Day: February 27, 2007

Richard Viguerie’s Self-Fulfilling Poll Fulfilled Its Conservative Mandate

Buck Banks

Last Friday, I posted an article about a poll being conducted by Richard Viguerie, poster boy for the Goldwater school of conservatism, and ever so wisely predicted that he would rig the poll to support his far-right platform. See, Viguerie and his cronies feel betrayed and marginalized by the Bush neocons, so what better way to highlight that fact than to mount a rigged poll? Viguerie got what he was looking for, despite the noble efforts of me and Trish to skew the results toward sanity.

The poll was hosted on Viguerie’s Web site ConservativesBetrayed.com. It asked only one question: “Who was responsible for the Republicans’ disastrous defeats, including loss of control of the House and Senate, in the 2006 elections?” Readers were encouraged to select no more than 10 reasons from the 31 choices provided. Viguerie’s agenda is clear from his presentation of the results:

How could you look at what happened in the 2006 elections and not blame the Republican loss on George Bush?

Their number one culprit: “Conservative leaders who kept silent when the GOP became the party of Big Government.” Coming in sixth was “Conservative media that kept silent while the GOP became the party of Big Government.” More than 77.1 % of Republicans selected conservative leaders, with 47.8% selecting conservative media, as one of the reasons for the negative outcome of the election.

“While many conservative leaders and conservative media outlets kept quiet, or were even cheerleaders for the White House and Congress, the grassroots noticed very little of a conservative agenda but huge increases in federal spending,” Viguerie explained. “And because the Big Government Republican politicians were not receiving criticism from conservative leaders and conservative media, they felt free to indulge their tendencies to spend and spent in order to buy votes.”

“It is interesting to note that the #3 reason cited by Republicans was ‘legal corruption’ to ‘buy’ votes through the use of taxpayers money for special interest purposes. That strategy backfired with the voters,” Viguerie said.

What’s interesting to note, Richard, is that George W. Bush was listed in fifth place when most people would agree that the election was a referendum on his incompetence and failed policies. How could you look at what happened in the 2006 elections and not blame the Republican loss on George Bush? Should have been number-one, if you ask me, but Viguerie’s cohorts loaded the results with a focus on the media’s influence and dumb stuff like Ted Stevens of Alaska:

The Top 10 selections made by 850 self-identified Republicans were:

1. Conservative leaders who kept silent when the GOP became the party of Big Government
2. Illegal corruption, such as Mark Foley, Robert Ney, and Jack Abramoff
3. Legal corruption, such as spending on special interest groups to “buy” their votes, including earmarks
4. Mainstream media that may have influenced the voters to throw out the Republicans
5. President George W. Bush
6. Conservative media that kept silent while the GOP became the party of Big Government
7. Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), former President Pro Tempore of the Senate and promoter of the $223 million Bridge to Nowhere
8. Blunders and misstatements by Republican candidates
9. Former Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN)
10. Congressman Dennis Hastert (R-IL), former Speaker of the House

Viguerie delightedly noted that “There were only minor variations in the order of the list among self-identified Democrats, members of other political parties, and independents.” Well, duh, Dickie, there were like 20 times as many self-identified Republicans voting on your site, compared to a handful of those of us with the intestinal fortitude to stomach your site’s content long enough to vote.

Owners of Seattle Sonics and Seattle Storm Donated $1 Mil to Anti-Gay Fund

Jon Ponder

Another tale of rank homophobia in professional sports. Just two weeks after retired NBA player Tim Hardaway told an interviewer that he “hated” gay people, campaign finance forms from the 2004 election cycle reveal that Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon, two of the owners of the NBA Seattle Sonics and the WNBA Seattle Storm, provided nearly 100 percent of the funding, over $1 million, for Americans United to Preserve Marriage a group run by professional homophobe Gary Bauer:

These same millionaires recently asked Washington’s left-leaning legislature for a $300 million tax break.

The campaign finance records I’ve reviewed show that Sonics/Storm co-owner Tom Ward has contributed $475,000 to Gary L. Bauer’s Americans United to Preserve Marriage.

And another Sonics/Storm co-owner, Aubrey McClendon, contributed $625,000.

Both men made their first contributions to the group, $250,000 apiece, on September 8, 2004 — the day after the group was formed.

As I said, the controversial group doled out $1,056,962 in the 2004 election cycle, which means Storm owners Ward and McClendon basically bankrolled the whole thing. Indeed, records show that between the 2004 and 2006 cycles the group spent $1.3 million total while Ward and McClendon’s donations total $1.1 million.

These same millionaires recently sought a huge tax break from the Washington state legislature:

The millionaires who’ve turned to this state’s left-leaning Legislature to authorize a $300 million tax subsidy for a new basketball arena have been playing right-wing politics. Two members of the new Sonics ownership group are heavyweight financiers of a national political group dedicated to banning gay marriage.

A spokesman for the teams’ owners said the two men have a right to their opinions:

“People are entitled to have their views, they are not views that I happen to agree with … but they are not trying to impose them on anyone out here,” [Jim] Kneeland said.

“I won’t argue that some of the owners may have more conservative political views than the norm out here; one of the things that they agreed to when they bought the team is that they would leave their politics at the state line,” Kneeland said. “They have done that. They were not involved in the election cycle out here last year and have no intention of doing so.”

It is a fact of life that gay women are among the biggest fans of women’s sports, so on a marketing level, at the very least, you’d think these bubbas would have more sense than to fund a group the sole purpose of which is to deny rights to gay people.

