• Should you really call yourself a "caucus" when there are only three of you? Wouldn't "the guys" be more appropriate?

  DeMint, along with Paul of Kentucky, and Lee of Utah, are currently the only three members of the Senate Tea Party Caucus.

• Of course one of the guys may be thinking about running for president:

  News that South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint will travel to Iowa on March 26 to address a conservative forum organized by Rep. Steve King is sparking another round of chatter that DeMint might launch a dark horse bid for the White House in 2012.

  ... several of his closest advisers and political confidantes are now telling CNN that he is at least open to a presidential bid if a suitably conservative candidate fails to emerge from the early and wide-open GOP field.

• Mystery solved:

  After weeks of sleuthing by journalists and political strategists, Time magazine says it has confirmed the identity of the anonymous author behind “O: A Presidential Novel."

  It’s Mark Salter, a longtime speechwriter and adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), reported Time magazine’s Mark Halperin on Thursday. The authorship’s been “confirmed by sources,” Halperin said, “but there were lots of in-plain-sight clues” pointing to Salter.

• Bill O'Reilly explains why it's okay if he calls people Nazis.
• No doubt John Boehner will take it as a personal slight when we are no longer in a perpetual state of orange:

  The Obama administration plans to replace the widely mocked color-coded terror warnings with a simpler, two-tier system: “imminent threat” or “elevated threat,” with more detailed information.

  “The alerts will be specific to the threat,” a senior administration official told POLITICO. “They may ask you to take certain actions, or to look for specific suspicious behavior. And they will have an end date.

• If it happened, would it be irrefutable proof that there is a God?

  Visiting Iowa for a movie premiere, Nevada Republican Sharron Angle wouldn’t rule out a run for president.

  “I’ll just say I have lots of options for the future, and I’m investigating all my options,” Angle said Wednesday when asked whether she was considering a bid for the White House, the Des Moines Register reported.

• Only by two votes:

  A motion by state Sen. Kent Sorenson (R-Indianola) to suspend the Senate’s rules to allow a vote on a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage was defeated early Thursday morning on a party-line vote.

  Sorenson asked all 50 senators to call up Senate Joint Resolution 8, a bill that would amend the Iowa Constitution to specify that marriage between one man and one woman is the only legal union valid or recognized in the state. Senate President Jack Kibbie (D-Emmetsburg) said “no,” but agreed to allow a vote on whether to suspend the rules and override his objection.

  Twenty-six Democrats voted “no” and 24 Republicans voted “yes.” The motion was defeated.

• Probably just the Ugandan version of an "isolated incident":

  An outspoken Ugandan gay activist whose picture recently appeared in an antigay newspaper under the headline “Hang Them” was beaten to death in his home, Ugandan police said Thursday.  

  David Kato, the activist, was one of the most visible defenders of gay rights in a country where homophobia is widespread and government leaders have proposed executing gay people. Mr. Kato and other gay people in Uganda had recently warned that their lives were endangered, and four months ago a local paper called Rolling Stone published a list of gay people, with Mr. Kato’s face on the front page.

• Comedy:

  At his January 2010 inauguration, Tea Party-backed Republican Edward Mangano marched up to the podium, pen in hand. Even before being officially declared Nassau County Executive, he signed a repeal of an unpopular home energy tax.

  The move elicited chants of "Eddie, Eddie, Eddie" from supporters assembled in the auditorium of Mangano's alma mater, Bethpage High School, 30 miles east of New York City.

  "This is very cool and quite an honor," Mangano said as he gave his admirers a thumbs-up.

  The fiscal consequences, however, were anything but cool. The repeal set Mangano on an immediate collision course with the state-appointed fiscal overseer, the Nassau County Interim Financial Authority, or NIFA. It culminated in NIFA seizing control of the wealthy New York county's finances on Wednesday.

• A message from the organizers of Netroots Nation 2011, to be held June 16-19 in Minneapolis:

  Each year, in order to ensure that our agenda reflects the issues that are most important to you, we ask for your help in developing and organizing the sessions you’ll attend at Netroots Nation.

  We want to see proposals for panels that run the gamut of progressive policy, but we especially want to see proposals that cover:

  • Building long-term capacity within the progressive movement
  • Pushing the practice of online and offline organizing forward, particularly in underrepresented communities
  • The 2012 election, weighing regaining our majority with ideological cohesion
  • Thinking big and moving the Overton window on policies
  • Challenging power

  The deadline for submission is January 31, 2011.

  For more information on the submission process, visit netrootsnation.

Ben Smith at Politico flags this bit of Republican dissembling from John Boehner (R-OH) during an appearance on CNN last night, where he complained about what the President didn't say in his State of the Union address:

BOEHNER: Well, they -- they've refused to talk about America exceptionalism. We are different than the rest of the world. Why? Because Americans have -- the country was built on an idea that ordinary people could decide what their government looked like and ordinary people could elect their own leaders.

And 235 years ago that was a pretty novel idea. And so we are different. Why is our economy still 20 times the size of China's? Because Americans have had their freedom to succeed, the freedom to fail. We've got more innovators, more entrepreneurs, and that is exceptional but you can't get the left to talk about it. They don't -- they reject that notion.

Did I say "dissemble"? I meant lied.

Because during the President's State of the Union, besides talking about "what sets us apart as a nation," what "America does better than anyone else," that we're a country where "anything is possible," and that "there isn’t a person here who would trade places with any other nation on Earth," Obama said:

What’s more, we are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea -– the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny.

... and:

America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world. No workers -- no workers are more productive than ours. No country has more successful companies, or grants more patents to inventors and entrepreneurs. We’re the home to the world’s best colleges and universities, where more students come to study than any place on Earth.

The American "exceptionalism" claim, which is pseudo-patriotic code for you're not cheering loud enough, has been enjoying a resurgence in popularity among Republicans since Obama was elected, because, hey, everyone knows that the commie, marxist, socialist Kenyan isn't a "real American."

But the lie, said by the Speaker of the House on national T.V., usually isn't this blatant.

The traditional media will be all over it ... just kidding.

So Sarah Palin went on Greta Van Susteren's show last night and one of the "questions" was about what she thought of President Obama's reference to America's "Sputnik moment" during his State of the Union address.

Just about everyone knows that the phrase "Sputnik moment" refers to America's response to the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite and how it galvanized the nation to make the scientific and technological advantages that allowed us to go to the moon and beyond, but not Sarah Palin.

To Palin, the Sputnik moment was a bad thing for America and the fact that President Obama "would aspire Americans to celebrate" it represents a "WTF moment." Why? Because, she says, Sputnik "resulted in the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union."

Of course, the collapse of the Soviet Union had nothing to do with to do with more than just Sputnik (and does Palin really think its collapse was a bad thing?), but the point of President Obama's speech wasn't that we should emulate the Soviet Union -- it was that we should emulate our own history and our own response to Sputnik. Palin obviously didn't understand that, which makes for a truly remarkable 45 seconds of television -- quite possibly the stupidest 45 seconds of babbling by a potential presidential candidate in American history:

Transcript:

GRETA: Governor, last night there was a lot of discussion about the Sputnik Moment the President wants us to have. Do you agree with him? Is this our moment?

PALIN: That was another one of those WTF moments, when he has so often repeated, the Sputnik Moment, that he would aspire Americans to celebrate, he needs to remember that what happened back then with the former communist USSR and their victory and that race to space, yeah, they won, but they also incured so much debt at the time that it resulted in the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union so I listen to that Sputnik Moment talk over and over again and I think, no we don’t need one of those.

Eighteen months after former California State Treasurer Phil Angelides was appointed to the bipartisan commission looking into the causes of the financial crisis whose aftermath continues to batter the U.S. economy, three reports have been issued:

First, there's the 400-page official report signed off on by the six Democrats and called Final Report of the National Comm[i]ssion on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States:

"The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire. The captains of finance and the public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings and failed to question, understand, and manage evolving risks within a system essential to the well-being of the American public. Theirs was a big miss, not a stumble. While the business cycle cannot be repealed, a crisis of this magnitude need not have occurred. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault lies not in the stars, but in us."

Then there's the 39-page dissenting report of three of the commission's four Republicans, including the vice chairman, Bill Thomas:

The majority says the crisis was avoidable if only the United States had adopted
across-the-board more restrictive regulations, in conjunction with more aggressive
regulators and supervisors. This conclusion by the majority largely ignores the global
nature of the crisis.

And then there's the 108-page dissenting report of the fourth Republican, Peter J. Wallison, who published his dissent under the auspices of the American Enterprise Institute:

Claims that there was a general failure of risk management in financial institutions or excessive leverage or risk taking are part of what might be called a “hindsight narrative.” With hindsight, it is easy to condemn managers for failing to see the dangers of the housing bubble or the underpricing of risk that now looks so clear. However, the FCIC interviewed hundreds of financial experts, including senior officials of major banks, bank regulators, and investors. It is not clear that any of them—including the redoubtable Warren Buffett—was sufficiently confident about an impending crisis to put real money behind his or her judgment.

All three reports destined for a government shelf.

Good new! Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) says that:

... he "made a mistake" when he suggested raising the retirement age to 70 last year.

Oh, wait. It wasn't so much a mistake as a premature suggestion:

The Speaker indicated he was premature in suggesting raising the legal age at which retirees are eligible for full Social Security benefits, since he didn't want to pre-judge a debate over how to fix the entitlement program. He said he wouldn't rule out raising the retirement age, however.

At which point Boehner trotted out what is a key Republican talking point to justify raising the retirement age:

When you look at life expectancy in America today and you look at the Social Security system, we're all living far longer than anyone had ever anticipated and the result of these big demographic changes is having a disastrous effect on the Social Security program. And so raising the retirement age or considering it is something that ought to be on the table.

... not mentioning that:

... most of these life expectancy gains have gone exclusively to upper-income Americans who work white-collar jobs that are not physically strenuous.

But Boehner insists that when:

... the American people understand how big the problem is, then you can begin to outline an array of possible solutions.

Never mind that the American people do understand and overwhelmingly -- including 67% of self-identified Tea Party supporters -- say that they would rather raise taxes than raise the retirement age, expect to hear the phrase "life expectancy" over and over in the coming months, because it's going to be the excuse for screwing over seniors and the working class.

