Reacts to Bibi's speech

++Josh Marshall says same old, same old but for the reference that you can google the details of the deal on line. This was a reference to the threat by the Obama Administration about leaking info. on the deal.

++Ed Kilgore quotes a Peter Beinert tweet that this was a Bibi speech without any mention of a negotiating process, two state solution or anything of relevance. Kilgore was sort of surprised that Bibi could dictate the issues he would speak about.

++Why I think Bibi spoke about Iran exclusively is that the GOP no longer has any credible people to speak on foreign policy and Bibi was as good as they could get.

++Jake Topper said it was an effective speech.

++Diane Feinstein said there were no solutions. Nancy Pelosi said it was an insult to the American people and Congress that they didn't know what kind of threat Iran was and that didn't have knowledge of the situation.

++Ted Cruz said the Obama Administration knows nothing about Iran.

++Christine Amapour said the speech was "dark and strangelovian."

++Ed Kilgore notes that Bibi suggesting that Iran was bluffing was not the greatest gambit to use since Bibi actually encouraged brinkmanship by the United States and felt that in his experience that isn't the way to negotiate.

++A blogger tweeted that "He hated the speech even more since W gave it in 2003."

++Civil rights legend John Lewis ,who boycotted the speech, said, "it was an insult to his president."

More Bibi

++The Israeli consul in Philadelphia noted that the people who were most in favor of Bibi Netanyahu's speech were the right-wing of the Jewish community, Christian Zionists and the evangelical right. He candidly said, "they want to humiliate President Obama and this has nothing to do with Iran."

++Nancy Pelosi went on national television to say she hoped that the speech would be delayed. 

++Every Israeli newspaper I've read today--and there were a few--covered the flap over the speech and the chaos it has caused among Democratic congressmen and women. 

++One Israeli rabbi wrote an op-ed saying that Bibi is delusional if he thinks Republicans are going to be tougher on Iran than the Democrats.

++Civil rights icon and the lead in Selma, Congressman John Lewis said he was not attending the speech. 

++I thought the Democrats were in disarray today over how to play the speech. Most said they would attend but didn't like it.

The State of the Senate

++The pundits have been refining their views on the Senate. The Washington Post has it 52 Republicans,46 Democrats and 2 Independents.
Etten at FiveThirtyEight has the Democrats in perilous shape but holding the Senate with 51 seats.

++Charlie Cook has his toss-up list:Alaska,Arkansas,Colorado,Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina. He also calls Georgia and Kentucky as toss-ups. he has Iowa and New Hampshire as leaning Democrat.

++Stu Rothenberg has the Democrats in poor shape in South Dakota, Montana and West Virginia. He has Iowa, Arkansas, Alaska, North Carolina,Colorado as toss-ups but leaning Democratic. He has Mary Landrieu as way ahead but because of Louisiana's system it will depend on whether the Senate's control will hinge on this race whether Landrieu can absorb the flood of money by the GOP at the end. 

++On the House side, Nancy Pelosi says the Democrats will pick up 25 seats. Almost all pundits say the GOP has over a 90% chance of keeping the House because of gerrymandering and voter suppression. But strangely, Nancy Pelosi, who is known to count votes well, made a cogent case of each individual. This is street politics.

Embrace the Suck

++Nancy Pelosi used these words to whip Democratic votes for the new budget deal. E.J. Dionne had an excellent column in the Amazon Post this afternoon how the new budget is basically austerity-lite and lacking in all the things the Democrats thought were necessary to bring the country back. But like Nancy Pelosi he said it was basically an old-fashioned compromise of splitting the difference.

++The Budget proposal is making its way through the House procedural steps. The House GOP made sure unemployment benefits were not included. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats are pressing for at least a 45-day extension and Harry Reid re-assured Democrats that in January it will happen.

++Eric Erickson of Red State claims John Boehner's tantrums against the Right are strategic and will pave the way for immigration reform, which he believes would betray conservatives.

++Andrea Peyser at the New York Post said that Obama acted like a horny-frat boy with the Danish Prime Minister.

++The Hawaii health director who verified President Obama's birth certificate died today in a plane crash. Cue in the next conspiracy theories.

++In the late night Senate session, Chai Feldblum was confirmed as EEOC director by 54 to 41. Elizabeth Wolfords was confirmed to the district court in New York 70-29.

Could We Get Real?

++The Republican House is now at war with Republicans in the Senate because they want the Senate GOP to take the lead in de-funding Obamacare. Tan Man Boehner's idea of getting a temporary budget solution by adding defunding Obamacare has now been withdrawn by the House Republicans because it did not suit The Club of Growth and Americans for Prosperity and other right-wing interest groups. They knew that it would be stripped from a Senate version and sent to Obama for his signature. The GOP budget would hamper Medicare, cut foodstamps by $50 billion and continue the sequestration. This little gambit by Boehner and Cantor didn't even sell well to their own Caucus.

++Nancy Pelosi rightfully called this the abyss of GOP dysfunction. How anyone in their right mind could vote for a Republican now is beyond me. They are virtually incapable of any form of governing. 

++House Teabaggers wants to throw the ball to Ted Cruz and a handful of Senators to force the Senate to vote on defunding Obamacare and face a veto by President Obama. 

++Remember all this is just to avoid a government shutdown, which both the House and Senators went off to recess, pledging to avoid. 

++None of this makes any rational sense. The GOP criticize President Obama has embarrassed the United State before the world. What do you think the last three years of incompetence by the GOP done?

++President Obama needs to do two things to avoid the total meltdown of the political system into Teabag anarchy. 1. Appoint Janet Yellin as the new Fed chair to avoid a long drawn-out battle in the Senate. 2. By executive order, unilaterally raise the debt ceiling to avoid market chaos. 

++Sequestration will start taking big hunks out of the military budget this year and less than the devastation it has wrought to domestic discretionary spending. The Democrats have a logical plan for ending sequestration but they have to remember the other side is a few planks short of a full deck. It is unlikely there can be any meaningful bipartisan movement on the budget this year and the next.

++One of the cut tricks little Ricky Cantor came up with was to pass a budget at the current sequestered amount that is about $200 million less than the Senate approved cuts. That would mean the base budget would be the already reduced budget and then add on the mandatory cuts for this year. All this in the pursuit of cutting the national government below 2008 levels.

++Remember, dear reader, the majority of Republicans do not want Obamacare defunded. This is the sole interest of the corporately funded anarchists.

Random Observations on SCOTUS ruling

++Mitt Romney vowed in his first statement that he would repeal Obamacare his first day in office. What was particular was that Romney didn't offer any alternatives as his policy going into the election .


++Republicans are seizing on the Supreme Court's argument for the mandate as a tax. So naturally, Obama raised everyone's taxes. Actually the real mechanics of how the mandate would work reveals that only a very tiny segment of the population would actually pay such a fee, the rest would be given tax credits and subsidies.


