Click here to view the embedded video.

Fred on the economy:

Partial transcript:

There have been a lot of good ideas as to how to get this money into people’s hands quickly. Some have suggested, for example, that we drop it by airplane. But that leaves something to be desired. Some people will have bigger rakes than others. It won’t be distributed equitably. My favorite stimulus idea is to give everybody who needs a job a shovel. We put half the people to work digging holes. We’ll get the other half to fill em up. Everybody gets a check and the unemployment problem is solved. And theres no limit to the number of holes we can get Americans to dig and fill.

~~~

and now to the gentlemen at my last lecture who said that this sounded like telling a fat guy that the way to lose weight is to eat more donuts…I can only say that there are cleary some among us who still don’t quite understand the sophistication of the economy.

~~~

So this Holiday season be extra nice to the kids. Bless there hearts they have no idea whats in store for them. But, of course thats there problem. Our job…your job, this holiday season, is to follow the lead of our government. Spend more than you can afford. More than you can ever possibly pay back. “Ask not what your country can spend for you … ask what you can spend for your country.”

Classic Fred!

To go along with Wordsmiths post below comes the news that Fred Thompson may be considering a challenge for the RNC chair:

“I’m extremely excited that he’s considering it,” said Scooter Clippard, a Middle Tennessee businessman who spearheaded national fundraising for the Thompson and McCain campaigns. “It’s time for a change. Fred Thompson would be the absolute best person to articulate that message for the party.”

Thompson’s appeal, his supporters say, is that he has no future presidential ambitions for himself — only for his party. The former actor is also an able communicator — once famously described as a “southern-fried Reagan” — in a party sorely in need of a new message and a new direction.

“The party’s going to be looking for a messenger. Here’s a guy who’s looking toward the future of the country, not looking to pad his resume,” former Thompson campaign staffer Bob Davis of Nashville said…

Thompson has not said anything about the RNC chairmanship publicly, but the prospect has his supporters intrigued. Even former Republican presidential nominee John McCain is in on the speculation.

Wow! Michael Steele or Fred Thompson…..now that is going to be one difficult choice to make.

While I love Steele, I would have to side with Fred on this one. To see him on TV and radio as the voice of the Republican party would be fantastic.

Fred talks for over 12 minutes on what a Obama presidency will do to this nation…well worth the time to watch the whole thing:

Man o’ man I wish this guy was our candidate.

Select quotes:

Senator Obama and his campaign see a historic opportunity, a political opportunity. They know that in times of fear and uncertainty the promise of a safe haven is well received. But there is no sanctuary in what they offer. Their haven is the same tired old refuge of liberalism. The federal government. And the candidate, the least experienced, the most liberal in two generations, represents the last gasp of imposing the failed 1960′s radical leftist agenda that could never succeed in normal times.

Now let me make it as plain as I know how. Senator Obama is elected President with a Democrat majority in both the House and Senate, this country will make a dramatic shift to the left such as we have never seen before. Senator Obama and the Democrat congress will be unrestrained, and unrepentant at making our country, as never before, more divided, more dependent, on a dramatically larger and intrusive federal government.

Another good quote:

Are we really expected to believe that the spending needs of the most liberal government in American history in control of all three branches will be satisfied by only raising revenue on the top 5% of American taxpayers?

I think we’ve heard this tune before. Back when Bill Clinton campaigned on a middle-class taxcut and when elected imposed a middle-class tax increase.

Here’s Fred speaking to bloggers earlier today (Skye has her own report here). Hopefully video of his speech at the RNC will be up soon:

Meanwhile Allah at Hot Air did a great job of succinctly laying out all that the left has found out about Sarah Palin in their Palinsanity:

Why on earth would McCain dump her? What does the media have to show for all these breathless scandals they’ve dug up? We found out her daughter’s pregnant, but McCain probably knew about that in advance; in any case, the base has rallied around her in the aftermath and independents are unlikely to care two months down the road. We found out she was once a member of the Alaska Independence Party — except that, er, she wasn’t, and as Smith notes, it’s not nearly as fringe a party as one might think. We found out Todd Palin had a DUI back when Wham! was still together. We found out she flip-flopped on the bridge to nowhere, which would sting if not for the fact that she flip-flopped in the right direction and ended up torpedoing it. We found out she requested earmarks as mayor of Wasilla in the fine tradition of The One, who also claims to stand for “Change.” We found out she hopes God approves of what our soldiers are doing overseas. And as to the one big story that’s cooking, Troopergate, we found out nothing: She has a private lawyer now and the Democrat in charge of the investigation is trying hard to make Republicans panic, but like the Bristol Palin news, this is one thing McCain probably did vet thoroughly given the stakes.

Addon: Gerard Bakers breakdown of the accomplishment comparison between he who would be President and she who would be Vice President bears repeating:

Political experience

Obama: Worked his way to the top by cultivating, pandering to and stroking the most powerful interest groups in the all-pervasive Chicago political machine, ensuring his views were aligned with the power brokers there.

