ORIGINAL FRIDAY POST: Yes, that is the news. According to NY Times’s Mitchell L. Blumenthal, Sarah Palin to Resign as Governor of Alaska effective July 25th:

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska announced Friday that she would step down by the end of the month and not seek a second term as governor, fueling speculation that she is seriously weighing whether to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012.

Ms. Palin, who was Senator John McCain’s vice presidential running mate last year and solidified the support of the party’s conservative base, explained her decision at a news conference at her home in Wasilla, Alaska, accompanied by her husband, Todd, and other family members.

“We know we can effect positive change outside of government,” she said in making the announcement.

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Known as Sarah Barracuda when she played basketball in high school, Ms. Palin used point guard analogy in explaining her decision, saying she knows “exactly when to pass the ball so the team can win.”

She said that she planned to hand over the reins of the state government to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who would be sworn in at the governor’s picnic in Fairbanks later this month.

“This decision came after much consideration,” Ms. Palin told reporters gathered at her home, and added, “I really don’t want to disappoint anyone with this announcement.”

There had been wide speculation that she would seek to be the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 2012. Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, who is also considered to be a leading Republican candidate for president in 2012, announced last month that he would not seek re-election.

By leaving office early, Ms. Palin, a 45-year-old mother of five, will be able to travel around the country more freely and not be constrained by the duties and responsibilities of being a governor.

“Some are going to question the timing of this, and let me say this decision has been in the works for quite a while,” she said.

I cannot imagine what her thinking is here, but surely having to deal with all sorts of bogus ethics complaints, paying astronomical legal fees and fending off the non-stop media hit squad doesn’t help her in doing her job as Governor, or in caring for her family.

Whatever her motives or endgame here, I find the witch hunt against her absolutely disgusting. Ironic that prior to Sarah Palin being chosen as Senator McCain’s running mate, she commented about Hillary Clinton being on the receiving end of sexist attacks at the hands of the media. While she was very respectful of Clinton, she said at the time a woman knows she’ll be dealing with this going in, so she’s just got to be twice as good and get on with it. She intimated it would be better to just not mention it.

It is unfortunate that she has learned the hard way just what SoS Clinton has had to deal with for sixteen years.

Your thoughts, please.

UPDATE–Couple of articles with more substance on Governor Palin’s decision and motive.
Here’s what Sam Stein reports:

The head of the Republican Governor’s Association said on Friday that in emails sent to him moments before she announced her resignation as governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin discussed expanding the role she played in the Republican Party.

“Part of her decision is she wants to spend more time campaigning for candidates,” Nick Ayers, the executive director of the RGA, told Fox News.

“She felt like she needed to make her colleagues around the country aware, so she had given us a brief heads up,” Ayers said of getting the emails. “We have known for a couple of days she was considering not running for re-election but it was news today that she had gone ahead and made the decision to fully step down and resign.”

My friend, John Batchelor, posted this a bit ago (the original appears at the Daily Beast):

Rather than a blow to a career, Sarah Palin’s decision to resign underlines her self-awareness, writes The Daily Beast’s John Batchelor. She is now unmatched for the 2012 primary.
The early excuse for the Republican circular firing squad of the holiday weekend is that Weekly Standard editor and party brainiac Bill Kristol claims that pugnacious McCain campaign enforcer Steve Schmidt has been caught gossiping to Vanity Fair’s Todd Purdum about Sarah Palin’s rambling and incoherent vice-presidential campaign last September and October. (Now that Palin has announced her resignation from Alaska’s governorship, the late excuse for the fisticuffs will certainly be that the boys smelled a special mom baking an apple pie in the kitchen of the GOP and they got in line early with a plate and appetite.)
Purdum, writing with a polite disdain, does flatter Palin as “the sexiest and riskiest brand in the Republican Party,” before he goes on to mention unnamed McCain campaign sources who tell stories of Palin’s erratic behavior on the trail supposedly caused by her “post-partum depression.” Kristol asserts as evidence that Schmidt was the source of this defamatory rumor that Kristol knows that Schmidt has recently emailed Palin out of the blue. “Perhaps Steve was nervous someone would finger him for the Purdum piece,” Kristol proposes.
What Palin begins with an announcement from Wasilla is not only a campaign, it is an Iditarod of a crusade.
Firing back, Schmidt immediately emailed a reference to Bill Kristol’s distant youth when he worked for the perennial GOP chump, Vice President Dan Quayle: “I’m sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign.”
Meanwhile, the sniping continues to deteriorate, with erstwhile McCain campaign advisers like Randy Scheunemann choosing sides with Kristol (Scheunemann hates Schmidt, who tried to force him out of the campaign as a leaker and confiscated his BlackBerry), while Schmidt reveals that he had the permission of McCain and Palin to ferret out who was leaking unkind details on Palin to the media. No comment yet from the senator and the governor on their genius of a Plumbers Unit. Another campaign aide, Nicole Wallace, and her husband, Mark Wallace, are mentioned as founts of poison on Palin. “This is all news to me,” Nicole Wallace proclaims.
Is this normal after a losing presidential campaign? No. Nor is this a normal year for the Republicans. Kristol and Schmidt and their cronies all know that the Republican brand that they depend upon for a job and for money, lots of money, has been wrecked to the point of no return. They are veterans of a lost cause with one wild adventure to try before history moves on—and the adventurer’s name is Sarah Palin.
Palin’s sudden announcement that she will resign the Alaska governorship at the end of July, delivered alongside the fireworks of the 4th of July, underlines her self-awareness that she must respond to the pyrotechnics of her stature in the GOP—and must respond in an explosive fashion. Discarding the demands of an Alaska job that is at best part-time, undemanding, predictable, banal, means that she will now devote full-time to traveling the “lower 48” in order to speak, speak, speak. Wherever she goes, she is Alaska, moose-hunting, and Wasilla. As a candidate, she begins the nomination hunt with a formula that none of her rivals can match, not even Mitt Romney, not only because she gave up something in order to go for the White House but also because she reached this decision by being drafted.

What is going on right now in the Republican Party—even as the professionals scramble to react with grins and snorts to the news of Palin’s Alaska resignation—are the early scenes of the 2012 campaign for the presidency with Sarah Palin as the once and future hero. Like Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth Regina, and, skipping four centuries of quarrelsome princes, Margaret Thatcher, the Republican Party has already decided that the governor of Alaska will rescue the GOP from its ruination. What Sarah Palin begins with an announcement from Wasilla is not only a campaign, it is an Iditarod of a crusade—first woman, first mom, and second moose-hunter into the White House.
If you scoff at Palin for president, you are likely insufficiently cynical to work on a national campaign. Eight months after the election, the governor is as natural and gifted a presidential candidate as anyone since Huey Long. The farther she stays away from Washington and the longer she pushes away those sharpies clamoring for her to raise PAC money, to prepare gray-bearded policy positions, network at the barbecues in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina (well, maybe not South Carolina right now), the more box-office irresistible she will be to Republican primary voters. What most recommends the Palin boom is that she is now, 40 months to the election, as celebrated by the GOP right wing as she is reviled by the Democratic left wing.

Written by: Mary Ellen

The Fourth of July weekend often conjures up wonderful memories of past barbecues, fantastic firework displays, family gatherings and a feeling that all is right with the world. For me, that’s also true, except for a few fleeting moments as I remember the nightmare which my family went through, all due to the senseless act of one person…one very lazy, irresponsible person.

Anyway, today I want to use my very small blog as a venue for a public safety announcement and if this will help even one child, I’ll be happy. John Kass, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune agreed with me when I called him four years ago as my grandchild lay in a hospital bed at the University of Chicago Children’s Hospital. I’m putting up his entire column because he, in his usual fashion, was much more eloquent than I could ever be.

So, this is my story, as told by John Kass…..

Liana is a toddler with blue eyes and light brown hair. She sat in a hospital chair, playing with two helium balloons. She didn’t grab the strings with her hands. Instead, she grabbed at the strings with her toes.

Her mother explained, telling her story about a picnic at the lake the other evening.

“It was one of those perfect nights,” said Lisa ( XXXX) of Hyde Park, a teacher.

“There were people everywhere, and children, families, we were sitting on our blanket waiting for the fireworks to begin. People were grilling their food. It was wonderful.”

On July 3, she’d put the kids and blanket and some snacks into a wagon, then pulled them to Promontory Point, on the South Side of 55th Street, a peninsula awash in cool breezes that juts into Lake Michigan.

“It was getting dark, and we were excited because the fireworks downtown were going to begin, “she said. “My son, he’s 9, and Liana were playing. Another family had some jazz music on the radio. She was dancing to the jazz, and everyone was saying, ‘What a cute little girl.’”

As her mother told their story, the toddler kept pulling at the balloon strings with her toes.

“Balloon,” the child said. “Balloon.”

During their picnic, Lisa and her children had gone for a short stroll around the point. When they returned to their blanket, they sat down, but Liana being a fidgety toddler, just had to get up and toddle around. “She was right there, she was only 10 or 15 feet away, but it was dark then, and that’s when she fell. Her hands were out in front of her on the ground.”

If you know toddlers, you can picture it, hands down, head up, trying to right herself. She’d fallen into what looked like a pile of dust. Only, dust doesn’t give off a shower of sparks when a child falls in.

It was a pile of hot charcoals.

Some thoughtless barbarian had dumped out a portable grill on the ground rather than walk the 30 feet to the large red disposal containers.

“The sparks were flying and she was screaming,” Lisa said, her breath catching. “She couldn’t move because if she did, she’d get further into them, and I ran and grabbed her, and she was screaming.

