Walter Cronkite: 1916-2009

The Most Trusted Man in America. Perhaps the greatest newsman ever.

His reporting on the Tet Offensive is credited with turning American opinion against the Vietnam war. His voice brought calm to millions in 1968. But his most poignant moment?

Stewart on Jim Cramer, Lenny Dykstra and Fox (about Obama coverage)

Jon Stewart blisters Lindsey Graham over Sotomayor

YES! YES! YES! HUZZAH!

Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) FINALLY sets Republicans straight on Socialized medicine.

"I don't want to shock anybody here, have them dashing out of the room, but the VA is a socialized health care system. Right Mr. McCain? ....Anybody here want to bring up an amendment to eliminate the VA? I don't hear too many people.

Let's talk about single payer. In the united States we have a strong single payer system, it's called MediCare. If anybody wants to go out and compare the attitude of the people of this country toward MediCare contrasted with how people feel about private health insurance, let's have that debate." - Sen. Bernie Sanders

Frank Rich on Sarah Palin: she broke it, she bought it

Frank Rich - New York Times
(S)he stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind. Palin gives this movement a major party brand and political plausibility...The real wave she’s riding is a loud, resonant surge of resentment and victimization that’s larger than issues like abortion and gay civil rights.

That resentment is in part about race, of course. When Palin referred to Alaska as “a microcosm of America” during the 2008 campaign, it was in defiance of the statistical reality that her state’s tiny black and Hispanic populations are unrepresentative of her nation. She stood for the “real America,” she insisted, and the identity of the unreal America didn’t have to be stated explicitly for audiences to catch her drift. Her convention speech’s signature line was a deftly coded putdown of her presumably shiftless big-city opponent: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” (Funny how this wisdom has been forgotten by her supporters now that she has abandoned her own actual responsibilities in public office.)

The latest flashpoint for this kind of animus is the near-certain elevation to the Supreme Court of Sonia Sotomayor... Those maligning the long and accomplished career of an Ivy League-educated judge do believe in affirmative-action — but only for white people like Palin, whom they boosted for vice president despite her minimal achievements and knowledge of policy, the written word or even geography.

The politics of resentment are impervious to facts. Palinists regard their star as an icon of working-class America even though the Palins’ combined reported income ($211,000) puts them in the top 3.6 percent of American households. They see her as a champion of conservative fiscal principles even though she said yes to the Bridge to Nowhere and presided over a state that ranks No.1 in federal pork.

Were Palin actually to secure the 2012 nomination, the result would be a fiasco for the G.O.P. akin to Goldwater 1964... Or would it? ...you never know, as Palin likes to say, what doors might open.

It’s more likely that she will never get anywhere near the White House, and not just because of her own limitations. The Palinist “real America” is demographically doomed to keep shrinking. But the emotion it represents is disproportionately powerful for its numbers. It’s an anger that Palin enjoyed stoking during her “palling around with terrorists” crusade against Obama on the campaign trail. It’s an anger that’s curdled into self-martyrdom since Inauguration Day.

These are the cries of a constituency that feels disenfranchised — by the powerful and the well-educated who gamed the housing bubble, by a news media it keeps being told is hateful, by the immigrants who have taken some of their jobs, by the African-American who has ended a white monopoly on the White House. Palin is their born avatar. She puts a happy, sexy face on ugly emotions, and she can solidify her followers’ hold on a G.O.P. that has no leaders with the guts or alternative vision to stand up to them or to her.

click to read the entire article

Duke Nukem Disease

This is hysterical. Duke Nukem disease dooms it's sufferers to move only like the character from the first-person shooter game.

Reaganite Peggy Noonan calls Palin "Horrifying"

Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who had to smooth over relationships after being caught on a live mike last fall calling the Palin VP choice "political bullshit", can apparently now say exactly what she feels.

And it's not good. Remember, this is a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan saying this. Not a Democrat, not a liberal. Reagan's speechwriter.

If Peggy Noonan can't take her seriously, why does anyone who calls themselves a Republican?

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm.

In another age it might not have been terrible, but here and now it was actually rather horrifying.

Asshat Palin a habitual liar

Sarah Palin, in her "fighting, not quitting" speech, blamed the media and her enemies for launching frivolous ethics complaints that caused Alaskans to spend millions of dollars that could have gone to teachers and cops and firefighters.

Turns out that was a lie too. She arrived at her number by adding up the salaries of Alaska lawyers that would have been paid no matter what they worked on. In other words, that money was never going to be spent on babies and lambs and bunnies and rainbows.

Steve Benen -
But there's new evidence to suggest the argument is just factually wrong. Greg Sargent reported that the governor's own office conceded yesterday that money used to respond to the ethics charges are part of fixed costs that would have gone to the same lawyers, whether the charges were filed it or not. The funds wouldn't have to go schools, police, or transportation, as Palin claimed. The $1.9 million "was arrived at by adding up attorney hours spent on fending off complaints -- based on the fixed salaries of lawyers in the governor's office and the Department of Law. The money would have gone to the lawyers no matter what they were doing."

One of her more glaring flaws is her complete comfort with telling lies and half-truths, and then getting disjointed when they're not just gobbled down whole and accepted as gospel.

Go.

This is why Sarah Palin is an unqualified asshat

When the “I am not a quitter. I am a fighter" was asked how she would handle the scrutiny of the White House, given that the scrutiny of Anchorage has chased her out of government, the “I am not a quitter. I am a fighter" responded:

"I think on a national level your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out." — Sarah Palin

The Department of Law? In the White House?

Really?

People wonder how Al Franken got to the Senate when the real question is: how is it that this sportscaster who needed 5 colleges to get through got so close to becoming Vice-President of the United States?

She's inventing new parts of government out of whole cloth. What's worse is that 20% of the electorate sits there and shakes their heads along with her. "Aaats right Sarah, don't let them governmentals be's telling you what ta do".

Stuart Saves the Senate

Senator Al Franken

Health care: Harry Reid grows a pair, tells Baucus to STFU, Obama gets the message

(Rollcall)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday ordered Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill.

Reid, whose leadership is considered crucial if President Barack Obama is to deliver on his promise of enacting health care reform this year, offered the directive to Baucus through an intermediary after consulting with Senate Democratic leaders during Tuesday morning’s regularly scheduled leadership meeting. Baucus was meeting with Finance ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) Tuesday afternoon to relay the information.

It's about time that progressives stepped up and stopped the nonsense that some democrats are trying to get away with on health care. When 76% of the country wants health care with a public option, and a supermajority exists in the Senate, then it's time to throw out bipartisanship. Especially when bipartisanship is only going to lead to a watered-down bill that puts more money in the hands of insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

On the White House end, Rahm Emanual signaled that there was some support for inserting a "trigger". This means that there would only be a public option if the insurance/pharma coalition of the greedy didn't meet targets.

On Monday, Mr. Emanuel said the trigger mechanism would also accomplish the White House's goals. Under this scenario, a public plan would kick in under certain circumstances when competition was judged to be lacking. Exactly what circumstances would trigger the option would have to be worked out.

This is a horrible idea. Pushing a [public option 10 years down the road dooms this health care initiative. This is literally a once-in-several-lifetimes opportunity. Ten years from now there will not be the will, either institutionally or publicly, to get this done.

The White House was warned yesterday to stop playing around.

(Washington Monthly)
Progressive Caucus Co-Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) warned Emanuel that he would lose the caucus' votes if the White House compromised on the issue and included a "trigger" that could delay a public insurance plan indefinitely. The trigger idea is backed by conservative Democrats but is anathema to liberals.

"We have compromised enough, and we are not going to compromise on any kind of trigger game," Woolsey said she told Emanuel. "People clapped all over the place. We mean it, and not just progressives."

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said he was reassured by Emanuel. "He doesn't stand by that trigger," Waxman said. "He said the president and his administration and he are for a public plan as one of the options."

So then....

Politico reports that the President appeared to walk back Emanual's message, saying...

"I am pleased by the progress we're making on health care reform and still believe, as I've said before, that one of the best ways to bring down costs, provide more choices, and assure quality is a public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest. I look forward to a final product that achieves these very important goals."

It appears that the pressure that the President has been decrying is actually working.

It's a shame when Democrats have to be hounded and pressured into doing Democratic things.