With nothing going on, and a 31-31 tie continuing, Governor David Paterson has named former MTA chief Richard Ravitch as Lieutenant Governor, who could theoretically cast the tie breaker vote.
The thing is, it appears that he has no authorities to do so, at least not according to the Republicans, Democratic turncoat and poster child for corruption Pedro Espada Jr., and Democratic State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.
Palin is resigning as governor of Alaska to focus on running for President effective July 25. (see also here)
It appears that she thinks that she needs more than 2 years to run for President, her term expires in 2010.
3½ more years of Palin….Great googly moogly!
I cannot imagine that anyone out there with a smidgen of sanity views this with anything but dread, except, perhaps, Jon Stewart, Dave Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, etc. and their staffs, who find writing satirical monologues that much easier.
Former CIA employee, and torture apologist, Michael Scheuer goes on Glenn Beck’s show on Fox, and says that Americans need to die from a terrorist attack:
Scheuer: The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it’s going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It’s an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.
Beck: Which is why, I was thinking this weekend, if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.
But understand, this is not unpatriotic. You can wish all manner of horrors on this country, but as long as these horrors might serve a specific political agenda, you’re not being unpatriotic. Unpatriotic is a public health care plan. Unpatriotic is a judge modifying subprime mortgage loans to keep a roof over someone’s head. Unpatriotic is phosphate free detergent. Patriotic is wishing for a terrorist attack on the United States.
Why should we listen to these people about anything. They hate America and Americans.
They are claiming that the EPA is suppressing climate warming skeptical reports from one of their employees, Al Carlin.
There are, however, a few problems:
So basically, he’s the nutcase you ignore on an email listserv.
They convened today, but could not get any work done, because no one agreed who was in charge.
This body is almost as dysfunctional as the Republican Marital Fidelity caucus.
I have no clue as to which side is right under the Senate rules, but this is a damn mess.
A league has been founded in Georgia.
It’s nice to know that they are focused on acedemics and atheletics.
Perhaps the league, the Glory for Christ Football League should also invest in a spell check.
I think that New York Times photog Erik Lesser, was saying something here, when he snapped that shot.
I really hope that this sort of home schooling is not the future of our educational system, or we will be sharecropping to Hondurans in 50 years,
It comes from former Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino, who says that the Sanford affair proves we need to ‘elect more women,’ because women do not cheat on their husbands.
Great googly moogly, that woman is stupid.
[Kerry] was telling a group of business and civic leaders in town at his invitation about the “bizarre’’ tale of how South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford had “disappeared for four days’’ and claimed to be hiking along the Appalachian Trail, but no one was really certain of his whereabouts.
“Too bad,’’ Kerry said, “if a governor had to go missing it couldn’t have been the governor of Alaska. You know, Sarah Palin.’’
(emphasis mine)
I figure that after about 72 hours or so of faux outrage from the right, John Kerry will call a press conference to apologize.
He shouldn’t though, it was damn funny.
In fact, he may not even be number 2…or number 3, or even number 31, or for that matter, he may not even be number 62
You see, the New York Senate Democrats have locked themselves in the Senate chambers to prevent the Republicans from holding their own special session, which they did anyway, and claimed to have passed everything by 62-0, and that the session is over.
Of course with 31 people on each side, there is no quorum, so neither side of the aisle is acting with anything resembling sanity.
Only there was nothing to pass, because David Paterson had not bothered to finish the bills and send them to the legislature for the emergency session called by one David Paterson.
That being said, I think that NY State Senator Pedro Espada is the chief clown.
It appears now that he’s trying to extort money from the Democratic caucus, asking for $2 million for his “not-for-profit” health clinic chainwhen jumped to the other side over not getting $75 thousand for his little scam.
What’s more after weeks of claiming that thieves had broken into his “second” home in tony Mamaronack, he represents the Bronx, and stolen only those papers, the documents have turned up:
Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. now says thieves didn’t get the key documents he suggested might have been swiped during a reported burglary at his “second home” in Westchester County.
Espada, under investigation for living outside his Bronx district, raised eyebrows last week when he said that whoever broke into his Mamaroneck home stole files and documents – but no other valuables.
(emphasis mine)
How the hell this guy stays out of jail, I’ll never know.
Additionally, he had to be threatened with criminal charges before he was willing turn over his campaign donation information to state campaign finance authorities, though it appears that he still hasn’t paid the fines.
