This is becoming fun. More entertainment from MySpace. First, this one

Harold Ford Jr. wants to use soybeans for fuel. A lower-cost, environmentally happy and efficient way to drive your car saying, “Thanks, Mother Nature, you are good to me.” I like him. I will vote for him.

And no, I don’t think that one is a joke. What’s frightening is that the little mood icon was set to “pensive” when I saw the post. Then this rather verbose one

Well all those who understand the importance of politics and as a result actually follow whats going on I have an exciting update.  The political winds across the nation are at the back of the Democrats as the November elections draw ever nearer.  The Democrats need I think 15 seats in the House and 6 seats in the Senate to take over both divisions of Congress.

…

In Virginia Jim Webb is running a srong race against incumbent George Allen and in Tennessee D-Harold Ford is running a great race agains R- Bob Corker for the open seat of R- Bill Frist who is leaving to engage in a most certainly failing presidential bid in 2008.  Here in West Virginia Robert Byrd is being challenged by John Raese and it really isnt a close contest.  Byrd’s track record is emaculate and it will take much more then old age to bring this colossal political figure down from his current perch atop the United States Senate.

Yeah, his sheets are immaculate, too.

More material as I find it.

This comment on one of the Ford blogs stood out - for obvious reasons, from someone calling himself Joe4444

Well he [Bob Corker] is an Economic Conservative, which is why he is running “officially” with the Republicans, yet he has no moral ground. I dont think he even believes in God, if he does he is far from acting like any sort of Christian. He lies, supports murder, steals (which he is currently in legal trouble for), he clearly doesn’t have a strong opposition to gay marriage since his daughter is a lesbian herself. I dont trust Bob Corker to restore any values in Tennessee what-so-ever, whereas Ford has given me every reason to trust why he is the more Christian Conservative candidate in this election, regardless of party.

And that’s just the tip of the loony iceberg. Check out the rest here. The funny (sic) thing is that the proprietor of the Ford site seems not to care.

UPDATE The commenter has his own blog here. Anyone who actually believes that Ford is the conservative in this race is about to uncomfortably pass a hook, line and sinker.

What does this even mean? From Volunteer Voters

The most interesting portion of the Times Free Press article for my eyes was this:

Corker campaign manager Ben Mitchell said, “Congressman Ford has strong political ties in his Memphis congressional district, and as a result it seems only natural that someone like this who is politically involved would contribute to Congressman Ford’s U.S. Senate campaign.”

Wait isn’t the rap on Ford that he isn’t really from Tennessee? That he grew up in Washington and raises all this out of state money?

Either he has strong ties to Memphis or he is an out of touch Washington insider, you can’t have it both ways.
Well, actually, see - Ford has to get elected, which is where he needs help from the Memphis political machine. If he actually grew up in Memphis, and spent his free time in Tennessee (when not running for United States Senate, of course), he wouldn’t need the likes of “politicos” like Hooks.

So, it has nothing to do with “having it both ways”. It has plenty to do with how Harold Ford, Jr. got his House seat - from his family’s network and influence in Memphis, with whom the indicted Hooks is evidently a part.

I think this new blog ought to rename itself “The Kleinheider Factcheck Blog”.

I’m not getting the latent hostility over at Volunteer Voters from AC Kleinheider about Bob Corker. It’s as if that other WKRN blogger is ghosting at Volunteer Voters.  Who knows, really. The latest bit is some supposed intellectual superiority regarding a methodless poll, as if we Corker supporters are supposed to ebb and flow with every Internet based numerical release.
The overall point, I suppose, is that Bob Corker’s campaign staff is perhaps the best in the country. There’s no confusion, and no panic. The campaign has made some recent and impressive acquisitions. To think that Corker is “running out the clock”, or otherwise not engaged in this race, is completely without merit. We have eight weeks left in this campaign - the animated foretellings of doom are more scifi than reality based. The resources are there, and the plan is there. Believe that the onslaught is coming.

Perhaps some recent history is worth noting. I know it was ages ago, but do remember how long Bob was behind in the primary before winning convincingly. The general will be no different.

Republican incumbent Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island held off a primary challenge from a much more conservative member of his own party yesterday. While many Republicans rightly deplore Chafee’s more liberal nature, I was rooting for him to win. John Norris Brown explains why.

And it’s yet another reason among a growing pile that Bob Corker must win here.

UPDATE I have apparently been lampooned as nothing more than a Republican partisan for my above statement. The difference between a Republican majority and minority in the Senate for conservatives is legion. If Democrats control the agenda, they control the legislative calendar, the committee schedules, judicial hearings, executive oversight and treaty ratification. In the House, the control over legislation is even tighter.
If you can find a bright side to that for we conservatives, I’m all ears. If one liberal party member from Rhode Island ensures at least two more years of conservative jurists on the federal bench, count me as in.

