A little inside baseball........
 

The Governator and the Business Community

Two days after the special election, the California Chamber of Commerce held its post-election powwow in the former Four Seasons hotel in Newport Beach.

The talk of the two-day affair was the keynote speech from campaign strategist Mike Murphy, who told the room full of business leaders that they were to blame for the governor's defeat.

Numerous sources in attendance said Murphy chided the business community for not matching the spending by labor unions during the election. And because of the governor's defeat, Murphy warned the room that they should prepare for some uncomfortable moments in the year ahead.

"He said the governor is now basically in reelect mode, and that we should prepare for him to sign some things we're not going to like," said one business donor who heard the speech and requested anonymity.

Many in the room, which included executives from high tech firms, energy companies and developers, bristled at Murphy laying the blame at their feet.

They say the governor adopted a piecemeal agenda for the election that embraced a number of measures the business community essentially didn't care about. "Why would we give a sh-t about teacher tenure, or even public employee unions?" said one attendee. "We didn't even know what the governor was going to be pushing until the State of the State."

While Murphy's message did not go over well with some business leaders, some of whom blamed Murphy for the governor's defeat, the chamber is bracing for a new set of post-election political realities. They expect the governor to embrace a political agenda in 2006 that will include curbs on greenhouse gas emissions, an increase in the state's minimum wage (which he vetoed last year), and a host of new fees on everything from water use to state roads.

User fees may wind up as a key funding source for the massive new infrastructure bond the governor is expected to endorse next year. There has also been talk of using the roughly $1.3 billion in transportation money, set aside in Proposition 42, as a guaranteed funding stream for the new bond.

And business leaders privately acknowledge that a discussion of tax increases may be on the table.

After a disastrous campaign season in 2004, and a major setback in the governor's special election, the California business community and the Chamber of Commerce is bracing for the governor to move to the left, and they may be moving along with him, albeit grudgingly.

Republicans say that the specter of the 2006 elections will keep business groups closely aligned with the governor. "The two scariest words in the chamber's vocabulary are 'Governor Angelides'," said GOP strategist Bill
Whalen.

In the meantime, the chamber is looking to tweak their image as a knee-jerk, anti-tax organization. "There's an assumption that we're anti tax," said Dominic DiMare, the chamber's vice president of government relations. "We want to make sure there are sufficient safeguards and accountability for the investments we make."

Ben Austin, spokesman for Rob Reiner, says the universal preschool initiative headed for the ballot was hashed out with members of labor and the business community. Though the measure would implement a new income tax on the wealthiest Californians, the measure has the backing of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce as well as chambers in Oakland and San Francisco.

And while the state chamber is not supporting the measure, Austin says they did have a role in crafting it. "There is language in our initiative that the state chamber suggested. As we were draftng this, they gave us suggestions we took seriously and incorporated into the initiative."

Austin said he did not want to talk about specific provisions suggested by the state chamber, since they are not backing the initiative. But he did say the LA Chamber was pivotal in determining how the new preschool programs
should be funded.

"The LA Chamber was very interested in funding stream not being a split roll," he said, referring to a hike in the commercial property tax. "We accommodated that."

While it is far from peaceful between the chamber and labor groups, business leaders are beginning to think about changing their political approach. Internally, there is an ongoing discussion about the community's willingness to fund negative advertising, and to run candidates who may not necessarily be talking primarily about business issues.

Meanwhile, the state chamber's legislative political organization, JobsPAC, has hired Democrat Darry Sragow to help guide their 2006 electoral strategy, and Sragow says part of his pitch will be to convince the chamber, and other business groups to support Democratic candidates next November.

Sragow says the business community has to simultaneously be more cutthroat and less partisan. "You don't get very much in the halls of power without being able to strike fear in the hearts of people who are going against you.
People who are successful in politics aren't just liked or loved --they are also feared," he said.

"The business community, writ large, whether it's the chamber or chamber plus [others] is going to have a tough time until they become respected and feared."

Sragow said he in his work for JobsPAC, he will only work to elect Democratic candidates. "I will certainly never work for a Republican. That's not even remotely possible."

Some rifts still remain in the business community from the 2004 election cycle. Some former members of JobsPAC, including Ed Voice, Southern California Edison and the California Association of Realtors, split from the
organization, mostly over the race in the 53rd Assembly District. JobsPAC supported Republican Greg Hill, while the other groups opted to back Democrat Mike Gordon. But leaders from the organizations that left JobsPAC say there may be some room for cooperation during the next election cycle.

