Protest needed "R" rating

It is too bad that so much time is spent preaching hate. It was nice to see notable Wyoming Democrat leaders, Gov. Dave and Amb. Sullivan to a name a couple, chose not to attend this day's hate activities. Too bad Rep. Pete Jorgenson decided to give this event credibility for their stand. I hope the people of Teton County will stand up and vote him out at the next election! Hate has no place in Wyoming and the electorate should speak loud and clear about it.
Sad Cowboy

I have to admit that I was not surprised by the viciousness of the protest. Having only lived here about 2 years, I find that the people complaining about loss of their constitutional rights all too willing to vilify a person if they choose not to subscribe to the same opinion. I am happy to see that only a handful of kooks acted so viciously and that it is not an example of the greater community. If you don't like the war, vote the people out of office that supported it - Clinton, Kerry, Pelosi, etc. They not only voted to go there in the first place, but also voted to fund it this past spring after they were voted into office with a mandate to end the war! Oh, by the way - I will no longer go to Shades or use any other business service in which their employees act so shamefully.
Common Man

To all apologists for America’s present anti-Constitutional regime and those too self-serious and too obtuse to realize they’ve been had by the protesters, including the unthinking reactionaries who chastise the protestors for corrupting children while tearing down Cheney’s effigy, this is for you: Your outrage and indignation, arising as it does from your anal, circumscribed, and reactionary sentiments—-ill-formed as they are by false notions of superiority promoted by the most fanatical and most servile of the unpatriotic and increasingly isolated right-wing—-at the protestors’ act of pure political theatre is as stunning as it is entertaining. How did you miss the protest organizers’ ham-fisted scheme to generate publicity and satirize the public relations, psych-ops stunt perpetuated by the U.S. military? Maybe you did not know Uncle Sam had to ship in young Iraqis as props during the staged pull down of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad? How has all this delicious irony been so obviously lost on you? Nonetheless, by wading into this counter-psych-ops fray, Scarlett and Grossman have elevated this small band of protesters public relation’s victory into an even greater coup. And what is equally lost in all their self-revealing and serving comments is any insight into their own rank hypocrisy. What Mary Grossman fails to mention in her weak-kneed OP-Ed is that her for-profit only product, The Planet, benefited enormously from this voluntary, non-profit protest by capturing the demonstrators on video and being the first to publish the story in both text and video form on-line. Given the opportunity to contain dissemination of her so-called “surreal,” “vicious” and “disrespectful” images —- both before and after Matt Drudge picked up the story on his “Drugereport.com” -– Grossman opted to prostitute all the increased attention and traffic for personal gain. And in the process, she is delivering for her advertisers who put food on her family’s table a bonanza of exposure. It is clear as a bell that Grossman, via her on-line asset "Planetjh.com", put commerce over her newfound and highly dubious moral standards. It is she, not the protesters, who is most putting kids at risk by continuing to expose countless children —- and the otherwise impressionable and radical souls around the globe -— each day the story and video plays on her Web site. Meanwhile, Bill Scarlett, who while reproaching the marchers and protesters forgets to also decry the Planet’s crass commercialism, profiteering and collaboration with the enemy, is equally endorsing the Planet’s endangerment of our troops. And by doing so, he has called into question his credentials as a clear-thinking Republican and American. Additionally, the Planet’s trafficking in these images that both Scarlett and Grossman have given their stamp to, either explicitly or implicitly, have also neutralized any high-minded homilies about preserving the public interest and denouncing the manner in which the protestors’ attempted to rightfully redress grievances against a high government official. Their flawed disapproval exemplifies their inability to separate reality from fantasy. Further, those who condemn the pantomime of tearing down Cheney’s effigy are likely too dense and just gullible enough to question whether the tearing down of Saddam’s stature in 2003 was not also stagecraft for their uncritical domestic consumption. Beyond their blindness to the obvious and already well-documented, their ignorance of the basis for the well-founded charge that protest directed at such a high official representative of the United States’ government as Richard Cheney is justified for his willful, repeated and with reckless disregard for his many transgressions under Title 18, code 371 of the U.S. code. Scarlett, who has compromised his normal political smarts by behaving like an obedient pit bull, opts to defend Cheney: a fellow Republican who polls show the majority of decent and forward-thinking fellow Republicans and social conservatives are abandoning in droves. If even not proven a criminal in a court of law or via Congress, Cheney has nonetheless unpatriotically and needlessly marched to their deaths nearly 4,000 Americans and has the blood of thousands more innocent Iraqi men, women and children on his hands. Those who continue to support Cheney’s senseless and bloodthirsty campaign -— based on documented falsehoods, fraud, lies, half-truths, deliberately misleading statements and disinformation emanating from his federal office and public remarks —- are too callow to do their own thinking and homework and are thus stubbornly stuck on the wrong side of history. Aside from the protesters display of simulated revolt to illustrate the true violence to both humanity and the Constitution that the effigy’s likeness represents, have either Scarlett or Grossman shielded their own children from the psychologically damaging results of overexposure to news images of war or their own mindless repetition of right-wing talking points approving in private the obscenity of championing this unjust aggression? We know Cheney and Bush and the rest of this administration have conspired to defraud the Congress and the American people, in violation of federal statutes, because it has already been exhibited by the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, in their September release of a report now available on line, signed by Republicans and Democrats, showing the White House manufactured a nexus between Saddam and 9/11. Scarlett’s support and defense for such a corrupt regime and denouncement of patriotic Americans who would dare to oppose it demonstrates his immaturity to inspire a much-needed Republican Renaissance to save his sinking party. And Grossman’s blind allegiance to those who would march brave men and women into certain and unnecessary via the massive and deliberate deception of the Congress and the nation, without apology, and her promotion of both sides solely for personal gain proves her personal opinions are as mercenary and shallow as her capacity to vet the claims of her those who inform her statements and news product.
BelleCanto