(Image from Wikipedia)

To watch the Dow jockies on the teevee leaves one with the impression that Americans collectively win something when the industrial average rises above 10,000. But Americans don’t win anything. Most of them don’t even really understand what the 10,000 mark means, but they have learned to equate Wall Street winning with a booming American economy.

Do you earn a bonus when the Dow breaks 10,000? Does your job become more secure? Do your credit cards and medical bills disappear? Do your kids get college scholarships? Does the air you breathe become cleaner?

No, of course not. Americans don’t win anything when Wall Street prospers, and in fact, the opposite is usually true: what’s good for Wall Street is bad for America.

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Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr

Finally. In the words of Modo, our president “came down from the mountaintop,” and has decided to get bipartisan with this whole healthcare dealy.

President Obama said Sunday that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health care session at the White House to be televised live this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse.

If you’re experiencing a strong sense of deja vu, it’s because we’ve been here before.

March, 2009: The president gathered some 120 people representing varying facets of the industry — from doctors to patients to health insurers to the drug industry — along with lawmakers to discuss ways to reform the U.S. health system.

It is true that Republicans are determined to act as obstructionists. They have no plan. Actually, their plan is de-plan. My favorite example of this is the note Sarah Palin wrote on her hand for her big Tea Party speech. Palin originally wrote “budget,” then crossed it out and wrote “cuts.” That pretty much sums up the Republican Party right now. They have no plans for governance, but they do have slogans that are both myopic and superficial like “down with government” and “tax cuts for everybody!” Ask Colorado Springs how that will end.

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Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) hates Big Gubment. He hates it so much that he once rejected $700 million of stimulus funds, saying, “We simply cannot afford to base 10 percent of our state budget on money that will disappear in two years’ time.”

Translation: Thanks, but we’d rather just have a budget hole. The feds always rush in here, spendin’ cash like they’ve got the Argentine Elopin’ Fever. No, siree. Things are fine the way they are!

It takes a brave man to reject federal stimulus money, especially when one considers South Carolina has the fourth highest unemployment rate in the country (No. 1 in the south). Side-note: according to the Children’s Defense Fund, those poor residents include 190,000 children (h/t BC), or as anti-gubment Conservatives call children, “Those Who Have Not Gotten A Job And Remain Leaches On The State.”

The extremist teabaggers, who are now the majority of the Republican Party, have a very specific attitude about poor people that can best be described as: “fuck ‘em.” They should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. See: SC Lt. Governor Andre Bauer, the man running for the Republican nomination for governor, who recently compared public assistance to feeding stray animals.

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Someone, fetch the fainting couches. No one (including the media) seems to know what to do with this Sen. Franken character.

Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats.

Five sources who were in the room tell POLITICO that Franken criticized Axelrod for the administration’s failure to provide clarity or direction on health care and the other big bills it wants Congress to enact.

The sources said Franken was the most outspoken senator in the meeting, which followed President Barack Obama’s question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats at the Newseum on Wednesday. But they also said the Minnesotan wasn’t the only angry Democrat in the room.

Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats.

Five sources who were in the room tell POLITICO that Franken criticized Axelrod for the administration’s failure to provide clarity or direction on health care and the other big bills it wants Congress to enact.

[snip]

Franken — a comedian turned liberal talk show host — vowed to keep a relatively low profile when he arrived in the Senate over the summer after a protracted legal battle with former GOP Sen. Norm Coleman. But he has developed a reputation among his colleagues as one of the more aggressive personalities on the Hill.

Last November, after Tennessee Republican Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander authored an op-ed in a local paper defending their opposition to a Franken amendment, Franken confronted both men on the floor — and grew particularly irritated with Corker.

He lashed out at Corker and a staff member in a follow-up meeting about the matter, several people said. Franken also clashed with South Dakota Sen. John Thune, No. 4 in GOP leadership, last month in a scathing speech during the health care debate, and staffers have reported other run-ins.

What a ravenous beast!

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There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America’s critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up?

- via Obama administration is tone-deaf to concerns about terrorism

Awesome. It’s finally happening, you guys. Richard Cohen is becoming the male Peggy Noonan.

In the past, I have written about how Noons is a terrible columnist whose first response to tragic events is to rip open her shirt and throw herself at any burly man who claims to have a “plan.” When there’s the slightest hint of an impending conflict, Noons practically shouts that she wants a penis inside of her. During the critical weeks after 9/11, she freely expressed her longing for John Wayne because he fits her image of one of those “burly men,” even though Wayne was a draft-dodging, woman-abusing drug addict.

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