Good morning Conflucians! I’m a bit late this morning, because I stayed up practically all night reading a murder mystery that I couldn’t put down. At least I wasn’t working. It looks like a pretty slow news day, as you might expect. There’s still quite a bit of talk about the couple who crashed the White House state dinner the other night. According to the Washington Post,
A woman describing herself as a publicist for the Salahis denied that they were interlopers. Pressed for details, Mahogany Jones sent a statement saying simply: “The Salahis were honored to be a part of such a prestigious event. . . . They both had a wonderful time.”
While the White House offered no official explanation, it appears to be the first time in modern history that anyone has crashed a White House state dinner. The uninvited guests were in the same room as President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, although it is unknown whether they met the Obamas and the guest of honor.
If they really were crashers–and it sure sounds like it–the White House needs to be a lot more careful in the future.
The New York Times has an interesting story about the Massachusetts Senate race: 4 Vie for Kennedy’s Seat, but Only 3 Seek His Mantle. The NYT seems surprised that the candidate who isn’t constantly invoking the memory of Ted Kennedy and swearing to follow in his footsteps is the one who is leading the race. Yep, that’s Attorney General Martha Coakley.
A liberal Democrat like her rivals, Ms. Coakley has nonetheless billed herself as “a different kind of leader,” a phrase flashed in her campaign ads. Those ads have not mentioned Senator Kennedy, and yet she has outraised her opponents (though Mr. Pagliuca has spent more, by dipping into his personal fortune) and won the highest favorability ratings, which a Boston Globe poll published Sunday put at 71 percent.
“Martha has cut her own image, and it’s worked,” said Dan Payne, a Democratic media consultant in Boston who has remained neutral in the race. “She doesn’t need to glom onto the Kennedy legacy, because she’s the only one with statewide experience and exposure.”
In her biggest political risk to date, Ms. Coakley attacked the health care plan passed on Nov. 7 by the House because of its restrictions on abortion coverage. She said she would not support it, a stance that could help her among women but could also backfire among voters eager for a health care overhaul.
Maybe Massachusetts voters just aren’t as stupid as the NYT thinks we are. I guess they’ve forgotten that Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary here, despite Ted’s endorsement of “The One.” Maybe it actually means something to us that Martha Coakley fought for the votes of Florida and Michigan to be counted and that she stood up against the pressure and voted for Clinton at the Convention? Maybe we appreciate that fact that she can see the “health care reform” bill is scam that treats women like third class citizens?
Roman Polanski is still in jail, but will back living in the lap of luxury by Monday.
The 76-year-old has been granted bail after being arrested in September.
He has been wanted in the US since fleeing the country in 1978 after pleading guilty to having unlawful sex with an underage girl.
The Swiss Federal Criminal Court granted the Oscar-winning director $4.5m (£2.7m) bail, pending proceedings for his possible extradition to the US.
He was ordered to surrender his passport and be fitted with an electronic bracelet that will activate if he attempts to abscond from his chalet in the ski resort of Gstaad.
And speaking of child sexual abuse, the Catholic Church is caught up in a bit of a scandal in Ireland.
One priest admitted sexually abusing children every two weeks for 25 years. Some boys who were abused by one priest were later passed on to their friends and abused again. Another priest admitted abusing over 100 children. And as often the case with sexual violence, this is only the tip of the iceberg – for every victim who came forward, there are many more who seek peace in silence. These are only some of the findings of the report published yesterday by the commission of investigation into Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese. The commission’s report covers the period between 1 January 1975 and 30 April 2004. One can only assume that there were many more cases of child sex abuse prior to 1975, and even more cases of abuse around the Republic of Ireland outside of Dublin.
Dublin Bishop Says Vatican Silence on Abuse Cases ‘Regrettable’
Sexual abuse of children in the archdiocese between 1975 and 2004 was routinely covered up by church leaders, the independent commission, appointed in 2006 by the Irish government, said in a report published yesterday.
The church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was set up to spread Catholic teaching, didn’t reply to requests from the commission’s investigators for the release of information it holds about the sexual abuse of children in Dublin, the panel said. A Vatican spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter today when contacted by telephone.
Investigators were seeking information on the abuse cases that had been sent to the Vatican agency by the archdiocese itself, so the material wouldn’t have been any more “substantive” than that already available to the panel, according to Walsh. Still, the Vatican should have shown “courtesy and cooperation” with the panel by responding to the request for information, he said.
And yet the Vatican wants to tell American women and our so-called representatives what we can do with our own bodies. Shame!
Please post your links in the comments, and if you can find cheerful news, all the better! Have a FABULOUS Friday!!
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Filed under: General Tagged: | Martha Coakley, Massachusetts Senate seat, pedophile priests, Roman Polanski, Ted Kennedy, Vatican, WH party crashers
Morning BB! thanks for the news.
Good morning, SoD. Hope you don’t have to work today.
No. I’m off. Hubby’s home and so is daughter.
I’ll be cooking again today since my daughter has starved for the past several weeks at college. Her school’s vegan offerings are not enough to keep her nourished.
So, I’ll be making all her vegan favorites.
That sounds nice.
I guess we can be proud of our high tech food banks.
http://tinyurl.com/yhmrnhh
the White House is turning into one big infotainment infomericial :
according to politico:
bb: What mystery kept you up reading last night? I think we read some of the same authors.
Yes, BB. What were you reading?
I’m always on the lookout for a good new mystery to read.
It’s called Tryptich, by Karin Slaughter.
Just a trashy mystery novel, but it held my interest.
Many times that’s all I want to read. Thx, bb.
Yes, love a good mystery! I recently discovered Steig Larsson, a swedish writer and waiting his 3rd book. The first two, “The Girl with the DragonTatto” and the “Girl that played with Fire” were great. (listened to the audio books as I was traveling)
Read the first 2 – very very good! Pity that he is dead and the 3. book is the last!
Oh, well that sucks, for him and us. I assumed he was living and busily writing the 3rd book.
the third book is out….he died of a heart attack and now the family and his partner fight over his fortune…seemed she did a significant part of the research for the books but as they were not married she is getting nada….actually he died before the books were published. he intended it as one book but it was split into three…i think the furst is turned into a movie!
Vivienne, I just checked Amazon and they have it for preorder with it due out in May. Are you in the states & were you able to find it somewhere else?
BB, you are very brave to read murder mystery books while living by yourself! Shiver, I couldn’t do it.
I’m a fraidy cat.
Go, Martha!
Regarding slow news day…Dubai seems to be bust which sends some ripple effects thru the market….people talk already abt what could possibly the biggest default since Argentina in 2001. Will surely shift focus to fiscal deficits and countries ‘ability’ to go bust!
yes, their real estate market has really collapsed…I keep hearing horror stories from there that rival the worst of ours on a grander scale
was there over easter this year….talking abt a construction boom – it was very shocking! well, you dont need to be a great economist to know that most real estate booms tend to end in tears…..
Every time I read another story about Child Sexual assault by priests it just makes me wonder how wide spread the damage really is? Why on earth would you cover up for some one that could basically abuse the weakest among us? I’m not a proponent of the death penalty but I’d think I’d make an exception for serial child molesters. At the very least we should put them all on a prison island by themselves and never let them off again. I wonder if the Irish government will really be able to tackle the problem effectively?
“Why on earth would you cover up for some one that could basically abuse the weakest among us?”
An especially good question since one tenet of Christ’s teaching was to protect the weakest and most vulnerable among us.
As long as people are taught that priests represent God here on earth and give or withhold forgiveness for sins they will always have power.
The Catholic church has always been about power and politics.
It was more important to keep the illusion because it helped the church.
If the people realized that the priest was a sinner how could you go to confession and receive Holy Communion from him?
There goes the contributions
There are many who do care about the children but there are many who care about the power more.
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
Hi Boston Boomer,
I’m excited to vote for Martha Coakley too in a few weeks. Hopefully things will keep looking good for her in the race.
That last sentense you quoted from the Times story really bothers me.
“She said she would not support it, a stance that could help her among women but could also backfire among voters eager for a health care overhaul.”
First of all, as you point out, it implies that what is going on in Congress at this point is really Health Care Overhaul, and that any provision that enslaves women is acceptable.
Also, it annoys me that they imply that Martha’s stance would only be helpful in getting support from women. As a man, I can tell you her opposition to the bill if it contains Stupak strengthened my support for her. After all, women’s rights are human rights. I guess the NYT didn’t get the memo.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8376858.stm
This makes me angry. People pay to go to college and many work while going. To tell students you will not graduate because of your weight is nuts.
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS, BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
It is Peggy Noonan, but she is citing the Democratic Beltway buzz:
He Can’t Take Another Bow
An icon of a White House that is coming to seem amateurish.
This week, two points in an emerging pointillist picture of a White House leaking support—not the support of voters, though polls there show steady decline, but in two core constituencies, Washington’s Democratic-journalistic establishment, and what might still be called the foreign-policy establishment.
From journalist Elizabeth Drew, a veteran and often sympathetic chronicler of Democratic figures, a fiery denunciation of—and warning for—the White House. In a piece in Politico on the firing of White House counsel Greg Craig, Ms. Drew reports that while the president was in Asia last week, “a critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes for his presidency began to wonder whether they had misjudged the man.” They once held “an unromantically high opinion of Obama,” and were key to his rise, but now they are concluding that the president isn’t “the person of integrity and even classiness they had thought.”
When longtime political observers start calling for wise men, a president is in trouble.
There is the growing perception of incompetence, of the inability to run the machine of government. This, with Americans, is worse than Obama’s rebranding as a leader who governs from the left. Americans demands baseline competence. If he comes to be seen as Jimmy Carter was, that the job was bigger than the man, that will be the end.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574558134111577494.html
yeah – a black Jimmy Carter – oops say this does this make me a racist??
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8382887.stm
Can we do this to backtrack? The traveling man has been out of the country more than in it.
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/pma_group_biggest_democratic_scandal_youve_never_h.php
If the msm were to keep reporting on this like they do on hollywood scandals do you think the public would pay attention?
This is our money that they redistribute to friends.
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS, BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE