← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · xmetalhead
Thread ID: 3222 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2002-10-25
2002-10-25 19:16 | User Profile
I know Wellstone was one hell of a Leftist Liberal and the Republicans were really looking forward to beating him in the upcoming election. Is there something just too coincidental here?
Senator, family members killed in Minnesota plane crash Friday, October 25, 2002 Posted: 2:48 PM EDT (1848 GMT)
PAUL WELLSTONE Born: July 21, 1944, Arlington, Virginia Parents: Leon and Minnie Wellstone, Russian immigrants Wife: Sheila Ison Wellstone, 1963 Children: David, Marcia, Mark Career: Minnesota U.S. Senator, starting 1991; associate professor, political science, 1969-1990
EVELETH, Minnesota (CNN) -- Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone, his wife Sheila and daughter Marcia died Friday in a small plane crash near Eveleth, Minnesota, Democratic sources said.
The sources said three staff members and two crew members also died in the crash.
The plane went down in a wooded area about seven miles east of Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport. Officials said bad weather was reported in the area, and the last contact with the plane was at 10:20 a.m. when the plane was about two miles from the Eveleth airport.
Choking back tears, a Senate colleague expressed his sympathy. "He was such a good man, and his wife too," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont. "All of these people had families and they had friends and this is a horrible, horrible thing."
Such sentiments were echoed by Republicans. "He always just had a love for every person because you knew everything that he was talking about he deeply believed in and deeply cared about," said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas. "And then he cared deeply about the people around him. He was a very engaging person."
Wellstone held a key Democratic seat in the U.S. Senate and had been criss-crossing the state in a tough re-election campaign against former St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman.
The plane, a twin-engine turboprop King Air manufactured by Raytheon Aircraft, took off from Flying Cloud Airport in Eden Prairie, a southwestern suburb of Minneapolis. He was scheduled to attend a funeral in the northeast, followed by a campaign stop in Duluth.
Wellstone, 58, won his Senate seat in 1990, the only challenger that year to unseat an incumbent.
The son of Russian immigrants, Wellstone was raised in Arlington, Virginia, and was a champion wrestler at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where he earned both a bachelor's degree and a doctorate.
Wellstone was a champion of health care coverage expansion and environmental concerns, and was considered by many to be one of the Senate's most liberal members.
The crash leaves a void in the state's election for the Senate.
Under Minnesota law, if a nominee in a Senate race dies during a campaign, his or her political party can select a replacement candidate no later than four days before the general election. Election Day this year is November 5.
The Republican National Committee had shown a strong interest in defeating Wellstone, known as one of the most liberal members of the Senate.
When the senator broke his promise to serve only two terms, Republicans took it as a challenge to ensure his defeat.
[url=http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/25/plane.crash.minn/index.html]http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/25/...minn/index.html[/url]
2002-10-25 20:54 | User Profile
When a politician dies there is usually a sympathy vote if the media hypes the deceased. Look how LBJ rode to reelection on the "bloody shirt" of JFK. If you want to see what soccer mom sentimentality and close election ballot chicanery can do just look at Sen Ashbrook's defeat by his dead opponent. Let the dead elect the dead --- that is SOP for the Evil Party.
A backwater airport, worsening weather and a small private plane. Will Rodgers, Carole Lombard, Buddy Holly, Patsy Cline, Ricky Nelson, Sen Heinz, JFK,Jr. ---- couldn't all be "too coincidental."
I don't care how nice a guy he may have been in private, or how sincere he was in his beliefs. He worked constantly to pick the pocket of the taxpayer, uphold discrimination against WHAMS and pass more laws for the jack-booted thugs of BARF to use in persecuting gun owners. I won't shed a tear.
2002-10-25 23:49 | User Profile
Was Senator Wellstone on the side of peace when Slick Willie was bombing Serbia? I don't seem to recall that he was. Neither were the neocons --- in fact, they were among the most hawkish advocates of destroying Serbian infrastructure.
2002-10-26 00:33 | User Profile
The son of Russian immigrants....
Yes, of course he was - one look was sufficient to confirm that, huh?
They say that Chappaquiddick Ted was supposed to be on board as well.
Just missed. Damn.
2002-10-27 14:51 | User Profile
I got this from a Pilot BB:
"Having flown the aircraft involved in the accident (BE A100) I can give a very good guess as to what happened. It seems to me with the conditions being poor weather and icing involed there was a good set up for a classic"Tail" stall situation. The stab on the BE 10 is low (unlike its BE20 cousin). The King Airs perfom well in moderate levels of ice but great care must be taken when getting into the approach phase. Flap selections (especially below the approach setting) must be made with great dilligence. Boots must be working well. Any disruption of airflow (AOA changes etc) over the tail in icing conditions can lead to disaster very quickly. The proper procedure for recovery of a tail stall is check back and reduce power. Something we are not taught in flight school. If this was the case the crew would have only seconds to react successfully. Only my theory of course. "
2002-11-01 21:09 | User Profile
[url=http://www.strangecosmos.com/view.asp?PicID=6742]http://www.strangecosmos.com/view.asp?PicID=6742[/url]
2002-11-01 21:26 | User Profile
How Very Convenient... By John Bottoms Strike The Root 10-31-2
How very convenient. How very damned convenient. ~ L. Neil Smith, 1995
L. Neil wrote these bitterly sarcastic words in response to the 1995 bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, but they seem to resonate more strongly every day, as calamities pile up, seemingly always in the furtherance of State power. So, with the recent death of Minnesota's Senator Wellstone, it's my turn to say it:
How very convenient...
