27 Year Old Chelsea Clinton Can't Talk To 9 Year Old Girls

From the Cedar Rapids Gazette:

VINTON - It's one thing for Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign to turn down interview requests for the candidate's daughter, Chelsea. But can't a 9-year-old reporter catch a break?

Sydney Rieckhoff, a Cedar Rapids fourth grader and "kid reporter" for Scholastic News, has posed questions to seven Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls as they've campaigned across Iowa this year. But when she approached the 27-year-old Chelsea after a campaign event Sunday, she got a different response.

"Do you think your dad would be a good 'first man' in the White House?" Sydney asked, but Chelsea brushed her question aside.

"I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you're cute," Chelsea told the pint-sized journalist.

They don't call her mom "Hitlery" for nothing.

Welcome Illinois Smokers

From the QC Times:

Illinois passed a no-smoking law this year that goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. Smoking will be banned in restaurants, bars and workplaces, which means smokers will often be kept outside when not smoking at home.

Many establishments will be removing their ashtrays after their New Year’s celebrations wind down, but some owners still have questions about how the law works, and some private clubs hope they will eventually be exempt from the law.

Michael King, owner of Copia Martini and Wine Bar and Hickory Brothers Cigar Lounge in downtown Rock Island, has considered building a wall between his two businesses, which are connected, but for now, he will simply ask customers not to smoke in either establishment.

“I’m doing everything possible to keep both businesses open,” he said. “I won’t allow smoking until we get it fixed. The last thing I need is police coming in and writing tickets.”

Can't smoke in the cigar lounge!

So what will Illinois residents do? Drive over to Iowa:

Some smokers say they will stop going to establishments in the Illinois Quad-Cities and instead cross the Mississippi River to Iowa, where businesses are still allowed to let customers smoke.

That might be the case for Jim Stablein, 63, of Rock Island, who said he smokes up to three packs of cigarettes a day. He predicts the state will see businesses close because of the ban, which will spur people — especially on big game days — to go to places in Iowa, where they can sit and smoke in public.

“The State of Illinois is shooting itself in the foot,” he said. “This is a country where we’ve spread our troops overseas and criticize other nations for taking away rights from people, and that’s the same thing we’re doing here. It’s a form of communism, is what it is.”

The same people who take away the rights of individuals to smoke in a bar will also enforce the new laws as much as possible, but don't expect them to do anything about all the criminal illegal aliens running around.

David Yepsen Is God, And God Says...

David Yepsen has a horrifically bad column in the Sunday Des Moines Register.

In it, he distills each candidate down to the usual cliches of the leftist/"centrist" newspaper agenda:

Mike Huckabee

The former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister has soared in the GOP race following his second-place finish in the Iowa Republican straw poll in August. He has rallied party social and religious conservatives as well as supporters of a big national sales tax to replace the income tax.

He's a witty speaker and an affable politician whose criticisms of the nation's economic policies sound a lot like the populist attacks coming from Democrat John Edwards. His recent criticism of the "bunker mentally" reflected by the Bush administration's Iraq policy also sounds as if it's coming from a Democrat.

Huckabee appears to be a candidate who could rally Reagan Democrats, particularly in his home area of the South. That's a vital region for Republicans to carry to win presidential elections.

Huckabee's views on social issues have some moderating tones - such as saying that it's not enough for pro-lifers to just be against abortion, but that they also ought to be for better health care for women and children. That softer edge may help him win votes from more moderate Americans put off by the strident tones coming from some religious conservatives in the past.

David Yepsen hates Christians who are Republicans. Hates them. Unless, of course, they're "moderate" (meaning only one thing: they love abortions).

The most important thing to David Yepsen is that a Republican appeals to Democrats.

Riiiiiiight. Like any Democrat is going to vote for a Republican.

You never hear Yepsen yammering on about how Hillary Clinton should appeal to Republicans. Or Obama. Or John Edwards. Go read Yepsen's column again. Only Republicans must be bi-partisan. Never Democrats.

John McCain

The Arizona senator may well be the most electable Republican because of his strong appeal to independent voters. Many Americans admire him as a Vietnam War hero. He has been through a national presidential campaign, and his independent streak on issues like pork-barrel spending wins plaudits.

But Republican rank and file have been less enamored of his stance on campaign-finance reform and his centrist views on immigration policy...

When did being in favor of blanket amnesty for criminal illegal aliens represent a "centrist" viewpoint?

That's sort of like saying meth dealers are just unlicensed chemists.

McVain loves the press and the press love McVain. And that's about it.

Mitt Romney

...His biggest impediment seems to be his Mormon faith. Many evangelicals in the party believe the church is a cult. Other general-election voters are wary, too, and Romney has had to spend time discussing it. While he gets support from other Mormons, polls show some Americans could never vote for a Mormon for president.

No, Romney's biggest impediment is flip-flopping on issues important to the Republican base. The Mormons may be weird, but they all look good and appear successful. They don't believe in blowing themselves up for Allah's sake. And you never see a Mormon living in a trailer park, if you know what I mean.

Fred Thompson

The tall, deep-voiced former Tennessee senator and movie actor sure looks the part of a president. He has also shown vote-getting ability in a border state, and his conservative credentials are solid.

But his late entry and meandering speeches have caused concern among party stalwarts who wonder whether he could put together a successful November campaign. Thompson is also not seen as a very energetic campaigner.

Yepsen sure keeps the "...that nigga's so slow..." cliches going, which is exactly the agenda of the lamestream media. Don't look into what Fred is saying, just keep lying about what he says.

The Republicans can't have a straight-talkin' conservative on the ticket! Horrors!!! Fred must be marginalized at all costs!!!

It's much better for Democrats if the top of the Republican ticket is a softy lefty who appeals to "moderates" and "centrists" rather than conservatives. That was the only way Dave Loebsack beat Jim Leach in 2006. Newspapers know this. Yepsen understands this.

Joe Biden

The Delaware senator argues his years of experience in Washington equip him best to deal with the nation's problems, particularly in foreign affairs. At a time when voters are concerned about national-security issues, this makes him the most electable Democrat in the field, he contends.

Biden has a reputation for being scrappy and long-winded. He's worked to shorten his speeches and contends his scrappiness is just the sort of trait Democrats need to go up against any of the likely Republican nominees in debates and on the trail.

And, and, and.... what?

Why isn't Joe Biden doing better? Biden's got numbers worse than Ron Paul does for the Republicans, yet Yepsen wrote Ron Paul off as someone who has "almost no chance of winning the Republican nomination".

Hillary Clinton

The New York senator and former first lady evokes strong arguments over electability. Her supporters argue that as the first woman with a realistic chance of getting elected, she will draw thousands of new women voters to the polls to support her. This, they contend, will put additional states into play in the November election, as well as help other Democratic candidates.

Her opponents disagree. They believe that her high negative ratings in the polls put too many voters out of her reach and that she also will energize Republican opposition and prompt other Democratic candidates to distance themselves from her ticket. They also fear some voters are wary of electing another Clinton and want to "turn the page" past the 1990s and the controversies of Bill Clinton's presidency. While Democrats like her, she's just too politically radioactive to win, some contend.

She counters by saying that compared to the Bush administration, the Clinton years were pretty good. Her high negatives result from years of GOP attacks, she says, and any Democratic nominee will have similar negative ratings by the end of the campaign. She also says that what's important is that she's weathered these attacks, that her life has been examined and that there isn't much more the GOP can hurl at her - unlike Barack Obama, who is new to the political scene and has not undergone a rough-and-tumble campaign.

GOP attacks?

You mean the cattle futures? Health care? Whitewater? Travelgate?

The vast right-wing conspiracy of her husband sexually assaulting a subordinate employee with a cigar in the workplace?

Her crooked brothers?

Chris Dodd

Like Biden, he contends his long experience in Congress would make him electable in November. He has shown an ability to work with his opponents in Congress to get things done, which would appeal to Americans tired of the partisan deadlock in Washington.

But he ranks dead last in polls of the Democratic race. While he's a respected U.S. senator, his inability to break through in the primary fight does not bode well for his ability to win a general-election contest.

Oh, come on. You talk to any Democrat and they're just cocksure that any Republican can be beat in 2008. Any!

John Edwards

The former North Carolina senator, one-time presidential candidate and 2004 vice-presidential nominee contends he would be the most electable because he is a Southerner, and in recent elections Democrats don't win the White House without one on the ticket.

Edwards also argues he can appeal to rural Americans and could compete in every state. He contends the other leading contenders - Clinton and Obama - can't. They, or their views, would be too controversial for some regions.

Edwards' critics argue he did little for the 2004 ticket and couldn't even carry his own home state, home county or hometown. George Bush swept the South. They also say Edwards' change of heart on a number of issues will enable Republicans to paint him as a flip-flopper. Controversies over his pricey haircuts, big home, work for a hedge fund and high speaking fees will enable them to shred his populist image and paint him as a phony.

What he doesn't say - but some Democratic strategists say privately - is that some voters might not be willing to elect a woman or an African-American to the presidency. Those issues aren't present if Edwards is the nominee. Of course, he might not have the same ability to inspire and bring out new voters from women or minority groups.

Edwards did little for the 2004 ticket? Hardly.

More like John Kerry blew it.

Everybody remembers 1988 and how a Bensten/Dukakis ticket would have likely beat Bush/Quayle. The same thing probably holds true for an Edwards/Kerry ticket in '04. Don't ya think?

I also find it interesting that the voters who might not be willing to elect a woman or a black to the presidency are in the Democratic Party.

And what's with this notion that women are going to vote for women or blacks will only vote for blacks? Bullshit!

Democrats will vote for whoever is at the top of the ticket, unless of course Ralph Nader is running again.

Blacks vote Democrat 90% of the time or more. Even if a white guy is running, they'll still cross the Mississippi River in St Louis a few times in order to make their votes count.

Barack Obama

The Illinois senator positions himself as the fresh face in the contest, the candidate who will attract voters by "turning the page" to a new chapter in American politics.

But the flip side to being a fresh face is that he's also inexperienced. Four years ago, he was just a member of the Illinois state Senate, and Americans have rarely elected such novices to the presidency. Republicans could exploit that and argue he's unqualified....

Give me a break. Even though I disagree with most of Obama's positions on issues, he's run a really good campaign in Iowa, at least from what I've read, seen, and heard. I believe the guy could go the distance. But if white Democrats don't want to vote for him, that's a problem within the Democratic Party.

Bill Richardson

The New Mexico governor puts together an impressive package. He's of Hispanic ancestry, which should give him appeal to that growing segment of the electorate in a number of states. As a Western governor and former congressman, he's shown his electability. He's also got federal experience as energy secretary and U.N. ambassador.

Richardson specifically argues he would put Western states into play. This is an issue for Democrats. Since Democrats have trouble winning Southern states, political strategists have looked to the changing mountain West as an opportunity. Once solidly Republican, some of those states have shown the ability to elect Democrats as they become more urban and suburban.

But his inability to break into the top tier of Democratic candidates has led some political observers to believe he's now angling for his party's vice-presidential nomination, a suggestion he denies.

Wow! He's Hispanic! Like that's some sort of silver bullet.

Wow, he was an ambassador! How hard is that job? He got to go to New York City and pal around with terrorist Yassar Arafat.

Big whoop. Richardson will be history within a few weeks and throwing his support behind Hillary.

And finally:

Among likely caucus-goers, 34 percent of Democrats said Clinton had the best chance of defeating the GOP nominee, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll released last week. Obama and Edwards were tied at 22 percent each.

Iowa Republican caucus-goers are split over the question. Romney and Huckabee tied, each with 25 percent of the GOP activists who chose them as the most electable. McCain has 13 percent, Giuliani has 11 percent and 15 percent weren't sure.

I bet this poll isn't anywhere close to the outcome. I can't see Hillary beating Obama in Iowa, especially by 12 points. But who knows, maybe Iowans are that stupid. I honestly believe Obama will kick some major ass on January 3rd.

On the Republican side, Romney's got quite an organization in Iowa so he might do well. Huckabee is all hype, and he's been stumbling bad lately, mostly by pissing off real conservatives. Thompson will do better than the media thinks he will. And John McVain will be lucky to break out of the mid single digits.

As for David Yepsen, I can't believe this clown is taken seriously as a columnist. That's just because he's the "go-to guy" for the lazy journalists living in Manhattan or the Beltway. Better to call up the pudgy "centrist" Christian-hater Gannettoid than actually get on a plane, fly out, and do your own digging.

Organized Crime

Updated:

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

Former University Hospitals CEO Donna Katen-Bahensky was actually fired prior to tendering her resignation last month, according to documents released Friday by the University of Iowa.

Because she was fired without cause, UI is sending her off with an $830,000 severance package, which stems from a contractual clause that calls for a payout worth double her salary. Her base salary is $465,000.

Katen-Bahensky's last day at UI is Monday. Katen-Bahensky, who did not immediately return a phone call Friday, starts a new post Feb. 4 as president and CEO of University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics. She will earn $600,000 annually in her new post.

Based on a news release from UI officials Dec. 5, media outlets reported that Katen-Bahensky had resigned. Until now, the fact that she was terminated was not reported.

And from the Des Moines Register:

In a Nov. 5 e-mail to Robillard, Katen-Bahensky said her letter of resignation would be delivered the following day. Her e-mail continued: "We still need to decide timing for the announcement. ... The timing is a critical issue for me due to external issues we can discuss."

U of I officials received her letter on Nov. 6. The university announced the departure Dec. 5 in a press release that began: "University of Iowa President Sally Mason and Vice President for Medical Affairs Jean Robillard offered thanks and good wishes late this afternoon after learning that Donna Katen-Bahensky resigned her position as senior associate vice president for medical affairs and chief executive officer of University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics to accept a new leadership position at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Her resignation is effective Dec. 31, 2007."

The termination terms were specified in Katen-Bahensky's contract, which was signed in 2005. That contracted stated that if she was terminated without cause, she would receive 90 days notice, an opportunity to resign within 30 days and two times her annual base pay.

Katen-Bahensky will receive about $830,000 in severance pay, which is equal to two times her base salary for fiscal year 2008, Robillard said. In return, she surrenders her right to sue the U of I.

Katen-Bahensky, who has led U of I Hospitals since 2002, is scheduled to begin her new position as CEO of University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics in February.

Katen-Bahensky's role at the U of I changed in January 2007 when Gary Fethke, then interim U of I president, made Robillard the school's vice president for medical affairs, a move that was designed to better integrate the U of I hospitals and clinics and the medical school.

And now back to the Press-Citizen:

Two reasons prompted the separation, Robillard said.

First, the terms of the contract are one of a kind at UI, he said, noting former UI President David Skorton and UI Vice President for Statewide Health Services Bob Kelch first agreed to this in 2002.

Robillard described it as a binding "evergreen contract." The contract covers three years. At the end of each year, an additional year is added to the end. If that doesn't happen, the contract states it is considered "termination without cause," after which a two-year salary buyout is enacted.

"There was an evergreen clause where you have to tell her three years ahead of time. That contract protected her forever," Robillard said.

Wow, this whole thing stinks to high heaven.

These people are all really good at screwing Iowa taxpayers.

Nobody was paying attention when David Skorton and Bob Kelch agreed to Donna Katen-Bahensky's contract in 2002.

Nobody was paying attention when Gary Fethke reorganized the joint.

And only lawyers were paying attention when the "severance package" was being agreed to, deceptively, by both Katen-Bahensky and whoever is running the University of Iowa press office.

All of these people should be charged with racketeering, particularly under RICO, for fraud.

Yes, that's right, David Skorton, Bob Kelch, Donna Katen-Bahensky, her lawyers, and Gary Fethke should be spending 20 years or more in a Federal pound-me-in-ass-prison for fraud.

Those contracts are written specifically as get-rich-quick schemes and golden parachutes, all the while moving on to a high-paying job elsewhere.

However, like the CIETC case, the taxpayers would just get more screwed if such a case went forward.

Lawyers and university executives, what are they good for? In Iowa, they're good for screwing the taxpayers.


Update: I also think that University of Iowa President Sally Mason and Veep for Medical Affairs Jean Robillard should be charged with fraud as well. After all, they were quoted as saying that Donna Katen-Bahensky had resigned her position. They had to be well aware of the details of Katen-Bahensky's termination.

It shouldn't be a surprise that UI President Sally Mason is covering up and lying already. Mason pulled this shit at Purdue. What an awful, awful, terrible choice the Board of Regents made by hiring Sally "Cover Up" Mason. I can expect the University of Iowa will have many many more scandals and cover ups and downright lies dished out at taxpayer and tuition expense until Mason kicks herself upstairs to some job in the Ivy League or better paying position at another college.

Endorsement Schmorsement

John Deeth has a post detailing the various newspaper endorsements around Iowa.

Most newspapers are run by ultra-lefty Democrats with an axe to grind, so whatever endorsement they give on the Republican side should be totally ignored.

And it's obvious from their numerous picks of Huckabee and McVain that they prefer the most tax-raising, pro-illegal, and nanny-state Republicans in the field.

More Earthpark Misleading And Cheerleading

From the Knoxville Urinal-Excess newspaper, here's the lead paragraph::

The Iowa Environmental Project has been supported by former Governor Bob Ray; then Governor Tom Vilsack; Senator Tom Harkin; Congressman Leonard Boswell, the former Director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development, Mike Blouin, and the former Director of the Iowa Department of Education, Ted Stillwell.

Did a third grader write this?

Who starts off a story in a newspaper with a paragraph like that?

And didn't Tom Vilsack later withdraw his support of the project after it turned into an obvious debacle? Yes, he did.

There's more. Next paragraph:

Two years later, Senator Grassley took action to ensure the federal money was not frittered away. He subsequently won passage of legislation that required non-federal matching dollars to be raised before additional federal tax dollars were spent on the project.

I love that line "Grassley took action to ensure the federal money was not frittered away", as if he's some sort of big hero that the deficit-financed $50 million wasn't "frittered away" on Jim Nussle RINO-approved pork earmarks like swimming pools in California or to promote tourism in Kentucky.

And "non-federal matching dollars to be raised" is a misnomer seeing how in-kind contributions are allowed in order to secure the grant.

"In-kind contributions" are another phrase for "Phony Money".

And then we continue:

Monday night, the House of Representatives passed a year-end omnibus spending bill that includes legislation rescinding the Earthpark appropriation. The Senate passed the omnibus bill last night which included the same provision. The President must sign the spending bill before Friday in order to keep the federal government from shutting down.

If the Department of Energy does not approve the match proposal submitted by Earthpark and dispense the funds before the President signs into law the omnibus spending bill, then the federal money will no longer be available for the Iowa project.

And where is David Oman going to get the other $100-$300 million to build and maintain the project?

Finally, we get to some quotes in the "story":

David Oman, Executive Director of Earthpark, feels that the bill will be signed by the President.

"All indications are that the bill we be signed," Oman said. "The Department of Energy will continue to work and decide if the funds are appropriate. Then what's next? I am not sure right now. Our board plans to meet in January and will continue to discuss the direction of the project. Pella has been wonderful and patient and we will do our best to talk with people locally and in Washington to put options in front of the board."

Senator Grassley's office learned of the rescission of the Earthpark appropriation after the spending bill had been formally filed and prepared for the House vote. Senator Grassley does not serve on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Appropriators have primary responsibility for the omnibus measure, along with the Democratic leaders of Congress.

"Earthpark could bring unique opportunities to Iowa - not just environmental or energy related, but also long lasting benefits to Iowa's economy and education system," Grassley said. "Some may agree or disagree with the worthiness of this project, but I put in place a process to ensure the money wasn't frittered away. The Appropriations Committee should have let the current law play out, giving the Energy Department ample time to consider the matching funds proposal, before allowing the law governing the federal dollars to be changed. I'm frustrated with this move by the majority. It goes to show that the pledge to be more transparent doesn't appear to be more than a campaign promise that wouldn't be kept. This action was unfair to Pella, the project leaders, and those who stepped up to the plate to provide contributions."

Former Iowa Governor, Robert Ray, also gave his thoughts on the latest news.

"It is disappointing that some Members of Congress decided to replace set funding for the country's first national center for science literacy and the environment," he said. "There is certainly a basic fairness issue here, with Iowa losing funding for a national project, and dollars being sent to lesser, local projects elsewhere. What green project, other than Earthpark, was mentioned in Time magazine a month ago as the U.S. equivalent of Britain's successful Eden Project? What other project would become one of America's largest green buildings on the country's first green campus, at a time when sustainability and energy conservation are crucial for the world and this country? Both Earthpark and the Department of Energy have worked honorably to follow the process set forth two years ago. Earthpark submitted a valid application for the federal grant to the U.S. Department of Energy, and their review is nearing completion. Now, at the eleventh hour, Congress has thrown the rulebook out the door. I again want to express my appreciation to Sen. Grassley for his foresight and leadership in advocating for this national project that could mean so much for the environment, for education, and for 700 Iowans who would be employed on the full campus - at a time when Iowa is emerging as a leader in the green economy."

Honestly, now, when you read those quotes you've got to wonder why there isn't mandatory drug testing for members of Congress. Senator Chuck Grassley appears to be totally deranged after babbling that Washingtonianspeak nonsense.

Seriously, Grassley (and Harkin) are examples of why not only the 17th Amendment should be repealed, but single-term limits should be placed on members of the Senate.

Even if the Dept of Energy grant is approved, how in the world is the rest of the project going to get built? Nobody has stepped forward with cold hard cash. Nobody! The Iowa Legislature doesn't have the money, won't consider it, and Governor Culver would definitely veto any money approved for it.

And former Governor Robert D. Ray, he's clearly bonkers. Is he allowed to drive anymore? I certainly wouldn't let him near any parking ramps, that's for sure.

Romney Vs Hillary

Watch 'em both:

Here's Romney:



And here's Hillary:

Extra! Extra! Iowa Lemurs Are Binge-Drinking!

From the Des Moines Register:

The creator of "Dilbert," the popular comic strip, is dispensing some tongue-in-cheek, job-saving advice to his fans in the wake of an Iowa man's "Dilbert"-related downsizing.

Scott Adams' advice to readers follows the firing of David Steward of Fort Madison. Steward was recently fired from Catfish Bend Casino in Burlington after posting a "Dilbert" strip that compared corporate managers to "drunken lemurs."

The Des Moines Register's report of Steward's dismissal was picked up by the Associated Press and carried by almost 300 news outlets, including the New York Times, TV networks and National Public Radio.

You've got to wonder what the Gannettoids at the Des Moines Register think of "Caboose" Washburn after her much-reviled performance as a debate moderator.

Earthpark: It Ain't Dead Yet

Nicholas Johnson:

The AP reports that budget bills passed by both House and Senate strip the $50 million matching grant opportunity for Earthpark, if (1) the President signs the bill by Friday (Dec. 21) and (2) the DOE does not finish its staff work, and award the grant, prior to Friday. So stay tuned.

Meanwhile, David Oman dishes out more promises to his friends at the Des Moines Register:

Backers of the Earthpark tourist attraction and education center in Pella vowed to continue work on the $150 million project even after Congress pulled the $48.3 million federal grant.

Executive director David Oman said the Earthpark board will have to reassess finances at its meeting in January. However, he said, Earthpark has been in touch with potential cash sources from the United States, and one in Europe. He declined to name them or to lay out Earthpark’s latest financial plans.

Blah blah blah.

Kick the can down the road.

I'm betting that there will be a worst-case scenario.

Earthpark Recap

Nicholas Johnson has an excellent recap of where things are now concerning the Earthpark Rainforest project.

The Farming Bubble

Isn't it interesting how nobody's calling the 22% rise in farm land values over the past year or the more than 100% increase since 2000 the "farming bubble"?

Just yet, anyway........

More Staged Clinton Puff Pieces, Now With Tainted Dark Meat

From the Des Moines Register Clinton campaign operative Jennifer Jacobs:

Basketball legend Magic Johnson surprised shoppers at a grocery store on Martin Luther King Parkway in Des Moines this morning, by showing up with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her husband, Bill Clinton.

The trio greeted customers, and a select crowd of teens from three Des Moines schools — Callanan Middle, Lincoln High and North High -— who had been alerted to the campaign stop at Hy-Vee.

It's hard to believe that any teenagers from today know who Magic Johnson is, seeing how he retired from basketball nearly 15 years ago.

Like the weird marriage of the Clintons (they apparently never sleep together, much less spend any time in the same place), I always wondered how "Magic" "Johnson" got HIV. Oh, the story supposedly is that he fucked around with too many whores. Yet, he never passed it on to his wife. It makes you wonder. Was "Magic" like Bill Clinton, fucking everything in town except his woman? Or was Magic taking it up the butt in the shower? Or maybe he was sharing HGH needles? Who knows??? He's been HIV positive for 16 or 17 years, at least, and is still in excellent health. So what can I say but The CIA Failed. Viva big pharmaceutical!

And here we go with yet another staged Clinton appearance.

It's a funny thing how southern Democrats always have to import blacks in order to get their work done. Being a northerner, I just never understood that nonsense. Maybe that's why Obama is kicking Hillary's ass in Iowa.

Ramona Cunningham Is Insane In The Membrane

GED recipient and former $360,000-a-year CIETC head Ramona Cunningham with Senator Tom Harkin at the dedication of the "Tom Harkin Learning Center" at CIETC offices in October 20, 2004.

Bill "So Expensive Only The Guilty Can Afford Him" Kutmus got a 2 month extension for "Crazy" Ramona Cunningham.

Hee haw and Merry Christmas, taxpayers!

Or as one Des Moines Register comment put it:

A couple of vicodins, a bottle of booze, fake a suicide, a nice little stay in a boobie-hatch and maybe the criminal indictment goes away.... Ramona may only "got" a GED but she's not stupid. Crooked, yes, but stupid, no.

Now for today's entertainment: Cypress Hill!

Iowahawk Explains The Subprime Mortgage "Crisis"

Iowahawk explains the subprime mortgage "crisis":

As many of you know, I am a longtime resident of Lakewood Mobile Home Court, a gated community on the outskirts of Coralville. When I first moved to Lakewood in 2000, I was attracted by its affordable rental rates and many amenities, such as ample streetside parking, easy access to I-80, and a quiet, low-surveillance wooded area in which to store my automobiles and train my beloved sport dogs. At the time it seemed an ideal neighborhood in which to raise the various children the Iowa courts have assigned me financial support...

Read it all.

Earthpark Rainforest: Preferring Secrecy To Openness

Nicholas Johnson:

[Earthpark Rainforest head] David Oman refuses to make public copies of his DOE [Department of Energy] application -- which is, of course, a "public record," and one in which the public has considerable legitimate interest, given that it is $50 million of our money. Senator Grassley, who admits to having a copy of the application also prefers secrecy to openness, as does the DOE. (The DOE has been presented a number of FOIA [Freedom Of Information Act] requests -- including one from The [Cedar Rapids] Gazette -- to which it will, ultimately, have to respond. But it offers no justification for not satisfying those requests now -- or, better still, just putting the document on the Web.)

It would be nice if the heat could be turned up on this matter.


Recently related: Exposing Chuck Grassley For The Fraud That He Really Is and Earthpark's Grant Application: More Than $100 To Copy

Des Moines Register Predictably Endorses Hitlery Clinton and John McVain

It's not a shock to me that the Register Editorial Board endorsed both Hillary Clinton and John McCain to lead their respective parties in a bid for the US presidency.

The Register has been writing puff pieces for the Hillary campaign for years.

McCain, of course, doesn't have a chance, but he's for amnesty for criminal illegal aliens, and that's always good enough for Carol Hunter.

Maybe they also prefer how John McCain, like Tom Harkin, wants to give Social Security benefits to criminal illegal aliens.

It is a bit unreasonable that the Register, where everybody who works there must hate Republicans, would endorse somebody who earlier this year told the joke "Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father."

And did David "I hate Christian Republicans" Yepsen vote on the McCain nod? In 2005, Yepsen basically called a McCain run for the presidency laughable and amateurish.

Don't forget that the Warren County chairman of the McCain campaign earlier this year basically said Mormons were like terrorists.

Maybe the Register liked McCain's past support to give tax breaks to broadbandits, particularly crooked millionaire Clark McLeod.

Or McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal.

Or authoring that abortion called McCain-Feingold. Because, you know, "clean government" is more important than the First Amendment.

Ah, who reads newspapers anymore? Much less abides by them.

Not only are the people issuing these endorsements not exceptionally educated, but they're also ugly.

Only The Homely

Des Moines Register Editor Carolyn "Caboose" Washburn


"Big-boned" Register humorless columnist and blogger-hater Ken Fuson


Super-sized sports columnist and blogger-hater Nancy Clark


David "Christian-hating Moderate" Yepsen, the pro-Rainforest/anti-"mossback" columnist


And Opinion page editor Carol "Give driver's licenses to illegals" Hunter

You J-skool graduates need to ask yourselves as Marilyn Manson does in this video clip:

"Do you want to be in a place that's filled with a bunch of ASSSSHOLESSSSS?????"

And I don't want ya, and I don't need ya,
Don't bother to resist, or I'll beat ya,
It's not your fault that you're always wrong,
The weak ones are there, justify the strong,
The beautiful people, the beautiful people,
It's all relative to the size of your steeple,
You can't see the forest, for the trees,
And you can't smell your own...
...And on your knees!

There's no time to discriminate,
Hate every other hater that's in your way!

Hey you, what do you see?
Something beautiful or something free?
Hey you, are you trying to be mean?
You live with apes man, it's hard to be clean.

ahhhhhhhhh.....ahhhhhhhhh

The worms will live, in every host,
It's hard to pick which one they'll eat the most

The horrible people, the horrible people,
It's all atomic as the size of your steeple,
Capitalism, has made it this way,
Old-Fashion fascism will take it away.

Hey you, what do you see?
Something beautiful, or something free?
Hey you, are you trying to be mean?
You live with apes, man, it's hard to be clean.

There's no time to discriminate,
Hate every other hater that's in your way!

The beautiful people, the beautiful people,
The beautiful people, the beautiful people,
The beautiful people, the beautiful people,
The beautiful people, the beautiful people!

Carolyn Washburn Comes Out Of Her Bunker And Declares Victory

Update:



Carolyn Washburn, the editor of the Des Moines Register, defends herself on her performance as a debate moderator:

By and large, the Republicans say they can get us to smaller government and lower taxes with economic growth and government efficiency. They don't ask Americans to make terrible sacrifices. About half wanted to tackle global warming and about half chose not to talk about it. They want local control and choice in education.

Democrats say they would demand that U.S. trading partners implement stronger environmental and labor laws. They have expensive plans but say it's possible to cover them. They would improve preventative health care to reduce entitlement programs. And they would use the bully pulpit and spend federal money strategically to get kids to school earlier, lower class sizes and improve teacher training.

No fights broke out. No one called anyone a name...

...We didn't focus on Iraq or immigration. Candidates touched on them. But we decided to pose questions that hadn't been debated to death.

Some online comments:

Washburn, this current article demonstrates that you are utterly clueless to how inappropriate and unprofessional your so-called performance as a moderator for the Republicans debate was. What bubble to you live in? You are considered a laughingstock throughout the country and should be reprimanded for your pathetic attempts to control the so-called debate, for you have disgraced the good people of Iowa by your soulless antics. In this article, you state that you wanted the Republicans to debate the issue of Global warming, don't you recall you gave them an option of "raise your hand if" and then when they wanted to talk about said issue you would not allow them. If the Des Moines Register ever hopes to recover any type of national respect you should be renoved from your position for your arrogance and self-importance that was exposed to millions via the internet and the national pundits.

You have such a deep anti-republican feelings (more evident now that I have read the poor-me piece above) and yet you have somehow deluded yourself into thinking that you were fair as a debate moderator. Asking for a show of hands is NOT tackling global warming, nor is it proper for a debate. That you "feel proud" tells me only that you lack introspection. The difference between your debate and the CNN You-tube debate? Your debate had only ONE liberal ringer asking questions.

I noticed the difference in suggested number of responses to your effort by thousands of callers raging about the exclusion of Kucinich in comparison to the slew of e-mails you claim you received thanking you for a civil discussion. I find that interesting. Again quoting the Merriam-Webster Dictionary for slew as army, host, throng, do you mean that truly an army of Iowans emailed you, to, of all meaningless things, thank you for a civil discussion? Ms. Washburn, I just had to click my heels to return back from OZ, but truly I am struggling with your statement. I can't help but state that I strongly believe that you, the Des Moines Register, Gannett Company, and your sponsors, are very dishonest people.

In your comment, "No fights broke out. No one called anyone a name", it appears you are referring to a middle school debate. Have you ever honestly seen presidential candidates become out of control with argument or come to fists at a debate? Wouldn't that be telling information for the public if they did? Or did it have to do with protecting certain candidates and your personal discomfort with meaningful debate? For that matter what is a debate? Merriam-Webster defines a debate as "a contention by words or argument". Did Iowa hold a Debate or was it a sterilized snap shot of the face The Des Moines Register and Gannett Company would like to endorse? You are correct, there was no argument; however I don't think there was a debate either.

Ouch.


Update:

Can you imagine working for this type of person?



I caught some videos of her performance and omigod it really was terrible!

She comes off as cold, mean, fat, and angry.

Dr Tom Davis vs Steve Alford, The Final Chapter

How fitting.

The Drake Bulldogs men's basketball team, coached by Dr Tom Davis's son Keno, beat the Iowa Hawkeyes in Iowa last night for the first time in 40 years.

As you know, Dr Tom turned around the Drake Bulldogs from 2003 to 2007, when he retired. Generally, the next year's team is usually thought of as "the previous coach's team", recruiting-wise.

Dr Tom was also the winningest coach in the University of Iowa history between 1986 and 1999 before being disgracefully dumped by that asshole Bob Bowlsby (now AD at Stanford) and UI President Mary Sue Coleman (now the richest Big Ten Prez at Michigan) for the likes of Steve "Hot Tub" Alford, who ended up getting over a million dollars a year in compensation.

Alford was supposed to take Iowa to "the next level" but it was clear from early on that Alford played favorites, causing many excellent players to transfer, many more to choose other colleges, and recruited a habitual violent sex offender in Pierre Pierce.

Alford also left at the end of 2007, replaced by Todd Lickliter, who is basically dealing with the final class that Steve Alford and his gang recruited.

How fitting.

I'm not blaming Lickliter for his dwindling team of retards. As Donald Rumsfeld said, "You have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want..."

So take a look at the legacy:

Dr Tom Davis - disgracefully let go, moved to Des Moines and built up a respected program at Drake just like he did at LaFayette, Boston College, and the University of Iowa over the past 36 years. Retired with a winning team and bequeathed the program to his able son and assistant coach, Keno.

Steve Alford - got a lot of money at Iowa, won a few games for a while, but attendance dwindled as returns diminished. Plus there was the continued enabling of sex offender Pierre Pierce and Alford's reputation caused excellent players to avoid the Iowa Hawkeyes. Maybe he'll learn from his mistakes in New Mexico, but his new team has lost two of their last three games.

Carolyn Washburn As Nurse Ratched

DMR Editorette and Gannettoid Carolyn Washburn

You know me. I don't watch the debates, I read debate criticism.

Boy, they sure raked the Des Moines Register's Carolyn Washburn over the coals concerning her moderating of the Republican debate in Iowa.

Here's Dean Barnett at the Weekly Standard:

HERE WE WERE on Wednesday, a nation of political junkies gathered around our televisions to watch the candidates debate each other one last time, and we had as a moderator one Carolyn Washburn, the editor of the Des Moines Register. I don't mean to go all East-coast-elitist on you; I'm sure there are people in Iowa who could capably moderate a presidential debate. Unfortunately, and obviously, Carolyn Washburn is not one of them.

The bulk of the post-debate analysis will probably focus on how maladroit Washburn was at the job. She did the impossible--she moderated the last Iowa debate between the Republican candidates before caucuses and yet saw to it that none of the candidates engaged each other. In other words, the moderator ensured that the debate would be as lively as a 12 part PBS series on "How Grass Grows." A personal aside to the Des Moines Register--"boring" is not synonymous with "serious."

The problems went beyond Washburn's lack of mad moderating skillz. From the outset, Washburn announced that the candidates would not be discussing either Iraq or immigration. Swell! It's the biggest debate of the season, so let's take the two biggest issues off the table. For what it's worth, Washburn brought all the charm to her assignment of a latter-day Nurse Ratched.

At some point, the political parties will have to begin to wonder why they entrust such a critical part of our president-choosing process to people like Carolyn Washburn, people who obviously aren't up to the task.

Jay Wagner at Iowa Independent:

...the debate was a train wreck, difficult for even the most ardent political junkie to watch...

Moderator Carolyn Washburn, editor of The Register, was determined to hold the politicians to a 30-second time limit for their answers. Do we really want a presidential with a fiscal policy that can be explained in 30 seconds? Even a tightly written editorial in The Register on something as banal as, say, taxing pumpkins as food during Halloween, couldn't be read aloud in 30 seconds, let alone one of the paper's carefully researched editorials on more complex topics.

What next, a bumper-sticker debate?

And what good does it do to exclude discussion about immigration reform and the national security? Most Iowa voters list those issues as the most important of the election. It's the prerogative of debate organizers to establish any ground rules they deem fitting. But avoiding issues that voters care most about seems a bit elitist.

And Charles Krauthammer:

That was not just the worst debate of 2007, that was the worst debate in western history, and that includes the ancient Greeks. There was no record in any major European record of a debate this transcendently and crushingly dull. It was an astonishment.

The best line of the day was Fred in commenting after the debate where he said the moderator was Nurse Ratched. This moderator had the candidates shackled, handcuffed, and gagged with these absurd 15-second responses, 30 second responses. It was like a quiz show.

And, as you said earlier in the show, she had taken the major issues of any interest — Iraq and immigration — off the table at the beginning and never asked about the NIE or Iran or proliferation or interrogation — anything on our minds today.

You've got to wonder, are the people running the GOP today complete idiots? I think they are.

Why do they allow this?

After the CNN scam of including Democrat trans plants in their debate, why would the Republicans bother trusting the Des Moines Register and Iowa Public Television to host a debate?

The Des Moines Register is a newspaper that would love to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens.

The Register hates the Iraq war so much that they won't report on the success of the surge or the heroism of our soldiers, but rather only when soldiers die or when crazy old ladies protest.

The GOP should have told the Register to fuck off. Give the debate to the Cedar Rapids Gazette or some other newspaper that isn't chocked full of ultra-radical nitwits.

And Alan Keyes! Seriously. What the fuck is he doing there?

Exposing Chuck Grassley For The Fraud That He Really Is

A reader wrote a letter to Senator Chuck Grassley a couple months ago concerning the Earthpark Rainforest project. He recently received a reply.

First, the reader's comments:

Here is the response from Grassley regarding my letter to him about two months ago. I had sent him a request to have certain documentation in place prior to releasing funds. Note the incredible verbiage indicating that there is no possible way the DOE will reject this application. Also, the question about the already missing funds is answered by his acknowledgement that the "remainder" would be "reclaimed" if the DOE would reject it. The letter does mention "dollars to be raised". Too bad he doesn't know that his own rules allow in-kind dollars.

How about the recent news that he will have a hands-off approach to the application and yet responds to me that he will study their match proposal carefully. Which is it Chuck? The reasons why he wants it to succeed sound like they came straight from Oman's mouth, but about 8 years ago.

Please continue to let people know what a fraud Grassley is. Hopefully the DOE will rule on this before they get to my FOI request in a month...

...And wasn't it a hell of a lot earlier than September 28 that Pella was chosen as the new site? The budget is $150-200M? I'm not sure Grassley's office has any more details than we do. 50,000 acres of "natural habitat"? Does that include the massive planned development or the DNR-rejected marina?

And now the letter from Senator Chuck Grassley's office, which I have transcribed from a scan of the original:

Dear Mr XXX:

Thank you for expressing your concerns about Earthpark, the rain forest project to be located in Pella, Iowa. I am glad to have this opportunity to respond.

While the project was originally designed to be constructed in Coralville, the project leaders announced on September 28 that the project would be built in Pella. It will be relocated to a proposed residential, recreational and retail resort to be built on 240 acres on the southeastern shore of Lake Red Rock. It will be surrounded by 50,000 acres of natural habitat.

Federal funds for the rain forest project were included in the fiscal year 2004 spending bill through the Department of Energy. The $50 million federal appropriation only pays for part of the project, which has a total estimated cost of $150 to $200 million.

In November of 2005, I froze and put restrictions on the $50 million appropriation. My legislation requires non-federal dollars to be raised before additional federal tax dollars are spent. My measure also says that non-federal money must be secured by December of 2007 or the remainder of the federal funding will be reclaimed. Earthpark must submit the details of its proposal, including information on contributions they have received, to the Department of Energy by December 1. The Department of Energy will then determine if Earthpark has met the requirements specified in receiving the funds.

I appreciate your suggestion to require certain documents from the project leaders before unfreezing the federal funds. I will do just that an plan to study their match proposal carefully.

I want this project to succeed because it's a great opportunity for Iowans. Not only does the rain forest project show great promise for research and education, but it will also help the tourism industry in Iowa. Construction of this project will ultimately help Iowa build a better workforce, and provide more educational opportunities for teachers and students.

I understand the concerns that some Iowans have expressed about the amount of federal funds that we have appropriated for this project. Please know that during my time in Washington, I have worked for responsible government spending and to hold Congress accountable for your tax dollars. I will hold true to this commitment as I continue to work in the US Senate.

Again, I am glad to know your thoughts on this project. I always welcome your views, and urge you to stay in touch.

Sincerely,

Chuck

Senator Chuck Grassley is such a big phony. What a weasel.

CIETC: Guaranteed Screwing Of The Taxpayer

GED recipient and former $360,000-a-year CIETC head Ramona Cunningham with Senator Tom Harkin at the dedication of the "Tom Harkin Learning Center" at CIETC offices in October 20, 2004.

In August 2006 this blog had a post called "CIETC To Screw Central Iowa Taxpayers, Guaranteed". It was about who was going to reimburse the Feds over a million dollars in excessive bonuses and salaries paid to the CIETC gang:

I guarantee that the taxpayers of the above counties [Polk, Boone, Dallas, Jasper, Madison, Marion, Story and Warren] will get screwed. And Jonathan "I'm Gay" Wilson will be the one doing the screwing with his expensive billing hours.

Wilson, a Vilsack butt-boy, spent 16 months billing the taxpayers excessive amounts in order to come up with this sort of compromise (from the Des Moines Register):

The proposed settlement agreement Wednesday is based on the federal government’s decision to accept $1.3 million, rather than the full $1.4 million, for repayment.

The settlement calls for a 50-50 split on the cost of reimbursing the federal government. The state would advance $800,000 in state taxpayers’ money, and CIETC, through the local governments that control its board, would contribute $500,000 and also assign various CIETC assets to the state.

The local governments that would have to pay CIETC’s share of the settlement are Des Moines and the counties of Boone, Dallas, Jasper, Madison, Marion, Polk, Story and Warren.

Together, Polk County and Des Moines would be responsible for about half of CIETC’s liability.

As part of the settlement agreement, the Iowa attorney general has agreed to seek the recovery of money from people deemed to be responsible for the misspent money. The office would also pursue the recovery of money from CIETC’s insurance company, and potentially, from CIETC’s accountants and consultants.

I think we ought to bring back the death penalty for fraud and malfeasance by public officials.

Why the taxpayers of central Iowa haven't raided Archie Brooks' home and paraded his liver on a stick through downtown Des Moines is beyond my comprehension.

Until you get the public so pissed off that they'll invade Louisiana in order to drag that idiot Ramona Cunningham back to Iowa so she can be strung up like Clara Petacci, you'll never get any honest reform.

You're My Sunshine, You're My Rain

From the Hindustan Times:

Television host Oprah Winfrey's three-day presidential campaign tour with Barack Obama increased turnout for his rallies nearly tenfold. But though celebrities are good at attracting a crowd, it is unclear whether they are good at bringing in the vote.

Nonetheless, every US presidential hopeful has a celebrity or two in his or her coterie. Hillary Clinton has Steven Spielberg and Barbara Streisand. The number three Democrat, John Edwards, has Kevin Bacon and Jackson Browne. Republican candidate Ron Paul has the endorsement of the owner of the Midnight Blue Bunny brothel – the subject of an HBO series, as befits his anti-government ideology.

I now wonder if Oprah didn't come to Iowa too early.

Or perhaps she'll be back.

If Oprah showed up the week between Christmas and New Year's, I think that action would bury Hillary even more because Oprah might even get some of these suburban soccer moms to show up on January 3rd.

Earthpark's Grant Application: More Than $100 To Copy

From the reader who was pissed at this blog for not turning into a media reporting conglomerate on the issue of the $48 million Earthpark grant application:

I did get a letter from the Chicago DOE [Department of Energy] office yesterday.

They said that my FOI [Freedom of Information] request would result in more than $100 to copy and would be processed on January 7.

I wonder what will be blacked out???

It takes 5 or 6 weeks and more than $100 to copy a grant application under a FOI request???

Are Your Bill Clinton Are Belong To Us?

Kembrew McLeod (left), marrying 100 people to bananas.

From the Des Moines Register ("U of I prof heckles Clinton"):

A University of Iowa professor dressed as a robot interrupted Bill Clinton at a campaign stop here late Monday, screaming for an apology before security escorted him from the building.

The professor, Kembrew McLeod, stood on a chair and screamed several statements, including: “Robots of the world want you to apologize.”

The audience erupted into loud boos.

McLeod, before security officers could reach him, tossed hundreds of cards into the audience of about 400 people in protest of statements the former president made in 1992 of Sister Souljah, a member of the musical group Public Enemy...

...The cards included an Internet address for a group that calls itself “Mad Robots In Favor of Bill Clinton Apologizing.”

...McLeod said he is the Iowa chapter president of the group, which calls themselves Mr-IFOBCA, or RB-1 for short. The group also has chapters in New York, California, Virginia and Georgia, he said.

McLeod is an associate professor in the department of communication studies. He said he has tenure. He was not arrested.

That's brilliant!

Campaigns should have to deal with more of this stuff.

Here's the web site for Mr-IFOBCA with his statement.

Kembrew also has his own personal web site and has done numerous pranks before.

The Fringe

In followup to yesterday's post ("University Of Iowa Diversity: 8% Republican"), read Robert Maranto's piece in the Washington Post from today ("As a Republican, I'm on the Fringe").

Replace "Republican" with "women" or "blacks" or "other racial minorities" or "immigrant graduate students" or even "Democrats" and see how fair that sounds.

It doesn't sound very fair now, does it?

Isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general?

I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society?

Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!

Oprah/Obama 08

Concerning Oprah/Obama in Des Moines yesterday:

First things first, that sign absolutely kicks ass. I saw it in every report.

CHANGE
We Can Believe In

Whoever thought that slogan up really has it in for Hitlery. Well done. A real masterstroke.

But you know..... are all of those people really going to go out on January 3rd and caucus for Obama? Or are they just showing up to see Oprah?

A caucus isn't just showing up to cast a vote. There's other bullshit you have to wade through, particularly if you're with a lively or disorganized bunch.

And don't think for a second that the Hillary crowd or the lesser candidates won't drag proceedings past midnight in order to get the Obama-ites to give up and go home before things are finished. The truly committed have the patience to wait as long as it takes to win.

Skepticism aside, this has got to frighten the Hillary campaign into total paranoia. You can be certain Hillary will never say "I feel like Oprah!" when handed a microphone ever again.

Expect some focus to fall on Oprah, perhaps.

Remember, she interviewed Nawlins Mayor Ray Nagin after Katrina and broadcast this bullshit:

Oprah: Do you think they (Feds) didn't respond because they were poor people?

Nagin: I think it got into politics...

Oprah: Were there food drops?

Nagin: There were but not enough. That's why the people in my opinion got into this animalistic state. Because they didn't have the resources. They were trapped. You're getting ready to see something that I don't know if you are ready to see. They had people standing out there, had been in that frickin SuperDome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people. That's the tragedy. They were trying to give us babies that were dying! (breaks down)

Oprah: The Mayor apparently became overwhelmed and disgusted with what has been going on the past six days here and just walked away! He's become overwhelmed at what's happened and didn't have to happen to the children. It's pretty overwhelming.

Oprah: It makes me so mad! This makes me mad! This should not have happened! This should not have happened!...

Of course, none of that happened. Nagin was talking out his ass like a crackhead.

Shit, she still has the video of the interview on her web site!

Oprah's been busted so many times. She can't even pick a Book Of The Month without trouble.

As for Des Moines, in general, here are the words of Jon Gaskell a couple years ago about the city:

There is no such thing as a grassroots effort in Des Moines, so save it. Activism in this town, politically speaking, is dead. The fox was guarding the henhouse, and what did we do? We opened the gate. We encouraged the complacency. We encouraged the dirty dealings to continue.

Quite obviously contentment is an ugly thing, as is laziness. And people around here are both. When the Allieds and the Wells Fargos and the Principals stick their fat snouts in the trough that you fill, and they turn around and pay downtown businesses back by building cafeterias to encourage their workers to not be good patrons, to not get out, you bitch - a little. When a kid gets run over by a car because the council turned off the streetlight in front of his house to save money, you complain - a little. But you never fight. This town isn't made up of fighters. This town is made up of Oprah's top TV audience. This town is a Doritos test market.

Gaskell was right then and is likely still right today.

Rudy, Mitt, Fred, John, Mike, Duncan, Ron, Tom -- and Alan

Byron York at National Review:

The Republican presidential field will debate next Wednesday in Des Moines in what will be the last and most important debate before the January 3 Iowa caucuses. What many observers haven't thought about is that the field will include a candidate who has not been in any previous debates: Alan Keyes. It's not clear why the Des Moines Register, which is conducting the debate, decided to include Keyes at this stage of the race. But it's probably safe to say that the rhetorically brilliant but might-say-anything Keyes will shake things up. In a good way? That remains to be seen.

Alan "Carpetbagger" Keyes is running again? I guess he is.

At least he can't carpetbag the United States like he did in Illinois a couple years ago.

That seems kind of pointless to include Keyes, who I have not seen mentioned anywhere in the past 6 months. Maybe the Register just wanted more nutty moonbatty right-wingers up on the stage.

In all fairness, why not include Dr Mark Klein while they're at it? If you've been reading the Des Moines Register's comments sections online the past few months you'd know he was running!

University Of Iowa Diversity: 8% Republican

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

Breakdown of UI faculty

Out of 2,527 people:
• Democrat: 1,173 (46.4 percent)
• No party: 397 (15.7 percent)
• Republican: 205 (8.1 percent)
• Not registered: 752 (29.8 percent)

• There are 18 departments at UI with at least 10 registered faculty voters that include 80 percent or more registered Democrats, including Spanish and Portuguese, social work and community and behavioral health.

• There are 21 departments with at least 10 registered faculty voters with one or fewer Republicans, including the College of Law, teaching and learning and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

• There are seven departments with at least 10 registered faculty voters with zero registered Republicans, including history, anthropology and religious studies.

• If there is a Republican stronghold, it is in internal medicine, where there are 33 registered Republicans, or about 14.7 percent of registered voters. However, that also is the department with the largest number of Democrats. Internal medicine has 131 registered Democrats, which makes up 58.5 percent of the department.

• The department that comes in second is also the same for both parties. Pediatrics has 76 registered Democrats, or 61.8 percent, and 18 registered Republican voters, or 14.6 percent.

• Nursing has the third most registered Democrats with 66, or 74.2 percent, while anesthesia has the third most registered Republicans with 12, or 25.5 percent of the department.

• The departments with at least 10 or more registered voters with the highest percentage of Republicans are cardiothoracic surgery with four voters, or 36.4 percent, management sciences with six voters or 33.3 percent, urology with four voters, or 33.3 percent, otolaryngology head neck surgery with eight voters, or 29.6 percent, and biomedical engineering with 10 voters, or 27.8 percent.

• Possibly the most political department -- political science -- is 69.2 percent registered Democrat, among registered voters. There are 18 Democrats and two registered Republicans.

It was just a couple months ago that the UI History department was revealed to have 27 Democrats and zero Republicans.

What do you do about it?

Well, you can't force people to switch their political affiliation and "affirmative action" based on political party preference is a ridiculous idea.

You pretty much have to keep pumping out these stories to the public in order to wake people up to the fact that "diversity" at the University of Iowa is a crock and that those in charge of it are hypocrites.

Oh, and you make fun of them. You ridicule them.

The "diversity" types, I mean. Not the Republicans the university "accidentally" hired. Ha ha! Because you know somewhere deep within the University of Iowa there are people wanting to "politically cleanse" the school of all Republicans. They're almost finished, by the looks of things.

The Earthpark Roadmap

Nicholas Johnson:

I have been asked on more than one occasion in the past to run against Senator Chuck Grassley. I've always rejected the invitations. Not only do I not dislike Senator Grassley, I actually admire the attention he gives to constituent services -- it is of a quantity and quality among the best of any elected official in Washington. Moreover, I've always taken some responsibility for putting him in office, having lost (by my count by six votes) the Democratic primary for Congress in 1974 that led to a general election of then-legislator Grassley to the U.S. House of Representatives that year. Besides, as Art Small and others have discovered, running against Grassley is more of a sacrificial service to the Democratic Party than a realistic opportunity to gain a U.S. Senate seat.

But I have to say, with the way the Earthpark $50 million earmark is going, I'm seriously re-thinking my past reluctance. And this morning's (or was it yesterday's) Des Moines Register story about Grassley's current position was enough to prompt a serious discussion with my wife over breakfast this morning about my undertaking a statewide race against Grassley.

That's how strongly I feel about this.

Grassley isn't up for possible re-election until 2010, at which time Johnson would be 76 years old (and Grassley would be 77).

Running against an entrenched incumbent is tough work. Grassley has the money, the staff, the machine, and the media in his back pocket. He can coast. Johnson would have to work his tail off.

I still think Grassley's beatable, should he choose to run again, but not necessarily by a Democrat. He ought to be challenged by a real honest-to-goodness fiscal conservative from his own party in the primary. But seeing how Iowa doesn't have any of those, at least not without other baggage, I can serious see Grassley breaking into the longevity Top 40.

A Democrat beating Grassley would not be like Democrat Dave Loebsack beating Republican Jim Leach in the 2nd District in 2006. No way.

So, what can I say? Senator Nicholas Johnson has a nice ring to it. He'd clearly be an honest fella. I'd probably agree with about 85% of what he'd want to do. Iowa would be well-represented.

But that race...... that's like running across Death Valley in the summertime.

I think the important thing to focus on right now is that people are able to obtain and read David Oman's application for the $48 million in Federal taxpayer money to the Department of Energy.

Once the document is "out there" amongst the public and picked apart, then the questions can be asked.

If enough concern is raised about the in-kind donations, which are not cash, then you can go a step further and wonder about how Oman is going to get the rest of the money needed for construction.

And then you can pick apart the projected costs of the project itself.

Even if the fix is in, critics of the project still have a lot of outs.

Then again, perhaps the Dept of Energy says No to Oman's application.

Then what?

You ask who is going to pay back that $2.9 million already spent. You hammer and hammer and hammer and hammer that until it's answered. You dog Oman. You dog Grassley. You dog the columnists, pundits, and blogosphere. You dog Federal prosecutors.

That's my road map.

And just watch. If the Earthpork money is denied, watch Grassley keep his crusades up against government waste until re-election time in 2010. I'm sure there will be many other opportunities for him to be "shocked, shocked!" that the media will eat up.

Iowa's Weird And Arbitrary Sex Offender Residency Law Upheld By The State Supreme Court

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

The Iowa Supreme Court today once again upheld the controversial state law that requires convicted sex offenders to live at least 2,000 feet away from a school or child care center.

In ruling on a Polk County case involving Benjamin David Groves, the court said the state law does not violate his constitutional due process rights.

Court documents said Groves, 29, was convicted of lascivious acts with a child in 1997. In 2002, the Iowa Legislature passed a law prohibiting sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or child care facility.

In January 2006 Groves was charged with violating the law for living too close to a school.

He filed a motion to dismiss the charge claiming the residency law severely restricted his liberty rights, which he defined as the ``right to reside somewhere that meets basic 21st century living standards.''

District Court Judge Carol Egly dismissed the charge saying Groves' rights to substantive due process were violated by the statute and the ``residency restrictions are a severe restriction of the defendant's liberty rights.'' She defined one of those rights as the right to live somewhere with heat, electricity, sewer or septic and running water.

Opponents of the 2,000 foot rule have said the law has forced many sex offenders to move out of their homes and sometimes live under bridges or in rest stops, where it becomes more difficult to monitor them.

The Iowa attorney general's office and the Polk County attorney appealed.

Cops and county attorneys hate it. The law is costing taxpayers millions. But politicians don't want to repeal it because then they'll look "soft on crime".

Too bad I'm not in the Iowa Legislature. I'd submit a bill indicating that the state needs a Git 'N Ghetto Registry. Anybody convicted of robbing a convenience store would be placed on the list forever.

And that whoever is on the registry cannot shop or live within 2000 miles of a convenience store in Iowa.

Hey, it's for the children. And what are you? Soft on crime?

Grassley Finally Comments On Earthpark

Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold's unfinished and rotting mansion near Eldon, IA, early 1990s (photo by Bill Joyce)

Let's see.....

It's only been TEN DAYS since David Oman said he was going to submit the application to try and get $48 million in Dept of Energy dollars earmarked repeatedly by Senator Chuck Grassley so the Cedar Rapids Coralville Riverside Pella rainforest project called Iowa Child Iowa Environmental/Education Project The Environmental Project Earthpark can be.... well, not built.... but at least started.

Kind of like that mansion Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold were working on near Eldon in the early 1990s, before their divorce.

But seriously folks......

Ten days later, here comes a story in the Des Moines Register about how Senator Chuck "Fake Fiscal Conservative" Grassley says there won't be any more "extensions" for the Rainforest if the application is denied by the Dept of Energy.

Well, gee, I sure hope not. How many times has Grassley written and re-written legislation for his friend, campaign contributor, and fellow Republican David Oman?

This is the same Senator Grassley who goes after people who bill the Feds $12 for a bagel and is currently on a crusade against tax-evading TV preachers.

But somehow Grassley doesn't realize that wasting $50 million to build a rainforest in Iowa is a stupid idea.

Earthpark: Bloggers Doing The Jobs That The Media Won't

Nicholas Johnson from the "Week Long Wake" (December 6 update):

While I'm happy to help out with the above email to the DOE, I really think this story is the media's -- primarily the Des Moines Register, The Gazette, Iowa City Press-Citizen and Daily Iowan -- responsibility to (1) demand the document from Oman and the DOE, suing for it under FOIA if necessary, and then (2) question Senator Grassley along the lines I've indicated below.

Let's face it: This has been a major Iowa (and national) story for ten years; it's now come to a head; it's either dead or dying (i.e., it either is flat broke, or it has been granted $47 million toward the $300 million it needs -- with a decade long track record of being unable to raise one dime in cash). In either case it is a big, big story. And while I appreciate the Register at least reporting that it has done nothing, and knows nothing about it -- which is more than the other three papers have bothered to tell us -- that's scarcely what I think we have a right to expect from one of America's largest newspaper chains at a time when they're trying to convince us of the wisdom of permitting them to own TV stations in the same markets they dominate with their newspapers.

Indeed.

I must say, I am amused with this quote in Johnson's post: "...i.e., it either is flat broke, or it has been granted $47 million toward the $300 million it needs..."

I laughed quite a while after reading that bit.

I'm sure it was no accident that he used $300 million to describe the potential costs of the project.

After all, the project was originally expected to cost $280 million to $300 million, and that was in 1998-era dollars. Sure, it got scaled back several times. The school was nixed. The million gallon aquarium was cut almost in half. The IMAX theater disappeared. I'm sure a few other things were lopped off or scaled down. But if you talk to anybody in the construction industry they'll tell you that costs fluctuate all the time and they never go down!

So I applaud Mr Johnson for saying the Earthpark rainforest will cost $300 million. How is he any less accurate than David Oman himself?

Actually, I think Johnson may be a bit low. Oman is saying that the rainforest can be built in Pella for $140 million. 8 years ago, the Coralville rainforest was expected to cost $180 million. What was scaled back from Coralville to Pella? How could the price tag go down $40 million during a time in which overall inflation rose 18% to 20%?

My rule of thumb is the Englert Theater restoration in Iowa City. It went 150% over budget and a couple years off course. Considering Oman's SWAG of $140 million, that would mean the Pella Rainforest will likely cost $350 million.

How To Get Students To Participate In The Caucuses

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

Of the 11,169 Johnson County participants, 945 attended the four student-heavy caucus sites -- on campus at the Quadrangle and the Main Library and off campus downtown at the Robert A. Lee Recreation Center and the Senior Center. Most likely, despite any push to draw back out-of-state students, those precinct locations will be significantly emptier Jan. 3.

I know the solution: free kegs at every caucus site!

Kutmus Is Full Of Krap

GED recipient and former $368,000-a-year CIETC head Ramona Cunningham with Senator Tom Harkin at the dedication of the "Tom Harkin Learning Center" at CIETC offices in October 20, 2004.

From the Des Moines Register:

Indicted former job-training executive Ramona Cunningham is mentally incompetent to stand trial in February for the alleged misuse of $1.8 million in taxpayer money, her attorney said Wednesday.

Defense attorney William Kutmus has asked that a Feb. 4 trial for Cunningham and three other former officials and overseers of the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium be rescheduled, because she "is currently is unable to assist her defense with any degree of rational understanding."

You remember Archie Brooks' original defense?

It was the "Uncle Leo" defense. Brooks was excusing his actions because of his previous mild stroke.

Unlike their reporting on the Earthpark Rainforest project, the Des Moines Register does a slight bit of digging:

"She did not try to kill herself," said Virginia Ellis, who lives across the street from the home she said is now occupied solely by Dan Albritton, a former CIETC board member and Cunningham's co-defendant. "God, no. She's as sane as I am. That woman, she's too happy to be depressed."

Happy.... until she realized that she might just be going to a Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison for a number of years.

Blogger Malpractice?

In followup to my earlier post ("Earthpark: Oh, The Irony"), a reader emails:

Brian Quirke said that no bloggers had asked for the information, including State29. I requested for and was granted an EFOIA docket number CH-08-06. Brian even helped me answer questions appropriately so as to make the request one that they could grant. And it wasn't that difficult.

While I hate this project just as much as you and Nick, I do think it would be blogger malpractice of you not to request your own information as I did. This is your chance to actually create and report news to the public better and quicker than the journalists. Wouldn't it be nice for the DM Register to have to report that State 29 was the one who broke the story wide open??? So get off your butt and request the information from:

Miriam Legan
FOIA Officer/Privacy Act Officer
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Science - Chicago Office
Office of Chief Counsel
9800 S. Cass Avenue
Argonne, IL 60439
Phone - (630)252-2041

First of all, thank you for doing the legwork. And yes, it's not hard to find Mr Quirke.

Second of all, it's not blogger malpractice if I raise the issue and don't have the time to do all the digging. I've got a job other than blogging that I occasionally have to work at. I'm not a deep research type. And I can barely string two paragraphs together without a F-bomb.

But I get people thinking and I got you thinking.

And now, because of your legwork and this post, I'm likely going to get people requesting this document to go over with a microscope. That's a good thing.

I can see it now - Nick Johnson calling up, getting a copy, and scanning the thing into his archive for all to see.

Well, I hope he does. I certainly don't expect him to do it.

University of Alcoholic

Updated below:



From Hawk Central:

First he lost his starting position and now Dan Bohall has lost the opportunity to play against Northern Iowa on Wednesday.

Iowa men's basketball coach Todd Lickliter said Monday that Bohall, a 6-foot-4 sophomore guard from Sioux City, will not play against the Panthers. Lickliter didn't say why Bohall will miss the Northern Iowa game or if Bohall was suspended.

However, Lickliter made the decision barely 24 hours after Bohall was charged with public intoxication at 5:09 a.m. Sunday. Bohall did not attend Monday's practice at Carver-Hawkeye Arena and was unavailable for comment.

"I very seldom if ever will discuss any kind of personal issues in any regard publicly," Lickliter said. "I don't think that's fair."

Bohall, 21, admitted to drinking after being discovered sleeping shirtless on the floor of a locked third-floor bathroom in the north wing of Hillcrest Residence Hall, according to a report filed by University of Iowa Department of Public Safety.

Bohall registered a .164 on a pre-arrest breath test, according to the report, and a 0.15 on a post-arrest breath test.

Bohall is listed as weighing 193 pounds, and he was found at 5:09am with a BAC of .164.

5am! And he's passed out with a BAC of .164??????

Holy Jack Daniels! How much did he drink?

Wow!

You know he wasn't drinking beer.

And if he had been passed out for some time, imagine how much and for how long he had been drinking prior to blacking out.

This kid doesn't need to be on the basketball team. He needs to be in rehab.


Update: Yes, my calculations in the original post were all wrong. I edited all that out. Still, you've got to be drinking A LOT in order to be wasted like Bohall was at 5am!

Now for tonight's entertainment, Craig Ferguson. Watch it all:

Presidential Candidates: What's Your Worst Job?

From Breitbart:

The Associated Press asked major presidential candidates a series of questions about their personal tastes, traits and backgrounds. Today's question—first in a series—and their answers: What was your worst job?

DEMOCRATS:

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: "Sliming fish in a fish cannery in Valdez, Alaska."

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards: Textile mill. "I cleaned out overhead in the weave room, which is where all the crap goes. And I'd be up there climbing around, knocking the stuff down. And it would go down on the looms. The weavers would be, uh, not happy with me for that."

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama: Scooping ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins and eating too much of it.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson: Landscaping, while playing baseball on Cape Cod in 1967. "The pay was terrible. I remember it was backbreaking work."

REPUBLICANS:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: "Washing windows at JCPenney's and stocking shelves when I was 14 years old. ... It was a great job and it was a great company but they worked me hard. Just as I'd get all the fingerprints wiped off the door, somebody would come and they'd put their hands all over the glass. To this day, I'm still very sensitive about never touching the glass, but touching the handles because I had to wipe those windows so many times."

Arizona Sen. John McCain: "I've never really had a bad job."

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney: "Worst job was probably spending about a week sawing a sewer pipe at the ranch in Idaho I worked at. And getting down in the sewer and sawing through a sewer pipe that still had active sewage occasionally passing through it."

Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson: "I've worked in a factory, I was a bouncer at my uncle's drag strip, I worked at the post office, I sold children's shoes, I sold ladies', I sold men's clothing, I was a night clerk at a motel. I can't think of a job that I had that I wasn't thankful for at the time."

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani: Declined to answer.

The Freepers have some pretty funny responses.

Earthpork: Oh, The Irony

From Nicholas Johnson's "Week-Long Wake" - it's about David Oman submitting the application for $48 million in Federal money for the Earthpark rainforest project in Iowa:

Which Iowa Media Will Be the First to Report Its Contents?
[Dec. 4] A week ago the Associated Press reported that Department of Energy spokesperson "[Brian] Quirke said a decision on the application could come within a couple of days after it's received." Associated Press, "Deadline for Earthpark matching funds is Saturday," wcco.com/Iowa Wire, November 28, 2007.

Given that it was received by DOE last Friday (Nov. 30) or Saturday (Dec. 1) I'd say it's been "a couple of days." But there's no word yet as to how many tons of blue smoke and mirrors it takes to make what Senator Grassley would accept as a match for the $50 million of taxpayers' money.

Meanwhile, as State29 has noted, State29, "Earthpork: Keeping the Boondoggle Boondoggling," December 4, 2007, the Press-Citizen's editorial essay about the project this morning was one of the best pieces of writing to come from the state's largely-Earthpark-cheerleading media during the last five years or so. Read it. Editorial, "Area Did Right Thing With the Earthpark Deal," Iowa City Press-Citizen, December 4, 2007.

So a big "Hat's Off" to the Press-Citizen for what is an excellent start.

But I ask again: Who will be the first assignment editor to send a reporter out to ask Senator Grassley personally to respond to the questions I've laid out for him below, and then either tell us what he says, or report that he was too embarrassed to respond?

This is not just an "Earthpark story." It's not even just a "Senator Chuck Grassley story" -- although his former chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee, and continued efforts to build the illusion he is a fiscal conservative, are certainly a part of the story. As an oft-cited example of one of the worst of Congress' "earmarks" excesses, Earthpark is, during this pre-caucus presidential candidates' season, a major politics and money story: What is the relationship between special interest campaign "contributions" and Congressional action -- or inaction? How is Congress handling our money, and what are these presidential candidates proposing to do about it? It is -- as most signs indicate that the light at the end of the financial tunnel is an oncoming recession -- a useful illustration of why we're in the financial trouble we're in. In short, this unmonitored giveaway is a big and multifaceted story.

For the media to ignore the lessons in this Earthpark disaster is doing no one a favor -- least of all their audience and readers...

While I do applaud the Press-Citizen for their recent scathing editorial about Earthpark, they really need to do more by having a reporter or columnist dogging Grassley and this Brian Quirke guy at the Dept of Energy.

$48 million is a lot of taxpayer money. It'll be even more down the drain if Oman is able to parlay that money into a loan to start building.

The Des Moines Register certainly isn't going to do any investigative work, except continue to cheerlead the project when David Oman tells them. They're totally guilty of journalistic malpractice.

Where are the college newspapers? Aren't there any journalism majors trying to make a name for themselves, or are they only in school to Hate Bush, cover Obama's appearances, and rewrite wire copy? A couple years ago the Daily Iowan ragged on the project. Where's the followup?

Where is the Democratic Party? The Rainforest project is a Republican-created mess. Oh, sure, Oman and his gang have a few lefties on board, but Governor Chet Culver (D) trashed the project during his campaign last year. And the Democratic-majority Iowa Legislature is under strict orders not to part with any money for the project.

But perhaps all these groups are aware that Earthpork is a non-profit and thus is not subject to Open Records laws.

Maybe it's not so easy to get a look at the papers.....

And isn't that ironic, especially considering Senator Grassley's recent crusade against tax-exempt TV preachers?

Yes, it is.

Ain't Gun Vote Fur No Hitler Clean Ton

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

Christie Vilsack will kick off a women-to-women phone bank with Iowans for Hillary at 5 p.m. Thursday.

Why is letting Christie Vilsack talk to anybody on the phone a bad idea?

Here's an opinion piece from the Boston Herald in 2004:

Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack, a key factor in John Kerry's primary sweep and the primetime convention speaker tomorrow, has derided blacks, southerners and easterners as bad speakers because she couldn't understand them.

In inflammatory columns for her local newspaper obtained by the Herald, the normally soft-spoken Vilsack tore into several minority and ethnic groups while lampooning non-midwesterners for regional dialects.

"I am fascinated at the way some African-Americans speak to each other in an English I struggle to understand, then switch to standard English when the situation requires," Vilsack wrote in a 1994 column in the Mount Pleasant News, while her husband, Tom, was a state senator....

Vilsack wrote that southerners seem to have "slurred speech," wrote that she'd rather learn Polish than try to speak like people from New Jersey, and wrote that a West Virginian waitress once offered her friend a "side saddle" instead of a "side salad."...

Vilsack's Aug. 24, 1994, column was particularly critical of dialects from other regions of the country. In addition to the knock on African-Americans, Vilsack knocked residents of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

You've got to wonder if Christie Vilsack has an occasional problem understanding Hillary:

The Clintons Dig For Dirt All The Way To Indonesia

From the Associated Press:

KEENE, N.H. (AP) - Bill Clinton said Tuesday that if reporters covered the candidates' public records better, his wife's presidential bid would be far ahead of her rivals.

During a campaign stop on behalf of his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former president said he can't understand why so much of the media coverage of the campaign ignores her experience—and, without naming him, the relative lack of experience of her closest Democratic rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Honestly, I feel for Bill.

I often wonder why reporters don't cover all the Clinton scandals better? If they did, his wife's presidential bid would be in the tank.

Meanwhile, if you didn't already hate the Hillary campaign, read this:

To rebut Obama's comments that he was not running "to fulfill some long-held plans" to be president, the Clinton campaign cited an AP interview with Obama's kindergarten teacher, who remembered he wrote an essay entitled, "I Want to Become President."

Asked by reporters Monday if he had any response to Clinton's latest attacks, Obama said, "No," paused, then added, "It's silly season. I understand she's been quoting my kindergarten teacher in Indonesia."

That's really crazy, but that's what you get with the Clintons. They've gone bonkers. It's fun to watch.

I mean, if the Clintons wanted to trash Obama they could just talk about Tony Rezko.

But if Obama wanted to trash the Clintons, well, gee, take your pick. Start with the pardons and work backwards.

But I can see why Obama isn't going there. Why bother when you've got poll numbers going up, Oprah on your side, and the Clintons imploding?

I've got to say, even though I'm against most of what Obama stands for as a candidate he's running a very good campaign right now.

24-Hour Dorman

A followup to a recent post about allegedly missing and well-liked snarky political columnist Todd Dorman.

In addition to emptying trash cans and scraping gum at the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Dorman now has a blog: 24-Hour Dorman.

Read it and feed it!

Iowa DNR: 10 Motorcyclist's Deaths Are Worth $200 MIllion In Deer Revenue

Two letters in the DMR this morning:

The headline on Iowa Department of Natural Resources director Rich Leopold's Nov. 19 guest editoral read: "Additional Steps Are Needed To Reduce State's Deer Herd." I live in southwest Iowa, and that really caught my attention.

However, Leopold spent the entire article tooting his horn about what a wonderful job they are doing in managing the deer population and that deer hunting provides $200 million to the state's economy. He refers to the killing of deer as a "harvest." Wrong. Deer are not a grain. No, they eat grain, they destroy crops and trees and, yes, they even kill people. Ask the friends and loved ones of the 10 motorcyclists who lost their lives this year after encountering deer.

Does no one else see the conflict of interests here in allowing deer hunters to determine what the deer population should be? If the $200 million figure is accurate, there surely must be enough money for the state to provide game reserves for the deer. Round 'em up and put them all behind 12-foot fences; get them off the roads and highways that we all pay for with our gasoline taxes.

If deer hunting is such a great boon to the state's economy, wouldn't you think the state should be held liable for deer-related losses? I don't believe the $200 million would be enough to cover 10 human lives.

- Jerry Beard, Anita.

And:

"Don't veer for deer" and "Don't ride motorcycles at dawn or dusk" is the absurd advice given to us by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

The number of deaths and the number of people sustaining bodily injuries continues to rise due to deer-vehicle accidents. And as the costs of property damage mount due to these accidents, the DNR refuses to take responsibility for what is clearly its negligence.

It does not take a rocket scientist to know that if the DNR reduced the deer herd by half, the associated damages would decrease drastically.

- James Hamer, Traer.

I've been saying this for years, of course.

I'm glad that other people are waking up to the greed that has taken over government agencies like the Iowa DNR and voicing their opinions about it.

Don't forget that infamous quote by former Iowa DNR head Jeff Vonk (appointed by Tom Vilsack):

"When you shoot them, they are our deer, but when you hit them with your car, they are your deer," Vonk said with a nervous chuckle at a meeting.

What a dickhead.

At one point, Iowa had more motorcyclists dead because of hitting deer this year than soldiers from the state who had been killed in the Iraq War.

I haven't kept up tracking that statistic, but since the Iraq War surge has been working (just ask John Murtha or Dave Loebsack), I bet motorcyclists will beat out soldiers in the death race this year.

Earthpork: Keeping The Boondoggle Boondoggling

A really excellent editorial in the Press-Citizen today about the Earthpark rainforest project:

...we're thrilled that the Iowa City area could pass Dec. 1 -- the deadline for Earthpark to prove it had the matching funds necessary to claim the federal grant coordinated by Sen. Charles Grassley -- without having to worry about how the project's implosion would affect the local economy. Not only did Coralville wise up and finally break off its going-nowhere relationship with Earthpark, but it also has moved on to new, workable, positive development plans for the Iowa River Landing. For a while Riverside seemed gung-ho to repeat the mistakes that Coralville made early on, but eventually the project directors decided to move away from critical newspapers and skeptical donors and to relocate the imagined headquarters of their imagined project to Pella.

At that time, we rejoiced that Eastern Iowa was finally off the hook. Now the federal government needs to make sure that it double checks every aspect of Earthpark's application for the matching funds. Grassley recently has brought some needed scrutiny to the tax-exempt status of televangelists and university football programs. He now needs to apply the same skepticism to this project.

If Earthpark officials succeed in getting these millions in federal money, they pull in every American taxpayer hook, line and sinker.

Senator Chuck Grassley is such a big phony.

Seriously, Grassley goes after the government being billed $12 for bagels and now has this crusade about the tax-exempt status of a bunch of shifty TV preachers (like he hasn't had the past 25 years to do this!!!), but too many of the clueless pundits, reporters, and columnists ignore the folly of the Rainforest project.

Good job, Press-Citizen. Your persistent criticism of the project did a quite a job at driving con man David Oman out of Coralville. And it exposed Chuck Grassley to be the puppet that he really is. That's how a local media ought to work. Somebody's got to be on the side of the taxpayer every now and then. It sure as hell ain't the politicians!

Michael Gartner Can't Take The Heat

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

The president of the Iowa state Board of Regents plans to propose that a new president be elected, effective Jan. 1, he wrote in an e-mail Monday...

...Gartner's term as president has been marked by peaks and valleys. He has overseen the hiring of two university presidents, including University of Iowa president Sally Mason in June, and he helped secure full funding for higher education from the Legislature.

However, popular UI president David Skorton left on Gartner's watch, and many criticized Gartner as one of the prime reasons for the UI presidential search that lasted 17 months before Mason was hired.

That search featured a bitter fallout after an initial search failed. That resulted in unprecedented no-confidence votes in the regent leadership from various UI constituent groups.

The Gartner-led regents also were sued by the Press-Citizen for open meeting violations stemming from the first presidential search. That suit was settled in October with the regents admitting they violated some aspects of the law.

At various times, Gartner has stood up for unpopular positions that he believed in.

At the most recent board meeting in October, for example, Gartner made a speech explaining his reasons for voting against arming campus police in Iowa -- a position that contrasted with Gov. Chet Culver and almost every leader at Iowa's public universities.

Michael Gartner has been a disaster as the President of the Iowa Board of Regents. It's one of the many nasty legacies of Hillary Clinton supporter and former Governor Tom Vilsack. Perhaps he'll fade into the woodwork until he leaves the Board when his term expires 2011, although I doubt it.

At the time that Gartner was picked for the job, the Iowa City Press-Citizen wrote an editorial about his notorious past as the lying president of NBC News, but they really glossed over things and left out many important details such as what Gartner did to cause Arthur "The Scud Stud" Kent's $25 million lawsuit.

The Iowa media really did a shitty job at informing the public about this asshole.

Look at all the lawsuits filed, money wasted, lives disrupted, and stress dished out over Gartner's regime. It all could have been easily prevented with a more moderate and competent pick. But the media just bent over and let Gartner screw the taxpayers of Iowa and anger the professors at the University of Iowa. That's how you drive away Really Smart Guys like David Skorton, but then you're left with crooked shitheads like Michael Gartner.

Read through this site's many posts on Gartner for more details.

Hillary's Dirty Sanchez Problem

From the San Jose Mercury News:

[Los Angeles] Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa slipped quietly out of the city last week to campaign in Iowa for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a rare public foray into presidential politics since his marital meltdown dominated front pages last summer.

Clinton made a splash in May when she snagged the Democratic mayor's endorsement, and even former President Bill Clinton was called in to help lock up Villaraigosa's support. The New York senator said at the time that Villaraigosa, one of the nation's most prominent Hispanic politicians, would be "reaching out to a broad range of voters across the country."

...The mayor's image was badly wounded in July by disclosures that he had a long-running affair with a TV newscaster, who announced Villaraigosa's separation from his wife on the air. There was a cascade of unfavorable publicity about the illicit romance, which the mayor called a "mistake." His wife, Corina, filed for divorce in June...

...The Iowa visit was not announced by his office or Clinton's California staff...

...Bruce Cain, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, noted that Villaraigosa's pull with Hispanic voters would be of little use in Iowa and New Hampshire, where the voting population is overwhelmingly white. A surge of illegal immigration has alarmed many voters in Iowa, and the mayor has spoken sympathetically about the plight of illegal workers in the country.

But his scant public appearances for Clinton "might relate to the fact he's had these troubles and they are related to adultery," an issue Clinton would want to avoid in states like Iowa with a large population of social conservatives, Cain said.

Questions about the mayor's infidelity intruded when U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., endorsed Clinton in July. In a conference call with reporters Clinton was asked whether she was concerned about the scandal and Feinstein jumped in, "She doesn't need to get into this." Clinton said she continued to welcome his support.

Clinton has a long list of endorsements in California, ranging from Barbra Streisand to state Controller John Chiang. But Villaraigosa is not the only prominent supporter whose problems could limit his effectiveness on the campaign trail.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, another national co-chair who endorsed Clinton in August, admitted in February having a drinking problem and an affair with his campaign manager's wife. He was re-elected easily last month. Newsom, a Democrat best-known for opening City Hall to same-sex weddings six weeks into his first term, has held several private fundraisers for Clinton and appeared at a handful of public events on her behalf, a spokesman said. He plans to go to Iowa and New Hampshire to campaign for her this month.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, another Clinton co-chair, has faced scrutiny for lavish spending of campaign funds. Nunez was in Iowa campaigning for Clinton last weekend.

Gee, those Clintons can really pick 'em, can't they?

What a bunch of losers.

Where are the members of Iowa's ass-licking media to report this? NOWHERE!

Bill Clinton sure loved those spicy liberal Democrat Mexican-American adulterers and liars. This is from the Washington Post in 2001:

Clinton also pardoned a former Cabinet member, ex-Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, who was convicted in a controversy over payments to an ex-mistress.

And via Wikipedia:

In December, 1997, Cisneros was indicted on 18 counts of conspiracy, giving false statements and obstruction of Justice. Medlar used some of the Cisneros hush money to purchase a house and entered into a bank fraud scheme with her sister and brother-in-law to conceal the source of the money. In January, 1998, Medlar pleaded guilty to 28 charges of bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and obstruction of justice.

In September, 1999, Cisneros negotiated a plea agreement, under which he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of lying to the FBI, and was fined $10,000. He did not receive jail-time or probation. He was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in January 2001.

Do we really need more crooked, family-destroying politicians fucking around and causing problems? Elect Hitlery and you'll get Henry Cisneros II in Antonio Villaraigosa, a man who isn't a man. He's a fucking dog. A real piece of shit who ought to be kicked in the nuts for letting his big ego and tiny penis destroy his family.

And if you think I'm being tough on Villaraigosa because he's a Democrat, read what I said about Republican Henry Hyde, that dead fucker from Illinois, currently residing in HELL.

Hillary has to be mentally ill. Seriously mentally ill. She's supposedly this big feminist and women's rights type but she stays with that adulterous dog husband of hers, Bill. And then she has these mas macho Hispanic shitbags running around Iowa campaigning for her. They're probably chasing every piece of tail they can get while on the road.

Talk about a DIRTY SANCHEZ! Not only does Hillary love getting that shit all over her face, but the media in Iowa have no problem obscuring all these facts from voters. It's just disgusting all around.

The Return Of Lee Jolliffe

Drake University journalism professor Lee Jolliffe has a letter in the Des Moines Register today that trashes Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama.

Some key sections:

It's somehow appropriate that Oprah Winfrey would endorse Barack Obama. She brought us Jerry Springer lite (her TV show), counseling lite (Dr. Phil), and now it's candidate lite (Obama). He's a low-cal, "say-anything" campaigner.

Obama has declared he'd sit down with the radical leaders or enemy nations without any preconditions, thus granting them legitimacy. He even said he'd attack Pakistan, a U.S. ally - and an unstable nuclear power...

...Like most of Obama's supporters, she's being brought in from out of Iowa. Weekly buses come in from Chicago bringing his campaign's volunteers.

Obama knows from teaching constitutional law what a U.S. president actually can do. He should stop blowing smoke.

Iowa Dems should look at candidates with the honesty to promise what's actually possible and the experience to fulfill their promises: Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson.

Well, she's absolutely right about Obama.

And she's totally wrong about Hillary. I can't see Hillary getting any of her agenda through Congress, even with a Democratic majority. Bill Clinton couldn't get anything through Congress until the Republicans took over in 1995.

If you don't remember Lee Jolliffe, she's the dimwitted Drake University journalism professor who went to court to deny Ralph Nader a place on the ballot in Iowa in 2004.

Run, Ralph, Run!

The Return Of Jill Gaulding's War Against Iowa's Pink Locker Rooms

From the Daily Iowan:

A former UI associate professor of law plans to file a Title IX complaint against the university over the pink visitors' locker room in Kinnick Stadium.

Jill Gaulding, who spoke out against the pink locker room in 2005, said she plans to file the complaint because of the inappropriateness of the university's action in rebuilding the pink locker room during stadium renovations. Some have complained that the pink color is derogatory toward women, intending to make visiting teams feel like "sissies."

Jennifer Modestou, the director of UI Equal Opportunity and Diversity, said that when Title IX complaints are filed, her office looks to witnesses and documents involved with the situation and begins an investigation. The office aims to complete the process within 45 days.

Following the formal investigation, she said, the office makes recommendations to the dean or vice president of the affected department, but it's up to the administrators to handle the situation.

Steve Parrott, the director of University Relations, said he has been unable to contact Gaulding and that the university does not respond to potential lawsuits.

"If a complaint is filed, we will respond in the appropriate venue, which is through the court system," he said in an e-mail, declining further comment.

An "interesting series of events" played out when the controversy surfaced two years ago, Gaulding said.

Following internal discussion with then-President David Skorton in 2005, Gaulding and colleague Erin Buzuvis made a public statement on the issue to a NCAA public hearing.

Gaulding, who left the university in part because of how the locker-room ordeal panned out, said then-Vice Provost Patricia Cain made the decision not to include the statement because it was "a university issue" and should be dealt with internally.

Plans for Skorton to form a committee to look into the matter were not executed.

"The university was very discouraging when trying to make it a public issue," Gaulding said, pointing to numerous e-mails left unanswered by the administration.

Since 2005, the controversy has lain dormant, which she attributes to a lack of permanent leadership available to address the issue.

Gaulding recently sent UI President Sally Mason a letter congratulating her on her new position and asking what she was willing to do to address the issue of the pink locker room.

Mason hasn't responded, and I'm betting that she likely won't.

More of Jill Gaulding's past words here.

Gaulding liked to misquote former Hawkeye football coach and psychology degree holder Hayden Fry to make her point. She is one of those rare people who the descriptive slur "femi-nazi" fits perfectly.

Luckily, Gaulding has moved on and Iowa taxpayers aren't paying her nearly $100,000 a year to "teach" law anymore, but she's still wasting everybody's time and money.

But don't get angry, see some humor in it! Re-read Iowahawk's Little Pink Footballs post!


Related: The Queer Color Fascists and Slandering Hayden Fry

Earthpork: The Day After The Deadline

Updated below:

I find it interesting that the Des Moines Register has not run a fully-fledged story about how Rainforest con man David Oman submitted his $50 $48 million grant application to the Feds.

Isn't that kind of a big deal?

The best the Register can do is bury a mention of it in a profile on Ted Townsend, the guy who dreamed this nonsense up on his treadmill one morning about 10 years ago.

Here's a Google News snapshot of the word "earthpark" and sorted by date as of this morning:

Big ideas, passion motivate Ape Trust founder
DesMoinesRegister.com, IA - 5 hours ago
-Earthpark is a proposed $150 million project outside of Pella that would be a combination education center, energy-conservation lab and tourist attraction ...

Earthpark submits application Gazette Online, IA - Nov 30, 2007 PELLA — Officials with the Earthpark indoor rain forest submitted an application Friday with the US Department of Energy that they hope frees up $48.3 ...

Earthpark Officials Will File Papers Saturday WHO-TV, IA - Nov 30, 2007 November 30, 2007--It took four years of fundraising, and it appears Earthpark organizers aren't in any hurry to prove they've raised $50 million. ...

Countdown to Earthpark Deadline WHO-TV, IA - Nov 30, 2007 November 30, 2007--The developers of Earthpark, a $150 million enclosed rainforest only have until the end of the business day, to show they've matched a ...

Ideas coming soon for Iowa River Landing attraction Gazette Online, IA - Nov 30, 2007 "A rain forest in a cornfield doesn't make sense," he said, referring to former plans by the Earthpark organization to build an artificial rain forest near ...

Deadline for Earthpark matching funds is Saturday
WCCO, MN - Nov 28, 2007
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) The deadline for organizers of the Earthpark indoor rainforest project to come up with $48.3 million in matching funds is Saturday, ....

I think Iowa's newspaper reporters, editors, and opinion columnists have really dropped the ball on this one - and I believe the Des Moines Register has done so intentionally.

Oh, there has been criticism sprinkled here and there, like at the Iowa City Press-Citizen (whose increasingly questioning editorials essentially drove the project out of next-door suburb Coralville.....), but nobody state-wide has really pounded the drum regularly and warned the general public about what lurks ahead if this project is green-lighted.

Nicholas Johnson has written a lot, but he doesn't have the audience of a David Yepsen, Ed Tibbetts, or even John Skipper.

Yepsen, in particular, has done a remarkably crappy job at informing the public. He's even chastised Iowans for not getting on board the project, calling opponents "mossbacks". Yepsen simply has too big of a conflict of interest since he's so buddy-buddy with all these crooked politicians.

Because you can't talk to Senator Chuck Grassley about it and David Oman is nowhere to be seen, here are a list of questions I have compiled for the media in Iowa, particularly the Des Moines Register:

• Doesn't it disturb you that Senator Grassley wrote up a $50 million pork grant for fellow Republican and Grassley campaign contributor David Oman? Especially when we still have a huge budget deficit?
  
  
• Didn't it bother you when David Oman was caught after spending nearly $3 million of the grant money before his application had been submitted? Why weren't there any questions as to why Oman had access to this money?
  
  
• Who's going to repay that $3 million? Where did it go?
  
  
• Didn't it seem weird that Grassley re-wrote the $50 million pork grant bill to be potentially spent all over Iowa (as opposed to just Johnson County, as it was initially written) after Oman pulled out of Coralville following repeated inquiries by local supporters asking Oman how the project was going to be funded?
  
  
• How does a major construction project cost less, year after year? At first, the Rainforest was going to cost $280 million, then it was scaled back to $225 million, then $180 million, then $160 million, then $150 million, and now it's $140 million. What has changed? Has anybody looked at the plans to evaluate them?
  
  
• To break even on operating costs as an entity, this project would require over a million visitors a year. Pella has a population of about 10,000. It's 40 miles from Des Moines and more than 20 miles off Interstate 80. "If you build it, they will come" only happens in the movies. Doesn't this raise your eyebrows a little?
  
  
• I suspect much of Oman's grant application will likely be supplemented by mostly in-kind donations, something Grassley intentionally wrote into the grant earmark. This is not cash. These are freebees, usually billed at an abnormally high amount to fluff the numbers. This will not get the complex built. Why don't you question this vigorously?
  
  
• Where is the rest of the money to build the complex coming from? Even if the grant is approved with mostly in-kind donations, Oman won't have much cash on hand. Go talk to a banker or venture capitalist or financier about the likelihood of Oman getting a loan for the other $50-$90 million. Can you make a guess as to what that answer would be?
  
  
• We know that Governor Chet Culver and the Democratic-majority Iowa Legislature has no interest whatsoever in funding Grassley and Oman's rainforest. Without regular infusions of state taxpayer money or hooking it up next to a casino, how can it be done?

I could go on and on and on, but that's Being Skeptical 101.

Update: I will go on and on, here's some more obvious ones I missed:

• Not a single private individual or company (other than Ted Townsend) has pledged money. Why is that?
  
  
• How come the Coralville City Council, which mostly was in favor of the project there, could never get in touch with David Oman? Yet whenever there was a story on the rainforest the Des Moines Register always had his number?
  
  
• Senator Grassley seems awfully interested in auditing TV preachers as of late, but has anybody bothered to audit the Earthpark project?
  
  
• When the head guy says money for the project is right around the corner for year after year and year, but then no money materializes except in-kind donations from shifty-looking companies out of the Atlanta area, doesn't that look bad?
  
  
• 1 million visitors a year? Are they on crack? A million people in Iowa is more than the attendance at all the ISU and University of Iowa home football games, combined! A million people is double the annual attendance at Adventureland in Altoona. I heard central Iowa had a bit of an ice storm on Saturday, so many would show up then? Or how many are showing up on the coldest, darkest days of January and February when the ground is covered in snow and the temps sometimes barely get into the single digits above zero? And in the middle of summer, where would the kids rather go? Adventureland or Earthpark? Better yet, ask where the kids would rather go back to the next year.

That's it for now.

Where Did Todd Dorman Go?

Updated below:



One of my favorite snarky political columnists, Todd Dorman, left the Quad City Times in late September in order to get a job at the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

Well, no wonder I haven't seen Dorman's name in a while.

The problem with the Cedar Rapids Gazette is that you have to subscribe to the newspaper in order to read anything online.

They should have called their web site: www.gazetteNOTonline.com

Oh, they give you a few stories here and there, but most news and opinion is kept behind "the wall" - kind of like how the New York Times did things up until a few weeks ago.


Update: A commenter who is in the newspaper biz said:

He left the QCTimes for the Gazette?

Not sure if that's a step down or a step sideways. Ick.

And in regards to your fav topic of how our industry is dying, I'm also not sure how papers will deal with the transition to e-reading if they don't offer the same services as other papers (in this case, superior papers).

At least he's away from Lee Enterprises, a company which had to resort to an accounting trick involving the calendar in order to post positive numbers in their recent quarter.

Down here, the Kansas City Star is owned by McClatchy. It's an unexceptional bloated rag filled with the usual suspects on the editorial page and too much advertising that I always tune out, although they have a really exceptional movie reviewer in Bob Butler. That's one thing I miss about the Des Moines Register, a local movie reviewer, especially of the caliber of Joan Bunke (who had retired a few years before replacement Jeffrey Bruner took over). What was idiot editor Carol Washburn thinking when she eliminated movie reviews from the Register almost two years ago?

The KC Star is currently offering buyouts to about 60-65 of their most senior employees. Not a good sign for the future.

How do papers deal with the transition? Well, I think they're going to throw a lot of money at technology for stupid purposes that won't get them much in return except headaches.

The new way comments are displayed on stories on the Register's web site is lame. You get maybe six comments per "view" before you have to click Next or "2" or whatever. Who designed that nonsense? Somebody still using a 28.8 modem? If I want to read all 79 comments lambasting a Rekha Basu column, show all 79 at once. Otherwise, I'm never going to look.

I'm still amazed that the Register has gotten so deep into "blogs", especially after comments in the past by columnists Ken Fuson and Nancy Clark. The blogs they do host are pretty lame or are given to Jew-haters. Now they've got some "post your pictures" thing that surely sucks. What are they trying to be? And who would use this? And what kind of revenue do they expect to get out of it?

Pluck, the company who set up the Register's recent "Social Media" services, must be making a lot of coin off the newspapers who use their services. But when I look at the Register's web site it just seems like a hodgepodge.

I think for newspapers it's "too little, too late" for them. Advertising, the driving factor of the newspaper industry, is going elsewhere.

Say you're looking for a car. Are you going to buy a newspaper and call a phone number based on a tiny ad with no picture or description that cost a lot of money for the seller to place....... or would you rather go on Craigslist and have - WOW! - a whole bunch of things to choose from, and complete with descriptions and even pictures. Oh, and the Craigslist ad is free.

Why would anybody put a used car ad in the Des Moines Register in this day and age? You might as well burn $50. Advertising dollars for newspapers are going to plummet in the next three years. You just watch.

Newspapers have to invest in the community. Their focus has to be local. This reliance on wire service copy and rewritten stories from other media outlets has driven a lot of people away. Unfortunately, most major-minor newspapers like the Register or Star are owned by giant corporate conglomerates who install corporate lifers from other parts of the country to run the place.

And newspaper reporters and columnists have to take a step back from the locals they are writing about or commenting on. When you have such an obvious turd like the Rainforest floating around for most of a decade, why can't there be an advocate for the taxpayer or at least somebody with a BS detector who can flush this project down the toilet? Give the reader a reason to tune in every day rather than allowing the subscriber to eventually say, "Now exactly why do I keep getting the newspaper every day????"

Where will the newspaper industry be some 7-10 years down the road? It wouldn't surprise me if Google owned a bunch of them, or even Microsoft and Yahoo. How would "reporting" get done? Same way as it did before. Reporters would be hired by the parent companies, as would editors. Competition for good reporters and columnists with a following will be fierce because stats and click-through data will be kept. The emphasis on "local" news will be as easy as configuring a widget within Google Desktop, MyYahoo, and MSN.

Somebody like Todd Dorman will continue to have value because readers like me will promote his writing, tell other people to read it, subscribe to it, click through to it, or whatever is needed. Good stuff survives.

And stuff we "paid for" in the past, like classified ads, will be free. It already is free if you look around. It will eventually just BE FREE. That will kill off the traditional newspaper.

But this idea that the local monopoly corporate paper is going to last.... it's a joke. They're buggy whips... Rotary-dial phones...

Steve King On Henry Hyde

Updated below:



From Representative Steve King's web site:

"Henry Hyde was a living inspiration for all, regardless of our political affiliation. Congressman Hyde was the consummate statesman who stood elegantly on the principles of American values."

"He was an enduring friend and inspiration to me. As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Henry Hyde’s example is the single most significant reason that I serve on the House Judiciary Committee today."

"Henry Hyde has set the standard for those of us who follow in his footsteps. His legacy will remain for the duration of the republic."

Henry Hyde sure stood elegantly on the principles of American values.

Such values as being involved with the Savings & Loan Scandal:

In 1981, after leaving the House Banking Committee, Hyde went on the board of directors of Clyde Federal Savings and Loan, whose President was one of many of Hyde's banker contributors. Congress deregulated the S&L industry in 1982, and Clyde began taking part in loans for luxury residences in Texas and bought a bank in the Cayman Islands, a notorious financial exchange for laundering money. Since 1984, when Hyde left the board, it was clear to the directors from the reports that the establishment had failed, but the board continued to give inappropriate financial loans to cronies and insiders and make it possible for the establishment to overcharge the government on student loans. In 1990, the federal government put Clyde in receivership, and finally paid $67 million to cover deposits. In 1993, the Resolution Trust Corporation sued Hyde and other directors for $17.2 million. Four years later, before pretrial investigation and depositions, the government settled with the defendants for $850,000 and made a special arrangement exempting Hyde from paying anything. Hyde was the only member of the congress sued for "gross negligence" in an S&L failure. Hyde utilized his political clout and refusal to settle as a way to escape payment and give the impression that he was discharged.

And fucking around on his wife for 4 years!

In 1998, the Internet magazine Salon.com published "This Hypocrite Broke Up My Family" which stated that from 1965 to 1969, Hyde conducted an extramarital sexual affair with Cherie Snodgrass. At the time, Snodgrass was married to another man with whom she had had three children. The Snodgrasses divorced in 1967. Hyde said the affair ended when Snodgrass' husband confronted Mrs. Hyde, but Snodgrass said the affair continued another 2 1/2 years. The Hydes reconciled and remained married until Mrs. Hyde's death in 1992. Hyde, who was 41 years old and married when the affair occurred, described the relationship as a "youthful indiscretion". The revelation of this affair took place as Hyde was spearheading the impeachment hearings of President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Henry Hyde certainly overstayed his welcome in the House of Representatives. 32 years, in all!

To me, Hyde was just another corrupt and hypocritical politician from Illinois.

And Steve King was inspired by this piece of shit?

The only good thing I can say about Henry Hyde is: Thank God the taxpayers of the United States didn't have to pay his pension for any longer than we did!


Update: Here's the original story from Salon.com ("This hypocrite broke up my family")

Burn in hell, Henry Hyde.

Any married man who fucks around on his family with another women, especially a married woman with kids, is a complete piece of shit.