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Oh, man, is Meghan McCain ever asking for it:

In an appearance on ABC's The View, Meghan McCain also took issue with a number of recent statements from Sarah Palin, criticizing the former Alaska governor for defending Rush Limbaugh's use of the word "retard" and for suggesting that President Obama launch a war against Iran in order to win a second term.

McCain described Former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo's call for a literacy test for voters as "innate racism."

McCain obviously also has issues with Palin, but it was Tancredo's speech -- in which he thanked God that McCain's father lost the election -- that stuck in her craw:

"It's innate racism, and I think it's why young people are turned off by this movement," McCain retorted on The View.

"I'm sorry, but revolutions start with young people, not 65 year old people talking about literacy tests and people who can't say the word 'vote' in English," McCain added.

McCain, a self-described "progressive Republican," criticized Palin's assertion that President Obama could get himself re-elected to a second term if he launched a war against Iran.

"You should never go to war unless its the absolute last circumstance," McCain said.

As for Palin's defense of Rush Limbaugh for using the word "retard" after calling for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's resignation over the same word last week, McCain said it was a symbol of "exactly what is wrong with politics today.

"We can't placate and say Democrats can say one thing and Republicans can say another thing," she said.

McCain added that the rhetoric coming from the Tea Party movement and from Republicans like Palin "will continue to turn off young voters, and anybody who says different is smoking something."

Why, if she only watched Fox News, McCain would know that America loves this movement and it's full of revolutionary fervor and all kinds of vim and vigor and pep!

Translation: Intraparty heretics like Meghan McCain are political roadkill. Like her dad.

Steve Clemons reacts to a close look inside the Obama White House, written by Financial Times Washington bureau chief Edward Luce. Go read the whole thing, Steven's comments are enlightening:

At a crucial stage in the Democratic primaries in late 2007, Barack Obama rejuvenated his campaign with a barnstorming speech, in which he ended on a promise of what his victory would produce: "A nation healed. A world repaired. An America that believes again."

Just over a year into his tenure, America's 44th president governs a bitterly divided nation, a world increasingly hard to manage and an America that seems more disillusioned than ever with Washington's ways. What went wrong?

Pundits, Democratic lawmakers and opinion pollsters offer a smorgasbord of reasons - from Mr Obama's decision to devote his first year in office to healthcare reform, to the president's inability to convince voters he can "feel their [economic] pain", to the apparent ungovernability of today's Washington. All may indeed have contributed to the quandary in which Mr Obama finds himself. But those around him have a more specific diagnosis - and one that is striking in its uniformity. The Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing, they say.

[...] An outside adviser adds: “I don’t understand how the president could launch healthcare reform and an Arab-Israeli peace process – two goals that have eluded US presidents for generations – without having done better scenario planning. Either would be historic. But to launch them at the same time?”

Again, close allies of the president attribute the problem to the campaign-like nucleus around Mr Obama in which all things are possible. “There is this sense after you have won such an amazing victory, when you have proved conventional wisdom wrong again and again, that you can simply do the same thing in government,” says one. “Of course, they are different skills. To be successful, presidents need to separate the stream of advice they get on policy from the stream of advice they get on politics. That still isn’t happening.”

(This reinforces what I recently wrote about Obama's lack of executive skills. Seems like I'm not the only person who noticed.)

Clemons calls the piece a "vital" and "brave" article, noting that most of the insider media isn't mentioning it at all:

But one thing essential to understand is that the kind of policy that smart strategists -- including by people like National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other advisers like Denis McDonough, Tom Donilon, James Steinberg, William Burns, (previously Gregory Craig) -- would be putting forward is getting twisted either in the rough-and-tumble of a a team of rivals operation that is not working, or is being distorted by the Chicago political gang's tactical advice that is seducing Obama towards a course that has not only violated deals he made with those who voted him into office but which is failing to hit any of the major strategic targets by which the administration will be historically measured.

President Obama needs to take stock quickly. Read the Luce piece. Be honest about what is happening. Read Plouffe's smart book again. Send Rahm Emanuel back to the House in a senior role. Make Valerie Jarrett an important Ambassador. Keep Axelrod -- but balance him with someone like Plouffe, and get back to putting good policy before short term politics.

Set up a Team B with diverse political and national security observers like Tom Daschle, John Podesta, Brent Scowcroft, Arianna Huffington, Fareed Zakaria, Katrina vanden Heuvel, John Harris, James Fallows, Chuck Hagel, Strobe Talbott, James Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and others to give you a no-nonsense picture of what is going on.

And take action to fix the dysfunction of your office.

Otherwise, the Obama brand will be totally bust in the very near term.

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Arianna Huffington debated Hugh Hewitt over Beck's lunatic rantings when he and Roger Ailes lied about his usage of the word "slaughtered" with Howard Kurtz. We exposed that lie here already, but then we were treated to Hewitt's buffoonery about Andy Stern and the same old conservative line being used to defend psycho word talk by conservatives and that was entertaining by itself if you can stand it.

Hewie: If you talk for thirty hours a week, you're going to use the word slaughter and you're going to use it sometimes without knowing it and I don't think we outta focus on it.

No need to respond to that idiocy. But he does try to change the subject and ask why FOX is so popular. Because they have catered to conservatives their entire existence.

Kurtz: let me come back to this question of whether you apply the same standards. Rahm Emanuel, the WH chief of staff said at a private meeting some months ago and used the word "retarded," talking about a democratic idea..."blanking retarded"...he's nbow apologized. You were asked on MSNBC, you said this is political correctness, let's not talk about it. Why not apply the same standards to Rahm?

C&L has commented on the Rahm situation and although what he said was disgusting, it still was behind closed doors and not for public consumption.

What Beck does is totally different and Howard knows this.

In trying to find a comparable situation (which happens all the time by the media,) Kurtz used Rahm's behind closed doors slur. Glenn Beck said it to millions of people and continues to say crazed things on a daily basis to millions of people publicly. Rahm is not a public speaker or a radio or TV talk show host. Do we really have to discuss Glenn Beck or Limbaugh or O'Reilly in this silly way? Please stop it.

Arianna did a great job on the debate, but it needs to be expanded to the entire FOX News network. Beck is but one cog in their wheel. Yes, it's a very twisted wheel, but the debate should center around Roger Ailes and their entire network in the end.

Last June, soon-to-be ex-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin praised Michael Reagan, lauding his propensity to "to call it like he sees it, and to screw political correctness that some would expect him to have to adhere to." As she headed out the door six weeks later, Palin promised to be "less politically correct" after her leaving office. Then after the Ft. Hood shootings in November, Palin said "profile away!" because such political correctness "could be our downfall."

As it turns out, Palin's crusade against political correctness was a bogus one. As her manufactured outrage over Rahm Emanuel's closed-door comments show, Sarah Palin's new mantra is "political correctness for me, not thee."

On Tuesday, Palin took to Facebook to call for Emanuel's resignation following a Wall Street Journal story that the White House chief of staff called liberal activists "f**king retarded" during a meeting last August. But while Emanuel already apologized last week to Special Olympics Chairman and CEO Tim Shriver, Palin demanded his head on behalf of her son and those like him:

"Just as we'd be appalled if any public figure of Rahm's stature ever used the "N-word" or other such inappropriate language, Rahm's slur on all God's children with cognitive and developmental disabilities - and the people who love them - is unacceptable, and it's heartbreaking."

Of course, in two days Sarah Palin will collect a $115,000 pay day speaking to those who traffic in the "N-word" at the National Tea Party Convention.

For Palin, who called for the merger of the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party, the audience will be quite familiar. During the 2008 campaign, attendees at McCain-Palin events displayed toy monkeys to represent her African-American opponent. Self-proclaimed Tea Party "founder" Dale Robertson carried a large sign bearing the N-word at one of the movement's events. Only last week, Robertson distributed a fundraising email which portrayed President Obama as a pimp. It's not hard to imagine that the assembled Tea Baggers would buy "Obama Waffles" and sing along to the words of the "Barack the Magic Negro" song so beloved by Rush Limbaugh and would-be Republican National Committee chairman Chip Saltsman. Still, as Palin wrote in her USA Today op-ed Tuesday:

"They have the courage to stand up and speak out.

Their vision is what drew me to the Tea Party movement. They believe in the same principles that guided my work in public service..."

No doubt, the conservative commentariat will join Sarah Palin's call for Rahm Emanuel's ouster. Sadly, that may be difficult to do.

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From Hardball, while attacking President Obama for not having enough passion to suit them over the party crashers at the White House and the Christmas Underwear Bomber Pat Buchanan uses the Nixon administration to attack President Obama.

MATTHEWS: ... that executive role. And I want you to jump in here, Drew, because I think we`re on to something very narrow and very particular and pointed here. Something like the White House security and those grifters broke in -- a small matter, you could argue, because nothing really went wrong, but they did break in. They had no right to be there. It took him the longest time.

Now, Sally Quinn, who writes about things in Washington, said today in "The Washington Post" on the op-ed page, he should have fired somebody. It should have been Mark Sullivan out of Secret -- somebody, Desiree Rogers, in charge of social life. That was a case. Then the other thing with this thing with the airplane almost being blown up -- nobody seems to be -- you don`t get a sense he`s the boss.

BUCHANAN: Look, I...

MATTHEWS: He`s got some people like Rahm Emanuel enforcing them. And nobody gets sledgehammered.

BUCHANAN: Well, let me tell you -- this is -- now, I know you might...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: ... what Sally said...

BUCHANAN: You might not like the...

MATTHEWS: ... the president explained every time.

BUCHANAN: You might not like this comparison, but Nixon would have called in Haldeman, if those two people had walked in there. What went on, Bob? What happened? You get to the bottom of this. Heads roll. And Haldeman would have been right on top of this. I know they ran into a lot of trouble, but I`ll tell you, that was the best-run White House I have ever been in, first term of Nixon. I mean, when Nixon demanded this kind of action -- and he would not have been satisfied...

MATTHEWS: Well, Watergate, was first term, though.

BUCHANAN: Well, Watergate was first term. There`s no doubt about it. OK. You can laugh about it, what I`m saying...

MATTHEWS: I`m not. I`m just bringing it up.

BUCHANAN: ... is Bob Haldeman was an executive.

WESTEN: He was decisive.

BUCHANAN: And I don`t know that -- and Rahm Emanuel is a congressman and a guy that runs around getting money from Wall Street.

Yeah, best run White House Pat, except for the pesky little Watergate matter.

Boy, it seems like it was only yesterday that Obama was cheered as the end to Clintonian triangulation. Does Obama have serious problems with the base? Bob Brigham seems to think so:

If Obama were leading the Democratic Party in accomplishing good things that made voters' lives better, an increase in Obama numbers could be seen as a sign that Obama could have coattails, that his popularity would bring Democrats along for the ride.

Unfortunately, Obama seems to be pursuing a different strategy. Instead of leading Democrats, Obama is triangulating against the Democratic base. This became clear in the administration's failure on health care turning into attacks on the left.

For Obama, health care seems to be following a model of raising the president's approval at the expense of depressing the base during the midterms. Everyone on the ballot this fall with a 'D' after their name should be alarmed by this:

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been telling Democrats a win on the health issue will reverse the slide in public opinion, just as passage of another controversial proposal, the North American Free Trade Agreement, lifted President Bill Clinton in the polls.

This is triangulation at its worst. This is personal gain at the expense of the party.

There is a reason Obama campaigned on the public option and against mandates, instead of vice-versa. Same with his pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class. Yet now, instead of Democrats being able to campaign on the popular public option, Democrats will have to play defense as to why they raised taxes on middle class health care plans while turning the IRS into the bagman for some of the most hated companies in America.

In conclusion, Obama isn't in good shape. Halfway through the midterms, Obama as coach is giving a lockroom pep talk that is little more than "we couldn't have done any better in the first half because our team is so bad." And his strategy in the second half appears to be focused on making himself look good even if it is at the expense of the rest of the team. Which means even if he does start looking better in the polls, it might not be good news for Democrats in 2010.

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Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi and The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner joined Bill Moyers to discuss the health care bill which appears to be on its way to passing the Senate now and what lessons the Obama administration took away from Bill Clinton's failure to get a health care bill passed. Robert Kuttner explained why even though he thinks this is an awful bill, if he were in the Senate, he'd vote for it. You can watch the rest of the interview at Bill Moyers Journal.

BILL MOYERS: Let's start with some news. Some of the big insurance companies, Well Point, Cigna, United Health, all surged to a 52 week high in their share prices this week when it was clear there'd be no public option in the health care bill going through Congress right now. What does that tell you, Matt?

MATT TAIBBI: Well, I think what most people should take away from this is that the massive subsidies for health insurance companies have been preserved while it's also expanded their customer base because there's an individual mandate in the bill that's going to provide all these companies with the, you know, 25 or 30 million new people who are going to be paying for health insurance. So, it's, obviously, a huge boon to that industry. And I think Wall Street correctly read what the health care effort is all about.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Rahm Emanuel, the President's Chief of Staff, was Bill Clinton's Political Director. And Rahm Emanuel's take away from Bill Clinton's failure to get health insurance passed was 'don't get on the wrong side of the insurance companies.' So their strategy was cut a deal with the insurance companies, the drug industry going in. And the deal was, we're not going to attack your customer base, we're going to subsidize a new customer base. And that script was pre-cooked so it's not surprising that this is what comes out the other side.

BILL MOYERS: So are you saying that this, what some call a sweetheart deal between the pharmaceutical industry and the White House, done many months ago before this fight really began, was because the drug company money in the Democratic Party?

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President Barack Obama accused Fox News as operating in a talk radio format. Fox News only strengthened that argument Sunday as they allowed only White House detractors to comment on the situation. Chris Wallace went so far as to suggest the White House was using mob tactics in it's "war against Fox News." Of course, Fox couldn't find any White House defenders to appear on the Sunday talk show.

It's "what some people are calling the administration's Chicago way of doing business," said Wallace referring to a scene from the classic mobster movie "The Untouchables." Wallace's comparison follows other commentary by the right wing echo chamber. The Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel was one of the first:

A White House set on kneecapping its opponents isn't, of course, entirely new. (See: Nixon) What is a little novel is the public and bare-knuckle way in which the Obama team is waging these campaigns against the other side.

Glenn Beck followed the script with a rant about the White House "beatdown" of its enemies the following day.

That's the Chicago way and now we have it in Washington with Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama.

What was it that Obama promised on the campaign trail? Oh yeah, a "new kind of politics." America didn't think the "new" politics would be even worse than the "old" politics.

Agree with the administration? Fantastic. Dare to stand in the way of "reform"? Uh-oh.

No longer is it a gentlemen's disagreement that can be debated. No, you are going to play ball or get a beatdown.

Media Matters put together some examples of how Fox opinion bleeds into Fox "News."

BBC:

A panel probing fraud claims in the Afghan election has found Hamid Karzai did not gain enough valid votes for an outright win, the BBC understands.

Preliminary results from August's first round had placed Mr Karzai comfortably over the 50% plus one vote threshold needed to avoid a run-off.

But the BBC understands Mr Karzai's vote share has fallen below half, after a number of votes were ruled invalid.

Under poll rules, Mr Karzai now faces a runoff against rival Abdullah Abdullah.

The panel said it had found "clear and convincing evidence of fraud" at the polling stations, which were across the country.

It was not clear how Mr Karzai would respond to the ECC findings, amid reports of a possible legal challenge.

Initial results released last month had given him nearly 55% of votes, with former foreign minister Mr Abdullah on 28%.

The Afghan president has insisted he won the election outright, but EU observers have said as many as one in four votes cast were suspicious.

Sources have told the BBC that Mr Karzai is furious over the prospect of a second round.

It makes Rahm Emanuel's comment that we must know if we have a partner in Afghanistan before making a decision on troop escalation that much more pointed and the Republicans pressuring Pres. Obama to make a quicker decision regarding Afghanistan that much more ridiculous and reactionary.

This is pretty big news. The big progressive groups hadn't yet spoken on the question of escalation in Afghanistan - their silence was pronounced. MoveOn finally broke that silence today, appealing to the President to commit to a clear exit strategy. It's a pretty big step.

U.S. policy in Afghanistan has reached a pivotal moment. President Obama is poised to make a critical decision about the Afghanistan war in the next few weeks. And there’s a big debate happening right now about what to do.

Pro-war advocates both inside and outside the administration—including John McCain and Joe Lieberman—are calling for a big escalation. The general in charge of Afghanistan is expected to request tens of thousands more troops, and that may just be the beginning. They’re cranking up the pressure for an immediate surge.

But other powerful voices are urging caution: Vice President Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have raised real concerns about the idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan without a clear strategy, as have Democrats in Congress. And a majority of Americans oppose increasing troop levels.

Can you write to the White House and tell them we need a clear exit strategy—not tens of thousands more US troops stuck in a quagmire? You can send the President a message by clicking below:

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51843&id=&t=1

Some administration officials are arguing for a smaller, nimbler approach with a narrow focus on the threat from al-Qaeda. But cheerleaders for the war refuse to acknowledge that there could be any viable strategy other than more and more troops. So they’re trotting out the same tired old lines and questioning the motives of those who disagree with them.

They figure they can cut off any debate about our ultimate goals in Afghanistan and the region. But President Obama has consistently shown a willingness to stand up for his more thoughtful approach to foreign policy, and that’s what he needs to do here, too.

The hawks are making their position heard. Now, the majority of Americans—those of us who are for as quick and as responsible an end to the war as possible—need to make our voices heard, too.

With Democrats opposing escalation by more than two to one, MoveOn is just reflecting the opinions of their membership. They're a bit late to the debate, but better than ducking it entirely.

The D.C. crowd really does live in another world, don't they? Interesting that this article concludes the Dems are having trouble raising money is that they're not business-friendly enough!

The reporter doesn't mention that the netroots community (aka the Democratic ATM) has stopped donating to the DCCC and the DSCC, and instead donate directly to candidates - mostly because we're so disgusted with the Blue Dogs Rahm Emanuel and Co. have recruited.

The party's obliviousness is costing them money at a time they really need it. Worse, it will end up costing us a majority. But why should we give them our money when they're more interested in serving corporations than they are in us?

Democratic political committees have seen a decline in their fundraising fortunes this year, a result of complacency among their rank-and-file donors and a de facto boycott by many of their wealthiest givers, who have been put off by the party's harsh rhetoric about big business.

The trend is a marked reversal from recent history, in which Democrats have erased the GOP's long-standing fundraising advantage. In the first six months of 2009, Democratic campaign committees' receipts have dropped compared with the same period two years earlier.

The vast majority of those declines were accounted for by the absence of large donors who, strategists say, have shut their checkbooks in part because Democrats have heightened their attacks on the conduct of major financial firms and set their sights on rewriting the laws that regulate their behavior.

As the battle over President Obama's effort to overhaul the health-care system reached a fever pitch this summer, the three national Republican committees combined to bring in $1.7 million more than their Democratic counterparts in August. The pair of Democratic committees tasked with raising money for House and Senate candidates -- and doing so at a time when the party holds its strongest position on Capitol Hill in a generation -- have watched their receipts plummet by a combined 20 percent with little more than a year to go before the November 2010 midterm elections.

Gee, Rahm. We didn't have that problem when Howard Dean was DNC chair, did we?

Large-scale defeats in the midterms could be a crippling blow to the ambitious agenda mapped out by Obama's top advisers, particularly if they happen in the Senate, where Democrats caucus with a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority. The party will have to work furiously to defend at least six Senate seats and as many as 40 in the House, including many snatched from Republicans.

"If they take them back, this is the end of the road for what Barack and I are trying to do," Vice President Biden said Monday at a fundraiser for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), whose district was held by a Republican for more than two decades before her 2006 victory.

Democrats said a struggling economy is only partly to blame for the poor fundraising performance and acknowledged a more perilous problem: satisfaction among activists that the party now holds the White House, 60 votes in the Senate and 60 percent of the House.

Watching August finally come to a close, I couldn't help but notice that the strategy being used by David Axlerod on the health care reform debate is pretty much the same one he's used throughout the primaries and the general election: David allows the debate to drift off, loses the messaging almost completely, the media runs afoul with wingnuttery and then Axlerod brings President Obama back in so he can swoop down and save the day at the last second.

