If Rome burns, no Nero here… Parsky succeeds as UC Regents’ Chairman

Americans applaud Roman virtues including gravity, resolution, temperance, self-control, authority, honesty, and justice when we find them. The Roman model of self-governance including reliance upon the rule of law, recognition of human dignity and freedom of choice form the basis for our own democracy. Don’t blink now… but the UC Board of Regents is showing signs of ‘going Roman’.

Initiatives to expand educational opportunities to minorities; to professionalize the business of academia and to continue the management of our national nuclear laboratories all bring exceptional economic benefits to the state. Accomplishing all three initiatives within a year or two’s timeframe is nothing short of extraordinary. Kudos to the UC Board of Regents. More kudos to the Chairman of the UC Board of Regents, Gerry Parsky, and from the Los Angeles Times, no less.

About Parsky, the LA Times states he is “Taking an unusually activist approach to the volunteer job, he has testified before — and helped calm — lawmakers angered by the compensation scandal. He arranged an outside audit of UC managers' pay and perks and proposed administrative and structural reforms to help the university's embattled president, Robert C. Dynes. He played a key part last year in UC's ultimately successful effort to hang on to a share of its historic contract to run the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico.”

With the Los Angeles Times singing hosannas to Gerry Parsky, where is the next ParskyWatch when the news is good?

The game to watch tonight!

Think basketball is the game to watch tonight? Tomorrow Tom DeLay will announce his resignation and retirement from Congress. Today, in an exclusive interview with Time Magazine’s fabulous Chief White House correspondent, Mike Allen, Tom DeLay gave his rationale for leaving Congress and not seeking reelection.

First, CNN broke the story of DeLay’s decision to walk away.

Shortly, MSNBC followed with terrific reporting by Chris Matthews about a call he received today from Congressman DeLay… Chris spoke about his conversation with DeLay on both Joe Scarborough’s and Tucker Carlson’s shows this evening. Be sure to catch Mike Allen and Chris Matthews on rebroadcasts of the “Situation” on MSNBC.

Finally, FoxNews…. Well, where in the world is the FoxNews coverage? Fox didn’t have the story on air, even via a Fox Alert, for almost an hour after CNN and then only with a small announcement. Obviously Tom DeLay didn’t give anyone at Fox a heads up – but he did give a 90 minute afternoon interview to Mike Allen, called Chris Matthews AND his own Congressional donors this evening.

It’s been 90 minutes and counting just since CNN and MSNBC had details… and pictures up… but Fox is still talking about Aruba. Hey Fox, who are you hiring for your political intel these days? Too many folks watching the UCLA v. Florida game to be in touch?? We’ve got interesting stories happening in Texas and Virginia, not to mention control of Congress hanging in the balance, and still there is more news we need about a girl who went missing in ARUBA last summer?

If you’re waiting for FoxNews to cover the “DeLay Dynasty Ends” story maybe their coverage tomorrow will help recover the “Situation.” In the meantime, try instead wondering if MSNBC, having scooped Fox on coverage of the Republican Presidential beauty contest in Memphis last month, and now leading with great coverage of the biggest news to hit the Republican Congressional leadership this decade; wonder if MSNBC (and Time Magazine) aren’t turning into the “game” to watch for more than just tonight?

So Frenchy... so ungrateful!

If you ever had any doubt that the French are way behind the times, read the April 1st issue of Socialist Worker Online. http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=8587

Watching the Paris protests, I am reminded of a childhood growing up ten minutes from People's Park and Berzerkley, CA. Crowd scenes and whistle noises, uncontrolled mob movements (police BACKING up to keep control), a lock down of public institutions all remind me of my childhood. Is it any wonder I am conservative when the first news I remember was filled with Black Panther protests, assassinations in Oakland including the School Superintendent, kidnapped oil executives' kids and a newspaper heiress?

Who can be sympathetic to a 'cause' when the protest is so destructive? Not me. Why do the French youth believe that their future will be advanced by transit strikes, violent marches and political gridlock? Not I.

