Saturday: Sleepyhead

Posted: July 16, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Hillary Clinton, morning reads | 32 Comments

CLICK FOR TRANSCRIPT/VIDEO (...at one point Hillary gets asked to comment on the passing of Betty Ford.)

Morning, news junkies… I’m really exhausted, so this is going to be a pretty basic rundown of links and snippets, nothing fancy or earth-shattering in the way of two cents from me.

This week’s Hillary photo:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Catherine Ashton hold a press conference at bilateral meetings at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on July 11, 2011. [STATE DEPT. PHOTO/PUBLIC DOMAIN.]

The Chicago Sun Times’ Lynn Sweet has got another photo worth catching if you missed it this week:

Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan at Betty Ford funeral.

Also from a Grand Rapids press report: The Westboro creeps “didn’t show as threatened, but members of a group promoting tolerance came just in case with intentions of shielding the funeral from members of the Kansas-based hate group.”

Via the BBC’s Kim Ghattas:

On the road with Hillary Clinton.

(Also give Kim’s interview with Hillary a look. And, here’s an international headline based on one of Hillary’s answers to Ghattas: Clinton Ready to Retire from ‘Merry-Go-Round.’)

In “water is wet” news, John Kerry can’t wait to step in Hillary’s place on that merry-go-round…

NYT Mag profile: The All-American.

Globetrotting with Hillary…

CNN reports: The Energizer Secretary embarks on another world tour. (“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived Friday in Istanbul, the start of a 12-day journey that, in typical Hillary fashion, will straddle the globe, taking her to Europe, India and East Asia.”) The Guardian’s takeaway: Hillary Clinton circumnavigates a sphere of diminishing US influence. Dipnote Travel Diary: Secretary Clinton Travels to Turkey, Greece, India, Indonesia and Hong Kong.

My Dipnote picks of the week:

Women Leaders as Agents of Change: Caribbean Regional Colloquium. (“In a personal video message, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sent her greetings and congratulations to participants and organizers. Participants received the video enthusiastically, commenting that they felt encouraged and inspired by the Secretary’s interest and support.”)

U.S. Launches “Women in Trade Initiative” in Pakistan.

The Impact of Diplomacy and Development on Economic Prosperity.

Food for thought… Still4Hill’s take on Madame Secretary’s response to the assassination of Hamid Karzai’s brother…

Hillary Clinton: A Giant Shadow.

Good News from GetEqual.org:

After 17,000 petition signatures and a 75-person rally… Immigration Judge Postpones Deportation Proceedings For Two Years, Allowing Married Gay Binational Couple to Remain in U.S.

Via TDP (Texas Democratic Party):

MeetRickPerry.com (TDP is still in the building stages of this site right now, so the homepage is a fundraising push at this point… but I still thought this was amusing and wanted to share.)

Via Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check…

NYT: The Courts Stand Up for Access to Reproductive Health Care. (“While these rulings are preliminary,” states the editorial, “each is a determination that enforcing the law would cause irreparable harm and that the plaintiffs are likely to prevail at trial.”)

Bloomberg article on Indian women in finance (h/t Dakinikat):

Top Women at India Banks Prove ICICI CEO Factory Gender Neutral. (“I never thought the banking industry was male dominated because I could see Chanda Kochhar lead such a big bank,” Mistry says in the sunlit classroom. “Chanda is my inspiration because I want to join banking.”)

The loquacious veep’s first tweet:

“Just met w/Cabinet re unacceptable violence against HS+college women; tasked agencies to mobilize all assets to attack this problem – VP”

Dean Baker, from the Bastille Day edition of Counterpunch:

Economic Illiteracy...

In the same vein, when a politician asserts that Social Security is going bankrupt and that there will not be anything left for her children or grandchildren, serious reporters would ridicule her for being ignorant of the Social Security trustees projections. These projections show that even if nothing is ever done to change the program, future beneficiaries will always be able to collect a higher benefit than current retirees. The “nothing there for our children” would be treated as a serious gaffe, sort of like then-Senator Obama’s comment before the Pennsylvania primary about working class people being bitter and clinging to guns and religion. The difference is that the Social Security comment has direct relevance for policies that affect people’s lives. […] If economic and political reporters applied the same sort of investigative zeal to economic and budget reporting as they did to Representative Anthony Weiner tweeting pictures of underwear, we would have a much better informed public. Not only would the news stories that we see and hear be much more informative, but politicians would be less likely to make things up to advance their political agenda.

This Day in Women’s History (July 16)

Emily Stowe... click to read bio.