How's that working for him now?

It might have had a better chance of working if the President had given more definitive answers to what he wanted in health care reform. Instead, he turned the entire legislative process over to Congress, the Baucus Dogs, the Blue Dogs and the Chuck Grassleys, and now it's a mess.

If a bill is passed without a public option, President Obama is in jeopardy of losing his base now. If he doesn't want to lose the left, he must speak out and make clear what he wants in the bill that includes a vibrant public option.

Rahm Emanuel, his Chief of Staff, has always been the biggest supporter of the Blue Dogs and it seems like it's part of his strategy to let them block real change to the system and is making sure that the insurance companies still rule the world. Without ever going out on a limb and saying what exactly he wants to pass in health care, he's allowed the right ring fanatics to spew their Beckerwocky, brandish their assault rifles at his events and it shows in the polls. If President Obama loses his base, then who will be there to get his back as his presidency continues? As Mike Lux has written, it's Bush's base that kept him afloat when things got rough and without them, he surely would have lost the 2004 election.
Chris Bowers writes:

In both branches of Congress, Democrats already have the votes and procedural options in place to pass a public option on health care reform. This means it is possible to pass a public option now. it also means that if a public option does not pass as part of health care reform, it will be a because of a political calculation made by the Democratic leadership, not because there was no way to pass one...read on

We have the votes and we have the power, but does the will to really change health care exist? Only time will tell, but the Obama administration is at the precipice now on health care. When Congress comes back in session the time for games, trial balloons and focus groups are over. We voted you in to make real change and not phony compromises. Allowing conservatives to dictate health care and his agenda was never something the almost 70,000,000 who voted for him wanted.

I didn't vote for Rahm Emanuel, did you?

He still has time to make it work, but that time is running out.

UPDATE: I watched Chuck Todd say on MSNBC a little while ago that we should all circle the date 09/15/09. That's the day of reckoning. He also is reporting that President Obama's true health care bill of love is the Baucus Bill and that's the one he'll get behind. How does Chuck know that? I'm not sure, but he's an elitist Villager.

Digby writes:

Chuck Todd is a bit of a dim bulb, but he is a perfect purveyor of beltway conventional wisdom. His proclamation is what the Village believes and regardless of whether or not it's true, the debate will be shaped by that preconceived notion.

Just a word to the wise: as of September 15th, if the committee reports out a bill as promised, the proponents of real health care reform will be fighting the notion that the debate is over and anything more than minor cosmetic changes to the bucket of corporate compost the Finance Committee serves up will be portrayed as Obama caving to the hippies. Plan your arguments accordingly.
{}
Update III: Ooooh. The plot thickens. "Robust" public option or nothing? Brian Buetler reports...
The Republican obstructonism, from a number of anlges, is pushing Obama to choose between a good plan or nothing.

If he picks a good plan, maybe we should send them all thank-you notes.

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(h/t Heather.)

I, for one, am thrilled that Dr. Dean is outside the White House, agitating for real healthcare reform. He's much more effective out here than on the inside, being back-stabbed by Rahm:

Howard Dean has emerged as President Barack Obama’s chief antagonist from the left on healthcare reform, raising questions over whether Obama made a mistake by snubbing Dean for a position in his administration.

Dean’s strong advocacy for creating a broad government-run health insurance program, known as the public option, has become a headache for Obama while at the same time giving liberals a powerful spokesman with national credibility.

Dean, who once declared himself a representative of the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” has been traveling the nation this summer offering his own views on Obama’s healthcare proposal. His uncompromising stance is reminiscent of his 2004 presidential campaign that took many Democrats by surprise, and has begun to symbolize a rift between the president and those activists who played a major role in electing him.

Oh, yeah. Yoo hoo, over here! Remember us?

“Howard Dean has been the bully pulpit for the grass roots, expressing what the majority of Americans across the country are feeling but using his profile to make it newsworthy,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), a liberal activist group that supports the public option.

“It might have been a blessing in disguise that Howard Dean was not brought into the admin because it has allowed him to be bully pulpit for the overwhelming majority of American people who support the public option.”

