politicalpartypoop.com

Too bad to check, although it’d certainly explain his half-hearted campaigning. He wanted to be VP, was surprised to find major buzz behind a presidential run, took a stab at it to see if he could convert the buzz into votes, and then predictably flamed out when he half-assed it.I don’t quite believe it, but Cameron mentioned something about this yesterday too on FNC. Can it be? Can the whole Fredhead phenomenon be nothing but a lark spun off from a stunt aimed at raising Fred’s profile to the point where he’d be viable as John McCain’s number two?

Update: Excruciating: “I sent off a resume to the campaign in, oh, seems like about May, and never heard from them.”

Update: A reader e-mails to remind us (snidely) that Cameron’s been hammering Fred ever since his pal Jim Mills was hired away from FNC by the campaign and then summarily fired a few weeks later, leaving him high and dry. I’ve noted that intriguing background detail myself in previous posts. I don’t know anything about Cameron to make me think he’d be so vindictive as to invent details to smear a disfavored subject, but there’s your grain of salt.

Update: Jack M. tells Ace that he heard the same rumors about Fred sniffing around for a VP nomination back when Cameron claims to have heard them, from which Ace mines this quandary:

Carl Cameron most likely let his fellow Foxies in on the Big Secret he was keeping confidential. This almost certainly distorted FoxNews’ coverage of Fred Thompson, which was strangely antipathetic towards him. Fred complained that he wasn’t getting much play at Fox, and there does seem to be some evidence for that.Fred Thompson should have enjoyed a fairly warm reception at conservative-leaning, Reagan-revering Fox — and yet he seems not to. Why? Well, perhaps because Fox was acting as if Cameron’s scoop were true… while not telling their audience the reasons for their behavior.

Which leads to serious questions. If FoxNews was sitting on an undisclosed scoop they could not reveal due to oaths of secrecy, should they then behave according to that knowledge?

READ THE REST HERE

One of the curiosities of American politics is the media’s ongoing infatuation with John McCain. A bit of this is based on things such as McCain’s opposition to torture (unfortunately we can no longer treat opposing torture like opposing child molestation, i.e., something one assumes is standard equipment in a presidential candidate rather than a luxury upgrade). Yet most of the journalistic love affair with McCain is based on other factors.Consider this typical endorsement from The Orlando Sentinel: While McCain “has stuck to his principles at the risk of sinking his campaign,” Mitt Romney “has abandoned positions that would have alienated his party’s conservative base.” (Indeed I checked a computer database and discovered that, in the national media, Romney is at least six times more likely to be described as a flip-flopper than McCain).

This does not merely ignore but actually inverts the truth. The fact is that no presidential candidate in either party has flip-flopped as egregiously as McCain on such a wide range of issues. Here’s just a small sample of Sen. Straight Talk’s recent series of remarkable conversions to politically convenient stances:

* On abortion rights, McCain has done a 180-degree turn, from favoring only the most minor restrictions and opposing the overturning of Roe v. Wade, to supporting an almost total ban, while advocating that the Supreme Court reverse Roe immediately.

* McCain has transformed himself from a deficit hawk who mocked supply-side economics, into someone who sounds like he’s drunk deeply from the wackiest vats of supply-side Kool-Aid, to the point where he now claims raising taxes decreases revenues (a claim so wildly in conflict with the facts - for example federal tax revenues almost doubled in real terms after the Clinton tax increases - that it’s either a shameless lie or a product of astounding ignorance).

* In regard to ethanol subsidies, McCain has gone from treating them as the worst sort of pork, to becoming a strong supporter of a program despised by economists, but beloved of Iowa farmers and the good people at Archer Daniels Midland.

* Six years ago McCain sternly condemned Jerry Falwell as “an agent of intolerance.” Eighteen months ago he gave the commencement address at Falwell’s university, while openly embracing one of the most noxious figures of the religious right.

These are just a few examples from a far longer list. On topics ranging from immigration, to campaign finance reform, to gay marriage, to accepting support from various sleazy characters he previously shunned, McCain has either completely reversed his views, or seriously equivocated regarding what they are this week.

Yet the media continue to lavish him with worshipful paeans to his supposedly uncompromising commitment to principled leadership no matter what the political cost etc., etc.

Part of this is accounted for by lazy autopilot journalism, which stops people from bothering to check whether the story line they’ve repeated for years still has any relationship to reality.

But part of it is something worse. When it comes to McCain, many of the sophisticates at the top of the media pyramid are like a masochistic spouse who treats open infidelity as a twisted sort of faithfulness. They love McCain because when he lies to their face he doesn’t even pretend to be doing otherwise. According to the pretzel logic of a certain kind of journalism, that counts as candor.

