Politics Extra: What have the Dems done?

Thursday, March 01, 2007

What have the Dems done?

In conjunction with their party tonight, the Democrats issued this report

15 Comments:

at 11:26 AM, March 02, 2007

Anonymous said...

Could the people of Ohio (thru OH AG Dann) sue Ken Blackwell for the $64,613.14 in attorney fees that his actions cost the taxpayers of Ohio:

Item no.5: The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals today told Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell to open his wallet and pay $64,613.14 for attorney fees to the Sandusky County Democratic Party.

The party sued Republican Blackwell prior to the 2004 presidential elections over his delay in telling county boards of election they could let voters cast "provisional" ballots. The Help America Vote Act, enacted in 2002, permitted provisional ballots but Blackwell didn't get around to sending out his first directive until mid-September 2004.

FYI: the $64, 613 from Item no.5 was paid by Ohio taxpayers, not Blackwell.

http://clarkstreetblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/buckeye-institute-gets-another-feather.html

ps I sure hope blackwell realizes that Chair of the House Judiciary Rep John Conyers is sitting on a mountain of compiled evidence from blackwell's '04 election fraud. Rumor is the wait will be worthwhile because they are waiting so pardons can not occur!

at 3:36 PM, March 02, 2007

Anonymous said...

can i ask why you guys are allowing comments that have absolutely nothing to do with the posts through? if you're going to allow every 9/11 conspirator and bush basher to post any drivel they want, whats the point of commenting anymore? this your blog, not theirs, and you have an obligation to the readers of this blog to allow comments that are applicable to the topic through, and delete those that arent. it's not censorship if the comments dont pertain to the topic at hand.

at 4:44 PM, March 02, 2007

Anonymous said...

As many people have mentioned before here, why doesn't the Enquirer offer an open thread or a general politics, national politics blog section. I've found some interesting articles referenced in these blog pages that I wouldn't have known about otherwise. Maybe you just need to expand your Political Blog categories?

at 5:01 PM, March 02, 2007

Anonymous said...

I second what Anon 3:36 just said and would like to add that the Enquirer is not a government and therefore is not capable of engaging in censorship anyway. The Enquirer is protected by the First Amendment, not obligated to enforce it. That's like saying that the National Rifle Association has to give me a gun if I ask for it.

at 7:31 PM, March 02, 2007

Anonymous said...

".....I second what Anon 3:36 just said and would like to add that the Enquirer is not a government and therefore is not capable of engaging in censorship anyway. The Enquirer is protected by the First Amendment, not obligated to enforce it. That's like saying that the National Rifle Association has to give me a gun if I ask for it...."

We must conform !

Typical wRong wingnut whack slinging the elephant dung "corporate rights" above "individual rights".

Mao would roll over in his grave at the sheer thought allowing the press to publish anything but the wRong wingnut whacko party line !

PATHETIC !

HAD ENOUGH, VOTE DEMOCRAT 2007 !

at 7:42 PM, March 02, 2007

Anonymous said...

I DON'T AGREE WITH THEM! BAN THEM!

So is this just a rehash of the 'Ban the Bold Italic Guy' type of Republican 'control freak' thinking?

at 9:53 AM, March 03, 2007

Anonymous said...

all you can do is laugh...

so carl, just what have the dems done?

at 10:15 AM, March 03, 2007

Anonymous said...

"...I DON'T AGREE WITH THEM! BAN THEM! So is this just a rehash of the 'Ban the Bold Italic Guy' type of Republican 'control freak' thinking?...."

YES !

It is also the Mao conservative position that "freedom of the press" is defined as:

The press can pick and choose the elephant dung party line propaganda and censor opposition !

You see "corporate rights" are superior to "individual rights" !

It is a return to the conservative thinking "Separate but Equal" !

You see, corporations can use Taxpayer funds (i.e. stockholder capitol, gov. grants, tax incetives, etc.) and broadcast their message to the citizens, but, the censored individual is not entitled to publication because they were not able to tap the public funding for POWER !

PATHETIC !

HAD ENOUGH, VOTE DEMOCRAT 2007 !

at 10:22 AM, March 03, 2007

Anonymous said...

Typical wRong wingnut whack slinging the elephant dung.

Mao is too fat to roll over in his grave---lololo
PATHETIC !

HAD ENOUGH, VOTE DEMOCRAT 2007 !

at 6:37 PM, March 03, 2007

Anonymous said...

anon 7:42 - no, its to avoid things like this:

It’s Not Only About Price at Wal-Mart
By MICHAEL BARBARO
For 44 years, Wal-Mart’s message was “Low prices, always.”

Then in early 2006, it invited customers to “Look beyond the basics,” and try costlier products like 500-thread count sheets.

Now, after a tumultuous year of experimentation, abrupt reversals and admissions of missteps, Wal-Mart Stores is finding its raison d’être in the middle of these two extremes: “Saving people money so they can live better lives.”

The new, and so far internal, definition of what Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, stands for will soon become a very public strategy, evident on the shelves of 4,000 stores and in advertisements seen across the country.

In their first interviews since a management shuffle last month, John Fleming, the new chief merchandising officer, and Stephen Quinn, the new chief marketing officer, said that after a year of intense research, the discount giant is seeing its 200 million customers as belonging to three groups.

There are “brand aspirationals” (people with low incomes who are obsessed with names like KitchenAid), “price-sensitive affluents” (wealthier shoppers who love deals), and “value-price shoppers” (who like low prices and cannot afford much more).

The new categories are significant because for the first time, Wal-Mart thinks it finally understands not just how people shop at its stores, but why they shop the way they do.

The recalibration might seem subtle. But when the company is Wal-Mart, whose $345 billion in sales exceeds those of its next four rivals combined, the stakes are unusually high, especially for Mr. Fleming and Mr. Quinn.

After all, these two executives will be responsible for putting into practice the new strategy, which is intended, in many ways, to fix the old strategy they championed.

That idea — to squeeze more dollars out of every shopper by stocking higher-end products and marketing them in sleek ads — was the company’s best hope for correcting its biggest problem: achieving growth by relying on opening new stores, at a rate of more than 300 a year.

Sales growth at Wal-Mart’s older stores, a major measure in retailing, trails those of rivals like Target, and for the first time in a decade, they fell during the most recent holiday season.

But the upscale strategy has not worked, at least not yet.

Wal-Mart has begun remodeling its aging stores and has changed how it schedules employees, to bolster customer service at the busiest times of day. To turn around the United States business, executives said, they must fix merchandise and marketing, the biggest priority of 2007.

Mr. Fleming said that for all the new insights Wal-Mart gleaned from its research into its shoppers, it was also reminded that its most powerful lure was low prices.

“It explains why people who have to shop here do and why there are BMWs in the parking lot,” Mr. Fleming said.

So what does this mean for Wal-Mart’s upscale designer-inspired ambitions, which promised to nudge shoppers who dwelled in the land of $5 shampoo into the territory of $31 trench coats by Mark Eisen?

Those ambitions are still there, Mr. Fleming said, but they are scaled back (the contemporary urban women’s clothing line Metro 7 is in 1,000 stores now, down from 1,500 last year) and proceeding more judiciously. The company is now focusing more on consumers who already shop at Wal-Mart, rather than on people who executives would like to shop at its stores.

From now on, all product decisions will be organized around the three groups — brand aspirationals, price-sensitive affluents and value-price shoppers — that, Wal-Mart says, represent the majority of its business.

What do they have in common? They want deals, of course, but they do not want cheap products. In fact, they all put a high value on names like Motorola and Samsung.

So Wal-Mart is creating teams, each with a marketing executive and a merchandise executive, to tackle five so-called “power” product categories with these consumers in mind — food, entertainment, apparel, home goods and pharmacy.

A model for this is the electronics department at Wal-Mart, where the company improved sales not by merely offering the lowest prices, but by carrying well-known national brands, like flat-screen TVs from Sony and Magnavox.

Customers “really need the assurance of brands,” said Mr. Quinn, the former Frito-Lay advertising executive who succeeded Mr. Fleming as head of marketing. “In the past we were so focused on low price,” he added, “but low price on what?”

A customer in the electronics department, Mr. Quinn said, would see shelves of no-name TVs and think, “I can see it’s low price, but I will not buy that television.”

But having one or two name-brand products scattered in each department is not enough, he said. Wal-Mart must build a reputation for brands in each category, so that when it is time for a customer to make a purchase, they think of Wal-Mart, rather than Best Buy, Macy’s or Home Depot.

Under Mr. Fleming’s direction as chief marketing officer, Wal-Mart deliberately strayed from its single-minded focus on price, opening a design office in Manhattan, staging fashion shows and buying ads in stylish magazines like Vogue.

Mr. Fleming, a former executive at Dayton Hudson, which became Target, based the new strategy on research that showed millions of Wal-Mart shoppers bought only household staples like paper towels and orange juice.

But the research was not deep enough, Mr. Fleming said. For example, the “selective shopper,” as Mr. Fleming labeled such customers, would buy only household staples at Wal-Mart, never clothing.

The response — introducing stylish dresses from Metro 7 and George ME to satisfy this shopper — apparently misfired precisely because Wal-Mart did not know exactly what motivated their clothing purchases.

“Our decision at the time was to take action,” based on the behavior of shoppers, Mr. Quinn said. “It was not perfect.”

He added, “It was not wrong, but it was limited.”

It was, however, costly. In the fall, when sales at Wal-Mart stores open at least a year fell for the first time in a decade, top executives pointed to the new stylish merchandise as the culprit. H. Lee Scott Jr., the chief executive, said the company “moved too far too fast.”

This time around, Mr. Fleming and Mr. Quinn said, the research is more refined. Wal-Mart knows, for example, what motivates brand-obsessed shoppers. As a result, new advertising, being developed by the Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., is likely to play up that message with the slogan, “Saving people money so they can live better lives.”

Mr. Quinn said the marketing will be more consistent this year. “Last year represented a lot of experimentation to learn what works and what doesn’t,” he said. “We will narrow the range.”

The head of Wal-Mart’s United States division, Eduardo Castro-Wright, has told executives that after a tough year of store renovations and a new scheduling system in the stores, 2007 will be the Year of Merchandise.

“There is a lot of pressure,” Mr. Quinn said.

“But we like our chances,” Mr. Fleming added.

at 6:38 PM, March 03, 2007

Anonymous said...

and this

Bill Maher Sorry the Assassination Attempt on Dick Cheney Failed
Posted by Noel Sheppard on March 3, 2007 - 10:22.
In 2002, ABC made the decision to not renew Bill Maher's contract after he made some disgraceful comments on his program "Politically Incorrect" concerning America's military response to 9/11. After what transpired on "Real Time" Friday, the heads of HBO should be equally outraged, if not more.

As the discussion moved to the attempted assassination of Vice President Cheney last week, Maher asked his panel why it was necessary for the Huffington Post to remove comments by readers concerning their disappointment that the attempt failed. As the conversation ensued, Maher said one of the most disgraceful and irresponsible things uttered on a major television program since Bush was elected.

In a nutshell, the host said the world would be a safer place if the assassination attempt succeeded. And, he even had the nerve to reiterate it. Here’s the deplorable sequence of events for those that have the stomach for it (video available here courtesy of our friend Ms Underestimated):

Maher: What about the people who got onto the Huffington Post – and these weren’t even the bloggers, these were just the comments section – who said they, they expressed regret that the attack on Dick Cheney failed.

Joe Scarborough: Right

Maher: Now…

John Ridley: More than regret.

Maher: Well, what did they say?

Ridley: They said “We wish he would die.” I mean, it was (?) hate language.

Barney Frank: They said the bomb was wasted. (laughter and applause)

Maher: That’s a funny joke. But, seriously, if this isn’t China, shouldn’t you be able to say that? Why did Arianna Huffington, my girlfriend, I love her, but why did she take that off right away?

After some discussion about why Huffington should or shouldn’t have taken these comments down, the following occurred:

Ridley: It’s one thing to say you hate Dick Cheney, which applies to his politics. It’s another thing to say, “I’m sorry he didn’t die in an explosion." And I think, you know…

Maher: But you should be able to say it. And by the way...

Frank: Excuse me, Bill, but can I ask you a question? Do you decide what the topics are for this show?

Maher: Yeah, I decide the topics, they don’t go there.

Frank: But you exercise control over the show the way that she does over her blog.

Maher: But I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow. (applause)

Scarborough: If someone on this panel said that they wished that Dick Cheney had been blown up, and you didn’t say…

Frank: I think he did.

Scarborough: Okay. Did you say…

Maher: No, no. I quoted that.

Frank: You don’t believe that?

Maher: I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.

Wake up, HBO: one of your hosts said the world would be a safer place if the Vice President of the United States of America had been assassinated.

*****Update: Upon further examination, it seems that Maher's comments last night were signficantly more serious and virulent than what got him fired from ABC in 2002.

To refresh everyone's memory, on Monday, September 17, 2001, Maher and his "Politically Incorrect" panel were discussing the attacks. Dinesh D'Souza was one of the guests, and according to both a UPI article from September 19, and a September 20 transcript from the "O'Reilly Factor," D'Souza was making the case that the hijackers weren't cowards.

From UPI (no link available):

"Look at what they did," he said. "First of all, you have a whole bunch of guys who are willing to give their life. None of (them) backed out. All of them slammed themselves into pieces of concrete ... These are warriors."

Maher, according to a transcript of the show, responded by saying, "We (the United States) have been cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."

Maher appeared on the "O'Reilly Factor" the day after this UPI article was published, and defended his statements as follows:

MAHER: I used the word we, we have been. That was a mistake because it's vague, and I apologize, as I do, to the military if they took it the wrong way. But I've been a huge military defender on this show, that is one of the things you and I would agree on, Bill, and maybe have when you were here.

What I was talking about was the policy making body of this country, which has not responded and had not responded before this, to terrorism the way they should. I was saying basically that they blew up our embassies in Africa. That was not a small thing. And embassies -- I know it's way over in Africa, that is American soil. And 100 people...

O'REILLY: So you're basically laying this at the doorstep of your guy, Bill Clinton. Is that we, his administration?

MAHER: OK, but you know what, as a society now we're coming together and we're all lobbying in the same way toward the president.

So when that happened I didn't hear a big out cry from Congress when Clinton did that. The country was satisfied to handle the problem that way. The country did not want to tackle terrorism then. And that's what we did, we lobbed a cruise missile at a pharmaceutical factory. Same thing when we tried to get bin Laden the last time.

[...]

MAHER: I think they're [the hijackers] moral cowards. But physical cowards, cowards in war, cowards in the sense of a soldier who falls on a grenade, no. And I think we make a mistake when we underestimate our enemy. I think that is a big mistake in this country to assume that these people are stupid and cowardly, because we are up against it now.

With that in mind, it seems safe to say that making reference to an attempted assassination of a sitting Vice President in the way Maher did Friday night -- actually voicing regret that the attempt failed, and stating unequivocally it would have been better if the plan had succeeded -- is far worse than what Maher stated on "PI" five and a half years ago, and should be dealt with just as seriously by the heads of HBO.

at 6:39 PM, March 03, 2007

Anonymous said...

and this

Kent State denies ties to jihadi site
Department head says professor contributed news but isn't creator
By Carol Biliczky
Beacon Journal staff writer
An Internet story on Wednesday identified a Kent State faculty member as the author of a jihadist news service on the Web.

The Drudge Report story accused Julio ``Assad'' Pino of posting ``Global War'' at global-war.bloghi.com.

Pino, 46, a Muslim convert and associate professor of history at KSU, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

His department head, John Jameson, defended him as a good teacher and said the allegations in the story appeared to have been blown out of proportion.

