Holy smoke. This is how low they will go to assassinate the character of a person? Seriously? The LA Times reaches the depths of sleazy behavior by saying Fred Thompson's roles as an actor - a paid performer - will be used against him politically. Especially the ones that the LA Times can salivate over because he played a bad guy. For money - as in a job. As in reading someone else's written words in a performance for television.
The L.A. Times asks: Will Fred Thompson’s racist role have political repercussions?
Ronald Reagan became president even though he worked with chimps in B movies.
Arnold Schwarzenegger played a murderous robot, and that didn’t keep him from becoming governor.
. . . “Law & Order” actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) . . . played a white supremacist, spewing anti-Semitic comments and fondling an autographed copy of “Mein Kampf” on a television drama 19 years ago.
The paper mulls over the meaning of this — and looks to conservative blogs!
His colleagues say that he was just an actor putting everything he had into playing the role of a charismatic racist, named Knox Pooley, in three episodes of CBS’ hit show “Wiseguy” in 1988. “Do you call Tom Cruise a killer because he played one in a movie?” asked show creator and writer Stephen J. Cannell.
But in the age of YouTube, this performance could raise an intriguing political question: How does a performer eyeing a presidential run deal with a video history that can be downloaded, taken out of context, chopped into embarrassing pieces and then distributed endlessly though cyberspace? Some conservative political blogs are already considering the problem.
Patterico points out that the writer of this smear job (and that is exactly what this is) took two comments out of context on his site to use as "evidence" of this concern. Ed Morrisey ripped the LA Times for being unable to separate fiction from reality.
I see the Los Angeles Times has spent decades living in and reporting on the film community without learning anything about acting. In their Celebrity News section, Tina Daunt wonders whether voters will confuse Fred Thompson the politician with the roles performed by Fred Thompson the actor. She speaks with a USC professor who apparently doesn't understand the difference, either (via Hot Air):
This is seriously demented. Steven Cannell, the producer, has slammed the LA Times for this record-breaking stoop to fling slime:
Cannell makes the point pretty explicit, although it seems that Daunt missed it:
"He was an actor hired to play a part," Cannell said. "These are not his personal views. He doesn't believe any of that, nor do I. If this is all they can find to say about him, then they've hit a new low."
I'd add this: if they are so desperate to sink to positively subterranean efforts to assassinate someone's character, they are scared as all hell of this man and his potential. And the backfire from this kind of crap will make him an even stronger candidate.
H/T Memeorandum for the links.
This is almost - but not quite - funny. Rasmussen Reports is reporting a survey that says 22% of Americans believe that the President of the United States knew about the 9/11 attacks before they happened. It gets worse. Almost half of Democrats believe it.
Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.
Republicans reject that view and, by a 7-to-1 margin, say the President did not know in advance about the attacks. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 18% believe the President knew and 57% take the opposite view.
Overall, 22% of all voters believe the President knew about the attacks in advance. A slightly larger number, 29%, believe the CIA knew about the attacks in advance. White Americans are less likely than others to believe that either the President or the CIA knew about the attacks in advance. Americans are more likely than their elders to believe the President or the CIA knew about the attacks in advance.
However, just 8% of voters say the CIA was Very Truthful before the War in Iraq. Another 33% believe the CIA was Somewhat Truthful. Most, 52%, believe the CIA was Not Very Truthful or Not at All Truthful before the War.
Still, 57% have a favorable opinion of the CIA. Thirty-six percent (36%) have an unfavorable view.
There is absolutely no real proof at any of this, mind you. Just the idiotic ravings of people who have zero knowledge of actual engineering or science. There are people who swear that the Republicans stole elections in 2000 and 2004. Which, of course, makes the converse have to be true - they threw them in 2006. No. Sense. At. All. Ed Morrisey has a lot of the cross tab data since he is a subscriber to Rasmussen. There is some really, really severe derangement out there at the moment. There is also no way to change these people's minds - they simply will not listen to reason or actual science or real experts. They are getting their information from conspiracy theorists with a glib line but no real understanding of the physics involved.
Be afraid. The overlords of the Animal Uprising™ are continuing their attempts to genetically engineer the perfect warrior. They tried four-wheel drive chickens, dolphins and ducks as well as seven wheel drive deer. Now they have introduced something even more fiendish: The hermaphroditic, six-wheel drive black Angus cattle warrior.
LITCHFIELD, Neb. - A days-old black Angus calf romps about a central Nebraska farm just like any other — only this one romps with six legs. "He's a real freak," said Brian Slocum, who said the calf was born Sunday to one of his cows. "I've never seen anything like this before."
The two extra appendages — one a front leg, the other a back — extend from the calf's pelvic area. The longer of the two extra legs doesn't quite reach the ground, and they don't interfere with the calf's mobility.
The unnamed calf also has organs for both sexes and a surgically supplied rectum.
David Smith, a veterinary specialist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said the calf's twin sexes indicate the embryos for what might have been fraternal twins likely fused during development, producing one calf with extra parts.
