Year: 2008

GOP’s Roger Stone Launches Anti-Clinton Group, Citizens United Not Timid – C.U.N.T.’

Jon Ponder

Earlier this year, an infamous, though quite mainstream, Republican Party operative quietly launched a new anti-Hillary Clinton 527 group called Citizens United Not Timid — yes, it really is C.U.N.T. The notorious operative behind it is Roger Stone, a protege of Richard Nixon who is known for his trademark impeccable grooming, a facade that masks as thoroughly sleazy a character as any operating in modern politics.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Stone’s exploits, here’s a brief overview:

In 1996, he was forced to resign from his volunteer role on Bob Dole’s presidential campaign after tabloids tracked down sexy ads he and his wife, Nydia, allegedly placed on a swingers’ website. In 2000, during the Bush v. Gore recount, Stone was chosen by Bush family consigliere, former Sec. of State James Baker, to lead the fake “Brooks Brothers mob” riots in Miami. In 2004, Stone secretly helped Democrat Al Sharpton launch his insurgent presidential bid.

Last summer, Stone was accused of making anonymous threatening phone calls to the 83-year-old father of New York’s Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer. Listen to the message here, and here’s the transcript:

This is a message for Bernard Spitzer. You will be subpoenaed to testify before the [New York State] Senate Committee on Investigations on your shady campaign loans. You will be complelled by the Senate Sergeant at Arms. If you resist this subpoena, you will be arrested and brought to Albany. And there’s not a God damn thing your phony, psycho piece of shit son can do about it. Bernie, your phony loans are about to catch up with you. You will be forced to tell the truth. And the fact that your son’s a pathological liar will be known to all.

(Emphasis not added.)

In December, Stone, who lives in Miami, made news by warning Florida’s popular bachelor (and preternaturally tanned) governor, Charlie Crist, that if he wanted to be vice president, Crist had better get married because, Stone said, “Bachelors don’t get selected for vice president.” Maybe these days they don’t but in fact, William Rufus de Vane King, the 13th vice president and longtime senator from Alabama, was a confirmed bachelor, nicknamed “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy,” who shared digs in Washington for a quarter century with James Buchanan, who later became the only bachelor to serve as U.S. president.

So that’s Roger Stone. Here’s Paul Kiel at TPMuckraker on Stone’s latest venture:

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Factcheck.org: Clinton Is Right, Obama Mailers Are Misleading

Jon Ponder

Hillary Clinton is doing what second-place candidates in two-person races must do: swing hard. On Friday, she challenged Barack Obama on the truthfulness of a pair of campaign mailers that she says misstate her positions:

Clinton said Obama’s mailers, which have been circulating in some states since Super Tuesday, were “tactics that are right out of Karl Rove’s playbook…”

“Shame on you, Barack Obama,” Clinton said. “Meet me in Ohio. Let’s have a debate about your tactics.” The senators have been scheduled for a debate Tuesday in Cleveland.

She may be swinging hard on this issue because she is right. Nonpartisan Factcheck.org checked out the mailers and generally agrees with Clinton’s assessment:

  • Trade: A mailer showing a locked plant gate quotes Clinton as saying she believed NAFTA was “a boon” to the economy. Those are not her words and Obama was wrong to put quote marks around them. In fact, she’s been described by a biographer as privately opposing NAFTA in the White House.
  • Health Care: A second mailer said Clinton’s health care plan “forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can’t afford it.” We have previously said that mailer “lacks context” and strains the facts. But both Obama and Clinton have been exaggerating their differences on this issue.

This raises the possibility that the Obama campaign is doing what frontrunners should never do: becoming over-confident and sloppy.

Florida Governor Gets Closer to Being McCain’s No. 2

Trish

The St. Petersburg Times’ political writer, Adam Smith, launched the Charile Crist Veep-O-Meter and it’s leaning toward the tanned one. Smith gives a bunch of reasons why John McCain might choose the Florida governor as his running mate, but the most compelling one is money.

McCain’s Florida momentum in January paid off – literally. Not only did the Sunshine State and its governor help deliver him the nomination, but it pumped more than $1.28-million into his campaign, more than twice what McCain raised from Florida in the prior three months, and nearly a third of the $3.5-million he’s raised from Florida to date. The Center of Responsive Politics reports that Rudy Giuliani all told raised $5.4-million from Florida, and Mitt Romney $4.4-million.

Another factor in Charlie’s favor is that no one else seems to want the job. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Tex.) turned it down cold on ABC’s This Week, while Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) is unpopular in his home state. Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) still looks like a possibility.

Charlie is said to be able to deliver the Sunshine State to McCain, based on the governor’s own high approval ratings. Personally, I’m not feeling it. Crist is popular in Florida, yes, but in context. Democrats like me don’t see him doing anything terribly wrong, in stark contrast to his predecessor Jeb Bush, and we do see him falling on the right side of some battles, like trying to get insurance companies to act fairly and turning around untenable environmental policies.

But all that sure ain’t enough to make me vote Republican for president, and it way sure isn’t enough to make me vote for John McCain.

Nader Announces Run for President

Jon Ponder

On Meet the Press this morning, Ralph Nader announced he is entering the presidential race this year.

He says he is getting into the race because he (rightly) believes the machinery of our political system is broken. It is hard to see how putting more sand in the gears helps anything.

Nader rankles at the suggestion his candidacy in 2000 led to the election of George Bush, but if Al Gore lost Florida by 600 votes (as opposed to the more likely scenario in which thousands of Democratic votes were not counted), the facts are the facts. Most Nader voters in Florida said they would have voted for Gore if Nader had not been on the ticket.

Nader is an Arab-American and will be 74 years old on Wednesday, both of which might make him vulnerable to political attacks in this cycle, if his candidacy were to become a serious threat.

O’Reilly Suggests Lynching Michelle Obama to Fox Audience – Why Is Security Lax at Obama Rally in Texas?

Jon Ponder

Is the Secret Service Doing Its Job in Protecting the Candidates – Or Has It Been FEMA-ized by Bush and His Cronies?

On Feb. 19, Bill O’Reilly told a caller into his Fox News radio show that he won’t “go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama” unless he finds out that she really did say she has lacked pride in her country.
“I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.”
– O’Reilly

BILL O’REILLY: “I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that’s how she really feels — that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever — then that’s legit. We’ll track it down.”

Well, Bill – get out your white sheets:

MICHELLE OBAMA: “What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback. And let me tell you something — for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I’ve seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues, and it’s made me proud.”

Emphasis added. (Video available at same link.)

Later, O’Reilly issued an unapologetic apology in which he brazenly lied about what he actually said that was offensive:

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Is Castro’s Brother Raul Gay?

Jon Ponder

It seems doubtful but here’s what Radar says:
Raúl is known as “la China,” or “the Chinese girl,” because of his effeminate demeanor.

As news spreads of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro stepping down, we’re reminded of the longstanding rumor that has dogged his brother Raúl, one that will surely be amplified as he begins his nasty little sashay into power. Word is, he’s gay.

Whenever Raúl’s been mentioned as Fidel’s likely successor, readers leave comments calling him El Maricón, a derogatory Spanish term equivalent to “faggot.” Not even the fact that he’s married with four children has prevented some sites from claiming he’s bisexual or a cross-dresser. The Economist has mentioned that Raúl is known as “la China,” or “the Chinese girl,” because of his effeminate demeanor. Allen Ginsberg referred to Raúl’s possible gayness in his journal. Andy Warhol alluded to it in his 1965 film The Life of Juanita Castro.

Though they’ve never been proven, rumors of Raúl’s gay thing aren’t that far fetched, Ann Louise Bardach, author of Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana and an expert in the regime, told Radar back in September ’06. There’s a pervasive down-low population, she said. “It might be the gayest place on the planet outside of South Beach.”

One of Raul’s children, his daughter, Mariela, 45, is the head of Cuba’s National Centre for Sexual Education, and is a supporter of the civil rights of gay people.

Peggy Noonan Uses Ebonics to Describe Michelle Obama

Jon Ponder

La Noonan, writing in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal:
“Man, she got it all.”
– Peggy Noonan

Michelle Obama seems keenly aware of her struggles, of what it took to rise so high as a black woman in a white country. Fair enough. But I have wondered if it is hard for young African-Americans of her generation, having been drilled in America’s sad racial history, having been told about it every day of their lives, to fully apprehend the struggles of others. I wonder if she knows that some people look at her and think “Man, she got it all.” Intelligent, strong, tall, beautiful, Princeton, Harvard, black at a time when America was trying to make up for its sins and be helpful, and from a working-class family with two functioning parents who made sure she got to school.

That’s the great divide in modern America, whether or not you had a functioning family, and she apparently came from the privileged part of that divide. A lot of white working-class Americans didn’t come up with those things. Some of them were raised by a TV and a microwave and love our country anyway, every day.

Does Mrs. Obama know this? I don’t know. If she does, love and gratitude for the place that tries to give everyone an equal shot would seem to be in order.

Emphasis added.

