Find new careers, morons.

President Obama, strategizing yesterday with congressional leaders about health-care reform, complained that liberal advocacy groups ought to drop their attacks on Democratic lawmakers and devote their energy to promoting passage of comprehensive legislation.

In a pre-holiday call with half a dozen top House and Senate Democrats, Obama expressed his concern over advertisements and online campaigns targeting moderate Democrats, whom they criticize for not being fully devoted to “true” health-care reform.

“We shouldn’t be focusing resources on each other,” Obama opined in the call, according to three sources who participated in or listened to the conversation. “We ought to be focused on winning this debate.”

The debate is entirely between Democrats, “each other” in Obama-speak. Republicans fear-mongering and will likely vote no down the line as they have on almost every bill this year. They have nothing to add, and their numbers make them wholly irrelevant. Democracy for America and MoveOn entered this battle because certain Democrats have come out early and vocally against a public option for healthcare, a position that more or less endorses continued insurance company privateering. It is diametrically opposed to the interests of an overwhelming majority of Americans, and almost all Democrats. But Obama doesn’t want to hear it because compromise and political cover for idiots like Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu is more important than truly universal healthcare.

Specifically, Obama said he is hoping left-leaning organizations that worked on his behalf in the presidential campaign will now rally support for “advancing legislation” that fulfills his goal of expanding coverage, controlling rising costs and modernizing the health system.

Left-leaning organizations are pissed because Obama isn’t doing anything left-leaning. He’s going out of his way not to. Note how “universal healthcare” has morphed into “expanding coverage.” More than 40 million Americans don’t have health insurance. People are losing their jobs (and with it employer-sponsored insurance) every day. Even those with insurance often find it doesn’t protect them:

Health insurance is supposed to offer protection — both medically and financially. But as it turns out, an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.

The current system is completely broken. There’s nothing about it that works. Yet some Democratic Senators want to prolong it, mostly because they take millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the insurance companies. And Obama would rather the racket continue:

A fundraising video produced by Democracy for America suggests Landrieu is a “sellout” because she has received $1.6 million in campaign contributions from the health-care industry…

I was about outraged-out until I saw this:

The goal of the Obama White House is to come up with a health-care plan that can attract bipartisan support. The president has told visitors that he would rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a bill that gives him 85 percent of what he wants rather than a 100 percent satisfactory bill that passes 52 to 48.

This is insane, indefensible, unbelievable. People are going to continue to go uninsured and underinsured because your President is delusional, and playing ego games with peoples’ lives. He’s never going to get 70 votes, and if he keeps playing this ridiculous game of indulging corrupt members of his own party, he’s not even going to get the 85% of what he wants. And since Obama doesn’t want single-payer, that 85% starts off mighty low on the curve.

But he’s not John McCain, so it’s all good, right?

“If there’s not another big shoe to drop in the Sarah Palin resignation story, I’ll…”

2% on a $100,000 minimum balance. Talk about punishing savers. I walked around for a couple of days, half irritated about the whole thing, half relieved that I’m getting about twice that on a couple of CDs I bought a couple of years ago. Then I saw this news out of Sweden:

The weak development of the economy requires a somewhat more expansionary monetary policy. The Executive Board of the Riksbank has therefore decided to cut the repo rate by 0.25 of a percentage point to 0.25 per cent. The repo rate is expected to remain at this low level over the coming year. At the same time there are several signs that economic activity will improve.
[...]
The minutes from the Executive Board’s monetary policy discussion will be published on 16 July. The decision on the repo rate will apply with effect from Wednesday, 8 July. The deposit rate is at the same time cut to -0.25 per cent and the lending rate to 0.75 per cent.

The Swedish can now pay for the luxury of warehousing their cash in banks.

Now I think the Obama administration is going to pay a price for not having acknowledged the problems with the stimulus bill they signed in January…If the administration felt that was the best they could get, then fine—you sign the bill and take what you can get. But they should have clearly and publicly articulated that while the ARRA was a useful step, it would likely prove inadequate to the scale of the problem. Then in the event that it did prove inadequate, they could say they had pointed this out at the time and maybe the Senate should stop ruining everything.

Instead, though, they proclaimed themselves pleased as punch with ARRA which now creates a situation where it’s not clear what they can really say.

