Newsweek jumps into the fray regarding Howard Kaloogian’s deceptively labeled photo album. The real issues here is not that Kaloogian or someone on his staff made a mistake. The photo and its accompanying caption were posted at Kaloogian’s Move America Forward website long before it was moved over to his campaign website. The purpose of the photo was deception. The photo was used not because it was an accurate portrait of what was going on in Baghdad during Kaloogian’s July visit to the Iraq. The photo was used in a typical Kaloogian attack on the news media. It supported Kaloogian’s fantasy that things were going well in Iraq and that the liberal news media was ignoring all the good news. It should speak volumes that the only way Kaloogian could make his point was to select a photo of a different city in a different country.

Kaloogian, a candidate to replace the vacated seat of disgraced former congressman Randall (Duke) Cunningham, traveled to Iraq on what his Web site calls the “’Voices of Soldiers’ Truth Tour.” The photo in question had the following caption, “We took this photo of downtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq.  Iraq (including  Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it—in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism.”

In the end, the real winner here will be the American people. Already the blogosphere is filled with stories about Kaloogian, his astroturf Move America Forward organization and the relationship of Move America Forward with Republican PR firm, Russo, Marsh + Rogers. The truth that Kaloogian so passionately wants to be told is going to start to expose Kaloogian.

Here is a quick Kaloogian sampling from post at Words Have Power:

March 28 – Kaloogian And The Truth

March 12 –  howardisaliar.com

March 11 –  Kaloogian News – Or Maybe Not

March 5  –  Look Who’s Pimping for Kaloogian

February 16 –  Kaloogian Alert – Toxic – Full Protective Gear Required

December 27 –  More Lies….

August 31 –  Move America Backwards

August 20 –  Kaloogian’s Group Attacks Cindy Sheehan

August 2 –  PR for the Civil War

July 13 –  Astroturf Howard

Howard Kaloogian is part of the right wing noise machine. His job is divide this country not help solve its problems. He is running for congress so he can be part of the same ruling party that tolerated Randy Cunningham and sucked up to Jack Abramoff.

He is part of the problem, not part of the solution

With less than two weeks to go before the 50th congressional district special election, a new poll has Democrat Francine Busby within striking distance of a stunning victory that would make her the districts new congressional representative and preclude the need for a run-off election in June.

A SurveyUSA poll released today shows Busby favored by 45% of likely voters. There has been a change of position among her chief Republican rivals, with millionaire Eric “Gonna Buy Me an Election” Roach and “truth” impaired winger Howard Kaloogian moving past early Republican front runner, Brian “Lobbyist” Bilbray.

Analysis: In a Special Primary for the U.S. House of Representatives in California’s 50th Congressional District today, 3/28/06, Democrat Francine Busby tops a crowded field of Republicans, but falls just short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff June 6th. With 2 weeks to the 4/11 Primary, Busby is at 45%, trailed by Republican Eric Roach at 14%, Republican Howard Kaloogian at 12%, and Republican Brian Bilbray at 10%. Busby is supported by 85% of Democrats, half of Independents, and 10% of Republicans. Kaloogian and Roach are each supported by 23% of Republicans. The district is heavily Republican and whichever Republican survives the Primary would be favored in a runoff, but the Democrats have a chance to capture the seat if Busby can top 50% in the Primary. Busby gets 53% among female voters. The larger the turnout among women, the better Busby’s chances to avoid a runoff.

Is this Busby surge real? Are independents and undecided moving in her direction? The opportunity is there for Busby to take this thing outright. It will come down to GOTV efforts and advertising exposure over the next 12 days.

I expect to see Roach move his attacks from Bilbray to Busby over the next few days. He is the only one of the top three Republicans that can afford to change the direction of his advertising and he now has to slow Busby down to keep her from an outright win.

Recent polling information regarding candidates in the 50^th Congressional District special election has a couple of candidates fuming.  Millionaire Alan Uke and state senator Bill Morrow had less than stellar performance in the Datamar poll released yesterday.

Both candidates now question the methodology used by Datamar.  The ballot for the April 11 special election is crowded with 18 candidates, including 14 Republicans.  Each of the top three Republicans were preferred by potential voters by margins of three and four to one over Uke and Morrow.

  Uke and Morrow claim that Datamar’s failure to rotate the names of candidates read to respondents in the phone survey doomed them to show poorly.

“The poll is inaccurate,” Uke said.

He said he has had his own poll conducted by a private company, and those poll results show that “right now,” most voters are undecided.

[…]

A spokesman for Morrow’s campaign also protested Datamar’s failure to rotate names.

“It’s a real disservice when a poll holds itself out as credible when its methodology is so clearly lacking in credibility,” said Morrow campaign spokesman Joe Justin.

Of course, their excuse for an equally poor showing in the Lake poll also released yesterday can’t be blamed on the lack of name rotation, as that methodology was used by Lake.

It could be that the public just doesn’t find much relevance in either candidate.

The AP put out an interesting story about Representative Dick Pombo today. The story is a pitiful fluff piece that goes out of its way to be kind to Pombo. In fact, the story goes out of its way to insure that one of Pombo’s most obvious lies goes unchallenged.

According to the AP story, little Dicky Pombo decided to go after the endangered species act because of the economic impact of the law on local development in Northern California.

 

In the early 1980s, he was upset when the presence of the endangered San Joaquin kit fox contributed to stopping development of a proposed town outside Tracy. After serving on the Tracy City Council from 1990 to 1992, Pombo won a congressional seat by pledging to revise the legislation.

Opponents “were able to use an endangered species that no one had ever seen or heard of in order to stop that project from going forward,” said Pombo, co-author of the 1996 book, “This Land is Our Land: How to End the War on Private Property.”

Unfortunately, this story is much different than the story Pombo told a congressional committee in 1994.  According to the Los Angeles Times:

In 1994 he told a Senate subcommittee that he ran for Congress after the ranch was declared critical habitat for the endangered San Joaquin kit fox, stripping his land of its value and forcing his family to run the ranch “with an unwanted, unneeded, un-silent partner — the federal government.”

But, as the Times notes, Pombo’s 1994 story wasn’t actually true.

The tale turns out to have been embroidered. Pombo’s ranch is a corridor for the kit fox, the smallest fox in North America. But it is not critical habitat, which the government has never designated anywhere for the tiny fox. Pombo paid $5,137 into a regional habitat conservation plan to compensate for houses he and relatives were building on the ranch. But that was years after his congressional testimony.

Today, Pombo concedes his characterization was “mistaken” and says having kit fox habitat on his land “didn’t prevent me from doing anything.”

I’m sure that the AP did all sorts of fact checking before it decided to promote one of Dick Pombo’s more egregious lies.

The Swing State Project picks up on an illegal campaign mailer in the CA-50 special election race. Seems that millionaire Eric Roach has put together a two page letter, ostensible written by his wife, touting his candidacy. Problem is the Roach campaign fails to note anywhere on the document that they are responsible for it, a clear violation of the law.

In other words, if you send out a mailer, you’ve got to put one of those little disclaimers on it, saying who authorized and paid for the mailer. The Roach campaign sent out a two-page letter – purporting to be from his wife, Meg – but didn’t include any disclaimers at all. Not on page one, not on page two, not on the front of the envelope, not on the back of the envelope.

The letter, which looks more like a 14 year olds diary entry, suggest among other rather foolish things that the Roach campaign is “more of a ‘grassroots’ effort.” How spending a million dollars out of your own pocket can be classified as “grassroots” seems to be beyond Meg Roach’s grasp.

This isn’t the first time that the Roach campaign has attempted to ignore the requirements of campaign law. Back in February, Roach’s self-funding triggered the “millionaires’ amendment” that opened the door for his opponents to increase their fund raising limits. Rumor has it that Roach did not intend to inform the Federal Election Commission that his campaign had exceeded the self-funding limits and that the Roach crew only made its disclosure after a reporter threatened to expose Roach in print.

This is a candidate whose wife suggests has “been thoroughly dismayed at the way Congress has been acting lately.” Yet, he seems to have already caught on to some of the finer points of rule breaking that so characterize the Republican congress of corruption.

Hat tip to the tireless crew at Calitic’s .

The Sacramento Bee takes Representative John Doolittle (CA-4) to task in an editorial this morning. The Bee’s editorial staff has finally decided that it might be time to question Doolittle’s extraordinary financial arrangement with his wife. An arrangement that efficiently moves 15% of all campaign and political action committee contributions directly into the Doolittle family bank account.

With this scheme the Doolittles have hopelessly blurred the distinction between campaign money and personal money. This arrangement raises obvious questions that Doolittle must answer for his constituents. How is his wife’s taking a 15 percent cut of political contributions any different from the congressman himself saying he will take a 15 percent cut? How is this different from donors, instead of writing out a $1,000 check to the campaign, writing out two checks – an $850 check to the campaign and a $150 check to the Doolittles?

The Bee notes that the Doolittle’s contribution skimming scam was working so well for his political action committee that last year they expanded it to cover contributions to his personal campaign accounts.

The congressman expanded the deal last summer. Beginning in June 2005, Julie Doolittle’s Sierra company began to receive a 15 percent commission for contributions to her husband’s re-election committee, the John T. Doolittle for Congress Committee. That is potentially a lot more money for the Doolittle household. The re-election committee has always received more contributions than the leadership PAC. In the 2004 election cycle, for example, that committee brought in more than $900,000 in contributions. A 15 percent commission would be $135,000.

If this isn’t an invitation to bribery, I don’t know what else to call it. It provides contributors a direct link to a quid pro quo arrangement with Doolittle. The money moves effortlessly into Doolittle’s bank account. The appropriate letter gets written.  The appropriate earmark is attached to the appropriate bill.

Hat tip to nightswimming for reading the Bee with the morning coffee.