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Blood in the Water… Enron And Democrats

The Democrats started 2001 smelling blood in the water, and like any mindless shark, started snapping at anything that moved. As they start 2002, though it’s looking more and more like the blood they smelled was their own. It’s just that quite a few of them, like the sharks they are, don’t know it yet.

They started this year of their campaign against Mr. Bush by challenging his legitimacy as president, claiming that Bush really lost the 2000 election and so shouldn’t have been in the White House at all. According to these people, it belonged to Gore… even when Gore was sounding rather relieved to have not made it in. Then during the summer, the big deal was punishing Bush and the ‘thieving’
Republicans in the 2002 elections

More recently, it’s had the undercurrent of that 2002 win pushing Bush out in 2004. These attacks have gotten so brazen and bizarre, that we are seeing indications that the Democrats plan to demonize conservative Christians as being like the Taliban, according to an article in Newsweek. All in the name of tolerance, of course.

Howard Fineman, in the NEWSWEEK, writes: Democrats “are planning a daring assault on the most critical turf in politics: the cultural mainstream” ….. ” The theory goes like this. Our enemy in Afghanistan is religious extremism and intolerance. It’s therefore more important than ever to honor the ideals of tolerance ? religious,
sexual, racial, reproductive ? at home. The GOP is out of the mainstream, some Democrats will argue [this] year, because it’s too dependent upon an intolerant ‘religious right,'” Mr. Fineman says.

“This is an incendiary battle plan… essentially comparing the GOP right with the Taliban… designed to draw an outraged response from the president. Then Democrats would have Bush just where they wanted him: in a firefight at home.”

Fineman has obviously not been reading Usenet, and some of the other political forums on the net, because that nonsense has been going on in there since Gore finally admitted Bush won. The usual suspects are getting more strident as they find themselves taken out of the realm of validity. But you’re always going to get that in Usenet.

But the net is hardly the only place. Consider Laura Conway of the ‘Village Voice’: “Progressives spent much of 2001 getting punched in the nose again and again and again… all the way from the crushing denouement of Bush-Gore-Nader to the collapse of a visible anti-war movement. We lost on tactics, principles and PR. The year opened with a few thousand protesters straining to be heard at the crowning of an illegitimate president and ended with 90 percent of the country … and no small number of progressives… backing that president’s military machine. As if understanding that the left is losing the fight badly, the Village Voice wails:

“The left can … and must… get up off the mat. The bell is ringing and the fight is now.”

What is happening here is that America is beginning to understand that what the left has been executing is an attack on American culture. This understanding existed , even before 9/11 but certainly after it. It’s not been until 9/11 that we as a people understood just how important that cultural base is, and how low the American left has been bending so as to attack it.

With all that Democrat partisanship as a backdrop, the left now decides to puke up charges about Bush’s involvement with Enron. But as usual, the left can’t seem to see the facts, so blinded are they by their desire for revenge. Consider the linkages:

Enron does fine for years, under Clinton. Under Bush they go under? Just what is Enron supposed to have gotten under Bush, anyway? Here’s a clue: Other energy companies fell the same way and most often and hardest in the states where energy companies are most closely regulated. Such as Democrat – dominated California. So, Bush gets the blame? Well, let’s see… Under the Clinton administration, what would
have kept Enron afloat? On Nov. 22, 1995 President Clinton scrawled an FYI note to chief of staff Mack McLarty, enclosing a newspaper article on Enron Corp. and the vicissitudes of its $3 billion power-plant project in India.
…..
McLarty then reached out to Enron’s chairman, Ken Lay, and over the next nine months closely monitored the project with the U.S. ambassador to New Delhi, keeping Lay informed of the Administration’s efforts, according to White House documents reviewed by TIME magazine.
……
In June 1996, four days before India granted final approval to Enron’s controversial $3 billion power-plant project, Enron’s gave $100,000 to President Clinton’s party.
……
Enron denies that its gift was repayment for Clinton’s attention, and White House special counsel Lanny Davis says McLarty acted out of concern for a major U.S. investment overseas, TIME’s Michael Weisskopf reported.

And of course, Enron later hired McLarty. Lay played golf with President Bill Clinton and slept in the Clinton White House. Lay served as an adviser to the Clinton White House on energy issues. So, Clinton did what the left is now complaining aout with Bush. The difference is, there’s documented evidence that the Clinton administration, in turn, helped Enron get a contract for a gas pipeline in Mozambique and other projects, according to many, many reports..

