Alan J. Cohen, 1938-2006

In a much more confrontational weekly address than we've been used to, President Obama sought to combat what he called the "willful misrepresentations and outright distortions" in the health care debate. That and other political news in today's TPMD Saturday Roundup.

Yesterday in 100 Seconds: The Wee-Wee Zone

Before all that sparking started, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was about to publish a serious book, as befits anyone with serious presidential aspirations. But then Sanford went hiking the Appalachian Trail. His wife left him, the press hounded him, his presidential hopes evaporated, and his book deal was cancelled.

Unfortunately for the publisher, Viking, the proofs for its Spring 2010 catalog had already gone to press, complete with a glowing write up of Within Our Means.

TPM has now obtained the entry from the catalog, which was apparently just released. Touting the book as "a conservative manifesto from one of the Republican Party's rising stars," the catalog anticipates "national publicity," "author tour," and "radio interview campaign."

Sanford would have explained through "personal" examples "how the GOP went astray over the last eight years." One can only imagine.

"Governor Sanford's down-to-earth voice and common sense principles will give conservative readers a much-needed sense of hope," the catalog promises.

You can read the entire entry here.

Politico:

And this week, [Obama] returned to an argument Democratic strategists said shouldn't be part of the pitch this year -- trying to convince Americans they have a "moral obligation" to help people without insurance, a discredited argument from the reform effort under President Bill Clinton.

Turns out "Chris", the guy who brought the assault rifle to the Obama event in Arizona, is a member of the same far-right political organization as the guy who brought the gun to the Obama event in New Hampshire.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

From Greg Sargent ...

A major factor in President Obama's slide in today's big Washington Post/ABC News poll, which is preoccupying the political classes today, is his surprisingly sharp drops among Democrats and even liberals, according to crosstabs that were sent my way.

Much talk today has focused on Obama's difficulties with independents. But the drop among Dems and liberals is also a key driving factor in the President's skid, according to WaPo polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta, who graciously provided the additional data.

Reich: Why are six senators in charge of health care for 300 million Americans?

Good few hurricane years for Florida?

Gov. Charlie Crist (R) is telling supporters that that's because of a personal request he put in to God back in 2007.

He had some friends follow up in 2008 and 2009 to keep up the trend.

Slideshow: The amazing Usain Bolt.

TPM Reader JZ adds more on evangelicals and Israel ...

A couple of things about this -- one on language, one on substance.

First, I think it is quite wrong to say that Evangelical "support" for Israel has any real meaning within the normal definition of the word "support." The evangelical/Likud position will actually hasten Israel's destruction because of demographics. As a Zionist, I reject the notion that it is in any way good for Israel to become either 1) an Arab state because a majority of its residents will be Arabs; or 2) an apartheid state in which a majority (or large minority) cannot vote based on ethnic identity. On the latter point, as an American I fail to see how "supporting" a country means making it undemocratic. Evangelicals are NOT pro-Israel: they are anti-Israel. They do not "support" Israel: they hasten its destruction. And we should not be afraid to say so.

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Gibbs: Obama is willing to be a one-term President to get health care reform done. Watch.

Nullification, the constitutional theory that states can block enforcement of federal laws they find objectionable, was crackpot from the start and hasn't been seriously entertained anywhere in the county since the Civil War (with the exception of feigned attempts in the South during the Civil Right Era). Nullification, to give you a thumbnail idea, is sort of like secession a la carte.

But Jim DeMint and Michelle Bachmann are now saying that Tea Party-loving states around the country should band together to block enforcement or implementation of health care reform if the federal government passes it.

Should be interesting.

Late Update: As someone who spent a good deal of time studying the Nullification Crisis, I'm chagrined that I failed to note that Sen. DeMint (R) is himself from South Carolina, the cradle of 'nullification' and the original seedbed of the treason that threatened to flair up in 1833 and finally did in 1861.

An important addition to the comments earlier about Huckabee from TPM Reader PD ...

As one Landsman to another, may I disagree strongly with Huckabee's comments?

