Intelligence, Please…

It’s very rare that I take on one of my own, but I was completely taken aback by Joe The Prophet’s post on Wikileaks of earlier today.

There were several excerpts in that post that left my skin crawling.

• “I am a 100% supporter of Wikileaks.org.” 100%, huh? Not one single question about their motives, or what’s at stake? “Transparency” is the new political buzzword to accompany the advent of globally-networked technologies in the 21st century, in much the same way that “independence from foreign oil” has been a buzzword since the days of the Nixon Administration, when Saudi Arabia took charge of OPEC, and oil prices skyrocketed – note that not in 40 years has America actually found that independence. It is designed to alleviate fears – not to become a manifest reality of political life.
• “…I have yet to see any direct proof that it [has compromised American troops on active duty].” Aside from the fact that you fail to recognize that we classify information to protect our human and physical assets in the first place, exactly what constitutes “proof?” How many bodies do you need to see? How many coffins with American flags draped over them before you realize what a categorically bad idea Wikileaks is?
• “In April, Wikileaks released video of a U.S. helicopter attack on civilians.” And according to this Benjamin Friedman piece from CATO @ LIBERTY, Julian Assange is playing politics with the war in Afghanistan, calling the video “Collateral Murder” despite the pilots’ obvious attempts to comply with the rules of engagement:

My problem with WikiLeaks is its practice of stamping its politics on its leaked documents. For example, in April, when it released that gruesome video of U.S. Apache helicopter pilots in Iraq enthusiastically killing civilians that they mistook for insurgents, WikiLeaks titled the video “Collateral Murder,” despite the obvious efforts of the pilots to comply with the rules of engagement.

Now rather than simply put its documents on the web and let people draw their own conclusions, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds a self-congratulatory press conference where he declares “it is our experience that courage is contagious” and compares the document release not just to the leak of Pentagon Papers but to the opening of the Stasi archive in East Germany. Certainly U.S. forces in Afghanistan have committed war crimes (it would be hard to run a war of this scale and avoid them completely) and spun the war’s progress. If these documents reveal more of those doings, that’s a good thing. But even the harshest critic of the war’s conduct ought to be able distinguish it from the activities of a Stalinist secret police force. I bet that the Stasi, faced with a similar leak problem, would have found a way to plug it by now.

Grandiosity is also evident in Assange’s recent response to transparency advocate Steve Aftergood’s critique of WikiLeaks seeming lack of privacy standards. In one paragraph, Assange irrelevantly brags that he spoke before European parliamentarians, asserts that “WikiLeaks not only follows the rule of law, WikiLeaks is involved in creating the law,” announces its opposition to “plutocrats and cashed-up special interests” (not secrecy?), and then claims to have inspired Senate legislation to make Congressional Research Service reports public, even though bills to that effect predate his organization’s existence by nearly a decade.

• “This has bad news written all over it for the President choosing to continue the Afghan war, but it doesn’t mean much better for the Republican party.” You’ve already fallen for the political gamesmanship angle, without considering the consequences for the men and women on the ground!

I come from a long line of military veterans. My father, in fact, did classified work for the US Air Force (when he wasn’t caring for the fighting force as a staff cardiologist). His stint in missile launch command has since been declassified, and so I can talk about it here. Many of the military’s successes are also classified. Why? Because if you find a tactic that is successful, you don’t want information about its execution falling into the wrong hands, lest it be exploited.

"Classified" is NOT subject to interpretation!

Has nobody stopped to think that the only classified information Wikileaks has divulged has reflected poorly on the United States? Has nobody considered the political motivations? I’m guessing Joe The Prophet hasn’t, since he writes of the organization he supports 100%, “The organization has grown in popularity/notoriety, and the U.S. government doesn’t know if it’s a mere fad organization that got lucky, or the start of a trend that would be devastating to government secrecy.” The government has – in many cases, particularly relating to national security – very compelling reasons for keeping secrets! And when did hunting down Osama bin Laden become an issue of political popularity? Is Joe The Prophet advocating mob rule? If so, let him defend it!

Not since the 4th grade when I took piano lessons while the rest of middle school played football have I liked fighting. I do not like war, and I wish that we, as a nation, weren’t eyeballs deep in two of them. But to herald Julian Assange and Wikileaks as some sort of courageous and heroic raconteur of the evils of the American Empire is reckless.

