The scorched earth style of opposition does indeed work at dragging down Obama and the Democrats' numbers. But it also keeps approval of Republicans down, and "generic Republicans" still do not poll better than Democrats. They're probably poised to pick up 15 to 25 House seats next year, especially if Democrats again don't bother to get the youth vote out and if the "recovery" continues to be jobless. But the Republican were also supposed to hold on to an upstate New York district they've represented for 150 years, until the tea parties, Sarah Palin, and the Club for Growth got involved.

Maybe the excommunication of moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava was an aberration, and the grownups will rein in the activists and run electable Chris Christie types. But if they do, the disgruntled anti-authoritarian Glenn Beck acolytes will rebel.

Already, the Club for Growth—which threw a lot of money at NY-23 and in doing so gave the seat to the Democrats—has endorsed Marco Rubio for Senate in Florida. Rubio is the conservative challenging popular moderate governor Charlie Crist. As governor, Crist enjoys approval ratings in the high 60s among Democrats, independents, and Republicans. But Marco Rubio enjoys the support of George Will, The National Review, and the aforementioned very wealthy Club for Growth.

Rubio is, at the moment, polling below the likely Democratic nominee, which is a feat, because no one knows who the Democratic nominee is, as a race against Crist was not expected to be winnable.

Meanwhile, out in broken California, the Republicans have decided to launch a real challenge to Senator Barbara Boxer for the first time since she took office. With Boxer facing rising unfavorable numbers, former Hewlett-Packard executive McCain campaign insider Carly Fiorina decided to throw her hat in the ring. Fiorina has a lot of money, good name recognition, and might appeal to moderates and women who are tired of Boxer. So, of course, True Conservatives are beginning to rally behind a crazy man named Chuck DeVore, an Assemblyman who is currently tied with Fiorina in the polls.

What sort of Republican is this DeVore character? Let's look at something he wrote last week in an Amazon review.

American Progressives and European fascist theorists admired each other and exchanged ideas. From William James to Georges Sorel, from eugenics to the militarization of society ("War on Poverty" anyone? It was William James who penned the "Moral Equivalent of War" in 1906), both the American left and European fascists sought to remake society using crises to urge action to justify bigger government at the expense of individual liberty.

Ronald Reagan had it right in 1981, when he remarked that Roosevelt's New Deal had much in common with Mussolini's fascism, including frequent words of praise from Roosevelt's brain trust directed towards Italy in the 1930s.

Good luck becoming a Senator from California, sir!

This is all sort of like if Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy had been to run clones of himself in all 50 states, instead of diverting money to Democrats who actually had chances to win. So there are basically two end games:

• Republican infighting leads to unelectable candidates losing what should've been easy pickups across the board.
• Apocalyptic death cult masquerading as Republican party makes the usual midterm gains, Congress promptly shuts down federal government again, Obama impeached for lying under oath about where he was born.

It's a good thing none of the tangible benefits of health care reform are scheduled to go into effect until 2013! Otherwise the Death Panel lines would be unbearable come 2011.

Fanaticism makes strange bedfellows, and the push to link up Hasan to a wider terrorist plot has united Sen. Joe Leiberman and radical Yemeni cleric Sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki in common cause. Wingnuts and neocons want Hasan to be a Muslim terrorist because it confirms their worldview that Muslim terrorists lurk in every shadow and helps them scare the shit out people. Muslim terrorists want Hasan to be a Muslim terrorist because it satisfies their desire to claim credit for the murders of Americans and helps them scare the shit out of people. Everybody wins.

The question of whether Hasan qualifies as a bona fide Muslim terrorist seems to be academic, and can serve as handy ideological litmus test. He clearly was motivated in part by extremist religious views, and clearly killed a lot of people. For the New Republic's Jason Zengerle, that alone is enough to call him a terrorist. But "Islamic terrorism" has a political and cultural meaning that extends beyond merely acts of violence by people who believe a certain subset of crazy religious teachings—it means jihad, Al Qaeda, spectacular violence, and a global network of people who are acting in concert to kill us all and establish an emirate. Dick Cheney is not worried about American civilization being destroyed 13 soldiers at a time by single men armed with pistols, and "the largest single terror act in America since 9/11"—which is how Fox News contributor Walid Phares describes the Ft. Hood shootings—is a label that's tailored to call up something in our lizard brains that goes far beyond lone wolves. It's about the "existential threat" we are under. No matter how extremist his views or how despicable the man, no one can argue that Maj. Hasan is an existential threat to the republic.

So the question is: How do we turn him into one, so that this horror will not pass without being taken advantage of politically? That requires making him part of, and representative of, a larger and well-known enemy for which there exists more than sufficient reserves of justified hatred and fear—Al Qaeda. Enter ABC News' Brian Ross, the notoriously unreliable investigative reporter who came out with a blockbuster this morning: Unnamed intelligence officials tell Ross that unnamed American intelligence agencies learned months ago that Hasan had attempted to make contact with "people associated with Al Qaeda" who were under U.S. surveillance. The report is a grab-bag of red flags. Ross mentions that officials are trying to find out if Hasan ever communicated with Anwar Al-Awlaki, the former imam of a mosque that Hasan attended on Falls Church, Va., who later fled to Yemen and supports violent jihad. But it's unclear from Ross' report whether Al-Awlaki is one of the "people associated with Al Qaeda" that Hasan is said to have attempted to contact, or if there are others. Within the story itself, what begins as an attempt to contact "people associated with Al Qaida"—with no explanation as to why he was allegedly trying to contact these people—rapidly becomes "Hasan's attempt to reach out to al Qaeda." These are vastly different things, and Ross' casual conflation of them, with no evidence, is an indicator that something is cooked in the story.

It wouldn't be the first time: Ross famously, and breathlessly, reported in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks that U.S. intelligence sources had specific and detailed evidence linking Iraq to the type of anthrax used. It was complete and utter bullshit, and it served to heighten the atmosphere of panic and fear in the days immediately following the attacks and to link them to a convenient enemy. So we take his latest entry in the post-massacre-blockbuster-terrorism-story sweepstakes with a grain of salt.

Even before Ross' report, the attempts to render Hasan's killings more politically effective for the purposes of changing U.S. policy toward Islamic radicalism had begun. Sen. Joe Leiberman called on Sunday for a congressional investigation into Hasan's background—which we think is a great idea—and mimed Phares' bumper sticker, calling it it "the most-destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11." The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg charitably wrote today, under the headline, "When Muslims Commit Violence," that not all Muslims are "violently unhappy with America." Whew! Good to know. Unfortunately, Goldberg continues, "elite makers of opinion in this country try very hard to ignore the larger meaning of violent acts when they happen to be perpetrated by Muslims." The "larger meaning" here being what? That "when Muslims commit violence" we should have a different reaction, and different policy reforms designed to prevent a recurrence, than when Christians or Jews or anarchist nutjobs or right-wing nutjobs commit violence? The problem, Goldberg writes, is that since "elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism," they should apply the same standard to Muslim beliefs. Because clearly, Islamic theology has gotten a pass from journalistic and cultural establishment over the last eight years, and it's about time somebody blew the lid off the whole thing. Did you know that some of them agree with suicide bombing?

Goldberg and Zengerle both make the point that the left referred to Scott Roeder as a terrorist after he murdered Dr. George Tiller. Parity, one imagines, dictates that the same term apply to Hasan. One noteworthy distinction, though, is that Roeder fits precisely into what most people generally think of when they talk about right-wing terrorists. He worked closely with other people who sought the deaths of abortion providers. He talked about it all the time. He was an active member of an organized movement. Hasan's case is noteworthy because of the extent to which it is not like the Al Qaeda threat we've come to know. That doesn't mean there's nothing to be learned from it, or even that we shouldn't try to change the way we do things to try to prevent it from happening again. What it does mean is that it's not like the Al Qaeda threat that we've come to know, and is substantively different from the Muslim terrorism, and fear thereof, that has hijacked our national psyche for nearly a decade. As Zengerle quite reasonably acknowledges, magnetometers at airports won't prevent it from happening again, nor will invading Iran, nor will another PATRIOT Act.