These things will be able to cover a lot of ground in a hurry once they are perfected. Worse yet, the six legs will make cow tipping virtually impossible! What are they going to do for entertainment on Saturday nights in Nebraska?
Apparently, the Canadian Postal Service folks are a bit chicken about cats. They have stopped delivering mail to one homeowner due to a "very threatening cat." The problem is that the threatening cat is declawed.
THROUGH rain, sleet or snow, sure.
But the mail doesn't get through when Shadow the house cat is around.
Unfortunately for Shadow's owner, John Samborski, the animal's the reason a postal carrier refuses to deliver mail directly to a Winterton Avenue bungalow.
Thursday, Samborski received a notice from Canada Post stating due to Shadow's alleged growling, carriers will no longer deliver mail to the home of the declawed feline.
The letter states due to "unsafe access" for carriers, Samborski will have to pick up mail at a Nairn Avenue postal outlet about four kilometres away until other arrangements are made with Canada Post.
"This is ridiculous. When we got the letter, we were like, 'What is this?' " said Samborski, 41, a material controller at a Winnipeg factory.
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He and his partner, who did not want her name used, both said they were shocked about the Canada Post letter concerning their eight-year-old cat.
"This is Shadow. He likes to eat and sleep and cuddle. You could drop a bomb and he'd just open one eye, take a look, then close them and go back to sleep," said Samborski.
The feline lounged lazily on the front lawn of Samborski's home Thursday afternoon, napping in the sun and rolling on its back when visitors approached, nuzzling their hands. The cat remained silent during a visit from a Free Press reporter.
Samborski said he called a Canada Post telephone number listed on the one-page notice delivered to their house and talked to a supervisor, but remained flummoxed about allegations Shadow hid under their porch stairs and growled at postal workers.
Regular readers will of course suspect what really happened. It wasn't Shadow the declawed and docile feline who was growling at the postal carrier. It was an alligator disguised as a doormat. They must not teach Canadian postal workers about the real dangers in the world, eh?
Regular readers will of course suspect what really happened. It wasn't Shadow the declawed and docile feline who was growling at the postal carrier. It was an alligator disguised as a doormat. They must not teach Canadian postal workers about the real dangers in the world, eh?
The Las Vegas Review-Journal, fresh off its editorial comparing Harry Reid to Bozo the Clown positively drops the hammer on Reid, Pelosi and the Democrat's transparent political stunt theater. I continue to point out that the media is increasingly angry with the Democratic "leadership" in Congress and their headlong rush to the left.
Democrats contend, "The ball is now in the president's court." If so, it's only because they've handed it back to him.
Now, mind you, the fact that the Democrats are racing to get some money into the pipeline so the troops don't run out of ammo is a good thing. Their reasons are more cynical political calculus than patriotism — they know that declaring the war lost, pulling out and leaving the Iraqis to suffer a massive bloodbath does not play well in the polls.
Remember, challenger Ned Lamont might have won his primary among left-wing Connecticut Democratic zealots last summer, but his "surrender with honor" platform promptly went down to undignified defeat at the hands of pro-war (Democrat-turned-Independent) Sen. Joseph Lieberman in the autumn general elections.
So the strategy of Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, D-Vichy, has been to go through the motions of "trying to cut off funding for the war" so they can tell the Neville Chamberlain branch of their own constituency, "We gave it our best shot" — all the while with no intention on God's green earth of ever really seeing it happen. (Emphasis added)
This is good, because (as President Bush has rightly pointed out) announcing to the enemy the date fixed on which you intend to surrender is not exactly a recipe for victory, or even for bolstering your own troops' morale while undermining the other guys.
What's ludicrous is that the Democrats in Washington still insist they're "trying to end the war" — by which they mean they will now agree to a set of nonbinding, face-saving, endlessly re-interpretable "security benchmarks" that supposedly have to be met if the president wants to keep his forces in Babylon.
That is about as harsh as I have ever seen an editorial. And this is Harry Reid's hometown paper calling him "D-Vichy". I suspect his next reelection campaign will be a somewhat uphill battle. The media cover is going away. CNN, of all networks, ran some analyses that warned that there would be a massive problem in the entire Middle East if we just up and leave Iraq (something many of us have been pointing out all along). But the media is starting to warn about it. That, I think, is significant. That CNN is one of the first to go on record about it is a big deal.
Peggy Noonan makes a great point in her column today. She is discussing the Republican debate held yesterday at the Reagan Library. She points out something that is pervasive - comparisons to Reagan.
They stood earnestly in a row, combed, primped and prepped, as Nancy Reagan gazed up at them with courteous interest. But behind the hopeful candidates, a dwarfing shadow loomed, a shadow almost palpable in its power to remind Republicans of the days when men were men and the party was united. His power is only increased by his absence. But enough about Fred Thompson.
This is a piece about Thursday night's Republican presidential debates, but first I would like to note that the media's fixation with which Republican is the most like Reagan, and who is the next Reagan, and who parts his hair like Reagan, is absurd, and subtly undermining of Republicans, which is why they do it. Reagan was Reagan, a particular man at a particular point in history. What is to be desired now is a new greatness. Another way of saying this is that in 1960, John F. Kennedy wasn't trying to be the next FDR, and didn't feel forced to be. FDR was the great, looming president of Democratic Party history, and there hadn't been anyone as big or successful since 1945, but JFK thought it was good enough to be the best JFK. And the press wasn't always sitting around saying he was no FDR. Oddly enough, they didn't consider that an interesting theme.
They should stop it already, and Republicans should stop playing along. They should try instead a pleasant. "You know I don't think I'm Reagan, but I do think John Edwards may be Jimmy Carter, and I'm fairly certain Hillary is Walter Mondale."
She's right. Comparing the current candidates endlessly to Reagan does, in fact, act as a subtle undermining of these people. Each should be judged on their own merits, not in comparison to Reagan. But the media is using this as a way to slip the knife into the Republican candidates. Sneaky. We really should refuse to cooperate with this kind of thing, shouldn't we? I know some comparisons are hard not to make but we should do so very cautiously, shouldn't we?
Charles Krauthammer skewers the new book by George Tenet and exposes Tenet's revisions of history. It's kind of interesting how the book was news for a while and has suddenly dropped out of sight in commentaries. I rather suspect it is because the rewriting of history is too blatant for even the most partisan. Tenet has been caught out telling some real whoppers.
Tenet writes as if he assumes no one remembers anything. For example: "There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat."
Does he think no one remembers President Bush explicitly rejecting the imminence argument in his 2003 State of the Union address in front of just about the largest possible world audience? Said the president, " Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent" — and he was not one of them. That in a post-Sept. 11 world, we cannot wait for tyrants and terrorists to gentlemanly declare their intentions. Indeed, elsewhere in the book Tenet concedes that very point: "It was never a question of a known, imminent threat; it was about an unwillingness to risk surprise."
Tenet also makes what he thinks is the damning and sensational charge that the administration, led by Vice President Cheney, had been focusing on Iraq even before Sept. 11. In fact, he reports, Cheney asked for a CIA briefing on Iraq for the president even before they had been sworn in.
This is odd? This is news? For the entire decade following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was the single greatest threat in the region and therefore the most important focus of U.S. policy. U.N. resolutions, congressional debates and foreign policy arguments were seized with the Iraq question and its many post-Gulf War complications — the weapons of mass destruction, the inspection regimes, the cease-fire violations, the no-fly zones, the progressive weakening of sanctions.
Iraq was such an obsession of the Clinton administration that Bill Clinton ultimately ordered an air and missile attack on its WMD installations that lasted four days. This was less than two years before Bush won the presidency. Is it odd that the administration following Clinton's should share its extreme concern about Iraq and its weapons?
I personally have no plans to enrich Mr. Tenet by buying this book and frankly have no desire to read it. An awful lot of these self-serving revisions of history are circulating these days. Maybe they should be gathered up and debunked by Snopes. That would keep them very busy for quite some time. I wasn't particularly impressed with Tenet when he was in charge of the CIA. His book and his rewrite of history indicates that my opinion of him was too high altogether.
PC World has compiled a list of the 25 best web hoaxes of all time. Some of them are hysterical, some are disturbing. But all should be looked at as a cautionary tale. Remember, not everything you read on the web is real. For example:
8. Microsoft Buys Firefox (2006)
Talk about scaring the entire open-source community. In October 2006, a previously unknown Web site popped up, announcing Microsoft's acquisition of Firefox and promoting the company's new Microsoft Firefox 2007 Professional. The site talks glowingly about the browser's new features and provides a video advertisement for the product. It was a great prank, and the image of the Microsoft Firefox 2007 box was so elaborate and professional looking that the blood pressure of real Firefox users went sky-high.
9. The Really Big Kitty (2001)
There are big cats and then there are even bigger cats. This one, reportedly tipping the scales at almost 90 pounds, was enormous. The claim seemed plausible and even snookered a lot of e-mail cynics (I'm raising my hand)–until they read the accompanying copy, that is. With nonsense about the owner working at Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, and more balderdash about nuclear reactors, the jig was up. Eventually, the cat's owner fessed up to a creative Photoshop session, though he claimed that he never expected anyone to believe the photo was real.
There is some really amusing stuff. You'll love the GPS cell phone tracking website.
Microsoft is apparently getting serious about buying Yahoo. They have asked Yahoo to enter formal talks about a buyout.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. has intensified its pursuit of a deal to take over Yahoo Inc., asking the company to re-enter formal talks, the New York Post reported on its Web site on Friday.
While the two companies have held informal deal talks over the years, the latest approach signals a new urgency on Microsoft's part, the paper said, citing unnamed sources.
The approach follows an offer Microsoft made to buy Yahoo a few months ago, the Post reported, but Yahoo spurned the advances.
I'm not terribly keen on this idea. Word is that Microsoft already is working on acquiring web advertising companies as well. How hard is it going to be to keep unwanted advertising from your computer in the future? It is already a nearly non-stop battle as it is.
Politics | Gaius Friday, 4 May , 2007 | 
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