Cleveland Plain Dealer to Jackson, Tubbs-Jones: "Please, let it go"

[bones_7672]

"Memo to Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and the Rev. Jesse Jackson: The election horse is dead. You can stop beating it now.

Not an ounce of political flesh remains on that carcass. Ohio has counted and recounted: President George W. Bush received 118,775 more votes than your man, Sen. John Kerry.

The senator had the good grace and sense to acknowledge the abundantly obvious, go home and resume his life. You might consider emulating his excellent example, because what you are doing now -- redoubling your effort in the face of a settled outcome -- will only drive you further toward the political fringe. And that long grass already is tickling your knees.

The 176 Democrats who sit on Ohio's 88 county election boards pondered their jurisdictions' results, accepted their subordinates' good work, and are turning their energies toward the future. Are they all dupes in some Machiavellian Republican scheme? Or do they simply have a firmer grasp of reality than that displayed by the two of you and a handful of unrelenting zealots still ranting in the January rain, eight weeks after the November voting?..."

http://www.cleveland.com/editorials/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1104834711239252.xml

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. The RACIST Plain Dealer should just SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!

:grr:

[Snivi Yllom]

9. Where did you detect racism in that editorial?

Because I did not see any. And as much as I hate to wade into the swamp of the media whores, in this case they are right. It's over. Don't drag a legitimate election reform movement that has real potential over the cliff with the screaming conspiracy kooks.

[genieroze]

I guess you missed the good part.

" But for two national figures whose constituencies are among the poorest of the poor, it seems an embarrassing waste of energies sorely needed elsewhere. Fold your mildewed tents, collect your soggy cardboard and focus on the poverty, single-parenthood and dropout rates that have so impoverished those in whose names you protest too much. Good causes await your serious advocacy. And what you are doing now isn't serious."

They said everything but the N word.

[Snivi Yllom]

22. What was racist about that?

Everything but the N word?

"Nuts"?

[Vektor]

44. This is offensive on so many levels...

I think that this statement attacks MANY people, and is totally prejudiced in so many ways. Completely offensive and irresponsible journalism. One doesn't need to say the "N" word to be completely beneath contempt.


They also left out the fact that Americans with the highest levels of education, living in the wealthiest states, voted overwhelmingly Kerry, too.

[Zhade]

46. Wow, that's pretty harsh. The whole editorial is.

Uninformed, as well. Reeks of desperation - "give it up, nothing to see here, PLEASE don't examine the questionable election results!"

[HeeBGBz]

48. I find it extremely offensive and condescending.

Every day I just get more pissed. Sorry excuses for humanity.

[cyberpj]

26. where did you NOT detect it? Go away. eom

[pbartch]

17. I'm appalled by this language:

" Fold your mildewed tents, collect your soggy cardboard and focus on the poverty, single-parenthood and dropout rates that have so impoverished those in whose names you protest too much. Good causes await your serious advocacy. And what you are doing now isn't serious."

I HOPE THAT THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE, GETS FIRED, LOSES THEIR HOME BECAUSE THEY CAN'T FIND A JOB, FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY AND STARTS PAN-HANDLING.....ON THE STREET CORNER.....HOLDING A "soggy cardboard sign that says "WILL WORK FOR A HAMBURGER"

[The Gigmeister]

47. Where is the racism??

Just because Jackson and Conyers are black?

This is just as bad as Hannity and the rest of the brown shirts who call the dems racist because they oppose Clarence Thomas.

[malatesta1137]

60. You should learn to read.

[Alizaryn]

The white noise is only going to get louder and more nasty.

We need to be prepared and not get dragged into anger and responding on their level.

[whometense]

2. Didn't they endorse *???

Credibility: ZERO

[righteous1]

5. No, they gave no endorsement this time

[whometense]

15. Thanks. I stand

corrected. Still, if they had any integrity they would have endorsed Kerry.

