Last Call

Something I don't do very often: quote Evan F'ckin Bayh and actually agree with him.

Faced with anxiety in financial markets about the huge federal deficit and the potential for it to become an electoral liability for Democrats, the White House and Congressional leaders are weighing options for narrowing the gap, including a bipartisan commission that could force tax increases and spending cuts.

But even the idea of a panel to bridge the partisan divide has run into partisan objections. Many Democrats, including in the White House, are loath to cede such far-reaching decisions to a commission and doubt Republicans’ willingness to compromise. And most Republicans remain adamantly opposed to tax increases, leaving the prospects for any bipartisan approach limited at best.

The proponents, however, are pressing for a Senate vote this month. “If we have the same process and the same people, we are going to get the same results,” said Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, who recently met with Mr. Obama to discuss the idea. “The Democratic Party wants to spend more than we can afford; the Republican Party tends to want to cut taxes more than we can afford. So we are stuck.”

We're going to have to raise taxes. We're going to have to make cuts, and I believe those cuts need to come in defense spending.

Neither is going to happen without Washington telling us it's the end of America.

Not doing so is what will bring that about.

ODI Watch: Halloween Edition

Rasmussen's "Presidential Approval Index" is -10, while Pollster.com's Obama approval rating average back in reality is 56.1%, giving us an ODI number of -16.1. Not quite as bad as last week, but then again that's the scary part.

Teabaggers Collect Their Head

The Hoffman Effect just claimed its first victim as the Teabagger haterade for Dede Scozzafava has convinced her to quit the race.

As first reported by the Watertown Daily Times, the Republican nominee in the New York 23rd Congressional special election, Dede Scozzafava, announced this morning she's suspending her campaign. Her exit leaves Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman, who had garnered plenty of national GOP support, as the favorite to win what was a hotly-contested 3-way race. Republicans had feared that Hoffman and Scozzafava would split the Republican vote in this somewhat competitive district and hand the seat to Democrat Bill Owens. Former Republican Congressman John McHugh resigned his seat earlier this year after he was named by Pres. Obama to be the Secretary of the Army.

Here's my take on all this:

1) The message this sends to moderate Republicans, centrist Independents, and especially women is "There is no place for you in this Republican Party anymore." If this was a battle for the soul of the GOP, then all three of those groups have lost in favor of extremism. The Purge is now officially on.

2) The corporate Club For Growth/FreedomWorks anti-government crowd is now 100% in control of the GOP. There is no middle ground. There is no choice but to tow the line or they will bring in someone who will and drive you out of the election. They're not even going to pretend anymore.

3) What moderate in their right mind will even run on the GOP ticket in 2010 now? Not a one. I forsee nothing but Teabaggers in House races, screaming that the Kenyan Usurper Other is coming to personally enslave your nubile daughters while wearing FREE ORLY TAITZ T-shirts.

4) I wonder what Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe are thinking right about now...

Welcome to your new GOP, America. You wanted it? You got it.

[UPDATE 12:30 PM] Dave Weigel has Scozzafava's statement here, and notes that she did not endorse either remaining candidate on the way out.

Night Of The Living Dud

Shelly's back, calling for America to rise up on Thursday and take torches and pitchforks to health care reform as only a popular revolt can save America from the unending nightmare that is affordable health care.



Yeah, that's right! Go show them! Demand your right to be overcharged by a system that wastes $850 billion a year! Demand that Congress take another sixteen years to "get it right" in the meantime! Demand your right to have your health coverage dropped because you're sick so you can face medical bankruptcy! Demand your right to the House Republican health care reform bill which they still haven't even written yet, nor will they ever!

Demand the absolute nothing that the Republicans are offering you! And yes...they really do think you're that stupid. After all, voting against your own self-interest has been the definitive hallmark of the modern Republican Party for decades now.

Only Dirty F'ckin Hippies, broke-ass welfare queens and illegal immigrants want health care. Real Americans get sick and die. (Well, Shelly has a pretty nice health plan as a member of Congress there and of course Medicare and Medicaid have nothing to do with the government at all.)

So rise up and join her on Thursday to take back the country for the insurance giants the way our Founding Fathers wanted!

I mean...right?

StupidiNews, Halloween Edition

Ghoul morning, kiddies! Here's the news and boos this Halloweekend...

• Nine more banks join the growing ranks of the undead as the FDIC chops them up for parts.
• The White House and the media strike a deal on a shield law to protect journalists, but the devil is in the details.
• Swine Flu has some parents reconsidering how scary trick or treating really could be this weekend.
• CIT Group's financial horrow show continues as a bankruptcy deal may come as early as Sunday.
• Republicans in both the House and Senate are trying to drive a stake into net neutrality laws.

Have a safe one out there this weekend, folks. Hell, America in 2009 is scary enough without the ghosts n' goblins...

Last Call

The bottom line is that there's two very, very likely outcomes from the NY-23 race's "Doug Hoffman effect" :

With Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman running neck and neck with the Democrat in Tuesday’s special election in New York, some other disaffected Republicans are seeing the third-party route as more viable.

And it could hurt the Republicans in those races.

In Virginia’s 5th district, state Sen. Robert Hurt’s entry into the GOP primary has spurred little-known candidate Bradley Rees to switch to the Virginia Conservative Party. And in Ohio, another GOP primary contender said this week that he’ll run as a Constitution Party candidate.

Both will go at the GOP nominees from their right flanks and try to expose some unhappiness in conservative ranks. They might not be as well-funded as Hoffman or be filling quite as big a vacuum as the one left by Republican Dede Scozzafava’s left-leaning politcs, but they could steal valuable votes.

Rees isn’t afraid of playing spoiler to the establishment-favorite Hurt. He even suggested his third-party candidacy could help freshman Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) stay in Congress.

“It may amount to only drawing enough votes from the Republican candidate to ensure Tom Perriello a second term,” Rees told the Lynchburg News and Advance.

“If so, so be it. Maybe then the party will understand that we are trying to save the GOP from its worst enemy — not the Democrats, but themselves.”

Scenario A is that third party candidates split the Republican vote and Democrats win. Scenario B is that the GOP embraces teabagger/birther/tenther nutjobs in the primaries and get smashed in the general. I've been leaning towards B for quite some time, but in a lot of House races I most certainly see A popping up, especially in red districts.

Which one of these should have the Dems shaking in their boots again? I'm a little fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing here.

In the Dune novels, the Holtzman Effect is what allows for personal shields and anti-grav flight, but if you shoot one with a laser, you get the equivalent of a resonant nuclear explosion (it's why they use knives.)

New tag so I can officially keep track of this phenomenon where third party teabagger candidates cause a resonant nuclear explosion when they come in contact with the GOP: The Hoffman Effect.

Boom.

The Kroog Versus Pretty Much All Of Washington

Paul Krugman straps on the Krooghelmet, jumps in the Kroogmobile, and races onto the Obamacare scene.

The people who really have to make up their minds, then, are those in between, the self-proclaimed centrists.

The odd thing about this group is that while its members are clearly uncomfortable with the idea of passing health care reform, they’re having a hard time explaining exactly what their problem is. Or to be more precise and less polite, they have been attacking proposed legislation for doing things it doesn’t and for not doing things it does.

Thus, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut says, “I want to be able to vote for a health bill, but my top concern is the deficit.” That would be a serious objection to the proposals currently on the table if they would, in fact, increase the deficit. But they wouldn’t, at least according to the Congressional Budget Office, which estimates that the House bill, in particular, would actually reduce the deficit by $100 billion over the next decade.

Or consider the remarkable exchange that took place this week between Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, and Fred Hiatt, The Washington Post’s opinion editor. Mr. Hiatt had criticized Congress for not taking what he considers the necessary steps to control health-care costs — namely, taxing high-cost insurance plans and establishing an independent Medicare commission. Writing on the budget office blog — yes, there is one, and it’s essential reading — Mr. Orszag pointed out, not too gently, that the Senate Finance Committee’s bill actually includes both of the allegedly missing measures.

