Month: July 2006

Chuck Hagel took to the Senate floor today to criticize the Administration’s assitude about the Israel-Hezbollah war:

Although pro-Israel sentiment runs deep in the U.S. Congress, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., broke with the president on Monday and said Israel’s pounding of Lebanon was hurting America’s image in the Middle East. “The sickening slaughter on both sides must end now,” Hagel said. “This madness must stop.”

The media discounts Hagel because he is running for president in ’08 and, unfortunately, so should we.

“Hello, Pot? This is Kettle. Guess what? You’re black!”

Karl Rove:

“Some decry the professional role of politics, they would like to see it disappear,” Rove told graduating students at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. “Some argue political professionals are ruining American politics — trapping candidates in daily competition for the news cycle instead of long-term strategic thinking in the best interest of the country.”

But Rove turned that criticism on journalists.

“It’s odd to me that most of these critics are journalists and columnists,” he said. “Perhaps they don’t like sharing the field of play. Perhaps they want to draw attention away from the corrosive role their coverage has played focusing attention on process and not substance.”

Apple Falls Close to Tree Dept.: You have no doubt heard that we had a seismic incident here in Hollywood Land. The temblor occured about 2:30 Friday morning on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu when a major movie star was busted for drunk driving — and its aftershocks are only now beginning to reverberate through the movie industry.

As he was being arrested for drunk driving on the PCH Friday night, Mel Gibson — a self-proclaimed Christian and family man — reportedly said to LA County deputies:

“Fucking Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Gibson then asked the deputy, “Are you a Jew?”

That statement was a lie, and a dangerously delusional one at that. But here’s the truth: Jews occupy top offices at every movie studio in this town. It is as true today as it was a century ago when the Hollywood branch of the Industry was founded.

What will be interesting to watch is how they — the suits who run this town — deal with this outburst from one of their major stars.

If OJ Simpson murdering his wife — I mean “allegedly murdering” — was a “10” on the gossip seismometer, this is at least a “5.”

From a political perspective, now that President Reagan has passed away, Charlton Heston has succumbed to Alzheimer’s and Arnold Schwarzenegger is up in Sacramento playing governor, Mel Gibson is the de facto top conservative in the movie business. After him, there is Bruce Willis and Bo Derek — and that’s about it.

Gibson’s arrest won’t have any direct effect on, say, Republican fortunes in the mid-term elections, of course, but it does provide one more example of a top conservative who preaches family values but who is revealed to be a drunken, racist lout in real life.

[…]

Conrad Burns of Montana may be the most vulnerable U.S. senator in the upcoming elections. His problems stem primarily from his association with the GOP’s prison-bound former wunderkind lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But Burns’ latest escapade, in which he publicly berated a crew of hard-working firefighters, probably won’t help make his case with rank and file voters, including even Republicans:

Paula Rosenthal, a [Montana] Department of Natural Resources and Conservation employee, wrote that members of the hotshot crew said Burns confronted them in the Billings, Mont., airport Sunday while they were awaiting a flight and told them they had done a “poor job” fighting the 92,000-acre Bundy Railroad fire…

Rosenthal, who was serving as a fire information officer in the Billings area at the time, prepared the report at the direction of agency supervisors. She said she was sent to the airport to meet with Burns after reports of an “altercation” between the firefighters and the senator.

“The toughest part of the conversation was the point where the senator was critical of a firefighter sitting across from us in the gate area,” Rosenthal’s report reads. “I offered to the senator that our firefighters make around $8 to $12 an hour and time-and-a-half for overtime. He seemed a bit surprised that it wasn’t higher.”

She said Burns also was concerned and upset about the overall “command and control” system for firefighting efforts and made “several comments about us ‘not letting ranchers fight the fire on their own land.’ ”

She said she responded that landowners were an important part of firefighting, but that safety was always a priority.

“He replied, ‘We’re fighting a war on terror and we’re concerned about safety there too, but we’re out there doing it,’ ” Rosenthal wrote.

See how they do it? In a discussion about firefighting, Sen. Burns attempts to stifle debate by bringing up the so-called War on Terror. Somewhere Karl Rove is smiling.

Casey Judd, business manager for the Federal Wildland Fire Service Assn., which represents federal firefighters, said he was disappointed Burns chose to confront the hotshot team. An Internet bulletin board for firefighters quickly filled Thursday with postings critical of Burns.

“We have expressed our support for him in the past,” Judd said. “But to make a point of blistering a bunch of hotshots — it’s really disconcerting.”

Sen. Burns is undoubtedly aware of the damage inflicted on California’s Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year when he faced a barrage of critical television ads featuring fire fighters.

Sensing incoming political damage, Burns quickly apologized: “In retrospect, I wish I had chosen my words more carefully … My criticism of the way the fire was handled should not have been directed at those who were working hard to put it out.”

Apparently, Americans love it when their president behaves like a complete boor.

In the weeks since President Bush was caught on tape at the G8 Summit saying the “s” word — with a mouth full of food, no less — while speaking with the Prime Minister of Great Britain, only to be caught again giving a cringe-making, frat-boy shoulder massage to the female German leader, his approval rating has skyrocketed two points, to 39 percent since last month, in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.

Capital idea: Once again, Molly Ivins comes up with a brilliant notion — draft Bill Moyers to be the next prez. Here’s her column that appeared in the “Miami Herald” today:

AUSTIN, Texas — Dear desperate Democrats,

Here’s what we do. We run Bill Moyers for president. I am serious as a stroke about this. It’s simple, cheap and effective, and it will move the entire spectrum of political discussion in this country. Moyers is the only public figure who can take the entire discussion and shove it toward moral clarity just by being there.

The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem-cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy.

Moyers has been grappling with how to fit moral issues to political issues ever since he left Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and went to work for Lyndon Johnson in the teeth of the Vietnam War. Moyers worked for years in television, seriously addressing the most difficult issues of our day. He has studied all different kinds of religions and different approaches to spirituality.

The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem-cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy.

He’s no Holy Joe, but he is a serious man. He opens minds — he doesn’t scare people. He includes people in, not out. And he sees through the dark search for a temporary political advantage to the clear ground of the Founders. He listens and he respects others.

Do I think Moyers can win the presidency? No, that seems like a very long shot to me. The nomination? No, a very long shot, too.

Then why run him? Think, imagine, if seven or eight other Democratic candidates, all beautifully coiffed and triangulated and carefully coached to say nothing that will offend anyone, stand on stage with Moyers in front of cameras for a national debate . . . what would happen? Moyers would win, would walk away with it, just because he doesn’t triangulate or calculate or trim or try to straddle the issues. He doesn’t have to endorse a constitutional amendment against flag burning or whatever wedge issue du jour Republicans have come up with. He is not afraid of being called ”unpatriotic.” And besides, he is a wise and a kind man who knows how to talk on TV.

It won’t take much money — file for him in a couple of early primaries, and just get him into the debates. Think about the potential Democratic candidates. Every single one of them needs a spine, needs political courage. What Moyers can do is not only show them what it looks like and indeed what it is, but also how people respond to it.

Who’s right?

I don’t want to go through another presidential primary with everyone trying to figure out who has the best chance to win instead of who’s right. I want to vote for somebody who’s good and brave and who should win.

One time in the Johnson years, LBJ called on Moyers to say the blessing at a dinner. ”Speak up, Bill!” Lyndon roared. ”I can’t hear you.” Moyers replied, “I wasn’t speaking to you, sir.”

That’s the point of a run by Moyers: He doesn’t change to whom he is speaking just because some president is yelling at him.

• To let Moyers know what you think of this idea, write him at P.O. Box 309, Bernardsville, NJ, 07924.