[me b zola]

49. If they had integrity they would endorse American Democracy

and those who fight to keep her alive.

[whometense]

51. Can't argue

with that.

[sickinohio]

55. Only because they thought better of it - they thought about

endorsing the chimp, but decided on endorsing no one (they didn't think about endorsing Kerry) - so yes - they are prejudiced, and they suck.

[bones_7672]

59. editorial staff wanted to endorse Kerry, but the Boss wanted Bush

so they endorsed noone.

[zbdent]

23. No, but they were forced into not endorsing anybody

The editorial staff was set to endorse Kerry, but Alex Macheske (sp?), who runs the show and has hosted enough Bush-a-thons, threatened them, and they had to do a non-endorsement.

[mountainvue]

3. Bastards. n/t

[Cocoa]

4. utterly irrelevant

Jackson and Tubbs Jones know that the Cleveland Plain Dealer's editoral writers would never support them in a million years.

[zann725]

6. Please pass that 'let it go' to dead horse beat-er himself, Dino Rossi!

Though I guess THAT's a "horse of a different color."

No, we'll "let it go" as quickly as Repugs would if the "horseshoe was on the other foot"...(and about to 'drop' any minute)!

Vive the re-re-recount! Vive Conyers,and Arnebeck, and Bonifaz, and Jessie Jackson, et al! AND vive President John Kerry in 2005!

[impeachthescoundrel]

7. I read it

Not surprising. If I could have found a contact us link I would have emailed them and said simply

RE:: "Please, let it go"

FUCK YOU

[EFerrari]

8. Looks like they need a few friendly notes. "So, how long has

your "newspaper" been run by the Klan?"

[EFerrari]

10. Contact information

Douglas C. Clifton
Editor
216.999.4123
[e-mail]

[EFerrari]

12. Letter to the "Editor"

Editor,

The Civil Rights Act did in fact pass in 1964, in case it hasn't been brought to the Plan Dealer's attention.


Elizabeth Ferrari

San Francisco, CA

[super simian]

61. Good One!

:toast:

[roenyc]

11. OMG

they should be sued! i want to kick their ass! how dare they! by the last paragraph my mouth was wide open. i cant beleive they said that. how dare they.

how racist and awful.

[genieroze]

13. Recounted my ass, the whole state wasn't recounted. What a moron. eom

[pgh_dem]

14. This part of the editorial is right out of the bus terminal toilet

"Yes, long lines built voter frustration. Yes, some electronic machines malfunctioned. Yes, boards rejected more provisional ballots than usual. But such things happen when hundreds of thousands of new voters join the process and new technology debuts under fire."

Don't bother with, "Yes, these points overwhelmingly (on the order of 95%+) favored B*."

And hoooeee, that 14 year old machine in Hocking County with a BIOS so old it can't autotype a harddrive is soooome new technology. Someone at the PD ought to look up what happened to that 'new technology' that the HAVA funds were supposed to buy, but Blackwell himself rejected, on the grounds that the votes couldn't be verified....

Finally, "Your doubts notwithstanding, numerous nonpartisan election experts say Ohio did an above-average job."
Who? By what standard? *NUMEROUS*?


:puke:

[Chimpanzee]

21. Long lines built more than voter frustration

The disenfranchised maybe up to 100,000 Kerry voters!

[Der Blaue Engel]

24. Oh, it all comes clear to me now!

"Yes, long lines built voter frustration. Yes, some electronic machines malfunctioned. Yes, boards rejected more provisional ballots than usual. But such things happen when hundreds of thousands of new voters join the process and new technology debuts under fire."

It was the hundreds of thousands of new voters who screwed everything up. Now if only they'd just stayed home and stopped making trouble.

:eyes:

[SueZhope]

16. why would anyone

defend this kind of propaganda trash
It should say

"This election stinks like a dead horse"

[mod mom]

18. Read, investigate, this is about democracy! The ELECTION WAS A SHAM!

[SlowDownFast]

19. my email to the editor.....

