Content by jannelsen
Posted at 12:35pm on Aug. 25, 2006 A list of WaPo's stories, etc., on Allen and 'macaca'
By jannelsen
In the world of August news frenzies, George Allen and macaca are to Washington Post political writers and editorialists what snakeheads and shark attacks were to past years' feature writers.
Except this summer's splash features sanctimonious "gotcha" journalism and overt candidate favoritism.
Anyway, in reverse chronological order, below you will find the news stories, features, columns and editorials that have appeared in the printed version of the paper. The list excludes AP Online stories, blogs, discussions and some different published versions of the same story. And I'm sure I missed some.
My conclusion: If you're a Republican in the Washington Post's circulation area, don't say dumb things and then, as a first reaction, don't curse the newspaper. Just not worth it.
Still and phew, this is a whole lot of newsprint spilled over "macaca."
List of published articles -- with four page-one pieces -- follows:
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Posted at 11:49am on Jul. 15, 2006 Bush 'aide' kills self; unrelated Claude Allen update
By jannelsen
Ex-Bush Aide Fatally Shoots Son, Himself
The above is the headline from the on-line Washington Post today, a story that appeared on page B-1, The Metro Section.
I don't want to minimize the terrible wrong of the murder-suicide. I have no idea what desperation caused this man to commit this crime and destroy his family.
But the headline is absurd...and misleading. Here's the second paragraph of the story:
William H. Lash III, 45, was an assistant secretary of commerce from 2001 until last year, then returned to teach at George Mason University Law School in Arlington, where he had begun as a professor in 1994.
Criminy, by that measure, as a political appointee in a cabinet ageny, I'm a former Bush aide. 'Cause, you see, I shook his hand once.
I've encountered this kind of newspaper elevation any number of times, a mid-level administration official being raised to some close association with the President as aide or advisor. Yeah, I suppose "Bush aide" fits the headline space, but at the expense of accuracy?
Another example: Ex-Aide To Bush Found Guilty, the front page WaPo story on June 21 about David H. Safavian.
Safavian, a former chief of staff of the General Services Administration, was convicted in U.S. District Court here of covering up his many efforts to assist Abramoff in acquiring two properties controlled by the GSA, and also of concealing facts about a lavish weeklong golf trip he took with Abramoff to Scotland and London in the summer of 2002.
These events occurred while Safavian was at the GSA, so he could accurately be called an "Administration official."
And how do we get to "Bush aide?"
Days before his arrest in September, Safavian had resigned as the White House's chief procurement policy officer, a job he got after leaving the GSA. He had worked earlier as a lobbyist for Abramoff and also as a congressional aide.
So the guy who signs off on paper clips and three-hole punches for the White House is a "Bush aide?" (I note the charges -- he plans to appeal -- related to events long before he came to the White House.)
I guess these are battlefield promotions in the MSM's wars against the Bush Administration. But, they're WRONG!
Suggestion for reporters, editors headline writers. Before calling someone a "Bush aide" in the interest of brevity and punchiness, how about determining whether or not the person was, you know, a Bush aide.
As for Claude Allen, as White House Domestic Policy Advisor, he was a Bush aide. No doubt.
There were speculative stories last month about Allen reaching a plea agreement with Maryland prosecutors on his shoplifting charges so he could avoid trial.
The latest news suggests no progress on that front.
Claude Allen, the former Jesse Helms protege and White House staffer, has a new date for his trial on charges of swindling Target and Hecht's stores in Montgomery County, Md.
The new date is Aug. 15, according to the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office.
I have also shaken Claude Allen's hand, so let me provide some deep psychological insight about his circumstances: Boy, I don't know. Sometimes people do weird things. Hope he's OK.
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Posted at 9:48pm on Jun. 25, 2006 Ted Kennedy, canine mathematician
By jannelsen
C-SPAN Book TV this weekend broadcast a recent, half-hour visit of Sen. Ted Kennedy to P.S. 11 William T. Harris School in New York City, where he entertained the children with tales from his new book, My Senator And Me : A Dog's Eye View Of Washington, D.C. The book describes the D.C. life of his Portuguese waterdog, Splash.
Kennedy's apparently unironic naming of his dog has drawn derision from bloggers like Mark Kilmer. Given the watery death suffered by poor Mary Jo Kopechne, the mockery is well-deserved.
The New York Daily News had an account of his promotional stop at the Chelsea school:
His Portuguese water dogs, Splash and Sunny, were also present, and Kennedy talked baby talk to Splash, who did a stupid pet trick with a tennis ball in his mouth. The trick apparently was that Splash refused to let anyone have the ball as his master cooed: "Show me the ball! Splash Kennedy, you know I want the ball! Splash! Splashy! Now you know I want that ball!"
Me, I enjoyed Kennedy's use of the Socratic approach with the kids when dealing with mathematics. Consider the following exchange with a questioning moppet.
Q: How old is Splash in dog years?A: Dog years...Now, you know the answer to that. I think the old...We used to think that they were seven years old, I think is what I learned. Is that about right? So, he's nine. He's nine. So, can anybody figure that out, nine? How about if it was, if he was two years, how old it be then? Thirteen? Er, it's seven years, seven years, right. So, he's for all intents and purposes in his mid-50s. I think.
Baby talk and confusion over simple matters of counting.
I guess he really IS the senior senator from Massachusetts.
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Posted at 10:25am on Apr. 7, 2006 For Sen. Coburn fans/Ending Earmarks Express
By jannelsen
And supporters of the Porkbusters efforts, I commend a news conference today at 11 a.m. at the Rayburn Building.
Please come...To the kick off of Americans for Prosperity Foundation's
ENDING EARMARKS EXPRESS
with special guests
U. S. Senator Tom Coburn (OK)
U.S. Representative Tom Feeney (FL-24)
U.S. Representative Scott Garrett (NJ-5)
Tim Phillips- President, AFPF
Tom Schatz- President, Citizens Against Government Waste
Allison Fraser, Heritage Foundation
Dan Clifton, Americans for Tax Reform
Lee MacVaugh, National Taxpayers Union2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC
11:00am, Friday, April 7th, 2006The Ending Earmarks Express is a nationwide bus tour that will turn up the grassroots pressure for spending restraint in Congress. For more information about this event or about Americans for Prosperity Foundation's Ending Earmarks Express, please call (202)349-5880, e-mail info@afphq.org or visit www.americansforprosperity.org.
And from AFP, a column explaining the Ending Earmarks Express:
Judging by its increasing prevalence the past few years, it would appear that the earmark is the new "it" item - the hottest new thing that everyone on Capitol Hill has to get their hands on. The buzz inside the Beltway is - out with fiscal responsibility and in with waste and greed.
But, as is often the case with anything trendy, the time comes when people realize that the fad really isn't as great as everybody seemed to think back in the day. That's happening across America with wasteful earmarks today, but not everyone on Capitol Hill has gotten the message yet. Some people still think that these special provisions inserted behind closed doors are as cool as grunge rock, not having realized that both have already seen their best days.That's why Americans for Prosperity Foundation is firing up the Ending Earmarks Express - a nationwide bus tour that will visit places that have received egregious earmarks over the past few years. The goal is to educate and motivate grassroots citizens about how damaging earmarks are to the federal budget, and to help them make their voices heard in Washington. Below is a sampling of some of the places we'll be visiting this month:
Followed by six pretty good examples of pork.
I'll be interested in the reaction in local burgs to outsiders telling them their pet project is bunk.
P.S. I'm not involved in AFP in any way. Know some people there and appreciate this hard-core approach. That's it.
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Posted at 3:46am on Oct. 10, 2005 Kilgore, Kaine battle to a cliche -- Go Kilgore!
By jannelsen
The sole statewide TV debate between the two major-party candidates for governor of Virginia took place in Richmond Sunday. And the winner was....
Stop! I reject that formulation! It was the people of Virginia who won....all those people who skipped the broadcast, that is.
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Posted at 1:35pm on Aug. 26, 2005 Ellsworth: Success has many authors, including Thune
By jannelsen
Ellsworth Air Force Base is saved. Rapid City is saved. South Dakota’s economy is saved. And Sen. John Thune’s political career is looking pretty good right now.
The Base Realignment and Closure Commission this morning voted 8-1 to reject the Department of Defense’s recommendation to close Ellsworth Air Force Base and transfer its 29 B-1 bombers to Dyess AFB in Texas.
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Posted at 1:46am on Jul. 24, 2005 Napolitano rises, as does illegal immigration as an issue
By jannelsen
Keep your eye on Janet Napolitano, Democratic governor of Arizona. Already headed for re-election in November 2006, she will emerge as a national spokesman for the Dems at about the same time.
The reason? She will be serving as chairman of the National Governors Association, a platform long favored by state politicians aspiring for a national profile. (Revealing list of past chairmen here. Howard Dean!)
Not only that, she’ll be the first woman chairman in the NGA’s nine-plus decades of existence, a moderately interesting storyline the national media will turn into propaganda for distaff pols, a la the U.S. Senate election of 1992, the Year of the Woman.
As a border-state Democrat, Napolitano’s growing national profile will help keep immigration at the forefront of public discussion during the 2008 election cycle. And the desire of Democrats to use immigration to attack Republicans will keep Napolitano in the news, as well. A powerful combination in politics.
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Posted at 9:10pm on Jul. 12, 2005 The Washington, D.C., weather report
By jannelsen
Escorting an out-of-town guest over to the House side of the Capitol this morning, I squinted in the glare off the Supreme Court building. Then I sweated. And then I offered the bromide, "Some people say the growth of the federal government is the direct result of the invention of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, everyone left the city in summer. Of course, its development coincided with the Great Depression and WWII, which brought more and more folks to work in Washington." Then I sweated some more.
Read on.
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Posted at 2:08pm on Jul. 8, 2005 Roemer bows to reality, won't challenge Lugar
By jannelsen
Former Indiana Congressman Tim Roemer will forego a defeat at the hands of septuagenarian Senator Richard Lugar, R-IN, in 2006. Dems were hoping to parley Roemer's service on the 9-11 Commission into a legitimate challenge and a long-shot victory in Indiana, despite Lugar's unabating popularity. All they got out of it was a few marginal hits against the Bush Administration's foreign policy and a few more marginal hits against Roemer for appearing to politicize the high-minded, oh-so-objective 9-11 Commission. And for trotting out suspect poll results -- it was a push poll -- that pumped up Roemer's prospects, a bit of deception that damaged Roemer's reputation for seriousness.
That reputation for seriousness also takes a hit with his soccer-mom shtick in Thursday's announcement (reprinted in the Howey Political Report and below). Peanut-butter sandwiches in tow?
UPDATE: Oh yes, elsewhere on the Indiana politics front, boy, is Senator Evan Bayh running for President. He's chosen the "Who Lost China" platform. Not a bad theme, really.
UPDATE II: We'll make this a Hoosier round-up post, I guess. The White House just announced that President Bush will be speaking at the Black Expo in Indianapolis on Thursday. "I think it's stupendous," says Rep. Julia Carson, D-IN. She's right.
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Posted at 2:41am on Jun. 27, 2005 Capital Gang, RIP
By jannelsen
Agronsky and Company begat Braden and Buchanan, which begat the McLauglin Group, which begat The Capital Gang, which misbegat a bunch of other CNN talk.
Agronsky is gone, Braden far gone, Buchanan scuttles on, the McLauglin Group drones on, and CNN goes on and on.
But on Saturday, June 25, 2005, The Capital Gang ended its 17-year reign on cable. (Transcript here.) The final show distilled all that is the Capital Gang -- cross-talk, self-congratulation, outrage and all-in-good-fun bashing of Bob Novak.
When it started in the late '80s, Capital Gang was an entertaining and half useful addition to the still generally sparse menu of Washington, D.C. gab panels. For those of us on basic cable, out in the hinterlands, 6 p.m. Saturday Central Time was an opportune time to catch up on political gossip you could rarely find elsewhere. (The McLaughlin Group on local PBS affiliates being the exception.) The trademark "Outrage of the Week" was usually good for one grunt in response (out of the four outrages offered).
Now, of course, the Capital Gang is supernumerary, and its founder, Novak, superannuated. So, CNN's new programming leaves the show superseded.
As for Novak, being outside the Beltway, one point I never realized until recently was that the show was a Novak operation, originated and managed by the Journalist Formerly Known as the Crown Prince of Darkness. He let Al Hunt -- a pompous purveyor of the liberal conventional wisdom -- and Mark Shields -- a liberal purveyor of the pompous conventional wisdom -- host the weekly episodes, but the show was his gig.
I'm a Novak fan, because at heart he's a reporter. He works the phones still, and helps turn the usual gossip into a scoop now and then. With Crossfire also going away -- as CNN revamps itself to become jazzier, or something -- we'll have less Bob Novak to keep us entertained, and that's too bad.
But otherwise, I bid it farewell with no sense of loss. The Capital Gang was a diverting hour that had its moments, pre-Internet, pre-FOX. I won't miss it, but neither do I regret the hours I spent watching it.
Well, except for the parts where Al Hunt talked.