Monthly Archives: February 2006

Dubai or Not Dubai? That is The Question….

Ok, help me out here:
We’ve been told non-stop for 5 years in earnest that Muslim terrorists are the enemy (and they are. Really!) And we’ve been told we have to do all kinds of Tough Sounding Stuff to said folks, because who knows which one might be The Bad One.
People ran for political office jumping up and down saying Their Party was better than The Other Party at keeping Those People and the Bad Ones out of our country! Bad people! We better at stopping Bad People than Other Party. And by a slim margin , they beat out The Other Party (who voted for something before they voted blah blah blah)
Now, someone decided it was ok to allow one foreign company (a British one – hey didn’t we fight a couple o’ wars against these guys or something?) who was running some of our ports to sell their biz to another company, one in Dubai, an Arab Muslim country, and more to the point, one owned by the government of Dubai.
The President says he didn’t know. Then they say there was a secret deal between the White House and the Dubai Folks. The President seems genuinely stunned that people with R’s next to their name are upset. The President and his handlers seem really shocked a lot of people with all sorts of letters next to their name are “upset.”
All I can say is, it’s time for the Bush folks to take some classes at No Duh University. Regardless of the details, how in the world can anyone think in today’s world that selling 6 ports’ managment to a company run by folks that worship the same moon god and have the same looks and language as Those Bad Ones won’t raise a whole lotta ruckus?
Ever get the impression most people who run things at the corporate and governmental level honestly have no idea what they’re doing? I mean, really. Either these folks are genuinely that stupid (and let’s face it, one group of folks had full control over 3 branches of government and more) or really conniving and doing something we just haven’t heard about yet.
Meanwhile, no one seems to notice that most big companies and operatios and industries we have are being sold to China….next time you buy a “ThinkPad” remember – the Chinese Government gets a piece of the action. In fact…the Chinese goverment gets a piece of all the action of every company that does a “joint venture” in allegedly capitalist China.
The Chinese figured it out. Socialism can make a buck. You just have to let outsiders come and use your cheap labor and cut them in on the profits. Eventually, you’ll make your bucks and take over their industries. Who cares about fidelity to Lenin, when you can have it both ways?
Dubai? What? Is there even going to be a Dubai in 20-30 years? I know there will be a China…
© 2003-2006 Greg Dewar | All Rights Reserved | Originally Published at www.schadelmann.com

A High Five To My Cousin, Helen Dewar of the Washington Post

This Sunday I’m devoting some blog space for a tribute to my cousin, Helen Dewar. Regular readers of the Washington Post for the past 40 years will no doubt recognize her name – she was a veteran political reporter for the paper, first covering Virginia politics, and for 25 years, national politics and the US Senate.
More importantly, she was a trailblazer as she was the first woman to cover these beats at a time when women didn’t really do that sort of thing. She got her start at Stanford Daily, where she covered campus and state politics, and was the first woman to edit the Daily.
While browsing the archives of the Stanford Daily, I found a fun little gem in the stacks of old papers. Helen had covered the student council elections in the early 1950s, and had the lead story on the results. The winner for the vice president position was a
young woman named Dianne Goldman – whom you know as Sen. Feinstein. It was interesting that less than 40 years later, Feinstein would be serving as a US Senator and Helen would be the Posts’s top correspondent in the Senate.
Throughout her career, she was recognized for her honest, integrity, and her dedication to the news. Before I moved to Seattle in 1994 to work on a US Senate race, she told me more about the state’s political history, and that of its legendary US Senators, Warren Magnuson and Henry Jackson, than I’d learned from anywhere, or anyone, else.
It was also fun to have lunch with her in the Senate dining room as inevitably, someone important would walk up to talk to her. I got a chance to meet Sen. Bob Dole this way, as well as a few other Senate leaders.
When Helen retired in 2004, her retirement party had quite a number of Congressional leaders, Democrat and Republican, who had enjoyed a great relationship, due in large part to her hard work and commitment to the facts, not silliness (as it seems most mainstream publications engage in today).
This past week, the Washington Press Club Foundation honored Helen with their Lifetime Achievement Award. This was another in a string of honors she’d received – last month Virginia Commonwealth University inducted her into the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame for her work as one of the first women to cover state politics in Virginia.
The Washington Post covered the event earlier this week, and it was featured on C-SPAN, but I couldn’t tape it (and oddly enough you can’t download C-SPAN on BitTorrent yet). Media Bistro’s FishbowlDC blog also covered the event as well, which was cool.
While the Post’s story does tell you a little about the event, it fails to mention something I got a kick out of – a short video tribute recorded by Senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy. I thought that was really cool of them to do, so I’m tracking down a copy of the DVD for myself and my various Dewar relatives.
More importantly, though, I think that Helen’s career and her integrity stand out even more as we live in an era where “newspapers of record” routinely pump out half-truths and falsehoods, and the DC Noise Machine does a lot to stoke partisan fires, and do little to get things done.
And in an era when most journalists think it’s All About Them, Helen’s quiet, steadfast, honest reporting of the news is a tremendous contrast to what passes for journalism today. So for now, I’m paying tribute to my cousin Helen’s life and work – and hope that despite her retirement that the concept of honest jourmalism doesn’t retire along with her.
© 2003-2006 Greg Dewar | All Rights Reserved | Originally Published at www.schadelmann.com

This is Getting Insane – All It Took Was A 5 Month Old Cartoon…

This is getting out of hand, folks. The enemies of freedom and free speech are on the march.
All it took was a 5 month old cartoon in a paper in one country, and suddenly we see riots, threats, and now the burning of embassies. All because of one simple little .
If you’re a , and you think these people are acting like thugs and idiots, it is your duty to speak up and say something. Please. Otherwise you’re just as guilty as the ones that attack freedom and free speech.
Funny, Muslim papers print virulent racist anti Semitic and anti American and anti Christian stuff all the time, and yet….I have yet to see people burning the Saudi Embassy. Hmm. Oh and it’s funny how these people ask the GOVERNMENTS of and Europe to stop the presses. I guess if you live in a country where the government is an autocratic dictatorship, the concept of a free and independent press might be difficult to grasp.
What’s saddest is seeing Bill Clinton and our own State Department take the side of these rioting thugs. Sad, but predictable. I guess Hillary has to raise money or something.
Read the Rest-Click Here
© 2003-2006 Greg Dewar | All Rights Reserved | Originally Published at www.schadelmann.com

Democrat Janet Reilly Kicks Off Her Campaign In West Portal!

Last weekend I decided to check out Janet Reilly’s 2006 kickoff for her campaign for the California Assembly. Loyal readers will recall that Janet had her campaign start in May of 2005, complete with an appearance by 2004 Presidential Candidate John Kerry.
While last year’s event was held downtown and was a gathering of both political insiders and grassroots supporters, the event held last Saturday was one dominated by local district residents who were solidly behind Janet’s campaign at West Portal Elementary, conveniently located just above the West Portal Muni tunnel.
Current Assemblyman Leland Yee (who is now running for the State Senate) introduced Janet and endorsed her to succeed him in the Legislature. Former Lt. Governor and Speaker Leo McCarthy also addressed the crowd. Here you can see a photo of Janet and Assemblyman Yee as Janet began to give her speech.
You can read her remarks here as well.
All in all she gave a good speech – clear, to the point, not too long, and not afraid to speak up on some issues that are sure to create some debate during this campaign.
What I liked best though was that it was clear to me that despite what some nadering nabobs of negativism might say in the press, she was running because she really wants to do the job of representing the district – which is rare these days when you see so many people run just to see their name in the paper and their picture on TV, or just find a gig to make plans for the next campaign – a nasty side effect of term limits. Besides, if she wasn’t serious, there’s no way she could have attracted a crowd like
this on a foggy Saturday morning.
It will be an interesting season for San Francisco/San Mateo County voters in both the 12th Assembly District and the 8th State Senate district, since they will have two very open races with many hard working candidates. But after seeing just how well organized Janet’s campaign has been to date, and how tech-savvy and people-savvy it has operated so far, I’d have to give the edge to Janet in this race.
Special Note to Los Angeles Readers: During a recent trip to Los Angeles to enlist support for her campaign, both the LA Independent and Joe Scott’s The Body Politic blog, among other places.
Part of being a legislator is of course to represent your home area, but part of it is also to be able to work with people around the state, and Janet’s got the edge in this race on that issue for sure.
Pictures graciously provided by Carolyn Weiss.

A Blast From the Past with WA State Senators Pam Roach, Jim West, and a Blog from 1998

Years ago, my good friend Mike Sando had a website devoted to politics and centered on the Legislature in Olympia, Washington’s state capital in the late 1990s.
Now I hestiatate to use a term as over-used as “blog” but in fact that’s what Mike’s site was – before we all knew the word “blog” and before the “cool kids” figured out these things.
Lost in the mists of the Internet, as Mike left the Legislature and became a high school teacher in Enumclaw, we also lost two gems of audio fun Mike had posted at his site. As it turns out, I am the only one who still has both these .WAV files stored (one of the benefits of archiving every single email I’ve sent or recieved since 1995!) and am posting them here so they may be found by intrepid Googlers the world over.
The first file is an actual audio recording of State Senator Pam Roach, who is expressing outrage that a large bouquet of flowers delivered to her Senate desk on behalf of a lobbyist, was moved. Mike mixed in the Imperial March theme for comic effect – but this really is a state Senator, and he really is that pissed off about some flowers.
Listen to Darth Roach on the critical matter of floral placement in Olympia.
The second is an actual audio recording of then-state Senator and now disgraced ex mayor, Jim West. Loyal readers may recall I spotlighted this clown’s troubles earlier.
The recording you are listening to here is an actual voice mail message left by Jim West to Tom McCabe, who at the time represented building interests in Olympia. Unfortunately such outbursts were par for the course with Jim West. But then again, recent research and reporting has shown other outbursts were also common – just not exposed in public until he became Mayor of Spokane!
Listen to Jim “Godfather” West talk dirty to lobbyist Tom McCabe’s voice mail machine here.
If you’re new to the site, I urge you to read some of the archives to the left and leave a comment! Enjoy!
Here’s a link to coverage of the incident way back in 1998 from the Seattle Weekly.
© 2003-2006 Greg Dewar | All Rights Reserved | Originally Published at www.schadelmann.com