Sweet and innocent “Mary Ann” (from Gilligan’s Island fame) was busted for allegedly being in possession of marijuana.
After reading the Associated press story, that’s not really the bad news (for me). Mary Ann is 69 years old. Can you believe that? I then found that Ginger is 74, and the Professor is 83. I think the rest of the castaways are all dead.
I am getting older. Crap.
Has New York Governor Eliot Spitzer (D) and U.S. Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) been hanging out together? They seem to have a lot in common today.
Ouch!!
It happened today. Did you see it, yet? We’ve all been waiting days for the big event.
By now, you’re probably asking, “What did I miss? What is this important thing that happened today?”
The big event is that Max Baucus kicked off his campaign advertising blitz on TV this morning!
So, if you are watching your local channels during the news, you’ll probably be seeing one. If you have cable, you might see one, too.
The funny thing is that the Montana media sucked up this announcement like it was an ice cream cone on a hot August day. Baucus has already run a few campaign commercials before today. Remember “Fighting for Children’s Health Care” that aired in February 2008? Remember “Abigail” in October 2007? Remember “Rocky Mountain Front” that aired in December 2006 or January 2007? I guess the Montana media didn’t.
Today his ad was used to tell Montanans that he has not lost touch. He told viewers that he won millions for new highways (what game was he playing that he won?). The ad states that Max created 18,000 jobs (I’d like to see the list). Of course, he says there’s still more to do. Oh yes, the word “powerful” was used in the ad.
The ads were done by an out of state company, which should tell Montanans a lot.
Watch for the ad to run on TV during your local news, and then the reporters will do a story about the ad during their newscasts – a double win for the Baucus camp.
Kicking off an ad blitz this early shows Baucus is a little worried. People across the country are demanding change, and he knows it’s tough to change when you’ve been in office for 30 years. So, he’s spending the money now to cement his position as Montana’s Max.
So according to the media, Campaign 2008 has officially been launched over the airwaves in Montana. Luckily for us, nobody else has any money to run a TV ad, and most candidates probably won’t until the final month before the primary and the general elections. Congressman Rehberg has the money, but lacks a formidable opponent to worry about running TV ads at this time.
Campaign 2008 – Ready, Set, Go!
On Friday, I wrote about U.S. Senator Max Baucus and his mass mailing of a “postcard” telling us about “his” help in authoring the economic stimulus package passed by Congress. He also alerted us about where to go regarding the specifics of the rebate (Hint: IRS).
Of course, the actual work that Baucus did on the economic stimulus package can be disputed.
I wrote that it was perfectly legal for Baucus and other members of Congress to send these updates telling us what they were doing for us in Congress, but that maybe, just maybe, there was a wee bit of campaigning involved in this particular mailing, since we’ve not seen too many mailings from Baucus over the last five years.
No matter, it was a waste of money, and it makes one wonder just how many other senators and representatives are doing the same thing. I also wonder if those senators and representatives up for re-election this year, like Baucus, will send another postcard after the checks are delivered saying, “I want to let you know that your check should have arrived by now. I was proud to help…”
On Friday, according to this Associated Press story, it seems the Internal Revenue Service has decided to send out their own letter to let us know that the checks will be coming.
By the way, the cost to send these letters by the IRS is about $42 million.
Of course, Democrats thought this was a foolish waste of money and blamed President Bush for allowing it to happen.
In the story, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, was quoted as saying, “There are countless better uses for $42 million than a self-congratulatory mailer that gives the president a pat on the back for an idea that wasn’t even his.”
Schumer is correct about better uses for taxpayer money. The same could be said about Max Baucus and other politicians who send a “self-congratulatory mailer” giving themselves a “pat on the back” for an “idea that wasn’t even his.”
Jon Tester has asked a fellow Democrat to do his ethics audit. The Associated Press is reporting that 90 year-old John Sheehy of Helena will conduct the audit. Sheehy is a former Democratic Montana legislator and former Montana Supreme Court Justice.
Ok, you can stop laughing now.
He will supposedly do it for free, so I guess he’ll do it in Helena instead of flying to D.C. at “Tester’s” expense.
The results will be made public, possibly by April 15, and my bet is Judge Sheehy won’t find anything wrong.
As you may recall after the Montana media kind of let this “campaign promise” slide, The Western Word has posted at least a couple of reminders about the Tester promise, “…he’ll set an example – by asking a Montana judge to conduct an ethics audit of his office every year…”
Yep, he’s a Montana judge alright.
Elected officials in Washington, D.C. get to send a lot of mail. No stamps are needed, just the Senator or Representative’s computer generated signature where the stamp goes. This is called “Franked Mail.” Some of the mail is sent for constituent assistance, or to answer a constituent’s concerns about an issue. Other mail is sent to update their constituency about something happening in Congress. Sometimes they send letters. Others times postcards or newsletters.
No matter what they send via “official mail” you can bet it’s to get their name out there and to tell us, “Look what I did and you should keep me there!”
More and more updates are sent via e-mail, which makes it cheaper and that is a good idea.
Any mail that is sent from an elected official’s office must have “Official Business” listed on it and “Prepared, Published and Mailed at Taxpayer Expense” listed on the mail. Basically, these statements mean we are paying for their mail.
Yesterday I received a nice postcard from Max Baucus, telling me about the Economic Stimulus Package. Here’s what was on the back of the postcard:
The information Max sent was already out there from other sources. Max told me that, “I was proud to help author the economic stimulus package recently passed by Congress and signed by the President.”
Of course, Max’s photo was on the postcard and his name was in a large font so we can easily see it.
This is all legal, but I believe they have a cut-off date before the election when they have to stop doing it at taxpayer’s expense – just to make it fair.
Since it’s Max’s re-election time, one must think he’s using taxpayer money to do just a wee bit of campaigning. We sure didn’t see too many of these postcards and letters during the first five years of his term.
It’s the power of incumbency.
Update 03/07/08:
According to the Associated Press:
There’s apparently no link between the bombing of an Army recruiting station in New York’s Times Square and letters sent to Congress saying “We did it,” law enforcement officials said Friday.
It was an “incredibly unbelievable coincidence.” Plus, it would have been fantastic mail service, too!
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It takes a really “brave” person to bomb a military recruiting office station at 3:40 a.m. It takes an idiot to do it in an area that is surrounded by surveillance cameras, and then write letters to members of Congress saying, “We did it.” Of course only really smart people would stick a photo of themselves in that letter showing them at the scene of the bombing. If that wasn’t enough to get caught, maybe an idiot would add a few pages of their “political manifesto” against the war, just to let members of Congress think they were from the educated side of the fence.
You can bet the fruitcakes who bombed the military recruiting office in New York City will soon be caught.
The military personnel working in this office have probably already dodged a few bombs and bullets in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. They damned sure don’t deserve to be worried about their safety while serving a tour of duty in a military recruiting office.
The people who blew up this office don’t understand that the people working there just follow the orders that are given to them that flow down through the chain of command. They follow the orders to best of their abilities. That’s what a military person does, and mostly for little pay and with many days away from their families and friends. They sacrifice their lives for you and me, and they do all this even for the brainless ones.
Since we’re dealing with dim-witted people, they probably thought the war in Iraq was being coordinated and commanded through this military recruiting office in Times Square. I can already hear them explain their rational, “Like, wow dude, it’s like the largest city in America, man, they must be in charge of the military, man.”
Duh!
New Mouthpiece
It looks like Montana’s junior Senator, Jon Tester, has hired a new Communications Director. His name is Patrick Devlin. He starts Monday. So from the bloggers of Montana, at least a few of us, welcome Mr. Devlin.
According to the Tester press release, Mr. Devlin “attended” Carroll College in Helena for an unspecified amount of time and graduated from Virginia Tech in 1989. Since the press release did not state that he was born in Montana, I’m guessing he was not.
A friend reminded me that maybe the reason Tester could not find a Montanan to be his communications guy or gal, was because Max Baucus had hired them all for his campaign.
Anyway, it looks like Washington is still looking like Washington, instead of more like Montana, as promised by Tester.
Still waiting
Since it’s been about a month since my last post about this, I thought I would let my readers know that I’m still waiting for Sen. Tester to fulfill his campaign promise by having a “Montana” judge conduct an “ethics audit” of his “Federal” U.S. Senate office every year. It’s been over a year.
Security
Speaking of Sen. Tester, he’s ask Senator Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who is Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, to hold a hearing in Montana this summer about northern border security. That is a good move to do all we can to ensure America is protected.
This would also be a great opportunity for Sen. Lieberman to hold a fundraiser in Montana for Sen. John McCain. Lieberman has endorsed McCain for President.
Tester was quoted in this article saying, “Whether it’s making sure we have enough people to staff the Port of Sweetgrass, or getting better radar coverage to detect small planes that can currently fly across unnoticed, we have no room to fail.”
I agree that we have no room to fail in protecting our country. Then why did Sen. Tester vote against reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)? The bill provides intelligence professionals with the tools they need to keep America safe from terrorists. Yes, we have no room to fail.