“Her wrist’s,” Lisa said, sobbing now, in the quiet of the hospital room at the University of Chicago Children’s Hospital. “Her wrists melted. And her stomach was burned.

“Most people are kind. The great majority of people are so kind,” she said, still crying, not wanting to tell this part of the story. “But then, right there, no one helped, or called an ambulance, or brought water. One woman said, ‘Oh, put some ice on it and she’ll be fine.’ I was alone and put the kids into the wagon and started pulling them, running home.”

Lisa pulled her children running through the tunnel that leads to the point, down 55th Street and past the apartments there, past Orly’s Cafe and Morry’s Deli and the train viaduct at 55th Street and Lake Park with that mural that shows people helping other people.

It’s a 15 minute walk, but she made it in in less time. Then she got her car and drove to the University of Chicago Hospital emergency room, knowing about the doctors there, and the famous burn unit.

After treatment and surgery, Liana was sitting in her hospital room with me and her mom and my young friend Ben Berg, who had the smarts to bring the balloons.

She pulled the strings with her toes because her arms were heavily bandaged. Surgeons had also taken skin from her hip and grafted it onto her burned wrists. Doctors told Lisa that her daughter will heal just fine, lucky that her face and eyes wand fingertips weren’t burned.

The mom called me with a simple request, hoping a public reminder might save another child, save their hands, faces, eyes. She doesn’t want to outlaw casual barbecue in the park. She just hopes people will use their heads.

“Its so simple,” she said. “If you’re grilling in the park, don’t dump your live coals on the ground. Deposit them in receptacles marked for that purpose. And there should be more signs so people will know where to dump their coals.”

Such thoughtlessness happens everywhere, not just in the city of Chicago. But at the point after talking with Lisa, we found 32 piles of burnt coals dumped on the ground. Many were only a few feet from red coal bins. So what burned that child was selfishness. It was just too much trouble for the barbarian to walk a few paces to take care of a fire.

When Lisa called the Park District, they told her to contact their “risk assessment” department.

“I know what that means. It means lawyers,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about a lawsuit. I was hoping they’d listen and post more signs so it wouldn’t happen again to another baby.”

Liana played with her balloons.

“Balloon,” she said.

As I was typing this story, I still feel the same hurt, anger, and panic that I did when my daughter called us from the emergency room, sobbing as she told us what happened. We made it to the hospital in record time, trying to concentrate on the road as fear welled up in my heart. I tried to hold back the tears as we entered the hospital room and put on a brave front for our little grandchild. She didn’t have much to say, she just held up her arms and in her toddler voice said, “I got burned”, (which sounded like ‘I got booned’). The nurses said that they had already received two other children who stepped in hot coals while in the parks that day. They explained that this is a regular thing every holiday, but in my granddaughter’s case, it was the most severe case to date. And yet, there are still no public service announcements on TV or on the radio and there are no extra signs pointing to where the coals can be dumped safely.

Liana is now 6 years old but still remembers the burns and the hospital stay. Along with the scars on her wrists, stomach and arms–although faded, will always remain with my granddaughter…all because of the thoughtlessness of one person who may have not realized that his laziness has caused a lifetime of memories that no child should endure every July 4th.

I have heard that the soldier was captured while returning to quarters after standing post as a sentry. He was not out just wandering around with locals. He was grabbed from a remote, undermanned outpost. This one is on Obama. Why?

Our forces currently are shy 10,000 soldiers originally requested by General McKiernan, who was fired for having the audacity to challenge boy Barry for his refusal to approve the General’s request for more soldiers. As a result you have undermanned, thinly spread units deployed to remote areas without adequate Quick Reaction Force back up. What does that mean? If a large Taliban force manages to mass on one of these outposts the U.S. soldiers are a great risk of being overrun before help in the form of more troops, close air support or artillery can be called on to hold off attackers.

The troops are following their orders. But they are being asked to do nearly impossible missions with inadequate resources.

The Fox report had this disturbing tidbit:

Maulvi Sangin, who claims to speak for the Taliban in the province, said that the U.S. soldier was seized when he and the others were on their way to the Yousafkhel security checkpost, and took them to a secret location, according to an Afghan news Web site. Sangin claimed the abducted soldiers were drunk when captured by the Taliban.

U.S. officials could not confirm that these claims are true, and not Taliban propganda.

Based on prior experience, such as the ambush of the Navy SEAL patrol in June 2005 led by Marcus Luttrell (in which three men under his command were killed and a helicopter, with 18 would be rescuers was shot down), the Taliban are pretty accurate in their press releases on such events. If the soldier in question was intoxicated while returning from patrol that would raise a host of questions the military would, I imagine, prefer to keep quiet.

On the eve of Independence Day celebrations let us keep this soldier and his family in our thoughts and prayers. And let’s insist that Barack Obama stop second guessing on the ground troop commanders and give the soldiers what they need. If this soldier is killed by his captors then some of his blood is on the hands of Barack Obama. Obama declined to give the commander the forces he said he needed.

Yes, that is the news. According to NY Times’s Mitchell L. Blumenthal, Sarah Palin to Resign as Governor of Alaska effective July 25th:

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska announced Friday that she would step down by the end of the month and not seek a second term as governor, fueling speculation that she is seriously weighing whether to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2012.

Ms. Palin, who was Senator John McCain’s vice presidential running mate last year and solidified the support of the party’s conservative base, explained her decision at a news conference at her home in Wasilla, Alaska, accompanied by her husband, Todd, and other family members.

“We know we can effect positive change outside of government,” she said in making the announcement.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Known as Sarah Barracuda when she played basketball in high school, Ms. Palin used point guard analogy in explaining her decision, saying she knows “exactly when to pass the ball so the team can win.”

She said that she planned to hand over the reins of the state government to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who would be sworn in at the governor’s picnic in Fairbanks later this month.

“This decision came after much consideration,” Ms. Palin told reporters gathered at her home, and added, “I really don’t want to disappoint anyone with this announcement.”

There had been wide speculation that she would seek to be the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 2012. Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, who is also considered to be a leading Republican candidate for president in 2012, announced last month that he would not seek re-election.

By leaving office early, Ms. Palin, a 45-year-old mother of five, will be able to travel around the country more freely and not be constrained by the duties and responsibilities of being a governor.

“Some are going to question the timing of this, and let me say this decision has been in the works for quite a while,” she said.

I cannot imagine what her thinking is here, but surely having to deal with all sorts of bogus ethics complaints, paying astronomical legal fees and fending off the non-stop media hit squad doesn’t help her in doing her job as Governor, or in caring for her family.

Whatever her motives or endgame here, I find the witch hunt against her absolutely disgusting. Ironic that prior to Sarah Palin being chosen as Senator McCain’s running mate, she commented about Hillary Clinton being on the receiving end of sexist attacks at the hands of the media. While she was very respectful of Clinton, she said at the time a woman knows she’ll be dealing with this going in, so she’s just got to be twice as good and get on with it. She intimated it would be better to just not mention it.

It is unfortunate that she has learned the hard way just what SoS Clinton has had to deal with for sixteen years.

Your thoughts, please.

UPDATE–Couple of articles with more substance on Governor Palin’s decision and motive.
Here’s what Sam Stein reports:

The head of the Republican Governor’s Association said on Friday that in emails sent to him moments before she announced her resignation as governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin discussed expanding the role she played in the Republican Party.

“Part of her decision is she wants to spend more time campaigning for candidates,” Nick Ayers, the executive director of the RGA, told Fox News.

“She felt like she needed to make her colleagues around the country aware, so she had given us a brief heads up,” Ayers said of getting the emails. “We have known for a couple of days she was considering not running for re-election but it was news today that she had gone ahead and made the decision to fully step down and resign.”

My friend, John Batchelor, posted this a bit ago (the original appears at the Daily Beast):

Rather than a blow to a career, Sarah Palin’s decision to resign underlines her self-awareness, writes The Daily Beast’s John Batchelor. She is now unmatched for the 2012 primary.
The early excuse for the Republican circular firing squad of the holiday weekend is that Weekly Standard editor and party brainiac Bill Kristol claims that pugnacious McCain campaign enforcer Steve Schmidt has been caught gossiping to Vanity Fair’s Todd Purdum about Sarah Palin’s rambling and incoherent vice-presidential campaign last September and October. (Now that Palin has announced her resignation from Alaska’s governorship, the late excuse for the fisticuffs will certainly be that the boys smelled a special mom baking an apple pie in the kitchen of the GOP and they got in line early with a plate and appetite.)
Purdum, writing with a polite disdain, does flatter Palin as “the sexiest and riskiest brand in the Republican Party,” before he goes on to mention unnamed McCain campaign sources who tell stories of Palin’s erratic behavior on the trail supposedly caused by her “post-partum depression.” Kristol asserts as evidence that Schmidt was the source of this defamatory rumor that Kristol knows that Schmidt has recently emailed Palin out of the blue. “Perhaps Steve was nervous someone would finger him for the Purdum piece,” Kristol proposes.
What Palin begins with an announcement from Wasilla is not only a campaign, it is an Iditarod of a crusade.
Firing back, Schmidt immediately emailed a reference to Bill Kristol’s distant youth when he worked for the perennial GOP chump, Vice President Dan Quayle: “I’m sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign.”
Meanwhile, the sniping continues to deteriorate, with erstwhile McCain campaign advisers like Randy Scheunemann choosing sides with Kristol (Scheunemann hates Schmidt, who tried to force him out of the campaign as a leaker and confiscated his BlackBerry), while Schmidt reveals that he had the permission of McCain and Palin to ferret out who was leaking unkind details on Palin to the media. No comment yet from the senator and the governor on their genius of a Plumbers Unit. Another campaign aide, Nicole Wallace, and her husband, Mark Wallace, are mentioned as founts of poison on Palin. “This is all news to me,” Nicole Wallace proclaims.
Is this normal after a losing presidential campaign? No. Nor is this a normal year for the Republicans. Kristol and Schmidt and their cronies all know that the Republican brand that they depend upon for a job and for money, lots of money, has been wrecked to the point of no return. They are veterans of a lost cause with one wild adventure to try before history moves on—and the adventurer’s name is Sarah Palin.
Palin’s sudden announcement that she will resign the Alaska governorship at the end of July, delivered alongside the fireworks of the 4th of July, underlines her self-awareness that she must respond to the pyrotechnics of her stature in the GOP—and must respond in an explosive fashion. Discarding the demands of an Alaska job that is at best part-time, undemanding, predictable, banal, means that she will now devote full-time to traveling the “lower 48” in order to speak, speak, speak. Wherever she goes, she is Alaska, moose-hunting, and Wasilla. As a candidate, she begins the nomination hunt with a formula that none of her rivals can match, not even Mitt Romney, not only because she gave up something in order to go for the White House but also because she reached this decision by being drafted.

