Ghost of Politics Past

A most curious article appeared in one of our daily tabloids here in New York last week. It said former New York City Mayor and failed presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani was contemplating yet another run for office. This time the prize is New York's Governor's Mansion. But wait, didn't we just get a new governor less than a month ago?

Yes, we did, but the article says Rudy is thinking about a run in a special election. That election would take place this November, in the event Gov. David Paterson is somehow forced to resign. Resign for what, you might ask? The only answer is for the high crime of first degree candor. Unlike Giuliani, Paterson was honest enough to admit to past marital infidelity, and even to acknowledge that he might have paid for a tryst out of campaign funds by mistake. He corrected that transgression, it must be noted.

Contrast this with the behavior of America's Mayor. When it was revealed he fobbed off security costs for his mistress on three little known city agencies while in office, his then-presidential campaign went into furious spin mode. When all was said and done, however, the facts were laid bare. No amount of spinning could undo the damage arrogance inflicted on his presidential hopes.

Now, Rudy and his enablers see an opportunity in someone else's troubles. Never mind the same article said little outrage has been generated about David Paterson's past foibles. That would be among both his colleagues and the public. If this governor pulls off getting the state budget done on time, Rudy's hopes for a November coup will take a serious hit. No matter. Like an aging boxer who can't stop seeking the limelight, Rudy Giuliani will fight on.

And lose.  

Suckered!

How does a prestigious newspaper like the LA Times get hoodwinked by a jailed felon and con man who forged FBI reports on an ancient typewriter? The reference, of course, is to the now totally debunked story the Times carried linking Sean "Diddy" Combs with the 1994 ambush shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur in the lobby of a recording studio here in New York. The sham was quickly and meticulously exposed by The Smoking Gun Website, which deserves as much credit as the Times does blame.

The original story, written by a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, has enough holes in it to make a piece of Swiss cheese envious. It apparently came from the fertile mind of one James Sabatino. This guy, who has been fabricating music industry chops for well over a decade, has a rap sheet longer than Yao Ming's arm. He has, at one time or another, posed as an executive of Coca Cola, Blockbuster,Paramount Pictures, Sony Music, Warner Bros., Viacom, and the Miami Dolphins.

He apparently typed the FBI reports used to dupe the Times on a 30 year old typewriter he accessed in prison (he's not eligible for parole until 2012). The 31 year old has done time in an astonishing number of facilities, both here and abroad. Yet this is the person the LA Times relied on to build its mythical story. 

What's obvious here is that a story that was reportedly six months in the making should have been subject to a rudimentary vetting that would have, as one example, noted numbers of spelling errors in the alleged FBI documents. Those errors were remarkably similar to those in a court filing by....guess who....James Sabatino!

The LA Times has apologized for this bit of shoddy journalism, as well they might. That alone may not be enough to keep Diddy's army of lawyers at bay when lawsuit time rolls around, as it certainly will. But the central question remains.

What was the paper thinking?     

Going Psycho

It must be desperation time in Hillaryland. How else to explain the decision by 21 Democratic Party fundraisers, all supporters of the New York senator, to send a threatening letter to, of all people, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi? The donors, you see, are upset about something Pelosi said. It was a little something about the candidate who is ahead in pledged delegates being the party's nominee.

Gee, how radical! The winner should win. What Speaker Pelosi said was that the superdelegates shouldn't overturn the the will of the voters. In both tone and tenor, the donors' letter to her speaks volumes about whether they think their candidate can overtake Barack Obama in either pledged delegates or the popular vote.

The broad hint in the letter was this. We, the donors, support Democratic candidates not just for president but for Congress was well. Keep talking like this and that money will stop. This is like the owner of a sports arena threatening to close it during a game because his or her team is losing.

Barack Obama has called the letter "inappropriate". It's worse than that. It shows these donors as a group are no better than the Republicans they are trying to defeat.

Besides, it doesn't pay to go psycho on Nancy Pelosi.

Court Shoots an Airball

A federal court says New York State can't enact a law protecting airline passengers who get stuck for hours in planes on the ground. If you've ever been in this situation, you know the nightmare. Your plane pulls away from the gate, taxis a short distance, then sits. And sits. And sits. In recent memory, hundreds of JetBlue Airways passengers experienced just such a scenario. They were without water, food, fresh air, and working toilets for up to 10 hours.

The New York law sought to remedy this by mandating these basics for passengers stuck on grounded planes for more than three hours. Silly state! The feds say that's their job. The appellate court ruled that if New York could get away with this law, other states could prohibit selling soda or require certain types of food be served.

Okay, that may be logical. But then, where have the feds been on this all too frequent occurrence? The answer is, nowhere. Fact is, New York acted because Washington hasn't. You know what they do. Spot a problem, form a task force, or stick a passenger bill of rights in a budget authorization bill that gets bottled up for the better part of a year.

A court can't force the Congress to pass a law mandating basic amenities for air passengers stuck on the ground through no fault of their own. The responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of our elected officials.

After all, doesn't federal law make us fasten our seat belts during takeoff and landing? 

Running on Ugly

It seems even the Easter weekend couldn't stop the Clinton and Obama campaigns from going after each other. From Judas to Joe McCarthy, accusations were hurled, the offended reacted, and hopefully, no permanent damage was done to the eventual nominee. It's now reached critical mass. Not a day goes by when media aren't speculating about who can get the delegates, popular votes, etc. Suddenly, the landscape has changed.

You may notice there's a steady move away from media calling the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary make or break for either candidate. The goal posts are moving. Now people are talking about the cumulative impact of Pennsylvania, Indiana, and North Carolina. The latter two hold their primaries on May 7th. To use the hated sports metaphor, a one and done has become a best of three.

It remains too early to say which of these two, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will eventually become the Democratic Party standard bearer. It's not too early to ask how the party will heal the wounds dealt during this campaign. In many cases, the wounds are deep (ask Carville and Richardson). They cannot and should not be allowed to fester.

What we are experiencing is the result of having two candidates without massive differences on policy face off late into the primary season. If your differences on healthcare come down to mandates, maybe it shouldn't be a surprise things got personal.

Fact is, however, this can't go on too much longer. 

A Grim Milestone

We knew as long as US troop strength in Iraq remained constant, sooner or later we'd reach 4000 Americans killed. That the latest deaths occurred on Easter Sunday ought to amplify the calls to get US troops out of the country. It's less than a week after the fifth anniversary of the start of this sorry and unnecessary war. It's as good a time as any to take stock.

Over the past three months or so, we have been fed a steady diet of "the surge is working" from the president and his minions. That line is then parroted  by much of the media. In fact, the violence had died down. We should not have been fooled. The insurgency never gave up control of the tempo of this conflict. They chose when to ramp down hostilities, and they can choose when to escalate them as well.

Does anyone think the recent spate of rocket and mortar attacks aimed at the "heavily fortified Green Zone" are happening by accident? The Bush Administration has its own way of spinning this latest violence. "The surge is working, but the enemy is resilient", they say. That, in plain English, is a rationale for endless war. Endless, because there is absolutely no clue as to what constitutes victory. There's no game plan beyond containment of the insurgency. They won't tell you this, but they can't defeat it.

It also means, by conservative estimates, that thousands more Iraqi civilians will join the nearly 90,000 killed since this obscene war began. These are people who will never taste the fruit of American imposed democracy. Many living Iraqis are doubting whether they will either.

The Iraq war has lately taken a back burner to legitimate concerns about the American economy. Few people see that the war is in fact a drain on the economy, one that we can ill afford.

But above all else, we should no longer tolerate an unjust war.   

Back Monday

Hope everyone has a happy holiday weekend. Back Monday with LOTS to write about.

Mark

Home Run,Then Jitters

Hillary Rodham Clinton professed not to have watched her rival Barack Obama's speech on race yesterday. She and her husband should have. They might have learned something. If nothing else, they might have understood why the task of wresting the Democratic presidential nomination from his grasp may well be impossible.

If Hillary Clinton didn't watch Obama, you can bet an awful lot of those uncommitted superdelegates did. Don't think for a moment that speech won't have an impact on which way a number of them decide to go. It was that good. If you still have doubts, consider this.

Hillary Clinton is making an unscheduled trip to Detroit today. It's not because she wants to have a word with embattled Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. She's trying to convince Michigan state legislators to reverse course, and support a June 3rd re-vote. Florida's is already dead in the water, blunting one avenue to cut into Obama's pledged delegate advantage. If she's not successful, three options remain: Seat the delegates by the January primary results (unacceptable to Obama), don't seat them at all (unacceptable to Clinton), or split delegates from both states 50-50 (advantage Obama).

The speech Barack Obama gave Tuesday has made Hillary Clinton's job harder, and she knows it. So does anyone who crunches the numbers, and the options. And just in case somebody tries to tell you how important Pennsylvania is, tell them this.

Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oregon are all yet to come.

Period, End

Senator Barack Obama is giving a speech about race today. It certainly wasn't planned, but then an awful lot about the race for the Democratic presidential nomination hasn't been planned either. The reason for the speech is simple. The so called story of his relationship with his former Pastor Jeremiah Wright, threatens to spiral out of control.

Never mind the "story" was part of a well orchestrated plan to inject racial controversy into the Obama campaign. How else to explain the blizzard of e-mails to media demanding to know why they hadn't covered it more completely and often? The rationale goes something like this. Obama was close to Wright, and was a parishioner at Trinity United Church for 20 years. He must have known about Wright's views on 9-11, America's role in the world, and most importantly, about white people.

Create doubts about Obama's views on race, the theory goes, and his white support peels away. Never mind that Obama has already parted company with Wright about those very views. It's all about guilt by association. The anti Obama smog machine even goes so far as to risk exposing dubious religious affiliations on the part of the candidate they support.

One might have thought someone among the Democrats would have Obama's back on this. Someone, that is, besides fellow Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. Hillary Clinton has been a victim of this same type of attack, but she won't say anything for obvious reasons. But what about Howard Dean and the folks at the DNC? Can't he/they step up and call this divisive smear what it is?

Guess not.    

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

What is it with our politicians? Here in the New York area, we've seen not one but three sitting governors resign due to scandal since 2004. Rowland in Connecticut did time, then there was McGreevey in Jersey, and now Spitzer in New York. Will it ever end?

Probably not. Did we forget to mention Sharpe James in Newark, Kwame Kilpatrick in Detroit, Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Duke Cunningham? Even McGreevey is now back in the news with a former aide alleging three way sex romps with the "gay American" and his wife.

So what are the American people to do? What we normally do is sit back and grumble. "They're all crooks!", we say, as if we have no part in enabling them. How? By re-electing them with frightening regularity. Incumbent politicians usually have little to fear from their constituents. If they're in Washington, they can come home during one of their all too frequent vacations and do a few photo ops. If they happen to be running for re-election, the visits are more frequent. If they're local and statewide, shaking  few hands and kissing a few babies often is their ticket to another term in office.

That, and the massive fund raising it takes to run just about any campaign for an office above the rank of dog catcher. Our inattention has created a political class that in turn rarely has to pay attention to us. It's come full circle.

It may be naive, but maybe if our politicians thought they had more to fear from us, they'd be less likely to get themselves embroiled in scandal, sexual or otherwise. If only the passion Barack Obama has brought to the process would trickle down to other races for lesser offices.

If only.