Year: 2007

New GOP Logo Features Blue (Not Red?) Elephant

Jon Ponder

The GOP has unveiled a new logo for its convention in Minneapolis next year. One striking thing about it is that the elephant in the center is rendered in Democratic blue instead of Republican red.

Is this a subconscious admission that Republicans fear that America will turn from red to blue next year?

Another thing: Are those prison stripes?

Finally, as Keith Olbermann pointed out last night, experts say that when elephants are usually only up on their hind legs when they’re copulating, so perhaps there’s a bit of an homage to the sex lives of prominent Republicans, including Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, whose family values include consorting with prostitutes and Sen. Larry Craig who has pleaded guilty for trolling for sex in a men’s room.

Ron Paul Raises $5 Mil – in Range of Frontrunner Rudy’s $11 Mil

Jon Ponder

Quarterly fundraising reports from the presidential campaigns are in, and Rep. Ron Paul — the only Republican candidate who opposes the war — made a little news:

[Paul] surprised observers when his campaign said it had raised about $5.1 million from July through September, more than doubling his contributions from the second quarter and bringing total donations to more than $8 million for the year. The Paul campaign said it had $5.3 million in cash on hand.

Frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani raised $11 million, Mitt Romney $10 million, John McCain $6 million and Fred Thompson $8 million. Ron Paul has an intense grassroots following but polls under 5 percent in national surveys. The fact that the renegade candidate raised donations within range of the top tier is interesting. He bears watching.

Paul opposes the war, as noted, and some of his libertarian views would appeal to liberals. He opposed the Patriot Act, for example, and favors habeas corpus. He is for legalizing drugs, especially medical marijuana.

In one significant area, however, the libertarian supports government intervention, and it is a deal killer for the left. He opposes a woman’s right to abortion.

UPDATE: Here are Paul’s own words on abortion:

In my medical career, I’ve delivered more than 4,000 babies, so naturally my professional experience has influenced my views on abortion. It’s my strong belief that life begins at conception, and that children in the womb are entitled to inheritance rights. More broadly, libertarians, like most Americans, respectfully come to different views on the issue based on their different personal feelings about when human life begins … I think we ought to return the issue to the states so that local opinions could better determine the specific regulations concerning this deeply personal issue.

And on gay marriage:

Just like with abortion, I believe that marriage is an issue best decided by the states, not the federal government. I’m opposed to a federal ban on gay marriage, but it also goes both ways: I’m against the courts at the federal level pressuring the states into accepting same-sex marriage licenses. What we’re talking about in both cases is the redefinition of an ancient social institution by the federal government that’s best left to the people to decide at the local level.

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Democratic frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama raised a combined $47 million, more than the combined totals of all the Republicans mentioned above. Clinton raised $27 million, and Obama raised $20 million.

AFA: We Didn’t Lie And Morningstar Still Hates Christians

Buck Banks

Man, Joe Mansueto must have really rattled the Wildmons, American Family Association’s head henchmen, when he responded by e-mail to all the AFA drones who sent him an e-mail through the AFA site criticizing his company for not taking an ad from Faith Financial, as we reported earlier. See, most organizations who are slimed by the Wildmons choose to meet with them privately. Mansueto, chair and CEO of Morningside, chose to take the fight to the public.

Several hours later, the Wildmons are in full spin mode, quoting Faith Financial’s version of what happened as a way to deflect criticism:

‘Based on the fact that Morningstar takes advertisements for liberal social interest groups, it still appears to AFA that the Faith Financial ad was rejected due to it’s Christian content.’
— Tim ‘Wildman Jr.’ Wildmon

Faith Financial attempted to amplify its message of values-based investing on a national platform. To that end, it worked with a global ad agency named Come And Stay which suggested using Morningstar.com, one of the largest and most popular investor information resources in the industry. The ad agent worked with Faith Financial to craft an ad that met both the criteria of Faith Financial and Morningstar then submitted an offer/invoice (what is generally considered a contract) to CEO Stephen Bolt of Faith Financial who signed it and sent it back to be presented along with the 80 word text of the ad to Morningstar. Much to the surprise of both the ad agent and Faith Financial, the ad was rejected by Morningstar. Faith Financial Planners was told by the ad agent after he had consulted with Morningstar that ‘Unless you change the message completely and eliminate the Christian undertones…’ the ad will not be accepted.

The ad agent submitted an offer/invoice to CEO Stephen Bolt of Faith Financial who signed it and sent it back to be presented along with the 80 word text of the ad to Morningstar. From Faith Financial’s perspective, the offer/invoice was a binding agreement as is stated in the contract, but Faith Financial recognizes that Morningstar.com never accepted Faith Financial’s ad and thus, Morningstar never signed an agreement with Faith Financial.

Anybody who has ever dealt with advertising knows that signing an insertion order is a contract between the advertiser and the advertising agency, not the publisher. That’s why there’s an agency percentage — for the work and the financial risk. So, there was never a contract between FF and Morningstar — but that’s what Tim Wildmon said. So who’s lying? I’d bet on both Faith Financial and Wildmon. The above was offered by Wildmon by way of explanation.

