Year: 2007
Where Is Team Thompson’s Rapid Response? ‘Daniel Boone’ Error Still Up on Campaign Site
Former senator and lobbyist, Joe Don Thompson, with friend
The presidential campaign team of former lobbyist Fred Thompson is either unaware — or does not care — that the Tennessee-born candidate’s bio contains an error about an important historical figure in his home state.
The mistake, which I saw at TBogg’s place and reported on yesterday, is a mix up of the identities of Davy Crockett, a native son and hero of Tennessee, and Daniel Boone, who was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in North Carolina. The Thompson bio reads, in part:
In the tradition of Daniel Boone of Tennessee and President George Washington, citizen-legislators and leaders Thompson had admired growing up, he walked away from an easy reelection victory to seek new challenges.
As of 8 a.m., Pacific, the error had not been corrected. Republicans who cling to Thompson as their last best chance for keeping the White House had better hope his campaign’s rapid response team gets its act in order before he enters the race next month.
We speculated that the source of the confusion is, first, the lack of Tennesseans on the campaign team, which is dominated by non-Southern elites like Mary Matalan, Larry Lindsey, Ken Khachigian and Victoria Toensing. Secondly, like Thompson, these folks are all Boomers, and probably confused Crockett and Boone because the actor Fess Parker established himself as an icon 40 years ago by playing both men.
Our friends at BuzzFlash.com, in effort to help Team Thompson keep straight which frontier hero is which, posted a link to the lyrics to the Davy Crockett theme song. Buzz said:
To Assist the Fred Thompson “Hollywood Light” Campaign, We are Posting the Lyrics to the Davy Crockett Song. We Saw Davy Crockett on TV, and Fred Thompson is No Davy Crockett.
We also had a couple of comments yesterday that were interesting.
Stephen Crockett — co-host of Democratic Talk Radio — who should know from Davy Crockett, agreed with BuzzFlash:
Fred Thompson is no Davy Crockett. My ancestor was a strong defender of the poor and powerless. Thompson is an enemy of the poor and powerless.
While a Senator, Thompson represented the interests of Wall Street. He spent a third of his professional life as a corporate lobbyist.
Davy Crockett would have been a campaigning actively against any elected office for Fred Thompson. This Crockett will do the same!
And from Ricardo, who wrote:
That’s OK. I confuse Fred Thompson with Joe Don Baker. Another actor that played dumb hicks in movies.
Thanks, Ricardo — you inspired our choice of photos to go with this story.
Update: 11:25 a.m., Pacific: Had a nice note from the Thompson campaign website developers who said the text of the site had been corrected. The bio now reads, “In the tradition of Daniel Boone and President George Washington.†Not “Davy Crockett of Tennessee.”
Quote du Jour
He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safe for children to grow up in.
— Ursula K. Le Guin (1929- ), American writer
A Bad Day for Rudy: Report Says He Was Kicked Off the Iraq Study Group for Poor Attendance — And His S.C. Finance Chair Was Indicted on Coke Charges by the Feds
George Bush famously had no foreign policy experience before he was elected president, and after seven years of bumpersticker slogans and bad, sometimes awful, decision-making, the result of his inexperience has been disastrous by every rational measure.
The fact that Rudolph Giuliani is the GOP frontrunner demonstrates that the Republicans are fully prepared to foist another tough-talking foreign policy featherweight onto the rest of us again.
The fact that Rudolph Giuliani, whose foreign affairs resume is equally thin, is the GOP frontrunner at the moment demonstrates that the Republicans are fully prepared to foist another featherweight onto the rest of us again, mainly because he makes the slogans sound convincingly mean.
But a revelation today about the events that led to Giuliani’s abrupt resignation from the Iraq Study Group in 2006 will provide ammunition for his critics:
Rudolph Giuliani’s membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel’s top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.
He was replaced by former Attorney General Edwin Meese in May 2006.
Meanwhile, in South Carolina:
South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel, a former real estate developer who became a rising political star after his election last year, was indicted Tuesday on federal cocaine charges.
Ravenel and another man were accused of distributing less than 500 grams of the drug starting in late 2005…
Thomas Ravenel is also the state chairman for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign.
Fred Thompson’s Campaign Confuses Home State Icon Davy Crockett with Daniel Boone
The campaign team for Fred Thompson, the Tennessee-born former lobbyist who is running for president, made a mistake on its website that wouldn’t get past your average 10-year-old from Chattanooga: They confused Tennessee-born frontiersman and politician Davy Crockett with Daniel Boone, the trailblazer who was born in Pennsylvania, raised in North Carolina, and served in the Virginia legislature.
Comparing the former K Street lobbyist to George Washington is wildly hubristic, but the Daniel Boone mix-up is just sloppy.