++Eric Cantor said that the House would vote on totally repealing Obamacare the week after the July 4th vacation. It is almost like asking sitting members to vote for Paul Ryan's budget again. I'm not so sure that voting against the many popular provisions is a surefire to win votes.


++David Frum says that repeal is a fantasy. He outlined when the ACA was passed that it was a dark day for conservatives, which they could capitalize on in a short term (The 2010 elections) but that as the provisions become known the American people will actually like it and feel entitled to it.


++Women won a big victory today because the law prohibits health insurance companies from charging higher premiums for women than men, something that is a standard practice.


++The extreme right has been tweeting they will move to Canada. Like Rush Limbaugh's pledge to move to Costa Rica when Obamacare is implemented,it is peculiar that conservatives select countries with national healthcare systems.


++The President actually thought the bill had been overturned because of the snafus by CNN and Fox, which trumpeted the defeat of the individual mandates. D.C. wags suggest this was the President's Truman moment where he would be photographed with the Chicago Tribune saying Dewey won.


++The health care ruling ranks with Medicare and Medicaid as the largest expansion of health care in 45 years. While observers debated over the meaning of the Supreme Court's cautious approval of the expansion of Medicare,this will prove an enormous benefit to the uninsured and the poorest among us.


++Does anyone get the sense that today's contempt vote against Attorney General Holder was meant as the double sammy against Obama. To time the vote on the day of the Supreme Court ruling was a no accident. If healthcare had gone down and Attorney General Holder was cited with contempt,the double act would have been fodder for ads to demonstrate the president was weak and ineffective. Now it seems like sour grapes, particularly now that Fast and Furious has been exposed as a phony crisis.


++The healthcare ruling cements President Obama's first term as an historic achievement. Whether he can generate momentum from this victory is yet to be seen. Within an hour of the decision, the Romney campaign had raised $400,000.


++I can't help but think that Romney now has to scramble. He muffed his moment on immigration. He actually did offer some constructive ideas when he talked to the Latino community, except those ideas went counter to his primary statements. He is stuck with his endorsement of the Arizona law, which was struck down except for the Papers Please clause, its most controversial component. Now the Supreme Court has ratified Romneycare and he must campaign against the decision. How do you do that? Do you refute all the popular provisions and say you would keep them and then attack the mandate? And if you do, don't you argue against your only achievement as Governor? 


++The Most amusing reactions have been the psychobabble on Justice Roberts. Why he endorsed the mandate? Why he became the swing vote? Did he really back Kennedy's dissent and change sides? Did he sneak a poison pill in the decision about the limits of the Commerce Clause?


++MSNBC got the ruling right but was criticized early for doing so. Then they had a live feed for Boehner's reaction, which never came as he said he would comment later. He was clearly blown away by the decision. 


++Nancy Pelosi did spike the football because she had played such a pivotal role as Speaker in getting it passed. She had Mrs. Ted Kennedy, Victoria, at her side to remember Senator Kennedy's lifelong dream of this day. 


++The entire trade union movement hailed the decision and promised to keep agitating for more change. The NEA was the most effusive pointing out what it means for kids--alot.


++The bettors on Intrade took a pounding as they had driven the odds up to over 70% that it would be reversed.


++The astroturf organizations like Americans for Prosperity claimed it was a travesty. Scott Walker said he would not implement the law. Our head tea bagger Senator de Mint from South Carolina vowed to use nullification against the law. Rand Paul basically called out the Supreme Court as no longer an institution deciding what is constitutional. It all sounded like the Supreme Court just allowed blacks to vote--and not that Americans have the right to healthcare.


++Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli bragged that the wording of the section on expanding Medicare would allow him to save $100 of millions for the state because he won't allow it to occur.


++From here on, it is best to ignore the complaints about the Healthcare bill. What has been ratified serves as a good platform for ensuring the whole country and not the wealthy have access to healthcare. What are slight problems can be tweaked to work better. Think of it this way--we are becoming more like Switzerland, which does mandate every individual pay for healthcare.

Government Shutdown Coming Right Up

Steve Benan of Washington Monthly claims there is a 70% chance of a government shutdown. I agree with him. Even Nancy Pelosi agrees. It's not coming because of some ideological stance by the GOP but from sheer incompetence. The House budget process, which has now zoomed to over 500 amendments,physically means the House will miss the early March deadline. There is not even enough time to reconcile the House and Senate since the two exist on different planets. I'm not even sure the House, even though it's been running to 4am, will have enough time to work through their own budget, let alone discuss a Senate version.

There are scads of things to write about in the House GOP budget. They intend to gut all government agencies that make the basic rules for the economy and even the IRS, which has to collect the limited tax dollars needed to keep the sinking ship afloat. Virtually every cut to a program offered by the GOP eliminates jobs. An early estimate of the GOP budget is that it will cost 1 million jobs.

Last night they cut all funding for the new Consumer Protection Agency. The budget goes far beyond just gutting anything that Barack Obama proposed over the last two years. It is a declaration of war on basically all government programs, with the exception of the military,which have been developed since the last Depression. A list of the cuts is mind-boogling. The fascinating point of the exercise is that the overall GOP House budget does not cut the annual deficit or the national debt. Top that off and it kills jobs and doesn't create any.

But the kicker for me was the orchestrated attack on Planned Parenthood, which received $363 million last year from the federal government. Rep. Mike Pence claimed that the elimination of federal funding for Planned Parenthood was a "victory for life". Planned Parenthood called the act "extreme and dangerous."

Mr. Anti-abortion Chris Smith from New Jersey described a abortion procedure during the second trimester in the graphic detail we haven't heard since Jesse Helms would describe pornographic acts on the Senate floor. Smith let a little cat out of the bag. He said Planned Parenthood performed 300,000 abortions per year. He claimed that was one-fifth of the abortions performed every year. So we have gone from 50 million per year to 1.5 million, closer to a statistical reality. But color me dubious still because we know from Planned Parenthood's own ads that they perform 300,000 screenings for breast cancer per year. So it's odd that the number is identical to Smith's assertions about abortions. But at least we can dispel the 50 million, Mao-purge like figures.

Men should really stop pontificating about women's health issues. Jackie Speier (D-California) immediately responded to Chris Smith and talked about having the very same procedure Smith described because of necessity and talked about losing the child. The American Taliban can't silence American women like they would want to.

Since the House Republicans want to defund Richard Nixon's creation the Environmental Protection Agency,why should we be surprised that they defunded another one of his creations--Title X Programs? Title X was created in 1970 to provide comprehensive family planning services, including all preventable health services for women. This is the program that provides Planned Parenthood with its funding. By eliminating the program,you essentially close down 4,500 community-based clinics. These clinics provide breast and cervical cancer screenings, HIV preventative education, pregnancy diagnosis and counseling. Of course, this program primarily supports lower income families. Over 1.2 million youth and adults participated in these programs last year.

