Wellstone's passion recalled 10 years after death

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

Last edited Fri Oct 26, 2012, 03:07 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: AP


EVELETH, Minn. (AP) — On the 10th anniversary of the plane crash that killed Sen. Paul Wellstone and seven others, speakers remembered the liberal Minnesota firebrand Thursday for his activism and his ability to care for others.

More than 200 people turned out in northeastern Minnesota's Iron Range to remember Wellstone and those who died with him near Eveleth. In attendance were Minnesota Democratic Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, and Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who was Wellstone's Senate colleague.

The event was held at the Wellstone Memorial and Historic Site, an understated series of rock monuments and walkways that wind through the forest a few hundred yards from where the small plane went down Oct. 25, 2002, 12 days before the election. Wellstone, a liberal Democrat and former college professor, had been running for a third term.

The crash also killed his wife, Sheila; their daughter, Marcia Wellstone Markuson; campaign staffers Tom Lapic, Mary McEvoy and Will McLaughlin; and two pilots, Richard Conry and Michael Guess. There were no survivors.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/article/Wellstone-s-passion-recalled-10-years-after-death-3982389.php

---

[MADem]

1. It can't be ten years. I remember Tom Harkin sobbing on TV like it was yesterday.

I still get sick down to my gut when I think about it.

I hate to be petty, but I'd be dishonest if I didn't admit that I am GLAD that Mister Shithead Norm Coleman is just a flyspeck of miserable, turdish memory in our collective rearview mirror. If there's any satisfaction I can glean from this tragedy, it's that the people of of Wellstone's state had the good sense to kick that toothy Republican to the curb and put Al Franken in PW's seat.

[dflprincess]

6. Tom Harkin gave a great speech at the memorial

urging us to "Stand up! Keep fighting!"

And, yes, it was wonderful to see Franken send that weasel Coleman packing.

[MADem]

11. I'll bet he did. Those two were like brothers up on the Hill.

That was a very close relationship--they had each others' back.

[alp227]

17. what's up with all those wingnuts who were elected to senate seats vacated by death?

[link:http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/four_column_table/SenatorsDiedinOffice.shtml|list of senators who died while in office
]
Let's see...
- Sen. John Heinz (Republican/Pennsylvania) died in 1991. Democrat Harris Wofford won the special election afterwards, but in the Republican election sweep of '94 Rick Santorum defeated Wofford. Heinz was considered a moderate Republican. (And yes, Heinz's wife later married current Democratic Sen. John Kerry.)
- After Gov. Mel Carnahan (D/Missouri) died in a plane crash mere weeks before the 2000 Senate election (which he would win), interim Gov. Roger Wilson appointed Carnahan's widow Jean Carnahan. In the 2002 special election, Republican Jim Talent defeated Carnahan. Among Talent's positions in his single, partial term in the Senate? Supporting a law against flag desecration and bans on stem cell research and most abortions! Also was supported by the pork lobby (as in meat not money). In the 2006 Democratic sweep of Congress, Democrat Claire McCaskill defeated Talent. This year, someone even crazier than Talent, Todd Akin, could win the seat that Mel Carnahan never lived to serve (and Mel would become REDFACED at that legitimate rape comment).
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D/Mass.) died in 2009. Republican Scott Brown would win the next year's special election. At first Brown was seen as a moderate Republican but would shift rightwards as the years went on.

So far the seats of John Chafee (R/Rhode Island) and Robert Byrd (D/West Virginia) haven't been tarnished with the ass of a Tea Party Turd. Paul Coverdell (R/Ga.) was already a right winger anyway, and his successor Zell Miller was a Dixiecrat. Craig Thomas (R/Wyoming)=succeeded by another Republican in a very red state.

[MADem]

19. Isn't it the oddest thing?

I sometimes wonder if it's an expression of crazed grief, or something.

You know, in some sects of Islam (shia, most particularly), at certain religious holidays (Ashura, specifically), guys will go to the masjid, line up in nice white shirts, and beat the living shit out of themselves with chains. The hardcore ones will put tacks or nails in the chains so it will cut them and they will bleed all over their white clothing. It's rather like a purging. Other gents will participate in symbolic and highly stylized ceremonies where people keep their coats on and it doesn't hurt that much, if at all, and others will take off the shirts and smack themselves with those chains without any cloth between them and the nails.

I've seen it done, I've never understood it, I always found it off-putting, but the people who do it insist they're transformed afterwards. I don't think it lasts, after those scabs set in and get infected, and those shirts stick to one's back on a hot and dry day.