A. Barry Rand, the C.E.O. of AARP, had a bit of a bone to pick with President Obama's remarks on Social Security in the State of the Union:

"We're pleased to hear the president acknowledge the vital importance of Social Security and the need to protect this lifeline for future generations, but we are disappointed that he, like his fiscal commission did last late last year, seeks to address this bedrock of financial security in the context of reducing a deficit it didn't cause.

"Moreover, any attempt to control spending in Medicare and Medicaid without addressing the causes of skyrocketing costs throughout the health care system will not reduce these costs, but rather shift them on to the backs of people of all ages and generations.

"While efforts to reduce the deficit are important, we will continue to speak out against any plan offered by the administration or Congress that would target these critical safety nets for changes based on budgetary targets instead of their impact on the lives of everyday Americans."

Obama's remarks on Social Security were good to hear, but being offered within the context of the deficit and debt reduction, were misplaced. But what was slightly disquieting, and the part that means that everyone who cares about saving Social Security (which is a huge majority of the American electorate) will have to remain active in fighting changes, was this: "To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations."

Where does bipartisanship on Social Security put us? On the road to raising the retirement age, if the latest, bizarre comments from Lindsey Graham are any indication.

Speaking at the Atlantic’s post-State of the Union event today about his recent trip to Afghanistan, Graham said that if lawmakers would “act in accordance with the way” the troops serve in war, then Congress would raise the retirement age from 67 to 69:  

GRAHAM: I would give anything if the United States Congress for one month could act in accordance with the way our men and women are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. We know what to do on Social Security. I’ve put on the table adjusting the age from 67 to 69. There’s an ad running in South Carolina right now from some group on the left with a 59-year-old librarian saying I’m ruining her life. Well let me tell you, under the proposal, changes don’t affect you if you’re over 55. So I’m a reasonable guy. But how the heck can we save this country from bankruptcy if we don’t reform entitlements? …You will never convince me that that is hard sell if we wanted to sell it. So what the president said last night — “I’m willing to work with you but you can’t affect anybody’s benefits” — that’s telling me he’s planning a 2012 campaign not a 2011 governing session.

So I’m going to offer to the president and to Rand Paul, which is a wide spectrum of people, an opportunity to make a small down payment on entitlement reform by introducing legislation soon that would adjust the age the way Reagan and O’Neill did — 67 to 69 — over decades and a reasonable means test on benefits as a down payment to getting our entitlement house in order. And they can run all the commercials they want. It does not matter…I know what I need to do to help my country. And these young men and women know what they need to do in Iraq to make us safe.

Seriously. The troops would have us raise the retirement age. That's the bipartisanship on offer from the GOP. The Wall Street Journal reported a few days ago that the "White House and a bipartisan group of senators are focusing on restructuring the tax code and entitlement programs such as Social Security which could have more dramatic impacts on the deficit in the long run but would do little in the short term." Lord help us if Lindsey Graham is in that bipartisan group of Senators. But Lord help us more if the White House doesn't understand that Social Security doesn't have anything to do with the deficit.

Come to think of it, lumping Social Security in with the deficit makes about as much sense as using what the troops would do to justify raising the retirement age.

The good news
Sometime today, Thursday, January 27th, the Senate will finally hold a vote on the package of filibuster reforms we have been pushing. This package includes a real filibuster and a greatly accelerated confirmation process for judicial and executive branch nominations.

The bad news
The reform package will require 67 Senators in order to pass. We were unable to round up the necessary 50 votes, plus Vice President Biden, to change Senate rules with the Constitutional Option.

This makes passage of the reform package an extreme longshot. There might be votes on one or more individual components of the reform package, and those might only need 60 Senators in order to succeed. However, even then, the odds are heavily stacked against us.

What we are going to do
We need every Kossack in all 50 states to send emails to their Senators asking them to support filibuster reform. You can do so by clicking here.

The vote today will at least get Senators on record on filibuster reform. To have a better chance in future fights, we need to get as many Senators on record in favor of filibuster reform as possible. Further, we need to register our disappointment in those Senators unwilling to accept these sensible reforms.

Please, take thirty seconds, and email your Senators now. We’ve come too far in this fight to go down without one last swing.

Judge John Roll went to Rep. Gabrielle Gifford's town meeting on January 15 to talk about the overload of cases the federal judiciary in Arizona is experiencing. He was assassinated at that event, resulting in an even greater problem for the Arizona judiciary.

The issue has become a full-blown crisis in the wake of his death. Judge Roslyn O. Silver, who took Roll's place as chief judge for Arizona, on Friday declared a judicial emergency to allow statutory time limits for trying accused criminals to be temporarily suspended in the district because of an acute shortage of judges. On Tuesday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals extended Silver's temporary order for a year....

Several factors have contributed to the emergency. Federal felony caseloads are at an all-time high in Arizona amid the political clamor over tougher enforcement of border immigration and drug laws. Yet partisan wrangling in the nation's capital has slowed the flow of judicial appointments to many states, not just Arizona, leaving the federal bench overwhelmed by caseloads.

Roll's death only worsened Arizona's problem, cutting the number of federal judges in the busy Tucson division from four to three and forcing redistribution of Roll's caseload of more than 900 criminal cases and various civil matters.

Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski said in a statement Tuesday that he was hopeful the emergency declaration would prompt congressional action. If Congress adds more judgeships, it will fall to Arizona's delegation to make recommendations, and be up to President Barack Obama to see those seats filled.

"It doesn't do any good if you get the judgeships and don't get the nominations," said Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond in Virginia. "Ultimately, it's the president's call."

The president's call, and he has been slow to nominate. But the primary problem is the Senate, where too many nominations have gone to die. The situation has become so dire that a group of Republican-appointed federal judges have pleaded with the Senate to confirm judges. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts sharply criticized the Senate in his recently released State of the Judiciary report.

The crisis extends well beyond Arizona, with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts identifying 44 "judicial emergencies" in federal courts where there are just not enough judges to hear the cases pending before the courts. Perhaps Judge Roll's assassination will provide new impetus for Obama to prioritize finding jurists for the open positions on the bench, and for the Senate to figure out how to move them.

The House is not in session today.

In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

Convenes: 10:30am

Following any Leader remarks, the Senate will proceed to the consideration of several resolutions relating to changing the Senate rules, en bloc. There will be up to 8 hours for debate equally divided and controlled between the two Leaders or their designees. If all time is used, at approximately 7:15pm there will be a series of up to 5 roll call votes in relation to the following resolutions:

• Wyden-Grassley-McCaskill resolution relative to "secret holds" (subject to a 60-vote threshold);
• Udall (CO) resolution regarding waiving the reading of an amendment, (subject to a 60-vote threshold);
• S.Res. 8 (Harkin) (subject to a 67-vote threshold);
• S.Res. 10 (Udall (NM)) with a substitute amendment which is at the desk (subject to a 67-vote threshold); and
• S.Res. 21 (Merkley) with a substitute amendment (subject to a 67-vote threshold).

The Senate will recess from 12:30 until 2:15pm to allow for the Democratic caucus meeting.

Here are the remains of the push for Senate rules reform. The stuff on "secret holds" gets rid of the "secret," but not the hold. What they're going to do is give the Senator who asked for the hold one day to reveal his name in the Congressional Record and in a new section of the Senate Calendar. If the name isn't revealed, then the Senator who objected on the floor on behalf of the unnamed Senator will have his name printed in the Record and on the Calendar instead.

But the hold still stands, and nobody gets to vote on anything until they pass a motion to proceed, which can be filibustered and therefore requires the same 60 votes as always.

Could they just have started pinning the holds on whomever objected on the floor, even without this? Yes. But for some reason, they never did. This resolution serves notice that they're going to start. And it creates a new place to print the names of the people they're going to blame.

The Udall (CO) proposal is most likely that part of his earlier S. Res. 12, which will allow waiver of the requirement that the entire text of amendments be read aloud on the floor, so long as they've been available and printed for some number of hours. His original proposal said 24.

And Senators Harkin, Udall (NM) and Merkley will offer their full proposals for actual filibuster reform (with some slight modifications), but all will be subject to the 2/3 cloture threshold for rules changes. It's not necessarily a 67-vote threshold, though, since the rules actually require 2/3 of Senators present and voting. In theory, cloture could be invoked with as few as 34 votes, or 2/3 of a quorum of 51. But that ain't happening.

Why the 60-vote threshold for the first two items? They're technically not rules changes. They'd establish "standing orders" of the Senate rather than actual changes to the standing rules. Operationally, they're not that much different. But so long as it's not a rules change, the cloture threshold is 60. And that is a hard 60, since it's 3/5 of Senators "duly chosen and sworn," as opposed to present and voting. Could you do a lot or maybe even all of the rules changes people wanted with standing orders? Yeah, probably. Why don't they? I don't know. Would it make a difference? Probably not, since there wouldn't be 60 votes for most of them, either.

So, drop on by C-SPAN2 and see who's coming out for which of the proposals. The vote totals are likely to be a little bit distorted by the presumption that certain thresholds won't be met. That'll have the effect in some cases of bringing out "yes" votes that are freebies, knowing there won't be enough to make a yes vote count, and in some cases of bringing out "no" votes that are motivated by not wanting to side with what they think will be a losing cause. That's something that's by no means limited to rules-related votes, of course. It's just another of the many transparency problems created by the filibuster.

You can be clear about your own preferences, though, using the Daily Kos action email engine to tell your Senators how you'd like them to vote on reform.

It won't get you the sweet, sweet government health care, but it's worth it just the same.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

It's Little Gay Billy's BIG Gay Newsapalooza!

I'm here, I'm queer, and I brung ya a case 'o beer. But first...this bit of coolness:

2010 State of the Union

"This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are."

2011 State of the Union

"Our troops come from every corner of this country---they are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American.  They are Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Muslim. And, yes, we know that some of them are gay.  Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love."

Why was DADT originally foisted on the bravest military in the world back in '93? Irrational fear. That sound you hear is history doing a facepalm.

ITEM: It ain't marriage, but it's a start: Kossack Keori posted yesterday that a Senate committee in Hawaii approved a civil unions bill that "has the support of a majority of lawmakers and new Gov. Neil Abercrombie." I'll resist the urge to make a double entendre about couples getting lei'd, for I am a classy and serious journamalist.