But Sragow was adamant that include supporting some Democrats, not just in the primaries, but in the fall. The chamber says they will be supporting some business-friendly Democrats next November. And he says he is pushing the group to focus on state Senate races.

"When you're dealing with Senate candidates, typically they have some experience under their belts. Most have served at least a term in the Assembly," he said. "They're not better human beings, they're just more experienced. The argument I am making is if Jobs PAC and the business community chooses to play in contested primaries, in the Senate, at least they know what they're getting."

Catch 22
 

Since the White House won't turn over much of the intelligence it received, how can you be so sure they are representing it fairly?

Catch 22
 

Did you look into his heart or something?

Happy Thanksgiving
 

They have been deceived by a Democratic PR campaign and the complicit mainstream media.

Catch 22
 

Torture is funny!

eta: quadfecta!

In this post from Crooked Timber (links in original), Henry responds to something in the Economist, but he might as well be responding to Spanky.

eta: more here

Catch 22
 

Bush was negligent!
People, it's evident!

. . . Naaah.

Happy Thanksgiving to ALL.

S_A_M

P.S. In the spirit of the season, I'll leave out my usual stuff about arrogance, blinders, incompetence, etc. Those are also really hard to rhyme.

Peace.

Nice! But point of order, if I may. This part here:

The critics mentioned in the piece aren’t making “the charge that [Bush] knew all along that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction.” I’m not aware of anyone apart from a few crackpots who are.

Are you now claiming that you never claimed Bush lied? I am really close to never posting on this board again from stuff posted earlier. If you now take the position you never claimed he lied, I won't challenge. I will only post on PB in my Penske voice here after, unless you admit you are full of shit by midnight PST.

Catch 22
 

Penske recognized he was a net negative to this board and left. Your reason for staying is........?

"The critics mentioned in the piece aren’t making “the charge that [Bush] knew all along that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction.” I’m not aware of anyone apart from a few crackpots who are."

This is such a preposterous lie. That is exactly what all the critics are saying. Almost no one I have read, or I have heard complaining has acknowledged Bush was not lying when he said there were WMDs. When people are saying Bush lied that are saying he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction. It was totally duplicitous to say Bush lied about the existence of the weapons, I guess I shouldn't expect to the same people to be honest about what they were saying. Once it became apparant that no matter how many time they repeated Bush lied it was still obvious it was B.S. on its face, they then try and claim they didn't mean what they meant.

This is really pathetic.

For the record
 

I should point out that I am pretty sure that at one time Ty did admit to me that he did not think Bush lied. But he is the only one the board that has admitted it.

For the record
 

Suppose I'm selling a house, and it has water in the basement. I don't really know about the water down there, because I don't go down there, and when other people go down there I make it clear I don't want to hear what they saw. If I don't make some sort of disclosure about the water in the basement, I'm misleading the buyer. Perhaps I didn't lie, in the sense that I put myself in a position where I didn't have to say anything that was literally untrue. But if you're the buyer, you don't really care about the lying, per se. That's not the question. The question is, were you misled?

For the record
 

I'm curious as to why no one ever talks about Saddam's violation of UN resolution (I forget the number...1441?), which allowed the use of force, anymore. To me, that was the biggest reason to go in (I'm a Dem who supported the invasion) and I was disgusted when all the other countries that approved the resolution didn't have the stones to back it up.

All of the WMD, mobile anthrax labs, and yellow cake stuff was just gravy to me, we went in because he fragrantly violated the UN resolution and someone had to enforce it.

Regarding whether Bush lied or not, I think he was ignorant of information that went against his case. Whether he was willfully ignorant is something that will become more clear years from now. Certainly he seemed to surround himself primarily with advocates of going to war instead of getting both sides of the story.

For the record
 

The problem with this entire debate is that we haven't had nearly enough analogies.

Damn, Ty. Since the run-up to the war and the beginning of the war and the war and the bloody insurgency following the war, it seems like every week you come up with some new "no, THAT"S not what we've been saying, we've always been saying _______!" The invasion was doomed, it went too fast, it's a quagmire, there would never be a vote or a constitution, the vote meant bad things, the constitution was flawed, the groups could never work together . . .

It's Eurasia this week, right?

For the record
 

And litotes. We need more litotes.

For the record
 

And stuffing. We need more stuffing. Hey, it's Thanksgiving.

Leaving ya'all to a Merry Thanksgiving with this . . .
 

"Harriet Miers walks into the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings. Arlen Specter asks her, "Ms. Miers, how would you describe your approach to interpreting the Constitution?”

Miers, visibly excited, says, “I’m glad you asked. My approach is really quite interesting. I think you’ll like it.”

“Well then,” Specter says. “Let’s hear it.”

Miers launches into an explanation: “Well, first thing I do is find a fairly quiet room with a clean desk. I put the Constitution on one side of the desk, and a Bible on the other. I then completely disrobe, as to be completely unfettered for the job at hand.”

“Uh, Ms. Miers, I’m not sure that—”

“I then take the Constitution and stick it all the way up my ass. This is fairly difficult, because I like to use a large, leather-bound version, but I’ve gotten much better at it. It’s usually just the gold-plated index tabs that hurt.”

“Ms. Miers, you realize that we’re on C-SPAN right now....”

“Then, once the Constitution is safely hidden in my rectum, I bring my cat—Oscar—into the room, and begin feeding him pages of the Bible. He mostly likes the New Testament. Of course, since the Bible I use is printed on a 15% cotton-fiber stock, Oscar can only keep it down for so long. But when he finally coughs up the Bible-laden hairball, the pages have been reduced to a fine paste that it is somehow perfectly suited for use as decorative body paint.”

“I really think we should take a break now, Ms. Miers.”

“Wait just a moment. So now that I have this kitty-puke body paint, I’m finally ready for the midget to come in.”

“Ms. Miers—”

“I’m sorry, little person. The little person takes the cat-vomit paint, and begins transcribing my thoughts on the facts of the case in longhand, backwards, using, for parchment, my glorious, naked body, and using, for a quill, his glorious—”

“Would somebody get a paramedic in here? I think Feinstein just fainted!”

“Now, while the anatomically-gifted dwarf is dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s, I take a moment to forcibly eject the Constitution from my cavity. I then beat the cat to death with it—that little fucker just ate my Bible, after all—skin his corpse, and spread it out onto the desk. I then proceed to pleasure the Sex Gnome with the Constitution, all the while rolling my body across the desk, which transfers a now-readable version of the transcription onto the spread-out cat’s fur. I then wrap myself in this fabulous cloak, borrow a quarter from my Magnificent Porn Pygmy, and flip it into the air. If it lands on heads, I donate the cloak to charity, marry the little guy, and decide for the appellant on moral grounds. If it lands on tails, I donate the Oompa Loompa to charity, have myself declared legally married to the Cat-Skin-and-Puke Blanket, and decide for the appellee on a technicality.”

At this point, Feinstein has fainted, Kennedy has had three heart attacks, and Specter looks as if he’s just vomited down his suit pants, which, in fact, he has. “That’s quite a judicial philosophy you have there, Ms. Miers,” he says. “What do you call it?”

Miers jumps up from her seat, gives a cute little wave of her hands and says:

“Originalism!”



http://wingsandvodka.blogs.com/blog/..._promised.html

It's a wonder anyone takes me seriously..
 

True Story: It has been pretty dry in California lately so often I get up in the night and put lotion on my face (I know I should get a humidifier, I just haven't gotten around to it yet). At the Gym I had an injury recently so I have also been putting Ben Gay on my shoulder. Last night I grabbed the lotion bottle and rubbed it on my face only to find out I had actually grabbed the Ben Gay.

Didn't get a lot of sleep.

"We'll put as many troops on the ground as commanders ask for."
 

Time:

• If the Repulblican Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee wants to get a second opinion on how the war in Iraq is going, where does he turn? To the Pentagon, but not to the top brass this time. In an unusual closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill last week, Virginia's John Warner, joined by Democratic Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Mark Dayton of Minnesota, sat across the table from 10 military officers chosen for their experience on the battlefield rather than in the political arena. Warner rounded up the battalion commanders to get at what the military calls "ground truth"--the unvarnished story of what's going on in Iraq.
  
  "We wanted the view from men who had been on the tip of the spear, and we got it," said John Ullyot, a Warner spokesman who declined to comment on what was said at the meeting but confirmed that some Capitol Hill staff members were also present. According to two sources with knowledge of the meeting, the Army and Marine officers were blunt. In contrast to the Pentagon's stock answer that there are enough troops on the ground in Iraq, the commanders said that they not only needed more manpower but also had repeatedly asked for it. Indeed, military sources told TIME that as recently as August 2005, a senior military official requested more troops but got turned down flat.

Rummy can suck it.

