Day: October 22, 2007

Lame Duck Bush Team Killing Time By Blogging

Trish

You know blogging has gone mainstream when two members of Bush’s cabinet start doing it.

Yes, I now have something in common with Michael Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Defense. Welcome to the internets tubes, guys!

The men take very different approaches with their blogs.

Leavitt says he writes every blog entry himself, often late at night in hotel rooms when he is traveling. He is concerned that his entries are too long; on Aug. 20, he wrote 2,444 words about his trip to an orphanage in South Africa.

…Chertoff comes up with an idea for a blog entry, then someone in the department writes it, and Chertoff heavily edits it, said Jeff Ostermayer, a department spokesman who oversees the blog.

Mercifully, Chertoff’s picture is not shown on his blog, “Leadership Journal,” which also calls upon guest contributors like W. Ralph Basham, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Kip Hawley, Transportation Security Administration.

Leavitt, possibly a frustrated editor, features no guests but he does offer a confusing list of categories. I guess you have to spend some time on the site to understand the differences between “health” (capitalization Leavitt’s own), “Health Coverage,” “Health Diplomacy,” “Health IT,” and “Personalized Health Care.”

The blogs are not quite like, say, ours. Or most others for that matter.

The public can comment on Chertoff’s and Leavitt’s blogs, but both departments established ground rules that include a ban on personal attacks and vulgar language.

As all you Pensito Reviewers know, the three of us are on the receiving end of our share of personal attacks and vulgarity. And every once in awhile, we’re on the giving end too. But knowing how much time blogging takes the three of us, I have to agree with a comment on one of Chertoff’s posts.

Another comment said, “This is a serious question. How do you have time to blog? Don’t you have a 24-hour-a-day job with very important things to do?”

Not really.

Yet Another Reason to Not Take the Florida Dems Seriously

Buck Banks

I received another weird e-mail from Florida Democratic Party chair Karen Thurman. She started off gloating over Republican national party chair Mel Martinez stepping down after only nine months on the job:

Does the Florida Democratic Party have so much money and resources that it can waste it on a spoof Web site that appears to serve no purpose beyond entertaining members of their own team?

Remember how he had big plans to resurrect the Republican Party and rehabilitate its image? It appears that was an insurmountable task.

But we shouldn’t be surprised. Martinez ignored the Floridians he was elected to represent by siding with President Bush over the people on just about everything.

One of the biggest debacles occurred this week, when Martinez and 14 Republican Representatives from Florida ripped away the promise of medical coverage for half a million uninsured Florida children and millions more children across the country.

Okay, I can understand that, and Thurman’s point is valid. Then she goes on a bit about how the SCHIP was passed on her watch in Congress. Then she begins to level accusations against the Republican Party:

Now the Republicans have put the program and millions of children in grave danger. I believe their decision to block healthcare for children will go down as a major turning point in history. No amount of spin can cover up the simple fact that these Republicans, like Feeney and Keller, chose Bush over Florida’s kids.

This vote demonstrates, in the starkest of terms, why we’re Democrats.

But here Thurman (and the FlaDems) go off the rails:

Rank-and-file, right-wing Republicans are so fed up with their candidates blustering, flip-flopping and backtracking that they’ve become desperate for another option. They need a Real Republican.

We’re giving them one.

What humdinger of an idea is coming? It’s a Web site called Draft Katherine Harris. Clever, huh? It’s ironical!

Yep, in a letter where Thurman asks for a contribution no less than six times, she unveils a Web site plastered over with unflattering photos of former Florida attorney general, erstwhile gubernatorial candidate and certifiable whack-job Katherine Harris that is intended to be humorous. I guess it would be if this were something besides a presidential election.

Does the Florida Democratic Party have so much money and resources that it can waste it on a spoof Web site that appears to serve no purpose beyond entertaining members of their team? I’m certainly no fan of Katherine Harris, but I’m even less a fan of Karen Thurman, whose judgment and leadership are certainly questionable in this instance.

Here you’ve got the state Democratic Party, which has already been put through the wringer by the Republican state legislature (oh, wait, that’s right — it was a Democrat who filed the bill to move the state’s primary to Jan. 29, incurring the wrath of the national party and rendering its primary meaningless) and the Democratic National Committee, paying to design and host a “satirical site” that is neither funny nor in good taste.

Seems to me the only joke around here is the Florida Democratic Party. And it’s not funny, either.

Alberto Gonzales May Be Indicted Next Month

Jon Ponder

Spokane Spokesman Review:

Gonzales hired a high-powered criminal defense lawyer soon after he resigned as attorney general.

The U.S. Inspector General may recommend criminal prosecution of departed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the conclusion of an investigation, possibly as early as next month, [John McKay] the fired former U.S. attorney for Western Washington told a Spokane audience Friday…

McKay said he was summoned to Washington, D.C., in June and questioned for eight hours about possible reasons for his firing by investigators with the Office of Inspector General, who will forward their final report to Congress.

“My best guess is it will be released sometime next month,” and likely will include recommendations for criminal prosecutions of Gonzales and maybe others, McKay said.

Gonzales “lied about” reasons for the firings when questioned under oath in July by the Senate Judiciary Committee and now has hired a lawyer and is refusing to answer questions from the Inspector General, McKay said.

The White House said McKay was fired for poor performance ratings of his office, but the ex-U.S. attorney said he and his office got exemplary reviews just three months before he was fired.

“The chief law enforcement officer for the United States should not lie under oath,” McKay told the bar association.

Gonzales hired a high-powered criminal defense attorney within a few days after he resigned as attorney general.

Border Fence Set to Destroy Habitats That Have Cost Millions to Preserve

Jon Ponder

Los Angeles Times:

The lush, meandering lower leg of the Rio Grande is one of the most biologically diverse places in North America. More than 300 varieties of butterflies and half the bird species in the United States can be spotted here. So can two endangered species of wild cats: the ocelot, which resembles a miniature leopard, and the jaguarundi, an otter-faced relative of the puma.

Over the last 30 years, ranchers, conservationists, and state and federal officials have strung together a delicate necklace of nature sanctuaries along the river’s final 275 miles. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service alone has invested more than $100 million to buy land and restore it to its native state, creating a riverside corridor called the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

Now the new federal directive to build 21 fence segments here threatens to trample the lands the government and private groups spent decades nurturing. A Fish and Wildlife analysis found that up to 75% of the nature corridor could be harmed, for just 70 miles of fence.

“In this little area, you will find more species in four counties than in all but three entire states,” said Martin Hagne, executive director of the Valley Nature Center in Weslaco, a vacant lot that was transformed into an educational park filled with malachite and pixie butterflies, Texas tortoises and cottontail rabbits.

“Now they’re going to spend billions of dollars to undo the work that cost millions of dollars. These are your tax dollars at work,” he said.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent people are so full of doubts.

— Bertrand Russell (1972-1970) British philosopher, historian, logician, mathematician, advocate for social reform, pacifist, prominent rationalist

Borowitz Says Democrats Will Find a Way to Screw Up; Republicans Say They Already Did

Trish

Andy Borowitz needs to come to Florida. His parody column isn’t a spoof here — it’s reality.

Like manna from heaven, the Democratic presidential candidates’ boycott of Florida’s Jan. 29 primary has state GOP leaders giddy.

Amid a growing belief that there is no way the Democrats can blow the 2008 presidential election, Democratic National Committee chief Howard Dean sought today to reassure the party faithful that the party was “doing everything in its power” to uphold its losing tradition.

At a top-level summit called “Defeat: 2008” being held in Boston, the former Vermont Governor gave a rousing speech to concerned Democrats, bringing his audience to his feet by vowing, “I can assure each and every one of you, we will find a way to screw this up.”

Actually they already did. And while Democrats don’t acknowledge that banning candidates from campaigning in Florida to punish the state for moving its primary date is the dumbest thing they’ve ever done, the Republicans do.

Sure Republicans head into 2008 with an unpopular president, an unpopular war and no consensus on their best presidential candidate. But like manna from heaven, the Democratic presidential candidates’ boycott of Florida’s Jan. 29 primary has state GOP leaders giddy.

“I cannot imagine any candidate for president ever signing (such a pledge), but they have,” a beaming state Republican chairman Jim Greer told party leaders at the Presidency IV convention Sunday in Orlando…

“Our party, because of what the Democrats have done, has an opportunity that it has never had before…” Greer said. “Rules are important to any organization, but no one should be a prisoner of the rules.”

Even a Republican makes sense every now and then. Or, as Borowitz imagined it:

“Folks, let’s not forget, we’re Democrats,” Mr. Dean said. “If there’s a way to lose, we will find it.”