What Goldberg, Ross (or his sources), Leiberman, et. al. are trying to do is establish an equivalence between "Muslim person who kills people" and "global conspiracy of Muslims who kill people," so that they can advance a political agenda that involves deploying U.S. resources in a particular way to defeat a particular threat.

The funny thing is, the terrorists agree with them. Hasan's radical former imam, Anwar al Awlaki, wrote on his web site that "Nidal Hasan is a hero" who performed "an Islamic duty." It's precisely the same ideological jump: Hasan didn't act alone, he is part of a broader struggle by religious fanatics. And it's made for the same reason: to advance a political agenda. The neocons want to keep pressure on the idea that there is a vast army of scary Muslims always on the verge of killing us. And so do the terrorists.

The House of Representatives more or less proportionately represents the entire country equally. Its vast size provides a decent counterbalance to the extremism or incredible dumbness of a large number of its members. The Senate, meanwhile, provides a really easy and convenient way for industries to purchase political loyalty: you only need to buy a couple people off to completely stall anything at all. Hell, buy Joe Lieberman and you might kill health care altogether!

So. Drudge links to some very wishful thinking by the New York Post calling reform DOA in the Senate. Josh Marshall thinks its passage is more or less a foregone conclusion. Tim Noah thinks the Senate will maybe pass a terribly watered down version of reform.

Honestly the situation is exactly the same in the Senate as it was before the House vote. There are 50 liberals, 40 Republicans, and 10 assholes who are steering the entire process. Those 10 assholes represent a fraction of the populace. They want to make health care reform do less for fewer people because that is their working definition of "centrism." And they talk like this:

Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) conceded that movement across the Dome "builds momentum, which is helpful."

But Conrad, a deficit hawk who represents a conservative-leaning state, said Saturday night's vote would not pressure Democratic Senators into embracing specific policies within the House bill or speeding up a floor debate that could take several weeks and stretch into early next year.

"This is the Senate. ... There's no way I know of to move faster. Honestly ... I've never thought this thing would be done before December of this year, and I still wouldn't be shocked if it's not done in December," Conrad said Thursday afternoon. "I think people are very much directed by the constituencies that they represent. I represent North Dakota; I'm not affected by what some colleague in the House from California thinks, frankly."

Hah. Ha! 38 million people live in California. 640,000 people live in North Dakota. Do you know what the population of Nancy Pelosi's Congressional district is? It is 640,000.

Obviously it is not Kent Conrad's job to care, at all, what Nancy Pelosi's constituency thinks, except inasmuch as what they think might be what is best for the people of North Dakota as well. But, theoretically, in a representative democracy, Kent Conrad's constituency shouldn't have immensely more power than Nancy Pelosi's constituency, right?

But the Senate stands where it did before: Harry Reid's bill is being scored by the CBO, and when it is released, there will be a lot of really terrible columns and news stories about how long it is. When we are feeling optimistic, this is how we think it'll go down: the Dems need 60 votes to let it go to debate and 60 votes to end debate (in the event of a GOP filibuster—which we don't think is inevitable but it also seems idiotic to predict that they'd be adults about anything at this point) and then, maybe, hopefully, 50 Senators and Vice President Smilin' Joe Biden will vote for it and the assholes can save face by voting against it without making it actually fail. And then the Senate will have actually done something halfway decent and fairly monumental.

(Meanwhile the House passed a climate bill last June. Did you know this? Don't look for it to become law this year, though!)

Representative John Shadegg, a Republican from Arizona, decided it would be for the best of the debate that a child be brought forth and tortured by being used as an exhibit by Rep. Shadegg, as he helped floor members understand something about the health care bill basically ensuring this kid would be broke or dead or addicted to smack or all of the above. Watch as the kid tries to do what I want to do, which is eat the microphone:

Yeah, kid, NOM, indeed. But old people like babies so whatever, nobody blinks at what kind of patent ridiculousness this is. But when the "Fat Pride Community" talks about getting healthy, nobody listens to them, even though they're 2/3rds of our country. And what do they have to say? It's not just about getting skinny. O RLY? And who is this talking for them? Professor Bacon, that's who. Seriously:

"I get so angry when I feel people pushing a weight-loss agenda," said Linda Bacon, a nutrition professor at City College of San Francisco and author of "Health at Every Size," a book published last year whose title has become the rallying cry of the fat pride community. "What we're doing in public health care policy is harmful. We give a direct and clear message that there's something wrong with being fat."

Oh, ho, ho! A conspiracy! The tasty-meat industry has infiltrated all walks, it seems! But they might be screwed, as the House has started debate on the current legislative package, which will eventually lead to a vote on something like a 2,000 page bill, the contents of which most Americans seem to think include a provision that says something along the lines of "YOU, SIR, OR MA'AM, ARE GOING TO DIE. WE ARE GOING TO KILL YOU, AND YOU ARE GOING TO ENJOY IT! AND ALSO PAY US TAXES TOO, THANKS!" So they're getting together and freaking out, screaming mean things at a building where nobody can hear them inside.

"Kill the bill!" a few protesters yelled, egged on by a woman with a megaphone. "You'll be starting a civil war, you fascist tyrant!" yelled Andrew Beacham, 27, of nearby Falls Church, Va. Mr. Beacham, his hair in a ponytail, said in an interview that he believed Mr. Obama was a fascist because-

I'm sorry, what?

Mr. Beacham, his hair in a ponytail,

Unless he's fighting for provisions in the health care package to cover taxpayer-supported Bumble and Bumbles, I will stop processing information past that sentence. And he's not, and I did.

Oh, whatever. If there's anything nice that these Town Hall meetings have yielded, it's that we're no longer shocked and disturbed by the fucked up rhetoric plaguing our national debate. It's hard to be disappointed once something becomes the standard, no? These guys are just being ridiculous, now. Like this one, who killed a bunch of trees just to prove a point that the bill is long and complicated.

....(The representative) took a foot-high copy of the House bill to the podium when he spoke. "This bill steals freedom, and those of us that believe in freedom have contempt for those who would steal our freedom and contempt for this bill," he said in a shout, heaving the papers to the ground below the low stage.

What kind of asshole would do that? Let's go back to the first part of that paragraph...

Representative John Shadegg, a Republican from Arizona..

Oh, you mean, the baby-puppeteer? Yeah. That one.

Forget obesity for a moment. There are thousands of pages in the legislation. Hopefully, there's at least a milli or two in that thing set aside to look into the causes, effects, and ways to prevent important conversation-born at-large jackassery from infecting our country any further. The biggest health care crisis we've experienced in the history of our country is the one we've brought upon ourselves since we started talking about health care: that we, and our conversations about things that should matter, are getting patently stupider every time we have them.

In some states you can now get unemployment for nearly two years. Enough to keep your family in hand-me-downs and No Frills rice until all those uh, print media jobs come back.

The Democrats feel an urgency to act now because the monthly labor report that comes out Friday is expected to show that the nation's unemployment rate in October continued to be at or above 10 percent. Also, more than 600,000 workers had run out of benefits at the end of October

The revolution will not be televised until March, at the earliest.
[Pic: Flickr]

As we mentioned on Monday, Dan Halloran is a member of a pre-Christian pagan religion that worships the Norse gods. There were actual photos of him performing rituals and stuff. He is the "First Atheling" of his "theod."

And he is a now a Republican City Council member from Queens. So, hey, let's all hoist our horns of mead, in his honor.

(Obviously voters across the nation are sick of Barack Obama's liberal monotheism, and this bodes il for Abrahamic Democrats in 2010.)

That kidnapping was part of a CIA program called "extraordinary rendition," wherein an unknown number of people were flown to secret prisons to be tortured. Obama signed an executive order promising to not fly prisoners to places where they will be tortured, anymore, so his CIA's policy might be more accurately described as ordinary rendition. And we all know the CIA will do exactly as they are told, because they always do.

Extradition of the 23 convicted Americans is not going to happen, though, so Italians should probably consider having agents of their own lawless and unchecked international intelligence organization kidnap them all as they go to church or whatever.

In Fiorina's official candidacy announcement, published in an op-ed in the Orange County Register, the Republican hopeful lays out some of her political positions, which include safeguarding gargantuan CEO paychecks from the government; unshackling agribusiness from environmental protections; and denying national health care to people who get cancer like Fiorina but who, unlike her, aren't rich or well insured (Fiorina does think these people should be able to go to twee "community clinics," though).

Fiorina also boldy writes, "Let's put every government budget and every government bill on the Internet for every citizen to see." Great idea, Carly! If this were 1996. The government already puts federal and proposed budgets online here and here, and the bills can be found here, among many other places. At home in California, the budget is here and the bills are here and here. Maybe you should ask your good friend John McCain to teach you a thing or two about the internet.

Sure, if you live in New Jersey or Virginia you might've thought the gubernatorial campaigns in those two states were mostly about taxes and jobs (and weight), but that is wrong. These were shadow reelection campaigns for Barack Obama, and he lost both of them, because he is a failure.

Republican Bob McDonnell won in Virginia by a huge margin against Democrat Creigh Deeds, who was a white, conservative Democrat from southern Virginia, thus ensuring that not a single member of the coalition that won VA for Obama in 2008 would turn out to vote.

In Jersey, Republican Chris Christie squeaked by incumbent Jon Corzine. Corzine's was the campaign Obama belatedly lent his support to, once Corzine's double-digit polling deficit shrank to a couple points. This campaign was entirely about property taxes, basically, and so a Republican who campaigned entirely on cutting proptery taxes won.

Once again, gubernatorial elections have almost nothing to do with national politics. They are not House and Senate races. Meanwhile, in the nation's only two House races yesterday, Democrats won. They won handily in a California race that no one paid attention to, because a safe Democratic seat staying Democratic is not as newsworthy as a safe Republican seat that almost went to a Republican until national movement conservatives freaked out and excommunicated Dede Scozzafava from the Church of Teabagging. And then a Democrat won in New York's 23rd. He won a seat that's been a gimme for Republicans since a 1992 redistricting. (Before it was redistricted, this area of the state has been Republican since the 19th century. In 2002 the Republican ran unopposed.)

Please keep in mind that Obama picked up a new Democratic vote in the House of Representatives while you read some analysis piece on how Obama has just been crushed, politically.

As we said before, the special election in New York's 23rd was the only race yesterday that had anything to do with national politics, because movement conservatives inserted themselves into the race and promptly lost. In what could easily actually be a preview of next year's midterms, teabaggers and the conservative Club for Growth and Sarah Palin all threw their support behind a candidate they found more acceptable than the Republican, and their guy lost. As activists from out of town flooded the district, shouting nonsense about ACORN and waving "Don't Tread on Me" flags, imagining they'd already won, the Democrat turned out the vote and rode to victory on the back of union support and the president's popularity in the region.

And look at that: unions and GOTV made the difference! Hell, some of that might've won New York for Bill Thompson, even without Obama's support!

Here is the real lesson about and for Obama, though, and it touches on every single race yesterday: in 2008, Obama borrowed Howard Dean's 50-state strategy for the Democrats—open and staff DNC offices in every state to organize and run campaigns at every level—and applied it to the presidential primaries and general elections. He raised a ridiculous amount of money and compiled an amazing email list and organized a huge number of volunteers and won the presidency.

After the election, Obama turned those campaign resources into Organizing For America, "a grassroots network wielding some 13 million email addresses to mobilize former volunteers on behalf of the administration's agenda." And then they folded it into the DNC and they didn't do anything with it for months. And then it turned out that this massive organization couldn't be utilized to do much besides fundraise and canvass, and furthermore its ties to the DNC and the White House mean it can't actually be used to push progressive causes, which are the causes that this massive volunteer army cares about.

This means, basically, that the DNC has neutered Obama's progressive volunteer army and that massive volunteer army has consumed the DNC. The whole operation is now a 2012 reelection campaign already in progress, and if you are a local Democrat looking for organizing and canvassing and fundraising support of the kind Howard Dean promised to create for you back when he was in charge, you are shit out of luck.

This is the most worrying indicator for 2010. They need to fix this.

I know the Awl and Gawker (where I'll be live-chatting tonight's results) have joined the haters who want to throw out the best mayor this city has had in my lifetime (which is longer than some). Here are the top ten reasons you shouldn't join them.

10. Term limits are for suckers. Seriously. Fuck ‘em. Gold stars to all the Council members who voted to override. Who are a bunch of Ron Lauder-manipulated voters from the anti-incumbent craze of the early '90s to tell me who I can and can't vote for? Oh, you say, the sacred will of the voters can't be touched. Well, go to California, where decades of voter-passed propositions that can't be changed have smothered the governing process in quicksand. And don't you support overturning the California voters' ban on gay marriage? Ah, as I thought. And if that still doesn't convince you, think of it this way: if the term limits law included a provision allowing the City Council to override it, then the override was totally legitimate.

9. He doesn't care what people think of him or the niceties of the political process, which often comes in handy. He just cares about outcomes. He's outside the city's established, still-clubby political structure.

8. The 311 system and NYC.gov. What a concept: customer service for everyone who lives in NYC.

7. He's kept crime going down without the Mussolini-like police tactics of Giuliani. There have been no mayorally-sanctioned police hate crimes like Diallo, Louima and Dorismond.

6. He supports the arts, instead of attacking them as Giuliani did.

5. Fuck Critical Mass. A bunch of spoiled, self-righteous kids who think they're striking a blow against… something, by indulging their free-floating aggression toward everyone and tying up neighborhoods. If they can't stop at red lights, take their bikes and slap them with citations.

4. Unlike Giuliani, who tried to shut down and sell off the city's community gardens, Bloomberg has been a champion of open space, reclaiming traffic lanes for de facto parks around Times Square, Herald Square, Madison Square Park, the Lower East Side and elsewhere. He's closed down Park Ave. during the summer and was key to rescuing the High Line. His planning commissioner, Amanda Burden, has waged war on overdesigned developments that would have disfigured neighborhoods, and works constantly to increase New Yorkers' access to waterways.

3. The Nanny State. I don't care what people say, using government to direct people away from habits that are bad for them is 100% awesome. I don't believe those studies that say posting calorie counts doesn't work - I've myself been surprised to find out how many calories certain foods contain, and grateful for the info that helped me avoid them. And the trans-fat ban is great for fighting obesity. Fuck "free choice" - you think you had free choice at age 13 when Joe Camel convinced you and your friends that it would be cool to adopt a deadly, addictive habit?

2. So: the smoking ban. If nothing else, this alone would make Mike Bloomberg a national hero. Don't you like not having to strip off your clothes, enclose them in a hazmat bag and drop them straight off at the cleaners after a night at a bar? Notice how it's spread to other cities and states, and even longtime smokers' bastions like Ireland and Italy? That, plus high taxes on cigarettes that come closer to paying the true cost smoking and smokers impose on society has nearly driven smoking onto New York's endangered species list, where it belongs, and strongly discouraged underage smoking when people have the least ability to resist adopting self-destructive habits.

1. He kept us from going under after 9/11, as many expected. Not caring about politics, he forced an austerity budget on the city and an 18% property tax hike - which he ended as soon as the budget was in the clear.

The Wall Street Journal, bless its nilla heart, breaks this story and undermines it in the course of two paragraphs:

"Do you think that hip-hop would be an appropriate area for NEA to fund?" I inquired.

"Absolutely. And mural painting and graffiti are art. There are popular aspects of all the arts that I think shouldn't be ignored."

Funding hip-hop-the best of which is rhythmically poetic, but commonly punctuated by profanity, violence and/or misogynistic sexuality-could put the previously embattled agency back in the crosshairs of the decency police.

Sure, rappers have rhythm. Many can dance! But, you know...bitches and hoes. Guns and malt liquor. Pussy and weed. Glocks and rocks. The WSJ thinks you know what it means. The things those people talk about. [Pic: Rob Gale]

The Daily Beast has an excerpt from Sarah from Alaska, a new Palin bio, with the speeches writer Matt Scully wrote for her on election night: A concession speech in which she lauded "black citizen" Barack Obama for winning, and a victory speech in which she announces that her husband will thenceforth be known as "the First Dude." Reading the victory speech is chilling in a Man in the High Castle sort of way—what if McCain/Palin really did win the election, and we're all just characters in a blog or something? Trippy.

The speeches were never delivered because a) Palin lost, and b) vice presidential candidates don't deliver election night concession speeches in America, a tradition with which Palin was unfamiliar because she's from Alaska. McCain had to personally intervene to tell her she couldn't have the podium, and his staffers brought the house lights down when Palin stayed on the stage to take photos with her family for fear she'd grab the mic.

Anyway, they're both horrible speeches with the maverick-y touches we've come to know and love from Palin, like a reference to an immigrant from a South American nation called "Columbia" (maybe it's spelled phonetically) and a lack of clarity as to whether it had been 68 or 69 days since she joined the campaign (both speeches mention both figures).

From the concession speech:

If he governs America with the skill and grace we have often seen in him, and the greatness of which he is capable, we're gonna be just fine. And when a black citizen prepares to fill the office of Washington and Lincoln, that is a shining moment in our history that can be lost on no one. Barack Obama has achieved a great thing, for himself and for our country, and I congratulate him. God bless you and your beautiful family, President-Elect Obama.

From the victory speech:

It's not always easy in politics to see the best in our opponents. But we have seen the grace and skill of Barack Obama, and the grit and determination of Joe Biden. By his nomination and extraordinary campaign, Barack Obama has achieved a great thing, for himself and for our country, and for that America will always honor him. I say God bless you, Senator Obama, and your beautiful family.

Of course, these days Republicans pay her cash money to talk ahistorical counterfactual nonsense, so who's laughing now, Johnny Mac?

Not, obviously, that he is off the hook for Gitmo et al, but this is a useful corrective (especially because it is aimed, theoretically, at terrified conservative WSJ-readers) to the "but he hasn't done anything yet" bitching. He did a bunch of things that Democrats have been unable to accomplish in years of trying, like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay act, children's health insurance expansion, setting aside lots more federal land as wilderness that Sarah Palin will want to drill in, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Preventions Act, and killing the F-22 and a couple other defense boondoggles.

Also, according to the Wall Street Journal, all of the lobbyists are quitting! That is wonderful news, for everyone! Soon we will be back down to a respectable late-'90s era number of lobbyists in DC, arguing for a health care reform package that consists of mailing every American free corn and offering them payday loans to buy more corn.

The Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races have nothing to do with Obama or national politics, at all, except in that Obama did not do as much campaigning and organizing in those two races as the Democratic candidates would've liked. Otherwise, they are strictly local races and the results will reflect only the material concerns of the residents of those states. Still! They have been in the news a lot, so let us talk about them.

New Jersey: Incumbent Governor Jon Corzine is a very rich former Goldman Sachs executive. Despite that, he was a pretty good liberal Senator, for a couple years (he voted against the war!). But then, like a moron, he decided to govern the ungovernable state of New Jersey. He was promptly met with a government shutdown and huge budget problems and a populace that enjoyed the various programs the government provided but did not want to pay so many taxes all the time, or at all. And so he has had to cut spending, which makes everyone mad, and raise some taxes, which made everyone mad.

So waddling in comes Republican Chris "The Big Man" Christie, who has a brilliant plan: he will cut taxes! And cut wasteful government spending! Sounds wonderful! Christie was initially kicking Corzine's ass in the polls, and Democrats wrote off Corzine. But Corzine, who is very rich, remember, launched a hilariously negative ad campaign against Christie. Now, because Christie is fat and also because he's refused to give any details at all on what he would do as governor besides "not be Jon Corzine" (but mostly because he is fat), he is neck-and-neck with Corzine.

That tie is also thanks to this guy named Steve Chris Daggett, who is running as an independent, which means "the guy you vote for if you hate Corzine but don't want to vote for a fat Republican." Daggett is running on a platform of cutting everyone's property taxes, which is always a wonderful idea.

This one is a toss-up.

Now: do you see anything in that summary about Barack Obama's approval ratings, or health care reform's popularity, or Nancy Pelosi? No, you don't. This has nothing to do with anything besides the terribleness of New Jersey's government and populace.

Virginia Virginia does not allow governors to serve consecutive terms, which is nuts, but it keeps things interesting. So there is Republican Robert F. McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds. But stupid Deeds is a rural southern Virginia Democrat, not one of the rich suburban northern liberal Virginians, so he is not really exciting those Obama voters! Or black voters! So the coalitions that helped Obama win Virginia will probably not be turning out for Deeds. McDonnell is a tremendous asshole but this race is his to lose. Once again: this has nothing to do with national politics, except that people who vote on national issues don't usually turn out for off-year races.

New York's 23rd Congressional District This one is wonderful. Barack Obama appointed a Republican congressman from a safe Republican upstate New York seat to be the Secretary of the Army. The local Republicans decided to nominate a local Republican assemblywoman to take his place. But!!! While she is a Regular New York State Republican, she is also pro-abortion and pro-gays. So, hah, the complete lunatics who run the national Republican party, with blogs and TV shows and so on, went nuts and decided to throw their support behind the Conservative Party candidate.

New York's Conservative Party was invented to police the local Republicans, who have a tendency to be more liberal than Republicans elsewhere, because they want to get elected. It was also invented so that William Buckley could run for mayor on a "John Lindsay sucks and I am so awesome" platform. (Fun fact: Buckley supported congestion pricing! And also police brutality. He was always big on police brutality.)

So! The regular "moderate" Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was called all sorts of names by the internet, and every Republican who endorsed her, like Newt Gingrich, got called even more names, by the internet. The Club For Growth then organized the grassroots conservative campaign for the Conservative Party candidate, some guy named Hoffman who does not actually live in the district and who is also not very smart. Sarah Palin's Facebook page sealed the deal, and suddenly every Republican who wants movement approval and money had to endorse Hoffman. Scozzafava finally quit the race (though she remains on the ballot) and, hilariously, endorsed the Democrat.

Hoffman will probably pull this one off. Frank Rich thinks this is a good thing, because the Republicans are forcing out even more of their electable moderates, and making the party more extreme and more white. Josh Marshall seems to concur, comparing it to when Rush Limbaugh was making everyone apologize to him a while back.

And, ok guys, it is maybe beneficial to the Democrats for the Republicans to become even less inclusive and even less able to adapt to the new America and all that.

But honestly, because of our intractable and entrenched two-party system, all this really means is that the next time the Republicans take back control of any portion of the government they will be even more destructive and evil than they were before.

There is one last race you should keep an eye on, though:

Queens NYC City Council District 19 This race to represent Bayside pits Democrat Kevin Kim, who'd be the first Korean-American elected to the New York city council, against Republican Dan Halloran, who is a pagan lord who worships ancient Norse gods.

As the Tribune first pointed out, Halloran is "First Atheling," or prince, of a Germanic neo-heathenist "theod" or tribe. State records show that he incorporated the group in 2002 with the official name of "New Normannii Reik of Theodish Belief."

Colloquially, Halloran's followers refer to their tribe as "New Normandy," with a territory that incorporates New York City and parts of New Jersey (some of Halloran's Pennsylvania tribesmen recently broke away — with his blessing — to form their own group, which they call "Arfstoll Thjod").

Obviously there's nothing wrong with being a modern pagan (except that it is dumb), but this particular branch of paganism has been quite popular with white supremacists. Not that this guy his a White Supremacist! Like many Pagans, he may just enjoy playing dress-up.

You know those idiots who don't know anything about politics but think it sounds smart to say "I am a social liberal and an economic conservative?" Bloomberg is the candidate for them, if they love a liberal nanny state and a conservative religious fervor for the eternal goodness of private enterprise.

For all the talk of Bloomberg the power-player who at least gets things done without worrying about the unions and special interests, he's been unable to win any political battle with anyone he couldn't literally buy off. Like Sheldon Silver, who (thankfully) killed the West Side Stadium and (annoyingly) ended all that "Congestion Pricing" talk. And those unions and special interests were just bought off, which worked fine back when the boom whose end Bloomberg never saw coming was in full swing.

And about that stadium: what the fuck was that? And the Olympics thing? After bitching about Giuliani's disgraceful subsidizing of the fucking Yankees, Bloomberg both turns around completely on that particular issue and attempts to build the fucking Jets a stadium, so that New York could get an Olympics that it did not want. And that failed, and everyone forgot about it. Meanwhile: 40,000 people in shelters! Bloomberg could personally buy every single one of those people an apartment in a vacant Williamsburg luxury condo building and still have enough left over to bribe a City Council member into supporting his fifth term.

And those luxury Williamsbug condo buildings, by the way, that stand vacant? Yes, well, that was part of this brilliant plan to utilize rezoning to spur the free market (which always allocates resources more efficiently than anything else in the history of civilization but sometimes it needs government help, like with tax breaks and stuff) to create affordable housing all over the waterfront. This did not work, as developers decided to just not bother to build all those affordable housing units they were supposed to build. More than 2,200 promised new affordable apartments in Williamsburg and Greenpoint have turned out to be 768, 20 percent of which are renovations of apartments that were already affordable. There are lots more of these stories.

His record on housing, like his record on nearly everything having to do with the outer boroughs and poverty and human beings who make less than $100,000 a year, has been a ridiculous disgrace. His entire philosophy of development solving everything turned out to be precisely, 100% wrong, and suddenly the city itself was driving the real estate boom, driving up land prices to absurd levels across the boroughs and tearing down neighborhoods only to replace them with vacant lots and half-filled cheaply built hideous high-rises once the bottom fell out of the City Hall-inflated market. But hey, we got the High Line and 311! So you can sleep in that fancy park while you call 311 asking if there is room in a shelter because you can no longer afford your home.

Eight years into the Bloomberg administration, Ground Zero is a still a hole that everyone continues fighting about.

The MTA has raised fares while cutting service (without actually cutting service, officially—it's just that whatever line you happen to ride is suddenly experiencing a whole lot of track work every single goddamn weekend).

The Gays: still not married! And also a lot of them are getting beaten up on the streets these days for some reason?

Bloomberg is also the beneficiary of the most friendly news coverage of any big city mayor in the nation. Easily. It helps that, you know, he is a media mogul, himself, and he is good, close, personal friends with the three publishers who run the newspapers that went after each one of his predecessors for shit they've let slide under this mayor, because they know he's a good, decent guy, at heart, and the only one who can Fix New York, because of his Money.

Can you imagine how the Post would've blown up if David Dinkins lied about taking the Subway to work every day? The Daily News response to discovering that John Lindsay flew to Bermuda every weekend?

Let's talk about the cops, for a second: they are still operating under Giuliani levels of complete disregard for the law. They are getting drunk and running people over and shooting unarmed black people and sodomizing people in subway stations. The Civilian Complaint Review Board has become a joke, unless your case gets a lot of publicity. There's obviously no accountability, whatsoever, and no attempt to recruit and train more cops from the communities they actually police. The NYPD remains, primarily, the home of roided-out white people from outside the city with a great deal of contempt for civil liberties. The Mayor always sounds properly upset when some of them rape someone, but he's never done a damn thing to rein them in or change the culture.

What he has done is Keep Us Safe by never once giving a shit about Civil Liberties. The cops stop and frisk thousands more people every year, your 4th Amendment rights do not apply in the Subway system, and expensive and completely ineffective new rings of cameras are going up across Manhattan.

Bloomberg deserves to be run out of town on an inadequately funded public rail line for the 2004 GOP convention alone. Remember that ridiculous farce? No, of course not, no one does, besides the thousands of people improperly spied on, arrested, harassed, and detained by the NYPD. All of this was completely illegal. No heads rolled.

One more special bonus factoid: New York leads the world in marijuana arrests! Specifically, marijuana arrests of black people!

And he is personally a jerk. He is a thin-skinned, unpleasant, sanctimonious asshole. His company is being sued for a culture of sexual discrimination that plaintiffs say Bloomberg himself contributed to. He is a tremendous dick to reporters whenever he gets cranky. He is fucking race-baiting with Rudy Giuliani again, because why not?

He has been a shitty mayor and he does not deserve the support of anyone who claims to be a liberal. Though what all of his most destructive missteps as mayor have in common is that they do not in any way upset or inconvenience the well-off self-professed liberals who support him. Besides maybe a couple Critical Mass riders arrested in illegal sweeps. (Though he sure does like bike lanes, so it's a wash, right?)

We cannot encourage you to vote for the Democrat in the race, because even we still aren't sure if we'll go for him or the much more delightful Billy Talen. Just don't fucking vote for Michael Bloomberg.

Vanity Fair caught up with the freedom fighter himself in London:

What could happen to him if he went back today? "I don't know," he says. "There are enough lawyers working on it. So I let them work." He blames a lot of what happened to him in America on the eight George W. Bush years. "America has always been a country of dreams, and it became a country of hate."

Alberto Gonzales never could get a decent table.
[Pic: Getty]

House Dems decided, instead, to cute the price tag of the bill by expanding Medicaid, which pays providers way less than Medicare, but it is for urban poors. That is a much bigger, but obviously much less important constituency than Real Americans in Small Towns and so on.

So it is good to Cut Down on Government Spending except, obviously, when the Government is Spending Money deserving, hard-working folks in Coors ads and so on.

Recap: Dominic Carter was charged with beating his wife last year, he finally went to court last week (his wife said he was innocent, though in an unconvincing manner), then news emerged that he'd tried to name-drop his way out of the charges in court, which caused NY1 to suspend him indefinitely. All the alleged wife-beater wanted to do was get out of the city for a while and go hang out in Kansas City while this whole thing blows over. But no. He accidentally bumped a flight attendant when he bent down to tie his shoelaces, reportedly, which is not tolerated:

The steward took exception to the inadvertent contact and called cops and a ground operator supervisor, officials said.

"That other guy lost it, 'Oh, no! You bumped into me! You will be removed from this flight!' " his aunt, Inez Carter, 63, told The Post.

And then Dominic volunteered to get off the flight and just got on the next flight, because of this zealous flight attendant, and for his troubles he got LOL-ed at in the tabloids, which are both kind of like "You think you had a bad week, check out this guy!" Which is accurate. Not to mention his wife's past year or so.
[Pic via]

Let's go straight to some quotes from the interview:

On the Vanity Fair piece: "I stand by it and I'm cool with everything I said. The route I chose to pick was just because they wouldn't let me see my kid. So I didn't really think that there was another way. That was the huge thing that made me do this. I don't want to (say it was retaliation)...I mean, I guess. If they would've let me see my kid, everything's fine, I never would've had to do any of that. They were gettin' scared. They know I know a lot. I still know more than what's out there. Then it got bad again and I said screw it, Vanity Fair article.

