“Occasionally,
doors have opened to me,” now-almost-Presidential-candidate
Fred Thompson told Chris Wallace
of Fox News Sunday, “and I had sense enough
to see that they were opening, and I would walk through them.”
Web Log Archive, June 24th to July 8th, 2007
Saturday, July 7th, 2007
“Occasionally,
doors have opened to me,” now-almost-Presidential-candidate
Fred Thompson told Chris Wallace
of Fox News Sunday, “and I had sense enough
to see that they were opening, and I would walk through them.”
In 1973, Fred was
thirty years old and a newly-appointed counsel to then Tennessee Senator Howard
Baker in the thick of the Watergate scandal.
Some recently-reviewed
tapes of Presidential conversations reveal some higher-ups' feelings about
him at the time:
February 22, 1973
"Oh ... that kid!" said
Nixon (referring to the future Law
& Order star).
"We're stuck with him", said Bob
Haldeman.
June 6, 1973
"We've got a pretty good rapport with Fred
Thompson'', said Nixon's lawyer, J. Fred Buzhardt
"Except he's not very smart", said
the President
"No, not extremely so", answered
Buzhardt
"But he's friendly", said Tricky
Dick.
"He's friendly", agreed Buzhardt
Friday, July 6th, 2007
Word of the day: prosopagnosia
Thursday, July 5th, 2007
The Homage That Vice Pays To Virtue
''Pornography and violence poison our music and
movies and TV and video games. The Virginia Tech shooter, like the Columbine
shooters before him, had drunk from this cesspool.''
Well...that was Mitt Romney speaking at Pat Robertson's Regent University on May
5th of this year. But...come to find out...although Romney was a Director on the
Board of the Marriott Hotel chain from 1992 until 2001, he
claims he did "not
recall pornography coming up for discussion". This, in spite of
the fact that pay-per-view pornography in the rooms is a big
money-maker for the chain!
After he left his seat on the Marriott Board to sit in the Massachusetts's
Governor's chair, he went on to say, "I do
vehemently oppose practices or business procedures that will allow kids to be
exposed to obscenity."
Associated
Press
Wednesday, July 4th, 2007
"Libby will spend less time in prison
than Paris Hilton, Martha Stewart and Susan MacDougal. The same Republicans who
championed the impeachment of Bill Clinton now celebrate Libby's liberation from
the consequences of the very same acts they accused Clinton of committing."
William Rivers Pitt
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007
"He
(King George III, 1738-1820) has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to
complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of
Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy
of the Head of a civilized nation.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored
to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of
warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."
From The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies.
The 'original' (inscribed and signed, beginning on August 2, 1776) document
(poorly preserved, but on permanent display at the National Archives) is in the
handwriting of Thomas
Jefferson wherein the capitalization of certain nouns seems arbitrary and
random.
George was said to have suffered
from Porphyria,
an inherited metabolic disorder responsible for a constellation of symptoms, not
the least noticeable of which is insanity. :-)
Monday, July 2nd, 2007
Happy Birthday, Ruth!
J. B.
Handelsman, (1922-2007)
Sunday, July 1st, 2007
"...if we fail, then the whole world, including
the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink
into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more
protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves
to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its
Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their
finest hour.' "
Winston Churchill, June 18, 1940
Saturday, June 30th, 2007
It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it
is to say 'I don't know'.
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you
is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
Love is only the dirty trick played on us to achieve
continuation of the species.
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation
from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
W. Somerset Maughm (1874-1965)
Friday, June 29th, 2007
Happy Sixtieth Birthday, Carol!
I have almost forgot the taste of fears;
The time has been, my senses would have cooled
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in it: I have supped full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts
Cannot once start me.
MacBeth, Act V, Scene V
Thursday, June 28th, 2007
I'm
(almost) always wrong, but I predict that the
story that broke yesterday (and had grown legs by this morning) virtually
guarantees that the inventor of Phony Baloney,
Mr. Mitt Romney will not
win the Republican nomination for President!
Anyone heretofore willing to either overlook or embrace his
embrace of 'enhanced interrogation'
(i.e., torture) or his pandering
position-shifting on every issue from gay
rights to women's choice to gun control will be turned off
by this shaggy dog story...right out of Vacation:
As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping
his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble.
''Dad!'' he yelled. ''Gross!''.
See...dog lovers in America form a powerful constituency.
One that transcends even the Bible-thumpers, homophobes and xenophobes. In fact,
only the gun-lovers are a more loyal group, as per the ubiquitous bumper sticker:
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
Oh My God! Paris is so boring!
A week or two after my sixtieth birthday,
I was given to
understand
that I will die by by own hand.
Strangely, this understanding brings only comfort.
I know, now, that I need not fear a gruesome road
accident...nor need I know the pain of watching while others care for me and
tend to my most private needs.
The young man is eager to impress.
The old
man has learned that it is dangerous to be impressive. People come to
depend on you and, sooner or later, you disappoint them.
The young man struggles to rise...to reach ever higher.
The old man has learned
that the higher one goes, the longer---and more painful---is the fall.
The young man makes plans.
The old man has learned that the scenery changes with
each step; and what seemed worthwhile before the journey seems less so
after.
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007
General
William Tecumseh Sherman created the gold
standard for un-ambiguity while being pestered to declare his interest in the
Republican Party's 1884 Presidential nomination.
He said,
"If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve. If forced to
choose between the White House and the penitentiary for four years, I would
say the penitentiary, thank you."
"I would like to kill every reporter in the world
but, even if I did, I'm sure we would be getting reports from Hell before
breakfast."
"I confess, without shame, that I
am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even the most
brilliant success is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and
lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and
fathers. It is only those who have never heard a shot...never heard the shriek
and groans of the wounded and lacerated...that cry aloud for more blood, more
vengeance and more desolation."
May, 1865
Monday, June 25th, 2007
"Life at 19 is
a joyously ephemeral state of being in-between. Your adolescence is not quite
behind you; your adulthood is not quite at hand. You can appropriate the
privileges of a grownup without facing the responsibilities. And if you're
lucky, you can still put it all on your parents' tab."
Harry
Hurt III
Sunday, June 24th, 2007
"I
don't know why somebody else's marriage has anything to do with me. The marriage
of another couple makes no difference to me, just as it makes no difference to
me if a neighbor paints his house a different color. If he's pleasant to me on
the street, if his children don't throw things in my yard, then I'm happy.''
Elizabeth Edwards, speaking to reporters after her keynote
address before the Alice B.
Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club