corrente

This episode should serve as a warning shot to the Kerry campaign and to all organizations seeking to hold this Administration accountable. The far-right smear machine is saying: We will do anything--up to and including McCarthyite attacks on 9/11 widows and orphans--to insure victory in November. We are on the cusp of something extremely ugly in 2004. ~ Eric Alterman, The Nation, March 25, 2004

See the latest example of what Alterman is talking about via John McKay at archy, read: Just when you think they couldn't get any lower | The GOP surprises us again.

[snip]...Teresa Kerry's foundation has "connections" to and has helped finance "Fidel Castro's Internet network." [snip]

John McKay writes:

This is a repeat of an already debunked slander produced by a group of Richard Mellon Scaife funded hit men called the Capital Research Center and repeated by the freepers, the usual talking heads, and Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

As a further note: The CRC (Capital Research Center) JM mentions above is an organization essentially devoted to the old right-wingie wet dream of "defunding" non profit organizations it considers "liberal". As CRC President Terrence Scanlon told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February 2001 (speaking about "liberal" non-profit organizations):

...for the first time we have an opportunity to go after these groups and take away their federal money." [1]

Some of the "groups" (including labor unions) Scanlon and his CRC creatures consider too liberal to live include the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association. (according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report [1])

However the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Hoover Institution (theres a legacy to celebrate) are held up as true examples of the American "conservative" way. Lets hear it for the movers and shakers of the "new feudalism".

[1] See Disinfopedia for more on info on the CRC.

Heres what the Tides Foundation has to say with regards to Teresa Heinz Kerry or Heinz endowment connections to any attempts to provide internet access to Cuba. Via Business Wire:

August 10, 2004 02:13 PM US Eastern Timezone

Tides Foundation Statement Regarding Planned News Conference by Florida Congress Members

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 10, 2004--According to a news advisory, three members of the United States Congress are planning to hold a news conference today claiming that money from the Heinz Endowments granted to Tides Foundation or Tides Center projects has gone to support internet connections to Cuba. These claims are entirely false.

Those three Congress members are Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Business Wire/Tides statement continues...

No one from the offices of these Congress members has contacted Tides Foundation or Tides Center in an attempt to verify these false claims. These claims are also clearly refuted by a statement on our website clarifying our relationship with the Heinz Endowments--a relationship that has been repeatedly mischaracterized.

Specifically, claims that money from the Heinz Endowments granted to Tides Foundation or Tides Center projects has gone to support the Institute for Global Communications (IGC) or any of its associate organizations are entirely false. IGC is a Tides Center project. IGC has also received funding support from Tides Foundation--exactly $12,700 between 1993 and 2002.

None of these transactions have anything to do with the Heinz Endowments whatsoever.

A detailed statement about the relationship between Tides and the Heinz Endowments can be found at www.tides.org.

A complete list of all Heinz Endowment grants to Tides Foundation and Tides Center projects can be found at www.heinz.org; specifically at www.heinz.org/files/HP_Digit.pdf.

Once again the Right demonstrates it's inability to accurately "connect the dots" in almost any honest context. Not that honesty is a big priority with these folks. One does sometimes have to wonder if many of these Republicans driving these kinds of smears are little more than well pampered pathological liars, or, perhaps, just simply altogether dotty themselves.

And speaking of Lincoln Diaz-Balart and connecting dotty dots and what have you nots...in related news:

What Bush did was announce, in June, new measures against the government of Fidel Castro. At the last moment he added a provision: From now on, exiles can visit their families in Cuba only once every three years. Previously, one visit was allowed per year. Those journeys will be restricted to 14 days, when before there was no maximum stay. The government also announced new restrictions on the amount of money that can be spent in Cuba and sent to family there.

Those changes, championed by Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, were seen as a concession to the far right Cuban Liberty Council, which has evolved as the Bush administration's closest ally in the Cuban community over the past four years and part of the president's Florida base. The CLC wants fewer visits so that Castro will collect fewer dollars — cash that the CLC says helps him survive.

[...]

"Bush did this for purely electoral purposes and took erroneous advice," says Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the Democracia Movement, which includes many of those post-1980 exiles. "Bush isn't strangling Castro, he's strangling families. We Cubans believe that family reunification is one of our human rights. - SEE: "Law restricting Cuban exiles may cost Bush votes" Palm Beach Post, Aug 09, 2004.

Uh oh. Hey, look over there! Teresa Heinz Kerry and a commie plot!!!!!

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