And Clinton wasn’t alone in taking the money. What kind of donations did Enron cough up to the Democrats in Congress? Here’s a breakdown of Enron contributions 1989-2001

Enron Donations to Senators

#1: Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) $99,500
#2: Phil Gramm (R-TX) $97,350
#3: Conrad Burns (R-MT) $23,200
#4: Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) $21,933
#5: Michael D. Crapo (R-ID) $18,689
#6: Christopher S. Bond (R-MO) $18,500
#7: Gordon Smith (R-OR) $18,000
#8: Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) $14,124
#9: Chuck Hagel (R-NC) $13,331
#10: Pete V. Domenici (R-NM) $12,000
#11: John B. Breaux (D-LA) $11,100
#12: John McCain (R-AZ) $9,500
#13: Robert F. Bennett (R-UT) $8,053
#14: Pat Roberts (R-Kan) $8,000
#15: Bob Graham (D-Fla) $8,000
#16: John Ensign (R-Nev) $7,500
#17: Larry E. Craig (R-ID) $7,250
#18: Craig Thomas (R-WY) $7,000
#19: Don Nickles (R-OK) $7,000
#20: Tom Daschle (D-SD) $6,000
#21: Ben Nelson (D-NE) $6,000

Enron Donations to Representatives in the House

#1: Ken Bentsen (D-TX) $42,750
#2: Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) $38,000
#3: Joe L. Barton (R-TX) $28,909
#4: Tom DeLay (R-TX) $28,900
#5: Martin Frost (D-TX) $24,250
#6: Charles W. Stenholm (D-TX) $14,439
#7: Chet Edwards (D-TX) $10,000
#8: Doug Bereuter (R-NE) $10,000
#9: Larry Combest (R-TX) $9,820
#10: John D. Dingell (D-MI) $9,000
#11: Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) $8,500
#12: Edward J. Markey (D-MA) $8,500

*All figures from the Federal Election Commission

Confirmation:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,42757,00.html [1]
http://www.opensecrets.org/alerts/v6/enron_cong_senate.asp [2]
http://www.opensecrets.org/alerts/v6/enron_cong_house.asp [3]

Interesting; the farthest to the right they got with their donantions was left of center. An agenda, perhaps?

And of course, let’s recall, shall we, that the Congressional leftists in the Congress weren’t alone, here. Gregg Simon, Jack Quinn, and Johnny Hayes were all Gore advisors, and all took cash from Enron, while in that capacity. Remember these names; they will play heavily in any investigation into Enron. Bill Clinton did too, and so too, many other DNC candidates. Enron’s two biggest donations to House members went to Democrats. The company spread its cash around in vast amounts, on the left. How much remains to be seen, and I doubt we will ever know. And the reason is simple: The accounting for it has been destroyed.

Recently stories about Enron accounting records that were destroyed have surfaced. What the press hasn’t been telling you…at least as of this writing, is that the accounting firm, whose records were destroyed, were from the accounting firm Arthur Anderson and company.

Anderson is a company with a long history of supporting Democrats, with maximum money, and some reports place the amounts given well OVER the legal maximums. They also provided services worth millions of dollars, cooking up the books to defend Bill Clinton’s nonsensical economic prattle. With this in mind, it’s not hard to see why those documents have recent been reported as destroyed.

What did Enron get for all of those Democrat donations? There is much in the way of indication that Enron got special treatment from our federal government, both allowing, shall we say, non-standard budgeting practices, and international influence, in places like India, for example. Thing is, with the documents being destroyed, we’ll never know.

Putting the links together, it’s getting easier to see that this attempt to slander George W Bush by the Democrats will fail yet again, and will in fact backfire on them. I suspect and suppose the Democrats have dug their own grave. And like any body that’s dying, some parts just don’t know it yet.

Others seem to, however. Says the Washington Post this morning:

“Democratic lawmakers are divided about how aggressively to investigate the White House’s relationship to the implosion of Enron Corp., with an increasing number of party officials warning their colleagues against overreaching or showing too much glee in attacking a popular wartime president.”

I wonder if Tom Dashiele has gotten the message. If not, one could say the DNC is dead from the neck up, given that Dashiele is the only one who doesn’t know his moves will kill the party, if he keeps it up.

If he does, he’ll be doing the country a service for the first time in his overly long political career.