Gossip Rocks Forum - U.S. Politics and Issues

Sarah Palin facelift complication?

WhoAmI — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:40:42 GMT

palingates: Don't you just love this roguish headline at Huffington Post? - PLUS: New video of her disenchanted fans! / C4P suspects a conspiracy!

Sarah Palin fans go rogue, boo her on book tour in Indiana

kingcap72 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:30:32 GMT

Quote:

Unhappy fans of Sarah Palin went rogue on the Alaska Republican during her book tour stop in Noblesville, Indiana on Thursday.
The local Borders outlet had handed out 1,000 wristbands to book purchasers; the wristbands were supposed to procure fans Palin's signature on their hardback copies of "Going Rogue." But several dozen people who had been promised signatures were turned away empty-handed after waiting hours in poor weather, a local news outlet, the Indy Channel, reported.
"We gave up our entire workday, stayed in the cold, my kids were crying," one man was quoted saying. "They went home with my wife. She was out here in the freezing cold all day. I feel like I don't want to support Sarah."
Another woman told Indy Channel, "We bought two books from Borders to have our receipt and our wristband to get it signed tonight. My books are going back to Borders tomorrow."
The angry crowd turned on Palin as she returned to her "Going Rogue" tour bus. Video below shows people booing and shouting at the bus, and shouting "Sign our books Sarah!" as the engine revved up and Palin departed.
Palin Booed By Book Tour Crowd

YouTube Video
ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you don't have Flash installed.

I guess Palin supporters took the title 'going rogue' to heart.:rofl2:

Tea partiers turn on each other

celeb_2006 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:25:01 GMT

heartbreaking

Tea partiers turn on each other - Yahoo! News

After emerging out of nowhere over the summer as a seemingly potent and growing political force, the tea party movement has become embroiled in internal feuding over philosophy, strategy and money and is at risk of losing its momentum.
The grass-roots activists driving the movement have become increasingly divided on such core questions as whether to focus their efforts on shaping policy debates or elections, work on a local, regional, state or national level or closely align themselves with the Republican Party, POLITICO found in interviews with tea party organizers in Washington and across the country.
Many of these differences date to the movement�s beginnings last winter in an outpouring of anger about the huge increases in government spending enacted by President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress. But they were overshadowed by the initial explosion of activism that culminated during the congressional town hall meetings in August.
Now the disagreements and the sense of frustration they have engendered could diminish the movement�s potential influence in state and national politics.
�These groups don�t play as well together as they should,� said Kevin Jackson, a St. Louis-based conservative author and activist who has spoken at dozens of tea party-type rallies and is traveling across the South with a convoy sponsored by the national Tea Party Patriots group.
�They�re fractured at the organization level, I think mainly because there are a lot of people who have not had managerial experience who all of a sudden are thrust into the limelight and become intoxicated with it. And when a potential rift comes up, instead of handling it and maybe agreeing to disagree, they splinter and go off on their own.�
The movement is composed of hundreds of independent local groups, many of which are incorporated as nonprofits and have localized names referencing the tea parties, 9/12 or We the People.
Many of their members also belong to national conservative groups, including FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity and Grassfire, while the local groups often affiliate formally or informally with loose-knit umbrella organizations, including the Tea Party Patriots and Tea Party Nation.
The organizational chaos � combined with a widening apathy at the edges of the movement � has produced a growing consensus among local, state and national tea party leaders that for the movement to evolve from the loose conglomeration of fired-up activists who mobilized this summer to register their dissatisfaction with Obama and Congress at town hall protests and marches across the country into a sustainable bloc with the power to shape the GOP and swing elections, it will require the emergence of a national leader, group or structure.
Ned Ryun, president of American Majority, a nonprofit that has conducted organizer-training sessions for many tea party activists, said �the next three to six months� are going to be critical in determining �what�s going to happen with the tea party movement. Are they going to be a bunch of fingers, or are they going to come together to be a fist?�
Yet, while some tout a planned National Tea Party Convention in February (at which former Alaska governor and tea party darling Sarah Palin is listed as the keynote speaker) as a potentially unifying moment and others point to online coordination efforts, there is deep disagreement about what any national organization would look like and who would lead it.
FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, Grassfire, Americans for Limited Government and a host of other groups have helped organize various efforts capitalizing on the energy behind the tea parties, including providing training, online war rooms that help generate phone calls and ready-to-distribute canvassing literature.
But the groups have also jockeyed � mostly behind the scenes � to take credit for leadership of the movement, which � depending on who�s doing the telling � took its name either as an homage to the 1773 Boston tax revolt that played a major role in sparking the American Revolution or from an acronym standing for �taxed enough already.�
Some activists see the turmoil within the movement and the internal clashes as simply a part of maturing.
�Some of these groups may burn out, but this is part of this entrepreneurial process and the competition is good,� said Adam Brandon, vice president of communications for FreedomWorks, a nonprofit chaired by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas.
The group has facilitated some of the efforts demonstrating the potential power of the movement. Those have included the confrontations that erupted at congressional town halls this summer, the massive Sept. 12 �Taxpayer March on Washington� as well as another Washington rally this month and support for conservative third-party candidate Doug Hoffman, who narrowly lost a special congressional election in upstate New York this month despite strong support from many tea party groups and leaders.
Brandon stressed that the strength of the tea party movement is in its grass-roots nature and that FreedomWorks�s goal is to help facilitate the movement, not to control it.

