ledge of liberty

Bankgate

Why is it that wherever politicians go -- money disappears?

3 Banks Robbed During Bush, Kerry Visit [AP]
Robbers Get Busy During Candidates' Visits [Reuters]

Dems Must Sign Bush/Cheney Loyalty Oath

Do you [insert name here] solemnly swear to take Dick Cheney and George Bush for another 4 years -- to love, honor, and protect them. For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as they both shall live?

I'm sure the official pledge is a bit different, but surely the overall gist is the same. So if you're a registered Democrat, curious to hear your President or Vice President speak -- unless you sign the Bush/Cheney "loyalty oath" -- you’ll be refused tickets.

[AP/Star Tribune] Some Democrats who signed up to hear Vice President Dick Cheney speak here Saturday were refused tickets unless they signed a pledge to endorse President Bush.

The measure was a security step designed to avoid a disruption, which Bush campaign spokesman Dan Foley alleged Democrats were planning. Democratic Party officials denied it.

Several Democrats, at least, encountered the screening measures Thursday after calling from a line that self-identified as ACT, America Coming Together, an activist group that supports Kerry, Foley said. Others attempted to give false names and were denied tickets, he said.

Two men who had sought tickets reported they were required to give name, address, phone number, e-mail address and driver's license number, then were presented the pledge of endorsement when they arrived to pick up the tickets Thursday.

One of them, John Wade of Albuquerque, said he signed the pledge because he wanted the tickets but then changed his mind.

"I got to thinking this is not right," Wade said. "They're excluding people -- that's what has me so upset."

He returned the tickets and campaign workers returned his pledge.

Vietnam veteran Michael Ortiz y Pino said he refused to sign the pledge and was refused tickets.

Ortiz y Pino said he was asked if he associated with veterans, pro-life, gun rights or teacher groups.

Neither man wanted to give driver's license numbers but did so.

"I said why do you need that?" Ortiz y Pino said.

A campaign worker, he said, replied: "Secret Service stuff."

Kerry campaign spokesman Ruben Pulido Jr. said there had been no plan by the campaign to disrupt Cheney's event.

"I think that every American should have the right to see their vice president and hear from him firsthand what he plans to do for our country," Pulido said.

He also said the Kerry campaign had not attempted to screen Bush supporters out of Kerry's appearance at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque on July 9.

On that occasion, about a dozen Bush supporters wearing flip-flop beach sandals began chanting "Viva Bush" and waved their flip-flops over their heads. They contend Kerry has flip-flopped on the war.

The incident ended peacefully.

For Saturday's event, Foley, a New Mexico legislator, said the Cheney campaign didn't want supporters denied places that might be taken by detractors.

Some Democrats who are Bush supporters were welcomed without signing anything, he said.

The endorsement pledges, he said, were for screening purposes, not for any advertisement listing names of Democrats who support Bush.

Foley asked of the Kerry-Edwards campaign: "How many tickets did you give to Bush-Cheney supporters from New Mexico to hear Senator Kerry's speech tonight at the Democratic National Convention?"

Asked if Cheney might discuss a terrorism warning issued Thursday for New Mexico, Foley said he did not know.

Richard Fox, a political science instructor at a local community college, said attempts to screen political events is commonplace.

But he said: "This pledge or this 'loyalty oath' -- quote-unquote -- to me is unheard of."

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July 30, 2004

Anti-Candy Fascist Police State

Yesterday it was dildos in Alabama and today it's candy-bars in Washington. Oh it’s good to be an American where at least...I know...I’m...free?

The 45-year-old scientist was munching on a PayDay, when subway police arrested her for violating the city's "no eating en route" law. Still enjoying her "packed with peanuts" snack, in an act of sweet and salty sedition -- she continued to munch the PayDay as she traversed the escalator.

"If she had stopped eating, it would have been the end of it and if she had just stopped for the issuance of a citation, she never would have been locked up," Transit Police Chief Polly Hanson said Thursday.

Woman Arrested for Eating Candy in Subway [AP/CNN]

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LIVE DNC Balloon Meltdown: "WHAT THE F*CK"?!

DNC Balloon Director freaks out on CNN Live to soft rock 80's hit tune, "Higher" by Van Halen...

The some 100,000 balloons were choreographed by expert balloon engineers to drop in a crowd pleasing display of red, white and blue patriotism. But sadly -- balloon ballet was never to be fully realized.

In a pre DNC balloon exposé, a journalist asked a convention Official, “But what if the balloons don't fall right”?

"I have a house in England. Bye!" she said.