What is going on right now in the Republican Party—even as the professionals scramble to react with grins and snorts to the news of Palin’s Alaska resignation—are the early scenes of the 2012 campaign for the presidency with Sarah Palin as the once and future hero. Like Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth Regina, and, skipping four centuries of quarrelsome princes, Margaret Thatcher, the Republican Party has already decided that the governor of Alaska will rescue the GOP from its ruination. What Sarah Palin begins with an announcement from Wasilla is not only a campaign, it is an Iditarod of a crusade—first woman, first mom, and second moose-hunter into the White House.
If you scoff at Palin for president, you are likely insufficiently cynical to work on a national campaign. Eight months after the election, the governor is as natural and gifted a presidential candidate as anyone since Huey Long. The farther she stays away from Washington and the longer she pushes away those sharpies clamoring for her to raise PAC money, to prepare gray-bearded policy positions, network at the barbecues in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina (well, maybe not South Carolina right now), the more box-office irresistible she will be to Republican primary voters. What most recommends the Palin boom is that she is now, 40 months to the election, as celebrated by the GOP right wing as she is reviled by the Democratic left wing.

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said today she was canceling plans for an exclusive “salon” at her home where for as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record access to “those powerful few” — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

With the Post newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Weymouth said in an email to the staff that “a flier went out that was prepared by the Marketing department and was never vetted by me or by the newsroom. Had it been, the flier would have been immediately killed, because it completely misrepresented what we were trying to do.”

She’s canceling the event amid “uproar”? Hey, ya think?

Weymouth said the paper had planned a series of dinners with participation from the newsroom “but with parameters such that we did not in any way compromise our integrity.”
(snip)
She made it clear however, that The Post, which lost $19.5 million in the first quarter, sees bringing together Washington figures as a future revenue source. “We do believe that there is a viable way to expand our expertise into live conferences and events that simply enhances what we do - cover Washington for Washingtonians and those interested in Washington,” she said. “ And we will begin to do live events in ways that enhance our reputation and in no way call into question our integrity.”

What integrity do these people have left after their sycophantic coverage of the election last year? Live events? Here’s a taste at what this one might have looked like had they been able to get away with it:

The first “Salon” was to be called “Health-Care Reform: Better or Worse for Americans? The reform and funding debate.” More were anticipated, and the flier described the opportunities for participants:

“Offered at $25,000 per sponsor, per Salon. Maximum of two sponsors per Salon. Underwriters’ CEO or Executive Director participates in the discussion. Underwriters appreciatively acknowledged in printed invitations and at the dinner. Annual series sponsorship of 11 Salons offered at $250,000 … Hosts and Discussion Leaders … Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post … An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done. … A Washington Post Salon … July 21, 2009 6:30 p.m.

But in the “CYA” category, the denouncement of this event was loud and hard. You’d have to read Mssrs Allen and Calderone’s article in its entirety to really get the Herculean level of denial – and when I hear that much spinning it leads me to believe they got caught with their pants down:

Executive editor Marcus Brauchli was as adamant as Weymouth in denouncing the plan promoted in the flier. “You cannot buy access to a Washington Post journalist,” Brauchli told POLITICO. Brauchli was named on the flier as one of the salon’s “Hosts and Discussion Leaders.”

Brauchli said in an interview that he understood the business side of the Post planned on holding dinners on policy and was scheduled to attend the July 21 dinner at Weymouth’s Washington home, but he said he had not seen the material promoting it until today…
(snip)
The flier promised the dinner would be held in an intimate setting with no unseemly conflict between participants. “Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No,” it said. “The relaxed setting in the home of Katharine Weymouth assures it. What is guaranteed is a collegial evening, with Obama administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds typically on the guest list of 20 or less. …

Brauchli emphasized that the newsroom had given specific parameters to the paper’s business staff that he said were apparently not followed. He said that for newsroom staffers to participate, they would have to be able to ask questions and that he would “reserve the right to allow any information or ideas that emerge from an event to shape or inform our coverage.” That directly contradicts the solicitation to potential sponsors, which billed the dinner as “off-the-record.”

“Our mission in the news department is to serve an audience,” Brauchli said, “not serve our sponsors.”

“We do not use the Post’s name or our journalists to gain access to officials or sources for the benefit of non-news purposes,” he continued.

Uh huh. Sounds like a lot of backpedaling.

Brauchli declined to comment on whether anyone on the business side would be held responsible for the abortive plan. He said that would be a decision for either Weymouth or Stephen Hills, The Post’s president and general manager.

We’ll wait to see if someone’s head rolls over this. However:

Charles Pelton, The Post business-side employee listed as the event contact, seemed to dispute Brauchli’s version of events.

Pelton was quoted by Post ombudsman Andy Alexander in an online commentary as saying that newsroom leaders, including Brauchli, had been involved in discussions about the salons and other events. “This was well-developed with the newsroom,” Pelton told Alexander. “What was not developed was the marketing message to potential sponsors.”

According to Alexander, who called the flier a “public relations disaster,” Pelton told him: “There’s no intention to influence or peddle.” …

If POLITICO had not reported on the flier this morning, Brauchli said he expects someone would have seen it before the event and, given the obvious ethical issue, it would have been canceled.

How sure is he about that? And if no one caught it, is he implying the event would have gone forward? The above statement sort of reminds me of the kerfuffle with the E Pluribus Obama imitation presidential seal last summer. When there was a hue and cry about it, his campaign pretended it was a one time thing and they were never really trying to do it in the first place. Certainly President Obama’s administration did the same thing earlier this year when floating the idea of taxing veterans’ health coverage. The immediate outrage triggered by that notion made it evaporate very quickly.

Earlier this morning, Brauchli sent an e-mail entitled “Newsroom Independence” to his staff explaining his position.

“Colleagues,” Brauchli said. “A flier was distributed this week offering an ‘underwriting opportunity’ for a dinner on health care reform, in which the news department had been asked to participate. The language in the flier and the description of the event preclude our participation.

“We will not participate in events where promises are made that in exchange for money The Post will offer access to newsroom personnel or will refrain from confrontational questioning. Our independence from advertisers or sponsors is inviolable. There is a long tradition of news organizations hosting conferences and events, and we believe The Post, including the newsroom, can do these things in ways that are consistent with our values.”

Amazing that Brauchli would even have to make a statement like this. One would think it would be obvious. Not anymore, it seems. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about this yesterday.

“I think some people in the administration, writ large, may have been invited. I do not believe, based on what I’ve been able to check, anyone has accepted the invitations.”

Gibbs said that the White House counsel would review such invitations and that they “would likely exceed” what would be considered appropriate.

Yeah, it certainly would have gone beyond what would be considered appropriate.

It is obvious from the above that someone thought giving very expensive access to “sponsors” was a viable way of raising revenue for the paper. No matter how Weymouth or Brauchli offer up noble statements about the integrity of the Washington Post, this sort of behavior should not get a pass. I’m glad to see enough noise was made to put a stop to it. The fourth estate looks to be crumbling as it is. Let’s hope we don’t see more of the same.

I wonder where in the world God was when Governor Sanford was cheating on his wife with his “soul mate”?? Or how about the OTHER women with whom Governor Sanford had “dalliances“??

Seems to me that Governor Sanford has some mighty selective listening going on. I bet God is none too happy about having Sanford use Him/Her/It as an excuse to stay in office, either. At least that’s what God told ME! Ahem.

There are a few things that are issue here. Let’s start with this whole “soul mate” thing, shall we? Bear in mind that Sanford is MARRIED, and he is NOT saying this about his WIFE, but his MISTRESS. Then he has the unmitigated gall to say he is going to try and “fall back in love” with his wife? Holy smokes, what kind of moron IS he?? I’m sorry, but your wife tells you, and all the nation, that she is willing to forgive you, take you back, even though she is angry at you, and work on the marriage, and you dis her like that? Around these here parts, that will garner you a “sumabitch,” and well deserved, too. But Jenny is going with him and their four boys on a vacation to Florida. If I were her, I wouldn’t let him get in a boat by himself, but that’s just me.

Then there is the whole matter of what happens if the governor DOES resign, you know, if he misunderstood what God actually said to him(maybe there was another call coming in or something, or he hit a dead spot with his cell phone). See, here’s the problem for the people who would all move up: the Senate Pro Tempore President, Glenn McConnell, would move up to Lieutenant Governor:

If Sanford steps down and is replaced by Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, then the state’s constitution appears to call on McConnell to replace Bauer as lieutenant governor.

