[UPDATE 2]The third video (appended at the bottom of the post) – is a conversation I had with John Boehner on his show, Majority Report, this morning.

One interesting part of the interview had to do with something I’ve seen suggested by several people: that this is a “hit” put on Boehner from malcontents within his own caucus. I haven’t seen a lot of speculation regarding motive, but what I have seen generally has to do with petty ambition. I can’t say anything definitive, but this seems suspect to me. I’ll say why by asking a few questions: Why wouldn’t they have done it before he took the gavel? Why put the Republican Party through the storm that is sure to result if Boehner is forced to resign? Why not get word to him quietly, before he took the gavel?

Nah. I suspect that this is just something that made its way through the DC gossip mill and found its way to me because my source knew I’d be willing to ask about it if I was given enough background (unlike the vast majority of DC reporters that can’t afford to risk access – although, I will say that it is pretty amazing that they harbored no such fears when Clenis was their subject).

[UPDATE] In the comments, Boy Culture’s Matthew Rettenmund leaves a link to photos of the National Enquirer story. Can’t quite make out the text, but it’s a two-page spread.

Remember the videos at the bottom of this post?

The New York Times passed on the story (if there ever was one; Page 6 of the New York Post isn’t known as the beginning and end of truth), but evidently Boehner hasn’t been successful in making the story go away. I was recently contacted by a reporter from the National Enquirer, and now I have confirmation that their story will hit the newsstands on Thursday.

Wonder how well Boehner’s zero-tolerance pledge regarding corruption will hold up when it comes out that several hundred paper-making jobs were lost in his district and he refused to do anything about it at the same time he was sleeping with a lobbyist for the printing industry that was very happy to get their cheap paper from China.

Gotta give it to Lyons though! She’s one hell of a lobbyist!

[UPDATE] Just remembered that Rep. Bonner, just yesterday, trashed the National Enquirer when asked about the ethics process. I don’t believe in accidents.

Rep. Jo Bonner (R-AL) told a reporter for a newspaper in his home state that political realities kept House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) from shutting down the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, which he said would begin an investigation “out of the National Enquirer.”

Blumenthal is predictably milquetoast and non-committal with regards to anything specific. That said, he did say he’d like to see the Senate work better.

I asked Brown about the statement he made over the summer about directly electing Committee Chairs. He said it is intended to “send a message” and that electing chairs individually was a departure from what has been done in the past.

Tester was the most specific of the Senators, saying that he wanted to put the onus on the filibustering minority and that with regards to the election of committee chairs, he recognizes that the Senate Majority Leader needs to have people that he can work with. He says there needs to be balance.

Durbin says he hopes for filibuster reform that both parties can support. Regarding election of Committee chairs, he sounds less enthused. Moreover, he loves Joe Lieberman…

High school kids are asked to do the things our military must be protected from.

Weird.

It started out great. I was happy that he was successful in inserting language into the financial reform bill that forced a degree of ex post facto transparency on the Fed and its TALF program. I was wondering what Frank’s take on the data was, and in particular if revelations like the rampant conflicts of interest might give rise to additional legislation or proactive accountability measures.

Soon enough, the conversation slipped off the rails.

I’m don’t have the expertise of Karl Denninger or David Dayen or Atrios or Yves Smith, and Barney is pretty good at bullying the conversation, so I wasn’t really able to pin him down. But… you will notice that he didn’t want to talk about the toxic debt time bomb hidden away on the Feds ledger (debt they took off the banks hands), or the money lost to AIG (or the payout at par the Treasury made to Goldman Sachs on AIGs obligations), or the ongoing foreclosure fraud crisis, or the fraudulent and deceptive mortgages that were written that underpins the entirety of this mess, or the criminality inherent in all of these banks submitting SEC filings riddled with material falsehoods and deceptions. Frank kept saying that the banks did nothing illegal; in hindsight, the fact that he’d even mouth those words to me is pretty insulting.

I ended up chasing him down because I like the guy, think he’s as good as we’re going to get on a lot of this stuff and hate the idea that he refuses to accept that people have a right to be pissed off about all of this. He said again and again that he’s sick of only hearing about the bad side of this mess; that we in the progressive media don’t spend enough time explaining what he and the rest of the government got right. To him, they deserve a lot of credit for re-regulating the mortgage market. I told him they got credit for the Consumer Protection apparatus and Elizabeth Warren; he wants us talking more about the reforms that have been put in place that he says will prevent the need for more bailouts.

