Raw Story: 135,000 uninsured Americans will die before health reform takes effect, analysis finds. Some useless Dems will declare ‘victory’ but Dean says “kill it.”

Consortiumblog:: How banks fleece the unemployed

The Agonist: Hoyer: Bring back Glass-Steagall

Balloon Juice: Somebody hose off Vitter

Climate Progress: Gore derangement syndrome

James Wolcott is deadly...

Nate Silver picks up an interesting point: Much of the opposition to healthcare reform comes from the left - about 25%. We need to keep pushing on the final bill, because if there's one thing politicians understand and fear, it's bad poll numbers:

Ipsos/McClatchy put out a health care poll two weeks ago. The topline results were nothing special: 34 percent favored "the health care reform proposals presently being discussed", versus 46 percent opposed, and 20 percent undecided. The negative-12 net score is roughly in line with the average of other polls, although the Ipsos poll shows a higher number of undecideds than most others.

Ipsos, however, did something that no other pollster has done. They asked the people who opposed the bill why they opposed it: because they are opposed to health care reform and thought the bill went too far? Or because they support health care reform but thought the bill didn't go far enough?

It turns out that a significant minority of about 25 percent of the people who opposed the plan -- or about 12 of the overall sample -- did so from the left; they thought the plan didn't go far enough.

Nate Silver on why we shouldn't celebrate just yet:

Needless to say, it would have been very, very bad news for the Democrats if the motion to proceed to debate on their health care plan had failed tonight. But I'm not sure how newsworthy this really is. The potential hold-outs, like Lincoln and Ben Nelson, are going to have much greater leverage later on, when the bill nears its second major procedural hurdle: the cloture motion to proceed to the final vote.

And there's some bad news for Democrats too: Lincoln has joined Senators Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman in making a fairly explicit threat to filibuster a bill that contains a public option. Mary Landrieu, on the other hand, sounds a little bit more open to compromise. But this impromptu Gang of 3 -- Lincoln, Nelson, Lieberman -- could be a tough one for progressives to penetrate.

Yeah, it's going to be ugly by the time they get done dealing away any real hope of competition for the insurance companies. I'm not optimistic about the short-term results here and I have to keep muttering to myself that this will be good for our children and grandchildren - probably.

Climate Progress: Saudis redefine chutzpah: After decades of overpricing and trillions of dollars in future revenues, they want aid if use is cut by a long overdue climate deal.

Prairie Weather: Harry Reid - Harry Reid! - is threatening to hit the insurance companies where it hurts. And here's the bottom line on Olympia Snowe

Hysterical Raisins: The road to Shell is paved with bad intentions

Crooked Timber: Thought Crime and Mens Rea

Bay Area Houston: America can learn a lot from Texas

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Corner hilarity...Profanity Gate?...It gets worse...Anonymous sources...Too tough for the NYT...WSJ scribe knocks own editorial page...Shafting carriers...WaPo's bizarre Taliban editorial...Tom Tancredo is now writing for World Nut Daily...Wrong opinion... Iran away...National Partisan Radio

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Did someone in the Obama administration force Chrysler, as part of its reorganization, to order the closure of auto dealerships mostly among Republicans, while leaving Democratic-owned dealerships intact?

Naaaah. What, are you kidding me? But, you know, it sounded really good to Michelle Malkin. Mostly because she loves to fancy herself an "investigative journalist" and these kinds of "scoops" entrance her on a regular basis. Of course, the fact that none of them ever pan out seems not to deter her in the slightest.

Malkin, along with her intrepid pals at Newsbusters and a variety of other right-wing blogs, were all over it yesterday. Malkin appeared on Fox and Friends in the morning to tout her latest liberal-perfidy theory.

Too bad it took only a flick of Nate Silver's wrist to blow it all to smithereens. Seems that when you go looking at political donations by occupation, people who list "auto dealers" or some variation thereof are Republican by about an 8-1 margin:

Overall, 88 percent of the contributions from car dealers went to Republican candidates and just 12 percent to Democratic candidates. By comparison, the list of dealers on Doug Ross's list (which I haven't vetted, but I assume is fine) gave 92 percent of their money to Republicans -- not really a significant difference.

There's no conspiracy here, folks -- just some bad math.

It shouldn't be any surprise, by the way, that car dealers tend to vote -- and donate -- Republican. They are usually male, they are usually older (you don't own an auto dealership in your 20s), and they have obvious reasons to be pro-business, pro-tax cut, anti-green energy and anti-labor. Car dealerships need quite a bit of space and will tend to be located in suburban or rural areas. I can't think of too many other occupations that are more natural fits for the Republican Party.