1880: Emily Stowe becomes the first female physician licensed to practice medicine in Canada. From the link:

Inspired by a woman’s meeting she attended in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1876 Emily Stowe founded the Toronto Women’s Literary Club (in 1883 reorganized as the Canadian Women’s Suffrage Association). Members prepared papers on women’s professional achievements, education, and the vote. The Literary Club campaigned successfully to improve women’s working conditions. Stowe lectured on “Women’s Sphere” and “Women in the Professions.” She said that a woman “ought to understand the laws governing her own being.” Because of pressure by the Literary Club, some higher education in Toronto was made available to women—though Stowe protested that the medical course first planned for women was substandard. Stowe campaigned for better medical education for women and influenced several eminent physicians. In 1883 a public meeting of the Toronto Women’s Suffrage Association led to the creation of the Ontario Medical College for Women.

That’s it for me. What’s on your blogging list?

[originally posted at Let Them Listen; crossposted at Taylor Marsh and Liberal Rapture]

 

Thursday Reads

Posted: July 14, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Democratic Politics, fundamentalist Christians, morning reads, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, Surreality, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 40 Comments

Good Morning!! The big news is still the deadlocked debt ceiling talks. There will be another meeting of the squabbling children tomorrow afternoon. Frankly, I’m hoping for some serious fireworks.

Meanwhile, Eric Cantor is grabbing points with the Tea Party, but everyone else is laughing at him. Check this out from Joe Klein (yes, he’s an idiot, but the Villagers listen to him):

David Rogers over at Politico, who has been doing this–extremely well–for about as long as I have, has word that the President of the United States monstered down on Representative Eric Cantor in Wednesday’s deficit ceiling squabble. This is so refreshing on so many levels. Cantor has been using this crisis to undermine his leader John Boehner, by playing the Tea Party/Grover Norquist recalcitrance card. The boy badly needed someone to get up in his face and Barack Obama, of all people, apparently did, telling Cantor, in no uncertain terms, that he’d veto any short term deficit ceiling fix or, indeed, any plan that did not include revenue increases. Then Obama walked out, or the meeting ended, depending on whom you talk to.

So what we have now is the Republican party in, yes, disarray–a word used to describe Democrats almost exclusively, back in the day before the crazies took over the GOP store. You have Cantor and the House Teasies opposing any revenue increases, including a tax loophole closing plan that Ronald Reagan and Edmund Burke would have smiled upon. You have Boehner, struck dumb apparently, after his attempt at bipartisan statesmanship with the President was greeted by tossed shoes and catcalls from the Teasies. You have Mitch McConnell, well, I’m speechless about Mitch McConnell…

Here’s this Kentucky dude whose every action, before Tuesday, painted him as one of the most cynical operators we’ve seen on Capitol Hill since Pitchfork Ben Tillman–and now, suddenly, he’s gone all rational on us, chiding his Republican forces (that means you, Eric) about leading the party to the electoral slaughterhouse if they don’t take this debt ceiling business seriously. He has proposed to place the responsibility for raising the debt ceiling solely on the President and let Obama run with that. This is looking more likely today than it did yesterday.

Jonathan Allen at Politico suggests that Cantor is overreaching.

As he has surged to the forefront of debt-limit negotiations and faced round-the-clock scrutiny on cable and radio talk shows, a fundamental question about House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s high-stakes political maneuvering is being discussed in the halls of power.

Is he building street cred with House Republicans or overplaying his hand?

The answer may be both. Cantor’s allies note that he’s been put in the spotlight by assignment — from Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama — not by choice. And they say he has gained political capital within the GOP conference.

Cantor has a lot riding on the outcome of the debt-limit negotiations. He’ll share in the public blame if they fall apart and the economy tanks, and he’ll face recriminations from his conservative base in the House if he cuts too soft a deal with the president.

At The New Republic, Jonathan Chait explains why “The Republican Crazy Is Not An Act.” Please don’t miss it.

John Boehner says working with the White House over the debt ceiling has been like “dealing with Jello,” whatever that means.

“Dealing with them the last couple months has been like dealing with Jell-o,” Boehner said. “Some days it’s firmer than others. Sometimes it’s like they’ve left it out over night.”

Boehner explained that talks broke down over the weekend because, he said, the president backed off entitlement reforms so much from Friday to Saturday, “It was Jell-o; it was damn near liquid.”

“By Saturday, they’d spent the previous day and a half just going backwards” on reforming entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

“The only thing they’ve been firm on is these damn tax increases,” the Speaker said.

I have no idea what he’s trying to say. Maybe he’s been spending too much time in the tanning salon.

The Villagers will keep on bickering, but real people are suffering out in the real world. There has been another terrible attack in Mumbai.

The blasts that rocked Mumbai killing 18 people and injuring 131 was a “coordinated terror attack” but officials have not singled out a group behind them, India’s home minister said Thursday….Three bomb blasts rocked India’s largest city in congested areas during the evening rush hour Wednesday.

The attackers used ammonium nitrate with a timer mechanism based on forensic evidence collected from the blast sites…

In Minnesota, the state government shut down two weeks ago because of lack of funds, and it is causing bars to shut down because they can’t renew their licenses.

By Wednesday, hundreds of bars, restaurants and liquor stores across Minnesota already had been stopped from buying new inventory due to expired permits the state has not renewed.

