Month: August 2006

Betrayal: Speilberg, Katzenberg Endorse Schwarzenegger

Jon Ponder
“It starts with a personal relationship. They are friends.”
— Spokesman

There have a pair of corollary events in the California governor’s race this week.

First, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed former Rep. James Rogan to the state bench. Rogan, an ultra-rightwinger from Glendale, made his mark on history as one of the House Managers in the Clinton impeachment.

A few days after this prime example of a Republican governor busily packing California courts with rightwing, activist idealogues comes word of an audacious slap in the face to California Democrats:

Some of Hollywood’s most reliable and generous donors to the Democratic Party — Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and media mogul Haim Saban — are endorsing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bid for reelection.

Their support is partly a matter of friendship over partisanship. But it could deal a blow to the governor’s main opponent, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, by signaling to other Democrats that it’s acceptable to embrace a Republican.

“It starts with a personal relationship. They are friends,” said Andy Spahn, a spokesman for both Spielberg and Katzenberg.

The two men also like Schwarzenegger’s plans to tackle global warming and fund schools. But further, Spahn said, “they are receptive to the governor’s taking a less partisan approach to the job and a more inclusive approach to government.”

This defection comes as the fortunes of Democratic challenger Phil Angelides appear to be fading fast, and there is a whiff of rats deserting the sinking ship. It is also reckless. Schwarzenegger has been penned in this year because it’s an election year and because of his disastrous performance last year, but any number of factors could set him free to pursue the ideological interests of his party.

You would be hard pressed to find any Democrats in California who think a return to the agenda enacted during the 16 years of Republican rule that ended with the term of Gov. Pete Wilson, Schwarzenegger’s mentor, would be anything but destructive for the state.

True, the political influence of these moguls is limited, but their endorsement gives Schwarzenegger cover from namebrand California liberals that he has not earned and never will.

It reeks of cronyism. These guys can conveniently forget that Arnold believes he’s Ronald Reagan reincarnate because their relationship with him is based on business. After all, they’ll be working and socializing with him long after his second term.

Senate ’06: Good News for Dems in Three Vulnerable Contests

Jon Ponder

Rasmussen via Kos:

Our latest numbers from Minnesota (Klobuchar +12), Washington (Cantwell +11), and New Jersey (Menendez +6) provide Democrats with breathing room in the three Senate races deemed by the conventional wisdom and polling data as the GOP’s best pick-up opportunities of the cycle. In all three cases, polls earlier in the year gave Republicans hope but the trends are moving against them. With all the usual cavaets about a long time until Election Day, it is now hard to see the Republicans picking up any Democratic Senate seats.

Prior To Invading Iraq, Bush Did Not Know Islam Had Conflicting Sects

Jon Ponder

President boor: As evidence piles up that America has never had a more ill-equipped leader, so do the bodies of American soldiers and innocent Iraqis who have died as a result:

Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam–to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

Why Did Rush Limbaugh Take Viagra on Vacation with Four Guys?

Jon Ponder

When asked if his cigar was a phallic symbol, Sigmund Freud supposedly replied, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Implied in this answer, of course, is the idea that sometimes a cigar is more than a cigar: It is a symbol for something else.

Keeping that in mind, the Smoking Gun has revealed that when renowned cigar smoker Rush Limbaugh was busted with someone else’s prescription of Viagra, he was returning to the United States from a vacation in the Dominican Republic with four other guys:

Rush Limbaugh was traveling with four other men–including the producers of the hit show “24”–when he was detained over a mislabeled bottle of Viagra found in his luggage during a Customs search.

Hugh Hefner once called Viagra “the best legal recreational drug out there.” Keeping that in mind, the four men in Limbaugh’s Dominican sex party included:

Joel Surnow, “24”‘s co-creator and executive producer and Howard Gordon, another of the Fox hit’s executive producers (Hollywood agent Jeffrey Benson was also part of the Limbaugh quintet).

And TSG asks, “With all those guys in tow, it is unclear what Limbaugh needed with those 29 100mg Viagra pills.”

Speaking for all the gays in Gaydom, I don’t think Rush is a homo. We don’t want him. He is one of yours. Ick.

If Limbaugh and his boys went to the Carribbean to trawl resort bars for dates, you might think having Rush in their party would be a dumb girl magnet. Evidence suggests otherwise: only one of the 30 pills in the prescription was missing.

Here’s the takeaway: A cigar may not always be a cigar, but Rush Limbaugh is always a dick.

Sen. Intel Chair – and Bush Lapdog – Turns on White House over Iraq Cover-Up

Jon Ponder
“I have been disappointed by this administration’s unwillingness to declassify material contained in these reports, material which I believe better informs the public, but that does not — I repeat, does not — jeopardize intelligence operations, sources and methods.”
— Sen. Roberts (R-Kansas)

When President Bush’s misadventure in Iraq began is steady de-evolution into civil war during his first term, the president’s team answered calls for investigations into what went wrong by delaying them whenever possible.

