Sunday, November 01, 2009
Fox News, Jerry Brown, etc.
Unless you are brand new to this site, you know that I am an opinionated old Democrat. Today I have several things to rant and opinionate about.
A few days ago Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco and bright young hopeful to become the successor to Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California, announced that he was abandoning the race. He hasn't been able to raise enough money to put on an effective campaign. That leaves the Honorable Jerry Brown as the sole major contender for the Democratic Nomination.
Mr. Brown was governor before, following Ronald Reagan and preceding George Deukmegian. Brown didn't do such a good job as governor the first time. Perhaps he wants to correct some of the mistakes he and other former governors have made. Proposition 13 was passed during Brown's terms of office. He wasn't able to persuade the legislature to put in place something as a substitute for 13. Well, actually, there was a Proposition 8 that year that addressed the same problem, but it went nowhere. The public was gung-ho to cut taxes, protect the business interests of landlords, and all that. Perhaps I shouldn't be too hard on poor Jerry.
My problem now, as a Democrat, is that I don't believe Jerry can win. I don't believe the voters are about to give him his second chance. I have to look at the Republicans in the race and try to decide which one of them I dislike the least.
I heard Meg Whitman the other day on the radio. Patt Morrison was interviewing her. Unlike nearly everyone who has commented on the disfunctionality of California's government, she didn't subscribe to the idea that California has become ungovernable because of the very structures that voters have put in place with our easy initiative process. Her idea is that what is needed is someone as governor who will show leadership. What she means is the kind of leadership she has shown running a large corporation. To her leadership means the willingness to fire 10,000 or more state employees if that's what is needed to keep expenses within the limits of the tax revenue the Republicans in the legislature are willing to accept.
I know very little about Steve Poizner. He has been the state Insurance Commissioner, a position first held by John Garamendi. Mr. Garamendi made the office an advocate for the users of insurance rather than the purveyors. Those of his successors who were Republicans have tilted the advocacy toward the insurance companies. I can't say the same about Mr. Poizner. As the only Republican among the state-wide elected officials, he has managed to keep a low profile.
I think I know a little about Tom Campbell. He used to have the reputation of being a rather "liberal" Republican when he was in the state legislature. I don't know where he stands today on the question of getting rid of the 2/3 vote in the legislature, universal single-payer health insurance for California, legalization of gay marriage, the right of women to choose to terminate a pregnancy, and other issues that I care about. Based on what was said and written about him a dozen or more years ago, I tend to believe that his positions on these things are closer to mine than are those of Meg Whitman or other "real" Republicans.
Sometimes I fantasize about changing my registration to Republican just so I can vote for Campbell in the Republican Primary next year. Of course, that's just a fantasy and it wears off quickly. My father and his father would both roll over in their graves if I were to leave the Democratic reservation.
Another issue that nags at me is the rather extreme partiality of Fox News for Republicans, particularly conservative Republicans. I often argue with H and R that Fox puts out a lot of "news" that just isn't so. My friend S points out that Fox presents both regular news and news comment. The comment is provided by such pundits as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. Mr. Obama has recently taken on Fox News and is trying to discredit the organization. That's probably a mistake. Make Fox a martyr and people will flock to watch and listen to it. Better to take the position that the existence of Fox News is a small price to pay for the blessings of free speech.
A few days ago Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco and bright young hopeful to become the successor to Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California, announced that he was abandoning the race. He hasn't been able to raise enough money to put on an effective campaign. That leaves the Honorable Jerry Brown as the sole major contender for the Democratic Nomination.
Mr. Brown was governor before, following Ronald Reagan and preceding George Deukmegian. Brown didn't do such a good job as governor the first time. Perhaps he wants to correct some of the mistakes he and other former governors have made. Proposition 13 was passed during Brown's terms of office. He wasn't able to persuade the legislature to put in place something as a substitute for 13. Well, actually, there was a Proposition 8 that year that addressed the same problem, but it went nowhere. The public was gung-ho to cut taxes, protect the business interests of landlords, and all that. Perhaps I shouldn't be too hard on poor Jerry.
My problem now, as a Democrat, is that I don't believe Jerry can win. I don't believe the voters are about to give him his second chance. I have to look at the Republicans in the race and try to decide which one of them I dislike the least.
I heard Meg Whitman the other day on the radio. Patt Morrison was interviewing her. Unlike nearly everyone who has commented on the disfunctionality of California's government, she didn't subscribe to the idea that California has become ungovernable because of the very structures that voters have put in place with our easy initiative process. Her idea is that what is needed is someone as governor who will show leadership. What she means is the kind of leadership she has shown running a large corporation. To her leadership means the willingness to fire 10,000 or more state employees if that's what is needed to keep expenses within the limits of the tax revenue the Republicans in the legislature are willing to accept.
I know very little about Steve Poizner. He has been the state Insurance Commissioner, a position first held by John Garamendi. Mr. Garamendi made the office an advocate for the users of insurance rather than the purveyors. Those of his successors who were Republicans have tilted the advocacy toward the insurance companies. I can't say the same about Mr. Poizner. As the only Republican among the state-wide elected officials, he has managed to keep a low profile.
I think I know a little about Tom Campbell. He used to have the reputation of being a rather "liberal" Republican when he was in the state legislature. I don't know where he stands today on the question of getting rid of the 2/3 vote in the legislature, universal single-payer health insurance for California, legalization of gay marriage, the right of women to choose to terminate a pregnancy, and other issues that I care about. Based on what was said and written about him a dozen or more years ago, I tend to believe that his positions on these things are closer to mine than are those of Meg Whitman or other "real" Republicans.