I doubt you’ll see too many gay women at future Storm games — in fact, the team is likely facing a boycott. As the man said, everyone has a right to their views.

Rightwing Crack-Up: Minuteman Board Says $400k Is Missing – Fires Founder Jim Gilchrist

Jon Ponder

Earlier this month, the board of directors of the Minuteman anti-illegal immigrant group forcibly removed founder Jim Gilchrist as president, saying it found over $400,000 missing from the organization’s bank accounts.

“[When] we talk about the rule of law as an organization fighting illegal immigration, we too as an organization must be in compliance with the rule of law,” Stewart said. “When we allow these things to occur with any organization, we send a message to the public.”

Gilchrist took the matter to court yesterday, asking a judge to reinstate him, and leveling counter-charges at his former allies:

Gilchrist said all money raised by his organization was accounted for and that his critics had leveled false allegations to gain control of the organization. In court papers, he accused his opponents of hacking into the Minuteman website, stealing money from Minuteman bank accounts, diverting other money to funds they control and stealing 20,000 pieces of letterhead and envelopes.

And Guy Mailly, Gilchrist’s attorney, argued in court that the three members on the seven-member board who ousted Gilchrist had no voting power and, if they had, they voted him out without a required quorum.

Minuteman board members say that:

[A] direct mail company helped raise $750,000 for the group in 2006, but that she believes the Minuteman campaign received only $311,000. [New treasurer Deborah] Courtney said she and others had been unable to trace the rest of the money…

Gilchrist’s opponents also allege in interviews that he used Minuteman funds to promote the book he co-wrote — “Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America’s Borders” — but kept the royalties.

They also said he should not have used $13,000 in Minuteman funds to defend himself in court against their allegations. He said the group must pay to defend itself against “rogues.”

Rev. Marvin Stewart, the group’s new president says that Gilchrist’s charisma drew him into the group, but an organization set up to fight something illegal ought to be rigorous about obeying the law. “[When] we talk about the rule of law as an organization fighting illegal immigration, we too as an organization must be in compliance with the rule of law,” Stewart said. “When we allow these things to occur with any organization, we send a message to the public.”

Are you sure you’re a Republican, Rev. Stewart?

Poll: Disapproval of War May Have Hit Tipping Point

Jon Ponder

Your fellow Americans are slowly awakening to the horror Bush has inflicted on the nation:

Sixty-four percent now say the war in Iraq was not worth fighting, up six points from last month to a new numerical high.

A record number of Americans disapprove of the war in Iraq, and a clear majority now favors the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces, even if civil order has not been restored there — potentially a tipping point in public attitudes on the war.

While solutions remain vexing, for the first time ABC News/Washington Post polls show a narrow majority of Americans support setting a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Two-thirds oppose George W. Bush’s troop surge; most oppose it strongly.

It all makes for a continued hard slog for the president: Just 36 percent approve of his job performance overall, very near his career low of 33 percent last month. Bush hasn’t seen majority approval in more than two years — the longest run without majority support for any president since Harry Truman from 1950-53…

Bush is paying the continued price of an unpopular war. Sixty-four percent now say the war in Iraq was not worth fighting, up six points from last month to a new numerical high. (It was 63 percent in October.) A majority hasn’t said the war was worth fighting since April 2004, and it’s been even longer since a majority has approved of how Bush is handling it. Sixty-seven percent now disapprove; 55 percent disapprove strongly.

Did Cheney Use Iran-Contra ‘Lessons Learned’ to Keep Iran War Plans Secret?

Jon Ponder

One revelation in Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article about Vice Pres. Cheney’s not-so-secret plan to attack Iran bears more scrutiny. It involves Elliott Abrams — a Reagan Administration official who got caught in the Iran-Contra scandal, pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress and was later pardoned by the first Pres. George Bush.

“One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office.”

With a record like that, it should be no surprise that the current Pres. Bush has every confidence in Abrams, who currently serves as his Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy. Hersh suggests that Abrams has been helpful, at least indirectly, in providing Cheney and his team with a primer on how to operate secret government operations, as he, Oliver North, John Poindexter and then-Sec. of Defense Caspar Weinberger did during Iran-Contra — but, unlike them, without getting caught:

Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office” — a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said…

[A] Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight [over Cheney’s operations], was accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.

“This goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council aide told me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it.” He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.”

As is all too obvious, since we know about the secret plan, either Cheney’s war planners did not follow Abrams’ advice, or they consciously chose to leak their plans in order to unnerve their counterparts in Iran.

In any case, it’s worth noting that Our Liberal Media is completely untroubled by the fact that the U.S. government is set to foment a full-scale sectarian war in the Middle East between between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.

“Lessons learned,” indeed.

Cheney Unhurt in Taliban Bomb Attack

Jon Ponder

The Taliban in Afghanistan have claimed credit for a suicide bomb attack on a military base during a visit by Vice Pres. Dick Cheney that killed more than a dozen people. However, Cheney was unharmed:

There were conflicting reports on the death toll. Provincial Gov. Abdul Jabar Taqwa said 20 people were killed, while NATO said initial reports indicated three fatalities, including a U.S. soldier, a South Korean coalition soldier and a U.S. government contractor whose nationality wasn’t immediately known. NATO said 27 people also were wounded.

It was unclear why there was such a large discrepancy in the reports.

Didn’t we vanquish the Taliban before we went in Iraq? Oh, I guess not.