Nice try.

Have you, by the way, ever heard of the CIVIL RIGHTS ACT???

I expect either you have not, pretend to have not, or just don't care. I expect it's probably that you just don't care.

You could prove me wrong, by interviewing a few of the thousands of african-american voters who were disenfranchised by this sham of an election. Ask the Reverand Jackson to refer you to these voters. I'm sure he'll gladly oblige. But I expect you won't do anything of the sorts. Your sorry editorials have only been directed at delegitimizing an effort to investigate civil rights abuses in the guise of election irregularities.

And the answer to your pathetic plea?

In three words:

No. Not. Ever.

[Chimpanzee]

20. OMG!

"Your doubts notwithstanding, numerous nonpartisan election experts say Ohio did an above-average job."

Who? Like J Katherine Blackmail?

[cyberpj]

25. Condescending Racist PartySpeak Idiots will come, now,

from everywhere.

this is a prime example and should be spread far and wide to get people ready for what's coming.

For every one of these, we should return fire with a calm and condescending reply -- meanwhile, ever sending support to Conyers, Jackson, PDA and anyone else who continues to fight with us.

[bunny planet]

27. What is with this paper? What are they hiding? Who are they the mouthpiece

for? This makes me even more determined to get to the bottom of this sham of an election, and sham of a recount I might add.

[genieroze]

28. Does this moron really think that the pukes want this crap fixed?

"Fold your mildewed tents, collect your soggy cardboard and focus on the poverty, single-parenthood and dropout rates that have so impoverished those in whose names you protest too much. Good causes await your serious advocacy."

Just keep them poor people from voting by keeping Rethugnakins in office. Since Jackson advocates mostly for poor black people and the areas mostly affected by disenfranchisement are the areas he advocates for seems like he is advocating for them by contesting this election. The jerk who wrote this should pound salt.

[grasswire]

29. my letter

The racialism in the "Let It Go" editorial is breathtaking. Words like these do lead to civil wars.

I wonder if the editorialist and his/her superior considered how many generations of black folk suffered because white folk urged abolitionists to just "let go" of their opposition to slavery and injustice?

I wonder if they considered just how much American blood has been spilled for the preservation of the one man, one vote rule? I am a white woman. The blood of my family members over the generations paid for preservation of black votes, too.

I've long considered the Plain Dealer one of America's better newspapers. My opinion was shattered on reading this editorial. The judgment of the staff and publisher is poor. I'm outraged by this scandalous editorial. What were you thinking?

[musette_sf]

30. I wrote and let them know I was DISGUSTED

and BTW, if you follow DU links and BuzzFlash, have you noticed that there are several Ohio papers with similar "editorials"?

No names, no attributions, just anonymous "editorials" that seem to be written by the same person.

I'm at work, don't have links, but believe me, this is not the first one.

I see NO ONE in the MSM has the guts to put their name to such scurrilious garbage. I guess you don't have to prove yourself when you have Karl Rove as your "editorial" writer.

[Doremus]

31. Here's the contact information for the Op-Ed Editor

Publication: Cleveland Plain Dealer
Circulation: Weekday 404,400 Sunday 544,386
Contact: Gloria Millner
Title: Op-Ed Editor
Address: 1801 Superior Ave., N.E.
Cleveland, OH 44114
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]


She's about to get an earful from a (former) subscriber.

[Doremus]

32. Outrageous.

Kick

[IndyOp]

33. Yesterday in Columbus Jackson & Tubbs-Jones were laughing at

the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Tubbs-Jones held a copy in her hand and read aloud the part about her being free to embarrass herself by standing to contest the election if she wanted to. It just FIRED her up more. She talked about knowing that her mother, who died last year, would be watching her from on high and would be so proud of her. I was in awe of their courage - people who are experienced in fighting the system know way too much about being ridiculed for doing the right thing.

