When the Cat's Away

We'll be taking a break for a few days to work on our own, personal version of The Wave for the New England Patriots.

If you want to party, sad to say the Pensacola Beach Krewe of Wrecks web site is off-line, last we saw. Maybe they gave it up for Lent. The SRIA has a list of Mardi Gras weekend activities.
Krewe of Laffite: A Mardi Gras Calendar. The PNJ also lists Mardi Gras events.

If you'd rather read opinions about the news, politics, and household cats in Northwest Florida, check out our geographical neighbor's blog, Why Now? He's always good for an informative post, a rousing argument, or an old fashioned cat fight.

Primary Day

What Why Now? says.

Nelson's Clumsy Endorsement

Bill Nelson's apparent intent to endorse Hillary Clinton today is puzzling. If he was to do it, why wait until the last day voters go to the polls?

Substantial numbers of Florida voters have cast their ballots early and we would judge many who might be influenced by what Nelson thinks are not likely to hear about it until late today or tomorrow, anyway. It's a small pebble thrown on the pond that will make no waves.

Nelson's endorsement can't help Hillary much in Florida; certainly not as much as a full-throated endorsement might have done two weeks ago. And Nelson's influence hardly extends a millimeter beyond our borders, so it will have even less impact on Super Tuesday.

So, Hillary can't be all that thrilled. Neither can Barack Obama, of course. It all seems rather clumsy, ineffectual, and counter-productive, especially for someone who surely yearns to be on the short list for V.P.

Avatar for Pensacola Voters

Louise Roug of the Los Angeles Times thinks she's found the avatar for Northwest Florida's electorate. Sad to say, it may be so.

The stand-in for typical Pensacola voters are Charles and Rhoda Harding, a debt-ridden pawn shop proprietor and his wife. Their business is located "across the street from Dinosaur Adventure Land, a 'Bible-based creation museum."

They twice voted for George W. Bush, hate Hillary Clinton for no reason they can articulate, and are drawn to Mike Huckabee because "he sounds like he wants to help people."

The Hardings, who are in their early 60's, have suffered greatly under the Bush administration. "By almost every indicator," Roug writes, their "quality of life... has worsened since 2004."

When the Hardings voted for Bush, they trusted the war would end once U.S. troops uncovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They were hopeful their wrecked world would return to normal once the insurance company paid to repair the roof blown off by the storm.

Though the couple believe in minimal government, they expected there would be emergency help -- perhaps a loan to cover the hurricane damage. Their insurance company paid only half the cost of repairing the roof, and federal officials turned them down when they applied for assistance. They never returned to an even keel.

The Hardings, who earn about $2,000 a month, could no longer afford health insurance. When their son Ronnie started suffering from bouts of fatigue, he refused to get tested because it would strain family finances, and his leukemia went undetected.

Ronnie died July 28. He was 43.

The week Ronnie spent in a hospital cost almost $100,000, and the Hardings are already $50,000 in debt. All they got from the government was $250 in assistance for their son's cremation. "That's what you're worth here in America," Rhoda says.

After two decades of running Adams Pawn, they are trying to sell their business. But in this depressed economy, there are no buyers.

So there you have it: they're anti-war, pro-national health care, for a competent FEMA, and against Bush's consumer bankruptcy law amendments. In other words, their political views almost exactly match those of a liberal Democrat -- and they don't even know it.

It's a phenomenon that we've seen before. Years ago, a legal aid worker of our acquaintance happened to win a hard-fought Social Security disability case for a horribly injured unemployed blue collar worker. What should have been an open-and-shut case -- the guy couldn't walk and was dying of an incurable lung disease -- was made extremely difficult because of changes in federal disability law forced through Congress by the Reagan administration.

The client was, of course, grateful for our friend's devotion to his case. He also was thrilled that he'd won. After profusely thanking our lawyer friend, his family loaded the man's wheelchair into their broken-down van and started off for home.

"As I was waving good-bye," our friend recounted, "I happened to glance at the bumper sticker on the back of the van. It said, 'Re-elect Reagan.'"

What makes this scene double ironic was that at the very same time, the Reagan administration also was fighting to abolish funding for the legal aid society.

The source of the disabled man's legal problems was the Reagan administration. And the only avenue for a cure was under attack by the Reagan administration. Yet, just like the the Hardings in today's LA Times story, the disabled man and his family were about to vote against their own interests -- and they didn't even realize it.

Question for Candidates

Time was when the one thing all presidential candidates claimed for themselves was their loyalty to the U.S. Constitution. Anyone elected president even takes an oath to uphold it:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Given the grave threat to the Constitution posed by the Bush administration's FISA proposal now pending in the U.S. Senate, Bryan at Why Now? rightly asks, "Where in hell are Obama and Clinton?"

For that matter, where are all the presidential candidates, whether they be in the Senate or not? Have they no motivation or "ability" to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution?"

FISA Amendments Explained

This week, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) explained in clear, precise, and compelling ways the ongoing dispute in Congress over competing amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Nothing short of the Founding Fathers' constitutional plan for preserving individual freedoms via our democratic government of "checks and balances" lies at the heart of the issue. The original text and video (approx. 14 min.) also is available here.

Click on this link to see what you can do today to defend the U.S. Constitution at no cost.

Oops

Pensacola News Journal
(1/25/2008 classified ad section)

PAINTING OF MOTHER- accidentally sold in Moving Sale on 1/11 or 1/12. please call 850-293-3511 Published on 01/25/2008

The 'Real' Giuliani

The New York Times today says Rudy Giuliani isn't "the man the man who stood fast on Sept. 11, when others, including President Bush, went AWOL." Nor is he "the man we endorsed for re-election in 1997 after a first term in which he showed that a dirty, dangerous, supposedly ungovernable city could become clean, safe and orderly."

Write the Times editors:

That man is not running for president.

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

The Times isn't thrilled with any of the other G.O.P. candidates, but from a disappointing field the editors coolly endorse John McCain as "the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe."

On the Democratic side, the Times give John Edwards short shrift, says a lot of nice things about Barack Obama, and then endorses Hillary Clinton.

Will primary voters care about either endorsement? Not likely. While once influential, the impact of newspaper endorsements everywhere has greatly diminished over the years. Television advertising and five-second soundbites, to our shame, are far more effective in molding minds.

Dio's Question

Apropos of this, we are reminded of Dio's Rhetorical Question:

"For who does not realize that it is in no wise fitting, nor yet advantageous, to entrust affairs to any one man, or for any one man to be put in control of all the blessings we have, however excellent he may be? Great honors and excessive powers excite and ruin even such persons."

-- Cassius Dio (NEE: Cocceianus), Roman History (c. 222 A.D.) at Book 36.

Answer:

Who doesn't? The "Yeas" are listed here.

Nelson Mounts Fence on FISA

UPDATED BELOW
During the U.S. Senate debate on FISA legislation this morning, Florida U.S. Senator Bill Nelson endorsed Diane Feinstein's supposed "compromise" amendment on telecom immunity. He added, however, that if the amendment fails (as the Republican minority surely will see that it does) he intends to vote for the Bush administration bill -- which immunizes telecoms for past law-breaking and purports to give the president exclusive power to order wiretaps of American citizens -- even though Nelson's special access to intelligence documents leaves him "not sure" whether telecoms and the Bush administration acted lawfully in the past.

In other words, Nelson once again is straddling the fence while the Bush administration strangles the U.S. Constitution. He does it so often, Nelson must have splinters where his manhood once resided.

UPDATED
1-24-08 pm

This afternoon Florida's Bill Nelson voted along with Bush-Cheney administration supporters to "table" the Senate Judiciary Committee version of the FISA legislation. As Chris Dodd (D-CT) pointed out during the morning debate, the only appreciable difference between the two bills is that the Judiciary Committee bill protects constitutional rights of American citizens and offers some degree of a check against abuse of presidential power while the Intelligence Committee bill does not. The motion to table succeeded, 60-36.

corrected 1/24 pm

Beltway Banditry

In Washington today, telecom lobbyists have launched a full-court press to win retroactive immunity for their illegal eavesdropping on American citizens. Granting retroactive immunity will let corporate law-breakers off the hook and hamstring efforts to learn the truth about Bush's illegal spying program.

-- John Edwards

While many Americans understandably have been worrying over crime in the streets, it seems crime in the boardrooms of the Telecom corporations (that would include ATT, Verizon, and all the rest -- except U.S. West) has been running rampant. For six years they violated the U.S. Constitution and federal law by spying on thee and we.

Now, Telecom industry lobbyists and Dick Cheney are angling to have Congress grant them retroactive immunity for their past crimes. And, in the absence of real leadership from any presidential candidate other than John Edwards, Democrats in Congress are just as deeply implicated as accessories-after-the-fact as Republicans.

As Glenn Greenwald explains today --

Telecoms already have immunity under existing FISA law where they acted pursuant to written government certification or where they prove they acted in good faith (see 18 USC 2520 (d)). There is no reason that the federal courts presiding over these cases can't simply make that determination, as they do in countless other cases involving classified information.

Lots of bloggers and more traditional news sources have the low-down on what's happening, such as here and here and here. If you're short of time, Leave Us Alone! offers a succinct version. with links. Raw Story has an update for today, as well.

Click on this link to see what you can do today to defend the U.S. Constitution at no cost.

The Giuliani Tourist Trap

"[Florida] is a state of full of mothers who live for phone calls from long-distance adult children... ."

Timothy Egan, Jan. 24, 2008

Timothy Egan, 2006 National Book Award winner for his historical treatment of the Great Dust Bowl, today is blogging for the New York Times. Summarizing Rudy Giuliani's imploding Florida campaign, he uses a memorably snarky headline to foretell the conclusion: "Goodbye Rudy, Tuesday."

[Y]ou can summarize Giuliani’s problems in the line he no longer uses. When the World Trade Center towers came down, he turned to his loyal sidekick Bernie Kerik, and said he was glad George Bush was president.

Now, that line is a triple loser. Kerik, his police commissioner, is under federal indictment, in a sea of troubles. Bush is despised by two-thirds of Americans, and even a majority of Republicans want to go in a different direction.
* * *
Yet Giuliani still wants to frighten people into voting for him. Maybe that’s why he hired the gothic-faced actor Jon Voight to stump for him in Florida. What, Christopher Walken wasn’t available?

There is no doubt that Giuliani's unpopularity in Florida is snowballing. The Miami Herald reports his poll numbers have sunk to Huckabee levels, just above "Undecided" and the campaign corpse known as "Fred Thompson." The odd thing is that Egan attributes this to Giuliani's estrangement from his children rather than to the ex-mayor's hateful, retributive personality.

"This is a state of full of mothers who live for phone calls from long-distance adult children," Egan writes, "and there’s one thing they can’t abide – Rudy’s wreck of a family life."

Yes, people roll their eyes over the story of how Giuliani’s third wife picked him up in a cigar bar while he was still married to the second Mrs. Hizzoner. But I heard no end of condemnation over the mayor’s estrangement from his two children.

Another Times reporter, Michael Powell, probably has it right: Giuliani is hitting it off with the sight-seeing snowbirds, but not with voters who actually live in Florida. He's become a scary kind of tourist trap -- sort of like St. Augustine's Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum -- not a serious candidate for what we used to call "leader of the free world."

Hodos and Contels

Rick Outzen, publisher of Pensacola's weekly, The Independent News, asked a good question on his blog the other day: "Whatever Happened to Condo-Hotels?"

The answer may surprise you, unless you're familiar with Escambia County government.

School Super 'Censured'

Tuesday night the Escambia County School Board "censured superintendent Jim Paul for his Jan. 10 drunken-driving arrest in South Florida." What's that mean? The intrepid Michael Stewart explains:

School Board members approved a motion by Claudia Brown-Curry to "express disapproval of the conduct of Mr. Paul in Pinellas County."

In kiddyland, an "expression of disapproval" isn't even a "time out" much less a "grounding." It's more like a mild finger-wagging.

In any event, the school board's action rather misses the worst of Paul's behavior, doesn't it? More egregious than the crime "in Pinellas county" has been Jim Paul's persistent lying about it afterwards, right here at home in Escambia County. Reporter Stewart today exposes yet another whopper of Paul's.

As we pointed out when the story of his late-night drunken escapades first surfaced, the heavy irony behind this incident has its roots in Jim Paul's rigid insistence on a "zero tolerance" policy for students and teachers accused of even the most minor, attenuated, or thinly-evidenced misbehavior. But when it comes to his own behavior, all of a sudden he acts like all excuses should be warmly welcomed. To quote ourselves:

There is no reason to believe a "zero-tolerance" policy -- whether for drugs or alcohol abuse -- is any more effective or rational as a school district employment policy than it is as a policy governing student enrollment. There are gradations to such offenses. There can be important individual differences among offenders.

Paul apparently became sufficiently uncomfortable with the manifest hypocrisy of his own behavior that last week he claimed in an interview with Stewart that the school district's policy is mandated by "state law. "

"We have no choice," he claimed then.

Today, reporter Michael Stewart explodes that as yet another Jim Paul prevarication:

The state mandates zero tolerance for some school offenses, such as battery on a school official or bringing a weapon to school. In some areas, such as possession of alcohol or drugs, there is some flexibility.

To which the superintendent apparently now replies, If you don't like my policy, advertise and hold "a public hearing to... see if changes need to be made."

When an elected official repeatedly lies to the public not only about his own behavior but about the institutional policies he is charged with administering against others, he deserves more than a mere wag of the finger. He deserves to be fed a dose of the same medicine he's been so insistent is good for everyone else -- zero tolerance -- and it's up to the voters to do it.

Market Wrap-up

Robert Benchley wraps up the world's stock market action. Could have been like CNBC today: