Rumor Has It: July 2007

For News And Commentary:

For Florida Election News See:

Political Talk For And By Political Junkies

Just Rumors The Rumor Mills

Romney's Hardcore Porn Profits

Romney's Hardcore Porn Profits Not Mentioned in New Ad

Mitt Romney has a history of profiting from hardcore pornography. While a member of the board of Marriott for nearly ten years, he failed to voice any objections to providing the x-rated videos to those interested in renting them. Industry-wide, hotel chains make about $500 million dollars a year from this, and where was this culture warrior when he had a chance to actually do something about it?

No longer content with just profiting from money, now he's trying to profit politically with a new ad that talks about how the children are suffering due to a culture that has -- you guessed it -- pornography. It's fitting with the transformation he's been undertaking recently; just a few months ago hhe blamed pornography for the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

But what ever happened to personal responsibility? Namely, Mitt Romney's. If he's going to rail against it now, shouldn't he be forced to explain this obvious contradiction between his rhetoric and his record? The Deseret Morning News, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has already begun criticizing Romney for his hardcore porn profits, and look for more to come.

A Election '08 News Site:

For News And Commentary:

For Florida Election News See:

Political Talk For And By Political Junkies

Just Rumors The Rumor Mills

Fred Thompson Skirts The Rules, Delays Filing For Presidential Run

Do As I Say, Not As I Do; Campaign Finance Reform Advocate Freddy Skirts The Rules, Delays Filing For Presidential Run

Thompson claims he's not really a candidate for President yet; he's just "testing the waters". Now, friends, that's not a made-up term -- under the FEC rules, you can delay your initial campaign filings if you're truly not sure if you want to run, and want to raise and spend a little money to determine if your candidacy would be viable. But the ability to use this loophole ceases if it's clear that you've decided to become a candidate, and there are extrinsic factors are used by the FEC to determine if that's the case. I'll focus on three:

If you raise funds in excess of amounts reasonably required for exploratory activity or amass funds for use after candidacy is established;
If you conduct activities over a protracted period of time (or shortly before an election); and
If you make or authorize statements that refer to yourself as a candidate.

Raising Funds Beyond What You Need To "Explore"
Well, Thompson claims to have "taken in at least several million dollars", and the New York Post confirms that the campaign had "made significant strides toward the nearly $5 million that Thompson's 'First Day Founders' have committed to raising as seed money for a full-fledged presidential campaign." Indeed, almost a month ago, the WaPo reported the campaign's acknowledgement that it "seems on track to reach his goal of raising about $5 million in just one month, according to advisers."

Long-Term Planning
When your campaign "signed a long-term lease on a building in Nashville that will serve as its national headquarters", you're engaging in protracted campaign activity.

Calling Yourself A "Candidate"
Here's some of what Thompson has said already:

June 26, 2007: "You're either running or not running. I think the steps we're taking are pretty obvious."
June 4, 2007: Thompson referred in the past tense to having decided "I'm going to do this," and then again talks about "when I did" decide to run for President. Also in that interview, Thompson claims his Internet presence "has allowed me to be in the hunt, so to speak, without spending a dime." [Query -- does blogging on a site with only 23K visits/day count as a "presence"?]
June 6, 2007: Thompson tells CNBC's Kudlow and Cramer that his campaign is a foregone conclusion, saying "Well, I don't want to get into a lot of details in terms of a plan before I even announce my candidacy."
July 12, 2007: Thompson advisor Mary Matalin tells the WaPo, "He has made up his mind. And one can appreciate that planning the announcement of what's on his mind needs to take place in a deliberative fashion."

As one campaign finance attorney put it today, Thompson is "playing footsie" with the campaign rules. Thompson allegedly believes in "more disclosure" in the campaign finance realm. Let's see him prove it. What could he possibly be hiding?

A Election '08 News Site:

For News And Commentary:

For Florida Election News See:

Political Talk For And By Political Junkies

Just Rumors The Rumor Mills

More Dirt On GOP Hopefuls

1) Fred Thompson knocked up his high school girlfriend out of wedlock. They got married and subsequently divorced before Thompson married his current wife, 24 years his junior.
source 1 and source 2.

2) Rudy Giuliani's first wife (of three) was his second cousin (Regina Peruggi). They were married for 14 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani

3) Ron Paul has more cash on hand for his campaign than John McCain.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/07/ron-paul-tops-m.html.

4) Rudy Giuliani has been married more times (3 times) than Mitt Romney has gone hunting (2 times).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani
http://democrats.org/a/2007/04/more_money_same.php

5) Fred Thompson once worked as a lobbyist for the pro-choice National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. Not terribly shocking given that, to varying degrees, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and even John McCain have all offered pro-choice commentary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/07/us/politics/07thompson.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/10/114157/044

6) Rudy Giuliani is the cross-dressingest public servant since J. Edgar Hoover.
http://www.myspace.com/rudyinadress

7) According to their Wikipedia pages, Fred Thompson (2), Rudy Giuliani (3), John McCain (2), and Newt Gingrich (3) combine to average 2.5 marriages each.

A Election '08 News Site:

For News And Commentary:

For Florida Election News See:

Political Talk For And By Political Junkies

Just Rumors The Rumor Mills

Revist 9/11

Fred Thompson Gay: yuck!

RUMORS ABOUT FRED THOMPSON'S SEXUALITY ARE TOO MUCH

Andrew Sullivan:

Outside the extremist, activist base, regular GOP voters turn out to be relatively tolerant when it comes to sexual minorities and private sex lives. They're not well represented by their party leaders, as far as policy is concerned. This is good news for Fred Thompson. The man has had a colorful and wide-ranging sex life, as I'm sure we will soon find out.

Translated: COUGH COUGH GAY COUGH COUGH FRED THOMPSON IS GAY GAY GAY COUGH COUGH

But that's not all.

Roswell aliens theory revived by deathbed confession

Roswell PR officer dies, releasing sworn affadavit
Claims alien story true, saw bodies
UFO pieces handed around at high-level meeting

EXACTLY 60 years ago, a light aircraft was flying over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, at a height of around 3000m.

Suddenly, a brilliant flash of light illuminated the aircraft.

Visibility was good and as pilot Kenneth Arnold scanned the sky to find the source of the light, he saw a group of nine shiny metallic objects flying information.

He estimated their speed as being around 2600km/h - nearly three times faster than the top speed of any jet aircraft at the time.

Soon, similar reports began to come in from all over America.

This wasn't just the world's first UFO sighting, this was the birth of a phenomenon, one that still exercises an extraordinary fascination.

Military authorities issued a press release, which began: "The many rumours regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc."

The headlines screamed: "Flying Disc captured by Air Force".

Yet, just 24 hours later, the military changed their story and claimed the object they'd first thought was a "flying disc" was a weather balloon that had crashed on a nearby ranch.

The key witness was Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer who had gone to the ranch to recover the wreckage.

He described the metal as being wafer thin but incredibly tough.

It was as light as balsa wood, but couldn't be cut or burned.

These and similar accounts of the incident have largely been dismissed by all except the most dedicated believers.

Astonishing new twist

But last week came an astonishing new twist to the Roswell mystery.

Lieutenant Walter Haut was the public relations officer at the base in 1947 and was the man who issued the original and subsequent press releases after the crash on the orders of the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard.

Haut died last year but left a sworn affidavit to be opened only after his death.

Last week, the text was released and asserts that the weather balloon claim was a cover story and that the real object had been recovered by the military and stored in a hangar.

He described seeing not just the craft, but alien bodies.

He wasn't the first Roswell witness to talk about alien bodies.

Local undertaker Glenn Dennis had long claimed that he was contacted by authorities at Roswell shortly after the crash and asked to provide a number of child-sized coffins.

When he arrived at the base, he was apparently told by a nurse (who later disappeared) that a UFO had crashed and that small humanoid extraterrestrials had been recovered.

But Haut is the only one of the original participants to claim to have seen alien bodies.

UFO pieces handed around

Haut's affidavit talks about a high-level meeting he attended with base commander Col William Blanchard and the Commander of the Eighth Army Air Force, General Roger Ramey.

Haut states that at this meeting, pieces of wreckage were handed around for participants to touch, with nobody able to identify the material.

He says the press release was issued because locals were already aware of the crash site, but in fact there had been a second crash site, where more debris from the craft had fallen.

The plan was that an announcement acknowledging the first site, which had been discovered by a farmer, would divert attention from the second and more important location.

The clean-up operation

Haut also spoke about a clean-up operation, where for months afterwards military personnel scoured both crash sites searching for all remaining pieces of debris, removing them and erasing all signs that anything unusual had occurred.

This ties in with claims made by locals that debris collected as souvenirs was seized by the military.

Haut then tells how Colonel Blanchard took him to "Building 84" - one of the hangars at Roswell - and showed him the craft itself.

He describes a metallic egg-shaped object around 3.6m-4.5m in length and around 1.8m wide.

He said he saw no windows, wings, tail, landing gear or any other feature.

Haug 'saw the alien bodies'

He saw two bodies on the floor, partially covered by a tarpaulin.

They are described in his statement as about 1.2m tall, with disproportionately large heads.

Towards the end of the affidavit, Haut concludes: "I am convinced that what I personally observed was some kind of craft and its crew from outer space".

What's particularly interesting about Walter Haut is that in the many interviews he gave before his death, he played down his role and made no such claims.

Had he been seeking publicity, he would surely have spoken about the craft and the bodies.

Did he fear ridicule, or was the affidavit a sort of deathbed confession from someone who had been part of a cover-up, but who had stayed loyal to the end?

The US government came under huge pressure on Roswell in the '90s.

In July 1994, in response to an inquiry from the General Accounting Office, the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force published a report, The Roswell Report: Fact Versus Fiction In The New Mexico Desert.

Weather balloon 'cover story'

The report concluded that the Roswell incident had been attributable to something called Project Mogul, a top secret project using high-altitude balloons to carry sensor equipment into the upper atmosphere, listening forevidence of Soviet nuclear tests.

The statements concerning a crashed weather balloon had been a cover story, they admitted, but not to hide the truth about extraterrestrials.

A second US Air Force report concluded claims bodies were recovered were generated by people having seen crash test dummies that were dropped from the balloons.

Sceptics, of course, will dismiss the testimony left by Haut.

After all, fascinating though it is, it's just a story. There's no proof.

But if nothing else, this latest revelation shows that, 60 years on, this mystery endures.

A Election '08 News Site:

For News And Commentary:

For Florida Election News See:

Political Talk For And By Political Junkies

Just Rumors The Rumor Mills