Meanwhile, a grand jury has been convened, and is investigating whether Espada committed fraud by misstating his true residence, and the Bronx DA is now going back further, looking at his earlier campaigns.
You know, relative to this crap, I live in a good government state, and I live in Maryland.
I never ever thought that I would put the phrase “good government” and “Maryland” in the same sentence.
The CIA is launching a recruitment drive among laid off investment bankers, because, well, I guess they are sick and tired of people who can learned Arabic, Farsi, Pashtun, and Chinese from their parents, because they don’t fit in at the country club.
Great googly moogly, their latest brief in court is even more absurd than their DOMA brief.
Hell, it’s more absurd than the Twinkie Defense, it’s the Jon Stewart Defense:
A federal judge yesterday sharply questioned an assertion by the Obama administration that former Vice President Richard B. Cheney’s statements to a special prosecutor about the Valerie Plame case must be kept secret, partly so they do not become fodder for Cheney’s political enemies or late-night commentary on “The Daily Show.”
…
….He told the judge that if Cheney’s remarks were published, then a future vice president asked to provide candid information during a criminal probe might refuse to do so out of concern “that it’s going to get on ‘The Daily Show’ ” or somehow be used as a political weapon.
Gee, I wish that I could tell police investigating a crime to go pound sand because somehow it might be embarrassing.
Making this even more absurd is that this argument was first put forward by Bush’s now disgraced acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel Stephen Bradbury. (See also here and here)
Because it appears that one of their biggest, if not their biggest, drivers of traffic to their site, just too annoying, he had a brew up with the dishonest and delusional Charles Krauthammer about 2 weeks ago, and I’m sure that he and WaPo editorial chief Fred Hyatt comisserated over martinis and vicodin.
Glenn Greenwald is justifiably outraged.
All that I would add is that the WaPo still has space for Paul Wolfowitz.
It’s depressing. They have what I consider to be the finest comics section in the United States.
The nutjobs at PETA, who are complaining about Obama swatting a fly during an interview.
Seriously, if they weren’t able to make gullible celebrities strip for the camera, they would have no credibility at all.
Because it appears to be a remarkable tool for heckling people.
I’m logged in, and I can search for stuff, but it appears that a lot of people who use it find a lot of utility that I simply miss.
Case in point: Pete Hoekstra (R-Clueless) got today’s talking point, which was that being a Republican in the current Congress was a lot like the Iranian protesters being beaten and shot:
Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House.
Great googly moogly, it’s stupid, and there are hundreds of parodies out there, including a blog which has LOLZed some of the tweets:
So the details of Obama’s regulatory plans for finance are leaking out, and the picture is not good.
The New York Times makes a big deal about how all the stake-holders were brought in and given a voice:
President Obama’s plan to reshape financial regulation, which he will unveil on Wednesday, is the product of weeks of meetings among government officials, financial experts, lawmakers, industry executives and lobbyists, many of whom were invited to help the White House draft the proposal.
…
In the last two weeks alone, the administration has heard from top executives from Goldman Sachs, MetLife, Allstate, JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, Citigroup, Barclays, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Travelers, Prudential and Wells Fargo, among others. Administration officials also discussed the president’s plan with the top lobbyists at major financial trade associations in Washington.
So we ave the wrong and incompetent (financial experts), and the criminal and corrupt (industry executives and lobbyists) brought into the big tent in order to make one big happy family on the legislation.
As a result, they get very little right, they just rearrange the deck chairs, giving the Federal Reserve, the least accountable and most culpable of the banking regulators an expanded role, and create a “council of regulators,” which will serve to do nothing. It will be where meaningful regulation goes to die.
We already have a model for regulation that works: Roosevelt’s regulatory regime set up during the Depression.
It worked until the mid-1970s when Jimmy Carter started, and Ronald Reagan pushed to excess regulation.
About the only rule you need to add to all that is the rule that any new financial instrument is illegal until approved by a regulatory agency.
People may complain that this curtails “innovation,” but “innovation” is what got us here.
The Swedes have a society that I envy in a number of ways.
A social safety net, a policy of making contraception to teens 15 and above, and the latest case, the requirement that, “Sex education should form part of the curriculum for all adults attending Swedish for Immigrants (SFI) classes,” according to an official report given to the Minister for Health and Social Affairs.
This is a good policy. The idea of teaching people who may have come from very sexually repressive societies things like human sexuality, that clitoridectomy is wrong, and that homosexuality isn’t wrong, that women have the right to refuse sex to their husbands, contraception, etc.