All this would be merely amusing if McCain were not a genuinely tragic figure. The young man who showed such exemplary courage in the face of his North Vietnamese tormenters has become an old man whose courage abandoned him when subjected to the more subtle tortures of worldly ambition.

“McCain is a “maverick” — the media encomium reserved for Republicans who reject important Republican principles — he would be a conciliatory president. He has indeed worked with Ted Kennedy on immigration reform, with Russ Feingold on restricting political speech (McCain-Feingold) and with Kennedy and John Edwards — a trial lawyer drawn to an enlargement of opportunities for litigation — on the “patients’ bill of rights.”McCain is, however, an unlikely conciliator because he is quick to denigrate the motives, and hence the characters, of those who oppose him. He promiscuously accuses others of “corruption,” the ubiquity of which he says justifies McCain-Feingold’s expansive government regulation of the quantity, timing and content of campaign speech.

McCain says he would nominate Supreme Court justices similar to Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Sam Alito. But how likely is he to nominate jurists who resemble those four: They consider his signature achievement constitutionally dubious.

When the Supreme Court upheld McCain-Feingold 5-4, Scalia and Thomas were in the minority. That was before Alito replaced Sandra Day O’Connor, who was in the majority. Two years later, McCain filed his own brief supporting federal suppression of a right-to-life group’s issue advertisement in Wisconsin because it mentioned a candidate for federal office during the McCain-Feingold blackout period prior to an election. The court ruled 5-4 against McCain’s position, with Alito in the majority.

In the New Hampshire debate, McCain asserted that corruption is the reason drugs currently cannot be reimported from Canada. The reason is “the power of the pharmaceutical companies.” When Mitt Romney interjected, “Don’t turn the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys,” McCain replied, “Well, they are.”

There is a place in American politics for moralizers who think in such Manichaean simplicities. That place is in the Democratic Party, where people who talk like McCain are considered not mavericks but mainstream.”

Read full article here on Real Clear Politics

Barack Obama’s campaign recently accused Hillary Clinton of fund raising among Indian-Americans and investing with an Indian company. This of course also includes the suggestion that the senator is a supporter of outsourcing. India, in the eyes of some, has become almost like an off-shore service center. Many union members see this as selling out America and it is a hugely divisive issue.
There were two main problems with this tactic. Even if there is truth to the accusation, it plays to anti-Indian sentiment and there isn’t enough in the way of damning evidence to make it stick in a manner that will pay off for Obama.Another problem relates to perception. The view that the senator is a gung ho free trader goes back to the administration of Bill Clinton. The problem with that perception is that senator Clinton has put distance between herself and the former administration of her husband given that she is now a candidate in her own right.

A statement released by the Obama campaign, appeared shortly after senator Clinton’s congressional financial disclosure forms went public. The statement accused the Clintons of accruing “significant financial rewards from their relationship with the Indian community.” It also included a reference to the senator as - “Sen.Clinton (D-Punjab)”.

This comes off as juvenile at best, racist at worst and in general not the type of petty attack you would expect from America’s self-proclaimed unifier.

I frankly doubt if Obama himself was in on this. It seems more like the work of over enthusiastic staffers looking to increase the profile of the campaign with a broadside intended to grab attention. As it turns out, it attracted the wrong type of attention.

The head of the US-India Political Action Committee, Sanjay Puri, relayed his displeasure and suggested the Obama campaign may be trafficking in “anti Indian-American stereotyping”. The protests hit home and Obama apologized to leaders of the Indian-American community.

Obviously in terms of demographics, the Indian-American community isn’t a major factor at the polls at this juncture in US history, but that is hardly the point. The fall-out from this gaff comes down to perceptions. Obama’s support has been slipping of late. He didn’t hit his stride in the TV debates and seemed nervous at times. He even admitted to having a case of the jitters. Incidents such as “D-Punjab” followed by yet another apology, risk making him appear unfocused and even weak. His claim to be about unity and a fresh vision is bound to suffer when attacks of this sort are judged to be petty and self-serving.

His stance as a campaign finance reform champion, has also been tarnished to some degree by his long standing connections with Tony Rezko, variously described as a “gangster” or “slum landlord” or even “regular Chicago-style business type guy” - depending on your point-of-view. Whether or not Rezko is more like a Donald Trump than a Tony Soprano is hard to say, but once again it comes down to perceptions.

