Happy New Year!
Machiavellian or Boob?
I vote boob. I think Huckabee is the Forrest Gump candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
Mike Huckabee said Monday he wouldn’t run a TV ad he’d prepared blistering Republican rival Mitt Romney as dishonest. Then he showed it to a room packed with reporters and cameramen.
Huckabee, who has sharply intensified his criticism of the former Massachusetts governor in recent days, tried to reclaim the high road in the midst of a news conference three days before Iowa’s presidential caucuses. He told reporters the event had been called to announce the hard-hitting new ad but he had changed his mind about running it on TV.
Apparently, some of the reporters in the room started to laugh as Huckabee claimed to be above it all when he talked about not showing the ad he was about to show. Stupid is as stupid does.
Tags:
2008 Election, Campaign, Huckabee, Republicans
Feds Release Assassin
She took a shot at President Ford in 1975. Today, she was released.
Sara Jane Moore, who took a shot at President Ford in a bizarre assassination attempt just 17 days after a disciple of Charles Manson tried to kill Ford, was paroled Monday after 32 years behind bars. Moore, 77, was released from the federal prison in Dublin, east of San Francisco, where she had been serving a life sentence, the Bureau of Prisons said.
Bureau spokeswoman Felicia Ponce said she had no details on why Moore was let out.
Her public defender never got a satisfactory answer from Moore as to why she tried to kill Ford. In recent interviews, Moore said she regretted her actions, saying she was blinded by her radical political views and convinced that the government had declared war on the left.
Tags:
Assassination, Gerald R. Ford, Sara Jane Moore, 1975
First Bombing of 2008
Same as it ever was.
A bomb attack wounded 27 people Monday in a Thai tourist town where people had gathered to celebrate the New Year, officials said.
Muslim insurgents were suspected in the attack in Sungai Kolok on the border with Malaysia, where two blasts went off inside a hotel discotheque and one in the basket of a motorcycle outside a hotel, army spokesman Col. Akara Thiprote said.
My ’08 predictions include lots of these ‘events’, unfortunately.
Tags:
2008, Thailand, New Year, Muslim, Terrorism
Low Expectations Met
You can’t trust North Korea.
North Korea missed a year-end deadline to give a full account of its nuclear weapons under a disarmament-for-aid deal struck with regional powers and the United States.
“It’s unfortunate, but we are going to keep working on this,” said U.S. State Department Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey as Monday’s deadline of midnight North Korean time (10 a.m. EST/3 p.m. British time) passed.
But the United States seemed to temper its disappointment.
“The important thing is not whether we have the declaration by today,” said Casey. “The important thing is we get a declaration that meets the requirement of the agreement, which means it needs to be full and complete.”
Tom Casey is being too nice. Does this mean we can wait another year? Five years? Me thinks the Bush administration has plans to stow this hot potato until late January 2009. That’s too bad.
Tags:
North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, Disarmament
Stepford Daughter Denies 9 Year-Old Kid
To protect her mother from God knows what, Chelsea Clinton told a 9 year-old junior reporter to bug off. Ironically, the action aimed at preventing unwanted media scrutiny blew up in the face of the Clinton campaign, forcing them to answer to allegations of meanness.
Sydney Rieckhoff, a Cedar Rapids fourth grader and “kid reporter” for Scholastic News, has posed questions to seven Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls as they’ve campaigned across Iowa this year. But when she approached the 27-year-old Chelsea after a campaign event Sunday, she got a different response.
“Do you think your dad would be a good ‘first man’ in the White House?” Sydney asked, but Chelsea brushed her question aside.
“I’m sorry, I don’t talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you’re cute,” Chelsea told the pint-sized journalist.
The girl’s mother is a Hillary supporter, and she obediently brushed off the fracas.
“I like her position on family values and health care. And I think it’s time we have a female president,” Robyn Rieckhoff said.
And another one gets thrown under the bus in the name of the Clintonian “greater good”. Priceless.
Tags:
2008, 2008 Election, Hillary, Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Liberalism
The Murder of Benazir Bhutto: Up Close and Personal
Getty photographer John Moore narrates a series of slides he took the day Ms. Bhutto was assassinated. He was there and he recounts what he saw.
Meanwhile, another eyewitness confirms Bhutto was shot in neck.
More: Another video, another angle.
Tags: Assassination, Bhutto
Mobile Blogging
I thought I’d just give a quick shout out with a post sent via my iPhone, partly because I want to be sure it works correctly, and also because I’m just about ready to get back into ‘being’ PunditGuy again in 2008. Blogging from my mobile will help me contribute more to this place in the coming year. I’m really looking forward to talking with you all again.
Tags: iPhone, Mobile, Blogging, 2008