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

GaTTI- timetable to pull out or more troops go in? I know you think Bush is fucking up, but which way?


http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/paro...all_morons.jpg

Penske-style post!TM

Ty@50 would agree- Ty now not so much
 

“[AMERICA] had become intimidated by a foolish and destructive wind that ran across the land. It was a suicidal ideology: liberalism. It taught that the greatest virtue was national self-criticism. It resulted in people hating their own great country, America. And thus a handful of well-positioned, manipulative liberal elitists were able to bring down an entire powerful country.”

I thought back to what distorted times they had been, back in late 2005. While Christians were reviled and seen by liberals as the enemy, jihadist terrorists were “understood” and their detention raised a cry in their behalf for “compassion.” Social and political energy was channeled in two directions: overwhelming concern for the highest degree of humane treatment for Islamic terrorists coupled with an all out assault against Christians wanting merely to say Merry Christmas.
.
.
“So what happened, Grandpa? How did we lose America?”

“I’ll tell you: our soldiers on the battlefield overseas were brave, but we folks at home had no guts.”



Penske-style post!TM

PS- I now believe John Gotti was able to run his empire from behind bars

Dunno. The point of my post was that Rummy hasn't lied of course, he simply listened to the one(s) on payroll who said "yep, we're fine sir!," ignored the others, and chose to say that we'ved given our commanders everything they asked for. Simple, no?

Murtha's actual plan sounded like an interesting one, in which a number of troops are moved to the periphery (so they're not a daily reminder and target) but not completely out of the theatre (so that they can move where needed and stomp out Terrorist Fuckheads where and when needed), and that there's a gradual drawdown over the next year or two. That BushCo decided to turn on a dime from SwiftBoating him to throwing rose petals at Murtha's feet suggest that they might actually be thinking in these terms too.

FWIW, your picture doesn't really paint a thousand words analyzing Murtha's strategy, instead boiling it down to a couple of dozen. Penske would be proud. If he were reading this, of course.

Okay. As my inner Penske suspected, you have no opinion on what to do, you just want to criticize what those in power are doing. That actually is a skill that could move you up in the Dem party over the next few decades.

But say it this way- at first I thought we should bring troops home, then I thought we should send more there.

For one, I never called it a quagmire. As I recall, you put that word in my mouth, and then had to admit I hadn't used it. Or maybe you didn't admit it -- maybe you just disappeared for a while.

In that vein, please find the post where I said the invasion was doomed, or the one where I said there would never be a vote, or a constitution, or that the vote meant bad things.

I may have said the constitution was flawed. I may have said the groups could never work together. If so, I haven't exactly been proven wrong yet.

You, like Bush and Cheney, would much prefer to argue with straw men. When they do it, it's political technique. When you do, it's intellectual laziness.

For the record
 

For the record, if I've never said something, do I have to state whether or not I think that same something is true?

OK. My posts on this subject from way back should make it clear that I've never said (and have no reason to think) that Bush actually "lied."

I accept Bilmore's long-ago characterization of his actions as a "hard sell." I view it as similar to what a succesful trial lawyer would do (especially one with a different view than I of the role of an attorney as an "officer of the court.")

One of his biggest problems in my view, but also one of his great strengths politically, is that he and his administration try to operate in perennial campaign mode.

[eta -- I do not mean by this that he makes the decisions always based on their popularity. I mean that the way they sell them, the way they treat opposition and allies, and the way they try to handle problems are, in my view, more suited to a political campaign than to the art of governing.

That is perhaps understandable, given that: (a) Bush as a campaigner is far superior to Bush as a day to day "CEO" of an administration; and (b) his domestic political team (until thsi recent unpleasantnes with Mr. Fitzgerald) has proven to be deeper and more skilled than his policy teams.]

Thank God, folks. He sure is a fuck-up, but not a liar. Say it loud and say it proud.

S_A_M

Okay. Flip it, Hanky-poo. Please articulate this evening your plan for troop deployments (presumably for the indefinite future), or we can safely conclude that you march in lockstep with the impressive Bush Iraq policy to date. This is a skill that will preserve your sinecure in the Bush Administration firmament, which was nice in 2004, but in 2005-6 might well be marked by your standing alone on the dance floor holding watery Heineken, as GOP Congressional candidates run for the exits.

Happy Thanksgiving and pleasant tryptophan dreams, even to you, Hank.

Sigh. Gosh, I've missed you.

I would post a biting comment that would make DTB realize that Ty is really quite trite, except I don't post here anymore.

RIP PB.

