Although we'd planned to lazily cruise through the whole weekend on the strength of yesterday's open thread, the hard-working crews on the top three three northern Utah newspapers wouldn't permit that. We thus link today's three breaking Emerald-City-significant stories below:
1) This from our lower article comments section, courtesy of gentle reader Ogden Lover: "Wow! Rebecca Walsh has done a superlative analysis of our Mayoral election in today's SL Trib. Standard Examiner, this is what you should be doing!"
We thank OgdenLover for the story tip. As Emerald City post election 2007 articles go, we consider Ms. Walsh's piece to be the Gold Standard so far.
2) Gentle reader Sharon tips us off to this morning's Deseret News Godfrey fluff masterpiece, in which the "thrifty" little bounder who drives the '92 Nissan overcompensates for his personal financial prudence, by spending the taxpayers' money (other peoples' money) like a drunken sailor. Perhaps the amateur psychologists in our midst will step up today and explain Boss Godfrey's possibly "schizoid" behavior.
3) For those readers still fixated on the nuts-and bolt errors in our November 6 election, DO NOT MISS this fantastic Marshall Thompson piece, in which Std-Ex reporter Thompson digs in, interviews experts, cross compares the statements of folks from the Governor's office down to regular street folks, and provides a wonderful overview of the series of glitches which, operating in conjunction, transformed Election 2007 into one of the most strange in Weber County history.
4) And as an added bonus we'll highlight this morning's Standard-Examiner editorial, in which Lee Carter's paid editorial mouthpieces get closer to the truth than they have in any editorial in the weeks, from which we incorporate a few pertinent paragraphs below:
Eight days. That’s how long it took for ham-handed voucher supporters in the Legislature to strike back after their 63 percent to 37 percent flaying at the polls on Election Day. They’ve resurrected last year’s defeated effort to nearly double the size of the State School Board and require its members to run as partisan political candidates — in other words, to make them answerable to the GOP instead of students and parents.The above editorial is also accompanied by this "pointed" Grondahl cartoon. We think it would be a fair statement to say that the Std-Ex isn't pulling its punches today.
No, no, not at all, says the measure’s foremost cheerleader, Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper. Utah needs this change because few voters actually know who their board representative is. It has nothing to do with vouchers, he protests. Rather, it is simply a renewal of a year-old discussion. Nothing more, nothing less.
These guys must practice keeping a straight face in the mirror; a normal person couldn’t help but crack up when telling such tall tales.
Note to our Weber County GOP legislative delegation: Quit while you're ahead. The "voucher concept" is D.O.A.. The people of Weber County won't buy it; and neither will they buy your 2008 candidacies, if you follow your Utah County legislative leadership over the cliff, and start inflicting crass party partisanship upon the state school board. Perhaps you need to talk to your State Senate colleague John Greiner, the only single Weber County GOP elected official who seems to have gotten it mostly right. Just a helpful hint from yer old pal Rudi.
32 comments:
Finally! A good article by Walsh....wish she'd gone further tho. Will anyone?
If you want to throw up your oatmeal, read Robinson's whitewash of the little dictator in the DesNews today.
Stu Reid is the cheerleader on this fluff piece....and for $43,000. I coulda been also.
PLS NOTE THAT GODFREY WILL ADD A HOTEL ON TOP OF THE JUNCTION FOR THE GONDOLA TO PASS THRU TO A RESORT ON THE SOUTH SLOPE OF THE MOUNTAIN OVERLOOKING OGDEN!!!
Did any of us ever think this little liar had any other plans? Methinks y'all better not miss one CC mtg from now on....and that includes work meetings where Harmer and the othr flunkies lay out all the great plans for the council.
The only impressive thing I found in the article is that the Godfrey's are debt free! Wish our city was.
But, according to the 'frugal one'....we'll be debt free in just a few short years.
It'll be all gravy flowing into the troughs.
Read it and shake your head.
Oh, and note 'the retail stores at eh Junction.'
Read it....what a load of baloney.
Walsh's column [not article] is the best post-election analysis of the division in Ogden, the election and how it came out that I've seen yet. Nice bit about the city's divisions reflecting The Marshall White Center on one side and the Saloman Center on the other. Interesting piece, and well-written.
Sharon:
This from Robinson's piece in the DN:
The Ogden River and the adjacent land were cleaned up, some 60 acres so far, with dumps and other rundown areas being replaced by kayak parks, cafes, stores, trails, parks, housing, fly-fishing parks, and more is on the way, including a one-of-a-kind man-made ice-climbing tower of real ice.
Notice that his careless prose suggests all this has already been done in the River Project zone. Seems to have mixed up "planned/hoped for" with "already achieved." But that often happens when a real estate huckster is driving a mark around, pitching. One would like to think a newspaper man would be just a little skeptical about such claims. And Mr. Robinson seems to think the Ice Tower will be going up somewhere along the River, which gives you either some idea of how closely he was paying attention, or some idea of how sloppily he composed his piece, or some idea of how dazzled he was by the pitchman. Take your pick.
But hey, the Deseret News appointed as its editor last year a man with exactly zero newspaper experience, but lots of experience on committees overseeing church publications. Apparently looking at things primarily through the eye of faith is required of its columnists too....
And thanks for pointing out that the Mayor is still pitching the gondola chimera. No news there.
Ms. Walsh lives in Ogden, I think, or used to, and Mr. Robinson does not. Which may account for one of the essays being grounded in reality and the other falling into wide-eyed belief as the huckster pitches the mark.
"In his conduct while Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of Vice President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has
1. purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests
2. purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in order to justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security interests
3. openly threatened aggression against the Republic of Iran absent any real threat to the United States, and done so with the United States proven capability to carry out such threats, thus undermining the national security of the United States
Wherefore Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office."
Democrat:
And you people on here who can't stand the mayor and the way he manipulated the election are going to impeach Cheney? And, you also say some pretty harsh things about Hansen who, along, with the Legislative committee are looking into voter fraud in Utah. Weber County...Ogden...is reported as having the most violations!
So, good on Hansen!
I posted a critical (of Godfrey) comment on the Des News' website. A few hours later it's vanished. Guess they didn't like the language I used: "cronyism", "unethical", etc.
Rudi:
You wrote: Note to our Weber County GOP legislative delegation: Quit while you're ahead. The "voucher concept" is D.O.A.. The people of Weber County won't buy it; and neither will they buy your 2008 candidacies, if you follow your Utah County legislative leadership over the cliff, and start inflicting crass party partisanship upon the state school board.
Ahem. Permit me to ever so gently remind you that Democrats in the Utah legislature voted unanimously against the voucher plan. And to suggest, yet again, e-v-e-r so gently, Rudi, that you are in the wrong party.
How many WCForum readers have posted comments on the Des News story and had them mysteriously disappear without a trace?
I even said positive things about the Mayor, but they're not going to post my comment, apparently.
I had remarked on his ability to travel in time and retroactively increase the 1999 crime rate.
I noted that no other city along the Wasatch Front has a time-traveling mayor.
I don't know why they won't run that.
Jim
The answer my friend lies in the lyrics of an old Randy Newman song:
"Everybody loves a winner, but when you lose you lose alone".
Godfrey won, the editorial genius at work in the DNews luvs his skinny little butt as a result and will now protect it and it's image. Its a MoMo thing. When a brother wins, regardless of the methods he uses to win, he is looked up to and lionized. Sort of like in the slums the where the poor ethnic kids look up to the pimps and all their bling.
"Rudi, that you are in the wrong party."
So you're suggesting Curm, that an old GOP warhorse like your blogmaster should hook up with the party of Hillary and Obama, because we're having a little friendly intramural party dispute?
Nice try, though...
Rudi:
Be interesting to see you query Bramble, Curtis and Buttars [a.k.a. Utah Republican Party legislative leaders] about how friendly this little intramural tiff is as they begin their 2008 Revenge Agenda. You've already noted, as has the SE in an eminently sensible editorial, that the first target of their wrath has been identified: the State School Board. Wonder who will be next.... I suspect at some point during the next session, the Governor will be made to pay legislatively for having failed to bend his knee to the Wingnut Troika with sufficient sincerity and public enthusiasm. We shall see.
When you've finally had enough, let me know. We have a special welcome program for Old Republican War Horses who've at last had the scales fall from their eyes. With membership cards and signed and numbered certificates of authenticity suitable for framing and everything!
