The latest teabagger tactic

"My Republican opponent teabags!" This is whom the Republican Establishment is entrusting the future of the party to. Unfortunately, we'll all have to live with the consequences.

The most admired person in America is...

The President. Hillary is the most admired woman, but this statistic is quite remarkable.

Among women, Clinton continues an unprecedented 17-year run as the first or second most-admired woman. She first led the list in 1993 as first lady and has held the top spot for the past eight years as a New York senator and, now, the nation's top diplomat. She lost a bid for the Democratic nomination last year.

Good for both of them. We could have closed this rotten decade on a far worse note.

Avatar

What's most remarkable about the virulent conservative reaction to the film is how much they identify with the story's villains.

First off, don’t see the movie Avatar. It might look good, but the direction and storytelling are horrible. Unfortunately, director James Cameron and his lefty loonies are trying to promote another political message to the unsuspecting public: America is a repressive nation.

The United States is a far greater country than the film's villain, a giant corporation with an army. To the degree that the film is a warning of an inhumane future, it's one we should heed.

What's most remarkable is that America is never mentioned in the film. Not even once. No one could seriously think that Avatar's villains are fully representative of America. U.S. filmgoers, who have made this film #1 two weeks in a row, obviously don't feel the film is somehow calling them evil. They identify, rather, with its hero: a soldier who sides with injustice against a corrupt system.

So what to make of Free Republic and other GOP websites' incredible anger against this film? It is, perhaps, that their party, not the United States. is already the monster that the film warns us of: an anti-ecological, anti-religious tool whose primary objective is enabling foreign shareholders of American corporations to maximize profits. Party activists' anger is proof of something unexpected: at least the most conservative elements of the Republican Party know what they are. They just resent being unmasked.

The Kennedy Center Honors

Tonight at 9 pm on CBS.

News from the front

Armed forces sexual abuse on the rise, and some of it male on male. Oh, my.

In the turbulent regions from Egypt to Afghanistan where most American combat troops are now deployed, the increase in reported cases was even sharper: 251 cases, compared with 174 the year before, a 44 percent increase. The number in Iraq rose to 143, from 112 the year before. Everyone agrees that those represent only a fraction of the instances of assault, let alone harassment.

“A woman in the military is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq,” Representative Jane Harman, a Democrat from California, said at a Congressional hearing this year, repeating an assertion she has made a refrain in a campaign of hers to force the military to do more to address abuses.

At least 10 percent of the victims in the last year were men, a reality that the Pentagon’s task force said the armed services had done practically nothing to address in terms of counseling, treatment and prosecution. Men are considered even less likely to report attacks, officials said, because of the stigma, and fears that their own sexual orientation would be questioned. In the majority of the reported cases, the attacker was male.

No need to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, however. That kind of homosexual activity doesn't harm morale.

Catholic Health Association speaks

And delivers a giant f*** you to abortion-obsessed, anti-Mexican U.S. bishops.

In an apparent split with Roman Catholic bishops over the abortion-financing provisions of the proposed health care overhaul, the nation’s Catholic hospitals have signaled that they back the Senate’s compromise on the issue, raising hopes of breaking an impasse in Congress and stirring controversy within the church.

The Senate bill, approved Thursday morning, allows any state to bar the use of federal subsidies for insurance plans that cover abortion and requires insurers in other states to divide subsidy money into separate accounts so that only dollars from private premiums would be used to pay for abortions.

Just days before the bill passed, the Catholic Health Association, which represents hundreds of Catholic hospitals across the country, said in a statement that it was “encouraged” and “increasingly confident” that such a compromise “can achieve the objective of no federal funding for abortion.” An umbrella group for nuns followed its lead.

The same day, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called the proposed compromise “morally unacceptable.” [...]

Abortion rights supporters said the signs of openness from Catholic groups were helping some Democratic abortion foes accept the Senate compromise.

“We have known for quite some time that the Catholic hospitals and also the nuns are really breaking from these hard-line bishops and saying, ‘This really is our goal: to get more people into health care coverage,’ ” said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado.

The abortion rights faction of the House Democrats was initially dubious about the Senate bill’s provision but has warmed up to it after reassurances from their Senate counterparts, Ms. DeGette said.

McAllen, TX

Atul Gawande's summer piece in the New Yorker. Key quote: "Americans like to believe that, with most things, more is better. But research suggests that where medicine is concerned it may actually be worse."

It's not about watching sausage get made

It's about the sausage. If you know what I mean. Ezra Klein:

On Dec. 24, in an early morning vote, the United States Senate passed health-care reform. It was the first time the body had been in session on Christmas Eve since 1963. That's fitting, as it's arguably the most important piece of legislation the body has passed since 1963. [...]

Passing legislation, it turns out, is a long and ugly process. God, is it ugly. The compromises, both with powerful special interests and decisive senators. The trimming of ambitions and the budget gimmicks and the worship of Congressional Budget Office scores. By the end, you're passing a compromise of a deal of a negotiation of a concession.

But bad a system as it might be, it's the only one we've got. At least for now, this is what victory looks like. The slow, grinding, ineluctable advance of legislation that is quite similar, albeit not identical, to what you began with. It's not pretty, and it doesn't necessarily feel like winning is supposed to feel. But this bill will do most of the things supporters hoped it would do: cover about 95 percent of all legal residents, regulate insurers, set up competitive exchanges, pretty much end risk selection, institute a universal structure that we can improve and enhance as the years go on, and vastly reduce both medical and financial risk for families.

It's been a long time since the legislative system did anything this big, and people have forgotten how awful the victories are. But these are the victories, and if they feel bad to many, they will do good for more. As that comes clearer and clearer, this bill will come to feel more and more like the historic advance it actually is.

Lindsey Graham plays the race card

Its consequences beautifully explained by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Yglesias highlighted this the other day, and I ignored it because I thought it was a slip of the tongue. But here's Lindsey Graham, again, equating poor people with black people, or some such. A charitable interpretation says that Graham, in his discussion of Medicaid, is citing his state's black population because we tend to be disproportionately poor. But this would be like discussing Medicare by citing your state's sweater-knitting population because they tend to be disproportionately old.

It's probably much worse--most sweater-knitters may well be on Medicare, but most black people aren't actually poor or on Medicaid. And so what your left with, again charitably, is a kind of mental laziness, and weak, mealy-mouthed, factually wrong conflation of black people and the poor. A lot of bourgeois Negroes, like myself, spend too much time being offended by this kind of conflation. In fact the people who should be offended are the white people Lindsey Graham represents.

The charitable interpretation rests on the invisibility of white suffering. It rests on the erasure of Clay County. It rests on the notion that the white poor are not merely the white poor, but white trash. It's a formula makes an anchor of black America, straps it to a larger population of poor white Americans and then drops them in the Mississippi. It's a con that asks large swaths of white folks to suffer poverty in shame and silence.

But as Coates likely knows, it's a smart move for Graham, who represents one of the most virulently racist states in the country. As Karl Rove understood when he destroyed the McCain candidacy in the storied 2000 primary, race is the cornerstone of GOP politics in the Palmetto State. Graham's willingness to work out solutions on the environment and immigration and, most particularly, his vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor, has made him a whole lot of enemies in his own party. Racism may be all he has to offer his extraordinarily rabid GOP base. I suspect, however, that it won't be enough to avoid a primary challenge down the road.

TPM

Josh Marshall on the rather surprising 60 vote majority for the actual bill, not just cloture:

[T]his is actually a bad commentary on the state of the senate. It seems to confirm that there's now no longer any daylight between the kind of bill you'd simply decide to vote against and the sort of bill you'd actually prevent your colleagues from getting a chance to vote on. We've pretty much been there for a while. But this vote really confirms it.

Frank Lautenberg

The New Jersey legislature has unfortunately failed to change its U.S. senate vacancy laws before Chris Christie took office. That means that three 85 year old senators will be from states with Republican governors: Lautenberg, Inouye and Akaka.

Don't think that killing Robert Byrd wasn't part of the GOP's plan this week. They forced several additional procedural motions that required him to brave the severe cold.

Mr. Manchin told The Associated Press in June that any speculation about Mr. Byrd’s health was “callous” and “awful.”

It is also rampant, “something that’s in the back of everybody’s mind’s,” said one senator who declined to be named speaking publicly about Mr. Byrd.

The degree to which Mr. Byrd’s condition looms over the proceedings was underscored Monday when Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, outraged Democrats in a floor speech by declaring that “what the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote.” Many assumed he was talking about Mr. Byrd, whose term ends in 2012.

Mr. Coburn “does not wish misfortune on anyone,” his spokesman, John Hart, said in a statement after Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois complained that Mr. Coburn had “crossed the line.”

(Some conservative bloggers have been particularly unrestrained: Mr. Byrd should “do the right thing and expire,” wrote Bob Owens, in a post to the Confederate Yankee blog titled “All I Want Is a Byrd Dropping for Christmas.”) [...]

Even if the health care legislation passes the Senate, speculation over Mr. Byrd’s health will continue. The House and Senate bills must be reconciled, and both chambers must vote on the final legislation before President Obama can sign it. That process should extend into the new year, as will another round of Byrd watching.

When the histories of this battle are written, one of the remarkable footnotes will be the degree to which Republicans were willing and hoping to torture a 92-year-old, wheelchair bound man to death in order to screw 30 million Americans out of health care.

Bernie Madoff assaulted in prison? - ABC News

Thousands of Americans are unjustly assaulted in prison every day. I suspect, however, this is the first assault that actually made the news in years. For more information, visit Just Detention International.

2010 will be fun

The next year will see a rash of populist legislation against credit card companies, investment banks, and CEO's. Democrats will dare the GOP to join them in these votes. The bills may fail to get through the Senate, but they will get through the House. And each GOP "no" vote will allow the Democratic opponent to say that Republicans didn't just vote against funding our troops: they voted against the economic interests of regular people over and over again. November, 2010 is nearly a year away. A nasty, populist agenda will send Republicans fleeing for the hills. Louise Slaughter's bill capping credit card interest at 16% is just the beginning.

Um...

It's bad enough that Lawrence Summers is running Obama's economic policy. Is there anything at all at all that qualifies him to pick the cybersecurity coordinator as well?

Schmidt's selection suggests that economic and business interests in the White House held more sway in the selection process. Schmidt, president and CEO of the Information Security Forum, a nonprofit international consortium that conducts research in information security, has served as chief security officer for Microsoft and as cyber security chief for online auction giant eBay. He was reportedly preferred by NEC director Lawrence Summers.

China

The U.S. isn't the model for the new hatred of China: it's the old European colonial powers.

It seemed as if this village in northern Vietnam had struck gold when a Chinese and a Japanese company arrived to jointly build a coal-fired power plant. Thousands of jobs would start flowing in, or so the residents hoped.

Four years later, the Haiphong Thermal Power Plant is nearing completion. But only a few hundred Vietnamese ever got jobs. Most of the workers were Chinese, about 1,500 at the peak. Hundreds of them are still here, toiling by day on the dusty construction site and cloistered at night in dingy dormitories.

“The Chinese workers overwhelm the Vietnamese workers here,” said Nguyen Thai Bang, 29, a Vietnamese electrician.

China, famous for its export of cheap goods, is increasingly known for shipping out cheap labor. These global migrants often work in factories or on Chinese-run construction and engineering projects, though the range of jobs is astonishing: from planting flowers in the Netherlands to doing secretarial tasks in Singapore to herding cows in Mongolia — even delivering newspapers in the Middle East.

But a backlash against them has grown. Across Asia and Africa, episodes of protest and violence against Chinese workers have flared. Vietnam and India are among the nations that have moved to impose new labor rules for foreign companies and restrict the number of Chinese workers allowed to enter, straining relations with Beijing.

In Vietnam, dissidents and intellectuals are using the issue of Chinese labor to challenge the ruling Communist Party. A lawyer sued Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung over his approval of a Chinese bauxite mining project, and the National Assembly is questioning top officials over Chinese contracts, unusual moves in this authoritarian state. [...]

But in some countries, local residents accuse the Chinese of stealing jobs, staying on illegally and isolating themselves by building bubble worlds that replicate life in China.

“There are entire Chinese villages now,” said Pham Chi Lan, former executive vice president of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “We’ve never seen such a practice on projects done by companies from other countries.”

The key, as we have written before, is for Chinese labor exploitation to occur in Islamic nations.

Robert Caro

On power:

There's an old saying: All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The more I've learned, the less I believe it. Power doesn't always corrupt. What power always does is reveal. When a guy gets into a position where he doesn't have to worry anymore, then you see what he wanted to do all along.

Serendipity

Krugman:

I haven’t seen anyone point this out; but it occurs to me that we all owe thanks to the Club for Growth. If they hadn’t targeted Arlen Specter, he wouldn’t have switched parties, the Democrats wouldn’t have 60 seats, and the world might look very different.

He's right, and let's not forget Larry Sabato's tweet last night: "312 voters in Minnesota indirectly passed a health care bill that restructures 17% of the U.S. economy. Al Franken, not Ben Nelson, was #60."

This is one of my notes from election night liveblogging:

9:38 There's still one powerful homosexual in the Senate. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell holds on. On the bright side, Tom Udall flips another one for the Democrats, so the majority will be 54-45, so far, plus Lieberman. Democrats will not get to 60, but they might get 57.

So yes, Franken and Begich were so close they went to recounts. And Specter was an unexpected gimme. It turned out we needed every last one, plus the independent. If health care makes it to the President's desk, we should realize just how lucky we were.

Lieberman was the 60th vote

Suppose it hadn't come down to him. Suppose it was 57-42 plus Lieberman in the Senate. Given the threat of teabagger-incited Republican primary challengers, Democrats would have been hard pressed to find three extra votes from the other side of the aisle. Suppose it had come down to Collins, Snowe and some third Republican. Would this have been a better bill?

There's no doubt that Lieberman weakened the present legislation (though not more than Max Baucus, whose two month delay was the reason that the anti-health care forces organized as well as they did, to the great detriment of the bill and the President's larger agenda).

But if it had been up to the two senators from Maine (and can you even think of a third GOP Senator who would have considered voting for it?), this bill would have had a bit of cost containment and a few limited restrictions on dropping people from coverage. There wouldn't have been a penny spent to insure 30 million more Americans, what to speak of $200 billion a year. This is, still, the biggest expansion of social welfare in decades.

Because of Joe Lieberman, a huge chunk of it will go to bloated health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and health provider conglomerates (many of whose shareholders are not American). And the mandate may look simply terrible to young people, who, to be sure, are the primary victims of the Lieberman maneuver, since they will be forced to pay higher premiums for shoddier health are.

