Weekend Open Thread

Filed in National by on May 22, 2010

I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend. It’s open thread time again here in DL world. Share your thoughts, plans, rants and everything else.

In a move that surprised absolutely no one, Andrew Cuomo announced that he’s running for governor of New York.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Saturday officially entered the race to become the Empire State’s next governor, a move that has been long anticipated and long planned for.

Gov. David Paterson (D), who has been embattled for most of his tenure since assuming office in March of 2008, announced in February that he would not run for a full term. Cuomo is viewed as the overwhelming favorite to succeed Paterson over former Rep. Rick Lazio and Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, who are seeking the Republican nomination.

Yes, Rick Lazio, the guy that lost to Hillary Clinton the first time she ran for Senate. He ran on the “I’m not Hillary Clinton” platform. No word yet on whether he plans on running on that same platform in this race.

Who could have guessed that this would look bad?

Earlier this week, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar announced a reorganization of the Minerals Management Service (MMS), which has been rife with corruption and incompetence. MMS would be split into three different offices. Shortly after Salazar’s announcement, John Goll, the head of the Alaska MMS office, called an “all hands” staff meeting to eat a cake decorated with the words, “Drill, Baby, Drill.” Goll is now expressing regret for the incident:

In an e-mail Thursday to agency employees nationwide, Regional Director John Goll says it was wrong and expressed regret that he let that happen in his office.

The MMS under Bush was stunningly corrupt. There was a huge sex scandal involving MMS employees sleeping with oil company executives. Breaking up the permit function and the regulatory function is a good first step but obviously there’s a long way to go before that agency is cleaned up.

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Comments (17)

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  1. anon says:

    Today’s lesson… if you don’t want to be threatened with a taser for smoking a joint… you need a bigger gun.

    Fortunately nobody got killed. And fortunately the guy turned out to be an actual bad guy. But if he wasn’t, this would be a story about the Second Amendment and self defense.

    Eventually there will be an innocent person who successfully defends himself against an improper police taser, and then it will be a whole new narrative.

  2. skippertee says:

    Yes,like DEREK HALE! Innocently sitting on a stoop,minding his own business.Had been under constant secret surveillance the preceding two hours.Observed teaching a child to ride a two wheeler and loading a car with household items.No warrants for this x-marine,veteran of TWO combat tours of IRAQ.
    Suddenly,three blacked out SUV’s arrive and disgorge at least 10 SWAT members in full black battle gear armed with assault rifles to confront one man who stood 5’5″and weighed less than 150lbs.They surround him,some screaming,”DON’T MOVE!!!”,and others,”Take YOUR HANDS OUT WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!!!”,TASER him SEVEN times,and after he VOMITS and begins to slump forward,is SHOT THREE TIMES in the chest because the officers FEARED for THEIR LIVES.
    ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???????
    The civil trial is schelduled for April 11,2011.You BETTER believe I’LL be there.

  3. Someone kill me now.The Washington Post criticizes Elena Kagan’s fashion choices and she doesn’t cross her legs when she sits. How horrifying! (Not)

    But Kagan took the anti-style offensive several steps further. She put on rouge and lipstick for the formal White House announcement of her nomination, but mostly she embraced dowdy as a mark of brainpower. She walked with authority and stood up straight during her visits to the Hill, but once seated and settled during audiences with senators, she didn’t bother maintaining an image of poised perfection. She sat hunched over. She sat with her legs ajar.

    Kagan made her debut as a U.S. Supreme Court nominee dressed in a hip-length emerald-green jacket, black underpinnings, sheer black hosiery, sturdy black pumps, a strand of pearls and matching earrings. Her style was tidy and conservative but with a generous sprinkling of frumpiness of the sort that federal Washington can’t resist — at least when in front of a camera’s intruding lens.

    In the photographs of Kagan sitting and chatting in various Capitol Hill offices, she doesn’t appear to ever cross her legs. Her posture stands out because for so many women, when they sit, they cross. People tend to mimic each other’s body language during a conversation, especially if they’re trying to connect with one another. But even when Kagan sits across from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who has her legs crossed at the knees, Kagan keeps both feet planted firmly on the ground. Her body language will not be bullied into conformity.

    She does not cross her legs at the ankles either, the way so many older women do. Instead, Kagan sits, in her sensible skirts, with her legs slightly apart, hands draped in her lap. The woman and her attire seem utterly at odds. She is intent on being comfortable. No matter what the clothes demand. No matter the camera angle.

  4. cassandra_m says:

    And the media wonders why no one respects them anymore. They even found horserace detail in the woman’s fashion choices. Oy.

  5. delacrat says:

    Skipper,

    check this recent link on antiwar.com .

    What happened to Derek Hale has become SOP for police dept’s in the US.

