OneMom reports that Michigan Chooses Life PAC, a pro-life group, endorses Mike Huckabee. Read it all here.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Make Sure You Know the Charity
The ARRA news Service reports that some so called veterans charities do not give the donated money to the rightful veterans that deserve it. The blog post has the ratings from "American Institute of Philanthropy, a leading charity watchdog," via The Washington Post. Here are the ratings;
Air Force Aid Society (A+)
American Ex-Prisoners of War Service Foundation (F)
American Veterans Coalition (F)
American Veterans Relief Foundation (F)
AMVETS National Service Foundation (F)
Armed Services YMCA of the USA (A-)
Army Emergency Relief (A+)
Blinded Veterans Association (D)
Disabled American Veterans (D)
Disabled Veterans Association (F)
Fisher House Foundation (A+)
Freedom Alliance (F)
Help Hospitalized Veterans/Coalition to Salute America's Heroes (F)
Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund (A+)
Military Order of the Purple Heart Service Foundation (F)
National Military Family Association (A)
National Veterans Services Fund (F)
National Vietnam Veterans Committee (D)
Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society (A+)
NCOA National Defense Foundation (F)
Paralyzed Veterans of America (F)
Soldiers' Angels (D)
United Spinal Association's Wounded Warrior Project (D)
USO (United Service Organization) (C+)
Veterans of Foreign Wars and foundation (C-)
Veterans of the Vietnam War & the Veterans Coalition (D)
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (D)
VietNow National Headquarters (F)
World War II Veterans Committee (D)
Click here to read the commentary from ARRA.
Friday, December 14, 2007
E-Mail Alert From Fred Thompson's Campaign on the "Hands Show"
Dear Friend of Fred,
In the 1980 campaign, I worked for Ronald Reagan. I was proud to be part of his team.
Now, I am just as proud to be part of Fred Thompson's team.
That's why I am writing to seek your help today.
In 1980, the defining moment for President Reagan was in a New Hampshire debate when he refused to kowtow to a belligerent moderator.
Fred had a defining moment on Wednesday in the Iowa debate, when he refused the liberal moderator's demand to raise his hand to say yes or no to a complex question.
The similarities were incredible.
We have reached a critical juncture in the campaign--and we need you to step up once again.
On Monday, Fred kicks off "The Clear Conservative Choice: Hands Down!" Bus Tour in Iowa. The tour will take Fred to 50 cities and towns across Iowa in the most aggressive retail campaigning of the whole campaign.
Just in time for the Iowa caucuses on January 3! In fact, Fred will be there virtually the entire time except Christmas until the vote.
We call it "The Clear Conservative Choice" tour because Fred is the only clear, consistent conservative in the race. He was conservative in the past, he is today and he will be so in the future. You can count on him.
We just added the "Hands Down" to commemorate his dominating performance in the Wednesday debate.
I believe this tour can make the difference in the Iowa caucuses. It will bring Fred in contact with thousands of caucus goers--it will build off the momentum of Fred's performance.
Fred is really energized...and he's already come out swinging.
But that's where you come in.
We need "air cover" in the form of media for our tour and our first rate ground game.
As you can imagine, Fred is the best on TV and his bold proposals have been highly praised by conservative publications and commentators.
But we need additional funding for our final media push.
Can you help?
Could you contribute $25, 50, $100 or more today? Your contribution will help us get a powerful new ad on the air just as the caucuses conclude.
Then send an e-card to all your friends and family letting them know you have had enough of the liberal media's games.
Your help is crucial--can you respond immediately? Go here to contribute.
I know things are tight this time of year, just before Christmas...BUT NOW IS WHEN WE NEED YOU THE MOST!
Please make your contribution today.
Help Fred keep his bandwagon rolling--and the momentum increasing!
Just think about Fred's defining moment--and make your contribution now.
The time is right--the time is NOW.
Thanks so much for your help.
Sincerely,
William B. Lacy, Campaign Manager
P.S. We're only 20 days away from the Iowa Caucuses. Your gift of $25, $50, $100, $500, $1000, or $2300 is crucial to Fred's success.
John McCain
Two Great Michiganders who May Possibly Run Against Sen. Carl Levin
From That's Saul Folks.
- Former Representative Andrew “Rocky” Raczkowski and Representative Jack Hoogendyk are serious considering running for the United States Senate against long time incumbent Carl Levin. This could be an exciting prospect, please encourage your favorite potential candidate to enter the race.
Read today's articles of interest from Saul Anuzis' blog, here.
Huckabee Highlights
Some Highlights from Mike Huckabee's campaign to share.
News Release: Mike Huckabee Names Ed Rollins as National Campaign Chairman
December 14, 2007
- Little Rock, AR - Former Arkansas Governor and Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee has named Republican political strategist Ed Rollins as his National Campaign Chairman.
- "I am proud to announce the addition of Ed Rollins as my National Campaign Chairman," said Huckabee. "Ed is an unparalleled strategist and is well-known as the man who directed the most successful Presidential campaign in the history of the United States. Ed's experience and track record of building winning coalitions within our party, bringing together social, economic and foreign-policy conservatives, and reaching across party lines, makes him a good fit for our campaign."
- Rollins served as the National Campaign Director to Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election in which Reagan won 49 states. [more here]
Side note; Mr. Rollins also served in the Ford Administration (our boy from Michigan)
December 14, 2007 - 11:51 AM
Huck And Chuck On Bill O'Reilly Tonight
by Team Huckabee
- The Gov and Chuck Norris are confirmed to appear on The O'Reilly Factor tonight for a joint interview from New Hampshire. The show will air @ 8pm ET this evening... [source]
- Huckabee On "Money & Politics"
- PETER COOK: Hi, Betty, and good morning. On the Republican side of the presidential race, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has gone from afterthought to frontrunner in Iowa and he's surging in national polls as well. Mike Huckabee joins us now from Des Moines, Iowa to talk about his campaign, some issues important to business. Governor, good to see you again. Welcome back to Bloomberg.
GOVERNOR MIKE HUCKABEE: Thank you very much, Peter. Pleasure to be back.
MR. COOK: At yesterday's debate in Iowa, one of the challengers there called you the frontrunner. Are you in fact the man to be right now
GOV. HUCKABEE: Well, I don't know if I even want to put myself there, but certainly, it's better than where I used to be. You're right. I've come from really the back of the pack - I think people are connecting with the message I'm talking about, changing our tax system. Eighty percent of the Americans are totally disgusted with it. That resonates with voters. And they want someone who's not a Washington insider, somebody who has actually been at a level of government that made it function and made it work and balanced the budget, things that families have to do, things that people want their president to do. - MR. COOK: There are a lot of business-related issues I want to get to in the course of our interview. Let's start with one of them now that's been in the news. The Bush administration last week announcing a deal with the mortgage industry to freeze interest rates for some sub-prime borrowers. It's been criticized by some for going too far. Others say it doesn't go far enough. Do you support this plan?
- GOV. HUCKABEE: Well, it's better than have the taxpayers bail out people who made bad loans. The one thing I was so glad the Bush administration did not do is to say, okay, we're going to make it so that nobody has any harm. Look, this is a marketplace decision. People took some bad loans they shouldn't have taken. Lenders made some loans they shouldn't have done. It has to work itself out. I hope it's a lesson to people in the future; don't borrow if you can't pay it back. And it ought to be a lesson to the lenders: Be careful about loaning money to people that can't really give you your money back.
- Now, the one problem with the plan - if it freezes banks from being able to foreclose, if this trend should continue, you really do create a chilling effect on the lending industry because who's going to want to lend money if they don't have the capacity to get their asset back if there's a default on the loan. So it's a tricky area, but I thought the Bush administration played it about as well as they could. [full transcript here]
Fred Thompson: Bigger Than Life
This article in CBS News Shows why Fred Thompson is larger than life
Fred Thompson: Bigger Than Life
Washington Post: Candidate Was A Formidable Presence Who Could Win A Lot Of Battles Just By Showing Up
- Dec. 12, 2007
- Fred Thompson fits an archetype: the solid guy. He isn't charismatic in a traditional sense. He has no flash, no dazzle. His charisma is physical: He fills up a room. (AP)
Climate Change: Thompson
In a CBS Evening News special series, "Primary Questions," Katie Couric asked Fred Thompson whether he is concerned about global climate change. Share
- (Washingtonpost.com) This story was written by Joel Achenbach as part of a Washington Post series of profiles of the leading presidential candidates.
