Sarah Palin better have a back-up plan. A new Washington Post poll shows 60% of Americans say she's unqualified to be President.

[H]er favorability rating remains stuck well below what it was when she first emerged on the national scene at last year's Republican convention....if the goal is the White House, public opinion is now tilted against the idea: asked if they would consider voting for Palin in 2012, 53 percent say they would not.

A CNN poll shows similar numbers. (Added: Same for a new CBS poll.) I don't think she's serious about running for anything. She appears to be into making money -- and sales from her book are her main income right now. I just wish Levi would stop helping her. Today he's threatening a custody battle, which will only keep the family in the news. Sarah is not an Internet buzz.

And more Sarah book fallacies, this time on the timeline of when the McCain campaign knew about her daughter's pregnancy. [More...]

Via DougJ, I'm pretty sure Mark Shields is joking about his desire for "manly men"

Say no more. Know what I mean?

Open thread insinuated here.

Think Progress reports that Sarah Palin has weighed in on her Facebook page decrying the Obama Administration's decision to try the 9/11 suspects in federal court. She laments that criminal defense attorneys will use "technicalities" to try to get them off.

Criminal defense attorneys will now enter into delaying tactics and other methods in the hope of securing some kind of win for their “clients.” The trial will afford Mohammed the opportunity to grandstand and make use of his time in front of the world media to rally his disgusting terrorist cohorts.

...It is crucially important that Americans be made aware that the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks may walk away from this trial without receiving just punishment because of a “hung jury” or from any variety of court room technicalities. If we are stuck with this terrible Obama Administration decision, I, like most Americans, hope that Mohammed and his co-conspirators are convicted. Hang ‘em high.

So lawyers who protect constitutional rights are engaging in "courtroom technicalities." And there's no need to wait for a verdict, in Palin's view, she's ready to "hang 'em high." [More...]

Politico:

"There is no way on God's green Earth that the Stupak amendment would pass muster in a budget reconciliation bill," says Bill Hoagland, an insurance lobbyist who was the top GOP aide on the Senate Budget Committee for two decades and served as then-Majority Leader Bill Frist's budget guru. Democratic budget experts in Congress and the administration who asked not to be quoted on the record agree with Hoagland's assessment.

[. . .] If Reid chooses to go the reconciliation route, he can rely on the rules to quash Stupak's amendment, budget experts say. Under the arcane rules of the process, every provision must meet a strict, multi-pronged test -- known as the Byrd Rule -- or it can be dispensed with on a point of order that takes 60 votes to overcome. [. . .] While the Byrd Rule would sharply limit which parts of their health care plan could survive in a reconciliation bill, Stupak's language would be a victim, too, experts say. "It would violate (the) Byrd Rule, period," Hoagland said.

Another reason to favor reconciliation for health care reform.

Speaking for me only

Via mcjoan, Jacob Hacker and Diane Archer explain:

The public plan is [. . .] critical to reform as a cost and quality benchmark, one that is particularly crucial if private premiums accelerate upwards. The insurance industry has threatened that premiums will skyrocket if an individual mandate is not tough enough. It may be an idle threat, but if a final reform bill ends up looking more like the Senate Finance bill than the House bill, it might not be. In most local markets, competition is likely to be anemic, and regulation of insurers inadequate. There will be little to prevent insurers from raising rates as they have threatened.

Having a public plan in place should also help keep down the rate of growth of health insurance premiums over time. Over the past twenty years, the public Medicare plan has had a substantially slower rate of growth than private insurance. The CBO report on the House bill states that private insurers are better at controlling utilization than a public plan would be. But, to date private insurers have failed to prove their value at cost control and demonstrated they have strong incentives to delay and deny needed care rather than drive efficiencies in the system. [MORE . . ]

Damned stupid imo:

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

As Atrios says, "Good. Someone else who [cares] can run them with federal tax dollars."

Speaking for me only

I believe that we are at the threshold of a fundamental change in our popular economic thought, that in the future we are going to think less about the producer and more about the consumer. Do what we may have to do to inject life into our ailing economic order, we cannot make it endure for long unless we can bring about a wiser, more equitable distribution of the national income. [. . .] It is toward that objective that we must move if we are to profit by our recent experiences. [. . .] True leadership calls for the setting forth of the objectives and the rallying of public opinion in support of these objectives.