Our socialist friends write: "Since last week this sense has been reversed – people feel that winning is possible. If we manage to beat the government on the CPE it will open a new space where demonstrations and mobilisations have been clearly proved as winning formulas, which in itself would be an enormous victory." © Copyright Socialist Worker.

Winning is possible? Beat the government? This is an enormous victory?? Who do they think is the enemy? Have the French forgotten that Marie Antoinette is long gone and the government is their own? Apparently, the French socialists have.

No one guaranteed me a job, not even after earning three college degrees. Why should the French guarantee their kids a lifetime of under-performance and an under-funded pension on the road to national economic decline? The French are so un-grateful.

What's wrong with the Dem's
"Iraq veteran" strategy?

Rahm Emanuel's cynical ploy (see previous entry below) uses smoke and mirrors to equate anti-war veterans with strong support for national security. But voters in 2006 look to be having none of it, just ask Paul Hackett and Tammy Duckworth.

Voters in 2004 weren't buying this strategy either judging by the fortunes of John Kerry, a better known anti-war veteran, and the one who got Swift-boated right down the river. Clearly, the DCCC's candidate recruiting machine didn't pay any attention to Presidential politics or they might not need to be reminded that he who does not remember the past is doomed to repeat it.

Mensa man and GOP pollster, John McLaughlin, makes another argument for why the "Iraq veteran" strategy will fail... read on.


DEMS PUT BAD BETS ON VETS
by Deborah Orin of the New York Post

March 23, 2006 -- "There's a disconnect - the Democrats are trying to recruit people that have a strong support-the-troops image, when their base is anti-war and anti-military," said Republican pollster John McLaughlin.

Recruiting Iraq veterans blew up spectacularly for Democrats when they enlisted anti-war Marine vet Paul Hackett to run for Senate in Ohio, only to dump him for liberal Rep. Sherrod Brown. Hackett accused Democrats of "betrayal."

For original article, see http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/commentary/63512.htm

Rahm Emanuel's cynical ploy...

Q: What do these wanna-be candidates have in common? Cindy Sheehan (California). Paul Hackett (Ohio). Tammy Duckworth (Illinois) Tim Dunn (North Carolina). Bill Winter (Colorado).

A: The DCCC Chairman (and former top advisor in the Clinton White House), Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel, has decided to recruit candidates for House and Senate seats who claim military affiliations yet hope to embarrass George W. Bush and cause the loss of a Republican governing majority by subverting support for our national security. There are at least 14 Iraqi war veterans filed to run as Democrats in 2006 currently raising BIG money from anti-war groups.

In my role as an instructor for campaign (and grad) school classes, I teach others to look for life’s patterns. (e.g.: Intelligence is pattern recognition and chaos merely a nonlinear dynamical system, yada yada.) Here’s a clue for my USC students, the 2006 Dem candidate recruitment strategy shows a decided lack of sophistication. Running disgruntled candidates who are former war veterans (or their relatives) for House and Senate seats will not convince a majority of Americans to compromise.

In politics, it holds that for every similar action there is an repetitious outcome. When Bill Clinton was President (and after Monica Lewinsky became a household name), the 1998 mid-term campaigns ignored usual candidate standards of personal conduct. Instead, voters were presented with “character issues” where once these egomaniacs would have shunned public scrutiny.

Many, Republicans and Democrats both, campaigned for legislative seats regardless of their bad marriages, mistresses, second families (pre- the Big Love series promotion) and more. My favorite flaunt-er of conventional wisdom was an Indiana candidate who campaigned proudly as an Evangelical Christian Conservative – never mind that the much photographed woman who stood beside him at innumerable political events was not the woman to whom he was partnered in business and marriage. He lost a “safe” seat that November and so did the other “character” candidates.

Lesson One: Americans may not have supported punishment for their morally challenged President, but that determination did NOT translate into putting up with bad behavior from their local candidates. 1998 became the year of electing the true blue Congressman.

I have news for Mr. Emanuel.

Lesson Two: Democrat candidates - and veterans - critical of the War on Terror will not confuse American voters in 2006 into thinking that some military affiliation is more important than real military support. No matter how cynical the DCCC recruitment efforts may be, Americans want a successful national security strategy and will vote accordingly this fall.

For more information: http://capitaleye.org/inside.asp?ID=207

The difference a day makes….

House Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo) says about Democrats “their best day will be the day before they release their agenda.” We’re waiting….

There is an old axiom in Republican Party politics heard often at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis: Republicans win when they run on the issues. Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard reports “some Republicans insist it doesn’t matter whether Democrats finally offer a party agenda. ‘The question is not what they promise,’ (RNC Chairman Ken) Mehlman told Barnes ‘It’s what they are going to do’ that is important.”

With the helicopter Marine One at rest in the background on the South Lawn of the White House, the President outlined conversation today marking the third anniversary of coalition intervention in Iraq. On this beautiful day in Washington, Bush spoke of efforts to enable an Iraqi government that will successfully implement a democracy, build the peace and offer America the thanks, and relief, that will come from a victory in Iraq. We hope…

Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld today opined that the war in Iraq is in a Post-victory stage, terminology which is a naïve depiction of politics (and terrorism) better understood as a reiterative process. In politics, democratic - terrorist - or other, one deed begets another, end without end. In the Washington Post, Rumsfeld restated the rationale for a free and democratic Iraq: the search for deterrence to attacks on its neighbors, quelling conspiracies with terrorists, elimination of the funding for suicide bombers and death squads seeking American victims. We wish…

Experiences in Iraq serve to remind us that democracy is a rare, and fragile, form of self-governance. Ralph Peters writes about the media’s extrapolating daily crises from minor incidents. He argues we are being misled by a systemic reliance on local Iraqi stringers who enhance their own viability by bringing bad news to journalists whose distant editors know little of the reality on the streets. An author of 20 books, Peters believes “the Arab genius for failure could still spoil everything.” But being on the ground in Iraq, riding around with today’s U.S. Army, the former intelligence officer looked for evidence of the New York Times’ declared civil war and could not find it.

My favorite military friend may mock my six syllable academic terminology but I love a good ‘systems analysis’ when I read one. Find more Ralph Peters on www.realclearpolitics.com.

Perhaps another day, even tomorrow (the first day of Spring) brings a turning point? Lessening sectarian tensions, fewer ethnic provocations, greater momentum toward democratic institution building. As Ken Mehlman says, it’s not what they promise; it’s what they are going to do that is important.

Still Republican after all these years.

Years ago as the Immediate Past Chairman of the California Young Republicans, I attended something called YRLC. Last weekend, during the Southern Regional Leadership Conference (SRLC) I saw many of those same folks at a reunion held in the Isaac Hayes lounge in Memphis, Tennessee. You know your crowd is serious about their politics when we're still at the bar 15 years later.

Sadly, one alone went missing when Audrey Merkin suddenly passed away just a week before we could all be together. At SRLC, a grown up version of YRLC, there was Roman Buhler greeting arrivals in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel. With Roman there were two items to discuss: remembering Audrey Merkin's passing away and acknowledging the long planned career move to put Kevin McCarthy into Bill Thomas' congressional seat.

A girlfriend has groused that my entire political frame of reference is defined by my Young Republicans' experience. It's true. For that matter, so far the 2008 Presidential race is more like a YR campaign than not.

What YRs learn fast is that (1) strong regional alliances can be overtaken by raw talent, (2) paid delivery services for voting delegates easily overwhelm an event, (3) good speechmaking presentations are always overshadowed by the bar's circus scene (with apologies to Chris Matthews and his fabulous live-from-Memphis MSNBC broadcasts), (4) good operatives commit public acts of political suicide AND (5) we're never too old to be this silly (with apologies to the Peabody Hotel's duck pond for renaming it a "No Cheney Zone.")

God bless Audrey, we will miss her for she understood what powerful politics can come from youthful silliness, public displays, circus scenes, day trips and surprising friendships.

Congratulations Kevin, welcome back to the national scene.