- Freddie Thompson hit full height in the 10th grade, some 6 feet, 5 3/4 inches. His buddies called him "Stick." He was a nice-looking kid, played football and basketball, chased girls, horsed around in class, rarely cracked a book.
- "Basically, just a carefree, underachieving kid," he says today. "Pretty good kid. Never gotten in trouble or anything like that. But didn't care much about my studies." Years ago, he put it a different way in an interview with The Washington Post: "I was interested in two things -- and sports was one of them."
- He must have had something going for him, because he caught the eye of Sarah Lindsey. Freddie was smitten. She was a year older, a pretty brunette, smart, bookish and on her way to becoming salutatorian at Lawrenceburg High School in Lawrenceburg, Tenn. She planned to study English at Vanderbilt University. The Lindseys were pillars of the community, a clan that peopled the important jobs such as mayor and lawyer and county administrator. They owned a business manufacturing church pews.
- The Thompsons were a rung down on the social ladder. Freddie's parents, Fletcher and Ruth, had grown up on farms during the Depression, and neither had made it beyond the eighth grade. They lived at the edge of town in a one-story house on a hillside that plunged to a creek. Fletcher sold cars for a living, on Route 43, and did it well, selling to the same folks again and again, eventually opening his own used-car lot. Freddie admired his father's manner, how he could be at ease with anybody, whether it was a guy who didn't have two nickels to rub together or the governor passing through town on a campaign stop. Fletcher Thompson was a serious man, but always good for a joke. "He saw the humor and the tragedy of life," Thompson says.
A few more snippets;
- There are presidential candidates who are congenitally ambitious, having started campaigning for votes shortly after leaving the womb. There are other candidates for whom being presidential timber is a birthright, something inherited, along with a famous name and a jaw line and maybe a beachfront compound.
Wonder who that's talking about?
- Then there's someone like Thompson -- a reluctant candidate, not terribly interested in stumping, slow to enter the race and so laid-back that he declines to take a wide-open shot at an opponent during a televised debate.
- Thompson fit an archetype: the solid guy. He isn't charismatic in a traditional sense. He has no flash, no dazzle. His charisma is physical: He fills up a room.
- Thompson started the first Young Republicans chapter in Lawrence County just as the South was switching from Democratic to Republican. He rode the wave.
- A job opened in Nashville for an assistant U.S. attorney; thanks to his Republican connections he was transformed again, into a federal prosecutor, nailing moonshiners and bank robbers. He won every bank-robbery case but one (a bad guy whose name he can tell you instantly to this day).
- When Howard Baker, a Republican senator from Tennessee, ran for reelection, he asked Thompson to help manage his campaign. The two spent many hours on the stump, and Baker came to trust the young lawyer. After Baker's victory, he approached Thompson with an idea. The Senate, he said, was forming a committee to look into this Watergate business. He needed someone to be the minority counsel on the committee. "I wanted somebody I trusted rather than a legal luminary," Baker explains.
- Thompson leaped, as always.
- His three kids were in grade school; they stayed with Sarah in Nashville. Thompson flew away, and into a maelstrom...
- ...In Armstrong's view, Thompson and Baker were working with the White House to shape its defense -- "trying to put the fix in for Nixon."
- Thompson calls that "absurd" and says his contacts with Nixon's aides were appropriate, a view shared today by several Democratic staffers who recall Thompson fondly. "The White House trusted nobody. I don't think they even trusted Fred or Senator Baker," says Rufus Edmisten, a Democratic staffer. Terry Lenzner, another Democratic staffer, grew to recognize Thompson as "a solid guy and a good thinker" and says: "By the end of the investigation I had complete trust in him."
- Thompson would eventually write a book about Watergate, "At That Point in Time," in which he acknowledged his reluctance to face Nixon's culpability in Watergate: He wrote that he was subconsciously looking for "a reason to believe that Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, was not a crook."
