Year: 2005

Reuters is reporting more bad polling news for Chimpster. He did not fare so well in Esquire magazine’s “Global Survey of the Female Species,” in which women worldwide were asked to rate the President’s sex appeal.

He may be leader of the free world and Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” but a new international survey of women makes certain that President Bush is far from being the sexiest man alive.

In a recent online poll conducted by Esquire magazine, 11,000 women in 15 countries were asked to rate Bush’s sex appeal on a scale of one to 10, and America’s commander-in-chief failed to register much more than a two.

Women in Australia, Germany and the Netherlands were the harshest judges of George W.’s sexual allure, giving him an average rating of 1.4 each, Esquire said in its survey released earlier this week.

By contrast, Indonesian women were the most generous, giving Bush an average score of 2.2; American women found their president slightly less appealing, rating him a 2.1

The fact that he even got a 2.1 makes me suspect ballot tampering. The PR demands to know – what did Peggy Noonan know about the balloting, and when did she know it?

Another open mike and another rightwing message-meister caught showing how propaganda gets made. Faux News host Sean Hannity was caught on tape coaching guests on his March 31 show, instructing them the tried and true GOP technique of staying on message no matter what.

The guests were two nurses who had tended the late Terri Schiavo who were brought on the show to say that Schiavo – whose cerebral cortex had filled with fluid 15 years before she died – was actually fine, not brain dead at all. (This alone should give us pause about the quality of professionals in the nursing industry today.)

“Just say, ‘I’m here to tell what I saw,'” Hannity can be heard instructing his guests. “No matter what the question, ‘I’m here to tell you what I saw. I’m here to tell you what I saw.'”

Hannity adds helpfully: “Say, ‘I’m not going to be distracted by silliness.’ How’s that? Does that help you? Look into that camera. Look at me when I’m talking.”

On the air, [One of the “nurses”] performs beautifully. “I don’t have any opinions or judgments. I was there,” she declares

After the segment ends, Hannity gushes off the air to the nurses: “We got the points out. It’s hard, this isn’t easy. But you did great, both of you. Thank you, guys. Those nurses are powerful, aren’t they?”

The story was broken last Saturday by the great Harry Shearer (who was referred to on C-Span this morning as “an investigative comedian”) on his weekly public radio extravaganza, LeShow.

This is just mean. What did the poor slime mold beetle do to deserve this :

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have shared a common political vision for most of their careers. Now they’ll share something else: a slime-mold beetle named in his honor….

Naming the beetles after Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld had nothing to do with physical features, but was intended to pay homage to them, said Quentin Wheeler, a former professor of entomology and plant biology at Cornell for 24 years until October.

“We admire these leaders as fellow citizens who have the courage of their convictions and are willing to do the very difficult and unpopular work of living up to principles of freedom and democracy rather than accepting the expedient or popular,” said Wheeler, now the head of entomology at the Natural History Museum in London.

Thanks to PR reader Jim and our Guru & Consulting Editorial Director Susan D. for the tip!

Republican state Senator Paul Koering (right) of Minnesota came out of the closet during a phone interview with journalist Mike Rogers of blogActive. Rogers had placed the call to Koering after receiving photos of Koering in a gay bar.

With Rogers on the line and his political career in the balance, Sen. Koering – who had recently caused a stir by being the only Republican in the Minnesota senate to vote against a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage – decided not to weasel. He admitted that he was gay.

Koering, 40, hails from farm country, some 150 miles north of Minneapolis. He says his decision to come out was a complex one, but that the marriage amendment vote—aligned with the two year anniversary of his mother’s death—finally led him to believe the time was right…

As a proud Republican legislator who stood alone against his party to take a stand against what he sees as discrimination, Koering’s support for reporting on “hypocritical” gay politicians—including Republicans—is certain to send a shockwave through the Washington gay community.

“Somebody who is possibly in the closet and uses their bully pulpit or their position to bash gay people or to make gay people’s lives difficult… and are in essence leading a double life — people like that need to be exposed for the hypocrite that they are,” Koering says.

Koering is well aware coming out may cost him his job.

“The only thing I’m worried about are the 83,000 people that I represent,” he continued. “And I did talk to the chair of the Crowing Country Republicans and he said that the executive committee might consider asking for [my] resignation.”

“I said, I don’t think that would be a good idea on your part,” he added.

Koering says he supports the Defense of Marriage Act Minnesota has on its books, which prevents the state from recognizing gay marriages. But he feels that a constitutional amendment takes things too far. He says legalizing gay marriage at this point would be moving “too fast.”

The results are in, and one thing is certain: Floridians wouldn’t want the next reality show to feature a comatose woman whose husband and parents are battling each other to take her off life support.

According to multiple reports, including the Miami Herald,

From the president to the governor to legislators to judges to reporters, nearly every outsider involved in the Terri Schiavo tragedy is viewed unfavorably by Floridians, who frown most heavily on those who intruded the most…

The research was conducted by Quinnipiac University. For some reason, the news media took the biggest hit, and rightly, the Supreme Court got the least criticism. Personally, I still blame Jeb for getting involved early and often.

”I think this is a case of shooting the messenger,” Clay F. Richards, pollster for the university, said Wednesday. “And there was fatigue. This was on television and in the newspapers constantly and people just wanted this to go away. The Supreme Court got a pass because it just stayed out.”

Following the news media in descending order, Floridians viewed these entities less favorably than ”favorably:” Congress, the Florida Legislature, Gov. Jeb Bush and President Bush, the federal courts and the state courts. The poll showed, however, that both Bushes’ job-approval ratings in general held constant.

Jeb’s reaction to the news? Pure Jeb:

”I don’t know where Quinnipiac University is, for starters,” Bush said Wednesday. “Secondly I didn’t do it for polls or politics. When you are in this position you can’t be driven by polls. It’s just not appropriate.”

Of course, party affiliation made a difference. Republicans, as their puppet-masters knew they would be, were more evenly split.

However, the actions of the Republican lawmakers in Washington and Tallahassee proved almost as popular as it was unpopular with GOP voters — underscoring the logic behind a well-publicized ”talking points” memo that noted the case was “a great political issue.”

The photo on the right shows Bush-Cheney lawyer John Bolton (right) watching Judge Charles Burton, chairman of the Palm Beach County canvassing board, as he examines a disputed ballot in Nov. 2000.

At the time, Bolton was the man on the ground charged with disrupting the recount and throwing the election to Bush. Today he is President Bush’s nominee to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. A neo-con of the first order, Bolton is a big proponent of the Bush team’s shoot-first foreign policy. He has been harshly critical of the UN, and his placement in the ambassador’s seat appears to be a shot across the bow of the world body. The Barbarians are at the gate.

Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committe put on a concerted effort this week to make Bolton’s confirmation hearings as contentious – and embarassing – as possible. Testimony was presented that Bolton harassed intelligence agents who refused to alter their findings on Saddam Hussein’s weapons capabilities in order to bolster President Bush’s case for war, which, it turns out, is illegal. Nothing will come of this, of course, but witnesses also depicted Bolton as a Hollywood-mogul class asshole who threatens and rages at his subordinates and then brown noses his superiors with Eddie Haskell-class obsequiousness.

Today the vote on his nomination by Foreign Relations was postponed until next week, giving Democrats time to try to rally support for quashing Bolton’s nomination from Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and other liberal Republicans.

It’s just like the Bushes to send a political hit man – an anti-diplomat – to represent the United States to the world. The message seems to be, if you thought Jesse Helms was a flat-earther when it came to international affairs when he was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wait ’til you get a load of this guy!

In case you’re just tuning in, it looks like a demi-dynasty in Los Angeles is about to take a tumble. Mayor Jim Hahn is the son of Kenneth Hahn, a city councilman who represented South Central LA, which includes Watts, for many years. The mayor’s sister also currently serves on the city council.

