Day: August 3, 2005

Moonlighting On Campaigns by Schwarzenegger Aides Adds to Governor’s Ethics Woes

Jon Ponder

Last month, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was forced to give up a multimillion dollar contract with a muscle magazine publisher because of ethical conflicts. Now we learn that three of his top staffers have been moonlighting as campaign consultants – and taking rather hefty paychecks on top of their government salaries.

The campaign work by Patricia Clarey, the governor’s chief of staff; Richard Costigan, his legislative-affairs secretary; and Rob Stutzman, the director of communications — all of whom earn more than $100,000 for their day jobs — troubles government watchdogs, such as Larry Noble, the executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C.

“The question is how close are they to various special interests” that fund the campaign committees for which the aides work, Noble said. “It raises questions about the amount of time and work they put in on their jobs. And it raises questions about what hat they are wearing when people come to talk to them.”

Margita Thompson, the governor’s spokesperson, was perplexed at all the fuss:

[…]

Poll: Most Americans Think Bush Is Hiding Something about CIA Leak

Jon Ponder
Fifty-seven percent of Republicans think the administration is hiding something or lying.

CBS News:

Forty-one percent of the public views [the CIA leak] controversy as of great importance to the nation — more than what was said about the Whitewater scandal in its early days, and about the same as was measured for Iran-Contra in the spring of 1987…

Only 12 percent think the Bush administration is telling the entire truth about the matter; more than half –- 55 percent — think the administration is mostly telling the truth but hiding something, and another 22 percent think it is lying.

Many Republicans doubt the administration is telling all it knows to the public. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans think the administration is hiding something or lying — although 28 percent think it is telling the entire truth. Democrats are much more skeptical.

Pensito Review – Covering the Avian Flu Pandemic

Buck Banks

Bird flu. Doesn’t sound very threatening, does it? Perhaps you’re more concerned about the possibility of getting West Nile virus or SARS (sudden acute respiratory syndrome). But you should be worried about bird flu, or the H5N1 virus, as it’s known. Very worried.

Avian flu virus has every earmark of becoming a pandemic, or worldwide epidemic. The last pandemic the United States experienced was the influenza epidemic of 1918, which killed 675,000 Americans and several million people worldwide. The H5N1 virus could easily top that, as humans have absolutely no resistance to the virus. It’s too new.

H5N1 only emerged in Asia a couple of years ago. Like swine flu, it is a trans-species virus that mutated and crossed over from birds into humans from close contact. It can be transmitted through feces or sputum, from touching, eating or just being close to infected birds. Not all infected birds show symptoms. It has already crossed over to swine in China — only a short hop from there to people.

At this writing, 54 people have died from bird flu in Asia since December 2003. Millions of domesticated and wild fowl have been killed to stop infection or have died of the infection. Millions more have been vaccinated with a vaccine developed in China that has not been proved effective. Indeed, some health experts think it could spread a vaccine-resistant super-version of the illness.

Where is it? Infections have been detected in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, China and, most disturbing, eastern Russia, Siberia and Kazakhstan. Human deaths have been confined so far to Vietnam, Indonesia, Hong Kong and China.

H5N1 has been found in flocks of migratory geese, and when those birds migrate, well, they take the virus with them. Hence, the pandemic scenario, with eastern Europe having a high probability of infection in 2005. Health experts also fear that the virus is being spread through illegal meat imports.

What can you do? Nothing. The virus is spreading and will continue to spread, inexorably, across the planet. Take vitamins, exercise and read this News Watch column regularly, as this topic is still under the radar of Western journalists.

We will post the latest information on avian flu here, as it becomes available, from a variety of international new sources.

O.J. Offers to Find Real Leaker

Trish

O.J. Simpson has offered his assistance to Pres. Bush in getting to the bottom of the Plame CIA leak investigation. Speaking from a golf course in Florida Tuesday, O.J. vowed to find out who exposed Plame’s identity to reporters after her husband, Joseph Wilson, contradicted Bush’s version of Iraq’s efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction as the basis for pre-emptive war.

“The real leaker is out there,” O.J. said, “and I won’t rest until we find him and clear the good name of whoever it isn’t.”

