Farm Bureau confident Waxman-Markey going nowhere

A friend sent me an e-mail she received from the Iowa Farm Bureau. Excerpt: Mary Kay Thatcher, AFBF director of public policy, tells Agriculture Online that Farm Bureau doesn't anticipate the massive climate change bill passed by the House last week to[...]

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Store "Lucy" to gop; Store "Charlie Brown" to
Dems

Store "" to Goals
Store "" to Results
Store "" to Change
Store "Bipartisanship" to Myth
Do while .not. EOF
Case .not. EOF
 If gop = "Lucy" .and. Dems = "Charlie Brown"
    Store "Obstruction" to Goals
    Store "" to Results
    Accept "Are you ready to move forward?" Y/N to Change
        If Change = "N"
           Loop
        Endif
        If Change = "Y"
          Store "Stones" to Dems
          Store "Irrelevant" to gop
          Store "Accomplish something" to Results
          Skip
          Loop
        Endif
    Loop
 Endif
 If Dems = "Stones"
    Store "Accomplish even more" to Results
    Skip
    Loop
 Endif
Endcase
Enddo

And that's how Washington works.

Cross posted from Show Me Progress


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-lucy-to-gop-store-charlie-brown-to-dems

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Hacker May Have Obtained E-Mails, Threatened
Sanford And Mistress

The plot thickens...

RIO DE JANEIRO ? A television anchor who's the only journalist known to have spoken with South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's Argentine lover since news of their affair broke last week said the couple received an e-mail threat from the person who hacked into her Hotmail account.

Eduardo Feinmann, who worked with Maria Belen Chapur when she was a translator for Argentina's C5N news channel, said in a telephone interview from Buenos Aires that a member of Chapur's family told him of the threat on Saturday.He said the family member told him that the e-mail from the unidentified person warned both Sanford and Chapur that "you don't know who you are messing with." He said he didn't know how either of them responded.

Sanford's wife has said she's known about the affair for many months, so if true, this would certainly explain a lot:

Chapur said in an e-mail to Feinmann, which the anchorman read on the air Sunday night, that her Hotmail account was hacked into around Nov. 24. She became aware of the intrusion shortly thereafter and by Dec. 8 had succeeded in having the account closed. Read on...

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Presidential Election In Indonesia In 4 Days--
Nothing Much Expected

Don't be scared
You know what country has the most Muslims? Not Saudi Arabia, where the religion began; not Egypt, the biggest Arab state; not Pakistan, which has 174,579,000, almost all of whom are Muslims. The answer is Indonesia, which is where I am right now. Of the 237 million people living here just over 85% are Muslim. (I'm on one of the smaller Indonesian islands, Bali, which has a population of something like 3.3 million but only around 5% of the folks here are Muslim. Most everyone is a Hindu.)

When I arrived last week, my friend Anwar-- one of the 5%-- told me that next Wednesday is the presidential election. If the last parliamentary elections and recent polls are any indication, the incumbent, President Bambang, will be re-elected, probably quite handily. I asked Anwar if there was any chance for unrest and he said there isn't. Indonesia is a pretty secular state. There is no state religion and the kind of Moslem faith practiced here is a pretty moderate one. Today's NY Times managed to come up with a political story as religiously confrontational as you're likely to find. It's about women wearing head scarves. So far the only ones I've seen are on Malaysian tourists.

But with little else to campaign on, the probably losing Golkar Party is grasping at straws by pointing out that the wives of their presidential and vice-presidential candidates wear jilbabs (the traditional Indonesian women's head scarves), while President Bambang's and his VP nominee's wives don't. "But it would not be the first time that politicians tried to co-opt religious symbols to win votes." The issue doesn't seem to be getting much traction here, where head scarves have more to do with a fashion statement than a political one.

The country?s Islamic parties have core supporters that are coveted by the major parties, though the Islamic parties have failed to make inroads among mainstream voters. In fact, in April?s parliamentary elections, they suffered a steep drop in support compared with five years ago, a decline interpreted as mainstream voters? rejection of Islam in politics.

Neng Dara Affiah, an official at Nahdlatul Ulama, the country?s largest Islamic organization, which espouses moderate Islam, said the fight over the meaning of wearing the jilbab was taking place between ?fundamentalists? and ?progressives.?
The fundamentalists are trying to force women to wear the jilbab as an act of submission, and had already done so in various municipalities across the Indonesian archipelago in recent years, Ms. Neng said. For the progressives, she said, wearing the jilbab was an expression of a woman?s right.
?For women in Indonesia, whether they want to wear the jilbab or not is their choice,? said Ms. Neng, who started wearing one five years ago. ?It shouldn?t be political.?

...?If you ask 10 different women why they?re wearing jilbab, you?ll get 10 different answers,? said Jetti R. Hadi, the editor in chief of Noor, a magazine specializing in Muslim fashion, which features jilbab-clad models on its cover. ?You cannot assume that because a woman is wearing a jilbab, she?s a good Muslim.?

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NJ gets a Lieutenant Governor

New Jersey has always been considered to have one of the most powerful Governors in the nation, partially due the fact that the Governor position has been the only state-wide elected state official. Well, that has changed due to an amendment passed in 2006, and this year New Jersey voters get a chance to elect their first Lieutenant Governor:

The job holder's main duty would be to fill in for an absent boss and to take over if the term is not completed. The idea was to prevent a repeat of the scenarios when governors Christie Whitman and James E. McGreevey resigned, leaving the office to Senate presidents whom voters did not choose in a statewide election.
...
Supporters argue the job can be a vital step to statewide office, particularly for women and minorities. And a study from 1980 to 2006 by the National Lieutenant Governors Association showed 65 of 197 governors -- 25 percent -- once had served as second-in-command. -NJ,com

Gov. Jon Corzine (D) and GOP candidate Chris Christie must name their running mates by July 26. 

Of course, there have been a bunch of current or former Lt. Governors in the news recently. Govs. Jodi Rell (R-CT) and David Paterson (D-NY) are former Lt. Governors, and we're finding out more about Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer (R-SC) every day.

And New York is a special case. With Paterson taking the Governor's slot, NY does not currently have a Lt. Governor.  Why is that a real problem? Because the Lt. Governor gets a tie-breaking vote in the State Senate. And with no Lt. Governor, the State Senate is stuck in its current 31-31 state.

Not to mention the fact that before the current redistricting, there were an odd number of districts, which also would have prevented the current stalemate. So we won't mention it...

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Featured Video's: At Free Documentary.org

Download Free Political Documentaries And Watch Many Interesting, Controversial Free Documentary FilmsFEATURED VIDEOS: At Freedocumentaries.org, you can stream interesting and provocative documentary films for free!Like These: Hacking Democracy:[...]

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"She has told her supporters she is out of
politics, period."

Jed caught this clip on MSNBC:

I don't care what Andrea Mitchel has been told, I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

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"Si Se 'Bote!'" --- "Shar-ity" & The Million Can
March

video details and more


At C&L, BlueGal appeals for "sharity":

In case you haven't heard, the Million Can March is a counter protest to the teabagging protest redux scheduled for the Fourth of July. Good luck wi dat, teabaggers.

Since the news cycle is spinning the Missouri legislator who thinks summer nutrition programs for kids de-motivates them, the Million Can March is all the more timely. And should we remind the leading Tea Party advocate in the Senate, David Vitter, that food banks also need donations of disposable diapers?

But seriously, I'm already in the process of cleaning out my pantry and getting some food over to the local food bank.

The idea is to do something positive in response to the Teabagger business. The instigator of this project, Rev. Phat of Les Enrages, points out:

   This all started with a vague notion that we should do something more than just have a good laugh at the next round of tea parties scheduled for July 4th. I thought that if teabaggers are so afraid of socialism, maybe we could show 'em socialism on a national scale. And what is more socialistic than sharing our food with others.

And in the spirit of forgiveness, Rev. Phat invites conservatives to provide the drinks: dry packaged drink mixes and other non-perishable beverages are welcome at food banks, too.

For bloggers/webmasters the flash image above is free to copy, and there's a free-use set of non-flash images on Flickr courtesy of Tengrain. There's also a Facebook group (login req.) for those wanting to promote the activism.

Donate a can or two to your local food bank this week. Feeding America has a food bank locator if you need help finding one in your area. Thank you

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Alaska's Palin resigns as governor

Read The Full Article:
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Mass Of New Docs Support White House Reasons For
Firing AmeriCorps IG

As we noted yesterday, the Washington Post has published the documents turned over by the Corporation for National and Community Service to a Senate committee reviewing the White House's firing of AmeriCorps IG. Conservatives had charged that the IG, Gerald Walpin, was canned for going too hard after an Obama ally.

We've taken a look through the documents, and it's fair to say they offer a pretty clear picture of how and why the CNCS board lost confidence in Walpin. They jibe closely with what the White House and the board have already said -- to us, among others -- about the deterioration of the relationship between the IG and his agency. And they also make clear that this deterioration had begun long before the Obama administration existed.

Here are the key nuggets we've picked out from the 33 documents:

* Walpin clashed with CNCS General Counsel Frank Trinity over how to handle improper end-of-term service hour certifications for AmeriCorps members. An April 2008 memo by Trinity accuses Walpin of not correctly following the law on the issue.

* An email from Trinity to other agency employees about the May 2008 parody newsletter put out by Walpin's office -- which, according to the Washington Post, "included racial and sexually-themed jokes" -- makes clear that Trinity saw the newsletter as a potential violation of workplace harassment rules, and asked Walpin to "review and take appropriate action" over the issue. Corporation members have said Walpin did not do this, according to the Post.

* A string of emails from early 2009 shows that Walpin requested to telecommute from New York for part of the week, and was told by board members that doing so would weaken his effectiveness as IG. It appears that Walpin did indeed end up telecommting, despite the board's clear indication that they didn't support the idea. This issue was cited by the White House as being one of several reasons for Walpin's dismissal.

* The board also included the April 2009 letter from the US Attorney to an overseer for inspectors general, lodging a formal complaint about Walpin's behavior on the St. HOPE Academy probe. It criticizes Walpin for withholding information from the US Attorney's office, and for speaking to the media about the case, and accuses Walpin of seeking "to act as the investigator, advocate, judge, jury and town crier." This, too, was cited by the White House.

* There's also a report submitted soon after by Walpin to Congress, in which he defends his actions in the St. HOPE case and accuses CNCS and the US Attorney's office of having "another agenda -- not that of protecting Corporation grant funds."

* Another string of emails reveals a dispute between Walpin and Trinity over the legal status and reporting requirements of that special report submitted by Walpin to Congress. Walpin called Trinity's inquiries, "another demonstration of the hostility you have repeatedly expressed."

* Walpin's performance at a May 20 board meeting has already been cited by the board as having exacerbated their concerns about him. Several accounts of the meeting back this up. In a memo describing the meeting, Trinity wrote:

For the next ten minutes, during back and forth between Mr. Walpin and Board members, there were long pauses in the discussion while Mr. Walpin reviewed his notes. It did not appear that he was able to process the information on his notes for lengthy periods of time; he would flip the notes and then stop flipping without ever saying anything more from the notes. I was sitting right next to Mr. Walpin and I thought he might be experiencing some type of medical event, perhaps a mini-stroke or series of mini-strokes. I was concerned for his health. Once he finished his presentation, he was unable to engage substantively with the Board on any questions they raised; he simply argued that what they were saying was not the case.

Board chair Alan Solomont wrote that Walpin "seems totally confused."

And another board member, Eric Tannenblatt, wrote: "I wonder if we should shut down the discussion due to the IG's obvious confusion and let the record reflect so."

* In a letter to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), who had requested more information on the firing, the board wrote:

Over an extended period o f time, we observed how Gerald Walpin's effectiveness as Inspector General significantly diminished. Without an IG who can focus time and energy on areas of greatest risk, we are hampered in effectively discharging our responsibilities to you and your colleagues. Our concerns became paramount after an event in May involving the full Board of Directors that caused us collectively to question Mr. Walpin's ongoing ability to carry out his duties. As a result, the entire Board unanimously asked our Chair to convey our concerns to the White House. We support the President's decision to remove Mr. Walpin.

* In a letter to Sen. Harry Reid, the board explained their concerns about Walpin's habit of making critical public comments about the St. HOPE investigation:

The fundamental concern of the Inspector General appears to be that he was not consulted during the final week of the settlement discussions. As fully reflected in the referral of Mr. Walpin' s conduct to the Integrity Committee by the Acting United States Attorney, and as further documented by the attachments to this letter, Mr. Walpin's limited involvement in management's deliberative process in the final stages of settlement discussions was the direct result of his own conduct during the course of the St. HOPE matter. Specifically, Mr. Walpin had a marked propensity to make questionable comments on this matter in the media (against the specific direction of the United States Attorney), and to fail to disclose pertinent information to officials who must make decisions on behalf of the federal government.

You've got to assume that this mass of evidence has put to rest once and for all the line that this was a politicized firing -- and indeed, the conservative outrage seems to have receded recently.

Though that may just be because they've moved on to their next whistle-blowing hero...

Research assistance by Versha Sharma

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