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Thursday, October 26, 2006

Name identification

By Ken Herman | Thursday, October 26, 2006, 07:15 PM

From the transcript of President Bush’s remarks today at a Des Moines fund-raiser for GOP congressional candidate Jeff Lamberti. That’s JEFF Lamberti:

“This campaign only ends after the voters have had a chance to speak. No doubt in my mind, with your help, Dave Lamberti will be the next United States congressman. Dave and I believe a lot of things. We believe that you ought to keep more of your own money. We believe in family values. We believe values are important. And we believe marriage is a fundamental institution of civilization.”

He did correctly refer to him as Jeff 11 times during the remarks.

Things got better later Thursday in Warren, Michigan, where Bush raised money for GOP Senate contender Mike Bouchard. Got that name right every time.

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DID WILD PIGS CAUSE E. COLI OUTBREAK?

By Jeff Nesmith | Thursday, October 26, 2006, 05:52 PM

The outbreak of E. coli illness among people who ate raw spinach from a California field may have been caused by wild pigs.

Spinach traced to the field has been implicated in nearly 200 human illnesses and three deaths.

California health officials said Thursday afternoon they had compared the DNA “fingerprint” of E. coli O157:H7 specimens from persons who became ill with bacteria found in cattle waste in nearby pastures.

Bacteria with precisely the same DNA as the germ that caused disease was found only in cows in an adjacent pasture and from a stream running through the pasture, they said.

Since the pasture and the stream were both downhill from the field, it appears unlikely the bacteria could have been washed into the field by rainwater. Irrigation wells were at least a mile away.

The culprit may have been wild pigs, officials said. E. coli taken from the intestines of a wild pig — one of many that roam the ranch — also had the same deadly DNA fingerprint as the germs that caused illness, said Kevin Reilly, of the California Department of Health Services.

There were two other clues: holes in a fence between the pasture and the spinach field and numerous pig tracks in the field.

“We think there is a reasonable possibility that the contamination came from these pigs,” said Reilly, who would not say whether exterminating the wild pig population would be a recommended way of “reducing that risk factor.”

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Corker’s Color Scheme

By Scott Shepard | Thursday, October 26, 2006, 01:33 PM

Bob Corker, the Republican in Tennessee’s closely watched U.S. Senate campaign, may have learned an important color-scheme lesson from another Tennesseean, former Vice President Al Gore.

Corker’s campaign website is striking in that the intro page is almost entirely done in earth tones.

Most campaign websites feature the good old red, white and blue, the staple palette of Amercan politics.

And that includes the Website of Corker’s Democratic opponent, Harold Ford Jr.

But Corker’s features gold, tan, burnt orange and several shades of green, just like the suits and ties Gore sported in his 2000 presidential campaign, at least until it was disclosed that Gore was getting fashion advice from feminist author Naomi Wolf and conservatives began to poke fun at him as a “beta” male.

Corker, so far, has been spared the ridicule for his slick, fall-like Ralph Lauren-esque presence on the web. See it at www.bobcorkerforsenate.com.

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NOBODY MOVE, AND NOBODY WILL GET HURT

By Marilyn Geewax | Thursday, October 26, 2006, 01:23 PM

When it comes to Congress, is gridlock good?

Some Americans believe that having Democrats control one chamber of Congress, and Republicans the other, is good because a gridlocked Congress can’t do much harm.

But Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, which supports tax cuts and limited government, told reporters at a breakfast Thursday that any time Democrats have any power, Congress will cause trouble.

“We saw some pretty bad legislation pass when there was divided government recently,” he said, referring to the period between May 2001 and December 2002 when Democrats controlled the Senate. During that time, Congress passed a farm bill to provide agricultural subsidies and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to further regulate corporate accounting.

Toomey described each law as “terrible.”

“So I don’t subscribe to the view that divided government is great because nothing happens,” he said.

— Marilyn Geewax

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McCain Adviser Linked to Anti-Ford Ad

By Julia Malone | Thursday, October 26, 2006, 12:43 PM

Terry Nelson, who heads up the Republican National Committee unit responsible for a widely denounced TV ad against U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr., also serves as a senior adviser to Republican Sen. John McCain.

Nelson, who served as political director for President Bush’s 2004 re-election, runs the RNC’s independent expenditure unit, RNC spokesman Josh Holmes confirmed Thursday.

The independent effort drew charges of racism with its ad featuring a bare-shouldered blond woman saying she had met Rep. Ford at a Playboy party.

Ford, a Tennessee Democrat, is running to become the first black senator elected from the South since Reconstruction.

The ad drew fire from all sides, including from Ford’s Republican opponent, Bob Corker. RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, who denied that the TV spot was racist, said that he had no control over the independent expenditure unit.

The Republican chairman announced Wednesday that the controversial ad was being pulled off the air.

Nelson, a former deputy chief of staff at the RNC, now heads Crosslink Strategy, a Washington consulting firm.

His Website lists among his clients Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse and Senator McCain’s Straight Talk America Political Action Committee.

McCain’s Senate spokeswoman Melissa Shuffield declined to comment on the Ford ad.

Craig Goldman, executive director of Straight Talk America, said Nelson’s role has been to advise McCain on where he should go to campaign for Republican candidates in this year’s elections.

Nelson did not return a reporter’s call for comments on the anti-Ford ad.

Late Thursday afternoon, CBS-NEWS reported on its Web site that the TV spot had been produced for the Republican independent expenditure unit by media consultant Scott Howell.

Among Howell’s best known campaign work has been for Saxby Chambliss in his successful 2002 race to unseat Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat.

In that campaign, Howell produced a TV commercial that generated Democratic anger by showing Cleland, a disabled Vietnam veteran, along with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Ladin to suggest that the Democrat was soft on national defense.

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Relief is on the way

By Ken Herman | Thursday, October 26, 2006, 10:40 AM

Here’s the problem, personal though it may be:

While the White House Press Room is undergoing a massive remodeling scheduled for completion in the spring, the press corps is temporarily bivouaced in the nearby White House Conference Center. The accommodations are comfortable, save for some pesky temperature control issues that seem to have been solved.

In conjunction with the temporary move, a trailer has been set up on the White House grounds to house the pool reporters, photographers and TV technicians who have to be on hand for events open only to the pool.

The bathroom in the trailer is, shall we say, overtaxed and balky. At times, it’s a jiggle-the-handle deal. At times, jiggling was of no use because the little chain that connected lever and flapper was missing. There’s a White House souvenir for you.

So, with some urgency, the White House Correspondents Association has sought permission for the poolers to use nearby bathrooms within the complex. Help, it can now be announced, is on the way.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin has told WHCA President Steve Scully that pool denizens can use a unisex bathroom in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building when nature calls. The trailer is adjacent to the EEOB. And - the best news of all - poolers will not have to be escorted into the EEOB (as long as they behave).

“If we abuse the use of the bathroom, if folks begin roaming the halls of EEOB, Joe said he will end this immediately and we’re back in the trailer bathroom,” Scully told colleagues.

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