But at least 70% of the $200 billion won't fatten foreign shareholders' pockets (and let's face it, one of the great ironies of the modern GOP is the degree to which it is making foreigners who hate America richer). It will go instead to paying premiums for Americans who were otherwise uninsured. That may not seem like much to already insured people on the left. But it's a very big deal to 30 million people who will no longer have to fear bankruptcy if they have a car accident.

I am not sure Olympia Snowe would have voted for any bill the President would sign, since it looks like she still wants to win Maine's 2012 Republican Senate primary. I'm even less sure we could have mustered any other GOP votes, even for a health insurance reform that provided no subsidies and didn't insure any new Americans. The GOP's fight, after all, was about denying the President a victory, not about policy.

We'll have to fight the rest of our lives to fix Lieberman's mess. But at least we'll have a mess to fix.

So let's be thankful that we had a 60th vote. More importantly, let's hope we still have one for final passage.

Meet Robert George

The American Catholic hierarchy's intellectual leader. They've followed his anti-Gospel word for evil word.

Last spring, George was invited to address an audience that included many bishops at a conference in Washington. He told them with typical bluntness that they should stop talking so much about the many policy issues they have taken up in the name of social justice. They should concentrate their authority on “the moral social” issues like abortion, embryonic stem-cell research and same-sex marriage, where, he argued, the natural law and Gospel principles were clear. To be sure, he said, he had no objections to bishops' “making utter nuisances of themselves” about poverty and injustice, like the Old Testament prophets, as long as they did not advocate specific remedies. They should stop lobbying for detailed economic policies like progressive tax rates, higher minimum wage and, presumably, the expansion of health care — “matters of public policy upon which Gospel principles by themselves do not resolve differences of opinion among reasonable and well-informed people of good will,” as George put it.

A few months later, in a July 17 letter to Congress, the bishops did something close to that in the health care debate. Setting aside decades of calls for universal coverage, the bishops pledged to fight any bill that failed to block the use of federal subsidies for insurance covering abortion. “Stalin famously asked, ‘How many divisions has the pope?’ ” George wrote to me in an e-mail message after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed a vote on an amendment that satisfied the bishops’ demands. “I guess Pelosi now knows.”

George and the American hierarchy seem to have access to a more complete Bible, one that documents Jesus' obsessive, one-track condemnation of homosexuality and abortion, his lust for power and lovely red wedding trains. Internet versions of the Bible, sadly, are restricted to standard editions, so please ignore this passage.

Olympia Snowe finally admits it

She took everyone for a ride. She will vote to filibuster a bill that is in many ways more conservative than the one she voted for in committee. Obama wasn't wrong to cut a deal with Lieberman? It was the only game in town.

Snowe will probably lose the Republican primary in 2012 regardless.

Theda Skocpol on the Senate bill

Nice:

Understandably, some progressives see what's left at the end of these struggles as not worth their support. But history tells us this is mistaken. We should take the many big steps forward that are on the table now -- above all the expanded entitlement, the regulations of private insurance, and the increased subsidies for the less fortunate -- and accept that true "health care reform" remains a multi-year, multi-election struggle. Social Security took several decades to become universal and adequate; Medicare did not include cost controls or key benefits for many years. Both programs moreover, had to be improved and defended at the same time, because conservatives attacked and tried to dismantle, even as liberals fought to improve and expand. The same will happen here. [...]

After this Health Reform is signed by President Obama, we progressives should keep pressing Democrats to look for ways to use reconciliation procedures to improve the cost controls in health care. Reconciliation and the majority Senate voting it entails is MEANT to be used on public budget issues. Once the federal government is dispursing enhanced subsidies to cover all Americans and help employers afford health insurance, price increases in private insurance become an increasingly grave threat to the public good. Any measure that regulates private insurance prices or allows public plans to force price competition surely becomes fair game in Congressional tax and appropriations decisions. One possible advantage of the half of a loaf we get in this reform may be to make reconciliation more legitimate as a tool to introduce a true public option or a real Medicare expansion later, on the ground that they cut costs to the taxpayer. Progressives have to DEMAND that Obama and the Congressional leaders take that possibility seriously.

Ayatollah Montazeri dies

A hugely important figure.

The ayatollah, who was once designated to succeed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as Iran’s supreme leader, stepped away from the country’s hard-line path in the 1980s. He later embraced the reform movement, which has come to view him as the spiritual father of its cause.

In the months since Iran’s disputed June presidential elections, he has issued stinging denunciations of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, saying the Islamic Republic is neither Islamic nor a republic, and that its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has lost his legitimacy. Only two weeks ago, he warned that the Basij militia — which has brutally suppressed opposition street rallies — was forsaking the “path of God” for the “path of Satan.”

Ayatollah Montazeri is widely regarded as the most knowledgeable religious scholar in Iran, and that gave his criticisms special potency, analysts say. His religious credentials also prevented the authorities from silencing or jailing him, even as they imprisoned scores of others for less inflammatory remarks. [...]

Ayatollah Montazeri, who has long advocated greater civil liberties and women’s rights in Iran, was clearly angered by the bloody crackdown that followed the June elections, and issued a series of remarkable broadsides against the authorities.

“A political system based on force, oppression, changing people’s votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communications, jailing the enlightened and the elite of society for false reasons, and forcing them to make false confessions in jail, is condemned and illegitimate,” he wrote. [...]

But Ayatollah Montazeri gradually began to move away from his mentor’s policies. In early 1989, after a mass execution of political prisoners, he published an article strongly condemning the decision and calling for a “political and ideological reconstruction.” He also mocked Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa calling for the murder of the novelist Salman Rushdie, saying “people in the world are getting the idea that our business in Iran is just murdering people.” [...]

In 1997, Ayatollah Montazeri was placed under house arrest after openly criticizing Ayatollah Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The condition ended in 2003 after Iranian legislators called on Iran’s then-president, the reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami, to release him.

Ayatollah Montazeri continued to teach and to write prolifically, championing the reformist cause and issuing edicts calling for greater openness and democracy.

“Independence is being free of foreign intervention, and freedom is giving people the freedom to express their opinions,” he wrote recently. “Not being put in prison for every protest one utters.”

"The insincere center"

Krugman on the money.

And let’s also not fail to take note of those who had a chance to join in this historic moment, and punted.

I’m not talking about the progressives who have rejected this bill because they don’t think it’s good enough; I disagree, but I respect their motives. I’m talking instead about the self-described centrists, pundits and politicians, who have spent years lecturing us on the need to make hard choices and actually come to grip with America’s problems; you know who I mean. So what did they do when faced with a chance to help confront those problems? They made excuses. [...]

So did the deficit scolds, the people who preach the need to rein in entitlements and start paying our way, rally behind the cost-containment plans? Um, no. As I said, they made excuses, whining that the bill doesn’t do enough (as if there were any chance of passing a bill with everything they want), or insisting that even though the legislation does do the right thing, it doesn’t matter, because Congress won’t let the cost cuts go into effect — which turns out to be a claim at odds with the evidence of history.

And the lesson I take from that is that these people are insincere. They like posing as defenders of fiscal rectitude; they like declaring a pox on both houses; but when push comes to shove, their dislike of social insurance, their refusal to consider any government economy measures that don’t involve punishing people with lower incomes, trumps their supposed concern about acting responsibly.

Gentlemen — everyone I can think of here does happen to be male — this was your moment of truth, your test of character. You failed.

Copenhagen fallout

With any luck, the world will begin to see China as the major stumbling block for environmental progress rather than the United States. That's a soft power advantage for the United States, and only Obama could have made that happen.

Reporters summoned to a quick photo op of the session witnessed an unusually chaotic scene for a diplomatic setting.

Mr. Obama was heard raising his voice as he asked, "Mr. Premier, are you ready to see me? Are you ready?"

The question was aimed at Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

There was an uncharacteristic edge to Mr. Obama's voice as he addressed the Chinese leader.

It reflected U.S. exasperation over China's decision to assign a lower-level official to summit talks even though the premier was in the conference center. The president had already met with Wen shortly after arriving in Denmark.

Aboard Air Force One on the flight home from Copenhagen, a senior official revealed an intriguing account of the climax to the president's long day in Denmark. The official described the president's irritation with the Chinese.

He told his staff, "I don't want to mess around with this anymore. I want to just talk to Premier Wen."

Chinese officials sent mixed signals. They said Wen was at a hotel as his staff waited at the Copenhagen airport. The U.S. was also under the impression that other key countries were ready to abandon the summit.

Vicki Kennedy on the Senate bill

Important, though General Markos is not likely to listen:

In the early 1970s, Ted worked with the Nixon administration to find consensus on health-care reform. Those efforts broke down in part because the compromise wasn't ideologically pure enough for some constituency groups. More than 20 years passed before there was another real opportunity for reform, years during which human suffering only increased. Even with the committed leadership of then-President Bill Clinton and his wife, reform was thwarted in the 1990s. As Ted wrote in his memoir, he was deeply disappointed that the Clinton health-care bill did not come to a vote in the full Senate. He believed that senators should have gone on the record, up or down.

Ted often said that we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. He also said that it was better to get half a loaf than no loaf at all, especially with so many lives at stake. That's why, even as he never stopped fighting for comprehensive health-care reform, he also championed incremental but effective reforms such as a Patients' Bill of Rights, the Children's Health Insurance Program and COBRA continuation of health coverage. [...]

The bill before the Senate, while imperfect, would achieve many of the goals Ted fought for during the 40 years he championed access to quality, affordable health care for all Americans.
As President Obama noted to Congress this fall, for Ted, health-care reform was not a matter of ideology or politics. It was not about left or right, Democrat or Republican. It was a passion born from the experience of his own life, the experience of our family and the experiences of the millions of Americans across this country who considered him their senator, too.

The bill before Congress will finally deliver on the urgent needs of all Americans. It would make their lives better and do so much good for this country. That, in the end, must be the test of reform. That was always the test for Ted Kennedy. He's not here to urge us not to let this chance slip through our fingers. So I humbly ask his colleagues to finish the work of his life, the work of generations, to allow the vote to go forward and to pass health-care reform now. As Ted always said, when it's finally done, the people will wonder what took so long.

News from Paris

A court just demanded that Google remove thousands of French books from Book Search. That's OK. Americans and non-French Europeans decided the language was no longer worth pursuing about twenty years ago.

By the year 2050, the most populous French-speaking nation in the world will be the Democratic Republic of the Congo. With any luck, the French academy will be forced to move there.

Time to pass healthcare reform

Paul Krugman says that progressives need to get on board pass the health care bill. It's the only deal we're going to get, he argues, and after 2010, all bets are off.

That's about the same position Nate Silver takes, in today's hugely important post. The present bill is far from what we'd like, but it's hardly chump change.

Indeed, it's almost without doubt the biggest bleeping social welfare program that liberals have had an opportunity to pass in a generation. I don't know how you can just brush off providing $900 billion in subsidies, or helping 30 million people to become insured. That's not some side effect of the bill; it's the whole point of the bill.

As for the mandate, yes, it's awful. But maybe it holds the seeds for a long term solution. The South has far more lower middle class white people per capita than the North. The mandate will be a far greater burden on them. As a result, it is only a matter of time until Republican senators start requesting additional appropriations to cover Joe Bob's health insurance premiums and demanding increases in minimum income requirements for subsidies.

In time, the burden of these subsidies will cause even members of the no-math party to start thinking of ways to decrease costs. Taking away health care from white voters will be an impossibility; once this bill passes, they won't be able to kill the program any more than they could Medicare Part D.

Thus, 10 to 20 years from now, we will see Republican moves towards increased competition. A voter revolt against forced mandates for bad insurance policies could even result in populist policies such as windfall profits taxes on the healthcare industry or the elimination of for-profit insurance.

Americans have never been forced to buy anything private. Even car insurance is only mandatory for car owners. This mandate is forced on anyone who breathes; it's not a tax paid to the government. Believe me, people will notice they're forced, by the government, to pay a check to Blue Cross. What if they receive poor service or are somehow cheated by a monopoly that Big Government made them buy insurance from. Won't it make them angry enough to write their Republican congressmen? It will.

And that's when the common sense solutions Democrats have advocated, either in the form of the public option, or access to the federal employee insurance market, or the Medicare buy-in, will begin to make sense to less educated white voters and their Republican representatives. No mandate, no rage. No rage, no change. Let's get this disgusting, corrupted $90 billion a year subsidy to the health insurance industry passed. In a few years, Republicans will vote to increase it to $150 billion. Some time in the future, white taxpayers will demand that the government not force them to subsidize for-profit healthcare. That's when the fun will begin.

Uneducated, white Southern Republicans, in short, are the reason we don't have a good bill. They are also the reason we'll get one, down the road.

But none of these scenarios can play out without the passage of this bill. The overeducated, Naderite, white denizens of the left blogosphere complain that this bill is no solution. They are wrong. It is, rather, a crappy first stage solution. But if they think they'll be able to skip to a second stage with fewer than 60 Senate seats (and let's face it, this is the high water mark for Democrats in that body, possibly for decades to come), they are sorely mistaken. This is our one chance for a bill even this weak. And we need Lieberman's vote to get it done, and Nelson's too.

Because the President was once a senator, he understood the personalities, the politics and the numbers game from the start. It's time the rest of us took the hint and faced reality. An entertaining, more insured future awaits.

"Taking back the apology now"

Best Gail Collins column ever?

This is your big chance

To keep it real.... with Michael Steele. But really, the President had the last word on this clown months ago.

Henry Hyde versus Bill Clinton

Clinton wins, but no one will get those two years of his presidency back.

Hyde (R-Ill.), who headed up the House impeachment team and died in 2007, expressed no regrets. “Bill Clinton is making the most of his retirement. I’m glad he has no more pardons to sell. The country is safe to that extent. Bill Clinton could have been one of our great presidents. I think he had the brains and the energy and the ambition, but he lacked the vision. And the character. And that’s the sad part. What might have been,” Hyde told Gormley.

Clinton retorts: “They were disgraced, and he [Hyde] knows it. They ran a partisan hit job run by a bitter right winger, Henry Hyde, who turned out to be a hypocrite on the personal issues….Yeah, I will always have a asterisk after my name, but I hope I’ll have two asterisks: one is ‘They impeached him,” and the other is ‘He stood up to them and beat them, and he beat them like a yard dog.’”

Al Franken shuts down Lieberman

And that's exactly why Holy Joe crappified the health care bill. It was never about the policy, which, after all, he supported just weeks earlier. It was his f*** you to the left. And moments like this will just make it easier for him to filibuster the final bill unless he's in the conference committee. Not that Al doesn't speak for everyone whose death will be hastened by his betrayal of tikkun olam (and their loved ones).