For the record
 

Afghanistan is being cleaned up, and elections have been held. By all accounts, the majority of citizens there are grateful. Saddam is gone. Iraq has had elections, voted in a constitution, and is even now beginning the process of inter-party negotiation and compromise that is the hallmark of a working democracy. By all accounts, the majority of citizens are grateful. Partially as a result of the lessening of Saddam's destabilizing influences and partly because of Bush's influences, Israel and Palestine are closer to figuring out a way to live together. By all accounts, the majority of citizens are grateful. The markets are way up. Our educational systems are finally beginning to pay attention to the lowest achieving groups - something they could ignore previously because there were no metrics. Tax cuts have fueled the economy. Bolton has now pushed through the anti-Hezbollah measure where everyone before him has failed. I predict Roberts is going to be one of the all-time most popular, least partisan SC Justices in memory. N Korea is apparently backing down from its earlier position and is talking to all interested parties - something Bush insisted on and characterized as crucial. I could go on, but this paragraph is already too long.

Yes, quite the fuck-up.

What's truly fucked up is that so many of your cohorts can allow their visceral Bush-hate to make them speak so irrationally and ridiculously as to say that the current status is fucked up. I remain firmly convinced that, if Bush found a magical bean that produced enough food and clean water to end starvation as we know it, you would be here telling us that that stoopid fucking Bush should have more green vegetables and fewer proteins in the diet, and that he stole the election, and Gore or Kerry would be feeding us in a far more healthy way, and, by the way, Bush is stoopid.

(Oh, and, nice save and backpedal with the oops, okay, maybe he didn't really lie like we keep trumpeting in the theme that is the sole essence of our party. Admitting that, but then saying he's a poopy-head anyway. Strong position.

Now, pull a SS and yell "Katrina!" As long as your response is as sophisticated as his, you can go sit by him.

Oh, and, Merry Thanksgiving!

Nice fake. You post something - and I assume that, when you post a Dem rant, you're doing it for some reason aside from convincing us that that particular ranter is nuts - whose main point is, we never said that! And, of course, that's exactly the theme that's been pushed by you ("you" is the overarching liberal Bush-hating solution-avoiding big-city mass) all these many months. But, did you ("you" here means, well, you - Ty) ever say those exact words? Don't remember, but I certainly remember you saying, over and over and over, that, gosh, maybe all of those good things might someday happen, and I ("I" here meaning, me, Bilmore) must be far more optimistic than you, 'cuz, well, you just couldn't see it, given the idiot we had in charge.

For you to come here and say anything even remotely resembling "well, I always said it would all work. or at least I never poo-pooed it" is just funny. ("Funny" here means, complete and arrant bullshit.)

She does punctuation, not logic. Be kind.

For the record
 

2. And isn't it "Happy Thanksgiving".

That's right, Hanky. Follow b's shining example.

don't get hoodwinked. It is said that Mein Kampf was written in long-hand and without any misspellings or grammar errors.

Good grammar does not equal good content.

What a non-responsive pile of crap this was. I'm sorry I wasted fourteen seconds of my life reading it.

Yeah Ty! Even though most people say you're at fault for the board being dead, you're not. You are not at fault- of course not. I have decided to quit this board because of you, but I'm sure......well actually I do think your intellectual dishonesty combined with your toadies acting like you make sense have killed the board. Bye.

For the record
 

If you're going to suck Bush's cock, do it in 2 paragraphs or less. And leave me out of it.

For the record
 

"Backpedaling"? "Like _we_ keep trumpeting in the theme that is the sole essence of _our_ party."? I see you still can't seem to break out of your habit of viewing groups of people as undifferentiated masses.

Nice. Keep on believing that. If you do, you'll be sitting there wondering "What happened" after my party hands you your ass.

You are on record as saying that it is honorable and defensible to belive that Bush was negligent in his rationale for taking us into the Iraq war. I do take that position, and I believe that his handling of much of it thereafter has been incompetent as well.(particularly the first year). Mission Accomplished!

So, its honorable and defensible, but still makes you see red, hmm? Well, I'll have to reconsider my entire philosophy after hearing such well-considered criticism from a neutral observer like yourself.

You know, you're right, B. Its all good.

S_A_M

P.S. It cracks me up that the Dems being successful at demagoguing Bush pisses you off so much. Since Lee Atwater, your party has made a living at doing the same damn thing -- its a big piece of how the GOP has been so damn successful in national campaigns since then. The Dems were much slower and worse at it -- not sufficiently disciplined and organized to do it well until motivated by minority party status.

You think you're better than that, spend time talking about Bush's "honor." Fucking hilarious.

You know, I think the big, resignation flounce-out would be more effective, and more justified if you had done something better than the crap you criticize.

Its been too long since you've even tried. So quit already, if the last year is the best you can do.

S_A_M