Sometimes I fantasize about changing my registration to Republican just so I can vote for Campbell in the Republican Primary next year. Of course, that's just a fantasy and it wears off quickly. My father and his father would both roll over in their graves if I were to leave the Democratic reservation.
Another issue that nags at me is the rather extreme partiality of Fox News for Republicans, particularly conservative Republicans. I often argue with H and R that Fox puts out a lot of "news" that just isn't so. My friend S points out that Fox presents both regular news and news comment. The comment is provided by such pundits as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. Mr. Obama has recently taken on Fox News and is trying to discredit the organization. That's probably a mistake. Make Fox a martyr and people will flock to watch and listen to it. Better to take the position that the existence of Fox News is a small price to pay for the blessings of free speech.
Labels: Fox News, Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman, Prop. 13, Steve Poizner, Tom Campbell
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
A Difference of Opinion
The other day my Conservative friend H sent me an e-mail which contained the following:
It makes me wonder. Do Conservatives, like my friend H, live in a different universe? Is their mode of thinking so different from mine that we could see the same event and yet have such different conclusions? Am I demented or are they?
I can think of one possible, but extremely unlikely, explanation that preserves sanity for both H and myself: H watched the hearings on Fox News. I’ve rarely watched Fox News. It’s on cable, which I do not have at home. Occasionally at the gym I see a bit of Fox News on the TV sets that are placed in the exercise rooms. I was not in the gym the day Arlen Specter, Pat Leahy, Edward Kennedy, Lindsey Graham, and others skewered Alberto Gonzales and suggested that he would be doing the Department of Justice and the President a big favor if he would simply resign and go away. I don’t know how even Fox News could have slanted the coverage of the hearings in such a way that one could think that “…the AG did OK….”
In my e-mail to H I stated that Gonzales was in an impossible predicament. The question was, why were eight capable US Attorneys sacked and how much did you have to do with firing them? He couldn’t give answers to any part of the question. He couldn’t invoke the Fifth Amendment. All he could do was to insist that he couldn’t remember. The firings were not illegal; the President has the right to fire them at will. The question was why, not was it legal. In press conferences Mr. Gonzales had given several different and conflicting explanations of the firing. Both Democratic and Republican Senators sensed that Mr. Gonzales was hiding something; something so embarrassing to the President that Mr. Gonzales would rather play the fool than tell the truth. As far as I could tell from what I heard of the hearings, Mr. Gonzales’s only friend and defender among the Senators was Orrin Hatch.
I noted that after the hearings the left-leaning blogs were full of comments about Alberto Gonzales and explanations for his behavior in the Senate hearings. The right wing blogs (or at least the one I looked at) were silent about Gonzales. They were full of criticism of NBC television for airing the material that had been mailed to them by the Virginia Tech assassin.
I have TiVo and I recorded Gonzales's hearing which I watched this morning at breakfast. About the time it was over Jeanne brought me the LA Times. So I had the chance to see it and then read about it. I thought the AG did OK but that was not how the Times article came out.I wrote H an e-mail in which I commented that he and I saw things very differently. In fact, I wonder whether we saw or heard the same event. I also read the Los Angeles Times. The assessment of Gonzales’s performance in the Times agreed with what I had heard on radio and later seen on TV.
It makes me wonder. Do Conservatives, like my friend H, live in a different universe? Is their mode of thinking so different from mine that we could see the same event and yet have such different conclusions? Am I demented or are they?
I can think of one possible, but extremely unlikely, explanation that preserves sanity for both H and myself: H watched the hearings on Fox News. I’ve rarely watched Fox News. It’s on cable, which I do not have at home. Occasionally at the gym I see a bit of Fox News on the TV sets that are placed in the exercise rooms. I was not in the gym the day Arlen Specter, Pat Leahy, Edward Kennedy, Lindsey Graham, and others skewered Alberto Gonzales and suggested that he would be doing the Department of Justice and the President a big favor if he would simply resign and go away. I don’t know how even Fox News could have slanted the coverage of the hearings in such a way that one could think that “…the AG did OK….”
In my e-mail to H I stated that Gonzales was in an impossible predicament. The question was, why were eight capable US Attorneys sacked and how much did you have to do with firing them? He couldn’t give answers to any part of the question. He couldn’t invoke the Fifth Amendment. All he could do was to insist that he couldn’t remember. The firings were not illegal; the President has the right to fire them at will. The question was why, not was it legal. In press conferences Mr. Gonzales had given several different and conflicting explanations of the firing. Both Democratic and Republican Senators sensed that Mr. Gonzales was hiding something; something so embarrassing to the President that Mr. Gonzales would rather play the fool than tell the truth. As far as I could tell from what I heard of the hearings, Mr. Gonzales’s only friend and defender among the Senators was Orrin Hatch.
I noted that after the hearings the left-leaning blogs were full of comments about Alberto Gonzales and explanations for his behavior in the Senate hearings. The right wing blogs (or at least the one I looked at) were silent about Gonzales. They were full of criticism of NBC television for airing the material that had been mailed to them by the Virginia Tech assassin.
Labels: Alberto Gonzales, Conservative reaction to Gonzales's performance, firing US Attorneys, Fox News, Senate Hearings