:kick:

[Padme Amidala]

34. If the results were switched and votes were lost, how do they know?

This is ridiculous.

[Helga Scow Stern]

35. Memo to The Plain Dealer:

Dear Editor:

In your editorial of 1/4/2005, you ask Reverend Jesse Jackson and Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones to "Please let it go," and you compare challenging the election results to beating a dead horse.

Your first contention is that "Ohio has counted and recounted: President George W. Bush received 118,775 more votes than your man, Sen. John Kerry. " Actually, the outcome of the Ohio election is still unknown. No accurate recount has been done, thanks to the efforts of the Bush-Cheney campaign manager of Ohio, who happens to also be in charge of counting the votes. In his frantic effort to keep Ohio's votes from being accurately assessed, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell has not only broken laws put in the books to prevent a repeat of the 2000 Florida debacle, but he has also refused to answer questions under oath.

Then you make the statement that, "not an ounce of political flesh remains on that carcass." Presuming you mean accurately counting the votes, I wonder just which reality this "dead horse" of yours is in? You may be comfortable thinking that democracy is dead, but many of us are not. In fact this is becoming the political issue of all future campaigns, because unless the vote can be accurately assessed, and unless all people are allowed to vote and to have it counted, campaigns of Republicans as well as Democrats will lose all relevance and voting will become a superfluous act, not something participated in with any sincerity, if participated in at all.

So instead of Tubbs-Jones and Jackson being driven "toward the political fringe," it's those complacent, uninformed Democrats and Republicans who sit on the board of elections, or in the halls of Congress, who are going to be feeling the tall grass tickling their knees. Jackson and Tubbs-Johnson, and the other honest members of the House and Senate who go with them as courageous representatives of the people, are galloping, full steam, into a battle for our basic, guaranteed right to a fair election.

Those who continue trying to construct a false reality where the election was fair and that who won the presidency and by how many votes is known, will be labeled the "handful of unrelenting zealots still ranting in the January rain, eight weeks after the November voting" results have been shown to stink to high heaven.

That stench, which with your remarks you would like to cover up and pretend doesn't exist, is from that dead horse you keep beating, one which is supposed to have died a long time ago. The real dead horse you are not only trying to beat, but that those such as Secretary of State Blackwell are trying to ride into power, is one supposed to have been long gone from the arena. That ugly, smelly, supposedly dead horse is racism.

Disguise it as you may, you cannot hide the true intention behind these appalling remarks directed at Jackson and Tubb-Jones and their efforts to ensure integrity for all in the electoral process:

"But for two national figures whose constituencies are among the poorest of the poor, it seems an embarrassing waste of energies sorely needed elsewhere. Fold your mildewed tents, collect your soggy cardboard and focus on the poverty, single-parenthood and dropout rates that have so impoverished those in whose names you protest too much. Good causes await your serious advocacy. And what you are doing now isn't serious."

Did you actually print that, that poor people have other issues to worry about, more important than voting? Since when is the right to vote and have it counted not a cause for serious advocacy? Cleveland Plain Dealer, I am not sure which reality you live in, but for the rest of us here, this is the most fundamental cause of all. Without the democracy on which this country is based, all else is beside the point. Unless you can wake up to this fact, you had better move and get out of the way, because a stampede is coming and its horses are anything but dead.

Sincerely,
XXXXXXXXX
address, phone

[SlowDownFast]

41. excellent letter! n/t

[Straight Shooter]

56. Oh, you nailed it. YOU NAILED IT!!!

Did you actually print that, that poor people have other issues to worry about, more important than voting? Since when is the right to vote and have it counted not a cause for serious advocacy?

Ojai Person, I almost fell out of my chair when I read that.

Did you actually print that ...

:thumbsup:

[Helga Scow Stern]

58. Gee, thanks! If they "actually print" my letter, I might fall out

of my chair too! :hi:

[HeeBGBz]

57. Nice, Ojai! Well spoken.

Hope the lamers read it.

