Category: Politics

Topic Header

Florida Newspaper Endorsements: Nelson 10, Harris 0

Buck Banks

But who’s counting: Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson leads Republican Rep. Katherine Harris by almost every measure — in the polls, in sanity, and now, in newspaper endorsements. Last weekend, Nelson picked up endorsements from three Florida newspapers, bringing his total to 10. Harris has yet to garner an endorsement from any Florida fish wrapper.

Harris should be able to expect an endorsement by the Lakeland Ledger, right? I mean, she was born there.

Nelson has been endorsed by the Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times, Gainesville Sun, Palm Beach Post, Daytona Beach News-Journal, Fort Pierce Tribune, Port St. Lucie News, Stuart News, Vero Beach Press Journal and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Ouch! That last one had to hurt, since Sarasota is smack in the middle of Harris country. But maybe it’s too much for the Lord’s Chosen One to expect endorsements from the state’s top-tier newspapers. Maybe Harris should aim a little lower and go for quanity, not quality.

She could start by courting the Sarasoto Tempo-News, which, while it is not the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, it is hyphenated. Then there’s Basta Pinoy in Boca Raton, which serves the oft-forgotten Filipino constituency. Or the Bradford County Telegraph in Starke, home of Florida’s Death Row and a well-known bastion of wingnuts. Harris could probably pay to get endorsed by Miami’s El Nuevo Herald, as long as she said bad things about Fidel Castro.

Harris should be able to expect an endorsement by the Lakeland Ledger, right? I mean, she was born there, and did really well in a picnic poll two weeks ago, clobbering Nelson by 20 points. Other possibilities include the Okeechobee Times, Palatka Daily News, the Walton Sun and Williston Pioneer.

So take heart, Kate, there’s still a chance you’ll get a newspaper endorsement before the election. After all, I hear they’re expecting a cold front in Hell next week ….

Poll: Bush’s Approval Rating Drops to 37 Percent

Buck Banks

Free fall: The latest Zogby poll shows George Bush’s approval rating is falling faster than Greg Louganis doing a triple with a half-gainer off the 30-meter board:

After making headway improving his job approval rating over the course of several weeks, President Bush took a hit last week, dropping from 42 percent three weeks ago to 37 percent in a national live telephone survey conducted last week by Zogby International.

Another demographic that has strongly supported him in the past – weekly Wal-Mart shoppers – turned more negative.

Bush was last at 37 percent positive job approval in a Zogby telephone poll taken in early September. In this latest survey, 63 percent gave him negative job marks.

He held steady among Republicans in this latest survey – 72 percent said they give the President positive marks for his work. However, independent voters abandoned him – just 24 percent gave him positive marks, down from 36 percent just three weeks ago.

While married respondents, a part of Bush’s political base, remained steady at 42 percent positive in this latest survey, another demographic that has strongly supported him in the past – weekly Wal-Mart shoppers – turned more negative. Just 43 percent gave him positive marks in this latest poll, down from 55 percent three weeks ago. Among those shoppers, 57 percent gave him negative job marks.

Bushes at War: Fighting Backstage Between Aides for Bush 41 and 43

Jon Ponder

“Personally, I think he’s dying inside.”

— Aide describing former Pres. Bush’s disappointment in his son

Schadenfreude — you’re soaking in it:

The 41s were surprised that the 43s — the folks who would later botch Katrina — couldn’t see what was obvious to everyone else

[One] of the worst-kept secrets in Bush World is the dismay, in some cases disdain, harbored by many senior aides of the former President toward the administration of his son – 41 and 43, as many call them, political shorthand that refers to their numerical places in American presidential history.

For five years, the 41s have bit their collective tongues as, they complain, the 43s ignored their counsel. But as the war in Iraq has worsened and public support for the current administration has tanked, loyalists of the elder Bush have found it impossible to suppress their disillusionment – particularly their belief that many of 43’s policies are a stick in the eye of his father.

“Forty-three has now repudiated everything 41 stands for, and still [Bush senior] won’t say a word,” a key member of the elder Bush alumni said. “Personally, I think he’s dying inside.”

To 41 loyalists, the bill of indictment is voluminous. Some alleged 43 has betrayed his father’s middle-of-the-road philosophy by governing as a divider, not the uniter he promised in the 2000 campaign. Others, like former 41 speechwriter Curt Smith, argue 43 isn’t conservative enough.

“Conservatives want limited government, a balanced Middle East approach, a foreign policy that builds, not destroys, and general, not special, interest,” Smith said. “Bush 41 endorsed all of the above. Bush 43 supports none.”

The 41s were surprised that the 43s — the folks who would later botch Katrina — couldn’t see what was obvious to everyone else:

“Everyone knew how Rumsfeld acts,” another key 41 assistant said. “Everyone knew 43 didn’t have an attention span. Everyone knew Condi [Rice] wouldn’t be able to stand up to Cheney and Rumsfeld. We told them all of this, and we were told we don’t know what we’re doing.”

Like 41 himself, his aides are cock-eyed optimists who find the silver lining in Bush Jr.’s flameout:

“By comparison, the old man looks better and better,” a senior 41 hand said, with undisguised satisfaction.

Wasserman: A Timid Media Dropped the Ball in the Foley Case

Buck Banks

To out or not to out: I don’t always agree with Ed Wasserman’s media analyses. Indeed, I often think the Miami Herald columnist has brown eyes for a very good reason not related to genetics. However, his take on the Mark Foley scandal adds a new dimension to what has gotten to be a very old story. Here’s an excerpt, but to grok the nugget, read the whole column here.

[S]hould Foley have been outed?

If so, the argument has to rest on more than a visceral sense that nobody can be both gay and a conservative Republican. Why not? We all decide on our political allegiances based on a near fit, not a perfect fit. A gay man may well decide that the GOP, even with its recurring homophobia, still is more broadly to his liking than the alternative.

Foley’s sexuality had become the central issue in his career.

But the Foley problem was different, as I’ve been slow to recognize. Here, the issue wasn’t that his public performance wasn’t consistent with his private life. It’s that for years, his public performance made no sense unless you knew about what was happening behind the scenes. After his infuriating 1994 vote he dramatically softened his position on gay rights to deter further efforts to out him. In turn, he sought out off-the-wall issues — clamoring, for instance, for a state crackdown on a central Florida nudist colony — to appease his family values base. It’s almost certain he pulled the plug on his Senate run because his gayness would come up.

As [on-line Huffington Post columnist Eric] Boehlert correctly writes, ”Foley’s sexuality had become the central issue in his career.” And yet it was kept not secret, but in the shadows, known to those in the know, hidden from the main body of his constituents.

This wasn’t a matter of deferring to a legitimate area of privacy. Foley’s public actions were unintelligible unless you knew this backstory. And in failing to tell it, the media failed the public, and endorsed a principle of timidity that’s sure to fail the public in the future as well.

U.S. Dept. of Interior Blocking Employee Access to Pensito Review

Buck Banks

Well, maybe: There’s a bit of a tempest in a teacup going on at the Department of Interior, with a number of leading wingnut bloggers getting their panties in a twist over DoI’s recent moves to block access to weblogs. See, a couple weeks ago, an internal report was released that showed DoI employees spend thousands of hours visiting gaming, porn and auction sites when they should be working. DoI has about 80,000 employees with Internet access, but since 1999 has only reprimanded 177 employees for inappropriate Web surfing � 112 of those for skeazing slease while on the job.

Fast-forward to last week. The Interior Department has now started blocking access to a wide range of sites that it has determined are not related to the business of managing the interior of the United States, including weblogs because “some include sexually explicit language, libelous or defamatory commentary, and outrageous language,” Frank Quimby, spokesman for the agency, told FederalTimes.com.

( The funny thing is, DoI’s public affairs office now has to appeal for special access to be able to view weblogs that carry news about Interior.)

However, and here’s the rub � apparently, some wingnut employees tried to visit their favorite neo-Nazi sites, only to be blocked. But they could still visit Daily Kos and a whole slew of lefty weblogs. Gasp! There’s obviously a conspiracy at the top of DoI to prevent employees from being exposed to the brand of truth served up by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill OReilly. But why?

I like this explanation. It�s simple, it�s elegant, and it satisfies Occam�s razor.
� Baron Bodissey

Enter Baron Bodissey of the conservative weblog Gates of Vienna. He was given the task of “investigating” the story. If you have the time, it’s worth reading the article, which is told in a deadpan yet breathless kind of noir Web detective tone, as he drags the reader through every last step of the investigation. Here are a couple of the more interesting excerpts:

She passed me on to the Director of Communications, Mr. Frank Quimby. He was pleasant, and explained that the Department most emphatically did not selectively block conservative blogs. �We block all blogs. We�re still getting the glitches out of the system, so some get through here and there, but we�re blocking all blogs.�

I told him that I would report what he said, but that it strained credulity, because the chance of the system randomly blocking blogs that just happen to have a conservative political content � and not blocking liberal ones � was so small as to be negligible. Someone, somewhere had to have done this intentionally.

Mr. Quimby passed me on to to his deputy, Mr. Ed Meagher, who was more familiar with the technical aspects of their internet filtering system. Mr. Meagher was not as friendly as Mr. Quimby � he bristled at any suggestion that the Interior Department was selectively blocking blogs based on their political orientation. �I can guarantee you 100 percent that we do not do that,� he told me. �We block all blogs.�
[…]

WH Political Team Backs Newt in ’08

Jon Ponder

Run, Newt, Run!!

As regular readers know, I have endorsed Newt Gingrich to be the Republican nominee for president in 2008 — mainly as a reaction to having Hillary Clinton selected as the Dem nominee by the rightwing. I see Newt as being as polarizing on the left as Sen. Clinton is on the right.

Anyway, it is gratifying to learn that the geniuses in the White House political shop are supporting Gingrich, the notorious serial adulterer and former House speaker, as well:

The Newt Gingrich for president buzz is back, and we’re hearing it from a rather odd corner of Washington: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Top Bushies tell us that they think the former disgraced House speaker would make a great president. Gingrich thinks big, they say, and represents the old Reagan-style of smaller-government conservatism. As for his past marital infidelity, they think it’s a nothing-burger, especially if he faces Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose hubby had his own problems she’d rather forget.

What a great example of inside-the-Beltway rationalization: Hillary was a victim, if you will, of Bill’s adultery. Newt has been involved in at least three adulterous relationships that went public. Therefore, if Hillary runs against Newt, Bill’s adultery would somehow cancel out Newt’s as a campaign issue. Riiiight…

Why I Don’t Join the North v. South Racism Debate

Buck Banks

Count me out: In reference to Trish’s earlier post, I am going to go out on a limb and get a lot more personal than we ordinarily do on this Web site. The reason I stay out of the fray for the most part is because I think the racism question is incredibly difficult to parse, and the question of whether the North or the South is more racist just skirts the issue.

Disclosure: I have in the past been misidentified as a racist because A) I was born in a Cracker Florida town where, instead of desegregating the city pool, the town fathers filled it in; B) my name is Buck; C) my aunt and uncle were members of the KKK in the town of my birth, and D) my father was one of the worst racists I have ever met. In reality, I have always strived to allow my fellow humans to make complete asses of themselves, regardless of race, creed of skin color.

Anyay, here’s how I see it:

During slavery, the industrial North benefited from the South’s peculiar institution by receiving the raw materials and foodstuffs grown on the sweat of slaves. In Reconstruction and the early part of the 20th century, the massive flight north of millions of blacks fed the North’s need for cheap industrial labor (to augment the poor immigrants arriving from Europe) and created huge black ghettos in most Northern cities.

In the contemporary South, in every town I have lived in, there have been the tracks — literal or implied — across which blacks did not relocate by enforcement of the white-ocracy. In every Southern town I have lived in there have been acts of overt racism of varying degrees, race-on-race violence and conspiracies to deny blacks the rights to vote, congregate or worship. I would suggest that intelligent readers could say the same thing about any mid-size town or big city they have lived in.

In seventh grade (1970), Florida finally complied with a court order, issued in 1963, to desegregate its school system. The bright lights of Lee County responded by closing the historically black high school and junior high, and busing all seventh graders from all over the entire county into those two schools, located across the tracks in the predominantly black section of town. It was a rough year — for everybody, regardless of color.

Every year of my high school we had violent race riots, some rumored to have been incited by the Black Panthers. I learned a lot during those riots — the effect of a bean bag gun wielded by a policeman, the unforgettable aroma of tear gas, the sensation of bare knuckles rapping on my noggin and that the safest place to be during a race riot was in the Agriculture Building among the rednecks.
[…]

Surprise! Bush Will Have Warships in Position and Ready to Bomb Iran This Saturday

Jon Ponder

Bombing Could Start 17 Days before Mid-Term Elections

Based on stories last month in Time magazine and The Nation, it appears that the U.S.S. Eisenhower Strike Group left Norfolk, Virginia, on Oct. 1 and will reach the shores of Iran at the Strait of Hormuz this Saturday, Oct. 21 — 17 days before the mid-term elections.

First word of the Eisenhower’s deployment to the Persian Gulf came from angry Navy officers, who contacted military critics of the Iraq war and complained that they were being sent to attack Iran without any order from the Congress.

According to the mid-September 2006 article in The Nation, the strike group includes:

[The] nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship…

And:

First word of the early dispatch of the “Ike Strike” group to the Persian Gulf region came from several angry officers on the ships involved, who contacted antiwar critics like retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner and complained that they were being sent to attack Iran without any order from the Congress.

“This is very serious,” said Ray McGovern, a former CIA threat-assessment analyst who got early word of the Navy officers’ complaints about the sudden deployment orders. (McGovern, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the CIA, resigned in 2002 in protest over what he said were Bush Administration pressures to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq. He and other intelligence agency critics have formed a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.)

Colonel Gardiner, who has taught military strategy at the National War College, says that the carrier deployment and a scheduled Persian Gulf arrival date of October 21 is “very important evidence” of war planning. He says, “I know that some naval forces have already received ‘prepare to deploy orders’ [PTDOs], which have set the date for being ready to go as October 1. Given that it would take about from October 2 to October 21 to get those forces to the Gulf region, that looks about like the date” of any possible military action against Iran. (A PTDO means that all crews should be at their stations, and ships and planes should be ready to go, by a certain date–in this case, reportedly, October 1.)

So why has the president sent the strike group to Iran?

[…]

Soros Donates $75k to Wesley Clark’s PAC

Jon Ponder

Bushevik New York Sun:

A billionaire investor who spent more than $25 million to defeat President Bush in 2004, George Soros, is giving a financial boost to the political fortunes of a former four-star general, Wesley Clark, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and is poised to mount another bid in 2008.

Mr. Soros gave $75,000 in July to a political group led by General Clark, Wes-Pac, according to a report filed yesterday with the Internal Revenue Service.

It is the largest known gift from Mr. Soros this year to a political organization affiliated with a contender for the presidency in 2008…

In April, Mr. Soros hosted a fund-raiser for WesPac at his home in Manhattan. General Clark also serves on the board of a nongovernmental organization supported by Mr. Soros, the International Crisis Group.

Ex-Gay Therapists’ Crackpot Statements Are So Bad Even Other Ex-Gays Are Critical

Jon Ponder
One NARTH board member called for allowing schoolchildren to shame and ridicule classmates who don’t act according to stereotypical gender roles. Another asserted that slaves may have been better off in chains than in “savage” Africa.

The National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), which is based in the San Fernando’s upscale Encino neighborhood, is a group that purports to help gay people go straight. NARTH is embroiled in controversy over statements made by two of their board members that are so inflammatory that even other ex-gay groups are distancing themselves:

[Two] commentaries posted online in recent months by members of NARTH’s scientific advisory committee have raised concerns among its closest allies as well.

[Canadian psychiatrist Joseph Berger] called for allowing schoolchildren to shame and ridicule classmates who don’t act according to stereotypical gender roles. Another board member, [New York psychotherapist Gerald Schoenewolf], asserted that slaves may have been better off in chains than in “savage” Africa…

Yes, folks, these are the “scientists” who believe that the fundamental fact of a person’s sexual identity can be changed. In reality, most of the people seeking “reparative” therapy are bisexuals who can’t resolve wildly inaccurate interpretations of biblical texts with their inborn attraction to members of their own gender. No serious psychiatric researcher or therapist believes sexual reorientation is either possible or necessary.

NARTH is standing by its board members. But advocating the humiliation of school children and suggesting that American slaves were happy in their chains seems to have gone a step too far for other researchers and groups in the field:

One of NARTH’s scientific advisors has quit in protest, and a prominent therapist has canceled his presentation at the group’s annual conference next month. Alan Chambers, who leads the nation’s largest support group for “ex-gays,” urged NARTH’s members to “think long and hard about the mission of the organization.”

…The two groups that regularly stage conferences on “overcoming homosexuality” — Focus on the Family and Exodus International — have both affirmed their support for [NARTH President Joseph Nicolosi]. But Chambers, the president of Exodus, made clear he disagreed sharply with how NARTH has handled the controversy.

Berger’s advice that children with differences be ridiculed “wouldn’t be something we would tolerate from someone who was part of our board,” said Chambers, who recalls being teased for acting effeminate as a boy. “We have to be very careful about what we say and how we say it. Peoples’ emotions, hearts and even lives are at stake.”