All talk from the Back 40

ARE YOU  ready to ring in a new year with the thought of a four-year presidential campaign? .  The first bloody signs of it happening is the reemergence from the back 40  of at least three Republican losing candidates as radio talk-show hosts in 2009.  It used to be that the losers shared little political wealth after their quests for the Oval Office were denied by the voters.  Al Gore settled for a Nobel Prize for his environmental efforts; Jimmy Carter spent a lot of time building houses for the poor; Gerald Ford was happy to play golf.  But talk-show opportunities today offer boundless ways to convince the voters that the hosts are keenly aware of the Republic's deficiencies and would nicely fill out the top of their party's presidential ticket. Sean Hannity, the right-wing icon who talks a lot on  Fox News,  calls it  "conservatism in exile."

So as George Bush is being repatriated to his native ranch in Texas,  here is the old lineup of falling stars that will be soaring into the ether in 2009:

Fred Thompson will succeed Bill O'Reilly's radio show in March.  He will cover a lot of distance in the four-year run-up to 2012.  Confounding the media that sized him up as a formidable presidential candidate in 2008,  Thompson emerged more as a sleep-deprived politician  and netted an ever-so-silent o.5 pct. of the Republican vote.  

Mike Huckabee will be back, too.  Already visible with a Fox TV show(sufficiently after church,  at 11 p.m. Sundays)  Huckabee will begin a a radio talk show on ABC in January.  He has given every indication that he is an unannounced candadate for the presidency in 2012. Wanna predict what he'll be talking about?

Rudy Giuliani, who had been in the loop as a replacement for O'Reilly's radio show, was shut out, but is still shopping around for a radio spot.  Rudy never knows when to stop talking and was off the reservation a number of times during the campaign.  No one conceived of a worse campaign strategy  as he idled in Florida and elsewhere waiting for lightning to ignite his chances.  

Get out your delegate counters. And leave some space for other winner-take-all talkers.  Or you can simply turn off the radio and wait for the movie.   It couldn't hurt.  

Blackwell sings in minor key...

ODDLY ASSEMBLING his  campaign to become the Republican National Committee chairman, Ken Blackwell has inexplicably come to the defense of a rival for the job, Chip Saltsman.   In case the holidays have clouded your memory, please note that the very same Blackwell is the former Ohio Secretary of State whose quirky maneuvers in the 2004 Ohio presidential race still resound with questions about the validity of the balloting that put the state in George Bush's column. He then followed up with a failed campaign for governor in 2006. 

 Now, what about Saltsman?  Well,  he's the former Tennessee Republican Chairman who managed Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign. Lately, he  caused a stir in the party  hierarchy  by sending members of the Republican National Committee a CD bearing  a song spoofing Barack Obama.  It's titled "Barack the Magic Negro."  Sounds like a role that Blackwell, an African-American, wanted to fill during his stay in Ohio politics.  Blackwell says he doesn't see anything wrong with Saltsman's tactics,  opining that press reports were due to "hypersensitivity in the press regarding matters of race."   Blackwell generously added that all of his competitors for the RNC post are "fine people." Right. 

One the other hand, the current RNC chairman, Mike Duncan, seems to be a tad hypersensitive himself.   He said he was "shocked  and appalled" that a  candidate for the party's top job would participate in such a stunt.    

I had a hard time figuring out some of Blackswell's antics when he was the top gun for the state's balloting in 2004 as secretary of state.   I have even a harder time figuring out his strategy to claim the RNC job by shucking off tongue-in-cheek songs about a "Magic Negro".

The logic is so opaque.  Maybe not.  

Honors for a bell cow

ONE OF the perks of retirement from a  highly visible role as a TV news anchor is that you get to share with the world the praise from profound thinkers who thought that you were swell.  There's no clearer evidence of that than in the VIP accolades for Brit Hume, the baritone bell cow of Fox/Bush News, who is collecting his tidy retirement pay these days.  But first, a word from his sponsors, broadcast to Hume's loving  fans around the world  as aired  in his self serving final encomium:

   "After decades of hard work you've become one of the most respected journalists in the business.  You're a role model for young reporters, and while you leave big shoes to fill, we hope many are inspired to follow in your footsteps."  ...George Bush.

It gets better. Hume got this salute from Dick Cheney: 

    " I've always known you to be  a skilled and fair-minded reporter.  You've lived up to that standard every day of your career, and you've made 'Special Report' one of the finest news programs in the world."

Enjoy it while you can, Brit.  Twenty-seven more days and the George-and-Dick dark comedy hour will be officially  off the air  for good.   I report.  You decide. 

 .  

Recalling the recall

AKRON MAYOR Don Plusquellic  has not been in a giving mood to his political opponents during the holidays and you may expect to see the consequences in the weeks and months ahead.   The mayor's team is girding for battle.  It has had several high level  meetings to counter a recall campaign against him by former councilman and Plusquellic thorn, Walter Mendenhall. Around City Hall, the mere mention of Mendenhall's name is always accompanied by the soundtrack from "Jaws".   Neither side expects the latest clash to be gentle: recall campaigns are never pretty.  And this one would be at a desperate time in the economy when the minds of public officials should be on something more productive.  .

The mayor's strategy, I have been told,  will be an across-the-board appeal to civic and business leaders to defend the mayor's work during his six terms in office by sending the message down through the ranks of their companies and institutions.  If this strategy is effective  - and I think it probably will be - it will stave off a recall in a special election.  But that isn't certain.  As Plusquellic learned in his last campaign against Mendenhall ally Joe Finley,  nothing in politics can ever be taken for granted.  City Hall has set out to make sure that there will be no more close calls.

It will be costly for the city. Plusquellic advisors are talking about a six-figure outlay with some forecasts of upward of $500,000.    And the internal advice that will be given to the often outspoken mayor:  For this to be a success, you have to hold your tongue.  

The danger, of course, is that Mendenhall  may be able to get the 3,200 or so valid signatures on the recall petitions to force a disruptive special election. That's why there will be an intense effort to amass support from the top rung of the city's movers and shakers - many of whom have been supportive of his leadership in the past.  There is more than enough evidence of Plusquellic's productive initiatives for Akron to offset his setbacks over the years.  

So let the spitefully silly season of his opponents begin.  With so many other things on our collective minds to worry about, why do I feel that we are instead heading off to Wally World?  

They should have asked Mike

YEARS AGO I knew a barrel of a courthouse bailiff who sat outside the judge's chambers, chewed on a cigar and observed closely the ways of his world.   Much of what Mike  told me in one and two-syllable words made some sense, the kind of sense you would  expect from courthouse philosophers with time on their hands.  So I asked him about the great Akron-based $11 million Ponzi scheme that I had been assigned to cover for my paper.  Schooled by his deep  interest in the win-place-and-show odds at a nearby racetrack, he squinted knowingly when I mentioned the unraveled scheme by Don Lowers, the Akron lawyer, to build a financial pyramid that was destined to collapse on a lot of sorry investors.

"I went up to his office when I heard about it, went over a lot crap with him and left, " Mike said with a cough and bit of gravel in his voice.  "Naw.  It didn't make no sense to me at all about how you can make so much money in such a short time.  There had to be a catch.  Not with my  money because I didn't give him none. I figured you'd have a better chance laying up two bucks on a three-legged horse.  Naw. I ain't no dummy."

Trouble today is that there aren't enough savvy courthouse horse players  around to know that Bernard Madoff was shuffling all of his money from the bottom of  his private deck.  Interestingly, although it has been in vogue to blame the people being forced from their homes for not reading the fine print  in their mortgages, there is almost no concern about the careless way so many huge money bags were offered up by  people and institutions who might have been more careful about their treasures.  

Corruption has become so widespread in the carpeted offices of the investment industry that the FBI in New York says it is diverting some of its agents from a terrorism watch to the fraud on Wall Street.    "We have to work with those cases we think pose the greatest threat," the FBI's David Cardona told Bloomberg.com.  "In this case it's the threat to the financial system and Wall Street."  How comforting!

But how would the big losers  know?  It's true that the SEC would have been the last people to ask inasmuch as they (as well Alan Greenspan) were fully committed to George Bush's "ownership society" as well as ignoring  lot of other signs of mischief on Wall Street.   That now translates into easy come, easy go, particularly for millions of homeowners. As for the record-breaking  Ponzi,  there are scattered reports of some big companies that rejected Madoff's  preposterous robust investment options.   For all the others, it was too bad that Mike  the bailiff wasn't around to advise the well-paid  company financial advisors.   

Solidarity? Let's hope forever

WEEKEND WRAPPERS:  In a bouncy review of the past year in classical music, New York Times writer Daniel J. Wakin awarded  the Solidarity Gold Medal to the Plain Dealer's  Donald Rosenberg for the widespread professional support he received from the nation's other classical music critics after his demotion by the PD.  The paper, displeased by his criticism of the Cleveland Orchestra's conductor, Franz Welser-Most, restricted  him to lesser arts reporting  that denied him  his longtime beat of covering the Cleveland Orchestra....Speaking of the puzzling ways of newspaper front offices, I'm still trying to sort out the wisdom of the Detroit News and Free Press to limit the  home delivery of their   papers to Thursday, Friday and Sunday, beginning in March.  The plan is the latest effort by newspapers to cut their losses.  In this instance, it appears to be a bridge to nowhere.   I don't see how it can possibly work to either the papers' or the readers' advantage.  Absence on the doorstep four days a week will not make the the reader's heart grow fonder.  

Clearing some debris from my desk, I chanced upon this stunning observation  by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:

             "Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war." 

Good gracious! Who would have guessed?

Boo!   Once again, sports announcer Al Michaels' neocon handshakes were in evidence as he 

and his wife flew to a pro football game in the company of Rush Limbaugh and significant other.  Michaels, who has been heard on the air to make light of waterboarding, obviously is in sync with a guy like Limbaugh, who has made light of Parkinson's Disease and the recent mugging of TV talk show co-host Nika Brzinzski.  Guilt by association?  Naw.  Guilt by guilt. 

  

Bolt down the kitchen sink, too...

RUMMAGING through the gory reports on the $50 billion con man, Bernard Madoff,  I could only conclude  that his Hun-like assault on Wall Street investors was more evidence of the regulatory laxity of the Bush Administration.  In this instance, the Securities and Exchange 

Commission.  The Culture was easy to define: government's role in the finance industry (as well as all other Federal enterprises) should be minimal at best, a conservative mantra whose morning exercise routine is to turn one's eyes the other way while the culprits ransack the goodies with the speed of the Wabash Cannonball.     

The mea culpas to that effect are already part of the SEC's confessions as the titled managers apologize for not  being more alert to warnings that Madoff's Ponzi company was an inside job that might not withstand intense questioning.  It was laissez faire at its  worst that now has sunk individual investors,  foundations, pension funds and God knows what else in its wake.  

But the legacy of the Bush Administration  will show numerous instances of meddling to  cut away interference with  the official Culture, in some bizarre versions as recent as Secretary of State Condi Rice's absurd insistence that not a single American dollar was lost to corruption in Iraq.  Not one!  

Culture?  Dr. Richard Carmona, the former surgeon general, complained that his speeches on stem cell research and teen pregnancy were heavilly edited to conform, not with science, but with the Bushies' philosophy.   Carmona said he had been "marginalized".  

And what about the NASA scientists who reported that they were warned to tone down their warnings about global warming?  And EPA technicians who were kept under wraps about emission controls at power plants?   The muffling of science by the Culture could not go on forever.  That will change the day Bush heads back to the ranch to think about another day job.  

I'm sure somebody is already  putting together the book on the abuses of this administration by an army of fractals, those tiny images that are exact replicas of the larger image that they band  together  to create.  I wonder where the values folks will go for their next jobs.  And not a moment too soon.  Such is the ugly moral of Bernard Madoff, the Securities and Exchange Commission et al.  Keep it away from the kids in your house.  