Now if you are truly interested in lowering the number of abortions in America, wouldn't you support family planning programs and contraception? We know from Bristol Palin that abstinence programs don't work.

Nancy Pelosi said that the whole night's debate--several hours on Planned Parenthood--was surreal but that it posed serious risks to women's health. She called out Republicans on their clear position against family planning and urged them to go openly on the record against the idea. Jackie Speier wondered aloud what the whole Planned Parenthood debate had to do with creating jobs.

You could go batty just writing about Republican lunacy at both the federal and state level. A Republican legislator in Montana has entered a bill to declare global warming "natural" and "beneficial". After two years of marriage equality in New Hampshire,Republicans want to repeal the same sex marriage law because "it might encourage the development of sharia law."

I leave it to a leftwing blogger who parodied these efforts by writing a brief post that "Arizona has outlawed Karma."

Friday Catchbasin

Pet Peeve--I can't stand people who drive while talking and texting on cellphones. Here in Virginia, where no one uses their turn signals, these characters cause more accidents than anyone. How bad is it? Worse than 9-11. Between 2001 to 2007, 16,000 Americans died in accidents solely attributed to a driver texting while driving. In 2008, over 5,870 died because of cellphone and texting use. This about the total American fatalities in all of the Iraq War.

The Catholic Church in Minnesota is mailing out 500,000 DVD against same-sex marriage. What's next a church DVD in defense of pedophilia? Maybe they paid for it with the money laundered by the Vatican. Does anyone remember the anti-islam DVD circulated around the 2008 election time and stuffed in Sunday newspapers? Did anyone watch it?

Nancy Pelosi said she's reserving the right to push a middle class tax cut before the election. She will demand the procedure that calls for a two-thirds vote to prevent Republican amendments. Then this will force the Republicans to go on the record. Read a blogger saying that skipping the whole thing is probably better for the Democrats because the sight of Bluedogs and Leiberman types siding with the rich will provide a mixed message. Take your pick.

A gay male chastises the left for slamming Obama on gay rights when he says numerous changes have occurred. In particularly, he notes that now gays don't need the kindness of strangers or hospital administrators to visit their sick partners. One of the changes of healthreform was that gays would have the right to visit their partners. This is a big deal if you have ever known gays people who have been deprived this right by hospitals. In the freest country in the world, this was/is a common practice, especially encouraged by angry family members.

Another gay wrote that the gay/lesbian community is being foolish for criticizing the Obama DOJ in its response to the judge's ruling on DADT. He wrote that an appeal might end up in the Supreme Court, which might rule DADT was constitutional. This way the President as Commander-in-Chief can decide the issue.

Alan Grayson, who I find annoying on occasion, wrote a funny op-ed on the Dailykos called Caligula's Horse. Grayson argues that all the corporate funding of election campaigns really doesn't require sentient candidates. He quite rightfully says that corporate America would back Caligula's Horse against himself and Democrats if need be. This tracks with the wild and zany candidates of the Tea Party. Corporate America really doesn't need these people to have any understanding of the economy as long as they are pliant to corporate lobbyists once they come to town. This is the same belief of the Washington GOP leaders, who believe these people will be pliable to a corporate agenda.

How can you get any more bizarre than Glenn Beck? Beck is back bashing "progressives" with his little 'history" lessons. Yesterday,he decided to attack Edward House, an adviser to Woodrow Wilson, who is said to be responsible for creating the Federal Reserve. Beck urged his listeners to read Secrets of the Federal Reserve to understand how nefarious the Fed is. The book argues that the Fed was the creation of a conspiracy of a family of Jewish bankers. Of course, the Rothschilds have to factor into this. Normally, this would be the place where I go into a rant how Mormons were the only protestants allowed to proselytize in Hitler's Germany, which might explain Beck's fascination with all things Hitler. But, it's really the story of the author.

The Left has tagged Eustace Mullins a 9-11 truther and a follower of Lyndon LaRoche. Both true. But the story is more complicated. Secrets is dedicated to Ezra Pound. In fact, the book was funded by Ezra Pound when he was a patient at St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital in Washington. During that period, doctors and Ezra's literary friends were trying to avoid a treason trial because of his broadcasts in favor of Mussolini, primarily, and Hitler and against the American forces in WWII. During that time, he cultivated a circle of young admirers, who respected him not for his aesthetics but for his economic theories. Personally, his economic theories and his anti-semiticism ruined some of his most beautiful Cantos. But this coterie started small publications to disseminate his economic theories, which were heavy of blaming the Jews for changes in 20th century America. One such person was Eustace Mullins, who wrote the book Beck recommended to his audience. Later, the LaRocheites adopted this book,

Maybe Glenn Beck will end up like Ezra Pound. Pound was released from the mental hospital and allowed to return to his home in Italy. He gave a fascist salute as he boarded the ship and then entered into decades of self-enforced silence--literally not speaking to anyone other than his wife and mistress. Allen Ginsberg tracked Pound down in Venice at the end of Ezra's life and managed to get him to listen to Allen's poetry and music. He finally asked Ezra about his anti-semiticism. Breaking his silence, Pound replied, "It was a suburban prejudice." Pound died believing all his poetry was "botched".

Pound's treason and his cultivating this young group of followers is one of the most unpleasant episodes in our own intellectual history. Not only were the followers anti-semites but were linked with militantly racist groups, which alarmed Pound's former friends like William Carlos Williams, who tried to intervene with first Ezra , then his wife to stop him meeting and funding them. Maybe it's appropriate all this garbage be raised again with Glenn Beck, the perfect acolyte of the demented. Notice how the fascist thread keeps appearing in Glenn Beck's rants and among the teabaggers. Just the other day, Rand Paul said that an economic collapse would lead to another Hitler. His own separate history records a fixation of Hitler.

The cultic nature of our recent politics is beginning to resemble Christian fundamentalism. Both the Left and the Right have criticized Markos Moulitsas for likening the Republicans and the Right to the Taliban. But the similarities are too broad to be dismissed. I've already written about the Christian Right's Biblical literalism, which is non-Biblical, being absent in Jewish and early Christian tradition. The Christian Right makes a totem of the Book of Revelation, a false idol if you will. On the political side, the other totem is the American Constitution. But this must only be seen through the ideology of "originalism", which didn't exist in American history until conservatives invented it in the late 1960s and early 1970s to counter more liberal interpretation of the Constitution. You can see how ideological it is by the anti-historical reasoning in the Citizens United case and some of the recent pronouncements by Fat Tony Scalia. And the last totem is the Free Market, which again doesn't exist in reality. The Right used to remember Adam Smith's invisible hand guiding the markets but never mention the visible hand, which he wrote about also.

Stand By Me*

*Rock classic co-written by --surprise--Carole King.