MillerCoors, the second largest brewer in the United States, failed to get its license to sell 39 brands in Minnesota renewed before a government shutdown over a budget impasse began with the new fiscal year on July 1.

“Without that brand label registration, their distribution and sales aren’t allowed to continue,” Doug Neville, a state public safety department spokesman, said on Wednesday.

From Bloomberg:

The stalemate, the longest of the nation’s six state government shutdowns since 2002, began July 1 after Democratic Governor Mark Dayton and Republican legislative leaders failed to resolve an impasse about how to address a $5 billion budget deficit. Republicans want spending cuts alone, and Dayton is pushing for taxes to preserve services.

Dayton yesterday traveled to Rochester, which is home of the Mayo Clinic, and Albert Lea, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the Iowa border, to meet with people with disabilities and senior citizens to “discuss what is at stake in the state budget,” according to an e-mail from his office.

Meanwhile, legislative Republicans sent out an e-mail with charts showing the impact of the shutdown on areas including schools and parks in those two cities. It didn’t mention a booze drought.

Although businesses can sell alcohol with city liquor licenses, they can’t purchase new product without the state buyer’s card, Neville said in a telephone interview from St. Paul. Cards for 300 of 10,000 businesses have expired since the shutdown began July 1, and that will increase to 424 by the end of the month, Neville said.

Walter Shapiro writes that the whole thing is really Tim Pawlenty’s fault.

In addition to irrational politics and the state’s tradition of moralism, Pawlenty shares in the blame for Minnesota’s budgetary woes. And the GOP presidential candidate knows his financial stewardship is on the line: Late in the evening of June 30—just minutes before the Minnesota government officially shut down because of a budgetary impasse—Pawlenty held a hastily scheduled press conference at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport to try to shield himself from political attack over the shut-down. “Both in Washington, D.C., and in St. Paul, the Democrats continue their thirst for more spending and more taxes,” Pawlenty said in a boilerplate critique of his successor. “That’s not the right direction for Minnesota, and it’s not the right direction for our country.”

What the rhetorical onslaught was designed to hide was that, in truth, Pawlenty—like many governors in both parties juggling the books in the midst of the severe downturn—practiced budgetary legerdemain to avoid a statutorily forbidden deficit before he left office in January. Of course, it was hypocritical for Governor Pawlenty to eagerly bank $2.3 billion in federal stimulus money while Politician Pawlenty was denouncing Barack Obama for spending it. But, for all the partisan talking points over Pawlenty’s budgetary record, it strains credulity to believe that conservative GOP voters will blame him because Republicans in the Minnesota legislature held the line against a Democratic governor. In fact, Dayton may have caused more political mischief for Pawlenty with a recent unsuccessful proposal to help end the budgetary wars. Instead of his proposed 2 percent income-tax surcharge on millionaires, Dayton suggested that he could also accept a dollar-a-pack increase in the state cigarette tax. His purported inspiration: Pawlenty’s 2005 acceptance of a 75-cent-a-pack wholesale tax increase under the transparent guise of a Health Impact Fee. Undoubtedly relishing every moment, Dayton declared, “Governor Pawlenty even agreed to a cigarette tax increase. So there’s precedent for that.”

But, beyond the narrow implications for Pawlenty’s political fate, the broader national message from Minnesota is how easy it is for both parties to step off the cliff, heedless of the consequences. Already, there is talk that the government shutdown could last for months.

Will other states follow suit?

Finally, The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is suing Texas Governor Rick Perry over a religious rally he is planning to hold in Houston in early August.

Perry proclaimed August 6 as a “Day of Prayer and Fasting for our Nation to seek God’s guidance” and invited governors from across the nation to join his Christian prayer summit at Reliant Stadium.

“Given the trials that beset our nation and world, from the global economic downturn to natural disasters, the lingering danger of terrorism and continued debasement of our culture, I believe it is time to convene the leaders from each of our United States in a day of prayer and fasting, like that described in the book of Joel,” Perry said in June.

The legal complaint asks the federal court to declare unconstitutional Perry’s organization, promotion and participation in the event because it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

It says Perry’s active participation in the event violates the U.S. Constitution by “giving the appearance that the government prefers evangelical Christian religious beliefs over other religious beliefs and non-beliefs, including by aligning and partnering with the American Family Association, a virulent, discriminatory and evangelical Christian organization known for its intolerance.”

That should be a fun story to follow.

So… what are you reading and blogging about today?

Tuesday Reads: Cantor’s Conflict, Libertarian Cruelty, bin Laden’s DNA, and a Cold Case Solved

Posted: July 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Central Intelligence Agency, children, Corporate Crime, Crime, Economy, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, Foreign Affairs, income inequality, morning reads, Pakistan, Psychopaths in charge, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 36 Comments

Good Morning!! I’ll take my coffee iced today, because it’s hotter than hell here in the Boston area. And about 110 percent humidity. OK, let’s get to the news.