The site serves as the official house organ for the Thompson campaign until, as TBogg says,”[Thompson] gets done with sitting on the front porch and whittling and finally moseys on into town to file papers with the county recorder or some other act suitably bucolic enough to make Chris Matthews swoon.” (We hear Thompson is fixin’ to get ready to announce in mid-July.)
Framing Thompson, who worked as a Washington lobbyist for 18 years and served in the Senate for nine years, as a “citizen legislator,” the campaign site says:
In the tradition of Daniel Boone of Tennessee and President George Washington, citizen-legislators and leaders Thompson had admired growing up, he walked away from an easy reelection victory to seek new challenges.
Leaving aside the wildly hubristic comparison with George Washington, the facts about Daniel Boone are wrong.
After his family moved south from Pennsylvania, Boone grew up in the Yadkin River Valley near present-day Mocksville, N.C. As an adult, he made his name by establishing the trail through the Cumberland Gap from Tennessee into the Kentucky wilderness. He did serve as a legislator, but in the Virginia Assembly, not Tennessee’s. In fact, while Daniel Boone lived in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri and even bought land near Pensacola, Fla., he was never a permanent resident of Tennessee, as far as I can tell.
On the other hand, Davy Crockett was born in Tennessee, and later represented the state in the U.S. House. But Crockett did not walk away from an easy reelection victory.
Elected in 1828, he lost his seat in 1830 but won it back in 1832, only to lose it again in 1835, at which point he famously said to his constituents, “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.” He did just that — leaving behind his wife, children, mother and siblings. In March 1836, he was killed at the siege of the Alamo.
Of course, what may be confusing the campaign team — which is said to include non-Tennesseans like Mary Matalan, Lawrence Lindsey, Ken Khachigian, Dave Bossie and Victoria Toensing — is the fact that Crockett and Boone were both played by Fess Parker on television 40 years ago.
Quote du Jour
And if the white man thought that Asians were a low, filthy nation, Asians could still smile with relief — at least they were not Africans. And if the white man thought that the Africans were a low, filthy nation, Africans in southern Africa could still smile — at least they were not bushmen. They all have their monsters.
— Bessie Head (1937-1986), South African writer, educator
Video: Tim Griffin Cryin’ and Denyin’ He ‘Caged’ Votes for Bush-Cheney ’04
| Cryin’ | Denyin’ |
And lyin’: Former White House communications deputy Tim Griffin was caught on tape earlier this month crying about the sudden collapse of his career and then, with all faux outrage he could muster, denying he suppressed votes in the 2004 presidential election of African-American troops serving overseas — despite hard-copy evidence to the contrary.
Corporate media is ignoring the scandal despite the fact that the BBC has emails from Griffin that contain caging lists in attachments.
Griffin’s remarks were made at the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas soon after he’d stepped down as U.S. Attorney (USA) in Little Rock. The tears came as he thanked everyone who’d ever been nice to him along his career route from RNC operative to White House Communications deputy to Republican operative posing as a federal prosecutor.
The denial came in an answer to a question from the audience about reports of his involvement in caging activities in 2004. Griffin rambled a bit as he responded to charges made by BBC investigator Greg Palast dating back to October 2004, just days before the presidential elections, that Griffin and others had used “caging” to suppress Democratic votes in Florida.
Despite the fact that Palast has possession of emails sent by Griffin for which the subject was “Re. caging,” and that have caging lists — names of voters targeted for suppression — attached to them, Griffin said:
First of all, the allegations that are on the Internet and have spread through the tabloids are completely and absolutely false, number one. And ridiculous. Caging, as you may know, I had it looked up, is a direct-mail term for basically organizing returned mail. … And I’ll just say that it’s so untrue. … This is all made up and faux pas. I didn’t cage votes, I didn’t cage mail, I didn’t cage animals, I’m not a zookeeper.
From the outset in 2004, corporate media has ignored Palast’s findings on the GOP’s voter suppression activities. In May, however, their studied ambivalence was challenged — but not broached, apparently — when another White House operative, Monica Goodling, mentioned Griffin’s involvement in the caging enterprise during sworn testimony before the House Justice committee:
Despite my and others’ best efforts, [Deputy Attorney General, Paul McNulty]’s public testimony was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects. … I believe that the Deputy was not fully candid about his knowledge of White House involvement in the replacement decision … and failed to disclose that he had some knowledge of allegations that Tim Griffin had been involved in vote “caging” during his work on the President’s 2004 campaign.
(During the 2000 election, Goodling and Griffin worked together as opposition researchers at the Republican National Committee.)
After Goodling’s testimony, big media’s efforts to avoid this story were challenged again when Palast granted House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers’ request to see Griffin’s emails about the caging lists. The meeting between Palast and Conyers on May 31 did not go unnoticed by Griffin, however — nor perhaps did Conyer’s statement, “We’re not through with Griffin by any means.” Within hours of the meeting, Griffin resigned as the Arkansas USA.
The particulars of Griffin’s appointment last December came to light during the investigation into the unprecedented firing of USAs by the Bush Dept. of Justice when it was revealed that his predecessor, Bud Cummins, had been fired in order to install Griffin in Little Rock, apparently as a plant to oversee voter suppression in Arkansas.
Compounding the scandal, it was also revealed that Griffin was put in place under a provision the Bushies slipped into the Patriot Act that allowed the president to appoint federal prosecutors with Senate approval. (The provision has since been over-ridden.)
January 29 — Another Reason I’m Glad I’m Not a Democrat
The Democratic Party of Florida is trying its mightiest to put a positive spin on its reprieve from punishment by the Democratic National Committee and chair Howard Dean. Appears the Deanster won’t whup up on Florida for moving its primary to January 29 after all.
Here’s how Karen Thurman, the reality-challenged chair of the state Dems, spins it:
It’s not as if Floridians aren’t used to being regularly disenfranchised — only every time we have a presidential election.
As Chair of your Party, I am proud to officially announce that Florida’s Democratic Presidential Preference Primary will be held on January 29, 2008, in accordance with a new state law and the will of Florida’s Democratic voters.
Although Democratic National Committee (DNC) rules can penalize states (except for Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina) that hold 2008 primaries prior to February 5, the Florida Democratic Party’s leadership determined that holding a process outside the state-run January 29th election would be detrimental to the voters of this state.
Only problem with that is, it wasn’t the Democrats who made the decision and passed the state law to move the primary date, it was the Republican majority in the state legislature in collusion with our Republican governor, Charlie Crist. In response, Dean and the national party threatened to rob Florida of its delegates, render its primary meaningless and punish any candidates who campaigned in the state. By contrast, the Republican Party was willing to give Florida’s wingnuts a pass on breaking the same primary rules.
But that didn’t stop Thurman from trying to make it sound like it was a Democratic idea all along:
Florida Democrats made it clear that a date other than January 29th would potentially disenfranchise voters and inhibit preparations for a winning 2008 campaign — a campaign that will deliver the state’s 27 crucial electoral votes on November 4, 2008, to the Democratic Presidential nominee.
It’s not as if Floridians aren’t used to being regularly disenfranchised — only every time we have a presidential election.
The Florida Democratic Party missed an opportunity to point out on a national stage the Republican machinations that nearly resulted in the country’s fourth most populous state’s primary being rendered meaningless. The Republicans engineered it, Howard Dean very publicly condemned it and now the Florida Dems are trying to sugar-coat it.
I will go to polls on January 29, to vote for property tax reform and local politicians, but, as a registered independent, I won’t vote in the primary. So I won’t be a party to the next round of Republican electoral shenanigans and, thankfully, I won’t be a part of Karen Thurman’s sorry excuse for a political party.
Neuharth on Limbaugh: What a Comedian!
From Al Neuharth, the guy who brought us USA Today (or the Newspaper for Dummies Without Comics) comes this little gem about right-wing blowhard Rush “I Know a Babe When I See One” Limbaugh:
Well, when I travel across the country, my amusement comes from Rush Limbaugh’s show. I find that that’s one of the funniest programs on the air. I don’t become offended by the idiotic things he says; I become amused by them. But I also think that from my perspective that it’s OK for idiots like him to voice their opinion because that’s what this country is about and that’s what the First Amendment is about. I might add that I have become convinced, although a little reluctantly, that all the bloggers on the Internet have a right to all of their stupidity, too. And there’s a lot of it.
But I really think we’re better off with those kinds of opinions and dissenting voices than we would be if we or the government tried to control them.
Pentagon Planned to Turn Enemy Troops Gay
The Pentagon’s 1994 plan to devise a “gay bomb” is making new headlines.
More significant than whether the Pentagon has really abandoned the plan is what their research proves: sexual orientation is biologically determined — not a lifestyle choice
The DOD requested $7.5 million over six years to develop the “weapon,” which they hoped would chemically alter straight enemy troops so they would become attracted to each other. Theoretically, the hostiles would become distracted by their new relationships and stop paying attention to blowing us up. Later, morale would suffer as Joe breaks up with Jim, and Jim’s friends all tell him he’s so much better off because everyone knows Joe is jerk. Then one of them starts going out with Joe. And so forth.
The official line is that almost as quickly as the idea was hatched, it was scuttled. But the Sunshine Project, which monitors such hair-brained Defense Department activity via the Freedom of Information Act, says that ain’t so.
[Sunshine Project Director Edward Hammond] went on to state that the Joint Non-lethal Weapons Directorate, based out of Quantico, actually used the “gay-bomb” idea as a marketing tool in a CD-ROM from 2001-2002 and that “the Pentagon… submitted it to the highest scientific review body in the country.”
More significant than whether the Pentagon has really abandoned the plan is what their research proves: sexual orientation is biologically determined — not a lifestyle choice. That fact could blow up more Republican and Christian right fund raising campaigns than the best placed bomb, gay or otherwise.