Go balloons... Balloons... What's happening balloons? There's not enough of them coming down. All balloons! Where the hell, there's nothing falling! What the fuck are you guys doing up there?!? [Wonkette]

'WHAT THE F**K ARE YOU GUYS DOING UP THERE' [Drudge]
Thousands Of Balloons Prepped For DNC Finale [WCVB5]
Balloons and a thousand pounds of confetti to shower FleetCenter [UPN38]
Matt Drudge: Where the Hell are my Sources!?! [Wonkette]
Thread 2: "Can't miss the balloon drop" [Atrios]

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July 29, 2004

Goth Bush

White House interns have confessed -- they're concerned with the President’s downward spiral of depression and paranoia. My advice Mr. President -- black clothes, eyeliner, The Cure, The Smiths, dye your hair -- black, black, black like your heart.

Sullen, Depressed President Retreats Into Private, Paranoid World [CHB]

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Alabama: Dildo-free zone

It's official – sexually frustrated red state Alabamians will have to resort to sex with their husbands due to new anti sex toy legislation. The state, now a dildo-free zone, will police the sale of any and all "sexually stimulating" contraband.

Federal Court OKs Ban on Sale of Sex Toys [AP, 07/29/04]

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Bush Using Anti-Depressants

When Bush rolled out components of his New Freedom Initiative last month, a plan that moves to screen the entire U.S. population for mental illness, the overall consensus was -- you first! Well, apparently Bush has taken us up on the offer. Prognosis -- doesn’t look good.

[CHB] President George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.

The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician, can impair the President’s mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, administration aides admit privately.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” says one aide. “We can’t have him flying off the handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a President who is alert mentally.”

Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay.

“Keep those motherfuckers away from me,” he screamed at an aide backstage. “If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.”

Bush’s mental stability has become the topic of Washington whispers in recent months. Capitol Hill Blue first reported on June 4 about increasing concern among White House aides over the President’s wide mood swings and obscene outbursts.

Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports an anti-Bush propaganda, the reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a “paranoid meglomaniac” and “untreated alcoholic” whose “lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad” showcase Bush’s instabilities. табак для кальяна киев

“I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed,” Dr. Frank said. “He fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated.”

Dr. Frank’s conclusions have been praised by other prominent psychiatrists, including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School.

The doctors also worry about the wisdom of giving powerful anti-depressant drugs to a person with a history of chemical dependency. Bush is an admitted alcoholic, although he never sought treatment in a formal program, and stories about his cocaine use as a younger man haunted his campaigns for Texas governor and his first campaign for President.

“President Bush is an untreated alcoholic with paranoid and megalomaniac tendencies,” Dr. Frank adds.

The White House did not return phone calls seeking comment on this article.

Although the exact drugs Bush takes to control his depression and behavior are not known, White House sources say they are “powerful medications” designed to bring his erratic actions under control. While Col. Tubb regularly releases a synopsis of the President’s annual physical, details of the President’s health and any drugs or treatment he may receive are not public record and are guarded zealously by the secretive cadre of aides that surround the President. нарды купить

Veteran White House watchers say the ability to control information about Bush’s health, either physical or mental, is similar to Ronald Reagan’s second term when aides managed to conceal the President’s increasing memory lapses that signaled the onslaught of Alzheimer’s Disease.

It also brings back memories of Richard Nixon’s final days when the soon-to-resign President wandered the halls and talked to portraits of former Presidents. The stories didn’t emerge until after Nixon left office.

One long-time GOP political consultant who – for obvious reasons – asked not to be identified said he is advising his Republican Congressional candidates to keep their distance from Bush.

“We have to face the very real possibility that the President of the United States is loony tunes,” he says sadly. “That’s not good for my candidates, it’s not good for the party and it’s certainly not good for the country.”

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July 27, 2004

USA Today Rejects Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter was hired by USA Today to cover the DNC, she was fired after handing in the first article. Typically, I would never advocate reading Coulter [for the shear loss of brain cells], but this is just too insane – too funny to pass up. USA Today didn’t know what to make of it, hence the remarks, which move between confusion and frustration.

From Human Events, the National Conservative Weekly...

Put The Speakers In A Cage
by Ann Coulter

Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do. My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags. The people sporting shirts emblazoned with the "F-word" are my opponents. Also, as always, the pretty girls and cops are on my side, most of them barely able to conceal their eye-rolling.

USA Today: EYE-ROLLING? AT WHAT?

Democrats are constantly suing and slandering police as violent, fascist racists -- with the exception of Boston's police, who'll be lauded as national heroes right up until the Democrats pack up and leave town on Friday, whereupon they'll revert to their natural state of being fascist, racist pigs.

USA Today: WHAT DEMOCRATS SUE THE POLICE? BUT THEY WON'T ACTUALLY REVERT TO BEING FASCIST PIGS, DON'T YOU MEAN THE DEMS WILL THINK THEY HAVE REVERTED TO BEING FASCIST PIGS?

A speaker at the Democratic National Convention this year, Al Sharpton, accused white police officers of raping and defacing Tawana Brawley in 1987, lunatic charges that eventually led to a defamation lawsuit against Sharpton and even more eventually, to Sharpton paying a jury award to the defamed plaintiff Steve Pagones. So it’s a real mystery why cops wouldn’t like Democrats.

USA Today: IS THAT LAST SENTENCE SARCASTIC? IF SO, YOU SURE LOST ME.

As for the pretty girls, I can only guess that it’s because liberal boys never try to make a move on you without the UN Security Council's approval. Plus, it’s no fun riding around in those dinky little hybrid cars. My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call "women" at the Democratic National Convention.

USA Today: NOT FUNNY, I DON'T GET IT.

Apparently, the nuts at the Democratic National Convention are going to be put in cages outside the convention hall. Sadly, they won't be fighting to the death as is done in WWE caged matches. They're calling this the "protestor's area," although I suppose a better name would be the "truth-free zone".

USA Today: CLARIFY WHICH NUTS (NOTE FROM AC: THAT KILLS THE JOKE OF THE NEXT PARAGRAPH)

I thought this was a great idea until I realized the “nut” category did not include Sharpton, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and Teddy Kennedy -- all featured speakers at the convention. I’d say the actual policy is only untelegenic nuts get the cages, but little Dennis Kucinich is speaking at the Convention, too. So it must be cages for “nuts who have not run for president as serious candidates for the Democratic Party.”

Looking at the line-up of speakers at the Convention, I have developed the 7-11 challenge: I will quit making fun of, for example, Dennis Kucinich, if he can prove he can run a 7-11 properly for 8 hours. We’ll even let him have an hour or so of preparation before we open up. Within 8 hours, the money will be gone, the store will be empty, and he’ll be explaining how three 11-year olds came in and asked for the money and he gave it to them.

USA Today: I DON'T GET IT.

For 20 years, the Democrats wouldn’t let Jimmy Carter within 100 miles of a Convention podium. The fact that Carter is now their most respectable speaker tells you where that party is today. Maybe they just want to remind Americans who got us into this Middle East mess in the first place. We’ve got millions of fanatical Muslims trying to slaughter Americans while shouting “Allah Akbar!” Yeah, let’s turn the nation over to these guys.

With any luck, Gore will uncork his speech comparing Republicans to Nazis. Just a few weeks ago, Gore gave a speech accusing the Bush administration of deploying “digital Brown Shirts” to intimidate journalists and pressure the media into writing good things about Bush -- in case you were wondering where all those glowing articles about Bush were coming from.

The last former government official to slake his thirst so deeply with the kool-aid and become a far-left peacenik was Ramsey Clarke and it took him a few years to really blossom. Clinton must have done some number on Gore. Then again, with his yen for earth tones in a man's wardrobe, maybe Gore's references to "Brown Shirts" was intended as a compliment.

Only one major newspaper -- the Boston Herald -- reported Gore’s “Brown Shirt” comment, though a Bush campaign spokesman's statement quoting the "Brown Shirt" line made it into the very last sentence of a Los Angeles Times article. The New York Times responded with an article criticizing “both” Republicans and Democrats for using Nazi imagery. Democrats call Republicans Nazis, the Republicans quote the Democrats calling Republicans Nazis and “both” are using Nazi imagery. (It’s a cycle of violence!)

The nuts in the cages are virtual Bertrand Russells compared to the official speakers at the Democratic Convention. On the basis of their placards, I gather the caged-nut position is that they love the troops so much, they don’t want them to get hurt defending America from terrorist attack. “Support the troops,” the signs say, “bring them home.”

That’s my new position on all government workers, except the 5% who aren’t useless, which is to say cops, prosecutors, firemen and U.S. servicemen. I love bureaucrats at the National Endowment of the Arts funding crucifixes submerged in urine so much -- I think they should go home. I love public school teachers punishing any mention of God and banning Christmas songs so much -- I think they should go home.

Walking back from the convention site I chatted with a normal Bostonian for several blocks -- who must have identified me through our covert system of signals. He was mostly bemused by the Democrats’ primetime speakers and told me he used to be an independent, but for the last 20 years found himself voting mostly Republican. Then he corrected himself and said he votes for the “American.”

I’d say I love all these Democrats in Boston so much I want them to go home, but I don’t. I want Americans to get a good long look at the French Party and keep the 7-11 challenge in mind.

USA Today: WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY "THE FRENCH PARTY"? I DON'T GET IT.

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July 21, 2004

Airport Security Video Shows 9/11 Hijackers

Just in from the Associated Press, a Dulles International Airport surveillance video of 9/11 terrorists has been released to the press. The video shows 4 of the 5 American Airlines Flight 77 hijackers getting stopped by security and subsequently being allowed to pass without following the standard security procedures -- surprising with the 3 FAA warnings that had been issued.

Watch the video HERE

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