America Overwhelmingly Wants A Public Option

As HuffPo's Sam Stein reports, semantics matters:

A new study by SurveyUSA puts support for a public option at a robust 77 percent, one percentage point higher than where it stood in June.

But the numbers tell another story, as well.

Earlier in the week, after pollsters for NBC dropped the word "choice" from their question on a public option, they found that only 43 percent of the public were in favor of "creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies."

Opponents of the president's agenda jumped on the findings as evidence that backing for the public option was dropping. Proponents responded by arguing that NBC's tinkering with the language of the question (which it had also done in its July survey) had contributed to the drop in favorability for a public plan.

I've seen this 43% number thrown around in the comments as well, which makes sense: if you eliminate the option part from the public option, people get annoyed with it.

In asking its question SurveyUSA used the same exact words that NBC/Wall Street Journal had used when conducting its June 2009 survey. That one that found 76 percent approval for the public option: "In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance--extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?"

To ensure that its respondent pool was composed of people from similar demographics and political mindsets, SurveyUSA asked respondents a question pulled directly from NBC's August survey. The results were nearly identical.

Read a description of the president's health care plan, 51 percent of Survey USA respondents said they "favored" the approach, while 43 percent opposed it. In the NBC poll, 53 percent of respondents said they favored the president's plan, 43 percent said they opposed it.

In other words, the Town Hall Blitz mess hasn't really changed public opinion on the public option much at all, the majority of the country still overwhelmingly approves of the public option.

Explains why the Republicans are making mistakes all of a sudden.

[UPDATE 5:32 PM] Keep that 77% number in mind when you read Village centrist idiocy like this.

Cash For Clunkers Gets Traded In

The $2 billion put in the tank was enough to get the auto industry to Monday apparently, when the program closes for good.

The Obama administration plans to end the popular $3 billion Cash for Clunkers program on Monday at 8 p.m EDT, the Department of Transportation announced Thursday.

Two congressional officials familiar with the plan say the Transportation Department will wind down the program that offers car buyers rebates of $3,500 or $4,500 for trading in older vehicles for new, more fuel-efficient models. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the plan.

The Obama administration was set to announce details on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the financial arms of several automakers have begun offering help to cash-strapped dealerships, in some cases by floating loans to help cover clunker-related shortfalls.

Department officials met with car dealer trade groups on Wednesday to discuss how the program will eventually end and respond to complaints over a backlog of rebate payments to dealers.

Through early Wednesday, auto dealers have made deals worth $1.81 billion and are on pace to exhaust the program's $3 billion in funds in early September.

The incentives have generated more than 435,000 vehicle sales but dealers want a clear plan on when the rebates will no longer be available so they don't end up on the hook for any of the incentives.

And that's actually a valid argument and always has been, and it's a fair compromise to end the program Monday. There had to be an exit strategy for the plan, and after all, Congress isn't in session to approve more money anyway.

Take the victory and go. Works for me.

Purple Alert!

Turns out former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's new book will reveal how he was pressured to raise terror threat levels to scare America into re-electing Bush.

This revelation from former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge’s new book, nabbed by Paul Bedard, might shed some light on why Ridge passed on a 2010 U.S. Senate bid.

[He] was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

That’s a charge Ridge avoided every time it came up. On Aug. 3, 2004, he denied any such political pressure or politicization with a quote DHS recycled for every question on this.

We don’t do politics in the Department of Homeland Security.

If Ridge really quit DHS because it became so politically rotten, good for him; his successor Michael Chertoff, however, somehow managed to hold the job for four years without issuing a conveniently timed alert.

And yes, this was denied vehemently by Ridge and the Bush White House on a number of occasions, despite the fact that after Bush was re-elected, terror alerts dropped to almost nil.

Is there anything that the Bushies did that wasn't corrupt, incompetent, or both?

Taibbi Versus Bartiromo

Via Balloon Juice, it's some Taibbi lovin' for CNBC's Maria Bartiromo on Morning Joe. The carnage is exquisite.

Hint to NBC/Universal: in the future, don't throw your talking heads at competent people like Matt Taibbi, whose job is basically to rip the crap out of your collection of Village Idiots.

Eighty Is The New Sixty

The GOP has brought up a new angle of attack this week to oppose the "Democrats might go it alone on health care" play, and that's changing the entire rules of how reality is supposed to work.

It started about a month ago when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he thinks reform ought to get 80 votes in the Senate.

Apparently, this is starting to catch on.

Speaking on Fox News last night, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) claimed that health care reform should not happen because it doesn't enjoy "bipartisan" support, adding that a bill cannot be bipartisan unless it garners "somewhere between 75 and 80 votes." [...]

Hatch is hardly the only conservative senator to float a 75-80 vote supermajority requirement for health reform. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who is currently blocking attempts to fix the health care system, told the Washington Post that "[w]e ought to be focusing on getting 80 votes." Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) demanded "a bill that 75 or 80 senators can support."

There are a few angles to keep in mind here. First, it's fascinating to hear partisan Republicans suggest it's incumbent on Democrats to aim for 80-vote majorities on major pieces of legislation. Funny, Hatch, Grassley, and Enzi didn't feel this way when they were in charge.

This to me says that Republicans are now honestly scared that the Democrats are going to actually be able to pass this legislation, and with the help of at least a few Republicans who aren't going to slit their own throats by voting against this landmark legislation.

I've said time and time again that Republicans will never help the Democrats pass health care reform. But this may possibly be an indication that at least in the Senate, that's not 100% true for all 40 Republican senators.

Still Problems With The Truth

Even CNN is surprised by the lies.

A woman asked Rep. Allen Boyd at a town hall meeting the other day if health care reform proposals would force people to let the government access their bank accounts.

"That's not true," the Florida Democrat responded. "When someone sends you something on the Internet that sounds crazy, how about just checking it a little bit?"

The CNN Truth Squad, which fact-checks political claims, has debunked the bank-access rumor as false. Yet that claim, and others that have been disproved, keep coming up in the national debate on health care reform, inflaming an already emotional issue.

Heated protests have disrupted town hall meetings nationwide, with people shouting at legislators and venting anger at President Obama.

While the anger is genuine, some of it is based on misunderstandings of the actual proposals, said Kenneth Thorpe, a health policy expert at Emory University.

"People are freaked out because there's a lot of bad information and misinformation being ... put out there by opponents of health care reform," Thorpe told CNN.

Obama and the Democrats say misleading information sows fear and anger, particularly among senior citizens who are worried about how changes in health care could affect Medicare. The White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have set up Web campaigns to refute what they describe as provably false information.

"It is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue," Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer wrote in a recent commentary.

Republican opponents respond that the emotional reaction is due to Democratic efforts to rush through legislation that amounts to a government takeover of the health care system. They say the proposals eventually will lead to a system that rations treatment based on an individual's ability to contribute to society.

So...if I'm reading this right, the Republicans are justifying the many smaller lies about Obamacare because of other, much larger lies.

Got it.

Good Housekeeping

Not going to be near a computer as much in the next couple of days, so blogging will be less than usual, but feel free to make comments on what's here, or if you have any story suggestions that I miss today and tomorrow, email them to me.

Open thread, then.

The Pieces Start To Fall Into Place

This morning's big story in the NY Times is a big one, that the CIA's hit squad to assassinate terrorists consisted not of military troops but our old friends from Blackwater.

The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.

Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.

The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said.

It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations.

Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune. Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program.

And considering the very serious legal allegations against Eric Prince and Blackwater earlier this month involving murder, illegal weapons smuggling, extortion, intimidation and a host of other crimes, this story now takes on a whole new dimension of nefariousness.

Needless to say, the GOP wants any and all investigations into this unfinished Bush business dropped immediately.

Nine Republican Senators are urging Attorney General Eric Holder to drop the idea of appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Bush-era torture practices, news reports indicated Wednesday.

The appointment of a special prosecutor would “have serious consequences, not just for the honorable members of the intelligence community, but also for the security of all Americans,” nine GOP senators told Holder in a letter, as reported at the Hill.

Among the nine are Kit Bond (R-MO), who is the ranking GOP member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The others are Christopher Bond (R-MO), Richard Burr (R-NC), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Tom Coburn (R-OK), John Cornyn (R-TX), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), John Kyl (R-AZ), and Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

Newsweek first reported that Holder may appoint a special prosecutor to look at the torture practices carried out during the Bush administration. That news came shortly after congressional Democrats revealed the existence of a secret CIA hit squad that the agency kept from Congress, perhaps in contravention of the law.

And of course we've seen the results of Obama's refusal to rein in Eric Holder's investigation after the warning delivered in that Newsweek piece: a full-out war against the President's domestic agenda by both the GOP and most of the Village.

The pieces are falling into place now. The CIA/Blackwater/Cheney/Iraq/Torture threads of the Bush-era narrative are all coming together now. The price of going down this road is going to be very steep for the President.