Just few brief notes on a 100degree Saturday. This is Jim Inhofe's idea of a cold spell.

Yesterday President Obama looked almost bedraggled as he called an impomptu news conference to recite the accomplishments of the last week--Wall Street Reform, Unemployment Extension and a small bill, which would end the Government from paying phony bills and people. The latter will actually save the Government $38 billion a year. No small potatoes. But President Obama clearly felt he had to do this press opportunity because the last several news cycles had been focused on the firing, rehiring and smearing of Ms. Sherrod. So here's the President of the United States begging for recognition of some major accomplishments. I felt bad for him.

By late afternoon, Senator Landrieu threw a tantrum and shamed the Senate into finally passing the bill to provide small businesses loans, claiming these loans are likely to create 1 million jobs and make the Government money. This seems to be a hidden theme for some of the Democratic accomplishments this year--making money for the taxpayers. The TARP program made money, the auto bailout made money, the small business loans make money, the healthcare bill makes money and even the BP disaster made money. When was the last time this ever happened?

Last night I watched Van Jones address the Netroots meeting in Las Vegas. Van Jones chastised liberals and progressives for criticizing President Obama. "This guy volunteered to be the Captain of the Titantic after it hit the iceberg." Nice line. Van Jones made the best presentation yet by an Obama person on the clean energy strategy for transforming our economy. If you get a chance, review the video because it synthesizes the various aspects of energy policy and how it impacts the society at large. You'll also get some idea why Glenn Beck felt he needed to smear him. He is a very inspirational and effective speaker.

This morning President Obama seemed to have his mojo back with his weekly address to the Nation. Here he recounted the essence of the Wall Street Reform bill but added talking points of all the tax cuts this Administration have given the American taxpayer and small businesses. Then he zeroed in on John Boehner's alleged plan, pointing out that all the laws Boehner and the Republicans want to repeal contain all these tax cuts and will even deepen the deficit. In short, he called out the Republicans on actually wanting to increase taxes and the deficit. He is beginning to sharpen the Demmocrats' approach to the mid-terms.

In mid-morning Nancy Pelosi gave a strong defense of the House Democrats' record, which, in my opinion, has passed more "progressive" legislation in a short time than any other Congress. So Speaker Pelosi was in good shape before the Netroots. Then she switched and introduced a video feed from President Obama, which was considered a surprise. The nice part of the feed was when he hit the line about accomplishments, he cut to a video insert of Rachel Maddow just listing act after act after act, and then he concluded his address. As Rachel Maddow said, no one has done so much for the country since the days when alcohol was illegal. While he admitted change has not come as fast as he would even have liked, he promised more and warned that the country can not be allowed to go backward.

One small fact that no one has been mentioning and I completely forget. The bulk of American forces will really be gone from Iraq in August as President Obama promised in his campaign. Only he has mentioned this while no one in the press has even made a peep about it.

Another little note in the money-making territory. Nancy Pelosi mentioned in her speech a manufacturing and raw resource bill--in typical congressional fashion. Not to make it complicated, this little bill creates over 100,000 jobs and the GOP had tried to block it. It's this type of thing the Democrats have to make plain in words that the average citizen can understand.

The real bad news is that unemployment will remain at 9% through 2012, which makes the President vulnerable to demagoguery. The Bookings Institute this past week released a report on why unemployment will remain at these levels for the foreseeable future unless we transform the basis of our economy. Here I again urge you to listen to Van Jones, who outlines how that transformation is envisioned by President Obama. If the Democrats could speak as plainly about this as he, it would serve them well.

As Joe Biden told a fund-raiser in South Carolina, the heavy lifting is done and the Big Building Blocks are in place. Now is the time to explain this to the American voter.

There is a sense that the Democrats are more organized and getting their acts together just in time for the election. The question for Republicans is whether they peaked too soon and whether they have anything to offer other than a protest vote against the President. Charlie Cook , who has been beating the drums for a Republican takeover of the House, today ran a piece called "Adding Up The Democratic Math". Cook decided that he owed equal time to the Democrats.

He says that Democrats feel they will pick up 4 Republicans seats, with a chance at 8. Cook gives them the 4, which would mean the Republicans would need 43 just to get to a 218-217 control of the House. Of the 16 most vulnerable Democrats, the Democrats believe they would lose 8, which means they are down only 4 at that point. Now 35 Democrats would have to lose. Several dozen threatened incumbents have a massive financial edge over the Republicans, who can't make up the difference in time for the elections. The vulnerable incumbents can count on television and radio ads where the opponents can't. He cites several cases where Republicans are broke. In terms of organization, the DCCC is 14-3 in special elections, which Cook says demonstrates they are professionals. This tracks with what I wrote on Republicans yesterday. Their organization is fractured and ineffective and their finances are scattered and so far under the Democrats. The New York Times wrote today that the Democrats have already made a $25 million television buy for near election day.

You get the sense that even though he has been battered and bruised, President Obama has grit and still has energy. From the recent forays into the campaign mode, you also have a sense that Democrats have a sense about what they are doing. On the other side, you really sense alot of lazy bowhards, repeating the same lines about Democrats we have heard since 1980. Mark Pence tried to convince everyone that we are about to have the largest tax increase in history. Only if the Republicans filibuster tax cuts for the middle class. I got the sense the Democrats are not going to allow this nonsense to happen. The real sense I get from the Republicans is that they are truly brain dead and so intellectually lazy they don't recognize it. They are totally dependent now on the hate groups and the Right-wing echochamber for their electoral success. Given the recent polls showing independents basically splitting their vote, compared to earlier this year, this strategy seems to be backfiring. Then you have to wonder how Michele Bachman saying that all Republicans are going to do after the election is investigate the Obama administration will play with the average voter. Do people have fond memories of the circus surrounding the Clinton investigations? I would think and hope not.

Tom Tancredo provided the comic relief yesterday when he penned an op-ed for the Washington Times calling for President Obama's impeachment because he is more dangerous to this country than Al Qaeda. Even Fox News in their interview with him said, "You have to be kidding." But then the woman interviewer hadn't watched Glenn Beck declare the day Wall Street Reform passed, "was the day the American Republic died." Beck obviously watches Keith Olbermann because he now has taken to throwing papers at the camera--this time they were blank papers, which he pretended were the text of the bill. And this morning I received a new article from an extreme rightwing person calling for Obama's resignation yet again for taking the country to progressive socialism. I guess that's different from regressive socialism.

Goodnight Vienna*

*belated Happy Birthday to Ringo.

A fun political video is at www.FightTheRight.com , apparently made by the Democratic Governors' Association for the netroots conference in Las Vegas.

Andrew Breitbart claims he is "public enemy number 1 of the Democratic Party, the progressive movement and the Obama Administration" for his journalist successes. I guess this video and the whole ACORN scam. I didn't know he had been an assistant to Drudge and says that he was addicted to crack cocaine and been in rehab. Maybe he met Lindsey Lohan there. ( Could someone tell me what Lindsey Lohan ever did?) I guess he wants to be the Drudge of the YouTube age.

