Howard Dean: Republicans "Have Never Made An Honest Living In Their Lives"

Updating our story about the Moonbat convention in DC in which we said we "can't wait to hear Howard Dean's keynote speech later today, simply for the material." our prayers have been answered.

No commentary is needed, we'll just let the words speak for themselves.

- "You think people can work all day and then pick up their kids at child care or wherever and get home and still manage to sandwich in an eight-hour vote? Well Republicans, I guess can do that. Because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives. "

- "Is there a problem with the defense posture when we pick on dictators that are irrelevant to the United States and then leave nuclear powers like North Korea and Iran alone? Yes. We will look in the long-term for the defense of the United States of America. And in the tradition of Harry Truman and Jack Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt, we will fight the enemies that need to be fought. and we will use diplomacy with those who are not a threat to the United States of America."

- "The Republicans are all about suppressing votes."

- "We've suffered a couple of serious defeats. But we're energized. because we know that our vision for America is much better than the dark, difficult and dishonest vision of the Republican party offers America. We, we're in a war because the people that got us there weren't truthful with the American people. Our children are being poisoned by mercury and there's an extraordinary evangelical group that is now understands the real dangers of mercury poisoning."

- "And the young lady piped up and said, now, Governor, just a second, I'm an Evangelical Christian. and we don't think there ought to be separation of church and state. We think this is a Christian Nation. And you could have heard a pin drop.....And after dinner i was thanking everybody for coming and contributing and everything. and i went up to her and said how is it that you managed to support me as an Evangelical Christian? There's some things you can't possibly agree with me on, such as Civil Rights for all Americans and a woman's right to make up her own mind about what kind of health care she has."

- "When the president, the president rules by polls. he doesn't care that much about issues. he looks at the polls and he drives the agenda based on the polls. "

- "We need to have pension portability, so that pensions as we move from job to job to job, the pensions follow us. they don't stay in the company. That great Democrat, Jim Jeffords has been introducing this for 15 years."

Well, OK, just a few comments. The "never made an honest living" quote speaks for itself.

And we "pick on dictators"? I always remember speaking about bullies as being those who "picked on" people. Apparently the victim in this case, or the "pickee", is Saddam Hussein, a genocidal maniac. Yeah, "picking on him" was bad.

What I notice is the language. "Abortion" is now "health care" (Howie wasn't kidding when he said he wanted to strike the term "pro-choice" from the political lexicon). Nice isn't it, that vaccuming a baby out of a mother's womb is "health care".

Also the code word for "gay marriage" is "Civil Rights for all Americans".

Also, in a room of Democrats when someone mentions this is a Christian nation, the room falls silent. They obviously thought the woman was from Mars.

And while Jim Jeffords is a Democrat in how he votes, he's an "Independent". Shouldn't he know that?

Is it any wonder that Dean is an abysmal failure at fund raising?

We'll say it again. Democrats, thank you for electing this guy your leader. We'll put up a link to the entire transcript when it becomes available.

Lets see Kennedys wealth came from his great great grandfather selling Illegal booze across the border !

- On January 29, 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified. It prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, or importation of "intoxicating liquors" for "beverage purposes." For Joe, the law represented an opportunity to make huge profits.

- He formed alliances with crime bosses in major markets, among them Boston, New York, Chicago, and New Orleans. These would come in handy years later when his son was running for national office. Among his mob associates was Frank Costello, former boss of the Luciano crime family, who bragged, "I helped Joe Kennedy get rich." Sam Giancana, who would later figure prominently in Jack's presidency, called Joe "one of the biggest crooks who ever lived."
- Joe bought liquor from overseas distillers and supplied it to organized crime syndicates that picked up the liquor on the shore. Frank Costello would later confirm that Joe had approached him for help in smuggling liquor. Joe would have the liquor dumped at a so-called Rum Row - a transshipment point where police were paid to look the other way - and Costello and other mobsters would then take over. They distributed the liquor, fixed the prices, established quotas, and paid off law enforcement and politicians. They enforced their own law with machine guns, usually calling on experts who did bloody hits on contract.

-Columnist John Miller wrote, "The way Costello talked about Joe, you had the sense that they were very close during Prohibition."
- By the mid-1920s, Fortune estimated Joe's wealth at $2 million. Yet since Joe had left Hayden, Stone in 1922, he had had no visible job. While he made hundreds of thousands of dollars manipulating the market, only bootlegging on a sizable scale would account for such sudden and fabulous wealth.
- Joe used the profits from his bootlegging operations to fuel his continued stock market speculating, and finance his efforts in the film industry.

- By 1930 Joe had plenty to smile about. He had seen the Depression coming, and as Black Tuesday approached, Joe liquidated his longer-term investments while continuing to make money on the declining market by selling short.

Selling Short - Usually an investor purchases stock and later sells it, earning a profit if the stock has gone up. Selling short reverses the process. The investor who believes the price of a stock will go down borrows stock - say at $10 a share - from a broker for a fee. If the price falls to $8, he buys new shares at the lower price of $8 and gives them back to the broker to replace the shares he borrowed at $10. He then gets to keep the $2 difference as his profit.

- By selling short, Joe made sums estimated at more than $1 million and contributed to the eventual market crash by forcing prices down.

- The fact that the market was unregulated was largely responsible for the crash. Salesmen had made wild claims to a gullible public. Stock pools such as those perfected by Joe Kennedy had defrauded legitimate investors. Reporters and columnists had acted as shills for companies peddling stocks in return for payoffs.
- The crash set off a worldwide financial panic and depression that would last for years. By 1932, 12 million Americans were jobless. Governments responded with strict tariff restrictions that dried up world trade. In Germany, where 5.6 million people were out of work, the depression contributed to the rise of Adolph Hitler.
- Considerably richer because of his short selling, Joe Kennedy gleefully told friends that he had sold off his Wall Street holdings before the bottom dropped out of the stock market. He said he was now waiting to pick up the pieces left by "dumb people."

- Joe Kennedy's wealth was now estimated at over $100 million. By 1933, Joe was again manipulating the stock market to his advantage, even as federal investigators were swarming over Wall Street trying to expose the conditions that had led to the crash
-The stock market crash and resulting panic would eventually lead to the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to which Joe was named head.

- By 1933 the states had also begun repealing prohibition, and with his usual foresight, Joe could see it was only a matter of time before the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed and liquor flowed freely again.
- Kennedy used his connections in Washington to obtain permits to import ridiculously large quantities of Haig & Haig and Dewar's as "medicine." He stockpiled the liquor in warehouses so that when Prohibition ended, he would have more high-quality liquor in stock than anybody else.
- Joe also took steps to make sure he had cornered the market in Scotch. In September, Joe invited the President's son, James Roosevelt, to join him on a trip to England. Joe used young Roosevelt to get access to those who controlled Scotland's distilleries. Returning with distribution rights to brands such as Haig & Haig, Dewar's scotch, and Gordon's gin, Joe proceeded to build Somerset Importers into a force in the liquor business. On December 5, prohibition was repealed and Kennedy was ready.

- Joe took steps to protect his fortune and the future of his children. He moved to establish a series of trust funds that would eventually make all his children financially independent. These trust funds would eventually guarantee each of his children, and their mother, over twenty million dollars apiece.

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