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Discolor Online

Weblog of the sweetest person you never want to piss off.

 

Deja Vu

Friday the Los Angeles Times carried a story about California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's "candid moments" being caught on tape. (There is also a link where you can also listen to the actual recording.) The Times described the recording thusly: This audio recording mainly consists of relaxed banter among Schwarzenegger and a few aides, and it offers an unusually candid look at his administration when the doors are closed.

It was not an illicit recording. The Governor and the attendees at the meeting knew it was being recorded. Apparently, it is not unusual for the Governor's meetings to be recorded. However, it was apparently not intended to be distributed outside of the Governor's office.

Over the weekend a weak protest was made by some who were offended that the attendees chitchat about whether a state representative was of Cuban or Puerto Rican heritage and the Governor is heard to say, "I mean, they are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it." Not particularly sensitive remarks, to be sure, but certainly not received at the level of Virginia Senator Allen's macaca comment. Today, ABC News reports that the tape was leaked by workers for Gov. Schwarzenegger's opponent, Phil Angelides.

Why do I care? Well, I merely find it interesting what's being said as I read further about this story. For example, the Angelides campaign is saying (quoting from the ABC News story) But Cathy Calfo, campaign manager for Democrat Phil Angelides, said the campaign had done nothing wrong because the file was available publicly on the governor's Web site. "No one hacked," Calfo said.... Meanwhile the Schwarzenegger people are saying (again from the ABC News story) "The file that was leaked to the Los Angeles Times was in a private area of the governor's server not accessible to the public without manipulation of information," he said. Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea Lynn Hoch, said the sound file was stored in a password-protected area.

Man, this sounds really familiar to me. Where have I heard this before? Oh yeah...the GAMA elections!

Ryan Dancey: I did not "hack" into GAMA's email system. I simply went to a public website and read it. Besides, they were a "clear and present danger" and they totally deserved it. (Ok, so I paraphrased that last bit, but he did straight-facedly used the phrase "clear and present danger" in his own defense.)

GAMA: Files of those e-mail exchanges were in a private area, not promoted or accessible to the public. Anyone looking to access that information would have had to falsely impersonate a legitimate user to do so. (Can't find any public links to direct quotes, but as I was there at the time and was one of the people saying the above, I can at least offer myself as witness.)


Hmmm. I suppose it depends on what your definition of "is" is, eh? "Hacked" or not, the Angelides campaign has relied on the same unethical behavior hoping for the same result. Unlike GAMA, it looks like the Governator's people aren't going to be hand-wringing pussies about it: they've already got the California Highway Patrol investigating. I'll be very interested to see what the outcome of this is out in California.

 

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Blogger Jeff Tidball Says:

Angelides is basically a shitbag politician in every way that shitbag politicians are measured, and it's a damn shame he won the Democratic primary. We actually had some really good other options.

Not that I'm going to vote for Arnold.

 

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