President Obama gave an interview to ABC and said that his Administration had erred and jumped the gun because of the media. His explanation as usual made alot of sense but doesn't end the bad taste left by this episode.

And speaking of bad taste, Rep. King , the Christianist from Iowa, wants to investigate how Shirley Sherrod was hired by the Ag Department in the first place. So put that on your list of investigations for next year. Darrell Issa wants to investigate the Obama Administration's connections to Google.

And also, add the whole Blag the Governor episode. That hasn't worked out so well for the Right. The Gov. complained about Obama just wanting to thank him if Ms. Jarrett was going to be appointed senator. He had bigger fish to fry. Unfortunately, the Governor let us down by refusing to take the stand in his defense.

Someone who should step down is our old friend Charlie Rangel, who faces a number of ethics charges in the House. Sorry Charlie, you've had a good run. Now hang it up.

FED Chair Bernanke told the House today that Congress has to keep on spending so the economy can recover. He said that the United States must produce plans to reduce the deficit and the national debt but recovery must take the first priority.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi slammed the door on continuing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy but did emphasize the Democrats' desire to help the middle class. Geitner himself weighed in to say the tax cuts for the wealthy would expire as planned. So the fat is in the proverbial fire.

Remember when Drudge criticized President Obama for not vacationing in the Gulf when he went to Maine. Now President Obama is vacationing in the Gulf. No doubt we'll hear about how many times he played golf. He becoming a regular Ike or maybe even John Boehner.

Meanwhile Vishnu Jindal says we don't need no stinkin' BP money. Even his full statement didn't make any sense.

Tom Tancredo, the friend of all illegal immigrants and a birther, has asked the Republicans running for Governor of Colorado to step aside so he can run. Sounds good to me.

Barbara Boxer has an 11-1 cash on hand advantage against Carly Fiorina. The problem is that Carly intends to write herself a seven figure check to make up the difference. That's what having two yachts can do for you.

Elaine Marshall has jumped out into the lead against Burr in North Carolina. She leads 37-35% with 23% undecided in a race people had automatically put into the Republican column.

Lt. Dan Choi has been discharged from the military for his gayness. Dan Choi drew attention to the cause of gay soldiers through acts of civil disobedience such as chaining himself to the White House fence. Dan has been an articulate spokesperson for repealing DADT. What I can't understand is why discharge him now when you are reviewing the whole policy. Surely, that could have waited.

Oliver North has made a video about DADT, warning Americans that NAMBLA members will now be allowed to enlist in the military and that the home schooled children we are recruiting for the military will quit. The last raises several interesting questions about who exactly are we recruiting into the military. Ollie also raises questions whether chaplains will have to perform same sex marriages and will same sex couples serve in the same units. Another soldier claimed that all the Christians would quit from the military if DADT was repealed. Are we opening a window here on a Christian army waging holy wars against Muslims?

If you're interested in the whole issue of whether Trig is really the son of Sarah Palin, check out Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish where this seems to be an obsessive topic. There is now a whole hermaneutics on what this would mean or does mean for her future.

Pastor Warren of Silent Cone Fame has blinded himself through an accident. No comment.

The Washington Post printed a fascinating piece today about how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has spent nearly $3 million a week in opposition to President Obama's major agenda items, breaking all lobbying records and losing big-time. They vow to spend $75 million or more on November's midterm election cycle and have even backed their own candidates in the Republican primaries. So far more than 6 of their hand-picked candidates have gone down to defeat. They claimed to have blocked the union "card check" bill, cap-and-trade climate legislation and the proposed public option. Frankly, in my opinion, they claim credit where nothing was proposed in the first place. They remind me of the NRA who claims to have blocked all sorts of anti-gun moves by the Obama Administration that never existed. The Chamber is simply bilking its members.

And speaking of the public option, the CBO number is out--it would save the country about $68 billion.

John Boehner may have been hitting the sauce because he admitted that the teabaggers "are anarchists who would kill all of us in office." Letting his hair down for the guys.

Blue Rain*--The Final Cut

Hooray! President Obama has delayed his trip to focus on health care. We're becoming a banana republic when the President flies overseas and has to worry what mischief is going to play out in D.C.

Thank you , Frank Schaeffer. On http://www.frankschaeffer.blogspot.com/ , my favorite repentent co-creator of the Religious Right morphs back into his Calvinist mode to sternly lecture us all that under our "fickle noses" this is a time of national rebirth and he's delighted with President Obama, even more than he has been. He rips the shrivelled old conservatives abnd blasts the left for dumping on Obama. He proceeds to list all his achievements in the past year and taunts Obama's critics as they say" that's not good enough."

Rachel Maddow interviewed Nancy Pelosi last night. While not my favorite politician, the Speaker has been ferociously effective as a leader. Every one of the President's campaign promises except immigration reform passed the House last year. Now over 290 bills are bottled up in the Senate.

Could some one please muzzle Larry O'Donnell? Last night was another bummer about the health care bill. This was after a day when Harry Reid sent a blistering letter to Mitch McConnell on why he is going to use reconciliation and the House leadership walked away from dealing with Bart Stupak and the anti-abortion crowd. But Larry focused on the strange news yesterday that the Republicans say that Republicans asked the Parliamentarian whether President Obama would have to sign the Senate bill before reconciliation. Now we have no statement from the Senate Parliamentarian on this and on the face of it it doesn't make any sense considering past uses of reconciliation. But never mind, let's all worry..

The CBO price tag came in. The Healthcare bill saves about $190 billion over ten years and another $1 trillion in the second ten years. And it comes in under $900 billion. So the Speaker of the House is beginning to mark it up on Monday.

Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen warn Democrats about passing healthcare because of the dire consequences in the fall. Their long column in the Washington Post recites the depth of American opposition to health care reform.. Interesting thing is that they only quote our friend Mr. Rasmussen on his polling data--which conveniently didn't ask about the specific provisions of the bill. Last night Nancy Pelosi effectively laid out the meaning of healthcare in her interview with Rachel Maddow. She pointed to both the human and fiscal necessary for it and did it in great detail.

Now as I turn the curve on my taxes, let's make healthcare costs personally. Remember my eye operation is being billed this year. For 2009, the McColm family, which takes no medicines and last year had nothing wrong, spent cash out of pocket for medical expenses and insurance--$25,100. That is over half the average income of the American family. It is no joke to say that if anything serious happened, I would have to declare bankruptcy. That's why I want healthcare reform.

All is not well in GlennBeckistan: After the Jesuit dog whistle, conservative Catholics followed suit in their criticism of his positions on religion. Wakening from his deep slumber, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners, called on Christians to boycott Beck. His own church said that the Book of Morman was almost entirely a book about social justice. Let's not carried away guys. However, the term "social justice" does appear some 180 times in Morman doctrinal texts.

After "changing American history"--that was his promise--with the Eric Massa interview, Glenn Beck decided to go after FDR. We know from the Wall Street Journal and Amity Schlaes that FDR prolonged the Depression. Actually, we know from economists trained in the period that FDR cut the unemployment rate from 25-12% and did other things like create Social Security and the FDIC. But Beck's complaint about this President who was as popular as Obama was that he hired Communists. Yes, he did after the U.S. formed an alliance with the Soviet Union in World War II. In my mind, I always wondered why the Communists ended up in the Department of Agriculture.

Anyway, Beck then extolls Joe McCarthy's crusade against these characters and mentions the Dies Committee. (He should have disclosed his mentor the Morman" historian" was a staffer for the Dies Committee and was subsequently fired by J.Edgar Hoover from the FBI for being "paranoid and too extreme in his anti-Communism".) And he brings up the conservative's favorite hero Whittaker Chambers. A little dirty secret--Whittaker only ratted out the NKVD cells that were not longer functional to protect the one left behind. Conservatives love the rumpy looking Whittaker Chambers for bringing down fancy pants Alger Hiss. But they love him even more for saying that the United States already lost the Cold War in the 1950s.

Now how this relates to Barack Obama I don't know. But he gets around to Woody Guthrie and the song "This Land Is Your Land". I wrote about how delighted I was last year when Pete Seegar sang the uncensored version of the song at the Lincoln Memorial. A year later Beck picked this up. And said that this was a song about the Communist dream. He told his audience that Barack Obama's initiative to save millions of acres for the wilderness was a Maoist plot. Actually this was an extension of Theodore Roosevelt's vision , a man Beck hates worse than Mao.

Beck also decided to attack the union movement for harboring communists. For future shows I hope he mentions that the AFL-CIO's international department was led by the former head of the American Communist Party , Jay Lovestone. This could provoke another Jesuit-style backlash by older union types.

Howell Raines finally wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, chastising his fellow journalists for not mentioning that for the first time in modern American history we have a self-proclaimed news agency identified with a single political party. He called on his feloow journalists to start going after Roger Ailes and his right-wing Echochamber. A little late but welcomed.

My interest in Rep. Paul Ryan's Blueprint for the Future was only reinforced yesterday as the American Spectator and other conservative publications have endorsed it. Ryan asked the CBO to score his budget plan--using only his revenue figures. The plan called for the total dismantling of all entitlement programs, an increase in taxes on the Middle Class, a substantial reduction in taxes on the rich and corporations. Even people like Andrew Sullivan seem infatuated with the Ryan plan. Maybe it's like figuring out some mathematical formula to eliminate our deficit.

The final results for the Ryan plan were ruinous. If adopted, the federal government would be gasping for air and deficits would run so large through 2019 we couldn't ever recover. That's using his revenue figures. This is the new Supply-Side theory and I promise you it will be part of the Republican platform in 2012. I call it Aircraft Carrier Economics. The United States would become a gigantic platform from which one can launch endless wars but there would be no benefit to any Americans. I think Paul Ryan would have gotten along great with Brezhnev. They share the same worldview.

Leonard Pitts wrote a column lamenting the fact the GOP's own campaign now is based on fear. Sentimental guy that he is he waxed nostalgic for the days when politicians from both the right and left encouraged us to adopt higher principles that united us. It's not morning in America, he writes, it's now High-Noon every day.

To my conservative friends who believed President Obama would not donate his Nobel Prize money to charity, yesterday he did and the charities are all posted on line. Actually he made some good choices, emphasizing educational funds for minority students, including Native Americans. He also gave a sizeable gift to the Clinton Haiti Fund. Conservatives always liked to brag about how Dick Cheney gave his earnings from Halliburton to charity when he took office. The charity was the Richard Cheney Vice Presidential Library--believe it or not.

You will have noticed that I have not been referring to the FreeRepublic website lately. Yesterday their bloggers said that if health care reform passes they can't wait until 2012. They must engage in armed struggle now. At this point, I can't help but believe the Secret Service is n camped out at that website and in Jim Robinson's office.

A retired General sent me his latest article , which called for Revolution, because Washington is adopting progressive socialism and we constitutionalists must stop it. It reminds me of Sterling Hayden's great performance as a right-wing general with a private army in Winter Kills, which was about the JFK assassination. I don't respond because his notion of constitutionalism is based on the white nationalist movement and he doesn't even know it.

On President's Day, leading ministers of the Southern Baptist Church prayed to God for the death of President Obama. They think he is either the one to usher in the age of the Anti-Christ or the anti-Christ himself. Nero was the real Anti-Christ because he persecuted early Christians and inspired the Book of Revelations. Tim Lahaye of the Left Behind Series said it was Gorbachev because he had the mark of the beast on his forehead. Sarah Palin's minister believes the Anti-Christ is gay,which, I guess brings us back to the Vatican. But all this contradicts some of the think of the Southern Baptists, who believe the rapture ic coming in May 2012, before our next election. So no need for armed struggle or assassination--everything is solved.

Our Texas School Board problem hasn't been solved by the defeat of the wingnuts. They still refuse to include a section in the American History text why we have separation of church and state. They also want to include a section on the Emancipation Proclamation that it raised expectations of minorities too high.

George Will writes that Roberts should boycott the State of the Union address and wants more people to do so. After all we have a Black President and he's too uppity--I'm just translating. But Roberts, who is miffed by Obama's justified criticism of the Citizens United decision, should have been on the court of John Marshall when he ruled for the Cherokee Nation against its forced removal to Oklahoma. Andrew Jackson ignored him and the press asked about the Supreme Court Decision. Jackson said,"Let him (Marshall) enforce it."

Drudge reminds us that Obama's approval rating fell to its lowest point in Gallup of all time! Gallup reminds its readers that Obama's weekly approval ratings are very consistent and holding up. Rasmussen must be pleased he's getting traction--imaginary though it is. RS2000 has Obama where he was last week with a slight drop in the disapproval ratings.

We have an immediate consequence of the Citizens United ruling. Millions of dollars are flowing through front organizations with the usualy names like Americans for Free Donuts. The Corporate flood is a last gasp to defeath healthreform. I have never seen a time when corporate America has waged such an unrelenting war against the American people. Whether it's health reform or fiscal reform. And they don't even pay taxes or create jobs here!

The Democrats pledged they will not use earmarks for corporate funding anymore. The Republicans came in a day late and said they would do this also--for one year! The group of Republicans who signed onto this plan netted over $400 million in earmarks last year. K Street is in deep mourning and generating op-eds to defend their work on behalf of corporations.

* Hendrix's last cut on the album.

Red House

Another burning blues song from Hendrix.

