Year: 2007

Poll: 41% of CA Dems Favor GOP’s Electoral College ‘Reform’ Scheme

Jon Ponder

Republicans know they can never win California on the merits so they are trying a Tom Delay-esque rigging of the vote next year that would give the GOP presidential candidate one electoral college vote for each of the state’s 55 House districts he wins. Had the system been in place in 2004, Bush-Cheney would have gained 22 electoral votes.

When told that it would most likely give Republicans more electoral votes, GOP support jumped to 70 percent, while Democratic support remained the same at 41 percent, though opposition jumped from 42 percent to 53 percent.

That the GOP would make such a naked grab for power is not surprising. What is unsettling is the number of California Democrats who are apparently happy to hand the presidency to the Republicans again. In a new Field Poll, 49 percent of all California voters — and 41 percent of California Democrats — favor the GOP scheme:

In the first survey on the issue since the Presidential Election Reform Act initiative was filed two weeks ago for the June 3 ballot, 49 percent said they’d support changing the current winner-take-all system to a district-by-district method, while 42 percent are opposed.

And that’s after voters are told that scrapping the current winner-take-all system would give Republicans an advantage in the presidential race, with a potential 22 of California’s 55 electoral votes going to the Republican nominee. The GOP currently holds 19 congressional districts…

In the Field Poll, voters were first asked if they would support dividing votes by district. Voters favored it, 47 percent to 35 percent, with 57 percent of Republicans favoring it and 28 percent opposing it. Among Democrats, 41 percent supported it and 42 percent were opposed.

When told that it would most likely give Republicans more electoral votes, GOP support jumped to 70 percent, while Democratic support remained the same at 41 percent, though opposition jumped from 42 percent to 53 percent.

A glimmer of good news. Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, both of whom are popular with California Democrats, are leading the opposition to the measure.

Press One for English? Not in Central Florida!

Trish

Poor Adam Putnam. The third highest-ranking Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives has a constituency that is inflamed.

What are the residents of Lakeland and Central Florida so upset about? Is it the grinding violence in the occupation of Iraq? The lack of access to health care, causing middle class families to lose their savings? The impending housing market and mortgage lending collapse, which threatens the entire economy?

No, it’s much bigger than any of those things.

Their most frequent complaint is dialing a business and getting “Press one for English and two for Spanish,” he said.

That’s right. They are sick and tired of having a foreign language offered them by automated phone systems. Enough already! Someone needs to pass a law! Hey Adam Putnam!

“It is hotter than Iraq, hotter than abortion. I have never had an issue that so overwhelmingly overshadows everything else,” the Bartow Republican said. “I would say it is ahead of every other issue by 4 to 1.”

…The almost absolute opposition to immigration has a lot to do with a cultural concern as well as other issues of border security and a feeling of fairness to those who immigrated legally.

“What I am hearing from them is that we are losing our cultural identity. Instead of being the traditional melting pot, we are becoming factions,” he said. “Now all of these things are not necessarily government’s responsibility, but there is a growing concern that there is no assimilation anymore as there has been throughout our history.”

Something’s wrong here. Either Putman’s staff is throwing away the emails and letters from residents concerned about real — as opposed to Rovian manufactured — issues, or Central Florida is in big trouble. I tend to believe that Putnam, who continued to peddle the “Nancy Pelosi wants a bigger plane” story even after it was exposed as false, is ignoring the real issues in favor of the ones that appeal to the base.

Putnam is chair of the House Republican conference committee, which coordinates the party messages and manages media relations for House Republicans. It’s his job to make the Democratic House leadership look as bad as possible. If automated phone systems are the best he can do, like I said, poor Adam Putnam.

Mark Foley Doing Pretty Good in Fake Election

Trish

A poll being conducted by the Stuart (FL) News has some participants seeking career opportunities with the paper, since it is obvious employees are encouraged to drink on the job.

The question asked is, if an election were held today, would you vote for former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Ephebophile) or Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Palm Beach)? Although at one time disgraced page molester Foley led, the results are currently:

Mark Foley — 30% (83 votes)
Tim Mahoney — 69% (185 votes)
268 total votes

Who is that 30 percent? No doubt it’s the same 30 percent who would support George Bush, no matter what, even if he too were caught instant messaging teenage boys about what turns them on. And it’s that same 30 percent who think Bush is doing a helluva job, no matter how bad things are.

Some of the comments reflect this conclusion.

“Amazingly, the vote is split. This has to be either a haven for pedophiles or die-hard Republicans or both!”

“Is the 44% up there now for Foley voted by peodphiles? Do we have that many in our area?”