In effect, the Charleston Republican would be demoted from his top Senate leadership post to a part-time constitutional officer, and it’s a change he doesn’t want.

Uh, yeah, because he would give up a whole TON of power:

“I don’t think any resignation by the governor is imminent, at least based on the latest stuff I’ve heard,” McConnell said Wednesday. “It does present problems for me, there’s no question about that.”

First elected President Pro Tem in 2001, McConnell said he began looking at this question a few years ago and actually wrote a resignation letter effective upon the lieutenant governor’s position becoming vacant. He since has torn it up.

“Right now the prevalent thinking in the legal circles is that if something like that were to happen, I could refuse it,” McConnell said. “There’s some that question that.”

McConnell said he wouldn’t want to give up his Senate seat and 28-plus years of seniority, and resigning his President Pro Tem post would leave the Legislature unable to return to session this year should lawmakers have to deal with a budget crisis or another urgent matter.

“It would leave the state in the precarious situation where if we have a budget shortfall, there would be no way for the General Assembly to get back,” McConnell said. “It starts to become legally entangled.”

I guess it’s good for HIM that God is talking with Mark these days.
Besides Jenny Sanford being willing to forgive her diarrhea mouth cheating husband, Gov. Sanford had some other good news. You may recall that a whole BUNCH of folks down here were upset about the possibility of his using state money and resources for his trysts. Turns out, he didn’t:

Gov. Mark Sanford used his own cash and connections to pay for secret hook-ups with his Argentine mistress, including one New York rendezvous the night before his wife was to arrive, authorities said Thursday.

A State Law Enforcement Division review of travel records found no criminal wrongdoing or evidence to suggest that the governor misused public funds during his affair with Maria Belen Chapur, SLED Director Reggie Lloyd said.

Sanford visited his lover twice in Argentina and three times in the Big Apple, Lloyd said. Sanford used his money or private funds to pay for everything but a June 2008 trip to Argentina.

You may not know that Sanford is known for penny pinching - that was his big thing when he was a State Representative, cutting out spending (he also self-imposed a term limit). So, ya know, that says a whole lot about just how much he was jonesing to see his “soul mate.” Sigh.

Hopefully, with the First Family of SC out of the state for their vacation, Governor Sanford will get some Pepto Bismol, and SHUT UP already about his Argentine mistress, the other women with whom he had dalliances, and get more even keeled. And hopefully, Jenny Sanford won’t take any more BS from this guy, and insist he tread the straight and narrow (teehee - that’s kinda funny for ME to say). And maybe, just maybe, the next time Governor Sanford feels compelled to “share” that he can die knowing he met his soul mate (I am not making that up: Link), he’ll be talking about his WIFE, and not his lover. I imagine that’s what Jenny hopes for, too…

Sullivan seems to think he is “due” an explanation. BS. He thinks Palin should produce records, pictures or perhaps very special election 2008 episode of A Baby Story.

Palin owes this schmuck exactly bupkis. Who is Sullivan to demand “proof” of maternity? The father? No. Anyone important to Trig’s life, or any other Palin? No.

Do a search of “trig” on Andrew Sullivan’s blog at The Atlantic. You’ll get “about 421 results.” (Second time I searched, I got 536, but we’ll go with the lower number.) Given Sullivan’s obsession about Trig Palin and his birth, it’s hard to believe 421 doesn’t actually represent 421 separate articles, although I’m sure there’s a few duplicates in the list. Reading the overwrought supercilious tripe is painful in the extreme. How many articles has this loser devoted to an infant, not his own? Hard to tell without reading each one and I definitely don’t have the stomach for that. But here’s a sample of a few brief “bullets” or teasers about articles available if you search on “trig” at Andrew’s blog.

From 8/2008

Where has Bristol Palin (far right, holding Trig, with a ring on her wedding finger) been for the past year? Has she been attending high …

From 9/2008

Now all we need is confirmation from the obstetrician who delivered Sarah’s baby

From 10/2008

But for some reason, Trig Palin’s name is not among them. … So why is there no formal record of Trig’s birth? This is not an “unspeakable” …

Here’s a longer sample of Andrew’s Atlantic-worthy writing - from 10/2008:

Now, when are we going to get some record of Trig’s birth and parentage from the hospital or the doctor? It’s been over a month now and still nada. Some basic record confirming Palin’s eight-month special needs pregnancy, amiocentesis, labor and birth would be immensely easy to find and release - even off the record - to news organizations. And yet the McCainiacs refuse to even go near it and demonize anyone who dares ask for something that must be extremely well documented and easily found. They have stated on the record that Sarah Palin is Trig’s biological mother. But they refuse to provide one iota of confirming evidence.

I mean: what’s the problem here? Why is this so hard?

And no, I haven’t let the basic issue of accountability and transparency go. Never. It’s my job.

From 10/2008

… must be plenty of medical records and obstetricians and medical eye-witnesses prepared to testify to Sarah Palin’s giving birth to Trig. . .

Wait! There’s more:

Again, that was in August. It is not an answer to call bloggers “insane” because they are asking factual questions to which there must be evidentiary answers. (Yes, as Ed Morrissey notes, Biden, McCain and Obama have been bad on this as well, and this blog has criticized them for it, especially Biden where I’ve been relentless, given his aneurysm history. But only Palin has offered nothing at all. And only Palin has a core question of basic credibility at stake. Only Palin has used her medical history - her fifth child - as a campaign plank.)
————-

Why does Sarah Palin refuse to prove that her baby - the baby that has been a campaign prop for two months - is actually one she gave birth to?

From 11/2008

All she had to do was arrive at the scene with her son Trig to … So Trig was the critical presidential qualification for the theocons. …

Sullivan thinks Palin was chosen for the ticket strictly because she didn’t abort her Down-syndrome baby. Of course, if she wasn’t the mother. . . But. Oh nevermind.

From 12/2008:

Here’s the latest photograph of her “pregnant” with Trig at. … Sarah Palin still has not established, and refuses to establish, Trig Palin is her child.

Here’s more writing worthy of a job at a national publication and tv.

From 12/2008

. . . Neither [another writer who disagrees with Sullivan about Sarah being Trig's mother] nor I have baldly asserted something we cannot know for sure: that Trig Palin is Sarah Palin’s biological son. Our difference has merely been that he assumes that the Alaska governor is telling the truth and sees all the circumstantial evidence as very compelling backing for her maternity (as has almost everyone else in the MSM). For my part, I have always clearly conceded that that is perfectly possible, but that the bizarre chronology and facts in the public record raise enough questions that a simple piece of easily produced evidence should have been produced to end the issue at once. The facts of the case and the refusal to defuse it was enough to prevent me from assuming that she was the mother.. .
——–

As I said months ago, Trig is a human being as precious as any other. That he was not aborted is a noble, moral, beautiful act. Who his biological mother is, at this point, is much less important than that he has a loving and caring home, and it seems as if he has. What remains important in the larger scheme of things - and why I continued to ask pesky, awkard (sic) questions - is a press that is not afraid and not deferent (sic) to elected officials and not more worried about its own reputation than about flushing out the truth. I failed to do that beyond a shadow of a doubt. But I tried. And if the truth does definitively emerge, I will maintain my commitment to bring it to you.

Awwww. He’s just a good guy trying to do his job!!! Right?? Well, he surely doesn’t bear personal ill will, he just wants the truth for all of us. To save the country, after all.

From 12/2008

This deluded and delusional woman still doesn’t understand what happened to her; still has no self-awareness; and has never been forced to accept her obvious limitations. She cannot keep even the most trivial story straight; she repeats untruths with a ferocity and calm that is reserved only to the clinically unhinged; she has the educational level of a high school drop-out; and regards ignorance as some kind of achievement. It is excruciating to watch her - but more excruciating to watch those who feel obliged to defend her.

No, Andrew, what do you REALLY think?

Her candidacy, in short, was indefensible. It remains indefensible. Until the mainstream media, the GOP establishment, and the conservative intelligentsia acknowledge the depth of their error, this blog will keep demanding basic accountability

Don’t forget, Andrew’s blog is an irony free zone.

My point is not to persecute or hound some random person. I wish I had never heard of Sarah Palin. I wish this nightmare had never happened. I wish totally innocent by-standers, like Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston and Heather Bruce and Trig Palin, had not had their lives disrupted by this circus. It’s distressing to everyone, which is why most journalists left many aspects of this charade alone. But Palin is claiming vindication, is on every cable show, is at the National Governors Association Conference, and is touted as a future leader of the GOP. There comes a point at which you have to simply call a time out and insist that this farce cease and some basic accountability and transparency be restored to the process. Since no one else seems willing to do so, the Dish will stay on the case. So where are those medical records anyway?

Sullivan is upset Sarah Palin has the temerity to continue being the governor of Alaska and a public figure.

Yeah, I wish it were over too. But I can’t leave you with that, can I?

From 5/2009

But given this blog’s coverage of governor Palin’s various strange stories about Trig, and her continued refusal to provide any medical records to confirm …

From 06/2009

But the more her pregnancy with Trig becomes a campaign platform, … The truly bizarre circumstances surrounding Trig’s birth. …

So we come to June, 2009. Election is over now by what? Nearly 7 months. But Sullivan is still enraptured by the womb. . .

As the months have gone by since John McCain revealed his total cynicism and contempt for America’s national security by selecting one Sarah Palin to be a potential vice-president of the United States, we have learned that every single ghastly attribute we discovered in the campaign is worse than we thought at the time. The narcissism, the pathological and incessant lying, the viciousness, the delusions of grandeur, the vindictiveness, the fathomless and proud ignorance, the opportunism, the vanity, the white trash concupiscence and fraudulence in almost every respect: these are now indisputable. How an advanced democracy came that close to having this farce of a candidate running the most powerful country on earth reveals how deep the corruption of our politics and especially our media are.

Unfortunately, Sullivan promises another article on Palin at the end of the foaming-at-the-mouth rantarama above. But something about that bit catches the eye, doesn’t it?

White trash concupiscence. You know, I think THAT may be the key here. Andrew is nothing if not bothered by Palin women and their children. Maybe he only likes women safely past menopause. Either way, “white trash concupiscence” is quite telling. But not about Sarah Palin.

Luckily, others have tried to explain to Sullivan that he’s an idiot. But it didn’t take. I won’t waste time putting together another set of reasons why trig-truther Sullivan is an idiot. But someone at the New Ledger did make a few points worth noting:

Rarely in human history has a gay man been that obsessed with a married woman’s vagina.
————
Behold Andrew Sullivan, a man who contains infinite contradictions: A believer in privacy, except a woman’s medical records, who never seemed upset that his preferred horse in the race released nothing besides a one-page “All clear!” note from his doctor; an opponent of the objectification of homosexuals, who objectified at least one, and arguably two, children; a professional journalist with a boundless understanding of not only applied medicine, but also hospital protocol and the art of diagnosis by news clipping and photograph.

Sullivan reminds me of someone. Someone dogged to find and root out that which offends him personally and which he feels is an existential threat to our country. Someone with a presence and a reasonable request that someone else produce “the truth.”

Someone quite assured he’s the smartest man in the room. Someone equally smarmy. Yes, exactly right.

Luckily someone else once had an appropriate response to a self-blind yet self-aggrandizing, rationalizing schmuck overly obsessed with what he saw as other people’s wrongdoing.

Reckless cruelty. Sounds right to me.

Camp David. I’m not kidding. The chapel at Camp David. Now he has an excuse to leave DC every weekend, if he wants. So he can go to church. Now, this may come as a shock to some of you, but Washington, DC, actually HAS some churches there. Heck, they even have a big, ol’ cathedral - perhaps you’ve heard of it, the NATIONAL Cathedral? Ahem.

But you know that’s not it. To paraphrase Michael Jackson, “sometimes (he) feels like somebody’s watching (him)…”:

Now, in an unexpected move, Obama has told White House aides that instead of joining a congregation in Washington, D.C., he will follow in George W. Bush’s footsteps and make his primary place of worship Evergreen Chapel, the nondenominational church at Camp David.

A number of factors drove the decision — financial, political, personal — but chief among them was the desire to worship without being on display. Obama was reportedly taken aback by the circus stirred up by his visit to 19th Street Baptist in January. Lines started forming three hours before the morning service, and many longtime members were literally left out in the cold as the church filled with outsiders eager to see the new President. Even at St. John’s, which is so accustomed to presidential visitors that it is known as the “Church of the Presidents,” worshippers couldn’t help themselves from snapping photos of Obama on their camera phones as they walked down the aisle past him to take communion.

And how about that - right there in Time magazine - making the comparison between Bush and Obama! Teehee!

Seriously?? He was taken aback? David Axelrove has done NOTHING but MAKE a circus around Obama. Has he already forgotten his Greek columns in Denver? His plying people with food and drink to come to rallies (which the media conveniently failed to mention - except in Germany), so he could have HUGE gatherings to fawn all over him? C’mon, give me a break. I have never seen a man who wanted sycophants around him at every second - unless they are uncomfortably close. And then we see him getting irritable (”I just want to eat my waffles, okay??” Or whatever it was he said exactly…).

Now, I’ll grant you that it is inappropriate for people to be snapping photos of the Obamas while in church. A sense of decorum and decency would be nice, but sadly, we seem to be far from those days. Still, I have no doubt other presidents have had to endure people staring at them or what have you:

The challenge of not only being part of a church community but also praying in peace has long been a problem for Presidents, according to historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony. “McKinley hated having people staring at him while he read Psalms, sang hymns, put money in the collection plate or took communion,” he writes in America’s First Families. “By the 1920s, getting a presidential family in and out of church was a production. Secret Service agents had to cordon off a clear path from the curb to the church entrance before the Coolidges arrived … [and] they were swiftly escorted to their third-row pew.”

The Clintons attended Foundry United Methodist Church on 16th Street, and were particularly active during the years before Chelsea left for college. But White House aides say that security measures required by the Secret Service have become stricter since 9/11 and would cause significant delays for parishioners — and at significant cost to taxpayers — on Sunday mornings. Given Obama’s popularity within the African-American community, the President also worried that if he chose a local black congregation, church members would find themselves competing with sightseers for space in the pews.

Oh, isn’t that SO thoughty of the president?!? He’s always worried about the little people as he has demonstrated time and time again… Hahahahaha!! I could barely even write that out…Anyway, the Obamas won’t have to deal with the hoi poloi at Camp David:

The First Family won’t have that problem at Camp David, where the 150-seat Evergreen Chapel attracts a congregation of between 50 and 70 people most Sundays. The rustic stone-and-glass octagonal structure was built nearly two decades ago through private funds; President George H.W. Bush dedicated it in 1991. At the ceremony, Christian singer Sandi Patti sang and the late Cardinal James Hickey of Washington delivered a sermon calling the chapel a “witness to our common belief that we need to seek divine guidance in the conduct of our national affairs.”

Each week, regardless of whether the President is on-site, Evergreen Chapel holds nondenominational Christian services open to the nearly 400 military personnel and staff at Camp David, as well as their families. A music director from nearby Hood College coordinates adult and children’s choirs (Clinton sang occasionally with the choir when he visited). In December, the kids in the congregation put on a Christmas pageant and the chapel holds a candlelight service on Christmas Eve. The Bush family enjoyed Christmas at Evergreen Chapel so much that they celebrated the holiday there for all eight years of Bush’s Administration.

Well, you know, poor old Obama has lost his pastor, The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, over those little kerflufles at his church. You know the ones - when Wright was preaching his vitriolic, hate mongering sermons? Thus leaving Obama wandering in the desert without his former minister. But he is making do:

(snip)But Barack Obama found himself spiritually isolated upon entering the Oval Office. He famously broke ties last year with Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, and resigned his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. So, just as he followed Bush’s lead in choosing Evergreen as a church home, the President is taking a page from Clinton’s playbook on this front: Obama has a small group of pastors he contacts for prayer and spiritual support (including two men who played the same role at times for Bush).

Those two, Kirbyjon Caldwell and T.D. Jakes, are both African-American ministers from Texas. Caldwell offered a prayer at Bush’s first inauguration and in 2008 he officiated at Jenna Bush’s wedding. By that point, he was an Obama supporter, even launching the website JamesDobsonDoesntSpeakForMe.com last summer when the Focus on the Family leader accused Obama of “deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview.” Obama chose Jakes to preach the sermon at a private prayer service the morning of his inauguration and reached out to him to pray by phone on other occasions.

While the other three leaders Obama turns to are all members of his Faith Advisory Council, when he contacts them it is to talk not on a policy level but a personal one. Otis Moss Jr. is a retired Baptist pastor who once served with Martin Luther King Sr. at Ebeneezer Church. His son is the new pastor — following Jeremiah Wright — at Trinity in Chicago, but Moss is the model of a proper old-school preacher and is the father figure of Obama’s group. His fellow council member, Joel Hunter, is a white evangelical and pastor of a Florida megachurch. And Vashti McKenzie is the first female elected as a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

McKenzie isn’t surprised that Obama has reached out for prayer and guidance. “This President has not shown himself to be a person in isolation — going out on dates, spending time in the community,” she says. “You wouldn’t expect him to isolate himself spiritually. This is a man with a faith center, we’ve heard him give his testimony.” Her advice for how to build a life of faith within the White House? “Everybody needs to just back off and settle down. Let him choose where he’s comfortable, choose where he and his family are going to be spiritually fed, and then let it be his choice.” Amen. (With reporting by Elizabeth Dias)

Hold the phone - didn’t Wright say recently that Obama was like a son to him? Oh, I am pretty sure he did, as American Girl in Italy reported recently in “Reverend Wright Complicit In Murder At Holocaust Museum?“:

“Of course I voted for him; he’s my son. I’m proud of him,” Wright said. “I’ve got five biological kids. They all make mistakes and bad choices. I haven’t stopped loving any of them.

“He made mistakes. He made bad choices. I’ve got kids who listen to their friends. He listened to those around him. I did not disown him.”

Uh huh. I’ll say. But wouldn’t you LOVE to know what Reverend Wright means by that?? Anyhoo, I digress…

As for McKenzie’s claims, you have got to be kidding me. Because Obama takes his wife out on a date to New York on OUR dime, I might add, McKenzie extrapolates Obama likes to be among the people? Hogwash. He likes to be on stage, he likes the sycophants, but I (and others) have reported the numerous times Obama has gotten testy with people. Heck, I’ve never seen Hillary get testy even when men were screaming sat her, “Iron my shirt! Iron my shirt!” But Obama? Please. There was a post I saw the other day about Obama’s glares at world leaders who weren’t following the script, something his own aides pointed out. Here’s a little video of the Primaries to remind you:

Bit I digress again. The point is I think the Right Rev. McKenzie gives Obama way too much credit for wanting to be “sociable” and out with the people. Her statement is contradictory to the whole point of the article - Obama does NOT want to be around a lot of people, hence his desire to go to Camp David for church. And to get out of Washington AWAY from all of those people.

And isn’t it ironic that he has taken yet another page from the Bush playbook? Though this one won’t be destroying a bunch of lives like, say, “prolonged detention.” Perhaps Obama can pray about that while he is at Camp David…

I’ve always considered myself something of an environmentalist. I don’t remember ever hugging a tree, but I hiked and backpacked in my youth. I’ve recycled since the early 80’s. I shunned the use of chemicals and railed against deforestation, over-packaging, and junk mail. I joined Sierra club, World Wildlife and Nature Conservancy in my twenties (and have been a member ever since). But I am far from an environmental purist. Mostly I’ve just tried to enjoy our natural environment and be a thoughtful and conservation minded consumer.

So when Al Gore came out proclaiming that global warming was upon us and would bring an end to life as we know it, I believed him. And regardless of whichever side of science and popularity is currently ahead in the Global warming debate, I still believe that the our current lifestyle of mass production, mass consumption and mass waste is unsustainable.

But a funny thing happened as environmentalism became “Green.” It some how became less real.

Suddenly green thinkers were everywhere, changing their light bulbs and carrying their eco friendly bags, while driving a Hummer and anxiously awaiting their chance to purchase the latest version of the newest best thing. Yes, they bought the marketing slogan to “Think Green”, but their actions lacked the conviction of a true convert. Their hearts and heads were more invested in the idea of a carbon footprint. Then the reality of it. But that was okay. Every little bit helps, as they say. And its true, we all have to make compromises.

Then the talk turned to “Cap and Trade”, and I just couldn’t seem to get myself on the band wagon. I just couldn’t see the logic of some people, companies, industries or states making sacrifices to conserve energy and cut pollution, so others could “buy” the energy saved and use it and/or “buy” the rights to add pollution. How does that get us ahead? And how is that fair?

If I am required by law to make sacrifices, I want every one else by law to make those sacrifices as well. And if my efforts are creating a surplus energy product or pollution “right”, then why wouldn’t that surplus and those rights mine to sell? Why wouldn’t I be the one to receive compensation for my actions? Why would the government or some other entity be making the decision as to whom could buy my energy or pollution credits? And why would they receive the payments for my efforts?

No it just didn’t make sense to me and it didn’t seem right. But I didn’t realize how wrong “Cap and Trade” really was, until I read Matt Taibbi’s latest article in Rolling Stone. And would it surprise you to learn that Goldman Sachs has found a way to make money - big money on “cap-and-trade”? From Taibbi’s The Great American Bubble Machine:

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

And that’s just Taibbi’s opening lines. I’ve written (here, here and here) and read about the Goldman Sachs connections to our current financial woes. But Taibbi shows that economic destruction on a massive scale is Goldman Sachs’ historical MO and even now it is actively working to set up its next round of victims and this time their funnel will be in everyones pocket. More from The Great American Bubble Machine:

…any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain - an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

The bank’s unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere - high gas prices, rising consumer-credit rates, half-eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts. All that money that you’re losing, it’s going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it’s going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth - pure profit for rich individuals.

They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They’ve been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s - and now they’re preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.

In brutal detail, Tiabbi lays bare Goldman Sachs’ role in five bubbles that have rocked the US economy from 1929 to 2009 -

#1 - The Great Depression (of 1929)
#2 - Tech Stocks
#3 - The Housing Craze
#4 - $4 a Gallon
#5 - Rigging the Bailout

And then he goes on to explain their involvement in the bubble that’s about to start:

#6 - Global Warming

…If cap-and-trade succeeds, won’t we all be saved from the catastrophe of global warming? Maybe - but cap-and-trade, as envisioned by Goldman, is really just a carbon tax structured so that private interests collect the revenues. Instead of simply imposing a fixed government levy on carbon pollution and forcing unclean energy producers to pay for the mess they make, cap-and trade will allow a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine to turn yet another commodities market into a private tax-collection scheme. This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer money before it’s even collected.

If you haven’t realized it already, this is a must read of the highest order. And it should be read in its complete form to get the full effect. For me to snip and paste more would not do it justice. Warning it will leave you shocked and more than a little sick to your stomach. The complete article.. And by the way, the global warming part is at the very end, but please read through to get there.

And as a warm-up, I thought you might enjoy this clip of MSNBC’s Carlos Watson discussing Goldman Sachs with Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, Dillion Ratigan of Morning Meeting and Jean Chatzky of Today’s Money 911.

_____________________

Major h/t to “oowawa” for the link to Taibbi’s article and to “BGD” for the link to the video!

No Quarter’s American Girl in Italy has a great post including an excellent video explanation of “cap-and-trade” by the eco geek, here.

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), House Financial Services Committee Chairman

As the Wall Street Journal reports in Finance Lobby Cuts Spending as Feds Targeted Wall Street:

Wall Street’s spending on efforts to influence policy making diminished at the start of this year as the image of financial institutions has suffered with lawmakers and the public. Some of the sector’s major advocate groups lost funding and staff. Their spending declined just as the administration was hammering out its proposal for the biggest reorganization of financial-market oversight since the 1930s, details of which the White House released last month.

Industry lobbyists met last week to craft a response to the White House’s draft regulatory overhaul, particularly its creation of a consumer-oriented regulator for financial products, which could force major changes in how financial instruments are created and marketed. Whether or not the industry can influence this top administration priority, now that the plan is in the hands of Congress, will be a big test of its remaining clout.

The gig is up!!

Washington and Wall Street are finally starting to appreciate that America is getting wise to their incestuous relationship. Washington and Wall street are waking up to the waste that they have made of the American economy. Washington and Wall Street now realize that the mainstream media is being overwhelmed by independent citizens with strong voices demanding to be heard.

While politicians from both sides of the aisle are enmeshed in this incestuous relationship and culpable for our current fiscal condition, in my opinion, no single politician epitomizes it more than the Congressman from Taxachusetts, Barney Frank. Can we ever forget how Barney wanted to “roll the dice” on sub-prime lending? The WSJ reports that Barney told John Courson, new president of the Mortgage Banker’s Association:

“Everybody hates you, and now they’re starting to hate me for hanging out with you.”

Starting? Perhaps Barney believes America is merely “starting” to hate him for hanging out with mortgage bankers but it runs much deeper than that.

America hates all politicians and bankers who have sold out our country.

For those who care to fully understand why and how this level of hatred has gotten to this level, please review:

Barack and Barney Look to Further Plunder Freddie and Fannie

BREAKING NEWS 7-1-09 > Barack and Barney did it as Bloomberg just reports, Fannie, Freddie to Refinance Larger Underwater Loans.

Barney Frank: Twenty Years and Hundreds of Billions Later on Private Profit/Social Loss

Don’t Be Downwind From Barney Frank

How Wall Street Bought Washington

Legalized Bribery

If after all this, the residents of Taxachusetts remain enamored with Barney Frank, on behalf of America make him your own. How so?

Now that Deval Patrick has been exposed as a political lightweight, throw him out and make Barney governor.

You’d be doing America a huge favor.

LD

[UPDATE--I'm struck by the growing resemblance between Michael Scheuer and Bin Laden's number two guy. What do you think?]

IS MICHAEL SCHEUER ACTUALLY AYMAN AL-ZWAHIRI?

My disdain for this man is already on the record (see here).

But after watching this latest outburst I am convinced his behavior is becoming more erratic and bizarre with each passing day. What in particular does he believe that Obama is doing or not doing to give Al Qaeda a pass? I am all in favor of finding and killing Bin Laden. But to delude ourselves into believing that Bin Laden is more powerful that an evil superhero and the greatest threat we’ve ever faced is just flat out ignorant.

That anyone claiming to be a journalist or searching for truth would give this clown a platform is mystifying.

While this kind of “transparency” isn’t actually a surprise, Robert Gibbs’ smarmy “discussion,” where he mugs, laughs and does his Oscar-level best not only to make the questioners seem petty but also to suggest the questions themselves are ridiculous, is beyond fail. Gibbs even suggests email is a better way of reaching Obama than talking to his getting-paid-for-what “press secretary.” Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil and nevermind-the-man-behind-the-curtain all rolled into one.

Notice Gibbs is laughing by himself. No one else finds this funny. I guess the old saying about “laugh and the world laughs with you” does have at least one exception.

I’ve had conversations with people like Gibbs. But they were adolescents who were trying to get away with something in my classroom.

According to CSNnews, Thomas stated afterward that not even Nixon tried to control the media like this.

Following a testy exchange during today’s briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas told CNSNews.com that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama is trying to control the press.

“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.

Thomas also did not like the HuffyPot’s planted question at the previous “press conference” with BO.

Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.

“When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you,” Thomas said.

WaPo discusses the “townhall” in this piece. They note the statecraft involved but, unfortunately, don’t go into what that might mean to the event itself.

In the stage-managed event, questions for Obama came from a live audience selected by the White House and the college, and from Internet questions chosen by the administration’s new-media team. Of the seven questions the president answered, four were selected by his staff from videos submitted to the White House Web site or from those responding to a request for “tweets.”
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The president called randomly on three audience members. All turned out to be members of groups with close ties to his administration: the Service Employees International Union, Health Care for America Now, and Organizing for America, which is a part of the Democratic National Committee. White House officials said that was a coincidence.

The only thing transparent here is the bs.

My good buddy, American Girl in Italy, provided me with this article today, Clinton Urged Obama To Talk Tough On Iran. Now, see, this does not surprise me one little bit - both that Clinton wanted to talk tough to Iran, and that Obama left her hanging out to dry. That is her way, and that is his. And that is why so many of us never wanted her there in the first place (though we appreciate having an adult in the room). We knew it was coming.

So, here’s the deal:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged President Obama for two days to toughen his language on Iran before he did so, and then was surprised when he condemned Iran’s crackdown on demonstrators last week, administration officials say.

At his June 23 news conference, Mr. Obama said he was “appalled and outraged” by Iranian behavior and “strongly condemned” the violence against anti-government demonstrators. Up until then, Mr. Obama and other administration officials had taken a softer line, expressing “deep concern” about the situation and calling on Iran to “respect the dignity of its own people.”

Behind the scenes, the officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing internal deliberations, said Mrs. Clinton had been advocating the stronger U.S. response, but the president resisted. When he finally took her advice, the aides said, he did so without informing her first.

This was the first known example of awkwardness between the two former rivals for the Democratic nomination for president since they made up following Mr. Obama’s election. The disagreement also gave some insight into the Obama administration’s foreign policy decision-making process five months into its term.

“… Obama administration’s foreign policy decision-making process”??? Well, it seems to be, “We don’t know what the hell we are doing, and we will just say or do whatever we can until we get the fawning recognition on which we so depend. If that means screwing people over, even people in the Cabinet, oh well!” And, it is just a continuation of a policy Obama began during the Primary: taking Clinton’s words whole-cloth without EVER giving her credit for them. He did it time and time again. I guess we can’t be surprised that he is doing it now, too:

The officials said they were familiar with the language Mr. Obama used in his news conference because it was sent to the State Department a day earlier, but that Mrs. Clinton did not know until he uttered the words that he would choose that moment to make them public.

“It was a happy surprise,” one administration official said. “It was echoing the line the secretary had been pushing for a couple of days.”

Uh, yeah. I am sure that is exactly what it was, “a happy surprise.” Sure.

Guess when The Decider decided? About when you wold expect:

Another official said Mr. Obama apparently did not make the final decision to go ahead with the tougher stance until shortly before his remarks.

“I don’t think he himself had decided to do it until he did it, but we knew full well it was headed that way, because the White House sent over the actual language he’d use if he chose to take that line for folks to review and weigh in on, which State did,” the second official said.

Oh, he is so gifted, isn’t he?? How many times did he flip a coin? Draw straws? Played “eeney, meeney, miney mo” before he decided just what he was going to say - as he walked to his TOTUS?? Please.

Naturally, as to the tough language:

The White House and the State Department declined to comment publicly on Mrs. Clinton’s “private advice” to Mr. Obama and their internal communications.

As one would expect.

Apparently, Secretary Clinton was not the only one urging Obama to say something stronger:

Key congressional Republicans - most prominently Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was Mr. Obama’s opponent in last year’s election - criticized the president for being too “timid” and failing to speak out early against the Iranian regime’s crackdown on protests following the disputed June 12 presidential election.

Mr. Obama initially said he did not want to appear to be interfering in Iran’s internal affairs and provide ammunition to the regime, which tends to blame the United States and other Western countries for any unrest. In addition, he knew he would most likely have to deal with the current government as part of the West’s efforts to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon, officials said.

“On the one hand, he may have felt that the United States should naturally criticize the Iranian government’s violent crackdown on the protesters,” said Alireza Nader, an analyst at the Rand Corp. “On the other, he acknowledged that the U.S. was still willing to engage with Iran in the future. Strong U.S. criticism of the Iranian government could jeopardize future negotiations.”

Mrs. Clinton agreed with the president, but she thought it was time to get tougher after the June 20 killing of a young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, on a Tehran street, officials said. A video of the killing was widely viewed on the Internet.

At the same time, they added, she was content to leave the decision to Mr. Obama, because she understood that he bore ultimate responsibility for any consequences.

However, Mr. Obama’s sudden decision to toughen his language on Tehran had the effect of making the State Department look out of sync with the White House.

Until about an hour before the presidential news conference, the State Department continued to follow a more cautious public line, using words like “deeply concerned” about the situation in Iran, but refusing to “condemn” the crackdown. Then came Mr. Obama’s surprise.

“The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings and imprisonments of the last few days,” he said. “I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost.”

The decision on Iran was very personal, officials said. Mr. Obama knew his senior aides’ views, but it was up to him to “pull the trigger.”

Or to grow a pair. Or read the most recent poll - “Oh, no - not everyone is lapping up every word I read - I must do something! Quick - get me Clinton’s report and I’ll have it put on TOTUS!” Ahem.

Let’s not lose this important paragraph, though:

However, Mr. Obama’s sudden decision to toughen his language on Tehran had the effect of making the State Department look out of sync with the White House. (Emphasis mine.)

You don’t say. Well, OF COURSE IT DID. That was the intent, was it not? If it WASN’T, Obama could have said something like, “In conjunction with the State Department, ” or “As Secretary Clinton and I have discussed,” or SOMETHING that didn’t leave her high and dry. But like I said, that is his way. As is this, apparently:

“We have so few tools when we deal with Iran, and we don’t fully understand what’s going on, so all we’ve got is what the president says,” the first administration official said. “There isn’t a huge process behind it.”

In general, the officials said, Mr. Obama has relied on the government bureaucracy to formulate language on foreign affairs.

For example, before Mr. Obama’s meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday, everything he said was a “result of a long process involving meetings and briefing papers,” the official said. Even with North Korea, another country that has no diplomatic relations with the U.S., “we have a formalized mechanism in the six-party [nuclear] talks and more moving pieces.”

Analysts said the Iran episode shows Mr. Obama’s nuanced thinking and in-depth analysis of foreign policy, although some warned that he risks being too cautious and appearing indecisive.

“Appear”??? How about, he IS indecisive!! Once again, we are getting a load of hooey (”nuanced thinking”) to obscure how woefully out of his depth Obama is. I am sure you caught all of that above about him having the “bureaucracy” basically tell him what to say after they comb through everything for him. So, I guess his big “decision making” is to read, or not to read…

Some people do actually see through him, thank heavens:

“The demonstrators in Iran have revealed the extreme caution of Obama’s approach to the world, as if he is afraid of making a mistake, and his dislike of disruptions to an agenda he has already laid out,” Reginald Dale, director of the Transatlantic Media Network at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in reference to the president’s offer of engagement, which so far has been spurned by Tehran.

Kim R. Holmes, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, who was assistant secretary of state for international organizations in the George W. Bush administration, said: “The caution that we should not meddle was shown to be pointless after the Iranian leadership blamed the protests on America and Britain anyway.”

True that. But of course, there are reasons for Obama’s hesitancy:

Michael J. Green, former senior director for East Asian affairs on the National Security Council in the Bush White House, said Mr. Obama may be trying the learn from his predecessor’s mistakes.

Mr. Bush tended to make decisions during meetings with his national security team, but the problem was that his aides “interpreted his directions differently,” especially during his first term, Mr. Green said.

At the time, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s aides often said that he “felt good” about the outcome of a White House meeting, because Mr. Bush had taken his advice. Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld felt the same way, except that their advice was usually very different.

“It seems that Obama is trying to avoid such confusion by laying out specifically what he wants,” Mr. Green said.

As involved as Mrs. Clinton may have been in the process leading up to Mr. Obama’s decision on Iran, “the secretary of state usually doesn’t have the last say, because he or she is not there with the president all the time,” he said. “With all the modern technology, location still means power.” (Nicholas Kralev
)

Well, Mr. Green - you are assuming Obama KNOWS what he wants. Besides world domination, that is. But does HE know how to go about it? No, he has to leave that up to everyone else to figure out because he hasn’t a clue. Not only that, but he has no grace. Yes, he is the one who has “to pull the trigger,” but there are ways to do that in which others are not left hanging. But, that’s just not Obama’s way, now is it?

UPDATE: American Girl mentioned the following timely video in the Comments section, but it needs to be here:

So, there WERE African Americans and Hispanics who passed the exam, too, something previously unreported. As Mr. Ricci said, the press did NOT do its job, accepting as fact the city of New Haven’s talking points. Wow - what a HUGE surprise - the press not engaging in fact checking. Again! Shocking. Ahem.

I thought this was an interesting interview. Congratulations to all of the firefighters who worked so hard to pass their tests (Ricci was not the only one who sacrificed studying for the exam - it sounds like EVERYONE sacrifices for these extra classes and tests). Here’s hoping you all get the positions, and back pay, you worked so hard to achieve.

Is it even possible to track the massive government outlays across the entire economic landscape? Is it further possible to measure the actual cost of the outlays as a percentage of the overall subsidies? Can we navigate this terrain without getting bogged down in the midst of a thicket of government data and statistics? You have come to the right place.

Subsidyscope has just released a report, entitled Estimated TARP Subsidy Rate Rises, which links to a report from the Congressional Budget Office highlighting all aspects of the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program).

Just as “you can’t tell the players without a program” when attending a sporting event, “you can’t track Uncle Sam without Subsidyscope and Sense on Cents.”

What do we learn? Uncle Sam is still holding some TARP firepower. The TARP was launched as a $699 billion capital commitment. If you recall, the TARP legislation was passed as a vehicle to purchase toxic assets from banks. It has moved a long way away from that.

The TARP now covers 4 initiatives:

1. capital purchase and repayments from financial institutions

2. additional support for large financial institutions

3. financial assistance to automakers and related businesses

4. other actions, such as mortgage modification, TALF subsidies, and purchasing securities backed by Small Business Administration loans.

To be perfectly frank, I think it is very plausible that the actual capital commitments and activities ongoing under the TARP may not have met the pure letter of the initial legislation. That said, in an environment in which so many initiatives are capital constrained, there is no real legislative pushback. When was the last time we worried about the spirit or letter of our laws when we had bigger issues concerning money?? Money is more important than legal precedents, correct? We’ll get into that on another post.

On the numbers front:

Of the $699 billion in total capital, $142 billion has yet to be committed. Of the funds already allocated, Uncle Sam has incurred a total cost of $159 billion. What does that mean?

Recall the number of times that government officials told taxpayers that we would make money on investments in AIG and the like. Well, so far we’ve lost $159 billion dollars across all our TARP investments. The loss is calculated as the difference in funds committed and allocated to securities and the market value of those securities. That loss represents 36% of the funds committed and actually allocated.

Not that anybody in the media or the financial industry would want you to know that.

Program, here….get your program….step right up…program, here!!

Enjoy the ballgame, folks!!

LD

It’s not personal, it’s business. Revenues have been decreasing at an escalating rate in all business lines. Major losses in the main subsidiary have been financed through intercompany borrowings. Despite the financial hemorrhage, management has been taking salary increases. A bankruptcy filing could be imminent. Is this Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers? No, this is the National Organization for Women (NOW).

Some may think that NOW is an organization which has become obsolete, that women’s advocacy can move forward without this remnant of the second-wave of feminism. But that is missing the point. The success of national women’s organizations such as NOW is as important to women’s advocacy as it was for Wall Street to have Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley find their financial footing.

Last weekend, a major coup d’etat occurred at NOW’s election conference in Indianapolis.

One attendee described the conference as “the nastiest election conference I’ve ever attended.” Another added: “People I had worked with for years refused to greet me or even recognize me in the hallways of the hotel.” When all was said and done, after 417 delegate votes had been cast and counted, the underdog slate headed by Terry O’Neill had taken over the reigns of NOW by a mere eight votes. This despite NOW’s established leadership endorsing, actively supporting, and utilizing hardball tactics (including the disqualification of LA Chapter delegates) in support of their hand-picked slate of candidates.

What went down in Indy? Ahead of the election conference itself, a group of long-time feminists who were upset with the direction that NOW had taken decided to organize a resistance. One such feminist, Dr. Lynette Long, pulled NOW’s old tax returns. Dr. Long’s research revealed that NOW’s membership, which reached 500,000 at its zenith, is currently closer to 60,000. Yet, the conference and election itself were mostly a symbolic gesture and the turning of a page. The damage to NOW has been done over decades.

Ask a target audience on the soccer sidelines what they think about NOW. Jenna’s mom says: “Yeah, I joined after college a couple of decades ago, but then totally lost interest.” Katie’s mom says: “Their issues just don’t resonate with me.” Zoe’s dad says: “I’m concerned about my teenage daughter, but there’s no place for me at NOW.” And the polls show the same — just 20% of those surveyed consider themselves “feminists,” and only 17% want their daughters to be.

A whole lot of folks will look back and try to decipher what has caused the downturn at NOW. Yet, the answer is quite simple: the organization stopped representing its constituents. Management became insular and lost touch with the folks, so the folks moved on with their busy lives. Management became like a clique with strict rites of passage including being liberal and pro-choice. As management increasingly focused on issues that divided their members, they didn’t hear the decades-long patter of 440,000 footsteps slowly walking away.

This is not dissimilar to what occurred on Wall Street. There too, management lost track of the basic tenets of customer focus and service. Management instead relied on excessive financial risk through esoteric financial tools which took management further and further away from their customer base. It was only a matter of time.

And just as Wall Street lifts itself from the ashes of ruin, now, so is the women’s movement. While Wall Street rises with the help of TARP, the Next Wave gets underway courtesy of the sexism in the 2008 election. Wall Street got aid from Henry Paulson — the Next Wave got invigoration from David Letterman. The CEO ranks of Wall Street were merged and reshuffled; a new slate of leadership has taken over NOW and a new national women’s group has been formed. Wall Street will be forever changed, as will the women’s movement.

And thank goodness — it’s about time. Because we’ve come a long way, baby, yes, but the 2008 election showed us that sexism is alive and thriving in this country. Women have made great strides, but just beneath the surface, where eyes cannot discern, the roots of sexism and misogyny have been left to grow unabated. The roots flourish in our media, our schools, our workplaces, even our political parties.

And in 2008 we reached a nadir. For Wall Street it was the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. For the women’s movement, it was the sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.

As the Next Wave of “feminism” is ushered in, women’s advocacy can learn a thing or two from the lessons of Wall Street. The success of national organizations such as NOW and The New Agenda are just as critical to the way forward for women’s advocacy as it was for the stock market to see Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley shore up their capital base.

That at first may seem counter-intuitive. After all, thankfully, there are thousands of single-issue women’s organizations that have enjoyed tremendous success. Prominent and successful groups champion women’s issues such as fair pay, safety, and representation in business and government. These organizations have enjoyed successes; yet the women of this country have only come so far. Women still make 78 cents on the dollar of what men make; one in four women are still victims of assault at the hands of intimate partners; women’s representation in government has stalled and in business management is moving backwards. It seems that despite the noteworthy work at these issue-specific groups, making progress is still so incredibly hard.

There is a solution — and it’s right here, right now, at this moment. We have, for the first time in decades, the impetus and outline for the Next Wave. And the success of this Next Wave is in everybody’s interest. The underpinnings of the Next Wave is to make our country better, not for ourselves, but for the future. So when we turn to the next generation, we can say: “When you run for political office you will be judged on your merits. When you go to your first and last job you will get a fair shake and a fair wage. When you go to high school, you won’t have to be afraid of bullying and sexual assault. And most importantly, you will have mentors and role models in your life each step of the way.”

This is the message that will start to win back the 440,000 who left us because they felt that their voices were not being heard. Sure, we can look down our noses at the PTA moms and the softball dads who left along the way and insist that we don’t need them — but we do. We need unity. We need messages that will bring back the masses as the Next Wave begins. We need to focus on the issues that unite us, not divide us. We need national organizations that can excite and inspire. We need these national organizations to form alliances and fight for all of us.

And in fact, our collective success depends on it. When mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, friends and neighbors come back to us, we will finally have the groundswell of support needed to make this country better for the next generation. And we can do this. We simply need unity and alliances. We need to ensure the success of our national organizations in cultivating the Next Wave. We want the 440,000 and then some all to come back. And once they are back, the rest will take care of itself.

I vote for the latter. And I think reporter Tom Ricks would agree. Ricks posted the following at Foreign Policy today:

Several times the Bush administration tried to transfer responsibility for security to Iraqi army and police forces, only to see them unable to handle the burden. Now, once again, the Americans are trying to get Iraqi security forces to take over, as most U.S. troops withdraw from Iraqi’s cities. Will the Iraqis be able to keep the population relatively secure? To be honest, I don’t know, and no one else does. It’s a matter of faith. And the leap comes tomorrow.

The key issue is whether Iraqi forces will perform any better than they have in the past. U.S. officials, at least in their public comments, say they will. “I do believe they’re ready,” Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, said on CNN on Sunday. “They’ve been working towards this for a long time. And security remains good. We’ve seen constant improvement in the security force, we’ve seen constant improvement in governance. And I believe this is the time for us to move out of the cities and for them to take ultimate responsibility.” But, as he says, it is a matter of belief.

Here’s a contrary view given to Reuters by Khalil Ibrahim, a leader of a unit in the turned insurgents the Americans call the Sons of Iraq: “Iran has good relations with our political parties. They run militias. If the U.S. troops complete their withdrawal, Iran will do whatever it wants in Iraq. . . . Also, if the Americans pull out, al Qaeda will return.”

Meanwhile, Abu Noor, a college student in Baghdad, told my old colleague Ernesto Londono that, “We all know the militias are hiding because they know the Americans are inside the cities.”

Who is right, Odierno, or Ibrahim and Abu Noor? No one knows. Yes, Iraqi units are better trained and equipped than in the past. But that was never the problem. Rather, the point of failure was political. Sunni death squads and Shiite militias knew what they were fighting for, while an Iraqi soldier didn’t necessarily.

My worry is that I don’t see the political situation as being much different than it has in the past. Nothing much has changed from the previous rush to failures. As readers of this blog have seen me say before: the surge succeeded tactically but failed strategically. That is, as planned, it created a breathing space in which a political breakthrough might occur. But Iraqi leaders, for whatever reason, didn’t take advantage of that space, and no breakthrough occurred. All the basic issues that faced Iraq before the surge are still hanging out there: How to share oil revenue? What is the power relationship between Shia, Sunni and Kurd? Who holds power inside the Shiite community? What is the role of Iran, the biggest winner in this war so far? And will Iraq have a strong central government or be a loose confederation? And what happens when all the refugees outside the country and those displaced inside it, who I think are majority Sunni, try to go back to their old houses, now largely occupied by Shiites and protected by Shiite militias?

The differences between Sunni and Shia factions is real. The Shia are the majority. But the key to power, as taught by Lenin, is in the barrel of a gun not the seat of the Congress. If the militias come back to provide neighborhood protection we will be left with the equivalent of middle ages-style castles providing protection to the vassels surrounding them.

There is a bright side to such chaos. The Iraqis and the Iranians will be so preoccupied with their own internal battles to obtain and maintain security that they are likely to have little time for creating terrorist mayhem in other parts of the world. In any event it is not likely that Barack Obama will be able to point to Iraq and take credit for the “progress” in politics. The bombings and killings will be too disconcerting. If, however, the Iraqis figure out a way to coexist as the U.S. troops are withdrawn from Iraq then Barack will be taking a victory lap, whether deserved or not. Stay tuned.

One final point. The deadline of 30 June was a Bush creation. Obama is executing Bush’s policy. Who gets the blame and who gets the credit? My guess is Bush and Obama will share both in the coming year. If Iraq goes in the shitter you can be sure we will see the Olympics of fingerpointing as the Obama and Bush crowds square off. Meanwhile, the Iraqi people will be paying the price in blood and suffering. Hope or Audacity?