Former military colleagues of Eric Massa are delighted by his performance before the American public ,saying "Now, you know what we had to put up with." Apparently, General Wes Clark brought him along as a protege and only yesterday was raving about him on his website as one of the strong supporters of repealing DADT and telling readers to support him. The link has since disppeared from Gen. Clark's website. The military types said he was always a flake.

The Grand Exorcist of the Vatican says that the devil is there and that the reports about violence and pedophilia are true. The 85-year old exorcist says there is black smoke in the rooms inhabited by the Devil and that there are Bishops who do not believe.

Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition, must have sensed the same thing in Georgia. After hinting he was going to run for congress to replace Rep. Linder, who is retiring, he suddenly announced this morning he would not run. The Devil here might be Kevin Spacey playing Jake Abramoff, Reed's former business partner.

The AP has a poll ,which will really thrill Republicans. Only 4% of the American people do not want to change our health care system. Yes, that's right, only 4% want to maintain the status quo. When it comes to voting the healthcare bill, 43% are for reconciliation, while 41% want Congress to scrap everything and start again. On other polls, which breaks out the actual provisions of the plan, large majorities back the provisions, and also back the public option, but oppose mandates. These run counter to the endless GOP talking points that a majority oppose health reform. By last week, nearly every talking head and Republican politician said 70% opposed. No one has yet come forth to show where this magical number came from.

Katheleen Sebelius challenged the insurance companies at their meeting at the Ritz-Carlton saying that even if healthcare reform fails,their current business model works against their interests and those of the American people. She called on the companies to stop the ad campaigns and the lobbying and to cut the premiums. It was a gutsy speech to a bunch of leeches. They have already approved several millions to run ads rationalizing their large rate hikes. They acknowledge they have a public relations problem. I guess so.

Nancy Pelosi said--and politicians in her position risk alot by spinning this--that she has the votes to pass healthcare. She says she is waiting for the CBO to score the modified Senate bill and once she has the scoring by end of business today she will get to work.

Karl Rove's book Courage and Convictions is all the talk among the media in the Beltway. Richard Viguerie, conservative master of the mass mailings, said that he never associated the two words in the title with Karl and that he never viewed Karl as a conservative , just a paid political operative. In all the e-mails and conservative underworld, I have heard nothing, not whispers--just crickets.

Glenn Greenwald's blog piece on Chief Justice Roberts' arrogance and the regal position of all our judges is worth reading.

A strange poll. This is from PPP, which are pretty reliable, has Marco Rubio leading Meek, the Democrat in Florida, 44 to 39. Pollster. com have Democrats back in the lead in Congress 45-43%, reversing their trend of the past few weeks.

The Chinese have issued a statement saying they will continue to back America's debt. The Chinese military, who were annoyed by our arms sales to Taiwan and the meeting with the Dalai Lama, wanted Beijing to retaliate against the Americans by refusing to buy any more treasuries.

Get ready for the big money dump from the stimulus plan. Roughly $200 billion mostly earmarked for infrastructure projects and alternative energy initiatives is about to be unleashed on the economy. There are about 25,500 projects, which should create another 900,000 jobs through the remainder of 2010. Weirdly, the largest number of jobs--250,000--will be created in the Southeast.

Republicans argue that targeted tax breaks for industries that must needed it could have created tens of millions of jobs. What they neglect to tell anyone is that the large private sector neglected to create a single job over ten years and only 26% of them paid any taxes whatsoever.

Maybe it's just Spring. But I feel things are turning around.

Lastly, Number 3 Willie Davis, the fleet-footed centerfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, has died at the age of 69. Davis, the team's all-time hit leader, was in his time the fastest runner in baseball and a stolen base threat. Buzzy Bavasi said of Willie," He could have been in the Hall of Fame. He had million dollar legs but a ten cent head." Don Newcombe, Dodger great, convinced the club in the 1990s to get medical assistance for him because he had been struggling. Davis, who had been prone to violence and paranoia, finally became a Buddhist and seemed to have overcome his demons.

They want you as a new recruit--cue in the Village People

Rahm Emmanuel did a little rope-a-dope with the Fox News crowd by saving the best on Massa until right before he appeared on the Glenn Beck. First Steny Hoyer said Massa's charges about being forced out were "not serious", then Gibbs at the White House press briefing in the morning downplayed Massa's charges that the White House wanted him out because he opposed health care reform as ridiculous. Then as the day moved on, the press already knew right before Beck that the charges against Massa was he molested a series of male aides. The ones who hadn't pressed the ethics charges soon followed to make it known they had complaints also. By the time Massa got on Fox he was nearly as incoherent as he was the day before and only admitted to "tickle fights" with male staff. All the grave charges against the Democratic leadership disappeared and finally Beck had to apologize to the audience for wasting their time. Nicely done.

Meanwhile Howard Dean led a rally of pro-healthcare protestors in Dupont Circle. The group wanted to make citizens' arrests of medical insurance company executives who have called an emergency meeting in the Capital now that President Obama has taken out after them.

There are now 50 Senators on the record for reconciliation and 40 have signed on for the public option so far. Senate and House Republicans made it clear to day that they are going to make the mid-term elections a referendum on health care reform and will campaign to repeal it. I guess they are throwing in the towel. Now let's walk this one through. Let's say the republicans actually win both the House and the Senate and pass a bill repealing healthcare reform. Do you really think they will have 2/3rds of the Senate to override a veto? It's just a red herring.

Republican news outlets like Politico and Drudge are now circulating the story that Nancy Pelosi has "lost control" of the Democratic caucus because of how she handled the Rangel case. There is virtually no evidence of this. It's just another late minute ploy to shake Democrats who are wavering on health care.

What does disturb me is Steny Hoyer's statement that the vote may not be March 18th as the White House said today. That's the day President Obama is supposed to fly abroad. Don't go, Mr. President, until these clowns vote on it.

While all this is going on, the left appears to be throwing a tantrum and I can't figure it out why. Yes, the health care bill is far from perfect but it will help 30 million people and a few of us who remain at the mercy of the health insurance industry. But this drumbeat about how Obama is going to lose this constituency, that constituency for crimes real and imagined are at this early stage hyperbolic and certainly premature.

The good news is that a Zogby-Newsmax poll has Obama beating Bush 48-38. Zogby has definitely taken the one way ride to Palookaville. Once the premier pollster during the Carter years, he is just scrapping bottom for any clients he can get. For me, there is virtually no worth to Zogby polls at this stage.

Which brings me to the sad state of Rasmussen polls, which during past cycles were sensible and reasonable. My gut tells me Rasmussen is cashing in big time in the 2010 election cycle, perhaps to sell the business off. Rasmussen has been repeatedly been conducting polls around the country for Republicans in such a frequency as to raise questions about motivations. There is no earthly reason to have conducted so many polls so early in an election year except to establish a climate , a tone, a background favorable to Republicans and to influence the electorate. And to make buckets of cash.

Breaking down any of his polls recently, you will see Rasmussen over samples Republicans, often by as much as 8-9%. I was sad when Zogby bit the dust of credibility and I also regret Rasmussen travelling down the same road. Check for yourself, the difference in Rasmussen's approval polls for President Obama against Gallup or anyone else. You will find Obama has been in the low 40s in Rasmussen for quite some time, while Gallup ranges from 49 to 52. The difference is not plausible in my mind.

In many of these state races, Rasmussen has the only poll out there. If the Republican leads by less than 10 percent, then consider the race a toss-up. I think that is the margin of real error. And if the Democrat is in any type of lead, you already know the results.

All of this is part of an effort to manufacture a Republican comeback at a time when the party has no ideas or leaders. It's a very tricky thing to pull off. It's true they have their own private TV channel, which is the only one in my lifetime to actively organize protests against a sitting President. They also have dominance in my opinion over the other networks and the Washington Post. But so far they are just throwing anything at the wall to see if it will stick. The rolling Rasmussen polls are part of a strategy of psywarfare. I'm interesting to see what Rasmussen will do from a business angle after the mid-terms are over.

For the public good, I think it would be great to have the media boycott U.S. Senators of both parties for one week. I think this would be a great experiment and it would send our Samurai Warlords crazy. Frankly, I don't care if Blanche Lincoln is for health care but doubtful about reconciliation. Or that Lindsey Graham put his finger in the air and decided it was OK to criticize Liz Cheney. And why must we have John McCain on every week since he lost to President Obama? Did we have Michael Dukakis on every week or John Kerry? And, by the way, where are the Democrats when it comes to national security issues? They never appear to defend the Administration even though it's cleaning up on the war on terror.

I've been watching Alabama ever since accusations were made against Karl Rove manipulating the case against Governor Spiegelman. Alabama over many election cycles has been owned by Republicans. Between Ralph Reed and Karl Rove, there have been dirty tricks played galore in the state. But I've noticed recently that the Democrats are beginning to put together a solid team of candidates, including for Governor. I think this is one state to watch for some interesting changes this year. The other state is Texas.

I was fascinated today to learn Rupert Murdoch is going to move the headquarters for his media empire to Dubai. I wonder how much of this is related to the Saudi ownership in the company. His leading business partner as I've posted elsewhere is a Saudi Prince, who reportedly funds the families of suicide bombers. Interesting that this goes uncommented on in the U.S.

I'm having a tough time becoming a permanent Yankee Fan. Steinbrenner will not extend the contracts of Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera until after the season ends. He's the same old goat.

The Packard family is taking out after Carly Fiorina in California. Carly's main argument why she should be a Senator was her "superb" job as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Not so, say the Packards, who believe she brought the company close to ruin. They had to intercede to stop her attempt to acquire Compaq and finally stimulated a shareholder revolt to can her. You will recall the memorable moment in the McCain campaign where Carly told everyone that as CEO she purposely kept H-P funds abroad to escape paying Americam corporate taxes. So the people of California can elect a tax-dodger.

Charlie Crist looks like he's toast in Florida. Marco Rubio has an insurmontable lead for the Republican primary. Rubio is a major scandal waiting to happen. He's already been caught out using the party American Express card to charge his rather extensive personal expenses. He will be a disaster as a Senator, even though conservatives believe he is one of them--he's not. Crist has been a decent governor in hard times. Remember Jeb lost the entire state pension fund at Lehman Brothers. The Democratic candidate is too weak. Crist should either change parties or run as an independent.

Things are looking up for former Republican Lincoln Chaffee in Rhode Island. He appears to have a commanding lead in the race for the state house. He is one of those who was run out of the Republican party by the right.

The New York profile of Liz Cheney is worth a read. The operative elements of the article concern her personal and her husband's relationships with key media personalities in town. All her appearances are very managed and limited with the collusion of her media friends. It's not political, it's totally personal.

Finally, Jimi Hendrix Valleys of Neptune is sweet. You forget how good he was. This is the last album he recorded before he died. It was hung up in litigation until the family won the rights to all his work. It was recorded shortly after Electric Ladyland. I could have done without the copious notes on every single personnel dispute and where the band stayed in Manhattan during this period. But good listening.

The Left Did It--Massachusetts Follow-Up

There are really people blaming the Left for Coakley's defeat in Massachusetts. I didn't think Bernie Sanders had anything to do with it. Former CIA agent and Hilary Clinton supporter Lanny Davis pontificated about how the Left's neglect of the race and Obama's own leftwing policies--I didn't know he had any--caused the Brown victory. I rarely defend the Left but here I think it's important that even FireDogLake sounded the alarm that all progressives had to grow up and act like children and back the Democratic candidate. The netroots were in full tilt activist mode several days before the election once they sensed the prospect of a Brown victory. The union GOTV efforts were mobilized and cash began to flow with the sounds of alarm. Yes, they did hold their noses but came through.

As for a response to the Obama leftwing agenda--a thought expressed by Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman and Mark Penn, Research 2000 did an interesting poll of Democrats that voted for Brown. First, fully 57% believed Democrats were not fighting the abuses left behind from the Bush years hard enough. Second, a hefty margin backed the health care reform bill but a plurality said it did not go far enough. Thirdly,the vast majority supported the public option. Where the sample didn't track with conventional wisdom was that a majority felt the best way to get the economy going again was cut government spending, not regulate Wall Street. Clearly, the preliminary polling information does not support a return to triangulation.

Rush Limbaugh wondered whether the "bankers--ah the "liberal Jews" have buyer's remorse about Obama". That was not a slip. During the fall economic crisis, one of the most repeated e-mails I received was that George Soros, Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank were responsible for the banking crisis. Connect the dots. Stay classy, Rush.

Peggy Noonan opines that Brown won because he looked really like an "American". Another guest on the talk show said that after Americans elected an African-American, they wanted someone who looked normal and that a woman wouldn't do it. This reminds me of Cokie Roberts complaining during the campaign that the Obamas vacationed in Hawaii and not somewhere normal like Myrtle Beach.

The White House is giving off mixed messages after the Senate win by Brown. Word to MSNBC was that Obama would take a more combative stance toward Republicans on a whole host of issues and the White House sources claim they believe they are being pounded by some of the anger that propelled Obama to the White House in the first place. Then minutes later we have a whole new dance on health reform claiming Obama will pare down the version he asks for focusing on all the elements people agreed on. Some Senate Democrats are now sounding noises they are open to "reconciliation".

One of the stranger of the strangest things to occur today were the articles put out by major news services that Nancy Pelosi's job was in trouble. Again, personally I never liked her, but as a speaker she has been one of the most productive in my lifetime. This year the House passed more progressive legislation on more subjects than probably the first whole administration of FDR. If anyone has been effective in Washington, it's been Nancy Pelosi.