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Fireworks over the Hudson, New York City, July 4, 2009. AP photo. CLICK ON PHOTO TO SEE LARGER IMAGE.
Gov. SARAH PALIN gets her own Soaps! page. Hover on The Soaps! on the bar above & click on Palintology.
Catch links to the latest stories on the Mark Sanford & John Ensign sagas by hovering on The Soaps! on the navigation bar above & clicking on The Sanford Odyssey or Ensign Pulverizes. Pages will load in the center column. Gov. Rod Blagojevich & Sen. Roland Burris have a Soaps! page, too.
Here's a transcript of President Obama's interview with TASS Russian TV, ahead of his trip to Russia.
Steven Hurst of the AP looks toward President Obama's upcoming trip to Russia, Italy & Ghana.
In a letter buried on the op-ed, the Washington Post's publisher, Katharine Weymouth, apologizes "for a planned new venture that went off track and for any cause we may have given you to doubt our independence and integrity." CW: Weymouth's effort is hardly a stellar no-excuses mea culpa....
... Michael Calderone & Andy Barr of Politico: the Post isn't the only paper that arranges for paid, off-the-record meetings between special interests & its journalists; the Wall Street Journal & the Economist have been doing it, too. Notably, the Journal drove financial executives to the White House to hear Larry Summers give an off-the-record speech. CW: no wonder the administration won't release those visitor logs. Let's hope the press follows up on this.
Frank Rich: Bernie Madoff is the least of our economie woes; the overarching problem of the nation's socio-economic system is Wall Street's business-as-usual shenanigans, which the Obama administration is perpetuating; the bad news for the economy & the Beltway gang: the public is onto them.
This week a professional satirist will become the junior Senator from Minnesota, but the senior Senator is pretty good at cracking a joke, too.
Paul Krugman: "we're heading into Japanese-style deflation territory"; includes a graph in which, in the end, the mountains fall into the sea....
...BUT near-universal healthcare coverage is do-able....
...AND Krugman defends Al Franken against David Broder whom I won't link, but Krugman does.
Speaking of Minnesota, David Carr of the New York Times writes a brief history of the last few decades of the state's oddball politics.
The Grassley 100% Solution. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican who says "we need to make sure there is no public [health insurance] option" also claims to favor small government. Yet he tells a constituent that if he wants decent health insurance he should "go work for the federal government." Either Grassley thinks a public "servant" is entitled to be better off than those he serves, or he wants everybody in Iowa to get guv'ment jobs. The audio is very hard to hear; Think Progress has the transcript.
The Obamas welcome military families to the White House Independence Day party:
Transcript of the President's remarks. Pretty informative pool report.
President Obama talks to reporters at All Africa Media ahead of his trip to Ghana. Parts 1 & 2:
Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth. Photo by Matt Mendolsohn.
CW: David Carr of the New York Times has an excellent piece about the Washington Post's planned pay-for-play "salons" which could serve as the first lecture in that journalistic ethics class Post publisher Katharine Weymouth never took. There are more links on this fiasco in two places further down the column; I've highlighted them with ***s.
CW: speaking of questionable journalistic ethics, Glenn Greenwald is up already with a fine column on the New York Times' moral relativism vis-a-vis "the language of torture." Upon reading the Times story on the Iranian confessions early this morning, I had the same reaction Greenwald did, though I could never have expressed the irony of linguistic sociopathy so well as he.
Peter Baker of the New York Times: the Russian government's agreement to let American troops and weapons bound for Afghanistan fly in Russian airspace "represents one of the most concrete achievements in the [Obama] administration’s effort to ease relations with Russia..." but agreements on other issues have proved hard to come by.
Rob Hotakainen of McClatchy: Anthony Woods, a West Point grad booted from the military for violating "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy brings national attention to the race for California's 10th U.S. Congressional District seat.
Edifice Complex. Los Angeles Times: Congress is blocking funding for earmarks named for lawmakers, & Maxine Waters is furious leaders won't give her $1MM for her "Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center." CW:...but not so furious she's willing to change the name which she says would be "costly." Uh-huh.
Joe Conason of Salon runs down (in both sense of the phrase) the "lunatic" critics of Al Franken.
Adam Freedman in the New York Times: the colonists may have rejected British rule, but they surely didn't reject British values.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel: this Independence Day, the nation's 50 million nontheists have something to celebrate.
Paul Krugman says the jobs reports prove "we're going to need a bigger stimulus."
Carrie Budoff Brown of Politico: Democrats, Bernie Sanders, all members of a key Senate committee, get behind a healthcare reform proposal that includes a public option; Sen. Kay Hagan, who has been wavering on the public option, was among them.
Stan Liebowitz of the Wall Street Journal: the single most important factor in home mortgage foreclosures is negative equity -- the balance on the mortgage exceeds the sales value of the property. Government programs & plans don't address this problem.
Julia Preston of the New York Times: the Obama administration has shifted immigration law enforcement from the Bush administration's SOP of bringing criminal charges against illegal immigrants to using fines and other civil sanctions against businesses employing large numbers of illegal immigrants.
Matt v. Goliath: Matt Taiibi of Rolling Stone takes on Goldman-Sachs.
***Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times has more on the Washington Post's scandalous & short-lived pay-for-play plan to sponsor expensive private "salons" which would offer lobbyists special, private access to top lawmakers, administration officials & Post journalists.
***Howard Kurtz reports on this journalistic disaster for the Washington Post.
***Here's Andrew Alexander, the Post's ombudsman, on the "public relations disaster." CW: it ain't how it looks, Andy; it's what it is.
***Josh Gerstein of Politico: the White House reminded staff they had to get clearance to accept free tickets to "banquets, conferences & cocktail receptions. "
President Obama on the unemployment situation & innovative job growth:
President Obama speaks to the AP's Jennifer Levin about his upcoming trip to Russia, domestic issues. With video clips. There are more clips here.
Fred Schulte of NBC: Nancy-Ann DeParle, President Obama's health czar, was a director of corporations that were the subjects of "scores of federal investigations, whistleblower lawsuits and other regulatory actions." After running Medicare for the Clinton White House,
DeParle accepted director positions at half a dozen companies suspected of violating the very laws and regulations she had enforced for Medicare. Those companies got into further trouble on her watch as a director.
CW: why did Obama choose this crook to manage healthcare "reform"?
White House photo.President Obama signs a bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal to the Women Airforce Service Pilots. The WASPs were established during World War II, and from 1942 to 1943, more than 1,000 women joined, flying 60 million miles of non-combat military missions. Present for the signing: Bernice Falk Haydu, Elaine Danforth Harmon & Lorraine H. Rodgers. Also Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), and behind the President, active duty US Air Force pilots. -- from a White House release
CNN has a pretty good print story here about the WASPs with a video clip of an interview of pilot Jane Tedeschi. The New York Times has an item here, & this story by Chris Wilson for Senior Times is pretty good.
***Incredible! Mike Allen of Politico reports that the Washington Post is selling lobbyists access to government VIPs & Post reporters in organized "salons." (So French!) CW: even yellow journalists are spinning in the graves.
***Hah! Update: after sending the Post newsroom "into an uproar," publisher Katharine Weymouth said she was canceling her plans for "an exclusive 'salon' at her home where for as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists...off-the-record access to 'those powerful few.'"
*** Update: Gibbs takes on the WashPost pay-for-play controversy:
Reminder: good sources for updates on Iran: the New York Times' the Lede & Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish. Also, Nico Pitney at the Huffington Post is still "live-blogging the uprising" & has late-breaking info.
