July 02, 2009

The neverending Sanford soap goes on

Everyone has hailed Jenny Sanford for her fortitude in the face of what are humiliating circumstances and her unwillingness to stand by her man, as so many political wives have done in the past. But her most recent statement about "forgiving Mark" suggests that she still is looking for her pound of flesh. Maybe it's time for the public back and forth to end.

Just to recap: Mark Sanford confesses an affair on Wednesday a week ago. Jenny releases a statement hours later, saying she threw him out two weeks earlier to maintain her dignity but still loves him. Jenny then calls in an AP reporter on Friday to provide more evidence of Mark's perfidy, noting that he'd begged her for permission to visit his mistress (now there's some dysfunction). Mark retaliates with his own AP interview, in which he confesses that his mistress is his soul mate, that he's seen her more times than he'd previously acknowledged, that there'd been other women (sort of), and that now he's trying to fall back in love with his wife. Today was Jenny's turn, issuing a statement that says she's willing to forgive, but it's an oddly uncharitable one:

"Actions have consequences and he will be dealing with those consequences for a long while. . . . Trust has been broken and will need to be rebuilt. Mark will need to earn back that trust, first and foremost with his family, and also with the people of South Carolina.

"My forgiveness is essential for us both to move on with our lives, with peace, in whatever direction that may take us. . . . Forgiveness opens the door for Mark to begin to work privately, humbly and respectfully toward reconciliation with me. However, to achieve true reconciliation will take time, involve repentance, and will not be easy."

I'm not arguing that he should be forgiven. But isn't this the kind of thing one communicates in private, if one is truly sincere about forgiveness? And if one is actually feeling forgiving is it something one communicates at all? But as we now must suspect, the Sanfords haven't been communicating with one another for a long time. Maybe too many Biblical references. He cites King David, she references a Psalm. It's like watching some kind of Bible camp competition. But then Mark has made clear they aren't soul mates. Thank God for the AP.

The good news, for them and their boys, is Mark promised Wednesday that he was finished talking about his private life. Maybe this will be the last statement from Jenny, too. Then if they're serious about reconciliation, it can take place in private. Don't count on it.

In the meantime, it looks like Sanford won't be stepping down and there won't be a law enforcement investigation of his actions. So what's next?

Well, there will be the conspiracy theories. One arrived today from the Columbia Christians for Life, a South Carolina anti-abortion group. Here's how they spelled out the key questions in an e-mail sent around today:

Was Maria Chapur assigned to commit adultery with Bilderberger Mark Sanford, potential 2012 U.S. presidential candidate?

1) As a potential U.S. President in 2012, was Sanford initially targeted for seduction into committing adultery so that he could be "controlled" [blackmailed] more easily by the Globalist Establishment, if elected president?

2) Since it appears that CFR-member, 33rd Degree Mason, Catholic Newt Gingrich has been given the "tap" by the Globalist Establishment to be the designated "front-runner" for the Republican 2012 presidential nomination,was Mark Sanford "exposed" because he went off the Globalist plantation by opposing Obama's stimulus,and trying to bill himself as a conservative hero, and positioning himself as a challenger to the NWO's Gingrich?

And you thought it was just a love story.

Biden makes surprise visit to Iraq

Vice President Joe Biden has landed in Baghdad on a surprise visit to Iraq.

The White House reports that Biden will meet with President Jalal Talabani, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Ayad al-Samarrai, Sspeaker of the Council of Reprsentatives.

Biden will stress anew the U.S. commitment to carry out President Obama's pledge to draw down U.S. troops.

His two-day trip is his second visit to Iraq this year, his first since taking office as vice president.

Kennedy, Dodd unveil new, less expensive health care plan_but with a fee

The Senate Health Committee’s top Democrats Thursday unveiled a revamped health care overhaul plan that would cost $611 billion over 10 years_far below previous estimates_but could impose a tax on employers.

Under legislation proposed by Chairman Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who has chaired the committee while the ailing Kennedy is ill, most employers that do not offer health coverage would be assessed an annual fee of $750 per full-time worker or $375 per part-time worker.

The senators called the fee “modest,” and said companies with fewer than 25 employees would be exempt.

Their new plan would cost a total of $611 billion over 10 years, down from the $1 trillion estimate of last month’s legislation, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the senators said..

President Barack Obama quickly embraced the plan,saying it “reflects many of the principles I’ve laid out.”

Among them: Changes that “will prohibit insurance companies from refusing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and the concept of  insurance exchanges where individuals can find affordable coverage if they lose their jobs, move or get sick.”

            The effort to overhaul health care, though, still has a long road ahead. The committee began writing its bill last month and recessed for the Fourth of July holiday. The sessions are scheduled to begin again Tuesday.

 Their plan faces opposition not only from many Republicans, who are wary of any public option, but from the Senate Finance Committee, where Democratic leaders have been working with GOP members to find bipartisan consensus.

Dodd and Kennedy outlined their revised plan in a letter to colleagues.

      “The completed bill virtually eliminates the dropping of currently covered employees from employer-sponsored health plans,” they said. It also projected about about 97 percent of Americans would have coverage.

The bill’s price tag would drop not only because of the new fee, but because it is assumed fewer employers would drop coverage.

    Its public option, or government plan, would be available nationwide. The Department of Health and Human Services would negotiate rates and premiums. A health insurance “gateway” would provide access to private insurance.

“For the many Americans who have good coverage, nothing will change,” the senators wrote. “They will still be able to keep their doctor, their hospital, and their insurance plan.  What our proposal offers these families is stability – no longer will Americans with good health care have to worry about losing everything if they lose or change their job, or if someone in their family becomes sick or injured.”

            They stress the importance of private companies staying involved, and stress how they “should still share in the responsibility for ensuring that everyone is covered.”

.                                                                                 

To read the Kennedy/Dodd letter:

http://dodd.senate.gov/?q=node/5062/print

July 01, 2009

Americans like government health care, but are not eager to pay for it

Americans overwhelmingly like the idea of a government-run health program — but balk at the idea of paying more than $500 a year for it, a new Quinnipiac University poll found.

The survey of more than 3,000 voters nationwide from June 23 to 29 said that 69 percent thought people should have the "public option" Democrats are seriously considering as they write health care legislation.

But only 49 percent said they would pay more for a health care overhaul — 45 percent said they would not — and 72 percent did not want to pay more than $500 annually. And by a 63 to 30 percent margin, people opposed taxing employer-paid health benefits.

Other findings: Of the 88 percent of insured Americans, 49 percent are very satisfied with their coverage and 36 percent are somewhat satisfied.

"American voters want their fellow countrymen to have the option of a public plan, but don't want a public plan for themselves because they are satisfied personally with their health care," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "That presents a challenge to those who want Americans to pay more to reform the system."

Read the poll here.

June 30, 2009

Maybe Sanford just wants to quit

Not the governor's office, but his marriage. How else can you explain his bizarre interview with the AP today in which he acknowledges that he's had relationships, though not fully carnal, with other women, that Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentine siren who drew him to abandon office and sanity two weeks ago, is his soul mate, and that he's trying now to fall back in love with his wife. This surely is not the right way to woo Jenny Sanford back.

Afterall, Jenny Sanford is already on record as having thrown him out to preserve her "dignity." Where's the dignity in taking back someone who thinks you're second fiddle? You can just hear her reaction. You have to fall back in love with me?! Forget it.

Of course, then Sanford could claim he tried, but Jenny rejected him. So he keeps the governor's office — plenty of people want him to stay, as this editorial from McClatchy's The State newspaper makes clear — and maybe has a chance with soulmate Maria, who's really said nothing, one way or the other.

One thing is clear: for the sake of the boys, Mark and Jenny really need to call it quits. Imagine growing up in the "reconciled" Sanford household, shuttling back and forth between his bedroom and hers, carrying messages, trying to keep your head down and avoiding any possibility of glancing at Dad's e-mail. The Sanfords clearly like to use others to carry their messages to one another. If AP were a child, you'd have to pity it, whipsawed first by Jenny's confessional last Friday and then Mark's today. That's no way to live, and the Sanfords' "spiritual advisers" ought to remember that sometimes surrender is the better part of valor.

Besides, living on Sullivan's Island and visiting Dad at Christmas in Punta del Este doesn't sound all that bad. If Jenny'll let them come.

Franken declared winner in Minnesota

The Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of the drawn-out U.S. Senate race, defeating Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and potentially giving the Democrats a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate. Here's the latest from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

No reaction yet from Coleman. The court ruled that Coleman's dispute of the election had no merit and said Franken should be issued a certificate of election. On Sunday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said he'd abide by whatever the court ruled.

UPDATE: Coleman conceded. So that's it.

Vanity Fair: "Palin’s life has sometimes played out like an unholy amalgam of Desperate Housewives and Northern Exposure"

Todd Purdam's Vanity Fair article about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is out in the August issue
of the magazine.

The article begins with a description of Palin's triumphant return to campaign-style politics, with her April appearance at the Vanderburgh County Right to Life dinner, but there also are some new campaign trail tidbits from 2008, like this from McCain-Palin aides:

"In recent rounds of long conversations, most made it clear that they suffer a kind of survivor’s guilt: they can’t quite believe that for two frantic months last fall, caught in a Bermuda Triangle of a campaign, they worked their tails off to try to elect as vice president of the United States someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job, and might never be. They quietly ponder the nightmare they lived through. Do they ever ask, What were we thinking? "Oh, yeah, oh, yeah," one longtime McCain friend told me with a rueful chuckle. "You nailed it."

And this:

"At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to afford health insurance of any kind, and had gone without it until he got his union card and went to work for British Petroleum on the North Slope of Alaska. Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along. She insisted that catastrophic insurance didn’t really count and need not be revealed. This sort of slipperiness -- about both what the truth was and whether the truth even mattered -- persisted on questions great and small."

June 29, 2009

Obama celebrates gay pride month at White House

For all the criticism that gay rights activists have directed at President Barack Obama recently, on Monday he became the first chief executive to mark Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month at the White House.

To applause and cheers, Obama repeated his yet unfulfilled campaign promises to end the military's ban on openly gay service members, expand hate-crimes protections, enact a law to prohibit employment discrimination and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which earlier this month had been defended by his own Justice Department.

"I know many in this room don't believe that progress has come fast enough. And I understand that," Obama said. "I expect and hope to be judged not by words, not by promises I've made, but by promises that my administration keeps."

Obama moved to quell some of the concern two weeks ago by granting limited benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees, including relocation expenses and long-term care insurance. However, it didn't include health insurance or survivor benefits, which most married couples take for granted.

Sunday was the 40th anniversary of the birth of the modern gay-rights movement. On June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York's Greenwich Village. Such raids were once commonplace, and patrons usually dispersed for fear that their sexual orientation would become public. This time they fought back in a riot that lasted for three days.

As if to illustrate the challenges gay people still face, Fort Worth, Texas, police raided a gay nightclub over the weekend, sparking a protest on Sunday. Last week in an e-mail, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis denounced the vandalism of posters for gay pride month at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

The lack of openly gay people in prominient positions in the administration, including the Cabinet, has caused some to wonder whether Obama is really in tune with their concerns. Nancy Sutley, the chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and John Berry, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, are the highest ranking openly gay members of the Obama team.

Obama dunks chief of staff

In this video of last week's Congressional Luau on the South Lawn released by the White House, President Obama sends Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel into the drink.

Also taking a dunk: Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

The video was shot by the White House, which also decided which segments to release.

June 26, 2009

ProPublica, WP: Obama preparing order to hold terrorist suspects indefinitely

A story that will appear in Saturday's Washington Post says that President Barack Obama is drafting an executive order that would renew the authority claimed by his predecessor to hold suspected terrorists in indefinite detention.

Here's an excerpt from the story, by Dafna Lizner of ProPublica and Peter Finn of the Washington Post:

"Such an order would embrace claims by former President George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

After months of internal debate over how to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, White House officials are growing increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may prove impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the facility by the president's January 2010 deadline." 

ProPublica is a nonprofit independent news organization that was created in 2007 to pursue investigative journalism as major newspapers cut back on such efforts amid falling readership and revenue. It's led by Paul Steiger, a former managing editor at the Wall Street Journal.