Monday, September 24, 2007

Is Thompson Chicken?




A press release from Fred Thompson's campaign:

Fred Thompson will be interviewed on Bill Bennett's radio show, Morning in America WHEN: 7:30 am EST, Monday, September 24, 2007. Check your local listings.

This reminds me. Has Thompson done a single real media interview since dipping his folksy toe into presidential waters? I believe the answer is no. He's been on Fox with just Hannity (no Colmes for "balance"). But Meet the Press ? A Google search shows he was on Tim Russert's show on March 2, 2003, debating actor Mike Farrell on the Iraq war to come. In May of 2005, he graced the show to discuss nuclear terrorism. In July of that year, he appeared on MTP advocating the nomination of John Roberts to be chief justice of the Supreme Court. But so far he's not been on MTP to face any hardball questions. What is he waiting for?

GIVE THAT MAN A CROSSBOW. A press release from the John Edwards campaign:

Chapel Hill, North Carolina - In honor of National Hunting and Fishing Day, Senator John Edwards today released the following statement:


"Today, Elizabeth and I join with many Americans in recognizing National Hunting and Fishing Day and the time-honored traditions and sporting values that this day highlights.

"We proudly support the great contributions that outdoor men and women have made and continue to make in conservation efforts and the incredible economic benefits generated all across America by their passion.

"Above all, we honor the fact that today these core values and contributions are passed from fathers and mothers to their children and continue to provide a source of fellowship for families and friends everywhere."


Do you think that John Edwards annually celebrates National Hunting and Fishing Day at his house? ("This venison sure tastes good!") Just goes to show that when you run for president, you feel compelled to say a lot of things you wouldn't otherwise be saying. It's odd, though; I did not receive press releases hailing National Hunting and Fishing Day from the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Christopher Dodd, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, or Mike Gravel. Guess they were too busy shooting deer or hooking bass.

Posted by David Corn at September 24, 2007 11:00 AM

26 comments:

Hajji said...

Thompson was a lot more attractive to "conservatives" when they had the luxury of anticipation.

Now that his lackadasical campain is showing him to to be nothing more than a surly, inflatable scarecrow his troops seem to be hesitant to rally.

A couple of real Q&A's will show him to be further from the "ideal" candidate they were hoping him.

capt said...

"a surly, inflatable scarecrow "


*snort*

capt said...

Generals opposing Iraq war break with military tradition



The generals acted independently, coming in their own ways to the agonizing decision to defy military tradition and publicly criticize the Bush administration over its conduct of the war in Iraq.

What might be called The Revolt of the Generals has rarely happened in the nation's history.

In op-ed pieces, interviews and TV ads, more than 20 retired U.S. generals have broken ranks with the culture of salute and keep it in the family. Instead, they are criticizing the commander in chief and other top civilian leaders who led the nation into what the generals believe is a misbegotten and tragic war.

The active-duty generals followed procedure, sending reports up the chain of command. The retired generals beseeched old friends in powerful positions to use their influence to bring about a change.

When their warnings were ignored, some came to believe it was their patriotic duty to speak out, even if it meant terminating their careers.

It was a decision none of the men approached cavalierly. Most were political conservatives who had voted for George W. Bush and initially favored his appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary.

But they felt betrayed by Bush and his advisers.

“The ethos is: Give your advice to those in a position to make changes, not the media,” said Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, now retired. “But this administration is immune to good advice.”


More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Country before party and before any office. Truth before lies on every subject.



capt

Gerald said...

Quotable
Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.
– James Bryce

Gerald said...

Our country must also be morally strong.

An immoral country will destroy herself.

Personally, I see the destruction of the United States of Evil before my eyes. It will happen soon.

David B. Benson said...

Neocon advises Bush:

Hit Iran!

Horrors...

Gerald said...

Thompson is the perfect candidate for the Nazis, fascists, fundies, evans, kkkhristian zionists, lobbyists, the rich, and corporate Nazi America. He is lazy; he will follow and sniff toward the money; he will be their puppet; and he will continue to lead our country into everlasting wars.

Is he a law and order man? Yes!!! He will make the laws in order for us to follow them or else.

Gerald said...

What Norman Podhoretz does not understand, what is a mortal sin?

There are three things necessary in committing a mortal sin.
1. grave matter - killing God's children is a grave matter.
2. full knowledge - Hitler Bush is fully aware that killing God's children is a grave matter.
3. complete consent - Hitler Bush and the United States of Evil have already committed a mortal sin in attacking Iraq. Our souls are already damned. Hitler Bush's attack and our approval of his attack on Iran will only compound our mortal sins of our damned souls. Since we are already damned, who cares if we add more mortal sins to our wretched souls?

