1 Boring Old Man

No, I’m not going to declare Mark Sanford and Sarah Palin are crazy Republican Governors ergo Republicans are crazy. After all, the Democrats had Eliot Spitzer and Rod Blagojevich. I’m not even going to claim Governors are crazy [even though that is 8% of our Governors]. But I do think that a few comments are in order about disrespect of elected office.

Mark Sanford talks about his office as Governor as a "therapy" for him - a way to redeem the trust of his wife and the South Carolinians he serves. He said he thought about resigning, but then decided that he would take the high road and face the music. That seems to me to be an amazingly self-serving way to look at public office. It’s not about him and his moral or spiritual growth, being Governor. It’s about running the State of South Carolina - a state has the third highest unemployment in the country, and is in big trouble. Sanford’s reign has been no great shakes before these last several weeks, mostly characterized by conservative rhetoric with little else. Now, he’s paralyzed and making a public fool of himself [I went surfing for someone to quote who thinks Mark Sanford should continue in public office, but came up empty-handed].

Sarah Palin was inaugurated Governor of Alaska on December 4th, 2006. She was announced to be John McCain’s running mate on August 29th, 2008 - a campaign that lasted until November 2nd, 2008. Today, she resigned as Governor effective July 26, 2009. Taking time out to run for Vice President and now leaving early, that means she actually served 37% of her term. She doesn’t seem to have spent much time in the public service to the people who elected her. She butchers the Kings English. ["We know we can affect positive change outside government at this point in time on another scale and actually make a difference for our priorities,"] There is little question that she would not even be a political contender except for her "cutsie" persona. Palin was "discovered" by William Kristol, editor for the ultra [neo]Conservative Weekly Standard while on an Alaska Cruise. His take on her resignation?

"My contrarian take is almost everyone I talk to thinks it’s crazy but I wonder maybe it’s crazy like a fox," said Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, who has been out defending Palin this past week. Kristol’s view is that spending another 18 months in office in Alaska will not persuade skeptics that she’s ready to be president. Instead, he said, she can use this time to travel the country and the world, to immerse herself in policy issues and to campaign for Republican candidates, without facing questions every time she leaves her state about whether she is shirking her responsibilities.

Surreality Only Beginning
By Josh Marshall

As David noted below, many commentators have taken little more than an hour to proceed from slack-jawed bewilderment to belief that Sarah Palin’s unexplained resignation may be a political masterstroke.

For the moment there’s no clear evidence of or explanation for some massive political or scandal bombshell that would have driven Palin from office. And it can be difficult not to allow the preposterous to become credible when many supposedly rational people are saying it.

But logic and common sense seldom fail as a guide to understanding politics. And the idea that Gov. Palin just up and decided for no reason in particular to resign her office little more than half way through her term, with a hastily assembled press conference and a rambling and histrionic speech, is just too silly for serious consideration. Another sign of the confusion on the inside are the comments reporters are getting from supposed Palin insiders. Palin insiders told Andrew Mitchell that Palin was “out of politics for good.” But she told the Executive Director of the Republican Governors Association that she’s resigning to campaign for more candidates in the continental US, work on her book, all with an eye to gearing up for her run for president in 2012. Call me cynical but it seems hard to reconcile those two explanations.

As with her speech itself, the tell is that the decision was apparently so rushed and sudden that there was not enough time to come up with a plausible cover story or to get out the word about what it was.

It looks like a duck and quacks like a duck. Either Palin is resigning ahead of some titanic scandal [which should emerge in short order if it exists] or her resignation was triggered by an even more extreme mental instability than we’d previously suspected.

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION: JUNE 2009

Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in June (-467,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Job losses were widespread across the major industry sectors, with large declines occurring in manufacturing, professional and business services, and construction…

Unemployment (Household Survey Data)

The number of unemployed persons (14.7 million) and the unemployment rate (9.5 percent) were little changed in June. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 7.2 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 4.6 percentage

In June, unemployment rates for the major worker groups–adult men (10.0 percent), adult women (7.6 percent), teenagers (24.0 percent), whites (8.7 percent), blacks (14.7 percent), and Hispanics (12.2 per-cent)–showed little change. The unemployment rate for Asians was 8.2 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

Among the unemployed, the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs (9.6 million) was little changed in June after increasing by an average of 615,000 per month during the first 5 months of this year…

  

Iran Cleric Says British Embassy Staff to Stand Trial
New York Times
By ALAN COWELL and STEPHEN CASTLE
July 3, 2009

PARIS — Brushing aside British and European efforts to seek the release of local British Embassy staff members held in Tehran, the Iranian authorities indicated Friday that they planned to put some of them on trial — a move that deepened a diplomatic crisis and could provoke the withdrawal of ambassadors.

In London, the Foreign Office said it was urgently checking reports that the Iranian authorities planned to put two of its local employees on trial. Nine staff members were seized after the unrest sparked by Iran’s disputed presidential elections on June 12.

