This “commercial” is 4:50 in length but more than worth the wait.

Enjoy!

Jimmy

Wonder what kind of raise the average AT&T employee got this year………

SAN ANTONIO, Texas - Edward Whitacre Jr., who led AT&T Inc.’s expansion into the largest telecommunications company in the nation, announced unexpectedly Friday that he will retire as chairman and chief executive in June.

Whitacre, 65, also announced at the company’s annual meeting that the board has elected Chief Operating Officer Randall Stephenson, 47, to replace him in both roles on June 3. Stephenson has been the chief operating officer since 2004.

Whitacre will enjoy a rich payout in retirement of more than $161.6 million, including $73.8 million in deferred compensation and the $84.7 million in his pension fund.

More at MSNBC

SAN FRANCISCO - Lawmakers on Friday requested documents from the White House and Pentagon describing how and when the Bush administration learned the circumstances of Pat Tillman’s death.

The House Oversight Committee wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding requesting “all documents received or generated by any official in the Executive Office of the President … that relate to Corporal Tillman.”

A second letter was sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

The committee, headed by California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), gave the administration until May 18 to produce the documents.

Tillman, the former NFL star-turned-Army Ranger, was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in April 2004.

Although Pentagon investigators determined quickly that he was killed by his own troops, Tillman’s family and the American public were not told the true circumstances of his death for five weeks. Instead, the Army claimed he had been killed by enemy gunfire.

The oversight committee held its first hearing on Tillman’s death earlier this week. Tillman’s family has said they believe the erroneous information peddled by the Pentagon was part of a deliberate cover-up that may have reached all the way to President Bush and then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

A White House spokeswoman said this week that Bush did not learn about the unusual circumstances of the Army Ranger’s death until after the soldier’s memorial service on May 3, 2004.

From the Guardian:

DETROIT (AP) - A $26 million museum honoring the Tuskegee Airmen is planned for a renovated hangar at Detroit’s airport, an organizer said Friday.

Full’scale models of fighter planes and bombers the all-black group used during World War II, along with old uniforms, photos and other items already housed in a smaller museum, will be included, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Lucius Theus said.

Completion is still several years away, said Theus, 85, one of a handful of the original Airmen to become generals. Money for the 35,000’square-foot museum will be raised through a national campaign, special events and public and private donations. About $200,000 has been raised so far.

Trained in Tuskegee, Ala., the Airmen flew in tens of thousands of combat missions as the first group of black fighter pilots allowed into the U.S. Army Air Corps. The late former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young was among the group’s ranks.

The surviving members received the Congressional Gold Medal last month from President Bush.

The scandal that just keeps on giving…….

WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney’s controversial golf trip to Scotland in 2003 apparently was paid for by a foundation that Senate investigators described as a “slush fund” used by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The foundation’s connection is included among thousands of pages of Senate records and is the first evidence of who apparently paid for the trip, which has sparked an FBI probe.

Investigators for the Senate Indian Affairs Committee have detailed a pattern of Abramoff pressuring Indian tribes for donations to his Capital Athletic Foundation, either directly or indirectly, and then using those funds to pay for golfing junkets to Scotland for powerful public officials.

In January, Feeney agreed to pay $5,643 to the U.S. Treasury after a House ethics panel found that his trip to Scotland with Abramoff violated congressional rules.

“Representative Feeney is anxious to discuss this matter further when the time is appropriate,” press secretary Pepper Pennington said Thursday in declining comment.

The sponsor of the 2003 trip has been at issue since Abramoff’s dealings with public officials first came under the microscope.

More at the Orlando Sentinel

So what happens if he resigns? Who fills that seat?

U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., could soon step down in the wake of a federal investigation into his involvement in a federal land swap deal and FBI raids of an insurance agency owned by his wife.

His resignation could come as early as Friday or soon after, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Top Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, have been meeting to discuss what they will do if Renzi resigns and his rural congressional seat opens up.

Republican leaders also are starting to encourage Renzi to resign, saying a prolonged investigation will hurt the party’s chances of holding onto his Arizona seat, according to knowledgeable sources.

More at The Business Journal

From the Washington Post

ORANGEBURG, S.C. — In the midst of the Sen. John McCain’s presidential announcement tour comes news that Marlene Elwell — one of the Arizona Senator’s leading social conservative advocates — has parted ways with the campaign.

Elwell, who was one of McCain’s chief liaisons to the faith community, confirmed her departure in a brief telephone interview this evening. She did not offer any further explanation on the decision.

Elwell, who is based in Michigan, rose to prominence in social conservatives as a leading member of Pat Robertson’s campaign. She was also a prime mover in the Michigan effort to define marriage between a man and a woman that passed in 2004.

The departure of Elwell comes just days after McCain replaced his longtime finance director Carla Eudy in what communications director Brian Jones described as part of an overall overhauling of the presidential campaign.

just like Tenet, just like Powell, just like the congress people who voted for this war….they all should have spoke up and been heard before we entered into it.

BAGHDAD - An active duty U.S. Army officer warns the United States faces the prospect of defeat in Iraq, blaming American generals for failing to prepare their forces for an insurgency and misleading Congress about the situation here.

“For reasons that are not yet clear, America’s general officer corps underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq’s government and security forces, and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq,” Lt. Col. Paul Yingling said in the article published Friday in the Armed Forces Journal.

Several retired generals have made similar comments, but such public criticism from an active duty officer is rare. It suggests that misgivings about the conduct of the Iraq war are widespread in the officer corps at a critical time in the troubled U.S. military mission here.

U.S. spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said Yingling was expressing “his personal opinions in a professional journal” and the military was focused on “executing the mission at hand.”

More at YahooNews

From The San Francisco Chronicle

Bobby “Boris” Pickett, whose Boris Karloff impersonation was immortalized on the novelty hit song “Monster Mash,” which has become a Halloween perennial, has died. He was 69.

Mr. Pickett, a longtime resident of Santa Monica, died Wednesday of leukemia at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, said his manager, Stuart Hersh.

” ‘Monster Mash’ is the biggest Halloween song of all time. The song was spooky but nonthreatening, just a natural — it had a good beat and was a great, fun idea,” said Barret Hansen, better known as syndicated radio host Dr. Demento.

The catchy tune, about a mad professor who joins his latest creation to dance the “Monster Mash,” was the No. 1 song in the country on Halloween in 1962. Re-released twice more, it cracked Billboard’s top 100 in 1970 and the top 10 in 1973.

Inspired by a dance craze called the mashed potato, the song was written in a few hours by Mr. Pickett and a musical colleague, Leonard Capizzi.

Not only did “Monster Mash” catch on in a flash, its refrain — accompanied by Mr. Pickett’s spirited Karloff impression — was destined to get stuck in the minds of generations to come:

He did the mash

He did the monster mash

The monster mash

It was a graveyard smash. …

The tune turned him into “the Guy Lombardo of Halloween,” Mr. Pickett told the Boston Globe in 1989, but he didn’t seem to mind.

Outfitted in a lab coat stained with fake blood, Mr. Pickett often introduced “Monster Mash” at oldies concerts by saying, “I’d like to perform a medley of my hit,” Hansen told the Los Angeles Times.

While Mr. Pickett never again achieved the success of “Monster Mash,” the Christmas sequel “Monster’s Holiday” reached No. 30 in December 1962.

Robert George Pickett was born Feb. 11, 1938, in Somerville, Mass. Since his father managed a movie theater, Mr. Pickett grew up watching Dracula and Frankenstein movies, and developed the Karloff impression.

In the 1950s, he came to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, did TV commercials, got bit parts and joined the Cordials, a doo-wop group led by Capizzi.