The American Jewish community is divided about lots of things, it's our nature. One thing we tend NOT to be divided about is support for Israel. But support doesn't mean merely blind acceptance, which is something Republicans never seem to understand in general. We can support Israel while disagreeing--loudly and forcefully at times--about specific behaviors of its government. As an American Jewish liberal Democrat, I can support a 2-state solution (which, to my knowledge, remains official Israeli government policy), oppose the expansion of settlements, rail about Bibi's government or at least his governing style, and still wholly, fundamentally support the state of Israel. And, you know what? I resent Huckabee and his ilk for implying that my support of Israel is anything less than total just because it doesn't fit into his narrow prism of what he perceives that support should be.

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Bush Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend appeared on CNN this morning to deny Tom Ridge's claims of political motives behind terror alerts and seemed to provide two somewhat contradictory explanations: 1) that politics never came up at all, and then 2) that the only discussion was that it might hurt President Bush "because people might perceive it as being political."

The two points are not necessarily contradictory, if you allow a generous interpretation of her meaning. And she also had some new alleged details on the meeting in question.

Palin cleaning up in all-important birther primary; Romney on the skids.

Mike Huckabee just told CBN: "One of the things I find most interesting is that generally Evangelicals are so much more supportive of Israel than the American Jewish community."

This is true on many levels. But it also gets at deeper issues. One of which is the inability of the Republican party to attract substantial numbers of Jewish voters. This is treated as odd by many political observers, reasoning that the GOP has adopted such hard line positions on the Arab-Israeli conflict that surely this should lead to an increasing number of American Jews voting for the Republican party.

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As funny as he is, Jon Stewart is often at his best when he drops the comedian schtick and just goes with his whip-smart 40-something Jew routine, like he did last night with GOP whackadoodle Betsy McCaughey. Watch.

TPM fave Rep. Michele "The Gift That Keeps On Giving" Bachmann (R-MN) has managed to land a cable TV appearance on average once every nine days so far in 2009. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

I feel like we've finally succeeded in exporting American style democracy to Afghanistan.

Yesterday in 100 Seconds: All Wee-Wee'd Up

Eric Kleefeld sat in on the tonight's conference call with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R) and just filed this initial report.

Slideshow: NASCAR comes to the White House.

There's video, too.

Travel guru Arthur Frommer says he won't be traveling to Arizona anymore after wackadoodle gun stunt outside Obama event.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Another left-wing freak says the Bush administration timed terror alerts to maximize political effect.

Only this time it's Tom Ridge saying it, the guy in charge of deciding when to issue terror alerts.

Interestingly, Ridge refers to a terror alert Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and others wanted to have drop just before the 2004 election, one he eventually refused to issue. He doesn't note earlier cases, like in the summer of 2004, of terror alerts that were issued under equally dubious circumstances.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN): No government control of my body!

Seems like Tom DeLay may have made up that story he told Chris Matthews about protestors bringing paraplegics in on gurneys to one of his 1980s-era town hall and dumping them in front of his podium. Hard to see that one coming.

We've got hold of video of Sen. Vitter describing his secret plan to bankrupt the Canadian health care system.

Late Update: We've now contacted the Canadian International Trade Ministry. So we're hoping to get comment or a response from them about Sen. Vitter's plan to bring down their health care system.

One of the great, too-little-considered mysteries of modern Washington is that Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) was actually a Rhodes Scholar. Recently, in order to explain the seeming contradiction between his opposition to health care reform and his support for reimporting drugs from countries with national health care systems like the Dems want in the US. Vitter says it's part of a long-range plan to bankrupt the health care systems in those other countries and force them back to a USA style free market system.

I want to set aside for a moment the issue of whether the terminally ill bomber of Pan Am Flight 103 should be released to die at home in Libya. Instead watch Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill explain his decision to set Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi free.

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The feature story on the CNN page right now is "Claims about health care keep coming." Translation: people coming up with even more insane claims about health care reform. But here's the blurb on the front page ...

A woman asked Rep. Allen Boyd at a health care town hall if reform would force people to let the government access their bank accounts. "That's not true," the Florida Democrat responded. "When someone sends you something on the Internet that sounds crazy, how about just checking it a little bit?" The CNN Truth Squad has debunked that rumor. Yet other false claims keep coming up.

Now, the backstory here is that Allen Boyd, a very conservative Democrat from Florida, was probably the single most in the tank Dem for Social Security privatization back in 2005. So when Allen Boyd gets exasperated knocking down the crazy, you know things have gotten to a pretty sorry pass.

For a little background, here's Zack Roth's piece from last week knocking down this bank account lie.

Obama gets asked about National Treasure II: "I would tell you, but I'd have to kill you."

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), Rhodes Scholar and Harvard alum: "I have a fundamental problem with any 1,000-page bills."

Late Update: More Vitter nonsense from that same article: He plans to bring the Canadian health system to its knees through reimportation of drugs.

One of my early experiments with content distribution models ...

Late Update: I thought this photo would pretty much speak for itself. But a distressingly large number of readers have written in asking whether or thinking that the guy on the sweatshirt is David Cassidy. Please ... David Cassidy? It's Mork from Mork and Mindy. Here's a shirt my wife just found online which has the same picture.

From Joe Klein ...

How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? And another question: How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark?

Sen. Kennedy appeals to Massachusetts political leaders to revise state laws to ensure that his seat does not remain unfilled during the critical health care votes. This is a story you'll want to read.

From TPM Reader MN ...

Just read the post about the gun lobbyist advocating open-carrying at the actual events. It reminded me of this onion classic.

The Onion gives its troubling diagnosis for what ails the President.

Dining room table to Barney Frank: Bring it on!

Joe Scarborough wrings his hands over all the "name-calling" coming from the "extreme elements" on "both sides" of the health care reform debate. Watch as Mornin' Joe channels his inner David Broder.

In a sobering acknowledgment of his own mortality and the importance of his vote in the health care reform battle, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) is privately pressing state officials in Massachusetts to amend state law so that the governor can appoint an interim senator should the seat become vacant. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Yesterday in 100 Seconds: Health Care Spiral

From the Times ...

The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.

Reading through our email -- or, okay, in this case, it's more the hate mail -- it's clear that a growing number of base conservatives believe that the Obama White House is collecting their anti-health care reform emails and compiling them in a master White House database to surveil these people, keep tabs on them and so forth.

We were hearing rumblings of this today and now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Senate Dems may split health care reform legislation into two separate bills, sticking the more politically controversial provisions into one bill and using budget reconciliation rules to get that bill around a filibuster.

Dems float new plan: break health care reform into two bills.

We're kind of curious whether this really happened or whether it's just from some dream reverie brought on by too much dance practice. But when asked this evening whether he was surprised by recent town hall antics Tom DeLay told Chris Matthews that at one of his town halls in the 1980s protestors "brought quadriplegics in on gurneys and dumped them on the floor in front of my podium."

That sounds pretty out there.

We've done a little research and we cannot find any press reports about such a bizarre and somewhat hard to credit event. And DeLay's office has not responded to requests for comment.

Anybody help us on this one?

John Velleco, chief lobbyist for Gun Owners of America, just told Chris Matthews that he thinks people in the audience at presidential events should be allowed to bring their guns with them.

TPM Reader BG has a word or two for TPM's foreign correspondents:

I'm ever so slightly irritated by the recent comments from two non-US citizens. Perhaps I'm reading too much into them when I seem to sense the subtle insinuation that this craziness is baffling only to them and not to most of us as well.

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Slideshow: Remembering Don Hewitt

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Seems like only a few years ago the "nuclear option" was abolishing the filibuster. Now it's just pushing through a health care bill without Chuck Grassley?

Dave Weigel compares the LaRouchie rhetoric on the president's health care plan and the Republican party's ... and tries to find a difference.

Thinking back on those bleak days in the 1930s, when fascism was on the march, the world was hurtling toward war and Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and instituted the public option.

