Franken Sense

It's a shame Eric Massa is leaving when he is. Never mind the definite impression he's a wacko, lying sleaze bag; what causes him to stand out in Washington is his acknowledged experience with the "Tickle Fight". He's a regular old Elmo.

By now, we all have heard that's all he was doing to prompt charges he had groped staff members. So at the very moment Democrats are groping for some way to pass health care reform, he bails, just when his expertise would be useful.

Now that he's a former member of Congress and before he goes into rehab, so he can run for re-election, he would be tremendously useful as a TV analyst. He could provide the insider's view on all the moves during the ticklish legislative process ahead and the naked politics in and out of the shower room.

Who knew there were so many Congressional emperors with no clothes on? Sort of makes one long for the days when we compared lawmaking and sausage. At least both would grind something out. Now things have ground to a halt.

Here's how we get things moving. How about a full fledged tickle fight in public. Let's invite C-Span in to see everything. We should place cameras everywhere, including the Capitol gyms.

We probably should assign one to simply follow Rahm Emanuel around to watch all of his moves and, just as important, listen to his every subtle persuasion. That way, we don't have to hear what he's thinking via his favored reporters. We can get it straight from the horse's...uh...mouth.

So let's get this straight: Following embarrassing disclosures of some Democrats' ethics problems, the conservatives are dumping all over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, after all, had promised to "clean the swamp" of Congress.

AND: At the very same time, they are sliming her for cleaning the swamp of some muck, Congressman Eric Massa.

Here's what's so strange: Even though he's a hated "D" just like Pelosi, Massa has still mastered the far right. The extremist commentators like Glenn Beck along with the other usual opportunists, have embraced him as a cruel sacrifice for the Speaker's cutthroat politics.

That's because he suddenly claimed his party's leaders forced him out of office simply because he was a vote against the President's health care reform, which is hanging by a thread.

Never mind that before Massa declared himself the victim of vile conduct he acknowledged he was the victimizer...engaging in vile conduct with a staffer. In fact, the Washington Post is now reporting this may be even more of an "EWWWWWW" story. The Post reports Massa might already be under investigation on charges he was groping male staffers from just about the moment he took office a year ago. And as the day has gone on, conservatives are bailing on him.

So let's get this straight: Following embarrassing disclosures of some Democrats' ethics problems, the conservatives are dumping all over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, after all, had promised to "clean the swamp" of Congress.

AND: At the very same time, they are sliming her for cleaning the swamp of some muck, Congressman Eric Massa.

Here's what's so strange: Even though he's a hated "D" just like Pelosi, Massa has still mastered the far right. The extremist commentators like Beck and Limbaugh, along with the other usual opportunists, have embraced him as a cruel sacrifice for the Speaker's cutthroat politics.

They are there for him, loudly parroting his sudden claim his party's leaders forced him out of office simply because he was a vote against the President's health care reform, which is hanging by a thread.

Never mind that before Massa declared himself the victim of vile conduct he acknowledged he was the victimizer...engaging in vile conduct with a staffer.

You know how it is when a couple is going through a divorce. So often the friends feel obligated to choose sides. Sure you do. Larry David did a program about it. That's where I plagiarized the idea. With great "Enthusiasm" I might add. But I digress.

This split-up is happening right now with the disintegration of the Rahm Emanuel-David Axelrod marriage-of-convenience which is agonizingly playing out for all the world to see...at least those in the world who read the New York Times and Washington Post.

The Post went first...shamelessly turning into what could only be called the "Emanuel Manual". There was one article after another about how the beleaguered White House Chief-of-Staff had been done wrong.

Now it's the Times' turn. And sure enough, true to the spirit of competition, it has now become the Axelrod Almanac". There it was on the front page: a love feast called "White House Message Maven Finds Fingers Pointing at Him". Since we're talking Emanuel, as the adversary, it's easy to imagine which finger. But again, a digression.

For those who have tried to ignore this foolishness until now, a brief catch-up: Various Rahm Emanuel supporters have gone on background to complain things are not going well for the Obama presidency because Emanuel doesn't always get his way about how things are done.

He was talking about his last ditch attempt to resurrect health care reform, but the more expansive issue President Obama raised is the more valid one: Does the government have the "...ability to solve any problem".

Put it another way: Has the personal ambition of too many individuals holding power and influenced consumed their ability to act for the common good? Does their shameless demagoguery that so poisons the atmosphere reason is smothered.

And while we're at it, have the never ending disclosures of financial and sex scandals worn down our system to the point it's too sick to get anything done. Speaking of sick, are we all too sick and tired of all this to rally around any constructive effort to change?

How sad these questions are. But how valid they are too. Let's take the money and the fooling around: Every day, we hear that one of our esteemed office holders is caught in the wrong pocket or the wrong pants. It's usually petty and pathetic, but it's cumulative. How sad it is we've come to accept it as inevitable which reinforces a pervasive disbelief in our system.

What's to believe in? Our lives have been badly damaged by those who caused a near crash with their greedy financial schemes. Most avoid prosecution simply by using small parts of their ill gotten gain to pay off those who make the laws.

So we are a disgusted nation, one where scared citizens can easily be whipped up by wild distortion. Agents for the obscenely profitable insurance companies find they can thwart any efforts at curbing their excesses by labeling Health Care Reform "Socialism". Modern day reactionaries can level accusations of terrorist sympathy against Justice Department officials who before they came into government, were only doing their time-honored job as lawyers representing detainees against the excesses of the previous administration.

How about some reflections on Senator Jim Bunning, without any clever references to his past life as a major league all-star pitcher? Wouldn’t that be different? Wouldn’t that be refreshing? OK then: No baseball metaphors.

So:
It looks like Bunning has such a hatred for his own team’s quarterback, Mitch McConnell, that he tried to sack him. At the same time, he fumbled the ball and allowed the bitter rival team to score an easy touchdown.

He broke his own side’s serve, because he was way out of bounds. His power play failed miserably

It was a slam dunk for the Democrats, who have been complaining that, for over a year, his fellow Republicans have been doing nothing but trying to block their shots. Bunning committed a flagrant foul (basketball, not that other sport). Come to think of it, it was a technical non-foul because he was following the rules. Score one for those who think the Senate game needs to be changed.

What's so remarkable about this latest wet-kiss Washington Post article about White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel, is that it is appearing at all, on the front page, no less. That and the fact there are none of the newspaper's trademark typos or grammatical errors.

It's the second piece in a couple weeks. As the often profane Emanuel might say "What the #@*! is THAT about?!!" When did the Post become the Emanuel Manual? Why is there a another piece that stoutly defends Rahmbo from the backstabbing and even front-stabbing that inevitably results when an administration stumbles.

The story-line is the same: If the rank amateurs in the White House would only have listened to him, they could have avoided the Laurel and Hardy comedy of errors that has left them in this fine mess. But noooooo...on signature issues they often moved wildly instead of wily, ignoring Emanuel's counsel.

So the administration is in deep @*#! on so many fronts; health care, civilian trials for terrorists and Guanatamo. By all appearances many of those responsible would like to dig out and shovel the @*#! onto Emanuel,. He is, after all, the man in charge of keeping up the Obama presidency's triumphant starting momentum. Aren't honeymoons supposed to last forever?

This one has not. Obviously. Just as obviously, Emanuel's momma didn't raise no fools. She raised some hard@## brawlers, but no fools. So, it would not be unreasonable to expect that Rahm is fighting back to save his @##. Nor is it unreasonable to expect that he would take advantage of his media-handling skills to get his message out (Full disclosure: Over time, I've dealt with him. He plays reporters as well as anyone).

Why is it that they are so easily scorned and so effectively intimidated? Why is it that the common-sense wishes of the vast majorities of Americans are always suppressed as they trudge the middle-of-the-road...drowned out by the noisy bombs fired from the political fringes.

As the man in "The Graduate" said to Dustin Hoffman's character "I've got one word for you." Except, unlike the movie, it's not "Plastic" although that still would describe a lot of our leaders.

The word is "Passion". The extremists have it, the moderates don't. Until they do, the "Silent Majority" will continue to be drowned out by "Noisy Minority".

The big problem is that at first glance, "Passion" and "Moderate" appear to mutually exclusive concepts. But do they need to be?

Is it possible that someone might have an intense desire to improve society or is emotionally pumped by the Competition of Ideas"? Sure it is. Then why do those who enjoy the heat of intelligent jousting leave the battlefield to the simple-minded extremists?

What is so strange is how easily the huge Middle can be shoved to the sideline. Heat and light always trump substance. Reasoning together can be tedious.

So we watch as those in charge operate behind bunkers separated by barbed sound bites and shameless distortions from the fundamentalists on either side. Common sense is the No Man's Land (Yeah, I know, No PERSONS' Land).

Was that great Reality Television or what? What a gimmick: Stuff as many stuffy people into a stuffy room, let them say some stuff. Then, at the end if the season we can decide who is voted out. Actually, maybe it was a game show. Or situation comity.

Whatever. It was gripping TV. Chances are, though, there should be subtitles, because all of the contestants were talking in Washingtonspeak, an obsolete language, where most of the words translate into the exact opposite of what normal people think they mean.

This is just a small sample:

HUMANSPEAK. WASHINGTONSPEAK
Civility. Insincerity
Bipartisan. Obsolete
Discussion. Sound bites
Reconciliation. Irreconcilable Differences

That last one is the key. "Reconciliation" as in ramming Health Care through Congress using an arcane legislative process that allows Democrats, with their majority, to ignore the minority Republicans' squeals of outrage as they get steamrollered.
But before he can say "No More Mr. Nice Guy", Master-Of-Ceremonies Obama needed to be able to declare "Well I tried". Hence the Made-For-Tv-Stay-On-The-Script marathon.

Mindful of the public disgust over the political infection that paralyzes Washington, both sides needed to pretend they wanted to reason together. There are some obvious cures for what ails them, such as talking TO each other instead of AT but unfortunately, the "Competition of Ideas" is complicated. Simple minded phrase-mongering and gimmickry are scintillating so right now our leaders are sticking with "Bloodsport".

"Sorry guys,

We apologize"

"Sorry". By now we're sorry we ever heard the word. From Tiger, to Toyota to even DC City Councilman, former Mayor and non-stop delinquent Marion Barry, they're all "sorry"

After rigidly controlling its corporate and product reputation for decades, Toyota is suddenly as out of control as their deadly cars. But now the lid has been wrenched off of their Pandora's box which is spewing vile revelations...the kind that cause many to believe the company values profits over human life

At the behest of their patron Dick Cheney, John Yoo, now a law professor and Jay Bybee, who has become a federal judge called "Your Honor", enthusiastically stretched the limits with their memos that brushed aside human rights traditions and common decency with their twisted logic. They also swept away any pretense that the U-S was a country that, by definition, always stood/stands on the high road.

Either television's star is rising again or this is the final nova, exploding into the Internet black hole. It doesn't matter. Forget prime time. Stay glued to your sets for the Daytime Olympics. Or at least set your DVR.

The television spectacular began last Friday, as we cringed while watching that golf automaton mechanically recite the contrite words and phrases his advisers had programmed into him. It was eerily amazing to see how human he almost seemed to be.

On Tuesday, we can observe Toyota's dynastic leader and the members of his court while they do the same kind of thing as they try and prove that their conduct has not been INhuman. In this instance the charges are that what Whooziz did to a few dozen groupies, Toyota did to millions of customers.

In between the ritual apologies worthy of Brenda Lee, we can be entertained by the chorus of sound bites, delivered by opportunistic members of the Congressional committees, with their twaddles flapping in full outrage.

They will probably drown out any real truth, such as explanations about newly revealed documents. There are memos that seem to illustrate how the company's government relations people could thwart meaningful regulatory action that might have prevented so many deaths in their careening out-of-control cars.

Have you ever watched a football game, where the two sides continuously fumble and throw interceptions and blow their opportunities by repeatedly turning over to each other?

Have you ever sat through nine innings of inept baseball where both teams combine bad pitching and fielding errors to hand the lead back and forth?

Or the basketball game with airballs and traveling on both sides of the court? You get the idea. Bear with me, because as always, sports is an easy metaphor for that other team hot potato competition, Politiball. And I'm not even talking about Tiger Woods.

This is about the conservative comeback. Are you noticing how they've resumed a ferocious offense? This year's CPAC meeting is almost a celebration of the cheerleaders, as the old vets perform their old tricks.

There was Mitt Romney still trying to turn white bread into red meat. There was Dick Cheney, giving the same pro-torture, anti-Constitution speech. Add to the lineup the rookie, Marco Rubio, trying to outdo Cheney as he vies to become the new Senator from Guantanamo. All of them Palin comparison to Sarah, who wasn't there, but if she was paying attention she could learn a thing or two or more.

What a contrast to just a year ago when the liberals were running all over them, led by new President Barack Obama and his huge Democratic offensive line on Capitol Hill.

He and they made all their gains after the GOPs spent about four years showing how shoddy their team was, which was just the opportunity the Dems needed.

We have deteriorated. The old “Do Nothing Congress” has crumbled into “PLEASE Do Nothing” the best we can hope for is gridlock. The Olympic organizers in Vancouver must really envy Washington, not just for our snow, but our downhill slide.

Is it only now that Evan Bayh has seen the light of our darkness? He has spent his whole life in this mud pit. His father, Birch Bayh, was a Senate legend who was unseated by Dan Quayle, for crying out loud. So the kid has always known what he got into.

Fairly, or unfairly, Quayle was viewed as a lightweight, who not only knocked out a heavyweight, but went on to be Vice President.

Anybody who believes Sarah Palin could never be elected President should remember Dan Quayle, who was a heartbeat away. In fact, bitter Democrats point another “Son Of”, George Bush, the 2nd.

So don’t rule P
alin out, no matter how many think she’s an unqualified bubble head. Bayh, meanwhile, seems to have ruled himself out.

Imagine his frustration: He has always been a bit charisma-challenged. So he chose to cast himself as someone who moved deliberately. That simply doesn’t hack it. We live in a media-charged world where instant gratification is the only gratification,

"Cut costs at all costs". If there is any holy gospel in the corporate world, that's it. The god of profits is worshiped by the high priests, and highly paid by the way, who endlessly chant "Cut costs at all costs", or words to that effect.

Their salvation through destruction is camouflaged in expressions like "Efficiencies" and "Synergies" and "Workforce Reductions" and "Belt Tightening" and "Outsourcing" and "Consolidations" and a big one, "Mergers", where companies get larger and smaller at the same time.

They exact a terrible human price for their greed every time they toss millions into the rubble with one layoff after another. In the process, their once-successful businesses are ground into failure as their product and reputation earned over decades are frittered away leaving empt shells. .

The shell game is hardly unique to the US. It's played all over the world. The latest case in point is Toyota. It's still unclear when the auto manufacturer's legendary quality became a myth...a fiction that persisted as the reality of deterioration was obscured in the haze of image management.

Bigger Bigger Bigger" became the Toyota plan instead of "Better Better Better". The company kept spreading out and spreading thin, until it reached the breaking point. "Breaking Point" means being found out, inevitably getting caught when shoddiness and deception can no longer be hidden and come crashing down on the carefully cultivated "brand"

As for the consumers, so many companies in effect tell them to "Like it or lump it". Their claims of support for customers are bogus.

What better way to be snowbound than snuggling to watch me on "White House Chronicles" this Friday, Saturday or Sunday? Check local listings and experience the glow

There are at least three reasons the polls show the number of those who consider Sarah Palin unqualified for high office keeps growing.

*She's an acquired taste that hasn't been acquired yet

*She gets a relentless raw deal from the commie-pinko media

*She's unqualified

Whichever, Sarah Palin is one of those public personalities who makes everyone's blood boil. In disgust or adoration.

Without a doubt she has become the queen of the mainstream fringe, in fact she's become perhaps the leading symbol. Her cutie pie cattiness has overwhelmed Glenn Beck's irrational rants.

And before we dismiss Palin and her devout followers as some sort of splinter group, let's not for get that by comparison, her opponents are loosely packed sawdust...flying around every which way. Liberals and the others she scornfully calls "Elitists" are anything but elite when it comes to getting their acts together.

You haven't seen infighting until you watch psychotherapists and others who worship at the mental health altar, argue over the DSM, That's the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders...call it "Psychobabble for Professionals". With all the bickering over an updated version, these people could definitely use some counselling.

It could be called a "raging" controversy, but the experts want to change "Raging" to "Temper Dysregulation Disorder With Dysphoria". A bad temper is a disorder. Can't wait to see the pharmaceutical ads for that one.

Here's a question: Is "S and M" in the DSM? Yes indeedy. The authors probably don't say so, but it's widespread in the world of politics. What else would explain the motivation of those who engage in this tortuous process or those of us who voluntarily watch. What else would explain the cruelty of those who ridicule Sarah Palin for needing a hand? For that matter, who else would use such a shameless cheap shot line like that, other than someone who has what the DSM labels an "Antisocial Personality Disorder" But enough about me.

The publication could be a manual for politics: "Psychosis": A distorted view of reality. Check...along with the subcategory "Delusional" They both explain the current insane ranting about "Bipartisanship". It's a figment of the imagination people, It doesn't exist anymore! Get over it!

Let's be blunt. 173 Toyota dealers in the United States are plain and simply un-American. They are the members of their association that covers five southeastern states, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina, that have decided to pull their advertising from ABC affiliates in their coverage area. Why? Because ABC news has been giving what they've determined to be "excessive stories on the Toyota issues.". As I said, un-American.

They have decided they will use their economic clout to try and coerce the network into lightening up its investigation into the severe safety problems that have been discovered in their lethal product and suggestions of a coverup. These guys don't seem to understand that their advertising buy does not give them the right to blackmail a news medium's coverage.

They probably don't comprehend why they should be ashamed. The usual justification, when advertisers try to apply this kind of suppression is that they are not required to financially support anyone who is making their lives miserable. While that's true, it also demonstrates that they simply don't understand, or don't care enough about this country's free press values. It's sometimes and inconvenient bargain: If we are to have commercial TV as opposed to government-controlled media , sponsors are not allowed to substitute their own control.

No heart attack from digging out. That was a good thing but there was little to do but to spend the weekend mostly hunkered down inside. There were no newspapers, no delivery, but who missed them? We could read them just as easily on line. And then, those of us who didn't lose power had plenty of TV to help pass the time.

As the anchors and frozen reporters repeated ad nauseum what we already knew...that it sucked outside...it would not have been much of a surprise to see a crawl at the top or bottom of the screen informing that the meeting of the Global Warming Action Group had been cancelled. But the weather coverage was just one of the highlights.

Obviously the best television of all was provided by that entertainment superstar In Nashville. Of course that would be Sarah Palin, who brought her song-and-dance act to the Tea Party Departed-From Reality show. How fitting it was that she was at Opryland to perform her version of "Achy Breaky Heart. She called it"Hopey Changey Stuff"

Besides her relentless criticism of President Obama, she also made it clear she's after his job, telling Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday "It would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country".

An absurd idea? Not at all? A possible Palin presidency? You betcha. Scary. Happily there was more escapism on the telly.

There was this football thing, the Super Bowl. It was a terrific one at that...complete with the big upset win by the underdog Saints that came with such symbolism. We could all share in the "Laissez les bon temps roulez" post celebration by those who still struggle with the hard times in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.

The inspiring "Who Dat" team even made the embarrassing Who group bearable at halftime. Besides, the Super Bowl is way more than what we see on the field. There are the many contests within the contest, where the competition is brutal. Sponsors, for instance, pay ridiculous amounts of money in the fierce battle for attention between their commercials. It's hard to declare a winner this year, difficult to choose between the surprise of Tim Tebow's mother being tackled in that insipid anti-abortion ad or the astonishment of Leno, Letterman and Oprah in their Super promotional spot.

There are other things to talk about in DC than just the weather, and I will be tomorrow (Sunday) morning on MSNBC at 9:00 Eastern

All those who are focusing on the T-Party movement with all it's fervor for rattling the Washington cage this weekend, are missing the really important event that was the main focus in DC.

Of course that would be the big "P" party. For "Panda" of course. It too was a movement and it also involved a cage. This "P" party, along with a second one in Atlanta, was not just a sad farewell, but one hell of a metaphor.

The pandas you see were headed back to China. On loan and now called back. So many in this country had come to rely on them for so much and suddenly, reality, and Beijing, wrenched them away.

Tai Shan was not the only panda at the National Zoo. He leaves his parents behind, at least for a few months, until their lease also expires and we could also lose them. But Tai Shan was an American creation, or would it be better to say "PROcreation".

No matter. Even though the nation's capital went bonkers when he was born two-and-a-half years ago, so small he was nicknamed "Butterstick", and unleashing millions of "Aaaaaaawwwwww"s, he's out of here. He was always an American dream owned by China, which was now taking him back. Talk about the analogist's dream.

Back before a couple of conglomerates took over nearly all the stations with their vanilla play lists and avatar disc jockeys, radio used to have personalities who had, if you can imagine, PERSONALITIES.

They reflected the taste of their individual communities. Often bad taste, to be sure, but their banter and particularly the music they played reflected the characteristics and peculiarities of their metro areas. And no market was more peculiar than Washington.

It still is of course, and it's a crying shame the locally-based DJ's are not with us these days, what with the emergence of that singing group we hear constantly. You know the one I mean: The SPINNERS.

They're unique in that instead of being a choir, they sing to their choirs. They're always available for party gatherings with their party lines. Their biggest hit, "Message of the Day" is adapted to every situation. Any issue.

Like any other song and dance act they need their composers, and The Spinners have many of them. But none has gotten more prosperous and generated more publicity for himself than that Spinner guru Frank Luntz.

Full disclosure: Frank is a long time friend of mine and might continue to be in spite of what I'm saying here. We go back almost as far as the days when he was designing semantics for the 1994 long shot Republicans ...the ones who rolled over the Democrats and took over Congress.

16 years later, they are salivating at the possibility the Democrats will hand it to them once again and Frank is still writing their march music.

His stock and trade is lyrics. He's a memo machine, making tons of money showering corporate clients with insights into the words they should choose when making their case. For fun and the TV exposure he loves, he still loyally creates material for the Republican Spinners, the amen chorus that gave him his first big break.

They are salivating once again at the possibility the Democrats will hand it to them once again and Frank is still writing their march music.

You can be sure that some enterprising TV executive, somewhere, is going to take advantage of this. In about a year, the station's newscast, featuring the latest perky, sparkling anchorwoman, will open with "Here She Comes, Miss Amerrrrrrica"

Cue Caressa Cameron, who follows in the long line of beauty pageant contestants. who felt that looks and personality were all anyone needed to report on the tough issues of the day. Any fool can do it.

Journalism? Facts? Experience? Who needs them when you've got cute? What does it matter that the nation is drowning in a sea of ignorance, misinformation and oversimplification? Who cares if our clever operators are able to manipulate and distort issues with little chance of being exposed on yuck-it-up shows at 11 PM or 10:00, depending on your time zone?

Forget about that. Television's owners managers and cursed consultants couldn't care less about informing the public. The name of the game is ratings delivered by gimmicks and anchors who are 8 by 10 glossies.

Maybe popular thinking is wrong. It's entirely possible that when President Obama advocated doing away with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell the other night, the Joint Chiefs of Staff generals were not being stoic, they were stunned...too panicked to move. It wasn't military bearing, it was fear

Why? It's not as if the President was proposing that the services' Chaplain be required to perform gay marriages, simply that we get real about the present policy about the non-straight orientation in our armed forces, which is basically "If You Got It, Don't Flaunt It".

And speaking of Gay Marriage, why in the world is it even a controversy to say nothing of one that causes apoplexy like few others?

What is it that causes so many enraged people to make it their business to harshly judge what is none of their business...the private sex of anyone else? How could it be a button the demagogue can so easily push to such political advantage?

When you think about it, too many don't think, they react with all the fury their ignorance and intolerance can inflame.

Maybe this is a primitive aversion to any sex that doesn't produce babies. That is an explanation given for the marriage uproar. It's also an excuse that's riddled with inconsistency unless the opponents also want to ban the matrimony of couples who will be childless by choice or medical circumstance.

Now I get it. Now I understand why so many of the Supreme Court Justices are bitterly opposed to television cameras. They are worried people will see them make fools of themselves.

Samuel Alito probably learned an important life lesson on Wednesday night. The man definitely needs to stay out of sight. Because he just can't control himself.

He made that obvious by mouthing off after President Obama raised Cain about the corporate spending decision. While it wasn't Joe Wilson shouting "You Lie, visibly mumbling "Not true" is almost as bush league, which is probably apt since Alito was a Bush appointee.

People can argue whether the President's remarks were a bit tacky, under the circumstances, but hey, Justice Alito, if you can't take the heat, stay in your ivory tower.

There was much in common with the two events. One was in San Francisco, the other DC but they were similarly preceded by an inordinate amount of hype. They each had become ritual.

Jobs was a main focus in both cases. But where Steve Jobs often deals with long lines at his stores, for Barack Obama it’s long lines at the Unemployment offices.

The Apple CEO was presenting something new. The U-S Chief executive also had a new twist of two, but, for the most part, he was repackaging the same product he unveiled a year ago. A lot of it didn’t work, so he was trying to defend it just as more and more have decided they’re not buying.

Jobs was there after having obvious success with health care. Obama…well we all know that story. His reform is on life support.

The IPad unveiling revealed the latest from an organization that’s a highly effective well-organized machine always on the front edge of hip. The State of the Union? It was Washington. What more does one have to say? After just a year, the President seemed to have all his hipness drained out of him.

As always, it's called the "State of the Union" speech but if we're being real about this, it is the "State of Barack Obama's Presidency" address, or in legislative terminology the "Obama Recovery Act".

You get the picture. By the time he begins, we know what the president is going to say and who will be sitting in the upper deck listening.

Everyone thinks it's a big waste of time...certainly the TV networks who could be making more money on their OTHER reality shows. About the only good television in this one comes from the shots of the audience.

That's where we can watch the expressionless expressions on the Republicans' faces when Mr. Obama delivers his applause lines (The way things have been going his staff might have to pipe in some canned cheering.)

We might also be treated to some jeering from the GOP side of the aisle. For that matter, some of the hecklers might be Democrats.

It would probably mean a lot more if President Obama let it all hang out with a "TRUE State of the Union" address. This is how that might go:

"Mr. Vice President, Madame Speaker, my fellow Americans: Let's be honest. The State of the Union is in a sorry state. What UNION? No longer can we agree on much of anything.

"Let's take health care reform. How obvious does it need to be that our medical system is sliding straight down the tubes and taking the economy with it. But the few who benefit from the status quo found it remarkably easy to push the hot buttons of our most right wing instincts and distort every initiative.

"That sent each and every one of you Senators and Congresspeople scrambling for cover. 'Bold' is not a word that normally comes to mind when I think of you guys.

"'Selfish' is. As in 'Selfish Politics' as opposed to the national interest. (A shout is heard) Oh for crying out loud, shut up Joe. Who NEEDS your heckling. You too Michele Bachman.

I'm on MSNBC tomorrow morning (Wednesday) at 10:30, Eastern to preview the State of the Union speech

Never forget one of nature's immutable laws: "If Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining That Means Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud". At least that's the case when it comes to Washington's nature.

Let's take the thunderbolt from Boston that seems to have shocked the lethargic White House into the realization the voters' anger and fear require jolting action.

Beginning the day after the election that sent a Republican from Massachusetts, of all places, President Obama has switched into his "No More Mr. Nice Guy" mode. Gone is that Joe Cool stuff. The new Message of the Day is that it's time to turn up the temperature. Call that a Silver Lining.

Unfortunately, the sharper focus on the economy is clouded by the unavoidable suspicion it's more sound bite than anything else, more motion than movement toward truly unraveling the tangled mess that endangers the party in power.

We are being showered by a sudden flurry of proposals at the White House. Unfortunately some are widely considered to belong in the Snow Job category.

Let's take the tax credit for employers who hire people. That's an idea that was rejected last year because it would be so easy for the deceptive corporate types (pardon the redundancy) to manipulate. They could layoff workers, for example, just before re hiring them back to get their gift from the federal government. It was too hard too swallow the first time around, but it's being regurgitated again.

"DIVIDE AND CONQUER" POLITICS

One more thought on the Supreme Court ruling that corporations have the 1st Amendment right to free expression and are therefore able to spend on campaigns as if they were individuals.

It's a human right. Right? Actually that's the flaw in the decision: Humans have hearts. Corporations decidedly do not. As we've witnessed in the massive waves of layoffs to protect profits, in the despicable tactics of those in the big bank and finance companies, in the contemptible treatment of customers with health problems by the insurance companies, they are heart-LESS.

Their interest is not the common good. Their only concern is hoarding as much as they can for the few at the top of their executive garbage pile. Everyone else be damned.

And if any upstarts in government try to make any waves, the company lobbyist enforcers can calm the turbulence and drown the troublemakers with money that's now even easier to spread over the waters.

So what are the rest of us to do? There is only one answer. That would be to unite in outrage and organize mass pressure groups to scare the hell out of those in power.. to let those desperate to keep political office know that they will be thrown out if they don't pay attention to the true needs of their populations.

We've already seen it work with the "Tea Party" movement. The problem is that one is fueled largely by right-wing, simple-minded ignorance. It is organized by people who want to keep any meaningful protest DISorganized and maintain the status quo that pays them so well.

It's a classic "Divide and Conquer" strategy, backed by those who want to divide their riches with as few others as possible. To accomplish that they keep those fed up fighting among themselves, calling each other names, instead of coming together and channeling "I'm Mad as Hell and I'm Not Going to Take It Anymore" passion into meaningful action.

The Massachusetts election certainly represented that kind of valid resentment. The sad thing is the voters there may have added another person to the Senate who is part of the problem, someone who can be counted on to thwart desperately needed health care reform, for instance.

Ben Bernanke's reappointment to head the Fed looked for awhile like it might go down in flames because of the widespread bitter feelings about way the fat cats are once again gobbling public trillions, while everyone else starves.

I'm on "White House Chronicles", this Friday, Saturday and/or Sunday. Check local listings.

THE SUPREME POLITICAL COMMERCIALS

At least the Supremes latest hit is a blow for honesty. The 5-4 ruling that corporations (and unions) can directly spend their mega bucks for the ads that can distort the elections means they can have their way without having to jump through all the phony hoops they had to to maintain the pretense they weren't doing that anyway.

What a victory for the Republicans. On those rare occasions that the Democrats don't just hand them an election, like the freebie they gave away in Massachusetts, the GOP can buy it, now that there is easier access to the coffers of their patrons. They'll get whatever they need simply by reminding them how they always protect their interests.

For those attempting to keep the rich and powerful in line, it will be like herding fat cats, but at least the record will be set straight. The conservatives on the high court prevailed with the ruling that these artificial restrictions on campaign finance violated the Oligarchs' First Amendment Free Speech rights.

Never mind the argument it was really their Bought-and-Paid-For rights. The long long debate is over. So it's time to contemplate the commercials the different companies will create so they can sell the gullible voters the same way they do when they hustle their products.

Can you see the spots now? Geico cavemen will endorse those whose policies hearken back to the Stone Age.

Apparently, after his Massachusetts humiliation, President Obama has seen the light and he's heading back to the future...back to 1992 and that mantra "It's the Economy Stupid".

His peeps aren't saying so, but it looks like they're about jettison health care and cave, after telling us that comprehensive reform was vital to the nation and engaging the opposition in a brutal political war.

Now, however they want to couch it, it appears they're preparing to beat a hasty retreat, looking for some face-saving way out while leaving the millions of uninsured to fend for themselves.

Sure they got their butts kicked Tuesday and they truly do need to be much much less "stupid" about the economy. But should that mean they should abandon health care as a lost cause. Why not take one last, principled stand? Instead of looking for an easy way out of their war with the Republicans, why not take it to them?

Let us not forget that even with their carelessness and ineptitude in
blowing Massachusetts and their Senate super majority with it, Democrats will continue to have their plain old regular one. It'll still be substantial,59 to 41, meaning that they can pass a bill once it comes to a vote.

They have tons of wiggle room. Even if nine defect, Vice President Biden can cast the tiebreaker. This means they can tell the joe Liebermans and Ben Nelsons exactly where they can stick their outlandish demands.

A big test would be whether trembling House and Senate Democrats were up to this fight and even capable of agreeing on a single piece of legislation that actually accomplishes something. The alternative would be to scatter as they encounter more GOP lockstep opposition.

For the sake of discussion, let's assume House leaders can herd their cats long enough to pass the newly reconciled bill. Then it's on to
the Senate.

It's safe to assume that all of the Republicans there, including the new guy, will continue to dig in their heels. That means Democrats cannot get to the magic number of 60 for Cloture, which means they cannot stop debate. So LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!

It'll be time for the aforementioned Majority to call the aforementioned Minority's bluff. If they do the American people can witness a grotesque honest-to-God Filibuster where the opposition tries to talk the legislation to death, or each other.

Taking full advantage of the absurd Senate rules that the Segregationists
utilized in times past, the GOPs would block final consideration with floor speeches and parliamentary tactics. The Democrats would have to match them bluster-for-bluster.

It would be a Bombast Marathon...droning around the clock, seven days a week where the esteemed members could talk till they dropped, or until they realized that the people had decided they were a bunch of pompous out-of-touch buffoons.

Actually, they already had that kind of opinion of the Democrats after watching all their sleazy wheeling-and-dealing to create a passable health care bill. A final battle could at least expose the Republicans to some of the scorn.

Maybe, just maybe, they would blink. In that case, Health Care would get its up-or-down after nearly a year's warfare that revealed how UN-united the United States can be.

As I get directions from my car’s GPS, I often wonder what the turn-by-turn instructions would be like if the woman inside the device had emotional issues like:

Narcissism: “I don’t care which way you turn, It’s all about me” (A lot of us TV types own this one).

Then there’s

Multiple Personality Disorder: “Turn left! Turn right! Go straight! Go back!”

Let’s not forget

Clinical Depression: “It doesn’t matter which way you go, you’re not going to get where you want to anyway”

Which finally gets me to the point; which is the Massachusetts election which embarrassing coincides with the one year anniversary of the Obama presidency. As in why did anyone bother to hope things would be different?

Depressives are ecstatic. Nothing is more exhilarating than the words “I TOLD you so!!” It has taken exactly one year for them to be joined in despair by everyone in the Democratic party who believed there would be change they could believe in. They’re feeling might SHORT-changed about now.

Depending on their level of militancy, issues, the President has either overplayed or underplayed the party’s agenda right into the toilet.

Their Washington anniversary party has been cancelled because word got out about another gate crasher. This one is not one of the Salahis or Carlos Allen. His name is Scott Brown.

Unlike the others he has an invitation, provided by the people of Massachusetts to come here and rain on the Obama parade, which will now come to a complete halt.

They had met with the current occupant in their old digs in the Oval office Saturday. After that, there they were on five of the Washington Sunday Game shows…the usual drill.

Bill Clinton and George Bush the Younger are singing the same tune at the behest of the latest leader of the band. They’re bringing the ultimate prestige of their exclusive Chief Executives Club to the crisis in Haiti at the behest of the newest member, Barack Obama.

They’ll be very visible careening to and fro, and taking advantage, behind-the-scenes, of their unique connections to their old heads-of state buddies as well as their big-money groupies.

It probably would take something like an earthquake to get these two guys together. Other than being former leaders of the free world, they don’t really have a lot in common. That, and the fact they’re both sometime-ardent political enemies of Obama.

But he should give them plenty to gossip about when they fill the awkward gaps in conversation while they are forced together in various Green Rooms and private jets.

“It was bound to happen”. Bush begins the small talk. “Barack started out as King of the World, just a year ago. It seemed like everybody was united, celebrating his historic accomplishment”

“Well, George,” says Clinton, “I recall that you didn’t have that experience. At least half the country felt you had stolen the election in Florida. I personally didn’t care, because I thought that Al Gore was a wooden twit. But as I glumly stood on your inauguration stand, I sure didn’t look out on a sea of proud Americans the way Barack Obama did”

You gotta hand it to those executives of TV stations in and around Massachusetts. Somehow, they have managed to rake in extra millions of dollars in political ads.

Panicky Democrats and their supporters are suddenly pumping in the big bucks to rescue a Senate race that was considered such a forgone victory for their party less than a month ago.

Republicans are doing the same thing as they smell blood in the Bay State waters, and a chance to hugely embarrass the Dems where it is deep blue, a wrenching mortification considering they would be taking away the seat that was Edward Kennedy's for 47 years until his death last August.

In addition, a GOP victory would likely mean the defeat of health care reform, a humiliation that could weaken the Presidency of Barrack Obama or at the very least fire up the Republican steam rollers as they try and flatten the Democrats in November. Right now a Republican takeover in either house of Congress looks highly unlikely. But then, so did the possibility of the Democrats blowing the Massachusetts special election.

For TV stations, it's all good. The higher stakes mean wall-to-wall campaign ads...paid advertising. For that matter all media will benefit, even the newspapers that are left.

Wow! Let’s hear it for Michael Chertoff!! The former Homeland Security appears on the same day in the “Corrections” boxes of both “papers-of-record”, the New York Times and Washington Post.

Let’s see: After a lot of criticism that stories about Chertoff’s stated support for full body scanners neglected to mention he now represents a company that manufactures the peeping Tom devices, the Times states “That connection should have been noted in the articles”

Let’s remember how Albert Einstein defined insanity: ” Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”. It doesn’t take an Einstein to surmise that as long-standing champions of free market anarchy, Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers, the Obama administration’s main financial policy guys, are suddenly the best ones to apply effective controls.

The Post, meanwhile, had a “Clarification” since it had already reported the business relationship. It self-flaggelated for not pointing out the Chertoff Group had “previously disclosed” it.

Having trouble following all this? Don’t we all. The never-ending incestuous relationship between ex-regulators and regulatees is a blur. And there’s not much we can do to end it, or to answer doubters who worry that officeholders may tailor their policies to benefit prospective employers once the government gig is over.

There is probably no Constitutional way to eliminate all the detours around any pitiful barriers erected in this outbound lane to private sector prosperity. HOWEVER: There is a way to shut down the parts of the two-way-street that are incoming.

A President simply should not appoint his top economic people, for instance, from the ranks of those who enthusiastically helped create the disastrous mess they are now put in place to clean up. Why would they suddenly come up with regulations they successfully thwarted for their entire professional lives.

The President's image purveyors were quick to remind us yesterday that he spent a very long day bouncing between endless White House meetings. His Chief Executive concentration was constantly switched back and forth from the huge obstacles still confronting a final push for Health Care legislation and, of course, the unimaginable disaster in Haiti.

Surely, as he shuffled from one room to the other, he could not ignore the context, the relative magnitude of each. Maybe we should all take a moment to think about that.

It's worth comparing the miseries of health care and the other economic inequities in the United States to catastrophe in a nearby country where thousands upon thousands have died, where maybe millions walk around desperately missing the miseries that are part of their everyday existence. At least their struggles were part of a routine that has literally been crushed and swallowed up by uncontrollable forces.

Decent health care? Few Haitians had it in normal circumstances...they died from diarrhea and other scourges we don't even think about here. Now, what little treatment and sanitation infrastructure there was, is obliterated. The injured, the weakened, can only be left to die in the streets by dazed passersby who are helpless.

As terrible as the lives of so many medically deprived are left by the unequally distributed system is here and as truly important as it is to make the first paltry improvements, none of that compares to the unspeakable desperation and deprivation in Port-Au-Prince.

Perhaps it occurred to others that Washington provided another context on Tuesday. How cynically lucky the major bankers were. The first hearings, where they had the audacity to condescendingly defend their gross compensation and minimize their colossal business mistakes, got little of the scornful attention they deserved.

Maybe this is the year. After all the decades of lip-service to the idea of third party or independent candidates, perhaps the time has come. Heaven knows the Democrats and Republicans have done their part to make the idea appealing.

The two major parties have way more in common than their loyalists would like to admit. There is jealousy, dogmatic infighting, downright buffoonery. Then we have egotistical turf battles, corruption, incompetence and general chaos. And let's not forget the lineup of mediocre or worse hacks the Big Two select as candidates. For those who celebrate bi-partisanship, there is plenty of it.

For those non-partisans, there is frequently little to do but look on in disgust and hold their noses when they vote. Or vote "No" by staying home.

Think what you will about President Obama. As Candidate Obama he seemed to offer something new. Whether he has lived up to his promise is the subject of intense debate these days with many feeling like they were had.

In any case, he's not on any ballots this year. Instead, its hundreds of lesser lights from the party organizations, offering what all-too-many consider to be dismal choices...the bore versus the extremist, the bland versus the nutcase.

No wonder large percentages reject The Dem and Gop labels. They are unwilling to choose between parties which have demonstrated that about all they're good at is fundraising.

Maybe it's gotten obvious enough that alternatives would have a fighting chance. The self-proclaimed "Independents" might actually be able to overcome the Big Two's organized money machines. They could also find supporters with the wherewithal and expertise to successfully challenge the unfair monopolistic legal obstacles that often make it so hard for an outsider to take on the entrenched ballot system.

Sometimes its interesting to watch controversy careen in unexpected directions. The clumsy Harry Reid comments on race and Barack Obama are a case in point.

On day one the story was that Reid's favorable description of Obama as "light-skinned" was moronic. But now for all the liberal thinkers in the political and media world, even those who regularly raise the white bigotry alarms, the message of the day is that Reid, in his awkward way, was simply telling the truth: Light skin trumps dark.

Who knew this colorism hierarchy even had a name? It's called a "Pigmentocracy", which makes sense, I suppose. It's present not only between races but within.

Among blacks, we're told, lighter is better. We accept that as a given, which is the collective tenor of the Reid Reports-Day Two.

Here's an idea for Day Three. Shouldn't there be a discussion about the unfairness of all this? After all, in the same way that we condemn whites who look down on all people of color, shouldn't we also reject those non-whites who do the same thing to people of MORE color?

I'm on MSNBC tomorrow morning (Tuesday), at 10:30, Eastern

Experience is constantly given short shrift. All too often, the ones who don't have it belittle the value of life and work's hard lessons.

But sometimes those who have accumulated them haven't learned as much as they should. The comments by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2008 that Barack Obama would succeed because he was "light-skinned" with "no Negro dialect" are a case in point.

His remarks were disclosed in an about-to-be-released new book "Game Change", by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. Once they became public, Reid immediately apologized profusely, but he's not the only offender.

Then candidate Joe Biden's description of Obama as "An African-American who is articulate and bright and clean..." would certainly fit the bill. So would the barbs from former President Bill Clinton during the campaign that caused such an uproar for suggestions of bigotry.

All reflect the awkwardness with race that afflicts whites from the last generation who witnessed and supported the wrenching transition for blacks from oppression part way to mainstream inclusion.

By the way, the comparisons between the opinion expressed by Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid and a line that resulted in the downfall of Republican Leader Trent Lott in 2002 are partisan nonsense.

Let's recall that Lott was bemoaning the fact that Strom Thurmond hadn't been elected President when Thurmond ran in 1948, as an arch-segregationist. Reid was complimenting the African-American who was running for President, in a remarkably clumsy fashion, to be sure. But he didn't seem to be pining for the good old days of American apartheid in the way Lott seemed to be.

Still he and all those who took part in the movement, or at least didn't stand in the way, continue to struggle with nuanced stereotypes and misunderstandings that were considered fact just a few decades ago.

So there was President Obama with his stern face on, telling the world still again that the system failed, trying to assure one and all he is serious "...less interested in placing blame than I am in correcting these mistakes".

But isn't a little blame in order? The one thing the "Underwear Bomber" accomplished with his inept attempt to cause calamity is that his blundering was easily matched by those whose job it is to see these kinds of things coming. They are, after all in charge of the sprawling, gazillion dollars apparatus that is supposed to "connect the dots".

By now, are we all tired of that expression "Connect the Dots"?. We get it, there was an inexcusable disconnect in the wild and wacky world of national security.

But let's use the cliche to make an even more expansive point. Let's connect the dots about the way our overseers throughout government fail in that regard, and not only that, manage to stick around or even get promoted...just like in private business.

Regrettably, the grossly ineffective at the top of the public sector can cause widespread disaster with their mismanagement. Not only are we witnessing that here but clearly it was the case with our financial collapse.

The very people who should have seen the obvious signs of massive greedy carelessness and bubble bursting ahead have not only escaped being called to account for their failures, they are now in charge of the agencies that are supposed to make things right.

The General Motors people have to cringe every time they hear the term "Cadillac Insurance". After all, it is only because of taxpayer billions that GM has so far avoided being flushed down the toilet bowl of history. The last thing the company needs is being associated with the health insurance corporations who make up one of the few industries held in more contempt than theirs.

But while the customers of the auto companies were able to get government money in the "Cash for Clunkers" program, the President and the Senate want to tax those policyholders who get a slightly higher quality clunker in these so-called "Cadillac" plans.

Never mind that the idea is the very one about which candidate Barack Obama ripped apart candidate John McCain. Now President Obama and the Senate Democrats are ripping it off because heaven forbid they'd otherwise have to finance some of the health care reforms with a higher levy on the wealthy.

Sometimes it's really hard to tell these guys apart from the Republicans. The difference is that the GOP makes no bones about being a tax haven for the rich. The Democrats like to pretend they represent the little guy.

So why do so many of them resist a surcharge on millionaires to make sure everyone has access to what should be an inherent right to adequate medical treatment?

I have always resolved that I’d never write about my dog. Too self-indulgent, to say nothing of too chiche-ish. So let’s consider this the first resolution I’m breaking in the new year.

It’s OK though. This is about his obvious similarity to Congress. Because, all you have to do is offer members a few scraps and he or she will do whatever you want.

It explains how the loud snarling about of health care reform has been reduced to a whimper. It also makes it clear that financial regulation will have most its teeth removed…the same for Cap and Trade…anything that can threaten those who control that kibble we know as campaign contributions.

It is true a few members of a breed in the House and Senate are alpha dogs so powerful they can turn up their noses at these tidbits in disdain. They are the such well established leaders they only follow their beliefs.

Jim DeMint may have become one of those 50 monkeys at a typewriter who has actually come up with something. Usually, he just spews out garbled slime that serves no other purpose than to add to the highly partisan incoherence. This time, he may have landed on a valid target...Errol Southers.

As galling as it may be, perhaps he's actually correct when he says there should be no rush, that Senators need to think a little bit longer before they decide whether to confirm Southers as the best person to head the Transportation Security Agency. Not that he had nailed the correct reasons. Senator DeMint's motivation, after all, was blatant obstructionism of the most Republican kind. He claimed it had to do with the possibility that Southers might allow TSA employes to unionize, which, to the GOP base, is akin to Satanism.

But now, thanks to the Washington Post, we are reminded that Southers' past provides a bona fide excuse to give DeMint's fellow Senators pause. Southers admits that a long time ago, 20 years, in fact, that as an FBI Agent, he collected some background police data on his estranged wife's boyfriend.

Granted two decades is way in the past. And granted, there were extenuating circumstances and granted. Southers owned up to it then and now, and took his punishment at the time. Still, this is more than a commonplace egregious offense. A law enforcement officer, sneaking unauthorized peeks into into confidential information, for any purpose other than utmost official necessity is, probably beyond, as the Catholics would put it, a Mortal Sin. This is right down there in the vicinity of Original Sin.

Don't you get a kick out of us? Isn't it cute how we pretend we have any clue whatsoever how the 2010 mid-term elections will go?

By definition we cannot predict the surprises that will intercede in the next 11 months. They could very well dominate the agenda as the voters' "be-all-end-alls" by the time November rolls around when they decide between their Congressional and statehouse candidates and, just as importantly, the two parties.

Still, it's the end of the year. Wherever we turn someone has come up with a List. Except me. If I don't come with something I'll lose my Pundit Permit. We can't have that, now can we? So to prevent anything of the sort, let's catalogue some of the invective we can expect that Republicans and Democrats will try and use to heap scorn on each other when they inevitably go more and more negative to try to make their followers give a damn.

Watch me try to be lucid on MSNBC Friday morning at 7:00 and 11:00 AM Eastern and start your New Year off wrong.

So let's get this straight: Federal officials say they had responded to modesty concerns by blurring out the images of those airport security devices that see beneath a traveler's clothing.

But doesn't that also defeat the purpose of these "Body Scanners", which is to detect what danger might be hidden under the layers...not to obscure them?

Don't you just hate it that those troublesome privacy advocates raise a ruckus about the obvious potential for abuse and embarrassment? They get in the way of those who only want to protect us from dangerous terrorist lunatics.

Well here's another idea that might enhance that effort. Let's work on the ridiculous incompetence that pervades the ranks of those who have mismanaged their billions of dollars and near authoritarian powers.

For starters, we probably should no longer accept as a given that their Orwellian computer networks don't communicate with each other, unless it is to mistakenly list innocent people on their watch lists. Why should that be something that we tolerate?

It's still another "Cool Hand Luke" situation. As in "What we have" is a "Failure to Communicate". Or as our cool hand President prefers to call it "A Systemic Failure".

The problem with that description is it would require some sort of "system". A typical dictionary defines "system" as "...an instrumentality that combines interrelated interacting artifacts designed to work as a coherent entity".

The problem is that word "coherent". You can't have coherence if one part doesn't communicate with the other. What you have is chaos which is all too easy for deadly dangerous maniacs to exploit.

Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and all the rest, need to watch their backs, as they make their thinly disguised runs for their party's presidential nomination (make that "anorexically disguised). While they might present themselves as the champions of Dark Ages Republicans there is someone else out there who personifies everything the national GOP stands for. It can be completely summed up in three words: "Destroy Obama's Presidency".

The leader of that band is not Palin nor Gingrich, shameless partisans though they may be. The Obstructionist-in-Chief title goes to Jim DeMint, R (of course), South Carolina. You had probably figured that out, now hadn't you?.

This is the guy, after all, who had summed up his view of health care reform as nothing more than an opportunity to severely weaken the President. That's it. He made no bones about it. His exact words were "If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”

As much as that endeared him to the Base's basest instincts, Jim DeMint wasn't about to rest on those laurels. After all, almost no Republican is backing health care reform. So DeMint realizes he must always come up with other ways to stand out by standing in the way. And he has found quite a few.

C-Span is showing that panel of top financial reporters I moderated at UVa. Next 4:15 PM today (Tuesday) on CSPAN2, but many repeats on all its networks

T'is the days after Christmas and all through the nation,
Too many still face unemployed desperation.

The contrived cheer of yuletide, it could not make thing rosier,
In the home of the family that's facing foreclosure.

After gifts and a meal that they got from some charity,
Grim fears of the future rushed back with new clarity.

We must not allow this season's disguise,
To cover shamed bleakness in so many's lives.

"Seasons greetings", whatever, can be hard to swallow
For those millions whose prospects are nothing but hollow.

I'm on "White House Chronicles" this weekend, starting tonight (Friday) depending on the station. Check local listings.

We need to cut Michael Steele some slack.. If someone is willing to pay him big bucks to make a speech, he'd be a fool to say no. True, he has gotten into trouble about some of the dopey things he's said, but he may as well make some money for them.

It's not that there's a conflict of interest, Democrats, in particular should realize that. They constantly charge that GOP chairman Steele heads a party that always favors the wealthy...those who can afford to pay for his words of wisdom.

Oh yeah, full disclosure: I give a paid speech once in awhile, would love to make more. Mine aren't a conflict of interest either. What interest?

But we're talking about Michael Steele. He already gives his critics plenty to complain about. Some of his statements, for instance, as party Chair, about health care, and other issues, have been widely considered to be emotional panderings, exaggerations and outright, shameless distortions.

He has time and again gotten in trouble with his base when he has shot from the hip and hit himself. But again, if someone wants to shell out thousands to hear him say something outrageous, why should anyone complain.

Remember the late George Carlin's routine where the "Hippy Dippy Weatherman" reports that radar pinpoints a line of thundershowers? He goes on to say that radar also shows Russian missiles heading our way "So don't sweat the thundershowers".

This is similar. There are urgent predictions that unless there is meaningful health care reform, the nation will soon face a medical emergency.

But there are also dire warnings that doing too-little-too-late about global warming will mean the world will be overrun both by floods and drought. So, as our prophet George Carlin might have said, Don't sweat health care.

The good news is these alarms is only based on the belief our politicians are unable or unwilling to make the tough, unselfish decisions needed to save the future. The bad news is that appears to be a valid premise.

As fundamentally important as it is the global warming drama is still not worth watching. Right now the best show in town features our esteemed leaders thrashing around on health care.

On one side, we have Republicans. Their only motivation is taking down President Obama by sabotaging any reform, no matter how urgently its needed to turn back a national crisis. Now we can witness them throwing childish tantrums because they haven't been entirely successful. So far

On the other we have the Democrats, so desperate to avoid humiliating defeat that they make devilish deals just to come up with something, anything, they can pass and pass off as health care reform.

Remember during the early primaries when the moderator would present some question and ask the gaggle of candidates for a demeaning show of hands? Well, not to be outdone in the Asinine department let's have another one.

How many have gotten seasonal cards that include a note from the senders chronicling their families' past year? Raise those hands.

Ah. Most of you. Now. How many welcome those personal reports? It looks like about half of you. Which is no surprise. Some love them, some consider them way more than they want to know.

Since most didn't get a card from the Obamas this year, we can only wonder if they included a perky report to fill in everyone who thought they had dropped out of sight and wondered what was going on in their lives:

"Michelle, Malia, Sasha and I send Seasons Greetings and a wish that you enjoy a prosperous New Year, in contrast to the desperation you've been experiencing.

In contrast to your months and months of unemployment and the foreclosure, I took on a new job and the entire family moved into a new house.

It's beautiful, although it's a little over-decorated. On the plus-side it does have a mother-in-law suite which has come in handy, and I use one of the rooms as a home office.

Telecommuting is great particularly since I still get to travel a lot. What I don't understand is why everyone complains about the Washington area traffic jams. Whenever any of us takes a drive, we just zip right to our destination.

Obviously the first decision had to do with our daughters education. We weren't about to expose them to the public system. Obviously. So it came down to home or private schooling.

Our biggest concern was the socialization. Would the girls be denied the necessary interaction with other children from a diverse background? Finally we decided to risk it and take our chances with a private education. Already they have both begun the networking that will be so valuable later in life.

There are certain cliches that can get really really irritating. It's a condition called Platitudinous Badditudinous Attitudinous and it flares up each and every time someone says "We shouldn't make the perfect the enemy of the good". Some sort of ridicule is in order, like maybe a "Kick me" sign.

We usually hear it these days from those trying to gut health care reform, leaving an almost empty shell. Offender also include or Democratic leaders who are desperately trying to avoid the embarrassment of outright defeat which would probably devastate their party to say nothing of its President.

So they are bargaining away, trying to protect themselves by caving in to each and every special interest group but one, the American people. In particular, they are frittering away the changes that would force the insurance companies to act responsibly.

As we approach the final days after a year of false hopes and bitter debate we find the Senate bargainers all too willing to jettison the best chances to create competition in the industry, particularly the Public Option.

Do you want a bureaucrat to get between you and your doctor?” It’s the mantra of Republicans and other conservatives and it is effective.

It is the chant that can whip up a crowd against any sort of health care public option or any change for that matter. Never mind the reality that bureaucrats already get between you and your doctor…insurance company bureaucrats, that war cry is a blood boiling banality.

There is no cure for knee jerk which is the condition that reflexively kicks away at anything that can be called “Socialism”… a threat to free enterprise and the market system. Even so, let’s take the extremists to their logical extreme. Here are a few other slogans for the frenzied to shout at the next Tea Party.

How about “Do you want a bureaucratic dispatcher to get between you and your police or fireman?” What about your garbage collector? That’s appropriate because this distortion of free enterprise is pure garbage.

Of course we want the government to handle these services. All but the fringiest libertarian wants everyone’s trash picked up and is willing to pay a tax for that, if for no other reason than someone else’s uncollected slop can contaminate his or her preciously private property.

I'm moderating a panel of top financial reporters Thursday night at 8:00 at UVa. It's being covered by CSPAN. No idea when it will be on television.

Those who are not sports fans will probably not know the term "BCS", or that it means Bowl Championship Series, or that it is highly controversial because it chooses a national football champion without the kind of playoff elimination games one finds in other major sports. Now you know.

Even though I am among those critics, it has become apparent that BCS should stand for "Ban Congressional Silliness". After all, what earthly reason is there for the members of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection to get into the act by passing a bill and sending it further along the legislative process that would, and I quote "...prohibit, as an unfair and deceptive act or practice, the promotion, marketing, and advertising of any post- season NCAA Division I football game as a national championship game unless such game is the culmination of a fair and equitable playoff system."

In other words, the 30 or so members of this subcommittee apparently believe that Congress has enough room in its schedule, even with historic health care reform reaching crunch time, even with the economy tanking, even with Afghanistan and Iraq, even with all that and more, still, there is room to meddle in intercollegiate athletics.

You know we laugh when somebody says "Show Business Is My Life"? It's a joke. Right?

Perhaps it is, but it's not funny. That's because we live in an age of image making and media manipulation where much of Life is truly show biz. Reality is what the PR people tell us it is , and their superstar clients are made up super humans.

They thrive because we desperately want to have heroes. We want to believe in someone, whether it's a politician, an athlete, a business genius, or something, like say, a Secret Service. And when we find that these false idols are as weak and fallible as the rest of us, we turn on them with the vengeance of someone who feels completely betrayed and with the delight we all enjoy in watching the high and mighty knocked down to our level.

That explains the nasty intensity of the Tiger Woods ridicule. He had made his billion not by being the greatest golfer ever, which he is, and not even because he symbolized racial progress in a sport that still conjures up an image, fair or not, of fat white guys riding around the greens of exclusionary country clubs.

No, he was on his pedestal because he was smart enough to take the advice of those who create carefully programmed avatars who appear to be mythical figures.

Suddenly the curtain is forced apart and we find out that Tiger Woods is just one of us, except that none of us can expect to be the lead story on "Entertainment Tonight" for days on end.

When I was off chasing some grueling or even dangerous story, like say, a shooting war, I had a standard response for anyone who complained: "It sure as hell beats covering some Congressional committee". That was a heartfelt as could be.

After sitting through hundreds upon hundreds of Senate and House hearings, I long ago concluded that almost all of them were nothing more than excuses for the members to showboat and try to get on TV by competing for the "Sound bite of the Day Award" There are certainly many exceptions...Watergate or currently the numerous substantive encounters on health care or our stolen economy.

Then there's my all-time personal favorites the bizzaro Clarence Thomas hearings. There is nothing like discussing "pubic hairs on a Coke can" to get the juices flowing.

But too many are like this latest mundane round about the White House gate crashers. What possible value do they have? What will they uncover that adds to the investigations underway by the embarrassed White House and Secret Service? Who can blame the Salahis for refusing to show up? Is there anything sillier?

Well, yes there is. That would be the refusal by social secretary Desirée Rogers to face questions. Actually, what's dumb is the reason given by the administration. She has been instructed not to appear, so we are told, because it would violate the Separation of Powers.

No, I am not making that up. The administration argues that her testimony, in effect, would violate Executive Privilege, the doctrine, as we all know, that is supposed to keep critical advice to the President confidential, so those who give it can be candid and not inhibited by public disclosure.

Does that include the Social Secretary? Does this doctrine cover any embarrassment to the members of the First Family and their court. Does it extend to the gardeners who tend Mrs. Obama's garden. That's silly. Right? Of course it is.

Let's dispense with the cheap shot first: The Salahis were not invited to the White House Summit on jobs.

Unfortunately, neither were the unemployed, not in any meaningful way. True, there is no shortage of concerned speeches, including one by the Concerned-Speechmaker-in-Chief, addressing a collection of economists and other academics, and politicians , of course, along with representatives from business, mainly small.

They are all hand-wringing over the outrage of an economy turning upward while the downtrodden unemployed get more numerous and more desperate.

But all they do is nibble around the edges with platitudes instead of offering real solutions, which would be laws and policies that force the prosperous who are prospering again to share their prosperity with those they have victimized.

It is galling that an administration and a Democratic party that purport to represent common people have done so little to get them back on their feet. The protestations that their actions prevented the economy from falling into the abyss. That has little meaning to the millions whose lives are in that abyss, while the select few, with massive government help, are able to step on their backs as they scramble out.

My 10:30 AM MSNBC segment on this Wednesday has been blown away by overriding news.

I'm on MSNBC this morning (Wednesday)...scheduled for 10:30, Eastern.

An apparently uninvited couple waltzes past what we have always been told is an impenetrable human wall against danger to the President.

We may have already forgotten forget the failures a few months ago in what we had grown up believing were the fail-safe procedures to prevent cataclysmic disaster with our nuclear arsenal. Remember the cross country B-52 flight of missiles across the country that were never supposed to be armed over the United States but were? Or the theft of a device carrying launch codes, or the Minuteman Three crew members caught sleeping near their silo duty posts?

Is it any wonder, we are skeptical of any assurance we get these days? "The H1N1 Vaccine is Perfectly Safe", "Uncontaminated Food""You Can Afford That House", "Customer Satisfaction" "Free Checking", "Mission Accomplished", "Change You Can Believe In" and so on and so on.

Given the number of blunders and unkept promises by so many who insist we trust them, it is easy to understand why the relentless examples of false hope and incompetence leave any sane person wavering between skepticism and cynicism.

The problem is this broken faith is fertile ground for INsane Conspiracy Theories and all the other scams promoted by hustlers who gain riches and prominence as they target all of us who are looking for simple answers in sinister plots.

“WHAT AN INCREDIBLE NIGHT THIS WILL BE!!!”

Rush Limbaugh is beside himself. He’s the moderator of the first GOP presidential debate of 2012, carried exclusively on Fox News Channel. What a highly charged confrontation we can expect! Who would have known four years ago that the candidates would include Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Joe Wilson, Michelle Bachmann, Joe the Plumber, Michael Steele, what-his-name…oh yeah…Mitt Romney, the guy who looks like an anchor-man, and the front-runner, New Jersey Senator Lou Dobbs, who never did look like one.

They have already marched onto the stage. There was a brief scuffle as they each lurched to the far right, but things have settled down now. ALL of them are staking out the same extreme position. It’s not hard to understand. Ever since that upstate New York Congressional loss, no Republican wants to be in the middle. Not the road, not the stage. Not anything.

Limbaugh continues to speak:

“WE WILL BE JOINED IN THE QUESTIONING BY ANN COULTER AND GLENN BECK”

(Actually the choice of Beck had created some real hard feelings at Fox News, where Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly argued they were Lunatic Fringe before Lunatic Fringe was cool.)

(Actually that was not the only back-story. Beck was upset that Fox had decided Limbaugh should moderate instead of him. After all, had considered running for President himself. but angrily gave up the idea when officials rejected his idea that the nominating convention be replaced by a Tea Party).

“THE DISCUSSION WILL BE DIVIDED INTO SPECIFIC SEGMENTS:

“FIRST ‘OBAMACARE. WHY IT WILL KILL OLD PEOPLE AND GET BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR DOCTOR’

“NEXT: ‘THOSE CURSED MEXICANS’ WHY WE MUST SHOOT AT ANYONE WHO TRIED TO CROSS OUR SOUTHERN BORDER’

SENATOR DOBBS HAS ALREADY ASKED TO GO FIRST ON THAT ONE AND HAS AGREED NOT TO PARTICIPATE IN ANY OF THE OTHER SEGMENTS, SINCE IMMIGRATION IS ALL HE EVER TALKS ABOUT..

I'm sorry. I can't contain myself. I have to write about this:

It is probably not true that when President Obama announces Tuesday he'll be ordering thousands more Americans to Afghanistan, the first two to go will be the couple that crashed the White House State Dinner. But there are probably some people here who would applaud the idea.

Let's face it, Tareq and Michaele Salahi have left a lot of powerful figures bent out of shape and looking for some way to punish them for their embarrassing stunt Tuesday night. There's even talk of legal action.

What will the charge be...Ruining Thanksgiving For Secret Service Officials? Or maybe Pulling Off a PR Coup?

C'mon people, you were had, by a couple that succeeded in realizing the American Dream: Getting on television. They are probably the most ridiculous personalities to dominate political news since Joe the Plumber or Sarah Palin.

In fact, one could argue that instead of prosecuting these two, they should be given a medal instead. After all, they did reveal how porous the security around the President can be, and they did it in a harmless way. Unless you include all the heartburn at Secret Service headquarters.

Those Humane Society commercials on behalf of neglected, abused and hungry dogs and cats are heart wrenching to me . No one loves animals more than me, dotes more on his own pets.

HOWEVER: Don’t we need a similar campaign for human children? Given the new study that shows one fourth of young Americans face the possibility of going to bed hungry every night, could we show video of just some of them with someone to somehow touch our sadness and anger over their circumstance too?

How can we be blase about their plight? How could those of us more fortunate not rush out and share our bounty? This is not sharing wealth, this is about guaranteeing the right to basic sustenance. And Thanksgiving is the very day we should think about this.

I'll be on MSNBC Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving, at 7:00 Eastern. If you're not out being pummeled while shopping, tune in.

Unlike the wide coverage given to the tedious meetings President Obama has held about Afghanistan, the planning for the White House State Dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was conducted in complete secrecy.

It's a pity. First of all, the President himself also convened these discussions, this time assembling his Kitchen Cabinet to help with the decisions.

Actually, Michelle Obama sat at the head of this table, but it's fair to say that Barack was the power behind this throne. As a result the meetings were interminable debates between those who favored one protocol or another.

Particularly valuable, as one might imagine, was the input from Hillary Rodham Clinton who brought such a wide variety of experiences to the
deliberations. Not only could she share her perspectives as Secretary of States and former First Lady, she had also spent those many years as Governor's wife in Arkansas, so her knowledge if "Country Come to Town" society events was unmatched.

"Thank you for asking".

If I am ever able to realize my dream to establish an Insincerity Hall of Fame that phrase will have a prominent place.

It's the usually dismissive response from someone who has just been asked "How ya doin'?". I always want to fire back with "Thank you for answering" or "Thank you for thanking me for asking".

Come to think of it "How ya doin'" belongs in this memorial to meaninglessness.

Truth is we don't really don't care how you're doing. In fact the possibility you might tell us causes us to shudder.

"Nice to see you" is another one, almost always the automatic greeting from someone who is looking over your shoulder and doesn't really see you at all.

Washington would be the obvious home for an Insincerity Hall of Fame. The language of phoniness is a fine art here. Where else but the US Senate is it required that a member refers to his or her most bitter enemy as "My Friend"?

Only here can those who absolutely want to sabotage health care reform, feel no shame in piously declaring they are for "Sensible Reform".

This is the safe haven for those members of Congress who express the most intense outrage over our economic collapse while rigidly opposing any effective regulation of those who caused the debacle and, by the way, make huge contributions to the incumbents' re-election funds.

We get to have it both ways, because what's spoken here is the language of deception. But it is not unique to Washington.

With all the reports coming out that recommend we scale back on life saving medical exams there is one we might soon see from still another group of experts.

This one concerns depression. It concludes that diagnosis, medication and counseling won't work anyway, so why bother trying. After all, the best we can expect from dealing with negative feelings are false positives.

They'll certainly be startled by the intense political emotions, best described as anger turned OUTWARD. Republicans, in particular, will be screaming about how this is just another example of health care rationing contemplated by President Obama.

That is the main conclusion from the landmark Study About Depression (SAD). It is sponsored by the put together by the Foundation of Undermine Necessary Knowledge (FUNK), funded exclsuively by the insurance companies.

Critics will complain that the task force contains no mental health experts or other medical professionals. However, all the members are clinical depressives which means every one has first hand experience.

This project was anything but easy. Meeting after meeting had to be canceled because panelists simply couldn't drag themselves out of bed.

At one point it got so bad very large staff members were dispatched to their homes to try and convince or coerce the individuals to face the world. But they would simply pull the covers over their heads. The efforts failed. Isn't that the way it always is?

Almost. What did do the job was hiring each one's mother, who would call to say how she was so ashamed... that she'd always predcited her kid would never amount to anything.

Well she was wrong wasn't she. The task force has produced its report. Not that the members are getting any enjoyment out of it. But ifit is released all the angry reactions will mean that, for a change, when they burst into tears, they'll have a reason. .

We are supposed to be the land of prosperity but now a new Department of Agriculture study finds that 25 per cent of our children can't count on getting enough to eat. ONE IN FOUR faces the possibility every night of going to bed hungry!

President Obama released a statement calling it "Unsettling". "Unsettling?!!" It's disgraceful. That's what it is. Unacceptable.

Prosperity for whom? Fewer and fewer of us are hoarding all the wealth and refusing to share it. "Them that Gots, gets...", as the song goes. And they make sure of that by hiding behind laws they manipulate so they can cheat anyway or anyone they want.

They use the sheer power of their riches to wall themselves off from their responsibility to a society that allows them to engorge themselves, while the parents of one in four children outside their gated communities struggles to find a few morsels, a few crumbs.

The Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack calls this latest report "A Wake up call". No kidding Sherlock. What a surprise!!

Our economy came crashing around us thanks to the deceptions of a greedy few and so far the only turnaround we've seen seems to benefit those whose caused the system to come tumbling down in the first place. The spiraling unemployment rate wasn't enough of a "Wake up call"?

So let's understand this: That U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is recommending that regular mammograms should be delayed a decade because in addition to significantly preventing death, they result in too many "False Positives" and misdiagnoses of what needs to be treated or ignored.

Before I go any further, I will admit that I am a man, in case the name "Bob" wasn't a dead giveaway. That means anything I have to say on the subject can be considered suspect. Of course.

Wading in anyway to the bath water they want throw out with the life saver: Is the Task Force's conclusion really another way of saying that the reason to do away with a procedure that can be the difference between survival and dying is because the medical system cannot be counted on to do the tests and analyze their results in a competent way?

"Fraud". One dictionary describes it as "Dishonesty calculated for advantage". Only when it stringent burdens of proof are met does it fall to the standard of a criminal act that can result in fines and imprisonment. But manipulating those stringent requirements is what keeps many of those on the the top rungs of our financial ladder above the law. They have safe havens for people who could semantically, if not legally, be called "Frauds".

How else do we describe the bankers who conceal business practices that sneak large sums of money from unwitting customers who are left with no choice but to use their services?

What else do we call the pharmaceutical executives who peddle their concoctions at huge profit, fully aware they are neither safe nor effective? We're talking about the ones who coddle the doctors and obstruct the regulators to make sure they turn a blind eye toward the sometimes toxic dangers of their products.

How else do you describe the big business lobbying behemoths who dole out some of their limitless wealth to finance bogus studies for use in distorting public policy debate?

We can probably agree on a word that fits those few who get caught at it, like the poor guy at the US Chamber of Commerce, whose emails soliciting money for a phony economic analysis that would then be used to sabotage health care reform came into the possession of the Washington Post. But he doesn't really need an insult to add to the injury he'll suffer when his bosses get their hands on him for exposing their legalized fraud. There's that word again.

For that matter, the "F word" probably works to characterize those who have wormed their way into the administration who are really there to make sure no meaningful change takes place.

I'm on the program again this weekend. It broadcasts Friday, Saturday or Sunday, depending on the station, which means you must check local listings.

In re: the cases of those allegedly responsible for the 9/11 attacks and the other worst cases of terrorism against the United States, the question, plain and simply, is whether we in the United States are afraid.

Do defiantly admitted 9/11 mass murderer Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other defendants who will be tried in a New York court cause us to be so spooked by the threat their lunatic associates will attack, we are not able to properly adjudicate these matters at the scene of the despicable crimes?

Are we so scared we cannot defend our recent past actions we must continue to make exceptions to the normal proud legal traditions and go on rendering our punishments largely out of sight in an isolated prison in a remote part of Cuba or in other hell holes around the world?

Are we so unwilling to expose the abuse at Guantanamo, on what the world views as a "Devils Island" that we can't convene proper open trials in US courts?

Is our evidence gained there and elsewhere so tainted by torture and ineptitude that our legal system cannot not administer justice in these matters?

Those who believe the First Amendment should prohibit ANY ties between our government and religious organizations have gotten strong support for their arguments in recent days.

It seems that these deals with the angels have strings attached that fly right into the First Amendment’s prohibition against government’s ”
… establishment of religion…”

Last week it was the Catholic Bishops exerting their will into the health care debate. In effect, they were threatening to bring the massive reform legislation down if they could not impose their beliefs on abortion.

Now, in Washington, it’s the Archdiocese threatening to pull the plug on Catholic Charities. At issue: DC’s proposed same-sex marriage law that would prohibit discrimination against gays. Requiring equal treatment, in matters like benefits for employee would run afoul of church teachings.

The problem is that the Catholic Charities programs are a significant part of the social services infrastructure in the District. Their good works on behalf of children, the homeless, and so many others in need are an integral part of the safety net here, just as they are in some many cities. But now they’re threatening to cut the net.

If their contentions sound familiar it’s because they’re exactly like the ones heard in the black civil rights struggle when some other leaders from other churches claimed that racial oppression was justified in The Bible and/or ordained by God.

Many of us have gone through the misery of home renovation. One lesson that we learn from bitter experience is to never again trust the contractors’ time estimates. The job will ALWAYS take longer than what they promise. And cost more too. One can only hope the house doesn’t collapse in the process.

Which brings us to the chief contractor at Congress’ upper house, the U-S Senate. Majority Leader Harry Reid is now predicting that the health care legislation will be done before Christmas.

In fairness, he didn’t specify Christmas of what year. If he meant 2009, one might consider the possibility of an amendment that would require Senators to undergo random drug testing.

Give or take, we’re about six weeks away from Christmas, during which time the Senators have to shop around their competing views of what health care reform should be, or not be, or whether it should even be at all.

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If Nidal Hasan wanted to damage the United States with his vicious rampage at Ft. Hood, he may be succeeding more than his twisted mind ever dared hope. Not only has he left such sadness in the wake of his massacre, but he may have triggered anger that we will do something stupid and encourage authorities to intensify the intrusive snooping into our private lives.

Already we are seeing the finger pointing at intelligence operatives who were aware Hasan was in e-mail contact with an Al Qaeda operative.

How did they know? How do they ever know? Since 9/11, prying surveillance has become a fact of life for all of us.

Now the clamor is building to place blame on someone or something that allowed our domestic spies to ignore the so-called "warning signs" of possible terrorist connections their cyber sweeps had picked up major Hasan while sifting through everyone's communications. What naturally follows is a push to tighten the screws on our civil rights even more.

I'm on "Let's Consider the Source" tomorrow (Tuesday) evening at 7:30, Eastern on XM Radio Channel 133, Sirius 196

I am on MSNBC tomorrow (Sunday) morning at 9:30, Eastern, discussing the health care vote in the House

I'm on "White House Chronicles" this Friday, Saturday or Sunday, depending on the stations. Check local listings

Those who know me are aware I’ve always wanted to do the TV live shot where the anchor says “Now for a report on what this all means, here is Bob Franken. Bob, what does it all mean?”

To which I reply “Nothing, absolutely nothing”

Well the Tuesday off-year elections probably did mean something…actually somethings.

First of all, it means that those of us who think we have a clue would have new material to misinterpret in our columns and live shots

But it also says a lot about the state of play in politics right now and particularly about the players.

In Virginia and New Jersey, the Democrats displayed what it is they do best: implode. They got so caught up in their hubris after last year’s nationwide GOP forfeit, they decided it didn’t matter how dreadful their gubernatorial candidates were nor how tone deaf they had been in Washington. It mattered. What they did was send swing-vote independents fleeing in the other direction. So now there are two added Republican governors, two subtracted Democratic ones.

It’s not that Republicans are immune from self-destructive tendencies. Look no further than the Canadian border…uppest state New York where the Grand Old Party was sabotaged by the Tea Party purists. Goodbye swing voters. The voters in the state’s 23rd Congressional district were so offended they did the unthinkable: they elected a Democrat.

What this means, in other words, is that people are fed up with the whole bunch of these guys.

Whatever. Pronounced “WUT-’EVAH!!”. However you say it, the thought pretty much captures the surly mind set of most Americans a year after Barack Obama inspired a glimmer of hope in “Change You Can Believe In”.

No matter who is to blame, what most have seen since then is “change” all right, the nation’s problems, staring with the economy got much worse. And as country tries to claw out of collapse, the only ones who are really benefiting so far are the super-rich, the ones who got us into this mess to begin with.

And what do we see from our esteemed leaders? Whether they’re dealing with the economy, or desperately needed health care reform, we are treated the same old silly political games, or so it seems…the same old cheap shot sound bites, the same old money-buys-influence lawmaking… same circus, same clowns.

Chances are you’ve been following the Washington Redskins epic lately. You don’t have to be a football fan to be fascinated by the story of a team owner who has managed in 10 short years to squander generations of goodwill from an area that came together on little besides the adoration of the Redskins. That has been frittered away thanks to one lousy decade of astoundingly inept management under owner Dan Snyder.

What’s so amazing is the intensity of anger directed at Snyder. When those watching from their grossly overpriced seats aren’t booing the team, which is remarkable in in itself, they are turning to the owner’s box and chanting “Sell the Team. Sell the Team!!”, or “Fire Snyder!!” (Full disclosure: I am one of those who has paid to be in the stands)

Why are so many so wrought up about this that the team suddenly decided to ban all signs carried by spectators into the stadium, presumably out of fear poor Dan would be embarrassed by what the television cameras showed. Perhaps the answer is that he is a symbol for all the management fat cats who have also run our entire economy into the ground and actually added to their wealth in the process, while most of us have seen the bottom fall out. He is not only in the NFL, but in a league with mortgage bankers, health insurers and all the other Snidely Whiplashes of modern America.

What possibly could the Fox News executive and President Obama's press secretary have to talk about? Surely they weren't negotiating some sort of truce to end the silly War of Petulance the President's peeps have declared on Fox. Say it ain't so.

Were they describing some sort of quid pro quo? Did the administration offer to recognize that news media have the right to be critical of a president no matter how little he is used to it? Did the Fox guy offer to lighten up, to be a little less shrill about FNC's biases. Does this mean there will be no more " Tea Parties"? Let's hope not.

Let's be clear: The Tea Parties are partially the contrivance of a network that has mad geniuses in its PR department. After all it manipulated the thin skins at the White House to do the one thing that would inspire even more survivalists to watch. It singled out Fox for punishment. Never did punishment feel so good.

I

There's a song by the blues ensemble "Fathead" with a terrific title: "First Class Riff-Raff". I would call it to the attention of all our big headed politicians who get so caught up in their delusions of grandeur they dpn't remember how Americans see them: as First Class Riff Raff.

It's easy for them to forget that the their esteem and the terrific honorifics are merely the reflected glory of their offices. We chose them after they probably went through demeaning gyrations in order to be elevated onto their government pedestals. So it's easy to understand why we take great delight in knocking them off.

They take quite a pounding, particularly from the relentless criticism and second guessing of the media.

That brings to mind another piece of music: "Send in the Clowns". Let's face it, the news biz is saturated with ill-informed bombast and triviality that masquerades as journalism. It's not entirely that way, but oftentimes, the substance is drowned out by the noise and blotted out by superficiality. This abandonment of the mission to inform has been accelerated by the desperate efforts to keep up with the internet.

So it's easy to understand why a political leader, say a President of the United States, might get a little thin-skinned after awhile, weary of trying to match wits with nitwits. All this static interferes with his message.

We're hearing a lot of squealing from some of those who wallow around in the financial sector on behalf of the executives whose fat, make that bloated, compensation has been cut.

We're talking about the leaders at companies that needed to feed at the public trough to avoid going belly up. They received billions upon billions to help make sure they didn't finish crushing the economy. Now the government is weighing in and slashing their pay.

What is being herd on Wall Street, first of all, is the usual clamor over government interference, as if the bailouts were not. But just as widespread is the threat that the most talented will simply leave these corporations and lard over greener pastures elsewhere.

It's a strange argument, considering many of those whose salaries, stock packages and perks are being cut, are the very same ones who almost brought their companies to ruin. They got rich dragging the rest of us into a barren future. So many will ask "What's the big deal? Let 'em leave!"

For the moment, however, let's assume they can scamper away to enterprises out of the reach of the "Pay Czar" and the other awakening regulators...that they can continue to feed their greed, while so many others are struggling to feed their families.

You’ve heard this before. It doesn’t matter whether those of us who fancy ourselves politically informed are right or wrong when we pontificate. No one really pays close enough attention to remember, and certainly we don’t. It’s a great gig.

Well, I hope you’re sitting down, because this pundit-wanna bee is about to utter something that would otherwise knock you off your feet: ”I might have been wrong”

There. I said it. I feel much better now. Except I may end up being wrong about being wrong.

Right now you’re probably asking yourself “What in heaven’s name is he talking about?”. It’s a fair question and it deserves an answer. Finally.

This is about the Public Option and my prediction there was no way in the world the all-powerful insurance industry would allow its paid lackeys in Washington to enact one to compete with them and loosen their choke-hold on health care coverage. There was no way that they and their limitless money for “campaign contributions” and deceptive advertising would allow passage of a government alternative to its evil ways.

Well, they got cocky. Perhaps they overplayed their hand…with their HEAVY-handed attempt to frighten the White House and the Congressional negotiators. The Senate Finance Committee, remember, hadthe audacity to suggest a plan, MINUS that Public Option, mind you, that might make it more difficult for them to continue making their absurd profits for dismal performance.

Let’s get this straight. Some of those who oppose relaxing marijuana laws complain that it will mean even more dollars will flow to the drug cartels in Mexico. In other words, it’s like oil, where we are also beholden to foreign countries to meet our demands.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In the very same way that we try to create “Energy Independence”, searching out home-grown sources of power, we can do the same thing with pot…call it “Lethargy Independence”.

This is America people!! Surely we can focus on our innovative spirit to come up with ways to solve both problems.

FROM POLITICO:

The Democrats have just fired their biggest guns at the insurance industry but unfortunately they are shooting very loud blanks.

That's what they did Wednesday, when the the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing entitled “Prohibiting Price Fixing and Other Anticompetitive Conduct in the Health Insurance Industry.” The target is the McCarran-Ferguson Act.

There is no way in the world that the insurance companies are going to allow Congress to repeal McCarran-Ferguson, even though it really does allow their. "Price Fixing and Other Anticompetitive Conduct..." The insurance industry is the only one, other than Major League Baseball that gets a pass from anti-trust enforcement.

But don't expect the majority in Congress to play ball with those who are serious about getting rid of that exemption, even though the ever-quotable Sen. Chuck Schumer called it "...one of the worst accidents in American history..."

It was no accident at all. The McCarran Ferguson Act has been with us since 1945 when when the industry got Washington's willing lawmakers to reinstate the industry's immunities from federal regulation after the Supreme Court, a year before, had overturned the apple cart of special treatment insurers had gotten since right after the Civil War.

I mean, what was Rush Limbaugh thinking? Did he really believe that his comments about race that many consider outright bigotry would be forgotten...particularly in a league where two thirds of the rosters are African-American?

Was he really surprised that superstar Donovan McNabb had not forgotten Limbaugh's assessment just six years ago that he was "...overrated... because ".. what we have here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback can do well—black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well."

We he really surprised that McNabb and some other of the players were suggesting they would boycott the team, wouldn't show up to play? Is he surprised now that the people who want to buy into the NFL have dumped him?

This was one of those rare cases where Congresswoman Shelia Jackson-Lee had made an understatement on the House floor. Rush Limbaugh " is not", she said, "someone who brings people together".

That is true. Unless we count the fact that Limbaugh has brought Democrats together in opposition to his dream of getting a stake in a football team. Uniting Democrats is no easy task, just ask President Obama.

Limbaugh is not an understatement type either, thundering "I wonder if Ms. Jackson Lee to have any regard for the truth. Does she have any regard for hoping, desiring to sound intelligent and knowledgeable, or is she content to be happy and proud to go the floor of the House of Representatives and make a fool of herself?

The question here was who was making a fool of whom?

What is such fun about Washington is we get to be unbound by any reality. Words, for instance, have no meaning. Nor do alliances, promises or anything that normal people use as guideposts to understand what's going on. Here in DC Fantasyland, there is nothing to understand, so we are permitted to conjure up any explanation we wish.

Case in point: Karen Ignagni: She is president of America's Health Insurance Plans, the lobbying enforcer for the health insurance mob, as the name suggests. For the last several months, we have been told that this time, the industry would be allied with the Obama White House and the other special interests in creating some sort of reform...not like the last go around when their "Harry and Louise" ads brought the Clintons' efforts down in flames. They took a seat at the negotiating table. Now we discover that they were probably using it as a vantage point to choose the right moment to sabotage the whole thing from the inside.

AHIP (we're big on acronyms here), has commissioned an anything-for-a-payoff accounting firm, Pricewaterhouse-Coopers to concoct a study that concludes the average American will end up paying more for health insurance under many of the planned reforms than they would otherwise.

They've been roundly attacked by the Democrats for a less-than-honest analysis, based on a very selective use of assumptions. Even Price-Waterhouse is backing off a bit in embarrassment, because the firm is looking kind of like the author of a medical study that is paid for by a drug company. Among the assumptions, the absence of a public option as an alternative to insurance companies.

Is it me or does anyone else have an impression that White House Communications Director Anita Dunn has a second job...that she is a public relations spokesperson for Fox News? What else would possess her to declare that FNC is not a news organization at all but "...often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party".

What else could she possibly utter that would cause the right wingnuts and any others not enamored of the Obama administration to lock their TV remotes on the network's channel wherever they live? It's hard to imagine a siren song more seductive to them. Rupert Murdoch and/or Roger Ailes surely sent her flowers after she said that.

The only other possibility is that the Obama group is so bent-out-of-shape when someone doesn't follow the message-of-the-day that its members don't realize that they are downright petulant

It doesn't matter that Fox is generally slanted toward the right...shamelessly so. Even though there are many fine journalists who work there, the story selection and tone during straight news reporting is almost always conservative, to say nothing of the bulk of its "personalities", guests, and most blatantly, its strategy of becoming a megaphone for the partisans who organize contrivances like the so-called "Tea Parties".

That's what happens when news business becomes show business. That's what happens when the corporate decisions have nothing whatsoever to do with a responsibility to adequately informed those who vote and everything to do with currying favor with one mass of true believers or another. Those of the conservative persuasion are just as convinced that other media, particularly MSNBC, are nothing but shills for the Democrats, and they too can make a persuasive case.

I'm on MSNBC tomorrow (Sunday) at 9:00 AM, Eastern

When Barack Obama steps on the stage to accept " The Prize", and shouts, in his rock star way, "HELLO COPENHAGEN!!! and a chagrined aide whispers in his ear that he's in Oslo, it won't be that hard to understand.

Just a week earlier President Obama was flying back from Copenhagen when he got the embarrassing news that his efforts to get the Olympics for hometown Chicago had been harshly rejected, even after his personal appearance.

Just seven days later from another Scandinavian capitol,Oslo, comes the altogether surprising news he has won the Nobel Peace prize. That is what his basketball buddies would call a "rebound" He didn't even have to show up.

In fact, it's less than a year since he's really shown up on the world stage and he's already won the Tony Award for his role as peacemaker...way before he's made any peace.

The Nobel committee cited his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international cooperation and diplomacy between peoples". The announcement specified his outreach to the Muslim world and efforts to stop nuclear proliferation.

Sometimes the choice of what is news reveals way than the stories themselves. Sometimes they give us a clear look at the social perspective of those who make journalistic decisions. The front pages of our two so-called “Papers of Record” gave us a particularly revealing comparison of what their editors considered important, at least on Tuesday.

In the New York Times, the headline was “Lavish Door to Food Is Shut in Magazine World”. In the same spot in the Washington Post it was “Identity Crisis Accompanies Va. Family’s Financial Slide” The Times was mourning the loss of Gourmet Magazine, which is being shut down after “…a rich history…that lived and sold the high life”. The Post meanwhile was chronicling a middle class family that has suddenly been thrust by the economy into homeless and “depths they had never imagined”, The quotes are from each article.

What a juxtaposition! These were just single news articles, but their placement on the front page speak (or in this case write) volumes about what the editors at the New York Times consider important. A magazine devoted to finest foods versus the spreading plague of those who are desperately seeking their sustenance from food banks. Not that the Washington Post always gets its journalistic priorities straight, but on this Tuesday it kicked the stuffing (pardon the pun) out of the Times.

I'll be on XM (Ch 130)-Sirius (110) Radio this afternoon (Wednesday) at 12:15, Eastern to talk Afghanistan

Defense Secretary Robert Gates obviously works very hard at being inscrutable. He is a definite adherent to the “Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick” approach. So when he gently suggests in a speech that President Obama’s advisers should deliver their advice “candidly but privately” you can bet he’s swinging a club at General Stanley McChrystal.

McChrystal was anything but private with his insistence the US needs to send thousands more troops into harm’s way on the treacherousAfghanistan battlefield he commands.

Now his boss is going public himself, putting his usual placid face on some candid advice he had on his general and his military colleagues who have also gone semi-defiantly public to spread the word they favor, as they so often do, emphasizing force before finesse, this time in Afghanistan.

The “advice” from Gates? Candidly? ”Shut the hell up. Remember who’s boss.” And Gates made it clear he was also speaking to the civilians at the administration’s top levels who were also seeing to it, their private counsel to the president was anything but private. Were you listening Vice President Biden? Biden, as we know, is opposing heavy troop commitments.

Let's face it, Oak Street Beach in Chicago is no Impanema. Where Rio De Janiero has its Bossa Nova tradition, Chicago is better known for its "Boss of Bosses" history. Whatever the reason, the International Olympic Committee has chosen Rio to host the 2016 games, handing the United States' Celebrity-in-Chief a bit of embarrassment.

That's Oprah Winfrey, of course, who had also brought Barack and Michelle Obama to play like Chamber of Commerce boosters. But it wasn't enough. The members of the IOC, who are not that keen on the U-S anyway, finally succumbed to the samba song of Rio, after tossing Chicago out in the first round of its final deliberations. It wasn't the Second City, it was Fourth.

The rap against Rio is security. The place is dangerous as hell. But Chicago is no great shakes in the crime department either. Besides, South America has never had an Olympics before. The last two in North America were in Salt Lake City, where the Winter Olympics struggled with a bribery scandal and Atlanta, which struggled with someone who tried to blow up the place.

I'm on "White House Chronicles" Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. It depends on your local station. So check the listings if you want to watch.

They are called the President’s “War Council”. Perhaps the more accurate name would be “Face Saving Council”.

As the President and his national security “Principles” meet in the White House to discuss how to move ahead with Afghanistan, the best question, the most fundamental question is not on that round table in the Situation Room: If we were starting fresh, what would we do if we were deciding how to send forces and IF.

Of course that’s not the case, any more than it is in Iraq, and arguably the Afghanistan invasion was more justified than the Iraq foolhardiness, which by the way, depleted the military resources that might have helped do the job in Afghanistan.

But for that reason, and more importantly a combination of negligence and distractions combined with incompetent miscalculations, here we are, too hopelessly entangled to merely cut the knot. Put another way, simply pulling out is not an option.

If we did, the same mortal enemies of the United States, Al Qaeda would simply return to their safe havens provided by the same insane Taliban who would quickly overrun the weak, corrupt, unpopular leaders who were no longer propped up by their naive benefactors from NATO.

These ruthless Taliban fanatics would then have free rein to resume brutalize their countrymen and worst of all their countryWOMEN.

Now that we’re there, it would be unconscionable to abandon Afghanistan and let these despicable thugs wreak their vengeance and once again enslave the country.

