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Wednesday, July 23, 2008
‘Wall Street got drunk,’ says Bush — at a private fund-raiser, much like the one in Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last Friday, President Bush was at a private fund-raiser in Houston to benefit a Republican challenger against U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, a Democrat.
The circumstances were very much like Bush’s visit to Atlanta on Tuesday. The press was barred. Video cameras were ordered turned off.
But someone pushed the button on the video function of a mobile phone, then posted the results on YouTube.
Said Bush:
“There’s no question about it. Wall Street got drunk. That’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras. It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is, how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments?”
On Wednesday, a day after the president’s in-an-out trip to Atlanta, White House press secretary Dana Perino was asked if a pool reporter might be allowed to listen to what the president says in such circumstances, or whether the White House might provide a transcript.
According to The Hill newspaper:
Perino noted that she inherited that policy, and she said she does not expect it to change.
She did concede that the president’s remarks were “certainly a more colorful way” of making the same case he has made before.
Perino said all public figures have to be “guarded” in their remarks in the era of YouTube and other technological advances, and it’s important that the president be afforded opportunities, including off-the-record talks with reporters, where he can speak candidly.
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Kudzu Vine lands a Senate debate between Jones, Martin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia politics is about to advance one step deeper into the Internet.
David McLaughlin, host of the Kudzu Vine, said he’s landed the two remaining Democrats in the U.S. Senate race for a 7 p.m. Sunday forum — the first high-profile debate that I know of to be conducted wholly on the Internet.
This is where you’ll need to click to listen in.
The Democratic-oriented Kudzu Vine operates via the platform offered by www.blogtalkradio.com. Participants will be sitting at home — or wherever they choose to be — while McLaughlin directs the program from his computer in Rome.
Vernon Jones and Jim Martin, the two surviving Democrats, won’t confront each other. But a panel that includes McLaughlin and former Democratic candidate Josh Lanier will pose questions.
Kudzu Vine has already made an impact in the Senate race. This is the site where, one year ago, Jones acknowledged that he had voted twice for George W. Bush — which Martin has highlighted in his campaign.
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Broun burns through much of his yearly congressional budget
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. Rep. Paul Broun lives a charmed life. Only after his thumping of Barry Fleming in the Republican party does Roll Call, the D.C. newspaper that covers Congress, report that the Georgia rep has spent two-thirds of his office budget in the first six months.
My colleague Julia Malone in Washington has been sorting out the details. Click here to read.
Election-year franking is what caused the budget drain. Broun’s office just put out this statement:
“Congressman Broun has put a priority on communicating with constituents. Those official communications have all been done in compliance with the rules of the House and were all approved for timely distribution by the bi-partisan U.S. House of Representatives Commission on Congressional Mailing Standards.”
Broun still faces Democratic opposition — Bobby Saxon, an Iraq war vet — in his fight to retain his 10th District congressional seat. Frankly, when we called a few Washington contacts, they said that Broun’s 71 percent margin in the GOP primary would cause national Democrats to put their money elsewhere this fall.
But Broun’s not making that decision any easier for them.
Photo credit: Rick McKay/Washington bureau
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Reading other people’s mail
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
New Yorker magazine has a quick piece on a fellow named Guru Raj, who four years ago — while watching the Democratic National Convention in his parents’ Norcross, Ga., basement — set up a Gmail account in the name of the “young senator from Illinois” he’d just seen on TV.
Here’s a snippet:
“I just thought it would be kind of funny to create an e-mail address based on a random senator whose name no one could spell.”
Over the next four years, as Gmail became the third most popular Webmail provider in the U.S. and [Barack] Obama became a serious contender for the next President of the United States, Raj used the account for his personal e-mail.
In the fall of 2006, he received, for the first time, a message intended for the Senator. By February, 2007, when Obama formally announced his candidacy, Raj was daily receiving dozens of misdirected notes from all over the world.
One more thing about the piece: It was written by Charles Bethea, who lives in New Mexico — but whose mother is Sally Bethea, executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.
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