Featured Stories
A Beethoven-In
July 5, 2012
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by David Safier I don't know about you, but I find videos like this thrilling.
Message to Rupert and Bill: It’s not too late to nominate another candidate
July 5, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The oracles of the conservative right have a message for Willard "Mittens" Romney: "You suck as a candidate!"
Rupert Murdoch's GOP establishment Wall Street Journal editorializes today Romney's Tax Confusion:
The Romney high command has muddied the tax issue in a way that will help Mr. Obama's claims that he is merely taxing rich folks like Mr. Romney. And it has made it that much harder for Republicans to again turn ObamaCare into the winning issue it was in 2010.
Why make such an unforced error? Because it fits with Mr. Romney's fear of being labeled a flip-flopper, as if that is worse than confusing voters about the tax and health-care issues.
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Perhaps Mr. Romney is slowly figuring this out, because in a July 4 interview he stated himself that the penalty now is a "tax" after all. But he offered no elaboration, and so the campaign looks confused in addition to being politically dumb.
This latest mistake is of a piece with the campaign's insular staff and strategy that are slowly squandering an historic opportunity.
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The Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House by saying the economy stinks and it's Mr. Obama's fault. We're on its email list and the main daily message from the campaign is that "Obama isn't working." Thanks, guys, but Americans already know that. What they want to hear from the challenger is some understanding of why the President's policies aren't working and how Mr. Romney's policies will do better.
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[The Obama] attacks were predictable, in particular because they go to the heart of Mr. Romney's main campaign theme—that he can create jobs as President because he is a successful businessman and manager. But candidates who live by biography typically lose by it. See President John Kerry.
The biography that voters care about is their own, and they want to know how a candidate is going to improve their future. That means offering a larger economic narrative and vision than Mr. Romney has so far provided. It means pointing out the differences with specificity on higher taxes, government-run health care, punitive regulation, and the waste of politically-driven government spending.
Mr. Romney promised Republicans he was the best man to make the case against President Obama, whom they desperately want to defeat. So far Mr. Romney is letting them down.
Richard Carmona: always the doctor
July 5, 2012
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by David Safier The story is everywhere and should be here as well. From ABC News: Carmona performed an impromptu medical exam Wednesday on a campaign tracker, who has been following Carmona at public events with a camera, in the apparent hopes of catching the candidate doing or saying something that could be used against … Read more
Embarrassment about vouchers in Louisiana doesn’t embarrass Arizona at all
July 5, 2012
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by David Safier Louisiana set up a voucher program without any oversight of the private schools students could attend. Then a news report came out about New Living Word in Ruston which "has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of … Read more
Awesome fireworks show!
July 5, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you set off all the fireworks at once?
Well, the citizens of San Diego finally learned the answer to that question last night when a control malfunction set off 15 minutes of fireworks in 15 seconds. Awesome!
It reminds me of an episode of Malcolm in The Middle when the boys set off the Komodo 3000.
Videos below the fold.
More trouble for the ‘Open Elections/Open Government Act’ initiative
July 5, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Thursday, July 5, 2012 is the filing deadline for citizens intiatives in Arizona.
One citizens initiative certain to be filed today before the 5:00 p.m. deadline is the so-called "open elections/open government act" initiative. Last week, the Arizona Legislative Council met to prepare impartial analyses of ballot measures, and based upon their language, it would appear this initiative may be subject to legal challenge. http://azleg.gov/alispdfs/Council/2012BallotMeasures/Adopted_C-03-2012.pdf.
Beginning with the 2014 elections, Proposition ___ would amend the Arizona Constitution by eliminating the longstanding primary election that allows each recognized political party in Arizona to select its own nominee for the general election. In its place would be a primary election system in which registered voters may vote for candidates regardless of political affiliation. A funding source has not been identified that will pay the cost of the open top two primary election that will replace the current system.
Further:
Proposition ___ provides that individuals may organize or join political parties and that political parties may elect party officers, support or oppose candidates and otherwise participate in all elections, if the party activity is not paid for or subsidized using public funds.
This initiative appears to be facially flawed. In 2004, Arizona voters approved Proposition 101, amending the Arizona Constitution "to require all subsequent ballot initiatives and referendums to specify a new source of revenue for any required expenditure." No source of revenue is identified in this initiative. The fallback position that the general fund could be used to fund elections would seem to be precluded by the provision that public funds cannot be used for political party activity — which is what a primary election is. Without an identified funding source, it is unconstitutional under Prop. 101 (2004).
This initiative is a half-baked idea. The Arizona Legislative Council desription provides:
The proposition leaves to future Legislatures and governing bodies a number of issues, including who will have access to the statewide voter database, how vacancies will be handled, what percentage of votes will be set each year as the number of petition signatures required by each candidate for each office to qualify for the ballot, how to pay for the two tier election and how to pay for the cost of implementation and conforming legislation. The Department of Justice must pre-clear any changes.
So the backers of this initiative are going to leave all the details they didn't bother to address to the partisan elected state legislature of whom they disapprove. Freakin' brilliant. Guess how that's going to work out for you?
News flash: Drugs declared winner in War on Drugs
July 5, 2012
by Pamela Powers Hannley Pot-smoking hippie anti-war activists like the Chicago 7 and LSD-popping elitist Harvard medical school researchers like Timothy Leary gave poor, paranoid President Richard Nixon a hard time back in the late 1960s. As they sipped their highballs, the moral majority– Nixon's base– decried the nation's drug abuse. What's a president to … Read more
Fortune investigation: More on the truth about the Fast and Furious scandal
July 5, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Katherine Eban follows up her investigative report in Fortune from last week, "The Truth about the Fast and Furious Scandal", with more on the truth about the Fast and Furious scandal Fast and Furious follow up: The ATF and gun stores:
In the six months of investigations that led Fortune to conclude that the ATF had no policy to intentionally permit weapons to be trafficked, we examined 2,000 pages of ATF records, Congressional reports and testimony, and interviewed 39 people involved in or knowledgeable about the case. That body of evidence shows the ATF did not have a policy of encouraging gun dealers to sell to traffickers. Until now, the alleged encouragement of gun-dealers has not been a central focus of the Fast and Furious scandal. As a result, we did not address those points in the article. However, given the interest in this question, we thought it was worth taking readers through the evidence on this point.
It should be noted at the outset that the Congressional committee investigating Fast and Furious has never claimed the ATF had any official, written policy to encourage gun dealers to sell to traffickers. No documents, emails, or testimony mentioned in Congressional reports show signs of an agency-wide policy, or even a policy within Phoenix Group VII, the unit that worked on Fast and Furious.
What the allegations in the Congressional hearings and reports boil down to are two specific situations. In one, as we'll see, the allegations are true — but misleading and incomplete — and in the second, the evidence is contradictory. It's possible that the Congressional investigators have other evidence, but these two episodes are the only ones that have surfaced to date.
Claim No. 1
In August 2010, after a successful wiretap led Phoenix Group VII to seize 114 weapons in a single month, an employee at a gun dealership informed Group VII supervisor Dave Voth that one of their chief suspects was looking to purchase 20 9mm pistols. Based on evidence it had gathered on the wiretap, the ATF had enough probable cause to immediately arrest the suspect if he purchased the weapons. So — in the only such instance known to date — Voth wrote back and asked the dealer to make this particular sale. Voth says he encouraged the sale so that the agents could arrest the suspect outside the gun dealership. In the end, however, the suspect did not make the purchase and the arrest did not take place. No evidence has emerged that Voth ever made such a statement to any other gun seller.
Claim No. 2
This allegation involves a gun store called Lone Wolf Trading Company and shifting assertions made by its owner, Andre Howard. ATF records and Justice Department correspondence show that Voth and federal prosecutor Emory Hurley met with Howard soon after Voth arrived in Arizona. According to those records, Hurley advised Howard that, obviously, he could not make illegal sales (which he wasn't), and needed to use his judgment regarding legal sales, but that the government would appreciate any information about the purchasers and the sales to aid the investigation. Lone Wolf cooperated with the ATF, according to agency documents, regularly providing records of gun sales and permitting the ATF to install a surveillance camera in the store.
