Where's the Disney World gun story in the Miami Herald?

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Below, an email I sent earlier this afternoon to Miami-area resident and longtime South Beach Hoosier favorite Matt Drudge, with the hopes that he'd turn his immensely powerful combination telescope and microscope of The Drudge Report in the general direction of Orlando and Miami.

This illuminating Orlando Sentinel story by Scott Powers and Jason Garcia is perhaps as good an example as any I'm familiar with that properly illuminates both the 'fixer' mentality and backroom-dealing culture of Tallahasseee, and the Miami Herald's own clueless-ness in the year 2008: a large organization that is neither deft enough nor quick enough on the draw to properly use the myriad resources it possesses, to the detriment of its remaining number of readers.

As to my own original thoughts below about the future of the Herald Building itself, consider yourself warned. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IMG_1642.jpg

And yes, I'll admit, I completely forgot about the Terra Group's purchase of the building, but the general point still holds true.

Winner of the 2005 Best Architectural Eyesore: The Miami Herald Building, 1 Herald Plaza,
Miami, FL 33132-1609
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/bestof/2005/award/best-architectural-eyesore-42698

See also: http://www.miamisunpost.com/archives/2006/07-27-06/eightstoryfrontpage.htm

Sometime soon, I'll share some thoughts on what it was like to be in that huge building in the late 1970's, and look out towards the bay from the desks of the Sports Dept. of the late and much-missed Miami News.
___________________________
Thursday July 3rd, 2008
12:30 p.m.

Dear Matt:

I'm somewhat dumbfounded that you haven't yet linked to the infuriating story about Disney once again playing its Bigfoot card behind the scenes to carve out some special treatment for itself.

The story in today's Orlando Sentinel by Scott Powers and Jason Garcia is as clear and to the point as you could ask for.

Now, personally, me being me, I'd like for the article to have asked State Rep. Stan Mayfield, who helped craft the legislation, to publicly identify these lawyers" (i.e. lobbyists), who were able to $weet talk him and his committee into inserting such a patently deceitful exemption 'exception' on behalf of Disney & Co.
Yeah, I'd really like to know who they are.

The fact that the reputed largest newspaper in the state, the Miami Herald doesn't mention this story anywhere in the paper today, a front page story to be sure, and on its antiquated and third-rate website, rather than have their own reporters ferret out the true facts, runs two AP dispatches, the most recent of which contradicts/clarifies the first, is another larger question worthy of discussion.

Clarification: Parking Lot Guns-Disney story
http://www.miamiherald.com/775/story/591998.html

Disney says it's exempt from new gun law
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking_news/story/592379.html

That's a question that might more reasonably be brought up in the not-too-distant future, when, aping the recent moves of The Tribune Company, McClatchy will likely raise the idea of selling the property where the Herald HQ is located, right on Biscayne Bay, where it's long been the largest eyesore on the Bay.

You can place this example of the Herald once again ignoring the troubles of a large state employer on the agenda/autopsy page, right after that delicious item I told you about the day it happened last September.

That was where the Herald ran a story in their third-rate Sunday opinion section, Issues & Ideas, shortly before a Dem presidential debate at the U-M, where one of their Latin America experts wrote that Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico was actually born in Mexico, which would surely come as shocking news to his mother, who was in Santa Monica, CA when Bill was born.

You'll recall that I stated to you at the time how this merely confirmed my own doubts about the tenuous grasp of the U.S. Constitution by most reporters, other than the Second Amendment, and in this case, not only the individual reporter at the Herald who wrote this, but his editors as well. A two-fer.

That this simple "fact" could've been discovered and refuted by a nine-year old in all of about 30 seconds via Richardson's own presidential or gubernatorial website, or that the newspaper never ran a correction, is just one of the many reasons why the Miami Herald has been in economic and editorial free fall for years.

Matt, I can hardly wait 'till the geniuses at The McClatchy Company try to re-assure their stockholders that they won't have any trouble getting the City of Miami or Miami-Dade County to change their zoning laws to accommodate McClatchy's desire to sell the property, and turn it into bayside luxury condos. (What else!)

That's when I think you'll see South Florida residents (inc. bloggers) decide that "what's good for the goose is good for the gander," and decide it's time for that area to become the beautiful bayside park it should've always been.
(The one the city and county completely botched with Bicentennial Park years and years ago, and are now trying to fix with their current equally flawed project.)

Then we'll see how dedicated to the concept of transparency and accountability the Miami Herald's Editorial Board is, when South Florida civic activists make it their business to give the proposed deal the highest possible degree of scrutiny.
You know, just for ol' times sake.

'Chinese wall' and all that.

Hmm... as of Noon, there were only 346 Orlando Sentinel reader comments on their website. That's like, what, the total of all comments to the Herald in a good week?
Exactly, hence my email to you now.

Please consider adding it before the 4th of July.

Adios!

Dave

Orlando Sentinel
Walt Disney World fires back on guns at work
Scott Powers and Jason Garcia, Sentinel Staff Writers
July 3, 2008

Walt Disney World employees won't be packing any heat in the company parking lots anytime soon.

The giant resort has declared that much of its sprawling property is exempt from a new state law that allows Floridians with concealed-weapons permits to keep firearms locked in their cars at work.

Disney, which has 60,000 employees and a long-standing policy against allowing guns on its land, cites an arcane -- and late-added -- loophole in the new law, which took effect Tuesday.

To see the rest of the story:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/custom/tourism/orl-disneyguns0308jul03,0,4282076.story
________________________________________
Reader comments at:
http://www.topix.net/forum/source/orlando-sentinel/T7AB2CU04R1EK4NK0

Kate Snow ignores Bill Richardson -"Bill Who?" es la problema!

For months now I've been waiting to join the live autopsy on the failed Bill Richardson presidential campaign corpse, and add my two cents plus interest.

See my earlier posts on Bill Richardson first, though, so you know where I'm coming from on him:
http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2007/09/us-constitution-still-apllies-in-south.html
http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2007/06/thoughts-on-bill-richardsons.html

That will come soon enough, as I describe some of the issues and steps my political campaign and media friends and I were continually emailing and calling each other about, as we watched his campaign implode in slow-motion for weeks. I'll try to share some of the steps he and the campaign needed to follow in order to ramp-up even before he officially announced, and thru either lack of courage, wisdom or common sense, or all three, he all but ignored, thus guaranteeing his lame current status, where the week that could've been, is instead the week where he's already long forgotten.

Tonight, on ABC's World News with Charlie Gibson, Kate Snow did the ubiquitous "The Latino Vote" story on the importance of this demographic in Nevada to pandering Dems, just hours before their curious Saturday caucus, where we now can see clearly that some unions are created a little more equal than others.
VIDEO: Webcast: The Race for Vegas

(If I caught it right, Kate even told us that, in essence, when you ask, "Como se dice "caucus" en espanol?" you'll get nada, as there is no exact translation of the word. Oddly enough, it's not said on this linked story, yet when I watched it on TV live at 6:30, I could've sworn she said it. I seem to also distinctly recall her saying Sergio Bendixen's name also, but... speaking of Sergio... http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-01-16-florida_N.htm)

Hear Kate's observations from Las Vegas in a Politics Live Now report, even talking about being with Chelsea for a few hours at UNLV.
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4156758

Don't know if the UNLV event with Chelsea was also a sorority thing, as when she was at Stanford recently -the Pi Phi house.
Stanford Daily's Editorial: Chelsea lacks class at exclusive event
http://www.stanforddaily.com/article/2008/1/16/editorialChelseaLacksClassAtExclusiveEvent
In the piece on the Nevada caucus, which is the logical result of the DNC wanting to be sure to show that they're as salsa-friendly as they are ethanol-friendly and maple syrup-friendly, Kate never said the name of the first and only Hispanic candidate to run, who some thought would use Nevada as a springboard. Guess who?

Letter of the Year -so far!- is an excellent Jan. 12th response to Andrew Sullivan's Jan. 9th post, How "Left" Is Obama? at The Daily Dish http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/01/how-left-is-oba.html
A former U of Chicago law student zeroes in on Obama's main weakness like a laser beam.
"Bottom line: Obama delivers a good message about ending divisiveness in Washington and working to find common ground. Perhaps the only opportunity in the last 4 years to test that message was the John Roberts vote, and Obama lined up with the partisans."
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/01/dissent-of-th-9.html#more

I thought the same exact thing at the time and wondered why so few others were willing to say so.

This reminds me, in an upcoming post I've been working on for a few weeks, I'll show you what the Chicago Tribune was writing about Obama before he was a pol and just Ye Olde Street Organizer on the South Side, and trust me, it's hardly magical or lyrical, and far from "a fairy tale."

When Everybody Wants to be a Political Wiseguy

Per my recent comments about Bill Richardson casting his lot with folks who claim that ACT was a positive step in the right direction...
_____________________________
New York Times
September 1, 2007
Editorial
The Slow Pursuit of Political Wiseguys

Too little and too late, federal regulators are getting around to one of the worst abuses in the last presidential election — the channeling of unregulated tens of millions in “soft money” contributions to shadow party operations created to evade federal campaign controls.
These clearly partisan groups should have been tightly regulated as political action committees, but they improperly claimed exemption under the tax code as simpler advocacy organizations. Three years after election complaints were filed, regulators have cited one of the bigger abusers — America Coming Together, a Democratic get-out-the-vote drive that spent nearly $100 million in skirting the campaign law.
A settlement includes a fine of $775,000, which federal regulators say should be a warning against future abusers. But party wheel horses could just as easily take that as a fair price for further shady electioneering next year, unless the federal elections commission sets clear and early regulations against it. Party sugar daddies stand ready with their checkbooks for fresh variations on this devious theme. The billionaire George Soros helped bankroll America Coming Together under the leadership of Harold Ickes, the Democrats’ field marshal. The commission has reprimanded Republican shell operations, too, notably the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads scurrilously financed under the radar.
Representatives of America Coming Together, defunct after the ’04 election, ludicrously proclaimed vindication in the commission’s citation and punishment. This signaled that fresh groups undoubtedly are eager to game the next elections.
The commission has too often served as the lair for safe appointees from both parties dedicated to protecting machine values. It’s time for the commission to confront the political wiseguys’ next round of machinations with firmer regulations and bigger fines.

Despite what Miami Herald says, U.S. Constitution STILL applies to South Florida

Pablo Bachelet is one of the the Miami Herald/McClatchy's resident Latin America experts. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/167
Personally, I prefer the work of the Herald's Tyler Bridges. Maybe it's because of his conversational style, but his stories stay with me a lot longer than Bachelet's.

Like so many reporters and columnists at the Herald, he blows both hot and cold, often within the same story, often on consecutive days.
Sometimes, like the proverbial blind pig who finds an acorn, he stumbles upon something that comes perilously close to insight, or at least an original thought on Latin America, a specific country there or some aspect of U.S. foreign policy towards the area.

One that I haven't already read in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs or don't recall anyone having already uttered at some foreign policy event at SAIS, Brookings, AEI or over at the Wilson Center for International Scholars, whose Latin America program is great,
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.home&topic_id=1425

[This would've been before they moved into the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues, NW, http://www.itcdc.com/ and were still in the Smithsonian Institution's iconic castle on the Mall. http://www.si.edu/visit/infocenter/sicastle.htm

(Trivia note: the huge parking lot shown in the film version of Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein's All the President's Men, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074119/ which featured some unintentionally humorous shots of Robert Redford as Bob Woodward freaking out about possibly being followed, is where the Reagan Bldg. is currently located.)

The Latin America dept. at Wilson rarely had something going on there which didn't attract a large crowd of well-informed and very vocal partisans with a dog in that particular fight, even decades-old fights that had been chewed on and dissected a million times before.
For instance, like Reagan's support for the Contras, Pinochet's middle-class opportunistic allies who looked the other way, why Argentina is always self-destructing, was Brazil too big and unmanageable for its own good, etc.
In that regard, of course, it reminded me a lot of Miami, where no old slight or fight is ever forgotten, merely placed in storage somewhere for a bit like Christmas ornaments, ready to come out again when the time is appropriate.

Unfortunately, for the most part, not unlike the Wilson Center's always topical and prescient Russian studies program -The Kennan Institute, run by Blair Ruble, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.profile&person_id=4997&topic_id=1424 -which had guests predicting something like perestroika publicly before the C.I.A., it was often just elites -and authors at that!- speaking to other elites in the room.
That's why my usual pattern at these events after the panel was over was to always let the requisite back-patting Q&A go on for a bit before I'd rise, walk over to the mike and pepper the guests with questions they didn't usually get at such gatherings.
Like, but to cite the most obvious example, why they couldn't or wouldn't accept the fact that, however much they wished that it weren't so, Latin America was/is indeed held in low regard by so many Americans precisely because of demonstrable facts, and not simply of misperceptions, the card that they continually play, premised on the kind of silly arguments you rarely hear said with a straight face outside of South Florida to rationalize points lacking in logic or reason.

Sort of like the problem that the militant Islamic apologists at CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations pretend don't exist, by insisting that America is the problem, not the actions of individuals. Talk about bad salesmanship!
For proof of that , you only need to read Neil MacFarquar's story in today's New York Times titled, Abandon Stereotypes, Muslims in America Say http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/us/04muslims.html

(Somehow, despite the topic, MacFarquar conveniently forgets that one of the reasons that former Times reporter Judith Miller was considered radioactive was because she personally phoned a Chicago Muslim group to give them a warning, right before the FBI was going to serve a warrant on them to search for info that they were intentionally fooling well-meaning American Muslims, legitimately interested in zakat, by illegally funnelling millions to overseas terror support groups. Oh well!
In case you didn't know or have already forgotten, the U.S. attorney in Chicago investigating that Chicago case was Patrick Fitzgerald, the very same federal prosecutor who went after Miller in the Valerie Plame/Scooter Libby blackhole of a 'perjury trap,' which was un-necessary because Fitzgerald already knew that Colin Powell's assistant Richard L. Armitage was the source of Bob Novak's column.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0611FB3C550C768CDDAE0894DF404482

For background on the the Dallas trial referred to in his article, see
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=technology&res=9F00E3D6133DF93AA25751C1A9649C8B63

The Washington Post's excellent index of their stories and essays on the Valerie Plame/Scooter Libby matter is at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/09/29/LI2005092901976.html

Reminder: Lest you forget, I agreed with President Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence.
http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2007/06/pardon-libby-or-at-least-read-his-book.html )

Still, regardless of the fireworks inside the room, after everyone retired to the lobby area, they always had a nice food and drink spread, which made the après-ski portion of the program always entertaining and amusing!
Nothing like watching well-known experts arguing 'till they're blue in the face while simultaneously holding their wine glasses in the air, just like some made-for-TV movie about the Georgetown diplomatic crowd at play. Sorry about the tangent!)

Unfortunately for Bachelet, this past Sunday was not one for the highlight reels, for either him personally or the folks behind the Herald's sad-sack Issues and Ideas section, long a national laughingstock of an OpEd section, especially when they were running nothing but puff pieces extolling the Carnival Center before it was finished, which, to my way of thinking, Chinese wall and all that, more appropriately belonged in the Tropical Life section, if not in a paid advertising section. (Didn't anyone learn from the LA Times' Staples scandal?)
But that's how the boosterish Herald is when they get behind something -ethical lines are crossed and ignored.

The section was more muddled thinking than I was expecting for a Labor Day weekend and certainly more than I personally can dissect here. Suffice to say that I'll concentrate here on the most glaring self-evident factual mistake.

As most of you know by now, I've been a vocal supporter of Bill Richardson since first meeting him and talking to him fairly frequently in the early 90's, when he was still a New Mexico congressman. He's really a great guy and has a perceptive mind that's well beyond most politicians and reporters in Washington.
As it happens, I was the person who first told him -at the Georgetown Park Mall no less- just who then-House candidate and now current U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was, and what his whole background and "Independent" modus operandi was.
Sadly, I had to throw in the towel completely on Bill Richardson during the recent Iowa debate televised on ABC News, when, on top of all the issues he's consistently gotten on the wrong side of frommy point of view, he just couldn't have seemed less compelling or able to seize the moment by displaying the solid qualities I know he has.
Plus, well, I've support the war in Iraq since the beginning, so Richardson and company's silly emails to me over the past few months just got old and irritating.

He could've really shown some strength and played the Sister Souljah card by taking advantage of his unique background and said that the horrific slayings in Newark show that, whatever else you think, immigration advocates who are so zealous in their desires -and personal hatred of President Bush- that they willfully ignore the consequences of the ripple effect of having thousands and thousands of illegal alien criminals in our society, preying upon honest legal immigrants as much if not more than native-born Americans, do themselves no favor.
He could've done that, but he didn't.

Once he threw in his lot with the Daily Kos folks and the George Soros folks who were part of ACT -America Coming Together- which just paid $775K in fines to the Federal Election Commission, http://www.fec.gov/press/press2007/20070829act.shtml -a story that couldn't possibly have gotten less media coverage!- I knew it was time to throw him and his silly campaign overboard toute-de-suite!
(Also see the Times' honest editorial of September 1st, The Slow Pursuit of Political Wiseguys
where they blast ACT.
"Federal regulators are getting around late to one of the worst abuses in the last presidential election — the channeling of unregulated “soft money.”)

I'm hopeful that he'll learn something from the experience and perhaps in the future, wiser from the experience, not repeat the same mistakes and realize that you only have one chance to make a good first impression on the American people.
Arguing for defeat in Iraq and leaving a vacuum is not the way to do it.

Please note for the record that even in South Florida, the U.S. Constitution still attaches:

Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

As I've always known and Bill Richardson's own website makes crystal clear for even the dumbest of reporters or editors, http://www.richardsonforpresident.com/about_bill?id=0004
Bill "was born on November 15, 1947 in Pasadena, California to William Richardson and Maria Luisa Lopez-Collada. William Richardson was a banker who had been working in Mexico City for decades and he settled his family there shortly after Bill's birth."

Red highlighting below the result of an Indiana University education.
Poor Pablo, he and the Herald editors just don't know the law of the land.
Very McClatchy!
__________________________________________________
http://www.miamiherald.com/campaign08/story/221823.html
Miami Herald
Sept. 2, 2007
Debate on Latin America shallow
BY PABLO BACHELET

It has become an article of faith for U.S. presidential hopefuls: If elected, they would give Latin America the attention it deserves.
Among the Republicans, Mitt Romney pledged to ''rebuild relationships of trust,'' while John McCain said Latin American nations are ``natural partners of the United States.''
Democrat Bill Richardson wants to resurrect the Kennedy-era Alliance for Progress, while rival Barack Obama promised a listening tour, starting with a visit to Bolivian President Evo Morales, who has been critical of President Bush.
Such words are a welcome development for a region that largely sees Bush as too distracted by the war in Iraq to reverse the drop in U.S.-Latin American relations.
''Latin Americans are looking with a certain degree of enthusiasm for a new administration in Washington,'' said Peter Hakim, who heads the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. ``They're basically very unhappy with the Bush administration, and there is a degree of anticipation.''
But peel away the presidential hopefuls' lofty words, observers say, and there have been few substantive proposals on issues that matter the most to many Latin American governments: treatment of migrants and access to the U.S. market. Instead, there is plenty of fiery rhetoric condemning anti-U.S. leaders like Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro -- but few proposals that deviate substantially from what the Bush administration has done.
Hakim argued that Latin Americans should be ''cautious'' because presidential candidates are not pushing an agenda that suits them on trade and migration. Bush, he added, has been friendlier on issues such as comprehensive migration reform, free-trade pacts with Peru, Panama and Colombia, and cutting farm subsidies that anger Brazil.
With states with large Hispanic populations like Florida and California moving up their presidential primaries and foreign policy becoming a key debating point, Latin America is receiving more attention than usual at this point in the race.
McCain delivered a Latin America speech in West Palm Beach in June in which he pledged to re-create the defunct U.S. Information Agency to improve Washington's diplomacy outreach.
Romney has tried to show his interest in Latin America by putting out statements for the national days of Peru, Colombia, Cuba and Venezuela, speaking in favor of free trade and condemning Chávez and Castro. He has also announced high-profile campaign advisors, including Al Cardenas, a Miami Cuban American and former head of Florida's Republican Party, and Mexican American Roger Noriega, a former assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere.
On the Democratic side, former White House Chief of Staff Thomas ''Mack'' McLarty describes Sen. Hillary Clinton as an ''engaged internationalist'' who, as first lady, visited 17 Latin American countries.
Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, speaks fluent Spanish and has met with 49 heads of state from Latin America and the Caribbean since 1987, according to his campaign.
Richardson, who was born in Mexico and speaks nearly fluent Spanish, is a special Organization of American States envoy to Latin America on migration issues. Besides reviving Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, he says he would move key government agencies to Miami because of its nearness to Latin America.
But while the candidates may know and talk about the issues that matter most to most Latin Americans, they also face pressures of domestic political considerations.
''It's very predictable that the three issues where Latin America and presidential politics intersect are going to be immigration, trade and Cuba-Venezuela,'' said Nelson Cunningham, a former special advisor on Latin America for the Clinton administration.
Immigration can be a toxic issue for Republicans because many conservative voters are angry over a perceived flood of undocumented migration from Latin America. ''Any time a Republican candidate talks about Latin America, they have to link to two things,'' Cunningham said. ``One is being tough on immigrants, and No. 2, being tough on Castro. That's become their one-two punch.''
Democrats, for their part, are reluctant to tackle free trade because their organized-labor partners oppose it. John Edwards has blasted pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement for having ''devastated towns and communities across this country.'' Clinton and Obama say they favor free trade but opposed an agreement with Central America and the Dominican Republic in 2005, claiming it lacked sufficient provisions to protect workers and the environment.
Castro and Chávez are condemned by all candidates, but there are some cracks on how to deal with them.
Obama and Richardson favor allowing more family travel to Cuba. Obama caused a stir when he suggested that under ''certain conditions,'' he would meet with U.S. foes like Chávez or the Castro government. ''Sometimes it is more important to talk to your enemies than to your friends,'' he told Miami Herald columnist Andrés Oppenheimer. Then he wrote an opinion piece in The Miami Herald saying he would allow more family travel and remittances to Cuba and held a well-attended rally in Miami's Little Havana on Aug. 25.
Hillary Clinton criticized Obama's positions as ''naive,'' but Obama is hardly alone in that stance. Clinton herself has, in 2003 and 2005, voted in favor of bills that would have relaxed restrictions on travel to Cuba.
Dodd, in a statement to The Miami Herald, said, ``We need to open up channels of communication with all sectors of Cuban society, including with Cuban government authorities.''
Richardson said he is ''a believer in negotiations'' without preconditions. He wants to lift the U.S. embargo if Cuba frees political prisoners and agrees to ''negotiated democratic reforms'' -- without going into specifics.
But, tellingly, neither Clinton nor Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani has pronounced speeches on Latin America, although their campaigns say they plan to do so soon. Observers say this is in part because the Hispanic community isn't pushing the issue, and Latin America-related questions rarely come up in debates.
Polls show that Hispanics who vote in the United States resent discrimination against Latinos but rank bread-and- butter issues like healthcare as top concerns.

John Edwards model behavior on cover of Mens Vogue magazine; Les Habs & Tracey Geffin

Photo by Annie Leibowitz
Article:
http://www.mensvogue.com/business/politics/feature/articles/2007/06/john_edwards

Photo gallery: http://www.mensvogue.com/business/slideshows/2007/06/john_edwards

Was running some errands last Thursday afternoon before we were scheduled to be hit with a so-called "wave" of rain that all of the local South Florida TV weather talking-heads had been predicting ominously for days, but which took its sweet time in showing up.

I stopped off at the Publix supermarket here in Hallandale Beach on Hallandale Beach Blvd., east of me towards the beach, a store that is so polyglot that even during the slow and steamy days of summer, they still carry the main 6-8 Montréal and Toronto daily newspapers, in English & French, along with their usual American cousin suspects.

I bought some of the Montréal papers last March, the day after #5, Bernie "Boom-Boom" Geoffrion of Les Habs died, when Le Journal de Montréal, had a beautiful color 8'' X 11'' glossy photo of the beloved Hall of Famer, the day after his jersey was to be raised to the rafters of the Belle Centre, which is, to say the least, no "Fabulous Forum."

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story/?ID=157993&hubname=nhl

In many ways, his wife Marlene tied together all the generations of Montréal hockey fans, because of her father, legendary Habs superstar Howie Morenz, her marriage to Bernie as well as her link to post-exapnsion NHL thru her son Danny, who was good enough to have been the Canadiens first round draft choice in 1978, at age 20, playing in the NHL for 3 years.

I was surprised -pleasantly so- to see that the best hockey story that I've read in years on hockey's neverending hold on Montréal was a story in le Journal, http://www2.canoe.com/jdem/abonnement/index.html/ by the player I most loved to watch and cheer for in the mid-to-late '70's, when his long hair flowed like the proverbial Stanley Cups a la Belle Province: The Flower, Guy LaFleur.

I can still recite that championship Habs roster as easily as I can roll off the Dolphins' Super Bowl championship teams, in part because so many of their players achieved such great success off-the-ice as head coaches and general managers with other teams, as well as the Canadiens.
I will try to find that article of his and run it in the future, because it was so insightful and heartfelt that I actually found myself getting teary-eyed reading it in the original French.

I suppose that sounds a little crazy to read in print, but trust me, when you read it for yourself, you'll see exactly what I mean.

LaFleur's article gets to the heart of what it means to be both a French-speaking player and fan in Montréal.

If you're not already familiar with it, a really great hockey blog, with a Montréal Canadiens-orientation is called, not surprisingly, http://wwwrealitycheckeyesontheprize.blogspot.com/

It's written with a lot of insight and understanding in the ways of the Canadiens and their fans, who while not "long-suffering" like Cubs and Red Sox fans, still have an obvious anxious gene that is not found in quite so many of the devout fans of other hockey teams.

(It's sort of like how Dolphin fans felt in '75 and '76, wondering what had happened to the methodical planning and execution they'd become used to, suddenly seeing -more often than not- other teams doing that, namely the Steelers and Raiders, and seeing something unrecognizable in the aqua, ornage and white Dolphins: road losses to the Oilers and late

collapses against so-so teams that you're used to beating nine times out of ten.

That's when the anxious gene really kicks in!)

The blog also consistently has great photos and illustrations, and really speaks to someone who knows the history of the NHL and the Habs in particular.

(When I run the LaFleur story in the future, I'll also explain how and why it came to be that a guy growing up in North Miami Beach came to root for the Canadiens, have a subscription to The Hockey News and have a large classic Canadiens bumper sticker near his bedroom sports wall, right near the team photo of the undefeated 1972 Dolphins.

Part of this can be chalked up as simply another ripple of the Tracey Geffin Effect.

That was my nickname, once I got to IU, for the small but subtle ways that I noticed I'd changed for the better while at North Miami Beach Senior High School, NMBHS, as a result of all my time around Tracey Geffin, my cool, stylish and urbane not-to-mention adorably gorgeous friend and classmate from Montréal.

I sat next to Tracey everyday for two and a half years, at the same large desk in the front row of our home room class at NMBHS, which was always our French class, my favorite class.

That class room, with the passionate and enthusiastic Pearl Chiari at the helm, was one of the best learning experiences of my life, due in large part to the fact that, simply put, "Pearl" was one of the best teachers Dade County ever had.

This simple fact was proven by her being named Dade County "Teacher of the Year" once I was at IU, though it was hardly news to any of Pearl's past students, who were very motivated to do well in large part because of all the hard work they saw her put into making it easier for us to learn French and assimilate aspects of French culture.

While yours truly eagerly fled the state of Florida entirely and headed north to beautiful Bloomington, in search of a place where logic and reason held sway, Tracey went down to Coral Gables and the U-M, for both undergrad and law school, becoming a terrific attorney in South Florida like her talented and brilliant younger brother and sister who followed her, Alan & Samantha. More on Tracey & Pearl in the future.)

Obviously, because of the heavy NY/NJ/CT influence on this area, this particular Publix also receives more than the normal amount of copies of the New York Times, The New York Post and the New York Daily News -sometimes it seems like they have more than Ft. Lauderdale Airport- which is good for a newspaper junkie like me.
If only they got the Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun or Philadelphia Enquirer, but you can't have everything, I suppose.

Eventually I found my self over near the magazine area, and what do you know but I found "Mr. Two Americas" peering at me on the newstand from the cover of Mens Vogue, and not just anywhere on the newstand, but in a nice neighborhood there, too, situated right next to the Robb Report, "For the Luxury Lifestyle." Yes, even on newstands, John Edwards enjoys a bit of a charmed life.
But lest you think that he's going to wax rhapsodic, no, the headline assures us that -ironic in light of recent events- he's going to talk about yes, "his wife's battle with cancer, taking on the terrorists, and his surge in the polls."
But apparently not on why he can stand up to terrorists but NOT appear on FOX News.
Frankly, after seeing the magazine myself and perusing it, I wonder if seeing this at an airport newstand is what got under Ann Coulter's skin the other day, when she was blindsided by Elizabeth Edwards by the master manipulator Chris Matthews, who preposterously claimed something along the lines of ""we've got a caller to the show..."
Yeah, on a show that never has call-ins, guess who decided to place a "spontaneous" call and immediately got through. That's normal!

If you didn't already know from my earlier posts, I was a VERY early supporter of John Edwards in 2002, even before the WaPo's Style section immortalized him and his wife Elizabeth, with a front page story that hit you right in the gut and read like it had been written by edwards publicists.
I even voted for Edwards in the 2004 FL primary, just months after moving here from Arlington, because of my own personal experiences in Washington with John Kerry's wading pool shallowness, overwhelming smugness and faux glibness and intelligence.
In short, my Edwards vote stemmed as much from my great desire to keep Kerry as far away from real power as possible as for anything Edwards said or did, though he did have certain innate gifts and strengths that other Dem candidates didn't possess.
As some SBH readers know, after seeing him up close and personal many times and hearing
horror stories from two women I had dated who'd each previously worked for Kerry's senate office, we all ended up voting for Bush 43 in the general election, our first time voting Republican for president.

I've since turned on Edwards -with a vengeance!- but still receive the Edwards campaign's daily email because it's so unintentionally funny and reeks of desperation.
I'm a DLC-er, a longtime Bill Richardson supporter from 1990, but I also strongly support the war, despite Bush's poor execution of it, so... despite the fact that he's far from perfect, Fred Thompson is more likely to be getting my vote in 2008 unless something completely unexpected happens.
(Like Richardson finally becoming the smart, charming and persuasive candidate that I know he can be, complete with a Clintonian Sister Souljah moment of clarity where he rips into someone in a nano-second on policy grounds.)
But I'm not holding my breath.

http://www.mensvogue.com/business/politics/feature/articles/2007/06/john_edwards

Thoughts on Bill Richardson's presidential campaign

This was formerly a permanent feature on the SouthBeachHoosier blog, but has since been downgraded to simply a post, given the rather unexpected lackluster quality of the Bill Richardson campaign to date, which surprises me given the number of people I know who supports him. I hope that changes, but I can't justify leaving it permamnently on the main page while he and the staff try to get their collective act together.
If and when he makes the necessary changes and finally starts showing the smarts and wits I know he has in abundance, it'll go back up with his photo to my link to my most recent Richardson posts.

Bill Richardson for President
(Originally posted February 2007, edited June 2007)

SouthBeachHoosier has been a longtime supporter of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's presidential ambitions since first meeting and speaking with him fairly often in 1990, when he was still representing New Mexico in Congress. In fact, until I brought his name up once in a conversation in Georgetown about what I thought was the poor quality of novice House Democratic candidates, he'd never even heard of Bernie Sanders, the Independent Socialist running for the House in Vermont -now a U.S. Senator.

This, despite the heavy saturation coverage Sanders initial House candidacy received on slow-news weekends, with long pieces on Saturday and Sunday network news shows -usually after a basketball game or golf tourney- that most candidates could only dream of.
That surprised me, since he was usually very up to date on what was going on within the party, as well as with pop culture, unlike certain other people I can think of who live in hermetically sealed bubbles -Hillary- and who are continually trying to show their genuine self and sense of sincerity.
While he's not perfect, that's never been one of Bill's problem, which is one of the reasons why I always though he'd have great national appeal beyond the usual groups, once he started talking about new ideas with at least half of the fire and conviction as Newt Gingrich, whom I've really come to admire much more over the years because of his willingness to actually do the hard work that it takes to come up with real ideas that are based on facts and reason, rather than farming it off to focus groups, which is SO much more common than most Americans have any idea of.

I know of what I speak because I was a pretty regular participant in focus groups in both Alexandria and Fairfax County in northern Virginia, both of which dealt with political ideas and ads as well as consumer goods or trade association marketing campaigns.
But for whatever reason, the ideas aren't coming, and the ones that are, are NOT ideas I like. http://www.richardsonforpresident.com/

My own experience in working on presidential campaigns at a fairly high level made one thing perfectly clear tome -politics at the presidential level is about what is possible AND about winning. Richardson's current immigration policies are extremely problematic in that regard, being too much carrot and not enough stick, with TOO much emphasis on keeping families together, rather than having a strong defensible border being the first prong of a multi-disciplined approach that emphasizes logic, reason and an understanding of human behavior.
Since it often seems to be mis-quoted or taken out of context, Theodore Roosevelt's famous quote was "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."
TR did NOT say that diplomacy and negotiations were THE answers to every single policy or process problem, domestically or overseas.
Unfortunately, as was the case with his appearance on the May 27th Meet the Press, I sometimes get the sense that when Gov. Richardson appears on public policy chat shows, in his understandable desire to talk about his impressive resume and how he'd be better-suited -both intellectually and temperamentally- to handle a particular problem than both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, he neglects to point out that will, resolve and action are just as important as diplomacy in solving a problem.
That's largely why I'm so troubled and dismayed by the recent words and actions of someone I've admired and respected for so long, and for whom I had such high hopes.
Additionally, in my opinion, trying to appeal to the Daily Kos and the Moveon.org crowd, as he's been doing lately, is a real loser of a tactic, and ultimately, will prove to be a waste of both time and resources, two things he doesn't have in abundance to begin with. Reason?
Because there's no satisfying that crowd.
They'll always want more than is reasonable or practical under our political system -based on compromise- and will constantly wake-up tomorrow demanding to "move the goalposts."
Yet again.

(That's why people like that 'burn out' their friends and families at holidays, because how many times can you patiently listen to conspiracy theories over one weekend?
Especially ones they learned about thru British websites?
How many times can you hear about "secret" Bush plans for this or that, which, apparently, are conveniently on several liberal websites, which you'd logically think, would argue against it being a secret, per se, but apparently not.
Like dogs chasing their tails and actually thinking that they're getting closer, -see Comedy Central's TV Funhouse- it's a no-win situation.)

Their vituperative rants only scare away the sort of reasonable people in the middle -who once voted for Perot or Bill Clinton- whom you need to even be competitive and win in the West & South in a November general election. People like me.
As of June 9th, Richardson's plausible scenario for being the alternative to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is showing a pronounced lack of the kind of new ideas he needs to be presenting to make the contrast with them even clearer.
(Since I have had him on a daily Google Alert for the past 18 months, I've seen just about every story or blog post written about him, good and bad.)
His impressive resume, while enough to entice some people to the campaign, is NOT a real substitute for a winning & coherent strategy that takes unexplicable human behavior -voting- into account, especially in a front-running area like South Florida, where everyone wants to be with the "in crowd," and thus may not vote for Richardson if their condo friends have convinced them that Hillary has it locked up. Where's the counter-strategy?
The fact that Bill's campaign seems to be floundering and too tentative, seemingly waiting for "something" to happen, is very troubling to me, and should concren all supporters of Richardson.
Without giving voters like me who are already predisposed to vote for him some signs of a reasonably coherent campaign strategy, and not just relying on Obama and Clinton to self-destruct like John Edwards -whom I voted for in the 2004 FL primary but have since turned on with a vengeance- Richardson can't possible win the FL primary that's a must-win for him.
I haven't given up completely, but time's a wastin' my friend. It's time to get cracking!!!

Because of what I saw with my own eyes on Capitol Hill over the course of 15 years, I've long felt that should Richardson finally get his act together, his ideal VP choice should be Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, who is the perfect antidote to everything negative I saw in Washington, D.C.: someone who got so fed up with feeling that her own viewpoint was getting short shrift, that she decided to do something both RISKY and POSITIVE about it.
She ran against her former boss -and beat- Beryl Anthony, a popular incumbent Democratic Ark. congressman in the primary!
(I used to run into Rep. Anthony all the time at DC film premieres or sneak previews, usually up at the theatre in Tenleytown on Connecticut Avenue.)
In 1998 she was elected to the U.S. Senate, re-elected in 2004.
Blanche Lincoln is a true profile in courage! http://lincoln.senate.gov/

But with or without Bill Richardson, Blanche Lincoln will be playing a much larger role within the party than most of the usual suspects you continually see on the Sunday morning chat shows.
She's got moxie and the kind of 'down home' sincerity that Hillary can only envy from a distance!
And perspective that comes from being one of the few female members who've actually worked their way up the chain thru hard work and savvy, and not, as is common with seemingly every well-known elected female Democrat from California, thru their husband's wealth and/or connections.

In that respect, she's much like that other SouthBeachHoosier fave, Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, from South Dakota, who never does anything less than wow me every time I see her, with her keen insight and common sense.
Definitely a Blue Dog! http://hersethsandlin.house.gov/

Together, they remind me of a fascinating woman I first spoke to by phone and interviewed outside of a 7/11 in 1988, while doing research for an election project at USA Today, when she was running for Dan Quayle's old House seat, and whom I spoke to every now and then once she got elected years later, former Congresswoman Jill Long Thompson from Fort Wayne.
If we could only clone Jill, Blanche and Stephanie, the national Democratic Party would have a much brighter future and be competitive in ways that the current consultant-heavy DNC could never imagine.