You can just toss this one on the ashheap of such discarded Malkin "investigative scoops" as the General Ripperesque notion that the Flight 93 memorial is actually a tribute to the terrorists or that a suicide bomber in Oklahoma was the forerunner of an Islamic conspiracy there. She likewise groundlessly attacked the Pulitzer winner in photography as a secret Jihadi sympathizer; attacked USA Today with conspiratorial accusations for a badly retouched photo; and perhaps most notoriously, tried to ferret out a nefarious conspiracy by the Associated Press in Baghdad that turned out to be completely false. Though perhaps nothing quite matches her attack on a 12-year-old that again turned out to be a case of overwrought right-wing fantasizing. But then, that incident pretty much was a case of self-immolation.

Steve Benen and Bob Cesca have more.

Stop me if you've heard this one...

A lesser-known candidate attracts a small following of dedicated supporters by the promise of being different than your usual Washington DC elected officials. Taking advantage of these supporters' talent in getting the word out over the internet, scheduling meetups of other potential supporters, raising funds and generally building up a wave of enthusiasm that carries the candidate to national prominence, that same candidate starts taking on the trappings of traditional politicians-consultants, pollsters, campaign managers from inside the Beltway-and slowly, but heartbreakingly surely, the candidate moves away from those netroots supporters that got him where he was.

Sound like anyone you know?

Well, to Lowell Feld and Nate Wilcox, authors of Netroots Rising: How A Citizen Army Of Bloggers And Online Activists Is Changing American Politics this is altogether too familiar a story. Lowell and Nate are veterans of several netroots campaigns, such as Wesley Clark, Jim Webb, Tim Kaine, and Mark Warner. Netroots Rising documents instance after instance where candidates are profoundly grateful for the support and work of the netroots only to distance himself after surrounded by those desperate not to change the status quo of the power circles.
I am hosting the Book Salon discussing Netroots Rising at Firedoglake starting now 5:00 pm Eastern/2:00 pm Pacific. Come join us and let's discuss the growing power of the netroots and how we can get our voices heard.

But as close as we're going to get for a while.

(Thanks to Nate for the tip to this dKos diary)

The Gothamist interviewed The Daily Show's John Oliver on his feelings about the strike:

Someone from the WGA, I think it was the president, said the strike could go on for nine months. I did not hear that. To be honest I find brinksmanship like that difficult to stomach and it makes both sides sound equally bad. They're playing games with people's lives at the moment, and I'm not even talking about the writers. On The Daily Show we have a staff who are very concerned at the moment about losing their jobs - researchers, P.A.s, etc. - and I find talk like that quite difficult to stomach. I understand they're trying to play some kind of brinksmanship game but that doesn't make it any less difficult to hear when friends of mine who live paycheck to paycheck are being seriously affected by this strike. And they don't even stand to benefit from any of the negotiations!

I have some friends who are familiar with the negotiations--or lack thereof-- and they've been telling me that the companies may not feel compelled to negotiate in good faith until January or February, when their original content will be used up. United Hollywood has more videos as well as ideas on how you can show your support...

(guest blogged by BillW)

As the hate site says: "In Case Anyone Wants To Deliver Justice." The editor of the website with a swastika at the top says on an audio at the site "I'd like to go down there and put a bullet in each one of those little black kids ..." When asked if he might have brought any harm to the Jena 6 by posting that, he told CNN "I don't know that doing justice can be considered doing harm."

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Just sick. Pam has more:

As former White House press secretary Tony Snow said on an October 2003 edition of Fox News Sunday

"Here's the unmentionable secret: Racism isn't that big a deal any more. No sensible person supports it. Nobody of importance preaches it. It's rapidly becoming an ugly memory."

Nate has the Snow video....

Via the Sacbee: (h/t Nate)

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, bowing to fears of computer fraud, Friday decertified Los Angeles County's electronic voting system and sharply curtailed the use of two other machines that California counties had hoped to use to conduct the February 2008 presidential primary.

She said she would allow unlimited use of one system, Hart InterCivic, as long as security and auditing safeguards are implemented.

But in the case of two major companies -- Diebold Election Systems and Sequoia Voting Systems -- Bowen said she would allow just one machine per polling place, apparently to provide an accessible option for disabled voters.

Electronic voting critics had unsuccessfully lobbied Bowen's predecessor to stop the machines' use in California. More than three dozen California counties have invested millions of dollars in the technology and some will be forced to replace many machines by February under Bowen's order.

"I reject the notion that I should not require changes in security simply because counties already own (the machines)," Bowen said. Read more...

Via Sacbee: (h/t Nate)

As the House late Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to launch speedy ethics investigations of any member indicted for criminal conduct, Rep. John Doolittle voted against two measures on the matter.

The Roseville Republican is under federal investigation for political corruption in connection with his relationship with imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He said recently that federal agents searched his home in April after he refused to plead guilty to a crime as part of a plea deal.

Doolittle declined a request for an interview. He instead issued a statement saying, "I believe involving the House of Representatives in an investigation when a judicial proceeding is in progress jeopardizes the rights of the defendant and the people (represented by the prosecution)." Read more...

Who could have predicted Doolittle would be opposed to such legislation?