The Washington Post has a laudatory profile of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and his refusal to negotiate on raising the Federal debt ceiling–without ever mentioning that Cantor stands to make lots of money if the U.S. defaults on its debts.

Last month, Cantor walked out of talks led by Vice President Biden. Cantor said the reason was Democrats’ insistence on raising taxes as part of a deal to increase the national debt ceiling.

Then, last week, Cantor urged House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to reject a possible “grand bargain” with President Obama, which could have included tax increases. Boehner pulled Republicans out of those talks.

Now, as Cantor joins other leaders at the White House for near-daily summits in the third different grouping of negotiators, his moves have revealed him as a third major player in a legislative drama that had been dominated by Obama and Boehner. Where Boehner has sought to define what Republicans can do with their newfound power, Cantor, the House’s ambitious number-two, wants to underline what Republicans would never do.

So what is Cantor’s negotiating strategy?

On Monday, with a potential default less than a month away, Cantor was asked to identify compromises that Republicans had offered to help negotiations along.

He told reporters that the negotiation itself was a compromise.

“I don’t think the White House understands how difficult it is for fiscal conservatives to say they are going to vote for a debt-ceiling increase,” Cantor said.

Gee, it wasn’t all that hard to increase the debt ceiling again and again under Bush, now was it? But maybe in those days Cantor wasn’t betting against the U.S. in his financial investments. It’s very troubling that the Post didn’t mention Cantor’s humongous conflict of interest.

According to a new Washington Post-Pew poll, increasing numbers of Americans are “very concerned” about a U.S. default, but they are also “concerned” that raising the limit will lead to out-of-control spending.

The twin, divergent, concerns complicate the political calculus for the White House and congressional leaders as they attempt to strike an agreement. Nearly eight in 10 Americans are worried about raising the debt limit, and about three-quarters are concerned about not doing so.

Asked to choose, 42 percent see greater risk in a potential default stemming from not raising the debt limit, a seven-point increase from a Post-Pew poll six weeks ago. Slightly more, 47 percent, express deeper concern about lifting the limit, but the gap has narrowed.

Sixty-six percent of Republicans worry more about raising the debt limit than the U.S. defaulting on its debts. {sigh…}

Hipparchia has a wonderful post at Corrente that is an extended metaphor for libertarian attitudes about health care, specifically in reaction to the writings of a libertarian from the CATO Institute, Michael F. Cannon on the new Oregon health care plan. Here is the relevant quote from Cannon that set her off.

Michael F Cannon, of Cato@Liberty :

The OHIE establishes only that there are some (modest) benefits to expanding Medicaid (to poor people) (after one year). It tells us next to nothing about the costs of producing those benefits, which include not just the transfers from taxpayers but also any behavioral changes on the part of Medicaid enrollees, such as reductions in work effort or asset accumulation induced by this means-tested program. Nor does it tell us anything about the costs and benefits of alternative policies.

Reduction in work effort?? This would be really funny if Cannon weren’t so deadly serious. Providing health care to poor people means that more of them are just going to spend their days hanging out in parks, yakking on their cell phones , I guess. So, Libertarians are in favor of liberty for themselves and wage slavery for anybody else. Good to know.

Please go read the whole thing if you have time. It’s well worth the effort. We live in a world of selfish, greedy narcissistic fops. How can the country survive them?

Joseph Cannon has a short but pithy post on the media’s obsession with Casey Anthony being found not guilty. He then points out that the media has completely ignored the fact that

In 1995, when the Presidency was in the hands of the despised Bill Clinton, government regulators overseeing skullduggery on Wall Street referred 1,837 cases to the Justice Department for prosecution. That number has gone down. Between 2007 and 2010, the Justice Department has received just 72 referrals a year (on average).

Gosh. How can this be? I guess investment bankers are simply more honest than they used to be.

You won’t see this issue discussed on CNN. It’s not newsworthy.

I did not know that. Thank you Joseph Cannon. F&ck you CNN (and HLN and Nancy Grace).

Here’s an interesting story from The Guardian UK: CIA organised fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden’s family DNA

As part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Bin Laden in May, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the “project” in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.

The doctor, Shakil Afridi, has since been arrested by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) for co-operating with American intelligence agents.

Relations between Washington and Islamabad, already severely strained by the Bin Laden operation, have deteriorated considerably since then. The doctor’s arrest has exacerbated these tensions. The US is understood to be concerned for the doctor’s safety, and is thought to have intervened on his behalf.

The vaccination plan was conceived after American intelligence officers tracked an al-Qaida courier, known as Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to what turned out to be Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound last summer. The agency monitored the compound by satellite and surveillance from a local CIA safe house in Abbottabad, but wanted confirmation that Bin Laden was there before mounting a risky operation inside another country.

DNA from any of the Bin Laden children in the compound could be compared with a sample from his sister, who died in Boston in 2010, to provide evidence that the family was present.