But anyway...maybe the act of stupidly electing a Republican is like beating the living shit out of yourself with chains studded with nails...a moment of altered consciousness, a way of grieving (the purpose of the nails and chains is a grieving/mourning exercise for one of the Prophet's relatives). Do something that will hurt like hell, and that will make it allllllllll better!!! Of course, when you're talking about the Senate, you're talking about six long years of pain!

[Art_from_Ark]

20. And then there was Robert Kennedy

who was assassinated while serving as a US Senator from New York. He was replaced by Charles Goodell (R), who was appointed to serve out the rest of Kennedy's term (until 1971). Goodell himself was replaced by James L. Buckley who ran as a Conservative in the 1970 election.

[alp227]

21. James Buckley's brother was William F. Buckley.

Also Wikipedia says about James Buckley: "To date he has been the only candidate of his party, and the last third party registrant, to be successfully nominated and elected to the U.S. Congress."

Also: "During the 1976 Republican National Convention, then-Senator Jesse Helms encouraged a "Draft Buckley" movement, as an effort to stop the nomination of Ronald Reagan for President. Reagan had announced that Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker would be his running-mate if picked; Helms believed that Schweiker was too liberal."

Wow, a candidate to the right of REAGAN of all people? Who knew?

Oh and regarding campaign finance: "Buckley was also the lead petitioner in a landmark Supreme Court case, Buckley v. Valeo, which "shaped modern campaign-finance law."[1] He successfully challenged the constitutionality of a law limiting campaign spending in Congressional races." Nearly 35 years before Citizens United there was Buckley v Valeo.

[Art_from_Ark]

23. So New York made the full pendulum swing,

electing an unabashedly liberal Senator (Kennedy) in 1964, then 6 years later electing a man who was a favorite of Jesse Helms to occupy Kennedy's former seat

[alp227]

42. NY is a purple state in governor and us senator elections.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Senators_from_New_York

Buckley lasted one term; Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan defeated him in the '76 election. Two other Democrats have occupied the seat since he retired: Hillary Clinton and now Kirsten Gillebrand.

Before Democrat Chuck Schumer won his first senate election in '98, two Republicans sat on his seat: liberal Jacob Javits (first elected 1956) and conservative Al d'Amato (first elected 1980).

[Art_from_Ark]

43. Jacob Javits was one reason why I had some respect for Republicans

before the Reagan Revolution. But it seems like that 1980 election turned everything on its head, and is one reason why we're in the mess we're in now.

[alp227]

44. And NY was home to NELSON ROCKEFELLER, the original 60s/70s moderate Republican.

Rockefeller was Governor of NY from '59 to '74 then became Gerald Ford's vice president after Watergate. Since 1959, NY has had 28 years of Republican governorship and 24 years of Democratic governorship (the past three governors...Spitzer, Paterson, now A. Cuomo all Democrats). That's the point of NY being purple in gub. elections I wanted to make.

[Art_from_Ark]

45. His brother Winthrop was governor of Arkansas from 1967 to 1971

He wasn't a bad governor at all, and he helped to reshape the state's image from one of stupid hillbillies (which was mocked in at least two different Hanna-Barbera cartoon shows of the '60s), to one of more intelligence and tolerance. "WinRock" even made an appearance on "The Governor and JJ". But the two Republican governors who have come after him have been far from stellar.

[Art_from_Ark]

46. Getting back to Javits (and the theme of this thread),

my impression of him (and this is, of course, based on what I gleaned from the news, various political mailings, etc., at the time) was that he was similar in political philosophy to Senator Wellstone.

[sabrina 1]

2. I remember that day.

I also remember how much Cheney hated Wellstone.

One way or another, we seem to always lose the good guys.

[niyad]

29. accident or not, it certainly was convenient for the repukes

[Great Caesars Ghost]

3. Wellstone was assassinated

[jimlup]

5. And we need to be reminded of this now as we head into a major fight November 6th

They may well try to steal this one like they stolen Paul Wellstone from us.

[dflprincess]

8. James Fetzer (the speaker in the video) has a book about this:

"American Assassination: The Strange Death of Senator Paul Wellstone "

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/american-assassination-four-arrows/1006480460?ean=9780975276303

[Slit Skirt]

18. thanks I would like to read this

[hack89]

34. Fetzer is a Truther - there is not a conspiracy out there that he doesn't embrace

he is a loon of the highest order.