�One thing that�s clear is that anyone who says they own the tea party movement is going to get run over because no one owns the movement,� he said.
Brandon acknowledged the �rivalries and turf battles� now gripping parts of the movement but said �that�s normal because people have different ideas about what they want. That�s what�s happening now, and it�s sometimes a painful process.�
Those fights have been waged over issues that go to the heart of the movement�s purpose and strategy as well as more mundane rivalries and personal feuds.
In Myrtle Beach, S.C., disputes within the local tea party about how much to engage in partisan politics and whether board members were profiting from contracts to print paraphernalia emblazoned with the group�s logo prompted the treasurer to resign and join with defectors from a North Carolina We the People group to form a new organization.
�There�s a lot of fighting, and everyone wants to be in charge, and that�s why you have so many splinter groups,� said ex-treasurer Janet Spencer, who charged her adversaries within the tea party with saying �derogatory things about me that were very unprofessional.�
She said her new group, called Patriotic Voices of America/Carolina Patriots, counts about 100 members and will not coordinate with the Myrtle Beach Tea Party, whose treasurer, David Ognek, said the friction is �just group dynamics.�
In Texas, a handful of thriving tea party groups severed their ties from the national Tea Party Patriots group after it ousted, then sued a founding board member who had affiliated with a rival group called the Tea Party Express.
�Our fight is in Congress and not with each other or with these other groups,� said Toby Marie Walker, who was the Texas state coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots and also co-founded the Waco, Texas, tea party.
This Waco group recently drew an estimated 4,000 people to a rally it organized with the Tea Party Express, which travels the country hosting rallies. The month before, it had pulled out of the Tea Party Patriots after the Patriots group accused the Tea Party Express of steering the movement away from nonpartisan issue-based advocacy, embracing extremist rhetoric and raising questions about the Express�s finances.
The Patriots� attack and lawsuit worried the Waco group�s board, Walker said, because �if you align yourself with someone who is going to be that malicious, then how do we know they won�t turn on us?�
Other local tea party groups, though, cast their lots with the Patriots, heeding the group�s call to disassociate with the Tea Party Express.
In Granbury, Texas, local tea party organizer Josh Sullivan says he believes the movement�s effectiveness is being compromised by extremism.�You have some interesting folks in the Tea Party movement � some of them I can support, but some of them are kind of out there and radical, and I don�t want to associate myself with them,� he said. In Northern Colorado, meanwhile, a handful of active 9/12 groups � named for the Glenn Beck-encouraged effort to stage the Sept. 12 Washington march � are unhappy with the state 9/12 group�s aversion to fundraising and with its focus on national issues and have discussed forming their own rival statewide group.
�People are beginning to become a little bit de-energized � they�re starting to feel like they�re fighting a losing battle, because we send a lot of letters into Washington, D.C., and things like that, and people are saying they�re not listening,� said Brian Britton, who heads the Greeley, Colo., 9/12 group.
That fear is echoed by Glenn Galls, a Hot Springs, Ark., tea party organizer frustrated with the focus of Arkansas�s state-level tea party groups on national races and issues such as cap and trade and health care. �If the tea party movement is going to continue to thrive and to grow and to have influence,� he said, �it must start coming together and coalescing and finding its purpose in life, because if it doesn�t, the excitement will fade like it does from anything else.�

Paul-Grayson Bill to audit Fed passes key hurdle

witchcurlgirl — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:15:36 GMT

The most important legislation in ages......

Fed Beaten: Bill To Audit Federal Reserve Passes Key Hurdle

In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon despite harried last-minute lobbying from top Fed officials and the surprise opposition of Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who had previously been a supporter.

The measure, cosponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), authorizes the Government Accountability Office to conduct a wide-ranging audit of the Fed's opaque deals with foreign central banks and major U.S. financial institutions. The Fed has never had a real audit in its history and little is known of what it does with the trillions of dollars at its disposal.

The amendment expressly blocks Congress from interfering with the independence of monetary policy decision-making, but opponents of the measure said that the political pressure would inevitably follow.

A desperate, last-minute attempt to thwart the move came in the form of an amendment championed by Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) and described by its supporters as more reasonable. On Tuesday, however, the Huffington Post reported that, on a close reading, his amendment would in fact decrease transparency at the Fed by adding additional restrictions.

Backers of the Watt amendment pressed their case on Wednesday by sending a letter from a "political cross section of prominent economists" backing a measure like Watt's. HuffPost reported, however, that those economists might well have be prominent, but they certainly aren't a "political cross section." Seven of the eight economists in question have extensive connections to the Fed -- and half of them are currently on the Fed payroll. Those affiliations were not noted in the letter.

The playbook in Washington often goes like this: When a measure that threatens the establishment builds enough momentum that it must be dealt with, it is labeled as "unserious." The Washington Post editorial board, true to the script, called Paul's measure "an unserious answer to a serious question."

And it particularly rankles the center that a pair of "wingnuts" are behind a successful effort to challenge the prevailing order.

Step Two is for a "serious" compromise to be offered. In this case, it was Watt's amendment. But by the time the vote was called Thursday afternoon, committee members had seen through his measure, recognizing that it was not a compromise effort to bring real transparency to the Fed but an attempt to further shut the the doors.

The Watt amendment will fully obliterate everything 1207" -- Paul's measure -- "is intended to do," said Paul during Thursday's debate.
For anyone remaining confused, the debate was further clarified by the central bank itself: Federal Reserve Vice Chair Don Cohn and General Counsel Scott Alvarez spent much of the day calling committee members, urging them to oppose the Paul-Grayson amendment in favor of Watt's, a member of Congress who asked for confidentiality told HuffPost.

Paul's opponents also placed a letter from former Fed chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker on the seats of every committee member. Such a move is in violation of House rules and Grayson was able to have the letters removed.

As the day wore on and support held for the Paul-Grayson side, the Fed still could hope that both would pass. Watt's amendment, which included additional restriction, would then trump Paul's.

