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host · 10-08-2006, 01:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

It started in 2000, we know why, and I know who I blame, but still its no worse than in the past, its just the latest and it will fade and return again.

Amazing coincidence.....we agree about something....finally:

Quote:

(Post #19) http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=103610

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

My reply is telling in that I have no idea what hosts original point was, but I think it had something to do with the 2000 election. I fail to see a problem here, an issue here, or where he is going. Perhaps he is mad that Bush wanted to work with people who supported him rather than against him. He is also wrong because Bush did try to 'reach out' to the democrats after 2000, even letting Teddy write the Education bill, and he saw how far THAT got him, but thats all old news.

Perhaps I was remiss, by making my own statements and the documentation that I provided in this thread's OP, too brief. Possibly, I made statements that I did not thoroughly back up with references in news reporting, linked to published news articles on web pages owned by prominent MSM news departments. Live and learn.....my bad!

I'll let Al Kamen of WaPo, help clarify my core point:

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...ions/kamen.htm
Al Kamen is a reporter on the national news staff of The Washington Post. He writes the "In the Loop" column four times a week.

He joined The Post in 1980 and has covered local and federal courts, the Supreme Court and the state department.

Kamen assisted Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein in writing "The Final Days," and Robert Woodward and Scott Armstrong in writing "The Brethren."

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...1074-2005Jan23
In The Loop
Miami 'Riot' Squad: Where Are They Now?

By Al Kamen
Monday, January 24, 2005; Page A13

As we begin the second Bush administration, let's take a moment to reflect upon one of the most historic episodes of the 2000 battle for the White House -- the now-legendary "Brooks Brothers Riot" at the Miami-Dade County polling headquarters.

This was when dozens of "local protesters," actually mostly Republican House aides from Washington, chanted "Stop the fraud!" and "Let us in!" when the local election board tried to move the re-counting from an open conference room to a smaller space

With help from their GOP colleagues and others, we identified some of these Republican heroes of yore in a photo of the event.

Some of those pictured have gone on to other things, including stints at the White House. For example, Matt Schlapp, No. 6, a former House aide and then a Bush campaign aide, has risen to be White House political director. Garry Malphrus, No. 2 in the photo, a former staff director of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on criminal justice, is now deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. And Rory Cooper, No. 3, who was at the National Republican Congressional Committee, later worked at the White House Homeland Security Council and was seen last week working for the Presidential Inaugural Committee.
<CENTER><CENTER><img src="http://www.washintonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/graphics/intheloop_012405.jpg">
Here's what some of the others went on to do:

No. 1. Tom Pyle, who had worked for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), went private sector a few months later, getting a job as director of federal affairs for Koch Industries.

No. 7. Roger Morse, another House aide, moved on to the law and lobbying firm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds. "I was also privileged to lead a team of Republicans to Florida to help in the recount fight," he told a legal trade magazine in a 2003 interview.

No. 8. Duane Gibson, an aide on the House Resources Committee, was a solo lobbyist and formerly with the Greenberg Traurig lobby operation. He is now with the Livingston Group as a consultant.

No. 9. Chuck Royal was and still is a legislative assistant to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a former House member.

No. 10. Layna McConkey Peltier, who had been a Senate and House aide and was at Steelman Health Strategies during the effort, is now at Capital Health Group.

(We couldn't find No. 4, Kevin Smith, a former GOP House aide who later worked with Voter.com, or No. 5, Steven Brophy, a former GOP Senate aide and then at consulting firm KPMG. If you know what they are doing these days, please e-mail shackelford@washpost.comso we can update our records.)

Sources say the "rioters" proudly note their participation on résumés and in interviews. But while the original hardy band of demonstrators numbered barely a couple of dozen, the numbers apparently have grown with the legend.

In the context of the above Al Kamen column and the phoio embellished doucmentation that it offers, consider rereading the report about John Bolton, located in my OP...here's an excerpt........

Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200208041...mi/3657764.htm Posted on Sat, Jul. 13, 2002

Bush gave plum jobs to supporters who worked recount, paper reports

By CAROL ROSENBERG

Knight Ridder Newspapers

......Bolton, the U.S. diplomat now responsible for arms control issues, said no payoff was promised for his decision to join the post-election fray. He had worked for the first Bush administration and, <h3>finding himself in South Korea on election night, contacted former Secretary of State James Baker in Texas to see how he might lend a hand. The reply: Go to Florida.</h3>

``I think, frankly, most of the people who did it just went down there by instinct,'' Bolton said. He said he received no legal fees, although the campaign paid his hotel bills and other expenses.

