We have yet another study that disputes the Obama administration's claims that the various congressional health proposals will somehow muffle the relentless rise in medical spending. In the past week, both Peter Orszag, head of the Office of Management and Budget, and Christina Romer, head of the Council of Economic Advisers, have repeated earlier assertions that health-care "reform" amounts to "deficit reform" because it will reduce the health-spending spirals that contribute to bulging budget deficits. So far, their arguments aren't resonating with the economic models.

The latest study, done by the health-consulting firm Lewin Group (which is part of a company owned by United Healthcare Group), focuses on the proposal passed by the Senate Finance Committee (S 1796, "America's Healthy Future Act of 2009). The study estimates that it would increase national health spending in the program's first decade (2010 to 2019) by $114 billion. Without the proposal, health spending is projected to increase from 17 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010 to 25.2 percent by 2030; with the Senate proposal, the increase in 2029 would be slightly greater, about 0.3 percent of GDP. That's not a huge gain, but it's no decline. The study was commissioned by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a research-and-advocacy group that focuses on the nation's long-term budget problems.

Because it's Friday--and because I'm feeling a little mischievous, this being Halloween Eve and all--I'm going to make a wildly reckless prediction about the outcome of next Tuesday's gubernatorial election in my ancestral homeland of New Jersey: incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine will beat GOP challenger Chris Christie by a hair.

Even if it's not his own.

Of course, my hunch could be wrong. The latest poll from the local pros at Farleigh Dickinson University puts Christie ahead of Corzine 41 to 39, a four-point gain for the Republican since the last FDU survey earlier this month, while the other three most recent polls--SurveyUSA, Research 2000, and Rasmussen--either show a tie or a 1-3 point advantage for Christie. Plus, there's precedent. In 1993, an unpopular Democratic incumbent (Jim Florio) lost in the midst of a recession to a moderate Republican upstart (Christine Todd Whitman) despite holding a 10-point lead heading into the final week of the campaign. Corzine doesn't have 10 points to shed, and with a disastrous 37 percent approval rating, he's even less popular than Florio was back in the day.

By Jerry Adler

Many Afghan men are known
By a single name alone
Which can make the Kabul phone
            Book very hard to use.
 
Sometimes if they like their own
Name enough, they’ll add a clone
So Abdullah’s name has grown
            By doubling, to confuse—
 
Americans.  The other cat
Is Hamid Karzai, with the hat.
A Karakul – I googled that.
            It’s also worn by Jews—
 

From Africa.  You fold it flat.
            Gee, it’s hard to choose.

photo by Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty

You’ve gotta hand it to Nancy Pelosi: She is queen of the photo op. Four days after Harry Reid unveiled his version of health-care reform in a windowless room deep inside the U.S. Capitol, Pelosi chose perhaps the most dramatic setting in Washington to make her own health-care pitch: the west front steps of the Capitol building. You’ve seen it on TV. It’s where presidents are sworn in—though this morning’s events looked and sounded a little more like a convention speech than an inauguration event. Case in point: Pelosi marched into the event to her own personal soundtrack, “Elevation” by U2. (She loves that Bono, remember?) Reid had, well, the sound of reporters typing away on their laptops. Throwaway details aside, there is one major optical difference between the Pelosi and Reid events: when the senator spoke, he did it alone. At Pelosi’s event, almost every member of the House Democratic caucus stood behind her. Who do you think has more sway on Capitol Hill?

D.C. loves nothing more than insider intrigue about closed-door meetings. Exhibit A: TPM's Brian Beutler is stirring the pot with his reporting that last week's White House health-care meeting between the president and Senators Reid and Schumer was more acrimonious than we've been led to believe. Days after the meeting Reid announced the inclusion of a public option in his health-care bill, amid speculation that the White House still favored a trigger option. Beutler writes that in the days leading up to the meeting, relations between Reid and the administration inched toward the breaking point. His sources describe "the back and forth between Senate health-care principals and the White House as a "sort of stare-down where the two sides were saying, 'you be the face of pulling it out.' Reid wants Obama to do it to give cover to his caucus. Obama wants Reid to do it so he's not the bad guy on the public option and can still walk away with a win with reform, with bipartisanship, and with a card for everybody running for reelection." He also reports that Schumer was the one tasked with pitching Reid's opt-out-option strategy to the president. When he did, Beutler's source says,"Obama was less than responsive and asked questions that suggested he preferred an option that could get the trigger and bipartisan support." 

In true D.C. fashion, however, my sources paint a different picture. Senior Democratic sources close to the discussions tell me that the White House meeting was all about Olympia Snowe and how to secure her vote. It's no secret that the president is eager to call reform a bipartisan effort, and Snowe holds the one last candle of hope. But by the time Reid and Schumer entered the White House, Snowe was no longer the topic du jour for them. They were operating on a different calculus.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled her long-awaited health-care bill today. There aren't any real surprises. Most of the newsy provisions have been well known for weeks now. The bill will likely extend coverage to 36 million Americans, and it will prevent insurers from dropping or denying coverage. It also won't add to the deficit, thus satisfying one of the president's primary objectives. The CBO estimates the cost at under $900 billion. Here are a few of the key points you need to know about the bill:

• The change that will perhaps have the most impact on Americans is the expansion of Medicaid. Under Pelosi's bill, anyone earning up to 150 percent of the poverty line will be eligible for Medicaid. This is an increase on previous iterations─and the Senate bill─which only covered people up to 133 percent of the poverty line.
  
• The bill includes a public option but not the so-called robust plan. Hospitals and providers will be able to negotiate their rates with the government insurer.
• A surtax will be leveled on wealthy Americans─those earning over $500,000 for individuals or $1 million for families─to help offset costs. This differs from the Senate bill which relies on a tax on "Cadillac," or expensive, insurance plans. Medical-devices companies will also be subject to a new tax.
  
• The bill removes the health-insurance industry's exemption from antitrust laws, which will no doubt upset insurers.
• Like her Senate colleagues, Pelosi won't be offering a "doc's fix," that is, she won't offer a long-term solution to a problematic Medicare formula that causes reimbursement rates for physicians treating Medicare patients to decrease.
• Medicare expenditures will be cut by approximately 1.3 percent, with the pharmaceutical industry bearing the brunt.

The bill currently has no Republican support. Abortion remains a sticking point for some Democrats, like Bart Stupak of Michigan, who want to see the language tightened to prohibit any federal funds being used to fund abortions, meaning that government subsidies can't be put toward plans that cover abortion.

Politico reports that Pelosi has reneged on a deal she made with Anthony Weiner of New York to allow a vote on a single-payer system on the floor. The vote would have failed by a large margin, but its symbolism was important to liberals who feel that they've already compromised enormously in backing a public option over single payer.

Education reformers were disappointed two weeks ago to learn that fourth graders’ math scores failed to show any improvement this year. But a new report being released today by the National Center for Education Statistics reveals an equally disappointing improvement: states are getting much better at watering down the standards used on their annual math and reading tests. Or as Grover J. Whitehurst, former director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, put it, “States are getting better at gaming the system, but the kids aren’t getting any smarter.”

A little background: when George Bush pushed through his education-reform initiative, No Child Left Behind, one of its key accountability components was the mandate for annual tests in reading and math. Because of resistance to a national test, the feds agreed to a political compromise: states could develop their own tests to monitor their students’ progress and assess the effectiveness of their reform efforts. The hope—or depending on your point of view, the fantasy—was that states would develop rigorous tests based on high standards with the goal of motivating schools to work harder to improve student achievement and close the gap between black and white test scores. Every year, they were required to report how many of their students passed the test and which schools showed year-to-year progress. However, a few years later, when NCES researchers started comparing states’ efforts in 2003 to 2005, they discovered that some states had created tests that were a lot easier to pass than others. The motive? By lowering the bar, states could increase the number of their students passing their tests—and create the illusion that their schools were improving, even when they were not. This strategy didn’t benefit kids, but it sure reduced the political pressure on school administrators. The publicity that resulted from the NCES report was supposed to shame states into making improvements. Instead, as this latest NCES report reveals, when researchers updated their review by comparing 2005 standards to those used in 2007, they found that twice as many standards had been weakened in the interim as were strengthened.