Palin: Worked her way to the top by challenging, attacking and actively undermining the Republican party establishment in her native Alaska. She ran against incumbent Republicans as a candidate willing and able to clean the Augean Stables of her state’s government.

Political Biography

Obama: A classic, if unusually talented, greasy-pole climber. Held a succession of jobs that constitute the standard route to the top in his party’s internal politics: “community organizer”, law professor, state senator.

Palin: A woman with a wide range of interests in a well-variegated life. Held a succession of jobs – sports journalist, commercial fisherwoman, state oil and gas commissioner, before entering local politics. A resume that suggests something other than burning political ambition from the cradle but rather the sort of experience that enables her to understand the concerns of most Americans..

Political history

Obama: Elected to statewide office only after a disastrous first run for a congressional seat and after his Republican opponent was exposed in a sexual scandal. Won seat eventually in contest against a candidate who didn’t even live in the state.

Palin: Elected to statewide office by challenging a long-serving Republican incumbent governor despite intense opposition from the party.

Appeal

Obama: A very attractive speaker whose celebrity has been compared to that of Britney Spears and who sends thrills up Chris Matthews’ leg

Palin: A very attractive woman, much better-looking than Britney Spears who speaks rather well too. She sends thrills up the leg of Rush Limbaugh (and me).

Executive experience

Obama: Makes executive decisions every day that affect the lives of his campaign staff and a vast crowd of traveling journalists

Palin: Makes executive decisions every day that affect the lives of 500,000 people in her state, and that impact crucial issues of national economic interest such as the supply and cost of energy to the United States.

Religious influences

Obama: Regards people who “cling” to religion and guns as “bitter” . Spent 20 years being mentored and led spiritually by a man who proclaimed “God damn America” from his pulpit. Mysteriously, this mentor completely disappeared from public sight about four months ago.

Palin: Head of her high school Fellowship of Christian Athletes and for many years a member of the Assemblies of God congregation whose preachers have never been known to accuse the United States of deliberately spreading the AIDS virus. They remain in full public sight and can be seen every Sunday in churches across Alaska. A proud gun owner who has been known to cling only to the carcasses of dead caribou felled by her own aim.

Record of bipartisan achievement

Obama: Speaks movingly of the bipartisanship needed to end the destructive politics of “Red America” and “Blue America”, but votes in the Senate as a down-the-line Democrat, with one of the most liberal voting records in congress.

Palin: Ridiculed by liberals such as John Kerry as a crazed, barely human, Dick Cheney-type conservative but worked wit Democrats in the state legislature to secure landmark anti-corruption legislation.

Former state Rep. Ethan Berkowitz – a Democrat – said. “Gov. Palin has made her name fighting corruption within her own party, and I was honored when she stepped across party lines and asked me to co-author her ethics white paper.”

On Human Life

Obama: Devoutly pro-choice. Voted against a bill in the Illinois state senate that would have required doctors to save the lives of babies who survived abortion procedures. The implication of this position is that babies born prematurely during abortions would be left alone, unnourished and unmedicated, until they died.

Palin: Devoutly pro-life. Exercised the choice proclaimed by liberals to bring to full term a baby that had been diagnosed in utero with Down Syndrome.

Fred Thompson smacks this one out of the park:

Upon reading the opinion in Boumediene v Bush, one must conclude that the majority knew where they wanted to go and simply had to figure out how to get there. The trip was not a pretty one. How could it be when the justices seemingly wrote a map based on ideas cherry picked from over 400 years of established law and backfilled with justifications to create a new right for alien combatants that Americans themselves do not enjoy?

They could have saved us all a lot of time if they’d told us what was clearly on their minds.

They don’t trust military tribunals to deal with those accused of being enemy combatants, even if the tribunals are following guidelines established by Congress.

That the government has probably detained some prisoners at Guantanamo for longer than they should have.

And that Guantanamo should just be closed.

Though they are willing to give it lip service, they don’t really believe we are at war … at least not a “real” war.

Therefore, they should create a new right for our nation’s enemies commiserate with the displeasure that they and the rest of the “enlightened” people have with this “war,” Guantanamo and the Bush Administration.

At least this approach would have been an honest one and based upon about as much legal justification as the approach they took.

But, instead – as Justice Scalia pointed out in his dissent – they for the first time in our nation’s history, conferred a Constitutional right of habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war – a broader right than has been given to our own citizens. The court majority did so acknowledging that they could find no precedent to confer such a right to alien enemies not within sovereign U.S. territory

The majority had simply decided that prior courts had denied such rulings based on “practical considerations.” In other words in prior cases and prior wars it had just been too inconvenient to bestow the right of habeas corpus upon non-citizens in foreign jurisdictions.

