Posted on 10/04/2007 10:04:34 AM PDT by presidio9
Yes, he's an actor. But that doesn't mean he can perform.
The New York Times presents a searing portrait of Fred Thompson's lackluster performance on the campaign trail, with the worst damage done within the quotes attributed to the candidate.
"Can I have a round of applause?" Thompson is forced to ask a silent Iowan audience at the end of his 24 minutes of remarks. After a rustle of clapping and some laughter, he grumbles, "Well, I had to drag that out of you."
Drag seems to be the operative word here. Iowans saw a "subdued, laconic candidate who spoke in a soft monotone, threw few elbows and displayed little drive to distinguish himself from opponents," the Times reported. After he spoke recently, "stillness engulfed the room."
It may be that Thompson doesn't talk loud because he's not too sure of what he's talking about. In an interview with Kay Henderson of Radio Iowa on Monday, he referred to the "Soviet Union and China." At the end of her blog post on the exchange, Henderson wrote, "No, I did not mistype. Thompson said Soviet Union rather than Russia."
None Dare Call It Torture
The New York Times stops just short of using the "T word," preferring to call it "severe interrogations." But let's not beat around the bush: Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department secretly approved torture -- even as it told the rest of the world it didn't, and as Congress was passing laws to ban torture
In a long investigative piece, the Times digs up two classified opinions issued by the department under Gonzales' reign to prove it.
The first, issued soon after Gonzales' arrival as attorney general in 2005, for the first time provided "explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including headslapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures."
(That "simulated drowning," by the way, is the technique known as waterboarding: "pouring water over a bound prisoner's cloth-covered face to induce fear of suffocation.")
Meanwhile, the department's official stand to the public was the one it issued in 2004, calling torture "abhorrent."
Later in 2005, as Congress moved toward outlawing "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion declaring that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.
If they didn't violate that standard, they at least produced some of the tainted results torture often yields: confessions to crimes the confessor probably didn't commit.
When the C.I.A. caught Khaid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, interrogators were "haunted by uncertainty." They used a variety of "tough interrogation tactics" about 100 times over two weeks on the man known as K.S.M., and got all kinds of confessions. The problem is, intelligence officers say that "many of Mr. Mohammed's statements proved exaggerated or false."
Reacting to the Times story, a White House spokeswoman said: "Our intelligence agencies legally obtain information. This country does not torture."
Republicans Backing Away From Free Trade
What the heck is happening to the Republican Party? Right on the heels of news that business leaders are abandoning the GOP comes another discomforting poll from the Wall Street Journal: By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy.
Six in 10 Republicans in the poll agreed with a statement that free trade has been bad fo the U.S. and said they would agree with a Republican candidate who favored tougher regulations on foreign imports. That represents a substantial shift from eight years ago, the Journal reports.
But no one gave the Republican presidential candidates the memo. They're all still campaigning on the party's traditional anti-protectionist platform.
Well, all except one. Ron Paul of Texas, who opposes the Iraq war and calls free-trade deals "a threat to our independence as a nation," announced yesterday that he raised $5 million in third-quarter donations. That nearly matches what one-time front-runner John McCain is expected to report.
The GOP's departure from its traditional stance is a bit puzzling to some, but a big clue to what's behind it can be found in this sentence: "In questions about a series of candidate stances, the only one drawing strong agreement from a majority of Republicans was opposition to abortion rights."
As you know, I’m far from being a Fredhead. But this story sounds a bit fishy, NY Times style. Asking for applause?
Did anyone really expect the NYT to give a fair assessment anyway??? They know he’s the front runner and are totally feeding on the silly perceptions in various conservative circles (like here) that Fred has no fire. Completely predictable.
I think CBS is bombing out
I heard that he really did ask for applause. However, some of the people afterwards said they liked him. It wasn’t all negative.
Barak Obama is making mistakes left and right. So is Hillary Clinton for that matter. I’m waiting for the NYT or See BS to decide that one of those stories is major news.
Well, if CBS and the the NYT say that Fred isn’t setting the world on fire, I guess it must be true. I mean: why would they lie about something like that??
So the media doesn’t like what Fred has to say. Did anyone expect otherwise?
Personally, I’m quite pleased with what Fred has had to say for himself. And I’ll be voting in my State’s Republican primary. The author of this article will not.
Wishful thinking on the part of CBS.
What it really means is that they see him as a threat to Hillary.
If its from CBS it must be true.... LOL
See BS reports that:
The New York Times presents a searing portrait of Fred Thompson’s lackluster performance...
Yeah, like we’re really gonna believe that.......They must be terrified of and near panicked over Fred..................
But I guess I shouldn't have expected anything different as that is the way he was on Law and Order.
Another liberal hit piece posted on conservative Free Republic.
Like we don’t know See-BS and the NY Slimes are anti-Fred, anti-conservative and anti-Republican.
The New York Times doesn’t know how to report any actual happening.
They only know how to spin a story.
I wouldn’t believe them if they said today was Thursday.
The NY Times. . .now there's a reliable media outlet.
:::sarc tag in case its needed:::
I attended the Thompson banquet in New Port Richey, Florida and made a detailed report on this forum. Fred brought down the house before a politically-savvy audience. Many standing O's.
Woe betide anyone who spins and prevaricates if we have knowledgeable freepers in the audience who can string some words together to report the truth.
Leni
“They know he’s the front runner”? I don’t agree with just about anything the NYT says, but last I checked, he’s not the front runner. At least not now.
Fred Thompson Bombs On Campaign Trail
CBS News
The New York Times
No matter whom we are backing or NOT backing in the Repub race, can we PALEEZE stop quoting LIBERAL/COMMIE sources in order to slime Repub candidates?
It’s very simple really. The press follow these candidates wherever they go. They see it all: the high points and the low points. If they don’t like a candidate, they are free to report every low point in excruciating, even embellished, detail, while reporting nothing positive in balance. By contrast, a candidate they like gets the opposite treatment: gaffes are overlooked, “uhs” and “ums” are edited from quotes, crowd sizes are juiced up, crowd reactions are amplified in the positive, etc.
If the MSM doesn’t want Fred, they’ll do whatever they can to make him look bad.
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