The only disappointment, from her point of view, is that she did not
bring the same skills to fighting Obama, a year ago, that she is now
bringing to serving him. If she had, Obama might have been the one
learning how to play second fiddle.
gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/world/10325455.html
-----------------------
Sorry I don't have time to check whether this takes comments but it's
a nice article.
Gay groups grow impatient with Obama
politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0609/A_year_later_Hillary_wins.html
[ This sounds like help to those who can't afford it was Obama's idea
-- in fact both Hillary and Edwards stressed that. ]
[ Good article with links to sources. ]
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/05/20/pelosis-probably-right/
Wants login. 35 comments so far, good thoughtful comments.
"Because it appears that EPA is unwilling to intervene, it is now
imperative that the White House Council on Environmental Quality take
immediate action to stop the bulldozers," [Carl Pope of Sierra Club]
said in a prepared statement. "The Obama administration should take
swift action to fix the flawed 'fill rule' that enables this type of
devastating mining and should act decisively to save the mountains,
rivers and communities of Appalachia."
http://wvgazette.com/News/200905150759?page=1&build=cache
Requires registration/login.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22681.html#ixzz0Fv6Ry1ey&B
In particular, its East Coast faction, led by lawyer Philip Berg, has
filed suit against its West Coast chief, Orly Taitz, accusing her of
libel and other crimes for, among other things, calling Berg a
"shyster."
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0509/Birther_civil_war.html?showall
"In the past several months, we have seen an orchestrated effort by
the governor's opponents to make differences of opinion and ideology
almost criminal," said Mike Nizich, the governor's chief of staff, in
a statement. "Governor Palin has spent a considerable amount of time
and money fighting ethics complaints – and no charge has been
substantiated. I hope that the publicity-seekers will face a backlash
from Alaskans who have a sense of fair play and proportion. I served
six previous governors, and I've never seen anything like the attacks
against Gov. Palin."
....
"Over the past months it became increasingly clear that supporters of
Gov. Palin needed to help defend against the onslaught of frivolous
attacks against her," said Trustee Kristan Cole,
....
To avoid additional accusations of impropriety, the fund set an
unusually low, self-imposed cap of $150 per donation. It also
volunteered to disclose the names and dollar amounts of each donor,
leading Cole to call it "one of the most restrictive and transparent
legal funds in history."
Three days later though, another ethics complaint was filed — this
time against the legal defense fund itself.
An Eagle River resident who had recently joined a federal lawsuit
against Palin for failing to issue a proclamation commemorating the
Juneteenth emancipation holiday in 2007, complained that Palin is
misusing her office and receiving improper gifts by setting up the
fund, accusing the governor of intending to raise much more than she
needs to pay her legal debts.
latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedishrag/2009/04/no-vogue-cover-for-hillary-clinton-too-feminine-hard-to-imagine-that.html
EASY POST, no login. Dela for moderation.
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/04/valuating_clintons_base.php
Requires login. One comment so far.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/04/sarah-palin-mccain-vp.html
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http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0409/White_House_No_bow_to_Saudi.html
Interestingly, a columnist in the Saudi-backed Arabic paper Asharq
Alawsat also took the gesture as a bow and appreciated the move.
"Obama wished to demonstrate his respect and appreciation of the
personality of King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, who has made one of the
most important calls in the modern era, namely the call for
inter-faith and inter-cultural dialogue to defuse the hatred, conflict
and wars," wrote the columnist, Muhammah Diyab.
[E]very last damn thing, has been favorable to one of Wall Street's most entrenched interest groups: the bondholders.
The bondholders, the bondholders. It's always been about them [....] to make sure that the connected financial interests in his Rolodex don't lose their stakes, even in cases where they oh-so-richly deserve to.
This, by the way, is why the Obama administration ruled out the nationalization option for the banks from day one.
The cleanest option, and one we called for loudly in these pages – taking over the banks, throwing out current management, selling off the assets and starting over – was no-go because too many connected players would have taken a hit if their big bond positions went to zero.
[....]
But an aide in Washington is believed to have mis-dialled a number and connected to the sex line.
A White House spokesman said: 'This will not happen again.'
EASY POST. Form at the bottom, no login. Delay for moderation. 6 posts so far.
The picture caption says Hillary "was forced to issue an apology" but the actual story says the White House apolotized and admitted the mistake came from one of their aide.
By making drugs illegal instead of decriminalizing them (not legalizing, but decriminalizing) we have made the cartels in Mexico almost as powerful as those in Columbia.
Contact number for ALL Congressmen and Senators:
1-877-762-8762
Send email directly to your Representative:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/03/17/tauscher_to_state.html?wprss=44
The U.S. economy is so bad now that Nigerians are getting financial
scam e-mails from Americans. [....]
If you've got the courage, click on this fascinating stock market
chart/timeline of the market and the first half of Obama's first 100
days from the must-read fivethirtyeight.com blog. Not good news for anyone's mutual funds, even the few Barack andMichelle Obama owned
before the election.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/03/obama-economy.html
Comment box at the bottom. My name was in it, we've had several alerts here.
AIG has received $170bn in government money since being saved from bankruptcy in September. The bulk of the bonuses will go to employees in the very business division that wrecked the company's finances.
The Boston Globe published a horrifying article today titled "Many Boston teens surveyed say Rihanna is at fault for assault". The article reports the results of a survey conducted by the Boston Public Health Commission.
Here are a few quotes:
" Nearly half of the 200 Boston teenagers interviewed for an informal poll said pop star Rihanna was responsible for the beating she allegedly took at the hands of her boyfriend, fellow music star Chris Brown, in February."
"Health counselors are specifically concerned with teenagers' views of the controversy. Of the teens questioned, more than half said both Brown, 19, and Rihanna, 21, were equally responsible for the assault. More than half said the media were treating Brown unfairly, and 46 percent said Rihanna was responsible for the incident."
Comment on the Boston Globe article here. (Need to counter the few idiotic comments posted there).do:http://www.boston.com/news/loc.....r_assault/
We've had alerts here before.
Ammunition:
Apparently there are even worse videos and evidence here that you can utilize (scroll down their blog to find the post on this): http://guerillawomentn.blogspot.com/
[ Thanks to ER for all this material. ]
Listen Now [5 min 14 sec]
Comments so far sound civilized but few are about the 'council' or Jarrett.
Clinton campaign veterans giving advice in unpaid roles: Howard Wolfson, who was Hillary Clinton's spokesman during her presidential campaign, and Ann Lewis, a veteran of the Clinton White House.
Gillibrand must run in 2010 to serve out the remaining two years of Clinton's term. A recent Marist poll showed half of the New York electorate is unsure about the job Gillibrand is doing while 18% believe she is doing an excellent or good job.
Of the two selections offered by the independent citizens' commission, the Alaska Judicial Council, [ Ms ]Christen was deemed the more "activist" judge by at least one state conservative organization. [....] The 47-year-old Christen, who replaces a justice facing mandatory retirement at age 70, served on the board of Planned Parenthood in the 1990s before the group began performing abortions in 2003. As a career lawyer, Christen was also active for years in the Rotary Club, United Way and Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Alaska.
Only a candidate possessed with such boldness and self-belief would have challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination two years after leaving the Illinois state senate, promising in his first campaign speech to "transform a nation and usher in a new birth of freedom on this Earth".
Only a man who frequently compares himself to America's greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, would declare that when he was elected, "the rise of the oceans will begin to slow". Only someone who believes that America is on the crest of a dangerous historic wave - and that he "can help guide it" - would have undertaken a glitzy world tour midway through the campaign.
With reporters looking on, Clinton met Lavrov and handed him a gift — a green box tied in green ribbon. He unwrapped it to reveal a "reset button" [....] Clinton assured Lavrov her staff "worked hard" to get it right. Was it right? [....] "You got it wrong," Lavrov responded, also smiling. He said the word the Americans chose — "peregruzka" — meant "overloaded" or "overcharged" rather than "reset." [....] "We reached an agreement on how 'reset' is spelled in both Russian and English — we have no differences between us any more," he said through an interpreter.
[....] Obama's creating what political scientist Theodore Lowi called "a personal presidency," in which one unreasonably exaggerates the power of a president to influence events — especially economic ones. Going down that path, warned Lowi, is a sure road to political failure. [....]
Even so, Obama is all over the place. He seems to think that he's still in the middle of his "rock star" campaign, when the nation was understandably excited about electing its first African-American president. But we've already been there and done that.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/03/appearing_act.html
One of the most contentious [amendments] _ likely to be revived this year _ stipulates that nothing in CEDAW should be interpreted as creating a right to abortion. [....]
'This language is touted as neutral or benign but is not,' she wrote in a recent essay. 'This language can and has been used as an anti-abortion weapon.' [....]
Another New York-based women's rights group, MADRE, has similar concerns and is launching a campaign to get a 'clean' version of the treaty ratified.
http://www.topix.net/content/ap/2009/03/discord-likely-over-ratifying-womens-rights-pact
Comment box here. My name was already in it from previous alerts.
a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit [...] reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.
The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment."
The head of the Alaska Family Council -- a Christian pro-family, anti-abortion group -- on Wednesday sent an e-mail to thousands of people asking them to urge Palin to pick Smith, not Christen. [....]
The family council plea, from group president Jim Minnery, said Smith was "more conservative" and that Christen would be "another activist on the Court."
"it is likely that Obama will nominate someone else for a second post Daschle had created for himself: director of a new White House Office of Health Reform. One name mentioned for the job is former Clinton administration adviser Nancy-Ann DeParle, who would take over the effort to conceive, sell and implement a wide-ranging health-care overhaul."
Clinton herself saw all this coming. Two years ago, in the early stages of her presidential campaign, she warned we were undergoing "a slow erosion of our own economic sovereignty" because of our growing indebtedness to foreigners, who, according to some estimates, hold about half of our government-issued securities.
The day she made that warning, a selloff in the Chinese stock markets led to a plunge on Wall Street. In a letter to then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson andFederal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, then-Sen. Clinton said the dynamic "underscores the exposure of our economy to economic developments in countries like China."
Only about 70 people have been formally nominated to fill the roughly 500 senior posts in the Defense, State, Treasury, and Education departments and dozens of other government agencies, according to White House records. Dozens of nominations are still pending as FBI and White House officials scrub potential nominees' tax returns, financial ties, and former activities in government."
1. HHS Secretary – a Cabinet position – insist on a woman:
Governor Kathleen Sebelius
Marcia Angell, MD
2. Treasury Department:
Bethany McLean
Meredith Whitney
Brooksley Born
We purposely kept regulation on eBay to a minimum, so that small businesses could innovate. And when we spotted eBay entrepreneurs trying to build businesses, we worked hard to help them grow.
Freed from too many corporate rules, and supported by eBay's technology and employees, eBay unleashed the entrepreneur in people around the world.
NOW noted during the brief moment when New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg was the nominee for Commerce Secretary that, "With the nomination of Sen. Judd Gregg, the fourteen filled cabinet departments will be headed by eleven men and three women. Adding a highly-qualified woman... would increase the representation of half the population at the cabinet table, while adding health care and human needs expertise to HHS."
What woman? It is now reasonably clear that the Obama team likes Sebelius.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/state_of_change/409962/print?rel=nofollow
Chicago has yet to recoup the $1.74 million cost of President Obama's victory celebration in Grant Park -- despite a burgeoning $50.5 million budget shortfall that threatens more layoffs and union concessions.
"The Democratic National Committee has not yet paid us" [....]
Stacie Paxton, a spokeswoman for the Obama-controlled DNC, explained the reimbursement delay by saying, "We are still looking at various costs and bills.'' She would not say whether parts of the bill are disputed.
The US wants to enlist us in the war in Afghanistan, and side with the Pakistani state in its war against the Taliban. But [India should not] get sucked into the way Americans define this war. On Pakistan, we frankly don't have many options but to show restraint. This is not a battle we can win militarily, although we have to be prepared for all eventualities.
More at http://www.indianexpress.com/news/dead-ends-in-pakistan/426488/0
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