If you want to know why I support John McCain for President, and worked so hard against John Fraude Kerry, just watch this video. Keep a box of Kleenex handy when you do though, because it's highly emotional. I love his mom, she's an absolute pip!
Like Mr. Prescott, Mr. Ball is incensed that high-profile people like Al Gore — or environmental groups with deeper pockets than his — have not stepped up to the plate.
Hmmm, you can accuse Al of many things, but failing to step up to the (dinner) plate doesn't seem to be one of them:
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll have a hamburger!
The Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 44% of Likely Voters would definitely vote against Romney if he’s on the ballot in 2008. That’s a point higher than the 43% who would definitely vote against Clinton. Only one other possible candidate surpassed Clinton in this category all year (former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who is not considered a candidate at this time).
Frank DeMartini is often cited by the 9-11 Deniers as an example of someone who believed that the Twin Towers could not have been brought down by airplanes, including the dolts who designed the "Patriots Question 9-11" site. DeMartini said what is attributed to him, but it is despicable to include him on that website, when he is not around to defend himself from the lies of the Islamofascist apologists that make up the 9-11 "Truth" movement.
DeMartini is one of the true heroes of 9-11, as the book 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Stay Alive Inside the Twin Towers makes clear. Quoting from pages 164-165:
There was no further word or sightings of Pete Negron, thirty-four, father of two, or of Carlos DaCosta, forty-one, father of two; or of Pablo Ortiz, forty-nine, father of two; or of Frank DeMartini, forty-nine, father of two--four men who worked anonymously for a faceless government bureaucracy. On the morning of September 11, 2001, they tore open walls with crowbars and shined flashlights and pried apart elevator doors on the 90th, 89th, 88th, 86th, and 78th floors, saving the lives of at least seventy people in the north tower. When last heard from, they were on their way to try to free more, no doubt believing that the building they were in would last long beyond their old age.
Obviously these girls have been way overexposed, but I found this documentary on them quite interesting. The girls themselves come off reasonably well, although their mother is obviously a psycho. Note in particular the speaker phone call where the old white supremacist talks about his sexual attraction to the young teens. There has always seemed to me to be more than just a touch of pedophilia to the media's fascination with the twins.
It's also striking that the method used to sell the White Power message is very similar to the way the "Truthers" spread their poison. Note particularly the scene in the film in the bar, where the mother keeps saying "Just listen to the CD," in the same way that the "Truthers" say, "Just watch the CD."
There’s a weird sort of respect for the Paulites in some corners of the event. One brand of thinking was that Paul’s support was all online vapor, strange mutants from the Internet who couldn’t muster a crowd. But Paul’s crowd is enormous.
“That’s the only story so far,” one reporter told me during the dull-ish candidate speeches. “The presence of the Ron Paul people.”
And then he asked me: “Have you met any of them from Iowa?”
And that is the reason Paul’s people were able to generate so much light and heat and yet enter the poll with such pessimism. Volunteer after volunteer was from outside Iowa. And only Iowans could cast a vote in the poll. Campaign staff estimated that only half of the people milling around their tent were eligible voters and that 1000 votes would be a decent haul. Not winning, but decent.
Not decent, but fifth place. The real story of Iowa is that in a race with no McCain, no Giuliani and no Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney still couldn't get 1/3rd of the voters to select him.
I make the local arts & entertainment weekly in a terrific article by Stephen Lemons about my battle with James Bennett of the Chief Brief and Mark Roberts (and many, many others) against the 9-11 "Truthers".
The Phoenix New Times is comparable to the Village Voice in New York. I would classify it as liberal, but sane liberal, and it features some of the best journalism in the state--their writers regularly win the Virg Hill Award, considered the highest honor in Arizona newspaper writing. Steve's a terrific writer, as this passage will attest:
Curley patrols a veritable Mos Eisley cantina of conspiracy mavens, kooky celebs, Holocaust deniers, nutty academics, anti-Semites, aged hippies, delusional twentysomethings, and cynical, Elmer Gantry-like opportunists.
Is the name of the new book by Senator John McCain with Mark Salter. I've been reading the book for the last few days, and find it fascinating. I don't think there's any doubt that it will be compared to Profiles in Courage, especially considering the subtitle, "Hard Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them".
The book is broken down into sections on Awareness, Foresight, Timing, Confidence, Humility and Inspiration, with 3-4 biographies illustrating each trait. The bios are well-chosen for their purpose and the writing is superb, indeed soaring at times.
Much of this is familiar ground for me; the opening segment on Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey, and a later one on Winston Churchill are related to longtime passions of mine, so I did not expect to learn much from them, and yet I did.
And when it came to Marshall Field and King Gillette, it was stuff that I had heard about in general but never read. The book talks not solely about their genius but about how they were the right men for the time in a way that hits on so many things that have interested me.
For example, with Gillette, they point out the parsimony of the generations before he'd come along. I'm old enough to remember a sewing machine being a feature in every house; I'd suspect it's hard to find one these days. I remember when people would return their milk bottles to the store for a nickel, or the Coke bottles for two cents. The idea that something could be disposable and yet cheaper than the alternative was alien to America in the 19th century.
The section on Reagan and the collapse of the Soviet Union is particularly highly recommended. Nobody but Ronaldus Maximus could have predicted that the Evil Empire would fail. It's actually staggering now to think that the last man shot crossing the Berlin Wall died only 18 years ago.
I recommend the book highly, particularly for its inspirational message to youngsters that diligence and observation are the keys to getting ahead in life in today's America just as they were when these people were getting their start.
Romney: ...”Did you notice in Lebanon, what Hezbollah did? Lebanon became a democracy some time ago and while their government was getting underway, Hezbollah went into southern Lebanon and provided health clinics to some of the people there, and schools. And they built their support there by having done so. That kind of diplomacy is something that would help America become stronger around the world and help people understand that our interest is an interest towards modernity and goodness and freedom for all people in the world. And so, I want to see America carry out that kind of health diplomacy...”
Sounds quite a bit like Patty Murray's dipstick comments about Osama and his support for daycare centers.
Romney responds by saying that he's consistently denounced Hezbollah, but note that he does not deny make the statement above.
We now know that, at the very least, the New Republic's Scott Beauchamp lied about the timing and location of the ridiculing of a disfigured woman in a U.S. mess hall--the incident, if it happened, took place in Kuwait, Beauchamp now says, before he had the opportunity to experience the "morally distorting" effects of war.
But like OJ's glove, this doesn't fit the theme, which is that Beauchamp was made callous by his experiences in Iraq.
Debra Holland fronted for one heck of a band called Animal Logic. The bass guitarist was Stanley Clarke, considered by many to be the finest ever to pick up a four-string. The drummer was Andy Summers, formerly of the Police. They put out a couple of terrific albums that got some modest airplay. Here's the first song off their debut album:
As you can hear, Debra's a fine singer when warming up, but when she starts belting it out she moves up into the stratosphere.
The conference call started with two comments by the senator. First, the Ethics/Earmarking bill came to a vote. He is not happy with the bill because the Senate Majority leader can determine whether a provision.
Murdock purchase of WSJ? Senator McCain disagrees with the media consolidation issue, points out that media is diversifying with the advent of new media like the blogs.
He railed against the refusal of Senator Leahy to allow Judge Southwick's nomination to come to the floor. He stated that while he supports the use of ethanol, he remains adamantly opposed to ethanol subsidies (and pointed out that they are hardly necessary with gas prices where they are).
He noted that the immigration issue is where he took a big hit politically, and acknowledged that securing the border is the first step, but insisted as well that other aspects of immigration reform must be accomplished as well.
I got to ask a question about the earmarks/ethics reform bill, which the senator denounced as a sham and voted against. He agreed that banning earmarks is effectively impossible given Congress' power of the purse, but he's pushing for greater transparency and to get them out of conference reports.
He also had a somewhat surprising response to Barack Obama's assertion that we attack Pakistan if we have actionable intelligence on the location of Al Qaeda members. He pointed out that we have ways of doing things stealthily. Obama also apparently ruled out the use of nuclear weapons. McCain said that nukes are a weapon of last resort, but he would never rule out their use since it amounts to unilateral disarmament.
I've kind of been covering the kooky impeachment crowd on an ad-hoc basis, but I'm going to cover it more extensively in the next couple of weeks here.
As many of you are aware, Cindy Sheehan has been pushing impeachment for the last several month. In fact, its the whole basis for her run for Congress against Nancy Pelosi. But somebody should tell her that even if she wins, she'll be too late; Bush will leave office just as she's entering it.
Cindy has also recently aligned herself with the 9-11 "Truth" Movement.
Scott Ritter (yes, that Scott Ritter) wrote an article recently decrying the "Impeach Now" crowd and using a very good analogy.
The “impeach now” crowd reminds me of a football coach, late in a season which has produced only loss after loss, imploring his team to throw a “Hail Mary” pass over and over again, all the while suffering sack after sack of its quarterback as the offensive line fails to effectively block and the receivers fail to get open. The season is lost, and instead of pursuing futile and ineffective tactics designed to produce a meaningless score, the coach would be better off seeking to return to the basics so that his team might perform better next season. Only when the basics of blocking, tackling, running and ball handling are mastered can one expect to mount a campaign designed to produce a winning season.
Of course, aligning yourself with the "Truthers" is the ultimate Hail Mary pass. "We can't get the Democrats to impeach on anything else, so let's try using this crackpot theory that the Bush administration pulled off 9-11. It won't work, but we've got nothing to lose by trying!"