By the way, Sen. Lieberman voted for reauthorization of FISA.
MONTANA GOVERNOR
Here in Montana, it looks like Libertarian Stan Jones will make another run for public office. He has not officially filed yet, but says he plans to. You can read the story HERE. This time Jones will run for Governor, and that’s not good for Republican Gubernatorial candidate Roy Brown. Incumbent Governor Brian Schweitzer should be breathing at little easier now, and he will be really happy if Jones goes ahead and files for Governor by the March 20 deadline.
Jones was instrumental in 2006 helping elect Democrat Jon Tester to the U.S. Senate. Jones received over 10,000 votes in that election. Tester beat incumbent Conrad Burns by around 3,600 votes.
We’ve seen other races where a third-party candidate influenced the outcome of a race, The third-party candidate helped defeat a major-party candidate who they mostly agreed with on the issues and allowed the other candidate, whom they disagreed with on most issues, win the contest.
That’s why Montana should have a run-off election when a state-wide candidate does not get 50% plus one vote. The run-off election would be between the top two vote getters.
THE PURGE
You can’t always keep everyone happy in your political party and that’s a fact. It seems, at least in Montana, the Montana Democrats are better at keeping their problems internal, but at least some of the Montana Republicans want to air their problems out by grabbing a reporter and getting their unhappiness reported in the newspaper.
In this STORY, a fellow by the name of Roger Koopman, who is a state representative from Bozeman, wants to oust (Purge) 14 incumbent Republicans because he feels they “…have consistently sold out the cause of liberty in the Montana Legislature.” He wants to return the GOP to “its low tax, limited government, free market roots.”
I highly doubt Rep. Koopman will be voting for John McCain, but that’s just a hunch.
Maybe Rep. Koopman should be working to elect Republicans where the Democrats hold the seat? I’m not an expert on these things, but I’d rather try adding some fellow Republicans to the State House and Senate to replace Democrats, instead of causing some of my fellow Republicans to waste money in a primary, but that’s just me.
It also may be a sign that the Republican “big tent” is closing. At least by talking to a reporter about your unhappiness with fellow elected officials sure makes it look that way to the public.
THE AGE DEAL
The media in this country make mistakes. Most of my faithful readers already knew this. They also can tilt their story to their political leanings. Here in Montana, we see it often.
Late last night the Associated Press Special Correspondent, David Epso, filed a story called, “Clinton Wins Texas, Ohio; McCain Cinches.”
In the story, Epso writes about McCain, “The 71-year-old Arizona senator surpassed the 1,191 delegates needed to win his party’s nomination, completing a remarkable comeback that began in the snows of New Hampshire eight weeks ago.”
He wrote extensively about Clinton and Obama in this story, too. He did not mention the ages of Sen. Hillary Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama in the story. Was it just an oversight or a slam from Mr. Epso for McCain being 71 years-old? You can decide. By the way, Clinton is 60 years old and Obama is 46. Together they are older than McCain…
Montana’s News Station did what many folks may call, a “We Love Max” report about the senior Senator called, “Baucus ranked as 6th most powerful senator” according to Congress.org.
There’s the word, “powerful” again. Baucus’ folks have very much succeeded in selling that word to the Montana media anytime Baucus is mentioned. Of course, the AP picked up on the story, too.
While watching the news report, I kept looking for the “Paid for by Friends of Max Baucus 2008” disclaimer, but it never appeared. I would imagine Baucus’ staff have big smiles on their faces, while thinking, “We didn’t even have to buy media time for this great story!”
One thing the “news” report did not mention is that in the earmarks category, Max Baucus ranked #54. He is way down the list for someone that “powerful” and with about 30 years in Washington, D.C. Baucus was slightly ahead of first-term senator, Jon Tester, who ranked #66. Since neither have seats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, they were both were helped by Congressman Denny Rehberg from his position on the House Appropriations Committee. Of course I would be remiss if I did not mention that Sen. Tester should move up in the earmark category when he’s appointed to the Appropriations Committee by Sen. Harry Reid.
One has to wonder, who’s behind these power rankings? Back in 2006, the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) did a story about the Congressional power list called, “And Just What Is Congress.org?”
CJR reported, “Journalists love lists – so much so that this week, most didn’t bother telling readers about the source behind a “power ranking” of Congressional leaders.”
Seems that happened in Montana this year. Here’s a hint about the source: Lobbyists. We know how important that lobbyist money is to some candidates here in Montana.
