Cleland ad causes trouble for Chambliss

[DogPoundPup]

Source: Yahoo Politico

With Sen. John McCain returning to the campaign trail on Thursday on stump for Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss in his runoff race in Georgia, Democrats are reminding voters and donors of a controversial ad aired by Chambliss in the heated final weeks of the 2002 campaign that shows pictures of Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, a triple-amputee from wounds suffered during his service in Vietnam, just after shots of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

The ad — which has a voice-over warning that, "As Americans face terrorists and extremist dictators, Max Cleland runs television ads saying he has the courage to lead," then lists votes where the Democrat opposed President Bush before concluding that "the record proves Max Cleland is just misleading" — helped propel Chambliss to an unexpected victory.

"I'd never seen anything like that ad," McCain said at the time of the spot, which was widely condemned by Democrats. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield is "worse than disgraceful," said McCain. "It's reprehensible.”

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released a Web ad ahead of the Arizona senator’s visit titled “Disgraceful,” reminding voters of McCain’s 2002 response, and also issued a fundraising letter from Cleland where he writes, “In 2002, Saxby Chambliss won his Senate seat in the final days by putting my picture next to Osama bin Laden and lying about me,” Cleland wrote. “It was despicable, but it worked. This year, we can’t let Chambliss use the same vile tactics to defeat Democratic challenger Jim Martin.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081112/pl_politico/1...

[Jacobin]

1. Oh, this could be good

[Janice325]

4. Good enough for a Chambliss defeat and a big old

Jim Martin victory. (I hope!!!)
I live in Georgia, and Chambliss is the lowest of the low.

[Barb in Atl]

41. I just got a call today...

...asking that, since I was an Obama volunteer, if I would help out Jim Martin. The young woman that called me had been a member of the staff in Indiana. I'm psyched!

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Opposing Bush is a positive thing nowadays...so I hope it ensures Chambliss' loss.

[babylonsister]

3. Good job, great timing! Here's the ad:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[Ian David]

5. Here's are the ads they have posted so far

http://www.dscc.org/races?State=ga

And:

http://www.youtube.com/v/k5z5E2npJgw&f=gdata_videos

[Judi Lynn]

6. Republicans who would have elected Chambliss under those circumstances deserve him.

However, it should NEVER have happened to Max Cleland.

That vile, vicious attack on a fine man's character, on his record should never be allowed to remain unchecked officially. What Chambliss did was evil.

The people of the state should be good enough to correct their grotesque action against their state's finest patriot, Max Cleland.

[Octafish]

7. Saxby Chambliss is a vile turd of the neoconfederacy.

http://firesaxby.com/

[goddess40]

8. Where is Max Cleland?

Is he campaigning for Martin?

[karynnj]

47. He did do a fund raising letter for him

in the regular election - I don't know if he campaigned there.

Off topic, but:
At the end of October, he was with John Kerry in MA one day - here's a link to a video on that - http://www.jkmediasource.org/node/162 - One thing that is really clear is that he and Kerry are extremely good close friends.

[SpiralHawk]

9. Expose the disgraceful Republicon Chickenhawk propagandist

who dissed America's honorable veterans with lies...

[fascisthunter]

10. Excellent... watch the Republican Worm Squirm

[OwnedByFerrets]

11. Martin will only win if the voters come back out and vote....

I hope they understand how important this vote is.

[morillon]

12. Another ad the Martin campaign should run...

...would feature footage from Election Night 2002. At Saxby's victory party, he came up to the podium and said, in that smarmy accent of his, "I jest got awf the phone with GEORGE DUBYA BUSH. An' I said I'm so proud ta be workin' fer YEWWWWWW, Mr. President!"

Uhh, hello? Three separate branches of government, dude? Such a loser.

The Martin campaign could say, "Isn't it time we had someone working for US?"

[iceman66]

22. That is good. VERY good!

[morillon]

24. I wrote the Martin campaign about the ad and so did my sister. n/t

[Plucketeer]

64. Wow! That's got potential.

I sure hope they pick up on that.

[Divernan]

13. So much for the rehab of McCain into the old Maverick image!

McCain's apologists claim he's a great guy who just let his campaign be taken over by extreme evangelicals and neocons. They predict he'll revert back to the Maverick who fought the GOP. Some fools even claim he'll support President Obama & the Senate Dems against neocon GOP Senators.

Evidently NOT!

He's hotfooting it to Georgia to come to the aid of the most despicable swiftboater who only got his Senate seat by viciously slandering and libeling Max Clelland, a true war hero.

Cleland's injuries occurred when he was getting out of a helicopter during Operation Pegasus, relieving the siege of Khe San. With 1 month left "in country" on his tour, he'd volunteered for that particular assignment. He did so against the strong wishes of his CO and fellow officers, who told him not to take any chances when he was so close to getting out of Nam. As he exited the helicopter, he saw a grenade on the ground. He picked it up, thinking it had somehow fallen from his flak jacket. It exploded and shredded both his legs and his right arm. He blamed himself for his accident.

Decades later, he was part of a Discovery Channel program about soldiers surviving severe battlefield injuries, A retired Marine watching the show heard Cleland blame himself for his own injuries. This Marine was the man who rushed to Cleland's side and applied an emergency tourniquet with his belt. After Cleland was medievaced out, the Marine went to another less severely wounded soldier, a new in country private. That private was crying: "It was mine, It was my grenade." The private had failed to take the extra precaution that experienced soldiers did when they grabbed M-26 grenades from the ammo box: bend the pins, or tape them in place, so they couldn't accidentally dislodge. This soldier had a flak jacket full of grenades with treacherously straight pins, Lloyd says. "He was a walking death trap."

Meanwhile lifetime jogger, Chambliss, who dodged the draft by faking bad knees, spread the vile lie that Cleland had been drunk and goofing around at a base camp and was playing catch with a grenade when the accident occurred.

McCain continues to dishonor soldiers. I don't care how great a concession speech he made. He's lower than dirt in my estimation.

[acmavm]

16. You're not alone in your opinion of the 'man'.

[hangman86]

28. Hypocrisy at it's finest

Sure he disgraced my fellow veterans during and after the war. His actions were "worse than disgraceful," and "reprehensible." But what the hell, I'll campaign for him. Because if there's one thing that stands above things like duty, honor, and country, it's party loyalty.

[MadMaddie]

45. When McCain hired the very people that attacked his adopted

daughter I knew that he was not respectable.

He is a pathetic man.

[Chulanowa]

48. Good god

It would be hard work for me to maintain my own stance of nonviolence if presented with someone like Chambliss. He really accused Cleland of tossing a grenade around as the cause of his ingurins.

My apologies to those who will be offended, but Chambliss is a fucking cunt and should die via mechanical mastication.

[crickets]

51. I didn't know about the details surrounding Cleland's injuries.

Thank you for posting this. Max Cleland was a fine representative for our state. It was heartbreaking when he 'lost' his reelection bid in 2002. It's hard to decide which was more stunning: that Saxby Chambliss (or anyone) would run such a horrible ad and refuse to this day to acknowledge that it was wrong, or that such an ad could actually help him win. Of course, everybody knows it wasn't the ad that really won him the election. It was the Diebold machines.

Michael Collins: Election Fraud & Tyranny: Part 1 (page down to "2002 Surprise Attack--Barnes, Cleland and Their Stunning 'Losses'")

It's harder to cheat when you're the center of attention in a runoff race. I dearly hope reality bites him in the ass hard enough to cost him the seat this time around.

[Peace Patriot]

56. Thanks for bringing this up. GA was the first of the all-nontransparent, all-corporate

'TRADE SECRET' vote counting systems, with the programming owned and controlled by one of the worst of the rightwing Bushwhack, electronic voting corporations, with NO--none, zilch, zero--audit/recount controls (no paper trail at all). You wonder why GA has to have a runoff, instead of a recount? Cuz there is nothing TO recount.

System is still in place. No verification possible. It is the most ideal circumstance for stealing elections--secrecy, invisibility, no way to track it; a line or two of malicious code, and the program can redistribute votes in highly undetectable ways, then erase itself.

GA had one of the most corrupt election officials in the country--Cathy Cox, who did sales brochures for Diebold. Don't know if she's still SoS, but this Stalinist vote counting system still is.

Maybe the fuckwads who run it will back off--as I believe they did with Obama--and sacrifice the disgusting Chambliss, in order to preserve their election theft capability for future uses. Half the systems in the country are the same--no verification possible; the other half are not all that much better--generally a 1% audit, not nearly sufficient in a 'TRADE SECRET' system. So if Martin 'loses,' and challenges it, and somehow gets to review the secret code*, they could lose their stealth power over our election results in at least the 100% non-transparent systems, and suffer more scrutiny in the others. (If they had reversed Obama's win, we might well have seen a 'Boston Tea Party' for these nefarious machines, by an outraged citizenry.)

We really need to understand that, with 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting getting fast-tracked all over the country, what we got is a series of phony candidates--blowhards and bloviators, fake 'patriots,' pasty white male preacher men, corrupt low riders, etc.--where Rove would write the narrative for pre-ordained outcomes, then Diebold, ES&S and probably Sequoia (the third big election theft player) would insure that the narrative turned out to be 'true' (the voters swallowed it). The pre-written narrative is the P.R. part. They have to attribute the stolen election to some cause (soccer moms, gay marriage, the 'swift-boaters,' whatever), so they create the cause as they are stealing the election.

Really stupid shit, like calling Max Cleland a friend of terrorists, doesn't go over with the American people, as was clearly evident when the election theft corps backed off on Obama. The McDud campaign tried the same old shit (the Ayers thing, etc.), and it didn't work. People saw straight through it.

This stupid shit has many uses, though. Among other things, it makes the voters look stupid. It is demoralizing and disempowering. And it can get us all at each other's throats, like calling Georgians 'rednecks' and bigots, because of the way GA appears to vote. Yeah, there are some of those in Georgia, but I suspect that their power and visibility (and control of public offices) are way out of proportion to their minority numbers. (I'm thinking also of Prop 8. Diebold & brethren have that power, to be selective in which elections they steal--even where there is a paper trail, because, even in the states with the best systems, 99% of the ballots are NOT counted--a very insufficient audit that can be skirted by sophisticated programming--and although California now has a better SoS than before, it still has some of the most corrupt county election officials, in the Puke counties, of anywhere in the nation.)

-------------------

*(ES&S (brethren to Diebold) election theft machines 'disappeared' 18,000 Democratic votes for Congress, in FL-13 in 2006, in an election in which the Puke 'won' by only about 350 votes. When lawyers for the Democrat (Christine Jennings) took the matter to court, and asked to review ES&S's 'trade secret' code--to try to figure out what happened to those 18,000 votes--ES&S refused, and argued that their 'right' to profit from our elections with their 'trade secret' code trumps the right of the voters to know how their votes were counted! It is not surprising that a truly fuckwad corp like ES&S would make such an arrogant claim. What was surprising--and disgusting and dismaying and infuriating--was that the judge agreed with ES&S (!), and then, when Jennings took the matter to Congress (the final arbiter), the so-called Democratic Congress buried it six feet under, and painted its gravestone with a GAO whitewash--possibly a first for the GAO--and the head of the GAO immediately resigned upon its publication. This tale has several lessons: corporate power over the courts, and corporate power over the Democratic leadership, on Stalinist vote counting. Worst of all, if it's stolen from Martin, he has no recourse. Nor do we. Our Democratic leaders are protecting these election theft corporations. But it could be that election reform activism and national spotlight will at least save a Martin win).

[truedelphi]

65. Yes I too thank you for mentioning this. Mike Malloy

Has said that there will be no free elections in GA for at least one full generation - or until
the election machinery is taken away from the polling places.

[Bette Noir]

58. Thank you for posting this.

That's the worst story I've ever heard.

May all Republicans who campaign for Chambliss rot in Hell.

[Jackpine Radical]

60. The Marine who rushed to Max Cleland's aid is a guy named charlie Wolden.

He lives in northwestern WI & ran a couple of times for the state legislature, losing narrowly both times. We're casually acquainted because he is a psychotherapist who works with some of the same populations I do.

[rasputin1952]

14. Chambliss is getting some of the same he dealt out 6 years ago...

I hope he loses 110;1 and goes back into hell. He is one miserable SOB...

[elleng]

15. YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!

We've GOT TO GET RID OF THAT DESPICABLE ***!

[DirtyDawg]

17. Unfortunately, this is Republican-dominated Georgia...

...where these same Republicans - politicians and enablers - have no shame. Anything to win and any excuse to get away with it. I'll be very surprised if we unseat Shamebliss.

[morillon]

20. Yep. The machines are Saxby's friend, too.

I'll never be convinced that 2002 was anything other than outright theft.

[iceman66]

26. Probably 2008 as well.

Both Obama and Martin were consistently polling several points higher than the final result.

[morillon]

27. Oh, I totally agree.

I've never seen this level of support for a Democrat, not in all the years I've lived here. Until those Diebold machines are melted into slag -- or turned into game machines or busted up into jewelry or whatever -- we can't be sure of ANY election here.

Those machines have GOTTA go.

[iceman66]

29. Well Florida got rid of those machines for this election

and look what happened there!

[morillon]

32. Exactly! n/t

[yardwork]

35. I've read that there is plenty of evidence that the election was stolen.

Chambliss probably knows this, too, and if he does he ought to be in jail.

[blondeatlast]

18. Hoo-boy; can we get this beauty on the air? I'll pledge! nt

[msongs]

46. i have that waitresses album...on vinyl lol nt

[democrank]

19. Chickenhawk Chambliss

represents almost everything that`s wrong with Republican mouthpieces. I hope the POS goes down in red hot flames.

~Bless you, Max Cleland~

[GETPLANING]

21. " Chambliss to an unexpected victory."

The ad isn't what propelled Chambliss to an unexpected victory. Chambliss was behind in the polls by 5% all the way up to election night. Chambliss was behind by 5% in the exit polls on election night. The entire election was run on Diebold Election Systems and was stolen by hacking the tabulators and flipping votes from Cleland to Chambliss. Statistical analysis of the totals of all votes in all races proves that votes were flipped in the Cleland/Chambliss race.
So let's stop with the bullshit that "the ad helped propel Chambliss to an unexpected victory."
It was a typical racist Republican ad, but it wasn't what swung the election.

[Dinger]

23. God, I Want To See chambLESS LOSE!

[xxqqqzme]

62. chambliss & coleman both.

I'm hopin' the recount works for Franken

[yellowcanine]

25. Are they also noting that Saxby Chambpisspot is a big old chicken hawk?

Making the way he attacked Cleland doubly despicable.

[Dinger]

31. True, AND . . .

Didn't Georgia have statewide touchscreen, paperless, vote-stealing diebold machines in 2002?

[morillon]

36. Yep, that was the first year they were used.

And gee, how ODD that the incumbent Democratic governor and the incumbent Democratic senator both lost in surprise defeats!

[Dinger]

39. No Fucking Shit

Sucks

[yellowcanine]

59. Wasn't it Georgia where several Republican candidates got EXACTLY the same number of votes?

[morillon]

67. I hadn't heard that, but it wouldn't surprise me, either. n/t

[diane in sf]

68. Texas

[onehandle]

30. Web ad? How about a TV ad. Kick that draft-dodger's ass! nt

[DU GrovelBot]

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[Deep13]

34. Chambliss is an Atwater-esque slimebal.

Defeat is too good for him. He should be drafted and sent to Iraq.

