Not that they're picking a 2012 favorite or anything.

FoxNews is paying to put a TV studio in Sarah Palin's home.

John Edwards sex tape

I guess once we get a court ruling towards ownership, we can pretty much guarantee that the John Edwards' sex tape is real.

Also, per CNN, "The woman on the tape is visibly pregnant, the Youngs say...."

He knows about the mistress, and the baby, and the sex tape, and he still decided to run for pres.....

Right in the tea party wheel house

Tom Tancredo opens the tea party convention by referencing a call for a "literacy test."

....saying that President Barack Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country."

Nothing like a little Jim Crow invocation to start the rally.

Palin gossip

MSNBC dug through a bunch of Palin emails from her time as Governor of Alaska and found a couple of things.

Probably the stickiest may be, "The governor coached her staff on how to disguise the amount of electrical work needed at the mansion to hook up her new tanning bed," as it kind of hits at that style over substance thing.

It's no wonder Republicans like charter schools....

Charter schools increase racial and income segregation.

The growth of charter schools has promoted segregation both in California and nationwide, increasing the odds that black, Latino and white students will attend class with fewer children who look different from themselves, according to two new studies.

The enrollments at most of these campuses exacerbated income extremes, they concluded. Charters tended to serve higher-income students or lower-income students. Charters also were likely to serve fewer disabled students and fewer English learners.

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Unbelievable

Sen Richard Shelby, Alabama, puts an individual confirmation hold on virtually all of Obama's outstanding nominees (including national security nominees) until he gets a pork project for his district.

(And a nice WaPo blog item on Republicans who complain about spending, but push their own pork. (Are these a White House political op to push back?))

Tea Party fail

So, Sarah Palin is taking a six figure check (to her "travel expense" paying PAC) to speak at the quickly dissolving "tea party" convention, but really, what's that convention going to look like?

Organizers say some 600 attendees have paid $549 for access to two full days of events, culminating Saturday evening in a keynote speech by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin at a banquet that will reportedly feature a lobster and steak dinner.

600 people. That's it. And Organizers say that's a sell out.

While the convention itself has sold out, tickets to the banquet alone were still on sale late Wednesday for $349. So far, organizers say more than 500 banquet-only tickets have been sold.

So, Palin will be speaking to a room of 1,000+ marks who are all gullible enough and stupid enough to have their passions stirred to spend $350-$1,000 for a weekend of nothing.

That would be her target audience.

Trying out the anti-GOP narratives for 2010

I'm guessing the polling and focus groups came back from Obama's combative appearance at the House GOP retreat,

The White House’s goal is to show voters that Mr. Obama is willing to engage Republicans rather than govern in a partisan manner while forcing Republicans to make substantive compromises or be portrayed as obstructionist given their renewed power to block almost all legislation in the Senate.

I think the idea may be to pressurize the Republican primary season, to pinch the moderates who face "conservative" challengers and tear at the centrist/tea party rift. The national folks will also be pressed in their endorsements.

I think these are the lessons of the NY-23, Virginia and NJ Gov, and Ma-Sen special elections. The Republicans who were allowed to float between centrist tea party without challenge, had a much easier go.

Bin Laden determined to strike US

Obama's top intel heads sat before Congress yesterday and said that Al Qaeda is prepping for an attack in the next 6 months.

The face that didn't launch 1,000 ships

When the Republican centrist wins a primary over a "conservative," it's not treated as that big of news. (and the pundits don't spend days....)

What does that say about the Republican "civil war?"

He'll never talk if we Mirandize him....

...except that Christmas crotch bomber Umar Abdulmutallab is, in fact, talking to investigators, naming names, telling details.....

...unlike so many in Guantanamo....

(...but it feels so good to play tough and be ineffectual....)

Thought for the Day - Giuliani's impact on the terror debate

Richard Cohen, WaPo "centrist" editorialist:

There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer....

...because that is what we should all be concerned about, feeling safer.

And, that's not the only incidence of idiocy in the piece. It ends,

But the paramount civil liberty is a sense of security and this, sad to say, has eroded under Barack Obama.

Cohen apparently prefers a President who talks tough and does the wrong things, and, judging by his Iraq editorials, will happily follow that kind of President right off a cliff.

That is so f***ed up.

Quote

"Evidently, six minutes at my interview table counts as New York State residency," (Stephen) Colbert said to the former Tennessee congressman, who registered to vote here last fall

Here's the interview.

And, to give you a taste of what's really going on, here's Karl Rove talking about what a wonderful candidate Harold Ford is.

(I'm convinced the Ford backers are Republican money men trying to mess up Gillibrand's campaign and enable a Republican to steal the seat. Instead of the more traditional funding of a fringe challenger, they're trying to run a more centrist primary challenger to push Gillibrand (pretty centrist) out to the left, so when the general election comes around, she can get pinned on her primary statements.)

The Chinese jousting continues

China warns Obama against meeting with the Dalai Lama. The warning is normal, but the tone a bit more strident.

With the increased Obama/China jostling since they embarrassed him at Copenhagen, I'll be very curious how they play the optics of this meeting.

Image makeover

A pretty scary study that people were able to correctly pick party affiliation just by looking at black and white photos.

And more terrifyingly,

In a study published in Science in February 2009, subjects were able to predict from a pair of photos of faces alone which political figure would win an election. Even children could pick the winner when asked who they would prefer to be captain of their boat. And in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in November 2007, researchers linked competence perceived from a candidate’s face to his or her electoral success.

This is our democracy.

Harry Reid's dicking around......

Sen. Tom Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said negotiators from the White House, Senate and House reached a final deal on healthcare reform days before Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts....

A week earlier, and we'd be having a signing ceremony right about now.

John Yoo (sort of) cleared

The Justice Department report on John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and the torture justifications has come back and it says they showed "poor judgment."

That wording is significant because it means they will not face sanction from bar associations, etc.

No apparent threat, but rumble, rumble, rumble....

In the last two weeks, more than 100 mostly tiny earthquakes a day, on average, have rattled a remote area of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, putting scientists who monitor the park’s strange and volatile geology on alert.

Researchers say that for now, the earthquake cluster, or swarm — the second-largest ever recorded in the park — is more a cause for curiosity than alarm....

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An admission by throwing under the bus

Israel "reprimanded" two officers over the use of white phosphorus shells in the Gaza offensive attack that destroyed the UN building.

"Reprimand" doesn't appear to mean much, but it is a public admission of the use of white phosphorus shells. (Although, blaming the officers is an attempt for the country to escape culpability.)