C-130 carrying Sen Inhofe takes fire In Iraq

A C-130 carrying Senator Jim Inhofe and Senators Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Mel Martinez (R-FL), and Congressman Bud Cramer (D-AL) was shot at late today while departing Baghdad en route to Amman, Jordan. The crew of the aircraft dispensed flares to defeat any potential heat-seeking missile threat and no one was harmed.

Said Inhofe: “I have witnessed first-hand progress resulting from the ongoing surge in Iraq since my last trip to the region. Al Qaeda’s unsuccessful attempt to shoot down this C-130 aircraft was a futile effort to influence its losing fight in Iraq, and served to underscore the reality that terrorism is still a threat and that there is still work to be done. The crew’s impeccable training and flawless performance ensured the safety of the aircraft and all personnel on board. While this incident may have been harrowing, these are the kind of threats that our men and women in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world continue to face everyday. They are the front line in the War on Terror and are to be commended for their tireless service.”

The lawmakers said their plane, a C-130, was under fire from three rocket-propelled grenades over the course of several minutes as they left for Amman, Jordan. "It was a scary moment," said Martinez, who said he had just taken off his body armor when he saw a bright flash outside the window. "Our pilots were terrific. ... They banked in one direction and then banked the other direction, and they set off the flares."

Thompson Announcement Coming September 6th

Former U. S. Senator Fred Thompson will announce as an official candidate for president on September 6th.
The veteran actor has been "exploring" the race in recent months.

Despite his unofficial status, Thompson has placed high, or first, in several national, regional and state polls, including one of GOP activists in Oklahoma.

Thompson's Oklahoma leaders include Tulsa attorney Steve Edwards and Corporation Commissioner Jeff Cloud.
Thompson has named strategist Todd Harris to head his communications department. Harris, a former aide to Senator John McCain and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, will replace Linda Rozett who left Thompson's operation earlier this week. Harris served as deputy communications director to McCain during the Arizona senator's 2000 presidential race. He was communications director to then-Governor Jeb Bush for the 2002 gubernatorial campaign in Florida. Harris worked for Schwarzenegger from 2003 to 2005.

Late this afternoon, Thompson's campaign sent the following message: On September 6, 2007, Fred Thompson will be announcing his intention to run for President of the United States with a webcast available to millions at www.imwithfred.com. The launch of the video will be followed by a five-day campaign tour through Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. On the evening of the 6th, there will also be a National House Party, during which there will be a conference call with Fred.

We enter this campaign in a strong position. Fred is consistently near the top in the polls, and conservatives across the country have put together the closest thing to a draft in recent presidential campaign history in an effort to bring about this day. The next few weeks will only serve to build upon those efforts, with house parties, visits to the early primary states, and a homecoming in Lawrenceburg, TN on the 15th. To view the dates and locations of Fred's bus tour, please click here, and check back soon for more information on attending one of these events.

By announcing via webcast, Fred is able to take his consistently mainstream conservative message directly to the voters, who are already responding to that message with a strong upwelling of grassroots support. The webcast and the following campaign tour will play to Fred’s strengths, a consistent record of conservatism, his ability to clearly spread his message, and his ability to work with and connect with Americans from all walks of life. Sincerely, Bill LacyManager, Friends of Fred Thompson, Inc.

Inhofe Endorses Fred Thompson

Inhofe Endorses Fred Thompson

Senator Jim Inhofe endorsed Fred Thompson for president in a speech to the Broken Arrow Chamber of Commerce Tuesday morning.

Thompson is a former U. S. Senator from Tennessee and is expected to announce as a candidate for the Republican nomination for president soon.

Inhofe said he'll support Thompson, whom he said is the only Republican who has a chance to defeat Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., the person Inhofe appears to believe will be the Democratic nominee.

We lost one of the Good Guys Today - Michael Deaver RIP

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151AP_Obit_Deaver.html

Last updated August 18, 2007 11:39 a.m. PT

Reagan adviser Michael Deaver dies

By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON -- Michael K. Deaver, a close adviser to Ronald Reagan who directed the president's picturesque and symbolic public appearances, died Saturday. He was 69.

Deaver, who had pancreatic cancer, died at his home in Bethesda, Md., according to a statement from the Deaver family that was issued by Edelman, the public relations firm he served as vice chairman.

Deaver was celebrated and scorned as an expert at media manipulation for focusing on how the president looked as much as what the president said. Reagan's chief choreographer for public events, Deaver protected the commander in chief's image and enhanced it with a flair for choosing just the right settings, poses and camera angles.

"I've always said the only thing I did is light him well," Deaver told the Los Angeles Times in 2001. "My job was filling up the space around the head. I didn't make Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan made me."

Deaver's own image suffered a setback in 1987. He was convicted on three of five counts of perjury stemming from statements to a congressional subcommittee and a federal grand jury investigating his lobbying activities with administration officials.

Deaver blamed alcoholism for lapses in memory and judgment. He was sentenced to three years' probation and fined $100,000 as well as ordered to perform 1,500 hours of public service.

When the subject of a pardon surfaced in Reagan's final days in office in 1989, the president noted that Deaver had indicated he would not accept one, according to Reagan's diary.

Deaver's family said in the statement Saturday that he fought his cancer "with the courage, grace and good spirit that he carried throughout his life. ... In the end, he stood as the model of a man who not only loved life, but lived life right, one day at a time."

Former first lady Nancy Reagan said in a statement that Deaver "was the closest of friends to both Ronnie and me in many ways, and he was like a son to Ronnie." She added, "We met great challenges together. ... I will miss Mike terribly."

Deaver brought a public relations background and a long association with Reagan to his work as White House deputy chief of staff from 1981-1985. He and top Reagan advisers Edwin Meese III and James A. Baker III were known as "the troika" that, in effect, managed the presidency.

Deaver, however, was concerned more with Reagan's image than his policies. He also was responsible for the president's schedule and security and served as a liaison for any family matters.

To exert as much control as possible, Deaver steered the president away from reporters when he could, instead arranging Reagan in poses and settings that conveyed visually the message of the moment. Presidential news conferences were a rarity, which suited an actor-turned-politician who was at his best when using a script.

Meese, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his Virginia home, said Deaver "had great imagination, great innovation."

"Public relations was his obvious forte, and he did a very good job of it throughout his life," Meese said. "Mike had an amazing way to understand how people would respond and he had a great way of helping Ronald Reagan get his message across to the public."

Deaver's greatest skill "was in arranging what were known as good visuals - televised events or scenes that would leave a powerful symbolic image in people's minds," Nancy Reagan recalled in her memoir, "My Turn."

One example was Reagan's visit to the beaches of Normandy, in France, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Europe during World War II. Deaver arranged for Reagan to appear on a cliff overlooking the English Channel and address D-Day veterans, which yielded dramatic video and still images of the president.

Mistakes could be costly, though.

Deaver chose a German military cemetery near Bitburg for Reagan to lay a wreath while on a visit. To the president's embarrassment, the cemetery turned out to contain the graves of 49 members of Adolf Hitler's elite SS troops. Reagan refused to drop the appearance from his schedule in spite of withering criticism.

Deaver was born April 11, 1938, in Bakersfield, Calif., the son of a Shell Oil Co. distributor. He played piano in bars while studying political science at San Jose State College. He received his bachelor's degree in 1960.

He worked for IBM and served in the Air Force. Later, it was Deaver's interest in politics that led him to the Santa Clara County Republican Party. Hired as its executive director, he soon was organizing political campaigns for GOP candidates.

Deaver's work on behalf of the Reagans began when he joined the gubernatorial staff in Sacramento following Reagan's election in 1966. He became a detail-oriented aide focused on helping the governor run a smooth day-to-day schedule.

Deaver formed his own company after Reagan left the state capital - the former governor and presidential aspirant was his chief client - and then joined Reagan in Washington after his 1980 election.

Among the president's advisers, Deaver was the closest to Nancy Reagan. But their relationship suffered after his 1987 convictions and criticism that he was "cashing in" on his ties to the White House. "Somewhere along the line in Washington Mike Deaver went off track and caught a bad case of Potomac fever," she wrote.

Time eventually repaired their friendship, and for years Deaver spoke with the former first lady nearly every week.

When Deaver left the White House in 1985 he formed his own consulting firm. In 1992 he joined the public relations firm Edelman. He wrote four books touching on his White House years and his relationship with the Reagans.

Survivors include his wife, Carolyn, whom he met while they were staffers for the Reagan administration in Sacramento. They had two children, Amanda Deaver of Washington and Blair Deaver of Bend, Ore.

Fred Thompson's Rope-a-dope

http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/27362.html


Fred Thompson's Rope-a-dope

August 17, 2007 02:00 PM EST

by Star Parker


It's said that in life, timing is everything. And it could be that former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson's entry into the 2008 presidential race, expected in early September, will prove to be timed perfectly.

According to a just released poll from the Pew Research Center, 52 percent of Americans have a negative reaction to the presidential campaign thus far and only 19 percent have anything positive to say. And the main complaint of the disgruntled 52 percent is that the campaign simply started too early.

This could be Thompson's "rope-a-dope." Recall this maneuver of Muhammad Ali's in his famous "rumble in the jungle" in Zaire with then heavyweight champion George Foreman. Ali leaned back on the ropes in the early rounds, his forearms up covering his face, and let Foreman pound himself to exhaustion. Ali then stepped up, fresh and strong, and knocked Foreman out.

Thompson has been sitting on the sidelines while the large field of announced candidates on both sides have been traipsing from debate to debate in a campaign begun earlier than ever.

When Thompson announces next month and formally enters the race, his timing alone might be appreciated by a public wondering why they have been forced to start listening to candidates more than a year and half before they'll go to the polls to vote.

In a Washington Post poll done last week, only one in five Republicans say they are "very satisfied" with their candidates. And although the Democratic field is more settled (almost half of Democrats say they are "very satisfied" with their candidates), the negative ratings for their front runner and likely nominee, Sen. Hillary Clinton, remain at almost 50 percent.

So, Fred Thompson, a seasoned actor, may really know how to respond on cue. With Act One, Scene One played out, he may enter the stage in Scene Two and wake up the audience.

And, from what the Washington Post's David Broder reports, it may be more than just timing that wakes up this audience.

According to Broder, who reports on a two hour interview he just did with Thompson, the ex-senator and actor is going to be bold. He's got a nice life as a star in the popular "Law and Order" TV series, a beautiful young wife and young children, and is not running for president out of some ego-driven need.

He is stepping up to the plate out of a sense that there are things that need to be said that aren't being said, and that, if elected, he'll have a shot at getting these things done.

Anyone who has been reading what I have written these last few months knows my incredulity that the massive entitlements crisis facing this nation has not been part of the campaign discussion. It's been like hearing the social director of the Titanic announce shuffleboard times as the ship is going down.

It sounds like Thompson is ready to put the facts on the table before the American public and, yes, fasten your seatbelts, tell the truth.

He's going to talk about Medicare and Social Security and what we need to do to tighten our belts and get our lives back under control. And he's going to talk about national security and weigh in as a traditional values candidate.

This kind of honesty and candor is only possible with a candidate for whom the truth is more important than the job. And it sounds like Fred is ready.

Clinton, who in all likelihood will be the Democratic nominee, has just released her first campaign ad. In the short video, she lays out her cards about what her campaign will be about.

First, she'll run against George Bush. Second, she'll tell the American people they can rely on her to fix their problems. According to her ad, we're all "invisible" to the Bush administration.

The ad couldn't help but remind me of an exchange that occurred at the time when Clinton was making her first push at Hillary-care during her husband's administration. It took place between then Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, and Paul Starr, who was one of the crafters of the Clinton plan to nationalize health care.

Starr was pitching the government-as-mother-hen view of the world that defined Hillary then and, as evident in her new ad, defines her now.

Gramm said to Starr, "Don't tell me that you care as much about my grandchildren's health care as I do." Starr replied, "Excuse me, senator. But I do care about your grandchildren's health care." Gramm then rejoined, "Then tell me, what are their names."

No, Senator Clinton. The president of the United States cannot be and should not be our mother.

Freedom is for adults. It sounds like Fred Thompson is about to remind us all of this important truth.

Star Parker is president of CURE, Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (www.urbancure.org) and author of three books. She can be reached at parker(at)urbancure.org.

Fred Thompson's Gamble

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/15/AR2007081501925.html

Fred Thompson's Gamble,

By David S. Broder
Thursday, August 16, 2007; Page A15

When Fred Thompson makes his long-delayed entrance into the Republican presidential race, he will not tiptoe quietly. Instead, he will try to shake up the establishment candidates of both parties by depicting a nation in peril from fiscal and security threats -- and prescribing tough cures that he says others shrink from offering.

In a two-hour conversation over coffee at a restaurant near his Virginia headquarters, the former senator from Tennessee said that when he joins the battle next month, he "will take some risks that others are not willing to take, in terms of forcing a dialogue on our entitlement situation, our military situation and what it's going to cost" to ensure the nation's future.

After spending most of the past few years on TV's "Law and Order," and starting a new family, with two children under 4, the 65-year-old lawyer says he finds himself motivated for the first time to seek the White House.

"There's no reason for me to run just to be president," he said. "I don't desire the emoluments of the office. I don't want to live a lie and clever my way to the nomination or election. But if you can put your ideas out there -- different, more far-reaching ideas -- that is worth doing."

Thompson, like many of the others running, has caught a strong whiff of the public disillusionment with both parties in Washington -- and the partisanship that has infected Congress, helping to speed his own departure from the Senate.

But he says he thinks the public is looking for a different kind of leadership. "I think a president could go to the American people and say, 'Here's what we need to be doing. And I'm willing to go halfway. Now you have to make them [the opposition] go halfway.' "

The approach Thompson says he's contemplating is one that will step on many sensitive political toes. When he says "we're getting a free ride" fighting a necessary war in Iraq with an undersized military establishment, "wearing out our people and equipment," it sounds like a criticism of the president and the Pentagon.

When he says he would have opposed adding the prescription drug benefit to Medicare, "a $17 trillion add-on to a program that's going bankrupt," he is fighting the bipartisan judgment of the last Congress.

When he says the FBI is perhaps incapable of morphing itself into the smart domestic security agency the country needs, he is attacking another sacred cow.

Thompson repeatedly cites two texts as fueling his concern about the country's future. One is "Government at the Brink," a two-volume report he issued as chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee at the start of the Bush administration in 2001 and handed to the new president's budget director as a checklist of urgent management problems.

The difficulties outlined in federal procurement, personnel, finances and information technology remain, Thompson said, and increasingly "threaten national security."

His second sourcebook contains the scary reports from Comptroller General David Walker, the head of the Government Accountability Office, on the long-term fiscal crisis spawned by the aging of the American population and the runaway costs of health care. Walker labels the current patterns of federal spending "unsustainable" and warns that unless action is taken soon to improve both sides of the government's fiscal ledger -- spending and revenue -- the next generation will suffer.

"Nobody in Congress or on either side in the presidential race wants to deal with it," Thompson said. "So we just rock along and try to maintain the status quo. Republicans say keep the tax cuts; Democrats say keep the entitlements. And we become a less unified country in the process, with a tax code that has become an unholy mess, and all we do is tinker around the edges."

Thompson readily concedes that he does not know "where all those chips are going to fall" when he starts challenging members of various interest groups to look beyond their individual agendas and weigh the sacrifices that could ensure a better future for their children.

But these issues -- national security and the fiscal crisis of an aging society with runaway heath-care costs -- "are worth a portion of a man's life. If I can't get elected talking that way, I probably don't deserve to be elected."

Thompson says he feels "free to do it" his own way, and that freedom may just be enough to shake up the presidential race.

davidbroder@washpost.com

Thompson Sees First Poll Lead in S.C.

http://campaignsandelections.com/sc/articles/index.cfm?id=519

Thompson Sees First Poll Lead in S.C.

By - John Boyanoski
(August 15, 2007)

The still not-yet-a-candidate of 2008 has grabbed his first South Carolina poll lead, which could have a huge impact on the 2008 race for the White House.

Former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee led all Republicans with 22 percent, while U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton led Democratic candidates with 36 percent, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released Wednesday. Clinton has led most South Carolina polls during the campaign, but this is the first for Thompson, who has been slowly building his numbers and support since the spring.

"This is very significant," said David Woodard, a political science professor at Clemson University. "But I am not surprised by it. He is a Southerner and that appeals to the base here, plus has a strong appeal with the Christian right."

Among the 749 Republican respondents, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was second with 18 percent, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 17 percent.

Chip Felkel, a Greenville-based Republican political consultant, said those are significant numbers for those campaigns as well. Not many people have been giving Giuliani a chance in South Carolina because he doesn't really appeal to staunch conservatives, but he has consistently polled first or second, he said. Meanwhile, Romney has struggled to get above 15 percent despite heavy campaigning, so it's big news that he is moving up, Felkel said.

Felkel wondered how much of Thompson's victory, though, had to do with his own candidacy, rather than voter discontent with the rest of the Republican field. Felkel said he feels Thompson's push has a lot to do with the struggles of U.S. Sen. John McCain, who came in at 11 percent in the poll. McCain had been in the lows 30s in the spring.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee came in with 7 percent; U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas with 3 percent; U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas with 2 percent, and U.S. Reps. Duncan Hunter of California and Tom Tancredo of Colorado with 1 percent rounded out the Republican field.

Among 436 Democratic respondents, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois finished second to Clinton with 33 percent. Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina was the only other Democrat to get double digits when he snared 12 percent. U.S. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson had 3 percent, while U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich had 1 percent.

However, Obama grabbed almost 55 percent of the black voters in the state, which is significant because it is unlikely a Democrat will win South Carolina in 2008, but its January Democratic primary is seen as important because it is the first primary state with a significant black population.

Clinton grabbed 29 percent of the black vote, according to the poll.

John Boyanoski can be reached at jboyanoski@scpols.com