For the moment, let's step past the battle over a Government Option as competition for the private insurance companies. The real problem is that there would still be that private option.

Unless, we eliminate the revenue-obsessed insurance companies and adopt a single-payer system in this country, which most are loathe to do, it would be difficult for profit and non-profit to co-exist.

Under such an arrangement, insurance companies would find ways to offer their policies only to the most healthy, those least likely to need a payout from their medical coverage. Their lawyers would find ways to circumvent any restrictions on covering those with pre-existing conditions and canceling those customers once they get sick.

They would use the public plans as their dumping grounds, to put in bluntly, by tossing out anybody who would threaten the next quarterly report.

It's fascinating how this might be the mirror image of what happens in countries that rely on government health insurance the reflection would be backwards.

While the people of Canada, for instance, like to laud it over the United States for its government run systems, many citizens sometimes get frustrated with the delays in optional and semi-optional care.

The well off can head south of the border and pay extra for exactly what they want, when they want it in the US...exercising, in effect, their PRIVATE option.

I'm on "White House Chronicles" which is on Friday, Saturday and/or Sunday, depending on the market. Check your listings.

I moderated a program, taped at the Newseum about the Cold War called "The Wall and the Media". It will run on PBS stations and NPR, but I have no earthly idea when. Check local listings.

While we used to debate how similar the Iraq War has been to Viet Nam, the Iraq misadventure is nowhere near the parallel universe that Afghanistan is. And we are being sucked in again.

With his insistence he needs more troops to emphasize protecting
Afghan civilians, General Stanley McChrystal sounds eerily like the commanders who assured us that a bigger military commitment would be necessary to "win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese".

And what about the US supported leaders? As the man said, "Here we go again". This time around it is Hamid Karzai who presides over a hopelessly corrupt system. Back then America's crook was Ngo Dinh Diem.

But what is most striking is each country's repeated rejection of foreign occupiers. The people of what was then called Indochina had just gotten through disgracing the French by driving them out when the United States became the next fool to rush in.

The motive then was a fear of communism spreading through the entire region...what was called the "Domino Effect", where Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, all the other countries, would fall to the "Red Menace", one after the other.

We ended up just like the French...fleeing in defeat and suffering a national humiliation that scars us to this day.

President Barack Obama: You are about to set the world record for presenting the same show on the most channels in the same day. The record is currently held, of course, by “Law and Order”. The only network where you will not be seen is Fox. And that Mr. President, is a crime.

Many of us in the reporter biz have always referred to the Sunday interview programs as the “Game Shows”. It’s unfortunate that this Sunday, you, President Obama, are playing games with just one of them.

It doesn’t matter that many, particularly on the left, consider Fox News an instigator of the right wing extremists and a megaphone for their wildest fringe fantasies. The fact is that with its boffo ratings, it fits well within what is now the dismal definition of news media.

As a matter of principle, President Obama, you should include Fox in this Sunday’s merry-go-round of interview show appearances and make the dizzying saturation complete.

First of all, by boycotting only that major national network you are allowing it to trumpet the kind of victim hood that attracts the beehive of loonies like honey. So it’s a tactical error to indulge your obvious pique at the unfair and unbalanced coverage of your administration.

Beyond that, you shouldn’t need the lecture about how media are not supposed to be wrapped around your little finger as they sometimes were in the campaign. It’s probably been an adjustment for you as journalists have rediscovered we’re supposed to be skeptical of everyone, including you.

In addition, Chris Wallace is a good solid reporter, who will ask the tough but fair questions. He should get that chance…certainly before David Letterman does.

FROM POLITICO:

I’m amazed at how we have all gotten sucked into the health care debate over a “public option.” People, there is not going to be a public option. There was never going to be. That was just a red herring, created by Rahm Emanuel or someone else in the White House who likes to play mind games with those who lose their minds at the prospect. It’s a decoy; it’s not real. Get over it.

Between the lines of President Barack Obama’s health care speech last week before Congress, it was clear there will still be only one option: the insurance company option. Even those who had been allowed to take their chances with no coverage, particularly the young, will lose that option. They will be required to buy policies. The insurance giants will be swollen with even more billions in revenue. No wonder they have been playing ball with the White House.

What does the president, and what do we, get in return?

Insurance companies will not be allowed to deny coverage to those who have “pre-existing conditions.”

Be very careful about this one. After all the final secret deals are made, will the lobbyists have succeeded with slipping in language that permits the companies to still impose prohibitively higher rates? Will the proposed requirement that they cannot cancel a policy after someone gets sick contain a similar loophole that allows them to charge much more?

How naive we were on January 20th to believe that the inauguration of Barack Obama marked the time when had gotten over racial prejudice. We have clearly not.

Instead, wherever we turn, we witness widespread intolerance, much of it real, some of it perceived, all of it the continuing preoccupation of a country that cannot stop looking at a President in terms of black and white.

It’s hard not to notice the sea of nearly all white faces in the various “Tea Parties” and “Taxpayer Protests” or the blatant caricatures and characterizations on the signs they carry and in the hatred of President Obama spewing from those at the irrational health care town meetings.

They are whipped into a frenzy by the bigoted undertones of their champions like Glenn Beck and the other commentators along with the political demagogues that have become leaders of the fringe’s mainstream.

They cheer lustily at the shameless charge of lying on the House floor shouted at this President by Joe Wilson, the Congressman from the South Carolina Low Country (is “South Carolina Low Country” a political redundancy?)

Even though we’ve moved way beyond E mails with Texting,Instant Messages, Twitter, Facebook and what have U, Emails are still in play. But we have never understood what they really say.

So as another in my series of vital public services, I am interpreting the language of Electronic Mail…what the words actually mean:

“Dear Jim:I hope you are well”
(”Actually, I couldn’t care less. This is about me”)

“I thought it was time to catch up”
(”Why the hell haven’t you answered my previous Emails”)

“I’d love to get together to bounce some ideas off of you”
(”I am desperate for a job. Can we please talk?”)

“I’ve been meaning to get in touch since we had that tremendous conversation at the professional conference”
(”You might not remember a thing about it because you were totally wasted”)

“I came away thinking this is somebody I need to meet with again”
(”Actually it was a good thing you were drunk most the time, because sober, you’re a crashing bore. The truth is I came away thinking I would forever avoid you like the plague. But I had a job then. My standards are in the toilet now” )

“I’ve attached my resume”
(”Which should get a Pulitzer Prize for fiction”)

“And nothing would please me more than meeting you for lunch.”
(”That and being water boarded.)”

Warmest Regards”
(”Answer my damned E-mail“)

“John Doe CEO, FSE”
(”Chief Executive Officer, Face Saving Entity”)

The biggest impediment to my covering 9/11 from near the Pentagon crash site was the wireless phone service. There was almost none, which made reporting this national tragedy way more frantic than it should have been. We got there quickly enough, but anxious viewers had to wait far too long while we struggled with a technical near-meltdown that frustrated any attempt to get out this historic, nightmarish news.

Even worse, vital transmissions between the various police and other emergency first responders were often sporadic, due to disorganized radio and mobile network, overwhelmed to the point coordination was often non-existent.

It's fair to say that telecommunications have improved since then, although way less than they should have. It's also fair to say that, in so many other ways, our country has deteriorated since the nation was so tragically united both by patriotism and fear in the rubble of the attacks eight years ago.

Who will forget when the members of Congress stood on the Capitol steps to sing "God Bless America" as a symbol of unity and support for the President of the United States.

Compare that to the spectacle on Wednesday night inside the Capitol when a Congressman shouts "You lie" as the President speaks about health care.

This was a different President, to be sure, and a different time. But it was just eight short years after the September 11th attacks. In the small span, the country's "all for one, one for all" resolve has been shredded by a "what's in it for me" mind set that has left our national fabric in tatters.

There’s an old line about the treacherous people in television news that “Things have gotten so bad about (Fill-in-the-blank) he’s stabbing people in the front”.

That’s all that Republican Congressman Joe Wilson was doing…stabbing in the front…when he interrupted the President’s speech last night to shout “You lie!” from his seat in the Peanut Gallery.

The truth is that President Obama’s political enemies spent August screaming about the President’s “lies”, just not to his face. So why are picking on poor old Joe, and why did he wimp out and apologize later?

Was he worried about embarrassing his home state of South Carolina? That hardly seems possible these days. Was he trying please his true believers but still trying to survive in the hypocritical environment that is Washington? In other words, was he trying to have it both ways? No. There isn’t any evidence Congressman Wilson goes both ways.

What’s the big deal? Didn’t the President himself use the “L-word” when he accused the “Death-Panel”-mongers of telling “a lie plain and simple” (Were you watching Sarah?)

Let’s stop being so sanctimonious about all this buffoonery. Polite is soooooo 20th century…at least early to mid-20th. It pains me to say this but, television, particularly 24 hour news television, caused all of us to lose our minds.

Debate resembles a “Jerry Springer show (come to think of it, wasn’t he first a politician?) and Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment. The big difference is that WWE is more dignified than politics.

Those of us in TV lap this stuff up, and even add to the din with contrived confrontations. What the politicians and all their groupies learn is that boundaries of good taste are for losers. To win, one must be shameless. So Joe Wilson is not Joe the Dumber, he’s actually pretty smart.

So here we are. Those who use terms like “lie” and “liar” reap the benefit, not those who politely tremble under the assault.

The White House promised he would come out swinging and he did. Abandoning the “Mr. Cool” persona he dearly loves to convey, President Obama took it to the ones who have sent him reeling with what he called “…bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost.”

He minced no words, confronting the claim from “…prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens.” “Such a charge,” he went on, “would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.”

There was nothing subtle about that, a direct shot at Sarah Palin and the others who have contended the Obama plan would create “Death Panels.” This was his “No More Mr. Nice Guy” address, holding up a small carrot in one hand, and a massive stick, make that a club, in the other: “I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it. I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.”

The President and his people were well aware that the Republicans and their allies had sent his health care reform effort into a downward spiral. The consensus politics he favors had been interpreted by the other side as weakness. In August they had steamrollered him.

This highly unusual address to a joint session of Congress was his declaration that he was determined to take control and regain the slipping public confidence in his ability to handle the issue. While he spent much of his time outlining the specifics of what he’s proposing, the main purpose of the speech was to take on a debate over health care debate that has become poisonous in a toxic atmosphere where “… facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation…”

Maybe the President will have an “I told you so” signing ceremony by year’s end. Maybe, once again, we will have underestimated his resilience. Maybe all his rats will have climbed back aboard the White House that that didn’t sink.

But maybe it’ll be the rats squealing “I told you so” as they try to swim to political safety as far away as they can from the submerged health care reform effort that was too heavy a load for Captain Obama’s first year at the helm in very choppy seas.

It’s entirely possible that health care may become the President’s domestic Viet Nam, (not to be confused with Afghanistan in the International category). Like Viet Nam, health care can easily be described as a “morass” that sucks in the unwitting leader, who ignores the warnings and disregards a history of failure as he ventures into the muck.

The predictable result is an uproar that nearly paralyzes a nation, no matter how honorable the cause. We’re already seeing it. Witness the explosive Town Hall anger last month, incited by unscrupulous political guerrillas who had no regard for the truth or the consequences.

To stop the Democratic President at any cost, Republicans and their insurgents ignited their roadside bombasts and blew up almost any chance of a reasonable debate over this all-important issue.

Their unprincipled tactics seem to have worked. Disregarding the collateral damage, the reactionaries are stepping through the rubble and retaking the offense after their humiliation last November. Meanwhile, Democrats have done what they always do. They are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Isn't it fascinating that the Supreme Court is even considering whether to overturn prohibitions on corporate and union contributions to political campaigns?

Talk about a charade. Talk about a barn with a phony door. Corporations, along with organized labor have found so many ways to circumvent mealy-mouthed election laws that the so-called restrictions, are just that: "so called".

This is a highly unusual rehash of a case. It was originally argued last March but the justices decided they hadn't heard enough. By having simply scheduling a second set of arguments, they signal that they're good and ready to reverse the court's current precedents...Stare Decisis" in legal lingo. This is a strong indication they no longer wish to uphold the laws which prevented extreme right wing TV producer and Hillary Clinton hater David Bossie from televising his venomous "Hillary: The Movie" shown during her presidential primary run. It was ruled to be an illegal campaign ad...a 90 minute one.

While that's the case at hand,the fundamental issue is the constitutionality of prohibitions against corporations, like those who back Bossie's organization, directly financing efforts to influence campaigns. Do these restrictions, and even the Court's precedents infringe upon companies' and, also unions' First Amendment rights?

It's an intriguing event made even more so by the fact it will be the first proceeding for rookie Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, convening, just one day after she has taken her place on the bench. In our usual superficial way, we in the media will focus almost entirely on her every move and word, particularly since we'll get to hear her ask her first questions when the audio tape is released later in the day.

Chances are, we'll give short shrift to the debate itself, which is, at the same time, fascinating and superfluous. The law in question has done virtually nothing to prevent corporations and the wealthy from buying our government. The unions have also found ways to spread their largess but they are are puny compared to that of their enemies in big business.

FROM TRUE SLANT:

The fundamental idea about the democracy we claim to be is that our leaders are chosen by an INFORMED electorate. The fact is that all to often we voters are MISinformed…deceived.

How refreshing it is then to witness the gyrations of one Bob McDonnell, the Republicans’ candidate for Governor of Virginia. It looks like he has revealed himself…unwittingly but we’ll take what we can get. Now we can be entertained as he tries to tap dance away from his written record of views about morality, women and family and sexuality that could be gently called arch-conservative.

He wrote the particularly revealing paper 20 years ago, while he was a student at Regency University, that Pat Robertson established college that would also fit into the far right category.

The thesis denounces in often strong language the idea of women in the workplace along with alternative lifestyles, contraception. He argues arguing “…every level of government should statutorily and procedurally prefer married couples over cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators…”. The document…his document… riddled throughout with similar language.

McDonnell is now scampering around making the claim he no longer holds those views. Many who know him say that he still does, it’s just that he doesn’t want people to know that when he’s running for office.

The question is: Why? Why shouldn’t we know the beliefs of those who run our governments and therefore much of our lives?

The truth is that in the political campaigns of modern times we are usually shielded from the truth. Consultants get paid huge amounts of money to camouflage their clients’ realities, to deflect any efforts at understanding what makes their candidate really tick. It begs the question, if they’re so ashamed, so embarrassed, why do they believe they would be anything but dismal leaders.

FROM TRUE SLANT

There are two words that those on the left need to remember as they demand that any detainee torture investigation examine top officials in the Bush administration: "Karl Rove."

Not "Karl Rove" as in someone who should be investigated, but as a warning of what can happen when our mighty legal process is perverted by politics. Has everyone forgotten the accusations that Rove and other top Bush officials seriously abused their temporary control over the mechanisms of law enforcement? How tempting would it be for their enemies to engage in the same kind of misconduct?

Actually, there are two other words vengeful Democrats might want to bear in mind: "Richard Nixon." In their professed desire for accountability, do they really want to descend into his kind of toxic political retribution? Do they really want to cross the same lines Nixon and Rove did, undermining the integrity of a system of justice that treasures its independence?

That's exactly the danger in pursuing the prosecution of top-level public officials who can argue they were merely doing what the people elected them to do. Any investigation, when the other side controls it, could easily turn into a witch hunt.

The Justice Department is still suffering from low morale after Bush administration cronies breached the sacred barriers that are essential to enforcing the law in fair and impartial ways. An investigation during the Obama years would look like partisan payback and do further damage.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Even in the world of brutal partisanship, there is supposed to be "honor among thieves." In gutter politics, that means there are some unwritten rules about stretching the truth. Distortion is OK. Outright lies are not. Tell that to the Republican National Committee.

Critics complain that in the health care debate, the RNC, under Chairman Michael Steele, has shown it is immune to any sense of shame: It tries to terrify anybody who pays attention with claims that are outrageously untrue.

The latest is contained in a questionnaire accompanying a letter from Steele. The RNC argues that under health care reform proposals, the government could check voter registration, "prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed healthcare rationing system." The questionnaire goes on to ask: "Does this possibility concern you?"

Fears?! Whose fears? Apparently those who would be inflamed by this letter. Thanks to The Columbian of Vancouver, Wash., we've learned that the RNC is now saying it went too far. A Republican spokeswoman admits the questionnaire might have been "inartfully worded." What was "inartful" about it was the fact that the party, with Steele's apparent blessing, got caught spreading its toxic slander. Of course, the Democrats are calling this another case of Republican "falsehoods, fabrications and outright lies."

What it really is is a "push poll," a time-dishonored tactic in which one side asks questions using a dubious premise designed to "push" people to their side. It's sleazy, but it has been used by the low-lifes from all political persuasions. This one pushes too far. It violates that "honor among thieves" code.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

For the Obama administration, all the uproar over health care seems to have sapped the strength of opponents struggling to block the equally ambitious and equally massive changes to the nation's energy policy. At least a new poll says so.

In the Washington Post-ABC News Poll, 55 percent of those responding favor the way the president is handling energy policy. That drops a little to 52 percent when measuring support for the cap-and-trade system of controlling greenhouse gases.

Some of that decline can be attributed to an aversion to a program that allows harmful emissions to be spewed by industries buying and selling the necessary permits. It might also reflect resistance from avowed opponents, largely from industry, who argue that the plan would impose an expensive new tax on everyone.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

The Federal Trade Commission is scheduling public workshops on the media -- two full days to examine the problems of journalism. Please permit me to be subtle: What a DUMB idea!!! This is the Federal Trade Commission we're talking about.

The New York Times reports the sessions, scheduled for December, are designed to "play a facilitating and public education role in gathering together various disciplines and perspectives to talk about the crisis in mainstream journalism."

Hey, FTC: Butt out. The industry is crawling with academics and other navel-gazers always at the ready to whine about the "crisis." That's what we do. We don't need the government sticking its nose where it doesn't belong -- into a free press, as in First Amendment free. Free from government interference. That's one of our bedrock principles. Remember?

The broadcast industry already falls under the purview of the Federal Communications Commission, which enforces antitrust matters that might concern the FTC. Moreover, the FTC has power over a slew of issues that have a direct impact on the lifeblood of the media -- meaning money. When a report is issued (oh yeah, there will be a report), any number of timid executives will be willing to do whatever it takes to placate the feds. The term for that, I believe, is "chilling effect."

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

It's a bit simplistic, but generally true, for reporters to say that if we have antagonized people on both sides of an issue we're reporting on, we are probably doing our job well. Perhaps Barack Obama embraces the same belief about "presidenting."

Monday was a good example. Conservatives, up to and including Dick Cheney, are furious at Obama for allowing his attorney general to authorize a special prosecutor to look into alleged torture by CIA agents. And one has to wonder how comfortable liberals like Wisconsin Democrat Russell Feingold are in joining Cheney as he beats on the president's head.

Feingold is among many who believe the investigation must go beyond the interrogators to include people "at the very top, who authorized, ordered or sought to provide legal cover" for the interrogators. His list would include then-President Bush, officials at the Justice Department and in the administration, including, of course, Cheney.

The former vice president and his followers repeatedly and loudly proclaim that Obama is compromising America's safety by pulling back some of the uglier policies of the previous administration. Meanwhile, those who marched to Candidate Obama's "Change You Can Believe In" music are singing a sour tune these days, complaining that President Obama is not changing those policies enough. Go figure.

But that's nothing compared to the bipartisan pounding Obama gets on health care reform. Republicans and their conservative automatons are screaming bloody murder, saying the White House wants to nationalize our medical system.

FROM TRUE SLANT:

He started out in the reflected glory of his older brother. So many wilt in the heat from the harsh light of comparison. But Teddy Kennedy carried the torch in ways he might very well have never been able to do had Jack and Bobby not been taken away.

Kennedy ended as perhaps the most respected among his fellow members in the United States Senate. But his is a much more complicated life’s journey. His legacy is an bitter mix of that accomplished public life and a controversial and deeply troubled private one.

As a beginning reporter in Washington, I was frankly, in awe, the first time I approached him. That lasted about two seconds. Like everyone who dealt with him, I was immediately put at ease. Ted Kennedy truly enjoyed people, reveled in the give-and-take. That talent, combined with his remarkable grasp of Senate mechanisms means he will leave behind a record that is unmatched. His congressional and fellow Democratic colleague for 33 years, Rep. Ed Markey, told me “There is no issue of social justice that doesn’t carry his imprint”

But Kennedy’s story was also tragic and filled with bitter controversy. It is not complete without the Chappaquiddick death of Mary Jo Kopechne and the questions that still remain about what actually happened before during and after she died in the car he was driving that July night in 1969.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Some will certainly notice the irony in Hassan Nemazee being charged with trying to defraud Citibank, the financial behemoth so many believe victimized our entire economy.

How far he has fallen. The 59-year old Nemazee was national co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid last year, and when she lost he raised money for the man who beat her, Barack Obama. In 2004 he was New York state financial chairman for John Kerry. Most recently he was national chairman of the committee that works to elect Democrats to the Senate, chaired by New York Sen. Charles Schumer.

But on Sunday night, at Newark Liberty Airport, he was stopped by FBI agents just as he was boarding a flight to Rome. Prosecutors say he used "fraudulent and forged" documentation to claim he had hundreds of millions of dollars in net worth, used as collateral for a $74 million loan from Citibank.

In a statement, U.S. Attorney Breet Bharara said the assets "either never existed or had been closed years before Nemazee submitted the documents referencing those accounts." The documentation, he went on, included a telephone number Nemazee gave loan officials to verify his information -- a number that was really Nemazee's own.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Here's how the dictionary defines a "red herring": "Any diversion intended to distract attention from the main issue." And a "straw man argument" is one "based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position." Both come to mind as we consider the new Republican "Senior Health Care Bill of Rights."

In a Washington Post Op-ed, GOP Chairman Michael Steele pledges to protect against the dangerous straw men he and his cohorts have created and nourished with a steady diet of red herrings about health care reform.

There's that old favorite: "we need to prohibit government from getting between seniors and their doctors." It's based on the premise that government bureaucrats will be more intrusive than the ones insurance companies already place between everyone and their doctors.

The most deceptive in this litany of six "rights" is the fourth one: "we need to prevent government from dictating the terms of end-of-life care." Of course, this is based on the straw man Steele's allies have promoted -- that an Obama plan will create some sort of "death panel." It's one of the main distortions that have caused their true believers to lose it all at town-hall meetings.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

With the release of a graphic report describing the "unauthorized, improvised, inhumane" treatment of U.S. detainees, Attorney General Eric Holder has named a special prosecutor to investigate whether CIA interrogators and contractors violated the law by using brutal tactics to pry information from prisoners. The court-ordered disclosure of the 2004 CIA inspector general's report, which was kept secret for five years, describes alleged threats to kill the children of one high-ranking terror suspect and a threat to sexually assault the mother of another.

As a result, Holder has now appointed a special prosecutor to investigate CIA interrogators and contractors who might have violated domestic and international law. He chose career Justice Department attorney John Dunham to examine more than a dozen cases to see if a full-scale criminal probe is warranted.