By Jeremy Herb 

The Web site MeetChrisDonovan.com looks legitimate enough. The main picture shows Connecticut Speaker of the House Christopher Donovan pictured with a smiling Barack Obama. Then you read the main headline, "Mortgaging Connecticut's Future," which says it's "just plain wrong" that Donovan and the Democrats borrowed $2.3 billion. Scroll down further and there is a post titled "Going Back to the Well," describing Donovan's "refusal to cut the state's outrageous spending." Another is headlined "Costing Meriden Jobs." These aren't the messages the speaker wants to tell his constituents, but this site comes up ahead of Donovan's official one when you search "Chris Donovan" on Google.

MeetChrisDonovan.com was created by the Connecticut Republican Party, one of 33 fake Web sites and Twitter accounts the GOP started for state Democrats. After Democrats protested, Twitter shut down the accounts because Republicans were impersonating the lawmakers. But State GOP Chairman Chris Healy says he has no intention of stopping the Web sites, and he has no legal reason to do so. "By complaining to Twitter, almost weeping in public, it's helped drive more traffic to the Web sites," Healy says. The GOP may even create fake sites for more Democratic lawmakers, who hold a 114–37 advantage in the House and 24–12 advantage in the Senate.

As Eve notes today, the 2010 census has ignited a gay-rights controversy. It’s doing the same on the immigration front. On one side are immigrant advocates who are fighting to ensure that every individual, whether in the country legally or not, is counted next year. On the other side are folks, mostly conservatives, who argue that undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be included in tallies used to reapportion congressional seats to states.

The opening salvo in the battle: a recently proposed amendment sponsored by GOP Sens. David Vitter and Robert Bennett. The measure would add a question to the census survey asking if the respondent is a U.S. citizen or not. Its aim is to exclude noncitizens from state population counts that are used to divvy up not just congressional seats, but federal aid and much more.

Michelle Obama can add one more thing to her list of "firsts": next month she will be the first First Lady to grace the cover of Glamor Magazine. It's part of the fashion mag's annual "Women of the Year" edition, and Obama is being honored for her with a Special Recognition award for her work in mentoring younger women. Of course, no self-respecting women's mag would run a cover story without some mention of the central issue: boys. So what does the President's wife have to say on the matter? Good looks won't cut it.

A few months ago I wrote a short piece about the startling practice of using open-air burn pits to incinerate waste on U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. The toxic fumes from these pits have been linked to a host of debilitating illnesses in troops and contractors who worked near them. Here's an excerpt from my original piece:

Josh Eller, a military contractor stationed in Iraq in 2006, was driving through Balad Air Base when he spotted the wild dog. He wasn't sure what was in its mouth—but when Eller saw two bones, he knew he was looking at a human arm. The dog had pulled the limb from an open-air "burn pit" on the base used to incinerate waste. Eller says it's "one of the worst things I have seen."

Since hearing Eller's story, lawyer Elizabeth Burke has signed on 190 additional clients with complaints about burn pits at 18 military sites in Iraq and Afghanistan. By now, she says, all pits should have been replaced by pollution-controlled incinerators. She's filed suits in 17 states against KBR, the company contracted to provide waste-disposal services at these bases, accusing it of negligence and harm. Burke was shocked to learn what her clients saw incinerated: Humvees, batteries, unexploded ordnance, gas cans, mattresses, rocket pods, and plastic and medical waste (including body parts, which may explain the arm). Fumes containing carcinogenic dioxins, heavy metals, and particulates, according to an Army–Air Force risk assessment, waft freely across bases.

If Harry Reid were Jerry Seinfeld, he'd probably be snarling the name "Lieberman" through gritted teeth right now, in true Newman-esque fashion. The Connecticut senator announced this afternoon that he'll join a Republican filibuster of the health-care bill unless the public option provision is changed. In doing so he's effectively cleared the way for other fence sitters, like Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, and Blanche Lincoln to do so as well, and avoid taking as much heat.

When Lieberman, who is technically an Independent, came back to the Democratic caucus after deserting it in the 2008 election, he could have been stripped of his committee assignments as punishment for his infidelity. That's what any party who understands a thing or two about political discipline might be expected to do. But we're talking about Senate Democrats here, so of course Lieberman got a light rap on his knuckles. He lost his spot on the Environment and Public Works Committee, but he retained his coveted position as Chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. President Obama was a key Lieberman supporter, encouraging Democrats to let bygones be bygones. That was the heady aura of D.C. just 11 short months ago. A new kind of politics. Post-partisanship. Change we can believe in and all that. But Lieberman's actions today demonstrate that no good deed goes unpunished. I'm sure many Democratic senators are wishing right now they could take that vote over. They're probably reminiscing fondly about Ned Lamont.

Over at the Plum Line, Greg Sargent notes something I've been thinking, and meaning to blog about for weeks, namely that the Virginia governor's race is not a referendum on the president. As much as pundits want to draw national conclusions for an off-cycle race like this one—political reporters, myself included, can't resist the allure of "what does it all mean?" analysis—the Virginia race doesn't tell us all that much about the presidency. Sargent looks closely at the numbers from a recent Washington Post poll, and finds the following:

• Seventy percent of likely voters say Obama is “not a factor” in their choice. Only 15% say opposition to Obama is a factor, while 14% say support for him is a factor.
• Seventy-one percent say it makes “no difference” if the governor is from the same political party as the president. More people say it’s good to have a governor from the same party, 16%-13%.
• Obama’s approval rating in Virginia is 54%, in line with many national polls.

Senate Republicans have made little secret of their intent to oppose cap-and-trade legislation. Last week Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe—possibly Congress's most vocal climate change skeptic and opponent of climate legislation—threatened that if environment committee chair Sen. Barbara Boxer tried any funny business before the markup of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, such as not giving members enough time to review it, he would lead a boycott of the meeting among all Republicans on the committee, on which he is the ranking member. It would have been a brazen move to slow the committee’s debate by simply not showing up, thus causing the body to not make quorum. But for a party impotently in a 7-12 minority, Inhofe recognized that his options are limited. “The only leverage we have is the quorum leverage,” he told The Washington Post late last week.

Every so often, a newspaper story appears that simply must be read by everyone who cares about the most important issues of the day. Such is the case with Karen DeYoung's article in today's Washington Post about Matt Hoh, a State Department official and former U.S. Marine with years of on-the-ground experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hoh resigned in protest last month because he believes increasing U.S. combat-troop strength in Afghanistan will actually harm our interests in the region. "The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency," Hoh writes. Whichever decision President Obama makes, the PDF of Hoh's eloquent resignation letter will be used by historians to show that the country was warned that it was about to embark on a tragic course.

Hoh is "no hippie," as he tells DeYoung. He writes from real-life experience as a highly regarded officer and civilian official. But because he was lower down the chain of command—closer to the real action and the real story—his words carry more power than that of high-level officials who tour the country for a few days accompanied by yes-men. Richard Holbrooke, the special envoy for the region, asked Hoh to work for him after he resigned (Hoh eventually declined) and Tony Blinken, who is Joe Biden's foreign-policy adviser, is meeting this week with Hoh. That testifies to the power of his message. You can read a lot of columns about Afghanistan by stateside blowhards of the left and right who don't really know what they're talking about. Or you can read Hoh.

I agree with Katie that Harry Reid's announcement that he will bring a health-care reform bill with a public option to the Senate floor "is a win for progressives."

This is a very big deal, and I say that as someone who last summer told people to pipe down about the public option. At that time, I was worried that pressure for a public option would derail health-care reform. Because that's no longer a problem, now is the time to focus on the importance of choice and competition in keeping costs down.

Harry Reid's decision to opt for "opt-out" is significant, even potentially historic if opt-out is included in the final bill.

Katie says, "It's unclear why Reid decided on this model, over an opt-in model or a trigger." Here's why he did that: The problem with the weaker alternative—a "trigger"—is that it's more mañana-ism.

It wasn't long ago when pundits were calling the time of death on the public option. But today, in a move that seemed almost inconceivable back in August, Harry Reid has announced that the bill he plans to take to the Senate floor will contain a public option. His version will be an "opt-out" public plan, which would allow states to prevent their residents from participating in it. It's not a version that entirely satisfies progressives, who'd be happier with a robust, openly accessible plan. But it's a far cry from Max Baucus's plan, which relied on co-ops rather than a public plan to induce the competition President Obama so desires.

It's unclear why Reid decided on this model over an opt-in plan or a trigger, for example. It probably has something to do with pressure from the likes of Chuck Schumer, and assurances from folks like Jay Rockefeller that liberals would support him. Reid also said at his press conference this afternoon that he has the backing of the White House, quashing rumors (for now) that the administration prefers a trigger option. But there are a few key people who don't appear to support the idea. First and foremost, Olympia Snowe, who's had almost unparalleled influence on the Senate bill so far. Without her, Reid needs every single one of his 60 votes, and it's far from certain that Blanche Lincoln or Ben Nelson would support it.