Ms. Walsh -- who I proudly note was a fellow Daily Utah Chronicle Editor in Chief, shepherding the oldest and most continuously published student daily west of the Mighty Mississippi -- commuted to OTown until she could get a job at a real newspaper. She has performed admirably there and is in fact one of the best of our alumni. As to the Csmoking Lying Little Matty Gondola Godfrey ******** in the Mormon Times, well: You were right; the EIC is a partisan hack who bankrupted a steel mill. Great newspaper editor! Way to go, Des News! You almost looked like the Gondola Examiner, Godfrey Administration rag and PR organ for Wayne Peterson's famed Squirrel Patrol! Nuts! Get 'em!
THE SKI IS AWASH IN PURPLE
Another problem with the Mormon Times' suckjob on Lying Little Matty Gondola Godfrey: OTown is not the dwarf's "hometown." The Lilliputian criminal is from Harrisville: "his hometown" and "refusing to leave his hometown" and this and that. Jeezus. We have a major image problem here: Our mayor is a teeny-weeny, gondola-loving dork from Harrisville who campaigns on a scooter, and yet we are a blue-collar, rough-and-tumble burgh known for our toughness and tenacity. And we have a lying dork from Harrisville as our chief executive, who loves gondolas? I know it's petty and cheap, but the spry young lying little municipaligoon is only two years older than I am and I've heard plenty of stories about his time at good old Weber High School and suffice it to say that he would not have lasted a week at OHS. God you suck, Godfrey.
THE SKI IS A CRISS-CROSSED CANVASS OF BLACK AND BLUE
Jim posted, "I noted that no other city along the Wasatch Front has a time-traveling mayor.
I don't know why they won't run that."
Perhaps Jim should have mentioned Mayor Godfrey's amazing ability to talk out of his ass. Like when he told that room full of people that he had the most integrity of anyone in the room.
I'm just sayin
Well, the Robinson piece is useful in one regard: his mayor conducted tour apparently happened post election, so he got the "hotel with a gondola through its lobby to a ski resort" on the west flank of Mt. Ogden pitch after the votes were counted.
OK, we've been warned. Now we can all begin wondering... and perhaps the Standard Examiner can begin asking... when the Mayor's latest scheme to enrich Mr. Peterson and cronies in order to raise enough cash to build his downtown gondola will be announced to the groundlings. And what public assets, like undeveloped benchlands, some of which were carefully excluded from the parcels listed in the Mayor's "restrictive covenant" document, will be sold off, to make it happen.
Might also be nice, if a little late, if the SE began asking if the Mayor's "restrictive covenant" is in fact such, and is in any way legally enforceable. And asking what it lands it purports to cover and what not. Just out of curiosity. It'll be a day late and a dollar short, of course, if the SE does start asking, but hell, why not? Real journalism, even if belated, would be nice.
Well the Des News must not have a sense of humor because they've left the following comment stand for several hours now.
:Not Kidding | 3:42 p.m. Nov. 18, 2007
I went out into my backyard this afternoon, and Mayor Godfrey was walking on the surface of my pool! This is not a joke!"
Thanx, Ogdenlover, for a good laff!
Was it you, OG, who wanted to know if the DESNEWS has a TV Guide? It came today. Better than the Standard's because it also lists all the movies so you can know what they are about! The SE guide used to do that, but no more.
I've tried several times to register on the Trib so I can post a comment. I'm getting paranoid, I do everything they ask, but I can't register. Do they know who I am????? Bet the DESNEWS will be as 'cold'.
My reputation precedes me, no doubt. Oy vey
Sharon, bag that DN, this Robinson dude that wrote this one must have been writing while smoking crack.
Plus the fact that this thing is laced with alot of the, from lying little matty's lips, untruths published and accepted by the indespicable coven of idiots that make up the Standard Examiner editorial gaggle and news clowns.
Start building the fortifications and digging the trenches, it's gonna be a long siege, and the only help we're gonna get is an occassional piece from the Trib, on slow news days.
One more thing, has that crack smoking byu trained DN writer ever been to Ogden before this? I can't recall any of the bad past he seems to proffer.
Yeah, Bill, and did you catch that crime is down 23%...and that the despot was just horrified that no one wanted to tackle crime????? And, that was one of his reasons for running for mayor in the first place? Guess he forgot to pull that piece of paper out of his desk to see if he was tackling that problem for 8 years!
Did you catch the irony (but Godfrey didn't) that he was 'threatened' with loss of job if he ran for mayor????? Who'd' a thunk that anyone in Ogden gov't would stoop so low?
I thot Matt was first in everything. Robinson is a sorry writer alrite. Maybe he could commute to Ogden? Maybe Schwebke could show him around? Like how to be dazzled by lying lips and never ask a follow up quetion.
It doesn't sound like Robinson was actually taken inside the 'lustrous Junction so that he could see the emptiness for himself, and the teensy flowrider, the teensier Ifly. WHAT lines of people snaking thru the Costa Vida?? Was that Walsh or Robinson who wrote that?
If I read another PR fluff piece like Robinson's in the DESNEWS again....we'll switch to the Trib AGAIN! It's very irksome when over half of Ogden knows the truth and these pipsqueaks (Godfrey, Reid and Robinson) perpetrate a scam like that today!
So do you all think the Mayor has a mandate?
Kevin:
1.More RDA Debt.
2.Gondola.
3.Sale of Mt Ogden Park & Golf Course.
4.Hook the Crook from Southern California up with some more sweet deals.
5.Build the coolest and sexiest Wal-Mart at the Front Runner Station.
6.Lie to the Council.
7.Create more hate and division in Ogden.
You want more?
I am sure the Geigers can be a part of the new mandate.
8.Give the rest of the city to Chris Peterson.
The last one I know to claim to have a mandate following a hair's breadth win at the polls was G. W. Bush. And we all know how that turned out....
He's been re-elected. By the voters. That gives him some grounds to say the people placed their trust in his judgment for the next four years... a kind of mandate. Leavened somewhat by his having, very publicly, to abandon the plan he was saying for the previous two years was Ogden's primary hope for prosperity [the park sale/Peterson proposal], and by his supporters losing two of three Council seats up for election. They can claim a public mandate as well as the Mayor. [Mr. Johnson will have a more difficult time doing that, since there were about six times more provisional votes disallowed than the margin of his victory. He may well have been the people's choice. Or he may not have been. The point is, neither he... nor we... will ever know for sure because the handling of those ballots was so badly bungled.]
As for Hizzonah, we'll just have to see what that will mean in terms of his policies, and how he chooses to deal with the press, the public and the council, and the consequences of those choices. However annoying it may be, there really is no alternative to waiting to see what happens.
I doubt he will try to sell the golf course for residential development. He go whupped upside the head on that one and is not likely to forget the experience. He may try to lease it for golf operations. I do think he'll try to sell the public bench lands carefully omitted from the parcels listed in his purported "restrictive covenant" declaration... they're at the head of 36th Street, the proposed base area for Mr. Peterson's up-mountain gondola. I expect something along those lines will be proposed fairly soon. Earlier if the SE does some digging and it looks like it's on to something so Godfrey can control the initial press coverage by making the announcement himself. Later if the SE doesn't ask, or upon asking, finds nothing, so that he will do a better job this time of getting all his ducks in a row before going public. There will not be another Lift Ogden fiasco. Or rather, whatever the new incarnation of Lift Ogden --- currently the PAC called "Envision Ogden" it seems --- will have adult leadership.
We shall see....
Well Curm,
I remember Bush and his mandate………his name was Jeff Gannon.
It's time to expose Godfrey's cronies. Mark Johnson in particular. When I verify the facts. I'll be letting ya all know!
The republicans turned the terms Liberal, Amnesty, Immigration, Charity, Union, and Peace Makers into dirty words.
For the life of me I really don't see how you can be a good Christian and call yourself a republican.
9. Get even with the Firefighters for backing his opponent, and his hand picked council candidates.
Democrat:
Yellow Dog Democrat that I am, I'd be very leery of trying to judge someone's religious commitment on the basis of which party they support. Makes no more sense to me to say "you can't be a good Christian and a Republican" than it does to say "you can't be a good Mormon and a Democrat."
Well, Curm...there aren't many democrats who are also good mormons....lokk at the allens' and godfrey.
Sorry, but in the Weber County Democratic Party I seem to run into a lot of good Democrats who [so far as I can tell] also seem to be good Mormons... though that is absolutely not something for me to judge. And that was at least part of my point: I don't think we can or should attempt to judge the "goodness" of someone's religious standing or commitment by their party membership. Mixing politics and religion that was seems un-wise to say the least.
Being a REPUBLICAN is just WRONG.
Where were their parents?
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