Posted on 06/18/2006 5:26:52 AM PDT by Alas Babylon!
Agreed. Not now and nothing in the wings waiting....
Memo to Tim: Tony Snow is erudite and speaks truth. (Better looking too.)
There are NO questions from Russert. Murtha complains about Rove being paid by the taxpayer. The public is 2/1 against the war. Tim finally presents an earlier quote from Murtha. Just feeds into Murtha's "change direction" rant. He says 42% of the troops don't know what their mission is. We're losing ground in Iraq. We had no reason to go in. We had inadequate forces and we have no exit strategy. *0% of Iraqis want us out. He expects significant troop withdrawal by the Nov. elections. Do what Clinton did in Somalia. (Timmy is not asking the questions I sent in. LOL.)
Which is why he isn't on his show.
I don't buy this theory of Chris's that the American People are losing faith over the Iraq situation. That's media mythology as far as I am concerned.
It will destroy any hope he had of peeling off moderate to conservative white voters of either party. He has made several trips to Iraq and made very positive comments each time, though he always backtracked a few days later after getting a counseling session from his masters leadership. He has, however, been reaching out. That's over now.
His motivation is simple, he desperately needs money. His base in inner city Memphis just doesn't have the funds to give him and the Tennessee Democrat party is in a bad way. They are fighting to keep control of the state legislature as well as trying to keep a bunch of their members out of jail from a bribery sting operation called "Tennessee Waltz." That little Abscam like sting even netted Harold's uncle John, not only accepting a bribe on tape but also threatening to murder the undercover agent if he testified against him. In the general election that may not only cause Harold Jr. to lose the Senate seat, it might end his political ambitions altogether.
Harold Ford needs the big bucks from outside sources such as MoveOn.ORG, Hollywood and New York. The price for that has been to start to parrot their positions. He had a rude awakening a few months ago when he was scheduled to go to a big fund raiser in San Francisco but his vote for the defense of marriage act a few years ago caused the dim activists there to turn their backs on him and he canceled. The same is happening when he appeals to the big dim donors elsewhere. Therefore he has to stick to the (hard left) party line.
He'll win Memphis and probably the yellow dog Democrat vote in the rest of the state, concentrated in Nashville, but he'll lose big elsewhere. He'll probably end up losing with the same kind of percentages Al Gore had in 2000. He'll only get that close because of the nasty race between Van Hilleary, Bryant and Corker. Corker is the Republican establishment's candidate, with the biggest bank accont but the least name recognition. The current conventional wisdom is that Van Hilleary and Bryant will split the conservative vote in the primary allowing Corker to take the nomination. Corker was mayor of Chatanooga for the last few years, in far east Tennessee and Ford is the current congressman from Memphis, in far west Tennessee.
I actually think Harold Jr. is a really good congressman. He does the primary job, looking after his constituents, better than most any congressman I've ever come across. He has successfully intervened on several occassions that I'm personally aware of on behalf of folks in his district having trouble with various parts of the federal government, such as the VA or IRS. He's even taken it upon himself to intervene to help someone from the district next to his who was in trouble in Cancun (guy got hit by a taxi while riding a bike, got both legs broken and the local officials were threatening to jail him if he didn't pay them a big bribe to get out of the hospital). I might disagree with every vote that he casts (though he's all over the map on things like Iraq and gay marriage) but he does the job well.
I'd love to have him go back to Congress and take Nancy Pelosi's leadership position when the dims lose this November (he challenged her when she originally ran and actually did pretty well). I guess he's not running for his House seat this time so that would need to take another two years, so that's out. A fall back is to have him replace crazy Willy Herenton as Mayor of Memphis in the 2007 election and build up an in state rep. A good challenge would be copying the successful merging of city and county government the way the current governor, Phil Bredesen, did when he was mayor of Nashville. That would serve as a stepping stone to replace Bredesen in 8 or 12 years then give him a base to run for President in 2024 or so (he'll only be 54 then).
Murtha said on the floor of the Senate the other day that he pushed Clinton to leave Somalia after the Black Hawk Down incident.
Thanks a lot Murtha. You directly gave Osama bin Laden the guts to think he could attack America and we wouldn't respond.
That would be barbaric and inhumane, unless you meant with leaflets, of course.
I can't even call this a friendly interview because Russert isn't asking any questions!!!
MTP
Murtha is implying that anything his opposition says "is a political statement."
[So, Murth! Most of your statements are political, too.]
I think you can count on that assumption- it's a way of thinking- no matter the evidence or circumstances.
Wallace seems to be pushing hard to avoid any critcism from the other networks for giving Tony a pass.
I notice the Fox News Poll has the Bush JA lower than some others.
Murtha: "We have won the war 'militarily', now it's time to pull back and allow a political solution".
Eh? I thought "we couldn't win 'militarily'".
Tim catches him on the nonsense about Okinawa.
Excellent caller on CSPAN reminded viewers that we were at war with Iraq for 12 years and 16 UN resolutions. President Bush decided to wrap it up, but did not think that "wrapping it up" would satisfy Americans, so used the WMD reason for going in.
We do tend to forget the 12 years of no-fly zones, accusations of children dying because of UN sanctions, "palaces" springing up everywhere, etc.
Same day ONLY 6 dems.voted for that, 93 against and NOBODY seems to believe the media polls nowadays.
Read earlier, on FR of course, Murtha told Clinton cut and run from Somalia. All the claims about Murtha being anything like a hawk is total BS. He's as anti-war as any draft protester or other leftist. He may have served in the military but he has proven he's not patriotic nor does he support America in foreign policy.
Even Russert's interjections or whatever they are are in a quiet, almost deferential voice. He plays another Rove comment and then gives Murtha a "chance to respond to the White House." This appearance is a disgrace. Murtha says we can redeploy to Okinawa almost instantly. Tim points out that it could take a while to come from Okinawa. Murtha stutters...could get there with cruise missles and fighter aircraft. He repeats that the killing of Zarqawi was done from the outside.
MTP
Murtha: Okinawa oh uu huh uh oh
[Murtha couldn't come up with a response as to 'wouldn't Okinawa be rather far from the ME?']
Murtha is a big bag of wind, reveling in the attention he gets from the media.
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