Here is the part that had me spewing at my screen, though:
Milton said he thought it would be unnecessary for people from functioning democracies to sit through classes on sex education. He added however that finding a practical solution did not fall under his remit.
“Clearly people from the UK, US or Canada, for example, know these things already. But it can be sorted out on a case by case basis. It’s something that can be worked out locally,” he said.
While I cannot speak to the sexuality and sexual mores of either the Canadians or British, notwithstanding the, “no sex please, we’re British,” jokes, I find the idea that the United States, with the highest incidence of teen pregnancy, partner murder, etc. is somehow sexually enlightened as a society to be completely unsupported by reality.
Just ask Briston Palin.
Were US sexual mores more honest, and less punitive, we would be a far better place to live.
Senator Hiram Monserrate, he’s the one who slashed his girlfriend’s face, not the one who took thousands of dollars of illegal campaign contributions and laundered money
, has returned to caucusing with the Democrats, because the old Dem Senate leader has been replaced.
So, it’s a 31-31 tie, and there is no Lieutenant Governor to break the impasse, that was Paterson pre-Eliot Spitzer, and quorum is 32, and the Dems are refusing to enter the chamber.
This is also in court, and the judge is looking for a compromise here, and so is refusing to rule, but he’s being optimistic. He’s going to have to rule.
As a result of the Republican takeover of the state Senate in New York, legislation has come to a stand still, and the New York Times quoted Governor Paterson exhorting people to get along and get work done:
The governor also made one of the more unusual pleas for sanity, imploring lawmakers to “think of the lobbyists,” explaining that they had worked hard “to persuade legislative leaders and legislators of issues.”
Great googly moogly, this guy could lose an election to Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.
Think of the lobbyists? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Seriously, if he is the Democratic nominee for governor in 2010, he is going to get done like a drunk alterboy.
So the New York Times Corporation is unilaterally implementing a 23% wage cut.
I think that the National Labor Relations board may have something to say about this.
Absent bankruptcy, a contract is a contract.
I think there have been a number of reasons that this was rejected.
First, the Times‘ financial problems, are not as a result of the declines in the newspaper industry, but because of the enormous amount of debt that they took on to build, and move into, a swanky new headquarters building in 2007, and to pay (borrowed) cash for it.
When they could not roll over the short term loan, because of the financial crisis, they had to take a loan from Carlos Slim at very high rates. (14% !)
It also did not help that management handled communications abysmally, refusing to talk to its employees about the offer, refusing to send New York execs to the newsroom, and getting the math wrong, and then refusing to adjust the deadline, and making the cuts for rank and file about 50% larger than those of management.
This wasn’t a communication of the needs of the corporation, it was a communication of contempt for Boston by the folks in New York.
It should also be noted that the fact that the Times was not looking at New York for any give backs, and in fact continues to spend profligately, and just 2 weeks ago, the gift that keeps on giving, Thomas Friedman, shot his mouth off about how he never had to talk to an editor about what he is doing or spending:
Thomas Friedman, the Times’ chief foreign affairs columnist, lauded the efforts that Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., has made to keep the newsroom intact, saying, “I just have a great deal of admiration for him.” He told me that since taking his current post, in 1995, he has never been asked by Sulzberger what he was planning to write, or how high his travel expenses would be. “To be able to say what I want to say and go where I want to go—other than a Sulzberger-owned newspaper, you tell me where that exists today.”
(emphasis mine)
So, once again, Thomas Friedman, the man who is always wrong, drops another steaming redolent load on people who are ordinary enough that they have to work for a living.
I don’t know why the pay his travel expenses, he can create fictitious taxicab drivers who say exactly what he wants them to say while sitting at his home.
Yeah, the New York Times is on a real roll.
In an article on plans going through congress about fixing the US healthcare system, reporter Kevin Sack delivers this bon mot:
But critics argue that with low administrative costs and no need to produce profits, a public plan will start with an unfair pricing advantage. They say that if a public plan is allowed to pay doctors and hospitals at levels comparable to Medicare’s, which are substantially below commercial insurance rates, it could set premiums so low it would quickly consume the market.
(emphasis mine)
Ummm….Let me get this straight, the knock on a public option is that it will be too efficient?
The costs will be too low!!!! And the service will be too good!!!!
Horrors.
Dude, that’s the point. Private insurance has utterly failed!!!! Unless you have them compete against something better, they will stay crappy.
I have an idea, how about we start requiring PCB’s in tap water, because it unfairly competes with bottled water.