[understandinglife]

37. Digg link ...

http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Disgraceful_McCain_on...

[bvar22]

38. Help make this a NATIONAL effort:

Do your part to add another seat in the Senate.
Donate HERE:
http://www.actblue.com/page/changetogeorgia?refcode=sit...


Check out Martin's website:

http://www.martinforsenate.com/home.html

[BobTheSubgenius]

40. Saxby C. What a vile POS.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

42. I hope this RACIST Chambliss loses nt

[FVZA_Colonel]

43. The Democrats need to run an ad about his "the other folks are voting" comments.

n/t.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

44. Desperately! Yes! Everyone needs to know. nt

[The Wizard]

49. Is Chambliss the guy

who was selling naked Jon Benet pictures?
Make him deny it. Fuck that scumbag. If he didn't steal Max Cleland's Senate seat with Diebold's help he'd be stealing hub caps and holding up gas stations.

[investintrains]

50. Diebold is the reason Saxby Chambliss was put in the Senate in 2002

Diebold (now Premier) is the reason Saxby Chambliss was put in the Senate in 2002
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/votefraud.html

http://www.martinforsenate.com
http://www.saxbyshameless.com
http://www.youtube.com/saxbyshameless videos of Saxby Shameless
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/r...
The anti Georgia Saxby record
http://votesmart.org/summary.php?can_id=22029



Chambliss
1a. stole seat from the elected Max Cleland with Diebold help
.. this year Republican owned voting machine companies continued to
falsify election results with no paper trail
1b. massive vote fraud by Republican Party in Georgia this year
http://savdailynews.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSection...
2. voted against federal minimum wage with 27
other senators, 6 of whom are now gone
3a. voted to kill Georgians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
3b http://www.saxbyshameless.com /
voted against giving US troops time between deployments in Iraq or
Afghanistan.
4. voted 3 trillion dollars of your money to bomb babies
(war is mass abortion cruise missiles stop beating hearts)
5. voted to criminalize the 1st amendment
6. while Americans are subject to a roller coaster of gas prices
Chambliss voted against helping trains
7. Chambliss voted for the billionaire's banker bailout..
which burdens the poor of the US
8. The Small Farmers' Union gave him only 33% of 100
because he is a supporter of huge corporate farming.
9. Saxby in many of his yard signs (and bumper stickers and campaign
lit?) does not identify himself as a Republican.
10. Chambliss voted against lowering home energy costs
http://www.dscc.org/news_item?press_release_KEY=751
11
There is irony in the fact that Georgia which houses the CDC, the
pharmaceutical promoter, is 46th of 50 states in healthy children
http://www.dscc.org/shame?hall_of_shame_KEY=27
12.
http://democraticpartyofgeorgia.org/node/972
Martin cut taxes.. Chambliss voted against tax cuts for middle class
13.
Chambliss took a lot of $ from big oil (as did Palin)
http://www.dscc.org/news_item?press_release_KEY=771
14. whatever you like

[Dr Fate]

52. It's a web ad- is it really causing problems for Chambliss? Hope so. n/t

n/t

[DeepModem Mom]

53. K&R

[sandrakae]

54. When is the runoff election?

[Charlie Brown]

55. Dec. 2

though I believe early voting begins next week.

[dysfunctional press]

57. 60 senate seats is still VERY do-able...

martin in GA, begich in AK, and franken in MN gets us there.

[Bake]

61. I hope it sinks Chambliss.

The lowest of the low.

Bake

[RiverStone]

63. Who ever is in charge of this fight back strategy...

Needs to keep it up!!!

I am so damn proud of the way the Dems have learned this election cycle to kick ass and fight back against the rethug smear machine!

[mcg]

66. Links for donating to Jim Martin's runoff campaign ...

http://www.martinforsenate.com/home.html

http://www.martinforsenate.com/our_blog/jim_martin_stat...

http://www.actblue.com/page/changetogeorgia?refcode=sit...

http://www.dscc.org

[diane in sf]

69. done, thanks