Aussie Reader PB, a comrade in the united socialist front of western industrial nations:

I'm a long time reader of your blog and a big fan. But i'm turning off all access to US media, it simply depresses me. I cannot understand why a bunch of people feel so outraged about having universal health care policy. How is that socialism? My country along with a bunch of Europeans have had similar systems for years and although they're not perfect, they allow for the poor, middle and upper classes to seek treatment at no cost.

On a holiday to new york several years ago my grandmother had a heart attack, fell into a coma and passed away nine days later. We were told at the time that she was officially brain dead and that she had no chance of waking up. Thankfully we had travel insurance as there would have been no way we could of afforded treatment. Regardless it put into spotlight the difference between our two countries. If the heart attack occured in australia the treatment would have been no different and it would have been free. I can't understand how the richest country in the world can't have a similar system.

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From TPM Reader AB ...

I was with the NY caucus at Netroots Nation when Massa was speaking. The guy is super-passionate and very, very articulate when it comes to health care, and not a lot of people realize that the guy is a cancer survivor. He is a huge believer that every American should have the same access to care that he had when he was in the military, and frankly he considers it almost a crime that not everybody does.

When looking at what Massa says about healthcare, and his passion about the subject, his comments about Grassley, and his very, very strongly negative opinions of health insurers, it is very important to understand where he's personally coming from on the issue.

Public Policy Polling has a new poll out on the national 'birther' movement. And it turns out to be another fascinating look at the mystic overlap between ideological and simple ignorance.

Of the 24% of the population in the 'birther' category, one interesting thing to note is that more Americans seem to think Obama was born in Indonesia (10%) than Kenya (7%), which suggests not only that a frighteningly large number of Americans are birthers but that they have a shockingly low level of basic 'birther' literacy. As you know, according to orthodox 'birther' theory, Obama was born in Kenya.

Even better, 6% fully concede that Obama was born in Hawaii. They just don't believe Hawaii is part of the United States.

[ed.note: Special thanks to TPM Reader SR for flagging my attention to the poll.]

From TPM Reader DM ...

I've been a longtime silent reader and thought I'd weigh in on the Massa issue. I agree that "treason" is a very strong word. But I'm not sure if it has been emphasized enough how unacceptable the frequent tags of "Nazi", "fascist", and the comparisons of Obama with Hitler really are. To compare the efforts to extend health care to tens of millions of uninsured with a man who sent six million to the gas chambers is not only ludicrous, it is highly offensive and an insult to the tens of millions of people that have died in two world wars this century fighting against real "fascists." How did this debate get so out of hand? Why will so-called reasonable Republicans like McCain not condemn such inflamatory language by defacto party leaders such as Limbaugh? Why is the media not pushing them to do so? As a non-US citizen, I must admit I am baffled, not to say a little frightened at the lack of reason in the current debate. The gun toting crazies outside Obama and health care events are another case in point. Who on earth in their right mind could argue that this does not amount to intimidation of those seeking a reasoned, rational debate? Where are the responsible Republican leaders speaking out against this frightening trend?

We're getting some push back from readers on the post below about Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) -- mainly along the lines that with Republicans calling Obama the new Hitler and comparing the public option to Nazi concentration camps, can't a Dem get a little leeway for effect?

TPM Reader JH goes so far as to say I'm being "weak-kneed" and "dainty" in my approach.

I sympathize with the sentiment. And, frankly, I think my attitude and record on tough political rhetoric speaks for itself.

The people making the Third Reich arguments are pigs. They deserve all the verbal abuse anyone can give them. "Treason" though is a sui generis word, uniquely grave and with a very specific meaning. I just don't think it's a word to throw around casually. There's plenty to talk about with so many of the antis being congenital liars and their willingness to consign so many Americans to penury and premature death. That should be enough to work with, no?

Got bipartisanship on one side and the public option on the other. Not sure you can have both, guys.

Keep one foot on the dock and the other on the boat too long and ...

Upstate New York Rep. Eric Massa (D) says Sen. Grassley's 'pull the plug on grandma' remarks were "an act of treason."

Against sanity, honesty, self-respect? Sure. But I think he means against the country, which is pretty whacked.

Video: Tea Partier who screamed "Heil Hitler" at an Israeli man who supports health care reform explains her opposition to reform.

The legendary creator and long-time chief of 60 Minutes dies at 86.

Not sure quite what to make of this. Steve Clemons points out that Israel's Deputy Prime Minister appears to be twittering about possibly being left in the dark about a settlement freeze Netanyahu and Mitchell are negotiating. It's not a 'verified' Twitter account. So I'm a touch skeptical. But Steve knows folks in these circles pretty well. So worth a look.

One major health insurance company is encouraging its policyholders employees to attend tea party events opposing health care reform.

At a town hall meeting, the Massachusetts rep lays it on the line with a protester who equates health care reform with Nazism: "On what planet do you spend most of you time?" Watch.

White House Shocker! GOP not negotiating in good faith on health care reform. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

NPR: "Obama Town-Hall Gun Toters May Have An Upside"

(Special thanks to TPM Reader BG for the catch.)

You have to be pretty warped to see a straight line from Waco through Oklahoma City and 9/11 to ... health care reform.

TPM Reader MG:

You were right on ... in your post "Troubled History." I thought you were especially sharp to draw a loose comparison between substance addiction behavior and the American right's relationship to violence because it really does seem that there is an element of "they know not what they do" involved in this. It is compulsive, but not entirely self-aware.

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Yesterday in 100 Seconds: Mixed Messages

It was only a matter of time.

While "Chris" was the guy who carried around the assault rifle at the Obama event in Phoenix yesterday, it appears to have been another guy, Ernest Hancock, who organized the whole thing. And Hancock, who was also on the scene with a holstered handgun, turns out to have had very close ties to a 90s-era Arizona militia group called the 'Viper Militia' most of whose members were eventually sent to federal prison on various weapons and explosives charges tied to plans to bomb federal buildings.

Sound familiar.

In other words, the Viper Militia folks were sort of Tim McVeigh also-rans from back in the glory days. Hancock, though not indicted himself, was their main public advocate. He was clearly close to these folks while they were plotting. And now he's the guy coming up with the idea to send a bunch of guys with guns to greet President Obama. Feel better now?

Justin Elliott has the full story.

[ed.note: Be sure to see 'Latter Update' below.]

We've still got the on-going questions about whether NJ Gov candidate Chris Christie pushed political prosecutions as US Attorney to keep on Karl Rove's good side and pave the way for his run for governor. Now comes word that the hold-over acting US Attorney who took for Christie (a Bush era appointee for the 'acting' slot) is himself now facing an internal investigation into whether he politicized a recent corruption investigation to aide Christie's campaign and hurt Gov. Corzine.

Late Update: A further detail. According to the notification at the time of his appointment, Marra, the Acting US Attorney, is actually a registered Democrat. He was, however, Christie's top aide since 2002.

Latter Update: I was not clear enough on this in my initial post. According to the report from the AP, the investigation is not into the conduct of the investigation itself but rather into public comments Marra made at the news conference announcing the investigation. The question being whether his comments (you can see the precise words here) were aimed at or had the effect of spinning the indictments as a rationale for Christie's campaign against Corzine. That's plenty worth investigating but is certainly qualitatively different, if true, from politicizing and thus tainting the investigation itself.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Robert Reich asks, How tough is Obama?

Slideshow: Behind the Scenes, Summer at the White House, Part II

We're getting more background on that guy with the AR-15 assault rifle outside the Obama event in Phoenix. Turns out it was two guys who knew each other from working on the Ron Paul campaign -- small world, right? And they told the local police ahead of time what they were going to do because they wanted to avoid what happened the last time they did something like this back in their 90s era militia days. There's also a right wing talk radio angle. Read the whole story.

Late Update: One fun extra detail: the guy who planned the whole says he was motivated in part by William Kostric, the guy who brought the gun to event last week in New Hampshire.

From TPM Reader ZC ...

It's a truism that people in the west are accustomed to seeing firearms carried around. Having spent all of my life in the west and the majority in rural Arizona, I can say that yes, it's a common site to see trucks and ATVs with gun racks. However, the fact that most of the people I knew growing up owned and used hunting rifles is a very different thing to walking around the downtown area of a major city carrying a sidearm or an assault rifle. An AR-15 is a symbol, for gun advocates as well as opponents. I remember during the 2006 election there were people in Tucson hanging out at polling places in hispanic communities carrying visible sidearms and asking voters about their immigration status. Make no mistake, this isn't about "gun culture" or being comfortable with firearms. This is about intimidation - visibly carrying a firearm - especially one designed specifically for killing human beings is a not-at-all veiled threat, and is meant to silence opposition. Yes, Arizona's outdated laws technically allow them to do it, but laws on the books also prohibit unmarried couples from cohabiting and define a group of women living together as a brothel.

It's important point. There's a big difference between gun enthusiasts who use them for hunting, target practice or just self-defense and these kooks who think it's a good idea to show up at political rallies or protests with firearms.

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Did NJ Gov candidate Chris Christie (R) start his chats with Karl Rove back in 2003? Seems so. At least they were spending time together.

As we track the escalating number of incidents of right-wing fringers bringing guns to Obama events or other health create town hall events, we are, unsurprisingly, seeing various conservative websites mocking the public concern. "Oh, those Dems, they go all wobbly just because a few upstanding citizens show up with legal firearms." Call it the new girly-manism, it's a sign that Democrats are so many political panty-waists because they've never seen the gun culture up close or just get easily rattled.

It's true that there are some regional divergences at work here. Weapons just don't get carried around in public in say New Jersey or Connecticut the way they do in the South or especially the west.

But let's be honest about what this is about. The right -- the modern American right -- has a very troubled history with political violence. The ideological pattern is clear going back at least thirty years and arguably far longer. A simple review of the 1990s, particularly 1993, 1994, culminating in many respects in the tragic 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal building in April 1995 tells the tale. Mix in the militias, the thankfully inept attempt on President Clinton's life a few months before Oklahoma City (see Francisco Duran) and it's all really not a pretty picture.

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Jon Stewart to Obama: Are you a Jedi or is health care reform kicking your ass?

According to local police, approximately a dozen people carrying firearms outside the Obama event yesterday.

And now the health-reform opponent carrying an AR-15 Assault Rifle (or perhaps the group he's affiliated with) has produced a Youtube video which leaves little question where they stand -- "We will forcefully resist people imposing their will on us through the strength of the majority with a vote." Watch the Video.

Obama and Biden reportedly working on turning their shotgun marriage into a committed long-lasting relationship. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Yesterday in 100 Seconds: Dead On Arrival?

TPM Reader LAG has a question ...

In a stunning amount of irony, Mansonite Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme was released from prison this week, after 34 years in prison. The gun she pointed at President Ford had no bullet in the firing chamber-- unlike Sarah Jane Moore, she never even pulled the trigger or fired. Presumably, these gun nuts showing up for the health care events have their weapons actually loaded. I repeat, Fromme did *34 years in prison.* Where, may I ask, was the Secret Service today? Far be it from me to tell them how to do their job, but letting armed extremists near the President of the United States would appear to not be in their job description. Were the AR-15 guys questioned? Detained? Quite frankly, given the history of political violence in this country, I would think that the operative policy would be to disarm these guys first and ask questions later. The legal standard for determining what is a threat to the President is rather low, as these things go (as I recall, requiring only a threat and an apparent ability to carry it out-- Francisco Duran, while he fired his gun, never got within a hundred yards of President Clinton, who was behind several walls at the time. He's doing 40 years in prison.). What is going on here?

Allow me to share a few thoughts on this. First, it's important to say that not only has none of these guys tried to fire their weapon at the president (or anyone else), to the best of my knowledge none of them were within the protective perimeter of the event. In other words, at the event today, no one was in the hall where the president was speaking. They were all in crowds outside the auditorium where he was speaking -- probably across the street, or something like that.

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A tweet from SEIU's Andy Stern: "We should not lower our expectations on health care. We won the election and a bad plan could lose the next one-America needs real reform."

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) just appeared on Chris Matthews show basically gave a big thumbs up to the idea of bringing fire arms to public political events. WATCH the video.

Phoenix police estimate there were a dozen people with firearms outside the Obama event today.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

We've now got a local press report confirming that there were three people outside the Obama event today in Phoenix with guns of one sort of another.

Joe Klein speaks out on the crazy, worries about all the guns and proposes 'right to sanity.'

A closer look at two recent polls suggests that the people who believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and those who believe the health bill includes 'death panels' are in fact the same people. About a quarter of the GOP in each case.

We're still trying to piece this together. But according to CNN's Ed Henry, who was there in person, there was not one but TWO men outside the Obama event in Phoenix today with AR-15 assault rifles. It's like a fad.

One man, whose presence we noted earlier, was an African-American man who didn't seem to make completely clear what his political position was. But the second, who we haven't seen any pictures of, was apparently holding his assault rifle while chanting against socialism and denouncing Obama's policies.

Tom DeLay's long, dark history with Dancing with the Stars.

I remember when Dems started bringing guns to all those Social Security phase-out events back in '05. Heady Days.

Robert Reich on the Public Plan's "Last Stand"

Man at pro-reform health care rally outside Obama event in Phoenix seen carrying assault rifle and pistol. Police watching closely.

Bachmann: I'll run for president ... if called by God.

Grassley on public option: "The government is a predator, not a competitor."

The full consequences of a particular event are seldom clear at the outset. And that makes me think of the original reaction to former Sen. Tom Daschle's decision to withdraw his nomination for HHS Secretary over his tax controversy earlier this year.

At the time, it was mainly seen as the first major black-eye for Obama's fresh-start, anti-lobbying / Washington insiderdom image. And that it was. But I find it hard not to think that things would be in a different place on the health care front if Daschle had been running point on this issue today.

Certainly, many had complaints about Daschle's run as senate leader and Sebelius had a strong record in the red state of Kansas. But there's just no getting around the fact that the senate is where this legislation is going to live or die. And Daschle knows all of those people, knows the place, knows its inner dynamics.

That may have been a critical moment. I'm curious how much, or whether, he's been involved behind the scenes.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) will appear on Dancing With The Stars. That and other political news in today's TPMDC Morning Roundup.

From TPM Reader TL ...

When critics of Health Care Reform say that Congress and the Administration are not doing enough to explain the options, I believe they have a good point. For instance, how much less savings is there with a national non-profit that bundles existing insurance options and lowers costs from the huge pool of insured, versus a public option. Is a public option doctors working for the government in a kind of Kaiser Permanente run by the feds? I believe people can understand that discussion.

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Grassley spokesman concedes boss didn't actually believe 'pulling plug on grandma' comments.

From the start of the health care reform debate President Obama has insisted that creating a government-provided "public option" to compete with private insurance companies is critical to comprehensive reform. But is the administration now hinting that it is willing to forsake such an option in the interest of getting a bill passed? We investigate in today's Sunday Show Roundup ...

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

TPM Reader AS vents ...

Obama isn't saying the right thing. He should be saying, "Stop lying." Or maybe he should send Biden out to say it. That's probably the best thing.

I'm not basing this on some misguided sense that being aggressive is what's required. Rather, I'm basing it on how the MSM works. They report what politicians say. And they don't fact check them. That's the system -- maybe you don't like it. I don't like it either. But it's not changing any time soon.

That's a key point, so I'm going to repeat it. All the broadcast MSM does is report what politicians say. They don't fact check them. Afterwards, they have blowhards sit around in panels and have disingenuous spin-meister discussions about whether or not what was said is playing well with the general public.

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Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR): "I will never vote for a bill to kill old people, period."

Probably the single most insightful article published yet about the August of Crazy.

He hits the key point: journalists who lack the professional and cultural confidence to label lies and hate speech as such.