Talk about pulling out all the stops....Billionaire Warren Buffett has agreed to join Arnold's campaign as senior financial and economic adviser.
As to media blackouts, not only are Arnold's movies off-limits, Adriana has suspended her LA Times column, and MSNBC and NBC are attaching this disclaimer to their Arnold Coverage:
His wife, Maria Shriver, is on a leave of absence from NBC News. MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.
Smart move by California Governor Gray Davis.
Apparently not taking any chances, he's cranking out judicial appointments.
Davis has appointed 15 judges since July 23, the day the secretary of state announced the recall question would go to voters....There are currently 48 more vacancies on the state's 1,600-member bench, a number that is not unusually high.
Davis will likely fill them all before the Oct. 7 recall election. Most outgoing Governors do the same thing. We're glad he's doing it as opposed to his successor, should there be one. But one thing we don't buy is his spokesperson's assertion this is just coincidence.
Florida Governor Jeb Bush gets a scolding today from the St. Petersberg Times for putting $60 million into new prisons while giving nothing for higher education.
In portraying the only two options as more money or inmates in the streets, the governor is embellishing to make his point. And his rhetorical excess wouldn't be so jarring if he showed a similar sense of urgency for young people who are not in trouble with the law. Louis de la Parte, a respected Senate budget chairman in the 1970s, used to display a poster in his office picturing a young man in a jail cell and advising that "it costs more to send a boy to prison than to college." In this case, the governor is asking for $60-million to house new inmates while the universities are denied $66-million to accommodate eight times as many new students.
If Florida would spend more on treatment and prevention, and provide alternatives to prison for drug and other non-violent offenders, the state wouldn't have so many prisoners, and would have money available for financially strapped colleges and students. It's a policy decision and it falls on squarely on Jeb Bush's lap. Floridians should hold him accountable for this come election time.
We were very surpised to learn today that 43% of those appointed to federal appeals courts in the U.S. have no prior judicial experience .
What's more, there is a racial imbalance in that a recent study shows that:
....white judges - and particularly white male judges - are much more likely to be named to the circuit appeals courts without prior judicial experience.
Bush's judicial nominees have been more likely than those of past Presidents to have prior judicial experience. To date, 61% of those he's nominated have served as judges.
...Historically we've been moving more and more towards this notion of a career judiciary," said [Elliott] Slotnick, a political science professor at Ohio State University. "Republicans in particular have been very interested in people with judicial experience or prosecutorial experience."
[thanks to Matthew at Untelevised.Org for the link]
Al's Number 1 on Amazon....
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them:
A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right </font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"
Update: Eric Alterman says Fox has a case !
John Poindexter has submitted a five page resignation letter defending his data-mining and other privacy intrusive programs . You can read the text of the letter here .
Kudos to the Denver Post today for assailing Attorney General John Ashcroft for his recent dictate to prosecutors to keep tabs on federal judges who depart from sentencing guidelines against the Government's recommendations:
Sometimes, we wonder if U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft slept through some of his law school classes at the University of Chicago - you know, that stuff about checks and balances and an independent judiciary. Ashcroft's plan to have prosecutors across the country keep tabs on which federal district judges mete out sentences that are more lenient than those outlined in federal sentencing guidelines smacks of Big Brotherism and impermissible interference with the prerogatives of the judiciary.
After criticizing overly long sentences and the recent Feeney Amendment, the Post concludes with:
When Ashcroft became attorney general, he took an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic" and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same."
By setting up a "blacklist" of judges who aren't Draconian enough, it sounds more like he's trying to demolish one of the basic pillars of American freedom, an independent judiciary.
The War on Our Freedoms
Richard C. Leone, Ed.
Diane Carmen in the Denver Post outlines why Arnold is unpalatable to many Republicans.
He's on the record as pro-choice, pro-gay rights and pro-gun control. He's supported environmental protection regulations. He almost single-handedly passed Proposition 49, an initiative that calls for $550 million in state funds for after-school child-care programs. He married a Kennedy.
And, if all that's not lefty enough, he even trashed the impeachment of Bill Clinton. "We spent one year wasting time because there was a human failure," he told George magazine in 1999. "I was ashamed to call myself a Republican during that period."
According to Carmen:
This is why the Schwarzenegger phenomenon is so disturbing for those who have staked their careers on their unwavering conservative credentials. Because if the Terminator is the future of the party, they unquestionably represent the past.
We hope she's right.
Maureen Dowd is not impressed with the quality of would-be presidential bloggers.
The most telling sign that the Internet is no longer the cool American frontier? Blogs, which sprang up to sass the establishment, have been overrun by the establishment.
In a lame attempt to be hip, pols are posting soggy, foggy, bloggy musings on the Internet. Inspired by Howard Dean's success in fund-raising and mobilizing on the Web, candidates are crowding into the blogosphere — spewing out canned meanderings in a genre invented by unstructured exhibitionists.
But, there is one blog she's impressed with:
Even former candidates are weighing in. Gary Hart, who began his blog in March, doesn't bother to read other digital diarists. "If you're James Joyce," he said slyly, "you don't read other authors."
Now there's a man with a future in blogging.
We're having server problems. The site works fine to read from, but we can't use our MT files to post without great difficulty. Something to do with a server load failure, whatever that means. We'll be back with new stuff as soon as we get this straightened out.
We're up to 15 GB. a month of bandwidth or data transfer --most hosting companies limit you to 2 or 5 except at a very increased cost. If you're in the mood, and can spare a few bucks, please, jump right up to the top left of TalkLeft and hit the tip jar. Amazon is anonymous, Paypal lets us know your email address so we can send you a personal thank you email.
We won't be seeing re-runs of Arnold Schwarznegger movies on network televsion for a while. Or those with Gary Coleman. But you might see re-runs of Saturday Night Live with Father Guido Sarducci, played by Don Novella.
This is all the result of equal access time rules for television networks. They apply to the major networks, but not to cable. So, if NBC were to re-run the Terminator, Arianna and every other candidate would be entitled to equal time.
The ban will also apply to stations in neighboring states that reach a lot of California voters.
The provision makes exceptions for appearances on news programs, interview programs such as "Meet the Press," documentaries or spot coverage of news events.
The FCC has ruled in the past that shows such as "Entertainment Tonight" and "Access Hollywood," which are likely to be devoting a lot of air time to the celebrity aspect of the election, qualify as news shows.
This is serious stuff.
In 1972, NBC aired a Doris Day movie in which comedian Pat Paulsen appeared for 30 seconds. Because Paulsen had launched a satiric presidential campaign, he was ruled a legitimate candidate. Two Republican candidates requested and got 30 seconds in the same time slot as a result.
The Boston Globe says Clark is planning a Democratic nomination bid. Look for an announcement around Labor Day. (via No More Mister Nice Blog)
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