Oct. 14th, 2002

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Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post desperately trying to jumpstart his pet meme - this time, the omnipotent and wily Davis was responsible for Jeb Bush's behavior during the primary

Another trend? Incumbents trying to pick their challengers. Democratic ad maker David Doak says he was "obsessed" with the idea that his guerrilla tactics could be used against him.

After his negative ads helped California Gov. Gray Davis knock out Republican Richard Riordan during the GOP gubernatorial primary, Doak worried that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) might borrow the idea to knock out the Democratic primary candidate who he figured would be his strongest rival in that general election. And that's just what happened.

Even as Doak's candidate, attorney Bill McBride, was struggling in the Democratic primary against former attorney general Janet Reno, Doak taped a response ad and put it in the can.

Months later, when Bush began airing anti-McBride ads during the Democratic contest, voters quickly saw McBride respond on the air: "You're probably wondering why Governor Bush is running ads against me now. . . . I think it's because he knows I'd be the toughest Democrat to beat."

McBride survived the primary, but Bush is heavily outspending him on the airwaves.


Still up in the air - unconfirmed rumors linking the Davis campaign to unfortunate national weather conditions.
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Guest columnist Mark Green (who, full disclosure, I voted against three times in the primaries and for in the general election)

Yes, we’re weary of screeds about money in politics. Allow me to be skeptical about cynicism. While money has long been the lifeblood of the body politic, only recently has it metastasized into an authentic crisis due to its volume and impact. While in 1976 it cost an average of $87,000 to win a House seat and $609,000 a U.S. Senate seat, those amounts grew by 2000 like beanstalks to $842,000 for the House and $7.2 million for the Senate-a tenfold leap.

So, although issues such as terrorism, social security, health care, and pollution absorb far more public attention and concern, the scandal of strings-attached money corrupting politics and government is the most urgent problem in America today-because it makes it harder to solve nearly all our other problems. How can we produce smart defense, environmental, and health policies if arms contractors, oil firms, and HMOs have such a hammerlock over the committees charged with considering reforms? How can we adequately fund education and child care if special interests win special tax breaks that deplete public resources? How can we attract the best people to be public servants if those who run and serve are increasingly either special-interest or self-financing multimillionaires?


The President has just pushed war powers through Congress because of the urgency of our plight.

Now he's off on a two week fundraising trip.

Media ownership has been reduced to a few corporations, and they're reliably in the tank for the Republican Party.

Not everyone is allowed to vote in this country. Not even everyone who's eligible. If voting didn't matter, they wouldn't keep so many people from doing it.

Vote to take the future of the country out of the sweaty hands of Our Fearless Leader. Hold your nose and cancel a Republican vote on behalf of someone in Florida who isn't going to get the chance.

There is a difference and it does matter.
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if you are in the Maryland area. Unqualified Offerings has some questions to help you figure out if you might know the person doing the shooting.
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Guess what Florida Republicans think is wrong with the way they're executing people in Florida?

MIAMI, Oct. 11 - A measure on the November ballot in Florida seeks, among other things, to change one word of one phrase of the state constitution as it applies to the death penalty.

Supporters say it will strengthen the state's death penalty law, making it more resistant to legal challenges and to certain types of appeals.

But opponents see danger in the switch. They say it will have a consequence that was never intended and is hidden in the obscure ballot language: It will effectively lower the minimum age at which killers can be put to death to 16 from 17.


...

Proponents of the amendment say its wording was intended to correct language in the original proposal that the Florida Supreme Court ruled was misleading. "I know what the intent of the law is and I know my personal policy," Senator Crist said, "and that is not to execute minors."

So as long as the sixteen year old gets one of those original intent boys from the Federalist Society he's OK.

The judge doesn't get to sleep either.

DALLAS, Oct. 12 - A Dallas man's 20-year prison sentence has been overturned by an appeals court because the visiting judge fell asleep in testimony in the man's murder trial.

The judge, John Bradshaw, said he vaguely remembered the trial but not falling asleep.


Judge Bradshaw, it should be pointed out, had an undiagnosed heart condition at the time.

I suspect "little lady" and "sweetcheeks" are out too

First, there was "ma'am" from Maryland. Then came "Jennifer" from Michigan.

These were not callers to some talk radio program but rather two women running for governor of their respective states. Or at least these were the names their male opponents often used when they addressed the candidates, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Jennifer N. Granholm, below, in recent debates. In doing so, the male candidates angered supporters of the two women.


from the same article:

Unfortunately, someone will become the next governor of California. That seems to be the attitude of California voters as this year's contest is well on its way to setting records for voter turnout (low) and discontent with candidates (high). Recent statewide surveys show that more than half the respondents are less enthusiastic about voting than usual and 65 percent wish they had different candidates to choose from. In addition, 51 percent had unfavorable opinions of both Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, and his Republican challenger, Bill Simon.

If you have to ask what salmon costs, you can't afford it

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 - The Bush administration has opened the way for Western states to gain control over enormous volumes of water previously claimed by the federal government. That would shift the balance in a long battle over control of a scarce resource.

The policies cede to Western states important water rights that the Clinton administration had claimed. Bush administration officials describe the new approach as an antidote to past federal excess.


The federal government can, they say, compete with everyone else to buy back the water that now keeps national parks alive from the states.

Assuming they leave the federal government enough money to buy water.