[. . .] The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach. We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely. We need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer. We need the courage of the young. Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you. May every one of us be granted the courage, the faith and the vision to give the best that is in us to that remaking!

FDR's words in 1932 ring true again today. The time for bold leadership is now.

Speaking for me only

Reuters:

Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg, formerly of Merrill Lynch, thinks the unemployment rate is going to at least 12 percent, maybe even 13 percent. Optimists, Rosenberg explains, underestimate the incredible damage done to the labor market during this downturn. And even before this downturn, the economy was not generating jobs in huge numbers. [MORE . . .]

CNN:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is considering a provision to raise payroll taxes for the wealthy as part of a health care bill, a Democratic source told CNN. [. . .] Reid is considering an increase in the Medicare tax for individuals with income exceeding $250,000. The current Medicare deduction is 1.4 percent of income. The idea is an alternative to the Senate Finance Committee's proposal to tax so-called "Cadillac" health insurance plans that offer broad coverage at a much higher-than-average price.

The House proposal would fund health care reform through an income surtax of 5.4% on income above $500k. The House proposal is utterly superior to the rumored Reid plan, because it would apply to all income above $500K (including capital gains and dividends), not just payroll income. Clearly, Reid is trying to co-opt the Democratic Senators who make it their life's work to protect the rich (think Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln and the estate tax.) That said, Reid's proposal is eminently superior to the excise tax preferred by the Village Wonks and contained in BaucusCare.

Speaking for me only

Has the Media tired of Joe Lieberman's antics? We know the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt, who engages in the same type of dishonest antics (heck even Ezra Klein called him out) will never tire of him, but Gail Collins writes today:

Somewhere between the time when it seemed as if Olympia Snowe was writing the health care plan and the moment when Ben Nelson grabbed the reins, it looked as if the bill was being written by Joe Lieberman. I don’t want to suggest that he is not still the central figure in this whole crisis because that could cause him to race over to Fox News and issue a new set of threats.

(Emphasis supplied.) Lieberman is a punchline now. But the hard question is for Democratic leadership - will they allow obstructionists to block health care reform? Or will they be willing to use reconciliation? Time will tell.

This is an Open Thread.

So sayeth the WaPo's Steven Pearlstein:

[A]t the risk of sounding naive, I'd like to offer a novel idea for changing the legislative dynamic, restoring majority rule to the legislative process and keeping health reform alive: Debate it on the Senate floor. That's right, forget about spending another six weeks searching for those elusive 60 votes to break a filibuster, going back and forth with weak-kneed centrists like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu who can't seem to decide what they really want, or self-righteous egotists like Joe Lieberman, who thinks he can call all the shots. If they have suggestions for improving the bill, let them do it the old-fashioned way: propose an amendment on the floor and see if they can get 49 other senators to agree.

To get things started, it will be necessary to put Vice President Biden in his rightful constitutional place as presiding officer, where he should make clear he'll do whatever is necessary to restore majority rule to the Senate, even as he jealously protects the rights of the minority to blabber on as long as it wants and offer whatever amendments it thinks necessary. And if that means overturning some outmoded precedent laid down by some dead predecessor, so be it.

Apparently, not all of the Village is enamored of the shenanigans of Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Evan Bayh, etc.

Adam Bonin set up this Act Blue page for 20 Democratic representatives in competitive districts who voted No on Stupak and Yes on the public option. This is "moderate centrism" you can support imo. The representatives were:

AZ-01 Kirkpatrick, Ann
AZ-05 Mitchell, Harry
AZ-08 Giffords, Gabrielle
KS-03 Moore, Dennis
NY-19 Hall, John
FL-08 Grayson, Alan
MI-07 Schauer, Mark
NY-24 Arcuri, Mike
WI-08 Kagen, Steve
CA-11 McNerney, Jerry
IL-08 Bean, Melissa
IL-11 Halvorson, Debbie
IL-14 Foster, Bill
MN-01 Walz, Tim
NY-23 Owens, Bill
NH-01 Shea-Porter, Carol
NY-01 Bishop, Timothy
OH-15 Kilroy, Mary Jo
OR-05 Schrader, Kurt
NV-03 Titus, Dina