He said Pino told him he provided news stories to the Web site but didn't accept any ownership of it.

The Web site does not name the originator, but a photo of a bearded man there is not of Pino, the description of the originator does not fit Pino and none of the postings on it can be tied to Kent State, Jameson said.

While Pino did operate a pro-Palestinian Web site in the past, he told Jameson he gave it up ``when the hate response got to be too much,'' Jameson said.

The jihadist Web site ``doesn't have any connection to Kent State,'' university spokesman Ron Kirksey said. ``We object to our name being used in connection with it.''

The turmoil began Wednesday when a column by Mike S. Adams on conservative townhall.com, Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard, was posted on the Drudge Report, a collection of news stories from throughout the world.

``All we want is to get Allah's pleasure,'' the jihadist Web site reads. ``We will write `Jihad' across our foreheads, and the stars. The angels will carry our message through the world.''

Adams accused Pino of ``drawing a paycheck from the people of the State of Ohio while trying to launch a jihad against people like me.''

One recent posting on the Web site was, Crusaders Can't Take Anymore in Afghanistan, Adams said.

Pino is a specialist in Latin America and has a doctorate from the University of California at Los Angeles.

He joined Kent State in 1992 and a few years ago received tenure -- in essence, lifetime employment -- for his research and writings. At Kent, he has taught courses such as The '60s + A Third-World View and Comparative Third-World Revolutions.

He is no stranger to controversy.

Last year he was the target of an Internet petition that labeled him a ``walking, talking time bomb'' and sought to get him fired with comments like, ``Remove this traitor from our educational system'' and ``Get this murderer out of the country!''

In a 2005 letter to the student-run Kent Stater, Pino responded to students who questioned why Muslims were burning American flags.

``You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of drugs, gambling, the sex trade, spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past, such as AIDS, and turns women into commodities for sale,'' he wrote.

``The ill done to the Muslim nations must be requited. The Muslim child does not cry alone; the Muslim woman does not cry alone; and the Muslim man is already at your gates.''

In another letter that year, he called Bush a ``cocaine cowboy''... ``who has added an extra 100,000 corpses to the pile of brown-colored corpses, collected like Indian heads in the Old West.''

In 2003, Pino was charged with disorderly conduct at an anti-war rally at Kent State. He said the charges were an attempt to harass protesters.

The most controversial incident may have been in 2002, when he wrote a column in the Kent Stater that eulogized an 18-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber. He said he was trying to explain why suicide bombings occurred in Israel.

KSU English professor Lewis Fried took offense and urged then-KSU President Carol Cartwright to fire Pino. She refused, saying the university supported free speech.

``A university stands for the sustaining of life and not of murder,'' Fried said Wednesday. ``I'm not opposing free speech, just murderous free speech.''

Kirksey said the university had received about 100 calls and e-mails, some of them threatening Pino, in the most recent incident. University police had been notified, he said.

at 6:42 PM, March 03, 2007

Anonymous said...

its not about banning anyone. its about keeping the comments section from becoming a free for all. this isnt cincy's personal blog, and im sure 9/10 people here clicked on the comments button to see comments about what the dems have/havent done, not about 9/11 conspiracy theories.

if the enquirer wont crack down on the comments for fear of being labeled censors of free speech by the bold italic guy who has nothing better to do than sit on the compute all day long and look up child porn and bash bush on blogs, its pointless to even read it anymore.

got it Einstein?

at 9:42 PM, March 03, 2007

Anonymous said...

".... its pointless to even read it anymore. got it Einstein?...."

Typical wRong wingnut whacko slinging the elephant dung propaganda position:

Shoot the Messenger !

PATHETIC !

HAD ENOUGH, VOTE DEMOCRAT 2007 !

at 8:00 AM, March 04, 2007

Anonymous said...

for those that might have missed the fine print, the screed against bill maher was taken from your typical right wing hate site.

at least some americans haven't been cowered into not talking about what a lot are thinking about.

Previous Posts

Thursday, March 01, 2007

What have the Dems done?

15 Comments: