FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
Showing posts with label 2016 presidential politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2016 presidential politics. Show all posts

Thursday, May 23, 2013

A fatal flaw for which he'll never recover: lack of gravitas. LA's outgoing mayor was not a full-time mayor or even part-time mayor but more a when-I-get-around-to-it kind of mayor -LA Weekly report proves that Antonio Villaraigosa only spent 15% of his core time on city business

This report, which I originally saw cited via Breitbart News, does not comes as news to me.
I'd heard this from well-informed and reasonably well-connected friends in the Los Angeles area for years.

Frankly, they always wondered why nobody ever tried to get ahold of the mayor's schedule to connect-the-dots via a Public Records request that wasn't geared towards finding out who he was dating -like a TV reporter or anchor.
Well, someone did -the LA Weekly.  

Right, as if his more well-known personal tics, problems and hang-ups weren't enough...

LA Weekly
How L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa Spent His 12-Hour Days in 2012
By Patrick Range McDonald 
May 22 2013 at 3:52 PM 
In 2008, L.A. Weekly obtained Mayor Villaraigosa's official work schedule and discovered that he spent only 11 percent of his time on direct mayoral work. Critics dubbed him "the 11 percent mayor." Four years later, as he leaves office, we revisited his calendar. We found that Villaraigosa is deeply devoted to photo ops, ceremonies and travel, spending just 15 percent of his day on core duties such as deciding upon policy or weighing laws. He spends 42 percent of his working hours traveling outside Los Angeles.
See the rest of the post at:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/05/antonio_villaraigosa_schedule.php

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Boy Blunder on The Hudson: The opposite of crisis management -pouring more gas on the fire and your own already bad reputation. N.Y. Governor Andrew Cuomo is the thin-skinned boy governor who can't help himself


View Larger Map

Boy Blunder on The Hudson: The opposite of crisis management -pouring more gas on the fire and your own already bad reputation. N.Y. Governor Andrew Cuomo is the thin-skinned boy governor who can't help himself Cuomo the Bad, who if you didn't know it, opposes a version of Jessica's Law in New York State, would make a very good South American general who overthrows the democratically-elected government and who -wait for it- imprisons reporters in a soccer stadium, a la Missing.
Unless you want to go another way and go the Emperor's New clothes route, though I've probably used that metaphor a little too often here on the blog over the years.

New York Times 
Top Cuomo Aide Delivers Public Rebuke of State Worker Who Talked to the Press
By Thomas Kaplan
February 21, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/nyregion/top-aide-to-cuomo-rebukes-state-worker-who-talked-to-the-press.html

CapitalNewYork
Why Andrew Cuomo is losing a fight against an engineer named Mike
By Azi Paybarah
February 22, 2013 4:02 p.m.

Andrew Cuomo freaks out over a little hostile media coverage.

For those of you who don't already know the story, let me share with you a true tale about Andrew Cuomo that happened in Washington, D.C. when I was living and working there, and sadly, many years pre-blog.

it's the sort of delicious and meaningful story that likely didn't make its way down the media food chain to South Florida because the Herald and Sun-Sentinel's editors were either asleep at the wheel, disinterested, or deemed it too-inside-baseball.

That sort of lazy journalism attitude 15-20 years ago -and continuing to this day- explains why, as I've stated here and other places previously, so few people in South Florida, even usually well-informed people, DON'T realize the extent to which the Beltway press corps had completely soured on Sen. Bob Graham, and towards the end, often could barely stifle their contempt and laughter for him.

So here's the story as best I remember it. 

Cuomo, while HUD Secretary for the Clinton White House and with the tough task of filling the boots of perpetually effervescent Jack Kemp, was actually verbally reprimanded by top people within the White House -by Chief of Staff Mack McClarty if I recall correctly-  as well as verbally tonue-lashed by Congress, for being SO overly concerned with his own image and
press that he actually over-spent HUD's budget for PR/mediaand spent either three years worth in two years, or four years in three.
Don't recall which of the two it was but it really happened, so you get the larger point.

(As has been said so often about New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, especially the first few years post-9/11, when Sunday morning network TV chat show bookers semed to have him on every weekend, to everyone's dis-satisfaction, don't ever, ever get between Cuomo and a mirror or a microphone.)

So, on top of that episode, and then the very weird situation with his ex-wife, Kerry Kennedy, where we're led to believe that largely for their kids' sake, she seems to have gone out of her way NOT to talk publicly about his well-known control-freak tendencies when they split -which raised all sorts of flags among the crowd I knew in Washington precisely because of what was being squelched- we can add this latest episode of Cuomo-style "Seldom is heard a discouraging word."

The paint is beginning to dry on Andrew Cuomo and the overall picture that emerges is increasingly looking more and more like one of a megalomaniac elected official who is getting
closer and closer to exploding, like Martin Sheen's fictional character, Greg Stillsonat the end of the awesome film version of Stephen King's The Dead Zone, just as Christopher
Walken's character Johnny Smith had foreseen.

As for those East Coast/Beltway media types who, rather than focusing their time and efforts on writing about pols who are genuine problem-solvers and not puppets, instead, keep writing that Cuomo, hyper-liberal Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and moderate Virginia Senator Mark Warner will emerge as the top 2016 Democratic presidential candidates from east of the Mississippi, would be wise to drop Cuomo from the equation before they invest too much more time and energy into a relationship that will never bear fruit.

He doesn't have either The Right Stuff or enough self-control, and if you doubt me on this, wait until his competitors and their supporters get a chance to bait him. 
He can't help himself.
-----

Friday, February 15, 2013

re Marco Rubio: Oh dear! Another predictable Beth Reinhard paint-by-numbers piece on Rubio in The National Journal, full of the usual resume/personality recitals. I'll bet I can guess what Reinhard will say about him before reading it. Yes, and so can you! That's the whole problem -Reinhard writes about Rubio by rote; Where's the plan for positive changes at McClatchy's Miami Herald -still missing!

U.S. Senate longshot candidate Marco Rubio in Hallandale Beach, FL at Southeast Broward Republican Club. June 23, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

The National Journal
POLITICS
Can Marco Rubio Live Up to the Hype?
He's the GOP's Barack Obama, a fresh-faced politician with an immigrant name, a playlist full of rap, and a collection of fawning press clips. The challenge: He's selling the same old party message.
By Beth Reinhard
Updated: February 14, 2013 | 8:50 p.m. 
February 14, 2013 | 8:20 p.m.
The freshman senator from Florida had joined four veteran colleagues to unveil a proposal for the first major overhaul of immigration law in a quarter-century. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced “my friend, Senator [Marco] Rubio, who obviously is a new but incredibly important voice in this whole issue of immigration reform.”
Two weeks earlier, Rubio had laid out a similar set of principles in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal under the headline, “Marco Rubio: Riding to the Immigration Rescue.” The article came as a surprise to McCain and other members of the bipartisan group of senators who had been sketching out an immigration plan with and without Rubio for weeks. The blueprint was inspired by legislation that McCain first spearheaded in 2005.
The dig was subtle, but Rubio didn’t let it go.

Oh dear! Another predictable Beth Reinhard paint-by-numbers piece on Marco Rubio in The National Journal, full of the usual resume/personality recitals.
Bet I can guess what Beth Reinhard will say about Marco Rubio
Yes, and so can you! 

That's the problem -Reinhard writes about Rubio by rote.
Just like her last piece on him.

Even the new anecdotes she drops throughout the column sound just like the old ones she used, since they are almost always cobbled together to create the same old product: Marco the Magnificent.

It would be far better if she spoke to veteran analysts like Charlie Cook, also of the National Journal and someone whose every word I read religiously for meaning and portent, as mentioned many times here in the past, which is why I've linked to so many of his columns here over the years.

Specifically, speak to Cook about the dangers of over-exposure, which he is getting closer to everyday, and the graveyard of presidential candidates that peaked early and never made it to Election Day because they prematurely annoyed or bored America silly, or flat out didn't have the sort of practical experience needed or the ability to articulate a cogent, distinct message that resonated with the public and which could grow even larger with hard work.
Bill Bradley for instance.

Even though I was an early and very confident Senate supporter of Rubio's in 2009, when the entire Florida GOP and business establishment, along with Florida's sycophantic Mainstream Media, plus the East Coast drive-by MSM, practically handed the 2010 Republican Senate nomination to then-Governor Charlie Crist, in my opinion, Rubio needs to actually accomplish a lot more of substance sooner -and be seen LESS in a pop-culture prism- otherwise, everyone in America may be bored silly by the sight of him within two years as the new car smell wears off, just as he's campaigning for House and Senate candidates throughout the country, and actually getting most of the questions, not the candidates he's with.

Yes, just like a once interesting new TV commercial that you have now grown to cringe at within a milli-second of seeing on TV and reach for the remote.

And if and when that happens, the only thing that will be written about him will be the hit pieces by the usual suspects, especially among liberal reporters and columnists in the West, who have no secret of the fact that they resent the collective power of Cubans in the political process compared to Mexicans, who vastly outnumber them.

And Univision, of course, in their creepy stalker-like relationship with Rubio, where they are always looking to see if he's spending too much time with someone else.
Y
es, Univision, the Spanish-language channel that the Miami Herald is always kissing the butt of and overplaying the significance of, but who will, not so curiously, not mention in print that they didn't air President Obama's State of the the Union address, which is why they won Tuesday night in the TV ratings.

Nope, no mention, as you can see for yourself. 

I thought they were the new "It"?
Qué pasa, Herald?

Yes, Univision, the politically-biased TV network that makes it very clear in their so-called news coverage that the only reasonable side of the immigration debate is pro-amnesty, otherwise, you are a racist. 

Oh yeah -and the supposed news network whose employees loves to take public whacks at 
Rubio.

That is, if they, too, aren't already bored silly by Rubio and tired of pointing-out the same deficiencies they saw/see in him, over-and-over.

On the other hand, it's good to remember that Rubio eventually got so bored/irritated with Reinhard asking him the same ol' leading questions over-and-over during his long Senate campaign, that as I wrote here at the time, towards the end, he eventually started freezing her out because he simply couldn't take the routine anymore

You might recall that was back when the Herald's then-Ombudsman took Beth Reinhard (and the Herald) to task in his once-in-a-while Sunday column for having one person perform both reporter and columnist duties, saying that it was a conflict of interest.

The Ombudsman was right, of course, and Reinhard proved why that was true by being whiny publicly in her columns about being frozen out by Rubio, which not only made her less attractive to Rubio as a person to speak with, but for voters and newspaper readers, made her 'articles' about him not at all reliable, since you already knew that she was mad at him enough to say so publicly.
But I guess I'm the only one who remembers that, huh?

Alas, the Herald's then-Ombudsman left in April of 2011 and has never been replaced, with rather predictable results from my perspective: more bias than ever in articles as well as more missing facts and context.

As many of you regular readers know, I've directly asked the Herald's top management why there's been no replacement and no mention made in the paper of what their plan is, if any, for an eventual replacement.
And, what their plan for improvement in print and online was to keep the faith of readers.
That's been met with stony silence. 
Followed by more silence.

A smart and fair-minded person representing the interests of Herald readers and ethics is not in the cards there.

Folks, it's time to face the fact that publisher David Landsberg has no actual plan for the Herald's future that positive for news consumers, because if he did, he'd have already made them public months before they went to a pay wall, and only added the pay wall AFTER getting rid of the problem step-children, adding new and curious columnists and reporters who don't take things for granted -one of the worst daily offenses there!-  and completely re-do the website from top-to-bottom, so the same stories don't appear in three separate places there, as happens now, which is acutely embarrassing for everyone, most of all, them.

That's why in my opinion, with the same people in charge, the Herald's problems are only going to get worse over time.

But if someone with some smarts and money bought the Sun-Sentinel, fired all the dead wood and made it more like some of the Swedish newspapers that I've become increasingly  used to, and read daily while I was in Stockholm last month, newspapers which are very popular, well then, you could well see will see a very interesting dynamic take place here

in South Florida.
But not right now.

Now, each newspaper and its management seem locked in a battle of lethargy to do the least amount of original enterprise reporting possible.
  
------
TheWrap
Ratings: Univision Wins Night By Skipping State of the Union
By Tim Kenneally
Published: February 13, 2013 @ 10:03 am

November 1, 2010
Hallandale Beach Blog endorses Beth Reinhard & Charlie Crist's departure - asks they get escort to airport so they don't miss their flights out of FL

September 3, 2010

Addition by subtraction: Beth Reinhard leaving Miami Herald, heading to D.C. and The National Journal. Herald readers finally win one!


-----
Univision staffer attacks Sen. Marco Rubio on Facebook

No doubt after the Castro Brothers finally go adios for good, many of the Univision employees will try to move to Cuba and try to suddenly reinvent themselves as real journalists, after years of being celebrity hand-holdres, political suck-ups and amateur political science professors based in LA, NYC and Miami, forever intent on lecturing us on how important Latin America is, despite the fact that we mostly don't care about it for perfectly valid reasons, no matter how much they insist it's important.



But it's not, even with changing demographics and population changes, Americans aren't going to suddenly care about Honduras or Uruguay or Brazil if they never did before, and they can't let on that the whole thing has been a journalistic con for years to fleece advertising dollars.