Jeralyn at Talk Left has finally decided that Obama deserves to get a pink slip. Yes, I know, she should have known better. But please go read anyway.

I’m going to end with a story about a long ago murdered child and how the case has been solved–54 years later. Maria Ridulph disappeared in 1957 when she was 7 years old. Maria and her best friend Kathy were playing on the street one day.

Kathy Chapman, who was 8 at the time, recalled that she and Maria were under a corner streetlight when a young man she knew as “Johnny” offered them a piggyback ride. Chapman, now 61 and living in St. Charles, Ill., told the AP she ran home to get mittens and that when she returned, Maria and the man were gone.

Maria’s disappearance and death had a powerful effect on her small community.

Charles “Chuck” Ridulph always assumed the person who stole his little sister from the neighborhood corner where she played and dumped her body in a wooded stretch some 100 miles away was a trucker or passing stranger — surely not anyone from the hometown he remembers as one big, friendly playground.

And, after more than a half century passed since her death, he assumed the culprit also had died or was in prison for some other crime.

On Saturday, he said he was stunned by the news that a one-time neighbor had been charged in the kidnapping and killing that captured national attention, including that of the president and FBI chief. Prosecutors in bucolic Sycamore, a city of 15,000 that’s home to a yearly pumpkin festival, charged a former police officer Friday in the 1957 abduction of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph after an ex-girlfriend’s discovery of an unused train ticket blew a hole in his alibi.

Maria Ridulph

From the Seattle Times:

A judge in Seattle set bail Monday at $3 million for Jack Daniel McCullough, of Seattle, a former police officer who denies he is the man Illinois police have been seeking in the 1957 slaying of a young girl….

McCullough, 71, a former police officer in Milton and Lacey, has been living in North Seattle and working as a night watchman in a senior-housing facility, Four Freedoms.

McCullough, 18 at the time of the girl’s death, had been a suspect early in the investigation. He lived about a block from where the girl disappeared and matched the description of a man seen at the site.

At the time, police did not show Maria’s best friend Kathy a picture of their suspect. But last year, they showed her a picture of the teenaged McCullough (then using the last name Tessier) and she recognized him.

That’s all I’ve got for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

Monday Reads

Posted: July 11, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, GLBT Rights, morning reads, We are so F'd | Tags: | 22 Comments

Good Morning!

Well, the Deficit Dance continues and the President has scheduled a presser for 11 am today.  The President would like to resolve the debt ceiling issue within 10 days.  What exactly is on the table and what will the obsession with austerity mean for those of us in the working and middle classes and those of us that are poor or living on our old age benefits from social security and medicare?

According to a Republican familiar with the discussions, taxes and entitlement issues were stumbling blocks in the negotiations. Boehner said any deal must result in spending changes and cuts that are larger than the amount of an increased debt limit.

During today’s session, Obama will try to break a partisan impasse over whether to include cuts in entitlement programs and tax increases in a deal.

Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said Democrats “never said we will hold the United States’s full faith and credit hostage in the discussions.”

Senator Mitch McConnell is willing to take hostages as indicated by his appearances on Fox talk shows yesterday. McConnell, of course, made no mention of having no problems with raising the debt ceiling 7 times during George Dubya Bush’s war spending and tax cutting spree.

Senate Minority Leader Republican Mitch McConnell discussed the debt ceiling negotiations with Bret Baier on Fox News Sunday. McConnell was in agreement with Speaker John Boehner’s decision not to support a large deficit deal, yet also made a curious assertion that none of his Republican colleagues have ever claimed they will not be in support of raising the debt ceiling.

Baier, filling in for Chris Wallace, pressed McConnell on what would happen if no deal could be worked out and whether he was concerned with the consequences of what might happen if the debt ceiling is not raised. McConnell confidently responded, “nobody is talking about not raising the debt ceiling. I haven’t heard that discussed by anybody.” Yet Baier informed him that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, among others, have explicitly said just that. Baier even quoted Bachmann saying “don’t let them fool you that the economy is going to collapse” if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.

McConnell however apparently didn’t want to address such comments and preferred to stay focused on his opinion of how serious it is to actually raising the debt ceiling. Maybe the fact that some Republicans in Congress actually are determined not to raise the debt ceiling was news to McConnell, but if he doesn’t want to acknowledge the views of some of his colleagues then he might want to avoid making broad pronouncements about them in future interviews.

Newly appointed IMF Head Christine Lagarde is can’t believe that the US would deliberately default on its debt.  She was interviewed yesterday by Christine Amanapour.

As the White House continues negotiations with congressional leaders over a budget deal this weekend, newly elected head of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde says that she “can’t imagine for a second” that the United States would default on its debt obligations, saying it would be “a real shock” to the global economy if no agreement is reached.

“I can’t imagine for a second that the United States would default,” Lagarde told “This Week” anchor Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview. “But, clearly, this issue of the debt ceiling has to be resolved.”