It would have been really awesome if our elite bloggers would have been out in front of this back in February. But I guess in that case you wouldn’t need 1115.org.

An investigator at the Securities and Exchange Commission warned superiors as far back as 2004 about irregularities at Bernard L. Madoff’s financial management firm, but she was told to focus on an unrelated matter, according to agency documents and sources familiar with the investigation.

Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent e-mails to a supervisor, saying information provided by Madoff during her review didn’t add up and suggesting a set of questions to ask his firm, documents show. Several of these questions directly challenged Madoff activities that much later turned out to be elements of his massive fraud.

But with the agency under pressure to look for wrongdoing in the mutual fund industry, she wasn’t able to continue pursuing Madoff, according to documents and two people familiar with the investigation, and her team soon concluded its work on the probe.

Walker-Lightfoot’s supervisors on the case were Mark Donohue, then a branch chief in her department, and his boss, Eric Swanson, an assistant director of the department, said two people familiar with the investigation. Swanson later married Madoff’s niece, and their relationship is now under review by the agency’s inspector general, who is examining the SEC’s handling of the Madoff case.

Still, I’m sure we’ll soon hear Obama and Reid explaining that even 60 votes doesn’t mean anything in the Senate.

Reid’s spokesman Jim Manley about 5 minutes later:

While this is, of course, good news to the people of Minnesota, President Obama, and the Senate Democratic, Franken’s mere presence alone will not mean that the Democrats will be able to jam through our agenda, or make it any less critical for Democrats and Republicans to work together. We have a diverse caucus who represent diverse constituencies. No one’s vote is ever automatic.

In 2006, it was “Help us take back the House, and we’ll have subpoena power.” Not only did they take back the House, they managed to win the Senate too. When it came time to investigate, it was “We don’t want to abuse our power and risk our chances to take back the White House.” Not only did they (kinda sorta) take back the White House by a big margin, they routed the Republicans. But by then it was time to forgive and forget and start anew by watering down much-needed legislation because Democrats didn’t quite get to 60. Now they have 60, and from what Manley is telling us, all the electoral progress (and Obama’s win) have only served to increase the power of Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu who can just hold the caucus hostage any time they want.

Twenty-eight pages. Sean, you know the one question they don’t ask? They ask, “are you an American citizen?” They don’t ask if you’re here on a visa or when it expires. We have no real idea how many illegal aliens are in our country. But wouldn’t you think, here they are asking every personal question about our lives, they could at least ask if we’re an American citizen? They don’t bother to ask for that.

Matt Corley of ThinkProgress also outdid himself. It has long been rumored that it is useful for bloggers to actually read the chunks they quote in their posts. It is also widely believed that reading comprehension is a big plus. We cannot, of course, say with any certainty which precept Corley has trouble with. But this is his commentary on Bachmann’s statement:

On Sean Hannity’s radio show yesterday, Bachmann continued to attack the Census, repeatedly insisting that people should go to her website to “see the Census form for themselves.” Listing off a few questions from the American Community Survey (a long-form survey sent out to one in 40 households each year) that she considers invasive, Bachmann claimed that it doesn’t ask “are you an American citizen”…
[...]
In fact, the American Community Survey does ask about U.S. citizenship and it has since 1890…

If you read only half of what you quote, or understand only half of what you read (or, not to underestimate, Mr. Corley, both), maybe you too can be a blogger for ThinkProgress?

The icing on the cake was the headline Corley or ThinkProgress put on the post: “Bachmann Lies About Census’ American Community Survey, Claims It Doesn’t Ask About Citizenship »” (not sure what that punctuation mark is doing there at the end).

I will watch with keen interest to see whether Corley tries to fix this post. Regular readers may remember that he has more than once gone back and corrected embarrassing errors without bothering to acknowledge that the post in question has been edited. (That is, of course, thoroughly dishonest, and it’s astounding that ThinkProgress tolerates it.)

*** Update, 7:14 a.m. ***

Turns out that all Corley/ThinkProgress are guilty of is an embarrassing typo in their transcript. “They ask, “are you an American citizen?”” should read “They don’t ask, “are you an American citizen?”” Bachmann said the same thing both times.

*** Update #2, 7:33 p.m. ***

Matt Corley may have turned over a new leaf. At the bottom of his post, there now appears this little confession:

Typo corrected in the transcript.