And whats amazing is that this court somehow can see into the future. You see, we will never have a war like those in the past where tens of thousands of combatants may be taken prisoner. It would still be mighty inconvenient to give those tens of thousands the right of habeas corpus….but alas, according to the majority, this is exactly what will be bestowed upon them.

But Fred doesn’t stop there….stand by to stand by:

In reading the majority opinion I am struck by the utter waste that is involved here. No, not the waste of military resources and human life, although such a result is tragically obvious. I refer to the waste of all those years these justices spent in law school studying how adherence to legal precedent is the bedrock of the rule of law, when it turns out, all they really needed was a Pew poll, a subscription to the New York Times, and the latest edition of “How to Make War for Dummies.”

Ouch!

And so true.

Man, he would of been some kind of President…but c’est la vie.

I’ve said this in the past over and over again. I don’t agree with McCain on many issues, but on the courts and the war I believe he will be true to the conservative cause. This ruling just shows how important it is to put a conservative justice on SCOTUS.

John Bolton on why those who want to throw our country to the Democrats are espousing a view that is quite similiar to Lenin’s saying “worse is better”

Plus Fred Thompson endorsed McCain since he has all but wrapped up the nomination.

Fred Thompson, the one-time Republican presidential candidate, endorsed Sen. John McCain Friday, calling on the party to “close ranks” behind the presumed nominee.

“This is no longer about past preferences or differences. It is about what is best for our country and for me that means that Republican should close ranks behind John McCain,” Thompson said in a statement reported by the Associated Press.

Thompson’s endorsement was expected. The two men were colleagues for years in the Senate and shared what associates called a friendship. But while he was in the race, Thompson had bristled at the idea that he was going to drop out and endorse McCain.

I do find it quite humorous tho that the media, such as Michael Shear above, and many bloggers are saying this was all to be expected. Which I find ludicrous. If that were so Fred would of done this when he dropped out.

But he didn’t.

He waited until the nominee was chosen, and make no mistake, the nominee has been chosen. If Mitt had won, his endorsement would of went that way.

He understands that this fight is too important for petty bickering and will back any of the Republicans who win the nomination. Just one more reason why I respect the man so.

An interesting article written by Steven Stark today in which he muses that the GOP may very well be headed to a brokered convention if McCain loses Florida:

If McCain loses in Florida, the Republicans may well be headed to a deadlocked race and convention. And history teaches us that the likeliest candidate to emerge in that scenario is someone like Warren G. Harding: the prototypical, less-than-stellar candidate to which conventions turn when the going gets rough.

This year’s Harding? Believe it or not (are you sitting down?), despite the fact that he’s withdrawn from the race, is Fred Thompson.

He goes into the history of Harding, who was supposedly chosen in a back room to be the nominee after some lackluster showing in the earlier states:

In Montana, Harding challenged the front-runners and finished fifth with less than three percent of the vote, and then withdrew from New Jersey because he was already running out of money. He barely held his own state of Ohio as a favorite son. In neighboring Indiana — deemed a must-win by Harding because he had the support of both senators — he failed to win a single county and finished a very weak fourth.

In fact, Harding’s showings were so atrocious that he had to be continually convinced not to drop out of the race by his advisors. Sound familiar?

But as the convention approached and no one was near the number required for nomination, Harding had two huge advantages over the other candidates, even though they had proven themselves far bigger vote getters. He looked and sounded like a president. And, much more important, no one disliked him nor had any strong reason to oppose him.

That, in fact, is the key to winning a race that deadlocks. And, this year, it is Thompson’s ace in the hole.

Think about it: the GOP establishment is scared to death of Huckabee, the outsider who has the allegiance of the evangelicals. The only way he’s going to get nominated is if he can win a majority of delegates in the primaries. Ditto for Giuliani: his personal life, social liberalism, and New York background make it unlikely that he can win the GOP nomination any other way than through the primaries (which, unless he can win Florida, is a long shot).

McCain? The GOP establishment and mainstream Republican voters have never really trusted this maverick, either, given his sponsorship of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance legislation, his friendship with Democrats such as John Kerry, and his current stance on immigration. McCain can win over a few stray delegates committed elsewhere. But unless he’s close to a majority as the convention approaches, he’s unlikely to be the acceptable second choice of most delegates.

Romney? Parts of the GOP establishment (i.e., the National Review crowd and Rush Limbaugh) like him, but he has the highest negatives of any candidate in the race. Evangelicals don’t trust him, perhaps unfairly. And the other candidates can’t stand him, which, if a deadlock should occur, will hardly leave him the likely beneficiary of any efforts they might make on someone else’s behalf.

That leaves Fred.

Steven argues that he has always been the establishments choice, and I agree. While its fun to speculate about a brokered convention, I doubt it will come to pass.

But for us Fredheads who understand the man was the only true conservative in the race it sure is nice to dream.

[DELETED BY AUTHOR]