America's conservatives are probably feeling pretty chuffed today after reading Gallup's recent polling on political ideology. The data confirm Gallup's June finding that conservatism is the dominant ideology in the country right now. About 40 percent of respondents identified themselves as conservative, while 36 percent called themselves moderate and 20 percent liberal. The last time the conservative number was so high was in 2003 and 2004. The reason today's numbers are important is that they've jumped up 3 points after holding steady at 37 percent from 2006 to 2008. Considering the size of the sample and the lack of movement in the past few years, that jump is significant.

Although the numbers don't look great for Democrats, they're not exactly a reason for popping champagne at the RNC. According to Jeff Jones, managing editor of the Gallup poll, the number of people identifying as conservative rose similarly when Bill Clinton assumed the presidency in 1993. In 1992, conservatives made up 36 percent of the electorate. That number popped up to 39 percent in 1993. It dropped back to 38 percent in 1994, when Republicans took control of Congress, and reached its contemporary nadir—36 percent—the following year.

The Republican National Committee just can't catch a break online. Since, as RNC Chairman Michael Steele noted, the internet has been around for a while, the party relaunched their website two weeks ago with what it hoped would be a snazzy, eye-catching, hip new design. The site did get a lot of attention, but most of it was searing at best. Detractors skewered the format, especially Steele's embarrasingly titled blog, "What Up?" that recalled his promise of an "off the hook" PR offensive that would take the GOP to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.” (the name was quickly changed).

With that sideshow going on, perhaps the RNC has forgotten to keep an eye on their Facebook page, where "fans"--members of the Facebook group--can upload their own images. It's hard to put words to just how appalling the above picture, which appears to have been removed in the last hour or so, is: the idea that miscegenation is an anti-American crime, combined with the racist meme of President Barack Obama eating fried chicken and reference to Loving v. Virginia--the landmark case that struck down laws banning interracial marriage--is pretty stunning. The image was posted Tuesday, coinciding with news out of Louisiana that a justice of the peace was refusing to wed a white woman and a black man; Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal and Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu were quick to condemn the judge, while critics have pilloried Republican Sen. David Vitter for his tardy and tepid criticism.

Obama administration officials have repeatedly emphasized the need to "bend the curve" of health-care costs. Reducing increases in health spending, they argued, was essential to controlling future federal budget deficits and making insurance affordable for most Americans. Now, in the first comprehensive evaluation of one of the major congressional health-reform bills, analysts find that it does bend the cost curve—in the wrong direction. The study of H.R. 3200, as reported by the House Ways and Means Committee, concludes that the legislation would raise total national health spending by $750 billion over the decade from 2010 to 2019.

The study was done by Richard Foster, chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services. CMS's Office of the Actuary, like the Congressional Budget Office, is often asked to present independent, nonpartisan estimates of major health-care proposals. In its study, CMS finds that the Ways and Means Committee bill, one of three major bills in the House, would dramatically reduce the number of uninsured Americans, from an estimated 57 million in 2019 to 23 million. But this expansion of insurance coverage "would typically result in a fairly substantial increase in the utilization of health-care services, with a corresponding impact on total health expenditures."

One of the Republican party's biggest fundraisers confirmed Friday that he plans to help bankroll Keep America Safe-the new political advocacy group started by Liz Cheney to attack President Obama's national security policies. As reported on Declassified Thursday, Keep America Safe will run radio and Web ads criticizing President Obama's national security policies in the home districts of vulnerable Democratic congressmen. "I love Liz Cheney and what she's doing," Mel Sembler, a Florida real estate magnate said in a telephone interview, adding that he planned to be "as supportive as my budget will allow." Sembler wouldn't discuss numbers. But in his case those resources are considerable. A former finance chairman for the Republican National Committee who later served as President George W. Bush's Ambassador to Italy (and chairman of the Scooter Libby Defense Trust), Sembler has pumped at least $456,605 into political races over the past 12 years.

Sembler has long been close to the Cheneys—he tried to persuade Dick Cheney to run for president in 1996 and is now encouraging Liz Cheney to run for Congress from Wyoming (although he added she's not yet convinced "the time is right.") So while not exactly a surprise, Sembler's comments to help clear up one mystery: where at least some of the money will be coming from when Keep America Safe starts running ads blasting Obama for promising to shutdown Gitmo.

screenshot of Amazon.com, 10/23/09

With just under a month to go before it’s released to the masses, Sarah Palin’s upcoming autobiography, Going Rogue, has already been near the top of Amazon’s bestseller list for weeks. No surprise, considering the enormous amount of interest—both bad and good—the former Alaska governor has generated since John McCain named her as his vice presidential running mate last year. But there may be more to the story: over the past week or so, Amazon has been steadily dropping the price of Palin’s book to compete with other retailers, including Wal-Mart, which offered it for presale at $10. Amazon, which originally listed it at $28.99, is now basically giving the book away for a measly $9. This, as my fellow NEWSWEEKer Sarah Ball notes, is cheaper than buying a copy of Pat the Bunny. Heck, even How to Win Friends and Influence People is priced higher. Of course, it would be absolutely, positively un-American for Wal-Mart to back down from its promise of offering people the absolute lowest price, and now it's reportedly charging $8.98 for the Palin opus. By your Gaggler’s math, that’s a whopping 2 cents a page, or, as we’d describe it, practically free. Will Amazon go even lower? Could there be a buy-one-get-one-free scenario in the offing? Not likely, now that the trade association representing independent bookstores has gotten involved. It has asked the Justice Department to investigate Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target (a partner with Amazon) for charging below-cost prices for books in order to dominate the bookselling industry. You know what that means: buy your copies now.

As I predicted Wednesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan's major speech at Columbia University this week called on America's teacher colleges to follow the lead of Louisiana, which has been setting the pace nationally in terms of overhauling its schools of education. The state has turned the devastation wrought by Katrina into an opportunity to force through the kind of education reforms that other states just can't seem to muster. One of its most controversial strategies has been to include data on how effectively new graduates are teaching and how much their students are learning when evaluating the quality of teacher colleges and other training programs.

As Duncan put it: "Right now, Louisiana is the only state in the nation that tracks the effectiveness of its teacher-preparation programs. Every state in the nation should be doing the same." Duncan said the U.S. Department of Education would "provide incentives for states" through the ongoing $4.3 billion Race to the Top competition to make serious upgrades in their teacher colleges.

Official White House photo by Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz has been spending a lot of time at the White House lately, and now we know why. The famed photographer, in the headlines lately for drama over her personal finances, shot the official Obama family portrait, which was posted on the White House’s Flickr account this morning. Leibovitz has been trailing Obama for months. In January, she shot a major portfolio for Vanity Fair of Obama and his staff. She’s been spotted sporadically at the White House ever since, including earlier this month when she was accidentally body-checked by another press pool photographer while shooting Obama at a Democratic fundraising event. (Yes, covering the White House can be a lot like hockey.) No word on how much the portrait cost, though Leibovitz's rates reportedly exceed $100,000 a day. We're guessing the White House got a decent discount.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) is back on his one-man quest to introduce the rhetorical combat of the netroots crowd into the halls of Congress. This time, his unfortunate target is Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), the gentleman from Georgia leading the charge against ACORN. Broun had introduced an amendment to the Fire Grants Reauthorization Act of 2009 to block any funds from reaching the group. Grayson--calm, methodical, and merciless--reminded him of the constitutional ban on bills of attainder, producing the awkward silences and shuffling of papers that serve as catnip for the likes of Jon Stewart.

Grayson is as much a virtuoso of the form as Congress has ever seen. Though only a freshman, he's already made blogospheric waves with his strikes on Rush Limbaugh ("more lucid when he was a drug addict"), Elizabeth Coleman ("if you're not responsible for investigating that, who is?"), and the entire Republican party ("The Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly"). His is a charisma destined to produce quick fame online. The question, however, is whether the style that makes him a hero in the intertubes will have the same effect in the congressional cafeteria--or in Orlando, the fickle swing district he calls home.

In this particular case, the answer is no. The amendment was adopted by a large margin, and the full bill was reported out.

