PALIN: When I hear a statement like that coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism or you know maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think, “Man that doesn’t do us any good — women in politics, women in general wanting to progress this country.” I don’t think it bodes well for her, a statement like that. Because, again, fair or unfair, it is there, I think that’s reality, and I think it’s a given. I think people can just accept that she is going to be under the sharper microscope. So be it. I mean, work harder, prove yourself to an even greater degree that you’re capable, that you’re going to be the best candidate, and that of course is what she wants us to believe at this point.

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– Kyle Schmidt

The Senate Finance Committee has been writing a health care reform bill and struggling to create legislation that will have bipartisan support. Chairman Max Baucus (pictured left) considered several compromises to win Republican support, so they can claim it is bipartisan legislation. One of these potential compromises comes in the form of an abortion exclusion, which would prevent abortion services from being covered by some or all insurance plans in the Health Insurance Exchange. We fear that members of the Senate Finance Committee are considering such a compromise.

Should it pass, the Senate Finance version would be the only bill that specifically prohibits a medical service. As the Wonk Room points out, “if denying abortion services to women is the price of bipartisanship, then perhaps winning those one or two Republican votes isn’t worth the price of jeopardizing women’s health and well-being.”

WURZELBACHER: I believe in making sure our country is safe first. I believe we need to spend a little more on illegal immigrants. Get them the hell out of our damn country and close the borders down. We can do it. We’ve got the greatest military in the world and you’re telling me we can’t close our borders? — That’s just ridiculous.

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Wurzelbacher dedicated a private interview to saying that he’s tired of the government “sticking its hand” in his “back-pocket” and urging the government to “pull its head out of its butt.” Apparently he’s against bailouts and the stimulus bill, but he completely supports spending approximately $206 billion over five years, or $41.2 billion annually, to hunt down and deport all the undocumented immigrants living in the US. Joe probably doesn’t realize that such a policy would also mean a loss of $1.8 trillion in annual spending and $651.5 billion in annual output.

Joe’s demented view on immigration and government spending was echoed by tax protesters at tea parties across the nation. Jack Martin, Special Projects Director of the anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) was a featured speaker at Virginia’s Prince William County American Freedom Day Tea Party. The Anti-Defamation League warned that white supremacists and neo-Nazi hate groups were planning to take advantage of the tea parties to disseminate their anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant views and recruit new members.

“We must stop permitting this hypocrisy, cowardice, and treachery in our midst. Pro-life voters are calling on pro-life Senators to filibuster Sotomayor.

“A Senator cannot say, ‘I want to overturn Roe,’ and then vote to confirm a Supreme Court Judge that will uphold Roe. A vote to confirm Sotomayor is a vote to uphold Roe.

“Many senators use pro-life rhetoric to seduce us; they get our money, our volunteer labor, and our votes. But once an election is over, they discard us like an embarrassing mistress. . . . Whether they ‘have the votes’ to sustain a filibuster or not, they need to fight to stop her, for the sake of the babies who will die under her judicial reign.“

Sadly, such rhetoric is relatively tame by Terry’s extremist standards. Terry refused to condemn the recent killing of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, instead calling him a “mass-murderer” who “did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God.” Terry also once went on the radio to pray for a Colorado abortion provider to be executed; two days later, that doctor was found dead.

Huckabee claimed that “there’s one thing though that Biden and President Obama have got to get under control. And that is quit blaming George Bush.” He then made the common conservative claim that Bush inherited a recession from Bill Clinton, but didn’t complain about it:

HUCKABEE: There’s one thing though that Biden and President Obama have got to get under control. And that is quit blaming George Bush. George Bush inherited an economy when he became president back in 2001 that was already beginning to show real signs of the stress from the breaking of the technology bubble. George Bush didn’t go out whining and complaining every day, he stood up like the president of the United States and he worked on trying to get it fixed.

Then 2001, 9/11 came, things really went tough, but he worked on the economy and it was in much better shape for most of his presidency. Then the recession started, wasn’t totally his fault for sure and all you hear from Joe Biden and President Obama is how, how terrible it was, what they inherited, how it wasn’t their fault. No, look, you own it now. You got elected, you wanted the job. Stand up and take it and get this thing rolling. But quit spending money.