Bolton was part of the legal team and a ballot observer in Palm Beach County. Then he rushed to Tallahassee as the recount battle reached higher courts.

It was his role, on a Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000, to burst into a library where workers were recounting Miami-Dade ballots to relay news of the U.S. Supreme Court's stay in the on-again, off-again presidential recount. ``I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count,'' he was quoted as saying in news reports at the time........

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

All I seem to recall are the Union members the democrats bussed in to 'protest' the inital vote.

I fail to see a point other than you didn't like the outcome of the 2000 election. Next time perhaps the democrats won't try SELECTIVE recounts in democrat controlled areas and instead push for the statewide one.

The news reporting of that time....in mid to late November, 2000 stated conclusively that the Gore campaing tried to win the Florida vote in the courts, and the Bush campaign.....

Quote:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...,89419,00.html
.........It looks like Gore is the one doing the disputing and Bush is doing the Gary Cooper thing of being strong and

silent. In fact, of course, it was Bush who first went to the federal courts and first to the U.S. Supreme Court.

For Bush, who has made a mantra of local control, this is like trashing the big bully behind his back and then

enlisting his services when you get in a brawl. You'll notice that the Bush campaign called the Florida Supreme

Court an "instrument of the Democratic party" when it agreed to let the manual count continue, but were silent

about the court's bias when it rejected Gore's emergency appeal to force Miami-Dade to resume its recount. .....

......Right now, there is a vague presumption among Americans that Gore is the down-and-dirty cheater and Bush is the honest cheater. <h3>Bush is using tactics we all are used to, sabre-rattling press conferences and thuggish spokespeople and vague threats to do something really nasty.......</h3>

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/27/po...5ab0cd&ei=5070
November 27, 2000
The Demonstrators: Labor Unions Take to Florida Streets, Rallying for Gore
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. Nov. 26 � Finally, Al Gore's friends showed up.

After ceding the rallying and protesting to the Republicans for more than two weeks, the vice president's organized labor base gathered its troops today, filling the State Capitol plaza here with more than 200 cheering, chanting demonstrators, signaling a shift in the public relations battle over the presidential race.

<h3>Since the recounting began, Republicans have dominated the rallies on the streets, with their placards and slogans.

And their protests, occasionally unruly, as in Miami last week, have been important to the Republican strategy of

portraying the manual recounts as scenes of confusion and chaos.</h3>

The Democrats had chosen to portray the Florida

recounts as calm, methodical civic rituals.

That changed today, as the recounts wound down for the 5 p.m. deadline. Organized labor turned out its street

soldiers for simultaneous protests this afternoon in Miami, West Palm Beach and here, in the Capitol plaza.

Marilyn P. Lenard, Florida's A.F.L.-C.I.O. president, who called the protests, said she had grown weary of turning

on the television and seeing only all those "Sore-Loserman" placards. Sure, she said, she had considered something

dignified and quiet, like the silent vigil her group had organized on the night of the Florida Supreme Court's

decision last week. But that just got drowned out by the noisemakers from the other side.....

Read the following article, linked in the next quote box. All references to the November, 2000, post election Florida protests and accompanying organizing and support, describes republican activity as party managed and driven. There was apparently no "grass roots" (eminating from the people) protest activity or "voice" from the republican side. All republican participation was financed and managed by the party, and conducted by party officials and party activists, staff members of elected officials, and other "careerist" republicans or wannabees.

Contrast the descriptions of those who supported Gore. Some were organized and bussed by efforts of partisan clergy (Jesse Jackson) and by union organizations (AFL-CIO).....but....none apparently were seeking political payback via an appointed, post election job, they were not staff members of elected officials...

Quote:

http://www.geocities.com/floridavotecount/rallies.html
SPONTANEOUS RALLIES ARE CAREFULLY STAGED
FROM UNIONS TO PARTIES TO JESSE JACKSON, PROTESTS ON CAMERA GOT LOTS OF BACKSTAGE POLISH.
THE ORLANDO SENTINEL
December 6, 2000
Author: Doris Bloodsworth of The Sentinel Staff....

The Bush campaign was first to launch a "protest Op", solely engaged in a disinformation campaign to portray the recount process as "in chaos", attacked and shut down the Miami-Dade recount with the "folks" in the above photo, in which Joel Kaplan was one of their number, and directed John Bolton to rush from South Korea, to Florida, to burst into the room where the Miami-Dade recount has resumed...to order it stopped.

When you add the following to the "mix"....

Quote:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=44
it was discovered by the the Sarasota Herald Tribune that the 2004 purge list
HAD ALMOST NO HISPANIC NAMES ON IT, due to a "database error"), and
the way the 2000 Florida 65,000 names voter purge list smelled....since only
seven states do not automatically restore voting rights to felons who complete
their sentences, and the accuracy of that list was called into question, and
now because Florida recently was found to have neglected to give a notice,
required by law, to 125,000 inmates, since at least 1993, informing them at
the time of their release, how to apply to the governor for clemency in order
to restore their right to vote. Bush "won Florida" by 537 votes.......
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/11/St...s_felon_.shtml

http://www.whoseflorida.com/misc_pag...ht_to_vote.htm

This....is the "point".....the 2000 Florida vote contest resulted in the closed thing to coup that resulted in the "installation" of a POTUS who lost the popular, nationwide vote, by 500,000. He promised to be a uniter, not a "divider". He appointed 2000 Fla vote recount "intimidator", John Bolton. last year to an interim UN ambassador job that his own party's senators would not approve Bolton to hold. Now....a revamp of the white house staff is touted.
Fake 2000 "local protestor" in the Miami-Dade vote recount gets appointed to take Karl Rove's principle government job.

At what point is it appropriate to stop protestation against this...and end attempts to educate people as to the history of the 2000 Fla. vote....???
...when Bush stops appointing the thugs who broke the rules to put him in office, there would be nothing new to comment on!

The "running mates" were reported to have "laughed" about the thugishness of their own "organiz"-ation:

Quote:

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a22c0f25339.htm
Protest in Miami-Dade is a Well Organized GOP Effort

News/Current Events Breaking News News
Source: Wall Street Journal
Published: 11/27/00 Author: Nicholas Kulish and Jim Vandehei
Posted on 11/27/2000 12:15:46 PST by Freedom of Speech Wins

Election 2000 GOP Protest in Miami-Dade Is a Well-Organized Effort Bush Campaign Pays Tab For Aides From Capitol Hill Flown in for Rallies

By NICHOLAS KULISH and JIM VANDEHEI

Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

MIAMI -- When outraged Republicans raised a ruckus outside the Miami-Dade County elections office last week, some protesters at the door weren't local citizens. They were Capitol Hill aides on all-expenses paid trips, courtesy of the Bush campaign.

Right up front on television images of the event last Wednesday were Thomas Pyle, an aide to GOP Rep. Tom DeLay, and Michael Murphy, who works for a DeLay fund-raising committee. Doug Heye from California Rep. Richard Pombo's office also was in the fray.

Shortly after the door-kicking, window-banging protest, the Miami-Dade canvassing board made a sharp U-turn, suspending a recount that was expected to help Vice President Al Gore chip away at Texas Gov. George W. Bush's lead. Mr. Gore's inability to secure these votes was a key to Mr. Bush's certification as the Florida winner Sunday night. Miami-Dade canvassing-board members, while denying that the crowd cowed them, decided they couldn't complete the count by Sunday's 5 p.m. deadline without using a room that the protesters complained limited public access.

Their work in Miami done, the Republicans headed to Broward County, where they joined a platoon that included about 20 other congressional staffers, who had watched the Miami-Dade commotion on CNN and wildly cheered their compatriots' televised antics. The protests grew in Fort Lauderdale, with hundreds of placard-wielding Republicans protesting the recount for several days.

Sunday, some of these same staffers were involved in a confrontation with Democrats, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, in West Palm Beach. Tensions heightened momentarily as Democratic volunteers squeezed through the mob of GOP protesters to gather their campaign signs, but cooler heads prevailed. Behind the rowdy rallies in South Florida this past weekend was a well-organized effort by Republican operatives to entice supporters to South Florida. The protests drew angry denunciations from top Democrats, with several congressmen requesting a Justice Department inquiry. Vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman said the "orchestrated demonstrations ... were clearly designed to intimidate and to prevent a simple count of votes from going forward."

Bush operatives deny trying to intimidate. But they readily acknowledge that shortly after Election Day they began recruiting Republicans nationwide to come to the three predominantly Democratic South Florida counties then considering manual recounts.....

.....Democrats say they haven't flown staffers or operatives down to Florida to protest, and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. This has allowed Republicans to quickly gain the upper-hand, protest-wise.

In Washington, several GOP aides say the office of Mr. DeLay, the House Republican whip, took charge of the effort on Capitol Hill, passing on an offer many staffers couldn't refuse: free air fare, accommodations and food in the Sunshine State -- all paid for by the Bush campaign. Aides who accepted took advantage of liberal congressional workplace rules that allow them to jump from government jobs to political tasks at a moment's notice by declaring themselves on vacation or temporary leave.

"Once word leaked out, everybody wanted in," says one GOP operative involved in the effort. Participants estimate that more than 200 staffers signed on, some spending more than a week in South Florida. Many stayed in Hiltons by the beach and received $30 a day for food, as well as an invitation to an exclusive Thanksgiving Day party in Fort Lauderdale.

"They needed help down there," says GOP Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri. "A lot of people in Washington wanted to be a part of that." He adds that the collaboration has fostered a new sense of unity between congressional Republicans and Mr. Bush, who often ignored Washington Republicans during the campaign to bolster his outsider image. "The unfairness of [the Democrats' recount] effort has really brought Republicans together," the congressman said.

The camaraderie was on full display at the glitzy Thanksgiving night party featuring free food and libations at the Hyatt on Pier 66 in Fort Lauderdale -- "a festive family mood," says one protester. Entertainer Wayne Newton crooned the song "Danke Schoen," until a group of frenzied female fans rushed the stage. The night's highlight was a conference call from Mr. Bush and running mate Dick Cheney, <h3>which included joking references by both running mates to the incident in Miami,</h3> two staffers in attendance say..

....Bush spokeswoman Mindy Tucker declines to estimate how much the operation will cost or exactly how many people have been enticed to Florida. Others say about 750 people have rotated in and out. This weekend, few were still involved in the somber recount-monitoring of the early days. "All we are doing is rallying and protesting," says one GOP aide. "We are blowing the Democrats away."

Bush supporters sometimes outnumbered Gore backers by 10 to one outside the Broward County Courthouse in the Democrat-leaning community. A block to the north, a recreational vehicle festooned with Bush-Cheney signs served as operation central, having recently been transferred from similar duty in Miami.

Not all out-of-state demonstrators came from Washington. Several New York Republicans paid for their own plane tickets, while the Bush-Cheney campaign footed the hotel bill. "They told me to send an invoice for our bills, and I told them we need the check by Sunday night, in case he loses," jokes one of them.

Rick Nelson, a vascular surgeon from Oklahoma City, recalls arriving in Miami and being told by a GOP official that he and several other volunteers were going to become protesters. "Okay, we've never done this before," Mr. Nelson recalls the operative saying. "Anybody know how to put together a protest?"

The report of Bush and Cheney, "laughing" about the intimidation "event" captured in the photo, above, meshes nicely with the following reporting:

Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200208041...mi/3657764.htm
Posted on Sat, Jul. 13, 2002
Bush gave plum jobs to supporters who worked recount, paper reports
By CAROL ROSENBERG
Knight Ridder Newspapers

....._Three members of the window-pounding crowd that on Thanksgiving Eve helped persuade the Miami-Dade County canvassing board to abandon the recount are now members of the White House staff: Matt Schlapp, now a special assistant to the president; Garry Malphrus, deputy director of the president's Domestic Policy Council; and Joel Kaplan, also a special assistant to the president.

Schlapp and Malphrus, both of whom declined to talk to The Herald, were first identified in 2000 in The Washington Post as part of the Miami-Dade demonstration. Kaplan described his role in a lecture at the Harvard University Institute of Politics, calling the demonstration the ``Brooks Brothers Protest,'' a reference to the way the demonstrators were dressed.....

...and....this memory and it's continuing consequences is gonna move us to seek the "middle" ground? This was a "bloodless" coup d'état, IMO, and keeping our domestic political relations, "bloodless", is the best we're gonna do. The thugs in Miami in 2000, are still being rewarded, this year:

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12387465/
NBC News and news services
Updated: 8:54 a.m. ET April 20, 2006

..........But now, the job of deputy chief of staff for policy is being given to Joel Kaplan, the deputy budget director.

The move signals a broad effort to rearrange and reinvigorate Bush’s staff by new chief of staff Joshua Bolten. Bolten moved into his position last week; Kaplan was his No. 2 person at the Office of Management and Budget.

“Joel Kaplan is a man of great talent, intellect and experience who possesses a deep knowledge of policy and budget processes,” Bush said in a written statement.

At least for the time being, the promotion of Kaplan would leave Bush with three deputy chiefs of staff: Rove, Kaplan and Joe Hagin, who oversees administrative matters, intelligence and other national security issues.