The White House had a more-than-willing partner in obfuscating their malfeasance in the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, R-Kansas. Roberts allowed the first part of an investigation to go through during Bush’s first term but did everything in his power to delay an investigation into the false pre-war intelligence the president used as his precepts for war.

With Sen. Roberts’ help, Bush managed to stave off the investigation into pre-war intelligence during his first term, thus helping to ensure he would get a second term.

But now, seemingly inexplicably, Sen. Roberts has turned on the White House (in as much as a rightwing lapdog can do) over the second part of the investigation:

[…]

More Fun in the Olbermann Vs. O’Reilly War

Jon Ponder

Media Bistro:

On Thursday’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann reacted to Bill O’Reilly’s comments about “vampires” Wednesday night. In case you missed it: When O’Reilly said “we should call these people out,” referring to “smear merchants” like Olbermann, Geraldo Rivera said he should call them by name. O’Reilly said no, because “then you give them more publicity.”

In his latest Factor Fiction segment, Olbermann retorted: “There have been three million articles about this feud. There was one this morning! How much worse could you make it by using my name, Billo? What are they going to do — build a statue of me? You’re so confident in your success that you have to keep my name and show a secret from your viewers, or all of your viewers will all leave you in one night?”

Watch the video at News Hounds.

Pat Robertson Sees the Light on Global Warming

Jon Ponder

“Diamond” Pat Robertson has had a “come to Jesus” on global warming:

Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said on Thursday the wave of scorching temperatures across the United States has converted him into a believer in global warming.

“We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels,” Robertson said on his “700 Club” broadcast. “It is getting hotter, and the icecaps are melting and there is a buildup of carbon dioxide in the air.”

This week the heat index, the perceived temperature based on both air temperatures and humidity, reached 115 Fahrenheit in some regions of the U.S. East Coast. The 76-year-old Robertson told viewers that was “the most convincing evidence I’ve seen on global warming in a long time.”

It says everything you need to know about Pat Robertson that he was not swayed by years of scientific data, but rather by the thermometer outside his home in Virginia. (If there’s a record-breaking cold spell this winter, will he change his mind?)

Still, if he can convince the thousands of under-educated, easily influenced sheeple who send him 10 percent of their Social Security checks every month that the crisis is real, that is a net positive for the planet.

Whatever it takes.

GOP Appeals Tom DeLay Ruling to Friendly Court: The Supremes

Jon Ponder

GOP scandal figure Tom DeLay, the former House Majority Leader, is trying desperately to get his name off the ballot in the contest over the House seat he resigned earlier this year. But yesterday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a federal judge’s prior decision that DeLay must stay on the ballot in Texas — even though he has moved his residence to Virginia.

Now the Republicans have announced that they will appeal the case to the safest, most conservative activist court in the land: The U.S. Supreme Court.

We all know what the outcome will be. The same court that handed the presidency to George W. Bush — -now made even more Republican-friendly with the addition of two Bush appointees — will allow the GOP to place their hand-picked replacement for DeLay on the ballot.

Ten Questions: Rumsfeld Interrogates Himself at Senate Hearing

Jon Ponder

Donald Rumsfeld’s signature style during an interview is to abruptly launch into a series of questions and answers about the topic at hand that his questioner might ask, spun in a way that casts himself in the best possible light.

The technique has become hackneyed and self-parodying over the six years Rumsfeld has served as secretary of defense — and a politician who actually cared what people thought of him might try to come up with another linquistic device.

Instead, during his testimony before the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Rumsfeld offered a tour de force performance of self-interrogation.
Here are the 10 tough questions Donald Rumsfeld asked himself at the hearing:

1. Are there still Taliban around? You bet.
2. Are they occupying safe havens in Afghanistan and other places, correction in Pakistan and other places? Certainly they are.
3. Is the violence up? Yes.
4. Does the violence tend to be up during the summer and spring, summer, and fall months? Yes it does. And it tends to decline during the winter period.
5. Does that represent failed policy? I don?t know, I would say not. I think you?ve got an awful lot of very talented people engaged in this, and the decisions that are being made are being made with great care after a great deal of consideration.
6. Are there setbacks? Yes.
7. Are there things that people can?t anticipate? Yes.
8. Does the enemy have a brain and continue to make adjustments on the ground, requiring our forces to continue to make adjustments? You bet.
9. Is that going to continue to be the case? I think so.
10. Is this problem going to get solved in the near term about this violence struggle against extremism? No, I don?t believe it is. I think it?s going to take some time. And I know the question was some wars lasted three years, some wars lasted four years, some wars lasted five years. The Cold War lasted 40 plus years.