Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Garland Robinette is a Liberal and Other Random Media Notes

Some of this stuff was getting stale when I saved draft a week ago.

From Monday's (of last week) Anderson Cooper 360:
"Keeping Them Honest" for us tonight, CNN's Randi Kaye.

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The floodwaters long gone, New Orleans is drowning in murder.

....
The week Helen Hill died, there were 11 other murders, prompting New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to make this promise.

RAY NAGIN (D), MAYOR OF NEW ORLEANS: We will put all of our resources to focus on murders and violent crime, everything we have.

KAYE: "Keeping Them Honest," we ran the numbers. In the six months since the mayor promised to make murder a priority, more than 90 people have been killed in his city. The police force is still down 300 officers. And the justice system is a mess. Witnesses are either missing or unwilling to cooperate.

I'll mention it once again, the police force is, as far as we know, down a similar number of civilian employees. I don't how much police staffing affects crime rate or how many patrolmen are performing duties that had been filled by civilians, but if anybody wants to make a wager on next year's Endymion route, let me know.

Soon after the David Vitter scandal began*, Elliott Stonecipher gave an interview on WWL TV in which he said that the people pushing the story had to be operating at the national level because Louisiana operatives have known about it for so long, he makes a similar point here. He then went on to make the incredible claim that it had to be the Democrats, because Landrieu's seat is one of the few Democratic Senate seats that will be vulnerable in the next election. Which leads to the obvious question, is Stonecipher stupid or dishonest? That's a plausible theory, I suppose, but for Stonecipher to suggest that the story was driven by political operatives and leave out any mention of Vitter's involvement in Giuliani's presidential campaign is otherwise inexplicable; he's either dumb or dishonest. I've never paid enough attention to Stonecipher to be aware of his political leanings, so I did a google search. I found some hints of Republican leanings but not enough to satisfy Jeffrey Sadow:
Originally on New Orleans’ WWL liberal Garland Robinette’s radio talk show, and then on this area’s balanced Pat Culverhouse program, local demographer and for-hire political consultant Elliott Stonecipher

If Robinette's a liberal, it's news to him, and I can only imagine what the "balanced" Pat Culverhouse program is like. It's bad enough when conservatives claim that MSM types like Gwen Ifill (count the haircuts) are liberal, but Garland Robinette?

They're asking some interesting questions at Gambit Weekly:
Who paid for the call girls' visits? Specifically, did any lobbyist ever pay for the senator's use of prostitutes?

This isn't to toot my own horn, but when I first suggested that line of questioning, I hoped that somebody else would bring up the obvious Hillary Clinton comparison, because I'm reluctant to criticize a politcian's family members, unless they make themselves fair game. Wendy Vitter's done that.

Assuming the allegations, there's absolutely no way that Wendy Vitter could have been unaware of what was going on -- unless somebody else was paying for the prostitutes. I don't care how affluent a famly is, if there's a loss of income from the wife cutting back on her income to take of children at the same time that the family has new expenses associated with raising children and with building a large home on recently purchased land, finances tend to be too tight for the husband to spend that kind of money without the wife noticing. Well, maybe if they both had trust funds and separate checking accounts. I don't know about the checking accounts, but there doesn't seem to have been a trust fund. Sounds a lot like Hillary Clinton, at least Jeff Gerth's version of Hillary Clinton.

Must read post at NOLA-dishu. When ever the phrase "as much as..." or as "little as..." appears in print, or comes out of the mouth of a politician or political pundit, you should look for the half-truth.

*The interview was aired either Friday 7/13 or Saturday 7/14, started to post about it then, but decided to see if a transcipt or video would show up on WWL's website at the beginning of the following week. Neither ever did.

Labels:


Comments:
Well, 99.765 percent of the world is to the left of Jeffrey Sadow. I'm not even halfway joking.
 
Stonecipher has always struck me as somewhat dishonest. A little too much parroting Republican talking points while almost defensively pointing out that he's a "registered Independent". I have actually heard him say "A Democrat can't win an election against a Republican in the state of Louisiana without stealing it," in reference to Mary Landrieu's election to the Senate.
 
They should stop calling Stonecipher a "demographer," and instead refer to him for what he is, a Republican strategist. "Demography" happens to be his tool of the trade.
 
It's the most amazingly hypocritical defense, but variations of it are becoming commonplace -- deny and stonewall for as long as you can, then, when the denial stops being believable, downplay the significance of whatever you were denying because nobody ever really believed the denials.
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Old Favorites
  • Political Boxing (untitled)
  • Did Bush Take His Ball and Go Home
  • Teratogens and Plan B
  • Foghorn Leghorn Republicans
  • BayouBias.com
  • Quote of the Day
  • October's News(Dec.1)
  • untitled, Nov.19 (offshore revenue)
  • Remember Upton Sinclair
  • Oct. Liar of thr month
  • Jindal's True Colors
  • No bid contracts