The Guild 3-17-2004 A Merry St. Patrick's Day to ya!

[BigWaveBetty]

As you slide down the banisters of life

may the splinters never point the wrong way.

[Iowa Granny]

Great photo. Thanks for bringing it here.

[daisyscarlett]

Teresa does not look happy here...

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), D-Mass., and his wife, Teresa, right, ride the chairlift with her son, Chris Heinz, far left, and an unidentified ski patroller during their vacation at Sun Valley in Ketchum, Idaho Saturday, March 20, 2004. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

[lodwick]

G'day all.

I finally bought a new box yesterday, and seem to have it up and running...

Whatever property the couple may own, it was ketchup $$$ that purchased it: not the dork's income.

Cheers, all.

[daisyscarlett]

Good to see ya again...

John F-ing Kerry went from the poorest U.S. Senator to the richest, just by getting married. No wonder he and McCain (who is really, really irritating me lately) are buddies-Johnny got his wealth from marrying a beer distributor heiress...

[lodwick]

It's good to read the commentary here once more.

As the song says, "It's faster horses, younger women, more money..."

[lodwick]

null and void (Don't stand idly by and watch your country commit Hairy Kerry!)

Great tag by Nully.

[Endeavor]

good to see you back in the saddle again.

[Iowa Granny]

Welcome Home! Currently 37 degrees with a brisk breeze. Snow in the forcast for late Monday. Let's hope it's not another 14 inches like we had last Monday.

[BigWaveBetty]

I didn't get to go to the rally! I'm heartsick, still.

The friend I was supposed to go with hurt his back on Friday and even though he was willing to go I told him to stay in bed. It was too late to find anyone else to go with and I didn't want to go all by myself, that's no fun.

But I did watch it twice on c-span. :-) It really looked like a great rally, Laura's warmup was perfect, she's going to be a big plus for the campaign.

This blouse is gorgeous I have to have one.

Timeout, is Spencer Baucus your congressman? I watched him kill at the Washington DC Funniest Celebrity dinner. He was even funnier than the couple of professionals that performed! He won the competition that evening.

Don't forget, Rummy tonight on FNC at 9. Also this week on Prime Time 20/20, the entire hour will be all Rummy. Ahhhhhhhh, most refreshing after all that Kerry.

[lodwick]

You people have to be made of tougher stuff to live up there. Goodness.

Our moisture's been in the form of rain, with the humidity high enough to cause the AC to be necessary. Everything's budded out and the oak trees are now dropping those horrible green squigglies as they prepare for another year's growth.

[MaeWest]

Good to have you back on board. We've missed you. The Guild is really on a roll today - truly a great thread!

[MaeWest]

Teresa does not look happy here...

Looks like she is making an obscene gesture even the mitten can't conceal.

[Iowa Granny]

Silly boy! The Midwest is known for it's Strong Women,, in order not to look like wimps, the men pretend the weather doesn't bother them.

By the middle of the week it will warm up again. This is March. No weather pattern of any kind lasts longer than 3 days. Yo-Yo Weather.

[mountaineer]

Looks like she is making an obscene gesture even the mitten can't conceal.

LOL. I don't think I'd want to be a fly on the wall at the Heinz-Kerry enclave - I bet the air gets mightly blue.

[lodwick]

This from a gun-talk website:

After weeks of personal attacks on the President and our economy, Senator Kerry finally has unveiled his economic plan of recovery. His plan is to make sure that everyone will have access to a rich widow because it has been so successful for him.

Closet Guilder?

[BigWaveBetty]

Do you think testimony from our side this week at the 9/11 comm. will make Richard Clarke's book hit the bargin barrel sooner rather than later? Help or hurt Kerry?

...Clarke was known for pounding the table to urge his counterparts at the CIA, FBI and Pentagon to do more about Al Qaeda. But he did not have much luck, in part because in both the Clinton and early Bush administrations, the top leadership did not back up Clarke and demand results.

A White House official countered that the true fault lay with Clarke for failing to propose an effective plan to go after Al Qaeda. On Jan. 25, this official told NEWSWEEK, Clarke submitted proposals to "roll back" Al Qaeda in Afghanistan by boosting military aid to neighboring Uzbekistan, getting the CIA to arm its Predator spy planes and increasing funding for guerrillas fighting the Taliban. There was no need for a high-level meeting on terrorism until Clarke came up with a better plan, this official told NEWSWEEK. The official quoted President Bush as telling Condi Rice, "I'm tired of swatting flies." Bush, this official says, wanted an aggressive scheme to take bin Laden out.