To counter that possibility, the Paul-Grayson side moved to fully replace Watt's amendment with theirs, leaving only one amendment to vote on. The motion carried and the amendment passed in a landslide.

The GOP broadly backed the amendment, though Frank chided them for finding their love of Fed transparency only after they lost power, noting that Paul has been introducing some version of the measure since 1983.

Frank said he was opposing the Paul amendment because it could be perceived as influencing monetary policy, which can have inflationary pressure. "Perception is very important in monetary policy," said Frank.

He urged a no vote, yet 15 Democrats bucked him, voting with Paul. Key to winning Democratic support was a letter posted early Thursday from labor leaders and progressive economists. The letter, organized by the liberal blog FireDogLake.com, called for a rejection of the Watt substitute and support for Paul.

Grayson was able to show Democratic colleagues that the liberal base was behind them.

"Today was Waterloo for Fed secrecy," a victorious Grayson said afterwards.

Packing heat at Starbucks for all the world to see

celeb_2006 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:36:31 GMT

The Scavenger : Packing heat at Starbucks for all the world to see

"Open carry" supporter at a Starbucks in Cupertino (Courtesy of KTVU)

In a report highlighting the "open carry" gun movement, KTVU's Lloyd LaCuesta interviewed locals who are hanging out in public, packing heat and exerting their Second Amendment right for all the world to see.

Advocates across the country are picnicking together, going to zoos, going to church and picking up trash. Most notably, supporters protested Obama this past summer. In the Bay area, David Julian, 27, and others are hanging out at a Cupertino Starbucks, sipping their Venti coffees with guns holstered to their hips.

Supporters, who appear to come from all backgrounds, also say they're toting firearms to educate others about guns and their constitutional right. They're doing it protect themselves. And they can do it legally, as Julian demonstrated in his YouTube video below, which shows two Santa Clara deputies checking Julian's gun.

You can openly carry a firearm in California, but as KTVU and the Los Angeles Times explain, the gun must be unloaded and holstered. The ammunition cannot be attached to the gun, said Sunnyvale Police Capt. Doug Moretto. Other rules include:

-- The weapon can be inspected, but there can be no search for the gun's serial number. The open carrier cannot be within 1,000 feet of a school, on the grounds of a college or university, or in government buildings or secure areas of airports (KTVU).

-- People with drug or violent crime convictions or mental disorders cannot open carry (KTVU).

-- In cities within the state, publicly displayed guns must not be loaded. In unincorporated areas, loaded guns can be carried openly unless a local ordinance prohibits it. (LA Times)

But U.S. laws vary across the U.S. The Times cites Utah's "two step" regulation.

Of course the open carry issue raises several concerns. Officers interviewed by KTVU point out that there's no telling if the gun is loaded and that a tense situation could turn violent.

You can watch the KTVU report here. For an overview of open carry regulations, check Opencarry.org. The SF-based Legal Community Against Violence has more on California gun laws.

Michelle Bachmann not ready to give up the Crazy Crown to Sarah Palin

buttmunch — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:35:43 GMT

Quote:

Everyone is paying so much attention to one crazy liar lady that they have forgotten all about the other one, the one who still holds elected office! Thankfully, Michele Bachmann is stepping up the crazy.

World Net Daily�the completely insane right-wing "news site" that promotes and "researches" and obsesses over conspiracies like Obama's Kenyan birth and the NAFTA superhighway and FEMA concentration camps�held a press conference on Capitol Hill to celebrate their successful campaign to have their crazy (but spendy!) readers send "pink slips" to members of Congress. Lots of Republican congressmen went! Including Michele Bachmann, pictured with WND editor-in-chief Joseph Farah, one of the foremost birthers.

And remember earlier this month, when Bachmann helped organize and promote the anti-health care reform tea party protest at the Capitol? For the record, that was not a protest. That was a "press conference." It may have looked like a protest, as it was an explicitly partisan event at which the organizers encouraged the public attendees to tear up copies of a bill under consideration, and there was no point at which the press asked anyone questions about anything, but there was one important factor that made that a "press conference" and not a "demonstration": a "demonstration" would not have been allowed under House rules. Because they never sought a permit from the Capitol Police.

Furthermore, if that was a "rally" or a "protest" or a "demonstration" (which it wasn't! it was a simple "press conference"!) Bachmann would've violated House rules when she used her House website to organize and promote it.

That announcement described the event as a "Health Care �House Call' on Washington Press Conference" and urged citizens to "tell their Representatives to vote no to a government take-over of one-fifth of our economy."

According to the Member's Handbook - guidelines issued by the House Administration panel that govern the use of official office budgets - lawmakers "may not include grassroots lobbying or solicit support for a Member's position" on their Congressional Web sites.

Yes. Well. Seems pretty clear-cut! But the House Administration Committee decided Bachmann did not violate any rules, even though it basically looks like she completely did. The upshot is that we are granted one of those very small ironies that bitter coastal types cling to, like real Americans and religion: this means Bachmann's anti-government spending "tea party" protest was eligible to be paid for with funds from her official Members' Representational Allowance, making it a tax-funded tea party.

This, by the way, is the cover of this week's Minneapolis City Pages, which is running its millionth "history of Michele Bachmann" piece. This one actually kinda elides much of the crazy! Like the baby-farming and the hiding in bushes and stuff.Let's Not Forget About Michele Bachmann! - michele bachmann - Gawker

You just know there is something big lurking in this woman's closet...or maybe in her husbands. Can't wait for it to come out.

Crazy Christians pray for God to kill President Obama (secret coded t-shirts!)

buttmunch — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:57:47 GMT

Quote:

There's a hilarious new meme in the wingnut sectors of the internet: someone's coined a bumper sticker slogan encouraging people to pray for Barack Obama. But here's the funny part: it's really a secret Christian code for "Kill the President!'

