Sunday Talking Heads: January 1, 2012
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on January 1st, 2012 5:43 am by HL
Sunday Talking Heads: January 1, 2012
Ahhhh Happy New Year! A good friend wrote “I hope your best day of 2011 is your worst day of 2012…” and I wish this for the lot of you.
Ahhhh Happy New Year! A good friend wrote “I hope your best day of 2011 is your worst day of 2012…” and I wish this for the lot of you.
Here are the listings. Because the Iowa caucuses are January 4th there’s a whole lot of horse racing going on. (Just how much of the billions needed to run for President are given over to the MSM?)
ABC’s This Week: Horse Race – Rep. Ron Paul and Rep. Michele Bachmann. Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. Plus reports from Iowa by Jonathan Karl and Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson. Roundtable: Matthew Dowd, Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress, Washington Examiner chief political correspondent and Fox News contributor Byron York, and former Iowa Republican Party political director Craig Robinson, founder and editor-in-chief of The Iowa Republican.
CBS’ Face the Nation: Horse Race – Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a Ron Paul supporter, former Sen. Jim Talent, a Mitt Romney supporter, and former Rep. J.C. Watts, a Newt Gingrich supporter. Roundtable: Mike Allen, John Dickerson, Norah O’Donnell, David Yepsen, Director, Paul Simon Public Policy Institute and Former Des Moines Register political reporter. Plus, New Year’s resolutions from the Republican presidential candidates.
CNN’s State of the Union: Horse Race – Rep. Ron Paul. Then, Rep. Steve King (R-IA). Also, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. Roundtable: Dan Balz of the Washington Post and Neil King of the Wall Street Journal.
Chris Hayes: Nate Silver, Errol Louis, Noah K. Green, Michael B Dougherty, Amanda Marcotte, Corey Robin, Dave Weigel.
Fareed Zakaria – GPS: Predictions, what will happen in 2012? Then, Anne-Marie Slaughter of Princeton University, Ian Bremmer from the Eurasia Group, and Daniel Franklin from the Economist’s “World in 2012″ Edition. Followed by Harvard theoretical physicist Lisa Randall on the God Particle and more. Finally, deep inside the human mind, with Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Fox News Sunday: Horse Race – Rep. Ron Paul. Gov. Rick Perry. Rep. Michele Bachmann. Roundtable: Bret Baier, Jennifer Jacobs, Gov. Terry Branstad (R-IA), Jeff Zeleny, New York Times.
NBC’s Meet the Press: Horse Race – Rick Santorum, also Chuck Todd and Matt Strawn, Iowa Republican Party chair. Roundtable: Des Moines Register’s Kathie Obradovich, Mike Murphy,’ David Brooks, Mark Halperin, Andrea Mitchell.
Newsmakers: As the final U.S. troops return home from Iraq, Holly Petraeus, General David Petraeus’ wife, discusses on “Newsmakers” the challenges soldiers face when they return from war. Even after David Petraeus retired from the military to head the CIA, Mrs. Petraeus maintains her work for veterans and their families. She discusses the financial issues facing U.S. military service members – active duty and retired – and how the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is attempting to help them.
Q & A: William Beutler, the creator and editor of TheWikipedian.net, a blog designed to explain Wikipedia to the non user. Beutler describes his role as an editor, commentator and consultant for the Wikipedia website. He demonstrates the techniques he uses to create and edit and improve an individual page on Wikipedia…
60 Minutes: The Majority Leader – Lesley Stahl profiles House Majority Leader Eric Cantor about his life and the recent bipartisan wars in Congress. The Perfect Score – In his first interview about his criminal fraud, Sam Eshaghoff tells how he was able to take the SAT and ACT college admissions exams for others who paid him up to $2,500 per test. Alone on the Wall – “60 Minutes” cameras capture a feat never documented before: viewers will see Alex Honnold scale a 1,600-foot rock wall using nothing more than his hands and feet. Lara Logan interviews Honnold about his skills and his unique sport where there can be no mistakes.
To the Contrary: Topics: Population Stabilization Special: Environment, Feminism, & Political Correctness.
Univision’s Al Punto: Congressman Xavier Becerra (D-CA), Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus and Member of the Committee on Ways And Means; Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs; Fabian Nuñez, Noticias Univision Democratic Analyst; Helen Aguirre, Noticias Univision Republican Analyst.
Virtually Speaking: No show this weekend, but others during the week, tune in.
C-SPAN’s Book TV: In Depth with Chris Hedges.
FDL’s Book Salon: None today.
FDL’s Movie Night Monday: TBA.
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Why Is the MN GOP So Messed Up? Sutton Running Buddy Ben Golnik Is Part of the Answer
Lost in all the hubbub of the slow-motion trainwreck that is the Republican Party of Minnesota has been any evidence that anyone in charge is at all interested in getting to the root of its longstanding problems, and not just with money. Instead, the scandals are buried, the whistleblowers attacked, and the people who were in charge when the problems were created are allowed to go on doing what they’d been doing without any major hitches in their giddy-up.
Lost in all the hubbub of the slow-motion trainwreck that is the Republican Party of Minnesota has been any evidence that anyone in charge is at all interested in getting to the root of its longstanding problems, and not just with money. Instead, the scandals are buried, the whistleblowers attacked, and the people who were in charge when the problems were created are allowed to go on doing what they’d been doing without any major hitches in their giddy-up.
Case in point: Way back in 2006, Dwight Tostenson, a staunch Republican and the RPM’s finance director at the time as well as its chief fundraiser, had tried to get then-party-chair Ron Carey to clean up the Minnesota GOP’s stinking messes — messes which included using for Party expenses the money intended for timely depositing into retirement accounts, understating debts (“$100,000 plus”) on reports to the FEC and to Minnesota’s state campaign finance agency, delayed payment of staff expense reports and commissions, and failure to make timely payments to vendors. (Gee, sounds familiar, doesn’t it?)
Tostenson’s reward from the Party’s leadership? Per the memo he wrote them shortly after his “termination” as finance director in February 2007, a hard kick in the teeth: [cont’d.]
I have been told that over the last few months that RPM legal counsel is working on a response to the issues brought to the Chairman’s attention. However, I was told not to contact Party Counsel regarding these issues. In a meeting with the Chairman and the Executive Director, Ben Golnik on Tuesday, November 28, just two weeks after I sent RPM Counsel the documentation, the Chairman informed me that my compensation package would no longer include commissions for major donors or a net dollar performance bonus structure for 2007. He informed me my total compensation pacakge would be reduced to a $75,000 per year salary with no bonuses or commissions. This is an amount less than I have earned in any year in the last decade. Using 2006 numbers it would be a decrease in compensation of about 40%.
The underlining is in the memo itself, as reproduced on the website of CREW, which used the memo as evidence in its 2007 FEC complaint against the Republican Party of Minnesota. (See also the graphic above.)
Ben Golnik, by the way, is a longtime buddy of Tony Sutton. He’s the guy who helped Sutton found the “Count Them All Properly” 2010 recount slush fund — an oversight-free fund created without the input, wishes, or control of Tom Emmer, the person whose gubernatorial campaign it allegedly was intended to benefit (and did I mention that Golnik is a longtime Emmer foe?) — and is currently an adviser with the campaign of freshman state senator Mike Parry, who is battling the major-league TheoCon creepazoid Allen Quist for the right to lose big to Tim Walz ten months from now. (Yes, folks, that’s the same political campaign another Sutton buddy, Michael Brodkorb, was on until very recently.)
The Golnik name recurs often in Republican politics, and not just in Minnesota. Turns out that Ben has an equally skeevy brother, Jon, who has been trying for the past three years to pry the MA-01 congressional seat away from Nikki Tsongas in Massachusetts. During the Republican primary in 2010, Jon Golnik had to face a resurfaced scandal concerning his marijuana and drunk-driving bust after a 2001 AC/DC concert; the scandal didn’t stop him from winning the primary, but he still lost to Tsongas in the general election. (Personally, I think the real scandal is that anyone still found AC/DC a worthwhile band after Bon Scott died. But I digress.)
So does anyone really think the selection of Pat Shortridge to replace Golnik’s bud Sutton as the new RPM Chair will mean a new blast of fresh, cleansing air through the stale smoke-filled snakepits of the Minnesota GOP? Or is it a means to avoid actually cleaning up messes by working to shove them out of sight? Consider that one of Shortridge’s nicknames is “The Fixer“, and I don’t think that’s meant to signify any skill with power tools, aside, perhaps, from the ones who work for ALEC.
Late Late Night FDL: Bugs and Bogey, Baby
Bugs Bunny — Slick Hare. This Warner Bros Merrie Melodies cartoon was released on November 1, 1947. It’s New Year’s Eve – Happy New Year!
Bugs Bunny — Slick Hare. This Warner Bros Merrie Melodies cartoon was released on November 1, 1947.
Directed by Friz Freleng (as I. Freleng). Produced by Edward Selzer (uncredited). Story by Tedd Pierce and Michael Maltese. Animation by Ken Champin, Gerry Chiniquy, Manuel Perez, and Virgil Ross. Backgrounds by Paul Julian. Layouts by Hawley Pratt. Film Editing and Sound Effects Editing by Treg Brown (uncredited). Voices by Mel Blanc (Bugs Bunny / Waiter / Bartender / Ray Milland), Dave Barry (Humphrey Bogart – uncredited), and Arthur Q. Bryan (Elmer Fudd – uncredited). Original Music by Carl W. Stalling (uncredited). Musical Direction by Carl W. Stalling (as Carl Stalling). Orchestration by Milt Franklyn.
It’s New Year’s Eve – Happy New Year!
Whats on your mind?