    What’s really chilling is that the so-called “rules of engagement” (guidelines for murder) in Afghanistan and Iraq are more restrictive than what US SWAT teams go by.

    http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/05/20/will-grigg-13/

  6. a.price says:

    looking out my 15th story window towards north wilmington. does anyone know anything about a large fire near Namans rd and 95?

  7. Geezer says:

    “The civil trial is schelduled for April 11,2011.You BETTER believe I’LL be there.”

    Unless the family is more interested in getting the truth out than getting closure, this will be settled without a trial.

  8. P.Schwartz says:

    Obama wins the right to detain people with no habeas review
    Salon.com | May 21, 2010 | Glenn Greenwald

    Few issues highlight Barack Obama’s extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does. As everyone knows, one of George Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting people from all over the world — far away from any battlefield — and then detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any kind, not even the most minimal right to a habeas review in a federal court.

    Back in the day, this was called “Bush’s legal black hole.” In 2006, Congress codified that policy by enacting the Military Commissions Act, but in 2008, the Supreme Court, in Boumediene v. Bush, ruled that provision unconstitutional, holding that the Constitution grants habeas corpus rights even to foreign nationals held at Guantanamo.

    So congratulations to the United States and Barack Obama for winning the power to abduct people anywhere in the world and then imprison them for as long as they want with no judicial review of any kind…when Obama went to the Senate floor in September, 2006, to speak against the habeas-denying provisions of the Military Commissions Act, this is what he melodramatically intoned:

    ” As a parent, I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence. . . .

    By giving suspects a chance — even one chance — to challenge the terms of their detention in court, to have a judge confirm that the Government has detained the right person for the right suspicions, we could solve this problem without harming our efforts in the war on terror one bit. . . .”

  9. jason330 says:

    Via TPM, Josh Green at the Atlantic has a theory about the Rand Paul implosion. He says that the in-state Kentucky press has been so decimated by the newspaper crisis that there was no one to give him the kind of scrutiny Paul got on day one when he went national.

  10. P.Schwartz says:

    GOP wins House seat in Obama’s home district

    Associated Press ^ | May 23, 2010 | HERBERT A. SAMPLE

    HONOLULU (AP) — Republican Charles Djou (duh-JOO’) has won a Democratic-held House seat in Hawaii in the district where President Barack Obama grew up. The special election is the latest triumph for the GOP as it looks to take back control of Congress.

  11. jason330 says:

    Oh.,,,Hawaii, I thought you meant Kenya.

  12. P.Schwartz says:

    that’s the AP’s mistake, not mine.

  13. Rebecca says:

    Don’t cha love the objectivity of the line “The special election is the latest triumph for the GOP as it looks to take back control of Congress.” They can’t report straight news without making it sound like something straight from the RNC press office. But it probably is. Damned stenographers.

  14. jason330 says:

    The good old liberal media at work.

  15. jason330 says:

    But why am I as a liberal so enthralled by Rand Paul’s rise to prominence among Republicans? I think Paul’s hard line take on the Government (any government anywhere proposing any regulation) as alloyed evil marks the distinct and knowable over-reaching point for wingnutia. His primary victory is the high water mark for the reductio ad absurdum teabagger thinking in the GOP that regards BP as the victim of over regulation.

    Andy Borowitz put sit this way…

    MINNEAPOLIS – (The Borowitz Report) – In a sign of his increasing prominence in the so-called Tea Party movement, a new poll shows Kentucky senatorial candidate Rand Paul topping former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin among voters who describe themselves as morons.

    In the poll, conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, 42% preferred Paul, 36% preferred Palin, and the remaining 22% were unsure what the word “prefer” meant.

  16. P.Schwartz says:

    more super duper transparancy…

    Washington (AP) – What job (BRIBE) did the White House offer Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak if he skipped the Pennsylvania Senate primary and who made the offer? Sestak isn’t saying — and the White House only says “nothing inappropriate” took place. Sestak won his party’s Senate nomination last week. His opponent was longtime Sen. Arlen Specter, who ditched the GOP last year and became a Democrat. Sestak says the White House offered him a job — he’s not saying what it was — if he would leave Specter alone. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs isn’t saying if Sestak was offered a…

  17. P.Schwartz says:

    even Dems are noticing the smell…

    Dem lawmaker urges White House to release details on Sestak job

    The Hill ^ | 05/24/10 | Michael O’Brien
    Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner (N.Y.) called on the White House Monday to detail conversations it allegedly had with Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) to try to convince him to drop his Senate bid. Weiner said allegations that White House officials had offered Sestak an administration job in exchange for his dropping his primary bid against Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) had become a growing political liability. “I think what the White House should do is, to some degree, say, ‘Here are the facts,'” Weiner said Monday morning during an appearance on MSNBC. “If there’s not a lot [to] what’s going on here,…