Tag: Elections

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VA Sen: Dem Challenger Fights Back after Allen Attempts Swiftboat Tactics

Jon Ponder

The campaign staff of Sen. George Allen of Virginia attempted to swiftboat the senator’s Democratic opponent Jim Webb this week over the issue of flag burning. In stark contrast with the reaction by Sen. John Kerry to a similarly sleazy attack in the 2004 presidential campaign, Webb’s staff has attacked back:

The frission started when Allen mgr Dick Wadhams, in a statement on Webb’s oppositon to a flag burning amendment, said this: “Now that we know that James H. Webb, Jr. is following Kerry, Kennedy and Schumer in opposing the Flag Protection Amendment, maybe he will finally take a position on other ‘real issues’ such as immediate withdrawal from Iraq and immigration,” Wadhams said. “His positions change daily.”

Webb, a former Republican, is a much decorated former Marine and was the Sec. of the Navy during the Reagan Administration. His adviser Steve Jarding responded:

George Felix Allen Jr. and his bush-league lapdog, Dick Wadhams, have not earned the right to challenge Jim Webb’s position on free speech and flag burning. Jim Webb served and fought for our flag and what it stands for, while George Felix Allen Jr. chose to cut and run. When he and his disrespectful campaign puppets attack Jim Webb they are attacking every man and woman who served. Their comments are nothing more than weak-kneed attacks by cowards. George Felix Allen Jr. needs to apologize to Jim Webb and to all men and women who have served our nation.

Note to Dems: More of this!

Nonpartisan Study Says 80% of New Voting Equipment Is Vulnerable to Fraud

Jon Ponder

A yearlong study by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice found that the vast majority of electronic vote-counting systems deployed across the United States can be manipulated by hackers:

Most of the electronic voting machines widely adopted since the disputed 2000 presidential election “pose a real danger to the integrity of national, state and local elections,” a report out Tuesday concludes.

There are more than 120 security threats to the three most commonly purchased electronic voting systems, the study… says. For what it calls the most comprehensive review of its kind, the New York City-based non-partisan think tank convened a task force of election officials, computer scientists and security experts to study e-voting vulnerabilities.

The study, which took more than a year to complete, examined optical scanners and touch-screen machines with and without paper trails. Together, the three systems account for 80 percent of the voting machines that will be used in this November’s election.

Is The Daily Show Poisoning Democracy?

Buck Banks

Spreading cynicism: On Friday, The Washington Post’s columnist Richard Morin wrote, “This is not funny: Jon Stewart and his hit Comedy Central cable show may be poisoning democracy.” Wow, that’s heavy, and it’s one of Editor-In-Chief Jon’s favorite shows — when he can stay up late enough to watch it.

Appears Morin was bloviating about a supposed study by a couple of political scientists from East Carolina University that allegedly found that “young people who watch Stewart’s faux news program, The Daily Show, develop cynical views about politics and politicians that could lead them to just say no to voting.” Previous research among college students found that 48 percent of them watched The Daily Show and only 23 percent of them followed “hard news” programs closely.

Young people who watch Stewart’s faux news program, The Daily Show, develop cynical views about politics and politicians that could lead them to just say no to voting.

Puh-leeze! And Stewart makes them not read newspapers by the droves, too, I suppose. The slack-ass voting habits of college students is a big story — every election year — and it hasn’t changed since I had hair down to my shoulders and was politically poisoned by Chevy Chase’s cynical impersonation of a clumsy President Gerald Ford on Saturday Night Live.

So these yahoo perfessors did a speriment:

To test for a “Daily Effect,” [Jody] Baumgartner and [Jonathan S.] Morris showed video clips of coverage of the 2004 presidential candidates to one group of college students and campaign coverage from “The CBS Evening News” to another group. Then they measured the students’ attitudes toward politics, President Bush and the Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.).

The results showed that the participants rated both candidates more negatively after watching Stewart’s program. Participants also expressed less trust in the electoral system and more cynical views of the news media, according to the researchers’ article, in the latest issue of American Politics Research.

“Ultimately, negative perceptions of candidates could have participation implications by keeping more youth from the polls,” they wrote.

Come on, maybe they just felt the choice sucked so much that voting seemed rather pointless. I know I did. How can anyone remain uncynical in this postmodern national political environment where partisanship and pandering are exceeded only by cronyism, fraud, influence for sale, malfeasance and the president rules absolutely?

Au contraire. I think Jon Stewart is performing a public service by showing the boobs and crooks who run this country for the bozos they are. Come on, college kids, let’s give Jon a big hip, hip, hooray! Hello? Kids? Are you out there?

Gov. Schwarzenegger Admits CA National Guard Has Become Unprepared on His Watch — Media Fails to Notice

Jon Ponder
This story sums up in a very neat package where we are in the age of the supine media. Gov. Schwarzenegger’s campaign team is able to manipulate the news, inserting the governor into the headlines by cravenly using his troops as political props — and inadvertently admits the state is unprepared for a Katrina-like disaster — but the media reports it without question or nuance.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s abrupt reneging on his promise to President Bush that he would send an additional 1,500 California National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border has made a big splash in the national news.

But lost in the coverage of the story of the Republican governor’s apparent rebuke of the Republican president is the revelation that in playing politics with the California National Guard, Gov. Schwarzenegger inadvertently admitted that troops under his putative command have become unprepared to handle the disasters California is prone to, including, but not limited to, earthquakes, fires and riots.

The governor’s non-statement explaining his sudden about-face sounded eerily like the sort of carefully crafted, tautologically reasoned statements the president himself makes:

“We are stretched too thin, if we were to send an extra 1,500, so that’s why we won’t send an extra 1,500.”

And as they do with spin from the president, the media has focused solely on the superficial meaning of the governor’s explanation while ignoring its content. What they heard was a rebuke of the president, but what the governor said was, the California National Guard is “stretched too thin,” and it has gotten that way on my watch.

It is shocking but not surprising that this admission of dereliction of duty should go over the heads of the media. Just as President Bush once said no one could have anticipated the levees breaching in New Orleans, perhaps the Beltway gang is unaware that few areas in the United States are as vulnerable to a disaster on the scale of the Katrina disaster in the Gulf than are California’s two major population areas. When the city of New Orleans was destroyed, its metro population was slightly more than 1 million. In California, a major earthquake could lead to damage, displacement and death affecting 14 million people in the Los Angeles metro area and 8 million in the Bay Area.

The Schwarzenneger campaign team’s motive for refusing the president’s request in a matter related to immigration policy is simple: President Bush’s popularity has tracked 5 to 10 percentage points lower (even) than Gov. Scharwzenegger’s for at least a year, especially among the state’s millions of independent and latino voters. The president rebuke was a deliberate move to put Schwarzenegger into a confrontational position with Bush for the benefit of two constituencies where he desperately needs to improve his numbers.

Fortunately, Phil Angelides, the governor’s Democratic opponent in November, did notice the meaning of Schwarzenegger’s statement. “As governor, I will fight for the proper levels of funding and support from Washington, so our state’s National Guard can always meet its mission,” he said, in response.

This story sums up in a very neat package where we are in the age of the supine media. Gov. Schwarzenegger’s campaign team is able to manipulate the news, inserting the governor into the headlines by cravenly using his troops as political props — and inadvertently admits the state is unprepared for a Katrina-like disaster — but the media reports it without question or nuance.

Katherine Harris Aims for Democrat Nelson, Hits Republican Martinez

Trish

The best campaign strategy for Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson to use against Katherine Harris might be to just give her the floor. She makes an effective case all by herself that she’s too mentally impaired to hold office. Her hometown paper, the Lakeland Ledger:

“She’s trashing the senator of her own party,” Nelson spokesman Dan McLaughlin told The Tampa Tribune.

It turns out that when it comes to political potshots, Harris is no more cautious than Dick Cheney on a hunting trip…

Nelson, said Harris, is “weak on immigration” because he favors a bill that would provide “amnesty to illegal immigrants.”

That’s because Nelson supports a bill drafted and sponsored by — oops — his Republican counterpart from Florida, U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez.

“She’s trashing the senator of her own party,” Nelson spokesman Dan McLaughlin told The Tampa Tribune.

Hello? Katherine? Katherine’s handlers? Anybody? Somebody get research on the phone!

Nelson said last month that he favors [the Martinez] approach, “To get these people out of the shadows, working and paying taxes — which they are not — is what we need to do.”

Nelson has also proposed two amendments to the bill. One would add more beds in detention centers for illegal immigrants who will be deported. Another would increase the use of technology along the border for better patrolling.

Martinez told the Tribune that he thought the bill was “tough enough” before Nelson’s amendments, and that Nelson’s position on immigration may be tougher than his…

Harris has made it clear that Nelson is her main target. But with him standing so close to Martinez — one of the few Republicans who haven’t openly questioned her ability to win the election — Harris might want to use something other than a shotgun on the next attempt.

More on Top Three GOP Adulterers Running for President in ’08

Jon Ponder

Earlier this month our list of the top 10 GOP adulterers created a bit of stir. Now Steve Benen, writing in the Washington Monthly, has a related story on the three men on our list who are running for the GOP nomination for president in 2008, including the two frontrunners, Sen. John McCain and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, as well the candidate I have endorsed to be the GOP’s 2008 standard bearer, former House Speaker New Gingrich:

McCain was still married and living with his wife in 1979 while, according to The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, “aggressively courting a 25-year-old woman who was as beautiful as she was rich.” McCain divorced his wife, who had raised their three children while he was imprisoned in Vietnam, then launched his political career with his new wife’s family money. In 2000, McCain managed to deflect media questioning about his first marriage with a deft admission of responsibility for its failure. It’s possible that the age of the offense and McCain’s charmed relationship with the press will pull him through again, but Giuliani and Gingrich may face a more difficult challenge. Both conducted well-documented affairs in the last decade–while still in public office.

Giuliani informed his second wife, Donna Hanover, of his intention to seek a separation in a 2000 press conference. The announcement was precipitated by a tabloid frenzy after Giuliani marched with his then-mistress, Judith Nathan, in New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, an acknowledgement of infidelity so audacious that Daily News columnist Jim Dwyer compared it with “groping in the window at Macy’s.” In the acrid divorce proceedings that followed, Hanover accused Giuliani of serial adultery, alleging that Nathan was just the latest in a string of mistresses, following an affair the mayor had had with his former communications director.

But the most notorious of them all is undoubtedly Gingrich, who ran for Congress in 1978 on the slogan, “Let Our Family Represent Your Family.” (He was reportedly cheating on his first wife at the time). In 1995, an alleged mistress from that period, Anne Manning, told Vanity Fair’s Gail Sheehy: “We had oral sex. He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, ‘I never slept with her.'” Gingrich obtained his first divorce in 1981, after forcing his wife, who had helped put him through graduate school, to haggle over the terms while in the hospital, as she recovered from uterine cancer surgery. In 1999, he was disgraced again, having been caught in an affair with a 33-year-old congressional aide while spearheading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.

Florida’s Next Republican Governor Could Be Either Pot Smoking Adulterer or Allegedly Closeted, Self-Hating Gay Guy

Trish

Florida headlines are fairly drooling over revelations that Republican candidate for governor Tom Gallagher is a jerk.

Miami Herald: Gallagher’s Family Values Take Hit With Revelations

Sarasota Herald Tribune: Divorce Records Dogging Hopeful

Bradenton Herald: Gallagher Apologizes for Affair, Marijuana Use

Palm Beach Post: Gallagher Apologizes for Misdeeds

Sun-Sentinel: Gubernatorial Candidate Gallagher Used Marijuana, Cheated on First Wife

Tampa Tribune: Gallagher Admits Fault For Failed Marriage

Any outrage is a bit misplaced. In February, when charges of insider trading while on the taxpayer dole arose, hardly a gasp was heard from Pensacola to the Keys. Lakeland Ledger:

…an allegedly intoxicated Gallagher returned to their home and tore a screen off the house, the court documents say. The next day, he returned and took the dog. Ann Louise Gallagher asked a judge for a restraining order

Tax records show Gallagher made at least 70 separate online orders to buy or sell AES Corp. stock in 2003, and 60 of those came within weeks or days of five significant federal announcements about the [government] pipeline between the Bahamas and Broward County.

…Gallagher joined Gov. Jeb Bush and other Cabinet members when they voted in 2004 to support an easement for the AES project as well as a competing company’s pipeline proposal…He didn’t declare his ownership before voting but it was included on his annual public disclosure forms.

The deals were made on his state-issued computer during office hours while Gallagher was carrying out his duties as Florida’s Chief Financial Officer. And they weren’t the first.