“It would be a real shock, and it would be bad news for the U.S. economy,” Lagarde added on the threat of the U.S. not raising the debt ceiling. “So I would hope that there is enough bipartisan intelligence and understanding of the challenge that is ahead of the United States, but also of the rest of the world.”

Among the Republican economic dunces advocating deliberately not paying our bills is the infamous Quiteralla.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has issued a stern warning to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) as Boehner sits down with President Obama Sunday night to negotiate a raising of the debt ceiling: don’t do it.

Palin, in an interview appearing in Newsweek, “made it clear that she’s against any deal that raises the debt ceiling and would hold House Speaker John Boehner’s feet to the fire if he agreed to one” according to the magazine.

  Not only do Republicans seem to be deliberately ignorant of economics, they continue to spread lies with no scientific basis on Meet the Press concerning GLBTs.  Remember, T-Paw is supposedly one of the more ‘moderate’ candidates for president too.  Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty continues to spread the falsehood that there is no science supporting the biological nature of sexuality or for that matter climate change and evolution. (Check out the evolution link for a fun Doonesbury and a sad statement about what Bobby Jindal continues to hoist on Louisiana.)  From which century did these folks get their educations?

 GREGORY: Is being gay a choice?

PAWLENTY: Well, the science in that regard is in dispute. I mean, scientists work on that and try to figure out if it’s behavioral or if it’s partly genetic –

GREGORY: What do you think?

PAWLENTY: Well, I defer to the scientists in that regard.

GREGORY: So you think it’s not a choice? That you are, as Lady Gaga says, you’re born that way.

PAWLENTY: There’s no scientific conclusion that it’s genetic. We don’t know that.

In fact, there is no dispute among health professionals. All major medicalprofessional organizations agree that sexual orientation is not a choice and cannot be changed, from gay to straight or otherwise. The American Psychological Association, the world’s largest association of psychological professionals, describes sexual orientation as “a complex interaction of environmental, cognitive and biological factors.” There is considerable evidence to suggest that biology, “including genetic or inborn hormonal factors,” plays a significant role in a person’s sexuality.

Pawlenty’s comments underscore the reality that promoting ex-gay therapy and the idea that homosexuality can be changed or denied (which it cannot) are at the root of all anti-gay perspectives. The broad consensus of scientists have condemned such notions — and the kinds of discrimination Pawlenty has protected — for decades.

Pawlenty has previously said that “the science is bad” on whether human activity has had any impact on global warming. When it comes to Pawlenty’s unfamiliarity with science, perhaps he was just “born this way.”

Since T-Paw is nearly irrelevant at this point, he also took a few gratuitous pot shots at Michelle Bachmann since they both are vying for the crazy vote.

“I like Congresswoman Bachmann. I’ve campaigned for her. I respect her. But her record of accomplishment in Congress is non-existent,” Pawlenty said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Pawlenty said the three-term lawmaker didn’t have the necessary experience, accusing her of doing little more than delivering good speeches.

“We’re not looking for folks who just have speech capabilities,” he said. “We’re looking for people who can lead a large enterprise in a public setting and drive it to conclusion. I have done that, she hasn’t.”

The NYT’s Catherine Rampbell writes a compelling piece on the invisibility of our country’s unemployed.

Fourteen million, in round numbers — that is how many Americans are now officially out of work.

Word came Friday from the Labor Department that, despite all the optimistic talk of an economic recovery, unemployment is going up, not down. The jobless rate rose to 9.2 percent in June.

What gives? And where, if anywhere, is the outrage?

The United States is in the grips of its gravest jobs crisis since Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House. Lose your job, and it will take roughly nine months to find a new one. That is off the charts. Many Americans have simply given up.

But unless you’re one of those unhappy 14 million, you might not even notice the problem. The budget deficit, not jobs, has been dominating the conversation in Washington. Unlike the hard-pressed in, say, Greece or Spain, the jobless in America seem, well, subdued. The old fire has gone out.

In some ways, this boils down to math, both economic and political. Yes, 9.2 percent of the American work force is unemployed — but 90.8 percent of it is working. To elected officials, the unemployed are a relatively small constituency. And with apologies to Karl Marx, the workers of the world, particularly the unemployed, are also no longer uniting.

A Wichita, Kansas doctor has decided to take on the uphill fight to offer Abortions in what is undoubtedly hostile territory. This brave doctor is holding the ground for women’s health in a state with some of the country’s most extreme anti-choice terrorists including Operation Rescue.

Now a little-known physician has stepped into this tinderbox environment to take the mantle — indeed, the very instruments — of the man many abortion rights advocates regard as a martyr.

But Dr. Means is certainly not the ideological warrior many expected to fill his void. She said her decision to start performing abortions was as much about making money for her struggling practice as about restoring access to a constitutional right.

A second effort to establish an abortion clinic is under way, led by a group of prominent abortion rights advocates. The group has raised money but is still searching for a doctor willing to provide abortions in a city where doing so has in recent years required a bulletproof vest and an armored car.

“It’s about restoring access and standing our ground,” said Julie Burkhart, a former political director for Dr. Tiller who now runs the group Trust Women.

Elizabeth Warren will appear before congress on Thursday. This will be her last appearance before her bureau protecting consumers from bad banking practices becomes reality.

The GOP has made a strong attempt to paint the new bureau as far too powerful and lacking in any sufficient oversight. And Republicans will continue to press Warren Thursday.

“This hearing will give Professor Warren an opportunity to provide clear information – which has so far not been articulated in public statements, budget justification, FOIA responses, or previous congressional testimony – about how the administration intends to go about protecting consumers,” said an Oversight spokesperson.

Meanwhile, the CFPB’s strong (and vocal) backers tout it – and Warren – as a much needed and long overdue government advocate for consumers in the financial system.

The relationship between Warren and the GOP has always been icy at best, given Republicans long-standing opposition to the CFPB, and people that will be watching the hearing closely are expecting more of the same.

“What we’re likely to see is more demonstrations of a Republican Party that’s determined to become a kind of goon squad for Wall Street,” said Richard Eskow, a senior fellow for the left-leaning Campaign for America’s Future, which has repeatedly backed Warren.

For her part, Warren is looking forward to the hearing, according to the CFPB’s spokesperson.

I have one thing that I’d like to recommend you view from Fairewinds if you have about 5o minutes.  It’s called “Why Fukushima Can Happen Here: What the NRC and Nuclear Industry Dont Want You to Know”.  It’s totally worth the time.

In this video nuclear engineers Arnie Gundersen and David Lochbaum discuss how the US regulators and regulatory process have left Americans unprotected. They walk, step-by-step, through the events of the Japanese meltdowns and consider how the knowledge gained from Fukushima applies to the nuclear industry worldwide. They discuss “points of vulnerability” in American plants, some of which have been unaddressed by the NRC for three decades. Finally, they concluded that an accident with the consequences of Fukushima could happen in the US. With more radioactive Cesium in the Pilgrim Nuclear Plant’s spent fuel pool than was released by Fukushima, Chernobyl, and all nuclear bomb testing combined. Gundersen and Lockbaum ask why there is not a single procedure in place to deal with a crisis in the fuel pool?

Well, that ought to give you a few things to watch on CSPAN this week!  Meanwhile, please share what’s your reading and blogging list this morning!!

Saturday: Sheros don’t hold their finger to the wind, they ARE the wind

Posted: July 9, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Hillary Clinton, Human Rights, morning reads, Women's Rights | 27 Comments

(Click photo to see slideshow of more) Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez (L) arrives with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a joint news conference at the foreign ministry in Madrid July 2, 2011. REUTERS/Andrea Comas

Morning, news junkies.

This week’s Hillary pic is actually from last Saturday, but it came out after I wrote up my July 2nd post, so enjoy. (Click on the image–or click here–to see a great slideshow of more Hillary and Trini pics at Still4Hill’s place.)

Before I go on, a moment of silence for First Lady Betty Ford who died yesterday at age 93. Carl Anthony has an appropriate tribute to Betty up… The Revolutionary Moment of First Lady Betty Ford : Her October 1975 Speech still Makes History:

In this excerpt of that now largely-forgotten speech, Mrs. Ford delivered her crisp yet eloquent case for equal rights. As an example of the increasingly political and social importance of First Ladies to the nation, it ranks with two other revolutionary speeches – those of Eleanor Roosevelt at the United Nations in outlining the Declaration of Human Rights, a document she helped draft, and of Hillary Clinton in Beijing at the U.N. Conference on Women.

If you click on one link from this post today, make it the following one… Anna Sale/WNYC: Gillibrand’s Bipartisan Partisan Pitch to Women. It’s a very extensive and informative piece, and while there’s a whole bunch I could excerpt and tease, you really ought to just read the entire thing. I do love these Gloria Steinem quotes on Gillibrand from the article though:

Gloria Steinem herself called Gillibrand “our senator and our future” at the May dinner honoring Gillibrand for her defense of abortion rights.

“Like Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisolm, she doesn’t hold her finger to the wind. She is the wind,” Steinem said.

Since NASA launched its last space shuttle mission yesterday, I wanted to link to a few items about the contribution made by women to the shuttle program:

  • about.com’s Linda Lowen: Many Firsts for Women in NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. As always, I recommend clicking over to give the piece a read for yourself, but here’s one part I wanted to draw your attention to in particular (in part because it reminds me of Hillary’s famous line that “if we can blast 50 women into space, we will someday launch a woman into the White House”):

Even women who’d hit the glass ceiling again and again, like astrophysicist and space scientist Candy Torres, kept their eyes on the prize. As one of the first women to work in aerospace, Torres’ story as told to CNN reminds us of the institutionalized sexism that once prvailed and how inroads made Ride and others enabled women to walk an easier path in their pursuit of a career in space science.

In October 2007, Melroy became the second female space shuttle commander, when she led the STS-120 mission of Discovery. On this flight, Melroy and her crew delivered the Harmony node to the fledgling International Space Station.

It also happened that she rendezvoused with another female commander, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who was commanding the International Space Station at the time.

Melroy said this coincidence actually made a deeper impression on her than being the second female shuttle commander.

“I think to me it was actually a bigger thing that Peggy Whitson and I were flying at the same time in space and that no one had planned it that way,” Melroy said.

Next up… leave it to Big Dawg to sum up the state of the 2012 election cycle thusfar… Via The Atlantic… At the Aspen ideas festival, Bill Clinton Handicaps the GOP Presidential Candidates.

A few other 2012-related odds and ends:

Moving along… here’s a rather bizarre link–Clinton-deranged Margaret Carlson of all people saying “You go girl” to Hillary. Meh.

And, another odd one via NY Mag…it’s an “alternate history” on what would have happened if Obama had been adopted, which… I wouldn’t have even linked to were it not for the incredible pic at the link. If you voted for Hillary in 2008, you will want to click on that!!

So we’ve gone from the ridiculous DC parlor game of floating Hillary as a replacement for Biden to the equally ridiculous one of floating Cuomo for the same. Are DC cocktail parties really that boring?

Speaking of which… apparently DC has gone back to the Victorian age? NYT: A New Shirt Closes a Gap in Modesty.

Here’s a fun Hillary moment on youtube, via Team Hillary Clinton. Love Hillary’s quip at the end that if she had the defense department’s budget, this wouldn’t be happening.

Be sure to check out this Dipnote post on Secretary Clinton Honoring “TechWomen,” if you haven’t read about it already. Teaser:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton honored 37 women from the Middle East and North Africa and their American mentors who participated in TechWomen, an initiative that harnesses the power of technology and international exchanges as a means to empower women and girls worldwide, on July 6, 2011.

Secretary Clinton said, “…[B]eing a woman in the field of technology is not always easy. Being a woman in any field is not always easy but there are so many opportunities in technology that we just have to forge ahead, and we’re doing so around the world because we want to make sure that all the tools that technology has made available are just as open to women as they are to men. And I also believe that innovation thrives on good ideas, and women have a lot of good ideas. And we don’t want those ideas to just die. We want them to be shared and to help others and to create businesses and jobs and improve lives. And it has a greater impact when technology has access for everyone.

Reuters: Myanmar envoy seeks asylum, U.S. pressure on rulers. From the link:

(Reuters) – The No. 2 diplomat in Myanmar’s embassy in Washington is seeking asylum in the United States because the reports in which he outlined his government’s failures have put him in danger, he said on Tuesday.

Career diplomat Kyaw Win sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a letter before dawn July 4 spelling out his disillusionment with the lack of reform in the Southeast Asian nation also known as Burma, he told Reuters.

“Sometimes when you report the facts, they don’t like it,” Win said in a telephone interview, describing his efforts to persuade the junta that has ruled Myanmar for five decades that their repression and corruption hurt their country’s image.

“They would write back: ‘why are you doing these kind of things?'” Win said of officials in the capital, Naypyidaw.

And, one more Hillary item, via stacy at SecyClintonBlog–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Next Stop: India and then Indonesia.

I’m going lighter on the Hillary links this weekend (compared to usual, that is!), so I wanted to put a reminder to look out for Luke Fogerson’s Week-in-Review at Dipnote tomorrow. There’s usually one up on Sundays.

Two quick links from Huffpo on women’s issues (both of which mention Hillary’s call to action in Beijing 1995):

And, before ending with today’s historical trivia, I thought I’d just throw this last out there for weekend discussion–it’s an intriguing foreign policy read I happened to catch on Truthdig, by William Pfaff: Democracy Building Is Back in Fashion.

This Day in Women’s History (July 9)

1850: Upon the death of President Zachary Taylor, Abigail Powers Fillmore–wife of Vice President Millard Fillmore–becomes the 16th First Lady of the United States, as her husband assumes the presidency. Here’s a great bio on Abigail:

The Fillmore White House lasted for only two unremarkable years. While her husband is a forgotten president, Abigail can be considered a successful First Lady in that she established the First White House library and encouraged literacy awareness during her short tenure. This legacy would grow years later, when Mary Todd Lincoln added more books to Abigail’s collection. Sadly, Abigail did not live long enough to see her goal fully actualized. She died at age 55 on March 30, 1853, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. The cause of death was pneumonia brought on by a cold that stemmed from Abigail’s intolerance of Washington’s climate. Had she survived, Abigail would have undoubtedly become an ardent crusader for the cause she cared so passionately about.

Well, that’s it for me. What’s on your blogging list?

[originally posted at Let Them Listen; crossposted at Taylor Marsh and Liberal Rapture]

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