they had been allowed to vote--and cost Bush the election? Without a doubt.

On election night, after the polls closed, there was much confusion over what was happening with the counting of the votes in Florida. Finally a decision was made by the man in charge of the election night desk for the Fox News Channel. He decided that Fox should go on the air and declare that Bush had won Florida and thus the election. And that's what happened. Fox formally declared Bush the winner.

But down in Tallahassee, the counting of the votes had not yet been completed; in fact, the Associated Press insisted it was still too close to call, and refused to follow Fox's lead.

Not so the other networks. They ran like lemmings after Fox made the call, afraid that they would be seen as slow or out of the loop--even though their own news reporters on the ground were insisting that it was too early to call the election. But who needs reporters when you're playing follow the leader--the leader, in this case, being John Ellis, the man in charge of Fox's election coverage. Who is John Ellis?

He's a first cousin of George W. and Jeb Bush.

Once Ellis made the call and everyone followed suit, there was no going back--and nothing was more psychologically devastating for Gore's changes of winning than the sudden perception that HE was being the spoiler by asking for recounts, withdrawing his concession of defeat, tying up the courts with lawyers and lawsuits. The truth is that during all of this, Gore actually was ahead--he had the most votes--but that was never how the news media played it.

The one moment from the election night I will never forget came earlier in the evening, after the networks had first--correctly--projected the state of Florida for Gore. The cameras cut to a hotel room in Texas. There sat George W. with his father, the former President, and his mother, Barbara. The old man appeared cool as a cucumber, even though it looked like curtains for Sonny. A reporter asked young Bush what he thought about the outcome.

"I'm not . . . conceding anything in Florida," Junior piped up, semicoherently. "I know you've all the projections, but people are actually counting the votes. . . . The networks called this thing awfully earlier and people are actually counting the votes have different perspective so . . ." It was an odd moment in that crazy night of election result coverage. The Bushes, with their relaxed smiles, looked like a family of cats that had just wolfed down a bunch of canaries--as if they knew something we didn't.

They did. They knew Jeb and Katherine had done their job months earlier. They knew cousin John was holding down the fort at Fox election central. And if all else failed, there was always that team Poppy could count on: the United States Supreme Court.

As we all know, that's exactly what happened for the next thirty-six days. The forces of the Empire struck back, and they did so without mercy. While Gore was stupidly concentrating on getting recounts in a few counties, the Bush team was going after the holy grail--the overseas absentee ballots. Many of these ballots would come from the military, which typically votes Republican, and would finally give Bush the lead that denying the vote to thousands of blacks and Jewish grandmothers hadn't.

Gore knew this, and tried to make sure the ballots underwent maximum scrutiny before they could be counted. Sure, this ran contrary to the "let every vote be counted" plea he'd made when calling for recounts. But he also had Florida law, which is pretty clear about this, on his side. It states that overseas absentee ballots can only be counted if they were cast and signed on or before election day, and mailed and postmarked from another country by election day.

But while Jim Baker was chanting his mantra--"it is not fair to change the rules and standards governing the counting or recounting of votes after it appears that one side has concluded that is the only way to get the votes it needs"--he and his operative were doing just that.

A July 2001 investigation by the New York Times showed that of the 2,490 overseas ballots that ended up being included in the certified election results, 680 were considered flawed and questionable. Bush got the overseas vote by a ratio of 4 to 5. By that percentage, 544 of the votes that went to Bush should have been thrown out. Got the math? Suddenly Bush's "winning margin" of 537 votes is down to a chilly negative 7.

So how did all these votes end up being counted for Bush? Within hours of the election, the Bush campaign had launched their attack. The first step was to make sure that as many ballots got in as possible. Republican operatives sent out frantic E-mails to navy ships asking them to dig up any ballots that might be hanging around. They even put in a call to Clinton Defense Secretary William S. Cohen (a Republican) to ask him to put pressure on the military outposts. He declined, but it didn't matter: thousands of votes poured in--even some that were signed after election day.

Now all they had to do was make sure that as many of these votes as possible went to W. And so the real thievery began.

According to the Times, Katherine Harris had planned to send out a memo to her canvassing boards clarifying the procedure for counting overseas ballots. Included in this memo was a reminder that state law required all ballots to have been "postmarked or signed and dated" by election day. When it was clear that George's lead was rapidly shrinking, she decided not to send the memo. Instead she sent out a note that said ballots "are not required to be postmarked on or prior to" election day. Hmmm.

What caused her to change her mind--and the law? We may never know, since the computer records that showed what happened have been mysteriously erased--a possible violation of Florida's Sunshine Laws. Now, long after the horse has left the barn, Harris has turned over her hard drives to the media for inspection--but only after her own computer consultant "looked them over." This is a woman who is now planning to run for Congress. Can these people get any more shameless?

Armed with the blessing of the secretary of state, the Republicans launched an all-out campaign to make sure as broad a standard as possible was used in counting these absentee ballots. "Equal representation," Florida style, meant that the rules governing acceptance or denial of your absentee ballot depended on what county you were from. Perhaps that would explain why in counties where Gore won, only 2 out of 10 absentee ballots with unclear postmarks were counted; in Bush counties, predictably, 6 out of 10 such ballots made it into the final tally.