- After Nixon resigned in 1974, Thompson moved back to Nashville and started a lucrative private law practice. In 1977, he was hired by Marie Ragghianti, who had been fired after blowing the whistle on corruption in the Tennessee parole system, to represent her in a lawsuit against Gov. Ray Blanton. She recalls Thompson's effect on her antagonists: "When I walked in with Fred, they were visibly intimidated. I never felt so secure in my life."
- The article goes on to talk about Fred's movie career.
- His younger brother, Ken, says that after Fred became famous, "it was a little bit like walking around with Elvis."
- Thompson insists he's not aware of how he fills up a room, all that alpha-male stuff that people always mention. "I'm not cognizant of it to this day," he says. Asked to describe himself, he says, "I have an inner peace, and an inner confidence."
- After he announced his bid for the presidency, Fred Thompson returned to Lawrenceburg. About 10,000 people thronged the village square to see the local boy in a suit and tie, thinner than he used to be, talking without notes and pacing the full length of the makeshift stage.
Read the full article here.
Fred Thompson, Serious Guy
David Brody of CBN says of Fred Thompson.
Fred Thompson: Don’t Count Him Out
- December 13, 2007
- The talk in Iowa has focused so much on Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney in Iowa but let’s not forget about Fred Thompson. He’s running third in Iowa and is about to spend every waking moment in the state until January 3rd. Is it possible that Thompson could be the comeback kid? Read from Reuters below:Republican presidential contender Fred Thompson, looking to jump-start his lagging campaign, will focus on Iowa for the next three weeks in the hope a strong showing will create momentum for him in later contests.
- The whole article is here. If Thompson places in the top three in Iowa, then it’s on to New Hampshire where he’s got no shot. But South Carolina is different and so is Florida. Thompson’s debate performance Wednesday in Iowa was very impressive. It’s like he has a chip on his shoulder but looks much more comfortable at the same time. Read below from Iowa political expert David Yepsen:Fred Thompson came out on top in Wednesday’s debate among the Republican presidential candidates in Iowa. Of all the candidates, he did himself the most good.
- ...He’s not worried about the media, pundits or the traditional political game as we know it. He’s going to do things his way and talk about substantive issues. Look, he’s a serious guy and these are serious times. Thompson seems to be hitting his stride pretty well now...
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Getting Caught Up on Christmas Music
I went two nites without adding Christmas music. I so owe it to y'all to give some really great music. Thus I must add at least Brian Setzer and Elvis. I will soon figure what is next.
Brian Setzer - Run Rudolph Run
Elvis Presley If Everyday Was Like Christmas
Dan Fogelberg - Same Old Lang Syne (Covers Slide)
Warning-This Blog Can Only be Read while Your Computer is Turned On
Found this peice of humor, regarding stupid warning labels on products.Check out this article from The Daily Press of Escanaba, Michigan.
Wacky warnings show effects of litigationDETROIT (AP) — Words to live by, from a warning label on a small tractor: ‘‘Danger: Avoid Death.’’
Detroit-area radio personality Dick Purtan displays how to safely open an envelope according to one of the labels in the Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch’s 11th annual “Wacky Warning Label Contest” in Detroit. (AP photo)
That warning was selected Wednesday as the winner of the 11th annual ‘‘Wacky Warning Label Contest,’’ sponsored by Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch. The contest is part of an effort to show the effects of lawsuits on warning labels.
Kevin Soave of Farmington Hills won the $500 grand prize for submitting the tractor’s ‘‘Danger: Avoid Death’’ label. The $250 second place was given to Carrianne, Jacob and Robby Turin of Greensburg, Pa., for a label on an iron-on T-shirt transfer warning ‘‘Do not iron while wearing shirt.’’
Richard Goodnow of Lancaster, Mass., earned $100 for third place for a label on a baby stroller featuring a small storage pouch that warns: ‘‘Do not put child in bag.’’
Contest organizer Bob Dorigo Jones says the silly labels reflect how broken America’s civil justice system is.
‘‘Predatory lawyers know they can file ridiculous lawsuits against innocent product makers and blackmail them into a cash settlement — even in cases in which a user has ignored common sense,’’ Dorigo Jones said in a statement.
Those who oppose the contest say that while some warning labels may seem silly, even dumb warnings can do good. [source]
Wah, wah, wah. If you are too stupid to not use common sense, you are to stupid to use the product.
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