Posters to various message boards tell stories of seeing bumper stickers with the message "Pray for Obama�Psalm 109:8" on the highway, only to look up the verse and find, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office." People � like the commenter "Panama" on INGunOwners.com, to pick one guy completely at random � think this is "too funny." The next verse in Psalms is, "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."

Anyway, now it's a real thing: CafePress is selling T-shirts and bumper stickers, the Christian Science Monitor is wondering whether it's "funny or sinister" to pray for Obama's death, and Rachel Maddow referenced it last night on her show.

Psalm 109 is known as "A Cry for Vengeance," which is one of the foundational values of Christianity, along with small-business tax cuts. It's actually quite a little psalm, as psalms go, and the opening lines sound really familiar:

Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;
for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me:they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.

Then it gets into the part where you pray for God to smite Barack Obama and condemn Malia and Sasha to poverty for the rest of their lives, a fate they deserve because they sprang from the loins of the sinful:

Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

The Psalm 109:8 gag is one in what's becoming a long line of cheekily coded Obama death threats: There was the classified ad someone placed in a Pennsylvania paper hoping that he follows in "the footsteps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy," all of whom were assassinated. And there was the gun-toting New Hampshire teabagger with a sign saying it is time to "water the tree of liberty"�a reference to Thomas Jefferson's reminder that the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the "blood of tyrants and patriots."

Why not a T-shirt that says, "Will Somebody Please Kill That Guy Already?" The word games are getting tedious. If you want Barack Obama to die and for curses to "come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones," and for his name to be blotted out in one generation, just say so!

Here's our favorite part of Psalm 109:

Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame; and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.

That sounds about right.http://gawker.com/5407568/christian-...yline=true&s=x

I am sort of stunned at just how crazy the wingnuts are getting.

(I say secret-coded t-shirts because I wouldn't know a psalm if it knocked me on my arse.)

Sarah Palin's campaign chaperone hits back hard, ripping old Sarah a brand new one

buttmunch — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:21:26 GMT

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Nicolle Wallace, the campaign aide Palin blames for her disastrous Couric interview and other crises, struck back on The Rachel Maddow Show last night. And, holy crap, did she tear Sarah a new one.

Wallace�a Bush-era attack dog whose career highs include helping orchestrate the John Kerry flip-flop smear�was the staffer the McCain camp charged with keeping track of Palin. As predicted, she bears much of Palin's Going Rogue wrath, second only to openly hostile McCain adviser Steve Schmidt. Though Sen. McCain personally asked staffers to keep media exposure to a minimum during Palin's media blitz, Wallace gave an on-the-record interview to The Rachel Maddow Show (though declined to go on the air). It's the middle portion of this clip, and it's a doozy:

(clip posted below)

First, Wallace deconstructs Palin's claim that Wallace pushed her into the Katie Couric interview as a favor to boost Couric's "low self-esteem":

The whole notion there was a conversation where I tried to cajole her into a conversation with Katie [Couric] is fiction. ... I am not someone who throws around the word 'self-esteem.' It is a fictional description. Katie Couric was selected because we did evening anchors.

Regarding Palin's claim on The Oprah Winfrey Show that no one prepped her for the interview because it was supposed to be a "lighthearted, fun, working mom speaking with working mom" thing:

We set up this interview on the day of the U.N. General Assembly, with a walk-and-talk in front of the U.N. It was never made as two 'working gals.' It's either rationalization or justification or fiction. That was supposed to highlight her foreign policy savvy [in the context of] the U.N. General Assembly. The picture is in front of the U.N. to highlight her expertise and readiness to be vice president�it wasn't about two 'working gals.'

Note that Palin didn't actually use the phrase "working gals." Rather, Wallace combines Palin's words with even dumber ones, heightening the sense that the Thrilla from Wasilla is totally off her rocker. This is a patented right-wing rhetorical tactic (think "death panels") and we should all use it more often. But back to the matter at hand:

What she gets wrong is this personalization that [Steve] Schmidt and I were these lone villains�and that took place entirely in her imagination. ... I think she fixated on me from very early on. She hated me from the beginning. I try not to take it personally, the fact that she wrote a book based on fabrications. She gave a brilliant convention speech�other interviews that inspired support. But this book is a bizarre fixation on things that everyone else has moved on from.

And that is the story of how neocon PR warlord Nicolle Wallace won the begrudging respect of MSNBC liberals. Looks like the real uniter was Sarah Palin, after all. That, and the fact that no one gives a shit about Katie Couric's feelings.http://gawker.com/5407214/palins-cam...-lying-in-book

YouTube Video
ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you don't have Flash installed.

It'll be interesting to see if anyone at all wants to work with her come 2012. Me thinks there will be a bunch of soccer mums doing grass roots crap and bunch of idiots falling for the 'charm' and 'realness' of such an approach. And then we'll have this dumbass in the White House. Tell me I'm reaching to far!

Who would Sarah Palin pick to run with in 2012? GLENN BECK! YOU BECKCHA!

Grimmlok — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:58:40 GMT

Quote:

It's no secret that former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Fox News host Glenn Beck share great respect and admiration -- so their fans can be forgiven for wondering: Is a "dream ticket" of Palin-Beck ticket is completely out of the question?

Perhaps not.

Palin initially chuckled when Newsmax broached the idea. But then she had some serious words of praise for the popular Fox personality.

"I can envision a couple of different combinations, if ever I were to be in a position to really even seriously consider running for anything in the future, and I'm not there yet," Palin tells Newsmax. "But Glenn Beck I have great respect for. He's a hoot. He gets his message across in such a clever way. And he's so bold � I have to respect that. He calls it like he sees it, and he's very, very, very effective."

Palin-Beck Ticket? Sarah Doesn't Rule it Out

God, shoot us now

$6.4 Billion stimulus goes to phantom districts

witchcurlgirl — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:17:20 GMT

Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist.

According to data retrieved from recovery.gov, nearly $6.4 billion was used to �create or save� just under 30,000 jobs in these phantom congressional districts�almost $225,000 per job. The web site operates on an $84 million budget and is tasked with monitoring the distribution of the $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress�which, for the record, counts 435 members�in early 2009.

The site�s monitors, however, are not too savvy about America�s political or geographic landscape. More than $2 million was given to the 99th District of North Dakota, a state which has only one congressional district. In order to qualify for 99 districts, North Dakota would have to have a population of about 60 million people, almost 24 million more people than California.

The stimulus revived 8 recently retired congressional districts. Pennsylvania�s 21st District has received just under $2 million in funds. Mississippi�s 5th District and Oklahoma�s 6th received $1 million from the legislation, respectively. All three were eliminated by the 2000 census.

Many other recipients carried the banner for congressional districts that have been defunct for decades. South Carolina�s 7th took the cake, garnering more than $27 million in stimulus funds, despite being eliminated in 1930. And Virginia�s 12th District may have been written off at the start of the Civil War, but it must carry some sentimental value in Old Dominion�it received more than $2 million, according to recovery.gov.

The stimulus helped to create 35 congressional districts in Washington D.C. and the four American territories, all of which have no congressional districts. These areas received $5 of the $6.4 billion distributed to the non-existent districts.

New Mexico Watchdog broke the story on Monday morning after finding that $26 million in stimulus money had been distributed to 13 congressional districts�ten more than the state actually has. Similar reports soon followed from New Hampshire, Kansas, Ohio, Minnesota and West Virginia.

A reporter from the Montana Policy Institue confronted the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which oversees the site, about these non-existent congressional districts on Monday afternoon. Ed Pound, Director of Communications for the board, said that the faulty information came from recipients of stimulus funds.

�People make errors, and we�ve found people are making errors in these reports,� Pound said�

Recipients file their reports on a password-protected site. That information is then relayed to officials who oversee the recovery.gov website to post, Pound said. Unless an egregious error is noted, Pound said they post the information exactly as it is received.

�Our job is data integrity, not data quality,� he said.

The integrity of the data, however, has also come under scrutiny several times in the past month. Numerous media studies have revealed a reporting system riddled with errors and results that are �impossible� to calculate, such as the number of jobs �saved� by the bill.

Vice President Joe Biden admitted that the administration�s statistics were flawed after an Associated Press study revealed several instances of exaggerated and outright false job creation. The vice president acknowledged that �further updates and corrections are going to be needed.�

The administration may have begun to do just that. 60,000 jobs were cut from original stimulus estimates on Monday, citing faulty data.

Pound says that the board plans on correcting the site�s other reporting errors during the next data collection cycle, which is set for January.

The full data from the Franklin Center study can be found below or by clicking here. All information was pulled directly from recovery.gov.

$6.4 Billion Stimulus Goes to Phantom Districts

Timothy Geithner singled out in TARP watchdog report on AIG bailout

witchcurlgirl — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:52:14 GMT

A brutal report issued Monday by a government watchdog holds Timothy Geithner -- then the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now the nation's Treasury Secretary -- responsible for overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs.

The authoritative new narrative describes how, while bailing out insurance giant AIG last fall, a team led by Geithner failed nearly every step of the way.

Instead of bargaining with AIG's numerous counterparties to resolve its billions of dollars in souring derivatives contracts, Geithner's team ended up paying top dollar for toxic assets -- "an amount far above their market value at the time," the report notes.

"There is no question that the effect of FRBNY's decisions -- indeed, the very design of the federal assistance to AIG -- was that tens of billions of dollars of Government money was funneled inexorably and directly to AIG's counterparties," the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said.

Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia got full value for their derivatives contracts with AIG, and taxpayers got the bill. In total, $27.1 billion of public money was transferred to companies that did business with AIG.

Throughout the bailout of AIG, the report says, the New York Fed failed to develop appropriate contingency plans; failed to properly assess the impact of its decisions; and generally engaged in negotiation strategies that were doomed to fail.

Then, after Geithner's team paid off AIG's counterparties on Wall Street, it imposed "onerous" terms on the troubled insurer, the report says.

"[T]he decision to acquire a controlling interest in one of the world's most complex and most troubled corporations was done with almost no independent consideration of the terms of the transaction or the impact that those terms might have on the future of AIG," the report finds.

Geithner, now the nation's chief financial officer, just didn't bargain hard enough with Wall Street's biggest companies, the report concludes:

[T]he refusal of FRBNY and the Federal Reserve to use their considerable leverage as the primary regulators for several of the counterparties, including the emphasis that their participation in the negotiations was purely "voluntary," made the possibility of obtaining concessions from those counterparties extremely remote. While there can be no doubt that a regulators' inherent leverage over a regulated entity must be used appropriately, and could in certain circumstances be abused, in other instances in this financial crisis regulators (including the Federal Reserve) have used overtly coercive language to convince financial institutions to take or forego certain actions. As SIGTARP reported in its audit of the initial Capital Purchase Program investments, for example, Treasury and the Federal Reserve were fully prepared to use their leverage as regulators to compel the nine largest financial institutions (including some of AIG's counterparties) to accept $125 billion of TARP funding and to pressure Bank of America to conclude its merger with Merrill Lynch. Similarly, it has been widely reported that the Government, while arguably acting on behalf of General Motors and Chrysler, took an active role in negotiating substantial concessions from the creditors of those companies.

