• FOR THOSE MOURNING THE DEATH OF THE PUBLIC OPTION: Here, read this thing by our old flame Nate Silver, who basically argues that the fate of a public competitor to private insurance was always pretty precarious. At any rate the poor old public option is probably not worth saving at this point, lest we throw out the proverbial baby with “half a loaf” of bath water. Nate Silver has turned into a pragmatist sellout just like his old man (Barack Obama). [FiveThirtyEight]

Richard Wolffe, the formerly esteemed Newsweek journalist who everybody hates now because he works at the PR outfit of a couple of former Bush shills when he’s not pushing his Obama hagiography or playing Keith Olbermann on the teevee, has another book to sell! Would you like to buy it? MORE »

INTERN RILEY GOES LEGIT: Look, he’s writing for the esteemed Internet publication Matt Taibbi’s Still So Mad At Goldman Sachs. His beat: college and whoring, two topics upon which he is a National Authority. Check it out! [True/Slant: The Diploma Mill]

The newly installed stooge/senator from Minnesota, veteran circus performer Al Franken, had to wait, what, eight months to assume office? And during that time he frittered away many an hour in court, wasting the People’s Money on the frivolous lawsuit that was eventually decided in his favor. Norm Coleman warned him from the very beginning that The People would not look kindly on this frivolity and wasteful spending! Which is why it’s funny that Minnesota’s Republican Party has had to cut Franken a check for $96,000 to cover lawsuit-related fees. MORE »

If there’s two things our president loves, it’s detention camps and torture. So, obviously, he just used the whole “I will shut down that terrible den of Cuban shame” line to get into office, knowing that once he got in he would stop at nothing to open a thousand Guantanamos all over the Atlantic. We hear this speech he’s about to give, allegedly “explaining” his recent “decisions,” is really going to be one of these namby-pamby “on the one hand, but on the other hand” type deals that he loves so much. Let’s WATCH and LEARN. MORE »

This National Council for a New America, what do they do exactly besides hold coffee klatsches in Alexandria and inflame the ire of conservative voters? Who knows, but they’ve sucked Newt Gingrich into their little borg, which means they probably have spare wives and free donuts on hand. [The Fix]

Former Bush spokesmodels who do not know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was, finding work with reptilian Cheetos-addicted statisticians: it’s a Microtrend! Dana Perino recently joined this elite demographic when she was hired on at Mark Penn’s PR outfit to “communicate” things for “clients,” who include Lucifer and the reanimated corpse of Kenneth Lay. [Wall Street Journal]

You know what is weird? When the journalists who have been objectively reporting your newses start taking jobs with the new president, and you begin to wonder if maybe they were lying to you all the time with their biased “facts” and “analysis.” It’s weird until you consider that nobody in media has jobs anymore, so of course if Barack Obama says “Hey would you like to tout the benefits of light rail for me?” you will jump at that in a heartbeat. MORE »

Dagnabbit we were assured in no uncertain terms that Barack Obama was an unrepentant Marxist who would “spread the wealth around” and socialize medicine, plus other valuable American industries such as porn and sports teams. Everybody was going to win/get rich with virtually zero effort, except for the hard-working white Americans we would enslave for the Cause! Obama rode this wave of pro-Socialist sentiment to become President of our Second Great Depression. Only now have many proud netizens realized that our beloved Muslim Marxist was actually just some lousy centrist moderate type with a sober, pragmatic approach to governing and no intention of socializing anything, not even Major League Baseball. MORE »

The past week has been so insane and frantic — thanks, Ashley Todd! — that we never got around to mentioning the daily endorsements of “That One” by myriad Republican politicians and power-brokers. So let’s run down the list, and maybe even figure out what it all means, at this late stage in the game. MORE »

Everybody expected Colin Powell to endorse Barack Obama today, on the teevee, and guess what? Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama! Considering Powell’s professional and political service, it’s maybe not so surprising that he’d prefer the sane, thoughtful Obama to the unhinged nut McCain. After all, Powell had his happiest time in Washington working for the first President Bush, and the first Dick Cheney, too! (That was the Cheney who, while still a racist right-wing dick, was still involved enough in reality to know you don’t go topple Saddam and occupy Iraq.) Anyway, enough of the “analysis.” Let’s get to the Webnuts and their usual response to another Republican bigwig endorsing that African Communist Nazi City Slicker! MORE »