Sunday. Jack Kelly. Global Warming. Spin.

Sigh. I thought we'd gotten further than this. With great disappointment, I guess I have to accept that this week's column by Jack Kelly is strong evidence that he does not, in fact, read this blog.

Or else he would have seen this posting from Thursday. Perhaps if he'd seen it, he would have saved himself a whole mess of embarrassment.

No matter. We'll just retrace our steps.

He begins:

Al Gore claimed in his 2006 crockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" that nine of the 10 hottest years in history have been in the last decade, with 1998 the warmest year on record.

Not so, says the GISS, which is affiliated with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Columbia University, and is headed by Dr. James Hansen, scientific godfather of global warming alarmism. According to the GISS, the hottest years ever in the United States were, in order: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938 and 1939.

He then goes on to retell the Trib's editorial in analysed in Thursday's posting. Hey, here's an interesting question: How much of a difference is there between the newly corrected temperature data from 1934 and 1998?

Here's how a real climate scientist, Gavin Schmidt, describes things:

The net effect of the change was to reduce mean US anomalies by about 0.15 ºC for the years 2000-2006. There were some very minor knock on effects in earlier years due to the GISTEMP adjustments for rural vs. urban trends. In the global or hemispheric mean, the differences were imperceptible (since the US is only a small fraction of the global area).

There were however some very minor re-arrangements in the various rankings (see data). Specifically, where 1998 (1.24 ºC anomaly compared to 1951-1980) had previously just beaten out 1934 (1.23 ºC) for the top US year, it now just misses: 1934 1.25ºC vs. 1998 1.23ºC. None of these differences are statistically significant.

For those with a calculator, that's two one hundredths of a degree.

I should point out that nowhere in his story (and this matches The Trib more or less exactly) does Jack Kelly mention that the errors affected the US data a tiny bit and the global data not at all.

Schmidt goes on. First about the US data:

More importantly for climate purposes, the longer term US averages have not changed rank. 2002-2006 (at 0.66 ºC) is still warmer than 1930-1934 (0.63 ºC - the largest value in the early part of the century) (though both are below 1998-2002 at 0.79 ºC). (The previous version - up to 2005 - can be seen here).

And then about the global data:

In the global mean, 2005 remains the warmest (as in the NCDC analysis). CRU has 1998 as the warmest year but there are differences in methodology, particularly concerning the Arctic (extrapolated in GISTEMP, not included in CRU) which is a big part of recent global warmth. No recent IPCC statements or conclusions are affected in the slightest.

And he sums up:

Sum total of this change? A couple of hundredths of degrees in the US rankings and no change in anything that could be considered climatically important (specifically long term trends).

And yet to Jack Kelly, it's enough to shake the foundations of climate science.

Let's fact check some more of Jack's column. I got some time. Here's Jack:

The United States is only 2 percent of the world's land mass. It's possible the rest of the world's been getting hotter in the last few years, even if the United States hasn't. But as Lorne Gunter of Canada's National Post noted, we only have surface temperature readings for half the world today. Prior to World War II, we had readings for less than a quarter of it.

So who is this Lorne Gunter? Is he an expert in some way?

He's a "right-of-centre" columnist from Alberta, Canada. The short column from which Kelly takes the above information is another skeptical view of the global climate change data. In that instance it's a four paragraph over-simplification of how temperature data has been collected by weather satellites.

But Kelly's finale is true to form. Here's the last two paragraphs:

As the GISS was quietly acknowledging its error, Newsweek magazine, with exquisitely bad timing, declared in an Aug. 13 cover story that the debate on global warming was over.

"The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading," wrote Newsweek contributing editor Robert Samuelson in the following issue.

Again, this is the error about the US data that was not statistically significant nor does it affect the IPCC's conclusions in the slightest. Jack Kelly quotes Robert Samuelson as saying the story is "fundamentally misleading." But what part of the story? That the planet is warming up? That the debate on global warming is over?

Uh, no. Here's the Samuelson piece. Here's the article Samuelson is talking about. And here's the paragraph where Kelly found the phrase "fundamentally misleading."

If you missed NEWSWEEK's story, here's the gist. A "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change." This "denial machine" has obstructed action against global warming and is still "running at full throttle." The story's thrust: discredit the "denial machine," and the country can start the serious business of fighting global warming. The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading.

So what was "funamentally misleading" to Samuelson centered on the "denial machine" not about whether the debate is over. Here's an example:

...NEWSWEEK's "denial machine" is a peripheral and highly contrived story. NEWSWEEK implied, for example, that ExxonMobil used a think tank to pay academics to criticize global-warming science. Actually, this accusation was long ago discredited, and NEWSWEEK shouldn't have lent it respectability.

Samuelson spends more time writing that, whatever the truth, we probably can't do much about global anyway. And what, pray tell, does he say about the global warming "debate" itself?

Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it.

Too bad Jack isn't reading this. It might stop him from making similar mistakes in the future.

Reform Pittsburgh Now Site

Blogging from Podcamp downtown.

I just came from the press conference announcing the official opening of Reform Pittsburgh Now website. Looks like an interesting idea.

Councilman Bill Peduto ran the show with the newly famous and ever apple-cheeked Justine sitting just to his left. The room was dark (better to see the projected websites, my dear) and cool and completely full. Agent Ska was there with her camera. Rauterkus live blogged. I felt completely old-skool with a pen and paper.

As far as I can tell, the website's a blending, a co-mingling if you will, in an odd post-modern Reece's Peanut Butter Cups sort of way, of local politics and something Bill Peduto called "social media." Justine et al were to be the "social media" part of the venture. Peduto's former campaign manager Matt Preston will be in charge.

Peduto began the announcement by saying that the Pittsburgh city council will have a new make-up in January as three of the nine will be newcomers. But as yet there's no new agenda to reform the city. This is where the website and it's related Political Action Committee come in.

PACs are usually run, he said, by special interest groups, law firms, lobbyists, and the like. This PAC, he said, will be different. Run out of cyberspace, pushing for reform and transparency in local government, it'll be something new in these parts. It'll be a new way for more people to get involved in the process.

In an earlier session today, I heard Cynthia Closkey and Christina Schulman discuss how blogs can create a community of readers. In the case of Reform Pittsburgh Now, Peduto's looking to form a community of people all linked by their own interest in reforming the local political scene. He's looking to to raise the bar above the "personality politics" that's been the status quo for so long and to create an interactive forum for local folks to be better involved in the process.

There'll be a calendar of events, a library for public documents and so on. In a few months, there'll be so much material in the website's "library" that one could spend every minute of a weekend and still not have enough time to get through it all. Every minute of a weekend (48 hours x 60 minutes/hour) is, I think, 2,880 minutes. That's a lot of minutes.

I was curious about the funding, though. In the question period after the presentation, I asked how all this was being paid for. Bill said that the first $3000 came from his mayoral campaign account. The after that, he approached political types of every stripe for funding.

The PAC, as it's set up, is prohibited from endorsing particular candidates. When asked how it could then influence any politicians, he said that the PAC (and the website) would be making it easier for people to contact officials on their own. That's the pressure.

Bottom line, he said, was to make it fun - get the negativity out of local politics.

Sounds like a good idea.

BREAKING NEWS:Steely McBeam Begins Feasting On Pittsburgh's Children

When reached for comment, he said, "What's the problem? I need their innocent life essense in order to maintain my physique. It was either that or steroids, you know."

Take that, Carbolic Smoke Ball!

Reform Pittsburgh Now Debuts at Pgh PodCamp

What: Reform Pittsburgh Now Live Site Release
When: Saturday, August 18, 2007, 1:45pm
Where: Pittsburgh Art Institute, 420 Blvd of the Allies, Rm B (435)
Broadcast Live: live.podcamppittsburgh.com

Bill Peduto will be unveiling the website for Reform Pittsburgh Now at a live web-cast session at Pittsburgh PodCamp (http://www.podcamppittsburgh.com/ )

The session will focus on the use of social media to affect policy change. Panelists include Bill Peduto, John Carman ( http://www.avenuedesignstudios.com/ ), and Justine Ezarik*** ( http://www.ijustine.tv/ ).

The Reform Pittsburgh site will be highly interactive including blogs, Talk Shoe live call-ins, and mucho videos.