Hours after the Iranian threat, the European Union seemed to hold back from an out-and-out showdown, resolving to summon Iranian ambassadors in all 27 countries to send “a strong message of protest against the detention of British Embassy local staff and to demand their immediate release,” a European diplomat said, speaking in return for anonymity.

Other measures — such as a ban on issuing visas to Iranian travelers and a pullout of European ambassadors — would be considered depending on how the crisis unfolded, the diplomat said.

The Iranian authorities accused the local employees of fomenting and orchestrating protests, but pro-democracy Iranians ascribed the violence on the streets to a widespread crackdown by government security forces.

In London, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Office, speaking in return for customary anonymity under civil service rules, said: “We are very concerned by these reports and are investigating. Allegations that our staff are involved in fomenting unrest are wholly without foundation. We will be seeking an urgent explanation from the Iranians”…

My understanding of why Obama mostly kept his mouth shut was that he has good sense. By criticizing the Iranian government, the E.U. played in to the Iranian Cleric’s Standard Operating Procedure: Rally support by attacking the west. Remember Jimmy Carter’s debacle. Now we’ll have marching in the streets, burning the British Embassy, etc. All very familiar.

CIA Wants to Stall All Summer on IG Report
By emptywheel
July 2, 2009

Uh oh. The ACLU asked the CIA to stop stalling on production of the CIA IG report. And now the CIA has invented a reason to stall until the August 31 deadline that Hellerstein has given them - they want to review the 318 other documents it owes the ACLU first.

^{As we explained to the Court and Plaintiffs when Plaintiffs first raised the prospect of expediting the Special Review Report, the Report poses unique processing issues. It is over 200 pages long and contains a comprehensive summary and review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. The Report touches upon the information contained in virtually all of the remaining 318 documents remanded for further review. Although the Government has endeavored in good faith to complete the review of the Special Review Report first, as we have gone through the process, we have determined that prioritizing the Report is simply untenable. In this instance, we have determined that the only practicable approach is to first complete the review of the remaining 318 documents, and then apply the withholding determinations made with respect to the information in those documents to the Special Review Report. One month into that process, we have concluded that we must review all of the documents together, and that the review will take until August 31, 2009.}

Shorter the CIA: Obama said we have to make this stuff public. So we’re going to buy ourselves two more months until we make it public. If Judge Hellerstein allows them.

Update: The ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer responds:

^{The CIA has already had more than five months to review the inspector general’s report, and the report is only about two hundred pages long. We’re increasingly troubled that the Obama administration is suppressing documents that would provide more evidence that the CIA’s interrogation program was both ineffective and illegal. President Obama should not allow the CIA to determine whether evidence of its own unlawful conduct should be made available to the public. The public has a right to know what took place in the CIA’s secret prisons and on whose authority.}

^{There is nothing I can do that will make anyone feel better for the pain and suffering I caused them, but I will live with this pain, with this torment for the rest of my life. I apologize to my victims. I will turn and face you. I am sorry. I know that doesn’t help you.}

^{So if Hellerstein says “no dice” and forces them to release it forthwith, will they simply release another mostly redacted version? What will Hellerstein’s response likely be?}

The operative old saying here is, "Don’t do the Crime, if you can’t do the time." It’s a better choice that the one Bush couldn’t remember, "Fool me once, Shame on you. Fool me twice, Shame on me." But that one applies too. These people [Cheney, the C.I.A.] have hidden in the cracks too many times! We’re onto them.

^{President Obama should not allow the CIA to determine whether evidence of its own unlawful conduct should be made available to the public. The public has a right to know what took place in the CIA’s secret prisons and on whose authority.}

So yesterday, Mark Sanford tells the intimate details of his secret search for love in the dance halls of South America, and his readiness to die knowing he’s at last found his soulmate Maria [who apparently remains cloistered in an Argentine high rise]. Today, his wife, Jenny, releases a public statement offering potential forgiveness, then outlining the requirements for his redemption, reconcilliation, and his return to the family. Tomorrow, he joins them in Florida for the holiday weekend.

For review, Governor Mark Sanford disappeared for  days, then he is found one morning getting off of a plane in Atlanta - from Argentina. He tells the reporter about adventure trips he takes to blow off steam - "some place exotic." But the paper is holding emails between he and an Argentine woman named Maria. They call and threaten to release their emails, so by that afternoon, Sanford tells us that he’s been having an affair [after more history about his adventure trips and some folksy religious blathering]. In the next few days, we learn that his wife knows about the affair, and that the Governor has been in counselling with his Christian friends. He’s asked his wife let him visit the other woman. He’s suggested that his wife go with him to meet the other woman. He’s flown to meet her in New York with one of his spiritual advisers to break it off.  Then we find out that he and his wife have been separated for two weeks, and on the day he separated, he booked a ticket to Argentina for the fateful "missing Governor" trip.

Since then, we’ve had daily updates on the intimate details of Sanford’s affair. Of all the public confessionals of erring public officials to date, Governor Mark Sanford has taken the crown away from President Clinton - previous record holder. Mark Sanford has painted himself into a cramped corner and sounds like a mental case - which he obviously is. About the only thing that would surprise us at this point would be for a space ship to land on the grounds of the Governor’s mansion that takes him up into the sky. Now that I think of it, that’s about the only thing that would resolve this impossible dilemma.

