Gov. Sarah Palin will resign her office in a few weeks, she said during a news conference at her Wasilla home Friday morning. Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated at the Governor’s Picnic at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks on Saturday, July 25, Palin said. There was no immediate word as to why she will resign, though speculation has been rampant that the former vice presidential candidate is gearing up for a run at the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Muflats has crashed…so many people trying to get to the site..LOL

UPDATE:
Mudflats is up at her old site…. ‘back-up.’

Mudflats Old Site

From Andrew Sullivan, who was one of the best during the campaign in nailing the Horror from Wasilla:

03 Jul 2009 04:24 pm
The Miniseries Ends

I guessed right, which I suppose reflects just how much time I’ve spent trying to figure what goes on in her head. I think the simple truth is that, as even Alaskan Republicans told us last September, she was far from able to be governor of Alaska, let alone vice-president of the United States. Once the klieglights hit, it was only a matter of time before she imploded or exploded or some gruesome combination of the two. The librul media will be blamed for everything on her inexorable path to becoming a Fox News celebrity. Maybe a reality show? Someone hire her for The View!

In the end, I think, the one thing to say is that the Republican party is in such a total state of collapse and incoherence that it actually believed she could be a future president; and that John McCain was so reckless, so cynical and so cavalier that he was prepared to rest the national security of this country on her shoulders if he, in his seventies, were to become unable to fulfill his duties or die. In some ways, this is a moment to reflect on McCain, and his irresponsibility, not Palin and her drama.

I’m too stunned to say anything else, to tell you the truth. And yet not surprised at all.

Michelle Obama escorts her daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, off the stage as President-elect Barack Obama begins his victory speech at his election night party at Grant Park in Chicago, Tuesday night, Nov. 4, 2008.
—AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

From Lynn Sweet:

Michelle Obama to Russia, Ghana, Italy, Will Meet Pope Benedict
Posted: 07/2/09
Filed Under:The Daily FLOTUS with Lynn Sweet

First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia, along with her mother, Marian Robinson, will join President Obama when he travels to Russia, Italy and Ghana next week. The First Couple will meet with Pope Benedict XVI on July 10 at the Vatican.
The White House announced in May that Mrs. Obama would visit Ghana — and only recently confirmed that she will be with the president for the entire swing. The president will deliver two major speeches during the trip — in Moscow, on U.S.-Russia relations, and in Accra, before the Ghanaian parliament.

Not all details about Mrs. Obama’s activities on this trip are out yet, but a Wednesday briefing at the White House revealed some of her plans.

This is Mrs. Obama’s second overseas trip in less than a month; she, her mom and daughters flew to Paris and London in June, marking Sasha’s eighth birthday in London. Malia turns 11 on July 4. The next day, the Obama family flies to Russia aboard Air Force One, landing in Moscow on Monday.

Unlike the Paris and London trip — basically a vacation for Mrs. Obama, with the exception of a side visit to Normandy to mark the anniversary of D-Day — this travel is official business.

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All Williams Final at Wimbledon on Saturday, July 4th, NBC, Beginning at 9 am EST.

Good Morning.

TGIF and spend some of it at JJP.

Drop those links. Engage in debate. Give us trivia and gossip too.

And always, have a peaceful day.

The Official New Logo of the Washington Post - P.I.M.P

Yes, you read the title correctly.  Because of the dearth in profits in journalism these days (could it be that people want REAL NEWS, and not ENTERTAINMENT?) that has lead to the paucity that used to be known as the 4th Estate?

From Nicole Belle of Crooks and Liars:

Apparently the Very Serious People™ in the Village have a very different idea of journalism than they led us to believe. After their own columnist Dana Milbank lost his marbles and dignity over a DFH blogger asking a question, the Washington Post hits an all new low:

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few”: Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

Dang.  I’ve called the Washington Post a Rag, good enough for toilet paper or lining your pet parrot’s birdcage, but I never thought I would have to add the description of PIMP to this repetoire.

No wonder blogs like JJP are blowin up Big Willie-style.  Like lobbyists don’t already have access to government officials; hell, they’re what holds them hostage while they talk a good game about reforming and creating responsive, effective government of the people, by the people and for the people.

I don’t think James Madison had Big Pimping in mind when he helped to draft the Constitution, y’all.  And I guess because there’s a brotha in the White House, WaPo thought Big Pimping would be in STYLE.

George Bush was a PIMP - but you never had any of the media paying for access to his ass.  He merely threatened to cut off that access if you didn’t print what he or Dick Cheney told your ass to print.  Now that there’s a more media-friendly POTUS in the White House, the Washington Post decided it was okay to outright admit they’re pimping for  profit.

A National Newspaper that is a Real-Live Pimp.  And just when I thought I’d seen it all….

Good Evening.

Drop those links. Engage in debate. Give us trivia and gossip too.

And continue to have a peaceful day.

There’s a weird media blackout on this story. I heard about it on Twitter.

Here’s the deets with Cynthia’s phone call from detention above:

Cynthia McKinney calls WBAIX from Israeli prison. She and 20 others where detained after being seized by Israeli Navy while in international waters. They were attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. To watch live updates, interviews, protests go to http://www.livestream.com/wbaix

McKinney, former U.S. Congresswoman and presidential candidate, says that she had a suitcase full of crayons for Palestinian children in Gaza. Apparently these were confiscated too. The media coverage of this incident, if it’s possible to get any news that isn’t about Michael Jackson, will be very interesting indeed. Also, this is a real diplomatic challenge fo sho for the Obama Administration. Hillary Clinton — good luck with that! Wow.

The video above is Tammy Johnson from RaceWire on Jackson’s death. Here’s the text that accompanies the vid:

He tipped his hat and moonwalked across the stage like no one had ever before. Even Fred Astaire had to give Michael his props. But today, Thursday, June 25, the King of Pop is dead. Michael Jackson’s made his mark on the world, body and soul. But what we must not forget is that world marked Jackson as well. In his last days, assimilation and denial were sadly written all over his face. In death, we pray that peace finally finds the music man.

I was in NYC and riding the subway when I saw a dad and his 3 young kids who were on their way home after the Apollo Theater memorial to Michael Jackson. It was moving to see a caring black dad celebrating history and culture with some bright-looking kids. Yet those kids and that dad were all as brown as Michael had been once upon a time.

How do you explain to young African-Americans the level of self-hatred and amount of money required to turn yourself from a handsome black man into an attractive white woman? Has anyone seen Anne Hathaway lately, btw? Were she and MJ ever seen together? …I’m just askin’…

He was socially conscious, culturally curious and international, philanthropic, activist, compassionate, charismatic, business-savvy, and one of the greatest artists the world has ever know. He was also probably a pretty active (prescription) drug abuser, possibly afraid to tell the world he was actually gay (try and name an out-of-the-closet black gay celebrity - historically ours is not the most tolerant of cultures there), worshiped the god of bling, surrounded himself with an entourage of enabling, greedy yes men and sycophants — and danced with black women in his videos while marrying and publicly dating only white women. The fact is that Michael Jackson represents in one man all the best and the worst of African-American culture. And thus his relationship with his root culture and our reaction to him must  necessarily be complex.

It’s not just me. Here’s Quincy Jones who knew Michael very well, speaking to Men.Style.Com in the wake of Michael’s death:

Q: But it must’ve been so disturbing to see Michael’s face turn into what it turned into.
A: It’s ridiculous, man! Chemical peels and all of it. And I don’t understand it. But he obviously didn’t want to be black.

Q: Is that what it was?
A: Well, what do you think? You see his kids?

Q: Did you ever discuss it? Did you ever ask, “Michael, don’t you want to be a black man?”
A: No, no, no, please. That’s not the way you do it.

Q: But he was beautiful before?
A: Man, he was the most gorgeous guy.

I loved Michael Jackson. I was a huge fan. Yet, Voltaire famously said:

“We owe respect to the living. To the dead we owe only truth.”

Some folks got it the other way around and don’t want to look at the truth of Michael Jackson’s life and death now that he’s gone. Michael was right — it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white. Except maybe when you try to change yourself from black to white. There’s so much to learn from his triumphant yet tragic story. And it’s critical that we show the world that while we loved him, that we aren’t blind to his flaws — that we celebrate his contributions while recognizing the cautionary tale he ultimately represents for all of us.

The Reverend Al Sharpton and a fan dance on stage during a public memorial for pop star Michael Jackson on June 30, 2009 at the Apollo Theater in the Harlem section of New York.
AFP PHOTO/Stan Honda

Good Afternoon.

Drop those links. Engage in debate. Give us trivia and gossip too.

And continue to have a peaceful day.

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From Booman Tribune:

It’s Still About the Filibuster
by BooMan
Wed Jul 1st, 2009 at 01:48:39 PM EST

One of the things I think politicians are least inclined to do is to create problems for themselves on bills that will never become law. So, for example, so long as ‘centrist’ Democrats knew that the Employee Free Choice Act would never become law, they were all willing to vote for it. But, once it became clear that a united Democratic caucus and a Democratic president could pass the EFCA into law, several Democrats flipped and decided to oppose it. They didn’t want to alienate labor unions and Democratic activists by voting against the bill when they knew it would fail, but they were more concerned about alienating Big Business when they knew it might pass.

The same thing is going on now with the debate over a public option in the health care bill. I don’t recall a single Democrat who was running for president who didn’t run on at least a public option. And I don’t remember when senators like Max Baucus, Jon Tester, Kent Conrad, Ben Nelson, and Tim Johnson were endorsing candidate Obama that any of them complained about his health care proposals. Well, Obama won and the Democrats have sixty votes in the Senate, and they can pass single-payer health care if they want to. If they thought that the health care bill would fail, they’d probably support the public option. But they know that they have to pass a health care bill. So…now a bunch of them oppose it.

While the public’s support for a public option varies by state and region, it is overwhelmingly popular on a national level. Obama wants a public option and because he campaigned on providing one and won the election by a wide margin, he has a mandate for one. Yet, nearly a dozen Democrats have expressed some degree of reservations or even outright opposition to a public option. This is true in spite of the fact that none of them said a peep about opposing one during the primaries or the general election.

Prior to reaching the magic threshold of sixty senators, the Democrats had the excuse that they needed at least one Republican vote to achieve cloture and bring a health care bill to a vote. But, now, their only excuses are either that due to the illness of one or two senators they are not at full strength or that one or more of their own members won’t support the public option.

Assuming the Democrats can count on Sens. Byrd and Kennedy to show up for a cloture vote, the only way the Senate can fail to pass Obama’s signature program is if they harpoon it themselves. And that appears to be exactly what they are intent on doing. And they are going to do it on an issue that has the support of approxinately three-quarters of the electorate.

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From WhiteHouse.gov blog:

After days of taking video questions online, and with massive online discussions unfolding during the event, the President took questions on health reform directly from the public in an online town hall.

Look, getting people better health care in America is going to be a real fight. Not unlike the fight to get Obama elected. I give the Prez a lot of credit for rolling his sleeves up and getting hands on e.g. yesterday’s townhall. (The video is above and here’s the transcript.)

It’s the only way — only extraordinary effort on behalf of our leadership is going to insure that what most Americans see as a basic right and necessity is given back to Americans — the right to affordable healthcare for all.

Here’s the statement that the White House sent us this am. I’m publishing it cuz you know the mainstream media probably won’t and I know you want to know whassup:

Statement by the President on Health Care Reform Bill Released by Senate HELP Committee Today

For decades, Washington has failed to act as health care costs continued to rise, crushing businesses, families and placing an unsustainable burden on governments.  Today the Senate HELP committee has produced legislation that lowers costs, protects choice of doctors and plans and assures quality and affordable health care for Americans. The Congressional Budget Office has now issued a more complete review of this bill, concluding that it will cost less and cover more Americans than originally estimated.  It also contains provisions that will protect the coverage Americans get at work. When merged with the Senate Finance Committee’s companion pieces, the Senate will be prepared to vote for health reform legislation that does not add to the deficit,  reduces health care costs and covers 97% of Americans.

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Good Morning.

As you go through your day, don’t forget JJP.

Drop those links. Engage in debate. Give us trivia and gossip too.

And always, have a peaceful day.

Posted via web from baratunde’s posterous

From TPM:

Health-Care Market Characterized By Consolidation, Not Competition
By Zachary Roth - June 29, 2009, 12:50PM

As Congress gets set to take up health-care reform, there’s a crucial piece of data that hasn’t received nearly the prominence in the debate that it deserves.

Defenders of the status quo on health care like to point out that a public option will destroy the system of robust free-market competition that currently exists.
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), speaking earlier this month on Fox News, called President Obama’s plan the “first step in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known.” A public option, Shelby added, would “destroy the marketplace for health care.”

But the notion that most American consumers enjoy anything like a competitive marketplace for health care is flatly false. And a study issued last month by a pro-reform group makes that strikingly clear.

The report, released by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), uses data compiled by the American Medical Association to show that 94 percent of the country’s insurance markets are defined as “highly concentrated,” according to Justice Department guidelines. Predictably, that’s led to skyrocketing costs for patients, and monster profits for the big health insurers. Premiums have gone up over the past six years by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007.

Far from healthy market competition, HCAN describes the situation as “a market failure where a small number of large companies use their concentrated power to control premium levels, benefit packages, and provider payments in the markets they dominate.”

So extreme is the level of consolidation, in fact, that one former top Federal Trade Commission official working with HCAN has sent a letter to the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, asking for an investigation into the health insurance marketplace.

The problem is most acute in small rural states, according to the report. In Shelby’s own state of Alabama, the biggest insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, controls 83 percent of the statewide market. There, and in nine other states — Hawaii, Rhode Island, Alaska, Vermont, Maine, Montana, Wyoming, Arkansas and Iowa — the two largest health insurers control at least 80 percent of the market. So much for Shelby’s “marketplace for health care.”

The report doesn’t consider how this reality stands to affect the forthcoming congressional battle for reform. But extreme consolidation may actually be making it harder, not easier, to win support from lawmakers for a public option.

That’s because insurers who control large swathes of a given market stand to see their bottom lines particularly threatened by the introduction of a lower-cost public option. So, in turn, they’ll be particularly aggressive in pulling out all the stops to pressure lawmakers to oppose the plan. Given the healthy amount of campaign dollars that some wavering members take in from the major insurers, that’s hardly encouraging.

Of course, the Senate is where the major legislative showdown will likely occur. So in some forthcoming posts, we’ll be taking a close look at just which senators have taken money from insurers who control major percentages of the state-wide market — and where those senators stand on the public option. Stay tuned…

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RobM, I thought of you.

Found this over at DailyKos:

US Supremes clobber Big Banks
by Night Owl [Subscribe]
Tue Jun 30, 2009 at 02:03:58 PM PDT

For all of us who are (ahem) less than satisfied with the vigor of the US Federal Government’s prosecution and enforcement of banking laws against large financial institutions, the US Supreme Court on Monday bucked 145 years of tradition to deliver an important and far reaching opinion that falls squarely on the side of greater accountability.

In Cuomo v. Clearing House Association (PDF), the court struck down a regulation by the US Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) that prohibited enforcement of state banking laws against national banks.

The case involved an attempt by former New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer in 2005 to investigate bank lending practices, such as whether a disproportionately large percentage of high-interest mortgages were made to minorities.

After Spitzer sent letters of inquiry to national banks, including Wells Fargo & Co., Citibank and JP Morgan Chase & Co., a bank consortium called the Clearing House Assn. filed suit to stop the investigation.

The Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks, also filed suit, arguing that Spitzer was improperly encroaching on its rule under an 1864 law that it was the only entity with the “visitorial power” to examine such banks. The suits were combined and upheld by lower courts.

But Spitzer’s successor, Andrew Cuomo, appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing in part that the federal agency’s interpretation in effect shielded national banks from states’ enforcing their own laws to protect consumers and prohibit discrimination.

 

The court found that while a state’s ‘visitorial’ powers of investigation into financial practices remain preempted by the 1864 Federal statute, these visitorial powers do not include the power of a state to enforce its own laws, so a state’s Attorney General can still bring suit against national financial institutions to enforce the state’s consumer protection laws.

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