I won’t try to psychoanalyze the “naysayers,” as Mr. Orszag describes them. I’d just urge them to take a good hard look in the mirror. If they really want to align themselves with the hard-line conservatives, if they just want to kill health reform, so be it. But they shouldn’t hide behind claims that they really, truly would support health care reform if only it were better designed.

For this is the moment of truth. The political environment is as favorable for reform as it’s likely to get. The legislation on the table isn’t perfect, but it’s as good as anyone could reasonably have expected. History is about to be made — and everyone has to decide which side they’re on.

On which side of history will the Sensible Village Centrists be counted on? Thus the great conflict arises, Phoenix and Dragon must fight, for it is the way of all things. On one hand there's the fact that the SVC's really, really hate the Dirty F'ckin Hippies because SVC's are all elitist millionaire assholes. and the Hippies just ruin their profit sharing. On the other hand, the SVC's really, really love populist victories that make them seem like Real Americans so they can pretend to not be elitist millionaire assholes because it's how they retain their popularity.

It is on this battlefield that your entire health insurance future will be fought. Sad, isn't it?

Perspective, Can I Haz Plz?

Bob Cesca provides the Week in Obama:

To review the week:

-HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act
-Lifting HIV/AIDS travel ban
-Hate crimes legislation protecting LGBT citizens
-Defeated entrenched military-industrial complex on the F-18 and other programs
-First positive GDP growth since 2007
-Stimulus created or saved more than 300,000 jobs so far
-Deficit-reducing HCR bills with public option announced in both chambers of Congress
-Restored Intelligence Oversight Board powers
-Ended abstinence-only funding
-$3.5 billion for smart grid technology

In other words, just like Bush.

But it doesn't matter, because he's a crypto-fascist Kenyan usurper corporate lackey empty suit enigma messianic Communist Jimmy Carter Chicago Way Nixonian thug who hates women.

And his wife has these arms, man. These arms.

Seriously, can we finally admit that on the balance of the whole, Obama is 95% of the guy we needed right now?

Gravity Is Still A Harsh Mistress

After a 200 point gain yesterday on the Dow thanks to the GDP data and everyone screaming 'RECESSION OVER MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!" the cold reality set in for a 250-point loss.

Stocks tumbled Friday, more than erasing the previous session's gains, as investors dumped a variety of shares at the end of a rough week and choppy month on Wall Street.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost nearly 250 points, or 2.5%, according to early tallies. The Dow lost as much as 278 points earlier. It was the Dow's biggest one-day selloff on a point basis since April 20.

The S&P 500 (SPX) index fell 30 points, or 2.8% and the Nasdaq composite (COMP) shed 52 points, or 2.5%.

The selloff was broad based, with all 30 Dow components declining and most stock sectors sliding. Energy prices and stocks were hit hard as the dollar turned mixed and the financial sector erased most of the 4% gain it accrued Thursday.

"We might finally be seeing the 5 percent to 15 percent correction that many people have been calling for since the summer," said Ron Kiddoo, chief investment officer at Cozad Asset Management.

"I think the run has just gotten tired," he said. "A lot of people who wanted to get in over the last two months have done that, so maybe we need to sell off more to get more people back in."

The fundamentals of our economy have not improved. It's all been band-aids, smoke, mirrors and trillions in bailouts. Reality will catch up and when it does, it will be quite painful.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Well, actually, Yggy's Thought of the Day.

Unfortunately, foreign policy achievements have a way of not getting noticed if they don’t involve killing anyone with high explosives. This is too bad, since finding ways to resolve conflicts that don’t involve killing anyone with high explosives is generally preferable to approaches based on death and destruction.

Sadly, the Wingers wanted one of those war things in Honduras, and they ended up getting Not A War. If you're a Wingnut, it's the Halloween equivalent of getting broccoli.

So let’s take a time out to note that the Obama administration’s approach to Honduras looks to be paying off in the form of a deal that will temporarily re-instate President Zelaya in advance of new elections to be held in January. The US has an unfortunate history of backing coups in Latin America and an unfortunate history of heavy-handed involvement in Latin American domestic politics, so threading the needle between heavy-handed involvement and coup-backing was difficult. But they got the job done, and as Tim Fernholz says the results are likely to be appreciated throughout the region.

Also sadly, they will not be appreciated throughout the Wingnutosphere.

Lying Lying Liz

Apparently the Nameless One's daughter, Liz Cheney, has inherited her father's penchant for completely lying about things.

Liz Cheney called out President Obama for his early-morning trip to honor fallen soldiers arriving at Dover Air Force Base yesterday, suggesting President Bush honored America's heroes with a bit more class than his successor.

Cheney, on Fox News Radio's John Gibson Show yesterday:

"I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras. And I don't understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking family members if you can take pictures. That's really hard for me to get my head around...It was a surprising way for the president to choose to do this."

It's not clear exactly what Cheney is referring to when she says, "Bush used to do it without the cameras."

It's true that Bush's Pentagon continued a long-standing policy of banning cameras at Dover when the nation's fallen arrived in flag-draped caskets from foreign battlefields. (Upon taking office, Obama lifted the ban.)

So that covers "without the cameras."

But as CBS's Mark Knoller reported yesterday, Obama was the first president to visit arriving dead at Dover during the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq -- meaning that when it came to taking trips to Dover like Obama did yesterday morning, Bush never used to "do it" at all.

Apparently the ability to lie with skill comes with experience. Liz should call Pops up and take down a few lessons.

Then again, it's not like we haven't caught Lizzie lying before, either.

Pictures At A Teabagging Exposition

Tom Schaller's recounting of this Salon roundtable on if the teabaggers are good or bad for the GOP is quite frankly, fascinating. It's like asking if cocaine is good or bad for toddlers, and watching a drug dealer, a hospital administrator and a child services caseworker fight it out. Byron York, Rick Pearlstein and Karl Agne go at it.

Tom Schaller: I'd like to start with Rick and Byron, and ask that they provide some perspective on conservatism and its relationship to the GOP, as a way of putting the conservative angst we have witnessed in 2009 into a broader historical context.

Rick Perlstein: I hold no illusions that the number of folks who believe that there are sinister forces in Washington or the East that are kind of conspiring against ordinary folks on the right [has decreased] -- it's pretty constant in American history, or at least the 20th century. In the '20s it was the Ku Klux Klan, in the early '60s it was the John Birch Society. Now we know -- the stories the folks are telling on Fox News.

The big difference, I think, is how well they're able to kind of convince a margin of the American people that their agenda should be shared by them. In the 1920s, the Klan was fairly successful in taking over the Republican Party in a bunch of Midwestern states, like Indiana, but then in the early '60s, the John Birch Society was basically seen as verboten and beyond the pale. And I think a lot of it had to do with how the establishment media at various times treated these phenomena. I think one of the things that happened in the early '60s was the media -- and even the right-wing media people like William F. Buckley -- drew some boundaries about what was reasonable and unreasonable discourse.

And right now, with Obama pointing out the things that Fox News makes up, you're getting a lot of the mainstream media and the folks in Washington saying, "Well, why are you attacking someone who is part of our tribe, part of our team." So you get people like Howard Kurtz kind of aghast that this kind of faux pas has happened. But, you know, the faux pas is very similar to what William F. Buckley was doing, all the way through the 1960s, saying the John Birch Society's saying that America's foreign policy has gone astray because it's infiltrated by secret communists is not reasonable discourse.

Schaller: Byron, do you see analogues, historically, on the right side or the left side or both?

Byron York: I think it's pretty clear that the bases of both parties have moved farther apart over the years. If you go back to 1980 and just look at the ideological ratings of members of the House, relatively small numbers of Democrats, and small numbers of Republicans -- and Democrats were in the majority at the time -- relatively small numbers got 100 percent ratings, perfect ratings from either Americans for Democratic Action or the American Conservative Union or the other groups that rate them on their ideological purity. Now, the number of perfect scores is three, four times larger. So I think there's no doubt that each side has moved. This brings fights over ideological purity -- there's one going on right now in New York State over a House seat, New York 23, in which you have a liberal Republican and a conservative going at it. But I think you saw it a couple years ago in the netroots' attempt -- pretty darn close attempt -- to defeat Joe Lieberman with their chosen candidate, Ned Lamont. So these things crop up.

So right off the bat we have FOX News making stuff up about Obama being equated to...the netroots' attempt to back Ned Lamont against Joe F'ckin Lieberman. Totally alike!

It gets worse from there for Byron York, especially. But Rick Pearlstein continues to nail it.

York: Rick, how would you compare the New York 23 race to the Connecticut race of a few years ago?

Perlstein: You know, I think actually it's a decent comparison. I think that the insurgents in that race have a pretty good point. The Republican candidate did vote for some very important Obama initiatives, just like Lieberman allied himself with some very important Bush initiatives. The question is, how prototypical it's going to be. I don't think that you're going to find as many -- let me put it this way. Every Republican who's in elected office and wants to stay in elected office, it really finds them on the horns of an enormous dilemma. They can join the coalition that's being built to govern the country, and contribute to debates over how healthcare is going to go forward, and things like that -- how cap-and-trade is going to go forward, how stimulus spending is going to go forward. Or they can join the Tea Party people and just refuse. I wouldn't want to be a Republican elected official right now, because it's really a zero-sum choice for these guys.

And that's the bottom line.

Still not worried about 2010.

The Hand That Feeds You

At what point do the Dems finally admit they've have enough of Joe F'ckin Lieberman?

Sounding more like an independent than a Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., tells ABC News he will campaign for some Republican candidates during the 2010 midterm elections and may not seek the Democratic Senate nomination when he runs for re-election in 2012.

"I probably will support some Republican candidates for Congress or Senate in the election in 2010. I'm going to call them as I see them," Lieberman said in an ABC News "Subway Series" interview aboard the U.S. Capitol Subway System.

Lieberman infuriated fellow Democrats in 2008 by supporting Republican presidential nominee John McCain as well as congressional candidates Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

The moves nearly cost Lieberman his chairmanship of the Commerce Committee, but after promising to be a loyal Democrat he was allowed to keep his gavel.

Yeah, how's that loyalty thing coming along?

Seriously, the guy campaigned for McCain. He's threatening to kill Obamacare. Now he's saying he'll openly campaign for Republicans in the Senate. At what point do the Dems finally say "You're gone?"

Before or after he spikes health care?

Deficit Hocks

What Digby Said applies yet again on the loud, idiotic complaining about the deficit in the middle of a major economic recession and a massive housing depression.

Now that GDP has blipped up a tiny bit, expect these guys to start their song and dance in earnest. Ans yet, as Greider writes, there is every reason to believe that much more is going to be needed. But as far as these true believers are concerned, the crisis has past, now it's time to bleed the patient.

The people responsible for the economic mess of course cannot expected to pay for it. You and I are. Anytime you hear anyone complaining about the deficit, it means "I don't want to pay for this mess we helped to create. I think the rest of America should instead."

The only solutions these folks have is yelling "We need more tax cuts on America's wealthy and to cut federal spending!" All of it, the Club For Growth, the Tenthers, the government is bad people, the deficit screamers, the social program cutters, exist to turn America back to the Gilded Age where the privileged few control everything, and the rest of us exist to suffer.

Granted, we're not far from that now. But now the Lords have Glenn Beck to convince the peasants that the only way to stop being enslaved by the Other in the White House is to accept serfdom and fealty to one's corporate liege instead.

It's really the only American thing to do, serfdom...

High Nooners

Peggy Noonan decides that we should be in fact eating cake.

The cake is a lie.

The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third quarter. We should be dancing in the streets. No one is, because no one has any faith in these numbers. Waves of money are sloshing through the system, creating a false rising tide that lifts all boats for the moment. The tide will recede. The boats aren't rising, they're bobbing, and will settle. No one believes the bad time is over. No one thinks we're entering a new age of abundance. No one thinks it will ever be the same as before 2008. Economists, statisticians, forecasters and market specialists will argue about what the new numbers mean, but no one believes them, either. Among the things swept away in 2008 was public confidence in the experts. The experts missed the crash. They'll miss the meaning of this moment, too.

This first paragraph may be the most journalistically competent thing I've ever read from Nooners. She's right, and I'd never thought I'd ever say that.

Which makes the massively jarring contrast then with the sheer idiocy of her next paragraph the largest single breakthrough in matter/antimatter physics in decades if scientists can successfully mathematically quantify and reproduce the effect.

The biggest threat to America right now is not government spending, huge deficits, foreign ownership of our debt, world terrorism, two wars, potential epidemics or nuts with nukes. The biggest long-term threat is that people are becoming and have become disheartened, that this condition is reaching critical mass, and that it afflicts most broadly and deeply those members of the American leadership class who are not in Washington, most especially those in business.

Executives are sad, you see. This is America's biggest issue. Sad businesspeople who are sad.

Not greed. Not Too Big To Fail. Not the forced consolidation of the banking industry. Not the housing crash and the commercial real estate crash. Not the massive conflicts of interest surrounding Obama's economic team and the financial behemoths they in some cases still work for. Not a compliant Congress that is lobbied to destroy America's financial self-interests. Not the lack of oversight provided by said Congress, or the corruption those lobbyist help to breed and propagate. Not a shadow banking system of pyramid-scheme derivatives worth trillions that, should it even partially collapse, woudl wipe out the world's GDP. And certainly not an American middle class that has been outsourced, downsized, and productivity-enhanced to within an inch of its life.

No. The real problem is America's CEO's are bummed out.

Are you f'ckin kidding me?

That is the most inane thing I think I have ever honestly read about the recession so far. And the great thing is it gets worse.

I talked this week with a guy from Big Pharma, which we used to call "the drug companies" until we decided that didn't sound menacing enough. He is middle-aged, works in a significant position, and our conversation turned to the last great recession, in the late mid- to late 1970s and early '80s. We talked about how, in terms of numbers, that recession was in some ways worse than the one we're experiencing now. Interest rates were over 20%, and inflation and unemployment hit double digits. America was in what might be called a functional depression, yet there was still a prevalent feeling of hope. Here's why. Everyone thought they could figure a way through. We knew we could find a path through the mess. In 1982 there were people saying, "If only we get rid of this guy Reagan, we can make it better!" Others said, "If we follow Reagan, he'll squeeze out inflation and lower taxes and we'll be America again, we'll be acting like Americans again." Everyone had a path through.

Now they don't. The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how the country works on the ground, can't figure a way out. Have you heard, "If only we follow Obama and the Democrats, it will all get better"? Or, "If only we follow the Republicans, they'll make it all work again"? I bet you haven't, or not much.

This is historic. This is something new in modern political history, and I'm not sure we're fully noticing it. Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved.

You mean we're screwed? Like I've been saying for over a year now? Have you been paying attention to reality, woman?

You can just imagine her brunch conversation over Eggs Benny with her fellow Washingtonians. The Village just can't figure this one out. The moneyed class fouled up the entire country, and they just can't magically fix this without fundamentally rearranging the power structure of America. That terrifies the crap out of them, frankly. That's what Noonan is really afraid of.

The recession is actually affecting the Village. This doesn't happen to people like her, you see. And the people who should know best, who she has spent her career telling us about as being defined by having the quality of knowing best itself are the same people that completely annihilated the economy.

This apparently is negatively affecting her world view to the point of the Villager equivalent of emo whining. In the Wall Street Journal, no less.

Honestly? Peggy? Shut it. You're still employed, which is a lot better than, oh, about 10 million or so of us.