Meanwhile, the Fed was attempting to keep the details of AIG's counterparties hidden from public view -- another big mistake, according to the report:

The now familiar argument from Government officials about the dire consequences of basic transparency, as advocated by the Federal Reserve...once again simply does not withstand scrutiny. Federal Reserve officials initially refused to disclose the identities of the counterparties or the details of the payments, warning that disclosure of the names would undermine AIG's stability, the privacy and business interests of the counterparties, and the stability of the markets.

After public and Congressional pressure, AIG disclosed the identities. Notwithstanding the Federal Reserve's warnings, the sky did not fall; there is no indication that AIG's disclosure undermined the stability of AIG or the market or damaged legitimate interests of the counterparties. The lesson that should be learned -- one that has been made apparent time after time in the Government's response to the financial crisis -- is that the default position, whenever Government funds are deployed in a crisis to support markets or institutions, should be that the public is entitled to know what is being done with Government funds.

While SIGTARP acknowledges that there might be circumstances in which the public's right to know what its Government is doing should be circumscribed, those instances should be very few and very far between.

Geithner Singled Out In TARP Watchdog Neil Barofsky's Scathing Report On AIG Bailout

Who does Sarah Palin talk to while showering?

buttmunch — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:03:49 GMT

Quote:

Going Rogue is out today! The Washington Post have put together a cursory index that includes Hasselbeck, Elizabeth:"bold and talented," and Lieberman, Joe: a "bright spot" in the campaign. They also reveal who Palin calls when naked and soapy.

When George W Bush locks his office door, lowers the lights, puts on some Barry White, paints his nails and settles down for some one-to-one time with himself you can bet the following image will feature heavily:

Warren, Rick: Palin spoke with (and prayed with) the renowned pastor over the phone while taking a shower

Chris Cillizza also reveals that Palin's political action committee is using the book as an excuse to fundraise, adding to speculation that we'll see this hideous human being, who believes that the end of days will come in her lifetime, huntin', shootin' and a winkin' her way along the campaign trail in 2012.

Our only hope now is that Levi Johnston reveals more filth about Palin in his book than was in his Playgirl shoot.http://gawker.com/5406430/what-sarah...-in-the-shower

So she's masturbating to a homophobic, creationist?

Sarah Palin: Levi Johnston is a porn star and still delusional

buttmunch — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:47:36 GMT

Quote:

Sarah Palin came down hard on her grandson�s baby daddy Levi Johnston � saying it�s �heartbreaking to see the road he�s on right now.�

�By the way, I don't know if we call him Levi � I hear he goes by the name �Ricky Hollywood� now � so, if that�s the case, we don�t want to mess up this gig he's got going,� Palin said during an appearance on Oprah. �The things that he�s doing. It�s kind of heartbreaking.�

MORE: GOOD LUCK AVOIDING PALIN THIS WEEK

When Oprah clarified that Johnston had recently decided to pose in the buff for Playgirl magazine, Palin hit below the belt.

�I call that porn, yes. So it�s a bit heartbreaking to see the road that he's on right now,� she said of Johnson, who has been an outspoken critic of Palin since the election ended.

Palin�s sit-down interview coincided with today�s release of her 432-page book, �Going Rogue: An American Life.�

The book � already a bestseller on Amazon � is largely devoted to the GOP�s failed presidential campaign and incidents like the infamous interview with Katie Couric.

Asked about Johnston�s relationship with his son, Tripp, the former Alaska governor said, �He hasn�t seen the baby for a while, but we will let that be the discussion between Bristol and Levi as they work out their relationship. Because Levi will forever be the father of this beautiful little baby and I continue to hope for the best, and pray for Levi.�

As for politics, Palin said she�s not gearing up to run for president.

�I don�t know what I�m doing in 2012,� she said. �It�s not on my radar screen. In 2012, [my son] Trigg heads to Kindergarten and I�m focused on that.�

Palin also said she shouldn�t be blamed for John McCain�s loss.

�I don�t think I can be blamed for losing the race any more than I could have been credited for winning the race,� she told the daytime talk queen.

The conservative darling touched on a variety of topics � including how McCain�s handlers treated her � during her hour-long interview aimed at promoting the book.

She said she didn�t feel dissed about not being invited to Oprah�s show during last year�s campaign and that she was �naive� to think her pregnant daughter would not become a campaign issue.

Palin told Oprah she never felt snubbed by the talk queen, who backed President Obama.

�No offense, Oprah, but [at the time] it didn�t really register,� said Palin, who wore a turquoise jacket and black skirt during the interview taped last Thursday. �It wasn�t the center of my universe.�

Palin said she got a surprise phone call from the McCain camp asking her if she wanted to be the Arizona senator�s running mate.

�I didn�t blink,� she said. �I felt quite comfortable with my abilities [to be on the Republican ticket].�

Things grew sour shortly after that, she said.

The former GOP veep nominee said she �was surprised� that the McCain campaign knew that her 17-year-old, unmarried daughter Bristol was pregnant with the baby of her boyfriend Levi Johnston.

�It is a tough, tough challenge,� she said when asked how her family dealt with the pregnancy.

Palin was angered when the McCain campaign insisted on putting out a news release that her and her husband were thrilled with the pregnancy.

�I didn�t want the message sent up that I was giddy happy to become a grandparent,� she said.

Palin added, �I thought we had a chance to make a statement about teen pregnancy, so I wrote a new draft.�

Hours later, the McCain camp released the statement with which she disagreed. When Palin saw the quote on TV, she was incensed.

�That was really the first taste for me of what I was allowed to say,� she said.

Palin said Bristol called her in tears soon after.

�She had seen it on the news,� recalled Palin. �She was quite devastated. She was in tears.�

View more news videos at: Chicago Videos, News Video, Video Clips | NBC Chicago.