[Major Nikon]

14. It's time to put this "Wellstone was assassinated" crap down as crazy talk

The NTSB made a pretty clear cut case of pilot error. Fetzer is a professional conspiracy theorist. In other words, he makes money from perpetuating conspiracy theories. Hmmm, no motive for him to just pull shit out of his ass is there? His "theory" that Wellstone's plane was brought down by Deadeye Dick Cheney firing his Buck Rogers synthesized tachyonic particle revolver(or whatever kind of silly weapon he claimed) is a joke. It just is. At some point people just have to deal with reality which may not be what they want to hear. Parroting out Fetzer's nonsense does absolutely no good to anyone.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

15. agreed

It ranks right up there with any nonsense Alex Jones spews

Sometimes, terrible things happen in life.
We don't need to concoct a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory to try to explain them away.

[Nostradammit]

24. Crazy talk?!!

Methinks thou doth protest too much.

[sabrina 1]

25. I know, everything is 'crazy talk', stolen elections is 'crazy talk',

they would never steal an election, nor would anyone murder a great Liberal politician, not in America!!

I am sick of being told that everything is 'crazy talk'. It was 'crazy talk' also to say that Bush was lying about WMDs in Iraq, airc. It was crazy talk to believe that the US was torturing people in Iraq, until we saw the pictures.

I wonder why it bothers some people so much when people just don't accept the official stories we are told, especially since we KNOW how much we are lied to?

And all it does when there is so much intense effort to shut down any kind of discussion of these events is to make people wonder even more.

I don't know what happened with Wellstone, but considering those who hated him so much, nothing would surprise me. And I keep an open mind about these 'coincidental' deaths.

Ted Kennedy was supposed to be on that plane also, airc

[midnight]

26. I'm just beginning to listen to this lecture, and how the evidence submitted against the pilots

was manufactured... Who does that? Crazy talk indeed. Submitting false evidence into the report to make the pilots take the blame.

[hack89]

35. Fetzer claims that an "electro-magnetic pulse" (EMP) weapon was used to bring down the plane

despite the fact that Wellstone was in a plane that would not have been effected by an EMP weapon.


Wellstone died because he had very poor pilots.

Other pilots at the charter company told NTSB that pilot Richard Conry and first officer (co-pilot) Michael Guess both displayed below average flying skills. Conry had a well-known tendency to allow co-pilots to take over all functions of the aircraft as if they were the sole pilot during flights. After the crash, three copilots told of occasions in which they had to take control of the aircraft away from Conry.[23] After one of those incidents, only three days before the crash, the co-pilot (not Guess) had urged Conry to retire.[26] In a post-accident interview Timothy Cooney, Conroy's longtime friend and fellow aviator, said that Conroy expressed concerns about flying King Airs as late as April 2001, eighteen months prior to the accident.[27] Significant discrepancies were also found in the captain's flight logs in the course of the post-accident investigation indicating he had probably greatly exaggerated his flying experience, most of which had been accrued before a 11 year hiatus from flying due to a fraud conviction and poor eyesight.[23] In 2001, he had Lasik surgery but it only improved his vision to 20/50, 20/30[citation needed] and he was required by FAA regulations to wear corrective lenses;[citation needed] however, the pilot's wife and Timothy Cooney said he did not wear lenses after the surgery.[28] The coroner who examined his badly burned body was unable to determine if he was wearing contacts at the time of the crash.[29]

Guess was cited by co-workers as having to be consistently reminded to keep his hand on the throttle and maintain airspeed during approaches.[23] He had two previous piloting jobs: one with Skydive Hutchinson as a pilot (1988–1989), and another with Northwest Airlines as a trainee instructor (1999). However, he was dismissed from both jobs for lack of ability.[30] Conry's widow told the NTSB that her husband told her “the other pilots thought Guess was not a good pilot.”[31]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wellstone

[dflprincess]

38. And once it was clear that the bad weather story wasn't going to work

the pilots got even worse.

[Major Nikon]

39. Says who, Fetzer?

There never was a "bad weather story" that was anything more than ignorant media speculation.

It's very clear what happened to any instrument rated pilot who cares to read the NTSB report. The pilots started an instrument approach that started going badly from the beginning and instead of aborting it and trying it again, the pressed on and killed themselves and their passengers. Same story that's repeated over and over again. There's nothing at all uncommon about it. The NTSB report is backed up by FAA tracking data. So I guess if you really want to venture into tin-foil hat land, you can claim a massive conspiracy that involved the NTSB, the FAA, not to mention how ever many were involved in Fetzer's death ray nonsense. Fetzer is a non-pilot who has no clue what he's talking about yet tells a story that is just fucking nutty anyway. The sad part is he's not even all that good of a bullshit monger.

[midnight]

47. Here is a link that references the CNN news cycle that promoted the bad weather meme....

Reporter: There is no evidence that weather had anything to do with the crash.

Blizter: But the plane was flying into some sort of ice storm, was it not?

Reporter: There is no evidence that the weather had anything to do with the crash.

According to these observers CNN immediately cut away from the on-scene reporter who was not heard from again. Other watchers noted a crawl along the bottom of the screen which, they said, ran only one time, "Weather not a factor in crash."

Yet the stories currently posted on the CNN site still suggest that the crash was caused by bad weather and icing.

http://www.apk2000.dk/netavisen/artikler/global_debat/2002-na1103-ftw_wellstone_crash_eng.htm

[Major Nikon]

48. There were icing conditions present at the time

But Blitzer doesn't work for the FAA or the NTSB and last I checked what he says on TV has no influence on what they write in their report. Furthermore they ruled it out as a probable cause of the crash.

I guarantee you that accident investigators knew what caused the crash within days, if not hours of the crash. The radar data is easy to pull and analyze. You can look at the aircraft on the ground and tell it crashed after a stall. It took them a year to analyze all available data and prove their conclusions. The same thing happens on just about all crashes.

The article you posted was obviously written by a layman with zero aviation experience. Here's some obvious flaws I found just glancing over the article.

The pilots -- as is standard procedure for unmanned airports -- had sent a radio signal from their airplane to equipment at the airport which turned on the runway lights and activated a directional beacon that would align the plane with the runway.

What they are calling a "directional beacon" is really a VOR. The pilot never has to activate it. They are always on.

One of them related to me once that it would be easy to cause an aircraft to fly right into the ground by recalibrating the airport's IFR approach equipment and resetting the altitude. In fact, such a scenario was used in the movie Die Hard II.

This is movie bullshit.

Mechanical sabotage of flight controls that would only be triggered under certain conditions or an incapacitating gas might also offer explanations as to why a stall warning horn was not responded to. King Airs have pressurized cabins.

The author opines that the stall horn must not have been working due to "sabotage" or the crew was under the effect of "incapacitating gas" (WTF?), but this betrays the simplest cause of the accident. Stalls can happen quite suddenly, especially if the aircraft is banked hard. A turn raises the stall speed because it increases the load factor on the plane due to g forces. The author never mentions this because they obviously aren't a pilot. The stall horn could have also been affected by ice, which would have prevented it from sounding.

There are many questions, but the circumstances of the crash, as known thus far, do not lead to conclusions of pilot error, mechanical failure or bad weather.

Bullshit. The pilots flew a shitty approach. The approach coarse runs east to west. The aircraft was approaching from the south. They overflew the approach course by a mile. This was their first error (albeit not a major one). They applied a correction and overflew the approach course again. These aren't huge mistakes and weren't insurmountable on their own, but it shows sloppy flying on behalf of whichever pilot was flying the plane (most likely the less experienced co-pilot).

Airspeed and altitude were their major problems and this is evident from the start of the approach. They entered the approach at 164 knots and they should have been at 130. This, by itself is not an insurmountable problem, but again it shows a sloppy approach. What is worse is that they almost certainly didn't have the landing gear down at this point because the aircraft was going too fast. Again, more sloppiness. They were also descending at 1,400 fpm which would have been too sharp of a descent for a normal stabilized approach. Again, more sloppiness.

The crew would have known they were making a sloppy approach and they would have been making corrections and some of those corrections would have been drastic. They would have had to put down the landing gear in the middle of the approach, which changes the flight characteristics of the plane. They would have been correcting for course errors. They would have been pulling back the power because they were going too fast. Pilots describe instrument flying as juggling balls. You have course, heading, airspeed, and altitude, which are all balls which have to be juggled. Concentrate on one too much, and the rest go to hell. They also had communications and aircraft configuration to deal with. The bottom line is that this approach was going wrong from the very beginning. The pilots should have recognized this and made the decision to go around and either try it again or go land somewhere else. They continued a bad approach and 8 people lost their lives. This same scenario happens many times per year.

http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/reports/2003/AAR0303.pdf

[midnight]

49. But that is a story about the bad weather.....

[Major Nikon]

50. They wouldn't have been doing an instrument approach if there wasn't bad weather.

The only speculation was whether or not the weather was the prime cause of the accident. The NTSB largely ruled out weather as a primary cause. The NTSB didn't rule out the possibility of ice affecting the stall horn, but that wouldn't be a primary cause because the pilots would have gotten other feedback from other sources about an impending stall.

[midnight]

51. I'm not commenting on why they were doing the instrument approach, but that their was a weather

excuse....

[Major Nikon]

52. Had it been a clear day, the passengers and crew would still be alive

So the weather certainly contributed at some level, but it wasn't the primary cause. That's what the NTSB found, and their analysis and conclusions were based on facts and experience. Fetzer's conclusions were based on whatever he could pull out of his ass then package as marketable bullshit in the form of a book and lectures. He's a shit stain on the memory of Paul Wellstone.

[Nostradammit]

27. The Republican Party and corporate lobbying groups targeted Wellstone

The Republican Party and corporate lobbying groups targeted Wellstone as the Senate’s most vulnerable incumbent and raised a huge campaign war chest to help former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman beat the progressive Democrat. President George W. Bush visited Minnesota twice to campaign and raise money for Coleman, and Bush’s father followed suit. Karl Rove oversaw the anti-Wellstone effort, steering money from the energy industry—upset by Wellstone’s persistent opposition to oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—to support Coleman’s campaign. “There are people in the White House who wake up in the morning thinking about how they will defeat Paul Wellstone,” a senior Republican aide confided at the time. “This one is political and personal for them.”


http://inthesetimes.com/article/14009/paul_wellstones_legacy

[dflprincess]

37. It was never confirmed or denied by either Wellstone's or Kennedy's people that

they were scheduled to be on that plane together.

Kennedy was in the Minneapolis area that day to campaign with Wellstone. Wellstone's schedule changed to go a funeral in northern Minnesota and Kennedy stayed in the metro area and kept to the campaign plan (I believe Walter Mondale joined him). The plan was for Kennedy and Wellstone to meet up in Duluth for a rally later in the early evening.

The Duluth rally was part of the original schedule and it would certainly have made sense for them to fly up there together but whether this particular plane and pilots were also schedule for that is not known.

[Major Nikon]

28. Fucking crazy talk is more accurate

Methinks thou doth invest too highly in bullshit mongers.

[Nostradammit]

36. OK, cowboy.

[olddad56]

31. or, it is time you woke up and start listening to the 'crazy talk'

Maybe when 'Rove and Company' steal another election this year it will dawn on you that things ain't what they seem.

[Major Nikon]

32. I never could find a bag and shoes to go with a tin foil hat

So it's just not for me.

[olddad56]

33. in your case, I think the hat would go with anything someone told you to were.

[melody]

30. He and his family were murdered. nt

[dflprincess]

4. Wonderful tribute from Governor Mark Dayton:

http://www.mn.gov/governor/blog/the-office-of-the-governor-blog-entry-detail.jsp?id=102-48791

[limpyhobbler]

7. he was the best.

[marasinghe]

9. indeed.

[hrmjustin]

10. I remember crying al day long that day. I was asleep and my mom woke me up, and ...

... it was the worst news. I miss him and his voice.

[Skittles]

12. that was hard, very hard

[SomeGuyInEagan]

13. "Finally, someone I really want to vote for."

I still remember my wife saying that to me just days before, after a Wellstone volunteer stopped by our house (neither of us were here in '96).

I remember hearing it that day at work, from a radio in a common area at work. People slowly came out of their offices and walked toward the radio, just stunned and silent. Everybody was numb. And for the next few weeks, so many people in the Twin Cities had a distracted look and manner about them.

He touched people - people who never met him - and inspired us, helping us believe in something greater than ourselves. And when he left us so suddenly, it left an aching void in so many of us.

[azurnoir]

16. It was awful truly truly terrible I can not remember anything like this happening

that made me feel so disheartened and sad, I was at work and heard it on the radio and kept thinking no can't be.....

he wasn't just a great politician he was also a nice guy I met him a couple of times once by bumping into him (literally) in downtown Minneapolis. He was a great man a great liberal and a great loss from my state, our party and our country

[truthisfreedom]

22. My passion!

He will never rest until we fill his amazing shoes!

[argiel1234]

40. rest in peace Senator Wellstone

a decent and good man. One of the last decent politicians

[Paulie]

41. I met Paul Wellstone during an event in like 1998/99 in Chicago

back when I was a member of DSA USA Chicago. It's where I got my Wellstone for President 2000 bumper stickers. He could really light up a room. I still miss him.