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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Palin's Xena moment

Andrew Sullivan writes about Sarah Palin's book, and her claim, yet again, that she went into labor, yet continued to give a speech in Dallas.
Take one story that every mother will relate to: the drama of her delivery of her fifth child, Trig. She tells us that at eight months pregnant with a child she knew had Down’s syndrome and would need special care at birth, she got on a plane from Alaska to Dallas, Texas, to attend an energy conference. Most airlines won’t allow this but Alaska Airlines did. Palin then tells us that at 4am on her first night in Dallas, “a strange sensation low in my belly woke me and I sat up straight in bed”. In an interview she gave with the Anchorage Daily News just after Trig’s birth, she confirmed that she had amniotic fluid leaking at that point.

So she was a mother eight months pregnant with a special-needs child thousands of miles from home. She wakes up in the middle of the night with contractions and amniotic leakage and she tells her husband she doesn’t want to call her doctor because it would wake her up at 1am. And she is the sitting governor of a state and her doctor is a close personal friend. Not only that, but she gives the speech as planned in the afternoon, during which she makes a rather good joke. She then tells us what happens next: “Big laughs. More contractions.”

After the speech, does she then go to a local hospital to get checked out? Nah. She gets on two separate aeroplanes all the way back to Alaska, with a stopover in Seattle, because she is determined to have the child in her home town and she just knows that the contractions and amniotic leakage are not signs of imminent delivery. She has had four previous kids so she has experience. “I still had plenty of time ... It was a calm, relatively restful flight home,” she explains of the next 15 hours.

You might imagine that an airline would have some qualms about letting a woman in some sort of labour at eight months, and pregnant with a Down’s syndrome child, get on a long transcontinental flight. What if the baby were born in mid-flight? The plane would have to be diverted. What if something happened to the baby? The airline could be liable. Palin never told the flight attendants. Couldn’t they tell, one might innocently ask. In the Anchorage Daily News story about the birth, Alaska Airlines said: “The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation. She did not show any signs of distress.” Palin makes Xena, the warrior princess, seem fragile.
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Independence of financial market oversight council called into question

From Shahien Nasiripour at Huff Post:
If the White House and congressional leaders get their way, the vaunted new oversight council charged with overseeing systemic risk in the financial markets will actually be a house organ of the Treasury Department, lacking the independence required to challenge decisions by government regulators, among others.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) last week tried to fix that, by offering an amendment in the House Financial Services Committee that would give the council an independent staff and independent source of funding. But he was forced to withdraw the amendment after it became clear that he wouldn't get Chairman Barney Frank's approval, said a source familiar with the committee's deliberations....

As proposed by the Obama administration, the House bill calls for the council to be headed by the Treasury Secretary, who would pick his own staff from within the Treasury Department.

But not only is the council supposed to keep watch over firms and activities that pose a risk, it's also supposed to oversee the work of other regulators in mitigating threats and supervise financial regulation as a whole, according to the bill's language. In short, it has a mandate to watch over everything that could possibly endanger the financial system - including inaction and incompetence by regulators.

The independence of the council is in question, experts say, because it will be overseen by someone whose actions it is supposed to examine and question -- the Treasury Secretary -- who will also be able to handpick the staff that is supposed to act as independent watchdogs.
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Lou Dobbs considering presidential bid in 2012

I would think a Dobbs candidacy would hurt the Republicans more than us. Some independents may fall for Dobbs' schtick, but his base will be conservative Teabaggers. It really is a race to the bottom for the GOP of late. Read More......

More on Glenn Beck finding a Jewish last name funny

Spencer Ackerman weighs in on the story we wrote about earlier:
Now, in fairness, I’m a very short Jew, so, it’s not like this thought hasn’t occurred to me either. But my friend Ari Rabin-Havt is a perfectly tall American of Jewish heritage, and the demagogic buffoon Glenn Beck mispronounces Ari’s eeeeeeethnicky last name in order to make some juvenile jokes about Hobbits. Because real Americans have names like Beck. But maybe that’s just my deep-seated contempt for white gentile culture talking. Watch all those right-wing Jews busy attacking J Street as anti-semites say absolutely nothing about someone with power inside conservative circles.

God I’d love to meet Glenn Beck in person and give him something to cry about.
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Talking to folks in line at a Sarah Palin book signing

From our good friends at NewLeftMedia. Priceless, as usual.

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread

I'm off to Chicago today for Thanksgiving with the family. Chris is, I'm sure, planning some incredible French feast in Paris, that we'll hopefully be hearing about, and seeing pictures of, soon enough. Otherwise, it's not as slow a week as it normally would be this time of year in Washington. The health care reform effort is in serious flux at the moment.

Conservative Democrats are still more willing than the rest of Democrats to threaten to walk unless they get their way, which generally means that they will get their way. Senator Reid could still make the conservative Ds irrelevant by going the route of reconciliation. Then there's President Obama. One hopes, but doubts, that he's working behind the scenes to fight for a stronger, rather than weaker, bill. It seems that his staff wants anything passed, regardless of what. And far be it for the President to step up and show some initiative in support of doing more, rather than less. But hope springs eternal. Read More......

Obama bringing targets to Copenhagen

Glad to see he's stepping up a bit more on this issue. As one of the leading contributors to the problem, it is only normal that other countries expect the US to show some leadership on the issue. From Obama's perspective it also can't be easy working with a substantial portion of the population and Congress that do not believe it's even an issue. That said, showing leadership is what the job is supposed to be about. That's what people vote for in elections.
The White House said today it would go to the Copenhagen climate change summit with a proposed target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions after facing international pressure to commit to stronger action on climate change.

An administration official told reporters that President Barack Obama would propose the targets before the climate meeting, which is less than three weeks away. The move removes the biggest obstacle to a political deal at Copenhagen.

America is the only major industrialised country that has yet to reveal its emissions reduction plan. The official did not give details on the stringency of the proposed cuts, but it is thought likely they would range from 14% to 20% from 2005 levels – still below those put forward by the EU and other industrialised countries.
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UK police arresting people to collect DNA for database

Seriously creepy and the racial profiling is sickening. What is happening over there?
Police officers are now routinely arresting people in order to add their DNA sample to the national police database, an inquiry will allege tomorrow.

The review of the national DNA database by the government's human genetics commission also raises the possibility that the DNA profiles of three-quarters of young black males, aged 18 to 35, are now on the database.

The human genetics commission report, Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?, says the national DNA database for England and Wales is already the largest in the world, at 5 million profiles and growing, yet has no clear statutory basis or independent oversight.
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Monday, November 23, 2009

Car dealer in Colorado posts billboard linking Obama to Ft Hood, and pushing birther nonsense

The sad, and scary part, is that these people actually believe this stuff. Read More......

Blackwater allegedly running covert ops in Pakistan, posing as USAID employees

Yes, the Blackwater that Bush's DOJ was considering indicting last December. The same Blackwater that was accused of shooting at innocent Iraqi civilians. The same Blackwater that was accused, just a few weeks ago, of bribing Iraqi officials to quell criticism of the civilian shooting incident. Yes, that's the Blackwater that the Obama administration is reportedly employing to help plan assassinations in Pakistan.

Oh, and posing as USAID workers is a good way to make actual US development workers targets. From the Nation:
At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help run a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.

The source, who has worked on covert US military programs for years, including in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has direct knowledge of Blackwater's involvement. He spoke to The Nation on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. The source said that the program is so "compartmentalized" that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.
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Provincetown clarifies Pilgrim history

Rock? Who needs a rock when you have the real history? Just kidding, of course, but why not check out both fantastic places and their history? I admit to having a bit of bias though because I love P-town. Follow the link and check out the video with a bit more of the Pilgrim history.
And now, the good people of Provincetown want you to know the rest of the story: The Pilgrims made landfall here first, 389 years ago yesterday, five weeks before they moved to Plymouth, and about a year before they sat down to the harvest feast that spawned an American tradition. And if the Cape Codders have to steal a little Thanksgiving thunder to get their message across, well, so be it.

“Important things happened here, and we should remember that,’’ said Laurel Guadazno, education and program manager at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum. “Provincetown has always gotten short shrift. It still does.’’
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RNC loses communications director

As Cillizza notes, mid-cycle, that tends to mean turmoil in GOP land.
Trevor Francis, the communications director at the Republican National Committee, is leaving his post, an odd mid-cycle departure that suggests some level of turmoil within the GOP's chief campaign committee.
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