J's Cafe Nette

Archive for August 12th, 2007

I find myself agreeing with the last paragraph.

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards recently defended taking a lucrative book contract from a publisher controlled by Rupert Murdoch — whose News Corp. empire Edwards has sharply criticized — by insisting that “every dime” of his $500,000 advance went to charity.

Left unmentioned by Edwards, however, was that Murdoch’s HarperCollins paid portions of a $300,000 expense budget for the book to Edwards’s daughter and to a senior political aide, Jonathan Prince.

The sums paid to Cate Edwards and Prince, who are listed as co-authors on the little-noticed 2006 coffee table book, “Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives,” have not been made public, but were confirmed by two sources with first-hand knowledge of the book deal.

These and other details of the deal that have spilled out in recent weeks demonstrate both the complexity of Edwards’ transformation into an anti-corporate crusader, and of Murdoch’s double role as a corporate titan and political player.

Murdoch’s position as the backer of such conservative News Corp. outlets, from the Fox News Channel’s popular prime-time talk shows to the Weekly Standard magazine, has long angered some on the left, but Edwards was the first of the Democratic presidential candidates to join liberal activists in a successful effort to shut down a Democrat presidential debate that was to be televised on Fox.

“The time has come for Democrats to stop pretending to be friends with the very people who demonize the Democratic Party,” he said recently in a statement that referred explicitly to Murdoch, News Corp.’s chairman and CEO.

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From the Omega Letter:

Saudi’s Golden Parachute

In recent briefings we’ve looked at some of the political reasons that successful US administrations have looked the other way in all matters pertaining to Saudi Arabia.

No US administration has ever directly criticized the Saudi government on matters like anti-Semitism, or human rights or religious freedom within the kingdom. The Saudis are received as global statesmen, rather than representatives of a despotic dictatorship, their multitude of sins ignored.

Indeed, the Saudi government only “allowed” the previous Bush administration to save it from Saddam Hussein provided US forces met strict conditions: no alcohol, no women doing men’s work, no Bibles, symbols of Christianity or religious worship services on Saudi soil.

US forces were placed under restrictions on their freedoms that, if some other country imposed them on its own citizens, would bring swift condemnation from US human rights organizations and the US government.

Agreed, Saudi oil is important to the US economy, so there were pressing political reasons for defending Saudi Arabia in 1991. But the Bush administration could have told the Saudi government to shove their restrictions. The Saudis were in no position to set conditions while Saddam Hussein was massing his forces along their border.

President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker agreed. When Baker left government service after Bill Clinton’s election, he went straight to Riyadh to collect his golden parachure.
Baker-Bott LLC has a host of business clients in the Saudi kingdom, with offices in both Riyadh and Dubai. Most top US officials, particularly ambassadors and former CIA officials, retire from serving the US government and take up a lucrative second career serving the Saudis.

The Saudis lobby and suborn foreign-policy officials all over the world, promising sympathetic politicians golden parachute jobs upon retirement. Read the rest of this entry »

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This is cute.

‘Puppy killer’, ‘pole-dancer’, ’scheming’: the spouses of America’s presidential candidates are facing tough criticism and intense scrutiny as the campaign turns dirty, reports Paul Harris in New York

It is a brutal battle of whispering campaigns, gossip-laced leaks and highly disciplined PR machines. It is a world where image outweighs reality and where any sign of weakness or an unscripted gaffe could derail a bid for the White House.
The US presidential nomination process? Not exactly. Instead it is the battle royal being waged between the candidates’ spouses. As the Republican and Democratic parties are both choosing presidential candidates for 2008, never before have so many potential First Ladies – and one First Gentleman – battled it out so publicly.

In a mirror image of the candidates’ race, the fight has spawned an industry of advisers, lobbyists, hangers-on, focus groups and spin doctors. It has also provided acres of column inches for an American media that seems every bit as obsessed with the future President’s other half as it is with the next occupant of the Oval Office.
‘What’s new is that we are seeing so much coverage of the spouses so early. It is incredible,’ said Dr Myra Gutin, a professor of communication at Rider University, New Jersey, and author of several books on American First Ladies. ‘We are seeing the sort of coverage now that we would not normally see until the start of next year.’

That coverage has been colourful, to say the least. It has also shown a willingness to delve into the private lives of the spouses to a remarkable degree, turning over past husbands, ancient scandals and childhood secrets. Though, it must be said, some of the spouses on the campaign trail have certainly provided a lot of ammunition.

Judith Giuliani has been the focus of most of the negative attention so far. The third wife of the Republican frontrunner and former New York Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, she was the subject of a lengthy profile in the celebrity bible Vanity Fair. The magazine, and several other articles, portrayed her as a scheming woman with extravagant shopping tastes who – allegedly – demanded an extra seat on the campaign plane for her Louis Vuitton shopping bag. That piece has prompted a fight back from her husband’s campaign who wheeled her out to meet several carefully chosen newspapers in order to beat off some adverse coverage.

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I don’t know what to say except that I am so disappointed in these Democrats.

For three days, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, had haggled with congressional leaders over amendments to a federal surveillance law, but now he was putting his foot down. “This is the issue,” said the plain-spoken retired vice admiral and Vietnam veteran, “that makes my blood pressure rise.”

McConnell viscerally objected to a Democratic proposal to limit warrantless surveillance of foreigners’ communications with Americans to instances in which one party was a terrorism suspect. McConnell wanted no such limits. “All foreign intelligence” targets in touch with Americans on any topic of interest should be fair game for U.S. spying, he said, according to two participants in the Aug. 2 conversation.

McConnell won the fight, extracting a key concession despite the misgivings of Democratic negotiators. Shortly after that exchange, the Bush administration leveraged Democratic acquiescence into a broader victory: congressional approval of a Republican bill that would expand surveillance powers far beyond what Democratic leaders had initially been willing to accept.

Yet both sides acknowledge that the administration’s resurrection of virtually unchecked Cold War-era power to surveil foreign targets without warrants may be only temporary. The law expires in 180 days, and Democrats, smarting from their political defeat, have promised to alter it with new legislation to be prepared next month, when Congress returns from its recess.

“The real train wreck happens in September,” said a senior administration official involved in the negotiations with Congress. He was referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s declaration hours after the bill’s passage that portions are “unacceptable” and that the public will not want to wait six months “before corrective action is taken.”

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No surprise here. Romney spent lots of money in Iowa and it paid off Saturday with his first-place showing.

The other top tier candidates, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani decided to forego the straw poll.

Mike Huckabee is pleased with his second-place showing and Sam Brownback came in third.

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Leave them alone; they are just trying to do their job.

UK The government was last night accused of turning the clock back 25 years by introducing a law that will allow courts to imprison prostitutes who are arrested for soliciting. The move has provoked the fury of women’s support groups, who say the move will do nothing to address the root causes of the illicit trade in sex.
The landmark 1982 Criminal Justice Act removed the power of courts to jail prostitutes for soliciting, replacing the threat of custodial sentences with fines. But the new Criminal Justice and Immigration bill, which will be debated in parliament in October, gives magistrates powers to detain soliciting prostitutes in prison for up to three days on remand if they fail to attend mandatory counselling sessions and ignore court orders.
‘It’s a new way to lock women up for consenting to sex; it’s just appalling,’ said Nina Lopez, spokeswoman for the English Collective of Prostitutes. ‘You can’t force women into rehabilitation.’
Under the law, prostitutes caught soliciting can be ordered to attend three meetings with a court-appointed expert to discuss ‘ending their involvement’ with prostitution. Magistrates will be able to summon those who fail to attend the sessions before a court. Those who do not obey the summons can be arrested and imprisoned for up to 72 hours.

The new law is ostensibly designed to help prostitutes break out of a cycle of vice. Drawn up partly in response to the murders of five prostitutes in Suffolk last year, it is supposed to help rehabilitation by putting women in touch with health officials and probation officers. But given the chaotic nature of most prostitutes’ lives, experts said it was likely that many will not attend meetings and end up in prison as a result.

‘This is yet another example of the state’s wish to exert moral disapproval of prostitution while recognising that it will not go away,’ said Harry Fletcher, assistant general-secretary of the probation officers’ union, Napo. ‘The threat of custody is extremely punitive.’