Las Vegas is insane.

Everything I’ve heard about this Disneyland-for-adults is true: neon, sparkles, bells & whistles, herds (and hordes) of people, STAR WARS slot machines (pictures later)…I will definitely have to come back here one day for purposes other than business. My friend Jon Henke (@JonHenke) and I flew from DC yesterday by way of Newark, NJ and didn’t even land in Vegas until 1am PT…it was a long day, and I slept in a bit. It was easy to do in my posh suite at the Venetian, with my sunken living room and remote-controlled drapes! Life is hard.

The first panel I attended today featured Todd Thurman (@toddthurman) of the Heritage Foundation, Brian Faughnan (@brianfaughnan) of Liberty Central, and Alexa Moutevelis (@alexashrugged) of the RNC, all moderated by my Liberty Pundits co-blogger Melissa Clouthier (@melissatweets). The panel focused on connecting grassroots activists in the field to policy shops in DC – like Heritage, Cato, or other think tanks – as well as to communications resources and activism training like those offered by FreedomWorks or the Leadership Institute.

Probably one of the better bits of information passed along during the discussion was the notion that activists in the field shouldn’t be shy about engaging DC-based resources. Yes, DC is busy. Yes, DC occasionally has a heightened, over-inflated sense of self. But DC is also sitting on piles of your cash, looking for a way to return value back to you. So don’t be shy about sending emails or picking up the phones to ask for help.

But more than just connecting grassroots activists to DC to get talking points and policy papers to support candidates back home, the panel focused on connecting activist to activist using technology – that means Twitter, Facebook, the blogosphere, and other online resources.

The RNC announced some nascent, new API and they are transitioning all of their online tools to an open-source platform…the API is apparently already available for developers…more on this later. Despite this move to make RNC resources more available to more people, there was some grumbling in the audience that the RNC fails (on occasion) to return voter vaults back to activists on the ground once they pull out of town following a race. This makes people currently involved with components of the Tea Party movement a bit reticent to cooperate with the RNC in Washington.

After a few questions, and after some dancing around the issue, I asked the panel: is there a sense, going into this November’s elections (and subsequently in 2012) that the Right should be worried about the Left exploiting a growing rift between conservatives and libertarians? If so, how can we, or more appropriately, should we be doing anything differently than the suggestions you’ve all made here today to, strengthen the coalition between these two groups?

The consensus from the panel seemed to be that there’s not really any danger this year – libertarians and conservatives agree in principle that the prevailing issue of this election is the economy, stupid. Throwing the bums out is priority #1 in 2010. But the funnel of candidates is currently full, and the new Congressional primary begins, effectively, on November 3 – it is possible that infighting on the Right might get nastier in 2011 and 2012.

Todd Thurman told me after the panel “We just need to make sure we’re talking, and that we’re sticking together in areas where we agree.” I agree in principle with this strategy, but only inasmuch as it’s a first step. Because there is potential for infighting to become nastier on the Right as we approach 2012, it’s important to talk about areas where we disagree too – libertarians remain (rightly) mistrustful of the Big Government GOP – the same GOP that is trying to ride the Tea Party Tiger into new majorities this fall. Ignoring our differences now can be our foil later.

Cross-posted at Liberty Pundits and The Next Right.

She was an interesting tactical VP pick for McCain, especially after Barack Obama passed over selecting Hillary Clinton as his VP.

She’s constantly making headlines – people like her. She’s an effective fundraiser, edgy speaker, and potential 2012 presidential candidate.

I'm sorry, folks. I'm educated. I want an educated person representing me in the White House.

I wonder: did she quit spelling class as quickly as she quit the governorship of Alaska?

Update:

Apparently Governor Palin was embarrassed about the flap, and has since deleted the tweet. So, basically, the hyperlink above doesn’t take you anywhere anymore.

That’s the subject of this event I’m attending tonight at Reason Magazine. Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks, Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online, and Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute will have it out about “where libertarians belong” in American politics. This has, of course, been an interesting and important question this election cycle, since libertarians make up a sizeable contingent of the Tea Party movement.

As much as I think it’s cool to be able to blog from my phone, live-blogging will probably be kept to a minimum for this. I will probably tweet more than blog in long form, because I’m interested to see where an activist, a journalist, and a think tank scholar believe libertarians can/will/should play in American politics. If you’re not on Twitter, you can click here and just refresh the page a lot.

Update 1

So I didn’t actually tweet a whole lot. Jonah Goldberg said something funny though…he said “For the record, I never really jived with George W. Bush’s philosophy, the whole ‘compassionate conservatism’ thing…My name is ‘Goldberg,’ I tend to be a little more Old Testament…I like my conservatism with a little more smite and wrath.”

Update 2

It doesn’t look like they have video of the event turned around and uploaded yet, but you can check back at either Reason’s YouTube channel (which is chock full of other good stuff), or Reason.TV. I’m sure the video will be up in another day or two.

Lots of interesting items today…let’s jump in:

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YOU MIGHT START HEARING US HERE - Social media blog Mashable passes along the announcement that WordPress.com (the blogging platform that powers this site) now has a capability for users to phone in audio content to their sites:

The new feature is powered by Twilio, a cloud-based platform for building communication and voice applications.

The feature isn’t anything revolutionary — Livejournal has supported similar functionality for years. However, it should make for thousands of interesting, late-night posts in the near future.

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WE VOTE FOR LAND-LINE TELEPHONES - The folks at PC World have a countdown of 10 technologies that should be extinct (but aren’t).

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SHOCKER: LEFTIST DISSONANCE ON ECONOMY - Despite his eager bloviations back in 2009 that the Democrats should use reconciliation to pass a stimulus spending bill, the staff assistants of liberal blogger Ezra Klein of the Washington Post’s WONK BOOK report today that the stimulus, in fact, didn’t work…not even a little:

…the numbers depict a sluggish economy in which nearly 15 million people are out of work and job growth is mediocre. There is little evidence that a dip back into recession has begun. But the chances of a strong, self-sustaining expansion that can significantly improve the job market — which seemed a real possibility during the spring — are now slim.

…

The confused outlook is causing paralysis on Capitol Hill, since the recovery is neither strong enough to provoke a turn toward deficit reduction, nor weak enough to lend momentum to President Obama’s push for more economic stimulus. As Congress prepared to leave town for the week-long Fourth of July break, even funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was bogged down by the broader election-year squabble over spending.

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IS THERE AN ECHO IN HERE? – Noah Millman at The American Scene blog catches progressive Matt Yglesias of the Center for American Progress’s blog Think Progress (also Beltway butt-buddy of Ezra Klein) in a spot of more economic dissonance:

Your answer to our economic situation is that we need to ramp up government spending to stimulate consumer demand to increase employment. It’s not important to be efficient in how we deploy our stimulus money; it’s much more important just to get people buying stuff and making stuff for people to buy.

Your answer to the problem of climate change is that we need to substantially increase the price of carbon so that consumption patterns change and we all buy less stuff that is very carbon-intensive and either spend more of our income on non-carbon-intensive goods and services or simply live lives of greater overall leisure without so much emphasis on getting and spending. The government should do what it can to ease the economic pain of the transition, but some short-term economic pain is a reasonable price to pay for saving the planet.

I think the tension between these two positions should be obvious. I think Matt would reconcile that tension by saying that, no, he doesn’t really think that ramping up government spending on justanything is a good idea – he thinks we should ramp up spending on things that would help make the transition to a greener economy, even if this means sacrificing a bit of stimulus.

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COLOR ME SURPRISED – Just days after making a splash in the early goings of free agency, it appears as though Nashville Predators GM David Poile has inked talented-but-enigmatic right wing Sergei Kostitsyn (formerly of the Montreal Canadiens) to a one-year deal worth $550,000…which comes in just under the $575,000 obligation to heavyweight enforcer Wade Belak…for you hockey fans out there, Jeremy K. Gover has the goods.

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GREAT, SOMETHING ELSE TO KEEP UP WITH – Yahoo! has a new almost-constantly-streaming political blog, The Upshot! I think I’m going to start ending all my sentences with exclamation points so I can be like Yahoo! (see what I did there?)

