Double The Stupidity, Double The Fun
Apparently,
Al-Jazeera has a new racket, planning to kidnap politicians.
Ex-G.I. candidate finds election battle all too realUpdated Monday, July 28th 2008, 2:44 PM
Retired Army Lt. Col. Allen West thought he'd left behind the specters of Iraq when he decided to run for Congress in Florida.
But a recent interview request lead him to suspect he was a target for kidnapping.West's combat instincts flared a few days ago when his campaign office got a call from a young woman who identified herself as a booker for the Al Jazeera network's English-language channel.
"She told my staff that she wanted to talk about the perceived uptick in violence in Afghanistan," West tells us. "I found that strange, since I haven't been in Afghanistan in eight months. There are a lot of other people better qualified to speak to that subject.
"But my b.s. flag really went up when they said they wanted my address, to pick me up at night. They said they would send a car but wouldn't tell me where it was going.
"I don't know if it was a kidnapping attempt," says West, who is challenging first-term Democratic Rep. Ron Klein in the Sunshine State. "But I am not going to entrust Al Jazeera with my life. I said, ‘Cancel the interview!'"
West believes he has every reason to be wary. In 2003, while he was serving in the Sunni Triangle, his unit was targeted for an ambush. West's controversial questioning of a suspect (he fired his pistol next to the suspect's head) helped foil the assassination plot. After facing a possible court-martial for the mock execution, West was allowed to retire with a full pension.
"We were concerned about a link to the Iraq incident," says West's press secretary, Donna Brosemer. "I spoke with the FBI, and they said we were right to have alerted them."
Molly Conroy, a spokeswoman for Al Jazeera English, called the kidnapping scenario "outlandish" and said the call was legit, though she says the network never ordered a car.
West is happy he bailed. "I was not about to be a puppet for Al Jazeera," says the candidate, whose district includes fellow conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge and Ann Coulter. "You know they are going to pull some tricks. I will not validate their network, which has helped torment our men and women in uniform."
"AJE makes every effort to report all sides of the story," contends Conroy, noting that past guests have included Republicans John McCain, Karen Hughes and Michael Chertoff. "It is unfortunate that the individuals making allegations against the channel have clearly never taken the opportunity to watch it."
Mayor Langford refuses to do interview with Al-Jazeera reportersWednesday, July 02, 2008
JOSEPH D. BRYANT
News staff writer
Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford Tuesday refused to be interviewed by reporters from Middle Eastern news network Al-Jazeera English because he opposes the group's coverage of terrorist activities and its graphic display of hostages.Reporters were in town to do a story about Langford's plan for a four-day work week for city employees. The new schedule, set to begin next week, involves most of the city's 4,000 employees. That plan already received national and international attention soon after it was announced last month.Al-Jazeera English is the 24-hour English-language news channel, headquartered in Doha, Qatar. Al-Jazeera has been criticized for its news programming including coverage of American military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan and its broadcasting of taped messages from terrorist leaders including Osama bin Laden. "I refuse to give an interview because I don't know how that interview will be interpreted 10,000 miles away," Langford said. "This country comes before personal ego. This is bigger than all that. We have enough people damaging America without me joining them."Langford, who served five years in the Air Force, said he could not participate in an organization that showed little regard for American lives in its coverage.Langford's staff said the network contacted City Hall Monday telling them of plans to attend today's council meeting."They were told in advance that the mayor would not do an interview, and they came anyway, which they have the right to do," said Deborah Vance, Langford's chief of staff. "The Council Chamber is a public chamber."The mayor today did interviews with reporters from CNN and ABC News for stories on how the nation is handling $4-a-gallon gas prices. Langford had already been featured on the Fox News cable channel and "ABC World News Tonight" after announcing the new work schedule.While Langford did not talk to Al-Jazeera, Councilman William Bell did. Bell said he was asked by Council President Carole Smitherman to talk to the crew. The interview lasted a few minutes and included basic questions about energy conservation and what people are doing to save on rising fuel costs."I didn't detect any hidden political agenda," Bell said. "I just answered the questions that were given. It is what it is. We are going to a four-day work week, and the reason we did that was the cost of transportation."While the mayor disagrees with the organization's ethics, he has a responsibility to represent the city and his policy by talking to them, said George Daniels, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Alabama.In addition, Daniels said, if the mayor is serious about landing the Olympics for 2020, then he must be open to the international press."If you're talking about making the city an international city, a city that's going to attract the attention of the world, it would seem to me that you would be willing to talk to the media from around the world," he said.E-mail: jbryant@bhamnews.com
Labels: Double Dose Of Stupidity
GOP Youth Having A Tough Time, Pity Party Ensues
Well Boo-Fucking-Hoo, cry me a fucking river.
Young Republicans, Blue About the Prospects AheadGen-Nexters Are Feeling Left Out of the PartyBy Krissah Williams Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 22, 2008; C01
David All glanced around Top of the Hill bar and saw the future of the Republican Party. It looked dim. A who's who of young conservatives had gathered, but they were few, and they were frustrated.
Here were the executive director of the Young Republicans, and the 20-something who helped steer Fred Thompson's Internet operation, and the young woman who put Mitt Romney's Web site on the map, and the 24-year-old staffer for Newt Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future, who had brought them all together to cry in their free Blue Moon beer. The crowd was mostly white and mostly male, dressed in slacks and starched shirts. For most of them, Ronald Reagan and the good times he personified for conservatives were not even vague memories.
"When Reagan was president, I was 9 years old, doing cannonballs and watching 'Rambo,' " says All, 29, who prominently displays the requisite grip-and-grin photos of himself with President Bush in the office of his own L Street consulting firm. He recalled that first Republican presidential debate of the 2008 campaign, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California; it was a veritable Reagan love-fest, with each contender claiming to be more like the conservative icon than his opponents. They sounded like old fogies and intoned the icon's name at least a dozen times.
