My god! Nothing is worse than traffic on a normal day in Washington DC (except maybe traffic in Boston), and Bush wanted to shut down the car pool lanes for an emergency trip to help racist George Allen in Virginia.

Urgent Fundraiser? Bush Wanted Carpool Lanes Closed
President Ends Up Taking Helicopter

POSTED: 7:40 am EDT August 25, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Talk about political gridlock.

Secret Service officials confirm to The Washington Post they tried to get the Virginia Department of Transportation to close down the carpool lanes on a highway leading out of Washington Wednesday so President George W. Bush could easily get to and from a fundraiser for Republican Sen. George Allen.

State experts who monitor traffic predicted a commuting nightmare, because they would have had to close down the lanes for much of the day for logistical reasons, so they denied the request.

Vehicles using Virginia's high occupancy vehicle lanes must have three or more riders from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Some hybrid vehicles and motorcycles are exempt.

The president traveled to the fundraiser by helicopter.

Allen has been under fire for a racist remark he made. He was caught on tape calling an American-born college student of Indian descent a "macaca," and saying, "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."

The White House said the president had no qualms about Wednesday night's fundraiser. However, a Democratic campaign spokesman said attending made it look like Bush was rewarding Allen's behavior.

http://www.wsoctv.com/politics/9735828/detail.html

I'm sure Bush raised lots of money from his corrupt corporate robber baron friends to try and save the racist Republican Virginia Senate candidate, but looks like even all that dirty money can't save George Allen.

Democratic challenger Webb pulls ahead of GOP Senator Allen by one point in latest Zogby poll

"The race in Virginia saw a significant turnaround: Democratic challenger James Webb inched to a one percentage point lead over incumbent Senator George Allen, who was ahead eleven percentage points in the July Zogby poll," reports the Wall Street Journal website.

"Mr. Allen was swept up in controversy earlier this month over comments he made about a Democratic campaign worker.

Link: Beyond Macaca: The Photograph That Haunts George Allen



Only a decade ago, as governor of Virginia, Allen personally initiated an association with the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), the successor organization to the segregationist White Citizens Council and among the largest white supremacist groups.

In 1996, when Governor Allen entered the Washington Hilton Hotel to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservative movement organizations, he strode to a booth at the entrance of the exhibition hall festooned with two large Confederate flags--a booth operated by the CCC, at the time a co-sponsor of CPAC. After speaking with CCC founder and former White Citizens Council organizer Gordon Lee Baum and two of his cohorts, Allen suggested that they pose for a photograph with then-National Rifle Association spokesman and actor Charlton Heston. The photo appeared in the Summer 1996 issue of the CCC's newsletter, the Citizens Informer.

According to Baum, Allen had not naively stumbled into a chance meeting with unfamiliar people. He knew exactly who and what the CCC was about and, from Baum's point of view, was engaged in a straightforward political transaction. "It helped us as much as it helped him," Baum told me. "We got our bona fides." And so did Allen.


Descended from the White Citizens' Councils that battled integration in the Jim Crow South, the CCC is designated a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In its "Statement of Principles," the CCC declares, "We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called "affirmative action" and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races."

The CCC has hosted several conservative Republican legislators at its conferences, including former Representative Bob Barr of Georgia and Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi. But mostly it has been a source of embarrassment to Republicans hoping to move their party beyond its race-baiting image. Former Reagan speechwriter and conservative pundit Peggy Noonan pithily declared that anyone involved with the CCC "does not deserve to be in a leadership position in America."

Asked whether Allen supports or deplores the CCC, John Reid, his communications director, pleaded ignorance. "I am unaware of the group you mention or their agenda and because we have no record of the Senator having involvement with them I cannot offer you any opinion on them," Reid told me in an e-mail response.

In posing for a picture that he knew the CCC would use to promote itself and him, and would be circulated to true believers, Allen joined a tradition of conservative Southern politicians seeking to burnish their neo-Confederate credentials. In 2003, former Republican National Committee chairman and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour took a photograph with revelers at the CCC's "Blackhawk Rally," a fundraising event for white "private academies." In the subsequent hailstorm of media criticism, after reporters discovered that the CCC had posted photos of Barbour on its website, Barbour pointedly refused to demand that the group remove them.