And on the custody issues Levi's having now: It's startin' to get bad again. They're making it kind of a pain in the ass again (to see Trip). I know I'm gonna end up (going to court). There're a lot of secrets and a lot of things that I haven't put out there that are bad...so I don't know if I want to. Some of the stuff I got, kept in, would either really hurt her or really get her in trouble. So, I really don't want to say anything else. I'm not that kind of person, no matter how much she pisses me off. I don't want to leak anything huge on her.

Okay, so, questions:

1. Is Levi Johnston screwing with all of us? It's entirely possible. An interesting way to gauge this would be to figure out the timeline on the Vanity Fair piece? Did Levi approach VF? Vice versa? Was there a lag between an offer and the acceptance of the offer? Despite all of the custodial trauma Levi's claiming, you've gotta wonder if he isn't enjoying his time in the limelight. I can't imagine he isn't. On the other hand, walking around L.A. with the same big guys he was seen at Monkey Bar with have been the most egregious extent of his famewhoring. He could, theoretically, be doing much, much worse.

2. What the hell isn't he talking about? And why isn't he? Sure, Levi's claiming principles as the obstacle we're facing to knowing everything he's got on the Palin family, but this 19 year-old kid from the sticks is either as innocent as he's assumed to be, or is far, far savvier than anyone could ever imagine (or at least savvy enough to listen to good advice). Hanging on to whatever he knows and leaking info out in droplets could maybe, possibly, profoundly scare the shit out of Sarah Palin and her oft-projected 2012 run's potential. Then again, maybe she isn't running, maybe she actually is done, and maybe a cost-benefit breakdown of what Levi's leaks could get him as opposed to the trouble it could cause for Palin's entire family really isn't worth it to him. He's a 19 year-old father, though: so what, exactly, is?

3. Will the threat of a lawsuit do anything to the Palin camp? And what could a lawsuit mean for them? Either way, we're gonna find out, and with it, the weight of whatever Johnston may or may not have, and the character of his balls if forced to move it forward. [Ed. Oh, we'll definitely know that soon enough. Intimately.]

Listen to the audio. We read and read about a lot of bullshit. We watch it on TV and in movies. But just the audio track? It's different. There's that dumb line from a movie: the truth just sounds different. Well, man, it does.

'Could be that there's another way for him to earn a buck that doesn't have to do with being in the spotlight—he remembers at the beginning of the interview his prospects in hockey or as an electrician—because Levi sounds down, out, and tired of dealing with all of this shit. Maybe he just wants to see his kid, and move forward with his life as something other than Levi Johnston, Asspain to Sarah Palin.

Or he's an underdog genius who's playing the media and the entire Palin narrative to his liking. At this point, pick one: the odds are about the same. More highlights:

On Sarah Palin's Vice President nomination: "Didn't mean anything to me. I didn't care. I didn't think it was that huge. I'm just gonna sit here and not say a word."

On Palin's personal interaction nature: "You can catch her in a lie a lot of the time. She don't read the newspaper. A lot of the things she's sayin', I know she's lying."

On the outdoorsmen nature of the Palin family: "I'd say (Sarah's) definitely stretchin' it big time. They're not a big hunting family."

On racism in the Palin household: "No, not (Sarah Palin)..no. She never said anything like that. She's not the racist type."

On Palin's loss: "After the election, she didn't want us to get married, really. You could tell that they're all sad about everything. I don't know, just her attitude towards everything was pretty down. I don't think she had much care for anything for a while. She hung around in her room a lot. I think she just wanted to be left alone for a while. She just went through a big depression, I think. She was bummed out bad."

On his breakup with Bristol: "There's no one to blame for it. I mean, if it didn't work, it didn't work."

On what he thinks of Sarah Palin now: "I still don't think bad about her. But...You know, just some of the shit she pulled on me—encouraging Bristol not to let me see the kid and everything else, from her acting like she liked me for four or five plus years, and then going on saying that stuff, is just ridiculous how fake they are...it's just ridiculous."

Again: the truth just sounds different. Is this it?

[Photo of Levi in "happier" times via Getty Images/Robyn Beck]

Stuck twenty points behind Democratic rival Jerry Brown and without the support of "major San Francisco donors who helped underwrite Newsom's successful campaigns in the city," Newsom is dropping out of the governor's race. Newsom dropped the word "young" into his exit speech, a move that helps remind people he's a rising political star who in all likelihood plans to try again for higher office, just once he tackles some of those festering homelessness and crime problems he promised to attack when first elected mayor six years ago.

Though losing an alcoholic wife-fucker like Newsom will take some fun out of the gubernatorial race, the contest still features Democratic hopeful Brown, who proposed a state space academy last time he was governor, and Republican contender Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO whose personal voting record is "unacceptable," according to one Meg Whitman.

• He's currently on trial for allegedly assaulting his wife last year—specifically, she told police at the time that he punched her and kicked her during an argument over their epileptic son's health care. That's no way to argue, sir.
• The New York Post has decided to go hard against him on this story. That's a problem. The paper's currently running with "allegations" against Carter by relatives who don't like him—namely, that he's beaten his wife for years, has a secret family on the side (there does not appear to be any proof of that one yet!), and called his wife a "dumb project bitch."
• On Dominic Carter's side, though: His wife! She now says that she lied to cops about him beating her up. Instead, she says, it was some day laborer who did it. Although she doesn't know his name or anything. She also denies the Post's allegations. Noted.
• So maybe with his wife's support, Dominic Carter can keep his job? No he cannot! He's now on an indefinite leave of absence from NY1.
• Well maybe with his wife's support, Dominic Carter can at least retain the respect of his peers and the politicos who haunt his show? No, probably not! Because whether or not he actually beat his wife, news reports are now making him appear to be a rather desperate, unseemly whiner, suckup, and name dropper. The Daily News says that in a court appearance last December, Carter tried to play the "Do you know who I am?" card, with a judge:

  "I've appeared on the cover of The New York Times and TV Guide...I covered the state attorney general and the chief judge of the court."
  The New York 1 political anchor also claimed he was friends with former chief judge Judith Kaye and Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. He punctuated his pleading by insisting over and over, "This is not fair."
  If "my political enemies" find out about the charges, Carter warned, "it will end up in the Daily News."

  Unseemly, Dominic Carter. Your prediction was correct, though.

• This summer, New York governor David Paterson basically called Carter a suckup Uncle Tom. That earned Carter a moment of solidarity with his defenders both in the media and in the political community. That is now gone. His career at NY1 may very well be over for good (his contract is reportedly almost up). Whether you feel bad for him or not depends on whether or not the charges against him are true. But you wouldn't want to be him, either way.

1. His Name is No, Dr. No - Some hippie was once so enthralled by his resistance to the word "yes" that s/he sent him a giant "NO" in gratitude. He loves it so.

2. "Effective Nuisance" - That's going on his business card STAT!

3. Healthcare is His Thermopylae -

Mr. Coburn is preparing for what he considers a career pinnacle of havoc. Enacting the proposal, he says, would be catastrophic, and so if precedent holds, he will try to hinder it with every annoying tool in his arsenal: filing amendments (he has done that 508 times since joining the Senate, second only to John McCain's 542 in that period), undertaking filibusters and objecting strenuously.

And that fucking poseur Joe Lieberman can kiss his ass.

4. Friendship Means Paying off Your Friend's Mistress - And then ripping said friend a new one for being such a sick cheating cheaty bastard. Hey! Where do you think you're going, Ensign? Take your public shaming like a man!

5. The Correct Way to Treat Water Moccasins is to Behead Them - It's what Jesus should have done.

At 42% poor ol' Joe is worse off than Al Gore, a man who bored people so much, they voted for George W. Bush instead. In fact, he can't even measure up to his predecessor Dick Cheney, a man who took polls very seriously indeed.

This is either "a fascinating and important" puzzle or, you know, perfectly understandable given Barack Obama Superstar is his boss and nobody really cares about a guy whose job currently consists of campaigning for candidates who don't need it, poking gentle ha-has at the eco-nazis who vote for his party, making reassuring noises in the Midwest, playing pessimist on Afghanistan, and visiting countries his boss would like to, but can't afford to, ignore.

He's so determined to the VP of Obama's dreams, he's even trained himself to be marginally polite to Cheney! That's some hard work, folks.

Also, since no report about Obama or Biden is complete without it, let us mention that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is currently more popular than either Obama or Biden. This means she should have held both jobs.

Back when establishment Democrats (like Obama!) were trying to convince us loony internet liberals not to campaign against Joe Lieberman, you heard a lot about how Lieberman is only a conservative on foreign policy, and not domestic issues. (How his full-throated support for any bombing campaign against any Muslims anywhere in the world is supposed to be not as big a deal as the fact that he doesn't want to publicly execute gays or whatever has always been beyond us, but that is what we were told.) Now he's pissed that distinction away.

We all know that Vinegar Joe Lieberman is a sanctimonious, thin-skinned, self-satisfied monster. And a pious, amoral scumbag. And a narcissistic, deluded underminer who represents everything that is wrong with the United States Senate. And a war-mongering, concern-trolling religious zealot. And, generally, a bastard. And probably a racist. But why would this weasel-human hybrid who is actually literally slowly receding into his own asshole a little bit every day suddenly pipe up on health care reform with a position at odds with most Connecticut residents and a vast majority of the Democrats he claims to represent?

Because no one had been paying attention to him! (And also because he is owned by the various insurance companies of Connecticut. Like he is literally Aetna's personal offensive Jeff Dunham puppet. Well, they have to share him with AIPAC.)

This is the thing, Joe. The opt-out public option is a conservative compromise. It is a compromise from a non-opt-out public option, which is a compromise from a non-opt-out public option tied to Medicare rates, which is a compromise from a non-opt-out public option tied to Medicare rates and open to everyone, which is a compromise from single-payer. You would like a further compromise, to "no health care reform, at all, unless the Democrats all kneel down and blow me, as I will demand they do whenever they might need my vote, from now until I finally decide to caucus with the Republicans, which will only happen if the Republicans take the majority and the Democrats stop blowing me periodically."

And, obviously, his literal, stated objections to the bill are not based in any way on reality.

So the question basically is, what is his end-game here? What the fuck is he doing?

Whether Joe Lieberman will run for reelection in 2012 is currently a mystery. He has $1.4 million in the bank, which is a lot, but not as much as he had in 2006.

He also is polling rather terribly in Connecticut, where Democrats and independents both prefer real Democrats. He could run as a real Republican, but, as we said, those independent voters he needs to win do not like him, at the moment.

So our "what is Joe Lieberman doing" possibilities are:

• He is just following the golden path of his own of self-delusion, thinking he will be remembered as a mavericky hero who bucked the status quo once he retires in 2012.
• He's going all-in as a Republican in the desperate hope that a 2012 GOP landslide will win him one more term.
• He is just trying to sink health care completely for his insurance company friends, who will give him a lucrative post-Senate job.
• He is just trying to force Harry Reid to pay him fealty once again, because it makes him feel nice.
• He is just a prick.

Weirdly, Lieberman said he'd vote to bring the bill to the floor, and then he'd support a GOP filibuster. A GOP filibuster is decidedly not a sure thing, though it certainly moves one step closer to a sure thing every time Joe Lieberman opens his mouth. Christ, what an asshole.

The last time early-1960s advertising executive and New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd was so obviously baffled by a slight subversion of gender norms, noted masculine asshole Tom DeLay was gyrating in a feminine manner on the television.

This time, it's Barry Obama, the elegant and lady-like Democrat, who is, according to recent reports, excluding ladies from his inner circle, because they do not like to golf or talk about the football or play the basketball.

In her column on this important matter, Dowd simply ignores her own lengthy history of interpreting Obama according to her rigid "Democrats are fags and Republicans are real men" worldview. Instead, he is like presidents of old, who crack "racy" jokes with male aides. She quotes "a girlfriend" (Alessandra?) who wishes the uppity ladies would just let the president be a man with men in peace.

You would think someone who repeatedly called Obama "oBambi," and also butterfly, in columns dedicated to the argument that Hillary Clinton was the real man in the party, even if she pretended to have a vagina and ladylike tendencies (like those tears), would write a column expressing some sort of mild surprise that Obama is perhaps more traditionally masculine than she thought.

You would think she would remember the fact that last year she wrote that Obama is "the more emotionally delicate candidate, and the one who has the more feminine consensus management style." And then, perhaps, she might revisit those words, and say "huh, perhaps I was wrong, perhaps Obama is not a girly man."

Instead, she (this is once again nothing unusual for Maureen) talks about how it is those cruel Republicans who wish to paint every male Democrat as a "Mom-jeans-wearing girly-boy." It's a good thing no supposedly liberal columnists for supposedly liberal newspapers play along with that creaky old act!

And then she throws in a "Rahm Emanuel is a fag" laugh line for the hell of it.

Obama likes to play sports, watch sports and talk sports. (Even his favorite TV shows, "Mad Men" and "Entourage," are set in male-dominated worlds.) So the Obama aides who can do that, like Robert Gibbs, have a deeper personal connection with the president than someone like Rahm Emanuel, the former ballet dancer who prefers yoga to golf.

Yes, Maureen, we know that it is funny that a man would do yoga (is that funny, actually? is it 30 years ago?), but the problem with that little joke is that Rahm is part of the circle of men that Obama is reportedly more at ease with. The original stupid story was not "Obama excludes women and girly Rahm Emanuel from his inner circle."

But that is probably not all of it, as that financial disclosure only covers the period before she suddenly resigned as governor of the Alaska.

Still: a lot of money!

What is weirder, though, in her financial disclosure: last April Sarah Palin created a company called "Pie Spy." No one knows what this company does. Just that it is called "Pie Spy," and it is a "marketing" company. And:

It is listed with a North American Industry Classification System code corresponding to companies that provide services to the elderly or to people with disabilities.

But no one will say anything about this "Pie Spy" company that markets secret pies to crippled old people! What does it mean?

And why, exactly, would this completely uncontroversial bill that passed both houses without much fanfare elicit such an odd response from the governor?

Because it was sponsored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano. Not too long ago, Arnold showed up uninvited at a Democratic party event, and Assemblyman Ammiano politely requested that the governor "kiss my gay ass."

California! What a wonderful place! It is like America's Italy. Except, oddly, with fewer hookers.

Pic from the knife-brandishing budget-cutting threat video he made in July.

Earlier this year, Dunn spoke to a class of graduating high school students and asked them to go fight a war in Calcutta as per the recommendations of her "two favorite political philosophers" Mao Tse Tung and Mother Theresa. While it is not known what became of these newly militant American schoolchildren armed with maps, Fox News' resident Crazed Crybot discovered this footage in his continuing quest to expose the violent red heart of the Obama White House.

What a fright for Glenn Beck!

Would you be a little alarmed if somebody in the White House had cited Adolf Hitler in a speech to high school students as the person they turn to the most? What is the difference? Mao was worse. Plus, he took away the freedom of hundreds of millions of Chinese, and now he's being revered? How did we get here?

Now Andrew Sullivan thinks all this talk of a Red House is just silly. But he does have an answer for Beck:

Dunn would never have used Hitler as a source for perseverance and setting the right objectives. Why Because Hitler's evil is self-evident. So why is Mao's rancid evil not self-evident for a person like Dunn? Because she retains a double standard for far left totalitarianism over far right totalitarianism. It's that insulting and morally disgusting double standard that gets my goat. Mao was responsible for the deaths of up to 70 million people - and Dunn sees him as a useful strategist.

Oh, that's right. Lefties only ever truly despise righties. That explains the overwhelming love for Stalin... no?

Asked to comment, Dunn says she got the quote from noted Communist Lee Atwater, which leaves us back at square one: why doesn't the world feel about Chairman Mao the way it does about Hitler and Stalin? He definitely felt he deserved to share space with Stalin at least - even had a little tiff with Khruschev when he thought his heir apparent status was being infringed upon.