The threat of tougher measures also appears to be at odds with the government’s beliefs. The use of ‘traditional’ enforcement involving police crackdowns does not appear to reduce disorder, Home Office research indicates .

Some 3,500 prostitutes a year are brought to court or cautioned for soliciting offences. Allowing courts to detain prostitutes could see thousands in prison over the next decade, according to experts, who believe the new powers will prove popular with police and magistrates frustrated by the number of offenders who default on fines.

But at a time when the prison population is close to maximum capacity and prison reform groups are warning that the state is already locking up too many women, there are concerns that steps to detain prostitutes will backfire.

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When it’s so easy to check campaign contributors, why would anyone say something that isn’t quite true?

Using campaign appearances, e-mails to supporters, and Iowa TV ads, Illinois Senator Barack Obama has repeatedly reminded voters that his presidential campaign does not accept contributions from lobbyists or political action committees, casting his decision as a noble departure from the ways of Washington.

He hit the theme hard again in Tuesday’s Democratic debate in Chicago as he sought to capitalize on rival Hillary Clinton’s remark last weekend that taking lobbyists’ cash is acceptable because they “represent real Americans.”

“The people in this stadium need to know who we’re going to fight for,” Obama said at Soldier Field. “The reason that I’m running for president is because of you, not because of folks who are writing big checks, and that’s a clear message that has to be sent, I think, by every candidate.”

But behind Obama’s campaign rhetoric about taking on special interests lies a more complicated truth. A Globe review of Obama’s campaign finance records shows that he collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from lobbyists and PACs as a state legislator in Illinois, a US senator, and a presidential aspirant.

In Obama’s eight years in the Illinois Senate, from 1996 to 2004, almost two-thirds of the money he raised for his campaigns — $296,000 of $461,000 — came from PACs, corporate contributions, or unions, according to Illinois Board of Elections records. He tapped financial services firms, real estate developers, healthcare providers, oil companies, and many other corporate interests, the records show.

Obama’s US Senate campaign committee, starting with his successful run in 2004, has collected $128,000 from lobbyists and $1.3 million from PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit organization that tracks money in politics. His $1.3 million from PACs represents 8 percent of what he has raised overall. Clinton’s Senate committee, by comparison, has raised $3 million from PACs, 4 percent of her total amount raised, the group said.

In addition, Obama’s own federal PAC, Hopefund, took in $115,000 from 56 PACs in the 2005-2006 election cycle out of $4.4 million the PAC raised, according to CQ MoneyLine, which collects Federal Election Commission data. Obama then used those PAC contributions — including thousands from defense contractors, law firms, and the securities and insurance industries — to build support for his presidential run by making donations to Democratic Party organizations and candidates around the country.

Though Obama has returned thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from registered federal lobbyists since he declared his candidacy in February, his presidential campaign has maintained ties with lobbyists and lobbying firms to help raise some of the $58.9 million he collected through the first six months of 2007. Obama has raised more than $1.4 million from members of law and consultancy firms led by partners who are lobbyists, The Los Angeles Times reported last week. And The Hill, a Washington newspaper, reported earlier this year that Obama’s campaign had reached out to lobbyists’ networks to use their contacts to help build his fund-raising base.

Everyone takes money from lobbyists and PACs. Just tell the full truth instead of trying to talk your way around it.

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A Georgia police chief who had been called up to serve in Iraq was fired by his town council. That is, until until the Mayor stepped in and said the firing was illegal.

A small-town Georgia police chief who left to face enemy fire in Iraq only to return and be fired by town officials got his job back Wednesday, thanks to an angry mayor.

Doraville Mayor Ray Jenkins deemed his council’s recent vote to oust Police Chief John King contrary to state and federal laws and put the chief back on the job.

“I support him 100 percent,” Jenkins told FOXNews.com. “The community is really upset and disturbed. I am trying to get it under control.”

King, a colonel with the Army National Guard, came under fire by council members who were upset after he was sent to Iraq, calling him a part-time police chief. Doraville is about 16 miles outside of Atlanta with about 15,000 residents, King said.

“Apparently they feel it takes away from my effectiveness as police chief,” King said. “I think my service to my country has made me a better chief.”

The actions of the council are disgusting, but the Mayor got it right.

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