SANTIAGO, Chile - President Bush stepped into the middle of a confrontation and pulled his lead Secret Service agent away from Chilean security officials who barred his bodyguards from entering an elegant dinner for 21 world leaders Saturday night.Several Chilean and American agents got into a pushing and shoving match outside the cultural center where the dinner was held.
As always, I await Elizabeth Warren's critique. But it doesn't take an expert to see that forbidding states from writing their own, tougher regulations probably isn't good:
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee will unveil on Monday a proposal to revamp the nation’s financial regulations that would empower shareholders to have advisory votes on executive pay and to nominate directors for the boards of public companies through company proxy ballots, several people briefed on the draft legislation said Saturday night.
The shareholder provisions, which have been vigorously opposed by many corporations and by Republicans, will be part of a bill that would amount to the most sweeping overhaul of financial regulations since the Depression. But with no Republican support yet for the proposal, Democratic lawmakers and the White House have been gearing up for a potentially bitter partisan fight.
The impending proposal by the chairman, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, hews in many ways to a proposal advanced last summer by the White House, the people briefed on the legislation said.
[...] The bill would create a consumer financial protection agency under the umbrella of the Federal Reserve, but with a director appointed by the president and the ability to write rules governing mortgages, credit cards, payday loans and a wide range of other financial products.
It would have some ability, within certain parameters, to ensure that the rules are followed; how the rules would be enforced has been a major source of partisan division. As in a House version of regulatory overhaul adopted in December, the bill would, in some circumstances, restrict states from writing their own, stronger consumer protection rules.
The Federal Reserve would see its bank supervision powers significantly diminished. It would continue to oversee bank holding companies with $50 billion or more in assets, and would be entrusted to regulate systemically important nonbank financial institutions. Mr. Dodd had considered setting the threshold at $100 billion, which would have been even worse for the Fed.
Sarah Palin drew a straight line from Alaska to Alberta as she told a sold-out, largely adoring crowd in Calgary that the province gets her message of less government, lower taxes and development of natural resources.
In what was billed as her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska last summer, Ms. Palin's trademark folksy charm was on full display Saturday night.[..]
The vocal opponent of health-care reform in the U.S. steered largely clear of the topic except to reveal a tidbit about her life growing up not far from Whitehorse.
“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” she said. “And I think now, isn't that ironic?”
Well yes, Sarah, you could call it "ironic" that you feel no compunction about running across the border to avail yourself of the health care you fight and lie and propagandize against to keep your fellow Americans from enjoying. Or you could call it "grossly hypocritical." However, I prefer to think of it as "brainlessly missing the picture" and hoping to take a bunch a tea baggers down with you. If we indeed had "the best health care system in the world", why would anyone go to Canada?
Because it was free? Because you didn't need to decide whether the need for a doctor was important enough to pay the associated costs, even if it meant forgoing a few meals or a payment elsewhere? Because you felt you had a RIGHT to good health and the Canadian government agreed that it is in everyone's best interest?
Was the socialized medicine safety net of Canada frightening? Of course not. It was a social service that Palin used when she needed...even though she presumably paid no taxes into the Canadian system (remember how important it was to the GOP to make sure illegal immigrants couldn't milk the system).
But will any one of her fans or the nut case tea-baggers screaming about how Obama wants to turn us into some socialist state ever put two and two together and realize it's something we should aspire to?
I just put her teabagger speech on and man it's tough to listen to her. Her voice has this weird off putting quality to it. Not quite like chalk against a blackboard, but just as annoying.
Take a drink every time she says "common sense," but don't drive.
I'd rather be watching the Rangers vs the Devils hockey game right now. Brodeur and The King is a great goalie match up, but it's my job on a Saturday night so here I am.
My friend MB got a call Saturday night from one of her law school professors, whose about-to-be-adopted children were stranded in an orphanage in Haiti. (The paperwork was finalized, all that remained was the trip home to America.)
They were out of food and water, and some of the children's caretakers were killed in the quake. Apparently people had broken into their compound and taken their supplies, the situation was dire and the adoptees' mother was frantic. MB was trying to help. "I knew you'd have some ideas," she said.
First I forwarded the information about the orphanage to a state department official via Twitter. Then I thought about other options. "If that was me," I told MB, "I'd be contacting all my local TV stations to get them to do a story, hoping the national media picked it up."
"Good idea," she said, and got off the phone to call her professor.
After a Sunday afternoon conference call with U.S. officials working in Haiti, I called to tell her the U.S. State Department was aware of the 500 orphans who were in the process of adoption, they'd already evacuated 150 to the United States and five more were leaving Sunday afternoon. She said she'd pass the information along.
Yesterday morning, on my way to the dentist, I called MB to see whether she had any news. She'd called a friend who called a friend and yes, a Fox News crew went out to the orphanage and they got some food and water delivered to the orphans. Yay, Fox News! (You probably won't hear me say that again anytime soon.)
"But we still have to save the internet," she said, worriedly.
"MB, what are you talking about?" (She's a classic Cancer and just isn't happy unless she's worried about someone.)
Well, MB's husband Eric (one of the founders of the blogging Koufax awards) works for CORE, and used to work for ICANN, the international internet body. Seems that there are three people in Haiti capable of running the country's internet NOC (network operations center), and two of them died in the quake. The one remaining operator, Reynold Guerrier, told Eric the center was using a generator - and running out of fuel. Thugs were trying to break into the facility to steal what they could, but the NOC operator held them off. He was very worried about his wife and children, but told Eric he'd stay if someone would get his family out of the country.
MB was frantic. "I've called everyone I can think of, but everyone's closed for the holiday," she said. "I'm contacting people to try to get a number, just any kind of back-door contact. I wrote Joe Trippi to see if he can help."
"I'd try congressional staffers," I said. "What about Stoller? He works for Alan Grayson."
"I used to have his number. Who would have his new number? Would Natasha?"
When I came home from my lawyer's appointment, I called her again. She'd spoken to Darcy Burner, who told her either Sen. Patty Murray or Sen. Maria Cantwell would call her in 15 minutes. And Natasha had passed all the info onto Matt Stoller.
"I thought the internet was set up so that if one part went down, another part patched in," I said, a little whiny. (I only got four hours' sleep the night before and after spending the morning in the dentist's chair, I was just plain cranky.)
MB explained that if the router wasn't up and running, there was nothing to patch into. "And a lot of utilities, like the electrical system, run off the internet," she said. "So they won't be able to get back up without it." Oh.
So anyway, a bunch of dedicated people have been working very, very hard (not me - I didn't work that hard at all, I'm an idea person) to save orphans and the Haitian internet, and they all deserve a round of applause. Nice work, people! Smoochies to MB and everyone who helped her save the world.
I spent all day traveling yesterday, so I wasn't able to get this up, bu Darcy Burner's keynote speech at Netroots Nation on Saturday night was classic Darcy: concise, but compelling. Especially the heart of the speech:
So President Clinton -- how many of you were here for President Clinton's speech the other night? -- President Clinton did something very interesting in his speech. He delivered two fundamentally contradictory messages. He said, support the health-care legislation no matter what it is. That was one message he sent that he delivered quite clearly. But the other message that he delivered was that "Don't ask, don't tell" became policy even though he knew it was the wrong thing, because, he said, we didn't support him and make him do the right thing. That second message, that we have to make our leaders do the right thing was raw and true.
We can't rely on people in authority to make everything right. We have got to do the hard work of governing. It's our job as Americans. It's our obligation. And to be perfectly blunt, I consider it my obligation for Henry.
The vehicle we have for change is the people we have elected, and we have done, collectively, a tremendous job of electing people to office in this country. We have taken back the House, we have taken back the Senate, we have taken the presidency of the United States.
But that is just the beginning of the battle. There are a lot of people -- mostly not the people in this room, but a lot of people who thought that was sufficient and have stopped. We have to help the people that we have elected. And to be perfectly blunt, we have been asked to.
I have been working for the past several months with the Congressional Progressive Caucus -- eighty-three of the most progressive members of the United States House and the United States Senate -- and the message that I get from them consistently is: "We are doing everything in our power to make a difference. But we have to have the support of the grassroots. We need the grassroots helping to frame the message, we need the grassroots applying pressure."
In the health-care debate that's going down right now, the Congressional Progressive Caucus did something absolutely revolutionary in March -- which is that in March Congressman Raul Grijalva, the newly elected co-chair of the caucus, whipped the progressive members of the caucus and got enough of the members to say, "We will not support any piece of health-care legislation that doesn't include a public option."
That the progressives were able to then send a letter to President Obama and to Nancy Pelosi and to Steny Hoyer saying, "Guess what? You want health-care legislation? It isn't the Blue Dogs you need to be worrying about. You need to talk to progressives, because we are drawing the line, and we are not going to back down."
The next day I heard it being bandied about that Darcy suggested caving on the public option. As I told my friends, that wasn't what I heard. And if you watch the video, I don't think it's what you'll hear either.
I grabbed Darcy Burner for a quick minute to say hi to C&L's readers at the 2009 Netroots Nation shindig. She was recently named to serve on the board of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation. It's been an amazing time and just before she did this video, Darcy was named to give the keynote speech Saturday night. Good times.
At Saturday night’s Republican debate, Mike Huckabee used a word he emphasizes quite a bit: “vertical.”
“I think we also ought to recognize that what Senator Obama has done is to touch at the core of something Americans want,” Huckabee said. “They are so tired of everything being horizontal — left, right, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican. They’re looking for vertical leadership that leads up, not down. He has excited a lot of voters in this country. Let’s pay respect for that. He’s a likable person who has excited people about wanting to vote who have not voted in the past.”
A few hours earlier, Josh Marshall noted that “vertical” is a Huckabee favorite, with the former governor’s website arguing, “I think the country is looking for somebody who is vertical.”
Can anyone explain what the hell that means? Vertical? I guess if you’re main opponent was Fred Thompson you might push the fact that you spend most of your time standing up. But seriously, is there something I’m missing here? Or is this the weirdest campaign I’ve ever heard?
I mean, at a minimum it’s setting the bar for his presidency pretty low, right?
What’s more, by way of James Joyner, there’s apparently an entire “vertical politics” section on Huckabee’s website, in which he touts something called “Vertical Day,” though it’s not quite clear what that means.
So, is this just some slightly-awkward campaign catch-phrase? Perhaps, but more likely, it looks like there are dog-whistle implications.
"Kathy Griffin's offensive remarks will not be part of the E! telecast on Saturday night," the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences said in a statement Monday. In her speech, Griffin said that "a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus."
She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-color remark about Christ and proclaim, "This award is my god now!" The off-color remark was to say, "Suck it, Jesus."
I happen to like Jesus and His teachings a great deal, but this is ridiculous. This is America and we have a Constitution---or so I thought. And she has the same free speech rights that the odious and violent Bill Donohue has. I haven't seen him censored. (scroll down to see some of his antics)
Bush pulls top security agent from Chile fracas
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