Watch it:

As ThinkProgress has pointed out, it’s false to say that Bush and his colleagues refrained from “whining and complaining” about the economy they inherited. In fact, Bush complained about it right up until he left office:

“When I took office, our economy was beginning a recession.” — Bush, 8/7/02

“The president inherited a Clinton recession and turned it into the early stages of Bush prosperity.” — Secretary of Commerce Don Evans, 9/2/04

“In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession.” — Bush, 1/12/09

As Media Matters noted in their comprehensive report on the backdating of the 2001 recession, which actually began in March 2001 according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, Bush OMB Director Mitch Daniels once used the inherited a recession talking point in three separate interviews on the same day.

Transcript:

HUCKABEE: There’s one thing though that Biden and President Obama have got to get under control. And that is quit blaming George Bush. George Bush inherited an economy when he became president back in 2001 that was already beginning to show real signs of the stress from the breaking of the technology bubble. George Bush didn’t go out whining and complaining every day, he stood up like the president of the United States and he worked on trying to get it fixed. Then 2001, 9/11 came, things really went tough, but he worked on the economy and it was in much better shape for most of his presidency. Then the recession started, wasn’t totally his fault for sure and all you hear from Joe Biden and President Obama is how, how terrible it was, what they inherited, how it wasn’t their fault. No, look, you own it now. You got elected, you wanted the job. Stand up and take it and get this thing rolling. But quit spending money.

Last week, Cornyn expressed a bit of anxiety about how he would be received by the crowd, saying, “I don’t yet know exactly what it’s going to be like.” He asked a reporter, “What do you think? You think it’s going to be OK? I’m waiting to see. I didn’t want to come some place that I wasn’t wanted.”

The Duval County Republican Party, one of the organizers of the Jacksonville protest, has been engulfed in controversy because of numerous posters featured at the rally depicting President Obama as Adolf Hitler:

The Duval County Republican Party posted the pictures on the Party Facebook page. Racist and offensive posters have become a norm for tea parties, with signs comparing Obama to Osama Bin Laden distributed at the very first rallies.

Though the Duval County GOP has tried to disassociate itself from the protest, a new ad campaign, paid for by other tea party organizers, compares Obama to Hitler.

The Times notes that when visitors came to the White House, Bush often liked to show off the gun, which was found on Saddam when he was captured by U.S. special forces in December 2003. Referring to the gun’s historical value, Bush Library Foundation President Mark Langdale presented an interesting twist on its symbolism:

Mark Langdale, the president of the George W. Bush Foundation, said the library would use items to highlight 25 of Mr. Bush’s presidential decisions. “The gun is an interesting artifact, and it tells you that the United States captured Saddam Hussein and disarmed him literally,” Mr. Langdale said. “How we fit that into the decision to go to war, we haven’t gotten to that point yet.”

“Disarmed him literally”? Saddam was already disarmed before the U.S.-led invasion. Maybe if the U.N. team that disarmed Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War had possession of the gun, then Langdale’s metaphor would make sense. Moreover, when Bush said he wanted to “disarm” Saddam, he was referring to the Iraqi dictator’s non-existent WMD — not his personal handgun.

“It represents this Texas notion of the white hats taking out the black hats and keeping the trophy,” Rice University history professor Douglas Brinkley said, referring to Saddam’s pistol. “It’s a True West magazine kind of pulp western mentality. For President Bush, this pistol represents his greatest moment of triumph, like the F.B.I. keeping Dillinger’s gun. He wants people generations from now to see the gun and say, ‘He got the bad guy.’”

As part of a “record-breaking influence campaign,” the nation’s “largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress” to lobby Capitol Hill “in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues” on health care legislation. The industry is “spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight.”

The Senate may not be able to realize its “hopes of approving health care reform before adjourning for the August recess,” making it unlikely that it can meet Obama’s request to have a “bill on his desk by Oct. 15.” Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) said his goal is “to complete the tricky merger of the HELP and Finance Committee bills, with the floor fracas over a final bill put off until after Labor Day.”

Senate Finance Committee member Charles Schumer (D-NY) said that there will absolutely be a public option in Congress’ health care legislation. “Make no mistake about it, the president is for this strongly,” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation yesterday. “There will be a public option in the final bill.”

Yesterday on Fox, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) claimed the Recovery Act has not produced a single contract in Ohio. Media Matters debunks the claim, noting the Ohio Department of Transportation has “awarded more than $83.9 million in contracts for work on 52 projects.”

In a sharp contrast from Vice President Joe Biden’s comments yesterday that the U.S. will not stand in the way of a possible Israeli strike on Iran, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen also said yesterday that he has “for some time been concerned about any strike on Iran.” “I worry that it would be very destabilizing not just in and of itself, but the unintended consequences of a strike like that,” he said. 

Though conservatives like to complain about President Obama’s relationship with the news media, Politico reports that “there’s an equal and opposite reaction going on in the world of conservative media.” Frustration with Obama “is fueling listener intensity and book-buying binges at the same time it gives a boost to the careers of conservative figures” like Mark Levin and Glenn Beck.

President Obama arrived in Moscow today for “a summit with Russian leaders aimed at reaching an agreement to cut stockpiles of nuclear warheads.” When Obama met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in London in April, the two “agreed to start negotiations for a new treaty to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.”

Lt. Gov Sean Parnell (R-AK) said yesterday that “Gov. Sarah Palin’s decision to resign was largely prompted by the personal legal costs of the ethics investigations against her.” “[W]hat I heard from the governor really had to do with…the concern she had for the cost of all the ethics investigations…with respect to her inability to just move forward Alaska’s agenda,” Parnell said.

Next week, the Senate Judiciary Committee will commence hearings to discuss the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. Backers of Sotomayor have been “organizing local rallies and other events” to tout her credentials. Republicans have been “focusing their attacks on her work” with a Puerto Rican civil rights organization in the 1980s.

And finally: America wasn’t the only one marking a birthday on July 4; Malia Obama was also spending the day celebrating. In a video message, President Obama told the crowd gathered on the National Mall that Malia was “just thrilled that you are all here. When she was young, I used to say that all these fireworks were for her. I’m not sure she buys that [now].” The Obamas reportedly celebrated Malia’s 11th birthday at Camp David, “prior to the official day.”

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KRISTOL: Everyone said [Obama couldn't] compete with people with these long records. … He seems to have gotten President. I don’t think it is foolish for Palin to think, “You know what, if that’s the world we live in now where people don’t value — maybe correctly — experience in years of experience in Washington, or two terms counts more than two and half years as Governor of Alaska. Maybe she thinks she gets out there and becomes a leader of the conservative movement, and then a leader of the Republican Party, and then conceivably a nominee of the Republican Party, and then conceivably a president just as Obama did.

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Kristol has been particularly unreliable as of late, and has been extremely poor in predicting the likely success of would-be presidential candidates. In 2006, he declared that “Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary.” Earlier in the program, Karl Rove expressed a less charitable view than that of Kristol, saying, “[E]ffective strategies in politics are ones that are so clear and obvious that people can grasp it. It is not clear what her strategy is.”

Today on CNN, former Secretary of State Colin Powell criticized such comments. Saying that Sotomayor is a “gifted” and an “accomplished woman” with “a judicial record that seems to be balanced and tries to follow the law,” Powell added that calling her a “reverse racist” is “nonsense”:

POWELL: What we can’t continue to have is to have somebody like a Judge Sotomayor…called a “racist,” or a “reverse racist” and she ought to withdraw her nomination because we’re mad at her. Fortunately the senators who will sit on this hearing in the Judiciary Committee after a few days of this kind of nonsense said, “Let’s slow down. Let’s examine her qualifications and the way we’re supposed to at a confirmation hearing.”

When host John King asked about the GOP’s “sensitivity” toward minorities, Powell took aim at Limbaugh directly, firing back at his claim that Powell only supported Obama’s candidacy for president because he is black:

POWELL: And when you have non-elected officials such as we have in our party who immediately shout racism or somebody who is quite prominent in the media says the only basis upon which I could possibly have supported Obama was because he was black and I was black even though I laid out my judgment on the candidates, then we still have a problem.

King later noted that Limbaugh has also said that Powell is no longer a Republican. “Mr. Limbaugh of course is entitled to his opinion but he’s not on any membership committee,” Powell replied, adding, “He doesn’t decide who I am or what I am no more than I decide who he is or what he is.” Watch it:

Transcript:

POWELL: [Judge Sonia Sotomayor] seems like a gifted and accomplished woman. She certainly has an open and liberal bent of mind but that’s not disqualifying. But she seems to have a judicial record that seems to be balanced and tries to follow the law. And so I hope we do have a spirited set of hearings. And Supreme Court confirmation hearings tend to always meet that standard. And she ought to be asked about everything from both the left and the right. What we can’t continue to have is to have somebody like a Judge Sotomayor who is announced, and based on one simple tricky but nonetheless case that the Supreme Court has now decided have her called a “racist,” or a “reverse racist” and she ought to withdraw her nomination because we’re mad at her.

Fortunately the senators who will sit on this hearing in the Judiciary Committee after a few days of this kind of nonsense said, “Let’s slow down. Let’s examine her qualifications and the way we’re supposed to at a confirmation hearing.” […]

And when you have non-elected officials such as we have in our party who immediately shout racism or somebody who is quite prominent in the media says the only basis upon which I could possibly have supported Obama was because he was black and I was black even though I laid out my judgment on the candidates, then we still have a problem. […]

KING: The guy who used the term “reverse racist” — you didn’t name him but it’s Rush Limbaugh. He has said some not so favorable things about you, saying, “this guy says he’s Republican but then he supported Obama. So he’s not really Republican.” You’re a Republican?

POWELL: Yes and Mr. Limbaugh of course is entitled to his opinion but he’s not on any membership committee. He doesn’t decide who I am or what I am no more than I decide who he is or what he is. We’ve had this running debate let’s call it that and he’s entitled to his opinion and I’m entitled to mine.

Gov. Sarah Palin’s attorney threatened Saturday to sue mainstream news organizations if they publish “defamatory” stories relating to whether Palin is under federal investigation.

This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law,” Van Flein warned, citing Alaska liberal blogger Shannyn Moore.

The LA Times reports today that “the FBI’s Alaska spokesman said the bureau had no investigation into Palin for her activities as governor, as mayor or in any other capacity.” “There is absolutely no truth to those rumors that we’re investigating her or getting ready to indict her,” Special Agent Eric Gonzalez told the Times. It is not clear if this also applies to rumored IRS investigations.

That is the spirit we are called to show once more. We are facing an array of challenges on a scale unseen in our time. We are waging two wars. We are battling a deep recession. And our economy – and our nation itself – are endangered by festering problems we have kicked down the road for far too long: spiraling health care costs; inadequate schools; and a dependence on foreign oil. [...]

These are some of the challenges that our generation has been called to meet. And yet, there are those who would have us try what has already failed; who would defend the status quo. They argue that our health care system is fine the way it is and that a clean energy economy can wait. They say we are trying to do too much, that we are moving too quickly, and that we all ought to just take a deep breath and scale back our goals.

These naysayers have short memories. They forget that we, as a people, did not get here by standing pat in a time of change. We did not get here by doing what was easy. That is not how a cluster of 13 colonies became the United States of America.

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Grassley has been at the forefront of railing against Obama’s health care plan, declaring, “We need to make sure that there’s no public option.” As Igor Volsky notes, there is an irony in government workers like Grassley complaining about “government-sponsored health care.” If Grassley wants to stand on principle, he could abandon his government-sponsored insurance and try his luck in the individual health insurance market.

Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide open state.

SBS has close ties to the Palins. The company has not only sponsored Todd Palin’s snowmobile team, according to the Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett, it hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004.

Though Todd Palin told Fox News he built his Lake Lucille home with the help of a few “buddies,” according to Barrett’s report, public records revealed that SBS supplied the materials for the house. While serving as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin blocked an initiative that would have required the public filing of building permits—thus momentarily preventing the revelation of such suspicious information.

Just months before Palin left city hall to campaign for governor, she awarded a contract to SBS to help build the $13 million Wasilla Sports Complex. The most expensive building project in Wasilla history, the complex cost the city an addition $1.3 million in legal fees and threw it into severe long-term debt. For SBS, however, the bloated and bungled project was a cash cow.

Alaska bloggers have reported in recent weeks that “a long simmering embezzelment/IRS scandal is still being looked at by the feds.” In her press conference today, Palin asked the public to “trust me with this decision and know that it is no more politics as usual.” But she also bemoaned “political operatives” who have “descended on Alaska” to investigate “all sorts of frivolous ethics violations.” Palin said this “politics of personal destruction” was one of the key motivating factors behind her decision today.

After running through her accomplishments as governor during the announcement, Palin said, “This success I am proud to take credit, for hiring the right people.” She said she decided to “veto” those “stimulus dollars” because “some of those dollars would harm Alaska and they harm America.” “So that Alaska may progress, I will not seek re-election as governor,” she said, adding, “I’ve determined it’s best to transfer the authority of governor to Lieutenant Governor Parnell.” Watch it (note the video feed cut out before Palin finished her statement):