Day: October 25, 2006

Schwarzenegger Severs Ties with GOP — For Now

Jon Ponder
As soon as Schwarzenegger is ensconced in Sacramento for his first full four-year term, he’ll revert to his old ways: Handing the state’s resources over to its financial elite.

The playbook for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s reelection campaign has been clear from the outset:

  • Ensure that every public appearance is scripted and stage managed in order to prevent the gaffe-prone governor from having to make off-cuff-remarks (therefore only one debate)
  • Use the governor’s access to the national entertainment media to gain free publicity that is unavailable to his opponent, state Treasurer Phil Angelides (thus Schwarzenegger appears on Jay Leno’s show but Leno refuses to give Angelides equal time)
  • Run away from the Republican Party, of which the governor is one of the most popular figureheads (so terse and challenging letters from the governor to President Bush about environmental issues and the like are regularly released to the public)

As the popularity of President Bush and the GOP continues to tank in California, we’re seeing a special emphasis from the Schwarzenegger campaign on the latter point. He’s running as hard and fast away from his party as he can:

At tightly staged events this week in San Diego, Glendale and Oakland, Schwarzenegger has all but severed his Republican ties while playing up the value of bipartisan harmony.

He has also taken pains to widen his appeal beyond white Republican men, his most loyal supporters. At every stop, Schwarzenegger has surrounded himself with African Americans or Latinos and stuck to themes that resonate with Democrats, independents and women: the environment and education.

Hey, using black people as props certainly worked for then-candidate Bush in 2000. At the GOP convention that year, the stage was jammed with brown faces looking out on a sea of white faces on the convention floor. Americans fell for that in 2000, and it appears that Californians are falling for it 2006 as well.

The governor has been off the rightwing media radar but is planning at least one foray:

In what has become a rare nod to a conservative base that he once tended to assiduously, Schwarzenegger plans to appear Friday on “Hannity & Colmes,” a Fox News television show to be taped on the Midway, the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum.

But that is an exception. For months, the governor has kept a distance from his party, a move seen as a strategic necessity in a state where just a little more than a third of registered voters are Republican. He has avoided public events with other GOP candidates and refused to endorse the party’s staunchly conservative U.S. Senate nominee, former state Sen. Dick Mountjoy of Monrovia. And in an interview last week, Schwarzenegger sidestepped the question of how much he cares whether Republicans win other statewide races.

This distancing from his party is especially ironic since Gov. Schwarzenegger’s campaign team is comprised of former Bush White House political operatives. It is also a dodge. Everyone knows that as soon as he is ensconced in Sacramento for his first full four-year term, he’ll revert to his old ways: Handing the state’s resources over to its financial elite.

History Will Show that Republicans Played Race Card to Win the Senate in the 2006 Midterms

Jon Ponder


The Republican National Committee has released this ad against Rep. Harold Ford who is running for the U.S. Senate in Tennessee. The ad shows a young white woman who is depicting a party girl who says she met Ford at a party and closes her brief segment by asking the congresman to call her.

This all but ensures victory for the Republican, Bob Corker, who has a slight lead that is within the margin of error in the latest polling. The ad targets Southern swing voters who may be fiscally conservative but who are not comfortable with the idea of people dating outside their race. In a race as tight as this one, these squeamish voters can make a difference and, sadly, in this one they almost undoubtedly will.

It has happened before: Harvey Gantt was a successful architect, a civil rights pioneer who was the first African-American student at Clemson University and a former mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina’s largest city — and my former hometown. He ran against Sen. Jesse Helms, the uber-racist, uber-homophobe in 1990.

To outsiders, Helms was a powerful and nasty champion of the entrenched Southern subjugation of African-Americans. To almost exactly 50 percent of us Tarheel voters, he was an embarrassing anachronism. In his (too) long career, Helms never won by more than just a sliver over 50 percent of the vote.

Helms achieved his slim victories by waiting until the final days of the campaign to unleash ads that were designed either to “empty the trailer parks” by scaring his yahoo followers about civil rights for blacks, to “empty the pews” to scare them about gays.

In 1990, the ad he released at the end of the campaign was very simple. It showed a pair of white hands wadding up a rejection letter, while the voice over says, “You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.”

This ad helped gain Helms his one of his largest margins of victory: 52.5 percent.

Update: Just heard on MSNBC that the RNC is replacing the ad. Sorry, Gops, that ship has sailed. If Ford loses by a slim margin, the responsibility lies with this racist ad.

Iraqi Insurgent Snipers Target U.S. Medics, Engineers and Chaplains

Jon Ponder

The longer we stay, the more sophisticated the insurgents get at attacking us:

Enemy snipers in Iraq have improved their skills, and their attacks have become well-aimed and well-disciplined.

Insurgent groups have prepared instructional manuals and videos to train more snipers. Training materials obtained by U.S. intelligence show that snipers are urged to single out medics, engineers and chaplains for attacks on the theory that those casualties will demoralize entire units.

The manuals have been posted on the Internet. U.S. Central Command has verified the authenticity of at least one such training guide.

One recently captured insurgent sniper had a hole in the trunk of his car, which allowed him to fire at U.S. and Iraqi troops while hidden in the vehicle, said Brig Gen. David Halverson, deputy commander of U.S. forces in and around Baghdad. The sniper also mounted a video camera on his car’s rear window.

Enemy snipers in Iraq have improved their skills, and their attacks have become “well-aimed and well-disciplined,” said Col. Michael Beech, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team in central Baghdad. His brigade has lost two soldiers to sniper fire since September, he said.

Bush Uses ‘the Google’ to Surf the Internets, Yearns for Crawford

Jon Ponder
We want to remind Mr. Bush that all he has to do is resign. He can be back in Crawford in 24 hours, with nothing on his agenda for the rest of life but working on his abs.

One thing you gotta give President Bush — he’s not the least bit shy about putting his ignorance on display:

HOST: I’m curious, have you ever googled anybody? Do you use Google?

BUSH: Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see — I’ve forgot the name of the program — but you get the satellite, and you can — like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes.

This just says it all, doesn’t it? The Google puts an entire universe of knowledge at the president’s fingertips, and yet all he can think of to use it for is gazing at his own navel.

The president’s wistfulness about his ranch is touching — sad, really. As ever, we want to remind Mr. Bush that all he has to do is resign. He can be back in Crawford in 24 hours, with nothing on his agenda for the rest of life but working on his abs.

U.S. Conducting War Games off Iranian Coast

Jon Ponder

Tick… tick… tick…

There is a massive concentration of US naval power in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Three US naval strike groups off the Iranian coastline are deployed: USS Enterprise, USS Eisenhower and USS Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group.

The naval strike groups have been assigned to fighting the “global war on terrorism.”

Tehran considers the US war games to be conducted in the Persian Gulf, off the Iranian coastline as a provocation, which is intended to trigger a potential crisis and a situation of direct confrontation between US and Iranian naval forces in the Persian Gulf:

“Reports say the US-led naval exercises based near Bahrain will practise intercepting and searching ships carrying weapons of mass destruction and missiles.

Iran’s official news agency IRNA quoted an unnamed foreign ministry official as describing the military manoeuvres as dangerous and suspicious.

Reports say the US-led naval exercises based near Bahrain will practise intercepting and searching ships carrying weapons of mass destruction and missiles.

The Iranian foreign ministry official said the US-led exercises were not in line with the security and stability of the region. Instead, they are aimed at fomenting crises, he said.” (quoted in BBC, 23 October 2006)