Dunham has extensive experience with the CIA and its interrogation practices. For two years, he has been exploring obstruction of justice and false statement charges in connection with the destruction of video tapes that purportedly showed some of the harsh tactics that were sometimes employed.

Holder had seen the 2004 inspector general's report while it was still classified and was said to be "disgusted" by its contents. The public version, which is heavily redacted, describes a catalogue of brutal tactics. It was released Monday after a federal judge sided with the American Civil Liberties Union in a freedom of information lawsuit that was bitterly opposed by top intelligence officials.

The allegations in the report include an instance when interrogators allegedly threatened a detainee by bringing a loaded pistol and a power drill into the room. In another instance, gunfire exploded in an adjoining area to make a prisoner believe he would be killed.

The report also describes threats against the lives of detainees' families. It cites one agent telling alleged 9/11 architect Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed that if there was another attack against the United States, "We're going to kill your children." Another was accused of telling a different suspect that he would sexually assault his mother in front of him if he didn't cooperate. That interrogator denied the accusation.

According to the inspector general, the interrogation tactics were not within established guidelines. The guidelines themselves have been strongly criticized as political rationalizations by the Bush administration for practices that violated both U.S. and international law.

CIA Director Leon Panetta issued a statement insisting that "the challenge is not the battles of yesterday but those of today and tomorrow." As for the claim the harsh techniques produced valuable information, as former Vice President Cheney has said, Panetta said that "will remain a legitimate area of dispute."

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

The murder-suicide in tiny Dumfries, Va., was tragic enough, but even more scary if we believe the friends and neighbors' explanations for what may have been the motivation.

Wallis and Julie Fay were suffering the overwhelming problems that are consuming so many families. The husband and wife were found dead a day before they were to be removed from the house they had proudly called home for 15 years. After an all-too-familiar story of one setback after another, they were not able to pull themselves out of their downward spiral.

The jobs they had counted on to support their routine had fallen through. Their foundation collapsed. Friends say they were increasingly frantic about money problems that grew worse and worse.

Finally, their last tie to stability and self-respect was ripped away by foreclosure. Many who know them believe that the growing shame pushed one of the Fays over the edge. Police are not saying which one actually pulled the trigger.

As the politicians endlessly debate the fine points of regulation and rescue and take their contributions from the banks that drag their feet in extending mortgage lifelines, family agencies across the country report a jump in calls about domestic abuse. Officials say the rate of such violence is heading up as the economic turmoil has dragged so many down. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is just one of the organizations documenting a cause-and-effect relationship.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Sometimes there are so many trial balloons in the air, they could be mistaken for an eclipse. In the world of health care reform, they are currently leaving us all totally in the dark. And as the politicians send them up, their poll numbers go down.

Let's review: The Obama administration continues to play word games, offering vapid assurances to their progressive allies that the public option is still an option, while leaving very broad hints it's perfectly willing to abandon the idea -- and those who cling to it. Blaming the media, as usual, President Obama said again on Thursday that "the press got excited and some folks on the left got a little excited." He went on: "I see nothing wrong with having a public option as one choice."

Not exactly a fall-on-his-sword declaration, particularly since the president seemed to be differentiating himself from "some folks on the left." Let's not forget that if it wasn't for "some folks on the left," there would probably be different folks in the White House.

He's not the only Democrat out there posturing. Congressional leaders are telling anybody who will listen that they may try and ram reform through without participation from the other side of the aisle. "The White House and the Senate Democratic leadership still prefer a bipartisan bill," said a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "However, patience is not unlimited, and we are determined to get something done this year by any legislative means necessary."

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Now we find out the CIA was subcontracting an assassination program to a private company, deciding apparently that a public option was not enough. So in 2001, it turned to the now notorious Blackwater USA to supplement its own force of clandestine hit men.

The New York Times was first with the story ("C.I.A. Sought Blackwater's Help in Plan to Kill Jihadists"), and now everyone has scrambled to match the report, which says major elements of the program designed to take out terrorist leaders had been turned over to Blackwater, otherwise known as the "Gang that couldn't shoot straight unless it was gunning down innocents in Iraq." That Blackwater.

Small wonder that the new CIA director, Leon Panetta, terminated what was left of the termination program. No wonder he was embarrassed to tell Congress it had been kept in the dark about this. And now the agency needs to brace for more ridicule as the story continues to unfold in the media.

Let's see now: When the Central Intelligence Agency came up with the assassination plan, somebody decided it needed to bring in Blackwater to help with the, uh, execution.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

There are many who must be asking whether the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, was playing with a whole deck when he showed his hand on health care. What could explain a decision to volunteer, when he could have simply stayed out of the fight, that he doesn't happen to think health care is an "intrinsic right" in this country?

Did anyone tell him that his public opposition to a public option in the Wall Street Journal last week would thoroughly antagonize the millions of liberals who have believed it is their intrinsic right to waste money buying Mackey's overpriced organic food?

Did he really want to become their new Walmart monster, now that Walmart has caved to the same groups now organizing boycotts of Whole Foods? Did he really not understand that favorably quoting Margaret Thatcher was a bad idea?

So now he has left the left in uproar and sure enough, a boycott is growing, uh, organically. But there's a little problem. Actually, it's a big one: There is no true alternative for the nuts-and-twigs crowd. A federal court decision ruled it was not an antitrust violation if Whole Foods gobbled up competitor Wild Oats. And that's exactly what happened.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Two questions come to mind: What would possess someone to carry a gun to an appearance by the president of the United States? And what would possess the White House to say such a person has a right to do so?

Oh yeah, here's a third question: How crazy would someone have to be to carry a presumably loaded weapon just outside a hall where President Obama was speaking? In all probability, nobody approached to ask. They probably considered the likely consequences if they antagonized a gun-toting zealot. But, by golly, the White House, always eager to keep the right-to-bear-arms crowd happy, said it passed musket, er, muster.

The rationale, according to press spokesman Robert Gibbs, was that "there are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally" and that "these laws don't change when the president comes to your state or locality."

They don't? The commander in chief doesn't get special protection? Then why is someone detained for carrying a threatening sign? As weapons go, is the sign mightier than the gun?

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Isn't it great to have the media around? For public officials, they're always handy to blame when retreating in a big hurry from something the officials said. Case in point: White House spokesman Robert Gibbs claiming news reports that the administration was floating trial balloons about abandoning health care reform's public option were overblown. Never mind that that's exactly what happened.

It's so interesting to watch all the gamesmanship underway as reform opponents and proponents use every tactic in their negotiating bag of tricks. All the uproar at town halls, all the misrepresentations, all the straw men, and, yes, the trial balloons -- these are tried and true techniques. As are all the leaked stories, like the one in the Washington Post about how the "Debate's Path Caught Obama by Surprise."

Yeah, right. The White House is Casa Blanca. And they are "shocked, shocked." Either they're playing games with the press or they're rank amateurs. (And we all know which one: These guys are professional game players.)

It's kind of funny to watch. Here you have a president who rode the "Change You Can Believe In" wave to Washington. Now he's engaging in the same-old-same-olds that were first refined at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Lobbyists are calling the shots, just like they have since inventing themselves in the lobby of the Willard Hotel, keeping Ulysses Grant happy. When their behind-the-scenes maneuvering needs a boost, they bring out impassioned supporters. How quaint.

And when administration strategists want to try out ideas, they carefully prepare a spokesman, or in this case a spokeswoman, with exact wording designed to get a precise interpretation by the press. In this case, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius could later blame "a slow news day" as cover for her protestation she was misunderstood. That is so old-fashioned, it precedes female suffrage.

FROM TRUE/SLANT:

For well over 40 years, Bob Novak was known as the scourge of liberals. He loved his nickname "The Prince of Darkness" Imagine my surprise when I came to Washington and found him to be anything but dark.

Bob brightened my life for the many years we were friends. He was irrascible, hardnosed, crochety, all of that. The image was real. But it was only part of the truth. Bob was respectful, and supportive of people like me who were just getting our feet wet in Washington. He and his late partner Roland Evans were always there to encourage colleagues. It didn't matter what their point of view.

Until you crossed swords in the professional arena. Then he would whack you with everything he had, whether it was the printed word in an acid column, or on a "Crossfire" when he would try and cut anyone down to size. But after the show was over, so was the combat.

The same guy who had just been cutting you to shreds was now trading stories about family, or making plans with you for a get together with him and his wonderful wife Geraldine. This was not a unique experience. Just about anybody who got to know Bob basked in his friendship.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

When you combine his far-out ideas with his "aw-shucks" style and quick wit, Mike Huckabee could easily be called the "compassionate extremist." Now he's taken his rock-star act to Israel, where he's siding, not surprisingly, with the most conservative elements there, declaring that a Palestinian state in the middle of the Jewish homeland is "virtually unrealistic."

Huckabee is on a three-day tour designed to keep his name in the "true believer" political mix back home by siding with Israel's religious nationalist true believers.

In both countries they are lapping up his comments. He's approvingly touring Jewish settlements that even the government of Benjamin Netanyahu considers illegal. In his affable way, he insists that he isn't against a Palestinian state -- he just wants it somewhere else. "The question is," he said, "should the Palestinians have a place to call their own? Yes. I have no problem with that. Should it be in the middle of the Jewish homeland? That's what I think has to be assessed as virtually unrealistic."

He went on to praise Israel for allowing Muslims to visit Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock, which is a holy site for Islam as well as for Judaism. But should a mosque be allowed? Nope. It would be an "affront." "Israel is a place where they're going to allow other cultures and religions," he explained, "but don't ask the Jewish people whose homeland it is to completely yield over their ability to live within the context of their country."

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

When you combine his far-out ideas with his "aw-shucks" style and quick wit, Mike Huckabee could easily be called the "compassionate extremist." Now he's taken his rock-star act to Israel, where he's siding, not surprisingly, with the most conservative elements there, declaring that a Palestinian state in the middle of the Jewish homeland is "virtually unrealistic."

Huckabee is on a three-day tour designed to keep his name in the "true believer" political mix back home by siding with Israel's religious nationalist true believers.

In both countries they are lapping up his comments. He's approvingly touring Jewish settlements that even the government of Benjamin Netanyahu considers illegal. In his affable way, he insists that he isn't against a Palestinian state -- he just wants it somewhere else. "The question is," he said, "should the Palestinians have a place to call their own? Yes. I have no problem with that. Should it be in the middle of the Jewish homeland? That's what I think has to be assessed as virtually unrealistic."

He went on to praise Israel for allowing Muslims to visit Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock, which is a holy site for Islam as well as for Judaism. But should a mosque be allowed? Nope. It would be an "affront." "Israel is a place where they're going to allow other cultures and religions," he explained, "but don't ask the Jewish people whose homeland it is to completely yield over their ability to live within the context of their country."

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

It's time to turn away from health care for just a moment and address the confusion in the economy. It's a good thing, actually. How many town halls can we take? So, with the markets once again in their gyrations, it's a good time to, uh, take stock.

I can tell you what doesn't help: navel-gazing pieces like the one in the Washington Post, "Signs Don't Point to a Typical Recovery." It was a laborious "on the one hand, but on the other" piece that said so much it ended up saying nothing. Hey, I can do that.
So, as we ride the roller coaster of economic indicators that race us day-to-day from the depths to the tantalizing to the depths again, someone is bound to ask whether the glass is half empty or half full.

It's an idiot's question. So I'll ask it. For an answer we should start with the glass. It had been shattered, but it's beginning to look like it has been pasted together. Whether it will stick is another story.

Now we can get to the question about "half empty" or "half full." The answer (finally!) is "neither." (Right now you're asking yourself, "I waited for that?")

What we see in the glass depends on when we look. Sometimes there's a tiny drop of hope on the bottom -- some statistic that suggests we may have reached bottom.

On other days we see another report that unemployment will still grow and/or that consumers are not spending what it takes to generate a recovery.

FROM POLITICS: DAILY

There are few places more precarious than where you stand after being sent to launch a trial balloon -- when there's flak all around and those whose idea it was could pull the rug out from under you. Just ask Health and Human Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who an Obama administration official is now saying "misspoke" when she gave the very broad hint Sunday that the "public option" for health care reform might be abandoned.

"Misspoke" has become a favorite word in this administration. This time THE "M-word" being used to quell an uproar created when Sebelius said on CNN that a government-run insurance option is "not the essential element" of health care reform. She suggested the so-called insurance "co-op" idea may be preferable.

FROM TRUE/SLANT:

I had vowed to not write about Michael Vick because I didn’t want to be like everyone else who began by saying “I am a dog lover, but…”

Well you know the old saying “Promises are made to be broken”. So: I am a huge dog lover but… I had no idea what to make of Michael Vick’s return to the NFL.

This is not about my deep attachment to puppies, particularly mine. Nor is it about my conflict because, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, I’m guilty of being a professional football fan. So I don’t plan to boycott.

I don’t know if I will be able to tolerate the stench of Vick’s despicable cruelty but I’m definitely not able to ignore the foul odor of his PR campaign.

It is brilliant in a truly garbagey way. A primer on how public opinion can be manipulated.

While Vick was still serving his sentence his attorney Billy Martin, was methodically planning for his full return from exile.

Martin is one of the very best at not only protecting a client’s legal rights but rescuing his image. So step number one: Turn to Judy Smith.

Judy Smith is a genius when it comes to the crisis managing of public perceptions. She often works hand in glove with Billy Martin.I had been exposed to their every clever ways when I covered them in 2001, as they represented the parents of Chandra Levy promoting relentless war against then-Congressman Gary Condit.

The parents were desperately seeking to keep alive any shred of innuendo that he had murdered the young former intern and lover. To my shame, I spent the entire pre-9/11 summer getting on the air with every rumor and flimsy suspicion.

This time, we knew who was guilty. This time Martin and Smith had to convince the angry population that once Vick left the prison world he could re-enter the football world, with its own hyper-sensitivity to tarnish.

So far, the plan has proven to be brilliantly successful even as it has been darkly transparent.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

With Obama administration trial-ballooners declaring that the president might be willing to drop the public option from health care reform, an opinion piece that appeared less than a month ago should be required reading. It was written by Kenneth Bacon.

Bacon had long experience in government and public policy. A longtime Wall Street Journal reporter, he moved to the dark side and became a Pentagon spokesman during the Clinton administration. After that he became the president of Refugees International. But his op-ed piece in the Washington Post was about his private life and his suffering, and that's where he shared an essential voice of experience. It was titled "A Cancer Patient's Perspective." From that perspective, he recommended five goals for any reform:

Emphasize prevention, early detection and early intervention.

Maximize online efficiencies to reduce paperwork and streamline data.

Protect the patient-doctor relationship.

Address the insurance/quality-of-care gap.

Increase funding for medical research.

Bacon was writing as he struggled with advanced melanoma. Early on, when it was easily treatable, he said, his dermatologist misdiagnosed it.

From that point, he, his family and his doctor struggled with an insurance company -- his so-called provider -- "to arrange payment for my daily brain radiation [the cancer had metastasized], which had been rejected as 'not medically necessary' even though the cancer in my brain is growing rapidly."

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Who knew that Sarah Palin was such a uniter? How else can you explain how the right and left want to wrap their wings around her. Conservatives embrace her as a voice of the future, liberals hail her as a present-day object of ridicule. Enter the Center for American Progress, definitely in the latter group.

In a piece on its "Think Progress" Web site, the group takes delight in pointing out that the very same Sarah Palin who has inspired so much hell-raising with her little Facebook "death panels" description, not too long ago proclaimed her belief in the kind of living will planning she now denounces in brutal terms.

She was Governor Palin then -- before she had emerged from obscurity to become vice presidential candidate Tina Fey. In April 2008 she signed a proclamation declaring a "Healthcare Decisions Day." It cited the importance of "the need to plan ahead for health care decisions, related to end of life care" and went on to "encourage hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, continuing care retirement communities and hospices to participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information to the public about advance directives." Yada yada yada.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

With all the pushing and shoving going on with health care reform, there's very little attention being paid to tort reform. Malpractice lawsuits always are near the top of any medical provider's tale of woe. It's a shame it's not as controversial, so far, as the many other facets of health care reform. The screamers would REALLY enjoy yelling at some lawyers.

For the longest time, I thought tort reform had something to do with pastry. Silly me. In my view, it's really an alias for removing a patient's legal protection against shoddy medical treatment by curtailing his or her right to sue. It's a long-standing dream of those who would prefer not to be so accountable for their deceptions, carelessness and incompetence. It's not that the other side is all that angelic, either. That's where you find the attorneys who want to keep those billable hours and huge contingency fees coming in.

It's one of those issues that's lurking in the background so far. Doctors and the pharmaceutical manufacturers complain that the fear of lawsuits and the bloated insurance premiums they must pay are huge reasons they have to charge exorbitant amounts for treatments and drugs.

It is true that one of the major contributors to the cost of any treatment is unnecessary testing. Physicians say they order every possible examination they can, no matter how redundant, to make sure they don't get blamed if something -- anything -- goes wrong.

Where "First do no harm" used to be the first rule of the Hippocratic Oath, it seems to have been replaced with "First Protect Your A--." Why? Because those mercenary attorneys are always lurking, looking for the dissatisfied patient. So this is a problem, no question about it.

Here's where it becomes tricky. A lot of our medical professionals are sometimes negligent as all get out. Their unprofessional treatments can kill or maim. What do you do to those who cause such misery? I'll tell you what: You SUE THEM! Make them pay for their destructive sloppiness.

I

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

To: Candidates
From: The House and Senate Democratic Campaign Committees
Re: Explosive "Town Halls"

We urgently recommend that you schedule, as SOON AS POSSIBLE, a town-hall meeting on health care reform. In addition, make sure that the opposition Web sites know exactly when and where it's being held so they can send their wrought-up protesters to yell at you.

See to it that the media are invited -- not just the local television stations but the cable networks. They cannot get enough of the high-volume emotion. You need as many people as possible to see you standing there calmly as some crazy screams at you about socialism and judgment day. The nuttier they get, the more sane you look. And the more voter sympathy you get.

It's obvious what is happening: The wild backlash to the reform proposals has caused its own backlash. The people who are being inflamed look like they're setting themselves on fire.

Never mind David Broder's column predicting growing disgust at these tactics. They'll come anyway. You can't re-leash the unleashed. Besides, these are not people who read the Washington Post. They get their news from Rush, and Glenn and Sean and shadowy Web sites.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

As the economy shows signs of recovering and the health care debate rages, it's time to consider new financial opportunities. A certain moneymaker would be a firm that specializes in catering town-hall meetings. Shouldn't there be a cornucopia of rotten fruits, vegetables and eggs to throw at each other?

What better way to take advantage of the fact that August is not only "Trash Your Congressman" month, but the height of tomato season as well. There are far too many to eat, and they're easy to throw. (Tomatoes, not congressmen.) Some enterprising entrepreneur will recognize a great secondary market, even if it is a farmer's market.

While it is true the phrase "food fight" never appears in the Constitution, we shouldn't let the purists dissuade us. Furious debate is as American as apple pie. Come to think of it, won't we need some baked goods? You can't "pie" anyone without a pie, after all.

If you think this is facetious, you're obviously a skeptic. But is spoiled food any more ridiculous to hurl than the rotten distortions the manipulators are spewing out, drowning out any possibility of understanding health care reform? Our system is sick right now, and the extremists keep injecting poison. Someone may as well take advantage of all this to make sure that the partisan hacks are not the only rotten apples involved.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Just as President Obama complains about the "misinformation" about health care proposals spewing from his opponents, one of his allies has caught him in some misinformation of his own.

At his lovefest town-hall session in New Hampshire on Tuesday, the president denied charges he intends to cut Medicare benefits. "We are not," he said, "AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare. Okay?"

It was not okay. AARP Chief Operating Officer Tom Nelson quickly churned out a statement:

"While the President was correct that AARP will not endorse a health care reform bill that would reduce Medicare benefits, indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate."

Inaccurate??!! Is that the same as "misinformation"? It may be a matter of degree. AARP (which doesn't like to be called by its old name, the American Association of Retired Persons) continued that while it "supports specific measures that would help older Americans and their families," Obama was exaggerating its position.

There was no suggestion that the president's stretch of the truth goes nearly as far as claims from partisan hacks (you know who you are) that his plan would set up "death panels" and euthanasia or a government takeover of our medical system. Those are just wild fantasies dreamed up by opportunists exploiting the worst fears of people already frightened by the direction our country is heading.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Forgive this self-indulgence. Normally I don't like to brag, but there's a conservative Web site out there that has named me the recipient of its "Bonehead of the Day" award. Applause, please. The honor is bestowed because of my columns decrying the health care frenzy -- columns that allegedly overlook similar disruptions courtesy of the far left.

The site Bonehead of the Day complains that I "conveniently forget how groups like ActUp, Code Pink, MoveOn, ANSWER, ACORN have encouraged activists to shout down (and sometimes pie) conservative speakers at colleges, and mobilize millions online to 'push back' during political campaigns. "

I cannot disagree with that at all. The people on the right are absolutely, uh, right.

Now it's Democrats who are on the receiving end. One can only imagine Sen. Arlen Specter, wishing he had never switched from the Republican Party as wild constituents at his shout-fest called him everything but "senator."

The crazies from the far-right reaches are merely employing tactics refined by the crazies on the other fringe. It's quite remarkable when you think about it. Conservatives have always despised demonstrators. In my lifetime, they would sometimes organize their sympathizers to break up loud protests. Times have changed. The shoe is on the other wing.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Here's a question for Dan Rather: How could you be so right and yet so wrong? More specifically: What would possess you to call for the government to stick its nose into journalism?

You're right on the money when you decry the sorry state of the media in this country. But you are amazingly off base when you suggest a commission appointed by the president to study the problem.

--
He is the very last person who should appoint one, along with everybody else in government. When the First Amendment refers to "freedom of speech or of the press," it means freedom from government interference. I thought you knew that.

Imagine how astonished your old viewers must feel as they read your Washington Post Op-Ed piece, "The News Americans Need." You repeat the call you recently shouted from the mountaintop of the Aspen Institute: President Obama should "form a commission to address the perilous state of America's news media."

You provide a long list of particulars: Corporate ownership and consolidation, driving a never-ending quest for profits, have reduced most media to empty shells lacking the resources to adequately cover what people need to know, and also lacking any appetite to do so for fear of making waves.

You describe a dismal future where effective reporting will have become a thing of the past: "What you will see, instead, is more opinion, commentary and marketing, masquerading as news. You will get more in-studio shouting matches between partisans, moderated by openly partisan talking heads." As the late football coach George Allen once said, "The future is now."

You correctly go on to describe the inherent conflicts of interest affecting conglomerate-owned newspapers and television outlets because they have "at any given moment, multiple regulatory, procurement and legislative matters before various arms of the federal government; their interests, therefore can often run contrary to the interests of the citizens." Right on, Dan!!

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

We keep statistics about almost everything. So I wonder if anyone has kept tabs on the many people who have gone bonkers about government interference at health care meetings. How many drove to the town-hall meetings in new cars they just got in the "Cash for Clunkers" program?