“No, they’re not pedophiles, they’re just dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. These are the same people who will vote for Rudy Giuliani. They’ll swallow their objections to his stands on abortion, gay rights etc. just because they think he is the only Republican who can beat Hillary Clinton. Hypocrites! All of them!”

There’s more. Take a moment and vote yourself, or just read the comments.

What’s In a Name? The Islamification of Europe

Buck Banks

Back in 1992 a fellow traveler and I were on assignment for a travel magazine in Cairo, Egypt. We concocted a goofy experiment. We would stand back to back on a busy street, and one of us would holler, “Mohamed!” Then we’d count the number of men who turned to look. There were usually no fewer than a half-dozen. Pretty funny, huh?

Well, today you could conduct the same experiment in London or Amsterdam or Paris with similar results, say some pundits. They point to the rapid encroachment of Islam into Europe and the creation of a mysterious place fraught with danger called “Eurabia”:

Muhammad is the second most popular name for newborn boys in Britain, if you add together the various spellings. In the Seine-St-Denis suburb of Paris, Mohamed is number one. In the four biggest Dutch cities in 2005, either Mohamed or Mohammed came top.

Facts like these have led some pundits to forecast the Islamicisation of Europe – a future “Eurabia”. Bernard Lewis, a scholar of Islam, cited the immigration from Muslim countries and relatively high birth-rates of immigrants as trends that mean “Europe will have Muslim majorities in the population by the end of the twenty-first century at the latest.”

Not so, say others who study the issue. They argue that these are emotional assessments made based on biases and assumptions, not statistics:

‘Nobody knows how many Muslims there are in Europe.’
— Jytte Klausen of Brandeis University

Nominal Muslims — whether religious or not — account for 3 to 4 percent of the European Union’s total population of 493 million. Their percentage should rise, but far more modestly than the extreme predictions. That is chiefly because Muslims, both in Europe and the main “emigrating countries” of Turkey and north Africa, are having fewer babies.

“Nobody knows how many Muslims there are in Europe,” says Jytte Klausen, a professor of politics at Brandeis University who studies European Muslims. Few European states ask citizens about religious beliefs. Estimates based on national origins suggest that 16 million nominal Muslims live in the EU. There are about 5 million in France, 3.3 million in Germany and 1.5 million to 2 million in the U.K.

But isn’t it in the best interest of organizations whose job it is to convince us that there is a threat among us to exaggerate the numbers? If there’s a growing percentage of Muslims in the general population, it goes without saying that there’s a percentage of them who are bad eggs, who want to blow up our buses and subways, poison our water supplies, murder our women and children because Allah tells them to.

But actually:

The U.S. National Intelligence Council predicts there will be between 23 million and 38 million Muslims in the EU in 2025 — 5 to 8 percent of the population. But after 2025 the Muslim population should stop growing so quickly, given its falling birth-rate. In short, Islamicisation — let alone sharia law — is not a demographic prospect for Europe.

Too bad. I was kind of intrigued by the idea of vacationing in exotic Eurabia.

Calling all Mohameds!

Karen Thurman, Please Return from Lunch

Trish

Update: One reader was evidently confused about the letter in question so we drug it out of the trash, brushed off the coffee grounds, and posted it for his or her edification. On the back of the part you tear off and fill out with McCain-Feingold required disclosure info about yourself is the phrase, “Paid for the by the Democratic State Parties and the DNC as a joint fundraising program, www.democrats.org/victory fund. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.”

We were just standing around the virtual Pensito Review water cooler, chewing over one of our favorite subjects: How stupid is Florida Democratic Party Chair Karen Thurman?

I think she’s regular stupid, hovering somewhere between feather head and judgement-challenged. Buck thinks she’s too stupid to live, brush her teeth unassisted, or wipe her own backside. Jon, a California resident, agrees with both of us.

Well moments ago, from whom should I get a letter in the mail? It’s our very own K.T., and she’s got great news for me!

The response to our 2007 Annual Fund Drive has been so overwhelming that we have decided to extend the deadline for gifts to September 14, 2007.

There are so many things wrong with that opener that I hardly know where to begin. For starters, was she really going to cut off donations because they didn’t come in by some arbitrary deadline? “Sorry, your check arrived too late. We don’t want it now.”

And where do you go, in requesting urgent financial assistance, after you’ve just described the response so far as “overwhelming?” It doesn’t exactly make me look over my finances and decide I can pay the electric bill next week but right now I must help Karen! She needs me!

I’m beginning to see it Buck’s way. This woman really does need to find additional new employment, besides her job as a lobbyist in an agency headed by the former chair of the Florida Republican party. I hope the response by Democrats to extending Karen’s deadline at the helm of the party is not overwhelming.

Rove Left White House to Ensure Neocon Victory at Any Cost

Trish

We cheered when Karl Rove announced he was leaving the White House, but the nagging question is why? Here’s my theory: Rove needs total freedom to ensure that Republicans — and Republicans the neocons can continue to control — stay in power.

We are all looking forward to 01.20.09, Bush/Cheney’s last day in office assuming Pelosi continues to refuse to impeach. But they will be leaving behind a crime scene worthy of several teams of CSIs. The fingerprints, buried bodies, photographs, emails, and evidence of wrongdoing that you and I haven’t even thought of will be everywhere. They simply cannot let a Democrat win.

Bush/Cheney will be leaving behind a crime scene worthy of several teams of CSIs. They simply cannot let a Democrat win in 2008.

Rove knows this. And while in years past he obscured his partisan dirty work by using Republican National Committee computers, saving the presidency for neocons is too important to do it in half-measures. It will take massive election fraud to generate the numbers to carry a candidate who will most likely garner only about 25 to 30 percent of the vote, judging by current polls. Rove can’t do that from inside the White House.

Some people are wondering if he’s already setting a trap.

In this case, Rove’s weeklong broadside against Clinton…looks suspiciously like an exercise in reverse psychology that his team employed three years ago when it was preparing for President Bush’s reelection bid…

In the run-up to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when it was not yet clear who Bush’s opponent would be that November, Rove and his aides had begun to fear that their most dangerous foe would be then-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina…But instead of attacking Edwards, Rove’s team opened fire at Kerry.

Their thinking went like this, [former Rove ally Matthew] Dowd explained: Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party’s nominee. Thus Bush would be spared from confronting Edwards, the candidate Republican strategists actually feared most…

If that sounds implausibly convoluted, consider Dowd’s own words:

“Whomever we attacked was going to be emboldened in Democratic primary voters’ minds.”

Rove knows us well, although he proved in the midterms that he’s not infallible. Still, the trick worked before.

Is Rove playing a similar game against Clinton? Is he trying to stampede Democrats into nominating her, having concluded that Obama, Edwards or someone else would pose a stiffer challenge to the Republican nominee?

…Conservative activist Grover Norquist said that he doubted conservatives were trying to meddle in the Democratic primaries and that nobody on his side thinks that party’s base would pay attention to Rove…

“I want to run against Hillary Clinton because I think she’s the easiest person to beat,” Norquist said. “But she’s by no means a pushover.”

Yeah, nobody on their team would pay attention to Rove. My ass.

The good news is Rove has left the building. The bad news is now we have no way to know what he’s up to.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

What this country needs is a good impeachment. In itself impeachment is not evil or divisive, unless it is done cheaply. If it is done admirably, and it tears the country apart, then the country is so fragile that anything could tear it apart.

— Gail Thain Parker (1941- ), American college administrator, educator, writer

Government Set to Contract Out Spying on You

Trish

Imagine the government watching you, listening to your conservations, reading your mail, and — someday probably — your thoughts as well.

Bad, right?

Now imagine the government farming out these repugnant tasks to private companies. Turns out you don’t have to imagine. It’s a done deal.

The proposed contracts reflect a continuing expansion of the Defense Department’s intelligence-related work and fit a well-established pattern of Bush administration transfers of government work to private contractors.

The Defense Intelligence Agency is preparing to pay private contractors up to $1 billion to conduct core intelligence tasks of analysis and collection over the next five years, an amount that would set a new record in the outsourcing of such functions by the Pentagon’s top spying agency.

The proposed contracts, outlined in a recent early notice of the DIA’s plans, reflect a continuing expansion of the Defense Department’s intelligence-related work and fit a well-established pattern of Bush administration transfers of government work to private contractors.

That’s right. Contractors like Diebold with corporate agendas of supporting rightwing initiatives and candidates, or Haliburton, with monetary and ideological ties to the Bush Administration, or even ChoicePoint, which bungled and leaked hundreds of thousands of consumer records online, will be in charge of collecting and maintaining “intelligence” on you. And — yikes! — me.

The DIA did not specify exactly what it wants the contractors to do but said it is seeking teams to fulfill “operational and mission requirements” that include intelligence “Gathering and Collection, Analysis, Utilization, and Strategy and Support.” It holds out the possibility that five or more contractors may be hired and promised more details on Aug. 27.

We’ll be waiting for those details. So will one congressperson.

“Mind-blowing,” was the reaction of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, when she learned of the DIA proposal.

You said it sister.