Clap louder everybody. And stop your whining. Barney Frank says so.

Eric Kleefield at TPM flags a story out of Minnesota. The presumed winner of the MN governor election – by over 9,000 votes – is DFLer (Minnesotan for Democrat) Mark Dayton. At the same time, Republicans won majorities in both houses of the Minnesota legislature. According to a story cited by Kleefield, at least one Republican operative has suggested that Tom Emmer, the presumed loser of the governor’s race (and a Republican), should drag out the recount so that Governor Tom Pawlenty can have a little bit of time to work with a completely Republican legislature (he’s never had that opportunity; at least one house was held by DFLers for his entire governorship).

To their credit, Pawlenty and the incoming Republican leaders have shot the idea down. But incoming House leader Kurt Zellers offers a caveat:

“It would be disrespectful to either candidate and the people of Minnesota to somehow try to game the system or manipulate the recount to push through a legislative agenda. The recount should take its due course through the legal process and remain untainted by political maneuvering to drag out or accelerate anyone’s legislative agenda.

“You’re not going to see the House rush to ram something through right out of the gate just to try to beat the system. But we do have a job to do regardless of who sits in the Governor’s Office. We will get to work on day one to reform government and bring jobs back to Minnesota…”

So far, nobody has mentioned redistricting.

Here’s a story from the Star Tribune:

Should the state lose a seat like the RNC predicts, a messy fight will ensue if the governor’s mansion does flip to the DFL.

In 2000, Republicans had hoped to combine the Fourth (St. Paul) and Fifth (Minneapolis) Districts — both heavily Democratic — into a single urban district. On the other hand, it’s no secret that DFLers would love to see Rep. Michele Bachmann’s congressional district evaporate.

And here is the process Minnesota uses for redistricting:

“…Once the Legislature has passed a redistricting bill, the Governor will have the option of signing it or vetoing it. If he signs the bill, redistricting has been accomplished. If he vetoes the bill, the Legislature might vote to override the veto. If the veto withstands an override attempt, a new bill must be written, passed and sent to the Governor.”

Finally, here’s the timeline of events:

November 2, 2010
General election
Map drafters identified

December 31, 2010
State population reported to President
Congressional seats reapportioned

January-March 2011
Census Phase 3 – block populations reported to state census liaisons
Redistricting begins

February 21, 2012
Legislative and congressional redistricting complete

As you see, the deadline for completion is February, 2012. The deadline is set so far out because more foten than not, you don’t have one party controlling the Governorship and both Houses of the legislature. Redistricting battles can be drawn out to the extent that the begin to run into campaign season for the next cycle. So that candidates have a fair chance to prepare, a deadline is set early in the next election year. If it’s not met, the courts complete the process.

But that’s not what we have here, at least not early in 2011. With a unified government, Republicans could conceivably take full control of redistricting and ram it through before Mark Dayton takes his seat. If such a dirty trick were to transpire, Michelle Bachmann looks to be the beneficiary.

A piece written by historian and commentator Rick Perlstein is making the rounds. Titled, “We Are Ruled by Liars,” Perlstein says:

We live in a mendocracy.

So the guy to whom all Republicans must kowtow on pain of political death had just laid down a marker that everything Obama said was a lie.

I think Rick misses one key piece of info: Rush Limbaugh is heard by more people on a near-daily basis than any other person in the world. I’m not positive about that, but pretty damned sure.

A good cable news audience (Bill O’Reilly sets the standard here, I believe), may reach 5 million people on an excellent night. Network news shows get 7-8 million people.

For three hours every single weekday, Rush Limbaugh reaches (for at least part of those 3 hours) 20 million people.

The naked fact is that he is the most influential political voice in the United States. Probably moreso than the President himself.

Over his 25 years of broadcasting, Rush has built up a ton of trust with his audience and completely changed the AM radio spectrum. Hannity is close on his tail in terms of reach. Just behind him, you find Beck. And Ingraham. And Levin and Savage and Medved and Prager and Dobbs and Mancow and Bennett and Doyle…. and… and…. and….

What is more scary? The fact that these folks vote in wildly disproportionate numbers. They aren’t passive listeners. They open their wallets (fear does that to some folks, I guess), forward ridiculous email chains (when is the last time you got a progressive email from a crazy uncle?) and can be reliably counted upon to flood Congress with faxes, letters and phone calls. All of that gives them an outsized voice in our politics. It’s why our issues poll well, but we can’t elect people that do what we want them too. The talk radio crowd, combined with the moneyed interests, crowd progressive voices out.

