NY TIMES REVIEW: “Sarah Palin’s new book is part cagey spin job and part earnest autobiography. Its most compelling sections deal not with politics, but with her life in Alaska.”

Max Blumenthal, TomDispatch.com, HOW PALIN WENT ROGUE

AP “fact checks” Palin’s book:

PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling as Alaska governor, shunning “high-end, robe-and-slippers” hotels.

THE FACTS: Travel records indicate she usually opted for less-pricey hotels, yet Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) overlooking New York City’s Central Park for a five-hour women’s leadership conference in October 2007. With airfare, the cost to Alaska was more than $3,000.

PALIN: Boasts that she ran her campaign for governor on small donations, mostly from first-time givers, and turned back large checks from big donors.

THE FACTS: Of the $1.3 million she raised for her primary and general election campaigns for governor, more than half came from people and political action committees giving at least $500.

PALIN: Says Ronald Reagan faced a worse recession than the one that looks to be ending now.

THE FACTS: Economists say the current recession is far worse. The recession Reagan faced lasted for 16 months; this one is in its 23rd month. The 1980s recession did not have a financial meltdown. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent, worse than the October 2009 high of 10.2 percent.

PALIN: Describing her resistance to federal stimulus money, Palin describes Alaska as a libertarian haven of independent Americans who don’t want “help” from government busybodies.

THE FACTS: Alaska is one of the states most dependent on federal subsidies, receiving $1.84 for each dollar it pays Washington.

LA TIMES: THE EYES OF THE TSA ARE UPON YOU

To identify dangerous people, the Transportation Security Administration stations behavior-detection officers at 161 U.S. airports, including ones in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles. The officers can be anywhere, from the parking garage to the gate, looking for passengers who seem highly nervous or stressed.

They don’t focus on nationality, race, ethnicity or gender, said TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz.

“We’re not looking for a type of person, but at behaviors,” she said.

FOX NEWS.com: THE REAL FEAR: Some Fear Bush Administration Could Become Target in 9/11 Trial

So far we have heard nothing but “confessions” by the man known as KSM. He claimed credit for 9/11, the murder of Daniel Pearl and probably the fall of the Berlin Wall. They waterboarded him endlessly to get “the truth”out but what if this is all phony, an embellishment of his own role, a bid for martyrdom? Who could he be protecting? Who knew what and when? The contradictions here are thick as can be.

Is there more to this story? Of course there is, but will it–can it allowed to come out in Court? Will he try to turn it into more of a circus than this whole spectacle has been to date? Who is covering what up? The US government has a conspiracy theory too- spelled out in the flawed 911 report written by by intelligence people no doubt fronted by the scholar-propagandist Zelikow, the Condi Rice collaborator.

Was that a truthful document????? It has more holes in it than some of the great cheese I have been eating in paree.

I remember being in the NYC courthouse when the Blind Sheikh was being tried, defended, in part, by Lynne Stewart who was herself later convicted of helping him beyond her legal role. She was spied up on and probably was naive about what she was up against. Back then, if you recall, there was more coverage of the Sean Puffy Combs nightclub shoot em-up case than the terror trial.

This is going to be an interesting dance….

JOURNALISTS MURDER RATE IN MEXICO AT NEW HIGH

EJC: Russia: Police whistleblowers a YouTube hit

The Russian police force is under fire after a series of online videos from current and former officers appeared, denouncing it as permeated with corruption and malpractice. The latest video, posted on YouTube last week, came from Mikhail Evseev, a former policeman from the northern Komi region. The video was presented as a personal address to the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, asking him to help cleanse the police force of corrupt bosses. The police force in the republic is beset by “corruption, falsification of cases, and ‘ordered’ cases against businessmen,” said Mr Evseev. He noted in particular a recent case where two young men were sentenced to life imprisonment for burning down a shopping centre. Mr Evseev claimed to have documentary evidence of their innocence, which he sent to the prosecutor and other bodies but was ignored. Despite receiving little coverage on state-controlled television, the videos have become a sensation online, with more than half a million people watching Mr Dymovsky’s video. Mr Evseev’s received more than 50,000 hits in just two days. The hundreds of comments from Russians on the YouTube site were almost overwhelmingly positive. (The Independent)

QUOTE OF THE DAY–FROM SENATOR BYRON DORGAN

Senator Byron Dorgan has some harsh words for the too big to fails:

It’s one of the most frustrating things. We essentially have had modern-day bank robbers — except that they wore gray suits and not masks — and there’s been no accountability for it …

Every day we see energy speculators, war profiteers, managed health-care providers, media propagandists, and/or financiers given some unfair advantage over the average consumers and taxpayers, and the cumulative effect of the American people watching selfishness prevail over the public interest has been an undermining of the public’s trust in government.

This “anything goes” approach to capitalism has injured the very economy we have aspired to create.

I’m a big fan of the free-market system…This is not about a liberal or conservative philosophy. It is about making sure our economy and the free-market system work for everybody…

There’s no question the system is rigged against the little guy. The bigger interests have a lot more information. They jerry-rig the system so that they always win.”

I am leaving Paris today, so I am posting earlier and will update.

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First posted Sunday Morning