The President's Complete speech from Minneapolis on Gun Control (VIDEO)

Much shorter speech than advertised. Only 14 minutes or so.

First the introduction:




And the speech itself:



This was really a low key speech. Even the audience seemed off. Though the mention of Todd Jones as ATF Chief seemed to get a rise out of them.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) explains the Occupy Wall Street Movement (VIDEO)

Joe Scarborough: People who think Bachmann can win are "too stupid to run a Slurpee Machine in Des Moines"... (VIDEO)

Huffington Post makes you watch the whole clip, but Fort McHenry cuts right to the good stuff:

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Slightly off topic, the look on Halperin's face is priceless.

For those of you who miss Al Franken's former Radio Show...

Great catch by Ryan J. Reilly over at Talking Points Memo. Al used to do this stuff on the air, and he was going against a tape of someone saying something.

This, is on the record, with the joker sitting right there in front of him.



Release. Rotation. Splash. Nothin' but net.

Jerry Seinfeld's Comedy Repression Therapy... (VIDEO)

By the way, was Jerry getting any Medicaid dollars for this appearance? Just wondering, because isn't that the real problem with Marcus Bachmann's clinic?  Federal money for what's essentially a religious exercise in doing nothing?

The Daily Show - Field of Dongs
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And...

The Daily Show - Comedy Repression Therapy
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Please Keith Ellison! Don't Hurt 'em! (VIDEO)

And yes, that was an M.C. Hammer reference:

In case you missed the video of the Metrodome Roof Collapsing... (VIDEO)

It's eerily beautiful...only because no one was hurt when it went down.



Between this and the Dallas Practice Facility collapse (where someone was severely injured), maybe its time to realize these Inflata-roofs or "Steel" structures don't really work in areas with the potential for inclement weather...which would be everywhere.

Also, so the Gophers got a new Stadium...the Twinkies got a new Stadium...and the Vikes get what?  Bupkus?

Remember what I said about Tim Pawlenty?

Never mind:

Although Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) on Tuesday signed an executive order aimed at keeping the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act out of the state, he has also approved a budget that encourages state agencies to apply for grants funded by that very same health care law.

Pawlenty's executive order explicitly states, "All executive branch departments and agencies are directed that no application shall be submitted to the federal government in connection with requests for grant funding for programs and demonstration projects deriving from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("PPACA" or "the Act") (Pub.L. 111-148) unless otherwise required by law, or approved by the office of the Governor."

But in Minnesota's Special Session Budget, signed by Pawlenty on May 21, the state health commissioner is directed to apply for grants from this exact law:

Do as I say, not as I said to get a couple of headlines a couple days ago in the interests of my faltering Presidential ambitions.

And yes, I know I just ripped Huffington Post and quoted something from Huffington Post in the space of two postings. I am just Mr. Consistency!

The Republican Con-job on Health Care

As expected a number of states are suing the Federal Government over the “Individual Mandate” in the Affordable Care Act (aka Health Care Reform), all while they work very hard to collect the money they're suing to...keep from...having to take??

Anybody get all that?

The Conservative position is simple. The Individual Mandate makes people buy Health Insurance, and people shouldn’t have to be forced to buy Health Insurance if they don’t want to.

Here’s the problem with that notion. One of the most popular aspects of Health Care Reform is the provision that forbids Insurance Companies denying you coverage based on Pre-Existing Conditions. This provision is so popular that even Conservobots who voted against the bill say that this is the one thing they agreed with. If the Democrats had just gotten rid of the Individual Mandate, we could have voted for Health Care Reform.

Of course, that’s bull@#$%. One of the hard lessons people learned in the last few years is you cannot have one without the other.


Paul Krugman from back in March:

So what’s the answer? Americans overwhelmingly favor guaranteeing coverage to those with pre-existing conditions — but you can’t do that without pursuing broad-based reform. To make insurance affordable, you have to keep currently healthy people in the risk pool, which means requiring that everyone or almost everyone buy coverage. You can’t do that without financial aid to lower-income Americans so that they can pay the premiums. So you end up with a tripartite policy: elimination of medical discrimination, mandated coverage, and premium subsidies.


Or to put it another way, you end up with something like the health care plan Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusetts in 2006, and the very similar plan the House either will or won’t pass in the next few days. Comprehensive reform is the only way forward.

Of course, as you remember, the reform was passed, and Republicans are campaigning to repeal it.

It’s very simple. Health Care is a complicated machine. Piecemeal reform isn't going to cut it (as Dr. Krugman said). If you wanna do X, then you have to do Y. If you don’t, costs spiral out of control and soon nobody will have Health Insurance (see, Insurance Death Spiral).

Which brings me to Tim Pawlenty, Governor of Minnesota, and potential Republican Candidate for President in 2012, doing his damnest to make it impossible to carry his own state.


From Steve Benen:

As implementation of the Affordable Care Act proceeds, the law extends subsidies to states to help early retirees -- folks who leave the workforce before they're eligible for Medicare, but who still want to maintain their coverage. States led by Republicans may claim to hate the new law, but they're nevertheless seeking the funds -- even many of the states trying to kill the ACA in court.

In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) is taking a different route. The increasingly right-wing governor, desperate to pander to the party's base in advance of his presidential campaign, issued an order to state officials yesterday, demanding that they not seek grants through the new law, even if the funding would help the people of his state.

Keep in mind, this isn't some kind of opt-out scheme -- the law still applies to Minnesota, just like every other state. This is a scheme whereby funds are made available to states, and Pawlenty is demanding that Minnesota not seek those resources, at least for now.

Let’s call it what it is. Tim Pawlenty is screwing over the uninsured in his state to burnish his Conservative Credintials in advance of the 2012 race.

What a guy!

Needless to say Doctors in Minnesota are pissed off:

The heads of Minnesota's most influential medical associations -- which nearly always keep political matters at arms' length -- issued a sharp rebuke. "The governor's decision just doesn't make sense for Minnesotans," the Minnesota Council of Health Plans, the Minnesota Hospital Association and the Minnesota Medical Association said in a joint statement late Tuesday.

But not all Doctors are pissed off, according to Jonathan Chait. Actually, they are pissed off, but for them, not for you:

Hal Scherz, a doctor and president of the right-wing lobby "Docs4PatientCare" writes in today's Wall Street Journal that he and members of his group are posting letters in their waiting rooms warning patients of the horrors of the Affordable Care Act and urging repeal.

This is all real simple.

Republicans don’t give a rats ass about deficits or future costs. Period. All they care about is representing the Corporate Master who has given them a lot of campaign cash. They don’t care about the Health of the Health Care System. It’s broken (but starting to mend thanks to HCR), a fifth of our Citizens can’t access it, but screw ‘em. They should have been born to richer, whiter households. We don’t like President Obama anyway, and this seems as good an excuse as any to rail against him, even if it means lying through our teeth to get the job done.

If you fall for this, America, you'll fall for anything.

We’re about to learn a lot about America in the coming months. I maintain my position that the problem with the country isn’t its Polticans, but its people.

Not necessarily a campaign preview (VIDEO)

One of the things Democrats are doing very well in the run-up to the mid-terms is running local races. "All politics is local" after all. And while Democrats are doing that, Republicans are running a national campaign against the President, against the Speaker and against Harry Reid.

So, despite the fact that I think this is a good commercial, I don't know how much we're going to be seeing it in the future with other Democratic candidates.

This helps...Part 3

This has been a freakin' busy day, mostly because the State of the Union tends to produce a lot of news around it.

Screw Mary Landrieu, Al Franken has got it goin' on:

"I think we all thought this gathering today would be a celebration," he said. "Well, it may not be a celebration, but it's not a funeral either," he said.

From that moment, Franken called for those present to keep fighting for the cause and not to give up so close to victory.

"The opponents of reform have found their bumper sticker, their slogan, their rallying cry, it's one word: No. You can read that on a bumper," Franken told the members of Families USA, drawing laughs. "Our bumper sticker has — it's just way too many words. And it says, "'Continued on next bumper sticker.'"

While Franken acknowledged there were some parts of the Senate bill he does not agree with, he said that called for the House to pass it, with the understanding that Congress would then "fix" the bill through the process of budget reconciliation which only needs a simple majority.

"We have to stop letting perfect be the enemy of the merely very good. And I believe that the bill we passed in the Senate is a very good foundation on which to build," he said. He highlighted several "very good" aspects of the Senate bill, including his medical-loss ratio provisions, which would require that 85 percent of premiums be spent on actual health care costs, not profits and overhead.

Franken acknowledged that the Democratic loss in the U.S Senate race in Massachusetts was a setback, but reiterated Obama's words in the State of the Union speech Wednesday night that this is not the time to give up.