Pres. Bush responded warmly to O.J.’s offer.

“I have complete confidence in O.J.’s ability to track down the perpetrators of this dastardly deed,” Bush told reporters. “And if he actually does find the guilty party, I promise to take swift and immediate action, up to and including giving that person a stern talking-to. And I mean that. You can take it to the bank.”

Bush added that finding the leaker has been a difficult and arduous process, one that O.J. will probably be able to extend indefinitely unless he kills someone else and has to go to jail.

“I’ve done everything short of walking across the hall and asking if anyone knows anything,” Bush said. “O.J. has an uncanny ability to look for suspects as far afield as possible, so I know he will be thorough in all the wrong places. Excuse me, I meant right places. Next question.”

Jeb to Developers: Take Our Wetlands, Please

Buck Banks

The St. Petersburg Times ran an investigative piece that found a lobbyist for Florida developers wrote legislation that would make it easier to bulldoze the state’s ever-shrinking wetlands. The bill effectively took wetland permitting powers away from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and gave it to Florida legislators, a crew well-known for their inability to do the right thing.

A developers’ lobbyist helped write a state bill that would make it easier to get a permit to destroy wetlands of 10 acres or smaller. When it passed, the builders persuaded 15 members of Congress to send Gov. Jeb Bush a letter urging him to sign it. He did.

Besides the behind-the-scenes maneuvering, environmental groups were kept out of recent meetings between Florida lawmakers and the corps in which the lawmakers appear to be prevailing on the corps to relinquish permitting control.

Curiously, Jebby seemed to threaten the sponsor of the bill, which, remember, he signed after it passed and after he received a letter urging him to do so by 13 Repug and two Demohippocritic congressmen (that failed to mention the bill was drafted by developers).

Bush warned [Rep. Trudi ] Williams [R-Ft. Myers] that backing such a bill might hurt her reputation. When Williams sent him an e-mail explaining HB 759, he sent a terse reply that said he understood the bill but “my point to you relates to your career in the Legislature.”

Williams said last week she did not understand what Bush meant. Bush, responding via e-mail last week to the Times, said he wanted “to encourage Rep. Williams to take the lead on environmental issues” but was disappointed with part of the bill.

What developers don’t like is that to bulldoze wetlands requires a permit from both the state and the corps. That can take time, which is money to developers. In any case, no matter how long it takes, it’s pretty much a rubber-stamp deal:

The corps approves more wetland permits in Florida than in any other state. Between 1999 and 2003, it approved more than 12,000 permits and rejected only one. The state also issued permits for each of those projects — and the one the corps denied.

Harris Claims Make-up was Made Up By Mean Old Press

Trish

For sheer entertainment value, it’s hard to beat Katherine Harris. Now the future Florida senate candidate and partisan icon is claiming she was a victim of the liberal media in 2000.

She doesn’t wear clown make-up in real life, she said.

On Monday, on a conservative radio talk show, Harris, now a congresswoman from Longboat Key running for the U.S. Senate, hit back, blaming newspapers for the criticism and charging that some – without saying which – altered her photographs.

“I’m actually very sensitive about those things, and it’s personally painful,” Harris said when host Sean Hannity asked about her image problems from 2000.

“But they’re outrageously false, No. 1, and No. 2, you know, whenever they made fun of my makeup, it was because the newspapers colorized my photograph,” Harris said.

She didn’t explain what she meant by “colorized.”

Asked Tuesday to point to an altered photograph, Harris and her staff could not.

The main hole in her conspiracy theory is that she was also shown on T.V. — live, up close and personal.

Some political experts say Harris’ charge makes little sense because most Americans got their visual image of Harris from television.

At least two Harris news conferences in November 2000, detailing her decision to enforce a deadline and forbid recount results, got national TV coverage.

“Of course it wasn’t newspapers, it was television,” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. “I can remember watching her and thinking she learned all the wrong makeup lessons from Al Gore in the debates.”

I do agree that Harris took more criticism for her looks than a man would — say a man with a bad toupee or comb-over (paging Donald Trump). I also feel more favorable toward her for at least showing the good sense to state what the problem was.

“I haven’t worn blue eye shadow since the seventh grade when I was in the Girl Scouts.”

A Scientific Explanation for the Male Republican

Buck Banks

A Cornell University researcher recently conducted a study that seems to provide an explanation for the behavior of male Republicans.

Robb Willer surveyed undergraduates at Cornell and found that men whose masculinity is challenged become more inclined to support war or buy an SUV. And their attitudes toward gays become more negative, too.

Sound familiar? Like maybe the U.S. Senate?

When they completed the survey, participants were given random feedback indicating their responses were either masculine of feminine. In a follow-up survey, women expressed no reaction to either type of feedback, but the males’ reactions were “strongly affected,” Willer said.

“I found that if you made men more insecure about their masculinity, they displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq war more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle,” Willer said.

Those who had their masculinity threatened also said they felt more ashamed, guilty, upset and hostile than those whose masculinity was confirmed, he said.

I don’t know about ashamed and guilty, but upset and hostile certainly fit the Repug profile.

Still no scientific explanation for female Repugs.

Florida Deserves Oil Rigs Off Its Beaches

Buck Banks

I just received this e-mail from Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.):

Thank you for joining more than 9,000 fellow Floridians and concerned Americans who signed the petition on my website in support of maintaining the drilling moratoria and dropping the seismic oil and gas inventory provision from the final version of the 2005 energy bill.

Earlier this summer, with your help, we won a hard-fought agreement with Senate leadership to maintain a moratorium on oil and gas drilling off the coast of Florida. It even includes a large area of the Gulf known as Lease Sale 181 that previously was unprotected by the ban.

But despite my vehement opposition, drilling proponents in the Senate were able to get language in the just-passed energy bill that allows for an inventory of oil and gas resources in the Gulf of Mexico—widely considered a precursor to drilling. Such efforts jeopardize Florida’s $50-billion-a-year tourism industry and also encroach on military pilot training operations in waters off our state—just two reasons why I voted against the energy bill.

As I’ve said before, America cannot drill its way to energy independence—and we’re not sacrificing our valuable coastline to increase the oil industry’s bottom line. With your support, I will remain vigilant and continue my fight to keep the oil rigs away from Florida’s coast.

Only 9,000 people signed the on-line petition? Out of 18 million Floridians and 270 million other potentially “concerned Americans”?

That is so slack.

Daily Show on Bolton: Bush Doesn’t Give a &*%#

Jon Ponder

From “The Daily Show” on August 2, 2005. Unofficial transcript from JABBS:

JON STEWART: Alright, Rob. Considering the reception that Bolton is getting [at the U.N.], the hostility there, is the president concerned that he is perhaps sending the wrong message, by doing this to the world community?

ROB CORDDRY: Indeed, Jon, that’s exactly the kind of issue that would concern him, along with his deteriorating relationship with his own Congress, that is, if he gave a f–k, which Jon … which he doesn’t. Jon?

STEWART: I’m sorry, did you just say …

CORDDRY: Yeah, yeah, give a … yeah, I’m sorry, that uh, that was probably a little harsh. I didn’t have to put it like that. What I meant to say was the president doesn’t give two s—s.

[…]

Charlie Cook Before OH-02 Voting: A Schmidt Win of Less Than Five Points a ‘Serious Warning’ for Ohio GOP

Jon Ponder

“Bottom line: Schmidt, the Republican, is still favored to win the election, but don’t rule out the possibility of an upset, given the vagaries of August special election voter turnout and the problems unique to Ohio this year. But even assuming a GOP win tonight, the margin of victory can give us some insight into just how radioactive the governor’s troubles and the “time for a change” sentiment in the state will be for other Republicans in the Buckeye State next year.

“If Schmidt’s victory margin is in double digits, this tells us that there is not much of an anti-GOP wind in Ohio right now. If the margin is say six to nine points for Schmidt, then there is a wind, but certainly no hurricane. A Schmidt win of less than five points should be a very serious warning sign for Ohio Republicans that something is very, very wrong, while a Hackett victory would be a devastating blow to the Ohio GOP.”

— Charlie Cook, of the Cook Political Report, writing before the special election in Ohio yesterday.

The outcome was Schmidt (R) 51 percent/Hackett (D) 48 percent