** While traveling this week, I received a document from Anne Gust Brown, wife and manager (campaign, that is) of former Governor Jerry Brown. Earlier, I had criticized Brown — currently mayor of Oakland and frontrunner for California attorney general — for evading the question when asked what he thinks of The Da Vinci Code.
This new document would appear to provide a hitherto undisclosed linkage between the Jesuit-trained Brown, a shadowy religious organization, and the Da Vinci “code” itself. I need to study it further and determine its provenance. It looks to be very old, indeed. If it proves out, and if my LA Weekly tech can help me upload it to this site, the document will be revealed.
** THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION REMAIN TANGLED, DESPITE PASSAGE OF THE SENATE COMPROMISE BILL. (Could be a consensus emerging around illegal immigrants already here, and perhaps future guest workers, but border security remains a sticking point.) BUT ONE THING IS CLEAR, THE GREAT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOVERNOR ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER AND ASSEMBLY SPEAKER FABIAN NUNEZ.
You can listen in here.
Those who read my Nunez profile last summer might not be surprised. I exclusively revealed at the time that the speaker and the governor put in marathon sessions at Schwarzenegger’s LA home to try to avert last November’s special election showdown.
** Meanwhile, discontinuing the love, Jon Fleischman over at Flash Report tells about the mini-boycott of Mexican President Vicente Fox’s visit to the Capitol and the president declining to meet with legislative Republicans.
** THE CANDIDATES TODAY.
Phil Angelides: A Teamsters labor event in San Diego, a high school visit in San Diego, and an environmentalists event in Sacramento.
Steve Westly: The ex-eBay honcho’s buscapade adventure continues, taking in Tulare, Bakersfield, Fontana, and Cathedral City. Just think of all those West Wing episodes I’m missing.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: The governor is engaging in visualization exercises today.
** Okay, yes, the Brown family are old friends of mine. But never let it be said that I am not a nice guy. Rather than tee off on LA City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and his hyper-aggressive campaign for state attorney general, which would be child’s play for me to do … I have not. However, here are the newspaper endorsements from the would-be AG’s hometown. LA Times? Jerry Brown. LA Weekly? Jerry Brown. LA Daily News? Jerry Brown. From left to right, the pick over the LA home boy is the erstwhile Governor Moonbeam. Case closed. Game over. Without me ever investigating some very questionable events regarding the pro football player who was not, the gangland survivor who was not, the … well, you get the picture.
Attention, Republican state Senator Chuck Poochigian. I want to cover your campaign against Jerry Brown. Whenever it occurs. Because I love a story. And I need stories. Especially stories involving interesting personalities. There is a reason why I have urged your campaign to challenge Brown on his home turf. It is not simply because he would likely take that challenge and turn it back against you.
Here is the slogan of the British Special Air Service (SAS), which I am sure is familiar to you. “Who dares wins.”
Happy Memorial Day, all you vets out there.
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Yes, that is true. And let it be known that the biggest violators by far are from the campaign that has the principal and the senior figures with whom I have had the longest friendships and friendly associations, by far. The Angelides campaign. They make Team Schwarzenegger, Version 2, ie, last year’s, ah, wonderful crew, seem like cool, thick-skinned people by comparison.
These folks have consistently flooded my site with fake handle supporters spinning for their candidate and from the beginning were the most evasive of the three major campaigns in terms of what the candidate was doing and what the campaign was doing.
Not that I find this annoying in the least, of course.
And not that this is a good example of wise press relations.
This behavior has wasted many hours of my time.
While none of us can probably appreciate the effort that you put into the reporting, responding and monitoring for your blog, I would hope that we all appreciate the tremendous insights you provide, even if one is not necessarily in sync politically. That being said, we could probably get by without the anonymity (which no doubt will reduce the amount of comments), if only to glean your insights.
Here is something irritating and sophomoric about both Democratic campaigns.
Neither will fess up to their constant negative TV ads by featuring them on their web sites.
For months, the Angelides and Westly campaigns sent out a stream of press releases about what they were doing, what they were running, etc. Now, when the campaign is coming down to the short strokes, they are playing it evasive.
They are not fooling their opponents, who know what they are doing shortly after they do it.
They are fooling the public.
This is wrong.
It needs to end. Now.
I’m sorry, but this is too funny. I have been trying to read up (still) on all of the editorial boards, and I frequent both campaign’s websites, but I was wondering what this was doing as the first media article on Angelides’ website:
- – - – -
For Governor: Phil Angelides
In a ripe year, California Democrats have produced two unsatisfying choices for governor.
Los Angeles Times
May 14, 2006
This should be a golden time for California Democrats. They control both chambers of the Legislature. The state’s Republican governor has low (though improving) performance ratings. And they have two gubernatorial candidates with the resources to mount a substantial challenge in the fall.But there is no gold. There are only the leaden front-runners, state Treasurer Phil Angelides and Controller Steve Westly — two rich men who spend so much time raising more money and clawing at each other that it’s hard to tell them apart.
- – - – -
I mean, I know they go on to endorse Angelides, but there has got to be some better press than “he’s a little bit better than the other guy.” At least Westly has some real editoral-board endorsements. The liberal chronicle was glowing. They need to do a little content check in what is at the top of their list for media articles. Good days for Westly ahead.
All last night I waited for the “Friday Night Fights” that never materialized!
I guess that in honor of our brave veterans, we here on NWN laid down our arms.
One of us was out making the papers though, and it wasn’t even Garry South…
“Carole Wiese, a blogger for Bill Bradley’ s New West Notes, said Westly’s
education stance is the right one for her young son. Westly, she said, is a
better choice because he is a moderate Democrat unlike Angelides.
‘With Westly, we can beat the governor,” Wiese said. “With Angelides, we
can’t.’”
That was in the Riverside newspaper this morning.
Big ups to Carole! And to Google News! And to New West Notes!
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_R_westly27.3cbb675.html
Wow, isn’t that something?
Incidentally, I was very pleased to wake up and not find a bunch of campaign flaming here.
But flaming is good for debate it makes us stronger as bloggers.
Isn’t that something Phil Angelides or Garry South would say?
Yeah, something like “negative ads are a public service.”
The flip side of that is also true. The best Public Service Announcements are negative. Think of the potency of the anti-smoking ads done by Phillip Morris and company vs. the “Truth” ads done by anti-smoking people.
The feel-good “talk to your kids” crap is worthless compared to the “stacking bodybags in the street” hard-hitting ads.
Phew!
That post took a lot out of me. I think I need to light up.
Er, right …
BTW, if you want to see constant references to NWN, use Yahoo News.
Thanks for the tip. I do like how Yahoo News incorporates blogs into its news section. There has from time to time been controversy in the blogging world over who gets picked and featured. The Right and Left have bitched about it at different points in time.
I am just a google guy in general. http://blogsearch.google.com is a great place to turn. Subscribe to the RSS feed of your search terms of choice and you’ll see all kinds of great stuff.
I also like http://www.technorati.com and http://www.blogpulse.com. And the old standby http://www.icerocket.com. At blog pulse you can actually graph search terms against eachother on how often they appear in the blogs that are tracked.
All of these have RSS capability so you can really get hooked watching how things travel and develop in the blogosphere…use in moderation.
Bet your spam filter is exploding over that one. Sorry for all the links!
Yes, that took another minute or so of my time. Thanks.
Tommy Boy,
You and Bill missed out yesterday! The Hawaiian Tropic Bikini girls were having a contest at our resort. Guys I will never need to drag Dave to another political rally…ever! and oh…The Westly Rally and our hosts were wonderful!
Mr. Bradley wrote: On a more serious note, I think Karen has a very good point on the illegal immigration front.
There is really no sweetness and light on this issue.
As mentioned before, I ampart of a faith-based effort working with immigrants and supporting comprehensive legislative approach to immigration reform . I am optimistic, I think comprehensive legislation/immigration reform (citizenship track/border enforcement) will pass via a bi-partisan effort in the House. There are several factors driving it that will bring just enough Reps on board for this to happen. One major factor is the importance of the evangelical Christian base to the Rep Party and the little none fact that that Hispanics are one of the fastest growing sector of the evangelical Christian movement. They vote Republican. They were let down by their fellow evangelicals last spring as most of the evangelical Christian establishment chose to remain silent and some even unfortunately chose to oppose an earned citizenship track…that is changing… the stakeholders here,i.e., The Republican Party AND both white and black evangelical Christians understand there will be a negative impact and repercussions if Hispanic Evangelicals are let down again. This is America, there are always other political parties to register you as a voter and their are many kinds of churches to attend…and as I said, while not all House Reps understand this…enough will.
Bill–
Thanks for answering my question. It makes sense “Big Money” is pushing this debate. I do remember a few years ago some immigrant advocates first started making noises about a new amnesty program being needed. Then things were quiet untl the Minuetman turned it into a visual story and it seemed to explode from there.