Month: September 2006

Jeb Slammed By Righteous Florida Senator

Trish

Update: Villalobos won!

In Florida’s meanest and most expensive state Senate race, Miami Sen. Alex Villalobos was reelected Tuesday night, overcoming the millions spent by third-party attack groups and the ire of Gov. Jeb Bush, who helped run a candidate against the moderate Republican.

I have a new hero and she’s a Republican.

Florida State Sen. Nancy Argenziano has never been accused of hiding her feelings, but a masterpiece scathing email she sent about Jeb Bush last week is too fun not to share.

“The Governor has a history reflecting accommodation of special interests as evidenced by his agencies’ contracts, and his flexible Republicanism is at odds with both America and actual Republican principles. In his heart of hearts, the Governor prefers dictatorship to democracy.”

First, a little background. Fellow Republican Florida Sen. Alex Villalobos was in the queue to be the Senate majority leader until he parted ways with Big Boy on two initiatives the Florida governor has refused to abandon, despite being overruled by the people of Florida and the state supreme court: lowering class sizes (duh) and furnishing vouchers to public school students for private school tuition (no way).

After Villalobos, who would have been the first Cuban-American to lead the Florida senate, sided with his constituents over Jeb, he found himself the subject of a Jeb-led coup. And as Michael Schiavo could tell you, there is no pettier or more vindictive bully than a pissed-off Jeb Bush.

But Nancy’s on the case. When Jeb sent a fundraising letter to state legislators on behalf of Villalobos’ opponent, Frank Bolanos, Argenziano had enough. She emailed back, and cc’d her missive to the Tallahassee Democrat.

Full text:

Mr. Bolanos:

You are grossly in error in presuming to send me this garbage, especially through my legislative e-mail.

[…]

Quote du Jour

Trish

When an objection cannot be made formidable, there is some policy in trying to make it frightful; and to substitute the yell and the war-whoop, in the place of reason, argument, and good order.

— Thomas Paine (1737 -1809) Pamphleteer, anti-monarchist, American founder

Below the Beltway: ‘Filler Columns’ Abound Around Labor Day Every Year

Jon Ponder

Andy Borowitz is on it:

And rather than doing any original writing, the slothful columnists will rely on so-called “experts” to supply them with quotes to fill up space, experts say.

“They’ll often quote people you’ve never heard of,” says Harold Crimmins, an expert in the field of filler columns. “It’s pretty shameless.”

The typical “filler” column is often a reprint of a previously published column, but the writer will later plug in one cursory reference to current events, such as the arrest of polygamist Warren Jeffs, to disguise this fact.

And in order to fill up space even faster, Crimmins says, the lazy beach-bound columnist will compose his summer “filler” columns with short paragraphs.

Many of these paragraphs will be as short as one sentence, he says.

“Or shorter,” he adds.

Florida Cliff Hanger: Final Candidates to Replace Jeb to be Selected Tomorrow

Trish

Tuesday, Sept. 5 is the day so many Floridians have waited for: when we find out if the candidates for our next governor will be — on the Republican side — a Schwarzenegger or a DeLay, or — on the Democratic side — a Bill Nelson or a DeLay.

A few months back, I told people I preferred Davis but would be happy with either man. Now Rod Smith has pissed me off enough that I would consider voting for Charlie Crist — the Schwarzenegger Republican.

The Republican race started out as the more interesting of the two, and while it hasn’t lost any drama, the Democratic one has my attention.

In the beginning, there were complaints that the two Democrats were too similar, too nice to each other on the campaign trail, and too boring. Then Rod Smith, a former state senator, found himself behind in the polls and pulled out the heavy ammo: U.S. Sugar.

When Smith headed the state’s agriculture committee, he evidently made some friends with money — the huge sugar industry, which Florida has spent years in court trying to get to clean up the Everglades. That money is now painting U.S. Rep. Jim Davis — a plodding, deliberate but pragmatic boy scout ala U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson — as a racist in a series of ads and phone calls because of a vote from 16 years ago. […]

A Cuban’s As Good as a Nod to a Blind Idiot

Trish

The always fun In The Hoop blog at Indianz.com caught the Current Occupant exhibiting his colossal dunderheadedness again.