When Oprah asked if she thought the pregnancy could be an issue in the campaign, Palin replied, �I was naive to think the media would leave my kids alone.�

She said the press stayed away from Obama�s two daughters, but that was not afforded the same courtesy.

�There was a double-standard,� she fumed.

As for the controversy regarding her clothes and how the GOP spent lots of money to dress her, Palin said, �I don�t even like to shop � never thinking it would be a big controversy.�

Oprah also asked Palin if the botched interview with Couric while she was McCain�s running mate was a defining moment for her.

�I did not [think it was a defining moment] and neither did the campaign,� she said of the CBS News interview, which Tiny Fey later used to lampoon her with on �Saturday Night Live.�

She said McCain�s campaign told her, ��Right on! Good! You�re showing your independence. This is what America needs to see, and it was a good interview.�

She said she �knew it wasn�t a good interview.�

Palin said she doesn�t �blame people for thinking that I was unprepared for the office after watching that.� Sarah Palin criticizes Levi Johnston's decision to pose nude for Playgirl

I just wish I could see her keep putting her foot in it in real time.

Outrage in Washington over President Obama's Japan bow

celeb_2006 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:12:48 GMT

Outrage in Washington over Obama's Japan bow - Yahoo! News

(Oh boy, here we go again)

WASHINGTON (AFP) � News photos of President Barack Obama bowing to Japan's emperor have incensed critics here, who said the US leader should stand tall when representing America overseas.
Obama on Monday was in China, having wrapped up the Japan leg of his Asia trip two days earlier. But Washington's punditocracy was still weighing whether or not the US president had disgraced his country two days earlier by having taken a deep bow at the waist while meeting Japan's Emperor Akihito.
Political talk shows have played and replayed the moment from the second day of Obama's week-long Asia tour, which set the blogosphere on fire and chat show tongues wagging.
"I don't know why President Obama thought that was appropriate. Maybe he thought it would play well in Japan. But it's not appropriate for an American president to bow to a foreign one," said conservative pundit William Kristol speaking on the Fox News Sunday program, adding that the gesture bespoke a United States that has become weak and overly-deferential under Obama.
Another conservative voice, Bill Bennett, said on CNN's "State of the Union" program: "It's ugly. I don't want to see it."
"We don't defer to emperors. We don't defer to kings or emperors. The president of the United States -- this coupled with so many apologies from the United States -- is just another thing," said Bennett.
Some conservative critics juxtaposed the image of Obama with one of former US vice president Dick Cheney, who greeted the emperor in 2007 with a firm handshake but no bow.
"I'll bet if you look at pictures of world leaders over 20 years meeting the emperor in Japan, they don't bow," Kristol said.
Some said the gesture was particularly grating coming after Obama's bow to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah at a G20 meeting in April.
The US president's Asia trip comes just over a year after he won election to the White House, and is designed to shore up US power in a region increasingly dominated by rising giant China.
But back home, Obama's bow in Japan seems to have grabbed much of the attention being paid to the trip.
The gesture appears to have touched a particularly raw nerve among Obama critics who said the president has hastened America's decline as a world superpower by being too apologetic and too deferential in his dealings with other world leaders.
While most of the commentary about the bow in Japan was decidedly negative, some political observers, like longtime Democratic activist Donna Brazile, came to the president's defense.
"I think it's a gesture of kindness," she told CNN, adding that the bow appeared intended to show "goodwill between two nations that respect each other."
Meanwhile, an unnamed, senior Obama administration official told the Politico.com news site that the president had simply been observing protocol.
"I think that those who try to politicize those things are just way, way, way off base," the official told Politico.
"I don't think anybody who was in Japan -- who saw his speech and the reaction to it, certainly those who witnessed his bilateral meetings there -- would say anything other than that he enhanced both the position and the status of the US, relative to Japan," Politico wrote.
"It was a good, positive visit at an important time, because there's a lot going on in Japan."

The sleazy advocacy of leading 'Liberal Hawk' Peter Galbraith

witchcurlgirl — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:58:23 GMT

The sleazy advocacy of a leading "liberal hawk"

Peter Galbraith's vast, undisclosed financial interests in the policies he spent years advocating as an "expert."

The New York Times today details the unbelievably sleazy story of Peter Galbraith, one of the Democratic Party's leading so-called "liberal hawks" and a generally revered Wise Man of America's Foreign Policy Community. He was Ambassador to Croatia under the Clinton administration in the mid-1990s and, in March, 2009, the Obama administration (specifically, Richard Holbrooke, Galbraith's mentor) successfully pressured the U.N. to name Galbraith as the second-in-command in Afghanistan. The NYT does a good job today of adding some important details to the story, but it was actually uncovered by Norwegian investigative journalists and reported at length a month ago in pieces such as this one by Helena Cobban. In essence, this highly Serious man has corruptly concealed vast financial stakes in the very policies and positions he has spent years advocating while pretending to be an independent expert.

Galbraith was one of the most vocal Democratic supporters of the attack on Iraq, having signed a March 19, 2003 public letter (.pdf) -- along with the standard cast of neocon war-lovers such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot, Danielle Pletka, and Robert Kagan -- stating that "we all join in supporting the military intervention in Iraq" and "it is now time to act to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from power." As intended, that letter was then praised by outlets such as The Washington Post Editorial Page, gushing that "it is both significant and encouraging that a bipartisan group of influential foreign policy thinkers, veterans of both Democratic and Republican administrations, has signed on to a statement of policy on Iraq that makes sense on the war." Throughout 2002 and 2003, Galbraith appeared in numerous outlets -- including repeatedly on Fox News and with Bill O'Reilly -- presenting himself as a loyal Democrat firmly behind the invasion of Iraq. In 2002, he was an adviser to Paul Wolfowitz on Kurdistan.