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WHEN TWO WORLDS COLLIDE – In the aftermath of the shocking announcement that atheist author and Vanity Fair editor Christopher Hitchens is undergoing treatments for esophageal cancer, rabbinical author and speaker David Wolpe waxes philosophical and nostalgiac about his debate tours with Hitchens. An excellent read:

We began our acquaintance in New York in November 2008, when Temple Emanu-el, reputedly the largest synagogue in the world, invited us to debate each other. At a reception before the event, we were approached by someone who noted one of the blurbs on the back of my book: “Wolpe answers these challenges with such kindness and thoughtfulness that even Christopher Hitchens might find his heart warmed.” The man asked Hitchens: So, did it warm your heart?

“Oh, no,” Hitchens replied, holding the book up for skeptical inspection. “My heart is far too reptilian for that.”

Well, hello to you, too.

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WHAT CUTTING THE SHUTTLE PROGRAM GAVE US – NASA apparently has released a new PC game…because that’s important, right?

NASA’s latest endeavor to educate people on space exploration has taken them to the world of video games.

The space agency has released a new PC video game available through Valve Software’s Steam service called Moonbase Alpha.

The game, which features single-player and multiplayer components, places players inside an astronaut suit, as they must rebuild a lunar base crippled by a meteor strike.

To complete the objectives leading to the revival of the base, players will use a variety of tools include mobile robotic repair units and a lunar rover.

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SPEAKING OF STAYING ON IMPORTANT TASKS – Senator John Kerry takes a time-out from climate legislation and other sausage-making to hit up supporters for their votes to get Boston Red Sox infielder Kevin Youkilis from the MLB All-Star ballot to the AL roster.

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REMEMBER WHEN LIBERALS SAID THE TEA PARTY WAS A FRINGE MOVEMENT? – I guess all paradigm-shifting things start out as loony…because now that nearly 1/3 of Americans are sympathetic to the Tea Party, you can’t really call it “fringe” anymore. You have to accept that it’s mainstream:

According to a new USA Today/Gallup pollfinds three in 10 Americans describe themselves as Tea Party supporters. What’s less clear, the survey reports, is just what it means to support the Tea Party. The poll pretty much confirms what recent election results have proven about the Tea Party: It’s less an organized political party and more of a conservative ideological movement.

In many respects, the Gallup results show that the Tea Party is basically Republicanism operating under a different name. A majority of Tea Party supporters describe themselves as Republican—62 percent call themselves “conservative Republican” and 17 percent say they are a “moderate or liberal Republican.” Just 6 percent say they are independent, while 15 percent say they are Democrats.

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TEA PARTY, SCHMEA SCHMARTY – Republican obstructionism will help them win in 2010, notes liberal blogger Greg Sargent:

Poll after poll shows that majorities think the GOP is more interested in obstructing the Obama/Dem agenda than in reaching a good faith compromise. Yet amid all the gridlock Congress’s overallapproval is at historic lows, and the generalized anti-incumbent fervor is expected to hurt Dems in the midterms. Indeed, in recent months the GOP has tied or bested Dems in the generic Congressional matchup.

Republicans will argue that this shows that the public wants the GOP to stall the Dem agenda. But I think something else is going on: People don’t seem aware that the GOP, in addition to wanting to obstruct the Obama/Dem agenda, is successfully doing so in the Senate through the skillful application of fundamentally undemocratic procedural tricks. The press has largely failed to inform the public of of this fact, and when it does, people tune it out as so much Beltway white noise. Result: The GOP is paying no price whatsoever for obstructionism, and may well reap rewards from it.

It really has to suck to be a Democrat right now.

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BUT IT DOESN’T STOP THERE; TELL THEM WHAT ELSE THEY’VE WON, JOHNNY – Taegan Goddard prophesies that the GOP will win more gubernatorial races than in any election year in 90 years:

Smart Politics says the latest public opinion polls give Republicans the advantage in 28 of 37 states with gubernatorial races this November. If these results hold, the GOP would win more gubernatorial seats in 2010 than they have in any election cycle since 1920.

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PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN, WHERE AT LEAST I KNOW I’M FREE – This saddening, maddening, and horrific tale should mortify anyone with even a shred of emotive capacity:

The “mutilated torso” of Pasikali Kashusbe, who worked at Bishop Christopher Senyonjo‘s LGBT advocacy group Integrity Uganda, a group dedicated to mobilizing against homophobia, was found a half kilometer away from the farm where his head was found in a latrine pit, a week after he went missing. His torso was found without genitals.

