Kean Jr. won't sign petition for clean election
Tom Kean Jr. is long on rhetoric but short on substance, judging from his smear campaign but empty platform in his 2006 senate campaign. Kean Jr. says he is a champion of clean elections and public accountability, but he refuses to sign the Voters First Pledge from the Public Campaign Action Fund that would a) make elections fair through having public funds b) restrict gifts from lobbyists and other interest groups and c) restore accountability by making all lobbyist contributions public knowledge on the internet.Bob Menendez, who has been the magnet for Kean Jr.'s attacks, has already signed the petition, so one wonders what is holding Kean Jr. back from signing it. Perhaps it is his close-knit relationship with lobbyists, the oil industry, and special interest groups.
http://www.votersfirstpledge.org/about
posted by Michael Martin @ 10:29 AM
2 Comments:
MartinOne: Since someone at the Inside Edge has decided to block my response to your attack aimed at me at me on the thread regarding Menendez at the Temple in Livingston, I'll post it here.
You will no doubt reject it for posting, but you will at least have your answer.
MO, as theoc quite accurately pointed out, you seem to have little or no respect for the truth in a discussion.
Since I cannot get into your head, I cannot tell whether this arises out of complete ignorance or from purposeful deceit, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and posit that it is probably somewhere in between. Sometimes you seem unwilling to believe facts, so you go into denial and ignore them. Other times you appear to deceitfully attack on an entirely separate issue, hoping to somehow change the subject.
If you personally cannot grasp the relationship between facts and reality, don't embarrass yourself by writing the garbage you spew here for public consumption. Here's a hint: keep it to yourself, and that way no one will ever be able to prove you wrong!
It is beyond question, no matter what you would like or wish to be true, that there was an ongoing relationship between Saddam Hussein and the training of terrorist organizations world wide. So, get over it.
And that was what I said.
"Saddam Hussein was promoting and assisting terror training in his nation prior to us going in there. That is a fact. Iraq is indeed an important battle in that war with Islamofacism."
In addition to Miniter (accurately mentioned above by theoc) Stephen Hayes, among many other writers, have done an excellent job, including during 2006 with translations of captured document after document, of connecting the regime of Saddam Hussein to al Qaida prior to the war, let alone to other Islamist terrorist organizations. You could start by reading his book, The Connection, published back in 2004, but I seriously doubt you will.
For a good current survey piece, bolstered by new documentation, and detailing the pre-war terrorist training camps, including the one at Salman Pak, and the other primary ones in Ramadi and Samarra, and all maintained under Saddam Hussein prior to the Iraq incursion, you should read the thorough survey piece by Hayes published in January of this year called Saddam's Terror Training Camps, but I doubt that you will.
In early March he wrote an extensive piece documenting Saddam Hussein's long standing relationship with Abu Sayyaf, the Filipino-based terror organization, which began in the late 1990s. You should read that, but you probably will not.
In mid-June of this year, Hayes wrote a piece in the Weekly Standard called, Their Man in Baghdad; What Zarqawi--and al Qaeda--were up to before the Iraq war, pointing out that Eguptian Abu al-Masri, who is the last remaining original member of the Mujahideen Shura Council (aka, al-Qaeda in Iraq), and whom many believe has replaced Zarqawi, arrived in the Bagdad area in 2002 to establish an al-Qaeda cell, long before the American incursion. He has been a terrorist since 1982, having begun his life of terror with Ayman al-Zawahri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad. He attended terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s. I know you won't read that because you would have to pay a few bucks for access.
If you were intellectually honest, you would get up to date on the current struggle, instead of sitting out there flailing away with uninformed lefty talking points. To be honest, MO, you sound ignorant when you spout your nonsense. Why don't you learn something for once? But I know you won't, because you don't want to believe what is established fact.
As to your comments wholly endorsing the polemics of Reverend Reginald Jackson, please bear in mind that for years now, Jackson has been flirting with the line between his organization's tax exempt status, and open partisan involvement in lefty Democrat party politics. In fact, some, including Green Party candidates, say that Jackson was literally bought and paid for by Jon Corzine with a $25,000.00 contribution pledged back in 1999. And for a good laugh, note in the story, that Corzine henchperson, Tom Shea, laughingly tried to draw a distinction by saying that Corzine's pledge in July 1999, and delivered six months prior to the primary, was to Jackson's Church, and not the Black Ministers Council. Ha, ha, Tom, who is yet another recipient of a substantial tax-free gift from Jon Corzine, is priceless when it comes to such non sequiturs.
To be honest, MO, I think I'm right -- your comments sound half ignorant and half partisan. That's not a good combination.
But you would rather swoon over the words of Reverend Jackson!
Martin, if you truly wanted to engage in a serious discussion, the first thing you would have done is to post on Inside Edge that you strongly objected to them selectively censoring the legitimate comments of posters there. It was certainly not the first time it happened to me, and I know for a fact that it has happened to others on several occasions. For example, past comments have shown that it has been done to Dino. Someone arbitrarily blocked his comments for a few days, for no explainable reason. The intent can only have been the purposeful suppression of ideas or facts to inform the ongoing debate. That is censorship, pure and simple.
The only reason I posted my comment on your silly blog was because my October 25th (just after noon) response to you, directed at your evasive prior post directed at me, was summarily refused posting at the Inside Edge. I again tried to post it after going off line and clearing the cache, and then, having failed, I sent them an e-mail at 2:47 PM questioning why they were refusing to permit the posting of my response to you. I included a copy of the comment as it had appeared on the “preview” screen.
Though I asked for a response, I have received none, and I tried at least two additional times to post my response to you. So, I can only conclude, based on this and several similar experiences in the past, that someone over at the Inside Edge is intentionally engaging in censorship. Your prancing little polemics – including the subsequent comment where you pretend to know what is in Tom Kean’s head -- continue to appear unimpeded on the thread, however. If the censor(s) at the Inside Edge are unwilling or incapable of allowing a free discussion, so be it. That’s their business, but everyone should know that someone there is unwilling to permit an open discussion.
Sometime late yesterday afternoon, I did managed to sneak on a short link to my comment as I had posted it on your blog, but the fact remains that someone who “moderates” the discussion at the Inside Edge, is censoring some, but not all posters. I don’t play that game, and frankly, I’m surprised that someone who publicly claims to pride himself on being “progressive” would tolerate it. The truth is that the left in this country has become increasingly intolerant. And this increasingly disturbing level of intolerance on the part of the left in recent years, is getting thoroughly exposed because of the “democratization” of discussions on the internet. Too bad that an occasional bad apple such as the censor over at the Inside Edge, can occasionally spoil the medium.
For anyone interested in the rest of my complete response to you, they should just go here and scroll down to the second half.
Sorry about having to point out what a thoroughly disingenuous chap you are, but you were the person who made all those false claims about me!
Cheerio!
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