saw this - thought to myself, hmm, she's just loaded up with credibility..

And trust Roberts to let her blah blah blah without any real critical thought. /sigh

When Fran Townsend resigned from the White House in 2007, she paid tribute to President Bush by saying: "In 1937, the playwright Maxwell Anderson wrote of President George Washington: 'There are some men who lift the age they inhabit, til all men walk on higher ground in their lifetime.' Mr. President, you are such a man."

In a speech in Saudi Arabia, Townsend used the identical quote to flatter King Abdullah.

It is difficult for me to take such a first class ass kisser seriously.

So let me get this straight.

The conversation did NOT go like this:
"Let's raise the threat level for no reason in an attempt to influence our national election and stay in power."

Instead, it went like this:
"There might be threats to this country that would warrant an increase in the threat level, but we're not going to because it could hurt our chances in the election - since it might be seen as political."

In the first, you're terrorists. In the second, you're willing to let the nation be at greater risk of a terrorist attack, just to avoid a drop in the polls.

Uh. That's a "defense"?

Fran Townsend: We Discussed If Raising The Terror Alert Would Hurt Bush

...then we all looked at each other and started laughing and said "Nah, of course it will help him!" and so we went ahead and did it.

But but but but what was it ever raised (or lowered) for??

Like what was going to happen if it stayed the same or didn't exist at all?

Is there something missing here?

What is this debate about?

It's about total manipulation of the masses.

Other than duct tape and plastic what the f--- did they say??

Be scared this much?? or be scared even more? or really be scared to the max ....of............what?

This was so planned and could not have been as fear generating as it was without total media involvement.
That's the mic/oil/med media by the way.

Good luck getting straight answers.

Where did those wonder alerts go to anyway?

"This was two weeks ago, and Tom Ridge never mentioned any concerns - and he had some concerns - about politicization of the threat advisory system. You have to think this is personal, or publicity to sell more books."

Ah yes the tried and true republican favorite...they are disgruntled whiners who just wanna sell a book. You have to wonder how they just use the same lame bullshit excuses every time and get away with it. They will successfully launch the discredit campaign against Ridge, the media will repeat over and over and the story will be dismissed just as the republican crime family expects.

To my knowledge Ridge and Townshend are being indicted for Hatch Act breaches. Ridge likely has other charges coming his way. RFID manufacturers are a dime a dozen, and short-range IR (infrared) always is more secure and privacy-respecting.

While in office Ridge favored Savy Technology--one RFID manufacturer and now owned by Lockheed for all programs where Savy's solutions could be adopted: credentialing and Secure Container Initiative. Ridge didn't finally leave office until 2/1/05, but he was appointed/accepted a Savy Technology Board of Directors post in 1/05 to reveal in the open his conflict of interest.

General Hayden--then head of NSA gave interviews to Fox News the day Ridge resigned and about 2 1/2 weeks later. Yesterday I gave an excerpt of the interviews as they pertained to Ridge in a former post. I left something out. In mid-Dec 2004 when Hayden said Ridge hadn't dedicated staff to medium and long-term planning, the interviewer asked twice why with this known, Ridge couldn't be given another chance to fix his mistakes. The answer both times was that he couldn't be.

The reason why was because Ridge was on Savy's payroll all along. The DHS was supposed to adopt the smart wallet tech standard (NIST's name--we the inventors think this is a terrible name) when its doors opened. The smart wallet can use RFID or IR (both are apart of our patent applications), and favors IR because of its security which results in strong privacy. Since Ridge was in Savy's pocket, he had fair consideration denied us because of our opposition to using RFID.

Prosperity comes with quality, so quality is our # 1 concern. Hence, using IR was our priority, not bending to Ridge and his lobbyist Assistant and Under Secretaries, their Deputies and Chiefs of Staff and Program Managers. The entire brood were in Lockheed's pocket, and Lockheed is a smart card manufacturer. Smart cards need RFID, because they can't fit IR on them.

Finally, Lockheed is a Russian-owned company. I was unable to confirm whether Savy was Russian owned prior to Lockheed's acquistion of it. Starting 12/1/01 we began declining the Kremlin's financial offers starting with a 100 % financing package that then was sweetened over the next 19 months, so Ridge did the Kremlin's biddings by denying us fair consideration to force us to become Russian. While his actions are treason it so far has seemed that his most severe charges when brought will be limited to bribery/corruption charges.

Tom Ridge and Fran Townshend are caught-up in this corruption investigation. Link:

http://www.propublica.org/article/key-figure-in-cunningham-scandal-points-to-other-lawmakers-1203

Quote from Marcus Stern's article:

However, it did provide a tantalizing suggestion of another shoe to fall.

Wade answered questions related to "a large and important corruption investigation" unrelated to the Cunningham matter, wrote Jeffrey Taylor, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and Howard Sklamberg, deputy chief of its Fraud and Public Corruption Section.

It added that "there have been, at this point, no charges filed."

Fran Townsend: We Discussed If Raising The Terror Alert Would Hurt Bush,then we all had a good laugh and went on pressuring Ridge to raise the Alert Level.

I let them raise the alert level even though it could have hurt me politically. That's just the kind of America-loving guy that I am.