 

A flipped house divided?

AND A MERRY CHRISTMAS to the University of Akron , which could use a little extra cheer these days in the wake of  the indictment on ethics charges  of a member of UA's Board of Trustees.  We're talking, of course, about Atty. Jack Morrison. a political powerhouse in the realm of the Summit County Republican Party who now faces seven counts, all misdemeanors, of  trespassing on the state's ethics laws.  Since the Summit Count Grand Jury returned the indictment, the University has been officially silent in what UA spokesman Ken Torisky described to me as "a kind of waiting game" until the case plays out. But it can't be all that pleased with this kind of attention.

In short, Morrison  is accused of profiting from the sale of a  house to the University in the neighborhood where a new athletic stadium is being built,  a transaction involving his lawyer son that netted about $33,000, or 40 pct. profit during the short flipping  period that it was in the family.    Ethical or unethical, I'll let the court decide.  But if you want to raise suspicion of a conflict of interest, there's no easier way to do it than to sit on a university board while the family is turning a dollar.  Morrison, you should know, denies that any of this was off the books.  But the indictment says he engaged in "an unlawful interest in a public contract" and filed a "false" financial statement with the Ohio Ethics Commission.

 Morrison is the lawyer for the County GOP and sits on the State Republican Committee.  You can be sure that the two sides will have a lot more to say about this when it goes to trial.  The arraignment was set for 8 a.m. Dec. 31. in the courthouse annex at which time a trial date will be set.

Meantime,  there may be a subtext on another sticky  matter involving Morrison, who is the law director of Munroe Falls.  A former Munroe Falls Councilman, Bentley Hudson, will take up the question before the council on how Morrison managed to import tons of landscaping granite rocks and sandstone from city property to the lawyer's new home that was under construction on Silver Lake last summer.  "I'm going to be asking a lot of questions about that at the council meeting Monday,  Hudson says.  You'd have to assume that with Jack Morrison, life must never be dull. 

 

   

Rating the corruptibles

IMAGINE MY surprise in reading the other day in the New York Times that Illinois is not the most corrupt state in the Union.  It ranks no worse than sixth, according to The Corporate Crime Reporter, which bases its rankings on the number of  federal public corruption convictions per 100,000 residents.  Illinois, its governors and Chicago aldermen notwithstanding, is more respectable on the chart than Louisiana, Mississippi  Kentucky, Alabama and...I'll whisper it...Ohio.  This is hardly the season of the year to bring this up with all of the state's other bad tidings, including the fact that the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals are groping around in the darkness of their NFL division.  

Now that I have dared to bring you up to date on the relative evil that lurks in the land, let's just forget that I mentioned it and make the most of the holidays. .  

When the other shoes fly...

DO YOU find at least a little strange that after all of the bullets,  bombs and billions in U.S. dollars we have recklessly dispensed to pacify Iraq, the simple act of hurling shoes at President Bush has again told us that we are nowhere near creating the promised land that has been so fictionalized  by the Bush Administration?   Quite the opposite, despite the exaggerated claims of growing success in Iraq that Colin Powell is talking about so critically  these days.  You have seen the same reports of the nasty incident that I have.  And, based on the wide approval of Iraqis and throughout the Arab world of the culturally significant airborne shoes,  the disgust with U.S. presence in the Middle East has created a hero of Muntazer al-Zaidi, the journalist who staged the event.  (Contrary to some of my recent e-mails from curious readers, Zaidi is not a relative of mine.)  

We can say rather clearly that Iraq is not the world that neocon Richard Perle envisioned years ago when he confidently predicted that a big plaza in the center of Baghdad would be named for George Bush within months of the invasion.  At that moment there was plenty of Kool-Aid to go around.  But not enough these days to mollify the Iraqis whose lives in many cases are worse today than before. Look out.  If  Zaidi  is severely prosecuted it will only inflame the Arab world more.  At this late date, what in the world was Bush doing playing president  over there anyway?