CD9 Panel Discussion Reveals Candidates’ Characters
June 7, 2012
By Michael Bryan
I watched the whole damn thing. I did learn few things about the candidates. Certainly, there is nothing of substance one can learn about policy that might distinguish between the various GOP candidates and the various Dem candidates in such a forum. But one can get an idea of a candidate's style and presentation: how they express themselves, their values, the themes they will emphasize, their effectiveness as a communicator, their relevant experience. Here's the few crumbs I picked up amid the backwash of political soundbytes and trash-talk. Keep in mind this is just a gut-check response, not a policy review.
Scottsdale City Councilor Lisa Borowsky (R) and ex-CIA Officer Leah Campos Schandlbauer (R) couldn't be arsed to show up, apparently. Too bad. I was looking forward to seeing how Campos Shandlebauer handled herself. She's the most interesting entrant of the Republican field, in my opinion.
Paradise Valley Town Councilor/Mayor Vernon Parker (R): No wonder this guy keeps losing every nomination to higher office he tries for. He hasn't learned the most important lesson of contemporary GOP politics: you can only be a black Republican candidate if you are a racial stereotype with a catchy one-liner, or keep your mouth shut and toe the party line. Nothing puts off GOP primary voters like a thoughtful, well-spoken, accomplished, and charming black man: you are exactly what they are terrified of having in office, and are turning themselves inside out and having kittens trying to bum rush out the door. The right does not want an Obama, Vernon – they will only accept a buffoonish character like Cain, or a silent and correctingly voting crony like Thomas. Change your talking points slightly and become a Blue Dog Democrat, or resign yourself to being a big fish in a small pond for the rest of your political career.
Lt. Col. Wendy Rogers (R): Wow. She's really obnoxious and grating. Even Republicans are going to dislike her instinctually. I don't know why she thought that a political career was an option. Just watching her presentation makes your skin crawl. Her voice, her attitude, her phrasing, her bird-like head movements; a perfect package of ill-at-ease. It's nothing really to do with her worth as a person: I'm sure she's a very competent, and perfectly lovely person, she's just wildly off-putting in this context. I'm mean, really, the first thing out of her mouth is to claim to be one of the only people in the room to have started a business and created jobs in the district: she's addressing the fucking Chandler Chamber of Commerce! Foot tastes good to Wendy, apparently… Despite her military career and her business experience she will lose, because she has zero political potential. Give it up, Wendy, you are wasting your time, you just haven't got the right stuff.
Former Chandler City Councilor Martin Sepulveda (R): If the GOP were rational, this would be their guy. He's presents even wackadoodle ideas in a reasonable and approachable manner. He seems to have the ability to disagree without being disagreeable. He has a relevent set of experiences (military leadership, business owner, business development, city government), deep roots in the district, and has a reassuring and pleasant demeanor. He's not a ranter or a one-liner, he frequently even seems fairly pragmatic rather than ideological, and he just looks like a Congressman. He might have considerable cross-over appeal, and his last name can't hurt. Of course, all those reasons to nominate him practically ensure that the GOP won't do so.
State Senator David Shapira (D): David has the most natural presentation of the three Democratic candidates. He talks like a person more often than he talks like a poltician. He has a compelling personal story regarding his main themes of education and health care. David seems to have absorbed the lesson that to communicate politically you have to talk about personal experience, compelling stories, and hammering on a central premises and values. And he simply has the best political speaking voice of all the candidates, though Sepulveda and Parker sound pretty good.
State Legislator Kyrsten Sinema (D): Kyrsten sounds a little too over-rehearsed. She speaks with a polish and competency (and insidery buzz words) that is just a bit too perfectly posh. At the end of every perfectly framed paragraph that she rattles off from her prepared comments, she looks like she is waiting for applause, or a pat on the head. And she's madly triangulating the whole time. She invokes Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, and, yes, Mo Udall. She emphasizes her ability to work across the aisle every time she opens her mouth. She emphasizes balance and moderation, and makes sure to present a hard line (immigration, national security) to every soft one (tax relief for the middle class, more help for the unemployed). I suspect that Kyrsten is looking past the primary to the general election and carving out a moderate position to insulate herself against her more wild and wooly liberal and green past. Problem is, Kyrsten, it just doesn't seem genuine. Maybe you need to loosen up and tell people what your values are, rather than plot out some perfectly balanced set of policy positions.
Former AZDP Chairman Andrei Cherny (D): Cherny, as expected, came off as a hyper-competent, wunderkind, and policy wonk – which is what he is. I never got much of a glimpse any particular passion or personal feeling from Cherny, however. He's not very relatable. He returns a bit too often to his time in the Clinton Administration. He seems stuck in the same, "let's get back to the 90's" mindset that holds so many former Clinton staffer hostage to the past. He sounds like Clinton is running for Congress by proxy. Cherny needs to make the case why HE should go to Congress, not Clinton.
Travis Grantham (R): Who let Jesse Kelly in here? Seriously, this guy is Kelly with a slightly different hairline. He's a soundbyte spouting ignoramus with the same reality-challenged, know-nothing cant as Kelly. He has no relevant political experience, a sinecure job with daddy's business that he flacks as real business experience, a stint in the military (though not in dashing combat deployments like Kelly), and a somewhat MILFey wife with two kids (two photogenic girls, rather than Kelly's two photogenic boys); unlike Kelly, he at least bothered to finish college (though at ASU, so its value is debatable…). But he is every bit as empty of any real content as Kelly, and every bit as cocky, ignorant, and proud of it. Blah blah tax cut for the wealthy, blah blah job creators, blah blah cut regulations, blah blah cut the deficit, blah blah cut cap and balance, blah blah tax the poor, blah blah free market, blah blah tort reform! We have a winner folks! Seriously, I think the GOP will have to nominate this buffoon.
Jeff Thompson (R): Obligatory, condescending, hectoring, dyspeptic old guy who claims he's not a politician, but a businessman who will whip Washington into shape. Turned his debate performance into a hallelujah chorus for Grantham. Not an original idea in his head. The Donald Trump of the race, but without the 'classy'. Not a chance. He will, however, provide comedy relief in the race with his un-selfconciously dickish personality.
If you can take it, the whole two-hour snoozefest is after the click… (note the embedded video may not work with your browser, if so, use the link at the beginning of the post)
Ron Gould Shotguns Civility
June 7, 2012
By Michael Bryan
Ron Gould, candidate for the GOP nomination for Arizona's Congressional District 4, drinks deeply from the "2nd Amendment remedies" well, proving conclusively that he hasn't any actual ideas, only a ball of undefined rage which needs to be directed through the barrel of a gun.
Gould's latest ad features him toting a shotgun around the border (presumably hunting for them durned 'illegals') and then demonstrating his opinion of "government run health care" by shooting a copy of the Affordable Care Act, then smirking the exit line, "Because Washington needs a straight shooter." The double entendre – suggesting that we need to send someone to Washington to shoot the place up (maybe some liberals? maybe the President?) – couldn't more clearly appeal to the basest eliminationist streak in right wing politics.
The gun-play by right-wing politicos is appalling and despicable. Have they learned nothing from the Tucson Massacre? Such violent calls to action have no place in American politics. Given our history of political assassinations, civil political violence, and extremist terrorism, it is deeply irresponsible for our wanna-be leaders to go around promoting themselves by shooting those things they disagree with.
The underlying message of the ad is set up in the language of the very first line: "Washington doesn't get us." Gould is building upon decades of GOP messaging that has positioned our federal government as some sort of alien, face-sucking parasite that "we" normal people should resent and reject: by sending some gun-wielding yokel to Congress to put things aright… by selling out to his corporate donors and becoming a millionaire lobbyist, presumably… ::shrug::
I understand that Americans hate the government right now – and Congress most of all. It's a dysfunctional, gridlocked, ugly, partisan, hell-mouth with an approval rating somewhere below that of pedophiles.
What made it that way? The deluge of special interest money politicians have become dependent on to browbeat and hoodwink the public into voting for them (which in GOP terms are always unions and public employees, never the mega-corps whom they fellate with policy favors in return for campaign cash – no, those are sacrosanct "job creators" who must be appeased like Olympian Gods in order to bestow the benefices of wage slavery on we mere mortals), the extreme ideological intensity (which was instituted by Gingrich and fanned into a conflagration of spittle-flecked rabidity most recently by the Billionaire-backed Tea Party movement), and the inability to address major problems (see special interest money deeply committed to ensuring the status quo, or worse…).
Yes, Americans have plenty to dislike about Congress. And much of it stems from madly auditioning corporate shills and wanna-be sellouts like Gould, who have turned representative government into a twisted, populist, id-tickling, performance art designed to translate hatred and fear into votes for poseurs like Gould, who are more than happy to sell their constituents into slavery to the corporate-fascist vulture capitalists paying for the performance.
Mr. Gould, you may have the perfect right to say and do such juvenile and disturbing things, but you should demonstrate that you can recognize when you have gone to far by pulling this ad.
Watch the obnoxious Gould and and his ghoulish ad after the click…
Imagine Prep at Superstition: four years of dysfunction and disarray
June 7, 2012
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by David Safier
NOTE: Since Imagine School at Superstition made news by firing 11 of its 14 teachers, I've been writing about it, reading up on Imagine Schools and talking to people who know more than I do. This is the second of what will be a few posts trying to make sense of the nation's largest charter school corporation which has drawn more controversy for its practices and low student achievement scores than any other (Here's the first post). What I write may be incomplete or incorrect in places. If you have information to add, please leave comments or email me at safier@schooltales.net. I keep all email correspondence confidential.
Dennis Bakke, founder and CEO of Imagine Schools, has an unusual and ineffective strategy for running his charter school empire, which is the largest in the nation. He pitches his philosophy of the workplace — integrity, justice and fun — to his staff, which he detailed in his book "Joy at Work" (required reading for employees). Then he practices "decentralized leadership," which he says results in "high levels of employee satisfaction and dedication." While this may have worked for Bakke when he was building Applied Energy Services where he made his fortune (before the company collapsed in the wake of the ENRON scandal), its hit-or-miss approach to creating schools has resulted in hit-or-miss schools. Some Imagine Schools have succeeded, but many others have been failures for the students and staff. Often, "employee satisfaction" approached zero.
Imagine Prep at Superstition in Apache Junction, a high school with a middle school housed in the same building, is a prime example of a dysfunctional Imagine school. In its four years of existence, it has experienced three nearly total turnovers of staff and four different teaching strategies. By the end of this year, things were bad enough that the Republic wrote an article about student protests against the administration and an almost total exodus of the teaching staff.
Imagine Prep at Superstition began in 2008 with 100 students and 4 1/2 teachers. It was a computer-based school. Students spent most of their time sitting in front of computer screens working their way through curriculum supplied by Apex Learning with little or no classroom instruction. Only two teachers returned for Year 2.
Mittens makes stuff up, the media villagers just yawn
June 7, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
If the media villagers are not interested in doing their job — informing the public — then why don't they find another line of work that is more suitable for them? The pathological liar Willard "Mittens" Romney continues to make stuff up, and the corporate media villagers just yawn.
The latest example: Mittens claims that President Obama doesn't have a plan to create jobs, and at the same time blames President Obama for failing to pass his jobs plan through the obstructionist Tea-Publican Congress. Is this some version of "heads I win, tails you lose"?
It would be in line with Romney's "I'm rubber, you're glue" strategy. It appears that Romney's intellectual development was arrested around the age of 5. When adults are solicitous of lying little 5 year olds, it just encourages the evil ittle bastards to lie even more.
Steve Benen reports The jobs agenda slips down the memory hole:
Many of us have become painfully accustomed to Mitt Romney making claims that aren't true, but once in a while, his most egregious falsehoods strike a nerve. This week in Texas, for example, the Republican presidential nominee told a whopper that Andrew Sullivan called "a classic of total disingenuous crap."
"[W]ith America in crisis, with 23 million people out of work or stopped looking for work, [President Obama] hasn't put forth a plan to get us working again," Romney said Tuesday. "Now I know we're getting close to an election so he'll come out with one soon, but three and a half years later, we're waiting."
Plenty of fine folks have noted the absurdity of the argument, but I'd like to echo their sentiments. When Romney says things like this, he's obviously lying. There's no gray area; it's not a claim that's partially true; it's simply 100% false. It's not even a close call.
Fact Check: Karl Rove’s pants on fire – the stimulus worked
June 7, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Satan's spawn, Karl Rove, and his eccentric conservative Texas oil billionaire-funded American Crossroads has entered the CD8 Special Congressional Election race with mailers that assert the standard GOP talking point that the economic stimulus package did not work, and was "reckless spending." Funny how Karl Rove fails to mention the Bush tax cuts, … Read more
Explorer editorial rips Kelly on ALIPAC endorsement dodge
June 6, 2012
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by David Safier Thelma Grimes, managing editor of The Explorer, thinks it's a reporter's job to ask candidates tough questions and it's the candidate's responsibility to answer them. According to her editorial, KGUN asked Jesse Kelly a tough question, and Kelly, to his discredit, wimped out, over and over and over. [Full Disclosure: I write … Read more
Willard ‘Mittens’ Romney had better things to do during the Vietnam War
June 6, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The AP ran this story on Tuesday about Romney's (non) military record faces new scrutiny:
Though an early supporter of the Vietnam War, Romney avoided military service at the height of the fighting after high school by seeking and receiving four draft deferments, according to Selective Service records. They included college deferments and a 31-month stretch as a "minister of religion" in France, a classification for Mormon missionaries that the church at the time feared was being overused. The country was cutting troop levels by the time he became eligible for the draft, and his lottery number was not called.
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[B]ecause Romney, now 65, was of draft age during Vietnam, his military background — or, rather, his lack of one — is facing new scrutiny as he courts veterans and makes his case to the nation to be commander in chief.
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Romney's recollection of his Vietnam-era decisions has evolved in the decades since, particularly as his presidential ambitions became clear.
He said in 2007 — his first White House bid under way — that he had "longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam." But his actions, Selective Service records and previous statements show little interest in joining a conflict that ultimately claimed more than 58,000 American lives.
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Political rivals, military veterans among them, suggest that Romney's own decision not to serve in the military is in conflict with his pro-military rhetoric.
"He didn't have the courage to go. He didn't feel it was important enough to him to serve his country at a time of war," said Jon Soltz, who served two Army tours in Iraq and is the chairman of the left-leaning veterans group VoteVets.org.
Critics note that the candidate is among three generations of Romneys — including his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, and five sons — who were of military age during armed conflicts but did not serve.
Sorry media villagers, ‘independents’ are not nonpartisan or centrists
June 6, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Over the years i have posted about political science studies which demonstrate that "independent" voters are actually partisan "leaners." Data from the American National Election Study analyzed by political science professor Alan I. Abramowitz of Emory University showed that in 2008, independents made up 40 percent of eligible voters, but only 33 … Read more
