If Democrats succeed, so could a new sort of
Republicans

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

Given our fascination with Capitol Hill's just-say-no Republicans -- especially those monolithic ostriches on the House side, whom we strain our own necks to observe with exasperated wonder -- it's easy to forget that the double whammy of a gruesome election (for them) and horrible economy (mostly because of them) has indeed split the national GOP.

Leaderless and stunned, no longer does it march in lockstep or uniformly mouth a party line. Because today there are two discrete GOPs -- the one hunkered and burrowed at Washington Central, but the other one, too, the mostly gubernatorial and largely insurgent one popping up, from necessity, in local branches throughout the United States.

Among the latter are rising stars such as Florida's Charlie Crist and more pr Bookmark/Search this post with: buzzflash | delicious | digg | yahoo | technorati Technorati Tags: P.M. Carpenter republicans democrats crist jindal

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Sean Penn Wins Oscar for "Milk" Acceptance Speech

video details and more



I'm delighted to see Sean Penn win the Oscar for Milk, and especially delighted to see the reaction the Academy has for him, as illustrated by the standing ovation he receives.

For so long he was considered an outsider by mainstream Hollywood and it is simply great to see how much they now respect him. His speech is wonderful, and I especially loved his reference to Mickey Rourke at the end, especially as Mickey Rourke has been saying some odd things about Penn of late. Class.

Tags: Sean Penn, Oscar

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http://the-osterley-times.blogspot.com/2009/02/sean-penn-wins-oscar-for-milk.html

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Norm Coleman can't win. Now, he's just doing the
GOP's dirty work to keep Franken out of the Senate for as long as possible

I always thought Minnesota's Norm Coleman was one of the smarmiest Republicans in Congress. He's proving the extent of it now.

The Minnesota Senate recount has looked bad for former GOP Senator Norm Coleman for awhile, but it keeps getting worse for him. Coleman lost the election, but is continuing his legal suit. And, he's losing ground in court by the day.

It's becoming more and more clear that this is just an effort to keep Democrat Al Franken out of the Senate. Coleman is doing the national GOP's dirty work. He's even got George Bush' election lawyer, Ben Ginsburg, working the case. This is now all about preventing the Democrats from getting their 59th vote in the Senate.

Coleman is putting his partisan interests ahead of the interests of Minnesotans. While the nation is in an economic crisis, Minnesota is missing a vote in the Senate. From the Star-Tribunue:

The Senate election trial is a month old, enough time to ask: Does Norm Coleman have a chance of winning?

A series of court rulings have dealt the Republican long odds for overturning DFLer Al Franken's 225-vote lead. The three judges hearing the case have been only partly receptive to Coleman's bid to expand the field of ballots as he seeks more votes, and they brushed aside his claim of systemic problems with Minnesota elections.

Coleman once wanted to examine up to 11,000 rejected absentee ballots in hope that enough might eventually be opened and counted to help him overtake Franken. Now he's looking at opening perhaps a couple of thousand ballots. And the number could turn out to be even smaller.

"It's very hard, the way it's set up right now, for him to be able to win," said David Schultz, a Hamline University law professor specializing in elections.

"Very slim," was how Duke University law Prof. Guy-Uriel Charles characterized Coleman's current chances.

"Coleman is in a bubble running out of oxygen," said Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political science professor.

Coleman cannot win. He's going to pursue his frivolous lawsuit anyway.

The GOP will do everything and anything to block Barack Obama's agenda. We know that. Another Democrat in the Senate means one vote closer to cloture. That's what this is about now.

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ow-hes-just.html

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KS-04 McGinn Eyes Run for Congress

No, not Garth McGinn, failed 2006 Democratic nominee against current Congressman Todd Tiahrt, but[...]

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http://kansasjackass.blogspot.com/2009/02/ks-04-mcginn-eyes-run-for-congress.html

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One More Look: KS GOP Lost Budget Tussle with
Sebelius

I said last week that the leadership of the Kansas Republican Party in Kansas found themselves in[...]