...In the meeting, says Clarke, Wolfowitz cited the writings of Laurie Mylroie, a controversial academic [Isikoff fails to mention Mylroie served as an adviser on Iraq to the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign.] who had written a book advancing an elaborate conspiracy theory that Saddam was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Clarke says he tried to refute Wolfowitz. "We've investigated that five ways to Friday, and nobody [in the government] believes that," Clarke recalls saying. "It was Al Qaeda. It wasn't Saddam." A spokesman for Wolfowitz described Clarke's account as a "fabrication." Wolfowitz always regarded Al Qaeda as "a major threat," said this official. Link

She [Mylroie]thinks that Pollack, like many other former and current State Department employees and intelligence community members, intentionally tried to downplay Iraqis ties too terrorism, positing that "once the danger of Iraqi terrorist activity was admitted, the inescapable implication followed that the Clinton administration, including Pollack himself, had turned a blind eye to a major threat." Link

Clinton had to ignore it, real war is just too risky on one's legacy.

Wessie Clark was asked by Kerry to comment on this 'contraversy' on Fox News! Yikes, could I be getting my wish, a Kerry/Clark ticket?

[Timeout]

Charming sign from yesterday's SF anti-war rally:

[Endeavor]

I'm on the last chapter of "Losing Bin Laden" - I put it down to come down and watch 60 minutes and Clarke. Clarke is practically the hero of the book. Bush may well have felt that he needed his own assessment and plan to go after Bin Laden and may not have felt Clarke was as effective as he could have been due to his temperment - he apparently pissed a lot of people off and so in typical, yet sad, bureaucratic fashion, they purposely sabbatoged his plans. This plus Clinton's refusal to take Bin Laden seriously made any attempt to get Bin Laden pretty futile. Couple that with Gen Hugh Shelton lying to Clinton by telling him they'd have to have a big footprint to go in after Bin Laden (this was Shelton's way of blowing things out of proportion because Shelton and some of his cronies on the Jt. Chiefs refused to send a special ops team to do the job) makes me amazed that Clarke kept pitching given the crap he had to overcome.

That said, I'm sure he has a political persuasion and it ain't our direction. He was obsessed with Bin Laden (rightfully so) and would probably think any foreign policy that wasn't focused solely on OBL was pointless. We know that Bush had ordered a full plan of attack for OBL and that it was put on his desk on 9/10 or 9/11.

None of the Clinton people wanted to believe Iraq was involved with anything because that would have meant they'd have to do something about Saddam - Clinton was so ineffectual at recognizing the need to meet evil with might, that we are left with a truly vast terror network which is well-financed and trained and will go on to inflict as much pain to us as possible even after Al Zahwahiri and OBL are long captured/killed.

That will be Clinton's legacy. Perhaps we should send "Losing Bin Laden" to the Clinton Liebrary.

[Endeavor]

OK, this is a CBS hit-piece. Clarke surprises me that he could stay on throughout the ineptness of the Clinton approach to Iraq and is yet disgruntled to the point of airing this dirty laundry over 9 mos of the Bush admin. He strikes me as a guy who is po'd that no one allegedly listened to him. He definately has an agenda.

This load of manure that Leslie Stahl is dishing on Bush not going to "battle stations" when Clinton had in Dec '99 (because Jordanians found a massive millenium plot due to hit Americans in Jordan and then on the next day, the White HOuse wet its pants when the border guard in Wash State caught the terrorist who planned on blowing up LAX on 12/31/99). Then Clinton went into "battle stations" until Jan 1, 2000.

Sorry, but Clarke's story doesn't ring completely true. There's no way he could have put up with Clinton all those years and then come out and condemn the Bush admin for not taking AQ seriously until 9/11.

The admin better have a load of talking heads out on the talk shows this week to counter this idiot. Because w/o someone questioning Clarke on this, Bush looks terrible. And there's another side to this story. Just like there's another side to Iraq's ties to AQ.

I used to think ABC was the most anti-conservative network. I think CBS is outdoing Peteh.

[Endeavor]

Oh, he just stepped over the line bigtime - new AQ terrorists hate us because of what Bush has done. What unadulterated horsesh*t! This guy is nutty and one seriously loose cannon.