More to the point: How many stopped to pick up prescriptions they assume are safe because they have been so rigorously tested by the Food and Drug Administration? Actually, one of the FDA's biggest problems is interference by the private sector, but that's a subject for another day.

How many of those bellowing dire warnings about "bureaucrats getting between you and your doctor" were following the intense efforts to fend off swine flu by the staffs at the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Are the screamers aware that the CDC, NIH and NIAID are government agencies? As their blood pressure elevates, did they know handy tips are available on the Web site of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute -- another federal entity that practices medicine?

These guys already get between you and your doctor, and be glad they do. They lead the research efforts that give physicians the health care tools they need. They provide oversight to try and enforce limits on profiteering and carelessness.

While we're at it, let's not forget those other massive government programs where instead of the Hippocratic oath, most staff members take the Bureaucratic oath. That would include Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, Armed Forces medical care, children health initiatives, etc.

It would seem that those raising the most hell are either severely out of touch or knowingly making arguments so phony they should take a Hypocritic oath.

The bad news is that Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly have resumed their vitriolic war of words. The good news is that Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly have resumed their vitriolic war of words.

It's good news because they are repudiating efforts by the leaders of their conglomerate bands to orchestrate a cease fire that was designed to protect against corporate embarrassment. In the process the suits on high reinforced the view that their media holdings are shills for their companies and anything but the independent voices they claim to be.

Olbermann and O'Reilly are taking full advantage of the tradition in the United States where anyone is allowed free expression of his emptiest belligerence, even if it borders on inflammatory...as long as it keeps people watching.

The restrictions should be minimal. Crossing that incendiary line, literally, by falsely screaming "FIRE!!" in a crowded theater is the example that is always cited as a limitation. Inciting a riot is not allowed.

Oh wait a minute, isn't that what Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are doing with their calls for unbridled disruptions by their true believers at health care town hall meetings organized by Senators and members of the House?

By comparison, the rants by Olbermann and O'Reilly are largely for laughs...juvenile perhaps, but also quite successful as
viewers flock to watch their carefully planned faux outrage.

That says something about their audiences, but they have their own right to watch whatever they want, no matter how transparently silly it is.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

The head of the conservative group accused of inciting disruptive behavior at Democrats' health care meetings insists it's the Left that's to blame, not the Right. In an interview with Politics Daily, Matt Kibbe, the president of Freedomworks, contends that initially, his group's followers were "not nearly as rowdy as a high school football game."

But when Democratic leaders like Harry Reid "mocked" their grassroots as phony, he said, "people were aroused."

Democratic members of the House and Senate are being met by mob-like crowds whenever and wherever they try to organize a town-hall meeting. While Republican Party officials deny it's their doing, allies on the Internet as well on radio and TV stand accused of doing the dirty work of directing true believers to the meetings and whipping them into a frenzy before they go.

Now the other side is sending its own goon squads for "security" and it's a dangerous situation. Police officials worry it's only a matter of time before a confrontation gets completely out of hand.

Conservatives will lose the "You started it!!" argument: They began this slugfest over health care. They were the first to raise the cry and alarm their followers with often-distorted portrayals of mortal danger from the "Obamacare.'' And by the time the melodrama moved from the august stage of the Capitol to performances of the August roadshow, many watching from the far-right aisle seats were ready to act out.

FROM TRUE/SLANT:

When Sonia Sotomayor is sworn in she will join the other Justices who follow the Carlin precedent.

The late comedian George Carlin, used to do a hilarious routine he called “Heavy Mysteries. It was about the obnoxious kid in Catechism class who would test the priest’s patience with ridiculous questions.

When told it was a sin not to perform religious duty by a certain Sunday, his hand would shoot up and he’d say “…but then you cross the international dateline…and then it’s Monday, too late”. Would it still be a sin? Which brings us to the Supreme Court.

Think of the justices as nine people in black robes who bedevil lawyers with what amount to “International Dateline” questions, a constant barrage of “What If’s” (Well eight. Clarence Thomas never says anything.) Their dancing on the heads of pins is great entertainment. Too bad you can’t watch it.

On Saturday Sonia Sotomayor will be sworn in as the first Hispanic justice. As hugely significant as that is, it’s not the only “First”. Her public swearing in (after a private one) will be made available to television. That’s never happened before.

What a great sign! Maybe this is a first step toward allowing cameras to broadcast the Supremes performing live in session.

I won’t even pretend to be objective about this. As a TV twinkie, I have long argued for cameras wherever government operates. After all, if surveillance monitors and videotapes capture nearly every moment of our private lives why not show the public actions by so-called public officials.

We’ve come a long way with that. Television coverage of trials is routine, to say nothing of the minute-by-minute House and Senate proceedings that drone on CSpan.

A last holdout is the Supreme Court. While there have been audio tapes sporadically made available after a hearing on a particularly controversial matter…no cameras.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

What do you call a crazed group of people that disrupts a meeting on health care and hangs the congressman holding it in effigy? A mob.

What do you call the partisan groups that whip up their fear-of-change ultra-conservative base to engage in that symbolic lynching and then disavow any responsibility? You have a choice here between "deniers" and a word that rhymes with it.

GOP Chairman Michael Steele, for instance, insists, "We're not inciting anyone." But what about all the soulmate special-interest groups with close ties to the party? How about their allies, who issue insidious calls for disruption on their websites?

Can someone point to any Republicans who have been harassed as they hold meetings on health care? Are there any who have been taunted the way Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius were? Or chased from a supermarket parking lot gathering when an angry crowd of 200 closed in, as was the case with Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, or hung in effigy, like Rep. Frank Kratovil of Maryland?

They and some others who have been under siege in their home bases have one thing in common. They're all Democrats -- senators and members of the House who have been heckled and threatened as they tried to explain their views on the health care reforms moving through Washington.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

This may surprise faithful readers, but I may have a contrarian view about what the confirmation vote of Sonia Sotomayor means -- or more to the point, what the votes against confirmation mean. Instead of the pablum we're being fed, we should demand a healthy dish of judicial activism.

With 60 Democrats providing a solid wall against "no" votes, she'll get in. She could have mumbled her answers during the confirmation hearings and it would have been a done deal.

The bulk of the Republicans, all but nine of them voted "No", based their opposition on charges about her judicial activism. Just like the minority Democrats who unsuccessfully tried to turn away President Bush nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito. In all three cases, the wannabe justices made elaborate pretenses that they were legal automatons, with no ideology to guide them on the bench.

Most of the conventional thinkers say that such hokum means presidents will hereafter seek safe jurists. Here is the unconventional thinking (is "demented" a better word?):

Since almost everyone in the Senate is going to follow party lines anyway, why bother even pretending the nominee has not and never will stray from the middle of the road. Why would we even want someone like that? Shouldn't he or she be honest about his or particular brand of judicial activism?

Wouldn't that be a welcome relief, with the added advantage of not being such a bold-faced lie? If you want proof, look at the voting records of Roberts and Alito, who are confirming every suspicion they were bedrock conservatives.

On the other side, Thurgood Marshall was one of our greatest justices. We had a clear idea where he stood on the active role of the judiciary when it came to the great social issues. As an attorney, he had made the arguments before this same Supreme Court that led to the unanimous, precedent-shattering Brown v. Board of Education ruling. They don't get more "activist" than that one.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Let's consider the acronym. No, it is not a city in Ohio. An acronym is a clever set of initials for the title of an organization or endeavor. Often, it's a clever set of initials in search of a cause.

A good example is CARS, which stands, of course, for Car Allowance Rebate System. That's the official name of the "Cash for Clunkers" program.

There's the well-known NIMBY -- Not In My Back Yard-- and the much-used MILF -- Mothers I'd Like to Find. (Would you kindly get your mind out of the gutter?)

Special-interest groups adore acronyms. STOP is a favorite, as in Stop This Outrageous Purge (there's always an outrageous purge happening somewhere). CRAP stands for a group that deals with Cheap Redundant Assorted Products, and I'm not making that up.

Another old standby would be the People United groups -- people do like to unite. They call themselves things like PUMP (People United for Meaningful Progress) or some such. They are always countered by some entrenched special-interest group that should call itself People Opposed to Other Possibilities (figure it out).

Another obvious one would be DOC: Doctors Opposing Change.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

The time has come to end the shouting that characterizes nearly all of our policy debates. As we get immersed in health care reform, we need to calm down and return to quiet scorn and backstabbing.

It's a much more effective way of getting to what used to be the "competition of ideas." In today's world it's really more a competition of egos, as blowhards replace reaching the goal of getting to the heart of a matter with a stab in the heart of anyone who dares disagree.

Of course, the other aim is to get on TV or the Internet -- the Boob Tube or YouTube -- and you can't do that unless you're outrageous. So as still another public service by Politics Daily (at least until our bosses completely disavow this), here is a primer on the laws of the political jungle:

COMPROMISE IS TREASON
Anybody who is willing to settle for anything but all-or-nothing victory is a sellout.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CONSTRUCTIVE DEBATE
If it isn't destructive, the arguments are too weak

THE OTHER SIDE IS CORRUPT
Any conflicting viewpoints, no matter how reasonable they sound, come from people who are either on the take or blinded by ambition.

THE MEDIA ARE ALWAYS BIASED
They always blindly favor the other side.

So, now that we're clear on all this, it's time to talk tactics. Remember:

FAIR PLAY IS FOR SUCKERS
No one cares, so you may as well use dirty tactics. The other side will.

INTIMIDATION IS EFFECTIVE
Remember, the other side is not the opponent. It's the enemy.

Therefore:

What's so often missing when someone is charged with egregious conduct, as Miami Herald correspondent Carol Rosenberg was, is the follow-up. It won't happen this time. As far as her employer is concerned, the Rosenberg case has been dismissed.

Politics Daily readers will remember an extensive report last week on Rosenberg, my fellow Guantanamo Bay reporter over the past half-dozen years. Navy Cmdr. J.D. Morgan had filed a formal complaint with her newspaper, charging Rosenberg with "sexual harassment" and abusive language -- really abusive language.

One example of the graphic comments Rosenberg allegedly made in frustration as she tried to get information from the Pentagon spokesman was one suggesting a place Morgan could put a "red hot poker."

In an article today, the Herald said that after an investigation of the matter, it has cleared Rosenberg, who "will continue to cover the U.S. military." According to the paper, Human Resources Vice President Elissa Vanaver sent a letter Monday to the Pentagon stating an internal investigation "did not find corroboration" of Gordon's sexual harassment accusation. Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal, in an e-mail to Politics Daily, explained: "We talked to dozens of people familiar with the situation. They had different interpretations of what to make of the dispute."

Rosenberg was quoted by her paper as saying, "I have been heartened by an outpouring of support by both the uniformed military who have followed my coverage and journalists who covered the story." She did not respond to requests for additional comment.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Those of us who have been to the Guantanamo Bay detention hellhole and marveled at the beautiful setting have an idea: After the prisoners have gone, turn it into a tropical resort and condominium development. How's that for thinking ahead?

Obviously, there was little of that when President Obama impetuously announced in the love-fest first days of his administration that he would shut the place down and put an end to a site that had become an international embarrassment.

Unfortunately, his grand plan has collided with a national phenomenon we know as NIMBY.

So, when most states are mentioned as possible destinations for the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, they are quick to wall off any detention centers within their boundaries with a resounding "Not In My Back Yard!!"

Send the inmates to Ft. Leavenworth? Kansas screams, "NIMBY!!" Plan on trying some of them in Northern Virginia, Washington or New York? Even though ambitious U.S. attorneys are competing for these resume-making cases, in the neighborhoods outside the courthouses, the cries go out: "NIMBY!!. (Actually, in New York it's "FAHGEDDABAHDIT!!")

Is it possible to turn NIMBY into MIMBY ("Maybe In My Back Yard")? Perhaps in Michigan, where the dismal unemployment rate is about 15½ percent. The state's Upper Peninsula may offer a case study in how economic desperation can trump the fear of terrorists nearby.

That should explain why the response there is a definite MIMBY. In the town of Standish, a penitentiary is about to close. So, when the administration floats the trial balloon that it's considering special high-security facilities, where the unique inmates transferred from Guantanamo's sunny shores could be tried in courtrooms located behind the prison walls, the people of Standish go, "Hmmmm. How many jobs would it save?"

FROM TRUE/SLANT:

Can we agree that one of the most tiresome cliches is this one, which
has been overused ever since it was uttered by Count Von Bismark in the
18 hundreds ”To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not
watch them in the making.” The question a couple centuries later, is
what “respect”?

As we are witnessing with the health care grind, the government process
riddled with special interest contamination that is deadly to any
meaningful reform.

As the already infected members of congress scatter and spread this
organism throughout the body politic, efforts to restore it to health
are stymied by the sheer complexity of it. To say nothing of its
contradictions.

We are being told that it is too far reaching, too expensive. Then
comes the next sound bite from someone who says that it doesn’t go far
enough.

What are we to make of the conflicting claims that we need to maintain
an insurance company based approach versus the arguments that those
greedy insurance companies need competition from a government run plan.

So here's a question: Does the deal between Rupert Murdoch and Jeffrey Immelt -- the supreme leaders of NewsCorp. and GE, respectively -- to end the idiotic Keith Olbermann-Bill O'Reilly feud, constitute an antitrust violation?

No, I don't mean legal antitrust. Few worry about that anymore. I'm referring to the fragile kind of trust based on the belief that media should not be beholden to the owners' business interests.

In this case, the behemoths that own Fox News and MSNBC were clearly finding the bitter prime-time bomb-throwing an embarrassment and therefore a potential threat to the two conglomerates' bottom lines.

They obviously decided they couldn't just end the squabbling by sending the guys over to the White House for a beer, so they exercised absolute authority, ordering these two to stop it. Now.

There's a risk, of course. Will putting an end to the bickering alienate viewers who love it? As H.L. Mencken famously said, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

Notwithstanding that, there is another way to look at this: Survey after survey shows that the credibility of the so-called mainstream media has seriously eroded. Maybe Fox and MSNBC realized it was time to protect the bottom line and rein in the buffoonery just a teeny bit with a cease-fire.

Let's face it though: buffoonery sells. Whether it's on O'Reilly's and Olbermann's shows, whether it's whatever that is in the middle, whether it's out there on the crazy fringes of extremist talk radio, or whether it's this column, foolishness is definitely the way so much information is dispensed these days.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

I've been thinking. How about expanding the wildly popular "Cash for Clunkers" program. Wouldn't it work equally well for the divorce business?

It's been so successful with car sales, maybe we should similarly allow the dissatisfied spouse to get rid of his or her marital "clunker" and get thousands from the government to pay for a brand new model. The money could be a down payment on alimony.

Perhaps the Senate can attach the idea this week when it considers adding billions to the auto version that ran out of money after it barely got, uh, rolling. That was probably because of pent-up demand. Imagine all the pent-up divorce demand in this economy.

As the Neil Sedaka song goes, "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do." It's too expensive -- few can afford splitting because there's so little left to split.

I'm sure there will be those who will insist this is an idea whose time has not come, but then many of them are your usual naysayers, who question whether spending billions to juice any enterprise is a good idea -- including automobile sales.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

You know that typical commercial blather where Mr. or Ms. Announcer breathlessly says, "Act now, this offer is limited" or "Time is running out"? This is one of those rare times when it's really true.

The administration and Congress are actually moving quickly because they are faced with a problem, so rare the government doesn't quite know how to handle it: What do you do when a program actually works? So much so that it's spent all of its money.

It's the stimulus effort officially known as the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) and affectionately known as "cash for clunkers."

Car buyers get up to $4,500 for their beat-up gas guzzler if they trade it in for a new, fuel-efficient model. The program had $1 billion to dole out. The offer was in effect until Nov. 1, or whenever the money ran out.

November 1? How about August 1?! The $1 billion is already gone. People let their pent-up demand explode. They swarmed over car dealerships (at least the ones remaining), rushing to fill out the paperwork so they could drive off in that shiny new vehicle that is still such a symbol of American success, even if it's made by a foreign automaker.

Now the plan gets more typical of government programs. The paperwork is backed up. The official websites are crashing because they can't handle the load. The bureaucrats are shaking their heads and saying, "Who knew?"

So it's over. The guys have had their beer. President Obama has smiled through clenched teeth at the "Beer at the White House" diversion from health care reform. Has anyone considered, though, that the single-minded focus on health care is also a diversion?

An old friend once said about cable news, "We can only over-cover one story at a time." Britney Spears or Sarah Palin will completely take over. It's fair to say that the debate over health care reform is more substantive. Sometimes.

What's disturbing, though, is we've turned almost all our attention away from the faltering economy even as it shows glimmers of rebounding. There are still many many tales of despicable conduct we should be telling.

Thanks to the New York Times, we are reminded that the contemptible people who got us into this mess are doing everything they can to take care of themselves while everyone else continues to drown.

The article describes large numbers of mortgage brokers who are impeding efforts by desperate homeowners to stay in their homes. Why? Turns out these brokers have sweetheart deals where they share in the fees charged for late payments. The longer they can stretch the agony, the more delinquencies, the more money they get. So stretch they do. In the process they thwart government efforts to encourage new financing at terms the homeowner can better handle.

FROM TRUE/SLANT:

Health

“This is an Action, Eyewitness News Weather Alert!! Our town is going to be clobbered by an August Blizzard.”

You might not hear anything like this from Eye Nitwit News, but you should. Consider this a warning. Wall-to-wall TV ads will completely take over the airways, cables and satellites, whatever channel you watch. These health care commercials will definitely be hazardous to your health and will reverse any progress you had made toward understanding the fragments of reform that members of Congress had created, before they flew the Capitol for their month-long recess.

Just about every special interest group with deep pockets will be spreading the wealth just a bit with television stations that could care less whether the commercials are distortions, as long as they can pull in the full rate.

And they will be distortions. Sadly, the legislation is really just in skeletal form at this point, but the cleverly produced commercial can pick whatever meat there is on those bones and throw it out to be chewed up by the predators who have everything to gain from the Darwinian status quo.

The Senators and Congressmen and women who make the big mistake of going back with the homefolks will get clobbered at each and every town meeting they hold. They’ll play to big crowds…as many people as the insurance companies, doctors, lawyers,, etc, can recruit to pack the house.

That way, they can drown out the honest questions that might come from constituents who are understandbly confused as they try and grasp the complexities of the measures that are slowly going through the DC grinder.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

It is time to deliver a warning about the month of August. Do not watch television. Unless you like watching ads designed to totally confuse you about health care reform.

Members of Congress will have left Washington and scattered to the winds. If they're smart, they'll go into hiding, avoiding constituents like the plague. Perhaps they should enter the Witless Protection Program.

Otherwise they'll be hammered witless over the partially completed reform package they left behind at the Capitol. Every special interest group that can produce a deceptive commercial will do so. Their effort will be to pick all the bones off any package that's coming together, at least the parts that take away their hard-earned financial advantage.

Call this the "Broadcast and Cable Stations Gift That Keeps on Giving." Last year, the presidential campaign created artificial revenue highs for them. Now, thanks once again to Barack Obama, there will be new cash flow.

With all these commercials, even a PBS station's fundraising will be less irritating to viewers. And that's saying something. (In fact, maybe our leaders should consider a prohibition of those money-grubbing public television drives as a way to enhance the nation's mental health, but that's a discussion for another day.)

Never underestimate the pundits' ability to trivialize. So let's ponder one more time the president's promise of a Rose Garden to the professor and the cop.

We've all had great fun with the buildup up to what we're now calling the "Beer Summit." The White House started going along with the fun once cooler heads there realized they could turn the president's embarrassment over speaking stupidly into a picnic.

There they'll be: Harvard Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, the African-American; Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley, the white one; and President Barack Obama, the one in the middle, literally.

It would probably be useful to invite Sonia Sotomayor for the "Wise Latina Woman" perspective, but she's not coming.

FROM POLITICS DAILY

As a public service, Politics Daily will now provide definitions of a few of the words we are hearing in political debate.

RACIST:
1) Someone who harbors hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.
2) A word increasingly used by racists and/or those who want to inflame them. Example: TV crazy Glenn Beck, radio gasbag Rush Limbaugh, and political self-promoter Newt Gingrich.

LATINA
1) A person of Latin-American or of non-European Spanish-speaking descent.
2) A term a Supreme Court nominee might regret when used with the words "wise" and "woman."
3) A flimsy excuse for opposing a nominee's confirmation to the Supreme Court.
3a) Pretext for TV shouting.
4) No excuse for careless use of the word "racist." (See above.)

STUPIDLY
1) Characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish; senseless. As in "acted stupidly" or "spoke stupidly."
2) An expression that precedes an invitation to come over and have a beer.
3) A term that will distract and knock someone off-message.
3a) An impediment to health care reform.
4) A word to be avoided in the future.
5) Still another pretext to pander by calling someone on the other side a "racist."

FROM POLITICS DAILY

There are many reasons that so many people admire Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, whatever their political persuasion. One is that he is intellectually honest -- you can't call him a demagogue. Although it was tempting yesterday.

It is fair to say that, during a Fox News interview Tuesday, he slipped into some demagoguery when he was so consumed by partisan zeal that he uttered one of those oft-repeated simple-minded comments that so intentionally distort the health care debate. We hear it all the time from those who want to beat back any reform supported by President Obama.

You ready? Here it comes: "They want to put bureaucrats between you and your doctor!"

Let's go over this one more time. There already are bureaucrats between you and your doctor. They work for the insurance companies. Their job is to veto any medical decisions that cut into their employers' profit. If that isn't getting between you and your doctor, nothing is. From here on out, let's call them "insuracrats."

Furthermore, there really should be people between you and your doctor. Somebody needs to protect against the MD who orders the unnecessary test, not just to fend off a malpractice suit, which is a mealy-mouthed excuse, but because he can make more money with it. The same goes for the physician who has a sweetheart deal with the pharmaceutical company that throws money and cushy trips his way, or the one who pursues a particular treatment without exploring others simply because it fits into his specialty or skill set.

However, if we should have learned one thing by now, it's that the insuracrats are not there to guarantee proper care. They are there to stand between you and reasonable coverage.

The many elements of health care reform are mind-bogglingly complex, but there are some simple questions that anyone hoping to address it needs to ask first.

Are we a country that believes everyone equally deserves certain services and protections?

Is quality health care one of those rights everyone can expect or a privilege reserved for the few?

(For purposes of this discussion, we'll define the fortunate ones as those who carry insurance that's adequate to one degree or another. The unfortunate are obviously the millions who are uninsured.)

Do the fortunate have a right to state-of-the-art treatment at all times, while the others make do with medical care that is substandard (or sometimes non-existent)?

Should everyone get decent treatment, even if that means the well-off can't get the MRI-on-demand they've come to expect? Do the poor have less of a right to comprehensive diagnosis?

No matter how hard the politicians try to gloss over it, they will have to deal with these questions.

Even if all the improvements and efficiencies work as reform advocates promise -- and they won't -- a more equitable system would still mean millions more people will have access to it. For that reason alone, there will be longer lines of those waiting for the care they expect.

We will have to redefine not only what they can expect, but what they deserve -- what services are delivered and, just as importantly, which ones are not.

Not everyone who gets that MRI these days really needs it. Someone will have to be more discriminating about who does and who doesn't.

For that matter, not everyone needs the redundant tests that doctors prescribe, largely to protect the doctors', well, you know. Someone will have to come up with ways to help make sure that physicians' "well-you-knows" aren't in such danger of lawsuits, while still allowing the legal system to protect against shoddy treatment.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

As a reporter who has covered the Guantanamo Bay prison camp story probably longer and more thoroughly than anyone else, the Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg has always pushed military officials to answer her questions. It's often a tricky exchange, as the press officers try to bridge the gap between giving information and protecting the interests of their bosses.

And so there's no small irony now that she is ignoring attempts by Politics Daily and other news organizations to contact her.

Rosenberg is the story this time. A public affairs officer at Gitmo, Navy Cmdr. Jeffery Gordon, has formally charged that in her dealings with him, she crossed the line into "multiple incidents of abusive and degrading comments of an explicitly sexual nature."

One example he cited in a letter to Herald's editor: "Have you ever had a red hot poker shoved up your [butt]? . . . Have you ever had a broomstick?"

In an e-mail, Rosenberg's executive editor, Anders Gyllenhaal, would only say: "We're working as quickly as we can to sort out this out. Until then, it's not appropriate to say anything about a personnel case like this."

Gordon was also unwilling to comment beyond his formal complaint, telling Politics Daily that after he spoke with the Washington Post, his superiors said he "should say nothing more because this is an administrative matter."

This is for all of those who fly into Reagan National Airport: How many of you have looked out the windows when the pilot announces he is banking over the famous monuments of Washington?

How many have taken pride in this view? Unfortunately, like so much of the nation's capital, it looks better from a distance.

The visitor quickly learns, the areas surrounding these marble icons are beginning to resemble a pig sty. Thanks to the Associated Press for pointing out that the grounds and facilities have been allowed to deteriorate into embarrassing disrepair.

The sidewalks next to the beautiful Jefferson Memorial, according to the report, are "crumbling . . . sinking into the Tidal Basin." And reflecting pools "are filled with green, smelly water." The story says the Mall is in danger of becoming a "national disgrace."

Another term that has probably occurred to the millions who traipse among what are supposed to be demonstrations of American pride might be ''pathetic." How better to describe the neglect by Congress -- which is supposed to pass appropriations for repairs and maintenance.

FROM POLITICS DAILY

His spokesmen were quick to spread the word. "Sooner rather than later," President Obama will get the chance to practice his "Beer Diplomacy" and extinguish, with a little foam, the firestorm he ignited.

Professor Henry Louis ("Skip") Gates and his new best buddy, Cambridge, Mass., Police Sgt. James Crowley ("Jimbo"?), have agreed to show up. Let's not get too hasty, though.

It's all well and good that a president tries to show he's one of the guys, but it's not that easy. First of all, he's not.

Second, he can't invite someone into the White House for a beer, just like that.

When the head of the Secret Service heard about this, he probably had a cow. He doesn't allow people to simply come waltzing into the executive mansion. Background checks are mandatory. And these two guys are kinda dicey. One of them has been arrested, the other was accused of racial profiling. Besides, how many academics have nicknames like "Skip"? Just wondering.

Even if security gets past those red flags, there are so many questions to resolve.

What do you serve? Gates' lawyer says he doesn't drink beer. Of course he doesn't. He's a Harvard professor, after all, who wouldn't be caught dead with a brew in his hand. He'd probably lose his tenure. Even if he went along, would he need a glass or would he drink out of the bottle?

So what have we learned from all this "Acted Stupidly" stupidity, which I am hereinafter calling "StupidGate" What we have learned is that even smart people can Act and TALK "stupidly.

President Obama reverted to smart form at the end of a week where , he used the "S word" to describe the actions of Sgt James Crowley, of the Cambridge, Massachusetts PD. The President who obviously takes great pride in his cool, lost his Wednesday night when he said what he did about the arrest and criminal charge against his friend from Harvard Square, Professor Henry Louis Gates.

The moment he pulled his foot out of his mouth Friday, President Obama called to schmooze with Crowley. Since blurting out the insult at his prime time news conference, the President has since found out that Crowley is highly respected for his racial sensitivity, so much so that he teaches other law enforcement officers about the evils of profiling and how to avoid insidious stereotyping.

Then he made an impromptu appearance at the regular White House briefing to admit the obvious: "This has been racheting up and I obviously helped to contribute racheting up. "I think that in my choice of words, I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department and Sgt. Crowley specifically, And I could have calibrated those words differently"

Ya think? It was a well-advised effort to cut the Chief Executive's losses. It was also a definite improvement over his press guy Robert Gibbs' earlier comment that this controversy was all a result of the media's "obsession". Did he think that one up all by himself, or did someone put him out to say that? If so, who? They were celebrating at Republican headquarters.

Realizing that response wasn't going to cut it, the president decided it was time to eat some crow. There's plenty more to go around.

Crowley, for instance, let something get out of hand. If there's a cops' handbook, it tells them they're not supposed to let that happen.

Professor Gates, a certified smart man himself, should know that once you start yelling obscenities at the police, particularly the oedipal one, you WILL be charged with Disorderly Conduct, no matter how justified you may think you are.

Sarah Sarah, say it isn't so. Those of us who follow your every wink are devastated that you're losing popularity.

You've always pooh-poohed the polls anyway. So maybe we should just ignore a new one from ABC News and the Washington Post that shows only 40 percent of those responding had a favorable opinion of you. That's way down from the 58 percent back when you joined the presidential ticket with What's-His-Name.

There's an obvious disconnect here. Weren't you "Miss Congeniality" in that Alaska pageant back in 1984? Isn't presidential politics just another beauty contest? So surely this latest survey is wrong -- another creation of the "haters."

FROM TRUE/SALANT

You know that “Full Disclosure” thing we news writers do, where we say something like “Full disclosure, I’m having a battle with my insurance company over payments medical care”. Well, that would describe me. But who wouldn’t it describe?

Maybe the only “Full Disclosure” necessary would be something like “Full disclosure: I am entirely happy with my insurance company and it has nothing to do with the thousands of dollars they paid me to make a speech. In Honolulu.” That would not describe me. Unfortunately.

So maybe President Obama is on to something when he re brands “Health Care Reform” as “Insurance Reform. While this kind of thing can be Orwellian (” if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”) the latest new spin definitely is not.

Most believe the insurance companies are ripping us off. The companies have their own Orwellian ways. They insist they are simply using good business practices. They’re certainly right about that. In a slumping economy, their profits are soaring.

So it’s easy to see why they dread an alternative from anywhere…certainly not from a provider that doesn’t need to put its stockholders’ well-being over the health of the customers whose health they’re supposed to protect.

There is no room in their single- payer-by-collusion paradise for competition by anything that wouldn’t be polluted by financial greed.

They’re pulling out all the stops. They’re not the slightest bit embarrassed to exploit our aversion to government-run-anything to raise the alarm about “bureaucrats who will get between you and your doctors”

The President makes the obvious argument: They already do. Instead of government the bureaucrats work for the insurance company. Their main job seem to be blocking payment for the health care that’s due you and then daring you to plow through the walls preventing access to the coverage for which you spend big bucks. In other words, “getting between you and your doctor”. If they’ll even issue you a policy if you’ve ever had a cold, or allergies, or anytsort of “pre-existing condition”. “What’s the constraint on them”, asks the President.

FROM POLITICS: DAILY"

Here's a theory about Sen. Jim DeMint. Though he lists himself as a Republican, he's really a Democratic mole.

Why else would he make such blatantly partisan comments about health care reform, all the time, which play so easily into the other side's hands? When DeMint speaks, everyone bristles. He is able to do the impossible: unite Democrats. In anger.

He's now taken to taunting his opponents about their disarray over health care legislation: "I'm very pleased that my Democratic colleagues have rejected the president's strategy to force through a bad bill before anyone has had a chance to read it."

He's kidding, right? Senators don't read bills. They leave that to the lobbyists.

That gem followed his remark a few days earlier that he hoped health care would become President Obama's "Waterloo."

All he does is give the president easy openings, so he can look at the camera and piously say, "This isn't about me personally" before launching into a story about someone being abused by the current system. And lord knows there are plenty of those. So, actually, Obama doesn't need the help.

Has anyone ever wondered how conspiracy theorists come up with some of their batty stuff? Do they actually conspire? Is there some sort of Tri-Battiest Commission that meets in secret to concoct their wild plots?

The problem with paranoia is that you never know for certain if it's triggered by fantasy or a hidden truth. That's due, in large part, because the credibility of government, the media and other corporations is in the toilet.

So maybe there has been a seemingly impossible coverup -- there really are extraterrestrials at Area 51. Maybe there are Apache helicopters flying over this flat earth, ready to invade. And maybe the "birthers" know something we don't -- that President Obama was not born in the United States.

No, not the Birchers. They're from a different era. These are the birthers, the trendiest ranters these days. They are dominating the current babble by spreading word that Obama was really born in Kenya or somewhere outside U.S. borders, which would mean he's not eligible to hold our highest office because the Constitution requires a natural-born American. Of course, his mother was a citizen, which many scholars consider an adequate constitutional qualifier.

Never mind the ample documentation that he was born in the U-S-of-A. There is an amazing number of wishful thinkers demanding answers from their homes on the fringe. They refuse to believe the proof. They demand more. And if the president refuses to go along and produce his original birth certificate because he might not want to dignify this craziness, well, they're not going to buy that. One of the great things about madness is its certainty.

Even a voice of the wingnuts like Michael Medved worries, according to Politico, that the movement is being led by "crazy, nutburger, demagogue, money-hungry, exploitative, irresponsible, filthy conservative imposters." And Medved knows from "crazy nutburgers."

But there's that nagging little thought in the back of one's head that softly whispers maybe there's something to this. Boy, are we going to be sorry when we learn those pictures of aliens in the tabloids are not fake.

Bummer. There was a distress sale of the Watergate Hotel in Washington, and nobody bid on it.

Yes that Watergate, the one that gained infamy and lent its name to the scandal leading to President Nixon's resignation -- way back in the early '70s, when we used the word "bummer."

After so many years as a luxury address, it closed in recent times and has fallen into disrepair. So there it was on the auction block, offered by the company stuck with a $40 million note. Minimum bid: $25 million.

One would think that a cut-rate price tag would have attracted history-minded bargain hunters. But now it's back to the drawing board. They could let Filene's get whatever it could, but that company is struggling with bankruptcy. Surely there's a hedge fund out there, ready to make a killing, or even someone offering a subprime mortgage.

Oh, that's right: Subprime isn't in vogue at the moment. Apparently no lending is. Despite the latest quarterly reports showing our banks rolling in cash once again, they are very reluctant to share it with the rest of us -- you know, the chumps who provided the government gazillions that saved them from drowning.

It's easy to conclude they're worried about not having enough funds to return to their obscene compensation practices. Problem is that until they start sharing a teeny bit of the wealth again, the rest of us will still struggle to make ends meet.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

It is noon, Jan. 20, 2013. Sarah Palin raises her right hand to be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.

Palin had won a decisive victory over the incumbent, Barack Obama. The country was still trapped in economic rubble, and voters had tired of Obama's campaign slogan, "I Inherited This."

The experts debated whether this was a recession with 10 percent unemployment or a depression with 100 percent malaise.

By far the largest voting bloc in the United States turned against Obama -- those who had no health insurance, which was everyone but government workers. The rich paid for their medical care at hospitals within their barricaded communities.

Reform efforts had collapsed when Republicans successfully used the "socialism" label to tarnish any proposed changes.

On the other side, Democrats couldn't agree on anything. Every attempt to reach political compromise had been poisoned by the ideological-purity demands from those on the left.

After years as co-host of "The Jerry Springer Show," Sarah Palin had returned to the fray and run an unstoppable campaign. She had assembled a brilliant staff. The only requirement was that no one could have ever worked for John McCain.

In the primaries she swept aside Mitt Romney and Bobby Jindal. It was really no contest: Both opponents literally put nationwide audiences to sleep even before debate anchors-commentators got to the YouTube questions.

Isn't it appropriate that a battle over gun rights, or lack thereof, is used to shoot down totally unrelated legislation?

What comes immediately to mind is legislation that would have granted residents of Washington, D.C., full voting rights. Anyone who lives here gets tired after a while of the "No Taxation Without Representation" rant.

After centuries, it seemed it might change. Congress was poised to pass a bill and President Obama would sign it.

But at the last minute, opponents attached an unrelated amendment that would greatly expand gun rights in the District -- which favors restrictions. It was truly a deal "killer."

Among the many examples of media dopiness is this shrillness: "As I reported would happen . . ." The writer or excited TV correspondent then goes on to take credit for stating the obvious a day or so before.

Well: As I reported would happen, President Obama has started dropping hints that the August deadline for passing comprehensive health care reform is unrealistic. He still insists that the first draft should come by August -- give or take -- telling Jim Lehrer it's no big deal if "it's going to spill over a few days or a week."

It sure is a big deal, particularly when he slipped in a new plea: "Let's pass reform by the end of the year."

The razor sharp among us will notice that he didn't specify which year. As a matter of fact, the GOP is saying maybe "next year."

The president derided those who want to put things off for "another day, another year, another decade," but he's clearly playing defense now in this war of attrition against those who would prefer "never."

Violent crime is down. Imagine that. The experts are scratching their heads. Statistics from major cities across the country show homicides dropping to 30- and 40-year lows.

One possible explanation: The economic collapse means fewer and fewer of the bad guys can even afford a gun. Like the rest of us, they can't come up with the start-up costs to get their business running.

Besides, the only people who have anything left worth an armed robbery are the few who can hire their own bodyguards.

Which gets us to an important point: The surveys only look at crime that's against the law. There's nothing about the conduct of those who used their economic and political power as weapons to make sure what they did was not illegal fraud, not illegal larceny.

Sure as can be, they used deception to improperly take billions from the unsuspecting. At the same time, they connived with their public servants to make sure their world of finance was largely a lawless frontier.

Even though the walls came tumbling down, they are still fighting in the rubble to make sure no one regulates their ability to keep their hands in our pockets. There's an interesting article in Monday's Washington Post that describes how regulators at the New York Federal Reserve were hand-in-glove with those they were supposed to supervise.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Who knew that President Obama would adopt the "Big Mo" thinking of President Bush? That's Bush the First, of course.

Obama the Only is clearly trying to concoct momentum with his continued insistence that Congress come up with health care reform legislation by the August recess.

In fact there are strong hints now from underlings that he knows his public bravado is unrealistic, that the deadline is there simply to keep everyone's adrenaline flowing.

The problem is that when this political amphetamine doesn't create adequate speed in the normally lethargic bill-making process, there could be a major letdown from the expectations he's created. It's a damned-if-you, damned-if-you-don't situation: meet a contrived deadline or allow things to dissolve over the August break.

The bigger problem is he's already started skidding. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows approval for his handling of the issue has slid below 50 percent for the first time.

Worst of all, by the time our leaders cobble something together, the process of compromise will have created reform that really isn't. The pressure to do anything else will have run out of steam.

Our leaders will leave us with something that is inadequate, at best, and possibly worse than before.

Then, in their zeal to declare success and placate voters, they will trumpet a glossy success and gloss over the mind-numbing details that will really add up to failure.

We've already got failure with our current system. It has defied efforts to rebuild it. This time around the president is using a broad-brush strategy of involving all the parties in negotiations. The problem is that the broad brush might paint him into a corner, hemmed in by all the special interests intent upon keeping their piece of the pie, and maybe chomping a bite or two from some of the others. After all is said and done, they may have chewed up the vital parts.

True reform will require careful attention to the mind-bogglingly complex details. They are easily misunderstood and easily misrepresented by those who distort facts for a living. We can expect a lot of that as the doctors, lawyers, insurance companies, hospitals, business groups, pharmaceutical companies, the old, the poor, the rich -- definitely the rich -- use every means at their disposal to make sure any "shared sacrifice" is shared by others, not them.

I’ve noticed so many have commented on being so intimidated when meeting Walter Cronkite. I had quite the opposite experience in the few times our paths crossed after his active career was over and I was pursuing mine. At all times, he was just “Walter” who would talk as a fellow practitioner of our craft..not the icon he had deservedly become. His strength was that he projected an “everyman” image. Success came because for all his power, he felt that way about himself.

Still, it’s important to remember that he and CBS colleagues dominated the news ratings during his anchordom because he and they were authoritative and substantive. So were those who competed on the two other networks. They personified journalism.

Now that the power centers have shattered into many tiny profit-centers, where the be-all-end-all war over ratings is
a spasm that focuses on celebrity instead of credibility, that substitutes vacuous trivialization for substance.

Even the reporting of government dominated not by the issues, but by simplistic reporting on the politician-personalities who have learned the tricks needed to get on TV.

The loss of Cronkite at 92 is the loss of a “giant” who symbolized the colossus of trust that used to be television news.

How sad it is that too many of those who have replaced the giants are midgets. It’s not entirely true. The business is still populated by some serious heavyweights from Charlie Gibson, from instance, to Lesley Stahl to Gwen Ifill, to Wolf Blitzer to many more stars, who are wise and ferociously conscientious about facts, context, and excellence.

But their dedication is overwhelmed by the inane chattering of the inexperienced cuties of both genders who deride the necessary fundamentals and institutional knowledge as “old school”.

Let's put it this way: We still have Mark Sanford to "kick around." If the South Carolina governor has any hope of resurrecting his political career -- using Richard Nixon, perhaps, as inspiration -- he has a big job ahead. From a reporter's point of view, he's the gift that keeps on giving.

Thanks to some resourceful digging by Politico, we are now informed that state records betray his shtick as an officeholder stingy with public funds. A new analysis of those records shows that, in truth, Sanford was quite the high flier, expensive flier and frequent flier.

While he berated staff members who dared stray out of economy class, he could usually be found in business, or first class, stretched out. This after he had made such a big deal of his predecessor's "lavish spending" and had promised to "fix that problem in Columbia," the state capital.

Whatever he did in Columbia, it was a different story outside of it. There were trips to Paris, London and other lovely destinations, in the front cabins of commercial flights -- when he wasn't using the state jet. More often than not, he stayed in luxurious hotels. At the same time, he demanded that lower-level workers double up on accommodations when traveling on the public dime.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

"Truth Commissions" are spouting like weeds, and as with weeds, the need to find out what happened threatens to choke off efforts to do something about the problems.

We have the investigation into torture that is torturing us with debate over whether there should be an investigation. And there's the newly formed panel of heavyweights with subpoena power to probe how we got into this financial sewer and who got us there.

Heaven knows that recriminations are justified in both cases. One can only hope, however, that the focus is not just on lawbreakers and criminal actions.

What's even more important will be shedding light on conduct that should have been against the law and should have been criminal, but was not. The bad guys we're looking for were expert at staying on that fine line between what's criminal and what's merely sleazy. That's why they had/have lawyers.

And that's why they had/have lobbyists, whose reason for existing is to manipulate the legal system away from protecting the public. They are successful at holding politicians at bay by keeping them in their pockets and greasing their palms with campaign money. As far as torture is concerned, the apologists have had some success in making this an either/or debate about national security.

It is really important, though, that a rush to place blame not get in the way of the plod to reform. What we continue to witness is special interests pulling out all the stops to protect their precious interests. They're effectively employing the tools they've always used: distortion and influence peddling.

Under no circumstances can we ever allow Dick Cheney to watch programs like "24" or any James Bond flick.

For decades we have heard loud complaints that graphic movies and TV programs can cause violent and irrational behavior in their impressionable audience. Now we have irrefutable proof.

It's obvious that as the real head of American intelligence, Cheney embraced shoot-'em-up programs and rigid secrecy.

The few who haven't figured that out need look no further than the assassination program that the new guy at the CIA, Leon Panetta, has just, uh, terminated. All that ended up being killed was the operation itself.

Reportedly, the program would have created small teams trained to infiltrate enemies like al-Qaeda and take out their leaders. But it got hung up in bureaucracy for years and years. Osama bin Laden is still rattling around out there. Apparently, if you're going to create killer teams, the people at headquarters should also be a gang that can shoot straight.

Under no circumstances can we ever allow Dick Cheney to watch programs like "24" or any James Bond flick.

For decades we have heard loud complaints that graphic movies and TV programs can cause violent and irrational behavior in their impressionable audience. Now we have irrefutable proof.

It's obvious that as the real head of American intelligence, Cheney embraced shoot-'em-up programs and rigid secrecy.

The few who haven't figured that out need look no further than the assassination program that the new guy at the CIA, Leon Panetta, has just, uh, terminated. All that ended up being killed was the operation itself.

Reportedly, the program would have created small teams trained to infiltrate enemies like al-Qaeda and take out their leaders. But it got hung up in bureaucracy for years and years. Osama bin Laden is still rattling around out there. Apparently, if you're going to create killer teams, the people at headquarters should also be a gang that can shoot straight.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Maybe it's time for a contrarian view. Is anybody else concerned about Sonia Sotomayor chanting that she simply follows the law? "It is very clear that I don't base my judgment on my personal experiences." Is she serious?

Perhaps it's just the subterfuge her White House handlers have concocted to deflect controversy over her "empathy" and her "wise Latina" construct, but what if she means it?

What if she genuinely feels that a Supreme Court justice should strictly adhere to "settled law" with no regard for society's changing mores and ethics, to say nothing of context? She argues that her cautious rulings as a judge show that she does just that. Thoroughness is a good thing. Timidity is not.

How many times have we been outraged when we find that the law stands in the way of fairness, sometimes in extreme ways? Shouldn't a "wise" member of the highest court in the land aggressively look for ways to right those legal wrongs?

Here's the contrarian part: Should a senator who considers him- or herself to be progressive vote against confirmation because she's not demonstrably "empathetic" and proud of it?

Also, will someone please explain why Sotomayor being curt to lawyers in her courtrooms is a negative? Setting aside the obvious point that vast numbers of us hold the entire profession to be deserving of nastiness, the job of attorneys is to represent their clients. Diversionary tactics are one of the time-honored ways they do that. Any judge worth his or her salt needs to exercise control. They often need to be abrupt about it. Anyone who's watched "Law and Order" knows that.

FROM POLITICS DAILY:

Rule No. 1 when considering taxes: Other people should pay them. That's a big selling point for the health care surtax that House Democrats would impose on the wealthy to provide coverage for nearly everyone. Most of us aren't rich -- let them pay.

There's another rule: Taxes are an expression of social policy. Our society is being crushed by a system that is protecting fewer and fewer of us and costing more and more to do it. The newly unveiled proposal would take more from those with a lot in order to protect those without (health care in this case).

You didn't think those were the only rules, did you? How about the one where tax policy is supposed to promote economic growth? Now that's where we'll hear much of the uproar.

Opponents will argue that taking away profits also takes away the incentive for creativity and risk. Innovation and jobs follow the money.

They will quickly point out that the hardest hit would be small entrepreneurs, who struggle to stay afloat despite looking prosperous on paper. That's because they combine their business and personal income when filing with the IRS. It artificially puts them in a higher bracket and now could place them in surtax land.