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CONGRESSMEN ARE FROM MARS… – Because they don’t understand technology, say industry execs:

Some call it Capitol Hill’s own “digital divide” — the growing gap in understanding between lawmakers responsible for resolving the tech community’s most pressing issues and the industry leaders who first call attention to these issues.

The gap is all the more worrisome to tech industry leaders because of the speed with which new devices and practices are clashing with old ways of doing business.

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…TECH INDUSTRY EXECS ARE FROM VENUS – Because they don’t understand politics and policymaking, says Jim Harper at the Cato Institute:

It’s worth noting Tech’s thorough misapprehension of Washington, D.C. as well. Judging by how they act, most tech executives have all the insight they could pick up from Schoolhouse Rock. It seems cool and helpful to come to Washington and give money, so they do, encouraging the bears to rip open their cars looking for peanut butter.

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PRAISE BE TO FORD* – Stanford joins Berkeley in controversial gene testing of students:

This week, the University of California, Berkeley will mail saliva sample kits to every incoming freshman and transfer student. Students can choose to use the kits to submit their DNA for genetic analysis, as part of an orientation program on the topic of personalized medicine. But U.C. Berkeley isn’t the only university offering its students genetic testing. Stanford University’s summer session started two weeks ago, including a class on personal genomics that gives medical and graduate students the chance to sequence their genotypes and study the results.

* Bonus points to the reader who gets the reference.

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NO WONDER MY BATTERY KEEPS DYING – I must be in the 6%:

A significant percentage of U.S. smartphone users aren’t using data at all, while the top 6% of users are gobbling up half of all data consumed, according to Nielsen.Released this week, a study of 60,000 mobile phone bills found a huge disparity between heavy data users and the many smartphone owners who use their handsets almost exclusively just for voice calls and texting.

…

The study found that average data consumption jumped some 230% from about 90 MB a month in the first quarter of 2009 to 290 MB a month in the first quarter of 2010. More surprising is the finding that the percentage of smartphone owners using less than 1 MB a month actually decreased during the period. “That,” said Entner, “means about 20 million current smartphone users are hardly using data.”

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Barring breaking news, creative impulses, or something else pressing, I’ll see you bright and early!

HEALTHY, WEALTHY, AND WISE – If you’re up early reading this, you rule the world, writes Philip Delves Broughton at the London Evening Standard:

Evolution has produced a range of humans capable of being alert to danger at every hour of the day. Our experience confirms these findings. We all know people who love to be at work bright and early, with a cup of coffee to hand and decisions to make, and others who would rather stumble through the day until reaching a state of relaxed clarity around dusk, when their minds are purring.

The problem is that those with the genetic gift of “morning-ness” tend to be more highly rewarded. Morning-ness is perceived as a sign of activity and zest, whereas evening-ness implies laziness and loafing. How often did we have to see David Cameron on one of his early-morning runs to get the idea that here was a leader of potency and vigour? How different would it have been if he slunk out of bed to work, then exercised at around 8pm? Could a Prime Minister be elected today who worked like Churchill, reading, writing and thinking in bed before getting out of it at noon?

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DEMOCRATS CONTINUE TO LOSE JOBS, CONTINUE TO THINK OBAMA’S AGENDA WORKS – The Pew Research Center has an interesting report out, “How the Great Recession Has Changed Life in America“:

While nearly all Americans have been hurt in one way or another, some groups have suffered more than others. Blacks and Hispanics have borne a disproportionate share of both the job losses and the housing foreclosures. Young adults have taken the biggest losses on the job front. Middle-aged adults have gotten the worst of the downturn in house values, household finances and retirement accounts. Men have lost many more jobs than women. And across most indicators, those with a high school diploma or less education have been hit harder than those with a college degree or more.

Whether by choice or necessity, many Americans have already significantly scaled back their pre-recession borrow-and-spend habits. According to government data, household spending has gone down, savings rates have gone up, consumer credit has remained stable and mortgage debt has plunged during this recession.

…

Blacks and Hispanics are more upbeat than whites. The young are more optimistic than middle-aged and older Americans. And Democrats are more upbeat than Republicans, even though Democrats have lower incomes and less wealth and have suffered more recession-related job losses.