ITEM: The wit, wisdom, and bullshit-slaying ability of Dan Savage makes him one of the most respected GLBT activists/writers around. Among other things, he created the "It Gets Better" campaign to combat bullying, and I have yet to see him lose a debate with a right-winger. So we're glad to hear that MTV has approached Dan about doing an advice show that would be filmed during his appearances on college campuses. Hope it works out.

Speaking of TV, there's an excellent article in this week's issue of Entertainment Weekly on the increasing number of gay teens on the tube these days, led by Kurt, the character on Glee played by Chris Colfer:

The breakout character on TV’s most buzzed-about network show has won an Emmy nomination, a Golden Globe, and viewers’ hearts with an at times poignant, but often, well, gleeful depiction of a modern gay teen. It took Kurt only four episodes to say the words "I’m gay" to his dad, to which his father shrugged and said, "If that’s who you are, there’s nothing I can do about it. And I love you just as much." [...]  Gay characters have gone from one-time guest stars, whispered tragedies, and silly sidekicks to not just an accepted but an expected part of teen-centric television.

I loved this bit from Colfer's Golden Globe acceptance speech: "To all the amazing kids that watch our show and the kids that our show celebrates that are constantly told 'No' by bullies in their school and they can't be who they are: well, screw that, kids."

Two encouraging stats from the same article: gay-straight alliances are now active in 45 percent of schools, up from 25 percent in 2001. And the average coming-out age, which was 19-23 in the mid-80s, is 16 today.

Meanwhile, imagine the courage it takes to come out on-stage during a student assembly in high school. WGLB has the video here. I'm in awe of that student. If I had tried that in high school ('79-'82), I would have probably been suspended at best and pounded to a pulp at worst. We have come a ways.

Finally, the folks at Media Matters have created a "new research and communications initiative in support of full gay equality" called Equality Matters. Right-wingers already despise every single pic and pixel at the site. Goody goody.

Cheers and Jeers continues below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Jeb Bush and Newt Gingrich want Congress to let states go bankrupt:

An additional benefit of a new voluntary bankruptcy law for states is that its mere existence may deter any state from ever availing itself of its provisions. If government employee union bosses know that they could have all their contracts annulled under federal bankruptcy law, either through a plan of reorganization voluntarily entered into by state leaders or by the voters through proposition, they may be far more accommodating with state governments to restructure government employee union workforces, pensions and work rules.

Federal bailouts must come to an end. Federal taxpayers in states that balance their budgets should not have to bail out the irresponsible, pandering politicians who cannot balance their budgets. Congress must allow a safe, orderly way under federal bankruptcy law for states to reorganize their finances.

Saree Makdisi writes at the LA Times:

A massive archive of documents leaked to Al Jazeera and Britain's Guardian newspaper offers irrefutable proof that years of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians have been an empty sham. The papers make clear that the time has come for Palestinians and anyone interested in the cause of justice to abandon the charade of official diplomacy and pursue other, more creative and nonviolent paths toward the realization of a genuine, just peace.

...

The papers give the lie to Israel's claim that it yearns for peace but lacks a Palestinian "partner." And they reinforce the sense that Israel has gone along with these negotiations only to buy time to expropriate more Palestinian land, demolish more Palestinian homes, expel more Palestinian families and build more colonies for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers in militarily occupied territory, thereby cementing new realities on the ground that would make a Palestinian state a geophysical impossibility.

Michael Gerson says President Obama, unlike President Bush, isn't ideologically compromising enough:

Without doubt, it is easier to communicate Obama's agenda than it is to make the Republican case. Obama's campaign speeches write themselves. Just imagine: "If we can send a man to the moon, why can't we bring Twitter within reach of every disadvantaged child? If the Wright brothers could touch the sky, why can't we have more iPads per capita than the South Koreans? The naysayers will say 'nay.' But this is America. . . ." Any focus group facilitator will tell you that the dials go up with words such as "investment" and "competitiveness" - or "daffodils" and "lollipops" - and down with words such as "debt," "crisis" and "bankruptcy." Who is going to object, as the president promised, to improved cellphone coverage? Who is going to cheer the dour, downbeat call for entitlement reform?

But the main issue here does not concern political advantage. Ultimately, it only matters who is right. If the threat of debt is exaggerated - if it is merely fear-mongering - then Obama's State of the Union strategy makes sense. If the threat is real, Obama, like many politicians before him, is being irresponsible.

E.J. Dionne thinks we'll see a new, paradoxical Obama in the next two years:

The era of no politicking is over. Tuesday's State of the Union speech laid out a rationale for the Obama presidency that stands a chance of enduring through Election Day 2012. The choice is between backward-looking Republicans who talk grumpily about government spending and "Obamacare," and forward-looking Obama Democrats who would use government - carefully and efficiently, of course - to restore American leadership and a humming, innovative economy.

In fact, what Americans must be ready for now is the paradoxical phase of Barack Obama's presidency. Many things will not be exactly as they appear.

George Will says Education Secretary Arne Duncan is "the Obama administration's redeeming feature."  

Robert J. Samuelson:

It was a teachable moment - and Barack Obama didn't teach. Unless public opinion changes, we won't end our budget deadlock. As is well-known, Americans want budget deficits curbed. In a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 54 percent urge Congress and the president to "act quickly" and 57 percent prefer spending cuts to tax increases. But there's little support for cuts in Social Security (64 percent opposed), Medicare (56 percent) and Medicaid (47 percent), which together approach half of federal spending. The State of the Union gave Obama the opportunity to confront the contradictions and educate Americans in the unpleasant realities of uncontrolled government. He declined.

What we got were empty platitudes. We won't be "buried under a mountain of debt," Obama declared. Heck, we're already buried. We will "win the future." Not by deluding ourselves, we won't. Americans think deficits are someone else's problem that can be cured by taxing the rich (say liberals) or ending wasteful spending (conservatives). Obama indulged these fantasies.

Gail Collins:

Yes, a committee in the Utah House of Representatives voted 9 to 2 this week to approve a bill that would add the Browning pistol to the pantheon of official state things, along with the bird (seagull), rock (coal) and dance (square). Also, although it really has nothing to do with this discussion, I have to mention that the Utah Legislature has provided its citizens with an official state cooking pot, and it is the Dutch oven.

“This firearm is Utah,” Representative Carl Wimmer, the Browning bill’s sponsor, told The Salt Lake Tribune. He is an energetic-looking guy with a huge forehead who has only been in office four years yet has, according to one of his videos, “sponsored and passed some of the most significant pieces of legislation in Utah history.”

In case you've forgotten, Carl Wimmer is the genius who wanted to criminalize miscarriages in Utah. Yeah, he's that guy.

But as Gail says:

It is generally not a good policy to dwell on the strange behavior of state legislators since it leads to bottomless despair. If I wanted to go down that road, I’d give you Mark Madsen, a Utah state senator who tried to improve upon the Browning Day celebrations by suggesting they be scheduled to coincide with Martin Luther King Day since “both made tremendous contributions to individual freedom and individual liberty.”

NY Times:

Unless lawmakers and regulators stand firm, financial reform will fail. We were encouraged to hear President Obama push back in the State of the Union address, saying that he would not hesitate to enforce consumer protections and other rules in the reform law.

Dodd-Frank recognized that outsize bank profits depended on outsize risks and attempts to diminish that threat. If it works, the banks will still be big and multitasking, but not the money makers they once were. That would be a small price to pay for a more stable system.

And finally, Mark Morford lists "10 amazing truths you already suspected":

Did you already know? I bet you already knew. Or at the very least, had a sneaking suspicion...

The end is near-ish! Government overspending will be the death of us all! Massive, crushing debt will blot out the sun and ruin your lawn! Buy gold and hoard it in your small intestine for the End Times that are coming soon! The GOP and Glenn Beck hath spoken!

Yes, it's the everyday puling of the Republican right, a common refrain about how the liberal gummint is dead-set on bankrupting the nation as fast as possible. And the Tea Party eats it up like the giant sourball of falsehood it very much is.

Ironic, then, how it's actually the Tea Party-riffic red states that suck up far, far more in government handouts than the blue. Did you already know? I bet you did. Even more amusing is the inverse relationship: The more red/Republican a given state votes -- and hence the more loudly it complains about government spending -- the more it swallows federal handouts like Charlie Sheen inhaling Bolivia. It's true. It's also sort of amazing.

At New Deal 2.0, Marshall Auerback writes, Lesson From Europe: Fiscal Austerity Kills Economies:

• • • • •

At Daily Kos on this date in 2007:

Hello all and welcome to the Wednesday Edition of Diary Rescue! This evening's Rescue Rangers are Louisiana 1976, ItsJessMe, Purple Priestess, ybruti, vcmvo2, and rexymeteorite in the editor's chair.

Now for tonight's main event -- The rescued diaries:

• citisven has an interesting perspective on our emphasis on building and out-producing other countries in How sitting in windows is making the planet cooler. (vcmvo2)
• In a persuasive piece wideye tells us about PREVAILING WAGES AND OFFSHORING. (Louisiana 1976)
• KibbutzAmiad shares a heart wrenching story about a friend in need of food assistance and the dilapidated state of one of our most important social safety nets in "Social welfare net" or Kafka - you decide. (rexymeteorite)
• Lets Breakthrough asks "What does the state of the Union hold for immigration reform?" and proclaims that we must, once again, be the great nation that ensures equal rights and freedoms for all people living within its border. (rexymeteorite)
• fake consultant explains why it is important that we continue to be resolute, offering On Done Deals, Or, Sometimes Losing Is How You Win. (Purple Priestess)
• keepemhonest says we could still be facing the exact same deficit if we END ALL ENTITLEMENTS TODAY!! - and -. (ybruti)
• For all of us, but especially those of us with math-phobia, Shared Growth makes it easy to understand How the World Works 2 - What Became of the Toxic Assets? (Purple Priestess)

jotter has High Impact Diaries: January 25, 2011, and gizmo59 presents Top Comments (1/26/2011): Living in Flatland.

The DR crew has scoured the recent diary list for the most outstanding writing the dailykos community has to offer. We humbly offer these selections as some of the days best. Please feel free to promote your favorite diaries of the day in this open thread, or just goof off, hang out, and chat for a while. Remember to play nice and have fun!!

Via ThinkProgress, the National Academy of Sciences reports on the very real cost to America that a lack of universal access to health care has created. Along with smoking and obesity, being uninsured lowers life expectancy and is killing Americans.

Over the last 25 years, life expectancy at age 50 in the U.S. has been rising, but at a slower pace than in many other high-income countries, such as Japan and Australia. This difference is particularly notable given that the U.S. spends more on health care than any other nation. Concerned about this divergence, the National Institute on Aging asked the National Research Council to examine evidence on its possible causes.

Three to five decades ago, smoking was much more widespread in the U.S. than in Europe or Japan, and the health consequences are still playing out in today’s mortality rates, the report says. Smoking appears to be responsible for a good deal of the differences in life expectancy, especially for women. The habit also has significantly reduced life expectancy in Denmark and the Netherlands, two other countries with lower life expectancy trends than comparable high-income countries....

Obesity’s contribution to lagging life expectancies in the U.S. also appears to be significant, the report says. While there is still uncertainty in the literature about the magnitude of the relationship between obesity and mortality, it may account for a fifth to a third of the shortfall in longevity in the U.S. compared to other nations, the report says. And if the obesity trend in the U.S. continues, it may offset the longevity improvements expected from reductions in smoking....

Lack of universal access to health care in the U.S. also has increased mortality and reduced life expectancy, the report says, though this is a less significant factor for those over age 65 because of Medicare access.

The "best health care system in the world" isn't creating the longest-lived or healthiest people in the world, by a long shot. It's a known fact that universal access to healthcare makes for a healthier population. While the Affordable Care Act doesn't achieve universal access, it still makes a significant improvement upon the status quo. Full repeal takes that access away, and dooms millions of Americans to an earlier death. Full repeal would also mean that widespread programs promoting healthier lifestyles--like smoking cessation and weight control programs--would be nothing more than a memory. They like to call the ACA the "job-killing" law. One could more truthfully call repeal the "American-killing" bill.

(An aside for the Social Security reform zealots who insist that we have to raise the retirement age because our population is aging and is going to be living so much longer: Oh, really?)

Remember how Texas is having such a huge budget crisis that the Legislature has been forced to slash funding for one of its favorite pet projects, crisis pregnancy centers?

Well, apparently, the budget crisis is over because Gov. Rick Perry is insisting that the Legislature focus its attention on the most important issue ever:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has suggested to pro life activists that a bill in the Texas Legislature requiring women seeking abortions to have a sonogram taken of their fetus will be placed on the emergency fast track for passage.

That's right -- passing even greater restrictions on women's access to reproductive health care is an emergency in Texas, budget be damned. Not to mention that this legislation, if it passes, will inevitably lead to litigation, as it has in pretty much every other state where similar laws have been enacted. Nothing like a costly lawsuit to really help out with the state's budget crisis, huh, Governor?

This is the same Gov. Perry who, less than two years ago, declared that Texas might have to secede from the union because "the federal government has become oppressive. I believe it’s become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of its citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state."

Curse that damned federal government for intruding into citizens' private lives. Everyone knows only state governments should be oppressive and intrusive.

But here's the point apparently lost on Gov. Perry and his fellow Texas Republicans:

One controversy surrounding Perry's drive to make the sonogram abortion bill a "fast track emergency" is that the Texas State Legislature is wrestling with a real emergency of a huge budget deficit that has to be closed at all hazards. Placing other bills on a "fast track emergency", no matter what the merits, may be unwise until that problem is solved.

So in Texas, passing oppressive, intrusive legislation takes precedence over everything else because when it comes to the forced birthers, nothing -- not even the budget crisis -- is more important than making sure that if a woman is going to have an abortion, her doctor should be forced to try to make her feel super duper bad about it first.

Now if only Gov. Perry could find a way to tax women for the sonograms they'll be forced to have, he just might be able to kill two birds with one really, really stupid stone.

Earlier today I attended a White House press briefing with David Axelrod. The other attendees were all new media types representing center-left organizations. It was billed as a blogger roundtable. The entire transcript can be read below the fold.

Along with Bill Scher of Campaign for America’s Future, I was able to open the questioning. Our focus was on Social Security.

First, as a refresher, here is what President Obama said last night on Social Security:

To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations.  And we must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.

Now, here are the questions on Social Security from today’s roundtable. The questions are in italics:

Q  Bill Scher with Campaign for America’s Future.  As you know, Campaign was pretty pleased with what the President said -- the President had to say about Social Security last night, although noting that the door is still open with some changes to the program.

I was curious, what is the polling telling the White House and telling you as his political advisor how best to approach Social Security?  Our polling is showing there’s been a lot of opposition to raising the retirement age, for example.  But is your polling telling you anything similar or different in how that will inform the President going forward?

MR. AXELROD:  Well, I think all of that is pretty consistent.  What informed his thinking on this is that what is true is that in the long term there are issues on the horizon relative to Social Security, as you know, because you’re obviously a student of research.  Among younger Americans, there’s a profound suspicion that Social Security isn’t even going to be there.  And among older Americans, there’s a great deal of anxiety about tampering with it.

And our goal is to make sure that the program is strong and secure.  The President laid out his principles last night, and we’re willing to have a discussion, but those principles are going to inform the discussion.

Q  Speaking of those principles -- I’m Chris Bowers with Daily Kos.

MR. AXELROD:  How you doing?

Q    I’m doing good.  President Obama came out in opposition to benefit cuts and also to privatization.  Would he still be willing to talk about those as part of a bipartisan solution, or is he more inclined to veto any bipartisan deal that includes either benefit cuts or privatization?

MR. AXELROD:  Well, first of all, I think that -- as I said, I think his interest is in seeing the program strengthened, and there are certain things that are not just non-starters for him but I think many, many members of Congress, and that includes privatization, which Congressman Ryan has opposed, for example.

But I don’t think -- I mean, this is a delicate time because I don’t think you want to start pre-negotiating or pre-discussing issues to the point where people say, well, there’s no point in even sitting down and talking about this stuff.  So I’m not going to, here, start parsing the President’s words and so on.

I will say this.  I don’t think -- there’s not going to be a bipartisan agreement for him to veto.  I think if there’s a bipartisan agreement that it’s going to be hammered out around the principles that he articulated last night or it’s probably not going to move forward.  Just the nature of the issue.

So we’ll see what ensues from here.

The answers that we received are not answers that will make anyone entirely happy. Here is what I took from them:

• The Obama administration is not willing to repudiate the “crisis” narrative surrounding Social Security that dominates the national political media.
• President Obama explicitly repudiated privatization of Social Security in his speech last night, and David Axelrod reaffirmed that repudiation today.
• If there is going to be a “bi-partisan” agreement to alter Social Security, it will be brokered by President Obama himself. Congress is not going to pass a deal to which President Obama has not given his prior approval.
• President Obama strikes generally strong notes in defense of Social Security when it comes to other possible ways to cut the program. However, other than privatization, both he and his administration are unwilling to get too specific about where the line is drawn.

Q.  Well, it seems like there’s going to be a real debate to be had between this invest-and-grow strategy and a cut-and-grow strategy, as Eric Cantor defines it, because they do not seem to be interested in investing in anything right now.  How does that debate get driven over the course of the year?  Are there specific legislative vehicles that you’re looking at?  Are you looking at a clean energy standard, infrastructure bank, a multi-year transportation bill?  Are there specific things that are already in mind that will advance this discussion, or is it going to stay more on a thematic plate for the White House waiting to see what the House puts on the table?

MR. AXELROD:  Well, we have an obligation to put a budget forward, and we’re going to put a budget forward, and that budget is going to reflect the priorities that the President spoke to last night.  It’s going to be a tough budget in terms of the kind of the decisions we have to make about what we can afford and what we can’t afford.  But it’s going to reflect the priorities that he spoke to.

And presumably Congress is going to then turn their cards over and say how they would do it differently.  And we can have a discussion, the American people can participate in that discussion, as to the priorities.

You can’t just swirl around in the land of the theoretical forever.  We’ve got responsibilities.  They’ve got responsibilities.  We’re going to meet our responsibilities.  And I trust they’ll meet theirs and say, no, these are not the priorities we support, and here’s what we would cut, we could cut back.

I mean, we’ve had this discussion for some time now.  If, in fact, the idea is to cut education by 20 or 30 or 40 percent, that’s not a growth strategy.  If your -- if the idea is to not move forward on innovation and research and development, not to move forward on energy, that’s not a growth strategy.

So I expect this debate to become engaged pretty quickly as we introduce our budget and as they respond to it, and hopefully present us with theirs.

In 2011, the budget is the thing.

A recurring theme in the discussion was Axelrod not being very forthcoming on policy specifics. From questions on campaign finance, to gun control, to Afghanistan, to the upcoming House vote on the so-called “No Taxpayer Funded Abortion Act,” Axelrod did not announce, or clarify, Obama administration position on pretty much anything. One possible exception came on a process question asked by Greg Sargent near the end of the roundtable (emphasis mine):

Q. The big New York Magazine piece that had you getting up and checking your BlackBerry at 3:00 a.m., it had some pretty interesting stuff in there about -- he seemed to really be pretty plugged in in his reporting.  It had some interesting stuff in there about sort of the introspection that’s gone on after the loss in November.  And the suggestion was that you guys don’t view him as moving to the center so much as getting back to who he really is.  And I wondered if you could talk about the degree to which there’s been this kind of introspection and conclusion about –

MR. AXELROD:  Yes, I’m not going to change the nature of this town and the nature of our politics.  And part of what we do -- and I’m part of the political community too, okay, so this -- put this down in the category of self-flagellation as well.  But we tend to sit on the back of the truck and look at what happened before, and then define what’s happening now in the context of what happened some other time.

So, Bill Clinton repositioned himself to the center, and that’s the prescription for what you do and so on.  I guarantee you -- I give you, as God is my witness, my word that we have not had a repositioning discussion here.  We have not talked about let’s move three degrees to the right.  That’s not the way we view this.

Those were easily the most vehement words we saw from Axelrod during the entire discussion.

The entire transcript is in the extended entry.