Steve at NMMNB has an even better takedown of this rampant self-pitying schlock, too.

Why I'm Still Not Worried About The GOP In 2010

Number of GOP co-sponsors for Harry Reid's Senate resolution this month to delcare the week of October 25-31 as National Hispanic Media Week: zero.

Number of GOP co-sponsors for House GOP Rep. Mike Spence's resolution this month to honor the 1.93 Million Invisible Teabagger March: seventy-five.

I'm not worried that the GOP will somehow magically take over Congress next year because they're doing everything they possibly can to lose.

[UPDATE 10:51 PM] Not even FOX News viewers think the economy is Obama's fault, via Dave Weigel.

Here’s a somewhat surprising result from the new Fox News poll. Asked which president is “more responsible for the current state of the economy,” only 18 percent say President Obama. Fifty-eight percent say former President George W. Bush. Nine percent blame both of them. Republicans are the only subgroup of voters who blame Obama, and only by a six-point margin of 35 percent to 29 percent.

What’s striking about this is that the numbers have only marginally gotten worse for President Obama in the three months since Fox News last asked this question. In July, it was 16 percent who blamed Obama and 61 percent who blamed Bush. That is, needless to say, not what Fox News viewers hear when they tune into the network. But it’s essential to understanding why the president remains popular and why Republicans are failing to really capitalize on economic gloom.

2010 is not going to be bad for the Dems. Republicans on the other hand...

He'd Better Be Careful

Ahh, GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. More than any other Kentuckian, a representative of everything stereotypically wrong with the state:

In an interview on Dennis Miller’s radio show yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that the public option “may cost you your life”:

MCCONNELL: Well, it doesn’t make any difference frankly whether you opt-in or you opt-out, it’s still a government plan. You know, Medicaid, the program for the poor now, states can opt-out of that, but none of them have. I think if you have any kind of government insurance program, you’re going to be stuck with it and it will lead us in the direction of the European style, you know, sort of British-style, single payer, government run system. And those systems are known for delays, denial of care and, you know, if your particular malady doesn’t fit the government regulation, you don’t get the medication.

MILLER: Right.

MCCONNELL: And it may cost you your life. I mean, we don’t want to go down that path.

Listen here:

In his efforts to derail health care reform, McConnell has regularly fear-mongered about the British and Canadian health care systems, claiming that a public option would look just like them. Unsurprisingly, McConnell has gotten his facts wrong when he’s described other health care systems.

Sad, isn't it? After all this, Mitchy has yet to get off the death panels train.

And Republicans wonder why America doesn't trust them to fix health care.

Here He Comes To Save Your Job

The first $150 billion spent on stimulus has saved 650,000 jobs, according to the latest Obama administration report.

Based on approximately $150 billion in spending from the $787 billion recovery package, the tally is the first broad, concrete look at the stimulus program's impact on the economy. The numbers are drawn from tens of thousands of reports from state and local recipients as well as private companies.

The White House said the actual number of jobs created so far is likely closer to 1 million, since its report on stimulus job creation only focused on $150 billion of the $339 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds spent so far.

The Obama administration is expected to announce further details Friday afternoon, after the government posts complete reports online on its stimulus data tracker Recovery.gov.

As many as a million more jobs could have been lost if it wasn't for the stimulus. Sobering numbers this morning indeed. The same people who are complaining that Obama did too much would now be complaining if he did nothing, as the unemployment rate would be even higher than it is now.

The Liberal Bias

A very interesting poll from Pew Research on the Village TV media shows a couple of notable points:

The Fox News Channel is viewed by Americans in more ideological terms than other television news networks. And while the public is evenly divided in its view of hosts of cable news programs having strong political opinions, more Fox News viewers see this as a good thing than as a bad thing.

Nearly half of Americans (47%) say they think of Fox News as “mostly conservative,” 14% say it is “mostly liberal,” and 24% say it is “neither in particular.” Opinion about the ideological orientation of other TV news outlets is more mixed: while many view CNN and the three broadcast networks as mostly liberal, about the same percentages say they are neither in particular. However, somewhat more say MSNBC is mostly liberal than say it is neither in particular, by 36% to 27%.

Here's the chart:

More people actually think CNN and as many people think NBC are as liberal as the supposedly bleeding heart MSNBC. Most of the networks show a middle of the road or liberal bent, but FOX's claim of "fair and balanced" is clearly ridiculous...it's the least middle-of-the-road network according to America.

Also, who the hell are the 14% of Americans who think FOX News is liberal? I'd like to meet those guys. That's one in seven of us. Odds are you know one....and that goes up to 17% of regular FOX News viewers who think the network is mostly liberal!

Both FOX viewers and all viewers think CNN is more liberal than MSNBC. Perhaps that explains why Pat Buchanan is still employed.

StupidiNews!

• Nine people are missing after a Coast Guard plane and Marine helicopter collided off the coast of southern California.
• Five Democrats and two Republicans on a House defense subcommittee are under ethics investigations.
• Venezuelans are taking to the streets to protest President Hugo Chavez and the country's many shortages.
• A new Bloomberg poll of the financial industry shows bankers expect big bonuses this year, and 10% expect the best year ever.
• Arizona's Supreme Court has ruled that so-called metadata attached to public records also counts as public record.

Last Call

The House health care reform bill, HR 3962, would stop insurance companies from using domestic violence as a pre-existing condition to deny health care coverage.

Eight states currently allow insurers to reject women who have survived domestic abuse for coverage. As the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim has explained:

Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you’re more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.

In human terms, it’s a second punishment for a victim of domestic violence.

This provision is part of the bill’s larger ban on pre-existing conditions, which stipulates that insurers cannot discriminate based on “health status, medical condition, claims experience, receipt of health care, medical history, genetic information, evidence of insurability, disability, or source of injury (including conditions arising out of acts of domestic violence) or any similar factors.”

In 2006, Senate Democrats on the Health Education Labor & Pensions Committee tried to end domestic violence as a pre-existing condition, but lost in a 10-10 vote. All the “nay” votes were Republicans. Women currently pay up to 50 percent more for health insurance than a man would shell out for the same coverage, and most individual health insurance markets don’t cover maternity care.

The inclusion of a ban on domestic violence being treated as a pre-existing condition fulfills a promise Pelosi made earlier this month. “Think of this,” Pelosi told reporters. “You’ve survived domestic violence, and now you are discriminated [against] in the insurance market because you have a pre-existing medical condition. Well, that will all be gone.”

1990 pages, but at least one of them contains good legislation, anyway.

Sittin On The Dock Of The Bay, Wasting Time

Steve Benen checks up on that House Republican health care reform bill America was promised.

For those of you keeping score, here's the bill itself.


Oh gosh, there's nothing there.

The House Republican leadership "guaranteed" that they would offer an alternative health care reform bill. If my count is right, that was 134 days ago.

Asked about when Americans can expect to see the GOP plan, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said it's "pretty difficult" for Republicans to come up with a "solid plan," because the minority caucus is "not quite sure how the majority intends to proceed."

They're trying to pass a bill, unlike you morons. You guys pull crap like this instead:

Republicans have been insisting for months that Democrats are shoving a secret bill down the throats of the American public. The health reform legislation "should be posted online for 72 hours so members and the American people get a chance to see what's in these bills," House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) told Fox News. "But it seems to me that Democrat [sic] leaders want to rush these bills through Congress before anybody has a chance to read them."

In fact, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) "has repeatedly pledged to Republicans that the health bill and any manager's amendment would be posted online for at least 72 hours before the House votes," and he promised again this week.

At a press conference this morning, a reporter turned the tables on Boehner and asked whether he'd post the GOP plan for 72 hours. Boehner declined to make such a pledge.

Yeah, so how's that plan coming again, boys? That wonderful alternative you have that will fix health care?

Oh you don't have one, you never will have one, and you have no intention of crafting one? Of course.

Your Civics 207 Assignment

Via BooMan, Matt Browner-Hamlin teaches the finer points of Senate filibusters and cloture votes. Of special note:

What should you expect when you see a cloture motion? Lots of debate and delay. After cloture is filed, it takes one day and an hour to ripen. So if a cloture motion is filed on Monday, it cannot be voted on until Wednesday. After the motion for cloture is voted on, there is then 30 hours of debate for post-cloture consideration. This time period includes debate, roll call votes, and quorum calls. Basically each of these three big procedural steps prior to a cloture motion and vote on cloture will add a number of days before the next soonest step can be reached. This is why we expect the entire Senate floor debate of health care reform to be a process that could last, at minimum, a couple of weeks.

And in those couple of weeks minimum, the rumors, playcalling and punditry will be a-flyin'. But frankly, it's just going to take time before we get to the final vote.

If one is allowed to happen, that is. We've got a long way to go still.

Orly? Ya Rly! Part 4

Orly Taitz just got her ass handed to her again by yet another judge.

Central District of California Judge David O. Carter has dismissed Barnett et al v. Obama et al, Orly Taitz’s most successful lawsuit — that is, the one that got the furthest through the legal system — demanding proof of the president’s citizenship. The entire decision is here, and it’s devastating to Taitz.

Especially this part of the ruling:

[T]he Court has received several sworn affidavits that Taitz asked potential witnesses that she planned to call before this Court to perjure themselves. This Court is deeply concerned that Taitz may have suborned perjury through witnesses she intended to bring before this Court. While the Court seeks to ensure that all interested parties have had the opportunity to be heard, the Court cannot condone the conduct of Plaintiffs’ counsel in her efforts to influence this Court.

And if the judge follows through on those perjury complaints, Orly there is in real trouble.

Unlike the fantasy trouble she proclaims America to be in from the Kenyan Usurper.

High School Equivilency Test

The Wingers love to play a little game, and that game is "Yeah but Liberals are equally as bad if not worse." Doesn't matter what horrible things Wingers do, in their own minds they can instantly find something a Dirty F'ckin Hippie did and it justifies everything they've done or will do.

Case in point: the Winger's latest screed that "Okay, FOX News is a propaganda outfit, but MSNBC is equally as bad if not worse than FOX!"

Greg Sargent tackles that straw man.

This meme got a boost last night when CNN’s Cambell Brown grilled White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett on the Fox affair. After Jarrett said that “of course” Fox is biased, Brown pushed back: “Do you also think that MSNBC is biased?” Jarrett demurred. Ben Smith dubs this the White House’s “MSNBC problem.”

Sure, MSNBC has Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Ed Schultz. But it’s debatable, to begin with, that they are polar opposites — in terms of their ideology or their relationship to reality — of Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.

Put that aside, however. More to the point, it’s plainly obvious that there’s a much brighter line between reporting and commentary at MSNBC than there is at Fox.

Consider MSNBC’s daytime content. Morning Joe is hardly a liberal program. Throughout the day you get lots of reporting and commentary from Chuck Todd and David Shuster. Todd fits squarely in the “nonpartisan Beltway analyst” category. Shuster? Sure, he’s aggressive in debunking conservative attack lines, but agree with him or not, Shuster calls them as he sees them on the facts, and he’s fundamentally a reporter.

More to the point is MSNBC’s news judgment throughout the day, which contrasts sharply with that of Fox. You’d be hard pressed to argue that MSNBC’s choice of stories to report on is as ideologically driven as Fox’s editorial choices. There’s simply no equivalent on the MSNBC news side of Fox’s constant “news” coverage of the tea partiers, the czars, the ACORN story, the crusade against gay education adviser Kevin Jennings, etc. etc. The point is that Fox’s new judgment is far more ideologically motivated than MSNBC’s is.

Bonus points for noticing the Villager pushing the meme is Politico's Ben Smith. He's auditioning for a role in the Village pretty hard this year (along with NBC political director Chuck Todd and ABC's Jake Tapper) and he's trying pretty hard to get into the high school lunchroom cool clique.

Remember the number of Villagers who made their bones trashing the Clintons? (Wingers will say "Yeah but look at Maddow and Olbermann, they made their bones off of trashing Bush every night!" Because reality has a well-known liberal bias, you see. The rise of Glenn Beck, Brit Hume, Bill-O and friends during Bush's administration is just proof of how America hates liberals. ) All this goes back to that: These guys are trying to become the new Villagers in the age of Teh Internets.

Dear America:

"Obama has no choice, he can only follow up his classy move to show respect to 18 fallen heroes from Afghanistan returning home...by sending tens of thousands more soliders in until we win. They'll be fine over there."

--Pete Hegseth, The Corner

Top Billing For Nancy

Speaker Pelosi has unveiled the House public option bill today, and it's pretty decent. Not the Medicare for all bill that she wanted, but it's better than the Senate version.

Pelosi said the bill will "insure 36 million more Americans" and "will not add one dime to the deficit" -- covering 96 percent of Americans and costing less than $900 billion. The bill includes a public option and will end "discrimination for preexisting medical conditions."

She said the plan will be put online "for all Americans to see." You can read it here.

Early in her remarks, there was some loud off-camera noise -- apparently from protesters nearby.

"Thank you, insurance companies of America," Pelosi said.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was up next. "What a day for America, and what a day for all of our people," he said

The bill is expected to be debated on the House floor next week.

If implemented, by 2013, the bill would require a mandate for coverage and a health insurance exchange to be in place. There would, by this point, be new consumer protections, including an end to co-pays for routine checkups and preventative care, yearly caps on out-of-pocket expenses and an end to yearly and lifetime caps on what insurance companies will cover.

Young adults would also be able to stay on their parents' health care plans until their 27th birthdays.

Still digesting the full bill, the Cliffs notes version is here.

Jon Cohn's initial reactions are here, Ezra Klein's early take is here, both are worth looking at, both seem to think the bill is good on the surface.

The bill does pay for itself, mandate is somewhat more strict, but there are better subsidies to defray that. Comes in under the $900 billion mark as well. So far, it's a good bill.

[UPDATE 11:45 AM] Politico clocks the bill in at $894 billion.

In The Immortal Words Of Admiral Ackbar, It's A TARP

Via Digby, turns out that resolution legislation to wind down "too big to fail" banks is really just enshrining TARP-style bailouts as standard operating procedure in the future. Mike Elk explains:

If a bank deemed "too big to fail" by the Fed takes out risky bets and its fails miserably, the other banks who were engaged in safe banking would have to bail them out. For the big banks that can afford to take huge bets this would simply give them more incentive to do it. If they lose, the smaller banks not deemed "too big to fail" would merely go under bailing out the big banks. So why not gamble big on Wall Street since every situation would be a win-win if you win, big profits if you lose a bailout and your competition goes out of business. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Furthermore, as Congressman Brad Sherman points out the proposed legislation would allow the government to bailout banks into the trillions of dollars without having to seek Congressional approval. It would allow the Federal Reserve to bail these banks out secretly without the publicly knowing about it.

This is just simply undemocratic. At least the last time we bailed them out, the bankers at least had to go to Congress and beg in shame. Now, ss Congressman Sherman point it the current legislation meant to reform Wall Street would actually be like "TARP on steroids".

The obvious question remains why has the House Financial Service Committee under the leadership of Barney Frank dramatically weakened time and time again President Obama's proposals to regulate Wall Street? Why have the committee members strayed so far from President Obama's plans to regulate Wall Street?

Perhaps the $223 million that the banking lobbyists spent on lobbying Congress in the first six months of 2009 alone. has something to do it. Or perhaps as the Wall Street Journal reports campaign contributions to committee members have increased dramatically as they consider financial reform.

Distilling all that down, it makes a fair amount of sense: If the punishment for taking a multi-billion dollar risk is that your competitors have to pay to bail you out, then this is a moral hazard clause on a world-breaking scale.

I've said before that the chief goal of the Obama administration's economic plan is the forced consolidation of the financial industry. This new bill seems to almost assure that only the Too Big To Fail banks will survive another round of bailouts, and that the Fed will have the power to do this without any oversight...because it was designed that way.

I didn't honestly think we could get worse than Bush on this. But there you are. And here Timmy is testifying that establishing these banks as "too big to fail" means no more bailouts.

He's lying to Congress, basically.

And The Winger Rage Award Goes To...

The Sadlies stake out the coming Wingnut apoplexy on the 2010 Oscars.

There is always a collective wingnut freakout over teh Hollywood left’s big event, but next year’s could be particularly hilarious. Especially if Michael Jackson’s ‘This Is It’ wins an Oscar.

At the very least, his name will get a standing O when they do the dead people roll call … add in a possible shout out to Ted Kennedy and the almost inevitable spontaneous tribute to Roman Polanski by some presenter or award-winner …

Enough probability on this being true that it's worth marking this one down in the Future Stupidity files, surely.

If It's Thursday...

Special GDP edition, numbers are in and the GDP for Q3 was 3.5% growth. Definitely an improvement and CNBC is already trumpeting the end of the recession. The reason it doesn't feel like the end of the recession is that many of us are still in one.

In a separate report, the number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits dipped by 1,000 last week, while the number collecting long-term aid fell to the lowest reading in seven months as the job market steadied.

Initial claims for state unemployment insurance declined, though the number was higher than expected, to a seasonally adjusted 530,000 in the week ended Oct. 24, the Labor Department said. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast claims to fall to 521,000 last week from 531,000.

Get that? Half a million plus jobless claims this week is good news because the job market has steadied. Companies have all the excuses in the world to cut benefits and employees and reap profits.

Who here thinks America is going on a hiring binge now that the recession is "over"?

Didn't think so. Welcome to the new normal.

Why Can't Weeeeeee Be Friends, Why Can't Weeeeeee Be Friends

Got that song stuck in my head this morning after reading this:

A very reliable source tells FishbowlDC that Fox News SVP Michael Clemente met with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs this morning and reached what some are calling a "truce."

Clemente then met with the FNC Washington bureau and encouraged staff to remain "fair and balanced."

As John Aravosis puts it:

But the issue isn't that FOX is unfair, or unbalanced. They're simply not media, period. They were set up as a conservative propaganda operation, and that is what they are to this day. There is no way that they can promise to be nice. It's like the liberal blogs promising to stop favoring Democrats over Republicans. It's not who we are, or why we exist, and if we were to promise it, we'd be lying. So is FOX, if in fact they've promised any truce.

Yeah, I'm gonna go with that. There's no way FOX is going to call off their attacks just because Robert Gibbs asked nicely. The Wingers aren't going to stand for it, and frankly I expect to see some sort of teabagger boycott until FOX promises to go back to making up wholesale lies about Obama and friends. They'll say "Well the White House wanted this, but the American people demanded it!" and they'll dig right in doubly hard, probably reporting that Michelle Obama regularly bathes in the blood of teenage abortions to get her buff arms.

But hey, that's "truthiness" for the win. I can't imagine the White House getting anything out of this other than the 100% probability that FOX will break the promise first.

StupidiNews!

• A more moderate public option bill will be unveiled in the House today before a vote next week.
• The President has signed into law hate crimes legislation that includes protections based on sexual orientation.
• Boeing has brought their 787 Dreamliner assembly line to the most union-free state in America, South Carolina.
• Economists are projecting a 3.2% US GDP growth number in the third quarter ahead of today's figures.
• The President has announced $3.4 billion in electrical grid improvement projects nationwide.

Last Call

And if it's not Joe F'ckin Lieberman screwing over the Dems, it's Evan F'ckin Bayh.

Evan Bayh (D-IN) said on CBS’s Washington Unplugged said that if fifty senators were dead set on getting a real public option they could always do that by using reconciliation. Reconciliation measures can’t be filibustered, so a bill brought up through reconciliation would only need a simple majority to pass (50 votes plus the VP).

Evan Bayh said, “If the people [who] want the public option in its fullest form are just adamant about that they can always just get that with fifty votes.”

In other words, Bayh has no intention of giving the public option Senate bill an up-or-down vote because it will pass.

Think long and hard about that tonight. I suggest doing so while holding your health insurance bill for this month.

The Real Chicago Way

Steve Benen's right: Isn't Obama supposed to be the most bloodthirsty, partisan, ruthless President ever? I mean the nerve of him, appointing yet another well-respected Republican to his administration like Chuck Hagel. Obama named him as co-chair of his Intelligence Advisory Board today.

If memory serves, Hagel is the seventh Republican to take on a fairly significant role in the Obama administration. He follows John McHugh (Secretary of the Army), Ray LaHood (Secretary of Transportation), Robert Gates (Secretary of Defense), Jim Leach (National Endowment for the Humanities), Jon Huntsman (U.S. Ambassador to China), and Anne Northup (Consumer Product Safety Commission). It would have been eight were it not for the unpleasantness with Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.).

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed Obama's numbers slipping on his "willingness to work with people whose viewpoints are different from his own."

I'm not sure what more the White House can do on this front. Obama has not only repeatedly sought out GOP lawmakers for support on legislation, but he also keeps giving Republicans jobs in his administration, arguably at a level without modern precedent.

Also note that the president's efforts haven't generated any goodwill with the opposition party. Obama has added more than a half-dozen Republicans to his team, and GOP leaders continue to whine about the president being some kind of strident partisan.

But it doesn't matter, you see. None of those Republicans count as Republicans anymore because they are now working for the Other in the White House. When they joined his administration, they ceased being Republicans. There are no Republicans in the Obama administration. If they joined Obama, they were really closet Dems. Ergo, Obama is a horrible partisan who lied about doing things differently in Washington because there are no Republicans in his administration.

It really is that simple to the GOP.

Even better, the Village buys it hook line and sinker. Do a Google search of "Obama" and "Nixon" and see what you find. Obama could appoint Rush Limbaugh as VP, and he would still be the most divisive President ever.

Thirty Pieces Of Silver

Joe F'ckin Lieberman on FOX News today:

If the public option, the government run health insurance company negotiates hard to lower the reimbursement — the money it’s paying to hospitals, doctors — they’re [providers] going to have to get that money somewhere. And where they’re going to get it is from the 200 million Americans who today have private health insurance. Premiums will go up. It’s exactly what’s happened with Medicare and Medicaid. [...]

When people hear public option, I think they think it’s for free. It’s not for free. Somebody is going to have to pay for it and you can bet it’s going to be the taxpayers and the people who pay health insurance premiums now.

Hey Dems? When your Homeland Security chairman is on FOX repeating the GOP's talking point lies, you have a party discipline problem.

Joe F'ckin Lieberman has no intention of allowing Obamacare to pass without getting his thirty pieces of silver. That's how democracy works, you see.

[UPDATE 3:15 PM] CNBC's Julie Roginsky takes Lieberman to task on his lack of logic. Methinks she's not going to last long over there.

[UPDATE 3:58 PM] What Digby said, as she reminds us that Obama said "Gosh, we have to keep Joe F'ckin Lieberman, he'll be grateful to us."

How's that working out for ya, 11-dimensional chess grand master guy?

Quote Of The Week

John Cole on this Village Idiocy:

The endgame of this is so obvious. This isn’t about sexism. This isn’t about Barack Obama. This is another beltway game where the press sees how much they can make the administration jump. Are they really proposing that Janet Napolitano come out and do some half court with Obama, the UNC guys, and secret service agents? Do they want Lisa Leslie on retainer?

We're right back around to the African-American man/Caucasian woman dynamic, and everyone has their own set of preconceptions on that relationship, what the rules are, and what the rules should be. Happened during the primary and the general election, and now we're seeing it again here in the White House press corps.