***If you don't know who ijustine is by now, you haven't been watching any local or national news this week. She's the Pittsburgh video blogger who has a very well-produced video out there about her 300 page iphone bill from AT&T (see youtube clip here). The bill included the text of all her text messaging. If only Cheney, Libby and that whole gang had used the iphone we could have just staked out there mailboxes for their bills instead of trying to sue them to find the "missing" emails. (OK, OK. I grant you that you'd likely get shot if you went within 500 feet of Cheney's mailbox.)

Ron Paul

For those of you who listened to David and myself on The Lynn Cullen Show today and heard perennial local candidate (and blogger) Mark Rauterkus call in the last few minutes of the show to plug Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul, the blog posts that I mentioned about Paul can be found here, here and here.

After you read them, you'll understand why I'm not a fan of Paul.

Both Political Junkies On Air

I'll be on with David this morning after 11:00 AM.

Call in at (412) 333-1360

AM NewsTalk 1360 AM

One Political Junkie. On The Air. TODAY

As if you didn't already know...

I'm guest-hosting on Lynn Cullen's radio show TODAY at 9am-noon. Just follow the "listen live" link to, well you know, listen to the show live.

The schedule's changed a little bit. Elizabeth Holtzman couldn't do the show, but I will be discussing her book for the entire 2nd hour.

Feel free to live blog in the comments. Or you can e-mail me questions/comments here.

Should be loads of fun!

The Trib Spins Global Warming. Again.

From yesterday's editorial:

Thought 1998 was the warmest year on record in the United States? That's what Al Gore acolytes have been telling us.

Nope. It was 1934, according to newly revised figures from NASA, released quietly. The error is embarrassing

What sort of error? How big? Here's what happened. This is from Wired.com:

The data involved temperature measurements made at weather stations in the United States. Back in 2001, scientists the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration realized that some data was being skewed by stations making recordings at different times of day, or being located in once-rural areas that have become heavily urban, causing local temperatures to rise.

They published the a formula to account for the discrepancies. Generally, this lowered the average temperatures recorded. However, NASA's weather-crunching programs weren't updated. As a result, subsequent NASA temperature recordings were incorrectly high, and some earlier data needed revision downwards.

How big was the mistake? About .15 degrees celsius, or .3 degrees fahrenheit.

Now, this isn't a huge number, but it's enough to make a difference -- if, that is, the mistake applied to the whole planet. But the mistake involved only the United States, which covers but a small fraction of the globe. [emphasis added]

Ah, well that changes things, doesn't it? They sum it up this way:

We don't have the science to predict accurately what the climate will be in 50 or 100 years. Now we find out that NASA didn't get the previous temperature averages right.

In comparison to making climate forecasts, that ought to have been pretty simple.

Again, the corrections were for data in the US only, not globally. Something the otherwise erudite editorialists working for Dickiecougarmellonscaife utterly failed to inform its readers.

Here's NASA's graph of the data. See that little green line? That's the correction.

And remember that's just for temperatures in the US. Here's some data for global temperatures.

Notice anything? Like the general upward trend from, say, 1910 on? Granted, things reversed themselves from the mid-40s to the mid-60s, but look at what happens after.

Yea, there's doubt about that the temperature's rising.

ANTI-WAR events THU and FRI

Iraq Summer Campaign
Itinerary for Thursday 8/16 & Friday 8/17

Organizers Rory Casey (202-903-3229) and Caleb Payne (202-486-8607) or (412)828-5102 ext. 27

Thursday @ 10:00am Rally outside of Arlen Specter Town Hall Meeting Seton Hill University, Greensburg, Pa. Actual town hall will start at 11:00am and we will bring some of the protest inside as we demand Specter take a stand against this war.
One Seton Hill University Drive Greesnburg, Pa 15601

Thursday @ 1:00pm Rally outside of Specter Town Hall Meeting California University California, PA. Town Hall starts at 2:15 and just like in Greensburg we will bring the protest inside and demand Specter take a stand.
250 University Drive California, Pa

Thursday @ 4:30PM*** Deliver report card on Iraq War voting record, end the war cookies, brownies, and other goodies to Murphy's Mt. Lebanon office. Attempt to speak to Murphy and/or staff and once again invite him to the 8/28 take a stand event.

Thursday @ 5:00PM Drive time rally, followed by visibility canvass of local businesses within walking distance of Murphy's office.
504 Washington Road, Mt. Lebanon, PA 15228

Thursday @ 6:30PM Phone banking operation for recruiting turn out for the take a stand event at our office in Blawnox, PA.
237 6th St. Blawnox, PA 15237.

Friday @ 8:00AM Arrive at office in Blawnox, look up press clips, read local papers and blogs, prepare for 9:00AM state-wide conference call.
237 6th St. Blawnox, PA 15237.

Friday @ 10:30AM Yard sign canvass/distribution.

Friday @ 3:30PM Rally outside of Tim Murphy's office 504 Washington Rd. Mt Lebanon, Pa 15228

*** NOTE: Will Tim Murphy call the cops on his constituents again? The following video shows the second time a group of Rep. Murphy's constituents were refused entry into the PUBLICLY FUNDED office of their representative. The office doors were locked and the police were called.

What is Tim Murphy afraid of?
(Apparently baked goods.)


Here's a Post-Gazette story about another refusal by Murphy to talk to his constituents. Word has it that a New York Times reporter will be at today's protest.
.

Déjà vu all over again

Bob Mayo must have been feeling some serious déjà vu while reporting the following:

PITTSBURGH -- About 232 children taking part in Pittsburgh's summer youth employment program are wearing city-issued T-shirts with Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's name appearing on them.

The shirts have Republican mayoral candidate Mark DeSantis upset."It's not the mayor's program," DeSantis said.

"It's the city of Pittsburgh's program. It's not the mayor's money. It's taxpayers' dollars. It's not the mayor's government. It's city government. There's really no reason to promote his name with a city program."

DeSantis notes that Ravenstahl ordered suspensions for members of the city Redd-Up Crew when they wore political shirts in support of City Councilman Jeff Koch's re-election campaign.

DeSantis went on to say the T-shirts showed "really bad judgment" and that the whole thing was "frankly just tacky."

Here's the graphic on the new T's:


Here's a stroll down memory lane:


(Is there some secret stock of hideous neon green T-shirts in the bowels of City Hall?)
While Lil Mayor Luke often expresses the thought that anything anyone else does is "political," his spokesperson said that "the mayor's name on the summer youth program shirts is not political."

She added that "...he is a mentor to all of the youth living in this great city."

I'd add that he's particularly a role model for all the youth of this great city who come from a politically connected family, get their ACDC seat while still a teen, and become mayor of this great city on a fluke.


*************************************************************In a totally unrelated story...

Republican mayoral challenger Mark DeSantis was surprised when he donned his new campaign T-shirt to see that the words "Mayor Luke Ravenstahl" were added to the bottom of his logo:


When contacted, the local printer said that "it was an honest mistake."

The printed added, "We do tons of printing for the city and when we saw the Pittsburgh skyline on the shirt, well, you understand."
.

UPDATE For Friday's Radio Show

OK. Here's the schedule so far (still subject to change, of course).

For those who don't know, I'm guest hosting Lynn Cullen's radio show this Friday, August 17th from 9 to noon.

Hour One: Jon Delano is up first and then in the second half of the hour, Mark DeSantis
Hour Two: Elizabeth Holtzman, author of "The Impeachment of George W. Bush" and then I'll be taking calls in the second half of the hour
Hour Three: Still open, but I'm working on something special.

NOTE: I offered time to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, but his office told me he couldn't be on the show because of a scheduling conflict.

Two Views on Rove's Legacy

The first from a Conservative - David Frum (the first from...Frum?) a former speechwriter of dubya's. He paints Karl Rove as a coalition builder who specialized in "polarization" politics:

He united his own base on one side — and united his opponents on the other. Al Gore and John Kerry each won 48 percent, the best back-to-back performance by a losing party since the 19th century. Play-to-the-base politics can be a smart strategy — so long as your base is larger than your opponents’.

And describes the insular outlook of dubya's White House:

In my brief service as a speechwriter inside the Bush administration, I often wondered why it was that skeptical experts on issues like immigration could never get even a hearing for their point of view. We took the self-evident brilliance of our plans so much for granted that we would not even meet, for example, with conservative academics who had the facts and figures to demonstrate the illusion of Rovian hopes for a breakthrough among Hispanic voters. We were so mesmerized by the specious analogies between 1996 and 1896 that we forgot that analogies are literary devices, not evidence.

I like that last line. Wish I'd written it.

The problem, though, is that Rove's MO has little time to work any more. Frum calls him a "miner extracting the last nuggets from an exhausted seam." Here's why:

But it has been apparent for many years that the Democratic base is growing faster than the Republican base. The numbers of the unmarried and the non-churchgoing are growing faster than the numbers of married and church-going Americans. The nonwhite and immigrant population is growing at a faster rate than that of white native-borns. The Democrats are the party of the top and bottom of American society; the Republicans do best in the great American middle, which is losing ground.

I can't agree that the Democrats are the "party of the top and bottom of American society" but everything else in there seems right.

It's a good jumping off point to the next view. This time from the Ragin' Cajun hisself, James Carville. After pointing out some recent wins of Rove's (avoiding the 2000 "election" of dubya), Carville writes:

If only things were so neat and simple. The evidence is now pretty conclusive that Mr Rove may have lost more than just an election in 2006. He has lost an entire generation for the Republican party.

And offers up his evidence why:

A late July poll for Democracy Corps, a non-profit polling company, shows that a generic Democratic presidential candidate now wins voters under 30 years old by 32 percentage points. The Republican lead among younger white non-college-educated men, who supported President George W. Bush by a margin of 19 percentage points three years ago, has shrunk to 2 percentage points. Ideological divisions between the Republican party and young voters are growing. Young voters generally favour larger government providing more services, 68 per cent to 28 per cent. On every issue, from the budget to national security, young voters responded overwhelmingly that Democrats would do a better job in government.

I do have to say that while Carville does write that Democracy Corps is a "non-profit polling company," he fails to say that it's his "non-profit polling company." He's one of its founders. Carville adds quite quickly:

It is not just Democracy Corps that has found this. A host of new polls and surveys over the course of the past few months has served as a harbinger of a rocky 2008 election for Republicans.

The March poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 50 per cent of Americans identify as Democrats while only 35 per cent say they are Republican. The June NBC-Wall Street Journal poll showed 52 per cent of Americans would prefer a Democratic president while only 31 per cent would support a Republican, the largest gap in the 20-year history of the survey.

So long Karl, we hardly knew ye.

Jack Kelly on the FISA Reorganization

Sorry this is late - I was in Canada.

I posted recently on the Congressional votes giving President George Bush even more surveillance authority.

Well my favorite local conservative pundit, Jack Kelly, chimed in on the recently retooled FISA statute. Not surprisingly, he panders and spins and throws in a healthy dose of fear mongering. J-Kel paints the retool as necessary to avoid unavoidable terrorism, though he begins with a story that's already of dubious quality:

There could have been thousands of lives lost and an enormous impact with devastating consequences for international air travel," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told ABC News Monday. Mr. Chertoff was speaking of the al-Qaida plot -- narrowly averted last August -- to plant liquid explosives on London-based airliners headed to the United States.

If al-Qaida has made similar plans for this August, there's a good chance they'd succeed

Here's the ABC coverage of what Chertoff told ABC.

Jack used to be the P-G's "national security correspondent" and unfortunately for this column's credibility, the plot he mentioned has already been debunked - by a real national security expert, former CIA employee in the Directorate of Intelligence and former deputy director at the State Department's office of counter Intelligence, Larry Johnson.

Johnson said last year that the plotters had no working device, no passports, no tickets. Futhermore, CNN reported at the time that the group was infiltrated by British Intelligence and thwarted by British and Pakistani authorities. Looks like good old fashioned police work uncovered the almost-plot.

What relevance does it have to FISA? Jack's just trying to scare us into agreeing with him.

Kelly spends the first part of his column describing the necessity of retooling FISA so that all foreign based communications that happens to be routed through the US can be surveilled warrant free. OK fine. Most critics of the retool agree that that was a necessary part. Jonathan Alter of Newsweek:

Congress had good reason to amend the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). After the shift from satellites to fiber-optic cable for most international phone calls, the statute was as out of date as disco. With Congress, the courts and President Bush squabbling over his illegal wiretapping program, the government was actually conducting less surveillance of foreign nationals than before 9/11, which was crazy. We had to do more listening in, especially with scary new intelligence "chatter" suggesting an unspecified attack on the U.S. Capitol this summer. Congressional sources who attended the late-July classified intel briefings, but won't talk about them for the record, say these threats didn't sound like spin. After all, we're not talking here about trumped-up Iraqi WMD, but Al Qaeda terrorists who have already tried to kill us.

It's the other part that's nasty. Jack Kelly:

The amended law also permits interception of foreign communications directed into the United States without a warrant, provided that the person in the United States is not the target of surveillance. So if Ayman al Zawahiri calls a Muslim student in Florida, the NSA can just listen. But if authorities want to monitor any subsequent calls that the student makes, they have to get a warrant.

See? It's ok. It's only a terrorist who's calling a Muslim. Nothing to worry about. However as Alter points out, that also means the:

authority to spy without a warrant on any American talking to a foreigner, even if it's you and the guy from Mumbai fixing your printer.

So now it's a little scarier. Alter, again:

I hate to sound melodramatic about it, but while everyone was at the beach or "The Simpsons Movie" on the first weekend in August, the U.S. government shredded the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the one requiring court-approved "probable cause" before Americans can be searched or spied upon. This is not the feverish imagination of left-wing bloggers and the ACLU. It's the plain truth of where we've come as a country, at the behest of a president who has betrayed his oath to defend the Constitution and with the acquiescence of Democratic congressional leaders who know better. Historians will likely see this episode as a classic case of fear - both physical and political - trumping principle amid the ancient tension between personal freedom and national security.

Or maybe they just wanted to get to their vacations.

DeSantis Press Release

Got a Press Release from the DeSantis campaign (funny I don't get anything from the Ravenstahl campaign - maybe I should try to rectify that). Here's the text:

Mark DeSantis plans to attend City Council hearing September 10th on police promotions and challenges Luke Ravenstahl to do the same.

Summary: "I believe this is an important issue that needs to be addressed. If I am elected, I promise now to correct any past problems with domestic violence among City of Pittsburgh police officers. The only way to appropriately address the concerns of Pittsburgh residents is to hear from them directly and assure them their concerns will be addressed," said DeSantis.

Mark DeSantis will listen to the testimony presented at the hearing and implement the appropriate recommendations in his public safety plan that will be released next month. He also urges Mr. Ravenstahl to attend the hearing and listen to the concerns of these women's groups. "Ravenstahl decided to golf at a celebrity golf outing instead of attending the last hearing. Clearly that was the wrong decision. He now has another opportunity to address these concerns. If he is serious about city leadership, he will make himself available," said DeSantis.

As a side note, it looks like DeSantis is really getting into the race. As of today, this is the image on his website. Don't know if you can read the text. It says:

When the city was in a state of emergency, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl was watching the Steelers Practice. The question that should be on everyone's minds:

Does this guy ever go to work?

Good question.

UPDATE: Fair's fair. Bram got to this story first.

One Political Junkie ON THE AIR

An announcement:

I'll be filling in for Lynn Cullen this friday (August 17th). The tentative schedule is:

• 9:00 to 10:00 Jon Delano (it's a Friday Tradition over there at WPTT)
• 10:00 to 11:00 Impeachment
• 11:00 to 12:00 [nothing scheduled yet]

We're working on filling in the blanks.

It should be fun!

Turd Blossom to Resign

That's right. Karl Rove's resigning at the end of August.

It's in the Wall Street Journal.

And Paul Gigot has more.

Bye-bye, Karl.

The Problem With Bill

Tucker Carlson (MSNBC) called the performance "cringe-worthy."

Alison Stewart (MSNBC) said it was "cringe-tastic."

Jonathan Capehart (Washington Post) said it was like, "...watching someone drown in the shallow end of the pool and than refuse a life preserver." He added, "I watched that big guy shrink in his chair as he answered the questions."

The audience groaned.

I was cringing and groaning at my TV set at home.

I'm talking about Governor (and Presidential hopeful) Bill Richardson's performance on LOGO TV 's Visible Vote ‘08 Presidential Forum Thursday evening.

First, some background. If you're not familiar with LOGO, it's a LGBT oriented cable channel and this was billed as the first Presidential forum on gay issues. Each candidate who agreed to appear got 15 minutes on their own from a panel of questioners which included the aforementioned Jonathan Capehart, journalist Margaret Carlson, singer/activist Melissa Etheridge and the Human Rights Campaign's Joe Solmonese. The candidates appeared in the following order: Barack Obama, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton (Dodd and Biden had scheduling problems). Naturally, no Republicans agreed to appear in a separate forum.

So what was so wrong with Richardson's performance?

In a word: everything.

Let me state up front that while I don't have a favorite candidate yet, I really liked Bill Richardson and have stated that on this blog before. I also kept saying back in 2004 that Kerry should have picked him for his running mate.

Here's a sample of Richardson's sorry performance:

MS. ETHERIDGE: Thank you. Do you think homosexuality is a choice, or is it biological?

GOV. RICHARDSON: It's a choice. It's --

MS. ETHERIDGE: I don't know if you
understand the question. (Soft laughter.) Do you think I -- a homosexual is born that way, or do you think that around seventh grade we go, "Ooh, I want to be gay"?

GOV. RICHARDSON: Well, I -- I'm not a scientist. It's -- you know, I don't see
this as an issue of science or definition. I see gays and lesbians as people as a matter of human decency. I see it as a matter of love and companionship and people loving each other. You know I don't like to categorize people. I don't like to, like, answer definitions like that that, you know, perhaps are grounded in science or something else that I don't understand.

It's not just that the content is bad, it's like he wasn't even prepared for the question -- at an LGBT forum! After the broadcast, he released a statement saying, "I do not believe that sexual orientation or gender identity happen by choice." Then he repeated that he wasn't a scientist.

[sigh]

But it didn't stop there.

While he said he was for civil unions because that was achievable and he's a guy who gets things done, when Joe Solmonese asked him if he would sign a gay marriage bill if it was presented to him by the New Mexico legislature, he just wouldn't answer the question directly no matter how many times it was put to him.

And then they brought up something that I hadn't heard before. Bill Richardson had used the word "maricón" on the Imus show. For those of you, who unlike me, haven't lived in NYC for 15 years that word is Spanish for "faggot."

GayNewsWatch.com describes the Imus incident:

Almost exactly one year before Imus was to lose his show for using a slur to describe the Rutger’s women’s basketball team, the shock jock used the Spanish word “maricón” in an on-air exchange with Richardson.

“Bernard on the staff here has been claiming you’re not really Hispanic so-- that you're just claiming that for some sort of advantage or something,” Imus said to Richardson, tongue clearly in cheek. “You can just answer this yes or no and this will answer that question. Would you agree that Bernard is a maricón?”

Without missing a beat, Richardson replied in Spanish, “Yo creo que Bernardo, sí — es un maricón si él piensa que yo no soy hispano. [General laughter] Was that good enough or what? [General laughter]”

“That’s good enough for me,” Imus replied.

Most gay Latinos interviewed for this story agreed with the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation that the word “maricón” means “faggot” in Spanish. So, translated to English, Richardson had replied: "I believe that Bernard, yes – he’s a faggot if he thinks that I am not Hispanic."

By the time Richardson left the forum stage, my support for him had entirely shriveled up and gone the way of the wind.

[sigh]

You can see Bill R opine on "choice" here (it's about two and a half minutes in):


You can read Pam of Pam's House Blend's wrap up here (she does have a link to good things that Richardson has done for the LGBT Community) and Sue of Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents weighs in here.

You can also view clips of the entire forum at LOGO's website here and the forum will be rebroadcast Monday at 7:00 PM ET.
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"...19 kids lured onto planes..."

"...19 kids to be lured onto airplanes..." *

That quote is referring to the 9/11 terrorists.

Which crazy Democrat presidential hopeful said that?

NONE.

Which crazy Republican presidential hopeful said that?

NONE.

It was the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, who just proclaimed that at a presser.

In his increasingly desperate attempts to justify the War On Iraq, Bush just turned the 9/11 terrorists into VICTIMS.

And, I guess Osama bin Laden is just some big old knucklehead . . .

Can you even imagine the fallout if a Democrat -- ANY DEMOCRAT -- had turned the 9/11 killers into VICTIMS to try to justify ANYTHING?!?

CONTEMPTIBLE.

(Not to mention that Mohamed Atta was 33 years old forchrisakes.)

Please, someone, tell me I misheard him. Please!

* UPDATE: I've changed the quote that begins this post to match the transcript rather than my memory -- it doesn't make it any better.

The full quote is: "It matters if the United States does not believe in the universality of freedom. It matters to the security of people here at home if we don't work to change the conditions that caused 19 kids to be lured onto airplanes to come and murder our citizens."

Apparently, I'm not the only one who had problems with it.

Dan Froomkin at washingtonpost.com asks: "Kids? Lured?"

Worse still, according to the Mouth of the Potomac blog at NYDailyNews.com, this isn't the first time that Bush has gone "off on the root causes and sociology and such behind the “19 kids” who hijacked the planes on 9/11."

"Last April 20, in East Grand Rapids, Mich., Bush said “I happen to believe that, kind of, managing stability doesn't address the root cause of the problems that caused 19 kids to get on an airplane and kill 3,000 of our citizens.” He made similar comments in Ohio, Georgia and California."

They call it "Bush's Krupke Moments" as in when the Jets in "West Side Story" sang to Officer Krupke:

"Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It's just our bringin' up-ke
That gets us out of hand."

Reading...

I've just finished reading Elizabeth Holtzman's book, "The Impeachment of George W. Bush." I picked it up after delicately letting Al Gore's book, "The Assault on Reason" gently slip from my fingers. I picked up Gore's book after devouring Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great."

The first book I loved, the second, eh not so much. The third was in a class by itself.

I'll start with the last two and then end with Holtzman.

It can be an amazing experience to actually hear an author's voice in your head as you read. Whenever I read Vonnegut, for example, I can hear his scratchy Pall-Mall enhanced vocal cords quiver and speak.

This experience, however, can be a double edged sword (is that the right metaphor? I dunno). It does wonders for Hitchens. For Gore, eh not so much.

It's not that I disagreed with anything I read in Gore's book - far from it. It's an important work that everyone should read, no question. But while it may or may not be written by Gore alone, it certainly sounds like it's a work written by a committee all trying to sound like Al Gore.

It's an odd torture, of sorts. You know each page contains important ideas. But sitting through (and sifting through) the text...oh god. Not fun.

It's exactly the opposite for Hitchens. My main problem with that book is that he's written it almost as if it's the only book on the subject. There's no mention, for instance, of Bertrand Russell's great essay/book "Why I am NOT a Christian."

It seems incomprehensible to me that Hitchens, the product of Oxford University where he studied philosophy, could not have stumbled upon Russell's book at least a few times. His deconstruction of the "moral argument" for the existence of God (and in the book he spells it "god" by the way) is straight out of Russell. That was disappointing.

Hotlzman's book, while not written with the same polish as Hitchens', is still a gem. It outlines, in a style pointing towards the ever-boring, though highly precise, English that attorneys use in writing Motions, Briefs, Interrogatories and so on, all the reasons why George W Bush must be impeached. From the deceptions leading the nation to war, to the illegal domestic surveillance, to permitting torture, to leaking classified information, to the reckless indifference to human suffering after Hurricane Katrina, it's all spelled out. Clearly and succintly.

A good book.

ANOTHER Republican Sex Scandal??

What is it with these guys? From the News and Tribune in Indiana:

The chairman of the Clark County Republican Party — who last month was elected president of the Young Republican National Federation — has resigned both posts, apparently in the wake of a criminal investigation.

On Tuesday afternoon, Glenn Murphy Jr. e-mailed media outlets a letter announcing his resignation from both positions, citing an unexpected business opportunity that would prohibit him from holding a partisan political office.

However, the Clark County Sheriff’s Department on Friday began investigating Murphy for alleged criminal deviate conduct — potentially a class B felony — after speaking with a 22-year-old man who claimed that on July 31, Murphy performed an unwanted sex act on him while the man slept in a relative’s Jeffersonville home.

There's a lil bit of a wrinkle to the story:

In 1998, a 21-year-old male filed a similar report with Clarksville police claiming Murphy attempted to perform a sex act on him while he was sleeping. Charges were never filed in that case.

Here's the police reports for both incidents - they're eerily similar.

Now the legal stuff: Glenn has not been arrested nor has he been charged with a crime. And like most any other American (at least until dubya erases that part of the Constitution) he's presumed innocent until proven otherwise.

But really, couldn't he just hire James Guckert and be done with it? Murphy's a Republican. Surely he can spare $200 for some quality oral sex.