Poor ticket sales, expected protests scuttle Bush-McCain fundraiser at Phoenix Convention Center

Phoenix Business Journal - May 23, 2008

A Tuesday fundraiser headlined by President Bush for U.S. Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is being moved out of the Phoenix Convention Center.

Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue than attending the fundraiser inside.

Want to see a signature worth $320 million? Click here. It belongs to Jack Gardner, an official with the now-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority, who in July 2003 authorized that amount to be transferred to the Iraqi Ministry of Finance for the payment of Iraqi salaries. There are no other records of the transfer, just Mr. Gardner's John Hancock. Now that's power.

The payment is but one example of the process by which U.S. dollars have disappeared without a trace into the confusion (and, yes, corruption) of Iraq reconstruction, confounding Pentagon auditors who are now trying to find out where all that money went... and what exactly, if anything, the U.S. got in return.

One such auditor is Mary L. Ugone, the Pentagon's deputy inspector general for audit. Her testimony this morning before Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-Calif.) Committee on Oversight and Government Reform coincided with the release of a new report from Pentagon's Office of Inspector General, which reviewed over 180,000 payments made by the Pentagon to contractors in Iraq, Kuwait, and Egypt, totaling approximately $8.2 billion. Of that, the Pentagon admits that it cannot properly account for how $7.8 billion-"a stunning 95% failure rate in following basic accounting standards," Waxman said in his opening statement.

The IG report details how $135 million was paid to the governments of the United Kingdom, South Korea, Poland, and others contributing troops to Iraq without any mechanism for determining how it was used. Another $1.8 billion in seized Iraqi assets were also simply given away, without any accountability. IG investigators examined 53 payment invoices. Not one made note of the money's ultimate destination.

The keepsakes consist of a miniature bathroom stall with a couple of lower legs and feet. One of the feet is springloaded and "taps," which, the Saints' press release says, is in honor of National Tap Dance Day.

The team also takes pains to note: "It doesn't matter if your tapping style is done with a 'wide stance' or is used as some sort of code."
Minneapolis Star

On Sunday, May 25 the first 2500 fans through the gates at Midway Stadium will receive a Saints bobble foot in honor of National Tap Dance Day and in tribute to all their toe-tapping friends and fans from around the nation who may ever have set foot in Minneapolis-St. Paul... even for just a change of planes.

Seven active-duty Army brigades have been scheduled to deploy to Iraq later this year, the Defense Department announced yesterday, a plan that would allow U.S. commanders to keep troop levels at about 140,000 through the end of the Bush administration and into the next president's term.

The deployments will be part of the regular rotation of troops into Iraq and will come on the heels of the "surge" of troops, which is expected to end this summer. The increased U.S. presence in Iraq -- which topped out at about 170,000 troops -- is expected to go down to 140,000 by the end of July. U.S. officials plan to keep 15 combat brigades in Iraq through the end of the year, though ongoing assessments could allow commanders to change those numbers.

Until very recently -- like suddenly this afternoon -- Karl Rove was to most Democrats the Great Satan, the political mastermind of two outrageously stunning Republican presidential victories by a Texas goofball governor and, before that, the unfortunate upseNew York Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has long denounced political strategist Karl Rove, who engineered George W. Bush's two White House wins, and criticized her opponent Illinois Senator Barack Obama for allegedly following Rove's playbook, but now she cites Rove as an expert because he says at the moment she's the strongest Democratic candidate against Republican Arizona senator John McCaint ousting of a popular Democratic governor named Ann Richards, as well as the overall rejuvenation of the Lone Star state GOP in statewide offices.

In recent months one of the worst things Sen. Hillary Clinton could say about her chief opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, was that he was taking moves out of the "Karl Rove playbook." Can you imagine?! "Shame on you, Barack Obama!" she said. Which, if you stop to think about it, means Obama was being successful.

How quickly things change in this season's presidential politics.

"Just today," Clinton said, "I found some curious support for that position when one of the TV networks released an analysis done by -- of all people -- Karl Rove, saying that I was the stronger candidate. Somebody got a hold of his analysis and there it is."

A White House statement on Friday said the US has agreed to help protect the resources of Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, and help it develop peaceful nuclear energy.

"The US and Saudi Arabia will sign a memorandum of understanding in the area of peaceful civil nuclear energy co-operation."

The announcement came as Bush ended a three-day trip to Israel where he vowed to oppose Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Bush's Controversial FEC Nominee Withdraws Name

Controversial Federal Election Commission nominee Hans von Spakovsky has withdrawn his name from consideration for the post, potentially clearing the way for a deal that could get the crippled agency back up and running.

Von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department lawyer and Republican nominee to the commission, told the White House Friday he was withdrawing his name. His candidacy has been at the center of a partisan standoff in the Senate, as Democrats strongly opposed him for his past work on voting rights issues. With four vacancies on the commission -- two from each party -- Democrats wanted to vote on each nominee separately so they could kill von Spakovsky's chances. But Republicans insisted on voting on all four nominees as a group, and neither side would budge.

The standoff has meant that the FEC only has two out of six commissioners working, not enough for a quorum necessary to take substantive action. That has threatened Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) chances of getting public funding for his general election campaign, since the FEC must sign off before the U.S. Treasury can release the funds.

Democrat Wins House Seat in Mississippi

Democrats scored a remarkable upset victory on Tuesday in a special Congressional election in this conservative Southern district, sending a clear signal of national problems ahead for Republicans in the fall.

The Democrat, Travis Childers, a local courthouse official, pulled together a coalition of blacks, who turned out heavily, and old-line "yellow dog" Democrats, to beat his Republican opponent, Greg Davis, the mayor of Southaven, a Memphis suburb. With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, the vote was 54 percent for Mr. Childers to 46 percent for Mr. Davis.

The seat had been in Republican hands since 1995, and the district, largely rural and stretching across the northern top of Mississippi, had been considered one of the safest in the country for President Bush's party, as he won here with 62 percent of the vote in 2004.

President Bush said yesterday that he gave up golfing in 2003 "in solidarity" with the families of soldiers who were dying in Iraq, concluding that it was "just not worth it anymore" to play the sport in a time of war.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," Bush said in a White House interview with the Politico. "I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

Although Bush says he has given up golf, he is a mountain-biking enthusiast who has been photographed taking part in rides. He took up biking after an injury sidelined him from running.

But Dallek, who is critical of the current president's legacy, said Bush's remarks about Iraq "speak to his shallowness." Dallek added: "That's his idea of sacrifice, to give up golf?"

President Bush's daughter Jenna Welch Bush on Saturday married Henry Chase Hager, a graduate student and son of a former Virginia lieutenant governor, before 200 relatives and close family friends here, the White House confirmed.

On Saturday afternoon, the Hager family hosted wedding guests at a barbecue in Salado. The wedding, which began at 7:30 p.m., took place on the Bush ranch, before a white limestone altar erected next to a man-made lake. The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston officiated at the ceremony. Mr. Caldwell, a longtime religious adviser to Mr. Bush, has endorsed Senator Barack Obama.

The Bush administration on Friday urged a federal appeals court to stop meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease, but a skeptical judge questioned whether the government has that authority.

The government seeks to reverse a lower court ruling that allowed Arkansas City, Kan.-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef to conduct more comprehensive testing to satisfy demand from overseas customers in Japan and elsewhere.

Less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows are currently tested for the disease under Agriculture Department guidelines. The agency argues that more widespread testing does not guarantee food safety and could result in a false positive that scares consumers.

Larger meatpackers have opposed Creekstone's push to allow wider testing out of fear that consumer pressure would force them to begin testing all animals too.

Bush Would Use Power of Persuasion to Raise Oil Supply

"I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply," Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, told reporters here today. "Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot."

President Bush's decision in 2002 to sign a farm bill loaded with billions of dollars of new agricultural subsidies triggered considerable criticism from GOP conservatives true to the party's anti-spending philosophy.

Now, as Congress nears final agreement on a new five-year farm bill that will cost nearly $300 billion, the president has taken a harder line. Emboldened by soaring food prices and record farm profits, he has pressed Congress to cut farm subsidies sharply and has made clear that he will veto the popular bill if lawmakers do not meet his demands.