[babylonsister]

36. Mind boggling. I hope Conyers and Jackson get a

chance to read this, if only to fire them up even more.

[Carolab]

37. Oh yeah, let's just let voters rights and democracy go. No problem.

These people DON'T CARE about a citizen's right to a fair election. What a bunch of UN-American bastaards.

[Broken Acorn]

38. Please let it go...

before they find more evidence. Katherine Whitewell can only hide the massive amounts of fraud for only so long before everything comes crashing down.

PLEASE let it go...please. We can't hide this shit for much longer.

[Al-CIAda]

39. Commentary-

(More) Democratic Weak Tea

The troubling and sometimes criminal associations revealed in recent weeks about the shady pasts of the big election companies counting America’s vote can be seen to overlap with the cast of characters in the saga of the 9.11 terrorist hijackers associates while in America.

But what makes the Hilliard revelation particularly interesting are his associations with figures involved, not in 9.11, but in the current election intrigue.

Hilliard is in business, to cite one example, with Saudi billionaire arms dealer and international fugitive Ad
nan Khashoggi, whose name has now surfaced in connection with at least one, and possibly two, American election companies mired in controversy.

The story which follows is of vital current interest only for what it reveals about the milieu in which the 2004 election was fixed.

But first a word about methodology…

When the Cleveland Plain Dealer reluctantly concluded “System to Blame for Ballot Debacle” in a recent headline, the ‘system’ they chose to ‘blame’ was one which mis-handled provisional ballots. Nothing about allegations that one of the major election companies responsible for Ohio’s ballot debacle, Diebold, was being run by a handful of convicted felons!
Similarly, when Democratic Party leaders recently announced the launching of an investigation into the 2004 elections in OHIO, they referenced faulty machines, ballot shortages, polling place changes, understaffed polling places, untrained personnel, voter intimidation, misinformation and other anomalies.

At the MadCowMorningNews, we’ve been all over the “other anomalies.”....

http://www.madcowprod.com/01042004.html

[johnnie]

40. This is why I canceled that pos paper years ago.

I have always thought that paper is a rag, and this is typical of their "editorials". They are a very biased paper.
They did send me a "complementary" paper the other day. I didn't read it, I was happy that I had a whole paper to put on the bottom of my bird's cage for a while.

[bones_7672]

42. Anyone try to contact the Plain Dealer today? n/t

[Vektor]

43. Tubbs-Jones is a cool lady..

...and she takes NO shit from anyone. She'll let it go when she's damn good and ready, and not let that asshat newspaper tell her what's what.

[yojon]

45. Editorial page writer can stick his paper up his ass

If he sets fire to it first he will be a flaming asshole.

[Raksha]

50. Wow!!! It sounds like they're really afraid of something.

I consider that a VERY good sign!

[bones_7672]

54. What? This is the opinion of a Lib paper in one of Ohio's most

liberal counties. This wasn't done by the Repubs.

[Raksha]

52. Okay, I just read the whole thing.

Get a load of this: "Fold your mildewed tents, collect your soggy cardboard and focus on the poverty, single-parenthood and dropout rates that have so impoverished those in whose names you protest too much."

That is beyond condescending; it sounds like just another version of blaming the victim to me. I'd be pretty damn PO'd if I lived in an urban ghetto in Cleveland...hell, I'm pretty damn PO'd anyway! That's just adding insult to injury. I'm tempted to write to the Plain Dealer and ask them how many cancellations they got from that editorial.

[EFerrari]

53. There's contact info up the thread. n/t

[super simian]

62. Obvious Racism!

Disgusting! But the "let it go" part of this letter could just as easily have been written by some of our fellow "progressives" on Daily Kos. Just KIDDING!!! (LOL)



:bounce: :crazy: :silly: :wtf: :dunce: :grr: :shrug: :cry: :kick: :wow: