08 Jul

Candidates’ Vices: Craps and Poker



Candidates’ Vices: Craps and Poker
Time at CNN
The casino craps player is a social animal, a thrill seeker who wants not just to win but to win with a crowd. Unlike cards or a roulette wheel, well-thrown dice reward most everyone on the rail, yielding a collective yawp that drowns out the slots. It is a game for showmen, Hollywood stars and basketball legends with girls on their arms. It is also a favorite pastime of the presumptive Republican nominee for President, John McCain.
The backroom poker player, on the other hand, is more cautious and self-absorbed. Card games may be social, but they are played in solitude. No need for drama. The quiet card counter is king, and only a novice banks on luck. In this game, a good bluff trumps blind faith, and the studied observer beats the showman. So it is fitting that the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, raked in so many pots in his late-night games with political friends.
For centuries, the nation’s political leaders have loved their games of chance.
Andrew Jackson owned fighting cocks and raced horses.
Richard Nixon helped finance his first congressional race with his World War II poker winnings.
Teddy Roosevelt noted that the professional gamblers he knew “usually made good soldiers.”
But even among this crowd, McCain and Obama are distinctive. For both men, games of chance have been not just a hobby but also a fundamental feature in their development as people and politicians.
For Obama, weekly poker games with lobbyists and fellow state senators helped cement his position as a rising star in Illinois politics.
For McCain, jaunts to the craps table helped burnish his image as a political hot dog who relished the thrill of a good fight, even if the risk of failure was high.
The Thrill of the Game
McCain’s passion for gambling and taking other risks has never been a secret. He was a Navy flyer, trained in the art of controlled crash landings on aircraft carriers. He spent his youth sneaking booze behind the backs of his schoolmasters and reveling in his stack of demerits. He came of age on shore leave in the casinos of Monte Carlo, in a Navy culture that had long embraced dice in the officers’ clubs.
The moral code of McCain’s youth always distinguished between sins of honor and sins of pleasure. “Don’t lie, cheat or steal — anything else is fair game,” McCain told his son Jack when the boy left for the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md. In his memoir, McCain recalls that by his mid-20s, he “had begun to aspire to a reputation for more commendable achievements than long nights of drinking and gambling.”
Over time he gave up the drinking bouts, but he never quite kicked the periodic yen for dice. In the past decade, he has played on Mississippi riverboats, on Indian land, in Caribbean craps pits and along the length of the Las Vegas Strip.
Back in 2005 he joined a group of journalists at a magazine-industry conference in Puerto Rico, offering betting strategy on request. “Enjoying craps opens up a window on a central thread constant in John’s life,” says John Weaver, McCain’s former chief strategist, who followed him to many a casino. “Taking a chance, playing against the odds.”
Aides say McCain tends to play for a few thousand dollars at a time and avoids taking markers, or loans, from the casinos, which he has helped regulate in Congress. “He never, ever plays on the house,” says Mark Salter, a McCain adviser. The goal, say several people familiar with his habit, is never financial. He loves the thrill of winning and the camaraderie at the table.
Only recently have McCain’s aides urged him to pull back from the pastime. In the heat of the G.O.P. primary fight last spring, he announced on a visit to the Vegas Strip that he was going to the casino floor. When his aides stopped him, fearing a public relations disaster, McCain suggested that they ask the casino to take a craps table to a private room, a high-roller privilege McCain had indulged in before. His aides, with alarm bells ringing, refused again, according to two accounts of the discussion.
“He clearly knows that this is on the borderline of what is acceptable for him to be doing,” says a Republican who has watched McCain play. “And he just sort of revels in it.”
If McCain plays craps for thrills, Obama sees gambling as a way to vent his competitive urge. His love of basketball is well known. “I could get to the rim on anybody,” he told HBO’s Bryant Gumbel of his high school hoops days. He could not even play golf for fun, taking lessons to lower his handicap after a few poor performances. “Barack hates to lose,” says Dan Shomon, an old Chicago political aide.
Poker may be sedentary, but it is no less competitive. Obama played most regularly as an Illinois state senator in the late 1990s. The legislature met in Springfield, which had little to recommend it after hours, except on Wednesday nights, when “The Committee Meeting,” as it was nicknamed, convened in state senator Terry Link’s basement. Obama and fellow senators made up the “core four.” The game began at 7 p.m. and often lasted until 2 a.m. There were pizza and chips, a fridge full of beer, and enough cigars for a smoke-filled room. Obama usually showed up in a baseball cap and sweats. He cadged cigarettes and drank a beer, kept up with the boys’-night-out banter and roared at the off-color stories. When he lost a hand, Obama joked that he couldn’t afford gasoline to drive home.
But he always had his head in the game. The stakes were low enough — $1 ante and $3 top raise — to afford a long shot. Not Obama. He studied the cards as closely as he would an eleventh-hour amendment to a bill. The odds were religion to him. Only rarely did he bluff. “He had a pretty good idea about what his chances were,” says Denny Jacobs, a former state senator from East Moline.
Obama’s play-to-win approach drove other players crazy. Former state senator Larry Walsh, a conservative corn farmer from Joliet, once got ready to pull in a pot with a four-of-a-kind hand. But Obama had four of a kind too, of higher rank. Walsh slammed down his cards. “Doggone it, Barack, if you were more liberal in your card-playing and more conservative in your politics, you and I would get along much better,” he said.
Obama used the sessions to bond with those who could aid his political ascent, including several lawmakers with whom he forged lasting political alliances, as well as some lobbyists. The banks, utilities and insurance agents were often represented. “We all became buddies in the card games, but there never were any favors granted,” says David Manning of the Community Bankers Association of Illinois.
Obama usually left a winner. But he reaped a bigger payoff politically. When he announced his plans to run for the U.S. Senate, his poker pals — white guys from small-town Illinois — were among his earliest supporters.
Link says the Wednesday-night gang didn’t realize how far Obama would go: “Nobody said, ‘Mr. President, it’s your deal.’ ” But Obama’s risk-averse, methodical approach to five-card stud gives Link confidence in his potential governing style. “If he runs his presidency the way he plays poker, I’ll sleep good at night,” he says.
What do the candidates’ gambling proclivities tell us about who they are? Politicians talk of their campaigns as grand contests of ideas. But in practice, the political battle is both a crapshoot and a poker game, a study in managing risk and in manipulating people.
And there is no bigger gamble than a presidential run, which both candidates have conducted very differently this cycle.
McCain’s campaign, like his life, has been marked by its embrace of living dangerously and by clear runs of fortune and disappointment.
Obama, meanwhile, has succeeded, no less remarkably, by diligently executing a premeditated strategy. But the general-election game is new to both men. And as the stakes rise, both know they’ll need a little luck.


Wild Thing’s comment……..
BIAS bias BIAS big time in this article. hahahaha Just soooo obvious!
Not to quibble, but the card counter is king in blackjack, not poker. However, poker is a game of deception.
The casino craps player is a social animal, a thrill seeker who wants not just to win but to win with a crowd.
Total bilge! Roulette has a crowd, too. You play craps because you believe the odds are the best and you like the action of the game not because you want to get down with your fellow gambling homeys. Where do they find these putzes?
It makes it seem like McCain almost has a gambling problem: he’s a risk taker, he’s crazy, he’s almost immoral in his high-falutin’ pleasure seeking. Yee Haa!
Now, Obama on the other hand, is a thinker. He’s careful. He wins. He wins a lot. He’s smarter than other politicians. He uses poker as a bonding exercise. It makes him a more effective politician.
Oh, and Obama also walks on water.
The coverage just seems so over-the-top.
LMAO, next I am expecting an article on how the candidates apply ketchup to their french fries. Short summation: Obama applies ketchup in a god-like manner, while John McCain massacres his french fries in an angry orgy of corrupt, influence-peddling, blood-soaked storm of condiments.

08 Jul

Obama Switches Location For Speech To Accept DNC Nomination



Obama shifts venue for main convention speech to big football stadium
International Herald Triibune
Senator Barack Obama will accept his party’s nomination in a Denver football stadium that seats more than 75,000 people, campaign officials said Monday, a late change in plans intended to take advantage of the candidate’s ability to draw huge crowds.
The Obama campaign’s decision to hold the convention’s headliner event at Invesco stadium, nearly two miles, or about three kilometers, away from the main convention hall at the Pepsi Center, harked back to the decision by John F. Kennedy to accept the Democratic Party nomination at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles in 1960.
But the announcement came after the news media had spent months planning coverage under the seemingly safe assumption that all four nights of the convention would take place at the Pepsi Center, which seats 19,000 people.
The challenge was especially high for the major television networks, which pour millions of dollars into elaborate sky box and floor sets devised to showcase their own stars along with the candidates themselves.
The television network chiefs were to hold a meeting late Monday to discuss how to collectively handle the change in plans, which will now require extra sets and camera locations.
Executives at all of the networks said the move to the stadium may require them to scale back plans for the first three nights of the convention in a year when the unexpectedly long Democratic nominating season and tough economic times already have strained news budgets.
For the past few election cycles, the networks have chafed at providing blanket coverage of the conventions, complaining that they have become little more than stage-managed press releases for all-but-certain candidacies and no longer produce real news.
The excitement surrounding the presidential election this year has produced extraordinary television ratings that could change the network deliberations.
Obama’s campaign has clearly decided that the benefits of placing Obama in front of a roaring crowd of 75,000, on a day that also happens to be the anniversary of the “I Have a Dream Speech” by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., are worth the cost of agitated television network executives.
The Democratic National Convention Committee said it would party fill the stadium with Colorado residents. Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Obama, said that the move to a stadium that can hold more people and not just party regulars and supporters was in keeping with Obama’s “priority to open up the political process.”
But the decision also allows Obama take advantage of his ability to bring tens of thousands to their feet in a way that few politicians can.
Matt Burns, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said the stadium move amounted to simply “stagecraft and theatrics.”

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Guess the Obama campaign is holding a raffel so people can have a chance to “win” a seat at the stadium!
https://donate.barackobama.com/DNCconvention

“On Thursday, August 28th, he’s scheduled to formally accept the Democratic nomination in a speech at the convention hall in front of the assembled delegates.
Instead, the convention will move to an outdoor stadium where Barack will join more than 75,000 people for a huge, free, open-air event and deliver his acceptance speech to the American people.
It’s going to be an amazing event, and Barack would like you to join him. Free tickets will become available as the date approaches, but we’ve reserved a special place for a few of the people who brought us this far and who continue to drive this campaign.
If you make a donation of $5 or more between now and midnight on July 31st, you could be one of 10 supporters chosen to fly to Denver and spend two days and nights at the convention, meet Barack backstage, and watch his acceptance speech in person. Each of the ten supporters who are selected will be able to bring one guest to join them.
Make a donation now and you could have a front row seat to history:
We’ll follow up with more details on this and other convention activities as we get closer, but please take a moment and pass this note to someone you know who might like to be there.
It will be an event you’ll never forget.
Thank you,
David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America”

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Wild Thing’s comment……….
There is something sick about this whole thing. I will not compare this guy to any leader; because he’s not a leader. He’s a figurehead for some political power and the public doesn’t realize it.
I wonder if they will bring in a popular band to play before his speech, to make sure people show up.
Denver has some terrific lightning strikes in August; ‘twould be a delight to see the consternation if BO’s “really big shew” gets cancelled because of Divine improvidence.
Add to this Obama’s going all the way to Germany to deliver a speech at Brandenburg gate like Kennedy, when he wouldn’t even go to Alaska!
With the help of the media, the ENTIRE WORLD was already going to be able to view his acceptance speech at the convention. This is about getting as many people as possible to be there in person to ADORE him. It’s all about him.
Obama Speech in Germany and THEN IN DENVER



video :Pink Floyd- The Wall

08 Jul

Photojournalist A Maggot…Zoriah Miller….Banned By Marines In Iraq



Photojournalist Banned by Marines in Iraq
Zoriah Miller was an embedded blogger. He’s a photojournalist who has posted a photo of Marine KIA.
This vile horrible person blogs at Zoriah.net.
Zoriah Miller says he was censored by the U.S. military in the Iraqi city of Fallujah after photographing Marines who died in a suicide bombing. Zoriah Miller posted those pictures on his blog, was dismissed from his embed assignment, and is now screaming censorship.
Ventura County Star ….for complete article
BAGHDAD — It’s a disturbing picture.
The dead Marine is lying on his back, his face damaged beyond recognition because of the blast.
But for photojournalist and blogger Zoriah Miller, 32, it was important to capture the daily toll of war in Iraq.

“I just feel this war has become so sanitized that it was important to show,” said Zoriah, who prefers to go by his first name. “My only discomfort is the idea that the family could accidentally stumble on it.”

The Marine commanders who saw the photograph were not happy, saying it violated a “trust” between the military and journalists.

Claims of security risks
Zoriah was immediately “disembedded” from a Marine unit and barred from working with the military in Anbar.

In Gen. John F. Kelly’s letter officially kicking him out of province, the Marines said Zoriah “provided the enemy with specific information on the effectiveness of the attack and the response of U.S. and Iraqi forces to the attack.”

Zoriah denies he did anything wrong.

“All I can say is he’s no longer welcome here in Anbar,” said Lt. Brian Block at Camp Fallujah, where the Marine command in Anbar is headquartered.

Later, Lt. Cmdr. Chris Hughes, who is in charge of the Camp Fallujah command, said in a prepared statement that “there is no right to embed” with military units. Under the embedding program, the military allows journalists to be assigned to a military unit to chronicle the war. Journalists rely on soldiers for transportation, food and protection.

Zoriah violated the ground rules he agreed to when he was embedded, Hughes said in the statement. He added that Zoriah broke his “trust in the relationship” with soldiers.
‘Picture of what war is like’
While waiting to be transported out of the area, Zoriah was guarded for a time by armed Marines out of fear someone upset by the graphic photo might try to harm him.

“You’re a war photographer, but once you take a picture of what war is like then you get into trouble,” said Zoriah, a Denver native who has been in Iraq for much of the past year.

The Marines don’t see it that way. In his letter, Kelly went on to say that Zoriah could no longer be trusted, and that he “presented a threat to all” in the Multi-National Force in Western Iraq.

Zoriah has been flown out of the Marine base and returned to Baghdad. He plans on returning to the U.S. and appealing the Marines’ decision.

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Wild Thing’s comment………
This creep should have never been allowed anywhere near a US Military facility. He calls himself a humanitarian photojournalist. Just the word humanitarian photojournalist sends of bells and whistles in my brain. That should have done the same thing when he applied to be embedded with our miltiary.
humanitarian = lefite to the max!


* Blackfive

08 Jul

General Petraeus Draws Bigger Crowd Then Angelina Jolie




General Petraeus gets bigger crowds at his photo-opportunites in Iraq than Angelina Jolie did on her recent visit

General David Petraeus beats megastar Angeline Jolie as Iraq crowd-puller
Times online.co.uk
If Santa ever set up his Christmas grotto in a war zone, it might look something like this.
Hundreds of men and women, many of them armed, line up in a marble hall inside one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, waiting patiently for more than half an hour for their hero to turn up.
The object of so much adulation is General David Petraeus, the 55-year-old commander of US and allied forces in Iraq. General Petraeus, widely credited with the military strategy that has clawed Iraq back from civil war to a semblance of stability, is in such demand for photographs that his aides have had to organise special mass photo-ops every six weeks inside the Green Zone and at the other huge US base at Baghdad airport.
“He’s a real leader at a great time,” said Master Sergeant John Fife of the US Air Force, who had brought a group of comrades and local Iraqi staff across the vast fortified compound for the chance to have their picture taken with the general, who devised Iraq’s counter-insurgency strategy.
It’s like being at Macy’s again when I was nine with the Easter Bunny,” the sergeant admitted. Beside him one of his Iraqi staff, who for security reasons identified himself only as Salaam, described the occasion as a great honour. “I just want to say, ‘Thank you.’ This man has done great things for my country,” he said, although he confessed that for his own safety he would hang the picture on his office wall in the Green Zone, rather than in his house in the “Red Zone”, the military term for the rest of Baghdad.
Despite the progress Iraq has made under General Petraeus, Salaam said it would be a long time before he risked hanging such a memento at home; if neighbours knew he worked for the Americans he could be killed by militias or kidnapped by criminals.
The crowd of more than 500 people was a cross-section of life in the Green Zone, the complex that has occupied the heart of the capital for the past five years: American soldiers with assault rifles; British, Australian and Italian troops; security contractors in wrap-around sunglasses; embassy officials in suits; cleaners; men in running gear with .45 automatics on their hips; and a woman dressed as though for cocktail party. All file past the commander, who shakes their hands and poses for the army photographer.
General Petraeus has often said that he has no ambition to run for public office, but this would be perfect training for any campaign trail. His smile never wavers throughout the 45-minute ritual, which, with military precision, gets more than 500 people across the wooden podium in a cafeteria of the Republican Palace.
Only at the very end does he look slightly bemused, when he finds himself posing in a group photo with eight Sri Lankan waiters, far from home and looking for a little celebrity action to relieve the tedium of their daily grind.
Then he steps off the stage and marches briskly back to the business of running the war.


Wild Thing’s comment………
This cannot be!! LOL
Didn’t that witch Hillary declare that listening to General Petraeus testify about US performance under the ‘surge’ required a “suspension of disbelief”?????
I want to see every vicious Rat-weasel traitor driven out of office forever. Too much to hope for, but I can dream can’t I?
I posted before about how Angelina Jolie went to visit the troops and to thank them. How she is pro gun and also how she has donated $1 Million to help the Iraqi children. She seems to be a good person.
But the thing is for these men and women that get a chance to shake the hand of General Petraeus and have a chance to exchange words with him had to have been really something to look forward to.

07 Jul

Obama And His Team Of Marxist Considering Speech At Brandenburg Gate



Obama team mulling speech at Brandenburg Gate
the local.de (Germany’s news in English)
Democratic US presidential candidate Barack Obama has requested permission to give an address at the Brandenburg Gate when he visits Berlin later this month, according to German media reports.
Although it’s still not official, various German media are reporting that Obama’s team has contacted the Berlin Senate to discuss the possibility of the presidential hopeful delivering an outdoor speech in front of the famous landmark. It would likely be his only public speech during an upcoming European tour which is set to include stops in Germany, France and the UK.
If permission is granted, the address would be loaded with historical significance. The Brandenburg Gate is where former US President Ronald Regan gave a famous speech in 1987, during which he asked then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall.
Both Chancellor Angela Merkal and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have expressed interest in meeting Obama, although dates for his visit have not yet been confirmed.
Obama is immensely popular in Berlin – a factor that appears to have some of his advisors worried. According to reports in the daily Berliner Morgenpost, some of his staff have warned him that excessive popularity in Europe could end up costing him votes at home, as was the case with 2004 presidential candidate, John Kerry.

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Wild Thing’s comment…….
Let me guess…. Mr. Gorbachev bring back this wall?
Obama’s speech …”Ich bein en Panderer”…“Ich bin ein muslimer”……..“Ich bin laden Berliner”
Is this poser going to pretend to be some great defender of freedom and democracy? Sickening to see this lightweight trying to gain some credibility by associating himself with our military and such an iconic symbol of the Cold War victory, a victory that would never have happened if clowns like Obama had been in any position of responsibility.

07 Jul

Colorado’s Basketball Coach Jeff Bzdelik Visits Troops in Iraq and Kuwait

Jeff Bzdelik, Colorado’s head basketball coach,
recently joined other hoops coaches on a USO tour through Iraq and Kuwait.




