Month: August 2005

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

[…]

“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

• Rove underlings testify: ABC is trying an experiment called “journalism.” In this bold new venture they have staked out the court house where the Bush CIA Leak grand jury is meeting. They happened to catch two of Karl Rove’s flying monkeys – Susan Ralston and Israel Hernandez – going in to testify. What’s next – interviewing people?
• Villaraigosa spent $5.2 mil on LA mayor’s race: Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spent $5.2 million – twice as much as former mayor Jim Hahn in the runoff campaign in May.
• Global warming spawns bigger hurricanes: Scientists consider hurricanes to be the canaries in the mines warning us about global warning. Now top researchers report that these storms are nearly twice as powerful as they were 30 years ago.

JEAN SCHMIDT (R) 59,132 (51.74 percent)

PAUL HACKETT (D) 55,151 (48.25 percent)

Turnout was expected to be about 50,000, so the actual vote was more than twice the prediction.

Another interesting factoid: in 2004, the Republican candidate for this seat (Ron Portman) took it 72 percent to 28 percent.

Since this was a special election, Schmidt – who is truly one of the worst candidates ever to come down the pike – is up again in 14 months.

Against the advice of his legal team, Robert Novak wrote a column yesterday in the Chicago Sun-Times that kind of defends his role in the outing of Valerie Plame (Novak published her name first), but really seems to be splitting hairs in his own defense while flinging mean-spirited barbs at Joseph Wilson, Plame’s husband.

Novak appears to be playing the role of the abused hound who, finally free of his fetters, can defend his besmirched good name:

Though frustrated, I have followed the advice of my attorneys and written almost nothing about the CIA leak over two years because of a criminal investigation by a federal special prosecutor. The lawyers also urged me not to write this.

In response, Nick Madigan wrote today in the Baltimore Sun a column that tries to ascertain what Novak is trying to say with his half-explanations and Wilson smears.

Novak’s decision to address only partially the issue of his involvement, after many months of unanswered questions about it, did not sit well with some fellow journalists.

“It’s sort of frustrating,” said Michael Hoyt, executive editor of Columbia Journalism Review. “It’s like the prairie dog who sticks his head up and goes back down again into the dark, where you can’t ask him any more questions.”

In Novak’s column yesterday, Hoyt said, “he defends himself, but whether he’s defending himself by splitting hairs is another question.”

Gary Hill, chairman of the ethics committee of the Society of Professional Journalists, said:

“But what about Novak? What has he done and how has he escaped the pressure? … Is he not talking or is he just talking at the moment? He appears to be having it both ways. He’s defending himself in this particular instance while at the same time not telling us everything he knows.”

Bob — you shoulda listened to your lawyers ….