That is, if Eric Holder's investigation is able to put the threads together. The jury is still out on this one, but the warnings have been loud and clear for Obama to kill the entire inquiry. Every time those warnings are ignored, the crusade against the President's agenda grows stronger and more intense.

Another warning has now been delivered, this time by the GOP itself. We'll see what Obama does.

StupidiNews!

• Afghanistan chooses a President today amid threats and violence from the Taliban.
• Experts in Geneva are warning mind-altering drugs could be used for military applications.
• Vice President Joe Biden will announce $1.2 billion in funds for electronic medical record keeping.
• Switzerland will sell its $5.6 billion stake in UBS after yesterday's deal with the U.S. on tax evasion.
• An MIT physicist has claims to have proven that time can only flow forwards.

Last Call

Yet another multi-billion dollar bank failure is in the works for this week in Texas as Guaranty Bank of Austin Texas is expected to be seized by the FDIC in the next 48 hours.

Guaranty Bank, an Austin-based savings institution with $13.5 billion in assets, is expected to be seized by the FDIC by the end of the week. According to multiple reports late Wednesday, Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya has won the bidding for Guaranty.

Representatives for the FDIC and Guaranty were not immediately available for comment.

A private equity group led by investor Gerald Ford -- who got a federal bank charter in November so he could buy failed banks -- also reportedly made a bid for Guaranty. Other banks said to have expressed interest were JPMorgan Chase and Toronto Dominion, which made a failed bid for Florida's BankUnited when that bank was auctioned by the FDIC in May.

Guaranty's closing would mark the second-biggest bank failure of 2009, after last week's collapse of Alabama's Colonial Bank, which was seized by the FDIC and sold to regional bank BB&T.

Guaranty reiterated Monday that it doesn't expect to survive following its failure to raise new capital. The bank lost $174 million in the second quarter, according to its latest quarterly report to the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Needless to say, more of these are on the way. We're stuck with all the toxic debts, the banks bid on the assets for pennies on the dollar and get all the benefit.

And it goes on and on and on and on...

Unleash Joe Biden!

He's baaaaaaaaack!

Even as the White House concedes that its options for recruiting Republican support on health care have dwindled, if not passed altogether, administration officials say they have one last weapon in an effort to curry elusive bipartisan support.

Vice President Joseph Biden has, to this point, been noticeably silent in the health care debate, his time consumed primarily with overseeing the stimulus and consulting on foreign policy matters. Now, however, the assets he brings to the debate are of increasing importance and White House aides say he will be deployed by the president in a more strategic matter -- primarily as a bridge between the administration and those recalcitrant Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans critical to reform's passage.

"He has pretty substantial relationships with most members of the Senate who didn't come in this year," said one administration official. "He knows [Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max] Baucus (D-Mont.) well, he knows [Sen. Chuck] Grassley (R-Iowa). He knows [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid (D-Nev.). It is going to depend on what the issues are and who he needs to talk to but there is no one who is currently playing a major role that he doesn't have a long relationship with."

Jay Carney, a chief spokesman for Biden, noted that the vice president is set to hold a roundtable discussion with health care professionals and Health and Human Secretary Kathleen Sebelius this Friday in Chicago. In addition, Carney said, the vice president has been advising Obama privately on the matter over the past few months.

People forget that Biden was brought on to the Obama team precisely because of his long-standing relationships in the Senate and with leaders around the world. It's good to see him being mobilized in this battle finally, but it's something he should have been doing since, you know, March.

The Next Move On The Chessboard

With Democrats emboldened and having located their backbones once again, it's time for the Republicans to throw out another crazy batch of distraction in order to keep the Town Hall Blitzers coming. John Cole certainly called it as the Republicans play the "Free Health Care For Twenty Million Illegal Mexicans!" lie.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) on Tuesday defended critics of Democratic health care reform plans who claim the proposals would provide subsidized health care to illegal immigrants. Kyl said Democrats have long sought to block curbs on public services for people illegally in the country.

“It’s a logical question for people to ask,” Kyl said during a conference call with reporters, maintaining that during last year’s State Children’s Health Insurance Program debate and other legislative fights, Democrats blocked efforts by Republicans to include curbs on health care for illegal immigrants.

Precisely zero of the proposals before Congress include this, but Republicans are going to do everything in their power to whip up more "us vs. them" hysteria by making this an immigration issue.

The GOP is throwing everything in their playbook at stopping health care reform. They are now fully committed to the total failure of the President's entire domestic agenda.

They believe if they sabotage the country, you will vote for them, just like in 2008.

[UPDATE 3:06 PM] The lesson here for the GOP is simple: lie as much as possible.

Details, Details

Steve Benen reminds us that actual details matter about Obamacare.

In the new NBC News poll, people were asked, "From what you have heard about Barack Obama's health care plan, do you think his plan is a good idea or a bad idea?" Just 36% think it's a good idea; 42% think it's a bad idea. The numbers are exactly the same as they were a month ago.

The problem, as we discussed this morning, is that Americans oppose the idea because they've bought into several right-wing lies that are demonstrably false. Chuck Todd raised an important point this morning: "According to our poll, when [Americans] hear the facts, it's another story. After being read a statement that include actual details of the Obama health care plan, a majority -- 53 percent -- say they are in favor of it."

Funny how the program gains 17 points when the GOP misinformation is removed, isn't it? And hey, 53% was good enough to elect a President, right?

And let's also keep in mind that if Obama has no credibility on health care, Congressional Republicans by comparison have less than zero.

Several Republicans seem encouraged by the fact that only 41% of poll respondents approve of the way President Obama is handling health care reform. But let's not overlook the next question: "Do you generally approve or disapprove of the way that Republicans in Congress are handling the issue of health care reform?" Just 21% approve, 62% disapprove.

If the GOP really, really wants to make an issue of health care in 2010, go for it.

Once You Pop, You Can't Stop

I talked about the next housing bubble back last December, a good eight months ago. I've been giving more warnings since then. Turns out I'm far from the only one who believes we're heading right back into the soup again.

The housing market, which already has been battered by the worst collapse since the Great Depression, could be setting itself for another bubble, well-known economist Robert Shiller told CNBC.

With home affordability at a 40-year high, there is "absolutley" a possibility that the housing market will face another bubble in the next five years, said Shiller, an economics professor at Yale, co-founder of MacroMarkets and co-developer of the monthly Case-Shiller home price index.

"The low interest rates, the affordability is leaning that way and the ratios are back down," Shiller said in a live interview. "I get glimmers of excitement among some people, but we still have a high inventory of unsold homes, and we still have a lot of weariness because of the recent experience."

Although the most recent Case-Shiller report showed that US home prices posted their first monthly increase in almost three years, the sector—and the economy—are still a long way from recovery, Shiller said. Another round of stimulus money and revival of the credit markets is the only way the economy will shake out of this rough patch, Shiller said.

"It's clearly not over yet," he said. "It's not obvious that people are really ready to spend again. That may take years to rekindle that normalcy."

And keep in mind Shiller's "normalcy" is in fact a housing bubble. It's where America's been since the early 90's. Every time the housing bubble has burst, the economy has gone south. We keep reinflating it. It made a massive rupture last time, and we're still in a housing depression, now a full-blown real estate depression, because of it.

And now we're trying to recreate and reinflate that bubble once again. And when this one pops, we're really going to know the meaning of the word "depression".

This Is My Rifle

There are many like it, but this one is used to try to intimidate Democrats. Turns out Arizona right wing radio host Ernest Hancock planned out the entire incident with the man carrying the AR-15 rifle at Obama's speech in Phoenix on Monday.

They have a squad - used to be called the confrontation prevention squad, now called community service. We told them that we're going to come down, I'm going to do the radio show live, we're going to be broadcasting it, and I'm going to have a firearm. I had a 9 millimeter on myself...

It was Thursday that I called and talked to Al Ramirez, the representative from the Phoenix police department, and we were discussing - we've been around this rhetoric that was building up around William Kostric, who did this in New Hampshire. We knew this from 15 years ago when Janet Napolitano was a U.S. Assistant Attorney and prosecuted the Viper Militia out of Arizona, and how that was generated into something it wasn't. We talked to Al and we were like, look, we know where this is going and we want to make sure, we come down, we're peaceful, and we demonstrate the right of the people to carry their firearms. And the police protected our right.

They wanted to help - they assigned him [a police officer] to me. He was never more than 4-5 feet away from me. We had law enforcement around us to protect our rights to protect this firearm.

So the whole thing was staged. The Phoenix cops knew, Hancock knew, the whole thing was coordinated to send a loud and clear message to the President.

And not only that, but Hancock is an avid and vocal supporter of the Arizona militia movement as well. Yeah, this is what wingnuts mean by "debate"...bringing rifles to political events in order to make their points.

And of course, it's the kind of "debate" that the GOP is actively encouraging.

So now the Republicans are resorting to bringing firearms to political events in order to influence policy.

There's a word for that, you know. It starts with a T.