Yesterday afternoon, the Senate rejected a cloture motion that would have brought Sen. Debbie Stabenow's Medicare Physician Fairness Act of 2009 to the floor. Here at the Gaggle we don't normally write about the daily dramas on the Senate floor. So why is this vote worth analyzing? Because it shows how deeply nervous Senate Democrats are about spending increases.

Stabenow's bill would have changed the payment regime for doctors treating Medicare patients; those doctors are facing a 21 percent cut in reimbursement rates as a result of a quirky formula dating back to 1997. Each year Capitol Hill scrambles to come up with a temporary fix for the situation, fearing that reductions in reimbursements will prompt doctors to start turning away elderly patients. That's not a situation any politician wants, ethically or politically. They rarely forget that seniors tend to take voting seriously. With Stabenow's bill dead, Harry Reid has promised yet another one-year fix. Just one more patch for a chronic problem.

Iowa's Chuck Grassley was elected to the Senate back in 1980 and for decades now, his seat has appeared unwinnable to Democrats. Grassley's hold on it seems about as firm as you can get. Or is it? As Ranking Member on the Senate Finance Committee, Grassley took a battering for his (now forsaken) willingness to negotiate with Democrats over health care reform from both grassroots conservatives and his Senate leaders. His subsequent rejection of the bipartisan process angered moderates. As a prominent voice in a thorny debate, whatever Grassley says will cost him votes, one way or another.

Iowa's liberals are sensing an opportunity. Connor Anderson, a left-wing blogger at the Des Moines Register recently noted that Iowa's Democrats maintain a significant voter registration advantage over Republicans. (That's most likely the result of last cycle's energetic Democratic campaigning there.) Anderson also points out that Grassley's approval among independents and Democrats have taken a nosedive. He writes:

"While a majority of independents still narrowly approve of Senator Grassley, his approval among Democrats, once net positive, is now negative. That is the kind of statistical landscape that makes people in the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee stop thinking about the Grassley seat as permanently ungettable."

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has spent the past several months dangling $4.35 billion in Race to the Top money at states to entice them to include data detailing students’ year-to-year academic growth when evaluating teachers’ performance (an idea that the teachers' unions have long dissed). Now he may be poised to push states to dramatically overhaul their teacher colleges by urging states to follow Louisiana’s lead and include information specifying how well new teachers perform in real classrooms when evaluating the quality of schools of education and other training programs.

Republicans are rubbing their hands in glee—and Democrats wringing theirs—at the struggles of Democratic gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia. Both of these governor's seats carry great power and would be impressive coups for the GOP, but from a national level, they're really most important for citizens of New Jersey and Virginia. The race the nation should be watching is a special election in upstate New York. 

On the gubernatorial level, Republican Bob McDonnell looks to have the upper hand in Virginia, while incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine may eke out a win in New Jersey but will only do so after embarrassing 11th-hour revelations about opponent Chris Christie, attacks on Christie's weight, and help from an independent, third-party challenger. But regardless of who wins, these races aren't really referendums on Barack Obama—they're referendums on the corruption-racked Garden State and the economic future of the Old Dominion. The New York race, however, will provide some hints as to whether Democrats can hold on to voters who went for Obama in 2008 and show what path the right wing might choose to regain relevance.

After its modestly successful way-way-out-of-town tryout in Hong Kong, The Sarah Palin Show is getting ready to hit the U.S.A. next month. To coincide with the release of her ghost-assisted book, Going Rogue, Palin and her advisers are planning a careful TV and Web rollout in mid November, to be followed by paid speeches to business, civic, and college groups. Assembled with the advice of her Washington lawyer, Bob Barnett, and her speech agency, Washington Speakers Bureau, Palin's junket will go light on the free-ranging, traditional hard-news venues and heavy on personality: one major stop will be Oprah.

On speeches, a Palin spokesperson declined to offer details, but other sources tell me that she is asking for $75,000 for a college gig—and three first-class tickets, apparently so she can be accompanied by a press aide and another staffer. Fees for business and corporate groups may be higher. She also is asking that speeches be clustered in one city or other single location so she can do more; two or even three in a day's visit.

It’s no secret that Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” outburst turned into major cash cow for the South Carolina Republican and his Democratic opponent Rob Miller, but we’re now learning more details on exactly how many millions those two words generated in the race and where that money came from. According to a fundraising report filed late last week with the Federal Election Commission, Wilson raised $2.7 million between July 1 and Sept. 30—the bulk of that money coming in the final three weeks of the month, after he heckled President Obama during his Sept. 9 speech to Congress. According to Wilson’s FEC report, about 80 percent of that total—roughly $2.1 million—came from small-donor contributors who gave $200 or less. A little bit of perspective: Wilson raised $1.2 million for his last race against Miller in 2008. That’s $1.2 million over 24 months—a total Wilson virtually doubled in just three weeks of fundraising last month. Where did the money come from? While Wilson raised the bulk of his funds from South Carolina donors during the 2008 cycle, his latest fundraising report lists contributions from all over the country—including dozens of checks between $1,000 and $3,000 from donors in Ohio, California, New York, Florida, Texas, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Wilson ended September with nearly $2.6 million in the bank.

Of course, Miller didn’t do so bad either. According to his FEC report, Miller raised roughly $1.7 million—almost three times what he raised for his 2008 race against Wilson.

New York Governor David Paterson has had a rough few months. First his state’s budget hit a critical deficit point, requiring swift and unpopular action from him and the state’s legislature. Then, his poll numbers took a nose dive, hitting depths this week of 27 percent approval. And then, late last month, Paterson was told to drop his 2010 reelection bid by the White House, which feared that a Paterson loss—likely at this point, to say the least—would create political challenges for the Obama administration. Winter might be settling into New York, but it’s not usually this cold inside the governor's office.

Yesterday over at the Washington City Paper, sex and gender blogger Amanda Hess picked up an interesting nugget from Pew's latest research into the state of American marriage. She writes:

The District of Columbia has the lowest marriage rate in the country. Only 23 percent of women and 28 percent of men and in D.C. are married, compared to 48 and 52 percent nationwide. The rates in D.C. are so low that they lie entirely off the Pew map’s color key. The closest states to D.C.’s numbers are Rhode Island, where 43 percent of women are married, and Alaska, where 47 percent of men are married.

Hess offers two main explanations: that DC residents marry at an older age, and that, with gay marriage illegal in the District, the high proportion of LGBT residents (around 8.2%) skews the stats. Both those explanations are plausible, but they give the data short shrift. For starters, DC is a city not a state, so comparing demographics with states is always a dubious enterprise (a fact the Pew researchers note in their backgrounder.) But the study is more deeply revealing about nature of race and class in DC.

Norman Podhoretz, one of the original neoconservatives, just wrote a 352-page book asking Why Are Jews Liberals? To Podhoretz, and to many others, it's a mystery why Jews remain loyal to the Democratic Party and continue to avoid aligning with today's Southern-based GOP. After all, many Jews fall into a demographic—higher income, suburban, professional—that has tended to align with the GOP. And recent Republican administrations have been aggressively pro-Israel (at least when Israel happens to be governed by a right-of-center coalition). Plus, Republicans have pretty much purged the folks who make unfortunate stereotypical comments about Christians' elder brothers in faith. Well, pretty much.

In a letter to The Times and Democrat (Orangeburg) on Sunday, two South Carolina Republican officials defended Sen. Jim DeMint from charges that he had opposed earmarks that would have benefited the Palmetto state.

"There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves," wrote Edwin O. Merwin Jr. and James S. Ulmer Jr., chairman of the Bamberg County and Orangeburg County Republican Parties, respectively. "By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation's pennies and trying to preserve our country's wealth and our economy's viability to give all an opportunity to succeed."

Oy vey!

Last week, Holly wrote about the tough race Harry Reid will face next year in Nevada. Republicans, she wrote, are eager to knock him off, as they did Tom Daschle in 2006. And if his poll numbers are any indication, Reid should be worried. Sensing an opportunity to pressure the majority leader, progressives are leaping into the fray, hitting him from the left on health care. A group called the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is running an emotional ad pressuring Reid to fight for a public option. It features a plaintive nurse with serious health issues questioning whether Reid is "strong and effective enough as a leader to pass a public option into law."

The reason this ad could potentially be very effective is that it goes to the core of Reid's appeal in Nevada. As majority leader, he's supposed to be the guy who can bring home the bacon to his state. Few states are more politically privileged than the ones represented by party leadership. But if progressives can cast doubts about his effectiveness as a leader, that would erode his ability to argue that his position is beneficial for the state. That diminishes the trump card he holds over GOP rivals, who, if elected, would be junior senators with pretty ordinary committee assignments and very little power in such an anachronistic body. It's a smart strategy for progressives in the short term, particularly if they get the public option they want. In the longer term though, if they target a weakened Reid too aggressively, they may end up ushering in a conservative, who'll have far less sympathy for their agenda than Reid does.

Olympia Snowe's Tuesday vote in favor of Max Baucus's health care plan inspired much chatter about her "bucking the party" and whether the GOP will retaliate and strip her of her coveted seniority. But the polling data Ben Smith uncovered yesterday, got me thinking about a different tension in politics: an old three-way conflict between representing your party, representing your constituents and plain old intellectual leadership. Although Snowe's moves are easily characterized as a shift away from her party's powerbrokers, they could also be seen as a genuine attempt to represent the folks who elected her to office.

According to a recent survey, 57.4% of Maine voters are in favor of a government administered option while 37.2% are opposed. A whopping 73.6% of Maine residents support stricter regulation of insurance companies, and 58% approve of the job Obama is doing. An earlier Daily Kos / Research 2000 poll had similar results. That poll found that more Maine residents identify as Democrat than Republican, but a plurality identify as independent. It also found the state is divided on marriage equality, with the results (47 pro; 49 anti) within the margin of error.

It's treated as a given in our political debate that offering a good education is the most important way we can reduce our large, and growing, inequality. Democrats, from President Obama to House Speaker Pelosi all say they will invest more in education. George W. Bush pledged to be the education president, and signed No Child Left Behind. New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg says that failing to provide equal educational opportunities is a failure to achieve the goals of the civil rights movement. Wherever you sit on the political spectrum you are supposed to think that education is the way that we mitigate the vastly unequal opportunities that children in America receive. It's intuitively appealing: we are compassionate, we give kids a chance, but then they better pull themselves up their boot straps!

But maybe we are asking too much of our schools? Growing up in New York City I saw a lot of public schools with bad outcomes because the student population was deeply disadvantaged. But the few wealthy kids who went to those very same public schools turned out just fine (not long ago I met one who went to Yale -- I guess my parents wasted their money on sending me to private school, because Yale rejected me). Meanwhile, there are "good" public schools in wealthier neighborhoods where the main difference is just that the kids come to school with a full stomach and their parents read to them before they go to bed at night. Then there are all the private schools where some of the teachers are (unofficially) tenured and are pretty unimpressive, but the students tend to turn out (usually) OK. On the other hand, students who come to school poorly rested from a night in a homeless shelter, malnourished, or with untreated illnesses tend to do poorly. All the charter schools in the world can't solve those problems.

It has become the most over-used shibboleth of many a moderate or "contrarian" liberal pundit to say that the left does poor kids a disservice by refusing to confront teachers unions and enact education reform. Case in point, Nicholas Kristof in today's New York Times. "The Democratic Party... has admirably led the fight against poverty — except in the one way that would have the greatest impact. Good schools constitute a far more potent weapon against poverty than welfare, food stamps or housing subsidies." Ah yes, if I were a kid in East St. Louis I'd much rather be homeless but have teachers with merit pay than housing subsidies. I remember when I went to Cambodia  -- Kristof's favorite country -- and all those kids with missing limbs were begging by the side of the road for an end to teacher tenure. 

By Jeremy Herb

Do Americans support health reform? Depends how you ask. A Fox News story today—headlined "Opposition to Health Care Reform Holds Steady"—said Americans oppose reforms proposed by the Senate 54 percent to 35 percent. A CBS poll last week, however, said the public supported a public option by a 2-to-1 margin, 62 percent to 31 percent. Why the disparity? The answers you get depend on the questions you ask.

The CBS poll asked about government-run health care this way: "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?" Compare that to the Fox News poll, which focused its question on the legislation in Congress: "Based on what you know about the health-care reform legislation being considered right now, do you favor or oppose the plan?"

Calls to create a national test have long been fought back by advocates of local school control, but the release of the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress results that showed no gains nationally in fourth-grade math scores—as well as shocking gaps between students' scores on that test vs. state test scores in places like New York—will likely reignite the debate again. While eighth-grade math scores rose by 2 points on the 500-point NAEP scale, it was the first time since the test was launched in 1990 that no uptick was recorded for fourth graders. Scores on the highly regarded NAEP test, commonly known as "The Nation's Report Card," are based on a national sampling, and not every student in the country takes it. But it has consistently given a more accurate picture of what (if any) progress American students are making over the years than the highly political state tests, which vary wildly in rigor from state to state, and have come under increasing attack for doing little to speed up the rate of reform.

While there are technical reasons why the NAEP test might not be the right one to give every American student, a similarly challenging set of tests could certainly be developed. If nothing else, these results will increase the pressure the Obama administration is already applying to states to beef up the quality of state assessments and set the bar higher for proficient performance.

When the lobby from the health-insurance industry—America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)—released a study early this week contending that the Senate Finance Committee's health-care legislation would increase private insurance premiums beyond current law, supporters of health-care "reform" were quick to denounce the report as biased. Among the instant critics were nine prominent health-care experts, including Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution and David Cutler of Harvard, who called the report "flawed" and "not credible." It then scolded the insurers: "Important issues are at stake in health reform ... But responsible participants in [the] debate should avoid selective use of evidence and try to preserve analytic balance."

But were the "experts" guilty of the same sin? Well, yes.

Gallup released new polling data this morning showing that Hillary Clinton has higher favorability ratings (62%) than President Obama (56%). Like Obama, her numbers have declined since January, but in her case it is only by 3 percentage points. Since Gallup started tracking the former first lady in the early 1990s, the only other time Clinton's favorability ratings have been higher was in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal in December 1998, when she benefited from an outpouring of support over her husband's lewd misadventures.

Her only marginal decline in polls this year can be perhaps be explained by her relative absence from the spotlight. While Obama has been on our TV screens approximately every 7.5 seconds since taking office—mostly talking about dramatic interventions that make Independents nervous, such as bailing out auto companies—Clinton's appearances before the cameras have been more sporadic. She hasn't yet been faced with unpopular choices or had to defend publicly her decisions in such matters.

USA Today presents some interesting, if perhaps not groundbreaking, numbers on socioeconomic representation in Congress today. According to the report, which is based on analysis of census data,

Democratic members of the House of Representatives now represent most of the nation's wealthiest people, a sharp turnaround from the long-standing dominance that Republicans have held over affluent districts ... Democrats now represent 57% of the 4.8 million households that had incomes of $200,000 or more in 2008. In 2005, Republicans represented 55% of those affluent households.

The change in distribution of seats in the House is roughly the same size as the shift the article describes—although USA Today's data doesn't connect any dots between the two. Still, it goes without saying that some of the shift is a natural product of Democrats' electoral gains in the 2008 elections, in which they picked up 21 seats.

Lindsey Graham's actions on climate change in the last few days have set the greenosphere abuzz. First, he penned an op-ed, with John Kerry, where he committed to work with Democrats to pass a comprehensive climate-change bill. Then he got called a wussypants for his trouble (along with a lot of unwarranted and nasty things), and was yelled at by foamy-mouthed loons at a town-hall event in South Carolina. Environmentalists have heralded Graham's oped  as a game changer on the environment. They're probably right. Graham's advocacy of climate change legislation is a huge boost for the Boxer-Kerry bill (although he hasn't officially endorsed it). But it's not unexpected.

For starters, Graham, who has long demonstrated a willingness to work across the aisle, is starting to look more John McCain that John McCain these days. As Chuck Todd, et al. point out on First Read, "He, more than McCain, this year has shown a tendency to do two things McCain made famous over the last decade: buck his party (see Sonia Sotomayor vote) and talk bluntly about former President Bush ... Graham, himself close to McCain, has, at a minimum, set himself apart a bit as an unpredictable critic." Although Graham opposed previous attempts at comprehensive climate-change legislation, he's been slowly edging away from his old positions, even cosponsoring Democrat Senator Tom Carper's Clean Air Planning Act of 2006 that would have limited pollutants emitted by power plants.

Look out Tom DeLay. Here’s video of President Obama getting his salsa on with Mexican pop star Thalia at the Fiesta Latina concert held Tuesday night at the White House. Our verdict: Not bad—but he’s no Hillary Clinton.

OK. Granted, the GQ list of the 50 most powerful people D.C. is no more definitive, or less arbitrary, than any other such list. And, granted, President Obama is not the boss of many of the people on the list. But it's rather striking to see that the list is about as white and male as ever. There is no woman above No. 8 (Nancy Pelosi) and no one who isn't white above No. 13 (Attorney General Eric Holder). Wasn't 2008 supposed to be the election that changed all that? Remember Hillary Clinton's 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling? (Coincidentally, Secretary Clinton only ranks 18th on the list.)

Maybe this tells you as much about how GQ's staff thinks as it does about diversity and power in politics. Even the token sports figure—a hockey player—is comically white! Hockey? That ranks somewhere between NASCAR and professional bowling on the list of things people in D.C. think about.

But ask a bunch of politicos to name the most important players in town and everyone at the top of GQ's list would be mentioned. The bald, white pates in GQ's slideshow reflect a very different demographic than the one that put Obama in office. Women are more likely to vote Democratic than men. African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Latinos are all more likely to vote Democratic than whites, and young people swung enormously for Obama. Wasn't Obama's election supposed to usher into D.C. a bunch of diverse youngsters?

Democrats on Capitol Hill just collectively exhaled, joyously. Maine Senator Olympia Snowe has told the Senate Finance Committee that she intends to vote yes on Max Baucus's health care reform bill today. All the committee's Democrats have also committed to voting aye, so the bill is well on its way to the Senate floor. Hopes of bipartisan support for a final bill are now slowly rekindling. Snowe's blessing opens the door for her Maine colleague, Susan Collins, to think twice about her vote, and it may even pull a couple of other moderate Republicans, a dwindling breed, along with her.

Snowe's vote isn't all that surprising. Baucus twisted himself into a pretzel trying to craft a bill she could vote for, and she got nearly everything she wanted. There was some speculation around the Beltway this morning that she would vote no to preserve her bargaining power on the floor. But she hasn't undercut that power with this vote. She's only committing to let the bill be considered by the entire Senate. On the Senate floor, her vote is far from a sure thing, especially if liberal Democrats start tinkering with the bill in a way that moves it more toward their liking. She's probably reinforced her power: she's the one Republican that Reid knows he can get when he melds Baucus's bill with the one that emerged from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee. He's now even more likely to construct his leadership bill in a way that suits her, rather than shift toward the more progressive wing of his party. She may have even bought herself a seat at his table while he works to combine the bills. At the very least, her voice will loom large in those discussions.

This week in the weekly obsession: former House majority leader Tom DeLay shook his groove thing on Dancing With the Stars so much his feet failed him. As he hung up his Capezios, TV pundits everywhere mourned the loss.

The Weekly Obsession is a new video series dissecting the issues that dominate our 24/7 news cycle, by our talented video-ess extraordinaire Sarah Frank.

by Raina Kelley

David Chappelle had it right when he once said (on his much-missed comedy show): "If you're black, you don't want to be the first anything.  It's too much trouble.  You want to be second."  And that is doubly true when you're the first black inhabitants of the White House.  Everything you do and say becomes a very special "teachable moment" for America on race.  Sasha's ponytail becomes a peg for "How Black People Have Hair Issues."  Michelle's taste for sleeveless dresses morphs into a sociology lesson on how different groups of people have different tastes.  I don't know about the Obama family, but it would drive me up a wall. 

It can be hard enough to be "the black friend" in a roomful of white people, I can't imagine what it's like to be that friend to an entire nation. Or at least for The New York Times which seems to be obsessed with using the Obamas as an excuse to teach their readers a bit about our racial history.  So, it was no surprise to me that they picked up a genealogist's work on Michelle Obama's family tree.  Nor does it surprise me that the reporters summed up their findings thusly:

By Louisa Thomas

The news this morning that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize was greeted with stunned surprise—even within his own administration (Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to CBS, upon learning the news: "Wow").  Some commentators are encouraging him to turn it down, on the grounds that he hasn't yet accomplished the aspirations cited as the justifications, aside from drawing adoring crowds abroad. (It's hard not to wonder what Bill Clinton, who's treated like a rock star in some parts of the world, is thinking right now. First Al Gore, and now Obama.) One thing Obama has done is write a really great book, Dreams From My Father, along with a more formulaic but well-regarded political stump book, The Audacity of Hope. Maybe he should have gotten the Nobel Prize in Literature instead.

To be sure, the prize for literature is awarded to the accumulated body of work written over a lifetime, not to single books, and that rules out Obama. So does the fact that he's written nonfiction, which has, for the most part, unfortunately been overlooked or minimized by the Nobel committees. The fact that he's American is another big strike against him. I'm therefore not being entirely serious, but bear with me. Obama's writing does fulfill one important criteria stated in the will of Alfred Nobel: the prize should go to "the most outstanding work an ideal direction." People have been debating ever since just what "ideal" means, and one interpretation has been "idealistic." Nobel committees have tended, if inconsistently, to favor writers whose work tackles questions of human rights, political and social identity, and social justice. (That helps explain, a little bit, why American winners include the didactic and sentimental writers John Steinbeck and Pearl Buck.)

By Eve Conant

By Ben Adler and Daniel Stone

Finally, there's something that Hizbullah and the Republican National Committee can agree about. The reasons that President Obama should not have won the Nobel Peace Prize have been well established here and across the political spectrum. Of course, there are people who have saved more lives, if that's the measure of who should win the award. And by giving it to Obama now it raises the question: what if Obama actually does make monumental achievements in global peace as president? Or what if he does not? What if, say, he embroils the U.S. in a deadly quagmire in Afghanistan, or by exiting Afghanistan and Iraq prematurely leaves behind chaos and violence? Alas, as with National Magazine Awards, there are no retractions for Nobels that look undeserved in hindsight.

Twitter has been buzzing about the president's Nobel prize this morning, and it's been enormously entertaining. Here's a sampling of our favorite tweets so far, a tweet-ology if you will. (Blogging about tweeting, alarmingly postmodern I know.)

Farhad Manjoo, Slate (@fmanjoo)
- Yo Barack, I'm really happy for you and imma let you finish, but Morgan Tsvangirai was one the most peaceful dudes ever.

Pour Me Coffee (@pourmecoffee)
- Nobel committee: Please DO NOT invite Joe Wilson to the awards presentation.

By Eve Conant and Daniel Stone

It’s hard to tell who is more shocked by this morning’s announcement that Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama? Bill Clinton? The right? The left? Reporters who were present at the Oslo announcement audibly gasped. Obama has barely started his first term and has been awarded the greatest achievement for world peace … after only 263 days in office.

But perhaps the Nobel Peace prize Committee has succeeded in pro-actively promoting peace—in joining the hands of America’s liberal and conservative blogosphere.

Obamamania comes as little surprise to Rush Limbaugh, who e-mailed us this morning after we asked him to share his thoughts. “The Nobel gang just suicide-bombed themselves. Gore, Carter, Obama, soon Bill Clinton. See a pattern here? They are all leftist sell-outs. George Bush liberates 50 million Muslims in Iraq, Reagan liberates hundreds of millions of Europeans and saves parts of Latin America. Any awards?” Limbaugh says “Obama gives speeches trashing his own country and for that gets a prize, which is now worth as much as whatever prizes they are putting in Cracker Jacks these days.”

The Nobel committee has handed out some puzzling peace prizes over the years—Henry Kissinger and Yasir Arafat come to mind—but even given a few scratches and dings, the Nobel retained its luster as the most prestigious award of any kind in the world. Long after the "red carpet" pretty much destroyed the idea of prizes in general, the Nobel Peace Prize was still seen as rare and precious. By cloaking its deliberations and through brilliant PR, the committee gave the prize a supranatural aura, as if the name of the winner were spit out of the mouth of an ancient volcano.

That's all over now. The Nobel Peace Prize is finished. It's just another "prize," like a Teen Choice Award for old people. No matter what you think of Obama, the man has done nothing, at all, to deserve it. He may deserve it someday, but the Nobel prize isn't supposed to be a bet on the hope of the possibility of greatness at some point in the future. And it can no longer be taken seriously. From now on, no matter who wins, no matter how deserving, people will say, "Yeah, but they also gave it to Obama." The 1.4 million bucks is still nice, though.

Levi Johnston, the lad most famous for knocking up his high-school sweetheart—who also happened to be Sarah Palin's daughter—is making the most of his fame. He's been made news twice this week already. On Tuesday, we were chattering about his amusing role in a new commercial for nuts. Today, the blogosphere lit up with news of his nude shoot for Playgirl, titillating girls and gay men alike. Apparently Levi has become a work-out machine, toning the love handles he exposed in GQ in preparation for moment in the female erotica spotlight. If he wasn't a liberal pin-up boy before, he certainly is now. Surely Levi's 15 minutes are almost up. And yet there he is again, trending high on Google, and cluttering up gossip blogs. So why the fixation with this unemployed, hockey-playing, high-school dropout?

Of course, his appeal is partly explained by his looks. The dude is hot. But he also comes across as remarkably normal given his circumstances. His starring turns in GQ and Vanity Fair showed a kid managing to remain relatively down-to-earth amid his swirling fame and personal tumult. Sure he has an agent and talks about landing acting gigs, but one imagines him doing so with the same unaffected nonchalance with which he pops a pistachio, or talks about shooting moose. He seems playful, as though he's not taking this whole caper too seriously. He'll chat about his life as long as people want to listen. And therein lies the secret to his success: Johnston can pan the one of the most criticized women in the world without sounding salacious, nasty, or misogynist. He's not a screeching critic. He's just a guy bitching about the in-laws. It's an entirely unique position in the Palin-sphere. And people love it.

By Jeremy Herb

Democrats breathed a sigh of relief Wednesday after the Congressional Budget Office declared the Baucus health bill would reduce the deficit by $81 billion. But the $829 billion CBO estimate is unlikely to be accurate if the legislation is enacted. While the CBO puts together its most comprehensive prediction possible, it often gets it wrong with big health legislation. It's not a lack of expertise or bias that causes the predictions to miss the mark, says Stuart Altman, a Brandeis University economist: "The problem is what we're asking them to do is impossible." Health-care legislation is the toughest to score accurately, says Robert Reischauer, former CBO director, because unlike laws that change the tax code or budget new building projects, there are often no data to examine.

When President Obama declared that health reform should have a $900 price tag, the CBO's scoring became a decisive, make-or-break factor. Their first $1 trillion estimate of the House bill stymied plans to move forward with a public option, while the less ambitious Baucus bill will likely sail through committee with the CBO's blessing. "[Obama] has basically said that they're going to be the scorekeepers," says Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "He's endowed them with a lot of power." Three reasons why we shouldn't put too much stock in the CBO's predictions:

Education reformers were pleasantly stunned when the American Federation of Teachers announced today that two of the winners of their new Innovation Fund grants planned to use the money to create teacher-evaluation systems that give weight to students' standardized test scores. The idea of considering gains (or the lack thereof) in student test scores when evaluating the effectiveness of teachers is an idea that reformers have pushed for years. But it's also an idea that the AFT, the country's second-largest union, as well as its rival, the National Education Association, has repeatedly dissed, insisting that research doesn't prove that teacher quality and test scores correlate. In fact, AFT President Randi Weingarten, while head of the New York City teachers' union, helped push through state legislation banning use of student test scores in teacher evaluations for tenure. 

But perhaps now that the Obama administration has not only embraced the idea but is requiring that states hoping to get a piece of the Department of Education's $4.35 billion Race to the Top grant money must be willing to link teacher evaluations to student performance, the AFT has decided they'd better get a hand in this game. "This is a real about-face, especially after they put up a firewall in New York State to prevent districts from using student test scores when evaluating teachers," said Amy Wilkins of Education Trust, a nonprofit education-reform group. "It's really encouraging that they are willing to join this conversation."

"I suspect they want to figure out how to use this data before it's imposed on them," said Joe Williams, of Democrats for Education Reform. "The [legislative] firewall [between student test scores and teacher evaluations] expires next spring, and I think this may be the surest sign we've seen that they will let it expire."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has decided to pick a fight with Apple over climate change. This started after Apple quit the chamber this week and made it clear that it was doing so because it thinks the people running the chamber are a bunch of imbeciles when it comes to climate change. Yesterday, in an incredibly brazen move, the head of the chamber struck back, firing off a letter in which he criticized Apple and said the chamber really does care about climate change, and that Apple just didn't take the time to listen to its plans. (My colleague Daniel Stone blogged about the squabble earlier today here on Techtonic Shifts.)

Money quote from chamber president Thomas Donohue in his letter to Apple: “It is unfortunate that your company didn’t take the time to understand the Chamber’s position on climate and forfeited the opportunity to advance a 21st century approach to climate change."

I've long had a soft spot for Rep. Charlie Rangel. As a native New Yorker, I enjoy his slightly fey, gravelly-voiced regional accent. His pompadour is hilarious, and his impish smile, cheerful partisanship, and blunt-spoken political views have long made him an avuncular character to political junkies, sort of an affable Barney Frank.

But how can you chair the congressional committee responsible for writing the nation's tax laws when you have some serious tax problems of your own? Democrats seem quick to forget, as Holly pointed out in our recent print edition, that Republican ethics scandals were a major reason for the Democrats' congressional takeover in 2006. Well, voters have not forgotten. Republicans are playing smart politics by, as Katie reports, pushing to strip Rangel of his chairmanship, and for Democrats to go on record on the issue. The Democrats have a reasonable counterargument that the Ethics Committee should be allowed to finish its investigation before rushing to judgment, but they ought to move it along quickly. And, unless the Ethics Committee can compellingly prove that Rangel had only the most minor of infractions and they were made in good faith—an unlikely scenario—the Democrats should dump him.

Some might say it's been a long time coming—at least since Richard Nixon's appeals to the "Silent Majority" and Spiro Agnew's vilification of the media—but the crisis of conservative intellectualism is coming to a head at the moment. It's a fascinating spectacle to watch, and it is the roiling subtext to the whole debate about health-care reform.

The Republican Party's nomination of the proudly anti-intellectual and ill-informed Sarah Palin to be one 73-year-old cancer survivor's heartbeat from the presidency provoked some soul-searching among previously loyal former Republican presidential speechwriters such as Christopher Buckley (Bush I) and David Frum (Bush II), and spawned a bumper crop of new online publications seeking to build a more intellectually nuanced conservatism. Now conservative talking points on health care are being written by someone who might be characterized as Palin's progenitor: Betsy McCaughey. In 1994 McCaughey published a scathing attack on President Clinton's health-care proposal in The New Republic. The article was widely cited by health-care reform opponents, and considered a major nail in ClintonCare's coffin, even though many of the claims it made were later revealed to be false. McCaughey became New York's Republican lieutenant governor, but her relationship with Gov. George Pataki publicly unraveled, with Pataki's aides sniping about McCaughey's narcissistic and odd behavior. (Sound familiar?)

Now with health care back on the front burner, McCaughey is enjoying her second 15 minutes of fame. In newspaper op-eds, McCaughey propagated the myth of death panels by misreading the provision in the House health-care bill that would reimburse doctors for end-of-life-care consultations. "Death panels" became a conservative battle cry. But just as McCaughey has become a heroine to the same town-hall snarlers who idolize Palin, conservative intellectuals such as former McCain adviser Gail Wilensky and Stuart Butler of the conservative Heritage Foundation have been shunning her.

In this week's New Republic, Michelle Cottle argues that McCaughey is a blue-state Sarah Palin—an argument that on first glance seems too cute. But it's true! McCaughey's ostentatiously wonky presentation actually embodies the conservative populist attack on government and the other elements of a functioning democracy.

By Krista Gesaman

In a showdown between animal-rights activists and First Amendment experts, it appears the right to free speech might have an edge. Earlier today, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in U.S. v. Stevens, the controversial case that will determine whether to revive a 10-year-old law that makes it a crime to create, sell, or possess depictions of animal cruelty for commercial gain. The law was intended to prohibit the sale of disturbing sexual fetish videos, called “crush videos,” which pictured women in bare feet or high heels crushing small animals. But if struck down, it has the potential to also prohibit many other types of expression.

Animal lovers lined up on the Supreme Court steps earlier today hours before the hearing to champion the plight of their four-legged friends—and just as many free-speech advocates showed up to oppose. Among those in the crowd were contemporary artists, concerned that modern paintings of fox hunting or dead animals would violate the law. Others were worried their favorite animal-rescue shows or hunting programs would soon be taken off the air.

Photo by Pete Souza/WH

When President Obama received his copy of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Afghanistan assessment last month, one of the first questions posed to the White House was how long it would take Obama to decide whether he’d send additional troops into the region. “Weeks,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters. The decision, he said, was “not immediate and not imminent.” It’s a talking point that the White House has repeated over and over since then: Obama wanted time to digest McChrystal’s report and to weigh his options. A month later, Obama is still deliberating. Tomorrow he’ll convene the third of five planned Afghan strategy sessions in the White House’s Situation Room with top advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. McChrystal, as he did last week, will participate via videoconference. A fourth meeting is planned for Friday. According to the White House, Obama’s decision is still “weeks” away, but how much time does the president really have?

Over the weekend, Jim Jones, Obama’s national-security adviser, pointedly told CNN’s John King that time is on the president's side. “Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of failing,” Jones said. That may be true, but it’s the growing pressure from Congress and the public that the White House really has to worry about.

Guest Gaggler Joshua Alston mounts a convincing argument below against the outing of gay politicians. For the most part I agree with him, but I'm feeling a little argumentative and there's a little gap in his argument worth exploring. Josh writes:

Now, it’s fair to suggest that the voting public has the right to know everything about its elected officials, including their personal lives. But if we knew the details of what everyone was doing and voted accordingly, who would we have to vote for? Political scandals over the years, ones that have nothing to do with homosexuality, have proved that most politicians have skeletons they keep. If a gay man wants to run for governor of a socially conservative state because he has terrific ideas on how to reduce crime, balance the budget, or bring new jobs to his state, should he put his sexuality front and center and risk going down to defeat? There’s a valid argument for both sides of that question.

by Joshua Alston

Of all the confounding behaviors that human beings engage in, perhaps none is more irritating—or more common—than hypocrisy. It’s fascinating when someone condemns behavior while engaging in it himself, which is what makes David Letterman’s relatively mundane sex scandal more intriguing than it has a right to be. He mercilessly joked about the illicit affairs of others while having just those sorts of affairs himself. To expose such a disconnect is oddly fun, and the more sanctimonious the person, the more rewarding the exposure.

This is what makes the documentary Outrage, which airs Monday and re-airs Thursday on HBO—on the eve of a gay-rights march in Washington, D.C.—such a guilty pleasure.

In the wake of the president's failed attempt to bring the Olympic Games to his hometown of Chicago, some conservatives are partying like they live in Rio. On his radio program today, Rush Limbaugh was positively gleeful, declaring this the worst day of Obama's presidency. "Obama demeaned the office of the president going on this sales pitch," Limbaugh said. He told listeners Obama had been "bitch-slapped" upside his head. "He doesn't understand how delighted the world is to make him look foolish in order to take a swipe at our country . . . We've got a 2-year-old manchild with a Mars-sized ego, which today crashed and burned."

Blogger Erick Erickson, who runs the popular Red State site, vented sarcastically. "Hahahahaha. I thought the world would love us more now that Bush was gone. I thought if we whored ourselves out to our enemies, great things would happen. Apparently not. So Obama’s pimped us to every two bit thug and dictator in the world, made promises to half the Olympic committee, and they did not even kiss him. So much for improving America’s standing in the world, Barry O."

The president and first lady leave the stage after making their pitch. Photo: Charles Dharapak—AP.

Photo by Pete Souza/WH

In a surprise meeting, President Obama met with Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Denmark today. Obama, who was overseas lobbying for Chicago’s bid for the Olympics, met with McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, for about 25 minutes on Air Force One. According to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, the meeting was set up after Obama learned that McChrystal was in London this week. No doubt the timing is interesting. Last weekend McChrystal told 60 Minutes that he had talked to Obama only once since he took over the Afghan command—a surprising stat for a president who values outreach. On Wednesday, McChrystal participated via videoconference in a White House strategy meeting on Afghanistan. Today’s meeting was the first time McChrystal and Obama have met face to face. Will the photo be enough to please critics who say Obama hasn't talked to his general enough?

Is the public option dead? Yes. Oh, wait, no. We can't keep up but, rest assured, the continuing debate over health-care reform made for good TV last week. Here's the latest clip from NEWSWEEK video extraordinaire Sarah Frank.

On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart, at his sharp, inimitable best, ripped into congressional Democrats for failing to get a public option included in the health-care bill before the Senate Finance Committee, despite having a supermajority. For the few people still harboring concerns that the liberal-leaning Stewart would have difficulty matching his piercing critiques of the Bush administration while Democrats are in power—worry no more. (If you haven't seen it, watch here.) Stewart's observation was a simple one, delivered with devastating effectiveness: how is it possible that the Democrats appear so thoroughly incapable of taking advantage of their majority? And it's not just any old majority—it's a supermajority! Stewart is right. It's mind-boggling that a political party could be competent enough to sweep so many seats, and yet have such a stunning lack of discipline that it's unable to deliver on its agenda.

To be fair, the entire Senate caucus shouldn't be tarred with that brush. In reality, there are just a handful of Senate Democrats forcing their party to compromise so thoroughly. It's pretty obvious who they are. Blanche Lincoln, Kent Conrad, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, and Evan Bayh are the main offenders, but Bill Nelson, Mark Pryor, and Tom Carper can also cause headaches on occasion.  Part of the blame has to lie with Harry Reid. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has her caucus whipped into shape, though admittedly she has a much larger majority to play with, and individual senators have a lot more power to derail bills than individual House members do. Still, for some reason, Reid doesn't seem to be able to hold sway over the votes of his caucus members. (It's been suggested to your Gaggler by Democratic aides, who clearly don't want to be named bagging the majority leader, that Reid isn't tough enough. He won't play hardball with them.)

Today in "Breaking News That's Been, Like, Totally Obvious for Months Already": Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, the former veep hopeful and recovering mullet victim, wants to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Now, maybe it was the steady stream of television appearances that tipped us off. Or the increased presence at out-of-state GOP fundraisers. Or even the sleek new haircut. But for some reason, when we read over at Politico that T-Paw "has been quietly assembling the blueprint of a presidential campaign and will announce Thursday the support of a group of high-level political strategists and donors, complemented by a handful of top new media consultants," we weren't exactly surprised. 

Normally, we here at Gaggle HQ would be the first to argue that blabbering about 2012 in October 2010 is a bit premature. But Pawlenty's recent maneuvers may actually have a lot to do with the issue at the heart of this season's political slapfest: health-care reform. Earlier today, my colleague Katie Connolly ably summarized the governor's pluses and minuses as a potential GOP standard-bearer. On the upside, he's a bright, well-liked team player with blue-collar roots who has proven he can win on Democratic turf; on the downside, he's an unfamiliar (and somewhat bland) face with little national experience—and even less money. But what Katie didn't mention is Pawlenty's position on health care. Right now, I suspect that it will define the 2012 Republican primary battle, at least in part. And chances are it will give the Minnesotan a significant boost—whether or not it should.

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Looks like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has finally bitten the bullet and has submitted papers to register a PAC—usually the first step in any presidential bid—thus ending the most predictable speculation in the 2012 race so far. Pawlenty will call his PAC Freedom First, continuing the GOP trend of corny freedom-themed PAC names. (Mitt Romney's is called Free and Strong America.) Over at Politico, J-Mart reports that Pawlenty has been quietly collecting high-profile campaign staff and supporters, including Vin Weber to co-chair his campaign. Weber, a former Minnesota congressman and a prominent GOP player, threw his weight behind Romney in 2008. Pawlenty has wrapped up a few other big names from the 2008 cycle, including RNC communications director Alex Conant and McCain campaign manager Terry Nelson, who will be big assets to his bid.

Obama and Lippert. Photo by Pete Souza/White House

Big news from the West Wing: Mark Lippert, one of President Obama’s closest foreign policy advisers, is leaving to rejoin the Navy. Lippert, who is deputy national security adviser and chief of staff of the National Security Council, has worked for Obama since his first days in the Senate and later advised him during the campaign. Perhaps no one on the foreign policy team, save for fellow campaign vet and top NSC aide Denis McDonough, is closer to Obama—a situation that has sometimes raised questions about the relationship between Obama and Lippert’s direct boss, National Security Adviser Jim Jones. At the height of the 2008 Democratic primary, Lippert, who is a member of the Naval Reserve, was deployed to Iraq but returned to advise Obama and ultimately accepted a top post in the administration. According to a White House official, Lippert is taking “leave” to rejoin the military as a Navy SEAL—though there’s no indication when he’ll return. It’s an admirable career move, but it will no doubt raise questions about the timing—after all, with Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq, Obama’s foreign policy decisions aren’t getting any easier. McDonough, who handles “strategic communications” for the NSC, is viewed by many as Lippert’s likely successor.