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Max Blumenthal On The Scandal That Sunk Palin

post from TPMCafe on 03 July 2009 06:05:00 PM. © TPMCafe

This is credible.

There clearly is a story here and it is not that Palin can do more for Alaska NOT as governor.

Anyone who missed the announcement, check it out on TPM or wherever. It was incoherent, even scary. Obviously something is about to hit the fan and she is bailing.

She clearly is not running for President. A governor or senator who is running for President delivers some kind of policy address. Palin ignored policy, limiting herself to whining about media scrutiny.

She's done. My only hope is that she doesn't ruin Levi Johnston's career before it starts. I was so looking forward to his book. Actually, this craziness may increase interest in the book and the true story behind the Palin family follies.

What a fun 4th. Sanford, Ensign and now Palin gone. Three candidates, three scandals. Bring em on. The new GOP is delightful.

And check out this Alaska website which has done great work in uncovering the mystery called "Who Is Trig's Mom." Or dad.

Also, check out what the crazy right is saying. I love these automatons. Whatever they are fed, they swallow.

Sponsored Topics: Sarah Palin - Alaska - United States - Government - Executive Branch

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Rumsfeld On Abandoning Geneva: 'All Of A Sudden,
It Was Just All Happening'

post from TPMMuckraker on 03 July 2009 06:03:00 PM. © TPMMuckraker

Donald Rumsfeld has finally said he's sorry. Sort of.

In an interview with biographer Bradley Graham, the former secretary of defense says he has regrets about the administration's controversial detainee policy.

The twist is that Rumsfeld doesn't regret the policy itself -- specifically the abandoning of the Geneva Conventions for detainees picked up in Afghanistan. Rather, he regrets how the policy was formulated.

"All of a sudden, it was just all happening, and the general counsel's office in the Pentagon had the lead," Rumsfeld told former Washington Post journalist Bradley Graham, as quoted in By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld. "It never registered in my mind in this particular instance--it did in almost every other case--that these issues ought to be in a policy development or management posture. Looking back at it now, I have a feeling that was a mistake. In retrospect, it would have been better to take all of those issues and put them in the hands of policy or management."

Primarily at issue is the Bush Administration's decision -- in which Rumsfeld played a key role -- to not grant prisoner-of-war designation to detainees from Afghanistan. In the Department of Defense, which had authority for Gitmo, the policy initially took the form of a since-declassified January 2002 memo, written by Rumsfeld, that said Al Qaida and Taliban detainees "are not entitled to prisoner of war status" under the Geneva Convention.

This memo, as Graham puts it, "effectively nullified half a century of U.S. military adherence to the [Geneva] conventions."

But Rumsfeld, whose own memoir will hit the shelves in 2010, still sees the problem as one primarily having to do with process.

Here's the relevant section from Graham's book:

With the passage of time, Rumsfeld has come to recognize that he made a mistake, although he sees the error as one of process, not basic judgment. He faults himself for taking too legalistic an approach initially, saying it would have been better if senior Pentagon officials responsible for policy and management matters had been brought in earlier to play more of a role and provide a broader perspective. As he explained in an interview in late 2008, policies were developing so fast in the weeks after the September 11 attacks that he did not follow his own normal procedures. "All of a sudden, it was just all happening, and the general counsel's office in the Pentagon had the lead," he said. "It never registered in my mind in this particular instance--it did in almost every other case--that these issues ought to be in a policy development or management posture. Looking back at it now, I have a feeling that was a mistake. In retrospect, it would have been better to take all of those issues and put them in the hands of policy or management."
Further, Rumsfeld conceded, more should have been done to engage Congress in drafting the new policies on detainees--something he said that White House officials had opposed. Although Congress did eventually get involved, he noted that this occurred "in duress" after the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 against the administration's original approach.

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_geneva_all_of_a_sudden_it_w.php

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Geithner Neuters FDIC's Sheila Bair in New
Regulatory Overhaul. She Thinks Her Job is To Protect People, Not Banks.

post from Crooks and Liars on 03 July 2009 06:00:40 PM. © Crooks and Liars

video details and more

The New Yorker has a great profile of Sheila Bair, the populist Republican who's at the helm of the FDIC. (h/t Riverdaughter)

As you may already know, Bair is not well liked by the Wall St. crowd that's running the White House show. (Apparently she has this bizarre idea that her job is to look out for working folk. Crazy talk!) Well, she's very popular with regular people - the administration wouldn't get rid of her, it would make a stink. Instead, they've just neutered her:

These debates entered into the Administration?s discussions about building a new regulatory architecture. In late March, Geithner previewed for Congress some of the key concepts that Treasury wanted. The outline seemed to match the Bair camp?s ideas. [Ladies, has this ever happened to you?] A new authority with the power to take over large financial institutions that posed a systemic risk to the economy was modeled on the F.D.I.C., which, Geithner suggested in his testimony, would be an equal partner with Treasury in resolving such firms if they failed. He seemed to be saying that although he and Bair may have disagreed about how to handle the current crisis, there was much more consensus about how to deal with a future one.
But in the white paper detailing the new legislation, which the Administration released on June 17th, all the new authority to regulate firms that posed systemic risk was vested in the Federal Reserve. During Geithner?s testimony before the Senate, Jim Bunning, of Kentucky, echoing Bair, was incredulous. ?It took fourteen years for the Fed to write one regulation on mortgages after we gave it the power to do that,? he said. ?What makes you think that the Fed will do better this time around?? In addition, while the March plan said that the ?Secretary and the FDIC would decide? how to resolve a failing firm, the new plan said such power should ?be vested in Treasury.? Geithner could appoint the F.D.I.C. to do the technical work of cleaning up the firm, but between late March and mid-June ? when Bair?s aggressive ideas about how to handle Citigroup leaked to the press ? Bair?s agency had been downgraded from Treasury?s equal partner to a sidekick.
The senior Treasury official said that stripping authority from the F.D.I.C. had nothing to do with pressure from the banks. ?Making a group decision on something that must be done really quickly is not easy,? he said. ?At the end of the day, someone has to have the ability to make a call, and it?s better to have that authority vested in one person.?
When I asked Bair about the plan, she said, ?I think it reflected a lot of input from a lot of different agencies, and the private sector, and insurance and consumer groups. It?s a very difficult task to try to balance all the different perspectives and come up with a package, and every compromise is going to have people who are unhappy about various parts of it. So I think it?s a starting point.? I said that she sounded disappointed. ?I don?t know if ?disappointed? is the right word,? she replied.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/geither-neuters-fdics-sheila-bair-new

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Friday Philosophy: Pride (a photo journal)

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 03 July 2009 06:00:00 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

It's been a long hard work, trying to get back into the swing of teaching. The course we are teaching only lasts for 5 weeks and is at a very low, introductory level (Computer Literacy), but that is where these students are. The program is[...]

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Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

post from MyDD on 03 July 2009 05:59:26 PM. © MyDD

The announcement is stunning as it is abrupt. I did not catch the press conference but glanced at the press reports coming out of Alaska. Here's the report from KTUU-Alaska: Speculation has swirled for weeks, perhaps months that Palin would not[...]

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Palin Resigning, Won't Seek 2nd Term as Alaska
Gov.

post from Union Maine on 03 July 2009 05:59:00 PM. © Union Maine

[...]

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Sarah Palin resignation -- VIDEO

post from Daily Kos on 03 July 2009 05:45:19 PM. © Daily Kos

Celebrate the crazy:

You notice at the beginning of the clip, she takes a shot at lame duck governors who take overseas trade missions?

As I thought about this announcement that I wouldn't run for re-election, and what that means for Alaska, I thought about how, well, how much fun some Governors have as lame ducks. They maybe travel around their state, travel to other states, maybe take their overseas international trade missions.

That seems like a fairly obvious shot at Mark Sanford. It's very weird that she would choose to engage with him, and fairly bad political judgment.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/Tao1RMwxLCo/-Sarah-Palin-resignati
onVIDEO

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Sarah Palin: No Longer Alaskas Problem, Aspiring
to Be Americas Problem

It's too soon to tell whether the theme song for Sarah Palin's sudden resignation as governor of Alaska is "How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm?" or "Before They Make Me Run."[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://firedoglake.com/2009/07/03/sarah-palin-no-longer-alaskas-problem-aspiring-
to-be-americas-problem/

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