"If they did anything, it helped remind us of why we're doing this in the first place. They reminded us of how hard it is, how truly hard it is, to bring about big change in America. And they reminded us of what we're up against. And they reminded us about how close we are to the biggest health care victory in half a century."

Statement's like Mary Landrieu's are why she's going to lose in November, and frankly...won't be missed.

TPM: Pawlenty no longer a "serious" candidate for President

If you're turning your back on your own party (in this case, what's left of the GOP), and supporting a "Conservative Party" whackadoodle for Congress, if you're going to align yourself with the Palins, the Birthers, the Tenthers and the like, I can safely assume should you be the nominee, Obama can start measuring the curtains for Years 4 through 8.

If the GOP is even halfway serious about unseating President Obama in 2012, the only person left on the radar is Mitt Romney (and even he's a stretch).

TPM: Minnesota and the history of Tentherism...

Earlier today, Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN)...apparently forgetting that a) he's not yet the Republican Presidential Nominee for 2012, b) he's a douchebag, and c) he's never won more than 47% of the vote in Minnesota for either of his two elections, thus casting (a) into doubt...said that Minnesota would consider using the 10th Amendment to stop Health Care Reform for their state.

Besides being a monumentally stupid political idea, it also may be illegal. Or rather should I say, it's been ruled on by the Supreme Court and the argument's been found wanting (at best).

TPM's Eric Kleefield presented a short history of Minnesota's previous (and left-leaning) run in with the 10th Amendment, and how it didn't end up so good.

As you may know, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) is now threatening to invoke the Tenth Amendment in order to keep his home state of Minnesota out of any health care reform package that gets passed, and raising the possibility of governors filing lawsuits against it. As it turns out, this is not the first time that a Minnesota governor has been embroiled in a battle of states' rights with the federal government -- and the last time it happened, it involved political action from the left.

The last time, in the 1980's, Democratic Gov. Rudy Perpich unsuccessfully went to the Supreme Court, leading a group of governors who argued that the federal government had no authority to send the state National Guards for what were officially billed as training missions in Honduras, in which they would be building roads, over the governors' objections. The governors and other opponents had argued that this was a pretext for aiding the Contras in neighboring Nicaragua, according to an April 12, 1987, article in the Chicago Tribune (via Nexis).

The confrontation began when three governors, George Deukmejian (R-CA), Richard Celeste (D-OH), and Joseph Brennan (D-ME) refused direct federal requests for their state Guards to be called up. Congress then passed the Montgomery Amendment, named for Rep. Sonny Montgomery (D-MS), stripping Governors of the legal power to refuse an overseas Guard deployment.

"A few governors just cannot say, 'I will not let my guardsmen go to train in a certain part of the world because I do not like the politics of that situation,'" Montgomery argued at the time, according to a November 4, 1986 article in the Christian Science Monitor.

Perpich then took the lead, filing a lawsuit against the constitutionality of the Montgomery Amendment. After he was initially rebuffed by a federal district court judge, he vowed to appeal. "We feel very strongly about the states' rights issue, and that is why we will be appealing ... ," Perpich was quoted in an August 4, 1987, Associated Press article. "This is a clear example of the federal government's encroaching on state powers that have worked effectively in the past."

Yes -- the nation was subjected to the spectacle of a liberal Minnesota Democrat arguing for states' rights, against a measure from a conservative Mississippi Democrat.

Perpich went all the way to the Supreme Court, joined by six other governors, including Celeste and Michael Dukakis. In the end, the Supreme ruled unanimously for the federal government in Perpich v. Department of Defense.

How to talk down a Teabagger by Al Franken (VIDEO)

After the last couple of days, this is a positively heartwarming video...

Because I'm good enough, smart enough, and I'll bite your head off if I have to...

You go, Al.

Who saw this coming?? (VIDEO)

This Magic Moment... (VIDEO)

"Thank you, to the people of Minnesota..." (VIDEO)

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Courtesy Chuck Todd...

From the First Read site (you may have to scroll down a tad):

Franken’s discipline: By the way, and it's a point we've made before, but it's been pretty impressive how Franken has been so disciplined during this recount period. Indeed, until last night, when had we heard from him. Clearly, the GOP thought they were dealing with the stereotype that was Al Franken -- not the guy who proved to be a candidate who, well, got more votes than Norm Coleman. In fact, this has been a problem for the GOP in general the last few years when it comes to dealing with Democrats: They believe their own stereotypes about their opponents, rather than actually dealing with their opponents at face value.

TPM: Senator Franken (Video)