From Obama's debate intro Thursday night

Senator Clinton mentioned Barbara Jordan, somebody who ... said that what the American people want is very simple: They want an America that is as good as its promise. I’m running for president because I want to help America be as good as its promise.

And I marvel at this, because I'd been thinking a lot lately about Obama's promises, and a former Hooters waitress from Panama City Beach, Florida.

You may remember Jodee Berry, who was led to believe that the winner of her employer's regional sales contest would be awarded a brand new Toyota!  After hustling her hot-pants'd buns off and winning the contest, a breathless Ms. Berry was blindfolded, escorted to the parking lot, and presented with her brand new toy Yoda!

The disappointed waitress brought suit for breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentation, eventually settling for an undisclosed sum, but one clearly sufficient to cover the price of any Toyota on the lot.

Hounds and FOXes come running in from right field when Obama's bandwagon cranks up its 120dB dog whistle Wurlitzer. His policy point man is an ivory tower free marketeer (and DLC's Senior Economist). His Social Security wingman is an avid privatizer.

The third horse in BO's domestic policy troika is health care maven David Cutler -- a technology optimist, of American Exceptionalist bent.

Do other countries do health care better? Irrelevant -- we're different. Expensive? We ought to spend a lot more. Patients Bill of Rights? Dead issue. Single payer? Dissed and dismissed in a single paragraph of his book. Insure the uninsured? Sure, but don't let that distract us from the real issues. Negotiate drug prices? Careful, you'll kill the Golden Goose!

Our review of Cutler's eccentric frame for health care reform not only decrypts Obama's call to the Right – it unearths the audacious belief system that animates our New Politickers' across-the-board hope of finessing every clash of interest, and "turning the page" on every hard choice.

NC Chair Howard Dean has made his views known on the role of superdelegates:

Their role is to exercise their best judgment in the interests of the nation and of the Democratic Party. I am confident that they will carry out that duty responsibly and in accordance with the highest values of our democracy and our Party.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpoi...

Ordinarily, a party-wide missive from Dean would send multiple diaries clambering up the rec list ... but today, with this message?

Nothing on the front page. Nothing on the Rec List. Nothing in the diaries, period.

Is DailyKos deaf to Howard Dean? Or only selectively deaf to this message?

Discuss.

Our first installment began the task of decoding Barack Obama's curious appeal to our right-of-center friends and relatives. (His point man on domestic policy is also the DLC's Senior Economist -- a deregulatin', free tradin', globalizin', sharp-shootin' son-of-a-centrist-gun from Waco Texas, Milton Academy, Yale's Skull and Bones society and the Chicago school.)

The second member of Obama's policy advisor triad is Harvard's Jeffrey Liebman. Specialty: "pensions and poverty", i.e., "entitlements", i.e., "Social Security".

Liebman's reputation: centrist alarmist and moderate privatizer.

He has supported partial privatization of the government-run retirement system, an idea that's anathema to many Democrats and bears a similarity to a proposal for personal investment accounts that Bush promoted, then dropped in 2005.

"Liebman has been to open to private accounts and most people in town would say he's a moderate supporter of them,'' said Michael Tanner, a Social Security expert at the Cato Institute

Something about Obama attracts New D's, GOP's, Broderites, Indies, Perotistas, Reagan D's and Libertarians alike. Is it his big table? His promise to turn the page? His post-racial posture? Is it his cologne?

Or is it Austan Goolsbee?

Who??? Goolsbee. Economic wunderkind, forensics champ, MIT PhD, Yale Bonesman out of Waco via Milton Academy, Obama's chief / top / senior economic spokesman and senior policy advisor.

Oh, and DLC senior economist.

Stopping by Australia on return from a surprise visit to Iraq, the President bragged:

We're kicking ass.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA-07), delivering a reality-based assessment in a House floor speech, quoted the P.O.T.U.S.:

... he told the prime minister, quote, "We're kicking ass" ...

McDermott was promptly and properly admonished:

The Chair would remind Members to refrain from using vulgarity.

But a more pointed critique came from Rush Limbaugh. From his customary cruising altitude, the rightwing intelligence community's all-seeing observational blimp:

1. Promoted McDermott from the House to the Senate;
2. Asserted foreknowledge of the Petraeus Report;
3. Determined that "Baghdad Jim" (who counseled Vietnam War PSTD cases as a Navy shrink) "couldn't care less" about the troops left in harm's way.

In a peace activist strategy conference callwith Michael Lerner, Medea Benjamin, Tim Carpenter and others, Rep. Lynn Woolsey called for primary challenges to incumbent Democrats even at the possible expense of losing the majority.

Interestingly enough, Woolsey herself was among the top ten primaried House Democratic incumbents in 2006, defeating term-limited CA legislator Joe Nation.

Last cycle's Top Ten detailed below the fold. Reminisce, analyze, speculate.

Can the netroots support a Democrat who definitely plans to appoint Republicans -- that's RepublicanS, plural -- to the Cabinet?

If there's a pre-selected list of such GOP appointees, do we need to know who's on it?

What does it tell us about the would-be standardbearer's philosophy of government? What more should we ask?

Seemingly unnoticed in a monster news week, Barrington (NH) resident Daniel LaBossiere found one of our leading candidates on the stump, and posed what he may have thought was a candidate-stumper: What do you value about conservative philosophy?

LaBossiere was surprised -- and favorably impressed -- by an answer that, as the candidate acknowledged:

ran the risk of alienating voters by saying the cabinet list "I've already made" includes members of the other party.

LaBossiere had praise for "the courage enough to answer it, which is difficult enough ... I've never heard any other politician make that statement."

What do you think?

Democrats rode a wave of wins in 2006, after coming up short in 2004. What did we do right?

In a recent exit poll analysis, Chris Bowers tries to show that we energized the base and boosted Democratic turnout. Markos highlights this result in a DLC-bashing front page post. Unfortunately, Chris didn't finish the maths, or select the most comparable data.

Perfecting his model, we learn that 78% of the swing came from Independents and Republicans. ("Base" gains finished third.) This tends to weigh against "base election" schemes, in favor of persuasion, conversion and oppo attrition strategies, with a primary focus on "center court".

Details [and bonus updates by Ideology and Region!] below the fold.

That from Michael Carvin -- conservative uber-laywer, scourge of affirmative action, and Majority Leader John Boehner's advocate before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals (sitting en banc) in Boehner v McDermott.

From the initial AP report on today's rehearing:

Judge David S. Tatel said that under Carvin's interpretation ... newspapers that published the contents of the tape could be held liable.

 "The argument to extend it to the New York Times is quite powerful," Tatel said.

"I'm not representing the New York Times," Carvin responded. "I'm perfectly happy to throw them overboard."

For background apropos the holiday, see McDermott's Fall of the House of Ethics.

To pitch in of the side of truth, justice and the American way, pitch your post-election mad-money shekels to Friends of Jim. (Jim holds a safe seat; campaign funds defray case costs; surplus goes to aggressive, progressive campaigns.)

27 months ago Chris Bowers issued his famous 80 district challenge to the DCCC. At this point he hadn't begun to do the fundraising math -- but he apparently assumed we could take out GOP incumbents, in ordinary years, in 55% Red districts, by dint of "full-frontal assault". (Or at least he assumed we could do this cycle after cycle throughout the Kerry presidency.)

19 months ago Stu Rothenberg cited this challenge in a well-reasoned tutorial rant, noting two bloggers in particular for their "clueless" political naivete. [Subscription-only Roll Call; link is to RedState, and let any copyright grief be on their heads.]

This month Markos has taken to citing Rothenberg over and
over and
over and
over and
over as ironic evidence that the DC establishment is clueless. Does Kos's evidence support Kos's claim? Or just the opposite? Take a closer look.

US Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) authorizes the following release, in conjunction with a screening of the prizewinning "Iraq in Fragments":

SPECIAL FEATURE:  The Original McDermott Iraq Interview

A videotape of my original Iraq interview - taped in Baghdad, four years ago, prior to the commencement of the Iraq War, will be played before the film.  

James Longley taped the interview in September of  2002.  He has searched through his film archive to provide the interview film to us.  The film of the Baghdad interview has never before been seen.  Only a portion of this film interview prompted the Senate GOP Majority Leader (Trent Lott) to suggest that I come home and "shut up."

Never-released footage from Rep. McDermott's Sept. 2002 mission to Baghdad, at this special event Oct. 22, 7-10pm. Full announcement from Jim below the fold.

This is Rep. Jim McDermott's last day as substitute host on Dave Ross's KIRO 710 AM talk radio show. (Out of KIRO broadcast range? You can stream live or podcast.)

Al Gore is slotted for 15 minutes, starting ~9:25am (that's Pacific time; 12:25 for you E'coasters).
This is national release day for Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". Premieres in Seattle at Pacific Place and the Guild.

Hour two, PTSD - a subject near and dear to McDermott's heart as Vietnam era military psychiatrist - with VA's Murray Raskind, MD.

Now it's open topic, open lines for the remaining hour, as Jim shares a few quotes from favorites like Chief Sealth ... and Gandalf.

FYI, Jim is the leftmost Member of Congress, here (WA-07) in the leftmost district in America.

Seattle's Rep. Jim McDermott plays talk radio host again today. Topics on deck include an Iraq vet's lawsuit against Michael Moore, whistleblower cases, and health care policy. [A physician and psychiatrist by training, Jim has devoted 35 years of state and federal legislative effort to promoting single-payer health care.] Next, Bill Clapp on Global Partnerships for microcredit, business-wise development in povertyland.

9 to noon Pacific time (noon to 3pm Eastern) KIRO-AM 710, call-in 1-877-710-KIRO .

Outside the KIRO listening area, stream the show live or catch the podcast recap later. (See the podcast index page also for M-T-W show recaps and John Murtha's Monday segment.)

The irrepressible progressive Rep. Jim McDermott goes solo for the first time on talk radio today, subbing for vacationing host Dave Ross on KIRO-AM 710, 9 to noon. (Or noon to 3pm, Eastern time.)

First-hour programming includes give-and-take between Jim and stay-the-course Democrat Rep. Jim Marshall (GA-03). Later, discussion of Seattle anti-smoking regulations, and former Nation editor/publisher Victor Navarsky.

Outside the KIRO listening area, stream the show live (sorry, KIRO "Gold Club" sign-up req'd) or catch it in podcast later. (See the podcast index page also for John Murtha's Monday segment.)

Call-in 1-877-710-KIRO, or blog-in here.

Rep. Jim McDermott continues his stint as talk radio host today, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as featured guest.

Again, Jim subs for regular host Dave Ross on KIRO-AM 710, 9 to noon. (Or noon to 3pm, Eastern time.) Call 1-877-710-KIRO and let Rep. Pelosi know how you think she's doing.

Jim's other guests include Paul Farmer, founder of global Partners for Health and subject of "Mountains Beyond Mountains".

Outside the KIRO listening area, stream the show live (sorry, KIRO "Gold Club" sign-up req'd) or catch it in podcast later.

I won't be available to catch and relay the early segments today. Volunteers are welcome to step up and live-blog the show in comments below. (See for recap of yesterday's show with Rep. John Murtha.)

With the House in recess, and talk jock Dave Ross on vacation, Seattle's irrepressibly progressive Rep. Jim McDermott tries his hand at talk radio -- live today and all week, 9 to noon on KIRO-AM 710. (That's noon to 3pm Eastern time.)

Outside the KIRO listening area, you can stream the show live (sorry, KIRO "Gold Club" sign-up req'd), or catch it in podcast later. I'll do my best to keep a running live-blog here, and you can chime in with commentary, questions and suggestions.

Part of the Joy of Jim is that you never know what he's going to say. "I think the president would mislead the American people"? "You can make people do anything when they're afraid"? "One nation, indivisible"? How about "I thought that was the mute button"?

Befitting his Memorial Day debut, McDermott's first guest is Rep. Jack Murtha.

Just in: CBS news crew blow'd up in Baghdad. Paul Douglas and James Brolan dead, frequent KIRO correspondent Kimberly Dozier critical.

So much to talk about this week. 1-877-710-KIRO

A divided DC Circuit Court today upheld a lower court judgment for GOP Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) in his perpetual legal battle with Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA).

In a case with vast implications for freedom of speech, press, blogs and whistleblowers of every description, three conservative Republican members of the "Little Supreme Court" split 2-1.  

With failed SCOTUS nominee Judge Ginsburg concurring, Judge Randolph crafts a narrowly-reasoned, hair-splitting "fine print" opinion that labors to ensnare McDermott without utterly perforating the First Amendment.

In response, Judge Sentelle (yes, that Judge Sentelle) authors a BOOMING dissent (excerpts below the fold).

Core question: Can journalists, bloggers or anyone else repeat or republish information that originally became available via some breach of legal duty?