The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has found a self-financed millionaire to run against Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) in the 24th congressional district in Florida. That Suzanne Kosmas brings her own money to the game is apparently good enough for the DCCC, never mind her positions on anything, and whether or not they’ve already got another candidate in the race who has demonstrated his dedicated fealty to the party, his progressive credentials, his effectiveness on the stump, and his ability to take on Feeney with a great deal of success, as he did in 2006.
That candidate, who has declared he will be running again for the nomination in 2008 to take on the corrupt Feeney once more, is Clint Curtis, the man who worked with Feeney back when they were both Republicans — when Feeney served as both speaker of the FL House even while serving as the registered lobbyist for a computer firm with state contracts — and back when, as Curtis alleges, Feeney asked him to create a touch-screen vote-rigging software prototype back in 2000.
Nonetheless, the Democratic Party insiders of the DCCC — and now, apparently, the corporate mainstream media — have determined that their choice for nominee, comes before the people’s, and before even a single vote has been cast.
Here’s the letter that I wrote to WFTV, after they, and their reporter, Scott MacFarlane, recently sent the message to voters that they should just fuck off and not bother turning out to vote, because, according to them, Kosmas is already “Feeney’s 2008 Democratic opponent”…
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 6:34 PM
To: ‘news@wftv.com’
Subject: Error in your report, please retract/correct
In your report posted here:
http://www.wftv.com/elections/15313771/detail.html?rss=orlc&psp=news
…You wrote:
Feeney’s 2008 Democratic opponent, former State Rep. Suzanne Kosmas of New Smyrna Beach, raised more campaign money in the fourth quarter of 2007 than Feeney, who represents Florida’s 24th Congressional District.
Granted I don’t live in Florida, but I do tend to follow these things fairly closely. Was Florida’s Democratic Primary for Congressional seats already held this year?
Last I checked, Ms. Kosmas would first have to win her primary election, against Clint Curtis (and any other candidates who may be fighting for the same nomination) before she could be considered “Feeney’s 2008 Democratic opponent”.
Or have the rules for elections changed yet again in Florida, and WFTV gets to decide such things on their own instead of the voters?
It seems to me you owe your viewers a retraction, and you owe the Curtis Campaign — and all Democratic voters in the 24th District — a swift and complete apology for such shoddy reporting, which may well have a very seriously adverse effect on the upcoming election.
Brad
###-###-####
—
Brad Friedman
Publisher/Editor, The BRAD BLOG
http://www.BradBlog.com
The letter was sent more than a week ago. I’ve received no reply, and there has been no change to the originally posted story.
You can write to WFTV yourself here: news@wftv.com
– A Quick Summary of the story so far.
– An Index of all the Key Articles & Evidence in the series so far.
– Curtis is running against Feeney for U.S. Congress again in 2008.
For more info, see: www.ClintCurtis.com
Good catch Brad.
Gotta wonder though about how the fascist media loves to put up these fund raising numbers as some kind of dick/vagina measuring contest, instead of actually going in depth(no pun) into the reason some candidate is worth a shit/your vote.
There has got to be some kind of legal way to lay some heavy payback on these fascist good for nothing so called news stations. They don’t report the real news so why should they be allowed to even use the fuckin name.
I took your advise and try to type letters that are less agressive with less vulgar slang when dealing with these so-called journalists, editors, and managers.
They don’t give a shit either way. I have no respect at all for any of em. They are snide ass snotty little fucking word nazi protoplasm, “quote what they want and ignore the real issue” type fascists. If your not in the business like them you have even less sway. I at least know something about them.
I think that the ultimate way to fuck their day legally, is going to have to be a concerted campaign to petition the FCC and hit their public records and stop their fascist agenda by complaining so much that removing their public frequencies is the only option. And Deny them a station license renewal. (Just think how that would fuck the ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX cabal)
I mean fuck how many of you actually hit your local fascist alphabet stations public record and comment? Don’t tell me it’s the NETWORK, it your fucking LOCAL STATION GOD DAMN IT! They don’t need to fascist network shit.
Tell em your sick of their fascist shit stories and lack of coverage of real news that is in the public interest. (that’s the most basic complaint they don’t deserve an FCC license or a Frequency allocation) I ain’t saying they can’t have entertainment but Jesus Tits man there is NO FUCKING NEWS. and yet…for example Channel 3 in sacramento: they claim their news comes first. That’s a fucking outright lie. They been pulling this fucking lie for YEARS now. They could have copyrighted their lie and since nobody challenged it it’s their lie.
There should be a whole network of brainstormers and websites dedicated to this shit. I am fucking dead serious.
Plenty of places to protest too.
Your local stations.
The Transmitter Antenna’s.
The RF Vaults.
The FCC.
There should be people out there every day making it a living hell for them, their TV van’s satellites and all their shit, to do a fucking thing until they change their corporate fascist way and start working for the public interest.
But the reality is most people don’t even know there’s a problem. Don’t know the geographic locations of Antennas, Vaults. Don’t know how to block a satellite signal. Don’t know how to time a READABLE Guerrilla Blogger sign into the Good Morning X program. Don’t know what their public record is. (okay some MIGHT know this) Don’t know where the FCC is, don’t know how to NAVIGATE the FCC website and are too scared of the FCC to comment. People need coordination and guidance, and a compass. It’s like were all just birds flying and mating in whatever fuckin direction for winter.
GO SOUTH GOD DAMN IT!
Interesting how it’s fine to show blood guts and death but not say fuck or show sex. This whole FCC/broadcast thing needs hell of nitpicking and scrutiny . Fucking even a republican Frank Zappa told you about this shit what some 30-40 years ago, what did we just drop the ball. Said he was right and then keep getting fucked by the establishment anyway. There’s no more Frank Sinatra’s, Jerry Lewis’s, Woodstocks or skoal cans wedged in the back of the memorial auditorium because we are so pusi-fied and chicken shitted back by all the rent-a-cops and lawyers ripping the occasional person a new asshole.
I say no.
I ain’t got the time personally for some project of this scope. It’s not that big really. But I don’t have TIME.
Hit the broadcast stations, their affiliates, their finance, then hit the AM radio, affiliates, their finance. Make a website.
Hit the FCC. The more complaints the better. The deck/panel is unbalanced now and they run shit from a corporate fascist point of view instead of an engineers point of view. (Going directly against their mission statement, which they no longer publish) And only complaining will fix it.
Maybe just change the whole way the FCC is structured. Or do away with it and have the people dictate to the revamped agency. Theres smart people there. It’s the cronies and shit that needs to go. Do whatever it takes.
YOUR SAVING AMERICA!
“Hmm, what’s on the TV?”
“Smells like SHIT.”
“What kind of Shit?”
“a little afgan heroin and some camel dung tonight”
“well Camel dung isn’t so bad. They make punks out of it for fourth of july!”
“Oh man!!! Argh!!”
“What?”
“Juicy Diaharia! Oh and it smells bad. Oh God..”
“Turn it off”
What is this “B.” Esser II, the sequel?
WE WANT CLINT CURTIS !!!
No wonder Florida was not allowed to be at the convention with delegates.
They have been Kathyrn Harris’d and Jeb Bushed.
A Freudian slip? Like the BBC broadcasting the WTC-7 fell down…before it fell down?
I know England is a coupla hours off from us…but did the WTC-7 fall down over there, before it fell down over here? Maybe it fell down in their time-zone first…
Hmmm… Sounds like the DCCC is acting more like the DKKK . . .
Clint Curtis has a huge problem, as much as I respect him (and I hope he reads this.) When I first logged onto Bradblog and I read the story of Clint Curtis, I was convinced that both Curtis and Brad Friedman were crazy. Curtis asserted that Feeney hired him as a computer programmer to tinker with the source code to tilt the election to Bush in Florida, that the state official who he reported this to was murdered in a motel room, that a co-worker at Wang Computer was selling military secrets to China. Whew. Give me credit for following up. I googled the names that Curtis gave us and found, indeed, that the state official he reported to was found dead in a motel room in Georgia under suspicious circumstances (a suspected suicide, according to the press account) and that Curtis’ co-worker was indicted for selling NASA secrets to China. Wow. Pardon me for being out of breath. That’s a lot for anybody to swallow. The difference is that I actually followed up and found Curtis to be credible. But this is just the sort of thing that makes a political campaign hard to swallow. Most people will not dig that deep. I consider Clint Curtis to be a hero, but as a politician, he needs a lot of work.
P.S. Please delete Phil’s vulgar rant (for aesthetic reasons.)
Isn’t it nice to know democracy is only for those who can buy it? Clint Curtis has the integrity and courage this country needs to survive. But, I guess if you profit from living in this fascist state, you think otherwise.
It wasn’t all just a vulgar slang rant.
There was actually some legal ACTION you could take regarding local stations and inspecting and signing their public records.
My bottom line (without the vulgar slang) is
Defend the United States of America and it’s Constitution against *ALL* enemies.
Including those that are now breaking their oath of office.
My words aren’t pretty because what’s happening isn’t pretty. I hope you comprehend the seriousness of my word. Cause really deleting my message won’t change my word. Or the OATH that I took back when I joined the USAF.
The only thing it will do is censor me. Make it harder to get my crappy ideas out.
And for anyone wondering yes, even if banned (which could happen), I would still support Brad because he is the real deal. He honestly cares about election integrity. And that’s more than I can say about a lot of the people I know. Apathy is a disease for this stuff. You let it go, it just get’s worse. Yet it’s so overwhelming it’s easier to let it go. But remember when you let it go you basically say, I am not going to defend the US constitution. Maybe not important for you (and that’s your right), but it is for me. Words be damned.
And THIS is why they want us to pull the lever for Obama in the fall. So the Democorporate Party can decide what they’re going to do and tell the people what to vote later. Thanks, but No Thanks!
Here’s the DCCC website statement of leadership:
http://www.dccc.org/about/leadership/
Please note that it is Hoyer and Emanuel that are the ‘pay to play’ boys; in other words, the person with the most money is who the DCCC backs. And yes, for them, it is that simple.
Want change? Get involved with one of the ‘clean elections’ or ‘Federal financing’ orgs like just6dollars; otherwise, it will stay the same.
Voting is “quaint” to them…
“It fell down there…before it fell down here.” (John Kerry)
Robbie #10, I’m not so sure about that. It seems to me the people are driving the Obama thing not the party. Weren’t they selling us the unstopable money machine of hillary initially?
Hmmm… I’m gettin a little sick of seein & hearin ant ” B” on my tv . . .
I support Suzanne Kosmas, and you’re misrepresenting both her fundraising and her voting record. And no amount of your blathering is going to make Curtis a true grassroots candidate. I’m so sick of this “Clint is a man of the people” propaganda that the few supporters he has post all over the internet.
The fact of the matter is that he has a total of 21 individual contributions to his campaign, 21! And its a full 88 if you count the money given to the PACs he set up, but most of the contributors to his PACs are the same as his individual contributors. And of those 21, just about half of the money he collected came from outside the district, way outside like CA and NY. That doesn’t demonstrate grassroots support in FL24 to my mind. Kosmas, in stark contrast, has 273 individual contributions, which is 13 times as many individual contributions as Curtis. And virtually every one came from within her district. (don’t believe me? will you beleive the public records of FEC reporting : http://herndon1.sdrdc.com/cgi-bin/cancomsrs/)
But as you say the bottom line isn’t just about fund raising. It’s about who will be a better representative for the constituents of FL24. Kosmas has lived and worked in the district for over 30 years, raising a family there, and growing a successful small business there. She’s served her community with the best interests of her neighbors and friends in both a public and private way for all of those 30 years. People there know her, they trust her judgment, her integrity, and her ability to make tough decisions on tough issues, while never forgetting that she serves a diverse community of people and places. Curtis on the other hand was a Republican until recently, and this I don’t quite understand. What has he ever done to prove his dedication to the Democratic Party, and the principles it stands for? I’d have more respect for him if he ran against Tom Feeney in the primary as a Republican, or as a Libertarian, but that’s not my choice to make. Everyone knows that Kosmas is in a primary with Curtis, and possibly Gurav Bhola and Andy Michaud as well. But the voters of FL24, even editors and station managers (especially those in the district who have seen the candidates in action, or not…), have the right and the privilege and the responsibility to name their candidate of choice.
All that said, Brad, your blog post and your letter make you look lazy. And the only reason I’ll read what you write again is when you need correcting. Do your homework next time, and maybe you’ll have some credibility in what you say.
Oh great…Kosmas has bloggers. All everyone says about her is she has money and she is active in her community. Notice how they never mention that she voted FOR a resolution in support of the war in Iraq? Notice how they never say a word about her 8 years in the legislature where she never accomplished anything? Whoops…sorry, she did create the Florida Wildflower Commission…Please forgive my oversight. She has no backbone, all she does is scowl constantly and she is not at all intelligent. Clint Curtis on the other hand is supported by the Progressive Democrats of America and he has an army of grass roots…even his website clearly states his views on issues where Ms. Kosmas only says, “Hi…I am suzanne and I will be a voice…”. Nothing about energy independence, nothing about Iraq, not a word about health care, not a word about any issue facing us today. That’s what Dems will get it they support a “voice”.
E