ICYMI: @MichaelEDyson ripping the skin off Anti-Gay Black Preachers (VIDEO)

Metaphorically speaking, of course. But if anyone's deserved a rhetorical thrashing, it's been black preachers.

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The President's Town Hall at University of Maryland, College Park (VIDEO)

If you're going to hold a relatively impromptu Town Hall, might as well be right down the street in College Park, Maryland where I was raised, and where I went to College.  GO TERPS!


(More importantly, Go Terps, and try not to get any Scholarships voided.)



But Ritchie Coliseum?  Seriously?  We couldn't do better for our President than that rat-trap?  We couldn't get him into the Comcast Center (where he has spoken before)?  What?  Cole Field House isn't still standing?

You'll also note that the first question, in fact, a lot of the questions, had nothing to do with the Debt Ceiling.

Man, someone's really running for President in 2016

A two-fer from Martin O'Malley:

The ratings agency Moody's is threatening to reduce the rating of five states with AAA credit (along with the rating of the federal government) if Congress fails to raise the debt limit in early August. Now the governor of one of those states -- Maryland's Martin O'Malley -- is publicly singling out the Republicans in Congress who are preventing swift action on the debt limit.

"All of this brinksmanship and these threats of the dinosaur wing of the Republican party led by Eric Cantor to drive us needlessly into a default have impacted confidence I think throughout the country," O'Malley told me in a Tuesday interview. "It's impacted consumer confidence, it's impacted investor confidence, it's impacted the confidence of small businesses who are the backbone of this economy and who need to hire again. In that respect it's already had an effect. The closer we get to this deadline, and the more immediate ramifications that has for those of us that are going out into the bond market."

Remember, he also took a big step out of Andrew Cuomo's shadow for 2016.

Someone's running for President in 2016...

At some point I'm going to make a blogpost featuring names of people to know, what their current job is, and where they've got their eye.

One of my entries as going to be: Martin O'Malley, currently Governor of Maryland, and possible 2016 Democratic Nominee for President of the United States.

Today's announcement kinda sealed that deal.  After all, another entry would have to be Andrew Cuomo, currently Governor of New York, and possible 2016 Democratic Nominee for President of the United States.

Why I still have very mixed-to-bad feelings about Michelle Rhee.

For every article about Michelle Rhee that I save in Evernote that's positive, there's at least one that's negative. In my gut, for me personally, I think she's a little too fascinated with herself.  (A chronic case of Ed Schultz disease, and in this case it's not a TV Show that's gone to her head, but a whole movie).

I think one of the points in this Slate piece summarized this doubt nicely:

The fact that Rhee is a hard-working Ivy League graduate makes the elite press respect her as one of their own. And Rhee's flair for the dramatic makes her irresistible. In his well-written and highly favorable biography, The Bee Eater, Richard Whitmire recounts that as a teacher in Baltimore, Rhee grabbed the attention of her students one day when she swatted a bee flying around the classroom and promptly swallowed it. As a chancellor, Rhee once told a film crew, "I'm going to fire somebody in a little while. Do you want to see that?"

If she's not careful (and Michelle Rhee often isn't), she can come off as..."Hey, if we just treat these brown kids rougher, they'll do better with less money!"

Why?  Because you say so?

I don't think Teacher's Unions are to blame for what's happening in Education.  I think it boils down to what usually ails progress in America, our fellow Americans.

We still keep falling for this bull@#$% about a free lunch.  We demand first class Government, with Third World Tax Rates.  We want the best, as long as we don't have to pay for it...ever.  We want to do things on the cheap, and are somehow shocked (shocked I tell you) that the kiddies grades and test scores are suffering.

Only we are that myopic, and Michelle Rhee didn't help.

At the same time, I think that Michelle Rhee's right about the problems we face.  I do think its too hard to fire problem Teachers.  I personally don't have problem with merit-based pay, but if we're going to do that, we really need to start paying Teachers like Doctors or Lawyers (Public Universities do it at the collegiate level).  And the notion of a Teacher spending even a fraction of their own meager pay to cover for supplies or books is obscene.

Still, I thought this paragraph really encapsulated my doubts about her, or at the very least, the rhetoric that blasts Teacher's Unions:

Most education researchers, though, recognize that Rhee's simple vision of heroic teachers saving American education is a fantasy, and that her dramatic, often authoritarian, style is ill-suited for education. If the ability to fire bad teachers and pay great teachers more were the key missing ingredient in education reform, why haven't charter schools, 88% of which are nonunionized and have that flexibility, lit the education world on fire? Why did the nation's most comprehensive study of charter schools, conducted by Stanford University researchers and sponsored by pro-charter foundations, conclude that charters outperformed regular public schools only 17 percent of the time, and actually did significantly worse 37 percent of the time? Why don't Southern states, which have weak teachers' unions, or none at all, outperform other parts of the country?

Steny Hoyer: With friends like these...who needs Republicans?

Truth be told, I grew up in Steny Hoyer's Congressional District (the Maryland 5th...the fightin' 5th!). I can actually remember when it was Gladys Noon-Spellman's district, but that was a loooong time ago. He's always been a mixed bag of allegedly pragmatic politics, but this week has been particularly embarassing for those of us who voted for the man.

First, he stepped forth (on Fox News for pity's sake) and called Stephen Colbert's testimony before the House Judiciary committee's subcommittee on Immigration "an embarrassment".

"I think his testimony was not appropriate," said Hoyer, during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday." "I think it was an embarrassment for Mr. Colbert more than the House."

"You asked me, Chris [Wallace] whether the testimony was appropriate," he added. "I think it was not appropriate."

Really Steny? You think this was embarrassing?

I like talking about people who don’t have any power, and it seems like one of the least powerful people in the United States are migrant workers who come in and do our work, but don’t have any rights as a result. And yet, we still ask them to come here, and at the same time, ask them to leave. And that’s an interesting contradiction to me, and um… You know, “whatsoever you did for the least of my brothers,” and these seemed like the least of my brothers, right now. A lot of people are “least brothers” right now, with the economy so hard, and I don’t want to take anyone’s hardship away from them or diminish it or anything like that. But migrant workers suffer, and have no rights.

Yeah, I'm sure Stephen Colbert wishes he had that one back.

Not your finest moment, Steny.

And in a attempteed one-man filibuster almost as strange and stoopid as Chris Dodd's one-man crusade to keep Elizabeth Warren from heading up the Consumer Protection Agency, Steny seems to be hell-bent on preventing a vote in the House on Middle Class tax cuts.

Did I mention the Speaker of the House (above him) and the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (also a Marylander) are both in favor of holding a vote these cuts?

Steny? Not so much?

Or is this some bold move to garner support among the Corporate Dem set so that after a November Bloodbath, he can pivot their support into becoming House Minority Leader or Speaker?

UPDATE 10:08am, Pacific: Fingers crossed, but the Judy Chu (aka, the woman who asked Stephen the pertinent question in the video) represents the San Gabriel Valley and I will hopefully get a chance to meet her at this Sunday's Oktoberfest in Pasadena!

Figured.

Lefty bloggers, such as myself, have long distrusted Associated Press, particularly in their D.C. Political coverage. The fact that Ron Fournier is the Washington Bureau Chief is No. 1 on our list of complaints.

So when AP ran this headline, I wasn't the least bit surprised:

Hoyer: Comprehensive health bill may be no go

Right.

This after Pelosi saying, that we can do this, after the House Whip says, we'll get more votes for this than the original, suddenly Steny is the one acting squeamish??

Apparently, not so:

Hoyer [Spokesperson] Stephanie Lundberg (SPOX for future reference) insists his remarks were taken out of context, and that he spent more time expressing hope for comprehensive reform:

"Majority Leader Hoyer spoke at great length about why a comprehensive approach is the best way to affect the health insurance reforms the American people want versus incremental steps. He made clear that remains the goal."

DNC: It's on... (VIDEO)

Filmed at the College Park rally, on Thursday.



There's also a new DNC Website called "Call 'Em Out".

MSNBC: The President at the University of Marlyand (VIDEO)

Oh yeah...my Alma Mater.

He wished us good luck in football (against the MTSU Blue Raiders for pity's sake), and said he might rub Testudo's nose.

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Forgive the Low-Def feed...apparently...someone at Maryland didn't spring for HD Cameras.

Any comments there, Dad?

UPDATE: 3:54pm Pacific: This is from the Washington Post story, which explains the President's momentary "what's going on there" confusion in the first half of the speech:

The crowd was overwhelmingly friendly to the president -- Obama interrupted his speech to reply, "I love you too," to one person in the audience who had called out to him -- but one heckler caused Obama to briefly pause and ask what the commotion was. The protester was in the back of the arena, however, and the president continued talking. When security officers escorted the man out, the rest of the audience stood and cheered.

No explanation as to why MSNBC chose to edit the speech with that dissolve in the middle.

CNN: "In some form, a public option will be available..."

As the sausage continues to get made, we get this from my former Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-MD):

As Democrats met Friday in hope of achieving consensus on one of the biggest sticking points in the health-care battle, the House majority leader predicted final legislation will include a "public option."

The question, Rep. Steny Hoyer told CNN, is what form it will be in. "We'll have to see how that legislative process goes. The public option is a priority for us, it's our objective, and we think that in some form, a public option will be available," he said on CNN's "American Morning."

In case you doubted it... (PHOTO)

TPM: Maryland Man detained by the Secret Service...

From TPM (and AP):

The Secret Service is investigating a man who authorities said held a sign reading "Death to Obama" outside a town hall meeting on health-care reform in western Maryland.

The sign also read, "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids," referring to the first name of President Barack Obama's wife, said Washington County Sheriff's Capt. Peter Lazich.

Lazich said deputies detained the unidentified, 51-year-old man near the entrance to Hagerstown Community College about 1 p.m. Wednesday after getting calls from a number of people attending the meeting held by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. Obama was not at the meeting.