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One likely explanation for these seemingly counterintuitive patterns is that in an age of highly polarized politics, Democrats and Republicans differ not only in their values, attitudes and policy positions, but, increasingly, in their basic perceptions of reality.

With regard to young people losing their jobs, recall: increases in the minimum wage do NOT help the unemployed or the working poor. The recent increases in the minimum wage, after Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, should be filed under the growing list of failed Democratic policies.

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THANKS, BUT NO THANKS – In another indication that Democrats bet the farm on their agenda, and will now lose because of it, the Washington Post’s POST POLITICS reports that Wall Street develops a huge case of buyer’s remorse:

The drop in support comes from many of the same bankers, hedge fund executives and financial services chief executives who are most upset about the financial regulatory reform bill that House Democrats passed last week with almost no Republican support. The Senate expects to take up the measure this month.

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ENOUGH MONEY FOR A HOCKEY TEAM – The White House has released its annual salary data for 2010, and Emily Long at Government Executive has the breakdown on how they’ve decided to spend this $39 million payroll:

The administration is required to submit payroll statistics to Congress annually. In 2010, 437 White House full-time employees account for nearly $35 million in salary spending. One part-time staffer earns $21,000, and 31 temporary workers on detail from other agencies earn a combined $3.8 million.

Twenty-four senior officials earn $172,200, the highest salary for full-time personnel. White House senior advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, along with Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Jon Favreau, the president’s speechwriter and Carol Browner, director of the Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, are included in the top pay grade. Two detailees, Timothy Love and Michael Hash, each earn $179,700 — the highest salary among the 470 employees included in the data. Love and Hash both work on health care issues, and their titles are policy director and deputy director, respectively.

Rank-and-file employees such as analysts, staff assistants and schedulers earn between $40,000 and $60,000, while special and deputy assistants to the president and other advisers make lower six-figure salaries. Three staffers earn nothing for their work. On average, White House employees earn nearly $83,000.

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GOD DAMMIT, BARRY, WE’RE PISSED OFF…WHY AREN’T YOU? – Benedict Carey at the New York Times thinks Barack Obama needs to get in touch with his feelings (yes, seriously):

The longing for President Obama to vent some fury at oil executives or bankers may run far deeper than politics. Millions of people live or work with exasperatingly cool customers, who seem to be missing an emotional battery, or perhaps saving their feelings for a special occasion. People who — unlike the mining operators in the gulf — have a blowout preventer that works all too well.

Sang-froid has its place, especially during a crisis; but so does Sigmund Freud, who described the potential downside of suppressed passions. Those exhortations being directed at the president could be just as easily be turned on countless co-workers, spouses, friends (or oneself):

Lose it. Just once. See what happens.

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THOSE POOR RATS – Eggheads at Yale University have achieved a breakthrough in lung regeneration, using lab rats:

It’s an early step toward one day building new lungs: Yale University researchers took apart and regrew a rat’s lung, and then transplanted it and watched it breathe.

The lung stayed in place for only an hour or two, as the scientists measured it exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide much like a regular lung. Still, the work is a step in the science-fiction-sounding hunt for ways to regenerate damaged lungs, although lead researcher Laura Niklason cautions that it may be 20 or 25 years before a build-a-new-organ approach is ready for people.

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HOW ABOUT BETTER PARENTING? – Yale is Yale, and the University of Central Florida has a program designed to ferret out cheaters:

No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student’s speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside.

The 228 computers that students use are recessed into desk tops so that anyone trying to photograph the screen — using, say, a pen with a hidden camera, in order to help a friend who will take the test later — is easy to spot.

Scratch paper is allowed — but it is stamped with the date and must be turned in later.

When a proctor sees something suspicious, he records the student’s real-time work at the computer and directs an overhead camera to zoom in, and both sets of images are burned onto a CD for evidence.

Taylor Ellis, the associate dean who runs the testing center within the business school at Central Florida, the nation’s third-largest campus by enrollment, said that cheating had dropped significantly, to 14 suspected incidents out of 64,000 exams administered during the spring semester.

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And finally, People Magazine delivers their list of favorite actor portrayals of American presidents (both real and fictitious) and they poll to see who you think is best:

Call it civic duty or patriotic pride, Hollywood is no stranger to showing support for the red, white and blue. Actors and filmmakers alike have produced films about protecting and defending our country against everything from terrorists to aliens to giant astroids. Whether based on real-life leaders or leaders created by a screenwriter’s imagination, some of screen’s heaviest hitters have taken their turn portraying the President of the United States. But who served the office best?

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That’s it for now – see you around dinner time!

Jake Sherman, Jonathan Allen, and Abby Phillip at POLITICO forecast doom for Democrats in November over inaction on the economy:

This political problem has spurred a fierce philosophical debate inside the Democratic Party over what’s the best medicine for the economy — bigger spending, or cutting deficits. Liberals are clamoring for more money to save the economy, and centrists are arguing there’s no more money to give in the face of trillion-plus dollar deficits.

Amy Gardner at the Washington Post’s POST POLITICS has an exposé on Fourth of July Tea Party gatherings aimed at educating the American public on our cultural and historical legacy (not hanging Members of Congress in effigy, or inciting people to violence):

“The rallies were a start, but the goal now is to get people to stop and really think about things,” said Kerry Scott, an organizer of the Alexandria Tea Party, one of several hundred conservative activists who attended “An American Event,” a Fourth of July festival for “God and country” staged by a local farmer on rolling farmland in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains this weekend.

Amid Civil War reenactors, a reading of the Declaration of Independence and booths selling Native American artwork, Scott handed out strips of white paper, each printed with quotations from such American luminaries as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington.

“With knowledge, there is power,” she said. “And having an understanding of the Constitution can lead to electing people who will uphold it.”

A Robert Samuelson op-ed in the Washington Post opines that new financial reform legislation reported out of the House last week doesn’t get down to causes and conditions, and Samuelson argues something I’ve been saying to progressive friends all along – this isn’t about good policy, it’s about revenge:

The trouble is that — contrary to conventional wisdom — “too big to fail” was just a symptom of the crisis, not its basic cause. That was old-fashioned bad lending: home loans to borrowers who couldn’t repay. The panic arose because no one knew the size or location of the losses, now estimated to exceed $1 trillion. Ironically, the legislation may weaken the government’s ability to quell future panics by restricting — in highly technical ways — the Fed’s authority to lend to panic-stricken institutions in the midst of crisis.

The legislation has other gaps. It doesn’t settle the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federally created housing agencies whose lax practices contributed to the crisis. Nor is there much to revive private-market securitization — the bundling of individual loans (home mortgages, auto loans) into bonds. This major source of credit has collapsed, down more than 90 percent since 2006. One weakness was that rating agencies (Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s) never verified the reliability of individual loans. The result: “liar loans” with inaccurate information. But the legislation doesn’t require rating agencies — or anyone — to do selective audits of individual loans. Without that, investors may shun most “securitizations.”

What’s called “financial reform” has twin motivations: to stabilize financial markets and to punish “Wall Street” for the crisis. So much in the legislation (a consumer protection agency, restrictions on “proprietary” trading by banks) is left to regulators that no one can now know the full outcome. It could be greater stability, overregulation or a scattering of risky activities into lightly regulated institutions. History will judge whether this qualifies as genuine “reform” — or just revenge.

Sam Dillon at the New York Times has the scoop on teachers’ unions and their turn against Education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Barack Obama:

“Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment I have ever experienced,” Dennis Van Roekel, president of the union, the National Education Association, told thousands of members gathered at the convention center here.

President Obama and Mr. Duncan have supported historic increases in school financing to stave off teacher layoffs while seeking to shake up public education with support for charter schools, the dismissal of ineffective teachers as a way of turning around failing schools, and other policies. That agenda has spurred fast-paced changes, including adoption of new teacher evaluation systems in many states and school districts, often with the collaboration of teachers’ unions.

But it has also angered many teachers, who say they are being blamed for all the problems in public schools.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Duncan played down the tensions. “I have great respect for the leadership of both unions,” he said. “We’re trying to push a lot of change, and we’ve seen extraordinary breakthroughs in the last 18 months. But we won’t agree on every issue.”

He noted the considerable range of views among union leaders nationwide. “Some state and local unions are very thoughtful and progressive and are embracing innovation,” he said. “Others are more entrenched in the status quo.”

Still, administration officials are concerned about the souring relations, and have been working to ease tempers, partly by emphasizing what they consider to be positive leadership by teachers’ unions in some regions.

And finally, Mary Ann Akers, also of the Washington Post’s POST POLITICS blog, pens this biopic on Paul Teller, a liberal-Jew-turned-conservative-stalwart who now leads the most conservative caucus in the US House of Representatives as Executive Director of the Republican Study Conference:

Teller is known as a Hill staff member who can influence the thinking of lawmakers and the outcome of legislation. That quiet power was demonstrated a few years ago when Teller, now 39, in a simply worded e-mail blast persuaded conservative House members to vote against their party’s energy-tax proposal.

This is  a new feature I’m trying out here at the site – let me know what you think!

It’s an illusionist’s gimmick. From a post over at CQ Politics this morning:

Byron L. Dorgan was viewed as something of a Cassandra last fall, when he started warning fellow Democrats they were in for a 2010 drubbing unless they started talking more about issues that average voters care about — and in ways those voters understand.

But the senator from North Dakota has kept at it. Even after deciding against running for re-election himself, he’s been using his position as chairman of a leadership advisory group, the Democratic Policy Committee, to promote his views as parting advice to his colleagues.

And so it came to be that Drew Westen, a professor of clinical psychology at Emory University, flew from Atlanta to Washington early this spring. He explained to a caucus of Democratic senators, as Dorgan’s guest, his view that the most effective way to win over voters is to use simple language that engages the “frontal emotion circuits” of the brain.

Westen came to the Capitol wearing a pin-striped suit of the sort favored by senators, but his message made clear he wasn’t a member of their club. The senators say he delivered what amounted to an indictment of the party’s efforts to market itself in a time of economic anxiety. The Democratic Party was squandering its control of Washington, he said, by failing to telegraph its achievements and by pressing its agenda too timidly.

As a result, Westen warned, Republicans have been able to capitalize on the burgeoning power of the tea party movement and galvanize an electorate with shrinking confidence that the powers in Washington can create jobs, reduce the deficit or address other domestic challenges.

So which ever party/group/organizing mechanism is best able to make its case to John Q. Taxpayer will reap the biggest electoral rewards in November…and it looks like the Tea Party movement is way ahead, much to the chagrin of the Democratic Party.

No matter how badly President Obama wishes it weren’t true, people still – on both sides of the aisle – generally distrust government…Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann go to great lengths to try to convince the world that Republicans are manipulative, or to try to show that Tea Party rallies are grass-tops lobbying writ large, but the Democrats are relying on a psychologist whose work puts forth a psychological taxonomy of politics for their strategic cues…and those strategic cues seem to amount to “here’s how you dupe them.”

As a personal aside, reading Drew Westen’s book is on my list of goals for 2010. You should think about adding it to your library – we can read it together.

The health care debate rages on here in Washington, and one of the latest attacks the Right has launched against the majority party is to say that the use of reconciliation to pass a major policy reform is legislative legerdemain. If you’ve been completely oblivious to the news of this, or of the goings-on in the US House and Senate generally speaking, the Democrats would be able to wrangle their healthcare reform bill through the Senate with 51 votes, without the threat of a filibuster.

It is also worth noting that Republicans have used reconciliation for a number of measures related to our health in years past. This much we cannot ignore or wish away.

What is reconciliation really, though? It is a Senate rule designed to force a committee of jurisdiction to rein in costs of a spending bill within the parameters of a budget resolution before it can be considered by the whole chamber. This came out of a 1974 Congressional response to Richard Nixon’s domestic spending policies (see Budget Control and Impoundment Act of 1974 – Nixon simply refused to spend appropriated monies on domestic Great Society programs, so Congress passed this bill to re-assert its Power of the Purse over the Executive Branch).

Both major parties use reconciliation for their own, partisan and nefarious purposes, though, precisely because it can bring a bill to a vote without debate our threat of a filibuster. Certainly there’s a bit of tit-for-tat here, Lefties, but if you’re going to argue that it’s okay to use reconciliation to pass an unpopular healthcare bill – especially when the support inside and outside the Beltway isn’t there for it – just because Republicans did it for 30 years, then I don’t want to hear one more peep out of you about how Barack is going to “change the way Washington works”: