Eh, I dunno. I think Thompson's campaign handled it incredibly well, but I don't think it was entirely a work. The fact that they didn't ask them to turn off the cameras is a little suspicious, but by this point I think any media manager worth his salt would have known that the footage of Freddie answering her question in a polite, patient, and DOWN HOME ALL AMERICAN FRIENDLY manner was worth more points than TURN OFF THE CAMERAS TURN THEM OFF NOOWWWWWW would be.

Thompson comes across as a warm, personable sort and the questioner comes across as a shrill fucking psycho. (Also, that particular YT user has been uploading 9/11tardery for a few weeks now.)

Good food, free health care, legal weed and HBO tv series!

No, no, bush is still a moron, it's Cheney and Rove and Kristol and the PNAC and so forth that are the truly EEEEEVIL ones. These guys are motherfucking Bond villains, apparently.

Actually, no, it doesn't mean that at all.

I just find it hard to believe that people who have proven themselves so incompetent in, well, pretty much everything else are simultaneously the designers and builders of an alleged scheme that, if true, is so brilliantly evil it would make Senator fucking Palpatine applaud.

Complete incompetence and stupidity and a series of random fuckups just aren't sexy enough for some people, I guess; no, there has to be a brilliant scheme behind it all.

No, it's that a Council is a discussion forum, not an advocacy group, and that being a member of a Council doesn't mean you endorse or even agree with everything or anything other Council members do.

Still, not being aware of the issues raised (even if not promoted) in a forum you're part of doesn't hold water as an excuse when you're also trying to say that you may have done lobbying for groups with causes antithetical to your voting base, but that you don't recall doing a good job lobbying for them.

And really, he's a Bush apologist who looks like Darth Vader without the helmet. Does the right wing really think that this is a dream candidate?

He didn't say the issues weren't raised, he said "Oh, is that what they're trying to do," because it was a childish and ridiculous thing to say he was promoting by being part of a discussion group that talks about things "antithetical to his voting base."

That's basically exactly what I meant. He's super-polished. He's ready to jump in the debates and win people over with his fake folksy charm and imitation down-home common sense.