Day: October 22, 2005

Fox News’ Shepherd Smith Outed

Jon Ponder

Kevin Naff, managing editor of the Washington Blade:

Shepard Smith, who hosts a popular program on Fox News and received widespread praise for his work covering Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, also dodges questions about his sexual orientation.

Smith once chatted me up in a New York City gay piano bar, bought me drinks, and invited me back to his place. When I declined, he asked me to dinner the next night, another invitation I politely refused.

We sat at the bar chatting and drinking martinis until 3 a.m., our conversation interrupted only when he paused to belt out the lyrics to whatever showtune was being performed.

Special Election: Schwarzenegger Team Pulls TV Ads That Feature Gov. As Pitchman

Jon Ponder

Focus groups don’t like him: We haven’t seen polling on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s upcoming special election recently but there was a clear sign on Friday that things aren’t going well for Das Guber: The governor’s “Yes on Whatever” campaign pulled all ads out of rotation in which Schwarzenegger appears on camera, replacing them with ads featuring actors playing “ordinary” Californians. (Why these regular – Republican? – Californians come off so snarky is a question for another day.)

The governor’s flying monkeys insist the change has nothing to do with anything:

[Schwarzenegger spokesman Todd] Harris said the campaign was not pulling the ads because of public opinion about Schwarzenegger. Rather, he said, the campaign spent a lot of effort and money on TV ads featuring the governor, “and now we are putting a ton of [ads] behind educating people about the campaign.”

Meanwhile, in reality:

“[Pulling the ads] means their focus groups and polling are telling them that he is not a compelling source on these topics, and that is linked to his popularity ratings,” said Barbara O’Connor, a political communications professor at Cal State Sacramento.

In the poll that really matters – fundraising – the unions and liberal-leaning groups opposing the governor have raised about $90 million, while Schwarzenegger says he has only raised about $40 million.

The cost of holding the election is about $50 million, so whatever happens on Nov. 8, this is an obscene amount of money to be wasted on an election that at its bottom line is totally unnecessary.

VP Replacement Won’t Be Condi

Jon Ponder

Unelectable – by Republicans: Last week, we predicted that John McCain would be appointed as vice president if Dick Cheney resigns. Since then, we have covered chatter in the Capitol that Bush would likely pick Condoleeza Rice as his new VP.

The idea that VP Condi could become president if Bush died – well, that dawg won’t hunt in ‘Bama.

We’ll stick with our McCain prediction for this simple reason: Bush won’t have a say in the matter. The Old White Guys who actually run the Republican Party won’t give him a choice. Bush is the lamest of lame ducks. He will either accept their pick for VP or they will withdraw their support for him – essentially what their predecessors did to President Nixon in 1974.

The OWG won’t want Condi because if Bush were be forced to resign (or if he croaks), obviously, she would become president. Two problems with that, from the OWG perspective: One, she’s a woman; and, two, she’s black.

A recent Marist College/WNBC pol found that only 26 percent of voters said they would vote for woman for president, regardless of whether she were a Democrat or a Republican. Another 28 percent said they would never vote for a woman, period. (Since the poll is out of New York, we’re sure the poll-takers were assuming the female candidate to be white. Who knows how the numbers would have skewed had they been asked about voting for a generic black female candidate.)

Race is an even more determinative factor for Republicans than gender. Great swaths of GOP voters are either proud racists or the secret muttering kind, so the idea of having Condi becoming president due to the sudden permanent unavailability of Mr. Bush, well, that dawg won’t hunt in ‘Bama, if you get my drift.

The GOP’s OWG will install McCain, or someone like him – Sen. Chuck Hagel, perhaps, because he is electable. He has appeal to Independents, liberal Republicans and even some conservatives.

Rightwing Meltdown Continues: ‘American Conservative’ Mag Blisters Bush Admin, Contractors on Iraq Corruption

Jon Ponder

Rats overboard: There seems to be new evidence every day that the American Right has awakened to the fraud of the Bush Presidency. Now comes a scathing indictment of Bush’s management of post-war Iraq in American Conservative magazine, which was founded by the gentlemanly wingnut, Pat Buchanan. The author of the article, Philip Giraldi, details how the Administration, and especially the civilian Pentagon leadership and their contractors, squandered or stole billions of dollars from the Iraqi and United States treasuries:

An estimated 363 tons of $100 bills were shipped to Iraq in C-130 cargo planes.

When the final page is written on America’s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure—corruption. Large-scale and pervasive corruption meant that available resources could not be used to stabilize and secure Iraq in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), when it was still possible to do so. Continuing corruption meant that the reconstruction of infrastructure never got underway, giving the Iraqi people little incentive to co-operate with the occupation. Ongoing corruption in arms procurement and defense spending means that Baghdad will never control a viable army while the Shi’ite and Kurdish militias will grow stronger and produce a divided Iraq in which constitutional guarantees will be irrelevant.

How corrupt was it?

The American-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority could well prove to be the most corrupt administration in history, almost certainly surpassing the widespread fraud of the much-maligned UN Oil for Food Program. At least $20 billion that belonged to the Iraqi people has been wasted, together with hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Exactly how many billions of additional dollars were squandered, stolen, given away, or simply lost will never be known because the deliberate decision by the CPA not to meter oil exports means that no one will ever know how much revenue was generated during 2003 and 2004.

The level of corruption is so monumental that it literally involves tons of cash. Millions in currency “was flown into Iraq on C-130s in huge plastic shrink-wrapped pallets holding 40 ‘cashpaks,’ each cashpak having $1.6 million in $100 bills.” An estimated 363 tons of $100 bills were shipped to Iraq in C-130’s.

Here are hightlights of the Amcon article’s bill of indictments:

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