Perhaps it's because he never bombed our grandparents nor made our parents hide under schooldesks. Or maybe it's because the strongest proponent of the Cult of Mao is still the very country where he once had those millions of people tortured and killed.

[Pic: IntelligentLife]

He clearly thought he'd play to his strengths in retirement: he's always been good with the words. So yesterday evening he addressed 15,000 people in Fort Worth, Texas (at a seminar shoutily titled GETMOTIVATED!) in his new guise as motivational-speaker-in-chief.

"I don't see how you can be president without relying on the Almighty," he said, referring perhaps to Dick Cheney. "I can tell you that one of the most amazing surprises of the presidency was the fact that people's prayers affected me. I can't prove it to you. But I can tell you some days were great, some days not so great. But every day was joyous." (Even this one?)

It marks a return to the spotlight for Bush, and he likes it, says the Washington Post. He's giving another speech in San Antonio next month, and has "quite a few speeches planned" in fall, according to former Presidential adviser Karen Hughes.

"He is just a normal guy!" a salesman called Patrick Kruger who was in the crowd told the Post, referring to the multimillionaire scion of a privileged and powerful family. "He wasn't the best speaker. But I was happy to see him!"

Number 43 has joined the Washington Speakers' Bureau, so we have many more of these to look forward to. I, for one, am glad to see the comic relief back on stage after nearly a year of almost completely unamusing serious politicians.

When beloved former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich appointed Roland Burris to Obama's Senate seat, because Burris is black and because Blago could, we all thought, at first, that Blago had selected a competent public official, just to ensure an easy political victory on his way out of office. This Burris fellow is a former Illinois Attorney General! He is well-respected! How boring!

But no, Blago would not do that to us. Blago so loved the United States Senate that he appointed it a crazy egomaniac with a giant stone shrine to himself.

And so, at a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing last week on the subject of "czars," Burris asked a lot of very important questions about the Constitution. Dave Weigel has the full transcript, and all of it is worth your time. But, wow, any portion of it is worth quoting.

[Burris:] Every president's going to go through it. I don't even know how we in the Congress can legally - I mean, I heard the distinguished ranking member say that we passed a law. We can pass a law and say there's going to be a position in there, but I don't think the Congress can tell the president who to put in that position.

I mean, if we do that, then I think that we're violating the separation of powers. I mean, this is what we get into. And you can create a position. What happens if - what happens if the president says, "I don't want to appoint anybody as secretary of state. I'm going to use the undersecretary as an acting secretary"?

Is there a law that would require us or require the president to appoint a secretary of state? Is there? Is there?

CASEY: A law that requires the president to appoint a secretary of state?

BURRIS: Yes.

CASEY: Specifically, there would not be a law requiring him to do that. Now, of course, if he wants the functions that you vested in a secretary of state performed, he - he probably has to do…

(CROSSTALK)

BURRIS: But there is no law that says he has to even appoint a secretary of state, is that - am I correct?

(CROSSTALK)

BURRIS: There's a statute that says there's a position - a secretary of state position…

CASEY: Right, right - shall be appointed in the following - yes - I'm unaware of any…

(CROSSTALK)

BURRIS: But is there a law that says the president has to make that appointment?

CASEY: Not that I'm aware of.

After admitted cocaine-user and celebrity comedian Al Franken disappointed everyone by turning out to be a smart and serious US Senator, we must rely on Burris even more to entertain us with examples of how broken and useless the United States Senate is.

(Speaking of Czars! The Senate continues to refuse to confirm anyone Obama appoints to anything and then complain when he hires people they didn't confirm.)

[Photo: AP]

No, on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire—the daytime version!—DeLay will appear via "Skype" (they will not get him a town car to a proper studio, even!) as a mere lifeline, for some nobody contestant. The lifeline is called "Ask the Expert," so let's hope for Tom's sake that the contestants end up stuck on questions of pest extermination, and not, say, Texas election law.

The Facebook communications manager communicated the first news of his gig on archrival social network Twitter, according to Business Insider. If only it were possible to make such public pronouncements on Facebook.

UPDATE: Noyes writes, "To clarify, the news came first as my Facebook status msg, not via tweet." That's cool. Thanks for telling us — via Twitter again.

(Pic: Noyes, by Andrew Feinberg)

There will most likely be a public option in the Senate bill. Harry Reid, who will decide what the bill finally looks like, is leaning toward an "opt-out" public option, so that no one in Mississippi is forced to accept government health care to treat their rickets. Olympia Snowe, who will not vote for the health care bill no matter what she tells you but who might vote to break a hypothetical filibuster, prefers a "trigger" public option. "Triggers" are what Congress does when it wants to avoid creating programs or implementing policies without actually officially voting against them. Max Baucus is still being a dick for the hell of it.

Harry Reid thinks he has enough votes to pass a bill with a strong, opt-out public option, and he is like one or two solid votes away from a cloture vote on said bill.

The White House is skeptical of his vote-counting, though, and in a meeting late last week, they pushed him to keep trying to get Olympia Snowe on-board.

This upset Reid, because he thinks the White House should just get his back and announce that they support the thing he wants to do. But the White House doesn't want to openly support anything until passage looks like a sure thing. They are kinda big political babies about that kinda stuff, as Jon Corzine could tell you.

But it was not Obama "pushing" for a stupid trigger compromise so much as it was the White House wanting to make sure Harry Reid really knows what he's doing, because honestly that is always an open question with that guy.

The Sunlight Foundation's Real Time Investigations blog looked up the Republican National Committee's most recent FEC filing and found that they spent $1.4 million web sites and services over the past six months, the period during which Steele was blueskying names for his new "What Up" blog on the snazzy new site, which went live earlier this month.

How much does it cost to host a site for six months that is visited almost exclusively by stoned Wonkette readers who just want to see Steele walk onto their computer again? It costs $1,039,155. The Democratic National Committee, on the other hand, which gets roughly the same amount of traffic as GOP.com on its site, spent $203,000 on hosting during the same period.

That $1,039,155 went to Smartech Corp., a web company that services a lot of conservative clients. We're off to go find out which one of Michael Steele's brothers-in-law works there.

[Via Politico.]

To be fair, it was ridiculous back when ABC allowed Stossel to give keynote speeches at conservative/libertarian think tank gala events while still calling him a "reporter" for 20/20 and not a "pundit" or whatever. He's always had a very specific political agenda and he's always been more than willing to distort the truth in the service of that agenda. In that respect, he's not so different from a Michael Moore, except that he's on the side of evil and also no legitimate news organization has ever tried to pawn off Michael Moore as a regular plain-old "reporter."

But! John Stossel is different! He is not fat, first of all, and second of all he has a mustache, and thirdly it is considered a corrective to "liberal bias" to have a dude straight-up lying to prove conservative points on your newscast.

Obviously he is much more at home on Fox, where they only pretend to be unbiased for the purposes of annoying people like us. So the fact that Stossel is actively promoting and co-hosting this Americans For Prosperity anti-health care event is not even really News.

But it is coming as everyone in DC is dropping their monocles at the fact that the White House has been criticizing Fox News. This is Nixonian! The White House is not allowed to say a tv station is not legitimate! It is classic Nixon dirty tricks, to punish Fox by... not granting them interviews with administration officials for the rest of the year, which is two months.

Because, you know, they so often make themselves available to representatives of the RNC, various right-wing think tanks, and Ron Paul's newsletter.

Anyway Joe Conason has a very good little piece that begins to explain what, exactly, Nixon did in his war on the press. He did not criticize the Washington Post for being mean to him. He used the power of the federal government to hurt them financially so that they'd stop reporting truthful thing about him. Calling it "Nixonian" every time a president is upset with a news organization cheapens that man's amazing legacy of bastardry.