After playing a key role in enabling the invasion of Iraq, Galbraith first became one of a handful of U.S. officials who worked on writing the Iraqi Constitution, and after he resigned from the government, he then continuously posed as an independent expert on the region and, specifically, an "unpaid" adviser to the Kurds on the Constitution. Galbraith was an ardent and vocal advocate for Kurdish autonomy, arguing tirelessly in numerous venues for such proposals -- including in multiple Op-Eds for The New York Times -- and insisting that Kurds must have the right to control oil resources located in Northern Iraq. Throughout the years of writing those Op-Eds, he was identified as nothing more than "a former United States ambassador to Croatia," except in one 2007 Op-Ed which vaguely stated that he "is a principal in a company that does consulting in Iraq and elsewhere." When he participated in a New York Times forum in October, 2008 -- regarding what the next President should be required to answer -- he unsurprisingly posed questions that advocated for regional autonomy for Iraqis generally and Kurds specifically, and he was identified as nothing more than the author of a book about the region.

What Galbraith kept completely concealed all these years was that a company he formed in 2004 came to acquire a large stake in a Kurdish oil field whereby, as the NYT put it, he "stands to earn perhaps a hundred million or more dollars." In other words, he had a direct -- and vast -- financial stake in the very policies which he was publicly advocating in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and countless other American media outlets, where he was presented as an independent expert on the region. As Cobban wrote:

For the preceding four years, while Galbraith was an influential participant in Iraq-related constitutional and political discussions, he also had an undisclosed financial interest in a KRG-authorised oil development venture. . . .

Here in the U.S., Galbraith has long been associated with the "liberal hawk" wing of the Democratic Party . . . Many members of this group have been liberal idealists - though some of those who, on "liberal" grounds, gave early support to Pres. George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq later expressed their regret for adopting that position.

Galbraith has never expressed any such regrets, and last November, he was openly scornful of Bush's late-term agreement to withdraw from Iraq completely. The revelation that for many years Galbraith had a quite undisclosed financial interest in the political breakup of Iraq may now further reduce the clout, and the ranks, of the remaining liberal hawks.

Unfortunately, that last sentence is likely wishful thinking. What Galbraith has done, as sleazy and dishonest as it is, is simply par for the course in accountability-free Washington.

Galbraith's relationship with the Kurds goes back many years. He undoubtedly knew that overthrowing Saddam would empower his Kurdish friends and their ability to dole out oil contracts. Indeed, in his own 2006 book, he recounts that he began working on Kurdish autonomy and independence "two weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein." Less than a year later, having helped convince the public -- and many Democrats -- to invade Iraq, he formed a company that then acquired a huge stake in Kurdish oil. And he then spent years running around trying to use his status as Foreign Policy Community expert to exploit the war he cheered on for his own massive personal gain, while keeping completely concealed those glaring conflicts of interests.

Reider Visser, a historian of southern Iraq, told The Boston Globe last month: "Galbraith has been such a central person to the shaping of the Iraqi Constitution, far more than I think most Americans realize. All those beautiful ideas about principles of federalism and local communities having control are really cast in a different light when the community has an oil field in its midst and Mr. Galbraith has a financial stake." So here's a leading advocate of the war on Iraq who used his influence in the U.S. Government and the Foreign Policy Community -- as well as the break-up of Saddam's regime -- to enrich himself on Iraqi oil. As the NYT put it:

As the scope of Mr. Galbraith�s financial interests in Kurdistan become clear, they have the potential to inflame some of Iraqis� deepest fears, including conspiracy theories that the true reason for the American invasion of their country was to take its oil. It may not help that outside Kurdistan, Mr. Galbraith�s influential view that Iraq should be broken up along ethnic lines is considered offensive to many Iraqis� nationalism. Mr. Biden and Mr. Kerry, who have been influenced by Mr. Galbraith�s thinking but do not advocate such a partitioning of the country, were not aware of Mr. Galbraith�s oil dealings in Iraq, aides to both politicians say.

Some officials say that his financial ties could raise serious questions about the integrity of the constitutional negotiations themselves. "The idea that an oil company was participating in the drafting of the Iraqi Constitution leaves me speechless," said Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi, a principal drafter of the law that governed Iraq after the United States ceded control to an Iraqi government on June 28, 2004.

In effect, he said, the company "has a representative in the room, drafting."

Remember how all those freakish and paranoid people -- on the crazed "Arab street" and in American-hating leftist circles -- actually believed in "conspiracy" theories such as the wacky notion that one of the motives for invading Iraq was a desire to exploit its oil resources?

Here we have yet another example of one of America's most Serious and respected "experts" advocating various policies while maintaining huge, undisclosed financial and personal interests in his advocacy. He was given access to every major media outlet virtually on demand to do so -- the NYT, The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Fox -- all while those interests remained concealed. His uniting with the country's most extreme neocons to support the Bush administration's attack on Iraq didn't prevent the Obama administration from pushing him to be hired as the U.N.'s number two official in Afghanistan. He continued to be revered by leading establishment Democrats as an important and respected expert. In other words, Peter Galbraith is a perfect face showing how America's Foreign Policy Community and our political debates function.

UPDATE: Jonathan Schwarz recalls what was done to those who suggested that part of the motive in invading Iraq might have something to do with that country's oil reserves.

UPDATE II: The New York Times is forced to publish an Editor's Note today in light of this story, noting that "Mr. Galbraith signed a contract that obligated him to disclose his financial interests in the subjects of his articles"; he "should have disclosed to readers that Mr. Galbraith could benefit financially" from the policies he was advocating in his Op-Eds; and "had editors been aware of Mr. Galbraith's financial stake, the Op-Ed page would have insisted on disclosure or not published his articles."

Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com