I’d love to see a graphical representation of American politics compared against the arc of right wing talk radio. My bet is that it’d open up some eyes. I suspect that too many of us believe that since we see talk radio for the hucksterism that it is, it can’t really be a true threat. And I don’t think that could be more wrong. Talk radio is the nervous wiring of the right wing. The Koch’s and Scaife’s and the Waltons may be the brain sending signals through the wires, but as an organizing tool, it’s incredibly potent.

Wall Street’s last decade is full of assorted criminals and villains that will never be held to account. It’s simply not plausible that so many well-meaning, law-abiding people made so many innocent mistakes that, purely by coincidence, just happened to fatten their bonus pools. Of course, apologists remain. Over and over again, the propagandists responsible for propping up the hollow façade that remains of Wall Street tell us that “nobody saw this coming.”

It doesn’t matter that that lie has been deconstructed and exposed over and over and over again. The zombie lie lives on, because Wall Street needs it to. Which is why I’m not the least bit confident that Christine Richard’s Confidence Game (Wiley, 2008) will change things very much, notwithstanding its compelling narrative, meticulous reporting and unassailable documentation.

Did I mention its compelling narrative? Because this book hooks you right from the start. Take it from someone that knows what it is to walk into a lion’s den to deliver an unwanted message… It’s a hair-raising experience. And that’s how the book begins: Bill Ackman, the whistleblower, walks into the offices of MBIA, the overbearing villain in this book, to tell them they are a fraud and he knows it. And the story gets better from there…

Confidence Game tells the story of a bright hedge fund manager that saw his spot, went all in, faced down the best sharks on Wall Street and emerged with a billion-dollar payout. Typically, this would be the story of a villain, right? Not in this case.

Bill Ackman looked at the emperor and saw that he was naked back in 2002. He loudly proclaimed as much. And all the emperor’s horses, and all the emperor’s men on Wall Street ran interference. For the next six years. Before all was said and done, Ackman was investigated by Elliot Spitzer, the New York State Insurance Commissioner’s Office and the SEC. Ackman stood firm in the face of the onslaught, and for his travails, walked away with $1.1 billion dollars.

How did it happen? Well, a whole book was written on the subject, but in a nutshell, Ackman realized that a pillar of the bond-insurance racket (it was a racket), MBIA, had shuffled some paperwork to conceal their potential liability. They had severely underpriced their insurance contracts and could only sustain themselves so long as the economy continued to grow. Ackman’s evidence was ironclad, and he was generous in terms of sharing his information. After all, he had a reason to be – he had bet against MBIA and fully expected their share price to fall when the information he uncovered penetrated the market.

That’s where things began to go wrong.

The market didn’t want to accept the information Ackman was providing. Instead, they were downright hostile to it. Market participants (investment banks that built the bond deals MBIA insured) knew that if MBIA suffered, they’d suffer as well. That’s the abstract argument. In the real world, these bankers saw that if Ackman got any traction, their bonus pools would dry up overnight as their industry crashed. So they ignored Ackmen. For six years.

For six years the deals continued, getting bigger and bigger. Ackman looked on with unruffled confidence. He kept whaling away at the borg, until one day, the system fell apart. And Ackman was left standing on a pile of money.

If Wall Street or its regulators had listened to Ackman when he first chirped, the canary in the coal mine may have prevented what may go down in history as the world’s most devastating financial crisis. Ackman would have earned less than 1% of what he ultimately gained, but mainstreet would almost definitely be better off today.

Of course, the shame of all of this is that none of it has changed Wall Street. The bankers got their bonuses, even after being bailed out. They learned that trickery, lies, deceit, intentionally feigned ignorance and any other unethical behavior required to protect their bonus pools is what pays in the end. Bill Ackmans and Bethany McLeans will come and go, but the titans of finance will always be with us.

disclosure: i get a lot of free books. if i read one and like it, i’ll sometimes review it. that’s because i liked the book and think you should read it too because you will like it too, and also because i like getting free books.

I’ve been following Greenwald’s media criticism and want to add a couple of things:

• For most of the war, the military brass and civilian leadership told us that they didn’t do bodycounts whenever they were asked to estimate the number of dead. That’s been proven to be a lie by this document dump. Yet still, a overwhelming majority of our press either actively defend the military against Wikileaks, or, at a minimum, stay silent with regards to the fact that they were flatly lied to. It seems to me that any professional reporter that is worth a damn would be outraged that they were misled into misleading their readers. Their job is to provide consumers of their product with useful information; they should be appalled at being used as unwitting dupes in the Pentagon’s quest to spread propaganda. Has anyone witnessed such outrage?
• Given the fact that these casualty reports were systematic, what of all the embeds? None of them saw soldiers in the field producing body counts? If not, were the embeds strictly managed in such a way as to constitute little more than propaganda opportunities? If the reporters did see these counts, why weren’t questions asked when the brass and civilian leadership said no counts existed?
• Now that we know that the United States military cooperated with Iraqi torture teams, are any reporters asking the President, or House or Senate Armed Forces Committee members if they are disturbed by the revelation? Is anyone asking if the President or Committees are going to do anything about it? Aren’t these pretty basic questions?

This is an anti-Democratic year and Texas is a very conservative state. So why isn’t Rick Perry cruising to re-election with approval ratings in the 60s or even the 70s?

Though it’s rarely discussed, one possibility is an undercurrent of unspoken discomfort with Rick Perry among Texas conservatives – discomfort that may partially be attributed to years of detailed rumors circulating in Texas and national political circles that Governor Rick Perry is gay.

In recent years, several prominent Texas news organizations have mucked around trying to get to the bottom of this matter. The Austin-American Statesman even went so far as to run a lengthy story about its investigation into the rumors of a troubled marriage, pronouncing, in essence, that there was nothing to report.

Maybe that pronouncement emboldened Perry to work harder to macho his image. He boasted of an odd incident in which he killed a coyote with hollow point ammunition (his security detail was strangely absent that day). He’s asserted that he’s a “big tough guy,” and he posed with his “Come and Take It” boots on the cover of Newsweek Magazine. Recently, Perry went so far as to say: “We’re creating more jobs than any other state in the nation. … Would you rather live in a state like this, or in a state where a man can marry a man?”

Yet, the rumors of gay relationships persist, and occasionally flare.

During the Texas gubernatorial primary, Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s campaign caused a bit of a stir when it was discovered that they had embedded meta tags in their campaign web-site that optimized it for searches including the terms “gay,” and “Rick Perry”. In non-nerd speak, this means that when those terms were Googled, Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s campaign website was one of the first results.

As I began looking into this, I repeatedly heard detailed rumors of a past gay relationship between the Governor and his former Secretary of State, Geoff Connor. A version of this story included Perry’s wife, Anita, catching Connor and Perry in the act and screaming at him the next day from her office phone. The most common retelling has it that the Governor was caught, struck a quick (and expensive) deal with his wife that allowed him to avoid an immediate trip to divorce court, and swore everyone involved to secrecy.
I also learned of a new rumor making the rounds. Several sources told me they had heard that the Governor is in a current gay relationship with one of the two (male) chefs that Perry he keeps on staff at the tax-payer funded ($10,000 a month) temporary governor’s mansion.

What’s interesting, given the longevity and evolving nature of these rumors, is that as far as I can tell, no media outlet has ever publicly asked the Governor the simple question: “Are you gay?”

To my mind, this isn’t an offensive question, any more than someone’s religious affiliation or military service record. Some people are gay, some aren’t. Of course, if the rumors prove true, the fact that Rick Perry has done so much to misrepresent who he is, possibly has a paid lover, the chef, on the state payroll, and the hypocrisy regarding his public persona would all conspire to make this a matter of extraordinary public interest.

Around the time he became Governor, he denounced and denied the rumors that he and his wife were divorcing. But he never mentioned the rumors having to do with his sexual orientation – the supposed reason for the rumored divorce. This loose thread still flutters in the wind.

I thought it would be worth asking Texas conservatives whether or not they had knowledge of these rumors, if they would continue to support Perry if the rumors proved true, and if they believed those that hold the public’s trust owe a duty of honesty with regard to these matters to their constituents. Who better to ask than all 250 Republican Party County chairs?

I harvested the chairs’ names and contact information from the Texas GOP’s website, then called through the entire list. I was straightforward with who I was and that I was looking into the question of Governor Perry sexual orientation.

I spoke with 100 out of the 250 chairs. More chairs hung up on me as I approached the end of the list, and I suspect that by that time, either the state GOP or the Perry campaign heard of what I was doing and demanded chairs avoid me.
Despite that, many were open to talking, and they were candid with their thoughts. The results were interesting:

1.) About a third of the chairs said that they were aware of the rumors.