When the Democrats complained that ballots that didn't follow the rules shouldn't be counted, the Republicans launched a fierce public relations campaign to make it look as if the Democrats were trying to scare the men and women who were risking their lives for our country. A Republican city council member from Naples was typical in his hyperbole: "If they catch a bullet, or fragment from a terrorist bomb, that fragment does not have any postmark or registration of any kind." Republican Congressman Steve Buyer from Indiana even obtained (possibly illegally) the phone numbers and E-mail addresses of military personnel so that he could gather tales of ballot-denial woe to garner sympathy for "our fighting men and women." Even Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf weighed in with the reflection that "it's a very sad day in our country" when Democrats start harassing military voters.

All the pressure worked on the wimpy, spineless Democrats. They choked. While appearing on Meet the Press, vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman argued that the Democrats should stop creating a fuss and not be bothered that hundreds of military ballots were being counted, just because they weren't "postmarked."

Lieberman, like so many other among this new breed of Democrats, should have fought for principle instead of worrying about image. Why? Well, as the New York Times found out:

* 344 ballots had no evidence that they were cast on or before Election Day

* 183 ballots were postmarked in the United States

* 96 ballots lacked appropriate witness information

* 169 ballots came from unregistered voters, had envelopes that weren't signed properly, or came from people who hadn't requested a ballot

* 5 ballots came after the November 17 deadline

* 19 overseas voters voted on two ballots--and had both counted

All of these ballots violated Florida law, yet they all were counted. Can I say this any louder? Bush didn't win! Gore did. It has nothing to do with chads, or even the blatant repression of Florida's African-American community and their right to vote. It was a simple matter of breaking the law, all documented, all the evidence sitting there in Tallahassee, clearly marked without question--and all done purposefully to throw the election to Bush.

On the morning of Saturday, December 9, 2000, the Supreme Court got word that the recounts in Florida, in spite of everything the Bush camp had done to fix the elections, were going in favor of Al Gore. By 2 P.M., the unofficial tally showed that Gore was catching up to Bush--"only 66 votes down, and gaining!" as one breathless newscaster put it. It was critical to Bush that the word "Al Gore is in the lead" never be heard on American television: With only moments to spare, they did what they had to do. At 2:45 that afternoon, the Supreme Court stopped the recount.

On the Court sat Reagan appointee Sandra Day O'Connor and Nixon appointee Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Both in their seventies, they were hoping to retire under a Republican administration so that their replacements would share their conservative ideology. On election night, O'Connor was heard lamenting at a party in Georgetown that she couldn't hold out another four--or eight--years. Junior Bush was their only hope for securing a contented retirement in their home state of Arizona.

Meanwhile, two other justices with extremist right-wing viewpoints found themselves with a conflict of interest. Justice Clarence Thomas's wife, Virginia Lamp Thomas, worked at the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank in D.C.; now, she has just been hired by George W. Bush to help recruit people to serve in his impending administration. And Eugene Scalia, the son of Justice Antonin Scalia, was a lawyer with the firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher--the very law firm representing Bush before the Supreme Court!

But neither Thomas nor Scalia saw any conflict of interest, and they refused to remove themselves from the case. In fact, when the Court convened later, it was Scalia who issued the now-infamous explanation of why the ballot-counting had to be halted: "The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does, in my view, threaten irreparable harm to petitioner [Bush], and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he [Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election." In other words, if we let all the votes be counted and they come out in Gore's favor, and Gore wins, well, that will impair Bush's ability to govern once we install him as "President."

True enough: if the ballots proved that Gore had won--which they eventually would--then I guess that would tend to dampen the country's feeling of legitimacy about a Bush presidency.

In their decision, the Court used the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment--the same amendment they've loudly disclaimed when used by blacks over the years to halt discrimination based on race--to justify the theft. Because of the variation in the recount methods, they argued, voters in each district weren't being treated equally, and therefore their rights were being violated. (Funny, but only the dissenters on the court mentioned that the antiquated voting equipment found disproportionately in poor and minority Florida neighborhoods had created an entirely different--and far more disturbing--inequality in the system.)

Eventually the press got around to conducting their own recounts of the votes, doing their best to spin the jumbled ball of public confusion into orbit. The headline in the Miami Herald read: "Review of ballots finds Bush's win would have endured manual recount." But if you read the entire story, buried deep inside was this paragraph: "Bush's lead would have vanished if the recount had been conducted under the severely restrictive standards that some Republicans advocated. . . . The review found that the result would have been different if every canvassing board in every county had examined every undervote . . . [Under] the most inclusive standard [that is, a standard that sought to include the true will of ALL the people] Gore would have won by 393 votes. . . . On ballots that [suggested] a fault with either the machine or the voter's ability to use it . . . Gore would have won by 299 votes."

I did not vote for Al Gore, but I think any fair person would conclude that the will of the people in Florida clearly went his way. Whether it was the counting debacle or the exclusion of thousands of black citizens that corrupted the results, there is little doubt that Gore was the people's choice.

There was perhaps no worse example of the wholesale denial of the right of each voter to have his vote properly counted than in Palm Beach County. Much has been made of the "butterfly ballot," which made it easy to vote for the wrong person because candidate's names and punch holes were crammed unevenly onto facing pages. The media went out of its way to point out that the ballot was designed by one of the county's election commissioners, a Democrat, and then approved by the majority-Democrat local board. What right did Gore have to complain if his own party was responsible for the faulty design of the ballot?

Had anyone bothered to check, they would have discovered that one of the two "Democrats" on the committee--the ballot's designer, Theresa LePore--had actually been a registered Republican. She switched her affiliation to Democrat in 1996; then, just three months after Bush seized office, she resigned as a Democrat and switched her voter registration to Independent. No one in the press bothered to question what was really going on.

Thus, the Palm Beach Post estimates that more than 3,000 voters, mostly elderly and Jewish, who thought they were voting for Al Gore ended up punching the wrong hole--for Pat Buchanan. Even Buchanan went on TV to declare that no way in hell did those Jewish voters vote for him.

* * *

On January 20, 2001, George W. Bush, positioned with his junta on the Capitol steps, stood in front of Chief Justice Rehnquist and took the oath that Presidents take at their inaugurations. A cold and steady rain fell over Washington throughout the day. Dark clouds obscured the sun, and the parade route, usually jammed with tens of thousands of citizens all the way to the White House, was eerily bare.

Except for the 20,000 protesters who jeered Bush every inch of the way. Holding signs denouncing Bush for stealing the election, the rain-soaked demonstrators were the conscience of the nation. Bush's limousine could not avoid them. Instead of cheering crowds of supporters, he was greeted by good people moved to remind this illegitimate ruler that he did not win the election--and that the people would never forget.

At the traditional point where Presidents since Jimmy Carter have stopped their limos and emerged to walk the last four blocks (as a reminder that we are a nation ruled not by kings but by, uh, equals), Bush's triple-armored black car with its dark-tinted windows--favored by mobsters everywhere--came to an abrupt halt. The crowd grew louder--"HAIL TO THE THIEF!" You could see the Secret Service and Bush's advisers huddling in the freezing rain, trying to figure out what to do. If Bush got out and walked, he would be booed, shouted down, and pelted with eggs the rest of the way. The limousine sat there for what must have been five minutes. The rain poured. Eggs and tomatoes hit the car. The protesters dared Bush to step out and face them.

Then, suddenly, the President's car bolted and tore down the street. The decision had been made--hit the gas and get past this rabble as quickly as possible. The Secret Service agents running beside the limo were left behind, the car's tires splashing dirty rain from the street onto the men who were there to protect its passenger. It might have been the finest thing I have ever witnessed in Washington, D.C.--a pretender to the American throne forced to turn tail and run from thousands of American citizens armed only with the Truth and the ingredients of a decent omelet.

Once the American Lie put the pedal to the metal, it ran for cover to the bulletproof reviewing stand in front of the White House. Many of Bush's family and invited guests had already left to get dry. but George stood there and waved proudly at the marching bands, their instruments disabled by the rain, the long parade of floats wilted and crumbled by the time they arrived at the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue. Every so often a lucky convertible passed by, carrying the few dampened celebrities Bush had convinced to honor him--Kelsey Grammer, Drew Carey, Chuck Norris. By parade's end Bush stood alone in the stands, drenched, even his parents having deserted him for shelter. It was a pathetic sight--the poor little rich boy who came in second showing up to claim his prize, with no one there to cheer him on.

Sadder still were the 154 million of us who had not voted for him. In a nation of 200 million voters, I would say we constitute the majority.

And yet what could George W. have been thinking, other than "What, me worry?" There were plenty of hired hands to be installed in the White House, pulling the strings for their puppet President. With Daddy's old buddies called back to D.C. to lend a hand, Georgie could sit back and tell the public he was "delegating." The puppetmasters moved in, and the business of running the world could easily be left to them.

And who are these fine, patriotic pillars of the Bush junta? They represent the modest and selfless ranks of corporate America, and they are listed below, for easy reference, to help the United Nations and NATO forces round them up when they arrive to restore order and democracy. Grateful citizens will line the boulevards and avenues and cheer their arrival.

Personally, I will settle for nothing less than multiple show trials and their immediate deportation to a real banana republic. God Bless America!

Michael Moore!!!!! This is the best you've got!!! Like I said-You just gave a goooood laugh!!! Typical extreme leftist nonsense!! Thanks for the laugh!!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Originally posted by OU812
Michael Moore!!!!! This is the best you've got!!! Like I said-You just gave a goooood laugh!!! Typical extreme leftist nonsense!! Thanks for the laugh!!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Political wars on the Cheers board. How odd.

PLEASE STOP!

I've decided to close this thread. It has gone waaaay beyond anything Cheers related.