How to make friends and influence major party candidates

Dick Mahoney, a political independent began running 30-second commercials this week that focus on Fundamentalist Mormons in northern Arizona who practice polygamy and suspicions that they are committing sexual abuse, domestic violence, welfare fraud and other crimes.

One advertisement says Mr. Mahoney's Democratic opponent, Attorney General Janet Napolitano, has ignored the crimes. The other says his Republican opponent, Matt Salmon, a former congressman and mainstream Mormon, would ignore them if he were elected.

...

Mr. Mahoney's commercials are tailored for each opponent, but they open the same way, with scenes of the fiery destruction of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., almost a decade ago and an announcer's assertion that crimes committed in Colorado City and next door in Hildale, Utah, are "worse than Waco."

The reference to Waco is not a frivolous one. Mr. Mahoney said he based his accusations on an internal memorandum from Ms. Napolitano's office that says "Arizona has a Waco-level problem in Colorado City." The three-page memorandum, dated May 9, appears to be written by "JM" a supervisor in the attorney general's office of special investigations, who goes on to assess several suspected violations and warns, "It appears that there is a sooner or later necessity for federal and state law enforcement to move against criminal acts in Colorado City."

It all sounds rather ominous, but Ms. Napolitano says the memorandum is a fake.

"We know it's a forgery," she said. "Nobody in our office wrote it. We've referred it to the Department of Public Safety to find out who forged it."

Ms. Napolitano did not deny knowledge of possible crimes in Colorado City, saying her office and the Utah attorney general have been investigating them for 18 months. But with a closed society, she argued, undercover work is almost impossible, and few witnesses volunteer to testify in fear of violent retribution.

"Some of their houses actually straddle the state line," she said. "You can't even determine where the illegal sex occurred."


Polygamy has apparently been a third rail issue in Arizona politics since 1953, when the sitting governor lost his bid for reelection after going after polygamists.

Bloomberg skips the Columbus Day parade

and eats with the Sopranos actors who were barred from the parade at Dominics on Arthur Avenue instead, where if you ever eat there ask the waiter what's good in the kitchen because if you don't look italian (I, for instance, have my dad's freckles) he'll try to steer you towards something he thinks you'll be comfortable with and it'll be good, but you'll eat your heart out looking at the stuff the people at other tables have.

I've heard.

One other possible reason we can't find Mullah Omar

Thousands of United States troops scouring Afghanistan for Mullah Mohammad Omar have been looking for the wrong man, according to an Afghan villager who says that it is his face on the CIA's wanted poster and not that of the fugitive Taliban leader.

Maulvi Hafizullah, a former protocol officer for the Taliban, says he has been hiding in fear for his life in a remote part of southern Afghanistan since his photograph appeared as Omar on hundreds of thousands of leaflets air-dropped by US forces earlier this year. The leaflets offer a $US5million ($9million) reward.

Hafizullah, who had fled to his home village after the collapse of the Taliban last December, said he was horrified when he saw the leaflet.


Just make sure you crop the grainy black and white photo so you can't see the three amputated limbs

It may not be a trend, but Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are making their second appearance in as many weeks in a campaign ad. Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.) is crying foul after his Republican challenger used the two villains in a television spot that, the senator said, portrays him as soft on national defense.

The ad says that Cleland does not have the "courage to lead" at a time when "America faces terrorists and extremist dictators." The evidence? Cleland voted against the president's version of the still-pending Homeland Security agency 11 times.

Such ads have been relatively rare this election season, but in South Dakota, GOP Rep. John Thune's campaign mentioned al Qaeda and the Iraqi leader in a spot castigating his opponent, Sen. Tim Johnson (D), for voting against plans to develop a missile defense system.

Cleland, a decorated war veteran who lost three limbs in the Vietnam War, blasted the ad, accusing his GOP rival, Rep. C. Saxby Chambliss, of trying to wrest political advantage from the war on terrorism and the impending conflict with Iraq. "Accusing me of being soft on Homeland Security and Osama bin Laden is the most vicious exploitation of a national tragedy and attempt at character assassination I have ever witnessed," the senator said in a statement.

Chambliss defended the ad, arguing that Cleland's votes on the proposed agency are legitimate campaign issues. "While Max Cleland did honorably serve our country in Vietnam, this election is not about his unquestioned patriotism or his military record," Chambliss said. "It has everything to do with his voting record in the United States Senate."


Which is presumably why Cleland wasn't cheap enough to put out any ads bringing up the fact that Chambliss chose not to go to Vietnam.

I really really want this man to lose very badly.

Yet another bit of good news for George Bush and his outreach to labor

Over the past year and a half, Douglas J. McCarron, president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, has emerged as President Bush's closest ally in the labor movement.

While the AFL-CIO accuses Bush of favoring corporate America over working people, McCarron repeatedly defends the president. McCarron, who pulled the carpenters union out of the AFL-CIO federation in 2000, was the most prominent labor leader at Bush's "economic summit" in Waco, Tex. Most recently, he broke with the rest of organized labor to endorse the reelection bid of Bush's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R).

Soon, however, the warm relationship between Bush and McCarron will be tested. At least three top Bush appointees -- Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey L. Pitt and Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao -- are overseeing criminal and civil investigations in which McCarron is a central figure. Their agencies ultimately will have to decide how far to push these inquiries into alleged stock profiteering at a union-run insurance company.


At this point, I'm guessing there's only one carpenter left who still loves George W Bush, and clearly he never pays a bit of attention to His advice.

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