Sit back for a second and try to remember what this country is really supposed to stand for. I'm sure you learned it once. Try to remember what words like "freedom" and "democracy" really mean.
Now read on..
From Dan Froomkin
"A Lower Makefield woman said she received a rude awakening Wednesday when she tried to get tickets to see President Bush today in Lower Makefield.
"Simi Nischal got a ride with a co-worker to pick up tickets for herself, her husband, Narinder, and their two children. But just as the tickets were about to be placed in her hands, she was escorted from the Yardley gristmill and told to leave, she said.
"'I deny you the right to attend this rally,' Nischal said a Bush-Cheney campaign worker told her.
"Apparently, Nischal's ride was a Kerry-Edwards supporter. Her car sported a bumper sticker for the Democratic candidates."
Another reader e-mailed me this two-week old Des Moines Register story by Lynne Campbell, who writes that "John Sachs, 18, a Johnston High School senior and Democrat, went to see Bush in Clive last week. Sachs got a ticket to the event from school and wanted to ask the president about whether there would be a draft, about the war in Iraq, Social Security and Medicare.
"But when he got there, a campaign staffer pulled him aside and made him remove his button that said, 'Bush-Cheney '04: Leave No Billionaire Behind.' The staffer quizzed him about whether he was a Bush supporter, asked him why he was there and what questions he would be asking the president."
Sachs told Campbell: "Then he came back and said, 'If you protest, it won't be me taking you out. It will be a sniper,' . . . He said it in such a serious tone it scared the crap out of me."
Chris Suellentrop writes in Slate from a rally yesterday for Laura Bush in Port St. Lucie, where the crowd was led in "the Bush Pledge" by Florida state Sen. Ken Pruitt.
"The assembled mass of about 2,000 in this Treasure Coast town about an hour north of West Palm Beach dutifully rose, arms aloft, and repeated after Pruitt: 'I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States.'
"I know the Bush-Cheney campaign occasionally requires the people who attend its events to sign loyalty oaths, but this was the first time I have ever seen an audience actually stand and utter one."
Seriously, I would like to find one, just one, person that can mount even the most rudimentary defense of this. This is straight up totalitarian dictator stuff. Do you think Saddam Hussein let people who disagreed with him near his rallies? Of course not. Sure, he killed them, and we're not at that point yet. But apparently we're at the point where campaign workers will threaten to have someone killed.
And then there's this, from Law Geek, an image of a fraudulent letter that was sent out to Democrats in Lake County, Ohio.
Here's a PDF of the Lake County Election authority's response, warning people that the letter is fake.
More? Here's an image from a Bush rally, showing a brown-shirt tearing down a sign that read "Republicans for Kerry."
We've all been conditioned even, to think that maybe they have a right to restrict opposition signs at their functions. Why should they have to allow the other side at their event?
The answer is easy. Because of freedom. That's what it really means. If the protesters are yelling or throwing eggs or poop or something, then fine, remove them. But wearing a button is not disruptive. Holding a sign that says something different than everyone else's sign is not disruptive. Getting a ride from someone with a bumper sticker for the other guy on their car is not disruptive.
If it becomes disruptive, it's only because these people's FREE SPEECH is butting heads with the fascist intolerance of Bush-rally-attending, goose-stepping, Kool-Aid drinking jackasses*.
Really, what is going on around here?
* Naturally, while I consider these people to be jackasses of the first order, I would never suggest that they don't have the right to be so, or that they have the right to show up at public functions and act like the jackasses that they so obviously are. That's the difference.
