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Cablevision Announces Deal to Buy Newsday
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Two Republican dynasties are married in Crawford, Texas
The private wedding yesterday of First Daughter Jenna Bush and Henry Hager in Crawford, Texas, brought together two Republican families.
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MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.The Bush family – President Bush, his father President Bush, etc. – is extraordinarily well known, of course.
The Hager name does not constitute a national brand, but in Virginia the family is well-connected and well-known.
Henry Hager’s father, John H. Hager, 71, was an executive with the American Tobacco Company, as was his father, Virgil Hager.
John Hager is also a former lieutenant governor of Virginia and a former director of homeland security in Virginia. He’s now the chair of the Virginia Republican Party.
Beyond that, he has been an advocate and spokesman for people with disabilities since he contracted a near fatal case of polio in 1973 when he was 34.
Hager, who uses a wheelchair and competes in wheelchair races, lost a promotion with American Tobacco when he went through months of treatment for his illness.
“I had gone to the top and got knocked down to the bottom,” Hager told a Purdue University alumni publication.
But after his rehabilitation, Hager returned to the company and worked his way back up the corporate ladder
In 2004, he was appointed the assistant secretary, office of special education and rehabilitative services in the U.S. Department of Education. He served in that position until August 2007.
Jenna Bush, 26, and Henry Hager, 30, met in 2004 when both were working to get her father re-elected. Hager proposed in August 2007 on Cadillac Mountain in Maine’s Acadia National Park.
She recalled being awakened at 4 a.m. by Hager so they could catch the sunrise at the spot where the morning light first hits the United States.
“I did not want to go hiking at 4 in the morning,” she told ABC News. “It was freezing. But we got up, and we hiked in the dark for an hour and a half, and then when we got towards the top, with the sunrise, he asked me.”
A graduate of Wake Forest University, Hager will receive his MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business later this month.
He’s a former aide to presidential advisor Karl Rove. He also was an economic policy aide to Carlos Guiterrez, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
After the honeymoon – the destination hasn’t been disclosed – Hager will begin a job with Constellation Energy, a power supplier.
The couple will live in Baltimore, where Jenna Bush plans on returning to teaching.
A graduate of the University of Texas, she has taught in a charter school in Washington. She also served an internship in Latin America for the United Nations Children’s Fund.
She’s the author of Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope. It chronicles the life of a teen single mother with AIDS in Panama. Jenna Bush and her mother, Laura, are the authors of the recently published children’s book, Read All About It!
Jenna Bush selected her twin sister, Barbara Bush, to be maid of honor at her wedding.
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Two Republican Dynasties Are Married in Crawford Texas
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Muckety This Rosie Odonnell to Richard Nixon
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Project Runway ramping up for big changes (Muckety.com)
Facing a possible change in producers and network, will Project Runway still be able to follow the show’s catch phrase and “make it work?”
Hint: Click in map to explore connectionsStory continues below interactive map
MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.By outbidding NBC Universal’s Bravo, Lifetime has gained the rights to the flagship reality TV show. After the fifth season, which will air on Bravo this summer, the series will move to Lifetime.
However, longtime Project Runway producers, Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz, of Magical Elves production company, will not be following the show they helped to create. The duo has signed an exclusive agreement with NBC Universal, the network that hosts other shows they produce, including Top Chef and Step It Up and Dance on Bravo and Last Comic Standing on NBC.
However, Lipsitz doesn’t specifically cite the move to Lifetime as the reason for their departure. She tells Entertainment Weekly, “We didn’t have an issue with Project Runway going to Lifetime per se, and we’d both be surprised if it didn’t work for that network.” Instead, she says the decision was necessary for the growth of her company.
In the face of the impending network shift, NBC Universal has filed suit to reclaim Project Runway for Bravo. The network claims the Weinstein Company, which owns the rights to the show, did not give Bravo the right to first-refusal before striking a deal with Lifetime. The suit also attempts to block Lifetime’s ability to market future seasons of Project Runway.
In other Project Runway news, New York Magazine reported rumors Thursday that Elle magazine will not renew its contract with the show after the fifth season airs. Elle currently partners with the show as the media outlet to showcase the collection of the show’s winning designer.
Reports say Marie Claire may be interested in replacing Elle. Both Marie Claire and Lifetime are owned by Hearst Corporation.
Nina Garcia, a Project Runway judge, was reported to have lost her position as fashion director at Elle. While Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn have signed contracts with NBC Universal, it is unknown if remaining judges Michael Kors and Nina Garcia will also move to Lifetime.
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Mark Rachesky moves up in the world after leaving Icahn
Mark Rachesky, who spent six years advising Carl Icahn on investment opportunities, has done well for himself since going solo.
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MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.Rachesky, 49, left Icahn to run his own investment firm, MHR Fund Management, which specializes in inefficient markets and distressed companies.
While MHR is a private company that doesn’t have to report its finances, the man with the same initials is apparently quite comfortable. In November, he paid $33 million for a duplex at 834 Fifth Avenue, across from New York’s Central Park Zoo.
The ninth-floor residence has four fireplaces and seven and a half bathrooms. Neighbors in the building include Rupert Murdoch and John Gutfreund, former CEO of Salomon Brothers.
Just a year earlier, he and his wife Jill spent $20 million on an apartment at nearby 998 Fifth Avenue.
Rachesky has invested, and sits on the boards of, a range of businesses. MHR owns 22.5% of Leap Wireless International (NASDAQ: LEAP), which Rachesky chairs.
Leap Wireless stock rose yesterday after the company reported first-quarter results that beat analysts’ expectations. The company provides low-cost phone service, targeting young people and minorities. It has been able to increase its subscriber base even during the economic downturn.
Another major investment is Lions Gate Entertainment, the studio that has produced such movies as Crash and Monster’s Ball. The company’s special niches are teen comedies, action movies and horror, including the series of gory Saw films.
MHR is a majority owner of Loral Space & Communications, a satellite communications company chaired by Rachesky. Other investments include Neose Technologies and Emisphere Technologies, both biopharmaceutical companies.
Rachesky and his wife have a charitable foundation that has provided grants to the University of Pennsylvania, UJA Federation of New York, Trinity School, the Museum of Jewish Heritage and other nonprofits. Its assets, however, are relatively low – $393,000 in 2006, given the family’s personal wealth.
Rachesky has both an MBA and a medical degree from Stanford and generally lists M.D. after his name. He’s not currently a licensed physician in New York State, but then medicine is a low-paying profession compared to his current gig.
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Project Runway Ramping Up for Big Changes
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Mark Rachesky Climbs Up in the World After Leaving Icahn
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Clinton campaign scrubs name of Fox News military analyst from website Muckety.com
The Clinton campaign has deleted the name of a controversial military analyst from a press release published months ago on the Clinton web site.
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MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.Clinton announced at a Veteran’s Day event in 2007 that former Maj. Gen. Robert J. Scales Jr was among a group of high-ranking military brass joining the campaign’s Veterans and Military Retirees for Hillary Committee.
Scales may be a familiar face to those following the details of the war in Iraq. He has been on television and radio frequently, acting as a paid military analyst for Fox News and National Public Radio.
Last month David Barstow of the New York Times provided a detailed account of how the Pentagon used Scales and other retired military officers as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” to spin the Bush administration’s views on Iraq when they acted as military analysts for the media.
Members of the group were invited to private meetings with senior Pentagon officials where they were briefed on administration talking points. They were also taken on paid junkets to Iraq, to see the war firsthand and talk with officers in the field.
The Times investigation revealed that Scales and some of the other retired officers were in positions to profit from their Pentagon connections by consulting with and/or lobbying for defense contractors.
Scales is the CEO of Colgen, a company which bills itself as “America’s premier landpower advocate – new, lean, well-connected and able to meet the needs of any client or individual.”
Clients listed on the company web site include such defense industry heavyweights as Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman and Raytheon. The CIA and NSA are also on its “growing list of satisfied clients.”
Today, six months after the Veteran’s Day event, mention of Scales has been scrubbed from the press release on Clinton’s campaign web site – well, sort of.
Although the English version of the press release does not list Scales’s name, Muckety found a Spanish version of the release on the Clinton web site that refers to Scales. A list of the advisory committee members in the English version instead contains a blank space where Scales’s name appears in the Spanish version (see images below).
Redacting information from earlier publications could backfire by drawing attention to the issue, said Barbara O’Connor, professor of political communications at California State University in Sacramento.
The campaign “appears to be trying to distance themselves from (Scales). The motive for the deletion is not clear without an addendum and it causes suspicion,” she said. “I would err on the side of being transparent. You took it out and didn’t tell us why and it makes us suspicious.”
The Clinton campaign insists that it removed Scales’ name at his request last November because of his role as a cable network analyst. (See Editor’s note below.)
Editor’s note: Our original lead paragraph for this post read, “The Clinton campaign, in an apparent effort to distance itself from a supporter who has received negative publicity of late, seems to have deleted his name from a press release published months ago on the Clinton web site.”
We changed the sentence after receiving the following response from the Clinton campaign: “Because of his role as a cable network analyst, Maj Gen Scales asked in November to have his name removed from partisan press releases and the campaign complied at the time. Please correct your story to reflect this.”
We’re still awaiting the campaign’s answers to our follow-up questions about why no mention of the redaction was made on the web site and why General Scales agreed to be on the campaign’s Veterans and Military Retirees for Hillary Committee if he was concerned about being viewed as a partisan.
English version of press release (PDF)
Spanish version of press release (PDF)[Muckety.com](https://createpositivechange.org/2008/05/09/clinton-campaign-scrubs-name-of-fox-news-military-analyst-from-website/2681
