World News Korner

Courtesy of Politico:

In an interview, Begich gave Palin a “30 percent chance” of getting into the Republican primary this summer, insisting that Palin must do something to stay relevant on a national scale — and running for the Senate might do the trick.

“Here’s what she does. When she starts losing national attention — which she is — she has to find her entry point again. This is the way she operates,” Begich said.

The Alaska senator then repeatedly questioned Palin’s residency — as he did in an interview last July. This time Begich pointed to the database for the Permanent Fund Dividend Division, money paid to Alaska residents out of a state mineral royalties. A search of the 2013 database includes names of several members of Palin’s family, but no Sarah Palin.

“In Alaska you measure yourself as an Alaskan: Did you get your permanent fund check? She didn’t qualify this year, so I’m not sure if she’s Alaskan anymore,” Begich said. “In Alaska’s eyes that means you have no intent of coming back and you weren’t in Alaska long enough this year to be an Alaskan.”

Mark is exactly right about that PFD thing. (As we noted here at IM back in July of last year.) If you do not live here long enough during the year to qualify for one, then you are a transient, and have no business involving yourself in our politics.

Begich also said that Palin will have a tough time deciding who to endorse in the race, if she doesn't run. Which of course she won't.

“She’s in a box because Sullivan and Mead are establishment candidates. Joe Miller’s an insurgent and he had the best kickoff last week. He had a textbook kickoff,” Begich said. “She’s backing in other races. Why hasn’t she said anything about Alaska yet? But her brand will require her to. She has to.”

I think it is pretty clear that Begich has Palin's number.

I of course disagree that she is even entertaining the possibility to running for the Senate, because we all know she is terrified to attracting national scrutiny again, but I think the Senator has a point that Palin may feel compelled to proffer an endorsement.

However who would want it?

Essentially a Palin endorsement in Alaska would pretty much signal the end of your campaign, since there is NO place in the country where she is reviled more than right here in the Last Frontier.

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Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were often portrayed as geo-political soul mates, but government files declassified in London on Wednesday expose a deep British disdain for the president who was described in official papers as homophobic, uninformed, disinterested and, not to put too fine a point on it, “a Bozo.”

The British Foreign Office files seen by The Daily Beast show that Prime Minister Thatcher was warned President Reagan had little interest in world affairs and was unable to sustain a serious conversation about contemporary politics.

The damning critiques, which expressed sheer incredulity that this man could occupy the White House, were shared at the highest levels of government before and after Reagan’s first State Visit to Britain in 1982.

Despite the hostility of her advisors, Thatcher appeared to strike up a close relationship with Reagan based on their shared values. They loudly battled Communism together and were determined to vanquish the post-war economic consensus, which had been based on the work of John Maynard Keynes, in favor of trickle-down economics and low taxes.

Successive British ambassadors in Washington were deeply unimpressed with the former California governor, however. Sir Nicholas Henderson, who was in the job when Reagan was elected, described him as a dogmatic and simplistic man. “He has clear-cut opinions, not to say prejudices, as was apparent to me when he told me à propos Keynes that it must not be forgotten that he was a homosexual,” Henderson wrote in his United States Annual Review of 1981.

Anti-intellectual, anti-gay, anti-comprehension, oh yeah that was the Ronald Reagan that we knew and loathed here in the U.S..

Sir Oliver Wright, who replaced Henderson as the British Ambassador, was even less impressed with Reagan.

Wright was aghast to find that smart and serious political operatives in D.C. appeared happy to work under Reagan’s leadership. “No one in Washington smirks when they are expounding the President’s views or communicating his policies,” he said. “No one in official and hardly anyone in non-official Washington decries his want of powers of analysis or his inability to argue a closely reasoned case.”

Wright’s summation of the twin threads of the Administration’s policy objectives was equally damning. He described Reaganomics as “unsophisticated… it’s component parts self-contradictory” and his foreign policy as cartoonish and based on Reagan’s Wild West heritage. “California is on the look out for baddies and Public Baddie No 1 is the Soviet Union… baddies, as we all know, have only one proper fate: to bite the dust.”