What's the opposite of tikkun olam," is Mark Silk's rhetorical question. זונה, is the first commenter's answer.

The congressional polls look like 1994

There's only one problem: they look like the ones from >October, 1994... not December, 1993. The elections aren't tomorrow. The polls may be even worse then, but they just might be better.

Some Mexican drug cartel is really happy today

The Mexican government just got rid of some of their competition:

Two hundred sailors raided an upscale apartment complex and killed a reputed Mexican drug cartel chief in a two-hour gunbattle, one of the biggest victories yet in President Felipe Calderon's drug war.

Arturo Beltran Leyva, the "boss of bosses," and three members of his cartel were slain in the shootout Wednesday in Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City, according to a navy statement. A fifth cartel member committed suicide during the shootout.

I'll bet you the guys who did this are in a different cartel, though:

On Wednesday, the severed heads of six state police investigators were found on a public plaza in the northern Mexican state of Durango.

The net effect of drug seizures is known to be tremendous. Panacea-like in fact.This graph is all the proof you need.

:

Who else opposed the Medicare buy-in?

The answer may surprise you. Hint: it wasn't just corporate whores like Mark Warner.

FUTK

Good news for Natalie Maines fans. Toby Keith is doing more harm to his reputation by continuing to breathe than anything civilized people could think up.

Toby Keith may think his Nobel Peace Prize party eye gesture wasn't a big deal -- but TWO Asian organizations are furious about it, claiming the "racist" maneuver wasn't just offensive, it was an embarrassment to his country.

As TMZ first reported, Keith pulled back his eyes when Will Smith rapped the word "yellow" during an impromptu performance in Norway a few days ago -- Toby's rep blew it off, telling us, "nobody at the party thought Toby was out of line." But outside the party -- people are pissed.

A rep for the Asian American Justice Center tells TMZ, "Toby Keith embarrassed himself and his country, denigrated the Noble Peace Prize and offended Asians and Asian Americans by using a crude, racist hand gesture."

Another group -- the Media Action Network for Asians -- also took offense with Toby, telling us, "By doing this, he is telling his Asian fans 'you don't matter, you're not on my radar.'"

You gotta feel sorry for Toby's grandkids. Especially if the Republican Party, by then fully owned by its Chinese corporate overlords, is forced to deport them.

The death of an apostle

Oral Roberts has died. A quote from the New York Times' obituary:

He was the patriarch of the “prosperity gospel,” a theology that promotes the idea that Christians who pray and donate with sufficient fervency will be rewarded with health, wealth and happiness. Mr. Roberts trained and mentored several generations of younger prosperity gospel preachers who now have television and multimedia empires of their own. Mr. Roberts was as politically conservative as his contemporaries in what became known as the “religious right,” but he was known more for his religious style than for his political pronouncements. He was widely lampooned after he proclaimed on his television program in 1987 that God would “call him home” if he did not raise millions.

By 1985, the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University employed more than 2,300 people and earned $110 million in revenue. The expanse of Mr. Roberts’s ministry, coupled with his fiery preaching, tycoonlike vision and jet-set lifestyle, also attracted persistent questions throughout his career about his theology and his unorthodox fund-raising techniques, although no credible evidence of malfeasance was ever produced on his watch.

A quote from a related text:

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Why is the White House ready to cut a deal?

Collins isn't just a no. Her comments today show that she will lie as much as any other Republican about the contents of the bill. Snowe, meanwhile, may be worried about a 2012 primary challenge and is more interested in delaying the bill than improving it.

In short, White House has to get every single one of exactly 60 votes. The bill will have to be watered down to ensure unanimity. Given the fragility of the Senate coalition, the electoral fear among House Blue Dogs and the understandable rage among House progressives, there's no telling what will happen once the Senate bill gets to conference.

Most influential person of the decade

I say George and Dick. Alan Greenspan, however should have been on the list; he was quite as responsible for America's post-2007 decline, and specifically the global financial crisis that came with it.

Likely the last word on Lieberman, alas

By Atrios and Nate Silver.

Lieberman has no incentive to remain in the Democratic Party; if Richard Blumenthal runs for the Democratic nomination in 2012, it will be his for the taking. Lieberman will be hard pressed to get as many Democrats as he did in 2006. So he depends on Connecticut's independent and Republican voters to have a shot at retaining his seat in 2012. Note these numbers from a recent Quinnipiac poll:

By a 51 - 25 percent margin, Connecticut voters say Sen. Joseph Lieberman's views on issues are closer to the Republican Party than to the Democratic Party. There is agreement on this among voters in all parties.

Voters approve 49 - 44 percent of the job Lieberman is doing. He gets 74 - 20 percent approval from Republicans and 52 - 40 percent approval from independent voters, but Democrats disapprove 62 - 31 percent.

In short, Lieberman is free to do whatever he wants on health care and just about anything else. Worse still, as long as Democrats feel there is a even some probability Lieberman might vote against a filibuster on any other matter, they can't really throw him out of the party.

As things stand now, Democrats will lose their "filibuster-proof" majority next November. Once that happens, and assuming there are still have 55 or so Democratic Senators, throwing Lieberman out of the party might seem like a better idea. And Lieberman without his chairmanship will seem a lot less appetizing to Connecticut's independent voters. So payback will be at least a year (or three) in coming. To avoid it, Lieberman would have to buy his continued stay in the Democratic Party with some bold and necessary votes in the lame duck session.

At this point, the best shot at a good health care bill looks like the nuclear option, by which I mean less reconciliation but lowering the number of votes for cloture to, say, 56 from 60. The public option is dead regardless, but at least there would be a shot at a very strong bill. "Having said that," it might be difficult to get to 57. Lowering the magic number would be a political earthquake that would send 2010 contenders Landrieu and Lincoln to the exits. Bayh and Nelson, meanwhile, are hardly sure vote for reform. So even this solution would be hard to pull off.

UPDATE: Jonathan Chait's bizarre semi-defense of Lieberman: "Joe's kind of dumb. He knows not what he does."

Should we be in Afghanistan?

Depends on your answer to George McGovern's questions:

We have had tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan for several years, and we have employed an even larger number of mercenaries (or "contractors," as they're called these days). As in Vietnam, the insurgent forces are stronger than ever, and the Afghan government is as corrupt as the one we backed in Saigon.

Why do we send young Americans to risk life and limb on behalf of such worthless regimes? The administration says we need to fight al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. But the major al-Qaeda forces are in Pakistan.

The insurgency in Afghanistan is led by the Taliban. Its target is its own government, not our government. Its only quarrel with us is that its members see us using our troops and other resources to prop up a government they despise. Adding more U.S. forces will fuel the Taliban further.

"I drink your milkshake"

Shouldn't Daniel Day-Lewis get royalties?!

Drug traffickers employing high-tech drills, miles of rubber hose and a fleet of stolen tanker trucks have siphoned more than $1 billion worth of oil from Mexico's pipelines over the past two years, in a vast and audacious conspiracy that is bleeding the national treasury, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials and the state-run oil company.

Using sophisticated smuggling networks, the traffickers have transported a portion of the pilfered petroleum across the border to sell to U.S. companies, some of which knew that it was stolen, according to court documents and interviews with American officials involved in an expanding investigation of oil services firms in Texas.

The widespread theft of Mexico's most vital national resource by criminal organizations represents a costly new front in President Felipe Calderón's war against the drug cartels, and it shows how the traffickers are rapidly evolving from traditional narcotics smuggling to activities as diverse as oil theft, transport and sales.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy

Silvio Berlusconi gets "hit in the face and knocked to the ground," after describing his own handsomeness at a Milan rally.