The rap on Mayor Hahn seems to be that he is too mild – too mildly competent and as well too mildly charismatic. (His nickname is “Slim Jim.”) Antonio Villaraigosa is a former state Assembly Speaker whom Hahn defeated four years ago. Polls show Villarigosa with a commanding lead across all voter groups in the city – except the 24 percent of the electorate who are Republicans.

The Mayor’s late father was a beloved figure among his predominantly black constituents. And black voters helped put Ken Hahn’s son into the mayor’s office last time. Unfortunately for the Mayor, these voters have deserted him now. One theory holds that Mayor Hahn lost support from black voters because he fired the police chief, Bernard Parks. Parks, who is black and who worked his way up through the ranks, is now a member of the city council. Most recently, he ran unsuccessfully for mayor but lost to Hahn and Villaraigosa in the primaries.

Villaraigosa, a former labor organizer, comes across as a man on the rise, with his sights on the national stage. Speaking of which, we learned today that Antonio is fundraising in Miami, where he hopes to raise about $100,000 from Hispanic donors.

At first blush, you might think a run for the White House by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich seems a bit quixotic. Newt left the stage in bad odor a few years back, and today he is mainly remembered for his grating, bristly personality. But when George W. Bush became president in 2001, having an obnoxious personality ceased to be a disqualifier for the highest office in the land.

As bizarre as “Gingrich for President” may sound, he could probably do well in primaries in the Northeast and upper Midwest. He’ll have trouble in the Red, however. He’s no a liberal, like Rudy Guiliani, but Newt is what passes for an “intellectual” on the Right. He’s never had a cozy relationship with the anti-intellectual Christianist extremists who now dominate his party. He’s clearly uncomfortable talking about faith issues. And then there’s his record of personal immorality, including numerous tawdry extramarital affairs and generally being a cad to his wives and daughters.

Of course, the wild card facing the Gingrich ’08 campaign would be the candidate himself. He loves to talk and is more prone to gaffes than the average pol. And while he may be a master strategist, he’s got a tin ear for tactics. Shutting down the government backfired on him, and the Clinton Immpeachment failed on his watch.

As a national candidate, his outspokenness and strange “black-is-white” rhetoric put him at risk of coming off like a crackpot – like Pat Buchanan but without the cuddliness and charm. And in a sense, he has been beaten on a national ticket once before – back in 1996 when Clinton-Gore ran Newt as a shadow candidate on the Dole-Kemp ticket. They took a drubbing.

Here we see foreshadowing in the Reagan-Bush era of the mindset of the Bush-Cheney administration: The end justifies the means if the means benefits the GOP or its friends. Laws they don’t like can simply be ignored. And since democracy is antithetical to conservatism, it is the role of conservatives in government to undermine democratic institutions such as the US Congress.

The day after the House voted to halt all aid to rebels fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, U.S. Ambassador to Honduras John D. Negroponte urged the president’s national security adviser and the CIA director to hang tough.

The thrust of the envoy’s “back channel” July 1983 message to the men running the contra war against Nicaragua was contained in a single cryptic sentence: “Hondurans believe special project is as important as ever.”

“Special project” was code for the secret arming of contra rebels from bases in Honduras — a cause championed by Negroponte, then a rising diplomatic star. In cables and memos, Negroponte made it clear that he saw the “special project” as key to the Reagan administration’s strategy of rolling back communism in Central America.

Planet Out

Two of the largest U.S. telecommunications companies, Sprint and SBC Communications, will continue to offer same-sex domestic partner benefits to employees in Kansas despite the overwhelming passage of a broadly worded anti-gay marriage amendment in the state this week.

On Tuesday, Kansas voters passed an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage by a 70-30 margin. The amendment defined marriage as between one man and one woman, and stated that, “No relationship, other than a marriage, shall be recognized by the state as entitling the parties to the rights or incidents of marriage.”

Legal experts have warned that the latter part of the amendment may jeopardize domestic partner benefits in Kansas, mirroring battles being waged in other states. Last month Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox argued that public employers in that state cannot provide domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples because of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage passed by Michigan voters last November.

Sprint and SBC are the first companies to make clear they will continue to offer the benefits not only to their employees in Kansas, but also nationwide.