He then accuses Morningstar of anti-Christian bias while not offering one iota of justification other than to say that because Morningstar rejected the ad, then it is de facto biased. Oh, except for this:

Based on the fact that Morningstar takes advertisements for liberal social interest groups, it still appears to AFA that the Faith Financial ad was rejected due to it’s [sic] Christian content.

I went to the Morningstar site and I had a devil of a time finding an advertisement. And here’s where you can find the advert for Faith Financial.

I went to the Faith Financial Web site and to tell you the truth it looks to me like some kind of Christian multilevel marketing pyramid scheme. Judge for yourself by going here.

I could see how Morningstar, which is one of the largest financial sites in the country that does real analysis and provides real content regarding financial matters might be put off by Faith Financial, which looks kind of questionable.

And last time I checked it is within the rights of a private business to choose to do or refuse to do business with whomever it desires. And if there are consequences to that decision, then so be it. People are free to boycott and demonstrate any business that clearly demonstrates bias, but refusing to play ball with a bunch of flaky Christian scam artists is not against the law.

Unfortunately, neither is lying — with one hand on the Bible — to people to get them to follow your misguided agenda.

Larry Craig’s Guilty Plea Stands

Jon Ponder

Sen. Craig was supposed to step down on Sept. 30 but apparently has not. Maybe he was waiting on this:

Senator Larry E. Craig failed today in his effort to withdraw his guilty plea in connection with an undercover sex sting operation. The decision dealt the Idaho Republican a crippling setback in his attempt to hold on to his seat and caused new anxiety for other Republicans.

A Minnesota judge rejected Mr. Craig’s arguments entirely, declaring that, contrary to what Mr. Craig asserted, his guilty plea was made unambiguously and without coercion.

“The defendant, a career politician with a college education, is of, at least, above-average intelligence,” Judge Charles A. Porter Jr. ruled in Hennepin County District Court. “He knew what he was saying, reading, and signing.”

No word on whether Craig will appeal the ruling.

UPDATE: Craig says he will serve out his term:

“I am extremely disappointed with the ruling issued today. I am innocent of the charges against me. I continue to work with my legal team to explore my additional legal options.

“I will continue to serve Idaho in the United States Senate, and there are several reasons for that. As I continued to work for Idaho over the past three weeks here in the Senate, I have seen that it is possible for me to work here effectively …

“In addition, I will continue my effort to clear my name in the Senate Ethics Committee – something that is not possible if I am not serving in the Senate.

“When my term has expired, I will retire and not seek reelection. I hope this provides the certainty Idaho needs and deserves.”

Bush Secretly Reauthorized Torture in 2005

Jon Ponder

The biggest shock is that the agressive torture rules Cheney and Bush wanted were shot down by then-Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft, who I would have otherwise expected to fall in lockstep. Good for him, if it’s true.

Reading between the lines, it appears Ashcroft was pushed out and replaced by Gonzales, who once wrote that terrorism had rendered the Geneva Convention rules on torture quaint:

When the [Ashcroft] Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

AFA Caught in Another Lying Smear Campaign

Buck Banks

A couple of days ago I received an e-mail from Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association. In typical seething indignation, the missive exhorted me to leap to the condemnation of Morningstar, a provider of financial information, for its refusal to run an ad on its Web site from Faith Financial Planners:

Like any bullies, the Wildmons — pater and son — exaggerate their organization’s power and significance, and wield the threat of economic boycott like a baseball bat when they attack on behalf of Jesus.

We have learned that our friends at Faith Financial Planners were denied a paid advertisement on the website of Morningstar unless they removed the “Christian” content from their advertisement. Morningstar — one of the largest providers of financial information on mutual funds, stocks, and portfolios for individual investors and institutions in the world — told Faith Financial that the company had to “change the message completely and eliminate the Christian undertones.” This is a clear example of bigotry just because Faith Financial represents a Christian message about values and investing. Faith Financial is a company that, through one of its subsidiaries, provides information for Christians to use in reflecting their values in their investments. The information alerts values-based investors to those companies that are involved in pornography, abortion, the homosexual agenda, etc.

But Wildmon wasn’t finished yet:

In an unprecedented move, after a contract had been signed by both parties, an ad sales agent for Morningstar informed Faith Financial that Morningstar had reversed its decision to accept the ad and decided that Faith Financial must censor the “Christian undertones” in order for the ad to be acceptable. American Family Association is asking you to let the leadership at Morningstar know that this kind of Christian bigotry is unacceptable.

I, of course, took action. I like to take the AFA’s stock letter copy and rewrite it to take the polar opposite position. In a perverse way, it relaxes me and is mightily entertaining. Today I received a response to my e-mail from Morningstar Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Joe Mansueto:

The AFA’s email alert claimed that Morningstar asked a company called Faith Financial Planners to “eliminate the Christian undertones from their ad,” reneged on a contract, and rejected an advertisement on the basis of anti-Christian bias.