Of course fortunately for Reagan there was Mikhail Gorbachev to usher in perestroika and do the dirty work in Russia, and allow Ronnie to take the lion's share of the credit.

Is it any wonder that a certain political lightweight choose him as her role model?

Palin at Reagan ranch

Since the British found Reagan so distasteful one can only imagine how upset they were by the election of George W. Bush in 2000. And if by some miracle Palin HAD been elected as the VP in 2008 perhaps they would have stopped returning our calls altogether.




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Courtesy of Salon:

Tennessee has become the first state in the nation to pass a law criminalizing women for their pregnancy outcomes. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam took the 10 days allotted to him to consider the advice of doctors, addiction experts and reproductive health groups urging him to veto the punitive and dangerous measure that allows prosecutors to charge a woman with criminal assault if she uses illegal drugs during her pregnancy and her fetus or newborn is considered harmed as a result. Haslam ignored these recommendations — and the recommendations of nearly every major medical association, including the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy — and signed the measure anyway.

Opponents of the new law share a concern that a lack of access to health care and treatment facilities will result in the disproportionate targeting and jailing of poor mothers and mothers of color, particularly in rural districts throughout the state.

Republican state Sen. Mike Bell, one of the seven Republicans in the state Senate to vote against the measure (every Democrat in the state Senate voted in favor), recently told Salon that this lack of access is a problem he thinks will hurt the women of his district and their families. “I represent a rural district,” he said. “There’s no treatment facility for these women there, and it would be a substantial drive for a woman caught in one of these situations to go to an approved treatment facility. Looking at the map of the state, there are several areas where this is going to be a problem.”

Only two of the state’s 177 addiction treatment facilities that provide on-site prenatal care allow older children to stay with their mothers while they are undergoing treatment. And only 19 of these facilities offer any addiction care specifically oriented toward pregnant women. Tennessee has also refused the Medicaid expansion, leaving many women without reliable access to basic medical or prenatal care, much less drug treatment.

The law does nothing to expand treatment options for women in Tennessee, a fact that did not seem to trouble Republican state Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver, who sponsored the House version of the bill and remains one of its most vocal defenders. “I don’t know what to say about [how] some [women] have insurance and some do not,” she recently told Salon. “It’s a terrible thing, but I don’t want to get into that because that’s another subject.”

This is one of those laws that almost feels like the right thing to do, but once you consider the possible ramifications it becomes immediately clear that it certainly it NOT.

I personally work with children born with FAS, or coke addicted, and I can certainly testify to my anger at their mothers fro being so uncaring and irresponsible that they condemned their children to a lifetime of suffering.

However this law is guaranteed to keep expectant mothers, who desperately need prenatal care, away from physicians and health care workers who could identify potential problems with the pregnancy, or even provide nutritional advice.

And of course this opens the door for more stringent laws in Tennessee's future that will almost certainly further restrict a woman's right to choose.

Because if you don't think that this is ultimately about abortion then you certainly don't understand Republican politics.

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Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch:

Duck Dynasty stars coming to Alaska State Fair: Get ready, Alaska. The Alaska State Fair announced Wednesday that the stars of Duck Dynasty, the hit A&E channel show, will be hosting "An Evening with the Robertsons." That includes revered matriarch, Miss Kay, blue-cup-holding, story-telling Uncle Si and brothers Jep and Alan, as they "share insights into their family life, booming business and the filming of A&E’s most-watched series." Also included is Phil, the "Duck Commander" himself, who weathered controversy last year after making homophobic remarks in an interview with GQ. The evening is scheduled for Aug. 30. Tickets go on sale May 2.

As if we don't already have enough racist rednecks up here.

Well you know that the Lunatic from Lake Lucille will certainly not let this opportunity pass without trying to take advantage of it in some way.

However there is some question as to whether the Robertson clan would welcome her participation in anything they would do up here, or whether she would be willing to show her face in Palmer which is only a hop, skip, and a drunken stumble away from Wasilla. (I can guarantee she would be greeted with boo's.)

Well I haven't decided if I am going to the State Fair this year or not, but I can assure you that I will not be there on May 2nd.

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