A month ago I wrote about a small group of social conservatives who announced that they would boycott CPAC if the new gay Republican organization GOProud were allowed to be a co-sponsor. CPAC announced that all were welcome and refused to rescind GOProud's co-sponsor status.

Today, Liberty University Law School withdrew as a co-sponsor because GOProud is still going. I couldn't find a non-partisan link to this so here's the story from the very right-leaning anti-gay OneNewsNow and here's the story from a very left-leaning gay rights blog. They are factually indistinguishable, but both heavily weight their tone by their respective positions.

It boiled down to this, from Liberty University Law School's Dean:

"Obviously as an exhibitor or participant, you don't necessarily have to think that everyone agrees with you, and some people might even work against you," Staver notes. "But as a co-sponsor, even though not everybody would have the same mission, not everyone would agree with the same tactics, and some would actually focus on economics whereas others might focus on social issues and others might focus on national defense -- the fact is they're all conservative in nature. You wouldn't expect, however, a co-sponsor to actively work to undermine another co-sponsor, and that is in fact what GOProud does."

Of more interest, I think is that Liberty Counsel, the group that initially started the brouhaha over GOProud's inclusion and vowed to boycott CPAC, is still going.

On a sorta-related note, I'm on my way this evening to a meeting of the Westside Republicans where Dan Blatt aka GayPatriotWest has been invited to talk about blogging and explain why Republican ideas are good for gays. Should be interesting.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:19 PM | Comments (321)
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Yeah, I don't know what the hell's going on myself.

This is the sort of post that makes me wish I had a third ball and a swimming pool full of tapioca.

Gruber is the MIT guy who was paid -- well paid: $392,000, jack! -- by the White House to run supposed analyses of the economic and other effects of the White House health care proposals.

But this paid relationship was never disclosed to the public. And to sell the White House's proposals, they kept offering up MIT professor Gruber's supposedly objective, third-party analysis. And the media ate it up.

Now the, ahem, special relationship has been revealed -- but no one in the media is talking about it at all.

How the White House Used Gruber's Work to Create Appearance of Broad Consensus

...

How did the feedback loop work? Well, take Gruber's appearance before the Senate HELP Committee on November 2, 2009, for which he used his microsimulation model to make calculations about small business insurance coverage. On the same day, Gruber released an analysis of the House health care bill, which he sent to Ezra Klein of the Washington Post. Ezra published an excerpt.

White House blogger Jesse Lee then promoted both Gruber's Senate testimony and Ezra Klein's article on the White House blog. "We thought it would all be a little more open and transparent if we went ahead and published what our focus will be for the day" he said, pointing to Gruber's "objective analysis." The "transparent" part apparently stopped when everyone got to Gruber's contractual relationship to the White House, which nobody in the three-hit triangle bothered to disclose.

But that was child's play compared to the effort that went into selling Gruber's analysis of the bill unveiled by the Senate on Wednesday, November 18. Two days later on Friday November 20, Gruber published a paper entitled "Impacts of the Senate High Cost Insurance Excise Tax on Wages: Updated," claiming that the excise tax would result in wage hikes of $234 billion from 2013 through 2019.

And it was off to the races.

The next day on the 21st, Ron Brownstein wrote in the Atlantic about Gruber's effusive praise for the cost-cutting measures in the bill: "Everything is in here....I can't think of anything I'd do that they are not doing in the bill. You couldn't have done better than they are doing," says Gruber.

On Monday the 23rd, the DNC was sending the Brownstein column around in its entirety...one of 71 emails they would send touting Gruber's work. It was also included in OFA's Monday Morning News Clips on BarackObama.com.

On Tuesday the 24th, OFA had another post touting the Brownstein article and citing Gruber as a "self-proclaimed skeptic on this stuff. The DNC sent that around, too. Mike Allen wrote that Obama had made the Brownstein article "mandatory reading" in the West Wing. TPM had the scoop that Rahm Emanuel told senior staffers "not to come back to the next day's meeting if they hadn't read the article."

David Brooks of the New York Times was not convinced that the Senate bill would be deficit neutral, so Peter Orszag pointed him to the Brownstein's "insightful article on health care costs" on the White House OMB blog that same day. It's hard to believe Orszag didn't know about Gruber's contract -- a search of the White House visitor logs indicates he met with Gruber on March 26, the day after his HHS contract was first awarded.

I'm stopping there, but she continues to document the White House-Gruber-Media love triangle. It goes on and on. White House pays a flack to write a report saying exactly what they want it to say, White House sends the report out to the media as objective verification, media publishes. And publishes. And publishes. And re-publishes and surreplublishes some more.

And now it's all exposed, and no one in the goddamn media has any questions about this at all.

Thanks to Sort of Mad Max.

Posted by: Ace at 03:26 PM | Comments (159)
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"You are damaging my reputation. You'll have to pay me even more now."

TV funnyman Jay Leno is "furious" with how NBC has treated him and Conan O'Brien and is reportedly considering walking away from the network.

A day after O'Brien threatened to walk away from NBC, Leno is considering doing the same.

"They have put Jay in a terrible position. It looks like he is the reason that Conan is now without a job. Jay is a great guy and it's not fair that due to NBC's stupidity he looks like the bad guy," a TV insider told the celebrity blog PopEater today.

"Plus, what happens when Jay does return to the 11:35 slot if his audience doesn't immediately follow? How can he possibly trust the same network that canceled Conan after only seven months?"

A Leno spokesman denied the report.

He does have a point: He didn't engineer this. NBC did. But everyone's accusing him of screwing over a, ahem, competitor/rival again. (As if that's the worst thing in the world.)

Posted by: Ace at 03:01 PM | Comments (106)
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Palin on Glenn Beck right now, for the full hour. She's the Gatekeeper, he's the Keymaster, and there is no Dana only Zool.

Paul Begala just suffered a spontaneous prolapsed rectum.

Online: FoxNews' streaming video.

Posted by: Ace at 01:04 PM | Comments (363)
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So sayeth the National Enquirer.

Actually, he didn't sleep with this woman, she says; he just hit on her for four days running.

Cheating killed his political career, destroyed his reputation and left his marriage hanging by a thread - but John Edwards has done IT again! The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively that the philandering ex-senator embarked on a "sex-and-booze bender" after what appeared to be a marriage-ending blowout fight with his cancer-stricken wife Elizabeth.

While still publicly not admitting paternity of his love child - who turns 2 in February - the disgraced former presidential candidate shocked eyewitnesses by recently spending several consecutive nights trawling bars in search of women.

Before booting her shameless husband from their home after Christmas, Elizabeth screamed at John that she was "finally signing" the divorce papers she had her lawyers draw up last year during a previous battle over his relationship with Rielle Hunter, the mother of his baby.

Edwards fled to the couple's vacation home on Figure Eight Island near Wilmington, N.C. - and attempted to bed a female bartender as well as bar patrons young enough to be his daughter, say shocked witnesses.

In a bombshell exclusive interview with The ENQUIRER, bartender Stephanie Breshears revealed that Edwards repeatedly tried to get her to go back to his house for sex. The 34-year-old divorced mother-of-two said Edwards hit on her "for four consecutive nights" at the local Kornerstone Bistro, where she works.

"I think he's scum," Stephanie told The ENQUIRER. "He was definitely looking to pick up women when he came in here - and he wanted me to go back to his house."

Thanks to EdwardR.

Posted by: Ace at 12:45 PM | Comments (115)
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At this point the death and damage is pretty much beyond comprehension.

Haitian President René Préval issued an urgent appeal for his earthquake-shattered nation Wednesday, saying he had been stepping over dead bodies and hearing the cries of those trapped under the rubble of the national Parliament.

Préval, in his first interview since the earthquake, said the country was destroyed and he believed there were thousands of people dead but was reluctant to provide a number.

``We have to do an evaluation,'' Préval said, describing the scene as ``unimaginable.''

``Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed,'' he said. ``There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.''

The U.N. said casualties were ``vast'' but impossible to calculate.

The International Red Cross said a third of Haiti's nine million people may need emergency aid and that it would take a day or two for a clear picture of the damage to emerge, the Associated Press reported.

Obviously the US military is going to play a significant role in relief efforts. Right now there's talk of sending the aircraft carrier USS Vinson and an amphibious assault ship to the island. The biggest issue will be fresh water as well as a large fleet of helicopters to ferry supplies, especially to hard to reach areas. Given that reports are that most if not all hospitals are destroyed, I wouldn't be surprised to see the DoD move in the hospital ship USNS Comfort.

Once chilling note...some early estimates are that upwards of 500,000 people may be dead. That would represent 5% of the population.

Even at half that.....

Oh yeah, idiot extraordinaire Pat Robertson knows why so much tragedy has befallen the Haitian people...they made a pact with the Devil.

Posted by: DrewM at 12:28 PM | Comments (141)
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Coakley, in the Boston Herald:

“I do know that the Scott Brown stalkers who have followed me around and the people at that press conference ... were incredibly aggressive about trying to get in my face,” Coakley said. “I didn’t see what happened so I can’t say.”

In response:

Huh. You know, if you're going to stretch the truth, it's best not to get caught on camera looking right at the event you claimed not to see.

H/t: The Daily Caller

Update - Update from effinayright in the comments:

McCormack just said on Howie Carr's show that Coakley didn't actually see him being pushed to the ground, that she was about five feet ahead of him when it happened, that the photo shows her turning back to look.

THEN he said he's not thinking of suing Meehan.

Nah, nothing to see there.

Posted by: Slublog at 11:59 AM | Comments (160)
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Upper right corner, "Listen Live."

Thanks to LoopyD.

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (72)
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They don't want to fire him. So are they demanding this to induce him to quit, supposedly of his own accord?

Senior Republican National Committee members are preparing a motion demanding that RNC Chairman Michael S. Steele cancel promotional events for the book he wrote as chairman, The Washington Times has learned.

The proposed motion, to be presented to the 168-member RNC at its annual winter meeting in Honolulu at the end of this month, also would direct him to donate to the RNC and Republican candidates all proceeds from the book.

That is what you call an unacceptable offer. (And yes, I agree, Steele should not have written this book, especially without disclosing it.)

But the demand here is so unacceptable it's pretty clearly, to me at least, a passive-aggressive request that he resign.

If they want him to go they should just say so. This John Edwards style "why didn't you come to me like an f'n' man" stuff isn't fooling anyone.

Also, the PR fallout they think they'd get -- the first black RNC chair fired storyline -- is like a three day story.

Posted by: Ace at 09:10 AM | Comments (381)
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But most of this is bluster. Same in any negotiation -- both parties have an incentive to claim they're willing to walk away from the table with no deal.

Congressional Democrats face “serious problems” in getting a healthcare reform bill to the president’s desk, according to a House panel chairman.

“We’ve got to get a bill that’s more compatible to the House,” Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday. “Forget all the other questions. Two-hundred-eighteen [votes] is the most important issue we are dealing with… We have serious problems on both sides of the Capitol. Serious problems.”

Rangel’s comments come a day after Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said health reform is “hanging by a thread.”

Check this out:

Financing the roughly $900 billon cost of the bill stands as possibly the biggest obstacle to final action given how far apart the House and Senate are. Labor unions and their allies among House Democrats remain strongly opposed to the excise tax on high-cost health insurance plans. Obama met with labor leaders Monday and Pelosi sat down with some of the same leaders on Tuesday before gathering her leadership team and her caucus together to seek a way forward.

Although the House bill eschewed the excise tax and liberals have decried it, the provisions in the Senate bill appeal to the centrist contingent of the Democratic caucus as an alternative to an income tax increase. Some health experts say the excise tax will lead to reduced spending on healthcare services.

"I definitely think thereÂ’s increasing support in the caucus for some kind of a tax on plans that executives and wealthy people have," said Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.). "This is one of the few cost-containment measures in the bill," he said, echoing the argument made by Obama and senior Senate Democrats. Polis last year successfully pushed for the surtax in the House bill to be lifted to the millionaire level.

Despite the dissatisfaction among many House Democrats with Obama's stance in favor of the excise tax, a solution could be emerging as the president attempts to work out a compromise with organized labor.

Raising the threshold, currently at $8,000 for individuals and $23,000 for families, could be a key component of a revised version of the policy. In addition, Democrats are looking at other modifications, such as exempting existing collective bargaining agreements negotiated by unions and other tweaks to prevent a revolt by labor groups and provide cover to pro-union House Democrats.

Ah. Union-negotiated health care plans would be exempted from the excise tax. How novel -- buying off a specific constituency. This is only the thirtieth time they've done this in the bill.

Let's just cut to the chase and make it official that only Republicans or conservative-leaning independents have to pay higher taxes or have their health-care rationed. Because that is what they are attempting, after all, with all these exclusions for protected allies.

Rangel says no bill until February, which isn't much comfort, as that's less than three weeks away.

Hopefully Brown will win and end this catastrophe.

It might be that Democrats actually want that to happen. At this point they might prefer to lose, so long as they can blame Republicans.

Posted by: Ace at 08:57 AM | Comments (60)
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