Wild Thing’s comment……….
This is a moving video on what the Coach has taken back with him from visiting the troops. If I met him I could tell him this kind of thing will live in his heart and soul forever.
The most amazing thing of going to visit the troops is that what you bring back inside your soul is a thousand times more then anything a person can do for them. Their smiles and the look in their faces, and the moments shared together, well it lives on and on into forever.
40 years later you can be sitting watching TV and your mind will go back there as if it was happening right now, live. And that there are no real words for what your feeling, it is one of those private moments of a cherised memory kept alive in your very soul.

07 Jul

Hanoi Kerry Says McCain’s Judgment Is Dangerous



Says Republican Candidate Is A “Changed Man” For Siding With Bush On War, Economy, Energy
CBS Face The Nation
Sen. John Kerry believes that the presumptive Republican nominee for president is adhering to the Bush Administration orthodoxy in ways that call into question his carefully-nurtured image as a political maverick.

“John McCain has changed in profound and fundamental ways that I find personally really surprising, and frankly upsetting,” the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts said on CBS’ Face The Nation.

“This is a different John McCain. This is not the Senator John McCain; this is want-to-be president John McCain.

“And the result is that John McCain has flip-flopped on more issues than I was even ever accused possibly of thinking about! I mean, this is extraordinary what he’s done: He’s changed on taxes; he’s now in favor of the Bush tax cut. If you like the Bush economy, if you like the Bush tax cut and what it’s done to our economy, making wealthier people wealthier and the average middle class struggle harder, then John McCain is going to give you a third term of George Bush and Karl Rove.

“If you like what has happened to oil prices, John McCain is going to continue that policy. If you like what you see about health care, John McCain has no health care plan.

“I would have at least expected the John McCain that I knew back then to realize what almost every person in the Pentagon has admitted. There are very few who walk around and say, ‘Going into Iraq was the right thing to do, and we should have done it, or do it again if I have the chance.’ John McCain does.

“I’m challenging Senator McCain’s judgment,” Kerry said, “that says, ‘There’s no violent history between Sunni and Shia.’ That’s wrong. His judgment that says, ‘This is going to increase the stability of the Middle East.’ It hasn’t, it’s made it less stable. The judgment that says, quote, ‘This will be the best thing for America and the world in a long time. It’s the worst thing that we’ve done in a long time. And he’s turned his [focus] away from Afghanistan and al Qaeda and made America less safe. That’s dangerous for our country.”

Kerry criticized McCain’s continued support of the occupation, given the effect of a continuing presence of U.S. troops on the situation in Iraq and the region at large. He pointed to remarks by leaders in the Middle East who told him during a recent visit, “You, America, have served up to Iran Iraq on a platter.”

“They are outraged by the ineptitude of what has been done by those who decided it was smart to go into Iraq,” said Kerry, who feels the Republican Party is now in turmoil over the “reality” of McCain’s position, which is that “he has a plan for staying in Iraq and Barack Obama has a plan for getting out of Iraq.”


Wild Thing’s comment…….
The other day I posted about how Kerry had trashed Col. Bud Day. Now he is taking his BS and yakking about McCain.
He says that McCain has dangerous judgment, and yet we can remember that McCain solicited John Kerry to be his VP nominee. LOL Yes that WAS bad judgment on McCain’s part. Funny how Kerry’s words come back to bite him. heh heh
Here we go. “This is not the John McCain that I knew.”
Kerry is a traitor. The statute of limitations has not run out on his acts of treason. He can still swing by a rope if convicted. And he should.
Kerry seems to forget the fact that McCain slandered the POW families along side Kerry.
Kerry also forgets that McCain told off the Swift Boat Veterans that were speaking the truth about Kerry. Hey Kerry, so much for staying out of the fray in this election and not attacking your ole buddy McCain. OH but that makes sense on Kerry’s part he turned his back on his brothers in Vietnam as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kerry: “if you like the Bush tax cut and what it’s done to our economy, making wealthier people wealthier and the average middle class struggle harder, …”
This same old lie about the tax cuts being only for the rich.
The 2003 Tax Cuts:
1) Extended the earn income tax credit thereby helping the lower class.
2) Doubled the child credit from $500 to $1000 per child.
3) Eliminated the marriage penalty.

07 Jul

Raider Soldiers Celebrating Independence Day



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Wild Thing’s comment……..
I am so glad our military does things like this for our troops away from home.

06 Jul

Cast From TV Show “The Unit” Visit The Troops



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Dennis Haysbert, Robert Patrick and Max Martini, three of the stars of CBS’ The Unit, went on a tour of American troops stationed in Kuwait and Iraq . They went to Kuwait and Iraq, where they got to mix it up a bit with airmen, soldiers, sailors and Marines based there.
CBS 46 News reported that Dennis Haysbert, who stars as Jonas Blaine on The Unit, said it was wonderful to be able to spend time with the real men and women their characters are based on. Aside from his character on The Unit, Haysbert also gained widespread recognition for his portrayal of Senator-turned-President David Palmer on several seasons of FOX’s hit drama, 24.
For his part, Robert Patrick (Colonel Tom Ryan on The Unit), who is an active member of the United Service Organizations or USO, reportedly remarked that he was glad for the opportunity to meet the real-life soldiers. Patrick first caught the public’s attention for going toe-to-toe with Arnold Schwarzenegger as a humanoid T-1000, a souped up version of a Terminator, on Terminator 2: Judgment Day.



Then the actors descended on Camp Liberty in Iraq, where they held a meet, greet and photo session with the soldiers stationed there.
Inspired by the book “Inside Delta Force: The Story of America’s Elite Counterterrorist Unit” by Eric Haney, “The Unit” follows the undercover missions and personal lives of a covert team of Special Forces operatives that travel around the globe and routinely risk their lives. Headquartered on the fictitious Fort Griffith, the task force is composed of six trustworthy, brave and dependable soldiers whose reliance on each other creates a unique brotherhood. Broadcast worldwide, the highly-watched series is a hit with the general public and the military.

“It’s one thing to portray a member of the U.S. military on television, but it’s another thing to meet and hang out with our service men and women,” says Haysbert. “Not only do we consider it an honor to depict them in the series, but also a privilege to help share their important work with the world. We’re really excited about this USO tour and can’t wait to bring a touch of home to them.”



Wild Thing’s comment……..
Additional video of LIVE shots…… here is a LINK to the VIDEO of their visit
I am so glad the cast of this TV show “The Unit” went to visit the troops. It is an excellent TV show and one of my favorites.

06 Jul

B.Hussein Obama’s Vision For The Lincoln Bedroom




Lincoln Bedroom
It was Harry Truman who suggested turning Lincoln’s former office and cabinet room into a bedroom with furnishings associated with the family. In 2004, using documentary evidence from the period, the First Lady and her team restored the room and returned period details, among them the window cornices and mantel—made to match the one that had been there during Lincoln’s time.

Obama has a vision for the Lincoln Bedroom
Los Angeles Times
He’s not president yet, but Barack Obama has already given some thought to White House decor.
Asked at a town hall-style meeting in Fargo, N.D., about any decorating plans for the Lincoln Bedroom, Obama described a visit to the White House after he became a U.S. senator.

“You have all these mementos of Abraham Lincoln, but you have this flat-screen TV in there,” Obama told the crowd at the outdoor event.

“I thought to myself, ‘Now, who stays in the Lincoln Bedroom and watches [ESPN’s] ‘Sports Center’? You’ve got your clicker. . . . That didn’t seem to me to be appropriate. So I might take out the TV, I don’t know.

“You should read when you’re in the Lincoln Bedroom! Reread the Gettysburg Address. Don’t watch TV.”


Wild Thing’s comment……..
LOL like I believe him….NOT.
I have a vision for the Lincoln Bedroom… To keep Obama out of it! And out of the White House and Presidency.