...The Hill reports that the DCCC has reserved almost $3.4 million worth of TV time in CD5 and CD8. There's no guarantee that all the time will be purchased, and there can't be any official coordination between the national party and the individual campaigns, but the reservations are strong indicators of the importance of these races.
... (thanks to Desert Beacon for the headsup on this one) The Washington Post has an article on the state of readiness of Army National Guard units. Specifically, "House Democrats said publicly that two-thirds of the Army brigades are rated not ready for combat, and Army officials have not disputed that figure."
The article talks about equipment issues as equipment is abandoned in the field or comes back to the US damaged, and also about personnel issues has returning soldiers decline to re-enlist.
This would be something that I wouldn't normally note here, but Desert Beacon raises a good point about the readiness status of National Guard units and the effect that status has locally.
"Now we sit in the midst of "Fire Season," with 41 active large wildland fires, 7 of which were new on August 2, 2006...."
Add in hurricane season in the southeastern US, as well as the approaching winter, and you have a lot of manpower and hardware that's counted on for disaster relief by the states that's now out of commission or at greatly reduced efficiency.
Got to wonder if the degraded readiness of NG units contributed to the toll of Hurricane Katrina.
...The Business Journal of Phoenix reports a poll that has Governor Napolitano and Senator Kyl with significant leads over their opponents. The Rasmussen Reports poll shows both have leads of 15 - 20%.
...ASU has a press release detailing a field trip that some of its MBA students went on.
Fifty-three students from the W. P. Carey MBA – Executive Program have returned from Washington, D.C., after participating in a unique class...to learn how businesses can participate in the public policy process.
{snip}
...students met with current and former officials from the executive branch and Congress, and interest-group lobbyists...
{snip}
...The executive MBA students also met with U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake and U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl...
A quick check of the Carey School's core courses makes me think that this was part of the coursework for "MGT 591, Business and Public Policy."
In the interests of full disclosure, that course should be renamed "MGT 591, Proffering Bribes...errrr...Campaign Contributions."
OK, a less snarky comment - it's going to be very difficult to clean up government and return to government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" when corruption is openly taught as a business practice by our institutions of higher learning. Yeah, I know, "business lobbying" isn't considered a crime, but if John Gotti had contributed to the right politicians, leg-breaking would be a legal credit collection tactic.
...turns out that our beloved Senator Kyl (fyi - that's sarcasm, folks) is getting higher name rec outside of the state and country. Turns out that's not always good, though.
In the book "Wildfire and Americans" by Roger G. Kennedy (Douglas & McIntyre, hardcover, 332 pages, $33.95), the author writes (from The ChronicleHerald of Nova Scotia book review) "After Arizona’s Rodeo-Chediski Fire of 2002, he writes, U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl and then-Gov. Jane Hull "took turns directing public indignation against scapegoats (while) the real history of the place and the real causes of the fire went unmentioned."
That's it for now....Later!!
1 comment:
"Musings" really is all we have left; taking the Flakes, Kyls, Hayworths, et al of the world too seriously is liable to result in addictions to prescription pain killers, erectile disfunction remedies, and other substances Republicans are known to abuse. Sad isn't it that in the past few years "damn the torpedoes" has devolved into "damn the next generation;" I would guess that the drugs are to help drown out that annoying sense of guilt that must keep popping up.
Liked your list of sites and thought you might also find this one interesting: http://donklephant.com. It has some good middle of the road writing and informed discourse. I look to this type of site as an analogy for a meeting place between our current AZ "legislature" and the one we would like to have.
Cheers,
Rob
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