NOTE: Another in our series of special Election 2008 editions of our popular Around The Sphere link-fest where we offer readers links to weblogs of differing viewpoints — and give you our comments on some of the political issues raised. This version will only contain election-related links. It will appear several times a week until Election Day.
Ron Paul Under The Microscope And Under Fire: Rep. Ron Paul came under fire recently when it was learned his newsletters had racist and other outrageous comments in them. He argued he didn’t see everything in it. But in THIS POST Donklephant notes that it now has come out Paul and his family got money from the newsletters. A small part of the post:
So all that slack I’ve been cutting Ron Paul for the newsletters controversy? Yeah, it’s all gone.
Reason did some digging and uncovered tax documents which prove that Paul, his wife and daughter were compensated for their services as staff members of the company that published the newsletters.
…What can he say at this point? I mean, we’re talking about income earned from out and out bigotry? Of course this shouldn’t take away from Paul’s “current” message, but it completely decimates Paul’s credibility. He simply can’t claim he didn’t know what was being written in newsletters from a company that employed and paid him, his wife and his daughter. No way.
Paulites, please share your thoughts.
Oh…and I’m SURE they will (and, from the number of comments, THEY HAVE). Read it in its entirety.
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney Is Like My Uncle Irv: He gets blasted a lot..in a different way. But Oxblog’s always thoughtful David Adesnik looks at Romney and increasingly likes what he sees:
Romney’s ability to rapidly change his persona and values reflects his extraordinary success as a business executive. On that point, I’d be very interested in the observations of those of you who have had extensive experience in the private sector.
My sense is that the private sector places such a high premium on achieving results in the next month or next year that it has little interest in whether a chief executive has consistent principles. But great presidents must always take a longer view. Much as I support McCain, I suspect that Romney would be a very competent administrator of the federal government. I also believe he would be fairly moderate and favor a good degree of bipartisanship. I’d certainly vote for him over any of the Democrats.
Perhaps. Yours truly LIKED Romney when he was Governor of Massachusetts, in his old incarnation as a moderate Republican. The irony is: in their thirst to stop Arizona Senator John McCain at all costs, some conservative GOPers could well shift Big Mo from McCain to Romney as the Republican nominee. In normal times, they’d oppose Romney. But turn on talk-radio and listen to Republican icon Rush Limbaugh lambaste McCain repeatedly. McCain could win the election but has a steep hill to climb on the nomination. Romney could get the nomination but will have a steep hill to climb on the election.
Speaking of Romney, Did An AP Reporter Go Over The Line With Him or did he go over the line with the reporter?” The blogosphere was abuzz yesterday with outraged posts about Romney’s big confrontation with AP reporter Glen Johnson over whether a close associate who’s a lobbyist is “running” Romney’s campaign. View it yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15hVj29hH2k
Some, like the All Spin Zone accused Romney of mincing words (and it later came out that to a certain extent HE WAS doing just that). Others such as Macsmind think Johnson is biased and has shown to be biased before and was WAY out of line.
There are two issues here (1) Was a lobbyist “running” Romney’s campaign? The word “running” does matter, and Romney was probably correct: his lobbyist friend is not “running” his campaign but is still his friend (and what’s unspoken is he probably has some influence with Romney). (2) Was the reporter out-of-line?
It looks like Johnson had some personal animosity and went over the line.. Reporters are trained to ask tough questions and a GOOD reporter WILL do a follow up if the news source tries to wiggle out of answering. And what is election season BUT a bunch of usually-millionaire people running around the country trying to wiggle out of giving an answer that will lose them support?
But generally a reporter doesn’t keep challenging the interview subject and all but call him a liar. Note how NBC’s Tim Russert didn’t get total answers out of the big three Democratic primary candidates on Sunday, but he moved respectfully on after not getting his answer in follow ups. Also remember how CBS’s Dan Rather’s career seemingly sagged after his confrontation with then-President Nixon on TV. Except on highly-visual news shows such as 60 Minutes, most reporters don’t brow-beat their interview sources.
Proof that Johnson went too far: he has now become the story. AND the campaign officials admonition about not arguing with “the candidate” makes you wonder if we’re now heading into the age of The Imperial Candidate. (If you hate what I wrote, don’t bother The Blogger.).
Again Speaking Of Romney, he has been accused of having more flip-flops than the Swap Meet here in San Diego on a Sunday morning. But Poligazette thinks another candidate outsides him…
And Speaking Of That Other Candidate, he has now apparently equated homosexuality with bestiality and ATypical Joe has a lot of thoughts to share with you on THAT. (If you didn’t click on the earlier link we won’t tell you who he is except that he does look like actor Kevin Spacey.)
Also a must read on this: Professor Bainbridge who says if this candidate gets the GOP nomination “I would not vote even if the only alternative is Hillary Clinton (in which case I’ll just sit home and complain). ” Read the ENTIRE post and find out why.
Former Rudy Giuliani’s Future: He may have made a major miscalculation.
A SPECIAL NOTE ON A VOICE — AND PERSON — LOST WHO WON’T BE WITH US IN CAMPAIGN 2008:
Campaign 2008 promises to be pivotal year and a high-drama campaign. But one voice in the blgosophere is now stilled — a weblog writer who wrote on all kinds of topics, but particularly the war…a war he actually fought in. And now he’s gone.
His name was Andrew Olmsted and we linked to this highly-versatile blogger here at TMV from time to time. We exchanged emails some time ago.
He was killed in an ambush in Iraq.
I can’t say more except for full details READ THIS IN FULL (be sure to click on all of the links in the post)…then say a prayer…and if you don’t believe in God, light a candle.
And give thanks for him having shared his ideas with us and for having given his life for us.
Andy: you’ll always be on our memories’ blogroll…
[NOTE TO READERS: Typo is fixed. If you see a typo in the future, kindly email us and we will fix it immediately — rather than informing us in comments.]
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.