"For me, I don't even know what that means," All says. "The Republicans are sort of talking down to Gen-Nexters, not bringing them in."
"You don't hear Barack Obama going around saying, 'I'm John F. Kennedy.' He's saying, 'I'm Barack Obama,' " All says. "There's a reason for that. He's inspiring an entire generation, and it's a generation that's trying to change the world in 160 characters or less through text messages."
And John McCain? His campaign has never sent All a text message, he complains. It's the little things like that, along with poor communication on the big issues such as Iraq and the economy, that have caused the GOP brand to slip with younger Americans, even as they have grown more political.
Voters under 30 are more than twice as likely to identify themselves as Democrats, according to the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll.
All and his friends bravely offer bromides to fight off despair:
"I think the Republican Party is staring down a very long, dark, quiet night," All says.
"It's always darkest before the dawn," says Mindy Finn, 27, who ran Romney's site.
"It's a challenging time right now, and I think there's a lot of people searching for a new identity, new leaders," says Robert Bluey, 28, a blogger who is editor in chief of the Heritage Foundation's Web site and director of its Center for Media and Public Policy. "Sometimes it will take some cleansing before it gets better."
Republicans haven't always been so disconnected. A quarter-century ago, Reagan charmed young voters and won 59 percent of their vote in 1984. In 1992, on the heels of the Reagan Revolution, voters under 30 split their allegiance about evenly between the two major parties. But every presidential cycle since then, Democrats have gained ground. This year, according to the Post-ABC poll, 44 percent of those under 30 call themselves Democrats, and only 18 percent identify as Republicans.
Both parties had a tendency to shrug off the youth and young adult vote, because as a group they have been the least reliable to turn out on Election Day. But this year, record numbers have registered to vote and shown up at the polls. In the swing state of Virginia alone, 90,000 people under age 34 recently joined the voter rolls.
"Conservatives haven't been in the right place to get the message to young voters," Austin Walne, 22, says, sipping his beer. "Young people who just got into the workforce don't care about the tax rate, but they have to fill up their gas tank and turn on the AC in their studio apartment. Energy is a big winner for us if we can communicate it well."
Walne, just one year out of the University of Tennessee, helped staff former Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson's Web site and now works for a small PR firm in town. He has taken some teasing from Democratic friends, who predict this year will see a tidal wave for their party. He nudges back at them. "Congress's approval rates are [approaching] 19 percent, so nobody's thrilled," he says. "People that didn't grow up under Jimmy Carter don't remember the stagflation of the '70s or the Iran standoff. Our job is to educate them on the failed policies of the past."
Like their elders, the young Republicans have mixed feelings about their party's presidential candidate. Some worry that McCain is not conservative enough on core issues such as immigration reform and lowering taxes, on which he has departed from the party line. Others admire his lifelong service to the country and heroism while imprisoned during the Vietnam War. If McCain can convey his straight-shooting independence and show his authentic sense of humor through compelling YouTube videos and smart interaction via the blogosphere, he can pull in Gen-Next and millennial voters, says All.
The campaign intends to do just that, stepping up its presence on Facebook and MySpace and other social networking sites. McCain will continue to make the rounds of shows like "Saturday Night Live" and Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."
"Over the next couple of months, you will see John McCain talking to young voters across this country about the major issues confronting our country. We view the youth vote as very competitive, and we will campaign aggressively," says McCain spokesman Joe Pounder. "The vision [McCain] has outlined for this country addresses such challenges as global warming, energy independence and ensuring peace for future generations. Those issues appeal to young people."
Still, many of the party's newbies are preparing for the worst. Matt Lewis, 33, is hoping a trouncing in November will force the old guard aside and give his generation a shot. He was one of the committed young conservatives who came to Washington during the Bush administration, eager to push the politics of limited government and compassionate conservatism. He worked for the Leadership Institute, which teaches youngsters about the principles of classic conservatives such as Edmund Burke and Frederic Bastiat, as well as William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater. He now blogs full time at the conservative Web site Townhall.com.
He's happy with Bush's Supreme Court picks but disappointed by the administration's failure to curb the ballooning deficit and bloated government.
"When everything is working well there is no hunger for new ideas," Lewis says. "Maybe there is room for some new up-and-coming thinkers to get a shot now. There is a bright side to seeing the Republican Party go through travail."
And there is a depressing side, too. Tim Cameron, 24, the Gingrich staffer who sent out the mass e-mail bringing everyone to the bar to mingle, is now saying, "We don't care what the electoral map looks like." He cut his teeth on local races in South Carolina and worked on online strategy for conservative Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), but being out of power forces a different tactic.
"I'm focused more on solutions than partisanship," Cameron says. He began working for Gingrich's nonpartisan group last month, pushing the former House leader's "Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less" campaign to advocate for drilling off the coast of Florida and in other domestic oil fields. Cameron sent out a ton of e-mail promoting a "Drill Now" online petition and promoted a YouTube video of Gingrich discussing his plan. The petition now has more than 43,000 signatures. That got a few nods of approval at the Top of the Hill bar.
David All points to a page on McCain's Web site as more old-fogy branding: The candidate is extolling his regulatory policies as friendly to small business, and the accompanying photo shows an old-time Main Street barbershop in the background. The young Republican techie, who raises money online for McCain, would have used the image of a young high-tech entrepreneur instead, someone to whom teenagers could relate. Seventy percent of high school students say they want to be entrepreneurs, according to a recent Gallup poll.
"But," says All, "they're not talking about opening a barbershop."
Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
Labels: GOP Pity Party