Republican Mississippi Governor
and former RNC Chairman
Hayley Barbour at CCC rally

Though Barbour came from an old and influential Mississippi family in Yazoo, he had spent a long time as a lobbyist in Washington. "In Mississippi, one of the biggest problems he had was they thought he [Barbour] was a scalawag. So it didn't hurt him in Mississippi," Baum said of the photos. "Nobody said, 'Oh my golly!'" Despite the CCC photos becoming a campaign issue, or partly perhaps because of it, Barbour handily won re-election in 2003.

But George Allen's relationship with the CCC is different; it went beyond poses and portraits. In 1995, he appointed a CCC sympathizer, Virginia lawyer R. Jackson Garnett, to head the Virginia Council on Day Care and serve on the Governor's Advisory Council on Self-Determination and Federalism. According to the CCC's Citizens Informer, Garnett delivered a speech before a CCC gathering saying that the Federalism Commission was "created to study abuses by the Federal government of constitutional powers that rightfully belong to the states."

Link to more info about Republican ties to the CCC white supremicist group

I look forward to the day when we can don't refer to our political opponents as "racists", "nazi's" or "communists" when we disagree with them. It only serves to debase the public discourse and distract people from finding solutions to problems.

Calling Ted Kennedy a "communist" or Bill Clinton a "pervert" or Ronald Reagan a "fascist" or George Allen a "racist" only discredits the person making the allegation.

Unless the allegation is true.

God I hate that idiot racist Allen, I am pulling for Webb, as is much of thinking America (or perhaps all of thinking America)

And, of course, Allen seems to always be talking about immigration, and how to curtail it. Further use of coded language to underscore what this man stands for.

I hope you lose Macaca.......I hope you lose badly, its a question of whether enough thinking people can outnumber the clueless, and that small band of well connected GOP insiders who profit from fools who will do their bidding.

And I suppose your the self-annointed arbiter of what's "true" and what is not ?

I haven't heard George Allen utter one word regarding his opposition to immigration or how to curtail it. And why would talking about immigration be considered "code" to underscore what a person stands for? What exactly has he said that makes you feel this way ?

An allegation made simply as a means of flinging mud on your apponent is pretty poor.
But when the accusation is true, and backed up on film no less, it's a valid expression.

In other words, there is nothing wrong with the truth.
One can't say the same of lies and deception.

If we are to deem every public person who says something that offends someone else a "bigot" - then I can assure you that virtually every person in public life from Hillary Clinton to George Allen will be labeled a bigot. If we call everyone a "racist" then the term no longer has any meaning.

It DOES serve the purpose to call them racist, if in fact they are!
More so, it DOES serve the purpose when this racism becomes obvious enough for anyone to see.


Ya can't make it go away by simply ignoring it!

Great!

Keep calling your opponents "racist"! Great political stratgey!

That's a surefire way to win friends and influence people!

Paint me with what ever brush y ou wish.
However, I did NOT say call them ALL racist, did I? (please copy paste where I did)

Specifically I DID SAY, that if they ARE racist, then honestly call it what it is!
Your attempts to misconstrue what I have said has again failed you!



Again, ya can't make it go away simply by ignoring it!

I'll tell you what, you keep calling George Allen a "racist" and the people on the far right can keep calling Joe Biden a "racist" and the other rational 90% of America will just ignore you.

First of all, reread this entire thread.
I DIDN'T call him a racist!
I said, call a spade a spade! There is NO harm in the truth! (except for those with something to hide)

For the record. I do not know if Allen is or is not a racist. I do know that he has a propensity for making clearly racist statements, which naturally tends to lead me to the conclusion that he most likely is a racist. But, because I do not personally know the man, I do not know this. This this end, if it were my decision to make, I would not state that Mr Allen is a racist, because as I have said, I do not know this. I would instead state over and over and over that Mr Allen sure does say a lot of really stupid shit, and some of that really stupid shit he says is markedly racist!



And yet again I say this...

Just because you ignore it, does not mean it has gone away!

Although I am pretty sure you will try.

I keep getting my racist republicans mixed up. Was Allen the guy who was known for having a rebel flag and a noose in his office, or was that another one? And which one used a photo of himself with white supremacists in his campaign literature? That was Allen, wasn't it?

Yes, that was Allen. The GOP is lily white and rotten to the core.

OK, so he struts around wearing a sheet over his head, that does not mean he's a racist!
And besides, the people are getting tired of hearing about it!