Fred's dubious bed-fellow

How sad one isn't about Fred Thompson's lovely fundraising disaster.
Thompson is going to have to stop flying for free on his buddy's jet - because the fundraiser friend has a criminal drug-dealing history.
Oh, how the Republicans targeted Hillary when they found a shadow in a fundraiser's history.
They had better eat their niggardly words.
And, accordiong to the LA Times, this embarrassment for the hideously egocentric quasi actor candidate co-incides with his pulling rank among the candidates - putting Huckabee in his place. Huckabee has been on the rise - which is unsurprising when one considers that, among the GPO drears, he is really quite personable and able to crack a joke. Of course, he is also a born-again and a creationist, all of which should eliminate him from all running as a presidential candidate. One wishes. It remains a bone-chilling worry. But there one has George W. Bush as president - an example of all the qualities on would dread.

The Mormon is doing well, too. I read that I am not supposed to refer to Romney by his religion but, guess what? I will refer to him however I wish - and the fact that he is a mormon is the first thing that comes to mind. The only thing that comes to mind.
The super conservatives are not mormons - they tend to be fundamentalist born-again types. But they see the mormon as one of their own - and they have given him their seal of approval. Very telling.

For those of us who believe in a separation of church and state - and who positively abhor all this religious extremism, this is something of a worry.

We pin our hopes on the Dems.

Republicans' turn to debate

Once again, this time at the CNN Republican Debate in Manchester, New Hampsire, Ron Paul seemed to rise from the Republican ranks as the most balanced and sensible of them all.
I was not at this event, choosing to stay home on this wild and stormy night and watch comfortably on the TV. Wonderful CNN, however, kept the transcripts popping into my email. What a class act.

Ron Paul is a back-runner who comes to the front every time the Repubs get to open their collective mouths. He's not the popular modern model of the conservative, but an old-fashioned Libertarian - and a straight-talker. He's forceful and vehemently against unilateral aggression, and for general equality of human beings. He spoke up against the Republican obsession with God - saying that prayers in schools and the makings of laws about religion was not the business of Federal Government. Of course, Paul was perched at the very end of the lineup, again, the outsider. But here's my five-cent bet that the viewers and voters were really impressed with him yet again. Despite the fact that he was given so few opportunities to speak.

Rudy Giuliani has the presence and acquits himself most eloquently. But as the creationist Sam Brownback so ferociously stated, there is no way a pro-choicer is going to make it.


Mitt Romney believes in himself as much as in Mormonism. He played the cameras and the people - sidestepping direct questions, reiterating what we have already heard, practised and overly confident. He played the hawk.

John McCain has lifted his act and was really quite impressive, despite a tendency to keep addressing the audience as "my friends". The more debates he does, the more fluent and articulate he becomes, the more authoritative. He is making no secret of his contempt for the Bush administration's handling of the War of Iraq.


And as for the army wife who asked a question about EYErac - stubborn ignorance or cultural insult?


Of course these events are not really debates. They are question and answer sessions, television happenings. And, like almost everything in the American news media, they are always so rushed. The clock is constantly running out on everything. So the candidats are expected to express themselves in 15 second bursts, to speak really, really quickly. This, of course, ensures that everything is comfortably superficial.

The other candidates? I am not sure they are worth the time of day. Well, not my day, anyway. Mike Huckabee on Creationism? There is an unhealthy preoccupation with God and faith and creation. This is not politics. It is religion. It is frightening.

And wasn't it sweet to see Tom Tancredo and Rudy Giulinani wearing identical ties?
And, ooh, wasn't it spooky when lightning strikes zapped static into the sound system just when Giuliani was responding to criticisms by a Catholic bishop. It was a moment of much-needed levity, although the funniest moment was when Tom Thompson said that, in giving George W. Bush a job under his administration, "I would not send him to the UN". It did not raise a laugh among the Republicans - but some of us got the joke.

But here, just for the record, are some quotes from Ron Paul on Iraq:

"If we made the wrong diagnosis, we should change the treatment. So we're not making progress there and we should come home.

The weapons weren't there and we went in under U.N. resolutions. And our national security was not threatened. We're more threatened now by staying."

"...our foreign policy is designed to protect our oil interests.

The profits, that's not the problem. It's the problem that we succumb to the temptation to protect oil interests by literally going out and fighting wars over oil."

"...you can't enforce our goodness, like the necons preach, with an armed force. It doesn't work".