Gabby Watch

It appears Gabby’s friendly political blogsters (Blog for Arizona) are taking her to task for not openly advocating the impeachment of President Bush. As the debate fires up some Democrats are explaining to the more radical left that if Gabby was vocal about Impeachment of the President she would lose the voters who are more politically in the center, which would jeopardize her chances of winning the election.

I guess it is pretty tough for Gabby to compromise her true liberal feelings to get a few votes.

Why, sir, in the beginning we appointed all our worst generals to command the armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers. As you know, I have planned some campaigns and quite a number of battles. I have given the work all the care and thought I could, and sometimes, when my plans were completed, as far as I could see, they seemed to be perfect. But when I have fought them through, I have discovered defects and occasionally wondered I did not see some of the defects in advance. When it was all over, I found by reading a newspaper that these best editor generals saw all the defects plainly from the start. Unfortunately, they did not communicate their knowledge to me until it was too late.” Then, after a pause, he added, with a beautiful, grave expression I can never forget: “I have no ambition but to serve the Confederacy, and do all I can to win our independence. I an willing to serve in any capacity to which the authorities may assign me. I have done the best I could in the field, and have not succeeded as I could wish. I am willing to yield my place to these best generals, and I will do my best for the cause in editing a newspaper.”

Rober E Lee in a conversation with Mr. Hill 1863

Most historians credit this to Robert E Lee but The Duke of Wellington did make a similar statement in a letter to a friend.

We just received another glossy, colored campaign brochure from Gabby Gifford’s. The three page brochure is loaded with Gabby’s pictures and campaign talking points. Not a bad job of spinning until you look closely at the last page. It reads in small print  “ This mailing was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayers expense”. Was it mailed to Pima and Cochise County? Which voters did she target or was it sent to every household. Come on Arizona Star, when will you ask the hard questions? If you get Gabby on the phone could you please ask how much this cost the taxpayers. We challenge the Star to actually do some investigative reporting, break that umbilical cord with Gabby’s Campaign and start reporting on her blatant misuse of public funds.

It appears that the Daily Star has a double standard regarding how they treat candidates. For the most part, in our opinion, Daniel Scarpinato tries to be as fair as his editors allow but it seems his stories try to find fault with one candidate yet ignore the gross faults of the other. This “editor’s mind set” is very apparent in this years CD-8 race between Tim Bee and Gabby Gifford.

A case in point is the Stars’ blatant effort to connect some wrong doing to Tim Bee because of a cable TV ad placed by a lobbyist group which represents 16 school districts. It seems that the Career Ladder Bill (HB1488) is in the best interest of 16 school districts so they hired  lobbyist  John Kates, to plead their case and do public relations work to help passage of the important bill.  Mr. Kates as part of his public relations effort on behalf of the 16 school districts produced a 30 second spot thanking Senator Bee for helping pass this important legislation.  This is what Mr. Kates is paid for, developing strategies to benefit his clients (16 school districts) and further their goals in terms of future possible legislation.

I guess Gabby’s Campaign and the Pima County Democratic Party are hard wired straight to the Star editors (Question… what is the name of the Star reporter that wrote “unbiased” political articles? You remember the one Gabby hired right after the 2006 elections?).  Mr. Scarpinato tried his very best to connect some kind of wrong doing (anything would suffice) but all he could come up with were self serving statements from Gabby’s campaign and the Pima County Democratic party. Will somebody please tell the Star why they are losing circulation?

 The following is Senator Bee’s statement on this subject:

While, I am very proud of the Career Ladder Bill (HB 1488) and am appreciative of the broad range of support that we received for our efforts to promote an improvement in pay for teachers that excel, it is unfortunate that some have tried to politicize this extremely important public policy issue.

It is a distraction from the significance of the Bill and what it hopes to accomplish: improving education for Arizona’s children, providing teachers’ incentives, performance pay, and allowing them to further their own educations while still serving their pupils in the classroom.

I’m very proud of what the Bill accomplishes.  It provides incentives and performance pay for educators throughout the entire State of Arizona and the end result will be an improvement of our children’s education, but during this election season, this ad may be misconstrued and I’d appreciate it if the ad would be discontinued.