David Pleasant

Bad news: Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) has prostate cancer.

Max Baucus makes Joe Lieberman look like a bleeding heart liberal and one that the Progressive Caucus would welcome. From The Hill: 

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Thursday he hasn’t made up his mind on whether he will vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Baucus this summer has infuriated liberals on and off Capitol Hill by working to strike a deal with Republicans on healthcare reform. A “no” vote on Sotomayor would be adding fuel to the left’s fire at the Finance Committee chairman.

Baucus on Thursday twice told The Hill he is undecided on next week’s floor vote on Sotomayor.

“I have no idea,” Baucus said. “I haven’t paid any attention and I haven’t announced … I’ve been so busy with healthcare. It’s under consideration. I’ll certainly know when I vote, but right now I can’t tell you.”

I don’t understand why Max Baucus doesn’t change parties, other than doing so would cost him his chairmanship and thereby drastically reduce the amount of money lobbyists give him. Clearly, having a 60-vote majority in the Senate is meaningless to the Democrats, so what productive purpose does Baucus serve in the Democratic Party?

Late Update: FirstRead reports that Baucus will vote for Sotomayor.

"I have long said that to be a Supreme Court Justice a person must meet three main criteria: personal integrity, professional competence, and a view of important issues that is within the mainstream of contemporary judicial thought," Baucus said in a statement. "After personally meeting Judge Sotomayor, thoroughly analyzing her judicial record, and reviewing her nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Sotomayor unquestionably meets each of these criteria. Thus, I am proud to support her nomination and will vote to confirm her as a Justice to the United States Supreme Court.”

Well that’s nice. Sen. Baucus decides to vote with the rest of his party. I suppose a stopped clock is right occasionally, huh?

Ouch!

"It’s almost immoral what they are doing," Pelosi said to reporters, referring to insurance companies. "Of course they’ve been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure," she said, adding, "They are the villains. They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening."

Now the question is, is Pelosi just all hat and no cattle? Is she going to follow through with action or is that just red meat to appease us plebes?

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz just reported that Sgt. James Crowley showed up at the White House with his union representative and his lawyer. Hard to get any more tone deaf than that. He’s not looking for reconciliation. He’s looking for confrontation.

Late Update: It appears that the entourage was not part of the formal meeting and therefore may have not been as hostile as initially perceived. That notwithstanding, it certainly indicates a lack of awareness of the optics.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is pulling a Sarah Palin by blaming his ineptness on the media.

Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday blamed Capitol Hill media for setting an August deadline for health reform and Republicans for blocking the bill’s progress.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Conference Secretary Patty Murray (D-Wash.) also acknowledged that critics will "pour it on" during the coming August recess and they plan to respond in kind.

Reid said reporters created a fictitious deadline of a successful vote by the August recess, and downplayed the fact that the chamber won’t meet that mark.

“That is a deadline that you created,” Reid told a group of about 75 reporters. “It’s not like we don’t have a product. Significant progress has been made … The mere fact that this wasn’t done by last Friday or by five o’clock doesn’t mean we’re not going to get a quality product."

The absence of a spine is what Reid should be focusing on, not the media for reporting precisely what he set forth.

Excellent. The Progressive Caucus has enough confirmed votes (53) to block passage of any health care reform bill that “does not provide, at a minimum, for a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates – not negotiated rates.”

Now, if somebody can just get a hold of that execrable Max Baucus.

Here’s the kicker (pdf) on having a public option as part of health care reform.

Question: Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan – something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get – that would compete with private health insurance plans?

Poll after poll, similar results are found. But Max Baucus and the Blue Dogs insist on going along with Republicans and refusing to support a public option.

Late Update: Glenn Greenwald perfectly describes how these specific results should be interpreted:

That means it’s highly unlikely that there will be a public option in what ultimately passes, since in Washington there is, generally speaking, an inverse relationship between the beliefs of the public and the laws that are enacted.

While the American people have varying views on the economy, one thing is abundantly clear according to the NYT/CBS poll (pdf).  Don’t come around asking for another stimulus package.

When asked if they “would favor or oppose the government spending additional money on another stimulus package,” 65 percent opposed and 27 percent favored another stimulus.

I want to point out a few things in the latest New York Times/CBS poll (pdf).

This morning on Morning Joe, Joe Doucheborough Scarborough was ranting about how badly President Obama had taken a hit on health-care related polling results and that the American people were progressively focusing on the economy and increasingly less on health care.

He breathlessly bloviated that the only thing Americans were really concerned about was jobs, jobs, jobs and budget deficits. According to Mr. Scarborough, deficit concerns were overtaking health care concerns. He asserted the American people were finally aligning themselves with what he had been harping about for months: out of control, deficit spending by the President and Democrats in Congress. (This is what I recall. It appears MSNBC does not publish a transcript of Morning Joe. If someone has a transcript or applicable video, I will gladly reference it.)

Yes, that’s right. So we were told, the recent polls proved that America was now seeing and acquiescing to the infinite wisdom put forth over several months by Mr. Scarborough – the all powerful sage and Purveyor of Truth. Well Joe, it just ain’t so. As usual, he is lying to push his own agenda (his book and GOP talking points) .

Look at these numbers from the New York Times/CBS poll.

Question: What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?

Health Care rose by 71 percent in one month and was the highest in that category in more than a year and a half. That says the President’s message is getting out there. Other polling results indicate the electorate may be confused about what they are being told, but that does not take away the fact that concerns about health care have gone up, substantially.

Concerns about the budget deficit remain virtually unchanged. The percentage of people that perceive the budget deficit as the top concern facing the nation is no different than it was almost a year and a half ago. Furthermore, and in stark contrast to Scarborough’s false assertions, the budget deficit is one of the American people’s least concerns.

Concerns about the economy have dropped, not increased, which has been a steady trend ever since President Obama’s inauguration. In January, the economy peaked at 49 percent and has steadily dropped to 36 percent in the latest poll.

While jobs are a significant concern and have been all year, there has been only minor change since the Obama administration put health care at the forefront (from a debate position, not necessarily the administration’s working focus) In my opinion, this is more a factor of the rising unemployment rate than it is a factor of health care being pushed.

If anything stands out to me in this poll, it is the fact that Americans barely have war on their radar and we are fighting wars in two different countries at a cost of more than $100 billion per year.

Bring the troops home, now.

A senior American military adviser in Baghdad has concluded in an unusually blunt memo that the Iraqi forces suffer from deeply entrenched deficiencies but are now capable of protecting the Iraqi government and that it is time “for the U.S. to declare victory and go home.”

Prepared by Col. Timothy R. Reese, an adviser to the Iraqi military’s Baghdad command, the memorandum asserts that the Iraqi forces have array of problems, including corruption, poor management and the inability to resist political pressure from Shiite political parties.

For all of these problems, however, Colonel Reese argues that Iraqi forces are competent enough to hold off Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias and other internal threats to the Iraqi government. Extending the American military presence in Iraq beyond 2010, he argues, will do little to improve the Iraqis’ military performance while fueling a growing resentment.

The $100 billion a year we spend in Iraq would pay for health care reform. But who will win this debate, Haliburton or the American people? I guess we’ll see just how much President Cheney is still controlling the levers of power.

Late Update: It should come as no surprise that the Council on Foreign Relations is cheering to stay there. Why didn’t the NYT just ask Bill Kristol what he thought was best?

Some experts, such as Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations…have argued that this timetable may be too fast given the host of remaining problems in Iraq, including differences between Kurds and Arab leaders, remaining Sunni-Shiite tensions and the possibility that the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki might become more authoritarian.

Late Update: Trusting what is published in major media outlets is becoming increasingly difficult, if not downright impossible. The credibility of the NYT’s lead story (as of now) about getting out Iraq early based on the “analysis” of Col. Timothy R. Reese is called into question by Zachary Roth at TPM.