United States Congressman Lincoln Davis has been attempting to lay some groundwork for Harold Ford, Jr. This may not be the best way to go around convincing people. From the AP today

Davis said he recently convinced a small-town pastor to support Ford despite the pastor’s concerns about Ford’s family, several of whom, including his father, have been caught up in political and legal scandals.

 “He said, ‘U.S. Rep., I don’t know that I can be for Ford because of his family.’ I said do you realize in your family you had a brother who killed his brother?” Davis said, referring to the biblical story of Cain and Abel.

I’m not sure that’s the best way to go about it.

This weekend was action packed and consequently, long. There will be fresh stuff tomorrow, both here and at Blogging for Corker, to include a nice debunking of this Wal-Mart issue many on the left are lobbing at Bob Corker.

I truly wonder whether the problem is more Corker, or Wal-Mart, because honestly, having seen the suit, and read the documents surrounding it, there’s nothing illegal or unethical to be getting excited about.

On second thought, I guess it’s not fair to pigeon hole the ire of liberals onto one source. My utmost apologies for that.

UPDATE In addition to taking care of clients, I offer my apologies for not writing yesterday as promised. Thanks to lightning, I’m working on a new computer, and need to parse some documents with Acrobat, which I’m going to have to go out and buy.  I will address one non-sequiter which doesn’t require software, though

The claim now is that all myths about Bob Corker’s involvement in the Wal Mart deal will be debunked tomorrow on the Blogging for Corker blog as well as the Moore Thoughts blog. My question is this: if everything in the deal was above board, why did Corker and his attorneys request that all documents relating to this case be sealed? Or perhaps we, the people of Tennessee, are too inept to understand legal documents. Seems to be the case with his tax returns…..

Filing under seal and sealing the record can be for a variety of reasons - it’s not an uncommon activity. But hiding criminal activity is not one of those allowed reasons. In short, the other side plays with this like it means something, but without any proof to back it up.  This has been out there for some time, even before the suit, which was originally dismissed, was revived. You’d think if there was something to it, Ed Bryant or Van Hilleary would have latched on in the primary.
The easement was built into this property. Further development in the area was already envisioned in the mid 1990s.  As such, the process to get the necessary approval for the Wal-Mart development began before Bob Corker became mayor.  This is something the pro-Ford folks don’t seem to recognize.

Seeming that they claim to want to talk about issues, I’m not sure why they keep bringing it up.

Why in the new Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ad is Bob Corker in technicolor, and Harold Ford, Jr. is in a smudged and blurred black and white? Odd. Red State has more.

Double posted at Blogging for Corker.

So says notable blogger Bill Hobbs. And he has the proof to buttress his claim

U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., the Tennessee Democratic Party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate, is a liar. A serial liar. Back on August 4, Ford and U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, debated deficit reduction on the Kudlow & Co. show. As the transcript shows, Ford essentially agrees with Marsha that voting against the Deficit Reduction Act would be wrong - but then says he voted for it. That’s a lie. The record shows that Ford voted against the Deficit Reduction Act twice. He voted against the House version and he voted against the final conference report. Could Ford have simply “forgotten” his votes against the Deficit Reduction Act? Not likely for, as Leon Wolf, writing at RedState.com, reminds us, Ford filed filed an amicus brief challenging the constitutionality of the Deficit Reduction Act when it was challenged in court.

Click through. Hobbs notes this isn’t the first time Ford has lied about his record. And seeing how he’s running just to the left of Atilla the Hun, I’m wagering it won’t be the last.

Double posted at Blogging for Corker.

Much hupaloo has been made about the impending release of Harold Ford, Jr.’s poll showing him leading Bob Corker by two points. The “news” has caused all sorts of glee-ridden catatonic fits on the Left, showing that Tennessee is really “in play”, and that Ford has gained ground over the last six weeks.

I’ll explain margin of error later.

In the last 20 days, Bob Corker has run no media, and done no large direct mail, after a nonstop crescendo leading up to the primary. Ford, on the other hand, has been popping that misleading soybean ad all over the state, and pretending he’s a clone of Ronald Reagan at every opportunity (voting record aside, of course). Ford was going to gain some ground. Unfortunately for his rabid supporters, there’s no way at all he’s going to be able to keep up this pace through November.

Fine. We’ve seen irrational exuberance before. But then some race-centric, race baiting progressive goes ahead and establishes the pre-justification for why Ford will likely lose

Yes, but Ford has a blackness problem. If Ford was white, he’d have an excellent chance at winning the seat. But at the end of the day, whites who fled the GOP will have to go into a voting booth and vote for Ford, and I think that’s a tough sell.

I’d like to be wrong, but I think this race is about to get as ugly as Gantt-Helms. Because I don’t see the GOP going down without a nasty, racist fight.

Uh, we’re not the one’s mentioning his race, except to discuss it when he brings it up. If race is an issue in this campaign, it’s coming from the Left flank Kos-Klones or it’s from Ford himself.

But please, keep setting up that strawman. If it separates you on the Left from reality, we’ll take it.

Jay Bush notes Harold Ford, Jr.’s populist pandering - I call it the William Jennings Bryan campaign model.

Sean Braisted notes the impact of the Ninth District House race on Harold Ford, Jr.’s run for US Senate

Something dawned on me today…Jake Ford’s run as an independent in Memphis could cost his brother Harold the election. Think about it for a second, does anyone honestly think a long protracted race between the Democratic nominee and an “independent Democrat” is not going to get messy? By November, issues such as race and nepotism will be at the forefront of a political race like this, and people are going to be polarized into Pro-Ford and Pro-Cohen camps.

Even if HFJ stays out of this race, anyone with half a brain will realize that at best, Harold Sr/Jr approve of Jake’s candidacy. At worst, they orchestrated it to make sure someone from the “Ford Machine” kept that seat in case their favored candidates didn’t win the primary. Jake was an “in case $h!t happens” candidate, and as such his candidacy will create a lot of ill will (to add onto the ill will that already exists) towards the Ford family.

That’s a reasonable conclusion. I don’t know how the Fords go about running their funeral home / politics business in Memphis, but certainly there was room for a fail safe plan, albeit likely a bad one. I don’t see how Harold is going to be able to stay completely out of this fray. Jake is his brother, after all. The larger issue is how this affects the Memphis media market, and the certain shenanigans that will be reporter fodder with an independent Jake Ford candidacy. Harold needs a bump coming out of the West if he has any hopes of winning the Senate seat.  This extra-curricular activity by Jake will certainly dampen that prospect.

And everyone thought the Congressman from the Ninth got a breather when his uncle’s trial was moved to February.

So much for that lack of unity thing.

Please join Van Hilleary on August 15th as he campaigns in Middle Tennessee for Bob Corker -Tennessee’s next United States Senator…

  

You are invited to meet Bob Corker and
U. S. Senator John Thune

Join Bob Corker and U.S. Senator John Thune,
the Senator from South Dakota who defeated Tom Daschle in 2004, as they campaign through Middle Tennessee on Tuesday, August 15th.

Bob Corker and
Senator John Thune
campaign at Puckett’s Grocery Restaurant

Tuesday, August 15, 2006
3:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Puckett’s Grocery Restaurant
120 4th Ave. S
Franklin, TN

Pete & Katherine DeLay
David & Sarah Ingram
Ambassador Joe & Honey Rodgers
Steve & Denise Smith
Ted & Colleen Welch

invite you to a complimentary reception
for prospective donors with

U.S. Senator John Thune (SD)
the Senator who defeated Tom Daschle in 2004

in support of

Bob Corker
Candidate for U.S. Senate

The Ford blogs seem giddy that Harold Ford, Jr. has a plan to trifurcate Iraq, thinking this would somehow end the problems there, and make the Middle East a less volatile place. A bad idea is not better than no idea.

I question the Congressman’s sense of understanding of the region, and his knowledge of history. I could write an entire dissertation on why the establishment of Kurdistan, Sunniland, and Shiiteville is a bad idea. Here’s the quick version.

Though the Kurds have not been a problem in the Iraqi mess, they have been a problem to the Turks. Turkey has suffered Kurdish terrorism for some time, primarily because there is a substantial Kurdish separatist contingent just over the Iraqi border. Turkey would neither geopolitically nor militarily stand for the establishment of an independent Kurdistan. By giving the Kurds their own country, at least at this point in time, you’re simply rolling another barrel of gunpowder up to the fire.

An independent Shiite state would greatly enhance the capabilities of Iran in the region. The Iranians have already been interfering in domestic Iraqi politics through Shiite clerics. Separating the Shiites from the moderating effects of the Kurds and Sunnis would give Iran an instant client state. This is something we don’t need, especially in light of the recent hositilities between Iranian supported Hizbullah and Israel. Trifurcation, as Ford suggests, would empower Iran at a time when we’re trying to weaken the Islamist fascist regime.

Finally, the Sunnis would be the odd man out. The Sunnis in Iraq are a small contingent vis a vis the Shiites, and would be ripe for conquer by either the new more populous and fanatical Shiite state or Iran. The Shiites in Iraq are still smarting from decades of Sunni rule under Saddam Hussein. They would not hesitate to, in their eyes, even the score.

Dividing Iraq into three, as many would like to do, would be perfectly fine in a vaccuum. Iraq was an intentional and artificial state from the beginning, concocted by the British to ease imperial administration. But we’re not in a vaccuum, and the moving parts we do have to deal with aren’t going to sit idly by and help foster the growth of three new ethnic and sectarian based democracies.

This sort of uninformed thinking is exactly what we don’t need in Iraq. For this reason among many, Ford is not fit to be our next senator in Tennessee.

Don’t forget about Blogging for Corker!