Oh they all look alike…

One is a Democrat from New Jersey. The other is a Republican from Florida. Both are Cuban. And both serve in the Senate. AND they have similar last names. Easy to mix them up, si? But what if one of them used to serve in your administration?

Well, that won’t help you tell them apart. Just ask President Bush, Al Kamen of The Washington Post reports in his In The Loop column. At a recent White House event, el gobernor anterior de Tejas went up to Sen. Robert Menendez (the one from Jersey) and told him, “Senator Martinez, you’ve been very quiet.”

Menendez was quiet no longer. “That’s Martinez,” he told the president, pointing to Sen. Mel Martinez (the one from Florida), who served in Bush’s Cabinet no less.

“Bush turned bright red, we’re told. Señor Mayor?” Kamen writes. The White House wouldn’t confirm.

Hillary for Senate Majority Leader!

Jon Ponder

I have always doubted that Hillary Clinton would run for president in 2008 but, quite honestly, I have never had the cajones to go on record with a prediction. Six years ago, I’d had similar doubts she’d run for the Senate and you see where that got me.

Her run for the presidency will move the Clinton scandals in the 1990s onto the front pages again. Relitigating Monicagate, travelgate, socks-the-cat-gate and the rest could suck up all the air. A more latural fit for the First Lady would be as first female Senate majority leader. Talk about stature:

Friends of Hillary Clinton have been whispering the unthinkable. Despite her status as the runaway frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president, some of her closest advisers say she might opt out of the White House race and seek to lead her party in the Senate.

The former first lady longs to return to the White House with husband Bill as consort. Only last week she told television viewers America would be led by a woman one day. “Stay tuned,” she said.

First, however, she has to win the election. Some Democratic party elders — the American equivalent of the Tories’ “men in grey suits” — say Clinton may back out of the race of her own volition.

“I would not be surprised if she were to decide that the best contribution she can make to her country is to forget about being president and become a consensus-maker in the Senate,” said a leading Democratic party insider. “She believes there is no trust between the two political sides and that we can’t function as a democracy without it.”

How They Do It: GA GOP Legislature Wrote a Special $100k Tax Break for GOP Gov. Sonny Perdue

Jon Ponder

The Republicans have been in control of the Georgia government for so long that they are behaving like, well, Republicans:

The evidence is conclusive: In 2005, Georgia legislators quietly smuggled language into an otherwise routine tax bill that gave one particular Georgia taxpayer a special tax deferral worth more than $100,000.

The taxpayer in question was Gov. Sonny Perdue, the man who signed the bill into law on April 12, 2005, and shortly thereafter signed his state tax return taking advantage of that special legislation.

That chain of events represents a serious abuse of public power for private gain, and the victims of that abuse were Georgia taxpayers.

Then things got interesting.

On March 22, HB 488 was mysteriously recommitted to the Finance Committee, then chaired by Sen. Casey Cagle (R-Gainesville). Back in committee, only one seemingly minor change was made to the bill — changes affecting capital gains taxes from the sale of property were suddenly made retroactive all the way back to Jan. 1, 2004, more than a year earlier. Although only a few knew it at the time, that minor change meant big money for Perdue, whose land transactions now fell under the new law.

Cagle, who has since become the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, said in an interview Tuesday that the Department of Revenue had requested the change making those provisions retroactive.

However, that is contradicted by Graham, who says his department made no such request.

You may recall that Cagle recently defeated friend-of-Abramoff and acolyte-of-Pat-Robertson Ralph Reed in the primary election for lieutenant governor.

Does It Matter That Sen. George ‘Macaca’ Allen Is Jewish?

Jon Ponder
Unfortunately for Allen, he can’t afford to lose rightwing fringe voters if he plans to run for president in ’08. After his “Macaca” moment, they’re all he’s got.

It doesn’t matter to me — but the Christian Nationalists who make up his base might not be too happy when they learn that Sen. George Allen, a neo-Confederate Republican from Virginia, is in fact Jewish:

It seems that George Allen’s mother is Jewish (which, according to Jewish law makes Sen. Macaca Jewish too)… [But] Allen has gone to some length to hide his Jewish background. Why? Ashamed of mom? A bigot? Or making sure the “base” does not stop supporting him because he’s half Jewish.