His newly fractured nose will surely enhance those looks. Somewhere in Italy, ex- beleaguered wife Veronica Lario is breaking out the panettone.

Locke's stupid strategy

As I wrote yesterday, race trumps everything among Southern Republicans.

In 1997, Lee Brown became Houston's first black mayor by substantially increasing the normal turnout of the black vote because, as former police chief, he was well known in the black community and seen as having a chance of winning. It was a historical, pent-up enthusiasm among black voters that was not available to Locke.

What's more, Brown was running against Rob Mosbacher, a popular Republican. On election day, the white vote split along party lines, with Brown getting just under 30 percent of it — enabling him to win the election 53-47 percent.

But with Parker, Locke was running against a white Democrat, not a Republican.
His backers had nothing against Parker but did not believe she could overcome the lesbian label.

They believed Locke could win by combining the black vote with a substantial portion of Republicans who would vote against Parker because of her sexual orientation.

That turned out to be wrong. For one thing, as the low turnout indicates, neither candidate had the star power to boost voter participation.

More important for Locke, his appeals to Republicans, particularly as a law-and-order candidate, didn't stick, and the anti-lesbian vote turned out to be smaller than expected.

Greg Wythe, a bright political analyst and blogger (www.gregsopinion.com) who has joined Mayor Bill White's gubernatorial campaign, did a precinct-by-precinct analysis of the first-round of votes.

It showed Parker coming in first or second in such Republican areas as the West Side, Kingwood and Friendswood.

Locke came in a poor fourth in those areas.

I believe it was Locke's performance in those areas that led his finance team members to take the desperate step of aligning the campaign with gay-bashing Steve Hotze — thereby pushing undecided white liberals and moderates into Parker's well-run campaign without turning out enough anti-gay votes to win.

Locke blew it. And even though he's a Democrat, his legacy will be forever tarnished by his foolish, cynical strategy.

"Pastor, that's Mayor Parker"

The Houston Chronicle has called the race for Annise Parker.

Houston on the verge of history

With 68% of the vote in, Annise Parker maintains her lead in the Houston mayoral race. Right now she's at 52.7%, and Gene Locke is at 47.3%.

UPDATE: A couple of outlets are already calling the race. Parker retains her lead with 88% reporting.

There's a jihadi Facebook?

Who knew?

"Increasingly, recruiters are taking less prominent roles in mosques and community centers because places like that are under scrutiny. So what these guys are doing is turning to the Internet," Kohlmann said.

Terror group operatives, and even freelance recruiters, troll jihadi social networking sites, attempting to establish relationships with young men who seem ideologically committed, and physically able, to commit violence in the name of radical Islam.

Oprah visits the White House

And Obama has more moments of utter geekdom.

OW: Well now you get some practice here - goodness gracious. Doll house...I asked this question to some of my friends and they all said Easy Bake Oven. Did you have an Easy Bake Oven?

First Lady: Oh I did have an Easy Bake Oven but you know once you run out of the mix it’s like you're done with it

OW: (LAUGHS) Yeah you're done with that -

President Obama: You couldn't get more mix?

OW: It doesn't come with more mix, the Easy Bake Oven

President Obama: But can you order more mix?

First Lady: Nowadays it's easy -

OW: Probably now you can go online and get more mix -

First Lady: When we were little - what you got - that’s what you got

OW: That's what you got

First Lady: When it’s over, it’s over.

A terabyte on a disc

That would be nice:

In January 2007, Hitachi showcased a 100 GB Blu-ray Disc, consisting of four layers containing 25 GB each. Unlike TDK and Panasonic's 100 GB discs, they claim this disc is readable on standard Blu-ray Disc drives that are currently in circulation, and it is believed that a firmware update is the only requirement to make it readable to current players and drives.

In December 2008, Pioneer Corporation unveiled a 400 GB Blu-ray Disc (containing 16 data layers, 25 GB each) that will be compatible with current players after a firmware update. Its planned launch is in the 2009–10 time frame for ROM and 2010–13 for rewritable discs. Ongoing development is under way to create a 1 TB Blu-ray Disc as soon as 2013.

Houston mayor: Locke plays the gay card

He's hoping for white Republican evangelicals to vote for a black guy because they hate homosexuals more. It's an interesting bet, but Locke needs to remember that race was the reason Confederate Democrats switched their party affiliation in the first place. My guess is that Locke's gambit will fail. And the black pastors who joyfully did his dirty work will be locked out of the corridors of power for a good bit.

College football recruiting rape parties

Hardly surprising, but surely it's time to get these corrupt and quite often criminal programs out of publicly funded universities.

New York Post headline

Houston mayoral runoff tomorrow

It's between Annise Parker, a white lesbian, and Gene Locke, an African American. Polls have Parker ahead by a substantial margin but below 50%.

If elected, Locke would not be the city's first black mayor: Lee Brown was elected to three two year terms between 1998 and 2004.

Parker's election, obviously, would be a major political event, even if all it would really prove is that working in the oil and gas industry is never a liability in Texas.

"If we don't prevail, the victors get to rewrite history"

Bill Clinton at Netroots Nation in August, 2009. The left-blogosphere would do well to listen.

Republican family values poster boy, case #2657, Exhibit B

Wow:

Rod Jetton, the former Missouri House Speaker, fired a state lawmaker from his committee chairmanship in 2007 because the lawmaker had changed a bill in order to end a state ban on gay sex -- or what Jetton called "deviate sexual intercourse."

Jetton was charged with felony assault Monday after a girlfriend alleged that he had beaten and choked her during a recent sexual encounter, in which she failed to use a mutually agreed upon "safe word." The woman also suggested that Jetton may have slipped a date-rape drug into her glass of wine, causing her to lose consciousness. In the wake of the charges, Jetton announced that the political consulting firm he has run since leaving office last year would close its doors.

Republican family values poster boy, case #2657

Josh Marshall:

It's like I always say, if you're a Republican politician and you want to have some very rough/sadomasochistic sex, you gotta remember the safe word. Just, let me say it again, don't forget the safe word. That's led to some awkward situations in the past. But in the case of former Missouri House Speaker, now political consultant, Rod Jetton, the problem doesn't seem to be that he forgot the safe word. The problem was that the woman he was having sex with forgot. But then he made it tough for her by allegedly slipping some date rape drug in her champagne and then choking her to the point of unconsciousness.

In other words, what appears to have begun as something consensual (evidenced by a jointly agreed safe word, "green balloons"), escalated into what appears to have been pretty straightforward sexual assault or rape. (It is important to note that Jetton has not yet been charged with rape or sexual assault.)

The part about a rape date drug isn't confirmed yet. But the woman in question seems to think that's what happened. And that's what she suggests in the police report. And Jetton has now been charged with felony assault.

When Jetton left the woman's home the next morning he told her: "You should have said 'green balloons'."

Taliban bites the hand that feeds fed (?) them

A bomb struck at the offices of the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, Pakistan's CIA. Considering the ISI has funded and trained so much of the Taliban, you have to wonder what's going on... an extremely cynical interpretation would be this was the ISI's way of distancing itself from the Taliban in the wake of a multi-billion dollar American aid package. An alternate explanation is that the Taliban has declared war on its greatest benefactor. It's a big story, either way.

Decision explained

Now we understand why Rudy's going to Rio.

A report issued Tuesday by Human Rights Watch —“Lethal Force: Police Violence and Public Scrutiny in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo” — concludes that in fighting heavily armed gangs, Brazilian police in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo routinely resort to “lethal force, often committing extrajudicial executions and exacerbating violence in both states.”

According to the report, more than 1,000 people a year are killed in Rio and Sao Paulo during confrontations with the police, more than 11,000 since 2003. The police classify these deaths as “resistance killings,” but Human Rights Watch reports that they studied 51 cases which showed that victims were not killed in shootouts; in fact, some had been killed at point blank range.[...]

The report further added that even top prosecutors in Brazil acknowledged that “extrajudicial executions” are a major problem.

From the original report:

Police officers responsible for unlawful killings in Rio and São Paulo are rarely brought to justice. The principal cause of this chronic failure to hold police to account for murder, the report found, is that the criminal justice systems in both states currently rely almost entirely on police investigators to resolve these cases.

It's always Giuliani time in Brazil. He'll feel plenty at home there. It'll be a chance to rediscover his roots.

Palin's twists the knife

Smart:

Sarah Palin said in a recent radio appearance that Mike Huckabee made a "horrible decision" nine years ago to commute the prison sentence of the man suspected of killing four police officers in Washington, but she added that her "heart goes out" to the former Arkansas governor.

In an interview last week with conservative radio host Lars Larson, Palin called the murders "tragic" and "unfathomable."

"It was a bad decision obviously, but my heart goes out to Huckabee," the former Alaska governor said. "I love him, and I feel bad for him to be in this position. But I feel even worse for the victim's families in this situation. I do feel bad for Huckabee, but it was a horrible decision he made." [...]

"I don't have a whole lot of mercy for the bad guys," she said. "I'm on the good guys' side."

Lieberman

Home state attacks:

Hundreds of protesters representing an interfaith organization showed up at Lieberman's home in Stamford and at his office in Hartford, to plead (and pray) for him to support the bill. Among them was Rabbi Ron Fish, of Congregation Beth El in Norwalk, Conn., who was so supportive of Lieberman's 2006 reelection bid that he rushed through John F. Kennedy International Airport in search of a mailbox in which to send his absentee ballot before boarding a flight to Israel.

"I was very upset when I heard him say it was a matter of conscience for him to vote against the bill," Fish said. "His conscience bothers him about the cost of a government insurance option? What about his conscience for the millions of people living in real fear, suffering without insurance?"

More than a few liberal blogs have accused Lieberman of being beholden to the insurance industry in his state. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, he has received more than $1 million from insurance interests since 1990. Last month, protesters were arrested in his Washington office, shouting, "Represent Connecticut, not Aetna!"

Anti-Lieberman activists

They've put together some cash to run a negative ad on him in Connecticut. The problem? All the it says is that Lieberman is against the public option "because it's all about Joe."

They could have made the ad about the way he was personally enriched by the industry, or about how he betrayed his promise to Connecticut voters. They chose not to, opting instead for a stupid ad that is more namecalling than substantive critique.

A Republican ad wouldn't have made the same mistake: it would have tried to lower Lieberman's approval rating among all voters rather than a base he'd already lost. If they think Joe's scared about an ad that will make him a Republican hero, they are sadly mistaken.

"Obviously NASA employees can afford MUCH better drugs than I can."

TPM readers comment on the unbelievable (literally, it turns out) story of a thwarted "hijacking."

More entertaining comments:

I kept going back in my head as to what in the hell was this jerk-offs motivation to add the ridiculous porn thing into his delusion of grandeur story, and finally something made sense to me...

as he sends this out to, I'm sure, his holier than thou Christian posse, he is basically trying to out-fundamentalist the supposedly Muslim fundamentalists. it's not just to say how whacky they are. it is to say that it is THEY who are the infidels who have fallen from God's way with their sinful, sex-driven, and prurient entertainment. if he'd spent more time crafting the story, the antagonists could have very well been gay environmentalists smoking joints as they rambled on about all of the abortions they'd been involved with.

btw, is this guy 12 years old?
--
"Shut up infidel dog"? Come on, that's a HUGE tell right there. It's like saying a bunch of Mexicans got on the plane and said they didn't need no steenking badges.
--
WHAT?! You can be this dumb and work for NASA? Really? So much for that old saying, "it's not rocket science."

Air Tran's devastating debunking here.

When do you have a problem?

When you don't know you have one. The New York Times' Sabrina Tavernise visits Pakistan, and she's given a good talking to:

What I got was not so much an explanation as an illustration, in all its anger, of the embittered language in which a great many Pakistanis discuss their relationship with America — living proof of just how different America’s understanding of Pakistan is from its own view of itself.

“The real terrorists are not the men in turbans we see on Al Jazeera,” said the psychiatrist, Dr. Malik H. Mubbashar, vice chancellor of the University of Health Sciences in Lahore. “They are wearing Gucci suits and Brit hats. It’s your great country, Madam.”

I asked him to spell it out. “It’s coming from Americans, Jews and Indians,” he said. “It’s an axis of evil that’s being supervised by you people.”

They may be training the Taliban and hosting Osama bin Laden, but goddamn it, they aren't the terrorists. And while it's true that Ronald Reagan got the receipt for both, the denial in Pakistan is such that a long term regional solution will be a long time coming.

Why did Sarah Palin leave Hawaii?

If we didn't know Republicans better, we'd all be amazed:

Palin, though notoriously ill-traveled outside the United States, did journey far to the first of the four colleges she attended, in Hawaii. She and a friend who went with her lasted only one semester. "Hawaii was a little too perfect," Palin writes. "Perpetual sunshine isn't necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls." Perhaps not. But Palin's father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to Conroy and Walshe. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: "They were a minority type thing and it wasn't glamorous, so she came home." In any case, Palin reports that she much preferred her last stop, the University of Idaho, "because it was much like Alaska yet still 'Outside.' "

Wanda Sykes

She was great in Pootie Tang and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Like a handful of comedians (Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle), she was blessed with a voice that is intrinsically funny. And yet her standup seemed forever uneven, never quite up to her cameos in other comedians' creations.

This year, she killed at the White House Correspondents Dinner. It was the funniest I had ever seen her. This was followed by her latest special, "Ima Be Me," which debuted in October on HBO. I don't know if it was her marriage and her subsequent Prop 8 forced coming out by, motherhood, middle age, or the election of Barack (and Michelle) Obama. But this was the smartest, funniest standup I had seen in ages. With the collapse of Chris Rock's skills, and out of nowhere, she can now stake a credible claim for the title of America's best comedian.

Here is part one (of nine), but it's really just a set up for part two.

The government knows where you are

No, really. It does. And it made eight million requests for the data last year. And to think Enemy of the State came out over a decade ago.

It's Giuliani time in Rio de Janeiro

The city leadership must be on crack. Maybe they just wanted an American to give them license to gun down everyone in Rocinha. 41 shots per favela dweller, please!

The big winner if it's true? Kristin Gillibrand, since the Brazil move does seem to suggest that Rudy may not run for the Senate.

National Board of Review snubs Precious

It didn't just lose out on Best Picture. It didn't even make their top 10, while Star Trek, Inglourious Basterds and Where The Wild Things Are did. Mo'Nique's self-sabotage, it turns out, didn't just kill her own shot at glory, but, at least partly, the film's too. And with Invictus in the race, Academy members won't feel a bit guilty.

