The case against Ben Quayle
1. He’s unqualified. He doesn’t have a profession. He’s trained as a lawyer, recently started an “investment firm.” He hasn’t held a job in his life for more than a year or two.
2. When the nation, two years ago, was facing challenges on several fronts—mismanaged wars, soaring deficits, an economy falling down a sinkhole, Quayle was nowhere to be seen.
3. Did he offer his opinions or advice? Take a public stand? Maybe even point out that, as a Republican, he was troubled by the holy mess his party had gotten the country in?
4. No. Instead, he was helping a friend get a porny web site off the ground. It was called Dirty Scottsdale, with a plan for establishing itself as Skank Central for the sleazy nightlife crowd.
5. When the economy was collapsing, Ben was writing for the site under the name Brock Landers, and went on a search for “Scottsdale’s foxiest first lady!”
6. Ben moved to the district recently and got a congressional campaign going. His main funding source: Friends of his daddy’s! Former president Bush held a fundraiser for him in Texas! In Texas—for a guy from Phoenix who’s done nothing his entire life.
7. Then it came out that Ben had a skanky past. When questioned… he denied it. Then changed his story. Then said “My response has been consistent.”
8. The Arizona Republic, which used to be owned by his family, helped him out by carefully not going into any detail about his involvement with the porny web site during the Republican primary.
9. In that primary he got about 22 percent of the vote. It was a crowded field; that was enough to win. Even Republicans don’t like him.
10. To get attention, Little Benny ran a commercial saying “Barack Obama is the worst president in history.” Sane people know that Barack Obama isn’t even the worst president of the 21st century.
11. He dodged debates with his opponent, Jon Hulburd, finally agreeing to one half-hour session.
12. His public events have been nil. PHXated’s repeatedly asked his campaign for a single time he’s made a scheduled public appearance. There hasn’t been one we know of.
13. His campaign has also refused to answer basic questions about his positions. There are candidates running for ASU class president who have more substantive issue pages. Does he think woman should be jailed for having an abortion? Should gays be allowed openly to serve in the military? To our knowledge, Quayle has never answered these questions.
8:47 AM
Jan Brewer's big brain freeze -- not forgotten
Politico today looks back at how the candidate debates were this holiday season—and takes out Brewer’s painful 13 seconds for one last run around the track:
Says the magazine:
The gap between the ideal of debates—thoughtful, probing, spontaneous affairs that illuminate serious differences between candidates and their ideas—and the reality of debates has rarely, if ever, been more glaring.
Brewer’s in the second graf:
And then there was the frozen moment on a debate stage in Arizona, where incumbent Republican governor Jan Brewer was so tense that she paused for more than ten seconds, staring at the camera, looking at notes, then back at the camera, before finally speaking: “We have…did what was right for Arizona.”
7:19 AM
All the details of the night Jan Brewer was apparently driving drunk
James King, at New Times, has the full details from the police report the night in 1988 Jan Brewer rear-ended another car—and the officers who came to the scene thought she was drunk.
She was never charged, for reasons that aren’t clear.
Anyway, here’s King’s account of the report on Brewer’s field sobriety tests:
[T]he officer also described the then-state-senator as having bloodshot, watery eyes, and dilated pupils that reacted poorly to light stimulation.
[…]
According to the report, when asked to stand on one leg, Brewer was “not able to perform the test as instructed.” Instead, Brewer was “swaying back and forth from side to side and front to back heavily.”
[…]
Brewer was then asked to tilt her head back, close her eyes, and touch her finger to her nose. No luck there, either. Brewer didn’t even follow instructions — initially, she failed to close her eyes or tilt her head back, and when she did, her body swayed front to back and side to side as she tried to touch her finger to her nose. Her eyes would flutter when she tried to touch her nose, the report claims.
In the third test, Brewer failed the Rhomberg Modified counting test when she was unable to count from 1001 to 1030.
In Brewer’s fourth field-sobriety F-, the now-governor was unable to maintain her balance when asked to walk in a straight line. She had to stop three times to steady herself and didn’t walk heal-to-toe as instructed. According to the report, she stepped off the line five times in her attempt to walk straight.
8:07 AM
Was Jan Brewer a drunk driver?
AZ Fact Check has a long look at a 1988 car crash in which Jan Brewer, then a state legislator, was probably drunk.
It’s pretty clear from the available evidence, in fact, that she was drunk. Here’s what it says:
DPS officers at the scene believed Brewer was intoxicated. Unsteady on her feet, her breath smelling of alcohol, Brewer failed a series of field sobriety tests.
Brewer was placed in handcuffs and taken to a DPS station, where she was supposed to undergo a test to determine her blood-alcohol level. But no test was ever performed. After a discussion with a DPS lieutenant, two officers drove Brewer home.
At the scene, Brewer told officers she had “one scotch.” Later, at the station, she said she had had two. At the time, she denied being drunk.
Brewer was never charged, and the case was never pursued. (Arizona has some crazy law that says legislators can’t be arrested while they are in session; the story notes that they can still be charged after the session ends.)
Full story here.
8:23 AM
The Arizona Republic takes a pass on Ben Quayle's disastrous poll numbers
We’ve noticed before how the Arizona Republic didn’t take much interest in Little Benny Quayle’s involvement with a porny web site, Dirty Scottsdale.
Skanky sex, a famous political name…those aren’t the sorts of things the media should be interested in.
Now we can see the paper’s not interested in any bad news about Quayle.
Yesterday, a reputable polling company released numbers on the District 3 race. (The company is Public Policy Polling.)
It said Quayle was trailing opponent Jon Hulburd, 46 to 44.
Worse, it gave Quayle a 52 percent unfavorable rating.
Is this news?
Politico this a.m. has a lede story booming “99 Dem House Seats in Danger—that is to say, it’s not a good time to be a Democrat running for Congress.
District 3 went for McCain by a 57 to 42 margin—that is to say, it’s a solidly GOP district.
But nothing about it in the Republic this a.m. Columnist Laurie Roberts, however, did do a blog post:
The poll of 655 likely voters included more Republicans than Democrats and respondents favored Sen. John McCain by a wide margin over Rodney Glassman. Those aspects would seem in line with the district’s partisan makeup and its presumed political loyalties in another race.
But home readers of the paper—the ones who are clustered in the upscale developments in northeast Phoenix, where this battle is being fought—aren’t let in on the news.
7:45 AM
New Times on Ben Quayle: Does James King heart Ben Quayle a little too much?
The paper’s James King profiles the candidate at length. There’s a very funny graphic, by Jamie Peachey, that portrays Quayle as the 40-year-old virgin:
The story, while not a puff piece, lets Quayle off the hook on a couple of issues, notably the Dirty Scottsdale tale.
Besides being a hypocrite by being a family-values Republican with a history of working for a skanky, woman-hating web site, Quayle lied about it when he was first asked.
New Times is a good paper and King is one of its typically strong reporters.
But this doesn’t wash:
[I]t turns out that Quayle didn’t lie — he just didn’t volunteer information about his association with Dirty Scottsdale.
The Politico reporter who first called Quayle didn’t ask him whether he had written for the Web site. She asked if he was involved in the founding of The Dirty, to which Quayle answered no.
The reporter’s next question was, “You had nothing to do with it?” Quayle contends he thought the reporter still was referring to the establishment of The Dirty and answered no again.
[…]
But the damage was done. The claim that he initially lied about his involvement made the front page of the New York Times.
That’s plainly total bullshit.
Here’s the original Politico passage:
“I did not have a role in founding that site,” Quayle, a lawyer who runs a small Scottsdale investment firm, told POLITICO in an interview Tuesday morning when asked whether he was one of the original contributors to the sex-themed site.
“I was not involved in the site,” he said when pressed about whether he had any role.
In other words, Quayle tried to weasel around the question by framing his first answer carefully. (Note how the reporter includes her original question.)
But then, of course, she pressed him, and he specifically said he wasn’t involved in the site, when asked if he had any role.
It’s one thing to try to lie when asked a question like that, and it’s another level of deceit to try to pretend that your lie had been successful when it plainly hadn’t. That’s what Quayle’s been doing since.
King has it entirely wrong and should correct the story. Quayle plainly lied.
I think it’s fair to beat up on King about this because he’s given Quayle a pass as well on his cheesy little family mailer in which he posed with two little girls, even though he doesn’t have kids.
And finally, Quayle is never asked about his right-wing views.
Among other things, King could have asked him about his position on abortion, and specifically to what extent he would criminalize it if he had the chance.
He could also have asked him about the astate’s medical marijuana initiative—and whether he’d ever tried it himself.
11:47 AM
1Live-blogging the Ben Quayle/Jon Hulburd debate
It’s over.
Simons says the tape will be up on the KAET web site, but it’s not there yet.
I assume it will be on this page.
PHXated will post when it becomes available.
Incredibly, it’s almost over. Closing statements. Schoen goes on some more about manufacturing jobs.
Quayle says he wants to “bend the cost care curve down” in health care. Yeah, that’s always been a big GOP priority. He says he’ll work to repeal the health care bill.
Hulburd says repealing health care is a fairy tale. He says he’s going to go back and act like legislators.
Will Quayle kick the new kids on the health care rolls off? Hulburd says he likes part of the bill, not other parts.
Elect someone who will deal with this as an adult, he says. Hard to argue with that.
Simons asks about immigration reform. A bad question: “Is it needed, how do you do it?”
Quayle wants “a barrier from the Pacific to the Gulf.” He natters on about drug cartels. He wont' talk about reform until “we secure the border.”
Hulburd tries to attack Quayle from the right on this, saying that Quayle has been arguing for a guest worker program. Quayle says only after the border is secured.
Hulburd hits Quayle hard; he notes Quayle’s getting a lot of his money from Cerebrus capital.
Quayle says Hulburd’s getting money from a union. Hulburd says he’ll give back his $10K in union contributions if Quayle gives back the $80K he got from Cerebrus.
Tarp was not the way to go, Quayle says. He says the banks were that much in trouble.
Jesus these guys are bush league. Tarp was a Bush initiative supported by both parties and economists on both sides.
Hulburd says Tarp was a terrible idea, a disaster. Simons says, so should we have let the fire burn itself out? He says yes, the rich people got bailed out by the Titanic. He’s wrong.
Schoen notes than Greenspan has said you can’t cut taxes with borrowed money. He says the tax cuts are jsut going to blow out the deficit. He should be asking both Quayle and Hulburd to address that issue.
Tom Schoen
Simons asks a hard question of Quayle: Business, he notes, aren’t putting their money to work; they husbanding it, buying back shares and the like.
He babbles in response, not answering the question. None of it makes sense.
Simon turns to Schoen, who says he was once sued for defamation, too. I don’t think he needed to volunteer that. But he seems not to be an idiot on the economy.
Hulburd sounds good on the economy too. Even under Simons questioning he sticks to his support for extending the Bush tax cuts.
Quayle keep[s nattering on about “uncertainty.”
(This is a bullshit Republican talking point. Rich people had certainty. They knew their tax cuts were going to end this year; the only uncertainty was whether they could con Congress isn’t extending them.)
Quayle says Hulburd was using blatant lies in ads. When asked, Quayle says it was a lie that he’d pretended to have kids in a mailer. (Which he did.) Hulburd notes that it wasn’t a lie.
The moderator keeps hitting Hulburd, not Quayle. “He says he’s regrets the association,” he says to Hulburd. “Why isn’t that good enough?”
Jesus.
Quayle says he’s been tested in the primary. He says he’s been candid the whole time. (He hasn’t.) He has a deer in the headlights look.
He attacks Hulburd for having been sued for defamation and fraud. Hulburd says the suits were nuisance suits and dismissed with prejudice.
Quayle says something stupid, too: “It didn’t go through the proper trial.” He tries to make it sound suspicious. Well, if they were dismissed, they wouldn’t have “gone through the proper trial” … because they were dismissed.
The moderator asks a dumb question of Hulburd: Why harp on Quayle and Dirty Scottsdale? Hulburd says because character matters.
To that question, Quayle says it’s because he’s going to go to D.C. and fight for the people. Jesus. He says watching actions in D.C. the last year and a half is the best experience anyone could have.
Moderator Simons asked Hulburd why he’s qualified. Hulburd says it’s a fair question, and notes his social, business and personal experience. He stresses he work as a lawyer and family man and volunteer work for Children’s Hospital.
Schoen, the libertarian, shows a chart, demonstrating the decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs.
Hulburd begins, and goes on the attack. He ridicules Qualye for an ad with a wildly inaccurate ad about the federal deficit and goes after him for his involvement in Dirty Scottsdale.
Quayle says it’s “one of the most important elections in the country’s history.”
Quayle tries to attack Obama and the health care initiative.
It’s starting. An “open exchange of ideas,” moderator Ted Simons says. Interruptions are allowed. there’s a libertarian there, too, Michael Schoen, a former prosecutor.
The Ben Quayle-Jon Hulburd debate is scheduled to last for an absurd 30 minutes.
It will be broadcast on Phoenix’s public TV station, channel 8, KAET.
Stay tunes for live-blogging when it begins at 7 p.m. PDT.
(Out-of-state readers please note Arizona doesn’t recognize daylight savings time, it being a comminist plot of some sort, and is a consequence operating currently in the Pacific time zone.)
PHXated’s complete coverage of the life and times of Little Benny Quayle is here.
The complete Brock Landers story is here.
PHXated’s interview with Jon Hulburd is here.
The weird little story about whatever it is that Ben Quayle’s wife does is here.
Braham Resnik to Ben Quayle: “What have you ever done to ‘knock the hell’ out of anything?”.
6:49 PM
The Hulburd-Quayle debate is tonight
It will air at 7 on channel 8.
Incredibly, the Quayle campaign agreed only to a 30-minute session.
The Hulburd campaign says Quayle turned down an offer for a prime-time debate from channel 12, the NBC affiliate.
The Arizona Republic, either through complete incompetence or as part of a campaign to help Ben Quayle ascend to office with as little public examination as possible, has no mention of it that I can find on its web site.
The session is being taped at 4 this afternoon. Hulburd’s campaign manager, Ruben Alonzo, will be tweeting from the session, which is closed to the public. His handle is @ralonzo.
3:15 PM
Jon Hulburd's first TV commercial
Hulburd is the conservative Democrat running for the 3rd district Congressional seat being vacated by John Shadegg.
His first TV commercial continues to hammer on Dan Quayle for everything you’d expect.
2:53 PM
The NYT front-pages GOP dirty tricks in Arizona
The story, from the Times' Arizona guy, Marc Lacey, is about how Republicans are rounding up street people to run on a Green Party ticket:
Steve May, the Republican operative who signed up some of the candidates along Mill Avenue, a bohemian commercial strip next to Arizona State University, insists that a real political movement has been stirred up that has nothing to do with subterfuge.
“Did I recruit candidates? Yes,” said Mr. May, who is himself a candidate for the State Legislature, on the Republican ticket. “Are they fake candidates? No way.”
To make his point, Mr. May went by Starbucks, the gathering spot of the Mill Rats, as the frequenters of Mill Avenue are known.
“Are you fake, Benjamin?” he yelled out to Mr. Pearcy, who cried out “No,” with an expletive attached.
“Are you fake, Thomas?” Mr. May shouted in the direction of Thomas Meadows, 27, a tarot card reader with less than a dollar to his name who is running for state treasurer. He similarly disagreed.
“Are you fake, Grandpa?” he said to Anthony Goshorn, 53, a candidate for the State Senate whose bushy white beard and paternal manner have earned him that nickname on the streets. “I’m real,” he replied.
Gathered around was a motley crew of people who were down on their luck, including a one-armed pregnant woman named Roxie whom Mr. May befriended sometime back and who introduced him to the rest.
8:58 AM
Jan Brewer's big brain freeze on Hardball
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
7:18 PM
Democrats charges GOP with recruiting sham Green Party candidates
The story in the Republic this a.m. doesn’t say who exactly the complaint was made to:
The complaint names Rep. Jim Weiers, R-Phoenix; Steve May, a Republican candidate for the Legislature; and a House Republican staffer as complicit in an effort to register at least a half-dozen people as Green Party members so they could run as write-in candidates in last week’s primary election.
Republicans accused of the ploy denied any wrongdoing.
The newly minted Green candidates have been disavowed by the Arizona Green Party and are running in races in which Democrats are believed to be competitive. Those races include secretary of state, treasurer, Arizona Corporation Commission and several legislative contests in swing districts.
The response from Weiers, pictured above:
Those alleged to be part of the scheme denied the charges, saying they are only trying to broaden the political playing field.
Weiers, a former House speaker, called the complaint “cynical” and said people have a right to run under whatever political banner they choose. “If somebody wants to do it,” he said of the last-minute registration change, “there’s nothing illegal about it. There’s nothing immoral.”
He acknowledged that he talked to Chris Campbell about his bid to run on the Green Party ticket for state Senate in District 10 but said he did not recruit the recently re-registered Republican. Campbell is the roommate of one of Weiers' daughters.
The Republic endorsed Weiers recently, saying he has “the best interests of their district and Arizona at heart.”
A four-year-old story in the paper’s archives shows a different side of him:
State Speaker of the House Jim Weiers admits he did not respond to police for several days after learning that a man he mentored, hired for two jobs and allowed to live in his home with his children was wanted on 26 counts of child molestation.
In addition, a man who says he was sexually assaulted by Arthur “Art” Vitasek as a teenager claims that Weiers discouraged him from talking to police about the abuse, according to a 106-page Mesa police report released Friday.
7:14 AM
Doug MacEachern on Jesse Kelly: "A really, really angry guy."
The Arizona Republic’s Doug MacEachern comes to not bury Little Benny Quayle, but to praise him.
MacEachern’s argument: Quayle’s not a complete sociopath, like the guy the GOP nominated to run against Gabrielle Giffords in the eighth Congressional District.
(The district includes most of Tucson and extends to cover the southeast corner of the state.)
Jesse Kelly is a rabid former marine who unexpectedly knocked out establishment candidate Jonathan Paton, making life considerably easier for Giffords in a tough re-election campaign.
Kelly visited the Republic’s editorial board the other day, and in MacEachern’s telling he had a lot to say:
I met Kelly in an Editorial Board meeting. Honorable fellow: war veteran, like all the district’s GOP candidates. Indeed, he was a Marine combat platoon leader, the most dangerous job on earth. He is an honest conservative. And a really, really angry guy.
When asked about priorities, he gave an answer that, while perfectly suitable for a former Marine officer, it seemed a bit over the top for a prospective member of Congress: “We’ve got to kill all members of radical Islam.”
And, when asked if he could work with Democrats in Congress: “I hope there’s no Democrats left in Congress when I get there.”
Look, I like shock theater, too. And I’ve been known to be a bit edgy at times. But Kelly is that rare conservative who takes politics so personally that he has morphed into his worst enemy. Like far-left liberals, he doesn’t believe his political opponents are merely wrong; they’re evil: “I think liberals are destroying the nation. We had better go fight them in Washington before they destroy our children’s future.”
About Quayle, MacEachern continues the Republic’s odd insistence on mentioning at least once a day the scandal it did not tell readers about during the primary campaign, namely Quayle’s cheesy past writing for an ultraskanky Scottsdale nightlife web site.
That sordid tale is told in its entirety here.
PHXated’s complete Ben Quayle archive is here.
7:46 AM
UPDATE: TheDirty.com libel suit
The AP reported yesterday that a Cinncinnati cheerleader had won a default libel suit against the proprietor of a site called “the Dirt.com.”
The Arizona Republic reported that as a judgment against the site we all know as TheDirty.com, the place where Young Benny Quayle undertook some of his early nightlife epistolary efforts.
PHXated repeated the news (see orignal post below), even correcting the AP’s error.
Turns out the story was half right in about three different ways.
TheDirty is the site that said the cheerleader had VD. But the suit was filed against a different site, TheDirt.com, which ignored it and got a default judgment of $11 million against it. Hilarity has presumably ensued.
Politico has the story here.
It contains these entertaining passages from Eric Deters, the plaintiff’s attorney, about TheDirty.com founder and Quayle literary amanuensis Nik Richie:
“We’re still going to serve that S.O.B. personally,” Deters said of Richie. “I’m going to make that dirty, rotten, mean, vermin bastard pay. He’s a piece of dirt.”
When asked what he thought about Quayle blogging for Dirty Scottsdale, Deters – who has been following national media coverage of the political novice – called it “absolutely disgraceful.”
“He ought to be ashamed of himself,” Deters said “He’s another lying little weasel politician. That’s not slander; that is my opinion.”
Updates as they happen.
The original post:
One of the grimier things about TheDirty.com, the web site Ben Quayle wrote for and helped found, is now hateful many of its postings are.
As we’ve mentioned before, they basically come down to “she has VD.”
The practice seems to have cost the site and its founder, Hooman Karamian, who goes by the name Nik Ritchie, $11 million.
From the AP:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A gossip website has been hit with an $11 million judgment for libel and slander after posting false accusations about a Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader.
The judgment against Dirty World Entertainment Recordings, which runs the site Thedirt.com [sic], came Thursday after the site did not respond to a lawsuit brought by Sarah Jones. The high school teacher’s picture was posted on the site along with an accusation she had been exposed to two venereal diseases.
Richie is the guy who told Politico that Quayle had helped him get the site going and had written for it under the name Brock Landers.
10:40 AM
Little Benny Quayle on Greta Van Susteren
He proposes that Congress’s salaries be cut if it doesn’t reduce the budget.
“They have these incentives in the private sector and they work very well,” he says, insipidly.
Van Susteren, clearly skeptical, does her best to pin him down on the Dirty Scottsdale scandal.
Quayle has yet to answer any question about his involvement with the site clearly.
10:42 PM
Ben Quayle cancelled his own victory party
From Politico:
After a cascade of accusations and ever-shifting denials that he wrote for a raunchy website under the name of a fictional porn star, it seemed even Ben Quayle thought he was going to lose a 10-way Republican primary in Arizona.
Quayle, the son of former Vice President Dan Quayle, went so far as to cancel a victory party he had planned to hold Tuesday night to watch the returns in the race for the GOP nod to replace retiring Rep. John Shadegg in the 3rd District.
6:34 AM
Confidential to Ben Quayle: On Wednesday, give us a call!
Your big primary is Tuesday. You might be the GOP nominee in the race to replace John Shadegg in Arizona’s 3rd congressional district.
We have to be honest. We hope you win.
The primary, that is.
Last week it was revealed you used to hell around Scottsdale with the guy who founded Dirty Scottsdale.com, a skanky nightlife web site now morphed into The Dirty.com.
You used to write for the site under the name Brock Landers, a man embarked on an epic quest for Scottsdale’s hottest foxiest chick or somesuch, while all around you the site posted porny photos of club denizens with a lot of speculation about venereal diseases.
A classy operation!
This was two or three years ago.
Now all of a sudden you’re a family values Republican who borrows other peoples' kids so you look like a family man.
Anyway, like we said we hope you win, because you’d be vulnerable in the general.
But, here’s the deal.
The Dirty.com has really taken off. You seem to be a web guy with a magic touch.
And be honest: Is the search for Scottsdale’s hottest chick really over?
We think you’re the guy who can help find her—and help PHXated find its groove.
So, like we said, we hope you win on Tuesday.
But if not .. on Wednesday, drop us a line!
The complete Ben Quayle story is here.
5:01 PM
The complete Ben Quayle/Brock Landers links list!
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a wee little web site, Dirty Scottsdale.
On the site, folks sent in pics of marginal nightlife people, to which was paired commentary distinguished as much by its grammatical uncertainty as its utterly skanky content—generally asseverations about venereal disease and the like.
One of its early noted contributors was a guy named Brock Landers.
Landers was a man on a mission, namely to find Scottsdale’s First Foxy Chick.
This was in 2007.
Flash forward three years. Dirty Scottsdale is now a network of sites, all published under the name of The Dirty.
And meanwhile, a young man named Little Benny Quayle decides to run for Congress. This is a venue open to him if not too many other folks of his fairly undistinguished life work because he happens to be the son of a former vice president of the United States.
All is going well (well, fairly well), until a bombshell drops in a story on a national political web site.
The story says young Quayle had been a writer for Dirty Scotsdale, under the name “Brock.”
In the story, Quayle denied that it was he!
Politico: Quayle denies link to Scottsdale site
“I was not involved in the site,” Quayle said.
But the story quoted the site’s founder, Nik Richie, who would seem to have been in a position to know, saying that Quayle had posted eight to ten times on the blog.
Soon, he weighed in with his version of events on The Dirty.
The Dirty: I Think It is Time ….
He wrote:
Since the beginning (DirtyScottsdale.com) three years ago, I have gotten the same question from the DIRTY ARMY from all over the world: “Who is Brock from the Dirty Celeb Brock’s Chick?”
I have kept it a secret until right now… the mystery man is Ben Quayle aka Brock Landers, the son of Vice President Dan Quayle. If you are a DIRTY ARMY Republican, vote for Ben Quayle because he was one of the original creators of DirtyScottsdale.com which evolved into TheDirty.com.
Phoenix’s 12 News then ran this report, which features Quayle changing his story, saying:
“I just posted comments to try to drive some traffic."
KPNX 12 News: Quayle linked to thedirty.com: Congressional candidate was trying to help out
That got Politico back into the action.
Politico: Ben Quayle changes story on web site
The site took an uncharacteristically harsh tone with the political neophyte:
Ben Quayle had a hard time getting his story straight Tuesday….
And not just about writing for the site:
Richie also told POLITICO that Quayle introduced him to attorneys at the Phoenix law firm where he worked, Snell & Wilmer, so his Internet site could incorporate. But Quayle told POLITICO Tuesday morning that he couldn’t recall whether he had made the introduction.
Later in the day, however, Quayle confirmed to several Phoenix TV stations that he introduced Richie to an intellectual property attorney at Snell & Wilmer.
“He wanted an IP attorney, and I referred him to one,” Quayle told 12News. “I don’t know if they met or not.”
The story also said that “Brock”’s full name was “Brock Landers.”
At this point, the guy who founded Dirty Scottsdale and the Dirty.com is getting mad that Quayle is denying his association.
He responds:
The Dirty: Ben Quayle is Brock Landers
Richie links to what he says is some of Quayle/Landers' best work:
The Dirty: Brock’s Chick
Wondering where Quayle got the name Brock Landers?
Meanwhile, Politico gleefully stays on the story:
Politico: Quayle’s bump on road to Congress
Politico: Quayle Lashes out at political foes
Says Quayle:
“It is amazing that the media will take a casual acquaintance and turn it into something tawdry, taking the word of a smut peddler at face value."
New York Times op-ed columnist Gail Collins takes a few swipes at Quayle, too.
NYT: More American Idols:
Consider Ben Quayle, the son of the former vice president. He’s running for Congress in Arizona. He’s been accused of both using a phony family in his campaign pictures and helping to found a local porn site. In response, he’s come up with a new ad in which he announces that Barack Obama is the “worst president in history,” swiftly bemoans “drug cartels in Mexico, tax cartels in D.C.” and concludes that “somebody has to go to Washington and knock the hell out of the place.”
Talk about a clear agenda for change. Although Quayle does show a terrible disrespect for the records of Warren Harding and James Buchanan.
And more locally, the right-wing blogger Greg Patterson says the game might be over for Young Benny Quayle.
Espresso Pundit: If this is true then Ben Quayle has no chance of going to Congress…:
The site is awful and if it’s true that Quayle is one of the founders and authors then his political career is over.
His prediction:
If it’s too late and Quayle’s name and money let him squeak through the primary then he will get crushed by CD 3 Democratic nominee Jon Hulburd (who will go on to be crushed in 2012 by Jim Waring or Dean Martin).
To distract attention, Quayle reveals himself as a noted presidential historian, contending, in a new TV commercial, that “Barack Obama is the worst president in history”:
Everyone chuckles for a day, and then goes back to asking about Dirty Scottsdale.
Meanwhile, on the national level, Quayle keeps lying. He tells ABCnews.com, too, that he only knew Richie through referring him to a lawyer.
ABC News: Ben Quayle Denies Blogging for Racy Website.
“I am not Brock Landers,” Quayle says.
Then, on Friday, Quayle lied a few more times on CNN’s John King show.
Amusingly, King is less interested in Dirty Scottsdale than he is in Quayle’s recent contentions about Obama. (“He’s only been in office eighteen months!”)
CNN: John King USA.
“I’ve been consistent with my story from the beginning”
“I had no affiliation with that website.”
Displaying, perhaps, his father’s way with handling a gaffe, Quayle, incredibly, keeps denying he was Brock Landers to the Associated Press:
AP: Like father, like son? Quayle stumbles in Arizona
Asked about the site this week, Quayle told The Associated Press that he “wrote a couple of satirical and fictional pieces for a satirical website” but that he quit doing so once the website shifted its editorial direction away from satire. Richie says the site’s content and tone have not changed from the days when Quayle was connected to it.
When asked if he wrote as Brock Landers, Quayle said: “There’s all sorts of posts under that alias and that’s not me. That’s really all I’ve got to say about that.”
Back in Arizona, the Arizona Capitol Times advances the story, discovering that Quayle’s involvement went back deeper than previously known:
Arizona Capitol Times: Quayle’s ties to ‘The Dirty’ founder began in 2005
Recalled Richie, referred to here by his real name, Hooman Karamian:
“There were chicks all over the place, trying to hook up with celebrities,” Karamian said. “We moseyed around the bar and casino tables, just making fun of chicks.”
Karamian, who made a comment on his website about a “crazy hooker” in Tahoe said he was referring to that night, but said he was only talking about a woman that he and Quayle had assumed was a prostitute and on drugs.
“I said (on TheDirty.com), ‘Hey, do you remember that crazy hooker?’ because we saw some hooker who was acting crazy,” Karamian told the Arizona Capitol Times. “I wasn’t implying that he had sex with a hooker at all.”
Thanks for clearing that up, Nik!
On Saturday, the Dirty bites back some more:
The Dirty: Ben Quayle is the Pinocchio of politics
… And on Sunday, a little more:
The Dirty: Brock Landers’ aka Ben Quayle’s Family Values Campaign
10:22 PM
Ben Quayle lies on John King
“I’ve been consistent with my story from the beginning,” he says.
“I had no affiliation with that website.”
11:47 AM
Politico continues to dog Young Benny Quayle
Politico’s latest encapsulation of Quayle’s situation is hard to argue with:
Republican congressional candidate Ben Quayle’s glossy campaign photos and polished talking points paint for voters a portrait of a longtime Arizonan, accomplished attorney and family man who will bring a “new generation” to Washington.
The claims reflect the small biographical exaggerations that often accompany a political newcomer’s first campaign. The reality is that Quayle has held three jobs in four years, posed for pictures in campaign literature with children that were not his, and grew up in Washington with a famous father, former Vice President Dan Quayle, whose influential friends have given generously to the younger Quayle’s campaign.
But Quayle, 33, has had to confront a much bigger credibility issue this week after a blogger revealed that he had once been a contributing writer for Dirty Scottsdale, a raunchy, sex-themed website that covered the club scene in his adopted home town before morphing into the national gossip site TheDirty.com.
[…]
Quayle’s connection to the site has undercut the carefully honed image of a conservative with strong family values, and his inept handling of its disclosure brings up a different association with the Quayle name – his father’s gaffe-prone history.
Meanwhile, Quayle released a new campaign commercial today, in which, he calls Barack Obama “the worst president in history.”
… which is pretty funny.
Quayle’s father, of course, is frequently cited—here and here for example—as among the worst vice presidents in U.S. history.
And Young Benny Quayle himself isn’t exactly going to go down as one of the best congressional candidates in history.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/22/uselections2008.usa
10:05 PM
By the way ... where did the name "Brock Landers" come from?
… Apparently from the film Boogie Nights.
Young Benny Quayle took the name from an interesting character.
I haven’t seen the film recently, but it comes from a film-within-a-film, “Brock Landers: Angels Live In My Town,” in which our hero, the massively endowed Dirk Diggler, casts himself as an omnisexual crime-detecting stud:
Brock Landers: You still hungry?
Jessie St. Vincent: Starving.
Brock: [Unzipping pants] Then feast on that.
The video above is just the fake film credits.
You can see the full raunchy scene with the dialogue here:
8:55 AM
A second (and more important) big unanswered Ben Quayle question
… did wife Tiffany know about his moonlighting gig looking for Scottsdale’s Firstest Foxy Lady?
I read that the man the Sonoran Alliance calls “Benny” Quayle was married “recently.”
Quayle’s double life as the skanky Dirty Scottsdale’s Brock Landers was about three years ago.
8:49 AM
The big unanswered Ben Quayle question
… So, uh, did you ever find the “first foxy lady of Scottsdale?”
By the way, if there’s an original Arizona Republic story on Quayle today I can’t find it on the AZCentral site.
The original Politico story is here.
The second Politico story, in which Quayle admits he lied in the first one, is here.
8:15 AM
Ben Quayle likes young girls! And once adopted a dog in Wickenberg
You might look at the photo above and think, Oh, no—not another generation of Quayles.
The photo is from a campaign mailer in Ben Quayle’s bid for the GOP nomination for John Shadegg’s congressional seat—one of two his campaign has sent out that shows him with the young girls.
Turns out that Quayle, the son of former vice president Dan Quayle, doesn’t have kids.
That despite the fact that he’s certainly acting like their father, the hedline blares “A NEW GENERATION,” and the copy below includes the line, “[Wife] Tiffany and I live in this district and are going to raise our family here.”
A Quayle spokesperson told the Arizona Capitol Times, “They’re just terribly cute kids.”
The ACT didn’t follow up and ask whether Quayle, who is 33, couldn’t find some kids his own age to play with.
An Arizona Republic story says that the Quayle website doesn’t mention any children, though it does contain the information that “Ben and Tiffany have a puppy named Louie they rescued from the Wickenburg Humane Society.”
In the ACT story, the campaign spokesperson, Damon Moley, gets a little defiant:
“We are presenting Ben as a pro-family candidate because he is a pro-family candidate,” Moley said. “We are presenting him as a traditional-values candidate because he is a traditional values candidate.”
He’s pro-family—but doesn’t happen to have one. And he’s into traditional values: Like misrepresentation and pandering.
A Politico story on the mailer says that Quayle has raised more than $1 million thus far.
6:41 AM
The ruling on California's gay marriage ban is coming today
This is the case to overturn Proposition 8, the Mormon-backed initiative that wiped out the ability of gays and lesbians to marry in California.
Most analysts say the U.S. District Court judge will void the proposition, but you never know.
The case against to overturn Prop. 8—and make gay marriage legal again—was led by David Boies and Ted Olsen. The pair got a lot of notice because they were on opposite sides of Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush.
From the SF Chronicle:
Walker’s ruling, due sometime between 1 and 3 p.m., is certain to be appealed to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The case could reach the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 or 2012.
Meanwhile, a new study shows that the millions the Mormons spent spreading misinformation to California families worked.
From the LAT:
The numbers are staggering. In the last six weeks, when both sides saturated the airwaves with television ads, more than 687,000 voters changed their minds and decided to oppose same-sex marriage. More than 500,000 of those, the data suggest, were parents with children under 18 living at home. Because the proposition passed by 600,000 votes, this shift alone more than handed victory to proponents.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. The Yes on 8 campaign targeted parents in its TV ads. “Mom! Guess what I learned in school today!” were the cheery-frightening first words of the supporters' most-broadcast ad. They emerged from the mouth of a young girl who had supposedly just learned that she could marry a female when she grew up.
Among the array of untrue ideas that parents could easily take away: that impressionable kids would be indoctrinated; that they would learn about gay sex; that they would be more likely to become gay; and that they might choose to be gay. California voters, depending on where they lived in the state, were exposed to the Yes on 8 ads 20 to 40 times.
If you haven’t seen it, Netflix 8: The Mormon Proposition, a fairly rigorous documentary that examines the national campaign the Mormons waged against the proposition.
It’s nice—a supposed church collecting money from its flock under the guise of doing good works, and then using it to spread hate and intolerance.
Churches get a pass in our political debate—everyone’s scared to criticize groups that run around with the idea of morality draped about them.
But why can’t we call bigots bigots?
Why don’t they build tolerance rather than spread intolerance?
7:43 AM
A local legislator and publisher has his wages garnished
From the Republic:
State Rep. Cloves Campbell Jr.’s paycheck from his $24,000 annual legislative salary is a lot smaller these days because a judge has ordered automatic payroll deductions to pay for a reception a non-profit group claims it had arranged for him three years ago.
Campbell for two years ignored a lawsuit from an organization called the Leadership Consortium, which said it had spent $15,000 on a D.C. reception for him. The paper says the group gives out minority scholarships.
Campbell denied to the Republic the event had been held for him. As for missing all those court appearances?
“Actually, every time (the court) sent something, I was out of town,” said Campbell, adding that he “can’t recall exactly” the details of those trips.
Campbell is the son of Cloves Campbell Sr., one of the founders of the Arizona Informant, a local black newspaper. Its web site is here.
I couldn’t find his title on the site proper, but local news reports have identified him as “co-publisher” of the paper.
6:38 AM
Russell Pearce: "Phil Gordon is an anarchist!"
Arizona’s goofiest state senator faced off on John Stossel’s Fox show with Nick Gillespie, the longtime editor of Reason magazine, the leading Libertarian publication, and now the head of Reason.TV.
After Stossel asks Pearce about the Phoenix police chief Jack Harris’s opposition to SB 1070, Pearce starts sputtering that Harris is a political appointee “of an open-border, anarchist mayor.”
Hilarity, as they say, ensues:
Later Gillespie and Stossel try to get Pearce to address the plain fact that crime in the state has been dropping steadily for a decade.
If you listen carefully to Pearce’s sputterings in response, you can hear him assert that “child molesters” are coming over the border.
8:22 AM
When it comes to wasting taxpayer dollars on sports teams . . .
… Arizona is the winner.
That’s the verdict of a fact-laden analysis and history of the phenomenon by the business of sports expert Evan Weiner on the site NewJerseyNewsroom.com.
After a lengthy history of the practice, Wiener writes:
You can go virtually to every state in the union, including Alaska and Hawaii and find public dollars invested in sports. But who are the dumbest politicians in the country when it comes to sports spending? That is an easy question to answer.
Arizona.
Had the Phoenix city council been smart, which they were not, they would have approved a multi-purpose arena back in the late 1980s that would have accommodated the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and an NHL team. Instead lawmakers approved a $90 million expenditure that was designed to appease Suns owner Jerry Colangelo.
The arena was built in such a way that the building was only good for basketball and not hockey or Arena Football or indoor soccer and that severely limited the potential revenues that could be generated in the place.
Making sure they further satisfied Colangelo, the terms of the lease between the city and the NBA team required that the franchise pay the bulk of lease payments in years 36-40 of the 40-year lease agreement.
The real rent is supposed to kick in around 2028 but given the lifespan of facilities (the Miami Arena was viable for about 11 years, the Charlotte Coliseum for about 13), it is doubtful that the team will even be playing in the arena in 2028 or 2029.
He then does a case studies on all the other Valley sports facilities.
It’s not a pretty tale.
7:25 AM
Censorship dustup at the Cave Creek Film & Arts Fest
The Republic reports this a.m. that Suzanne Johnson has resigned from the board of the organization she founded after the fest removed a film called Sex and Violence from the lineup.
In fairness, the censorship involved was circumstantial rather than deliberate.
The fest was showing films in a local high school; that got it hung up on its lease for the space, which stated it wouldn’t be showing things inappropriate for a school environment.
That’s obviously not the ideal agreement to have for a film festival directed at adults.
Johnson herself acknowledged the spot the board was in:
She said the festival has gone on record as not censoring material, and that the omission compromised the festival.
She had been one of the festival’s chairs and oversaw the films being shown. She also was vice president of the board of directors.
“I don’t believe there’s room for censorship in society, and the fact that I had to censor this film … I just couldn’t be on a board that says it doesn’t censor,” Johnson said.
The real culprit?
An anonymous Arizona goon:
Johnson said the film was singled out by a member of the community who was upset that it was going to be in the lineup. She asked school officials to screen the movie, and they decided it was not appropriate to be shown on campus.
The fest runs through this weekend. Its web site is here.
A full schedule is here.
Info on the film Sex and Violence, directed by a Scottsdale native named Charles Petersen, is here.
6:33 AM
Arizona to the poor: Screw You
From a story in yesterday’s Republic:
Arizona grocery prices inched up in the second quarter for the second straight quarter, following more than a year of declines.
The Arizona Farm Bureau Federation’s non-scientific Market Basket Survey found that Arizona consumers paid $2.88, or 6 percent, more for a hypothetical basket of groceries in the second quarter of this year than they did in the first.
The increase in Arizona was more than the $1.66, or 4 percent, increase seen nationwide.
What did the state legislature do, with a big assist from Jan Brewer and the voters themselves?
Increase the state sales tax by one percentage point.
… bringing the total hit for a working poor family to seven percent.
Since working people spend just about all their money—and these, days, in fact, are going into debt—that translates to seven percent less food for their kids….or seven percent more debt.
Update: Dylan Smith of the Tucson Sentinel writes in to say that Arizona doesn’t charge sales tax on food. I was confused at first—I specifically recalled discussions on food sales taxes.
Turns out I was remembering articles about the city of Phoenix, which recently instituted a two percent food sales tax. I was wrong about Arizona, and shouldn’t have used food as an example.
The large point stands, however: Since working folks spend most of their earnings, they will be buying their kids six percent less food—and, thanks to Brewer & Co., seven one percent less clothes, toys and entertainment.
10:14 AM
The Daily Show visits Phoenix—again
The show’s newest correspondent, Olivia Munn, asks doltish state Rep. Carl Seel why speed cameras are unconstitutional but SB 1070 isn’t.
| Arizona's Photo Radar | ||
8:04 AM
The Arizona Republic breaks the towing scams in the Valley wide open!
Towing companies, the story says, confiscate cars they shouldn’t, won’t let people get personal items out of the cars once they are towed, demand fees of $150 or more in cash to reclaim cars … and even arrange kickbacks with property owners.
(That last, for example, creates an incentive for the lot owners not to label the tow zones clearly.)
But wait! you say. The legislature passed a bill outlawing a lot of these practices earlier this year!
What happened?
The push for reform at the state level has gained support from some tow-truck company owners, who blame the abuses on a few bad actors giving their industry a bad name. Still, towing legislation in 2008 and 2009 could not gain approval in the state Senate.
This year, as more cash-strapped motorists complained about being fleeced, the Legislature passed the strongest towing-reform bill in Arizona history.
But Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed it, saying it would cost too much to enforce.
Thanks, Jan!
This was her rationale for vetoing the bill:
“[Law enforcement agencies] would need to reassign officers away from law enforcement duties to private towing oversight functions.”
But that’s an argument against any piece of legislation. It’s a prime argument against SB 1070, in fact, not to mention most drug laws.
It’s even a great argument against laws against murder!
“Why, if we make murder illegal, then cops will be pulled away from other law-enforcement duties!”
What’s the difference? The people facing the brunt of the enforcement of SB 1070 are harmless and poor immigrants.
For the towing bill, it was scumbag local towing companies.
Brewer’s concerns extended only to the businesses.
Now, PHXated doesn’t feel that sorry for the people getting their cars towed. Too many drivers are thoughtless at best and radiate a sense of I’ll-park-my-SUV-wherever-I-want arrogance at worst.
They deserve to be towed.
But if there are towing abuses, there’s a right way to correct them: Charge local towing companies fees that would pay for someone in government to handle complaints and enforcement for their industry.
But that would be a tax on small business!
The result: Another example of Republican political philosophy that, conveniently, protects corporate crooks … and fucks over the populace.
The Republic story on the matter, which ledes the paper today, is long and seemingly in-depth.
But read it closely and you can see there’s very little in the story beside people asserting that there’s a towing problem in town. The two case studies the story offers are entirely one-sided. In both cases the towing company involved isn’t named, much less offered a chance to respond.
10:13 AM
Everything that's wrong with Arizona, encapsulated in a quote from one Barbara McGovern
From a front-page feature in the Republic this a.m.:
Five times a week, Barbara McGovern leaves her east Phoenix home to make the 15-minute drive to Piestewa Peak, the mountain she has loved climbing for a decade.
But, in the coming weeks, as she pulls into a parking space, it will be with a bit of resentment. Because starting Aug. 1, it’s going to cost McGovern and anyone else who parks at one of the Phoenix mountain parks or preserves up to $5 a day.
“I’m kind of flabbergasted,” McGovern said Friday, upon hearing about the new fee system Phoenix Parks and Recreation board members approved Thursday. “It seems like we’re getting taxed right and left. They shouldn’t be charging for this. It’s going to be a financial burden for some people.”
It’s possible McGovern isn’t what she seems to be: a classic Arizona Republican, one of those who’ve been electing, year after year, the destructive and clownish folks in the state legislature and then stand around whining when reality intrudes.
If she isn’t, well, then, she’s that other species of local resident, the Arizonicus boobicus—someone not entirely clear on the concept.
Parks cost money. Either you get taxed for them … or you pay directly for them.
I’m pretty sure that, between the short-sighted local statehouse and the nutty Bush tax cuts, “east Phoenix residents” like her have been treated very solicitously by the IRS over the last decade.
It’s intellectually coherent to say, “Why should we be taxed for parks? Let the people who use them pay for them.”
Or to say, “Parks are a public trust that should be paid out of public funds for the benefits of rich and poor alike.”
But neither? Does McGovern think money for parks grows on trees?
p.s.: Indeed—does the Republic? A nonsensical person like McGovern should not have been quoted that high up in the story. It gives it an imprimatur of coherence it obviously doesn’t deserve.
8:42 AM
2Jan Brewer doubles down on lying
The governor said last week that the majority of illegal immigrants were smuggling drugs.
In the face of the predictable outcry—even John McCain distanced himself from the statement over the weekend—Brewer could have acknowledged an overstatement and moved on.
Instead, she’s doubling down on the lie, getting shriller and making even less sense.
Her original quote:
“The majority of them, in my opinion and I think in the opinion of law enforcement, is that they’re not coming here to work. They’re coming here and they’re bringing drugs, and they’re doing drop houses, and they’re extorting people, and they’re terrorizing the families.”
Asked in an interview whether he agrees that most illegal immigrants are “drug mules,” the Republican senator said: “No.”
With the media continuing to press her on the statement, Brewer’s office released a slightly unhinged followup. From the PBJ:
“There has been some media attention in the last several hours regarding statements I made this morning regarding the level of drug and crime activity being perpetrated by illegal immigrants coming into and residing in Arizona,“ Brewer’s said in the statement. "The simple truth is that the majority of human smuggling in our state is under the direction of the drug cartels, which are by definition smuggling drugs.”
Notice how she’s blurring the issue from “illegal immigrants are smuggling drugs” to “they are being smuggled by drug cartels.”
The story continues:
“It is common knowledge that Mexican drug cartels have merged human smuggling with drug trafficking. For example, the Los Angeles Times on March 23, 2009, reported, ‘The business of smuggling humans across the Mexican border has been brisk, with many thousands coming across every year. But smugglers affiliated with the drug cartels have taken the enterprise to a new level — and made it more violent — by commandeering much of the operation from independent coyotes, according to these officials and recent congressional testimonies.’ This article and many federal government reports have drawn the same conclusions.
“The human rights violations that have taken place victimizing immigrants and their families are abhorrent. Border crossers are used by drug cartels as commodities. Mexican drug cartels have merged human smugglers who use their expertise in gathering intelligence on border patrols, logistics and communication devices to get around even tighter controls. U.S. border officials have stated that traffickers are gaining control of much of the illegal passage of immigrants from Mexico to the United States.”
As with so many debates in this state, the real issue here isn’t what it seems.
Of course Brewer is lying. She knows it’s not true that a majority of illegal immigrants are smuggling drugs. We know from numerous government reports that a big chunk of them are just people who’ve overstayed their visa, and we know that most of the rest are doing menial labor, a lot of it outside in incredible heat, just from simple observation.
The real issue is the state of politics in this state. Brewer’s campaign strategy is now apparent. She’s just going to repeat her mantra:
“Illegal immigration, illegal immigration, drugs, violence, illegal immigration, drugs, violence, illegal immigration, drugs, violence, illegal immigration, drugs, violence, child porn, tax cuts blah blah blah.”
And the question for the future of the state is whether Terry Goddard can come up with an effective enough campaign to combat it.
7:16 AM
Duke Tully R.I.P.: The comments!
From the post earlier today noting the passing of Duke Tully, the publisher of the Arizona Republic who resigned in disgrace after admitting he’d faked a lifetime of war exploits:
Francine Hardaway:
I was one of Duke Tully’s charmees in the 80s when I had my PR company. He would take me to lunch at Avanti, where he would have two martinis and tell me war stories. I knew nothing about the Air Force, so I had no way to judge truth. I was on a ski vacation with my daughters when the fraud story broke, and we still laugh about it.
Anon:
Perhaps, Francine, you would like to consider that one mistake does not define a person. That one fabrication that was difficult to let go of made him any less honourable, kind, or loving. In between your bouts of laughter, maybe you should reflect on just what gives you the right to judge someone so harshly. I’m sure you’ve never made a regrettable decision in your entire, small-minded life. I hope there are none who hold you in such low regard for a transgression of your own.
APC:
Duke was more than this one event. He was a good man, and came clean before the pressure from political enemies. He’d been dropping hints for some time, since he was wracked with guilt. Even though he was advised to quietly stop telling war stories and distance himself from it, he refused to stay quiet. THAT is the mark of an honorable man. Admitting his mistake and acknowledging fault.
And did he get any help from John McCain, after helping McCain so much? Not so much as a word of sympathy. McCain had gotten what he wanted, and washed his hands with no compassion.
Duke will be missed.
PHXated observes:
We have known Ms. Hardaway for only a short time, but are sure that her transgressions are equally entertaining but less hypocritical.
What the Republic obit didn’t mention was that Tully presided over the Republic when it was fat and self-satisfied—and a far-right defender of the status quo. (Pulliam newspapers were famously rigid and atavistic.)
The lives of all minority groups were attenuated at that time—gays and women, blacks and Hispanics. In the meantime, the small-mindedness of the city fathers (they were all of course men) laid the groundwork for the state today: A backward minor republic with a crappy, undeveloped economy; small-minded citizens; a ruefully mediocre educational system; and a bunch of social metrics identical to those of the Deep South.
We delighteded in his downfall because it was a small but enjoyable payback for those decades of intolerance and neglect.
And it’s also a reminder that our poltroons of the moment—that’s you, Russell Pearce, and you, Joe Arpaio!—may yet have their comeuppance!
1:30 PM
Duke Tully dies
The former publisher of the Arizona Republic died yesterday in Florida.
No worries that the paper would soft-pedal the scandal that drove him out of town; the obit goes into delightful detail:
Darrow “Duke” Tully, the former Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette publisher who faked an elaborate military career and resigned in disgrace, has died of complications from a stroke in Tampa. He was 78.
Tully was publisher of The Republic and Gazette until December 1985, when he resigned after learning that his political enemies were investigating his war record.
Tom Collins, Maricopa County attorney at the time, planned to have a news conference to expose Tully, who claimed to have been an Air Force combat pilot in the Korean and Vietnam wars.
[…]
Longtime friend and employee Bill Shover said Tully’s dual existence was driven by his need to win his father’s approval.
“He was rejected by the Air Force because he had bad vision and flat feet,” said Shover, former director of public affairs for Phoenix Newspapers Inc., which owned The Republic and The Gazette during Tully’s tenure.
Tully’s brother was killed in World War II during a training mission and his father criticized him for not becoming a war hero, Shover recalled.
That’s when Tully turned his sights on newspapers and was told he could curry favor with a small Indiana paper if he pretended to be a veteran.
From there, Tully’s stories about his military exploits escalated.
6:44 AM
4Huppenthal's video Waterloo makes the front of AZ Central
The full video, as Yuri noted in his update below, shows that the original You Tube posting was unfair to Huppenthal.
That said, he was still totally unable to answer a simplequestion from a high-schooler.
9:57 PM
Tom Horne: "I'll stick to my own facts!"
Heat City has a hilarious post about outgoing state superintendant Tom Horne, now a candidate for attorney general.
He’s been going around saying a fence would work along the U.S.-Mexico border because Israel’s fence in the West Bank has “totally put a stop to terrorism.”
There are of course about 19 differences between the two situations that render the comparison risible.
Nick Martin takes a look at just the issue of stopping terrorism, and finds that Israel is still chronicling scores of acts each month. Martin called Horne for a response and relates this exchange:
“I think that was pretty common knowledge,” Horne said. “It’s been all over the newspapers.”
Asked which newspapers had reported it, Horne could not name one.
[…]
But instead of changing his mind after hearing the facts, Horne stuck to his story. He said he remained certain of his claim’s accuracy despite what the Israeli government reported.
“I’ll stand by it,” he said. “I’m talking about something that there is pretty common knowledge about.”
Full post here.
7:55 AM
New York Times to Jan Brewer: Why won't you free William Macumber?
The Times today has a story about a legal case from Arizona.
There’s a guy in prison the state’s clemency board says is there because of a “miscarriage of justice.” Jan Brewer could accept the board’s recommendation but hasn’t—and according to the Times, won’t say why.
… Ms. Brewer rejected the board’s recommendation without explanation in November. It is possible that politics played a role in her decision; Ms. Brewer, a Republican who became governor last year, is running for a full term in November.
“She denied the application right after she announced that she was running for governor,” said Katherine Puzauskas, a lawyer with the Arizona Justice Project at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. […]
There is little political upside to granting clemency, but there is a substantial risk, as Mike Huckabee learned when a man whose sentence he commuted as governor of Arkansas in 2000 killed four police officers last year.
P. S. Ruckman Jr., a political science professor at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Ill., has been fuming about Ms. Brewer’s handling of the Macumber case. “I have been following state clemency for 30 years,” Mr. Ruckman said, “and this is easily, easily, the most disturbing. It’s borderline despicable.”
Emphases added.
The case is a doozy—the man’s son says his mother framed the father. She testified originally he had said he’d killed two people in the desert outside Scottsdale in 1962. Macumber was sentenced to life without parole.
In the story, the Times talks to the wife:
In the course of a half-hour conversation, Ms. Kempfert accused Mr. Macumber of terrible and disturbing crimes beyond the killings in the desert. Asked if he deserved clemency, she said, “Absolutely not.”
7:13 AM
Yuma's anti-gay mayor: "I don't want to compare myself to Abraham Lincoln, but ..."
Earlier this week, you’ll recall that Yuma’s kooky mayor, Al Krieger, got some attention by saying that those pushing for the reform of the armed services' “Don’t ask, dpn’t tell” policy were “limp-wristed, lacey-drawered[?] people”.
Now you can see a video of what he said and how he said it… accompanied by his explanation, which is that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln would have said the same:
4:10 PM
Bishop Thomas "The Turtle" Olmsted: Candidate for Worst Arizonan!
It’s a tough competition in a state with Joe Arpaio, John McCain and Russell Pearce. But the head of the local Catholic diocese, Bishop Thomas “The Turtle” Olmsted, is right up there as one of the most despicable figures in the state.
E.J. Montini in the Republic noted this last month: That while the local Episcopal Bishop, Kirk Stevan Smith, has come out against SB 1070, Olmsted hasn’t said a word.
Olmsted’s counterpart in Los Angeles, Roger Mahony, has condemned the law in the most forthright terms, saying it used “German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques.”
From Olmsted? Nothing.
Olmsted’s also the guy who presumably orchestrated the diocese’s $50,000 donation to an anti-gay marriage campaign in Maine in 2008…
… and he’s also made it clear to administrators at St. Joseph’s hospital that he’ll scuttle their careers if they even think about approving an abortion—even to save the life of the mother.
Religious people are supposed to be compassionate and righteous, the enemies of cruelty and hypocrisy. Olmsted is more like Tony Soprano, overseeing a many-fingered operation that lacks morality and enforces its dictats brutally.
He deserves an appropriate street name; given his testudinal visage, as seen above, it seems “The Turtle” is most appropriate.
8:29 AM
NPR reports on the debacle at St. Joseph's
(updated to include Bishop Olmsted’s testudinal visage, above)
Earlier this week it was revealed that a local bishop, Thomas J. Olmsted, had cashiered an administrator at St. Joseph’s hospital after she permitted an abortion to save the life of its mother.
(The bishop also excommunicated the mother, which hardly seemed sporting. I mean, having been in a position essentially to murder her had he been in the operating room that night, Bishop Olmsted with the parting shot of an excommunication leaves himself open to the charge of just being petty.)
NPR reports tonight and makes the obvious point:
It’s funny how the Catholic Church administers punishment with swiftness and surety when the victim is an 11-week-old fetus and the supposed criminal is a woman.
But it has never seemed to act with the same assurance when the victims are hundreds if not thousands of children and the criminals are scores if not hundreds of predatory male priests:
“In the case of priests who are credibly accused and known to be guilty of sexually abusing children, they are in a sense let off the hook,” canon lawyer Rev. Thomas] Doyle says.
Doyle says no pedophile priests have been excommunicated. When priests have been caught, he says, their bishops have protected them, and it has taken years or decades to defrock them, if ever.
“Yet in this instance we have a sister who was trying to save the life of a woman, and what happens to her? The bishop swoops down [and] declares her excommunicated before he even looks at all the facts of the case,” Doyle says.
10:32 AM
Creepy bishop punishes a hospital administrator for allowing an abortion--to save a woman's life
A Catholic nun and longtime administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix was reassigned in the wake of a decision to allow a pregnancy to be ended in order to save the life of a critically ill patient.
The decision also drew a sharp rebuke from Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, head of the Phoenix Diocese, who indicated the woman was “automatically excommunicated” because of the action.
Bishop Olmsted is apparently also the guy who cashiered the nun. St. Joseph’s is the hospital on Thomas and Third Avenue.
The story explains:
The actions involving the administrator, mostly taken within the past couple of weeks, followed a last-minute, life-or-death drama in late 2009. The patient had a rare and often fatal condition in which a pregnancy can cause the death of the mother.
Sister Margaret McBride, who had been vice president of mission integration at the hospital, was on call as a member of the hospital’s ethics committee when the surgery took place, hospital officials said. She was part of a group of people, including the patient and doctors, who decided upon the course of action.
The patient was not identified, and details of her case cannot be revealed under federal privacy laws.
This decidedly un-compassionate act comes after another one the local diocese is known for—donating $50,000 to an anti-gay marriage political campaign in Maine in 2008.
So people who are donating to local Catholic churches are having their money go to hate campaigns in other states … and to prop up local abortion fetishists who persecute hospital administrators put in the position of having to make a horrible decisions — not to mention the sick patients whose life hung in the balance.
(Though we have to note that excommunication strikes us as a pretty positive development for the woman. I mean, it’s obvious the bishop wasn’t looking out for her best interests.)
And for the rest of us, who wants to patronize a hospital that will let its patient’s die because of the radical religious views of a crazy bishop?
1:10 PM
Jeff Flake: "Uh, I guess I was wrong!"
From a New York Times article on the Office of Congressional Ethics:
“They had some pretty serious investigating,” said Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, an opponent of earmarks who voted against creating Mr. Wise’s office but has since offered praise. “There is an impact, and it was certainly felt in this case.”
10:22 AM
DMX performing for a church—what could possibly go wrong?
New Times has a story up saying that rapper DMX, the creepy serial animal abuser and petty crook, is going to be doing a gospel show to raise money for a Glendale Church. The celeb gossip site TMZ broke the story.
Both stories say he’s appearing at the church, but the poster says it’s actually at a Glendale high school.
It’s not clear to me that the words “DMZ,” “church” and “public high school” should be appearing in the same sentence:
• In 2007, the county raided his house and found a dozen abused dogs, many of them starving—and the bodies of three more buried in the yard.
• Sheriffs also found marijuana “packaged for sale” and other drug paraphernalia, local papers said.
• A year later, sheriffs raided the house again to serve an arrest warrant — and found five new pit bull pups.
• On the petty crook level, he ran up $3000 in traffic fines in Cave Creek and never bothered to show up in court.
• He was also charged with “theft of services” from the local Mayo Clinic. According to the Republic, which based the story on a search warrant police executed, police say he went to the hospital and was diagnosed with pneumonia, but gave a false name and skipped out on the bill.
• Stealing from the Mayo Clinic. Nice!
• He’s also been sued by American Express for non-payment of nearly $100,000 in bills.
• And I’m forgetting something …
• Oh, yeah: He already has been convicted once on thirteen counts of abusing animals — which is why he left New Jersey for Arizona in the first place.
From the Republic:
In the New Jersey case, police found 13 pit bull puppies held in cages or crates in the basement and garage of the rapper’s Teaneck, N.J. home.
“They were growing into their cages,” said Ray Koski , a former special prosecutor who represented the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which brought the charges.
The confinement deformed the puppies, Koski said, adding that a veterinarian had to cut them out of their cages.
“They looked like they had grill marks on them,” Koski said. Four survived. The others either died or were euthanized, Koski said. Published reports said the house reeked of dog urine and feces and was infested with flies, when police arrived.
1:58 PM