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http://kansasjackass.blogspot.com/2009/02/one-more-look-ks-gop-lost-budget-tussle
.html

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Stimulus as GOP Hopefuls' Iraq

Republican gubernatorial presidential wannabes are facing a dilemma over the Obama stimulus similar to the one that led Senate Democratic hopefuls into voting for George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2001.

Just as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Edwards et al feared retaliation at the polls in 2004 for being soft on terrorism, we now have Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford arguing against government spending in their states during a crashing economy to appease the Republican conservative base for their 2012 primary runs.

On Meet the Press, Gov. Jindal bloviated over his refusal to accept $100 million for unemployment compensation in an estimated $4 billion of aid for Louisiana: ?Now is the time, and it?s a great opportunity for Republican governors and other leaders to offer conservative-based solutions to the problems.?

He was followed by Charlie Crist of Florida, whose ambitions reach no higher than the Senate in 2010, saying, ?There is a national leader, his name is President Obama...I think we do need to be bipartisan. We need to be, in fact, nonpartisan.?

Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose state is drowning in red ink and is ineligible by birth for running for the White House, is also more philosophical. ?Even though it is against your principles or philosophy,? he notes that officeholders should be doing ?what the people want you to do rather than getting stuck in your ideology.?

Voting for Iraq left a lot of Democrats scrambling to explain themselves to voters later on. No matter how the stimulus turns out for the economy, some of their Republican counterparts now may have trouble persuading even their base why it was a good idea to open their umbrellas in a financial drought when it was raining federal money.



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http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2009/02/stimulus-as-gop-hopefuls-iraq.html

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Muse in the Morning

Muse in the MorningHanging by a ThreadWeed ControlThe man sayswe don't matterexcept in the waysthat we do harmto the human ecologyWhen can I expectthe gardnerto stop byto pluck me outof this garden?--Robyn Elaine Serven--December 26, 2008 ◊[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Docudharma/~3/545768567/showDiary.do

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Sir Eric is my IDOL

[images: group shot of the Bloggers Picnic, Singer Park from the Altadena Above it All website; screen shot from the now-down Aaorn Proctor blog showing icon art Centinel used to depict himself; below Sir Eric, my idol]

I LOVE Sir Eric and he has won my love by initiating this excellent piece of local investigative journalism, "outing" that RAT Centinel!

He went to the Sara Palin rally with AP remember, the man with the bag over his head, a big pal of Aaron P, who knew when to step out of the way when the picture of the picnic was being taken

- no wonder, everyone at the picnic was holding up a sign with his "screen" name - Centinel - on it!

Todd Ruiz was at the Bloggers Picnic, and appears in other photos taken at the event.

Centinel who was Mr. Anony-blogger (no wonder Kevin Roderick of LA Observed sources Foothill Cities!!), Mr. Right-wing Pasadena blogger himself, Mr. "Cool"

is Kenneth Todd Ruiz, former (this is now up for discussion) political and education writer for the Pasadena Star News.

Fantastic job, Sir Eric, my hat's off to you!!

Thursday, February 19, 2009

We Have A Winner In Our "Where Is Centinel" Contest!

Ladies and gentleman, meet the fellow that I have now come to believe is the mysterious Centinel. AKA Todd Ruiz, former political writer of some consequence for the Pasadena Star News and ex-editor of their now duller than death Under the Dome blogsite. (In that sad case he is actually missed.) This guy even cussed me out there once, which, given what we're revealing here, adds personal joy to this discovery. So how am I so certain that this actually is the elusive spiritual leader of the once prominent Foothill Cities Blog? The self-styled Centinel of the San Gabriel Valley? I'm not, actually. But I have been presented with a pretty compelling (if somewhat circumstantial) case, and I'm going with it. Life on the edge, that is what being Eric Maundry is all about.
The winner of this contest first came to my attention on February 17, @ 3:44 PM to be exact. That is when her post under the "Anonymous" rubric first came to my attention. There had been quite a few guesses up until that point and, just like my own desperate attempts, they were mostly improvisations out of not a whole lot of information. This Centinel person had obviously hidden his tracks well. But this particular Anonymous made a post that convinced me that here was a person who knew quite a lot about Pasadena, the newspaper writers there, and its once vibrant blogosphere.
I was always under the impression that Centinel was a journalist or someone closely associated with the City of Pasadena. He/she seemed very intelligent and well informed about the goings on in Pasadena. I thought he/she may have been Todd Ruiz, the former political reporter for the Pasadena Star News. Or he may have been one of the editors or journalists who work for/contribute to the Pasadena Weekly. If Centinel is not a journalist, then I am guessing he is a former City Councilmember, like Paul Little.
Now if you read my response to this informed post, you'll see that I totally bit on the Paul Little angle. I asked some questions, and assumed that I had figured something out. But the next day I received the following e-mail, and it was then that I started to believe we really had our man.
The reason I thought Centinel may be Todd Ruiz is the fact that he stopped blogging at the Foothill Cities blog around the same time he announced he and his wife (significant other?) were moving to Marrakesh. See his blog (here), and the Foothills Cities blog from the same time periods of mid-December 2008 through January 2009. Additionally, Pasadena's Most Electrifying Man, Aaron Proctor made the comment on February 17, 2009 at 9:20 AM, while referring to Centinel, "Last I heard he got on a plane with Big Bopper and Buddy Holly." I thought he was implying that Centinel has left the state/country, not that he was dead in a plane crash in an Iowa cornfield.
Circumstantial evidence? Sure. But the pieces of the puzzle fit quite snugly. Buddy Holly died when his plane crashed. But Centinel? He no longer existed because that guise was dead once its owner hopped a plane to Camelville. And that he would have two blogs would make sense. One was where he hung out with the people who knew him, and on the other he put on his Centinal face and yapped with the lokes about stuff like interstate construction techniques and PUSD school board candidates. And remember that last e-mail I referred to in the original article? The two word response to my inquiry about his whereabouts, "Life happens?" That would certainly fit as well.
And then there is this passage on the Aaron Proctor Effect where Pasadena's now exiled Most Electrifying Man reveals the following:
Former journalistic Superstar and a good acquaintance of mine, Todd Ruiz, is moving to Morocco. Marrakesh to be exact. I guess Todd's a huge Crosby, Stills and Nash fan. Who would have thought it? Seriously though, I wish my erstwhile friend and his lovely female companion (the elusive "Ms. Vanity") good luck.
Aaron Proctor, of course, was the star contributor to Foothill Cities when that site was in its prime.
The final piece of the puzzle can be found be on the Foothill Cities site itself. As you will quickly surmise, it is pretty much doornail dead. There is no vision or drive, just two guys from Monrovia very comfortable with the notion that their city is interesting enough without them having to try and make it actually seem that way. The FC is now empty because the fellow who was the life of the party left it all behind for a new life with his main squeeze in Morocco.
So who is our highly informed winner of a six pack of Modelo Especial? I have not been given permission to reveal her identity here, so I will not. But big props to "Anonymous!" As far as I can tell, you've cracked the biggest local blog mystery of all.

Posted by Eric Maundry at 5:00 AM

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http://pasadenanewprogressive.blogspot.com/2009/02/sir-eric-is-my-idol.html

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Bobby Jindal's Blustery Day (Joe Klein/Swampland)

Joe Klein / Swampland:
Bobby Jindal's Blustery Day  —  Bobby Jindal is a very smart fellow.  Back when he was in Congress, I'd try to check in with him every six months or so, just to see what he was thinking about.  At first, we talked about health insurance—his specialty.  Then, about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina (he was appalled).

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http://www.memeorandum.com/090222/p49#a090222p49

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The Implications of the Stimulus Package or is
Barack Obama a Roosevelt or a Cleveland

Much has been made of the various provisions of the stimulus package but there are some broader political and economic consequences that have received less comment.Partisan PoisonThe most important part of the stimulus bill may not lie in what it accomplishes but what it has revealed about the political realities of the next four years. [...]

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mplications-of-the-stimulus-package-or-is-barack-obama-a-roosevelt-or-a-cleveland.html

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