Jindal declares day of prayer over spill, but hasn't called up the Natl Guard

Hmmm. Seems to be one of these could have tangible results and one might not.

First, the Day Prayer:

On Thursday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) issued an order designating June 27 a "Statewide Day of Prayer" for perseverance through the BP oil spill that continues to devastate the country's Gulf Coast region.

That's one "solution" proferred by the Governor of Louisiana. He's also been screaming that the federal government hasn't been doing enough. But, Jindal has one major resource at this disposal -- the National Guard -- and as John noted below, he's not using it. More from CBS News:

Gov. Bobby Jindal's message has been loud and clear, using language such as "We will only be winning this war when we're actually deploying every resource," "They (the federal government) can provide more resources" and "It's clear the resources needed to protect our coast are still not here."

But nearly two months after the governor requested - and the Department of Defense approved the use of 6,000 Louisiana National Guard troops - only a fraction - 1,053 - have actually been deployed by Jindal to fight the spill.

"If you ask any Louisianan, if you said 'If you had those troops, do you think they could be put to good use? Is there anything they can do in your parish?' I think they'd all tell you 'Absolutely,'" Louisiana state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, said.

By all the bitching Jindal's been doing -- and the fact that he's got time to declare days of prayer, one would think that he's done everything he could. Not true at all.

And, now about this:

It's believed officials in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi and are reluctant to use more troops because their presence could hurt tourism. In hardest-hit Louisiana, however, Jindal is pointing fingers.

Stunning. Commander Allen pointed out that Jindal's finger pointing is "just flat wrong." Read the rest of this post...

Pelosi warns of double dip recession

From Arthur Delaney at Huff Post:

"If we really don't address this in a very serious way, we could slip back and have another recession, and if we do it's harder to come back." Pelosi didn't offer specifics on what might happen with the jobs bill or its component parts next week but said some within the caucus think extended unemployment benefits ought to be paid for. "One of the debates that goes on now -- which I completely resist, but it's one of the debates going on -- is at the end of the day, these people have to have their benefits, and should we begin paying for unemployment benefits?"

Read the rest of this post...

Nurse who says she was in Eisenstadt Times Square photo dies

Apparently, several woman claimed to be "the" woman. Read the rest of this post...

1/2 of pregnancies in US are unintended

That's abstinence thing seems to be working wonders. Read the rest of this post...

In Belgium, police raided Catholic offices over sex crimes. Vatican shocked

Here's the thing the Catholic Church never got about the child rape scandal: Catholic priests around the world were committing crimes when they raped children. Their actions were illegal. Criminal. But, the Catholic Church thinks it exists in some kind of alternate universe where its priests don't have to face prosecution. Unfortunately, over the past decades, too many public officials have enabled the criminals in the Church to slide by.

Finally, in Belgium, priests and those who abetted the crimes are being treated like the criminals that they are. Yet, the Vatican is shocked. Get over it, Benedict. Many of your employees should be in jail. And, good for Belgium:

An extraordinary series of raids on the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium provoked sharp criticism from the Vatican on Friday, with the church expressing “shock” a day after Belgian investigators interrupted a bishops’ meeting at the church’s Brussels headquarters, detaining clerics for nine hours, and opened an archbishop’s grave at a cathedral north of the city.

The Belgian civil law-enforcement authorities seized documents and other potential evidence related to allegations of sexual abuse after searching the headquarters, the home of a recently retired cardinal and the offices of a commission established by the church to handle abuse complaints. The grave was opened at the St. Rombouts Cathedral, north of Brussels, Jean-Marc Meilleur, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Brussels, told The Associated Press.

The aggressiveness of the raids — coming after hundreds of complaints of sex abuse had been lodged with the Belgian church’s special commission within a few months — represented a major departure in Belgium’s investigation of church-related sex crimes.

What's shocking is that it's taken so long for law enforcement officials around the world to act. No wonder the Church felt immune. Read the rest of this post...

Is it better or worse off knowing my biases?

I remember years ago watching Ted Koppel on TV, talking to an audience about journalism. Koppel challenged the audience to guess who he voted for President. He said no one could, with any proof. I believe the implication was that this was a good thing.

I remember thinking at the time that covering national politics for so long, Koppel must have had strong political views. So why was it better for me, and better for his objectivity, for me not to know Koppel's political bias? And, switching things around, why would I, as a consumer of news, be worse off KNOWING Koppel's biases? Whether I knew them or not, he would still have them. Wouldn't more information per se better permit me to judge the news that Koppel disseminated?

Fast forward to today. We've had a brouhaha brewing all day in online politics land. Sam Stein sums up what happened, and concludes with something related to what I wrote above.

When he arrived at a party on the Huffington Post's D.C. office roof-deck on Thursday evening, Washington Post reporter/blogger David Weigel felt secure in his job. Earlier in the day, the media-focused site FishbowlDC had published a series of off-the-record emails written by Weigel in which he had disparaged members of the conservative movement that he covers.

Long story short: Weigel is gone.

Undoubtedly, there were other reporters in the newsroom there that felt the exact same way as Weigel. Their fortune had been simply not putting their thoughts in an email chain, or, simply, not having their personal emails leaked. For political observers, it was a somewhat depressing reflection of the limits of the new media universe -- where the traditional powers have not quite yet reached a level of comfort with journalists who are transparent with their biases but, nevertheless, fair and accurate in their reporting.

I was talking to some Youth in Government kids the other day about blogging, and I mentioned FOX News, and why, at its core, it's bad for America. The difference between FOX and me, at least one difference, I said, is that they call themselves Fair and Balanced. I'm a partisan blogger and admit it up front. Now, in spite of that, I certainly strive to be fair, but I never strive to be balanced. I run a Demcoratic blog. I'm not here to help Republicans. But I'm still not going to lie to pursue my goals.

FOX News isn't only here to help Republicans, they're doing it in a way that isn't fair, balanced, or even disclosed. Yet somehow FOX is "news" and Weigel is out. Huh. Read the rest of this post...

Palin endorsement is 'toxic'

Most of the DC-based political punditry is agog over Sarah Palin. They document her every utterance. But, Greg Sargent took a look at Palin's polling numbers. His conclusion: Palin is toxic. Because outside of the world of hard core GOPers and the pundits who are wowed by Palin, most voters have a negative reaction to her endorsement:

Commentators keep telling us how influential Sarah Palin's endorsements are, and even if the whole "mama grizzly" meme is clearly overstated, there's no quibbling with the fact that Palin has pull among GOP primary voters.

But the more interesting point to be made about Palin is how toxic she's become among the broader electorate. In fact, buried in the internals of the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll [note it's a pdf] is an amusing number: A majority see a Palin endorsement as a clear negative.

The poll asked people how they'd respond if a Congressional candidate had various hypothetical attributes. Asked how they'd feel if a candidate were "endorsed by Sarah Palin," the response was....

Enthusiastic about this attribute 8

Comfortable with this attribute 17

Have some reservations about this attribute 15

Very uncomfortable with this attribute 37

So a majority, 52%, reacted negatively. And an astonishing 37 percent would be "very uncomfortable" about a Palin endorsement, more than four times the eight percent who would be "enthusiastic" about it.

Read the rest of this post...

Jindal holding up deployment of National Guard troops to fight oil spill

From Jed at DailyKos:

You know how Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal likes to blame the Federal government for the damage caused by BP's oil spill, arguing that he could have kept all the oil at bay if President Obama had only given him the resources he needed to fight it?

Well, last night CBS News tore Jindal's argument to shreds, pointing out that while President Obama has authorized up to 6,000 National Guard troops to fight the spill, Jindal has only activated 1,053 of them -- leaving more than 80% sitting idle, doing nothing to protect the state.

Read the rest of this post...

NPR: US spends the most on health care, gets the least

From NPR:

The U.S., by contrast, was last in every category except quality, where it was second to last, squeaking in ahead of Canada. At $7,290 in annual spending per person in 2007, the U.S. also dwarfed second-place Canada at $3,895 and third-place Netherlands at $3,837.

About the only good news for America, said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis, who was also the study's lead author, is that the new health law could put the U.S. on a path towards improvement.

Read the rest of this post...

Palin endorses Obama-Hitler comparison

The problem is two-fold:

1. Regardless of whether you believe anyone should be talking about Sarah Palin, the woman is a leader in the Republican party, and could, by a fluke of nature, end up president some day. So it's important to report on her inanities, if only to keep people informed of what a lightweight nut she really is.

2. The media has, to a larger part, accepted that Palin is a nut. Sure, they report on her every move, because they have to, but at the same time they're loathe to examine her comments and hold her responsible for them because, secretly, they know she's a little stupid, and nuts, so they give her a pass on actually discussing the implications of her comments. Had a leader of the Democratic party - an aspiring presidential candidate, no less - compared George Bush to Hitler, it'd be the end of their career. Now we have dingbats like Palin, and even GOP members of Congress, making the comparison with impunity. At some point, the media needs to stop reporting what Republicans say, and start analyzing it for the extremist, and dangerous, rhetoric it actually is. Read the rest of this post...

Socarides in WSJ: 'Obama Is Missing in Action on Gay Rights'

Richard Socarides, who has guest blogged here before, just published a strongly-word op ed in the Wall Street Journal about President Obama's record on gay rights. Some snippets:

Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice not only have chosen to aggressively defend the constitutionality of that law, which bars recognition of same-sex marriages, but Justice Department lawyers actually cite it affirmatively to deny federal employee benefits like health insurance to same-sex couples. Where is the Civil Rights Division, which Mr. Holder has called the "crown jewel" of his department?

The absence of a position from the Justice Department in favor of expanding civil rights is as shocking as the absence of a coherent White House policy on gay issues. There is no senior policy person at the White House whose primary responsibility is gay rights. And there is no gay person in Mr. Obama's inner circle of advisers. That matters when trying to get attention for issues in an already overcrowded agenda, and the result is obvious.

In a telling development, the most significant and aggressive legal effort to promote gay equality today is being led by a conservative, former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson. In federal court in San Francisco, together with co-counsel David Boies, he is prosecuting the most comprehensive and sophisticated legal attack on antigay marriage laws in history.

As that case unfolded—the decision will come later this summer—we learned last month that former First Lady Laura Bush supports gay marriage. Add her to the growing list that includes Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and Cindy and Meghan McCain.

When Mr. Olson's case reaches the U.S. Supreme Court in a year or more from now, will Mr. Obama be one of the few left on the wrong side of history? What a bitter irony that would be.

Read the rest of this post...

BP's spokesperson gets his news about the spill from the news

Yesterday, on WNYC's show, The Takeaway, BP's new spokesperson, Darryl Willis, talked to John Hockenberry. Now, Willis is the guy who replaced Tony Hayward in the ubiquitous BP tv ads. So, you'd think he's right on top of the situation, right? Well, he gets his BP news the same way "everyone else" does -- watching the news:

HOCKENBERRY: “Then what happened yesterday with the robot that changed this containment cap situation and caused the oil to spill full boar into the gulf yesterday, has that been corrected?”

WILLIS: “My understanding, and again, I watch the news like everyone else is because I've been traveling in between Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, and focused on planes, is my understanding in watching the news last night is that the cap has been placed back on the well."

BP is paying a lot of people and firms a lot of money to handle p.r. and damage control. Yet, BP's spokesperson gets his oil spill news from the news. Just like us. That's problematic because BP has done --and continues to do -- everything it can to block media coverage. Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The President is heading to Muskoka, Canada this morning for the G-8/G-20 summit. He'll have G-8 meetings all day.

As noted below, the House and Senate conference committee on Wall Street reform finished its work at 5:39 a.m. this morning. All the Republicans on the Conference Committee voted no. They must never, ever challenge their Wall Street benefactors.

Yesterday afternoon, Senate GOPers slammed the unemployed by blocking a vote on unemployment extensions. After growing the debt under George Bush, GOPers have a new found desire for fiscal austerity. Of course, they ignore the fiscal crisis for the hundreds of thousands of families across America who are losing their benefits and can't find work because the economy still sucks. Mitch McConnell talks about the debt we're imposing on our children and grandchildren. Just once, he should think about the children impacted by the economic crisis, which was brought on by Republicans. These people are such frauds. The Republicans know that high unemployment is bad politically for the Democrats. And, I think they're cynical enough to exploit that.

So, been a busy week. But, it's not over. One never knows what news will drop on a Friday afternoon in the summer.... Read the rest of this post...

Final deal reached on Wall Street reform legislation

The House/Senate conference committee on the Wall Street reform legislation wrapped up its work early this morning. They've got a bill, which will be sent to the House and Senate floors for final action next week:

A 20-hour marathon by members of a House-Senate conference committee to complete work on toughened financial regulations culminated at 5:39 a.m. Friday in agreements on the two most contentious portions of the financial regulatory overhaul and a host of other provisions. On a party-line vote, the House conferees voted 20-11 to approve the bill; the Senate conferees voted 7-5 to approve.

Members of the conference committee approved proposals to restrict trading by banks for their own benefit and requiring banks and their parent companies to segregate much of their derivatives activities into a separately capitalized subsidiary.

The agreements were reached after hours of negotiations, most of it behind closed doors and outside the public forum of the conference committee discussions. The approvals cleared the way for both houses of Congress to vote on the full financial regulatory bill next week.

The bill has been the subject of furious and expensive lobbying efforts by businesses and financial trade groups in recent months. While those efforts produced some specific exceptions to new regulations, by and large the bill’s financial regulations not only remained strong but in some cases gained strength as public outrage grew at the excesses that fueled the financial meltdown of 2008.

I expect we'll get some other perspectives on the legislation from key players later today. Read the rest of this post...

Air Tran stops plane over pet turtle

Give me a break.

A caged, 2-inch turtle traveling with a 10-year-old girl caused a crew to turn around a taxiing plane, take the girl and her sisters off the flight and tell them they couldn't bring their pet along.

The sisters threw the animal and cage in the trash and returned to their seats crying Tuesday after AirTran Airways employees on the jetway said they couldn't care for the turtle while their father drove to retrieve it. Two days later, however, Carley Helm was reunited with Neytiri even though at first the family thought the pet was emptied with the trash.

Read the rest of this post...