Soon after Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a television interview that the public option is “not the essential element” of healthcare reform, Dean took a strong opposing stance.

“You can't really do health reform without it," Dean said of the public option in a television interview Monday, calling a major government role “the entirety of healthcare reform.” His comment spearheaded a week of liberal criticism of the administration’s mixed messages on healthcare reform. (Obama insisted on Thursday that his position on the public option has not changed and described it as “a good idea” but “not the only aspect.”)

His potential to torpedo the administration’s signature domestic proposal is somewhat ironic given Obama’s efforts to enlist potential adversaries in his administration rather than face their wrath.

Dean was once considered a candidate for secretary of Health and Human Services. Obama passed him over while appointing former rivals and potential adversaries to Cabinet posts. He named his primary rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of State and asked Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a longtime critic of Democratic fiscal policy, to serve as secretary of Commerce.

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August 19, 2009 News Corp

VAN SUSTEREN: Voters want answers on health care. What they don't want is for the Democrats to go it alone. Now, according to one poll, 59 percent of people say Congress should not approve a health care plan if it's not bipartisan. But will the Democrats go it alone anyway, shut Republicans out of the health care debate? The New York Times reports that Democrats do not think the GOP is going to cooperate on health care reform. The Times quotes White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel as saying, "The Republican leadership has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama's health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day."

In a press briefing today, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs pulled back from the report.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT GIBBS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We are focused on a process that continues in the Senate with both parties. The president again met with Senator Baucus on Friday in Montana, and they discussed the progress that was being made among Democrats and Republicans on the Finance Committee. That's our focus.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAN SUSTEREN: Senator Chuck Grassley is ranking Republican member of the "Gang of six," a bipartisan group of senators working for a deal in the Senate on the health care bill. and according to The New York Times, the White House sees criticism by Senator Grassley as a sign there is little hope of reaching a bipartisan deal. Is that true?

Senator Grassley joins us live. Good evening, Senator. And is there little hope of a bipartisan deal, sir?

SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY (R), IOWA: I haven't given up yet, and I haven't said anything new since we adjourned for the summer break that I've been saying for the last three months. So for the White House to draw any conclusions other than what I've told the president right to his face -- and I've said a couple things that are very important, and I've said them before. I've told him for several weeks that, number one, it would really help get bipartisanship if he would make a statement that he would sign a bill that didn't have a public option, or what some of us call a government-run health plan, in it.

And the second one was, in response to a question he asked me about would I be (ph) three or four Republicans going along with the Democrats to make a bipartisan issue, and on that issue, I answered him the same way I've been telling a lot of people for three or four months, that I would not go along because that's not bipartisan.

What you have to have when you're rejiggering one sixth of our U.S. economy, and when you're dealing with health care because that's life-and- death issue for every American, affecting every American citizen, it's got to be done with lots of Democrats and a lot of Republicans, and that's bipartisanship. And it's my responsibility to do something that would get broad support among Republicans, and it's Senator Baucus's Republican to get something that would get broad support among Democrats.

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The always classy Coultergeist:

In the discussion with Coulter, in the first video below, Hannity brought up an old statement by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother to Obama’s Chief of Staff: “Services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

Hannity showed that statement with the clear suggestion that it somehow indicated the current health care bill will include euthanasia, even though the statement was made in 1996 by someone who is not part of the Obama administration. Hannity went on to conflate the statement with the health care bill by (falsely) describing it as “taking seniors in a room and offering them end-of-life counseling.”

Coulter agreed. She added, “Totally ironically, Zeke Emanuel is on my death list. Hold the applause. I’m going to be on the death panel.”

Hannity, obviously stunned, said, “In other words, you get to pick who dies.”

“Right. I have a list,” Coulter answered. “Should I start with the ‘A’s?”

Was Hannity outraged that she spoke that way? Heck no. In a half-admiring tone, he said, “I can read the headlines tomorrow. It’s going to be Ann Coulter…”

It's not the first time that Coulter has fantasized about killing a person. She also wanted to put "rat poison in Justice Stevens' creme brulee".

Of course, Fox News remains blissfully unconcerned by providing a forum for Coulter's murderous impulses and fantasies.