Obama’s tendency to under-perform on the big stage along with recent gaffs makes you wonder if he is capable of landing a major punch under pressure that can hit the mark and score needed points.

Obama on Rezko deal: It was a mistake - November 5, 2006

Broken promises, broken homes

Two decades ago, Antoin “Tony” Rezko was running a food company that peddled hot dogs on Chicago’s beaches. Daniel S. Mahru supplied the ice.
These businessmen had a brainstorm for a new venture — rehabbing rundown buildings for poor black families.Rezko and Mahru had no construction experience. Yet City Hall gave their new company, Rezmar Corp., a $629,000 loan to help fix up an abandoned apartment building at 46th and Drexel.

They had applied for the loan just six days after Richard M. Daley won his first term as mayor in 1989, having campaigned on a promise to build more housing for the poor.

The rise and fall of Tony Rezko

Most of the horrors of the 20th century — of which there were many — would not have been possible without demagoguery or misleading propaganda.

Most people have too much of a sense of decency and too much common sense to have gone along with those horrors unless someone found a way to turn off their thinking and turn on their emotions.

That is how Jim Jones led hundreds of people to their deaths at Jonestown. On a much larger scale, that is how Lenin created a regime of mass murder in Russia, how Hitler did the same thing in Germany and Mao in China.

Yet we seem to be no more aware of a need to be on guard against demagoguery today, in the 21st century, than those people who looked up with open-mouthed adulation at Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and at numerous other demagogues, large and small, around the world throughout the turbulent 20th century.

Many people find it thrilling that the mantra of “change” is ringing out across the land during this election year. But let’s do what the politicians hope that we will never do — stop and think.

It is doubtful whether there is a single human being in this entire country who is 100 percent satisfied with everything that is going on. In other words, everybody is for change.

The real difference between liberals and conservatives is in which specific things they want to change, and in what way.

Milton Friedman was the leading conservative thinker of his time but he wanted to radically change the Federal Reserve, the school system, and the tax system, among other things.

Everybody is for change. They differ on the specifics. Uniting people behind the thoughtless mantra of “change” means asking for a blank check in exchange for rhetoric. That deal has been made many times in many places — and millions of people have lived to regret it.

It is not too much to ask politicians to talk specifics, instead of trying to sweep us along, turning off our minds and turning on our emotions, with soaring rhetoric.

Optimists might even hope for some logical consistency and hard facts.

Barack Obama says that he wants to “heal America and repair the world.” One wonders what he will do for an encore and whether he will rest on the seventh day.

That we have so many people who are ready to be swept along by such rhetoric is a huge danger, for it means that the fate of this great nation is at risk from any skilled demagogue who comes along.

Barack Obama says that he wants to “heal” the country while at the same time promoting the idea that all sorts of people are victims for whom he will fight.

Being divisive while proclaiming unity is something you can do only in the world of rhetoric.

Senator Obama has no monopoly on demagoguery, however. Former Senator John Edwards has been playing this game longer, even if not as effectively in the political arena.

John Edwards built his own fortune in the courtroom, depicting babies with birth defects as victims of the doctors who delivered them. The cost of such demagoguery has gone far beyond the tens of millions of dollars that Edwards pocketed for himself from gullible juries.

Such lawsuits based on junk science have driven up the cost of medical care, not only directly but even more so indirectly, by leading to an increase in Caesarean births and other costly “defensive medicine” to protect doctors rather than patients.

The world of John Edwards, like the world of Barack Obama, is a world of victims, whose savior he claims to be.

What is scary is how little interest the public and the media have in the actual track record of political saviors and the cry of generic “change.”

America is not czarist Russia or Iran under the shah, so that people might think that any change was bound to be for the better. Yet even in those despotic countries the changes — to communism and to the ayatollahs — made them far worse.

The time is long overdue for voters to demand specifics instead of rhetoric that turns their emotions on and their minds off.

Ron Paul Nutbars Crow About Nevada - From Brainsters Blog

You know you’re pathetic when you point to a state where you got 14% of the vote in a state caucus where you ran the only TV ads. An LA Times blogger enthuses:

Boy, oh, boy! Hidden behind all the hoopla, headlines and the Nevada caucus victories of Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton is one little-noticed but stunning political development and number:Ron Paul, the one-time Libertarian candidate and 10-term Republican congressman from Texas, was in second place. That’s right, Second Place. The 72-year-old ob-gyn who’s always on the end of the line at GOP debates or barred altogether, was running ahead of John McCain, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, in fact, ahead of….all other Republicans except Romney, who easily captured his second state in a week after Michigan.