Been a problem in this country for, oh, couple of centuries now.

Nothing New Under The Sun

Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, now Obama.

The Obama Administration has doled out access to the White House and to top aides as a way to keep top Democratic donors feeling special.

The Washington Times has a good rundown today on how it all works, including invitations for two bundlers to bring their families to the famous bowling alley at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House.

As in past administrations, access to the White House is an irresistible addition to the Dems' quiver of perks for donors.

The Times reports:

At least 39 donors and fundraisers also were treated to a lavish White House reception on St. Patrick's Day, where the fountains on the North and South Lawns were dyed green, photos and video reviewed by The Times and CBS News also show.

Presidential aides said there has been no systematic effort to use the White House complex to aid fundraising, though they acknowledge the DNC has paid for some events at the presidential mansion.

DNC documents obtained by the Times show that donors who promised to give $30,400 for four consecutive years were promised access to meet "senior members" of the administration and "senior members" of Congress.

Needless to say, the Republicans DEMAND AN INVESTIGATION and all that.

Granted, it's to a lesser degree than Dubya or Clinton, but it's still there and needs to stop. Then again, there's a lot in Washington that needs to stop.

Stimulus/Response

No doubt this article will be disparaged with the idiotic claim that the 388,000 jobs saved by the stimulus only cost taxpayers $2 million a piece, because the roads, schools, projects and infrastructure in the stimulus package that will benefit everyone don't actually count as a benefit to Republicans who don't believe in the tyranny of the socialism of highways.

Breaking Moose Flash

America still doesn't think Sarah Palin has any business being President.

Seventy-one percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday morning believe the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee is not qualified to be president, with 29 percent saying she does have the credentials to serve in the White House. Republicans appear split, with 52 percent saying she's qualified and 47 percent disagreeing with that view.

The poll indicates that about half of the country, 51 percent, has an unfavorable view of Palin, with 42 percent seeing her in a positive light. Nearly two-thirds of those questioned say Palin's not a typical politician, and feel she's a good role model for women. Fifty-six percent add that Palin cares about people, and a similar amount think she's honest and trustworthy. But the survey indicates Americans are split over whether Palin shares their values, agrees with them on the issues, or if she's a strong leader.

"Sarah Palin has one advantage that many past Republican candidates have not shared - Americans think she cares about people like them," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "But her biggest Achilles heel is the number who think she is not qualified to be President. Those numbers are similar to what Dan Quayle got in 1993, when only 23 percent thought he was ready for the White House."

Most interesting draw from these numbers: Mathematically there are people out there that say Sarah Palin is honest, trustworthy, empathic and a good role model for women, but she still has no f'cking business being in the White House.

I'd like to talk to some of those people about the terms "projection" and "wishful thinking."

The other people I'd like to talk to are the 47% of Republicans who think she shouldn't be President, and I'd like to ask them who they voted for in 2008 for President. The ones that said "the septuagenarian cancer guy with the massive temper problem" I get to rochambeau.

Also, what Atrios said.

Timmy's At It Again

Tim Geithner is what Zandardad would call "a classic serial enabler."

Tim Geithner's getting ready to shovel more taxpayer money down the rat hole, this time to GMAC.

GMAC, in case you're in understandable denial, has been bailed out twice already.

And now Tim Geithner wants to shovel another $2.8 billion in.

What is the US taxpayer getting in exchange for all these GMAC bailouts?

Preferred stock.

Why are we getting preferred stock, which is neither a claim on the future upside of the company's equity, nor a senior debt security that will be completely repaid in the event that taxpayers finally get mad as hell and won't take it anymore?

Because Tim Geithner is worried that if he makes the folks who voluntarily lent money to GMAC -- the bondholders -- lose so much as a cent, the entire US economy will collapse.

The problem with Obama's economic team is that I know they're smart enough to see the obvious moral hazard they are creating by always coming to the rescue of busted financials.

They do it anyway. Obama also has to be smart enough to see the problem it's creating. Obama allows it to be done. There's a major problem here, and while Tim Geithner is certainly making idiotic decisions, he's doing so with the green light of President Obama. If Obama wanted to stop Geithner from shoveling money at failed companies, he would.

He hasn't yet. That's not Geithner's fault, nor is it totally his responsibility at this stage anymore. The difference between an error and a mistake is the refusal to correct it.

He's a classic serial enabler working for a classic serial enabler.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

How many more months of stories about home sales falling "unexpectedly" will we have to endure before people start realizing that we're still deep in a housing depression and start expecting sales to fall?

The Little Zygote Needs Some Michael McDonald

From Engadget:

Hey, you want to start annoying your kids with your crummy taste in tunes before they've even been born? Fine, go for it. The Lullabelly prenatal music belt -- which is like a giant, soft cummerbund with a speaker stuffed into it -- is here to help. Just plug your fave PMP into it and you'll be all set to turn the womb into a super musical fun fest. The speaker has an output of about 60 to 80 decibels, and you can jack in with your earbuds to jam along. Just remember: you're the one with the volume control, and no matter how good the Tran-Siberian Orchestra sounds to you at 11 am, some people would rather listen to Megadeth.

And I know this will sell *billions*. I wish I had thought of it. Then again, to have thought of it, I would of had to have asked myself "Zandar, wouldn't it be great if you could plug your iPod into somebody's womb and let fly with the Weezer?"

And then I'd have to core my frontal lobe out with a melon baller.

Epic Engineers Solve Problems, You See Fail

When the bits you used to supposedly fix the Bay Bridge fall off said bridge and into traffic, it's time to reevaluate your procedure for fixing bridges in general.

The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge closed indefinitely Tuesday night after a piece of the span fell onto the roadway, prompting the thousands who use the bridge to hunt for alternative routes. The 73-year-old bridge spans the San Francisco Bay and carries an average of 280,000 vehicles daily, the state's Transportation Department says.

"All traffic is being diverted to other bridges. Motorists are advised to expect delays, use alternate routes, and plan ahead for the morning commute," said a message on the Web site of 511, a group of public agencies that provides travel information to Bay Area travelers.

The section of the Bay Bridge from which the debris fell is the same section that was repaired during Labor Day weekend when crews worked almost around the clock to fix a crack in the span.

To ease roadway traffic jams, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, or BART, said it plans to run longer trains and increase its service during rush hour.

Here's a thought. ACTUALLY SPEND THE MONEY TO FIX THE BRIDGE. I know it's California and all, but hey, that's one of those infrastructure things people keep talking about. Somebody throw up a Recovery.org sign and get to work, dig?

Or is that Socialism/Communism/Fascism? I forget.

EPIC FAIL.

Fellow Travelers

Appreciated linkage from the folks over at They Gave Us A Republic, and I'm glad to be returning the favor. Definitely one of the better progressive Kentucky blogs out there, check them out.

Also, welcome NY Daily News readers.

It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Them Back

CNN seems to think the country is ruled by teabaggers as Kevin at Rumproast notes:

Check out the massive turnout for tea party in Fresno on Monday (video—top right). My favorite part in the local news report occurs at around the 40 second mark when the guy in the black shirt with no one else around him looks over his shoulder to see who else is there. Answer: NOBODY. Except for CNN.

UPDATE: CNN’s Patrick Oppmann was reporting from Tonopah, NV. Here’s the massive turnout that somehow didn’t make it into his report:

No report on whether anyone blurted out, “Bingo!” DEVELOPING.

No matter what the election results are, the Liberal Village Media will always let you know that upset old white conservatives are the future of American politics.

Not pictured: the 1,999,975 invisible teabaggers that CNN swears they can see out of the corner of their eye and don't want to admit aren't there.

Looking Ahead A Few Moves

Let's say that the opt-out public option does indeed pass. Let's game that out.

Sully argues that there's no way Republicans at the state level will opt out of the public option because it's political suicide.

But imagine for a moment that the opt-out public option passes and becomes law (I give it a 65 percent chance at this point). Then what happens? Well, there has to be a debate in every state in which Republicans, where they hold a majority or the governorship, will presumably decide to deny their own voters the option to get a cheaper health insurance plan. When others in other states can get such a plan, will there not be pressure on the GOP to help their own base? Won't Bill O'Reilly's gaffe - when he said what he believed rather than what Roger Ailes wants him to say - be salient? Won't many people - many Republican voters - actually ask: why can't I have what they're having?

John Aravosis wisely disagrees.

Imagine Republicans in red states convincing voters who don't have a lot of money, have precarious jobs if any, have a bad school system, have under-educated and less-than-healthy children, and whose home is about to be foreclosed on - imagine the Republicans being able to convince that voter that abortion and gay marriage are more important than their family's livelihood.

That is the definition of Red State.

Absolutely with Aravosis on this one. If Wingers/Teabaggers/Tenthers/Birthers were governed by logical, enlightened self-interest, they wouldn't be Wingers/Teabaggers/Tenthers/Birthers in the first friggin' place.

Case in point, Dan Riehl's reaction:

The problem is, the bill is quite possibly unconstitutional on its face. It'll see a court challenge before anything else, perhaps even from both sides. If it's constitutional, then a state government would have every right to do away with Medicare, along with several other federal programs, too. Try and rationalize that in a single SCOTUS brief. Somehow I doubt you could unless the court stands ready to take the Federal government apart piece by piece. The court would ultimately be tasked with determining if health care is indeed a constitutional right. Elections have consequences. What do think Sotomayor believes, not that she's much different than the justice she replaced?

And that's exactly how I see this playing out, Republicans will make sure this goes all the way to the top with the intent of using the Bush legacy Roberts court to dismantle as much of the Federal government as possible. It's the Club For Growth's wet dream.

There will be much sturm und drang, and in the end they just may get the Dems they need to Judas the party and kill it outright. But if it does pass somehow, you can bet the legal challenges will begin immediately to the law, with the intent of a 5-4 SCOTUS ruling to basically declare as much of the last 70 years of legislation as unconstitutional.

And that should scare the hell out of all of us.

Golf Clapping For Joe

Everything you need to know about the Village response to Joe F'ckin Lieberman's announcement yesterday can be summed up in today's WSJ editorial board.

Bravo, Joe. It's a relief to see at least someone standing up to the Washington rush to rearrange 18% of the U.S. economy without carefully inspecting the cost and the consequences. (See above for what the Senate Finance bill that is the basis for Mr. Reid's bill would do to insurance premiums.)

Mr. Lieberman added that he'd also oppose a bill that includes Mr. Reid's provision for states to "opt-out" of the public program "because it still creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line." Exactly right again.

The opt-out language is a ruse designed to give the impression of political and consumer choice when it will provide none in practice. The many new mandates, regulations and taxes in Mr. Reid's bill would so distort every state's insurance market that premiums would rise fast in states that did opt-out, assuming private insurance was still available at all.

States would quickly have no choice but to sign onto Mr. Reid's Medicare-for-everyone alternative, which would charge lower rates because the government will rig the rules in its favor. Democrats on the left know that if they can create the public-option architecture in any form, it is certain to become the only option in relatively short order.

It's funny how an industry making massive profits where revenue is rising at the rate of 5-8% yearly and with anti-trust exemptions allowing functional monopolies can't possibly find any way to make any money in the free market.

How nice of Joe to stand up for America's endangered insurance company profits.

Just in case some friend of a friend of a nameless aide ever sees this, keep telling yourself that voters are going to reward Democrats that block health care reform and maintain the status quo. That worked so well in 1994, after all.

Conduct Unbecoming

But still amusing on a sophomoric level.

At the San Francisco Democratic Party annual gala, it was something of a scene when Arnold Schwarzenegger crashed the joint. Specifically, Tom Ammiano's comments, caused some stir when they were heard around the Capitol.

You might have thought there would have been some repurcussion. A bill vetoed that you wouldn't expect. And that was the case as AB 1176 was vetoed. But the SF Bay Guardian thought the veto message was a little bit odd. And after reading the bizarre message, they played a little codebreaker and figured out this little juvenile prank.

Ignoring the fact that he vetoed a bill that he probably should have signed in order to allow financing to go forward on several projects along the San Francisco waterfront, how low can this governor stoop? Implanting secret epithets into veto messages?

Yes, the first letters on each line of Ahnold's veto message told Tom Ammiano exactly what he and San Francisco can do, rhyming with "muck chew".

Pretty juvenile and petty...but in the end Ahnold is a Republican after all.

StupidiNews!

• A car bomb in the Pakistani city of Peshawar has killed at least 90.
• Auto dealers have been exempted from scrutiny in the legislation to create a consumer protection agency.
• A Congressional subcommittee has determined that the government's response to H1N1 has been slow at best.
• The largest banks in America would bear the cost of future bailouts should House legislation pass.
• Experts warn that non-state actors could have significant cyberattack capability by 2012.

Last Call

BooMan basically says the Dems have blown it on Obamacare.

Far smarter would have been to let the Senate debate a bill without a public option, defeat the amendment for installing it, and then push for the a watered down House version in the Conference Committee. If the Senate still refused to vote for it then, it would be a whole lot easier to make the case for a public option in budget reconciliation. That was the original plan. If Obama seriously let himself be convinced of Harry Reid's whip count, he screwed this up.

If the problem is limited to Lieberman (and I don't think it is) then the solution is simple. He should lose his committee chairs in the next Congress. But that won't solve anything if the problem isn't limited to Lieberman.

The only upside I can see is that budget reconciliation just became more likely than a lousy bill in regular order. But, that hardly matters because a lousy bill in budget reconciliation just became infinitely more likely than it would have been had Reid not tried and failed to put the public option in the base bill at Stage Two.

And for the life of me, I don't see the way out of this. Harry Reid didn't have the votes, and he never did, apparently. Now the ConservaDems will dismantle the bill to the point where it will most likely fail, vulnerable Dems will lose their seats anyway in 2010 because voters like me are going to say "You chose to try to save your job rather than do the right thing, so screw you!" and vote them out of office, and Obama will be convinced to start playing the Clinton game.

Everything that went wrong with Clinton's presidency, from the Contract With America right up through impeachment, was a result of Clinton losing his health care battle first.

Will Obama follow the same dark path?

At this point, I don't honestly know.

Mr. Green In The Conservatory With The Candlestick

I didn't think there was any Senate Democrat stupid enough to come out and kill Obamacare. But then, Joe F'ckin Lieberman isn't a Dem, technically. He's just an asshole.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill.

Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid has said the Senate bill will.

"We're trying to do too much at once," Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now."

Lieberman added that he’d vote against a public option plan “even with an opt-out because it still creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line."

His comments confirmed that Reid is short of the 60 votes needed to advance the bill out of the Senate, even after Reid included the opt-out provision. Several other moderate Democrats expressed skepticism at the proposal as well, but most of the wavering Democratic senators did not go as far as Lieberman Tuesday, saying they were waiting to see the details.

Lieberman did say he's "strongly inclined" to vote to proceed to the debate, but that he’ll ultimately vote to block a floor vote on the bill if it isn’t changed first.

Your move, Messrs. Reid and Obama. What now?

[UPDATE 3:10 PM] As BTD says, fine then...let's muscle the robust public option through in reconciliation.

[UPDATE 3:52 PM] Marc Ambinder thinks Joementum is bluffing. Steve Benen does not. I'm with Steve. Joementum has screwed America over, and there's frankly not a damn thing Obama will do about it.

[UPDATE 4:47 PM] As expected, Lieberman's move has freed up the Snowe Queen and the other ConservaDems to hold the Reid bill hostage collectively.