(How hard was that, dude? Make a habit of it, please.)

In a written message to supporters Monday, Mark Sanford asserted that God’s plan for him includes finishing his term as South Carolina governor.

As readers will have gathered last week, I’m not exactly a fan of Mark Sanford. I am, however, a great fan of journalistic integrity.

So I’m constrained to point out that Vogel’s opening salvo is…how shall I put this delicately…a total crock of shit.

The word God certainly comes up a few times. But Sanford does not even come close to suggesting that he presumes to knows God’s plan for him. And “asserted” is a fairly strong word. Vogel/Politico are not just inventing lies to attack Sanford with, but lies that have been marinaded overnight in hyperbole.

How pathetic is it when you can’t find any real stuff to attack Mark Sanford with? Mark Sanford, for crying out loud?

Judge for yourself; this is the full text of that “written message to supporters”:

Dear Friends,

I write to apologize and ask for your forgiveness.

Well beyond the personal consequences within my own family, I know that at so many different levels my actions have upset, offended and disappointed friends and supporters and for this I am most sorry. As I mentioned in last week’s press conference, I’ve always believed God’s laws were there to protect us from ourselves, and what has transpired over this last week vividly illustrates the damage that comes personally, and to those you love and respect, in doing otherwise.

So in the aftermath of this failure I want to not only apologize, but to commit to growing personally and spiritually. Immediately after all this unfolded last week I had thought I would resign – as I believe in the military model of leadership and when trust of any form is broken one lays down the sword. A long list of close friends have suggested otherwise – that for God to really work in my life I shouldn’t be getting off so lightly. While it would be personally easier to exit stage left, their point has been that my larger sin was the sin of pride. They contended that in many instances I may well have held the right position on limited government, spending or taxes – but that if my spirit wasn’t right in the presentation of those ideas to people in the General Assembly, or elsewhere, I could elicit the response that I had at many times indeed gotten from other state leaders.

Their belief was that if I walked in with a real spirit of humility then this last legislative term could well be our most productive one – and that outside this term, I would ultimately be a better person and of more service in whatever doors God opened next in life if I stuck around to learn lessons rather than running and hiding down at the farm.

They have also made the point that a good part of life is about scripts – that the idea of redemption isn’t something that Marshall, Landon, Bolton and Blake should just read about, it’s something they should see. Accordingly, they suggested that there was a very different life script that would be lived and learned by our boys, and thousands like them, if this story simply ended with scandal and then the end of office – versus a fall from grace and then renewal and rebuilding and growth in its aftermath.

I won’t belabor all these points, but I did want to write as expressed earlier to say that I’m sorry and that more than anything I personally ask for your prayers for me, Jenny, the boys and so many others who have been impacted by what I have done.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Take care.

Mark

Sanford’s friends have suggested to him that perhaps suffering continued governorhood would lead to spiritual growth, and allow him to be a better role model to his sons, and also to serve God better in the future.

How the hell does that become asserting “that God’s plan for him includes finishing his term as South Carolina governor”?

I could produce quite a riff on what I hope is included in God’s plans for Politico and Vogel. But I’ve already wasted more time on both of them than they are worth.

Take Lt. Dan Choi of the New York Army National Guard, who has managed to become the poster child for the various costs of Obama’s foot-dragging on DADT—the human cost, the moral cost, the military cost. What if a substantial chunk of the New York Army National Guard upped and told their commanding officers (with a straight face, if you’ll pardon the term) that they are gay?

They obviously can’t discharge everyone. They won’t have the resources to investigate each “confession”, either, not if there are enough “confessions”. The only option left is a de facto policy of ignoring all such confessions.

It seems to me that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would get thoroughly trumped by a manufactured blizzard of Tell! Tell! Tell!.

We keep hearing about how scrapping DADT enjoys widespread support among the troops. About how unit members of DADT dischargees typically oppose the discharge. Would it be so hard to organize an effective civil disobedience protest, especially in units where someone has been recently discharged?

(This post is prompted by the belief that Obama only intends to keep on talking the talk; walking the walk is just going to keep sliding away into the future. If gay activists actually want to see anything happen — anything more than invitations to White House events — they have to twist his arm, or kick him in the shins. Or some other body part.)