Politicians play Nevada name game -- and lose

 

Every election cycle in the Silver State, some public figure makes the same blunder. They – or one of their surrogates – mispronounce the state’s name.

Here, it’s Nuh-VAD-uh.

Not Nuh-VAHD-uh.

Nuh-VAD-uhns are sensitive to this. We’re not sure why. More than two-thirds of residents were born outside the state and a number of them swear they’re only staying for a year (and then never leave). But President Bush and Sen. John Kerry both caught flack for not realizing that the second syllable rhymes with “dad.” Same with TV newsmen George Stephanopoulos and Brian Williams.

State Democrats, in the run-up to the 2008 presidential caucus, apparently sent all their candidates a welcome guide that included the correct pronunciation: Nuh-VAD-uh. And yet, this cycle’s campaign ads are already mangling the state’s name, which is Spanish for "snow-capped." (In Spanish, it would be pronounced Neh-VAH-dah.)

This summer, the National Education Assn. ran radio ads cheering Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose poll numbers could use a little pep as he seeks reelection in 2010. But the spot’s narrator repeatedly butchered Nuh-VAD-uh.

This week, Danny Tarkanian, one of the gaggle of Republicans who hope to unseat Reid, released a Web ad mocking how federal stimulus dollars were reported as going to congressional districts that didn't exist.  But the narration pronounced the state as Nuh-VAHD-uh.

One wonders how this might play out in Mi-ZOOR-ee, a.k.a. Mi-ZOOR-ah. Incidentally, in the western part of the Show Me State, there's a town called Nevada. But there it’s pronounced Nuh-VADE-uh.

-- Ashley Powers

It doesn't matter whether you say to-may-to or to-mah-to.  Click here to get Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. And we're also over here on Facebook.

Top photo: Bloomberg. Bottom photo: Associated Press.

Sen. Roland Burris admonished by ethics panel for being 'less than candid' during probe

The Senate Ethics Committee admonished Sen. Roland Burris today for being "less than candid" about his contacts with impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich in the months before Burris' appointment to the Senate.

In a letter to the Illinois Democrat, the ethics panel said it "found that you should have known that you were providing incorrect, inconsistent, misleading or incomplete information" during its investigation into whether Burris had been truthful about his contacts with Blagojevich associates.

The panel said, however, that it "did not find that the evidence before it supported any actionable violations of law."

Our colleagues at D.C. Now have more on the public rebuke. To read the letter from the Senate Ethics Committee, click here.

-- Kate Linthicum

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Photo: Sen. Roland Burris attends an Armed Services Committee hearing in January. Credit: Michael Reynolds / EPA

'Going Rogue' by the numbers: Sarah Palin's missing index has been found!

We salute Slate and the New Republic, whose quick-thinking staffers decided to produce an index for Sarah Palin’s bestselling book, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”  Some had speculated that Palin decided not to put an index in the back of her book to thwart the traditional "Washington read," which involves standing in a bookstore searching the index of a newly published tome for your name or the names of friends, enemies and/or frenemies.
   After reading the independent indices, we conclude that authors and publishers must be careful what they stint on. An independent index, it turns out, is more than a simple alphabetical listing of content. It’s a powerful analytical tool, as you will see from our excerpts of both versions:

Baby shower at shooting range 76
Bridge to Nowhere 237
“Captive” of McCain campaign 261
Caribou lasagna 218
“Change,” on originating campaign slogan before Obama 114, 225
Clinton, Hillary, Palin’s non-accusations about whining of 287
Couric, Katie Lack of knowledge about energy issues 207, 273; Low self-esteem of 256; As “lowest rated news anchor in network television 270; Unfair editing of interview with 272-275, 279; Lack of national pride 279

Sarah Palin, read this! Gavin Newsom's media advice

Bipartisan note to Alaska's Republican Sarah Palin from a direct-action California Democrat:

Stop whining about negative coverage from newspapers that don't like you and never will except if you help promote their publisher's favorite local charity and even then the affection will be short-lived.

Instead, simply help those nattering nabobs of negativity go out of business, one angry subscriber at a time.

Gangsters knew intuitively not to sue/argue with newspapers because of the resulting drumbeat of new negative stories. But it took longer for politicians across the ideological spectrum to learn the conventional wisdom: Don't argue with people who buy newspaper ink by the barrel.

Grumbling and worse over the media is sometimes warranted and always chronic among those in the public eye, who depend on the publicity but don't like it all.

Lyndon Johnson blamed negative media coverage for much of the Vietnam War opposition and the self-imposed end of his political career. Richard Nixon was not a huge fan of the Washington Post, which through Watergate helped him move along to memoir-writing a couple of years earlier than planned.

Of course, the media can create a handy target to help unify political followers against a perceived common enemy. Think Ron Paul's well-covered claims of being ignored last year and Republican convention delegates turning en masse to boo the overhanging media booths in St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center. 

And Palin is likely to re-mention media bias toward her and her family in her eagerly-awaited book, now set for publication Nov. 17. (Countdown now at 49 days.) She's particularly aggrieved over some mainstream media that took local blogs/gossip at face value. It's all sure to provide juicy new reasons to love and hate her, which Harper's corporate parent, News Corp., is unlikely to mind at all.

Who knows, you might even see Palin on another News Corp. property, Fox News. The way you just happen to see CBS stars show up on CBS talk shows and actors from Universal movies appear on NBC.

But now liberal San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who would like to be California's next governor, has added a novel twist to media-bashing. He got a Tweet from a follower feeling aggrieved about coverage of Newsom.

Not surprisingly, the mayor was sympathetic to the sympathy. He did not mess around or waste one of his 140 characters.

Newsom Twittered out to all 1.1 million-plus followers, specific advice on how to terminate their newspaper subscription, to at least one San Francisco publication.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Prison political primer: Traficant's out, but other pols headed behind bars

Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of all the politicians who have run afoul of the law. In the spirit of clarity, The Ticket offers this handy guide to recent events:

Headed out: Former Ohio congressman James A. Traficant Jr. walked out of a federal prison today in Minnesota. The colorful Democrat — “colorful” being polite journalese for the excessively eccentric —served seven years in prison for corruption. He was convicted in 2002 of bribery and racketeering for accepting bribes from businessmen and taking kickbacks from staff members.

Traficant was famous for a rambling speaking style. During his nine-week trial in Cleveland, he sparred with the judge, used profanity, dropped boxes on the floor and threatened physical harm to the prosecutors.

Traficant was expelled from the House of Representatives, the first congressmen tossed out of the chamber since the Civil War.

In the video above, taken at a congressional hearing on his expulsion, he verbally attacks the allegations — and the prosecutors — in his distinctively earthy style.

Headed in: One wonders if there’s some cosmic rule in the universe that states that as one crooked congressman leaves prison another must replace him to maintain a balance.

Former Rep. William J. Jefferson faces more than 20 years behind bars when he’s scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 30. Jefferson, who may be best remembered as the guy who had $90,000 in cash in his freezer, was found guilty in August of 11 of 16 criminal counts including bribery, racketeering, money laundering and wire fraud.

The Associated Press reports that the Louisiana Democrat filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation last week.

Already in: A former Democratic state senator in Pennsylvania, Vincent Fumo, reported Monday to a low-security prison in Ashland, Ky. He too has been convicted on corruption charges.

Already in: Another former Democratic lawmaker convicted of fraud, onetime New Jersey state Sen. Wayne Bryant, reported in late August to a federal prison in West Virginia.

Turning himself in: Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez surrendered today to Connecticut State Police — for the second time this year — amid allegations of corruption at City Hall. Perez, who was already charged in January with taking a bribe, denies any wrongdoing. So does former state Rep. Abraham Giles, who also turned himself in to authorities today.

Now, getting back to Traficant ....

Ex-N.Y. gov Eliot Spitzer, once caught up in prostitution ring, eyes comeback

He's back.

Once known as Client 9 in an indictment that busted up a prostitution ring, then New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was identified as the man who paid $4,300 for a Mayflower Hotel rendezvous with escort Ashley Dupre. When the news broke, he resigned his office as governor.

That was in March of last year. Ever since, he has worked in his father’s real estate firm. More recently, he has started to burnish his credentials as a financial expert -- you may recall that Spitzer, as New York attorney general, terrorized Wall Street executives by threatening corruption prosecutions. These days, he's making occasional appearances as a commentator on cable news shows and writing for Slate magazine. Also going to Yankees games with his wife Silda, seen with him in the photo above at the  Aug. 25 Texas Rangers game. Sort of Rehab 101 for politicians chased from office by scandal.

Now, according to the New York Post, Spitzer is eyeing either a run for state comptroller general or a challenge to New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, appointed to fill out Hillary Clinton’s term.

Calling Spitzer “the hooker-happy Democrat,” the Post quotes friends as saying that the former governor is citing recent polling that shows him more popular than the man who replaced him, his onetime lieutenant governor David Paterson.

For the record, Spitzer – who was never charged with a crime -- disavows any intention of running. Sort of.

"If by politics you mean running for office again, I've a hard time seeing politics as a career. I wouldn't want to put my family through the agony," he told Vanity Fair magazine in its July issue. "But that doesn't mean I can't participate somehow in the public debate about the issues."

Still, says the Post, a lot of those around the former governor figure it's only a matter of time before he returns to the ring. "There are people around him who want to see him [in office]," one unnamed source told the tabloid. "He sees himself there too. He loves to be in the limelight."

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo credit: Associated Press

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Guys! Quick! Hubby Obama needs some help 'splaining that photo

(UPDATE: Oops. Now another peekaboo pic has shown up. Different woman. Same angle. Same two guys. Over here.)

OK, let's help the poor guy out here. It's a bipartisan gender solidarity thing.

Yes, yes, he's president of the United States of America. The most powerful male in the free world, perhaps le monde entier. Pretty wife. Great abs. Loving father. And a real good talker.

He better be 'cause, as they fly down to Africa right now, Mrs. Obama with the buff bare arms may be asking her hubby one or two questions about this photo that's been flying all over the world ahead of them for a day now. Just as Desi Arnaz would ask his wife in the old "Lucy" show.

On the surface it might possibly appear to some jealous people that the 47-year-old ex-senator from Illinois is eyeing the working backside of Mayara Rodriguez Tavares, a 17-year-old youth delegate from Buenos Aires, no, wait, Brazil at the G-8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy. (And President Nicolas Sarkozy is checking it out too. But he's French.)

Such a suspicion about the nation's male chief executive is absolutely ridiculous, of course, and relies on the tired, old -- and patently erroneous -- sexist cliche about men having a roving eye for the opposite sex, even when they may already be in the company of a member of same said opposite gender.

There have, over the eons, been billions of misunderstandings like this between women and their men when the female followed the man's eyes and perceived them to be glued on some portion of another female's anatomy, back or front. It even happened in cave days when folks wore skimpy animal pelts. That's an Internet fact.

Those patently mistaken female impressions of visual infidelity have led to some verbal outbursts, punched arms, swung purses and long silences in the car followed by a night on the living room couch.

If the offended women would only wait one sec, they could learn the real honest-to-God object of their male's admiration. Most often, the male doesn't even know what other woman his lady is talking about. He was simply admiring a really attractive red sports car that was passing in the same spot but is now unfortunately out of sight.

The car one won't work this time. But there are other obfuscating explanations. Maybe the president had a speck in his eye -- it can happen to presidents anytime even with the Secret Service around -- and was looking down to try and get it out. Could be.

Also, as Ticket reader Tom points out, she does have great shoes.

The most innocent excuse or explanation is that the president was in the process of turning his head to thoughtfully take the hand of his life partner and help her safely down the last large step there so she wouldn't trip and embarrass herself with all the cameras around. What a guy! Chivalry lives!

And those European cameramen -- you know them -- cleverly snapped the photo to make it appear like he was looking at the long curly, brown hair and the female derriere in shiny red material that he hadn't even actually noticed was there. In fact, was there a woman there?

It's all perfectly innocent. So help him out, guys -- or gals. What other explanation can we helpfully offer the first man?

-- Andrew Malcolm

Photos of other male presidential encounters with derrieres below.

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Sarah Palin reclaims her inner fisherwoman: 'Politically, if I die, I die. So be it.'

The governor of Alaska went fishing Monday, wearing those waders with suspenders that fishermen fancy, accompanied by her baby, Trig,  daughter Piper and her husband, First Dude for a Few More Weeks Todd Palin. Oh, and she alerted the media.

What a spectacle -- the stars of America's cable news personalities from Fox, NBC, CNN, ABC meeting the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on the shores of Kanakanak Beach in Dillingham, Alaska, while the governor brushed salmon slime off her suspenders and blasted the media, bloggers and anyone who would dare question her politically bizarre decision to quit in the middle of her first term.

To Fox, she expressed bitterness at those who peppered her with ethics accusations, saying  that their ridiculous charges had nearly bankrupted her family and brought Alaska's government to a grinding halt. "The critics want to put you on a course of personal bankruptcy so you can't afford to serve," she said, calling the attacks "bull crap."

She was coy about her plans for 2012, musing that it was difficult to know what the political future would hold, let alone the next salmon run. But she was quick to criticize President Obama. As she led reporters in a boat across Bristol Bay, she opined, "Average, hard-working Americans need to be able to get out there, unrestrained, and fight for what is right. Fight for energy independence and national security, fight for a smaller government instead of this big government overgrowth that Obama is ushering in."

As the Ticket noted over the weekend, Palin has a tendency to sound like former President Richard Nixon, who intoned in the middle of the Watergate scandal, "I am not a crook." Three days after resigning as governor of Alaska, effective at month's end, Palin told CNN,  "I am not a quitter. I am a fighter."

She told ABC she's pleased with her decision, damn the consequences. “I’m extremely happy," she said. "Politically speaking, if I die, I die. So be it.”

And when NBC's Andrea Mitchell said that some would say she didn't finish the job, Palin's voice rose. "You're not listening to me as to why I wouldn't be able to finish that final year in office without it costing the state millions of dollars and countless hours of wasted time," she snapped.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Noting that "everything changed" last August when Republican presidential candidate John McCain asked her to be his running mate, Palin said she had no regrets about accepting the nomination. "Not in the least," she said. "It was a great honor to stand by a great American hero. I would have done all that again in a heartbeat."

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: A previous Palin fishing trip.  Credit: Associated Press

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Henry Waxman says restless legs syndrome doesn't exist, but then...

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), looking hale and hearty after a recent hospitalization, was on C-SPAN this week describing his groggy arrival at the medical institution when someone noticed his leg jerking and asked if he had restless legs syndrome.

The obstreperous Waxman said he knew that such an ailment is yet another example of America's greedy pharmaceutical companies creating a new disease to market new medicines for Americans to buy and swallow and pump into themselves.

The phone-in program then took the next call from the Independent Line and Waxman was surprised to learn something he didn't know. Watch his reaction.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Video courtesy of C-SPAN.

Palin's resignation speech has shades of Nixon's 1962 concession address

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's announcement that she was bowing out of Alaska politics on the eve of the Fourth of July holiday left a lot of viewers scratching their heads. As the Ticket reported Friday, Palin's friends report that she is genuinely sick of the attacks that seem to be part of the fabric of national politics these days.

But Palin's hastily announced press conference also had all the earmarks of Richard Nixon's famous concession speech in 1962, after he lost the campaign for California governor to Democrat Pat Brown. Nixon's rant was also a last-minute affair. Reporters had been told that Nixon -- a former congressman and senator who served as Dwight D. Eisenhower's vice president from 1952 to 1960 and lost the 1960 presidential race to John F. Kennedy -- would not be making a public appearance.

Instead, Nixon surprised even his staff by taking the microphone and, at the end of a long, rambling, 16-minute discourse on national and state politics, he dramatically left the stage.

I leave you gentleman now and you will write it. You will interpret it. That's your right. But as I leave you I want you to know — just think how much you're going to be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference and it will be one in which I have welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you.

Like Nixon, Palin seemed fraught with emotion. Like Nixon, she seemed angry at her critics.

Listen to the audio of Nixon's infamous speech via the History Channel and then watch the Palin speech below. Let us know what you think.

Of course to the surprise of his detractors, Nixon recovered. He spent the next six years stumping the country, piling up chits from grateful politicians who benefited from his endorsements, chits he cashed in during his successful 1968 run for the presidency.

Palin gave no hints of her future, except to say that a person can influence from outside the electoral process as well as inside the governor's office. Maybe Palin, who landed on the national political map in August when Republican John McCain plucked her from Wasilla, Alaska, as his vice presidential running mate, is planning to follow the Nixon playbook on that front too.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Nixon gives his "Checkers" speech on Sept. 23, 1952. Credit: Associated Press

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