Woooooot! The Ron Paul Love Revolution is surging!

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Also from Brainster - Drama Queen Conservative Bloggers

Add Jeff Goldstein to the list: I will not, will not, vote for John McCain.Oh, and he won’t vote for Mike Huckabee, either, and would have to hold his nose to vote for Mitt Romney. If Fred doesn’t win the nomination then Jeff’s going to sit this one out. LOL! Funniest thing Goldstein’s ever written.One of John Hawkins’ weekend guests does a little DQ herself:Jeff captures my ennui perfectly. And this reminds me of what I’ve written before: bloggers are a different breed than the average American. The air we breath on the conservative side is as rarefied as the air breathed in newsrooms around America.No, it’s as rarefied as the air breathed in the liberal blogosphere. And I mean that seriously. The idiot lib-bloggers spent all of 2006 trying to beat a Democrat because he was an apostate on one issue. The conservative bloggers look like they’re going to be spending all of 2008 trying to beat a Republican because he was an apostate on one issue.And don’t try to convince me it’s more than that one issue. McCain-Feingold? Tell me that you’re seriously going to sit out an election because of campaign finance laws. Torture (which Goldstein mentions)? Hey, I disagree with the senator on that issue, but guess what? He actually knows what torture is like, unlike Jeff or me.

You know, everybody on the conservative side of the aisle got a big laugh out of the gag that Hillary’s new theme song was, “It’s My Party, and I’ll Cry If I Want To”, and now what happens? Less than two weeks later, they’re singing it too!

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Oh what the hell, so I’m a drama Queen Conservative Blogger, I’m still not voting for McCain. John McCain can kiss my black ass and any blogger who is supporting him who wants to write this trifling bullshit chastising me for my political decision making can also kiss my black ass.

By Mark R. Levin - From via National Review: Found on Sweetness & Light

As I understand Victor Davis Hanson’s position, those of us who believe John McCain will cause severe damage to the conservative movement and the Republican party should hush up, or at least calm down, for this electoral juggernaut, who has managed to get 33 percent of the vote in South Carolina (despite backing by most of the establishment there) and is strong on the war in Iraq. And if we continue to bring attention to those issues that concern us — which are not insignificant to anyone who has worked in conservative circles for nearly 40 years — then we will destroy the party and Hillary Clinton will win, thereby losing the war on terror. VDH is neither the first nor will he be the last to make this case.

With all due respect, this is absurd on many levels. If John McCain is nominated and loses, it is because he doesn’t appeal to enough Americans, including the base that he has repeatedly betrayed (as Thomas Sowell puts it) over a long period of time. The suggestion that McCain and McCain alone is capable of fighting this war, given his experience, seems to be the core of the concern. Let me suggest that VDH and others who make this claim are wrong.

McCain never treated Bill Cohen, Clinton’s defense secretary, with the kind of personal animus he showed Donald Rumsfeld. McCain often confuses policy with personality affronts. He was social friends with Cohen so he didn’t admonish him about his hollowing out of the military. His attacks on Rumsfeld started before his disagreement over the surge. Their personalities clashed. And as before, McCain wanted to get even. The fact that he was right on the surge, which has now evolved into mythical proportions with the help of his campaign and supporters, goes high on the credit side of the ledger.

Read the rest here

A follow-up to Bryan’s post yesterday. Note well the results of Ruffini’s poll: Fred’s continued presence in the race is killing Romney, especially in Florida where he’s got double digits banked but probably won’t do better than fourth or fifth. If Huckabee was still a threat to win it’d be worth having Thompson around to take votes from him too, but he isn’t so it isn’t. All Huck is now is a stalking horse for McCain, lingering on to bleed social con votes from Mitt; if Fred stays in he’s playing the same part, a ball and chain on Romney’s other ankle in the first primary where Maverick can’t rely on Democrats and independents to push him through. Some Fredheads are fantasizing about him trudging along in hopes of a brokered convention, where he’d end up being the compromise candidate. So a guy who not only couldn’t win a primary but couldn’t do better than third place and the mid-teens even in the south is going to be The Man in November? Sounds like a plan.The Politico piece linked above speculates that McCain may promise the VP slot to Huckabee to stay in but he’s got enough problems with conservatives that he can’t afford another “centrist” on the ticket. So … how about Fred? I hear that Rich Galen, one of Fred’s advisors, was pitching the idea on Fox News radio this a.m. He’d give McCain instant credibility with the base, especially on immigration, and the Fredheads would thrill to the possibility of McCain retiring after one term, leaving their guy the presumptive nominee in 2012.

Read the rest of this post here

I have listened to Fred talk positively about McCain and their friendship. I listened to people ask why Fred did not talk openly about McCain’s liberal tendencies and not this shit.

I don’t give a shit, who McCain has on his ticket, I won’t vote for him under any circumstances. He is too tied to Democrats.

“On Friday during our golf broadcast, Nick Faldo and I were discussing Tiger’s dominance in the golf world and I used some poorly chosen words. I have known Tiger for 12 years and I have apologized directly to him. I also apologize to our viewers who may have been offended by my comments.”
“Poorly chosen words”. It seems we have been having a lot of that lately.“Lynch Tiger Woods in a back alley”?

Kelly, your little apology is nice, but you really shouldn’t be apologizing to Tiger. Instead, you should be apologizing to all the relatives and ancestors to the black men who have been brutalized and lynched in this country, from Thomas Shipp to William Brown. When you trivialize something as abominable and inhumane as lynching, you set us all back 50 years, and you insult us all. Not just Tiger. Mr. Woods will be fine. Money fame and power makes it easy to forgive those who have wronged you. But I don’t forgive you, because although these were just some “poorly chosen words” to you; the shit is personal to me.
So you will be back at work in two weeks and your ratings will probably go up, because more people know who you are now. You will be smarter the next time though, because you will know better than using “poorly chosen words” when speaking in public. You will remember that “poorly chosen words” should only be spoken in private.

The Obama campaign has released a recording (mp3) it says came from a Nevadan’s answering machine of an anonymous robocall that criticizes Obama for taking money from special interests while repeating, four times, his rarely used middle name: “Hussein.”"I’m calling with some important information about Barack Hussein Obama,” the call begins, before saying that  “Barack Hussein Obama says he doesn’t take money from Washington lobbyists or special interest groups but the record is clear that he does.”

After mentioning his full name once more, the call concludes:

“You just can’t take a chance on Barack Hussein Obama.”

Under pressure from Media Matters, the feminist and progressive blogosphere, feminist groups, and his bosses at MSNBC, Chris Matthews-the-misogynist struggled to apologize for the sexism yesterday. Matthews did not apologize for his long and infamous record of aiming sexist remarks at Hillary Clinton and other women. Rather Matthews apologized, sort of, for his most recent sexist remark.It was as if the other sexist barbs never happened. Oh, and Matthews made the point that he has a really great show and he is a really really great guy.

Howard Kurtz: For 10 days, the “Hardball” host had doggedly insisted he was just reciting a bit of history when he said on the air that “the reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around.”But protests against those and other remarks by Matthews reached a peak yesterday when the presidents of such groups as the National Organization for Women, Feminist Majority and National Women’s Political Caucus sent a joint letter of complaint to NBC News President Steve Capus.

AP: Besides Steinem, the letter to NBC News President Steve Capus was signed by Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women; Lulu Flores, president of the National Women’s Political Caucus; Carol Jenkins, president of the Women’s Media Center; and Eleanor Smeal, president of Feminist Majority. . . Last week’s Clinton comment was the trigger for their protest, but they said Matthews’ comments over the years “demonstrate a larger pattern of overt sexism when discussing women.” Matthews was also in the crosshairs of the liberal media watchdog Media Matters, which wrote to Capus on Wednesday to express concerns about the fast-talking political analyst.

This image released by Golfweek magazine shows the cover of the Jan. 19, 2008 issue. Dave Seanor, vice president and editor of the weekly magazine, said he was overwhelmed by negative reaction to the photo of a noose on the cover of this week’s issue, illustrating a story about the suspension of Golf Channel anchor, Kelly Tilghman , for using the word ‘lynch’ in an on-air discussion about how to beat Tiger Woods

Read article: Golfweek noose elicits strong reaction

Look out, soon will come ANOTHER hollow apology from some cracka.
I’m going to keep asking this until I stop reading these idiot ass stories.
You white folks out there STILL think that race is no longer an issue?

You have to watch this video. It shows Tom Cruise, with all the wide-eyed fervor that he brings to the promotion of a movie, making the argument for Scientology, the bizarre 20th-century religion. Making the argument is an understatement. The Hollywood actor, star of movies such as Mission Impossible, is a complete fanatic. “When you’re a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you’re the only one who can really help… We are the way to happiness. We can bring peace and unite cultures.” There’s much much more. Let me put it this way: if Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch was an 8 on the scale of scary, this is a 10.

Click here to view video, the clip was pulled from You Tube