I just returned from a fundraising dinner featuring MI-09 challenger Nancy Skinner, MI-08 challenger Jim Marcinkowski and the featured guest of the evening, former Ambassador Joe Wilson.
Note that my referring to him without his title in the title of this diary is deliberate--he specifically requested that we call him simply "Joe"; he only requires Republicans to use his full official title (he also told us a great story behind this).
I won't go into too much detail, as at this late point in the election, not too much was said that everyone here doesn't already know.
All three gave speeches, of course, and after dinner, the floor was opened to a handful of questions.
In any event, I have a few pictures from the event, for anyone who's interested:
http://thegabas.com/...
Both Nancy and Jim could use some last-minute cash:
http://www.skinnerforcongress.com/
http://www.vote-jim.com/
UPDATE: I've added a lot more details this morning:
Sorry about the brevity; it was late, I was tired, and frankly, given that it was a semi-private fundraiser, I wasn't sure whether it was appropriate to go into too much detail. However, I now see that info about the event is posted on Jim Marcinkowski's campaign website, so I guess it's ok to discuss.
It was held at the Sangria Tapas Cafe in Royal Oak. Wilson had spent the whole day attending events with Marcinkowski, and they decided to wrap it up with a co-sponsored dinner thing with Skinner in her district.
I'd say there were about 50 people. Standard schedule--some pre-dinner chit-chat, intros, speeches by all three (the candidates gave half-length versions of their standard stump speeches; Wilson gave an overview of his own situation and what the stakes were this year, etc etc.
He also specifically asked all of us to call him "Joe"; he said that these days, he requires only Republicans to call him by his official title, because he loves watching them have to force themselves to show him the respect that he's due.
This led into an amusing tale about an appearance he gave on one of the talking head shows with Congressman Chris Shays (R, CT-04) early on in the CIA leak brouhaha. Apparently Shays--grossly outmatched, outwitted and out of his league--had exactly two talking points in his head: One, that he should refer to Wilson as "just an angry husband" and two, that he should avoid using Wilsons' official title as a former Ambassador and chief dignitary.
Shays, right off the bat, managed to do both in his very first sentence: "I think that JOE is AN ANGRY HUSBAND", followed by him repeatedly and pointedly calling him "Joe" over and over again for the next several minutes--"Joe" this and "Joe" that.
Wilson responded by repeatedly referring to how CHRIS didn't know what the hell CHRIS was talking about, and CHRIS should study up on his history, etc etc.
After that, CHRIS referred to Wilson as "Ambassador" for the rest of the show.
Anyway, after dinner, they each spoke again, then Wilson took a total of three questions. I don't recall the first one; the second gave Wilson the opportunity to tell the real tale behind the "Ambassador Wilson Almost Hanged by Sadaam Hussein" story 15 years ago (big surprise: it involved sloppy journalism on the part of an over-eager reporter).
The final question came from, as it turned out, myself.
I asked a serious question about how he thinks the Bush administration will respond if the Dems DO retake both houses of Congress, considering that a) Bush can now LEGALLY arrest, lock up and torture any U.S. citizen he wants to; b) Bush can now declare martial law anywhere and anytime he wants to; and c) Rumor has it that FEMA has contracted with Halliburton to build dozens of detention centers here in the U.S..
His response was, let's just say, not encouraging.
Let me put it this way: Did you see the Oliver Stone/Anthony Hopkins take on Nixon? Towards the end, when his administration is crumbling all around him, he takes Alexander Haig (Power Boothe) aside and asks him what options he has left. Haig rattles off a few last-ditch legal maneuvers, and then states, somberly, that "you do still have...the military..." ...at which point Nixon basically folds, pulling himself and the nation back from the brink of insanity.
Well, apparently something like this really happened, because Wilson described Nixon's final days very similarly. His point was this: Nixon, while deeply flawed, did in the end show some respect for the Constitution.
George W. Bush is the one who literally referred to the Constitution as "just a G-dd*mn piece of paper" some months ago.
In short, Wilson anticipates that starting November 8th (or more likely in January, when the new Congress takes office), the United States will very likely have not one, but several Constitutional crisis' occur. This view was backed by Jim Marcinkowski, himself a former FBI and CIA agent (and Valerie Plames' classmate, thus his connection with Wilson).
I prefaced my question by admitting that I might be going into tinfoil hat territory. Unfortunately, Wilson stated that at this point, under this administration "there is no tinfoil anymore." Again, this view was backed by Marcinkowski.
The look on my face was still there from his answer. He was able to recover and smile for the camera faster than I could; makes sense, given how much crap he's had to deal with for the past 3 years.