These allegations are false. First and foremost, at no time did Morningstar sign a contract with Faith Financial or any group representing Faith Financial, and no one at Morningstar asked Faith Financial to “eliminate the Christian undertones from their ad.” The AFA is also incorrect in accusing us of bias in our decision not to run the ad in question.

Seems Morningstar had pretty good grounds for not running the ad:

This ad, which was submitted to us by a third-party agency, was a special promotional offer for a free copy of the book “Money on Loan from God.” A variety of companies run these types of promotional offers, which are made available to people who sign up for Premium Membership service on our Web site, Morningstar.com.

To give you a better sense of our internal process, our ad sales team evaluates each ad submission on a case-by-case basis, within our stated advertising guidelines. We have limited sponsorship opportunities available for the special offer area of our Web site and often turn down promotional requests based on a number of factors.

We also frequently turn down ads that we believe make unreasonable or risky promises to investors. The text in this particular ad — “Achieving a double bottom line on your investment, financial and moral!” — raised a red flag with our ad rep. Also, our ad rep was not familiar with the author of the book or the book’s contents.

Taking all of these issues into consideration, as well as our advertising guidelines, our ad rep made the judgment call to turn down the promotional offer for this special area of our site.

So, let’s review the facts, since AFA apparently didn’t: There was no signed contract, Morningstar didn’t ask Faith Financial to change its ad copy, the ad probably violated Morningstar’s ad policy and it wasn’t Faith Financial but a third-party agency that submitted the ad.

This is a familiar approach by American Family Association — trump up some nonexistent instance of alleged bias against Christian values, distort the facts, rouse its base to action and smugly await some hoped-for free media coverage.

The AFA simply practices thuggery in the name of Jesus. Like any bullies, the Wildmons — pater and son — exaggerate their organization’s power and significance, and wield the threat of economic boycott like a baseball bat when they attack, supposedly in defense of Jesus.

Morningstar’s Mansueto did the right thing by showing the AFA for what it is — a gang of lying, bullying Christian fundamentalist extremists.

Update: AFA has compounded its earlier lies with new ones. Read more…

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Dividing the world into a hundred parts, I am apt to believe the calculation might be thus adjusted: Pedants 15; Persons of Common Sense 40; Wits 15; Persons of a Wild Uncultivated Taste 10; Persons of original taste, improved by art 5.

— William Shenstone (1714-1763) English poet

Slice and Dice Your Demos – ZIPSkinny.com

Jon Ponder

Be sure to check out Trish’s post about Walkscore.com from last night. I happened upon a similarly interesting site this morning, ZIPSkinny.com, which slices and dices demographic information based on ZIP codes.

According to the results for my ZIP Code in West Hollywood, 55.9 percent of my neighbors are categorized “never married,” but I doubt this number counts folks like me who have California state-sanctioned domestic partnerships. Among my neighbors, a scant 24.2 percent are in dual-sex marriages.

Education-wise, we do pretty well considering the fact that movie industry types don’t always finish school: 94 percent have high school degrees and 53 percent have bachelor’s degrees or higher.

Median household income is $51k, which seems low when you consider that one-bedroom apartments rent for around $1,500 and two-bedroom homes sell for $1.5 million. Unemployment is 4.5 percent — have my doubts about this too since most everybody in the industry is self-employed and thus not considered in employment figures. The number of WeHoans living below poverty is 9.6 percent.

Our population density seems smaller than expected: 9600 people per square mile. One of the factoids that gets tossed about in these parts is that West Hollywood is the most densely populated town west of the Rockies — but this is probably an urban myth.

Another surprise: 47 percent of us have been here five years or longer. Would have thought it was more like 25 percent.

My ZIP is 82.7 percent white, 2.9 percent black and 7.3 percent latino. Multiracial is given at 2.5 percent.

The population is 59 percent male, which makes sense but the median age of the men is 39.6 years old, which means a lot of those twinks in Boys Town are lying about their ages. The median age of women is 40.6 years old.

What’s Your Walk Score?

Trish

No, it has nothing to do with heart-rate monitors. Your walk score is determined by analyzing your proximity to stores and services.

We help homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what’s nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment.

In my case, the results were a bit disappointing.

Despite the fact that I am about midway between a full-service grocery store and the main branch of the public library, my walk score was a weak 43 on a scale of 1 to 100. But when I clicked around the results screen a little, I noticed the grocery had disappeared, and a movie theater that is actually several miles from my side of town was shown on the next block. The popular sushi restaurant on the corner was listed as a catering service, while Arnold’s, the diviest dive bar I know, was featured prominently.

Maybe your results will be more accurate. Check it out and see how your address rates. If nothing else, you will see all the great reasons you have to walk instead of driving. Unless you’re trying to catch a movie. In that case, you’ll definitely want to crank up the roadster.