Effort Begun to Swing Close GOP Gov Race to Mark Neumann

With a divided Wisconsin GOP still dominated by the religious right, an effort is under way by progressives to take advantage of the lack of significant Democratic primaries [the Madison 78th assembly race being an exception] to make Mark Neumann the GOP nominee for governor.

So, look for a significant turn-out of Democratic and progressive voters casting their lot with Mark Neumann next Tuesday.

Mark Neumann has a profoundly, if earnestly held, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic and anti-gay worldview that would make Neumann a weak general election gubernatorial candidate.

Call it what you will but a close race could very easily be swung to Neumann with a little help from his Democratic and Progressive friends.

See:
Mark Neumann in His Own Words
Mark Neumann: The Mean Machine
Mark Neumann for Gov. - Please Jesus, Yes!
Mark Neumann's Church: An Unfair Topic?
Mark Neumann Is Ready, Wisconsin Is Not

Remembering a Hero, Jefferson Thomas, May He Never Be Forgotten

- America has many unsung heroes, some we remember, others are forgotten. One of the latter died this week, a man who helped to try bring ‘change’ to America before it became ‘official policy’. -

By Robbie Brown in MyCatBirdSeat

Jefferson Thomas, one of the nine black students who integrated an all-white high school in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957 in a landmark confrontation of the civil rights movement, died Sunday in Columbus, Ohio. He was 67.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, according to a statement from Carlotta Walls LaNier, another of the students — known as the Little Rock Nine — who desegregated Central High School and the current president of the Little Rock Nine Foundation.



The Little Rock Nine presented the first major test of the federal government’s ability to enforce a 1954 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed racial segregation in public schools.



After Gov. Orval Faubus refused to integrate the school, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered federal troops to escort the students. Central High’s desegregation began the agonizing, decade-long process of integrating schools across the country.

The students faced protests and racial slurs as they went to class beside Army soldiers. In the classroom, Mr. Thomas, a 15-year-old sophomore and track athlete, was subjected to hostile stares and was once punched from behind by a white student.

“That’s natural that somebody is going to stare,” Mr. Thomas said in a 1959 interview with The New York Times. “It’s like kids going to a circus for the first time and seeing an elephant there. They stare.”

All nine students received Congressional Gold Medals from President Bill Clinton in 1999. The other seven are Melba Patillo Beals, Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Terrence Roberts and Thelma Mothershed Wair. Mr. Thomas is the first to die.

The Little Rock Nine Foundation Web site describes Mr. Thomas as “a quiet, soft-spoken, unique and special person.” After graduating from Central High, he served in the Army in Vietnam, leading field campaigns against enemy troops, the site says. He earned a business degree and spent his career as an accountant at private companies and the Department of Defense.

In 2008, he was invited to the inauguration of Barack Obama, along with the other Little Rock Nine members. He called his former classmate, Ms. LaNier, in delight after the Obama campaign carried Ohio, the swing state where he lived.

“I delivered my state,” he told Ms. LaNier, according to her memoir, “A Mighty Long Way.” “It’s all over now!”

In an interview with The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 1987, Mr. Thomas called his years at Central High one of two periods in his life, along with Vietnam, that were “very trying.” The students endured taunts and ridicule to demonstrate a principle, he said.

“If one of us had quit, that would have shown a weakness in our unity,” he said at the opening of a memorial visitors center in Little Rock in 1987.

In her memoir, Ms. LaNier wrote that Mr. Thomas’s father was laid off from his longtime job at a machinery company, probably as punishment for his son’s decision to attend a white school.

Mr. Thomas is survived by his wife, Mary; a son, Jefferson Jr.; a stepson, Frank; and a stepdaughter, Marilyn.

In 2007, Mr. Thomas told The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that prayer had helped him through the integration struggle. He said that one Sunday at church he heard the hymn “Lord, Don’t Move My Mountain, Just Give Me the Strength to Climb,” inspiring him to pray for strength, rather than for the acceptance of his classmates.

“It seemed that overnight, things stopped being so bad,” he said. “The same things were happening, but they didn’t hurt me as much. I didn’t feel like I was a failure. I felt victorious because I made it through the day.”

Enjoy this presentation from one that was there to help make the change…

Scott Walker Worried about Neumann

Pre-primary polls are about as reliable as Brett Farve running hard for a needed first down.

And this truism applies emphatically to the Rasmussen polling touted by Mark Neumann in the GOP gubernatorial primary campaign.

What is clear from both the past pro-Scott Walker spots by shadowy independent groups and the new Walker direct mail piece assailing Mark Neumann as comparable to Nancy Pelosi [a bad thing among Republicans], is that Walker is worried about Neumann and the national GOP does not want Neumann as the nominee.

And Walker should be worried. Walker is running in the twenty-first century GOP, not exactly big on the Enlightenment.

And with no big statewide Democratic races, an unknown, perhaps significant number of Democrats may vote in the GOP primary for Neumann, seen as a weaker general election opponent.

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WALKER LAUNCHES NEGATIVE ATTACK AGAINST NEUMANN

As Walker falters in polls, Walker launches smear attempt to compare Neumann to Nancy Pelosi
Neumann Pledge: I will continue positive TV ads & mailers; asks Walker to do the same

WAUKESHA, Wis. - September 5, 2010 - In the wake of a new poll indicating that Mark Neumann is now the strongest candidate in the race for Governor, challenger Scott Walker has launched a negative attack in the form of a direct mail piece that compares Neumann to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. The piece has surfaced just days before the Sept. 14 primary election.

In response, Neumann has signed a pledge not to run any negative TV attack ads or mailers in the closing days of the primary election campaign, and has asked Walker to do the same. The pledge was hand-delivered to Walker's campaign headquarters this afternoon.

"When I first heard about this mailer I thought it was a joke. Nancy Pelosi? Is he kidding? I was kicked off a Congressional committee for fighting government spending," Neumann stated. "This is the type of last-minute smear campaign that career politicians launch when they are trying to make up lost ground in the closing days of a campaign." Neumann was considered one of the principal architects of the 1998 balanced budget - the first balanced budget in decades.

"The people of Wisconsin want constructive solutions from the candidates for Governor, not desperate last-minute attacks - and I won't stoop to that level," Neumann added. "I ask Scott Walker to join me and sign the pledge not to run negative TV attack ads or mailers in the closing days of this campaign."

The latest Rasmussen poll shows Neumann would beat Tom Barrett, 48 to 44%. It is Rasmussen's 10th poll in this race and the first time the poll has shown Neumann would beat Barrett by a wider margin than Walker. It was also the first poll to show Neumann outperforming Walker with Republicans.

Specifically, the Walker negative attack mail piece singles out one vote from 1998 that 143 Republicans voted for, including Wisconsin Republican Congressmen Tom Petri (Walker endorser) and Scott Klug, along with national conservative leaders like Dick Armey, now a leading Tea Party advocate. Democrats, including Wisconsin's David Obey, voted against it.

Importantly, the bill also ensured that all federal gas tax revenue would be dedicated to transportation projects. As Governor, Neumann has made it clear he will dedicate transportation-related taxes to transportation projects and ban any raids on segregated funds, including the transportation fund. It was not immediately clear whether Walker's negative attack signals a change in his own position on transportation funding.

U.S. Marine Veteran Returns to America as a "Terrorist," Says Israel

- Whose side are we on? -

By Ken O'Keefe

I will be returning to America in the next 36 hours as a publicly accused “terrorist operative”, according to the Israeli military that is. It will be interesting to see how my birth nation will handle me. Especially because I headed to Gaza aboard the Freedom Flotilla in order to “train a commando unit for Hamas” (according to Israel). But even before I was venturing to train commando units I was already on the US “terror watch list”, so it is with much excitement I prepare for departure.



To be honest, having the two greatest purveyors of terrorism and propaganda accuse me of “terrorism” is a massive compliment. Living as we do in George Orwell’s 1984, where black is white and white is black and the truth is nothing but a word, being a “terrorist” is a great thing. You see in this New World Order kind of world those with power speak a language in which words mean the opposite of what they seem. So when Israel and America say they want “peace”, that is Orwellian double-speak for “we are gonna bomb the bastards and steal their resources come hell or high water.”

Its funny actually, the greatest knock I have of myself is my utter failure to learn any language other than English… except for Orwellian double-speak that is. And I realise now that I have been able to understand double-speak for quite some time. Like for instance, when I was in America on 9-11 and everybody was ready to kick some “terrorist butt!” and fight the “War on terror”, I knew plain as day that the actual plan was to carry out yet another war of terror and kill a whole bunch of innocent people. Sadly most of my fellow Americans could not understand double-speak, or I am sure they would have thought otherwise of the plan.

And so here I am, accused and/or suspected of being a terrorist, you just gotta know the language, what they are actually saying is that I am a man with a proven record of humanitarian causes based on truth, justice and the desire for peace. In reality Israel and America are giving me a great compliment!

For clarity's sake, in double-speak “terrorist” translates to humanitarian and/or freedom fighter.

Now I’m no Nelson Mandela but he was paid the same compliment back when he was a “terrorist” convicted by another Orwellian agent, Apartheid South Africa. Who knows, maybe I will likewise be rewarded with imprisonment because I refuse to abandon the lawful right of self-defence?

This is a long-standing language really, back in the day of colonial Britain the “intellectuals” and “leaders” of that era also identified the “terrorists”; today we know them as the Founding Fathers of America.

For clarity's sake, in double-speak “leader” translates to tyrant/traitor, “intellectual” loosely translates to indoctrinated minion.

And such is the nature of the Orwellian language that dominates the “news” and “politics”.

For clarity's sake, in double-speak “news” translates to propaganda, “politics” is the art of deception and corruption.

Anyway, I made my last trip to the States through Canada thinking my travels would be smoother through the north, but the Israeli and Canadian governments are very cozy indeed, accordingly that turned out to be a bit of a miscalculation. My Canadian welcome included two days of “detention” in a Canadian jail before I was released without charge. Welcome to Canada, where I guess they are not able to understand double-speak and apparently thought I was a real terrorist; easy mistake to make when you don’t know the language.

For clarity's sake, “detention” without charge means, you have no human rights.

Eventually I made it south to the “Land of the Free”, while in Hawaii visiting my mother I had a Special Agent of the FBI come to visit me; and so I we chatted for about two hours. He seemed a nice enough chap, but I made clear his boss (FBI Director Robert Mueller) was a traitor with inside knowledge of 9-11. I guess that was enough to get me firmly on the “terror watch-list”, checking in and flying became quite silly after that, but the escorts throughout the airport made me feel real secure in the homeland.

And as if I did not already know, my friends within the airline industry told me that I am most definitely “ON THE LIST!” If you want to know what it feels like to be Jihad Hussein with a massive beard and thick Arabic accent travelling from Mecca to the United States, just come on a trip with me, it is pretty much the same. Actually, it isn’t really; if I were Arab I would have long since found my way into the torture chambers of the state terrorists.

And so I return to America in the next 36 hours, planning on meeting some of the American citizens with functioning brains and hearts that do more than pump blood. There are thankfully more and more such people in the US, and beyond, and it is always great to connect with such people. I will be mostly in the Northwest; Washington, Oregon and California, with a planned visit to Kansas as well. We’ll see if expanding the visit to other places becomes possible, but maybe the good people at Homeland Security have other plans? I suspect they may feel the need to protect the homeland from the likes of me. We shall see.

So if I am sitting in a jail cell or worse in just over a day, please do not think of me alone, think of the unknown amounts of innocent people who rot in jails and dungeons, often tortured, at the behest of the embarrassing, disgusting, criminal US government. And then thank Barack Obama the saviour who ain’t helping them one bit. Nope, Guantanamo Bay and other torture chambers remain.

Now that is change you cannot bloody believe in.

Always great to return home!

Two Wars Down: An Ungrateful Nation Now Turns on Its Veterans

- We can afford wars, but not the people who fight and serve, say Alan Simpson, James Webb, ... -

By Gordon Duff in Veterans Today

A week ago, we marched out of Iraq, leaving 50,000 'administrative' troops and tens of thousands of contractors behind. They perform no useful purpose of any kind, no more than the original attack which Secretary of Defense Robert Gates now openly refers to as unnecessary and wrong.

The war that never should have started cost America 3 trillion dollars, much of it unaccounted for. Along with the thousands of American dead and the untold devastation in Iraq, the war also cost America the health and welfare of up to 400,000 of her veterans, America's children. A generation of young adults, another generation of our best and bravest stand betrayed.

We have money for fraud of every kind, projects paid for but never finished, weapons stolen, defective or never delivered, buying poisoned water for our troops at five times the cost of French Wine, I could go on for hours, the list is endless.



This week, when Senator's Alan Simpson, the wild-talking Wyoming Republican and now formerly a stalwart veterans' advocate Daniel Akaka talk about saving money, it is to come from payments to veterans for "presumptive" illness.

Don't believe it's just these two, its the whole gang of them, with few exceptions, and its not the first time. When Bush gutted funding for Veterans and up to nine-million disability claims related to war wounds and the endless environmental crimes against our troops shredded or shelved, even our mainstream veterans organizations stood behind him.

I spent two hours on the phone with a Vietnam veteran I have known for 35 years. He has both a son and son-in-law seriously wounded from Iraq. His 30 years in government and 28 years in the military, many years working with veterans, gave him the skills to help his own family negotiate the minefield of bureaucratic insanity servicemen and women are faced with when returning from war, used up, smashed, maimed or poisoned, discarded and left to die.

How many veterans died with claims in processing? How many died of undiagnosed poisonings or waiting for that medical appointment that never comes? It isn’t thousands or tens of thousands. Is the number as high as a million? It may be, we aren’t allowed to know.