RSS Feed for This PostCurrent Article

Jim Webb: “Talk of the Senate From Day 1″ (+ Open Thread)

By SusanUnPC on December 30, 2007 at 9:02 PM in Bill Richardson, Current Affairs, Obama

What’s on your minds? Pakistan? Snow? Football? Booze? What are you doing the next couple days? (I just turned down Anderson Cooper’s invitation to spend the night with him tomorrow.)

I “DVR” Morning Joe — heck, it’s on from 3am to 6am my time — and am listening to Friday’s show as I surf the net. Just listened to a long interview with a shivering Bill Richardson in Iowa. He was SOLID on Pakistan, although his call for Musharraf to step down drew fire from Chris Dodd Friday, and might be too risky, although he correctly points out that @70% of Pakistanis want him gone. Special transcontinental message to Pakistanis, I KNOW the feelin’! Richardson said we have power and leverage ($$$) in Pakistan, and need to use it. We can be an “honest broker” in Pakistan (but what about “street cred”? — just kidding, sort of). He said we need a special envoy to get involved and calm things down. While surfing, I ran across this terrific profile of Sen. Jim Webb’s first year — and his “redneck caucus” — at Politico.com:

In the NBA, Sen. Jim Webb would have been a can’t-miss, No. 1 draft pick.

A decorated Vietnam veteran and a former secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, the freshman Virginia Democrat, who opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, was seen early on as the leader of a new vanguard of populist, anti-war Democrats.

Given plum posts on the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees and tapped to give the response to President Bush’s State of the Union address just 19 days after he was sworn in, Webb quickly lived up to expectations, emerging this year as a leading Democratic voice in the Iraq war debate.
“He is a unique and weird combination of street-brawler and professor,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), one of Webb’s closest friends.

“Intellectually, he is probably as smart, or smarter, than most folks around here,” she said.

“But he’s got an instinct. He knows when to go for the kill.” …

Read all. It’s a great story. Here’s perhaps my favorite line:

“I can safely say that I am the only person ever elected to state office in Virginia with a union card, two Purple Hearts and three tattoos,” he said in an interview.

  • yogi-one

    Actually, for a change, I read some stuff from the Seattle Times today. What caught my attention there was the letters section, and a farewell op/ed by “editor-at large” Mike Fancher: http://tinyurl.com/ytao4p

    He made a list of what he belives are necessary standards for journalists to uphold to maintain a free press:

    The key is for journalists to be true servants of the public, driven by clear values and ethics. The press must create the kind of journalism envisioned by Rosenstiel and Kovach when they articulated these “elements of journalism”:
    Its first loyalty is to citizens.
    Its essence is a discipline of verification.
    Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
    It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
    It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
    It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.
    It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.
    Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.

    I wrote him back, thanking him for his years of service at the Times, and lauded his good op-ed here. Then I wanted to make sure he understood where I thought the Times itself had fallen down on some of these items. I wrote:

    You and I, and Dick Cheney, Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, and the Board of Directors of the Carlyle Group, and the Gates family all get to have an opinion about what we see in the news.
    But the lofty principles you put in your column are all undermined when any of those people gets to decide what the news is.

    I hope he got it. And shares it with his editors.

    So for me an independent free press is a critical issue, that goes far beyond the “canary in the coal mine”. You can look around the world and actually gauge how free a country is by how free its press is, and it’s a dead-on one-to-one correspondence every time.

    It really bothers me that people who pride themselves on being prominent Americans are actively trying to shut down the independence and freedom of the press.

    Look at this from the letters to the editor:

    Flash back to fewer than five weeks ago. The No. 1 topic for the week of Nov. 11 in The Seattle Times was the FCC hearing in Seattle. The headline on the day after the hearing was “Seattle crowd blasts FCC on big media” [page one, Nov. 10].

    Guess what? The FCC ignored the crowds in Seattle and just ruled that media will be able to get larger in Seattle ["FCC eases rule on media ownership," News, Dec. 19].

    But here’s my pick for letter-of-the-week from a guy in Snohomish:

    Wake up
    Did you hear that?
    I just had the strangest dream.
    I dreamed that the EPA outlawed protecting the environment.
    That the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was opposed to teaching children how to prevent disease.
    That the FCC decided we no longer needed a free press.
    I sure hope I wake up before the fire department torches my house.

  • TeakWoodKite

    We need to get him a gas card for pulling gaurd duty this holiday.

    There is an interesting comment from a LT. Nixon:

    It’s high time we realize as country that you can’t fight something as big as war on the cheap and with a lot of outsourcing to contractors.

    To him and his band of brothers and sisters…

  • Bill Keyes

    Check out this article

    Stop Meddling in Pakistan by Jacob Hornberger

    http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2007-12-28.asp

  • GR3

    Seahawks against the Redskins next Saturday. Will there be sides taken at No Quarter?
    Seriously, I’m hearing from family in Iowa that Richardson is going to get their votes. They’ve heard him speak a couple times. Which is a lot different than reading and listening to big media repeat their ‘safe’ opinions. Regardless of opinions expressed on certain Sunday morning shows, Richardson isn’t a radical on Pakistan. While I would be happy with ANY Dem candidate winning the nomination, Richardson looks good.
    Like football, politics has only temporary winners. Let’s hope the instant replays are as decisive and accurate as 2008 exit polls.

  • Taters

    Remeber this? I believe this was written before Allen conceded…

    ELECTION 2006

    Class Struggle
    American workers have a chance to be heard.

    BY JIM WEBB
    Wednesday, November 15, 2006 12:01 a.m.

    The most important–and unfortunately the least debated–issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.
    Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic’s range. As this newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.

    http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009246

  • TeakWoodKite

    Let’s hope the instant replays are as decisive and accurate as 2008 exit polls.

    Yea and none of this taking a knee, with a minute left in the game. 5 to 1 …1 in 5. No onside kicks…

  • Shirin

    Gee, I was completely with that author until he said “No matter what the Bush administration does to intervene further into Pakistani affairs, the result will only be worse, especially for Americans, than the situation that currently exists.”

    Sigh!

  • Fred C. Dobbs

    >>> “America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years… Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.”

    Hey, is this a great country, or what?

    Or does it depend more upon if one is a Trickle-downOR or a Trickled-down uponEE?

    Meanwhile, what has Britney done now? Does Paris have a new shtup-buddy? And how about Fergie’s new crib?

  • Taters

    Funny Fred.
    Paris was seen kissing K-Fed. Ms. Lohan may yet still channel Al Gore. And for us duffers, Mo Dowd had an exorcism and – shades of Dick Morris.
    Sting is…well I’ll just post the link.
    This is too much information.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=505211&in_page_id=1773

  • Taters

    Apparently I’m responsible for the crickets. I should have given an ‘ewwwwwww’ alert.
    I apologize for the above link.
    I stand before you – humbled, barefoot in the snow and in sackcloth and ashes.

  • TeakWoodKite

    Brrrrrrrrrrrrr :)

  • TeakWoodKite

    Here is a General Election issue…

    Supreme Court to weigh in on voter ID laws

    The Supreme Court, which famously split 5-4 in the case that sealed the 2000 presidential election for George Bush, will take up the Indiana law on January 9, just as the 2008 presidential primaries are getting underway

    The cases are Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 07-21, and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, 07-25.

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2007-12-30-voterID_N.htm?csp=34

    http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/06/12/news/nation/111107142517.txt

  • Independent

    heh, I would love to watch the repubicans attack Obama for lack of experience after the right wing debacle of the last seven years. As much as it would be a hoot to get to watch Bill as first gentleman it’s not worth the same old same old for another four years.

    All the illegal immigrant lovers should vote for Rudy. His law firm is the one tying up the loose ends to get a ten lane hwy. from Mexico to Canada, engineered so that the people have no say. We are going to have illegals coming over the border at 80 MPH.

    Happy New Year.

  • TeakWoodKite

    Did you “Heyduke”?

  • http://tinurl.us/3f36cc Deeshyenams
  • http://www.greencashmoney.com ArepSedrive

    Hi All,

    I have been reading the forum threads for some time now but never bothered to register myself until today. Hope to bring some good stuff to these forums.

    Thanks,

    _________________
    Stock Market Timing

blog comments powered by Disqus