October 29, 2002
RES IPSA LOQUITOR:
WAS PAUL WELLSTONE MURDERED? (Michael I. Niman, October 28, 2002, AlterNet)There is no indication today that Wellstone's death was the result of foul play. What we do know, however, is that Wellstone emerged as the most visible obstacle standing in the way of a draconian political agenda by an unelected government. And now he is conveniently gone. For our government to maintain its credibility at this time, we need an open and accountable independent investigation involving international participation into the death of Paul Wellstone. Hopefully we will find out, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that this was indeed an untimely accident. For the sake of our country, we need to know this.
When Richard Mellon Scaife, the Reverend Jerry Falwell and others raised similar concerns about the death of Clinton crony Vince Foster, who was after all shot in the head, they were portrayed as raving lunatics. But the even more ridiculous notion that Senator Wellstone was murdered--which has already gained surprising traction, as witness this article--has evoked no similar declarations of lunacy.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 29, 2002 8:29 AM
My paranoid fantasy, to which I referred below, revolves around Wellstone being a Jewish Senator and Minnesota being a state in which we know Al Qaida has had operations and where it has a cause celebre
in the form of Sheik Rahman, convicted of trying to destroy the World Trade Tower (hmm . . .), who last I heard was in a federal prison hospital there. As long as we're going to be paranoid, we might as well be paranoid about the people who are trying to kill us.
There is a right wing version? All I've seen on their message boards are posters poking fun at the left wing one.
Posted by: Henry Hanks at October 29, 2002 8:58 AMFortunately, Arab News and Al Jazeera will explain to us that Sharon did it. Sharon always does it.
Posted by: Peter at October 29, 2002 9:08 AMDavid--
You do know that Coleman is Jewish too, right? And that David Wellstone was also considered a candidate to take his father's spot? That is, the "conspirators" couldn't have been certain that there would not
simply be another Jewish senator is a result of their actions.
Hi Orrin,
I think the premise of your commentary is slightly off, as no serious source takes a conspiracy theory seriously. AlterNet is hardly a reputable news source. You may as well look at MIMNotes.
Noel Erinjeri
Brian --
Yes, I know those things. Moreover, the safe bet is, as OJ notes, that this was an accident. But I don't think that you can show that this wasn't Al Qaida because of the logical consequences of their actions. As far as I can tell, they're pretty weak on logical consequences.
The lack of a Black box on the plane troubles me, and while I firmly believe there is no level to which the Dems won't stoop, the race was too close for me to believe either side was desperate enough to resort to these measures.
Posted by: MarkD at October 29, 2002 7:06 PMThe pudding proof of the truth here is that punditry across the board basically think that the Dems slightly benefit here with the sympathy vote (backed up by the Carnahan election), BUT, most pundits agree that we are, numbers-wise, pretty much where we were a week ago, and it's just too tough to call this race right now.
Of course, if Coleman wins, that fact will be conveniently ignored for a very long time by many, I'm afraid.
Further proof of the idiocy of pathological conspirators in general. They will in a heartbeat believe that the "evil Government / Corporations etc." will take the most appalling and deadly dangerous risks (to themselves) for an outcome that is never pre-determined, possibly entirely counter-productive, and rarely ever worth the conspiracy to start with.
Example: Evil Gov / Businessmen destroyed the WTC to attack the middle east and control oil. And this all cost us ..... how many hundreds of billions in taxes, lost property, stock values, etc? Funny, I thought evil capitalists wanted to MAKE money. I guess I missed something.
But, don't bother pointing it out. Logic is just a construct of the oppressors.
Any minute now, Alternet will theorize that Lott escaped being assassinated today, I'm sure...
Posted by: Henry Hanks at October 29, 2002 8:34 PMNoel:
Alternet publishes David Corn of The Nation and NPR, Ariana Huffington, etc. They may be whack-jobs, but they're the mainstream of the Left. Unless you'd care to concede that the Networks and major dailies are the mainstream Left?