Yes, Iran will be attacked by the United States of Evil!!!!!

Gerald said...

Who knows about a Hunting and Fishing Day? John Edwards is a phoney and a hypocrite hiding behind his wife and her problems. Everyone has problems. With Hitler Bush in office he has compounded our problems a hundred fold.

Gerald said...

The Age of Irresponsibility

Nazi Americans are permitted to murder another human being.

David B. Benson said...

David Corn --- Please do not insult chickens!

Gerald said...

And now we have the awful absurdity of U.S. diplomats going out to make allies among Iraqis and build civil society—winning “the battlefield of the mind,” Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone told The Washington Post—surrounded by security guards who operate in an amoral universe and are hated by Iraqis. The Blackwater phenomenon undermines the Petraeus surge, which applies counterinsurgency principles that require winning over the local population, and isolating the bad guys from them. Instead, Blackwater is seen by Iraqis as the face of a malignant occupation. Remember the scene at the beginning of the movie “Braveheart,” when the evil English lord claims droit du seigneur—the right to deflower Mel Gibson’s bride—over the powerless Scots? Well, that medieval reality is something like what Iraqis are living with today. This is the “model” George W. Bush will bequeath to the world.

Morality begins when people take responsibility for their actions. But no one in the Bush administration has taken responsibility for one disaster after another in Iraq. Nor does anyone seem to care. As Maureen Dowd has pointed out, so passé is the concept of taking responsibility that people who do bad things are even skipping the usual stage of shame, or “slinking away.” Instead they are “slinking back” into public life.

The Bush administration’s lack of concern about holding its employees responsible for their actions extends to obstructing civil suits against rogue contractors under the False Claims Act. “None of the lawsuits has been successful,” says lawyer Alan Grayson. “In a couple of the cases the government has said the case has to be shut down because it involves state secrets.” (The Justice Department has said it is carefully looking at the suits.) Who has been in charge of this? None other than Peter Keisler, the former head of Justice’s civil division who is now acting attorney general, says Grayson, who is involved in several cases against Blackwater and other contractors. “They run people off the road. They treat the local population like it’s some big shooting gallery. It’s not just Blackwater; it’s everybody.” No, that’s letting the responsible party off too easily: it’s the Bush administration.

Gerald said...

Maureen Dowd is one of my foxes

Gerald said...

Maureen Dowd is truly a fox

Gerald said...

How Hitler Bush became the new Saddam Hussein

This article is a long read but a good read for all.

Gerald said...

Neocons push for another war

Gerald said...

Hitler Bush's M. O. in Iraq

Gerald said...

Hitler Cheney asked Nazi Israel to attack Iran

Gerald said...

There is no question that war with Iran will happen and it will happen soon.

capt said...

Tracking Political Prosecutions


In the last two weeks, two sources, one of them inside of the Justice Department, have told me that a scheme was hatched in the upper echelons of the Bush Administration shortly after it took office in 2001 or early in 2002. The project identified John Edwards and Hillary Clinton as likely Democratic challengers to President Bush, and identified prominent trial lawyers around the United States as the likely financial vehicle for Edward’s rise. It directed that their campaign finance records be fly-specked, and that offenses not be treated as administrative matters but rather as serious criminal offenses.

The scheme contemplated among other things that raids be staged on the law offices involved, and that the records seized not be limited to campaign finance—there was an acute interest in all politically oriented documents, in order to seize valuable intelligence on strategic planning from the enemy camp.

This all sounds rather fantastic—even more insidious than the enemies list days of the Nixon era. It is precisely the sort of crude harassment that a primitive dictatorship would use against its enemies—like Alexander Lukashenko in today’s Belarus, for instance. But as the descriptions were passed to me, I instantly recognized the pattern described recently in a case which has made the headlines in Michigan involving a prominent lawyer there, and a second case in Los Angeles. According to one source, the number of these cases is at least five and they are scattered about the country. One case, described to me in some detail, closely matches the pattern in Michigan and Los Angeles and occurred in the south on the Gulf of Mexico.

Why, I wondered, would the attorneys involved not scream bloody murder about this? Then it struck me. The threat of criminal investigation and prosecution is devastating to their law practices. Of course, they would keep it completely secret. And that silence has made the entire scheme possible. I am told that these cases involved the attorneys general personally—both John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales—that their go-ahead was needed to stage the raids. And that in each case, the greatest concern within the political pirates commanding the operation has been that the public would get wind of the bigger picture. It was essential to pull it off that each case be viewed as something standing all on its own, and that the fact that there was a politically motivated project be obscured.


More HERE

David B. Benson said...

Re: Iran. All the top generals and admirals are against a war with Iran.

capt said...

Democrats Answer to Republican Resolution Regarding MoveOn.org



Sens. Jim Webb (Va.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) and every other Democrat who has served in uniform should go the Senate floor together and call for a vote on a resolution similar to the following:

Be it resolved that the United States Senate deplores actions take by President Bush that have led to preventable casualties for those killed or wounded in action as a result of the continuing failure to provide body armor and fully protected vehicles;

The Senate deplores the president’s lack of support for key areas of military medicine and care, which has resulted in unacceptable shortcomings in treatment for many wounded troops and veterans;

The Senate deplores the president’s failure to devote sufficient resources to veterans and the resulting harm done through veterans’ centers that are undersupported and treatment of disabled veterans that in many cases is grossly unfair and punitive.

The Senate deplores the president’s lack of support for homeless veterans at a time when homelessness among veterans is rising;

The Senate deplores the mismanagement, crimes and corruption that surround the president’s policies of occupation in Iraq, in which tens of billions of American dollars and tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Iraqi cash have been lost, stolen or otherwise fallen into the hands of criminals and those attacking American troops;

The Senate deplores the corruption and mismanagement under the president’s watch that has permitted huge volumes of American weapons to be stolen or lost, weapons that in some cases have fallen into enemy hands because of presidential neglect, thereby creating life-endangering harm to American troops.

Be it therefore resolved that the United States Senate deplores these actions, and calls on the president to immediately meet with bipartisan congressional leaders to address these crises that threaten our troops and seek solutions that have not been forthcoming from the president because of long-term mismanagement, failures and corruptions on matters essential to the safety of American troops in combat.

The above draft resolution is a partial statement of presidential failures that are directly harming our troops, and Senate Republicans should be forced either to join us in deploring the damage the president has done to our troops or, if they filibuster against our efforts to support American troops, to vote on this resolution for as long as it takes, to get the troops the support they need and which the president has failed to provide.

Let the Republicans vote with Democrats or against the troops.


More HERE

David B. Benson said...

Hot dog, capt! Hope there is some spine and this is 'debated'...

capt said...

Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.: Edward Abbey

=
"The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad soil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds-where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough-a modest living-and no man is made possessor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities.": Walt Whitman (1819-1892):

=
"A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property.": Harold Laski

=
"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. "In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. "The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war... and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." : James Madison, April 20, 1795


===

Thanks ICH Newsletter!

capt said...

Examiner Exclusive: Bush quietly advising Hillary Clinton, top Democrats


President predicts GOP will keep control of White House after 'tough race' in 2008


President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president.

In an interview for the new book “The Evangelical President,” White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.’ ”

Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.”

“Especially if it’s a Democrat,” the chief of staff told The Examiner in his West Wing office. “He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”


More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Any questions?



capt

capt said...

Expert: Prosecution Just Cost of Biz For Iraq Security Contractors



Earlier today I guessed that a potential prosecution of Blackwater by the Iraqi government would cause a panic from other security contractors fearing a similar fate. But a leading expert on private military companies says I'm underestimating the allure of the financial score.

Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution has done pioneering work on the emerging role of private security, going back to his landmark 2003 book Corporate Warriors. Singer says that even in the unlikely event that Iraq prosecutes Blackwater, its rivals will look to take over its multi-million contract with the State Department rather than look to the next flight out of Baghdad (the contracts since 2003 have been worth approximately $678 million). People are going to weigh risks differently, he says. Just like [security firms] ask 'is moving a convoy worth the risk to life and limb?', they'll ask 'is making a certain amount of money worth it?' It'll be another weighting factor if there are prosecutions. Some will accept it, and some will say it's not worth ending up in an Iraqi jail.

If anything, Blackwater's rivals were angered not so much by the Iraqis' threatened expulsion of Blackwater, but by the Maliki government's flip-flopping on the issue, said Singer. This was a business opportunity that opened up for them and then very quickly closed off. Blackwater has lots of competitors, and they didn't get a slice of the pie, Singer adds. But if they are prosecuted, then yes, it's going to cause a lot of wringing of hands in the contractor corps, particularly among non-Iraqi nationals, and especially among western companies, including those from the U.S. 'Am I now going to potentially be prosecuted by an Iraqi kangaroo court?'

With the Maliki government incensed over the Nisour Square shootings and the State Department attempting to simultaneously protect Blackwater and mollify the Iraqis, Singer observes that the long-simmering feud over security contracting has thrown the U.S. off its diplomatic game. Instead of pressuring Maliki on passing benchmark legislation, the U.S. is trying to appease the prime minister over the security company's continued role in Iraq, post-shooting. We're damned if we do and damned if we don't, he says. That's the corner we're painted into by outsourcing first and not even bothering to ask questions later.


More HERE