Gallagher’s online trading and other investments first were reported by the St. Petersburg Times…The paper noted the tax records also showed Gallagher had invested in insurance companies while he was Florida’s insurance commissioner and in an airline that had a contract with the state.

But infidelity and drug use are…so much more interesting. In this case, anyway. […]

What’s Jeb Raising $1.9 Million For?

Trish

Jeb Bush isn’t saying what he plans to use the $1.9 million he’s amassed in a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organization. The Foundation for Florida’s Future web site is decorated with apples and glowing headlines about how great the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Acheivement Test) is, so we would assume it has something to do with education. Not necessarily. The Palm Beach Post says the fund it can be whatever Jeb wants it to be.

Despite its vague goals, Bush faithful — those who have been well rewarded for loyalty by various Bush family members — continue to give generously

Bush has since been coy about what the foundation will fund.

“No plans yet,” he said last week.

Despite its vague goals, Bush faithful — those who have been well rewarded for loyalty by various Bush family members — continue to give generously to the fund.

…donors, including a host of developers and construction industry-related magnates from around the state, say they don’t care how he spends it.

…Jacksonville engineer Richard Blankenship, who served Bush’s brother, President George W. Bush, as ambassador to the Bahamas for two years, said he has given the foundation at least $185,000 over its lifetime.

… The top donation, $500,000, was given by Tampa-based Cast-Crete Corp., which makes building materials and is headed by conservative activist Ralph Hughes.

The Geo Group, a Boca Raton-based company that runs private prisons, donated $100,000. Its major shareholder is George Zoley, a Florida Atlantic University graduate Bush appointed to the university’s board of trustees.

Of all the headlines on the FFF web site about the FCAT, there were no links to the most recent story, about how the people employed by a private company to grade the test are not educators but instead, pizza delivery drivers and movie theater popcorn technicians. Read on for more.

First Katherine Harris Bumpersticker Sighting: Repent, the End Must Be Near

Trish

Slowed down and rode alongside, trying to see what a genuine Katherine Harris supporter looks like. She was driving a new, foreign minivan. She was a slim 54 or so but she didn’t look like she’d had, or was currently having, much fun in her life. Straight blond bowl cut, no makeup, Sally Jesse Raphael glasses. Looked like a nurse or maybe a nun out of uniform because her top resembled a hospital scrub. Older man was in the passenger seat, but beyond the fact that he was bald and white, I couldn’t really see him.

I need to find a Bill Nelson bumpersticker to paste on my PT Cruiser. Too bad I traded the Volvo…

Still. Doesn’t. Get. It.

Trish

If you’re like me, and from your comments I know you are, you’re about over John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and any other “presumptive nominee” that could never possibly be elected but have been shoved down our Democratic throats.

John Kerry scolding Hillary Clinton has got to take the biscuit for annoying, self-serving hooey.

Shut up, will ya, Kerry? The 2004 presumptive dolt is bickering with the 2008 presumptive sure loser

Kerry, who was widely criticized as the party’s standard-bearer in 2004 for being too cautious in his criticism of the war, said Tuesday that politicians “cannot have it both ways.”

In remarks that could have been aimed at Clinton, Kerry said: “It’s not enough to argue with the logistics or to argue about the details. … It is essential to acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake. … It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote for that Iraqi war resolution.”

Oh shut up, will ya, Kerry? The 2004 presumptive dolt is bickering with the 2008 presumptive sure loser over whether or not to set a date to withdraw troops from Iraq.

Anti-war activists at a liberal gathering booed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday for opposing a set date for pulling U.S. troops from Iraq. Facing down the jeers, Clinton said Democrats need to have “a difficult conversation” about the war…

“Sometimes this is a difficult conversation, in part because this administration has made our world more dangerous than it should be,” said Clinton, D-N.Y.

Note to Hil: a “difficult conversation” is when you tell your parents you want to discuss their living wills. One thing I’ll say for Clinton, though. She’s right to put the blame for this imbecility on Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney. On the other hand, she did vote for the war just before she voted against it.

Here’s what we have to do: we have to keep Kerry and Clinton and any other candidates that Republicans are peeing their pants hoping we’ll run from making it to “presumptive nominee” status. Last time I felt like my vote (for Edwards because Wesley Clark had already washed out by then) didn’t count — and I am in Florida, a frickin’ Super Tuesday, i.e. early primary state. We can not let a surefire loser make it to the podium in 2008.