Which brings me to this release from his wife. Governor Sanford talks about his relationship with Maria like a love-sick teenager. In every interview, he talks about his duties to his wife and children, his "fiduciary" duty to the people of South Carolina, and "what’s right" vis-a-vis the Bible. Then he lapses into talking about his soul-mate Maria, and his love, and tragedy. Surely wife Jenny reads all this stuff about him wanting to fall in love with his wife again [meaning he isn't]. Surely she hears all this talk about his "heart" being elsewhere. Surely she knows that she’s married to a guy who is big time damaged goods.

So in this statement, she’s talking about forgiving him, "[the] essence of forgiveness and the critical need to channel one’s energy into positive steps that uphold the dignity of marriage and the family, and lead to reconciliation over time. My forgiveness is essential for us both to move on with our lives, with peace, in whatever direction that may take us." She’s willing to forgive him if he works real hard, "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."

So, in this very public forum, Governor Sanford is talking about his duty to reconcile with his wife while making it beyond clear that his heart is in Argentina. And Jenny, his wife, is talking about her duty to forgive him as he repents and restores the dignity of their marriage. It seems a little premature from where I sit for Jenny Sanford to be setting up her parameters for forgiveness while her husband is talking about his devotion to his soul-mate in Buenos Aires. Surely she’s reading the same Governor Sanford interviews as the rest of us.

 ⁴ In your anger do not sin;
       when you are on your beds,
       search your hearts and be silent.
       Selah

Time for an Israeli Strike?
Washington Post
By John R. Bolton
July 2, 2009

With Iran’s hard-line mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps unmistakably back in control, Israel’s decision of whether to use military force against Tehran’s nuclear weapons program is more urgent than ever.

Iran’s nuclear threat was never in doubt during its presidential campaign, but the post-election resistance raised the possibility of some sort of regime change. That prospect seems lost for the near future or for at least as long as it will take Iran to finalize a deliverable nuclear weapons capability. Accordingly, with no other timely option, the already compelling logic for an Israeli strike is nearly inexorable. Israel is undoubtedly ratcheting forward its decision-making process. President Obama is almost certainly not.

He still wants "engagement" [a particularly evocative term now] with Iran’s current regime. Last Thursday, the State Department confirmed that Secretary Hillary Clinton spoke to her Russian and Chinese counterparts about "getting Iran back to negotiating on some of these concerns that the international community has." This is precisely the view of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, reflected in the Group of Eight communique the next day…

Sanford admits to more liaisons with mistress
The Hill
By Reid Wilson
06/30/09

In an interview with The Associated Press, Sanford admitted to as many as seven meetings with Maria Belen Chapur since 2001, including five during the year Sanford has said he was engaged in a romantic relationship with her. Further, the two-term Republican governor said he had casual encounters with other women, but that he did not have sex with them. Those encounters happened, he said, outside the United States but before he met Chapur… Sanford’s wife, Jenny, discovered the affair in January when she discovered a letter he had written her. Sanford told the AP he asked his wife to visit Chapur with him several times, but she refused. In the interview, Sanford called Chapur his ’soul mate,’ but said he is trying to fall back in love with his wife…

On Monday, Sanford issued an apology letter to supporters in which he asked for their forgiveness and said he had considered, then rejected, thoughts of resigning. "Immediately after all this unfolded last week I had thought I would resign — as I believe in the military model of leadership and when trust of any form is broken one lays down the sword," Sanford wrote to supporters. "While it would be personally easier to exit stage left, their point has been that my larger sin was the sin of pride."

Sanford, who has often clashed with fellow Republicans in the Palmetto State Legislature, said instead he thought the 2010 legislative session — his last as governor — could turn a page. His friends said their "belief was that if I walked in with a real spirit of humility then this last legislative term could well be our most productive one — and that outside this term, I would ultimately be a better person and of more service in whatever doors God opened next in life if I stuck around to learn lessons rather than running and hiding down at the farm," Sanford wrote.

SC gov gambles to ‘lay it all out’ about affair
The State
By TAMARA LUSH and BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE
June 30, 2009

… Among the additional visits with Chapur that Sanford detailed was an encounter that he described as a failed attempt at a farewell meeting in New York this past winter, chaperoned by a spiritual adviser and sanctioned by his wife soon after she found out about the affair.

Sanford said he saw Chapur five times over the past year, including two romantic, multi-night stays with her in New York - one in Manhattan, one in the Hamptons, both paid for in cash so no one would know - before they met in the city again with the intention of breaking up.

Four months later, he got on a plane to Argentina for another rendezvous with Chapur when he made an important discovery. "I will be able to die knowing that I had met my soul mate," he said…

Note that ALL of the O.L.C. opinions used for the War on Terror have been withdrawn [prior to Obama's Inauguration]…