2.) 15 thought Perry should publicly and unequivocally state his sexual orientation. There are:

• Bosque County – Tom L. Bratcher
• Brazos County – Paul Rieger
• Concho County – Beth Grounds
• Crane County – Tom Currie
• Crosby County – Edward Merrick
• Edwards County – Annette Cox
• Gregg County – Keith Rothra
• Harrison County – Chad L. Sims
• Hunt County – David Hale
• Jones County – Isaac Castro
• Karnes County – Jason Jansky
• Kenedy County – Lorraine Burns
• Kent County – Maggie Barnes
• Lamar County – John Kruntorad
• Lamb County – Charlotte Cain

• Crosby County’s Merrick said that public servants, “… if they are worth anything, will be honest about who they are.”

• Mr. Jansky, of Karnes County, said, “I don’t think anyone appreciates a secret life, whether you are killing hookers or banging guys.”

3.) 2 chairs said they wouldn’t support the Governor if he was gay. They are:

Paul Rieger – Brazos County

Kathy Riffe – Sherman County

4.) 19 Chairs said they would support the governor even if he was gay. Larry May, Chairman of Nolan County, said, “I’d vote for a perverted Republican before a liberal every time.” They are:

• Beth Grounds – Concho County
• Tom Currie – Crane County
• Annette Cox – Edwards County
• David Hale – Hunt County
• Betty Stiles – Aransas County
• Yvonne Dewey – Brazoria County
• Jean Ellis – Colorado County
• Robert Ford – Falls County
• Kerry Pratt – Floyd County
• Steve Murphy – Frio County
• Tony Salinas – Jim Hogg County
• Anne N. Rose – Kimble County
• John Quigley – Kinney County
• Duane Rawson – Mills County
• Walter D. Wilkerson – Montgomery County
• William Knight – Moore County
• Barbara Upham – Palo Pinto County
• Larry Brumley – Panola County
• John Tyson – Randall County

It isn’t clear what the Governor fears when it comes to addressing these persistent rumors. Public opinion polls reveal ever-increasing tolerance for gays (and even gay marriage). For the first time, the American military is developing plans to recruit, train and deploy openly gay soldiers. In my view, this is a healthy discussion for Texas to have, allowing the matter to move to being settled, once and for all.

I will continue researching this developing story and will continue reaching out to others in the state’s Republican Party and social conservative circles. I’ll do so not only to see if anyone in the party might know anything, but also to gauge their reaction upon hearing this information.

That said, if Governor Perry wants to close this matter once and for all, he should simply answer the question: “Governor, are you gay?”

Several days ago, my friend Howie Klein reported at his blog, Down With Tyranny, that Mike Pence was spreading the John Boehner/Lisbeth Lyons story.

Normally, I’d not feel the need to respond to what others write, but this case is different. First, I can’t have people assuming that Howie got his information from me, because implicit to that assumption would be the fact that I can’t keep confidences with my sources. Second, to the extent that people may read the two blogs and put together the idea that Howie got his information from me, they would be ill-informed. And since I think I am in the business of more fully informing the public, allowing that misunderstanding to fester cuts against what I am trying to accomplish with StarkReports.com.

Look, I’m obviously a partisan. And the idea that Mike Pence may be circulating these rumors makes for some pretty satisfying and delicious palace intrigue. But, as much as I wish it were so, Mike Pence was not a source for my reporting.

With that said, as fate would have it, I ran into Representative Pence at a Robert Hurt campaign event over the weekend. I was able to ask him if he was spreading the story. He looked down, pursed his lips and shook his head as if to deny. Most people I know would have taken that as a flat denial, and I’m certain that’s how it was intended.

But here’s another secret… In law school, when you are taking depositions, you are taught that the answers to “yes or no” questions must be spoken. I’m not sure if that is because a court reporter cannot record “witness nodded their head in the affirmative” or “witness shook head to indicate the negative” or if it is because sworn testimony must be spoken aloud for it to be a matter of record. Anyway, Washington has definitely jaded me. I have extreme difficulty accepting anything our elected leaders say as gospel; I’m a natural (extreme) skeptic. So all I can do is report what happened and let y’all make up your own mind.

But one more time, for the record: Mike Pence was not a source for my story; until yesterday, he and I had never discussed John Boehner and/or Lisbeth Lyons in any context whatsoever.