Stale Rice

ThinkProgress reports the deflation of Kinda Sleazy:

Over the past two years, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been on the Sunday talk shows 30 times, making her the most second frequent guest after Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE).

But that may be changing. In his Washington Post column, Howard Kurtz reveals that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is no longer a “prize catch” for the Sunday talk shows. She was recently turned down by both CBS and NBC:

The secretary of state has always been considered a prize catch for the Sunday talk shows. But when the White House offered Condoleezza Rice for appearances eight days ago, after a week focused on Iraq, two programs took the unusual step of turning her down.

Executives at CBS and NBC say Rice no longer seems to be a key player on the war and that her cautious style makes her a frustrating guest.

“I expected we’d just get a repetition of the administration’s talking points, which had already been well circulated,” says Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” who questioned two senators instead. “We’d had a whole week of that with General Petraeus and President Bush.”

Television media aren’t the only ones uninterested in Rice. A few months ago, every single major newspaper turned it down an op-ed by Rice on Lebanon. Price Floyd, formerly the State Department’s director of media affairs, recounted that the piece was filled glowing references to President Bush’s wise leadership and “read like a campaign document.”

Recent reports indicate that Rice’s influence within the White House is also waning, giving way to the more extreme policies of Cheney and his allies. A Newsweek article in June found that Cheney’s national-security team had “been actively challenging Rice’s Iran strategy in recent months.” In April, Rice advocated that five members of the Iran Revolutionary Guard be freed from captivity, but she was overruled after Cheney “made the firmest case for keeping them.”

These reports contrast when Rice first became Secretary of State. The media gushingly predicted she would succeed because she and Bush “know each other so well they have conversations based on body language” and speculated that she may even run for president in 2008.

This past Sunday, none of the five network talk shows turned down Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), who appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox.

Back to academia with you, Madam Secretary.

875 and $87,000+

In just the past week Rick Noriega's campaign has added 75 more donors and fifteen grand to the party.

And we haven't even flogged it much.

Noriega will probably be named later today the winner of Democracy for Texas' online polling, as he has carried a substantial lead throughout. And this is the final week before the end of the fundraising quarter and the results for the exploratory campaign will be made public.

Our little netroots push went national, and also generated substantial organic grassroots momentum (despite what one person thinks).

You can still ride the Noriega Express and be one of the One Thousand Netroots Supporters of this campaign. There's still 125 seats left. But hey, time's running out; you only have until Sunday to get on board.

Considering what a jackass our Junior Senator was this past week (and considering your other option -- a man who believes pregnant women have no choice, but gays do --) it's long been clear to those of us who know the man that Rick Noriega is the only choice for the US Senate.

Won't you join us?

Update (6 p.m.): Noriega 78.4%, Watts 21.6%.

Update (9/25): Via Sharon and RG Ratcliffe, Noriega thanks the netroots:



"Now with this new dimension in American politics, the netroots allows for regular folks like myself, who have devoted their lives to public service to step forward and offer themselves up for higher office.

"No longer do you have to be a celebrity or a self-financed millionaire to offer yourself up for higher office.

"The netroots in large part has leveled the playing field."

"The netroots component is going to be a critical piece of us defeating John Cornyn and getting the state and nation back on track after this administration has so misled us."