More Hugh Laurie

Our recent clip from Hugh Laurie (TV's House) and Stephen Fry on the privatization of police "services" put me in mind of this from an episode of Ellen. Enjoy:



Weekend entertainment, of course, but also a good sample of his improvisational skill.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Joe Sestak on cleaning up the Republican's mess

I might have gone with elephant dung and an earth mover rather than a poodle and little bag, but his point remains valid.

Sestak's website is here. Read the rest of this post...

The day CVS allegedly turned away a woman having an asthma attack for $1

Consumerist:

I had exactly a twenty-dollar bill. It came to twenty-one and change... I offered him my cell phone, my wallet. I said i live right around the corner. I come in here all the time....

I said 'Can you just give her the pump. She's on the floor wheezing... I didn't know if an ambulance would get there on time. He said there was nothing he could do for me.

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Colorado's GOP/Teabagger Senate candidate links being gay and alcoholism

There was a lot of gay-related news coming from today's "Meet the Press."

Remember how we kept hearing that teabaggers don't really care about social issues? Not quite.

The latest anti-gay attack comes from Colorado's teabagger Senate candidate, Ken Buck. He was on "Meet the Press" today and espoused his belief that being gay is a choice. Apparently, that's because "you can choose who your partner is." And, somehow, he managed to bring alcoholism into his explanation. Not kidding. The Wonk Room got the video:

Buck's answers to the gay questions warrant the headline in the article about today's debate in the Denver Post:
"Buck's remarks on homosexuality loom after Meet the Press debate"

It's not a choice. And, Buck gets added to the growing list of teabaggers who are unabashed homophobes -- along with Paladino, Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell.

If you live in Colorado, please don't let your friends and family vote for this homophobe. Elect Michael Bennet. This is a close race and Buck's homophobia should hurt him. Pollster.com shows Buck leading 48.2% - 44.1%. Nate Silver's model has the projected results favoring Buck: 49.8 - 47.5. But, it looks like Bennet is moving in the right direction. Read the rest of this post...

On 'Meet the Press,' Gibbs again makes no sense on DADT

Robert Gibbs was on "Meet the Press" this morning. In my open thread, I wrote:

Robert Gibbs is the other guest on "Meet." So, we may be treated to more garbled and incoherent answers about the President's views on DADT.

And, as you'll see, that's exactly what we got. The last time Gibbs wasn't completely illogical on DADT was during the transition. At AMERICAblog Gay this mornuing, Tim Beauchamp posted that video. I also posted this "Meet the Press" video at there, too.

Note that Gibbs will not say if Obama thinks DADT is unconstitutional. We've been trying to get an answer to that question directly for months. Instead, we're told he hasn't spoken to it. Same for DOMA. Please. Obama is a constitutional scholar. Laws that treat LGBT Americans as second-class citizens aren't just discriminatory. Judges have found them unconstitutional. Obama just won't say it. The White House must think it will look really bad if he goes to court to defend unconstitutional laws -- instead of just discriminatory laws. It looks bad, period.

Just watch Gibbs. Keep in mind that he's gotten DADT questions all week. Kerry Eleveld grilled him on Thursday. There's still no coherent response. They still don't have a plan:
Read the rest of this post...

Is BP backing out of their previous deal to 'pay whatever is necessary?'

This does not sound encouraging. At all.

But yesterday in federal court, an attorney for the oil giant sent shockwaves throughout the Gulf region by suggesting that BP may seek shelter under the $75 million liability cap polluters can invoke under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.

U.S. District Judge Carl J. Barbier, who's presiding over the more than 300 consolidated lawsuits against the company, was taken aback when BP attorney Don Haycraft floated the idea of the liability cap. Barbier replied simply that "BP said it would pay whatever [is] necessary." Steven Herman, a plaintiffs attorney in the case, also registered surprise. "We're shocked over here to hear the defendants now bring up this $75 million cap," he said. "We were under the impression it was waived."

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A telling exposé on Obama from the NYT

A telling exposé on President Obama from Peter Baker in the NYT. What's interesting about the piece is what Obama and the White House think and say about themselves. It's a huge piece, and worth a read:

“Given how much stuff was coming at us,” Obama told me, “we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right. There is probably a perverse pride in my administration — and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top — that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who’s occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can’t be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.”

That is utter nonsense. It's difficult to find an administration more political, more worried about what people think (at least people on the right), than Team Obama. When have they ever forged ahead with "the right thing" to hell with the consequences?  That simply is not the way they operate.  The President starts a negotiation by looking for the lowest common denominator, the thing least likely to make waves with the opposition, and then, after a comfortable period of time doing next to nothing, rallies around whatever is left.

"But I keep a checklist of what we committed to doing, and we’ve probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we talked about during the campaign. And I hope as long as I’m president, I’ve got a chance to work on the other 30 percent."

That's a tad disingenuous. On health care reform, he didn't push for what he promised - he didn't even try - and was forced to settle for much less than he could have gotten. Is that really a full accomplishment, getting a B- when you could have gotten an A? And how about the stimulus, another "promise kept": The President failed to ask for the full amount needed, and now the economy is in the crapper while Democrats prepare to lose control of the House, and possibly the Senate. How is that a full success?

“It’s not that we believed our own press or press releases, but there was definitely a sense at the beginning that we could really change Washington,” another White House official told me. “ ‘Arrogance’ isn’t the right word, but we were overconfident.”

No, arrogance is the right word. This is a group of people who think they are so right that they don't need anyone else's help. Other than bad people who won't help them anyway. It's an odd mixture of arrogance and insecurity, really (thus the constant right-wing outreach).

The biggest miscalculation in the minds of most Obama advisers was the assumption that he could bridge a polarized capital and forge genuinely bipartisan coalitions. While Republican leaders resolved to stand against Obama, his early efforts to woo the opposition also struck many as halfhearted. “If anybody thought the Republicans were just going to roll over, we were just terribly mistaken,” former Senator Tom Daschle, a mentor and an outside adviser to Obama, told me. “I’m not sure anybody really thought that, but I think we kind of hoped the Republicans would go away. And obviously they didn’t do that.”

They thought the Republicans would just go away? That is beyond naive. How could any Democratic leader lead based on the assumption that the Republicans would simply go away on their own? In other words, Obama didn't feel the need, or desire really, to fight back.

Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, though, is among the Democrats who grade Obama harshly for not being more nimble in the face of opposition. “B-plus, A-minus on substantive accomplishments,” he told me, “and a D-plus or C-minus on communication.” The health care legislation is “an incredible achievement” and the stimulus program was “absolutely, unqualifiedly, enormously successful,” in Rendell’s judgment, yet Obama allowed them to be tarnished by critics. “They lost the communications battle on both major initiatives, and they lost it early,” said Rendell, an ardent Hillary Clinton backer who later became an Obama supporter. “We didn’t use the president in either stimulus or health care until we had lost the spin battle.”

Note how Rendell mentions "using the President" too late in the game on HCR and the stimulus. That's a point I've been making for over a year: That the President sat back and refused to get involved until it was too late on far too many policies. Apologists argued that the President had little role in legislating. Those of us who have actually worked in legislating know that the apologists were wrong. And now Rendell confirms it.

The other side would like more ideological rigidity. Norman Solomon, a leading progressive activist and the president of the Institute for Public Accuracy, said Obama has “totally blown this great opportunity” to reinvent America by being more aggressive on issues like a public health care option. Other liberals feel the same way about gays in the military or the prison at Guántanamo Bay. “It’s been so reflexive since he was elected, to just give ground and give ground,” Solomon told me. “If we don’t call him a wimp, which may be the wrong word, he just seems to be backpedaling.” Solomon added: “It makes people feel angry and perhaps used. People just feel like, Gee, we really believed in this guy, and his rhetoric is so different than the way he’s behaved in office.”

Spot on.

As a senior adviser put it, “There’s going to be very little incentive for big things over the next two years unless there’s some sort of crisis.”

There was very little incentive over the past two years either. Well, to be more precise, there was an incentive to do a few big things, and then cave on them from the outset. Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Today, Barack and Michelle Obama will be in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio campaigning for Governor Ted Strickland and raising money for the DNC. Ohio is a really tough state (again) this year. Strickland is trailing his GOP opponent, John Kasich (a former Lehman Bros. exec.) and Senate candidate Lee Fisher is behind his GOP opponent Rob Portman (a Bush admin. official.) Seriously Ohio? Lehman and Bush helped ruin your economy and you're going to reward them. Wow.

The Veep is in Allentown raising money for congressional candidate John Callahan.

The Sunday shows have a heavy dose of politics. For some reason, despite all the very competitive races, "This Week" has another nationally televised debate between Chris Coons and Christine O'Donnell. Then again, the other guest is Maria Shriver. "Meet the Press" is hosting a debate between Colorado Senate candidates Ken Buck and Michael Bennet. This one is really close, although a couple recent polls have shown Bennet with a lead. Robert Gibbs is the other guest on "Meet." So, we may be treated to more garbled and incoherent answers about the President's views on DADT. In a promo, David Gregory just said Gibbs would also tell us how the White House will respond if GOPers make big gains on Election Day. (How about not addressing that til it happens, Robert?)

Howard Dean and Liz Cheney are on "Face the Nation." And, the main guest on CNN's "State of the Union" is David Axelrod. So, that will be another chance to confuse us about Obama's plans on DADT.

It's going to be almost all politics, all the time for the next two weeks. But, there is a hearing tomorrow at 2:30 PM PT on the Obama administration's request for a stay in the Log Cabin Republican's DADT case. Read the rest of this post...

Mississippi Fred McDowell - You gotta move

Looks like yesterday was a fun day in college football. I didn't think my Buckeyes would necessarily lose last night but I also figured they would drop a few games sometime this year. I was maybe more surprised that Nebraska lost to Texas. On the upside though, how about Michigan State? I was great seeing them pound UM last weekend and then stay on track yesterday. Oregon should take over as the new #1 but the Pac-10 doesn't do much with defense, so anything can happen out west this year.

It's sunny but chilly so I'm bundling up for an easy spin with my riding partner who just made it back from the US. Read the rest of this post...

Disturbing new poll out of Germany

Extremist views are certainly present elsewhere in Europe (and beyond) but it's unsettling that these numbers in Germany.

A new survey in Germany shows that 13 percent of its citizens would welcome a “Führer” – a German word for leader that is explicitly associated with Adolf Hitler – to run the country “with a firm hand.”

The findings signal that Europe’s largest nation, freed from cold-war strictures, is not immune from the extreme and often right-wing politics on the rise around the Continent.

The study, released Oct. 13 by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, affiliated with the center-left Social Democratic Party, revealed among other things that more than a third of Germans feel the country is “overrun by foreigners,” some 60 percent would “restrict the practice of Islam,” and 17 percent think Jews have “too much influence.”

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