He would be hiding his Jewish identity from the same ultra-rightwing Republicans who made hateful albeit ridiculous aspersions about John Kerry’s Jewish ancestry, such as:

[M]ost Jews still study the Babylonian Talmud, still hold secret Bar Mitzvahs in dark Boston cellars, and still despise Christians, who the Talmud states are merely sub-human animals, to be killed at leisure. Members of this American Zionist fifth column … “Marranos,” or “hidden closeted Jews.”

Fearing the imminent economic collapse of America, and by default the collapse of the Jewish State in Palestine, someone somewhere at Zionist headquarters in New York stacked the deck by shuffling a single very dangerous Marrano into the middle of the pack. The Marrano was Senator John Kerry, whose real name would probably be Judas Kohn if his family had not already pulled the covert Jewish name-change trick.

This would be laughable (“most Jews still hold secret Bar Mitzvahs in Boston” — whah?) if it weren’t so creepy and the menace weren’t so real. The threat of violent antisemiticism seems remote, even dormant, in the United States. But occasionally it burst through, as it did in 1999 when Buford O’Neal Furrow killed five people at a Jewish daycare center in San Fernando Valley.

To the rightwing fringe, there’s no such thing as “half-Aryan.” Unfortunately for Allen, he can’t afford to lose these voters if he plans to run for president in ’08. After his “Macaca” moment, they’re all he’s got.

Bush To Be Assassinated on British TV

Trish

You can’t help but wonder what prompted the British to make a TV movie about assassinating Pres. Bush. One thing’s for sure: such a film could never be made in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The program uses actors and digital manipulation of real footage to show a fictional account of Bush being gunned down after delivering a speech in Chicago

The program, to be aired Oct. 9, uses actors and digital manipulation of real footage to show a fictional account of Bush being gunned down after delivering a speech in Chicago, Peter Dale, the head of More4, told a news conference. More4 is the digital offshoot of Britain’s Channel 4.

“Death of a President,” which will first be shown this month at the Toronto Film Festival, in September, focuses on all those linked to the pretend crime — including nearby antiwar protesters, suspects, Secret Service guards and investigators, Dale said.

The White House declined to comment on the network’s announcement, saying it would not dignify the program with a response.

Plus, they couldn’t think of anything.

“It’s an extraordinarily gripping and powerful piece of work, a drama constructed like a documentary that looks back at the assassination of George Bush as the starting point for a very gripping detective story,” Dale told reporters. “It’s a pointed political examination of what the war on terror did to the American body politic.”

I wonder if it will be banned in this country.

Gay Son, Unwed-Mother Daughter Campaign Against Wingnut Dad Randall Terry

Trish

Things are getting good in a Florida state senate race that’s coming down to the wire on Tuesday. Anti-abortion zealot Randall Terry is running against moderate Republican incumbent Jim King to represent much of Northeast Florida.

Terry’s family values include divorce and remarriage to a younger wife and abandoning fatherhood when children disappoint you

Two of Terry’s children are coming forward to offer some reality checks on their dad, whose family values include divorce and remarriage to a younger wife and abandoning fatherhood when children disappoint you.

Terry’s adopted son has inserted himself into the election – publicly criticizing his father’s claim to uphold family values as hypocritical and even offering to help his opponent.

Jamiel Terry, 26, who is gay, said he is estranged from his father because Randall Terry disapproves of his sexuality. His sister, Tila, said she is also estranged from their father because she had a child out of wedlock.

…Tila, 21, who was also adopted by Randall Terry, said she asked her father for help with her child, but he turned her down.

“He told me he couldn’t help me because he was running for office and he had his own baby on the way,” Tila Terry said.

I’ve heard that many of these anti-abortion crusaders are only interested in babies before they’re born, not after. I wonder what Tila thinks about that?

For his part, King took the high road and declined the Terry children’s offers of assistance.

“I am a father just like Randall Terry is a father, and there are things that happen in a family that are personal, and they shouldn’t have much to do with a campaign,” King said.

Terry’s low blows in the race include getting not one but two cronies to qualify as last minute write-ins, shutting non-Republicans out of the primary vote, which in this case, will decide the seat.