...that Democratic anti-war Senator Wellstone died, to the advantage of his Republican adversary, whose ascension to the Senate will give a majority to the Republican Party.
...that Wellstone died right after Republicans conceded privately that he was going to win his Senate race in spite of, or maybe even because of, his anti-war vote.
...that he died after voting against Bush's unilateral attack on Iraq, against Bush's Homeland Security Department, and in favor of an independent 9-11 investigation over Bush and Cheney's objections.
...that he died one day before time ran out to name a replacement candidate. Running posthumously, Wellstone would surely have won, and a replacement named by Minnesota Democrats. Replacement candidate over-the-hill Mondale has less of a chance. Senator Wellstone's wife was conveniently killed also, preventing a repeat of John Ashcroft's defeat two years ago by the wife of newly deceased air crash victim Mel Carnahan.
...that a weather radar map from the hour that the plane went down shows no precipitation anywhere in northern Minnesota, and the on-the-scene reporter said there was no indication that weather was a factor, which was confirmed by officials the day of the crash. But two days later Robert Benzon, the NTSB official in charge of the investigation describes temperatures near freezing with icy and snowy conditions at the time of the crash, and is searching for "valves and cockpit switches that could indicate whether the plane's de-icing equipment was functioning." The story takes shape.
...that another pilot who left the same airport about an hour after the crash reported only "trace to light icing," but the NTSB investigator wouldn't speculate on whether such minimal icing was sufficient to cause the crash, although they've been happy to speculate that icing may be the cause almost from the start.
...that Wellstone's airplane lacked the usual flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder, even though FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto said that the plane was supposed to be so equipped.
...that Carol Carmody, the acting head of the NTSB, said on the day of the crash that the plane had a cockpit voice recorder, but retracted it the next day.
...that the first rescue party at the Senator's crash site told St. Louis County Sheriff that "the fuselage was intact, the wings were separated from the plane and the tail had broken off." But the next day, the NTSB said that "only the burned tail section was still intact, but everything else was destroyed." Acting NTSB head Carmody said that the fuselage was destroyed and the cockpit was "gone," and that "the impact destroyed the fuselage and the cockpit."
...that "the condition of [the plane's] de-icing system...may be impossible to document because of the badly burned condition of the wreckage."
...that the plane's poor condition prevented investigators from learning whether either of the plane's two independent de-icing systems (a set of valves, air lines and expandable boots on the wings) worked or were activated.
...that investigators have few clues to go on "since the plane had neither a cockpit voice recorder nor a flight data recorder, issued no distress call and was mostly consumed by fire." But they're quite willing to speculate that the weather was the cause.
...that the NTSB says they may "spend at least a year" determining the cause of the accident. That's plenty of time to start several new wars of conquest.
...that in these days when the federal government is issuing almost daily terrorism alerts, the NTSB has apparently already rejected sabotage as a possible cause of the crash, instead focusing solely on the weather.
...that the Bush administration has had an active "Plan Wellstone" for more than a year, and recently campaigned for his opponent.
...that "just hours after [Wellstone] perished in the fiery accident, WABC Radio's resident Democrat Richard Bey complained that he thought the Wellstone crash defied mere coincidence--then pointed out that the Bush White House had made the Minnesota liberal one of its top political targets. By the next day Bey had second thoughts, telling his audience he didn't want to encourage such bizarre speculation." Did someone get to him?
...that Wellstone avoided an apparent assassination attempt in Colombia (where there's an active CIA presence) less than two years ago.
...that 9 other powerful and outspoken politicians have died in often mysterious plane crashes over the last 30 years. Most convenient was the death of Mel Carnahan, John Ashcroft's Senate opponent, almost exactly two years ago.
In the weeks and months to come, don't be surprised if the contradictions and misinformation start to pile up, so that we may someday view Senator Wellstone's death as something far more ominous than merely "convenient." October 31, 2002
John Bottoms writes, works and lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
[url=http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/Bottoms/bottoms25.html]http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/Bot.../bottoms25.html[/url]
Comment
From Asteroid170@aol.com 11-1-2
All of this sounds feasible. Indeed, the coincidences do add up. But Bottoms failed to enter into his story the fact that within 2 hours after the crash a group of democrats, lead by the clintons, had already chosen Mondale to replace Wellstone. Or, perhaps Mondale had been chosen before the crash. Also, doesn't it seem more than odd--sickening, actually--that the little gathering in Wellstone's memory was nothing more than a well-planned political convention filled with one-liners, podium pounding, grinning and laughter-filled democrats and not a single tear to be shed, and all under the nauseating banner of "Wellstone would have wanted it that way"? I think we need to look at all possibilities in this case. It is too important an issue for us to only see the most popular possibility. History dictates that in almost every situation such as this one that which is the most obvious is never reality.
[url=http://www.rense.com/general31/covneb.htm]http://www.rense.com/general31/covneb.htm[/url]