Rush Off His Meds: Liberals Are ‘Snakes’ ‘To Be Defeated’

Jon Ponder

Rush Limbaugh, the drug-addled radio entertainer and provocateur, used the New York Times article suggesting John McCain had a too-cozy relationship with a female lobbyist a decade ago — a story sourced to, and apparently leaked by, Republican operatives in the 2000 McCain presidential campaign — to castigate McCain with a rambling discourse on his dark and paranoid view of Americans who do not share his political views:
Limbaugh’s swipe at Sen. Kennedy’s drinking is particularly rich coming from a man who ingested so many opoids that he was rendered profoundly deaf.

The lesson is liberals are to be defeated. You cannot walk across the aisle with them. You cannot reach across the aisle. You cannot welcome their media members on your bus and get all cozy with them and expect eternal love from them. You are a Republican. Whether you’re a conservative Republican or not, you are a Republican. At some point, the people you cozy up to, either to do legislation or to get cozy media stories, are going to turn on you. They are snakes. If the right lesson is not learned from this, then it will have proved to be of no value. There’s a great opportunity here for Senator McCain to learn the right lesson and understand who his friends are and who his enemies are. He’s had that backwards for way too long. He has thought the New York Times is his friend. He has thought Chris Matthews and these other people in the Drive-By Media are his friends. They aren’t. That’s the lesson today.

The story is not the story. The story is the Drive-By Media turning on it’s favorite maverick trying to take him out. The media picked the Republican candidate. The New York Times endorsed that candidate while they sat on this story, and now with utter predictability, they are trying to destroy him. This is what you get when you walk across the aisle and try to make these people your friends. Why should any of us be surprised or even angry at what the New York Times is doing here trying to take out John McCain? Those of you who listen regularly should have been expecting this all along because it’s utterly predictable. It’s as predictable as the sun rising in the morning. It’s as predictable as Ted Kennedy finding a bar at happy hour.

The swipe at Sen. Kennedy’s drinking is particularly rich coming from a man who ingested illegally obtained Oxycontin in such huge quantities that he may have rendered himself profoundly deaf.

Rush’s discourse, which is part of what he unironically calls the “Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies,” is classic transference: It is Republicans like Rush and his millions of easily deluded Dittohead followers who view politics as a zero-sum game. He and others of his ilk — Karl Rove, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity to name a few — play by just one rule: Win at any cost.

For these conservatives, no lie is too small. No smear is too unfounded. No political trick is too dirty.

The last thing they are interested in is calls for unity. Without divisiveness and rancor, their livelihoods — the millions they rake in from propagandizing for the oligarchs and corporatists in their books and on their radio and television shows — would disappear.

This is the field of battle they have chosen. Unfortunately, the only way to play against them is to annihilate them. The only way to teach them a political lesson is to defeat them utterly.

Poll: Bush Approval at 19% – Officially ‘Worst President Ever’

Jon Ponder

The perception that the economy is failing may have finally done what seven years of lies and incompetence have failed to do — bring George Bush’s approval rating down to a closer reflection of reality:

George W. Bush’s overall job approval rating has dropped to a new low in American Research Group polling as 78 percent of Americans say that the national economy is getting worse according to the latest survey from the American Research Group.

Among all Americans, 19 percent approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 77 percent disapprove. When it comes to Bush’s handling of the economy, 14 percent approve and 79 percent disapprove.

Bad news for Bush but good news, finally, for the United States of America. It means that fewer than 20 percent of our fellow citizens are truly and irrevocably dimwitted and/or delusional.

But how does a 19 percent approval rating compare with other presidents? Here’s an overview from the recent past:

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Timing, Sourcing Suggest GOP, Not Dems, Behind McCain ‘Smear Campaign’

Jon Ponder

The McCain campaign has had two months to prepare for the story published in the New York Times about his cozy relationship eight years ago with a young blond woman who happened to be a lobbyist.
The possibility that Romney’s mitts were all over this might explain McCain’s palpable antipathy toward him.
The campaign’s rapid response team put out a news release last night that twice used the phrase “smear campaign” to describe the Times story:

“It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

“Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.”

They have had this response in the can for two months, so it bears some scrutiny. The word “smear” is predictable but to use it twice in conjunction with “campaign” is interesting.

One news story is hardly a “campaign.” And it is obvious from even a casual reading of the Times article that lawyers have been all over it. But is there more to come? The McCain team’s use of the word “campaign” suggests there could be.

Or, it is equally likely that “campaign” is a bit of transference — that McCain and his operatives know the source of the story was a rival campaign.

[…]