Nearly 3 Dozen Planets Found

I'd like to know how they lost them in the first place. Probably Bush's fault. Read More......

Richard Wolffe: FOX's Wallace may be linked to Dunn Smear

I wrote earlier tonight about how an alleged "concerned parent" (blacked out to "protect" their identity), shown on FOX News tonight in order to smear White House communications director Anita Dunn, sure looked an awful lot like FOX News' own Chris Wallace. Well, it seems Newsweek's richard Wollfe found a Chris Wallace connection to FOX's smear campaign as well. This would be bad news for Wallace, as he always tries to portray himself as a "real" journalist, even though he works for a GOP political operation. If Wallace is indeed tied to this smear, it will cement him as part and parcel of the FOX Republican political machine. Media Matters has the video:

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Is FOX's Chris Wallace the anonymous "concerned parent" they just showed on Glenn Beck?

FOX News' Glenn Beck, who has previously talked about poisoning House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has been on a tear lately about all the "communists" he thinks are working in the highest levels of the Obama administration, and in the major media (Beck even found a "communist building" in downtown NYC - seriously, Beck uncovered that Rockefeller Center has secret communist drawings all over it - Keith Olbermann has a great segment on the commie building). One such "communist" who Beck thinks he's uncovered is White House communications director Anita Dunn. (I was on CNN yesterday talking about Beck's queer fixation with Dunn.)

Well, today America's favorite sociopath had a super duper double secret "anonymous" parent on to complain about a graduation speech that Ms. Dunn gave a while back. The thing is, when you look at the alleged parent, who was speaking from FOX's Washington, DC bureau, he sure looks an awful lot like FOX's own Chris Wallace. Check out the screen capture above from the TV. I posted a normal photo of Wallace to the left, and one in which I scrunched his head to the right (since the anonymous parent looks like they scrunched the video of his head, to further disguise him). Is it just me, or are those trademark ears and helmet-head hair just a little too similar to Chris Wallace's?

Then again, it could have just been Devo.

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More possible election trouble for House Dems

Which means that any election promises put aside for a better day, the better day just got worse.

Already prepared to deal with challenging midterm turnout dynamics that favor the GOP, national Democratic strategists now find themselves looking at higher unemployment numbers, potentially divisive foreign policy decisions and a president who lacks the luster that he had immediately after his inauguration.

This new political reality has a significant effect on the election prospects of dozens of Democratic candidates for the House, whether incumbents, challengers or open-seat hopefuls.

More than a dozen Democratic Members who were already headed for competitive contests now find themselves in even more serious danger in next year’s midterm elections. Before the election cycle ends, most of them are likely to be underdogs for re-election.

This is why you should never believe a politician who tells you to wait until next year, the year after that, or his next term for him to keep his promises. There is no guarantee that the conditions will stay favorable. Read More......

POLL: Support for public option grows, Americans want results more than bipartisanship

For the past few months, the public option has faced a barrage of attacks from the insurance industry and its allies on Capitol Hill, both Republicans and Democrats. The American people have rejected the criticism. In the real world, there's growing support for the public option, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, which just came out:

On the issue that has been a flash point in the national debate, 57 percent of all Americans now favor a public insurance option, while 40 percent are opposed. Support has risen since mid-August, when a bare majority, 52 percent, said they favored it. (In a June Post-ABC poll, support had been at 62 percent.)

If run by the states and available only to those who lack affordable private options, support for a public plan jumps to 76 percent. Under those circumstances, even a majority of Republicans, 56 percent, would be supportive, about double their level of support without such a limitation.

We keep hearing from top Obama advisers that the president thinks the public option is "the best possible choice." He's got the American people on his side. So why is he so reticent to demand a real public option be included in the final bill?

In addition to growing support for a public option, a key finding in the poll is that a majority of the American people want results more than they want bipartisanship:

Faced with a basic strategic choice that soon may confront the administration and Democratic congressional leaders, a slim majority of Americans, 51 percent, would prefer a reform plan that included some form of government insurance for people who cannot get affordable private coverage even if it had no GOP support in Congress. Thirty-seven percent would rather have a bipartisan plan without such a choice. Republicans and Democrats are on opposite sides of this question, with independents preferring legislation with a public option and without Republican support by 52 to 35 percent.

On this question, Greg Sargent has a very good take on what it means:

Okay, this is important: The new Washington Post poll finally asks people about their cravings for bipartisanship in the right way, and its finding really challenges the conventional wisdom that people want bipartisan health care compromise at all costs.

Specifically: A majority wants a Dem-only bill rather than a bipartisan one if the Dem-only one includes a public insurance option and the bipartisan one doesn’t.

Exactly. The D.C. conventional wisdom is wrong, again. Good policy trumps the Congressional process. It's so inside-the-beltway to think the process matters. In the long run, this is going to be the Obama health insurance reform law, not the "Obama + one or two GOPers" bill. (Remember, they call it the "Bush tax cut," not the "Bush + Max Baucus and a couple other Democrats" tax cut.)

So, if the Obama administration wants bipartisanship, it exists from the American people, not the professional Republicans here in Washington. This would also seem to indicate that Rush, FOX and Beck, who have been apoplectic about any kind of reform, don't speak for their party.

NOTE FROM JOHN: It's actually kind of amazing. The Obama administration has refused to puts its weight behind the public option, yet the poll numbers for the public option keep growing. All of this has me wondering if the Teabaggers and their fake August protests didn't scare the hell out of the White House and the Democrats in Congress. They actually believe that opposition to the public option is real, simply because a handful of nutjobs, organized by Glenn Beck, told them it was. There's still time for our president to lead. Read More......

Rush Limbaugh tells female CNN correspondent to get f----- by a fire hydrant to improve her day

POSSIBLE CORRECTION: One of the readers noted that it is possible that Limbaugh meant the female CNN reporter should go get douched by a fire hydrant, rather than f'd by it. I stand possibly corrected.

From Media Matters:
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GOPers: Sen. DeMint is like a Jew "watching our nation's pennies"

Or maybe a Jew who's never voting Republican again. From Rachel Weiner at Huff Post:

Two South Carolina County Republican Party chairmen stepped up to rebut criticism of Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) in a newspaper editorial Sunday. But their defense of the senator might be overshadowed by their use of an anti-Semitic stereotype to praise him...

"There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves," Ulmer and Merwin wrote. "By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation's pennies and trying to preserve our country's wealth and our economy's viability to give all an opportunity to succeed."

UPDATE: Dave Weigel tweets that he just found this hidden camera footage of a South Carolina GOP meeting.

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The Hill: Obama’s moves could rattle key constituencies

I just posted on the gay blog a long analysis of whether President Obama's growing problems with key constituencies, such as the gays, Jews, unions, and Latinos, could up biting the party in the behind. Do key constituencies every really walk? The conventional wisdom in DC is "no." But I think "walking" could manifest itself in ways that the gay community would embrace, and that the Democratic party would not welcome. Read More......

Lieberman to hold hearings on Obama's czars

Here's the thing. It's not entirely clear if this is a bad thing. If Lieberman is doing this in order to debunk the attacks on Obama's czars, and the hearing is geared towards doing just that, then this could be a good way to finally put that issue to rest. Having said that, this issue was, I thought, already out of the news. So the hearing risks bringing it back into the news. Also, at least two of of the four witnesses are Republican administration officials who worked under Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. Again, if Lieberman is using those Republicans to testify that even dyed in the wool GOPers think the czar story is silly, then it's a brilliant move. But if Lieberman's hearings do anything short of completely exonerating Obama, he should be kicked out of the caucus once and for all. Obama owns Lieberman, he saved Lieberman's committee chairmanship. It's time Lieberman got in line, or got out. Read More......

Congressional campaigns invest funds on Wall Street

Kind of a conflict of interest:

While it may seem unusual for members to invest their political contributions in the market, the practice is legal under current campaign laws. House conflict-of-interest rules also do not apply to campaign holdings, leaving members free to invest their funds pretty much as they please. Unlike their personal investments, members are not required to disclose the stocks their campaigns invest in.

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Obama needs to pull a Letterman on health care reform

Robert Reich:

Last January, as I understand it, the White House promised Big Pharma, big insurance, and the American Medical Association the moral equivalent of what Joel Halderman allegedly demanded of David Letterman: hush money. The groups agreed to stay silent or even be supportive of healthcare reform, as long as they were paid off.

But now that it's time to collect, the bill is larger than the White House expected, and it's going to fall like an avalanche on middle class Americans in coming years. That could mean an ugly 2012 election (read Sarah Palin).

So the President has to do what Letterman did: Refuse to pay. But if Obama doesn't weigh in forcefully and say "no" to the hush money for Big Pharma, big insurance, and the AMA, America's middle class will get walloped. And if the walloping starts before 2012, Sarah Palin or some other right wing-nut populist will wallop Obama. And after she or he wallops Obama, America will get walloped even worse....

But if Obama doesn't weigh in forcefully and say "no" to the hush money for Big Pharma, big insurance, and the AMA, America's middle class will get walloped. And if the walloping starts before 2012, Sarah Palin or some other right wing-nut populist will wallop Obama. And after she or he wallops Obama, America will get walloped even worse.

Remember, just yesterday White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel said that it's not yet time for the president to weigh in. It's possible that the White House doesn't want to be truly responsible, in advance, for staking out what comes out of the Congress in the name of "health care reform." Why? Because if you're most important goal is to be able to say you "reformed health care," for political purposes in the next election, and you only marginally care if health care is actually reformed for the better, then you don't endorse or demand any detailed provisions, or any specific bill, in advance. That way, no matter what Congress passes, if they call it health care reform, even if it really isn't, or at the very least even if it's only a b-rate effort at what could have been legislative brilliance, you can still claim victory.

If you demanded in advance that the final bill include a public option, negotiated prescription drug prices, capped insurance premia, you would have to actually fight for those provisions - and the White House has shown a reluctance towards fighting in support of its proposals. And just as bad, should those "must have" provisions not be included in the final bill, it would be harder for the White House to claim a "health care reform" victory, which it desperately wants. If claiming a victory is more important than the substance of the legislation, then you don't stake out hard and firm positions on what the bill needs to contain. Because you don't really care.

It's difficult to see any other reason to explain why the White House has been, and continues to be, afraid to have the president take a firm position on anything in this legislation. Read More......

New Jersey's Chris Christie hearts George Bush

I don't think this is going to help in New Jersey:

Vice President Biden will be campaigning with Governor Jon Corzine today. Obama will campaign with Corzine in Hackensack on Wednesday. Read More......

Republicans "Unable to mount a filibuster on their own," but still trying to kill health insurance reform with scare tactics

The GOPers on the Hill are all excited about their newest strategy to kill health care reform. They're going to scare people about what is in the legislation. Not so new, really. That's what the GOP does. But, there's a key line in this article, which many of us have been repeating for months now. Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Via Roll Call:

Unable to mount a filibuster on their own and calculating that Democrats are on track to send a health care bill to Obama by year’s end, Senate Republicans figure the only way to stop or reshape the measure is to give the public enough time to figure out what’s in it and what they don’t like about it.

Doing that is going to take some time, and the process of amending bills during a floor debate — which can include demanding a 60-vote threshold for all amendments — could provide the minority ample opportunity to slow things down. Republicans could also benefit from some built-in delays, including the fact that Democratic leaders have said they’d like to wait for a Congressional Budget Office cost estimate on the bill before beginning debate.

The Republicans don't matter in this debate. Their "scare" strategy only works if some weak Senate Democrat falls for it. Unfortunately, there are more than a few weak Democrats in the Senate.

This is where leadership will matter -- and that means leadership on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Read More......

Obama admin. won't pursue medical marijuana cases, if legal in state

Going after medical marijuana users and sellers was a complete waste of resources during the Bush administration. That strategy now ends in the state's where it's legal. This is a good move from the Obama administration:

The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors Monday.

Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws.

The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.

Fourteen states allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

This is a campaign promise that Obama kept. Read More......

Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

It's freezing in DC. Okay, not quite freezing. It's 37.

Not a lot on the President's schedule today. This morning, he's heading out to Sidwell Friends for parent-teacher conferences. This afternoon, he's meeting with a Senator who sometimes acts like a petulant child: Kent Conrad.

I still don't understand the White House strategy on the public option. That provision is supported by the President, a majority of Senators and a majority of the American people. The messaging from the White House that the president thinks it's the "best possible choice," but won't fight for it is the kind of messaging that could only emanate from inside the beltway. It doesn't make sense in the real world.

Since an overwhelming majority of the Democratic Senate caucus -- 51 of the 60 Democrats -- support the public option, Harry Reid should include it in the Senate bill. Make the GOP try to take it out. Surely, Obama can secure the votes of all the Democratic Senators, including Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Kent Conrad, to vote for cloture. They've all got their pressure points -- and Obama should have the pressure.

That's one of the stories we'll be monitoring this week...and still waiting for the Defense Authorization bill, which includes hates crimes legislation, to hit the Senate floor.

Start threading.. Read More......

Hamas launches religious crackdown in Gaza

Bringing out the inner knuckle-dragger whether they like it or not. The Guardian:

For the first time since Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections nearly four years ago, the group is trying to Islamise Gazan society. In public, Hamas leaders say they are merely encouraging a social moral code, and insist they are not trying to imitate the religious police who operate in some other rigid Islamic countries. But to many it feels like a new wave of enforcement in what is already a devoutly Muslim society.

Asmaa al-Ghoul, a writer and former journalist, was one of the first to run up against the new campaign. She spent an evening with a mixed group of friends in a beachside cafe in late June. After dark, she and another female friend went swimming wearing long trousers and T-shirts. Moments after leaving the water they found themselves confronted by a group of increasingly aggressive Hamas police officers. "Where is your father? Your husband?" one officer asked her. Ghoul, 27, was told her behaviour had not been respectable. Five of her male friends were beaten and detained for several hours.

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IOC Olympic destination looks dreamy

Sounds like the problems with violent crime in Rio de Janeiro haven't improved too much since I was last there. Fantastic country, great city, friendly people, tasty food and a country that appears to be on track for great things but this? As bad as the violence is in the US - and yes, the world views the US as a very dangerous place - you don't see police helicopters shot down. Pack your bullet proof vests and see the games!

Two weeks after Rio de Janeiro celebrated winning the 2016 Olympic Games, the Brazilian city was tonight bracing itself for a further night of violence after an intense gun battle erupted in one of the city's favelas and a police helicopter was shot down, killing two officers.

The violence, intense even by Rio's standards, began in the Morro dos Macacos, a hillside area in northern Rio. The shanty town, controlled by the Amigos dos Amigos (Friends of Friends) drug faction, one of three heavily-armed cocaine gangs that control many of Rio's 1,000-odd slums, was reportedly invaded in the early hours of Saturday morning by members of a rival gang, the Red Command. Police say traffickers from the Red Command were attempting to seize control of the local cocaine trade.

Deafening volleys of automatic gunfire were captured on amateur video, filmed from apartment blocks surrounding the slum. One local newspaper declared it a "War in Rio" on its website.

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Sharpton threatens Limbaugh with legal action

Rev. Al Sharpton is threatening Rush Limbaugh with a lawsuit. Whether you like Al Sharpton or not, this is good. Limbaugh is convinced that he can push everyone around and smear without consequences. Enough is enough. This situation also brings up how far the Wall Street Journal has dropped since being taken over by Murdoch. It was always conservative but now it's Fox-loony.

Reverend Al Sharpton and his lawyers say they are preparing to file a defamation lawsuit against conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh for an op-ed published Saturday, which Sharpton alleges "erroneously" characterizes his (Sharpton's) role in a string of violent incidents in New York in the early 90's.

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GOP Chair Steele: The fundamentals of the economy - I mean health care system - are strong

GOP chair Michael Steele appeared on Univision this morning. As usual, he made a gaffe. Two, actually. The first was claiming that America's health care system doesn't need reform. The second, saying that our healthcare system is the best in the country. Uh, I suppose so.

Jorge Ramos - Republican Senator Olympia Snowe has announced that she will vote for a healthcare reform bill. Are you disappointed, do you expect more Republicans to vote for it?

Michael Steele - I don't, if it's what we've seen produced so far in the House and in the Senate. I don't think we need a comprehensive overhaul of our healthcare system because our healthcare system, while it remains the best in the country and while it provides largely the services that people need and the quality of those services are very, very good, there are costs associated with this system that needs to be address more directly.

More from Latina Lista. Read More......