Remembering Paul Wellstone

[dobak]

The Minneapolis Star Tribune is running a special on Paul Wellstone

http://www.startribune.com/


Also, a new book just came out about Paul and Sheila Wellstone




Twelve Years and Thirteen Days: Remembering Paul and Sheila Wellstone

[Mandate My Ass]

1. Thanks for posting that

My husband and I were driving to Washington DC last year for a protest when another DUer called me on my cell phone and told me Wellstone had died in a plane crash. All I can remember saying is that I felt like we were living in Bizarro World now. What a tremendous loss.;(

[patdem]

2. For some reason I was thinking about he and his wife..and his poor

daughter who was also politically active got shoved aside because she was too young to really make her voice heard. I thought how very convenient it was for the entire 'political' wing of the family to be killed at once? Unlike Carnahan and his wife was elected in his stead.

I wondered about why perhaps one of his sons had not put their name in. I thought about also the BBV issue??? and how little time anyone else had to run in that state and how smarmy Norm Coleman was and IS!!!

[gully]

5. I was hoping his sons would run too. But I think they realize the

sacrifice, and perhaps wonder if Paul paid with his life? I dont honestly know.

But, I do know they are trying to carry on via Paul Wellstones organization and help many Paul Wellstones learn to run for Government. I think they feel they are doing greater things in the long run via Camp Wellstone:

http://www.wellstone.org/camp/information_detail.aspx?itemID=1186&catID=5

www.paulwellstone.org

[patdem]

3. I also remember watching C-Span and hearing someone I did not know

speak so eloquently for the working people of this country and I made sure to find out who that person was. It turned out to be Paul Wellstone. I thought, WOW he is the John/Robert Kennedy of this country today! He has a future in politics because he is passionate and one can see immediately he has the American people at heart not the almighty buck! How truly sad!! We lost a TRULY GREAT one! And his wife was a patriot as well. I will miss them both even though I am in Virginia.

[Lindacooks]

4. I remember it well

Just like when the Challenger exploded, and JFK died (well, I was only 5), I will remember forever when I heard about the Wellstones. As a Minnesota resident, I was physically ill; the local news channels were breaking into regular programming that afternoon. I remember slamming my fist into the countertop over and over, saying 'no, no, no, no!!!' My husband had just been to an event with Senator Wellstone two weeks before. It sickened me then and sickens me now. And then when that rat bastard Coleman got elected, I stopped watching news and reading the newspaper for three months.

[gully]

6. I was a horribly sad day. One I will never forget.

Thanks for posting.

[Armstead]

7. I sometimes wonder....

If Wellstone were alive and healthy today (sans MS and back pain) if he would be in the Presidential field. And how he'd be taken in that.

sigh...If onlys

[dflprincess]

8. I went down to Lakewood Cemetary yesterday

It was a beautiful day and Lakewood is a lovely and interesting place to ramble through. One of my grandpas is buried there and, of course, I decided to visit Wellstone's grave while I was there. I was having trouble finding it so I stopped in the office. As it turns out, it hasn't had a stone put on it yet. The woman in the office told me Mark and David Wellstone have not decided what they want there. She did tell me how to find its approximate location. There is nothing that marks the exact spot. The woman had told me there was a flag on the graves - I thought she meant a US flag, but the only flag in the area was one that marks it as new sod that must be watered. I guess this was it or close to it. Apparently people were leaving so many things there it was hard on the family as well as the groundskeepers.

Lakewood is a beautiful cemetary and you can see Lake Calhoun from the area where the Wellstones lay. Not far from their graves is a statue that the woman in the office described as a pair of wings - that's how I could find the spot. I had read a description in the Star Tribune of the sculpture and I agree with the reporter - it looks more like a broken heart.

[dobak]

10. Wellstone is buried in Lakewood Cemetary?

That is within walking distance of my home

I gotta go there on my next day off

[dirk007]

9. Senator Wellstone

served and died with honor. He really made it a point to vote his convictions rather than the wave.

His 'memorial' was a travesty that helped to soured the election cycle that year for democrates.

Dirk

[dobak]

11. Travesty is not the right word...

......but it did cause some unwanted issues.

I was even turned off by Rick Kahn's speech. It was just over the top and far too partisan.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. Read the interview with Rick Kahn

in this morning's Trib and try to empathize with his state of mind when he made the speech.

Anyway, I'm convinced that the Repiggies would have spun the memorial no matter what form it took. If they had just had a private funeral at Temple Israel and ended it there, the Repiggies would have spun it as,"The last liberal goes to his final resting place mourned only by family and a few close friends."

But it scares the hell out of them that 10,000 people come to the memorial, because their line all along has been that liberals are an endangered species. There aren't even supposed to be 10,000 of them in the entire United States, if you believe Faux. So all of a sudden, not only do 10,000 people of all colors and stations in life show up, but they stand up and vow to carry on Wellstone's legacy.

Eek! This ruins the story as far as the Repiggies are concerned. They've gotta start spinning, and spin they do, faster than a hard disk. They egg on their freeper hordes to write nasty letters to the editor. Freepers in Oregon even wrote letters to the Oregonian, only it was obvious that they were writing about an event that they hadn't even seen.

Here, I belive, the DFL made a HUGE mistake. They apologized for the memorial. They should have known that you never apologize to the Republicans when they smear you, because that looks as if you're accepting their point of view. The DFL hierarchy should have slammed right back and pointed out the effrontery and brazen callousness of criticizing someone else's way of mourning.

I bet that just enough fair-minded sheep would have stopped and thought, "Oh, yeah, the Republicans are out of line, aren't they?"

Rick Kahn's speech made me uncomfortable, too, but that was only because I felt that he was on the edge of breaking down in sobs and ended up rather incoherent. The same with Mark Wellstone. It clearly looked as if he was yelling, "We will win!" over and over to keep from bursting into tears.

[Lindacooks]

12. Read Franken's take on it

It was NOT a travesty. It was an honest outpouring of grief and a lot of anger against the unfairness of it all. I myself thought it was a fabulous 'call to arms' for liberals, and was totally shocked when the repukes started spinning it.

[Octafish]

14. The memorial was NO travesty.

It may have soured you and some Republicans because of how it was spun by VRC Pravda.

Paul Wellstone was a good man who did ALL he could to make this a better country for ALL Americans. That's a true Democrat.

[Bridget Burke]

15. Dirk now his own "memorial" (RIP)

Well-earned--the problem with the service was the right-wing spin.