Since Specter got a primary challenger, he started voting with Dems 97% of the time

Isn't that useful data for the future. Read the rest of this post...

Hillary says her relationship with Obama is strong

Always an odd thing to have to say. And if you have to say it, it then makes people wonder all the more. Read the rest of this post...

Admitting the GOP only wants to kill health care, Democratic Senator Kent Conrad still demands bipartisanship.

If we're going to get real health reform, it will have to come from the House. So, our friends in the House have to stand strong. In addition to the idiotic Blue Dogs, we've got to contend with the likes of Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) who is ceding great power to the GOP:

Despite their 60-vote majority in the Senate, a top Democrat argued today that Democrats alone can't pull health care reform through Congress.

"There are not the votes for Democrats to do this just on our side of the aisle," Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and a key player in the health care reform effort on Capitol Hill said during an exclusive health care debate this morning with Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., on "This Week."

"It's just not possible to have a Democrat-only bill?" I asked Sen. Conrad.

"No, it is not possible," he told me, "and perhaps not desirable either. We're probably going to get a better product if we go through the tough business of debate, consideration, and analysis of what we're proposing."

Conrad was appearing on ABC's This Week with none other than leading GOP obstructionist Jim "Waterloo" DeMint.

Conrad added, "Jim, I think has been very clear, he wants to kill it. And I think that would be a tragedy because we've got a crisis here for the country."

On "This Week" DeMint defended his recent war of words with the president -- arguing the health care issue could be Obama's "Waterloo" and will "break him."

So what part of "he wants to kill it" or "Obama's 'Waterloo'" or "break him" is bipartisan to Conrad's ears? DeMint is the voice of the GOP on killing health care reform. Read the rest of this post...

So was it racial profiling or not?

Now that home-break-in gate is practically over, I'm curious: Do you guys think the cops arrested Gates for racial reasons? Or at least, was the entire affair racially motivated? And if in fact he was racially profiled, is racial profiling always wrong? Just curious what you guys think. And try to keep it civil :-) Read the rest of this post...

More banking shenanigans

A reader writes:

The good old banking system is just full of new tricks to make sure they screw you.

I was trying to make an electronic payment to Bank of America this morning and low and behold, the payment could not be scheduled. A pop up screen appeared with a message saying " the payment must be made on a business day". I was gone for a few days and was catching up in paying bills that were coming due. This bill with Bank of America has a due date of 7/26/09 (Sunday) and silly me, I was trying to make the payment today, 7/25/09 (Saturday), to avoid any late fees. So, in actuality the due date was really the Friday before the stated due date printed on the statement.

By making you schedule your payment on a business day, as was my situation, your payment is late and you will incur late fee charges. This would or could affect my credit score and send out flags to other creditors which would or could potentially give them a reason to increase my interest rate.

The other option I had was to call BofA, which I did, and guess what? By golly, I could make a payment today by doing a debit to my checking account and for that privilege I would only be charged an additional $15.00. The representative on the phone indicated that this way my payment would be taken out of my checking account today to make my payment to BofA by the due date.

The story line I was given, from the representative on the phone, was that there was no processing of online payments going on over the weekend and that the computer generates the message to make the payment on the next business day. When I asked why the payment due date was on a Sunday, she said "the computer picks the next due date and it does not know if it is on a weekend or not". Hmm, the computer knows when it's a weekend for accepting payments but doesn't know if it's a weekend when assigning the due date.

I was able to persuade the representative to waive the $15.00, thank goodness.

Read the rest of this post...

John Ensign and the succubus

No not Sarah Palin. And not his mistress.

Van Nuys, California based megachurch pastor Jack Hayford, current head of sex-scandal embroiled GOP Senator John Ensign's religious denomination, has endorsed a theory proposing that a supernatural mechanism drove down Japanese stock market prices during the early 1990's: the Japanese emperor's alleged sexual intercourse with a "sky goddess" who, according to the theory, might be a succubus.

But fret not, there is a Palin link:

A June 24, 2009 AP story by John Christofferson concerned an uproar over a YouTube video, of footage taken ata Bridgeport CT church, which showed an apparent attempt to exorcise a "homosexual demon" from a 16 year-old boy. But coverage of the subsequent outrage the video provoked uniformly failed to note that the exorcism attempt may well have been the product of a unified religious ideology promoted from Jack Hayford's Church on The Way, from former NAE head Ted Haggard's Colorado Springs New Life Church, and even at Sarah Palin's most significant church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.

Read the rest of this post...

Has Obama ever been racially profiled?

Jake Tapper asked the question. The answer was, not really, but he has had some incidents that he felt were based on his race:

One small, as-yet-unreported example: in the Fall of 2004, then-state sen. Barack Obama was his party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate seat and an emerging national figure because of his rousing speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

But there he stood, at a country buffet in Western Illinois, fielding a question from a white customer as if he worked there.

As recalled by a campaign staffer from that time, Obama was standing with three staffers, waiting for their table, when a white man came in and asked for a table for him and his three friends.

“The woman is about to seat me and my party of four, so I imagine you’ll be next,” the President said, trying to defuse any embarrassment by playing it off.

The man who’d assumed Obama worked at the country buffet seemed embarrassed, the former campaign aide recalled, who emphasized that this was not a big deal by any stretch.

Perhaps. But the same thing happened to me years ago with Bill Sessions, George W. Bush's FBI Director. I was at a fancy restaurant in downtown DC, frequented by the political crowd, waiting for a table, and Sessions walked in and tried to hand me his overcoat. Trust me, I was tempted to take it, and did, at the time, think he was kind of a jerk for doing it. Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

Health care reform is the main subject, of course. Although, I did just hear Bob Schieffer say that he has to talk about the Prof. Gates/Cambridge police situation and its fallout.

The White House is sending out Axelrod (twice), Gibbs and even Hillary Clinton. (Yes, she is Secretary of State. And, yes, she just got back from India. But, she sure knows about fighting for health care reform.)

There is a full complement of Republicans, including Senator Jim "Waterloo" DeMint. He has become the leading voice for the GOP on Capitol Hill. We'll also hear from a couple of the Democrats who have been obstructing progress, including Sen. Kent Conrad and Blue Dog Jim Cooper (who helped kill real reform back in 94, too.)

The full lineup is after the break. Not sure we'll have a better sense later this morning about where things are headed, but it's possible.

Here's the full slate:

ABC's "This Week"—Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

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CBS' "Face the Nation"—David Axelrod, White House senior adviser; Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn.; Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La.

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NBC's "Meet the Press"—Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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CNN's "State of the Union"—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Axelrod.

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"Fox News Sunday"—White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.

Read the rest of this post...

Der Spiegel: Taliban's power continues to grow in Pakistan

Remember, Pakistan has nukes:

The Taliban's power in Pakistan continues to grow and it now has entire towns under its control. Under US pressure, the Pakistani army is fighting the Islamists -- with limited success. Pakistani intelligence says the Americans are doing more harm than good.

Read the rest of this post...