Republican non-Candidate Fred Thompson has yet to announce…but already he’s looking less formidable!

Washington Post, July 31st, Dan Balz

Can the wheels come off a wagon that hasn’t left the assembly line?  That is the Jesuitical question for Fred Thompson’s campaign-in-the making as he reports to the IRS today that he raised approximately $3.4 million in the month of June. After a week of staff shakeups and a financial report that fell short of expectations Thompson’s people set for themselves, Republican strategists wonder whether the former Tennessee senator’s campaign is experiencing something far more worrisome than normal growing pains.
First the signs of trouble:

Money: While not shabby, the financial report suggests fundraising is far more difficult than Thompson and some of those around him may have anticipated. Veteran fundraisers all tell the same story: raising tens of millions of dollars for a presidential campaign takes organization, time, enthusiasm and a belief on the part of donor’s that they’re backing a winner. Any sign of weakness vastly complicates the hunt for money.

Polls: The good news for Thompson is that he has surged into second place in most polls. The bad news is that he is still well behind Rudy Giuliani in national polls and well behind Mitt Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire. The only place where he is rising to the top of the heap is in South Carolina.

Looked at another way, after several months of extraordinarily positive news, Thompson is roughly tied with John McCain in the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, though McCain has suffered through several months of terrible news.

Campaign organization: The man Thompson recruited to organize his campaign, Tom Collarmore, was forced out last week. At this point, it’s not clear who the campaign manager will be. Thompson’s wife Jeri has been intimately involved in campaign operations and, according to one strategist, was running staff meetings last week.

Click here to read more in the Washington Post.

Hillary Clinton is weakest Democratic candidate at this time….
The Rasmussen Polling organization has completed a complete cross tabulation of “2008 Election Results” between the leading candidates in both parties. The results are startling!

• John Edwards has an impressive lead outdistancing any Republican opponent by seven points or more!
• Barack Obama also leads handily against all the leading Republican candidates.
• Hillary Clinton is either tied or has small leads over the Republican opposition but her numbers suggest there are significant numbers of anti-Clinton voters.

John Edwards’ numbers from Rasmussen are quite impressive. The cross tabulation puts Edwards seven points ahead of Rudi Guiliani; eleven points ahead of Fred Thompson and far far ahead of Mitt Romney (17 pts). The numbers suggest that voters would still prefer a white male as the Democratic standard bearer. But the central message is that John Edwards, who is currently lagging in the Democratic preference polling, would be the strongest national candidate next year! His recent campaign on Poverty in America is obviously resonating with the voters.

Barack Obama also leads over all the potential Republicans as well. The polls suggest Barack would beat Guiliani by six points; Thompson by six points and Romney by nine points. These are all respectable leads this early in the polling season.

Hillary Clinton, the current front runner in the Democratic sweepstakes is also the weakest national candidate. The numbers suggest that there is a core of likely voters that actively dislike her. The polls show her tied with Fred Thompson and ahead of Guiliani by only a point. She does a little better against Romney but still has only a small lead over him (4 points).

Turning this all around, the data suggests that Guiliani or Thompson would be the “strongest” opponents. Mitt Romney is the weakest of these three. We have not bothered to show the data regarding McCain, Brownback or Gingrich as all three of these candidates are far in the rear. For example, John McCain would be eleven points behind Hillary, seven points behind Edwards or nine points behind Obama. This assumes, of course, that he can get over the fact that most of the Republican party hates him.

For a closer look at the polling results, click this link to Rasmussen Polls.

Dr. Ted Downing recently sent an email with a link to a New York Times article talking about the insecurity of voting machines. In his words, “I am not concerned about the costs of installing hundreds of counties with paper ballot backups for the 2008 presidential election. Compared to the cost of this damn war by the usurper, the cost is nominal.”
New York Times, Christopher Drew, July 28th

Computer scientists from California universities have hacked into three electronic voting systems used in California and elsewhere in the nation and found several ways in which vote totals could potentially be altered, according to reports released yesterday by the state.

The reports, the latest to raise questions about electronic voting machines, came to light on a day when House leaders announced in Washington that they had reached an agreement on measures to revamp voting systems and increase their security.

The House bill would require every state to use paper records that would let voters verify that their ballots had been correctly cast and that would be available for recounts.

The House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, and the original sponsor of the bill, Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, said it would require hundreds of counties with paperless machines to install backup paper trails by the presidential election next year while giving most states until 2012 to upgrade their machines further.

Critics of the machines said that some of the measures would be just stopgaps and that the California reports showed that security problems needed to be addressed more urgently.

The California reports said the scientists, acting at the state’s request, had hacked into systems from three of the four largest companies in the business: Diebold Election Systems, Hart InterCivic and Sequoia Voting Systems. Thousands of their machines in varying setups are in use. The reports said the investigators had created situations for each system “in which these weaknesses could be exploited to affect the correct recording, reporting and tallying of votes.”

Click here to read the story directly from the New York Times.

The Bush administration boasts of its ability to rebuild Iraq thus aiding in the ultimate goal of “bringing democracy to the savages”.  (Remember this is the administration that was responsible for getting relief to New Orleans after Katrina!)  Here is a story from the New York Times about how your tax dollars are being put to work for world peace!  Please note that the Americans decided what projects to undertake and what resources to put where without so much as the tip of a hat to the Iraqis. Please, it is time for regime change in Washington!

New York Times, James Glanz, July 28th

Iraq’s national government is refusing to take possession of thousands of American-financed reconstruction projects, forcing the United States either to hand them over to local Iraqis, who often lack the proper training and resources to keep the projects running, or commit new money to an effort that has already consumed billions of taxpayer dollars.

The conclusions, detailed in a report released Friday by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, a federal oversight agency, include the finding that of 2,797 completed projects costing $5.8 billion, Iraq’s national government had, by the spring of this year, accepted only 435 projects valued at $501 million. Few transfers to Iraqi national government control have taken place since the current Iraqi government, which is frequently criticized for inaction on matters relating to the American intervention, took office in 2006.

The United States often promotes the number of rebuilding projects, like power plants and hospitals, that have been completed in Iraq, citing them as signs of progress in a nation otherwise fraught with violence and political stalemate. But closer examination by the inspector general’s office, headed by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., has found that a number of individual projects are crumbling, abandoned or otherwise inoperative only months after the United States declared that they had been successfully completed. The United States always intended to hand over projects to the Iraqi government when they were completed. Click here to read more in the New York Times.

New York Times, July 26th

The dispute over the truthfulness of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales reached a new intensity today as the F.B.I. Director, Robert S. Mueller 3d, contradicted Mr. Gonzales’s sworn testimony before a Senate committee.

Mr. Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee that the Bush administration’s secret eavesdropping program was the main topic at an encounter in the hospital room of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on March 10, 2004, contrary to what Mr. Gonzales told a Senate panel on Tuesday.
At the time, Mr. Gonzales was the White House counsel, and Mr. Ashcroft was recovering from gall bladder surgery. That March night, Mr. Gonzales went to the hospital room with Andrew H. Card Jr., then White House chief of staff.

In his testimony before the Senate panel on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales said the subject in the hospital room was “intelligence activities” under debate in the administration, but not the secret eavesdropping program.

But Mr. Mueller contradicted that version of events today, several hours after four Senate Democrats called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Gonzales perjured himself before Congress.

Mr. Mueller was testifying at an F.B.I. oversight hearing when he was questioned by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas.
“Did you have an understanding that the conversation was on T.S.P.?” the Congresswoman asked, using the shorthand for terrorist surveillance program.

“I had an understanding the discussion was on an N.S.A. program, yes,” Mr. Mueller replied, using the abbreviation for the National Security Agency. A moment later, he added that the discussion was on the warrant-less eavesdropping program “that has been much discussed, yes.”

The conflict in accounts could be significant, because Mr. Gonzales’s critics have accused him of trying to convey the false impression that the N.S.A. program had spawned no serious dissension within the Bush administration.  Click here to read more.

The Pinal County Democrats hold their meetings at 7pm on the third Wednesday of each month in Florence. We generally gather for a dutch treat supper at about 5:30 pm at the A&M Pizza on Highway 287 west of Florence. This is great opportunity to meet and greet fellow Democrats in an informal setting. The meeting is held at the offices of the Pinal County Attorney at 31 N Pinal St. Carpooling is generally available from SaddleBrooke.

Our regular July meeting will be held Saturday, July 14th 2007. Speakers to be arranged. The meeting starts at 3:30 pm following a half hour of social interaction. As normal, the meeting will be held at the Activities Center (HOA #1) at 64518 E Galveston Lane. Following the meeting we will have a pot luck buffet at the home of one of our members. See you there!

From of All Places Fox 11 Arizona, July 13th, Brady McCombs of the Arizona Daily Star
Immigrants are a $222 million fiscal gain for Arizona and their departure would result in a $29 billion annual loss in economic output, according to a study released by the UA.

The annual tax revenue generated by immigrant labor, $1.64 billion, outweighed estimated fiscal costs, $1.41 billion, for a net gain of $222.6 million, researchers concluded after analyzing figures from 2004. Immigrants accounted for nearly $44 billion, or 12 percent, of the state’s economic output, resulting in 399,000 full-time-equivalent jobs, the study found.

The analysis, released this week, was intended to increase the understanding of the economic impact of immigration in Arizona, said Judith Gans, the study’s author and immigration-policy program manager at the University of Arizona’s Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. The 1 1/2-year study was funded by the Thomas R. Brown Foundation in Tucson, which funds academic research and promotes education about the economy.

“The more we have good data about what’s at stake, the more calmly we can look at this issue,” said Gans. “By focusing so much on security in some squares, it’s easy to ignore what it might cost us economically.” Click here to read more at Fox News Channel 11.

The Pinal County Board of Supervisors has unanimously aplproved the creation of a health district funded by a small increase in the sales tax. The tax will raise about $4 million annually (it amounts to a thin dime on a $100 purchase) and will be used to expand operating hours at public clinics around the county and to purchase and operate mobile health vans to visit local schools and communities. The first project is to increase the rate of immunizations for children under the age of five years. Statistics show that only half of Pinal’s children are immunized against various diseases like polio before they enter school. The national rate of immunizations is nearly 80%. Furthermore, as many Pinal children are home schooled, a sizable percentage of these kids never get the vaccines.

Click here to read the short story regarding approval in the East Valley Tribune.

The SaddleBrooke Democrats and the Pinal Democrats are especially pleased by this action. As hard to believe as it may seem, the Republicans led by an Oracle activist, mounted a drive to oppose and disrupt the creation of the health district. In response, the SaddleBrooke Democrats and Pinal Democrats sent hundreds of emails to supporters all over Pinal County. We asked friends all over to send emails of support to the Supervisors. We are pleased to say that many many emails were sent and that quite a few Democrats showed up to the public hearing held last month and to the Supervisor’s meeting held this week.

The Republicans showed up and argued that no public monies should be spent on child immunizations. Further they argued that such immunizations were contrary to the religious beliefs of some. One person even stood up and said that child immunizations were not scientifically proved and that their administration could lead to autism. Is it really possible that the Republicans have forgotten polio? Are these the family values they talk about?  Shame on them!

Congratulations Chris on this National Recognition

Casa Grande Valley Dispatch, July 11th

At the general session June 26, the National Sheriff’s Associaton Board of Directors presented Vasquez with the 2007 National Crime Victim Services Award.

The sheriff was given the award that recognizes “outstanding achievement by a sheriff’s office in support of victims.” It is funded by the Office for Victims of Crime, U.S. Department of Justice and is administered by the Crime Victim Services Committee.

In 2004, Vasquez established a Victim Services Unit and a Volunteer Services Program within the sheriff’s office. About 20 volunteers support deputies and victims through on-call, crisis response to the crime scene or hospital, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Volunteers can be dispatched quickly from their homes, which are scattered across the county, directly to crime victims. The volunteers provide grief and loss intervention, assistance to victims in meeting their basic needs, referrals to other organizations and agencies, transportation and follow-up contact. They also accompany deputies for death notifications.

Every volunteer applicant undergoes an extensive testing and background investigation that includes traffic and criminal history checks, fingerprinting, written and in-person interviews. Applicants admitted into the program must complete 40 hours of orientation training and attend 3-hour monthly meetings and in-service training.

Gov. Janet Napolitano honored the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office in March 2007 with “Special Recognition” to the Victim Services Unit for “serving the public through community volunteering.” In April 2006, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard recognized the Volunteer Services Program for distinguished service to victims of crime.

Click here to read the full story this national award for Chris Vasquez.