Invictus also

1) is directed by Academy favorite Clint Eastwood

2) stars Oscar winners Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman,

3) is a feel-good movie

4) will have bigger box office

5) is a big, sweeping, and historically weighty. It feels like an Oscar movie. And the hype hasn't even begun yet: next week Morgan Freeman will personally screen the film for the 91 year old Mandela.

None of which means Invictus will win Best Picture. All of which means, however, that Precious won't come close.

More from the CNN poll

The American people get what's going on in Afghanistan. For the moment, they back the President's decision. And they haven't forgotten that this is baggage from the Bush years. There is, however, a limit to their patience, and they expect some results from the surge.

20. President Obama also announced that he plans to start removing U.S. troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2011. Thinking specifically about that policy and not about Obama's decision to announce it at this time, do you favor or oppose Obama's plan to start removing troops from Afghanistan in 2011?

Favor 66%
Oppose 32%
No opinion 2%

22. And just your best guess -- do you think conditions in Afghanistan will or will not be good enough in the summer of 2011 for the U.S. to start removing troops?

Conditions will be good enough 33%
Conditions will not be good enough 61%
No opinion 6%

30. Whose policies do you blame for the problems that the U.S. is currently facing in Afghanistan -- the policies of George W. Bush or the policies of Barack Obama?

Bush 64%
Obama 17%
Both equal/Neither (vol.) 18%
No opinion 1%

But there is a clear warning sign: if the situation in Afghanistan doesn't improve by 2011, the public will hold Obama responsible, not Bush.

CNN: Only 48% approve of Obama

The breakdown:

Approve (from Question 1) 48%
Disapprove, too liberal 40%
Disapprove, not liberal enough 8%
Disapprove, unsure on Question 2 2%
No opinion 2%

That means there's a 56% center-left majority in this country. But one that won't turn out to vote in 2010 unless the President provides a bit of the red meat he isn't known for.

America's best Islamic friends

In the 1980's, their names were Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Our new friends? You don't know them, but your heroin dealer's distributor might.

The Obama Administration has also widened the scope of authorized drone attacks in Afghanistan. An August report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee disclosed that the Joint Integrated Prioritized Target List—the Pentagon’s roster of approved terrorist targets, containing three hundred and sixty-seven names—was recently expanded to include some fifty Afghan drug lords who are suspected of giving money to help finance the Taliban. These new targets are a step removed from Al Qaeda. According to the Senate report, “There is no evidence that any significant amount of the drug proceeds goes to Al Qaeda.” The inclusion of Afghan narcotics traffickers on the U.S. target list could prove awkward, some observers say, given that President Hamid Karzai’s running mate, Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim, and the President’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, are strongly suspected of involvement in narcotics.

8: The Mormon Proposition

Twenty years from now, today's young Mormons will be young parents. The actions of their church in the 2000's will prove continually embarrassing in the changed country they'll be living in. The existence and continued airing of films like this one will guarantee it. Because, let's face it: few Americans know that black people couldn't get into Mormon heaven, just because there wasn't a movie about it.

Here's the trailer. I hope the film is a bit more substantive: getting into the nuts and bolts of church strategy and organization, the links made to the Catholic and evangelical hierarchy for purposes of the proposition, and the ties, monetary, organizational and otherwise, to the Republican Party.

Had your doubts about blue state secession?

These incredible collection of maps will erase them forever.

I would take this one step further

And say that people who had divorced would no longer be eligible for any future civil benefits of marriage: joint filing of taxes, hospital visitation, inheritance benefits, etc. After all, there's nothing as threatening to traditional marriage as divorce.

But good luck getting the signatures. Liberals are too apathetic (and might, understandably, not get the joke). Meanwhile, it's well documented that red states, in addition to being America's top porn consumers, have the highest divorce rates in the country. The same must go for red areas of blue states like California.

"Democracy is a heresy"

The real agenda of the American evangelical movement: a Christianist version of Shariah law in America. The only surprising thing about it is that it isn't surprising at all.

The real value of the state dinner crashers debacle

Republicans now get to pretend that they are concerned about White House security, after spending months getting their base fired up enough to assassinate him.

Amidst huge chunks of fresh cheese

Bill Clinton says something interesting.

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK)

He is a racist who has actively incited the assassination of the President of the United States. But he's right about one thing: Europeans are dumb.

Actually James Pehtokoukis is wrong

If Goldman Sachs is right and unemployment peaks at 10.75% in June 2011, that would be fantastic for Democrats.

The raw unemployment rate during presidential years is not the variable for predicting electoral success. It is, rather, the change in the unemployment rate during the first and second quarters of the election year that are key. If the President can credibly tell those crowds that "we've turned a corner" throughout 2012, he's home free, and so are Class of 2006 Senators, who will otherwise face some tough re-election battles.

Ain't nothing like the real thing

With the National Board of Review picks for 2009 out today, Clint Eastwood's Invictus looks like a serious contender in this year's Oscar race. Morgan Freeman won best actor honors (he tied with George Clooney. If it comes down to Freeman versus Clooney for the Academy Award, Freeman will win in a walk. Not only because Clooney has it all, but because Freeman has never won a Best Actor Oscar). Eastwood won for best director.

But the true story behind Invictus is so powerful that I don't see how any film could match a straight up documentary.



If you weren't moved by that, there's a chance you might not be human.

Carrie Prejean, meet Rachel Uchitel

Carrie better act fast to get her contract. The renowned homophobe, evangelical porn starlet and Miss California has some serious competition now. Vivid Entertainment has made an offer of a million dollars to "any woman who has proof she was a paramour of Tiger Woods." The company adds: "The names that have already surfaced, Rachel Uchitel, Jaimee Grubbs and Kalika Moquin, wil be tops on our list."

The bishops were out in force

To kill gay marriage in New York.

They came out in force for the Stupak abortion amendment in the health care bill, too.

But when the time comes, don't expect them to lift a finger to pass health care. Poor Catholics and Hispanic Catholics are voiceless in the rich, white Republican U.S. Church hierarchy.

Gay marriage falls in NY Senate, 38-24

The commentariat is shocked, since NY Senate Democrats claimed to have the votes. But after NY-23, it was hard to see how any Republican state senator could vote for gay rights and avoid a primary challenge. The weak governor was hardly in a position to help matters.

Liveblogging the Afghanistan speech

9:05 So far it could have been Bush's speech.

9:06 A delicate slam on the Iraq war, and a declaration of victory. All troops will be home by 2011.

9:07 The problems in Afghanistan. Lots of shots of West Point cadets, who sure are a lot whiter than the rest of the Army.

9:09 "Although it was marred by fraud," the Afghan government is legitimate. Huh? Or is that our new standard since our own election in 2000?

"Why I Parted Ways With The Right"

Conservative Charles Johnson, owner of Pajamas Media and makes headlines with this post on Little Green Footballs. Good for him, though it's hard to see how a rational person wouldn't make a break with the GOP during the eight years of Bush-Cheney.

Pawlenty goes after Huckabee

It has begun. Pawlenty is an evangelical, too. He can't get much of the evangelical vote in Iowa if Huckabee and Palin are both in the race. But if it's just Palin and Pawlenty vying for it, Pawlenty can get a good chunk of it, giving him a huge leg up against Romney among the non-evangelicals, few of whom will end up going with Palin.

The big question right now is who else will enter the GOP presidential contest. Will the 2010 elections create any Republican superstars (Rudy Giuliani seems to hope so)? We shall see.