THIS JUST IN! Forget Iran, forget health care — what the world REALLY wants to know about is: how did that “beer summit” called by President Barack Obama featuring himself, a prominent African American Harvard professor and the policeman who arrested the prof (with Vice President Joe Biden at the table) go? So it’s time for (what else?) the analysis. Rather than bore you with ours (we’ll have plenty of that from TMV writers later…) here’s a 10 minute take...

Today is the big day — a day that will go down in history: at 6 p.m. EST President Barack Obama will sit down at the White House’s first beer summit with a lreading African-American professor and the policeman who arrested him. Obama’s comments about the arrest added fuel to the polarizing fire — and this is his attempt to defuse it via a low-key session where the three deep six the rhetoric and lift some cool ones. But shouldn’t there be a theme song for this event?...

Is it “watch out Rush Limbaugh” in the future? Is former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, darling of conservatives and a politician who talks the talk of the conservative talk radio political culture destined to become a radio talk show host? Speculation is increasing that Palin’s next big role on the national stage might not be as a 2012 Presidential candidate, but Rush Limbaugh in a dress (a troubling image, to be sure…). But IS she daily talk show host material? Broadcasting...

A new burst of resistance and some allegations of rough police treatment mark events in Iran where riot police reportedly have broken up gathering mourners at the grave of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young Iranian woman whose videotaped shooting and bleeding-death at a June 20 demonstration was You Tubed around the world, turning her into a symbol of the regime’s repression and brutality. The stories covering today’s events are breaking now — but not all reports agree on the extent...

The name “Penn & Teller” conjures up an image of an immensely entertaining comedy/magic team so to the uninitiated, you’d think that any show of theirs would be more of the same. WRONG. In their cable series, Penn Fraser Jillette and Raymond Joseph Teller become the anti-60 Minutes: they present a series of documentaries setting out to examine a common “given” or a politically/environmentally correct assumption — and then shatter it to pieces via field interviews,...

It may well have been a “teachable moment,” but perhaps some folks learned the wrong things: A Boston police officer has been suspended and could be fired for a mass e-mail in which he used a racial slur to describe black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Commissioner Edward Davis put 36-year-old Justin Barrett on administrative leave pending a termination hearing after learning of the slur. A person with knowledge of the case who was not authorized to speak publicly about the...

Barack Obama’s poll numbers on health care and his approval ratings are moving south just as assuredly as elderly New Yorkers go south to Florida for the winter, NBC News reports: Despite his public-relations blitz over the past two weeks to promote his plans to reform the nation’s health-care system — including holding two town halls on Wednesday — President Barack Obama has lost ground on this issue with the American public, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street...

We may as well copy this headline and this first short paragraph (and we will) since we will likely have to use it again and again — as the political bar with what constitutes debate in our country goes lower and lower: It DOES. Details here.

Is the public plan option DOA in the ongoing Congressional discussions on President Barack Obama’s stalled healthcare reform plan? Several reports suggest it could well be. The best summary comes from Bill Press, writing on The Hill’s Pundit Blog: Don’t look now, but Democrats are about to abandon their commitment to a public plan option, if they haven’t already done so. In every public appearance, President Barack Obama continues to push the public plan option as an essential element...

Our political quote of the day is the final two paragraphs of Maureen Dowd’s must-read column contrasting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin: As McCain pal and Republican strategist Mike Murphy so sagely observed recently: “If Sarah Palin looked like Golda Meir, would we even be talking about her today?” Sarah should follow her own advice to Hillary and work harder to be capable. Until then, she’s all cage, no bird. Read it in its entirety.

If you’re literally a lifelong student of comedy as I am, you have to constantly watch and study the comedy greats. The era is unimportant: you study the work of great film and TV comedians of the 20th and early 21st century. And any student of comedy has to view at least some of the classic Marx Brothers movies, where they’ll be amazed at the antics of all of the brothers — but perhaps most amazed by Harpo Marx, who never said a word in any of their films and was consistently funny. When...

Some thoughts from Kevin Sullivan HERE.

If you want to know, here’s a MUST READ ROUNDUP of blog, Facebook and Twitter analysis and opinion at Booker Rising.

As the health care debate becomes more fiery and partisan and President Barack Obama is seen grappling with trying to please, convince and kowtow to members of his own political party, some now wonder whether Obama has lost his political clout and some talk wistfully about how much better Obama might fare if he was a little more like the arm-twisting President Lyndon Baines Johnson. What would LBJ do? Realistic, or not? Like many things that some wish for that are based on perceptions (false or authentic)...

Has a kind of pack journalism and pack analysis set in regarding new and old media coverage of events in Iran? Has this been a case of the two segments of the media in effect becoming one, big, fat echo chamber — where voices may not be as knowing as they seem? Read Kevin Sullivan HERE.

Ever since a young, dynamic and charismatic President named John F. Kennedy realized that a televised press conferences could be a potent political weapon in talking directly to the American people and communicating substance as well as charisma, it has been a political weapon Presidents have used with varying degrees of success — including some uses of that backfired. Is President Barack Obama now in danger of if not finding his press conferences backfire at the least a danger of diminishing...

Overheard in New York: A five-year-old girl, gets off the train to Grand Central Station, holds her nose and says to mother: “It smells here! It smells like New Jersey! Mommy! It smells like New Jersey!” Now breaking via news outlets throughout the world: Authorities feel something else apparently smells in New Jersey, so today some 30 people that included mayors and even some rabbis have been arrested in a corruption probe: About 30 people, including some New Jersey mayors and several...

Is it bad, or can it be good, or even if it’s seen as good can it be bad? A great place to start this debate is by reading Ron Beasley HERE.

What if the ongoing new and old media narrative about suspense over the fate of President Barack Obama’s centerpiece healthcare reform was really all in effect choreographed — and a bill was more of a done deal that many know? The L.A. Time’s Andrew Malcomb looks at the possibility HERE.

Time’s Mark Halperin says You Betcha…NOT — and here he gives seven reasons why not.

New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation is reportedly getting a stream of complaints from state workers about the latest trend in chic bathroomware: waterless urinals: The Department of Environmental Conservation’s effort to maintain eco-friendly bathrooms at its downtown headquarters has made quite a splash but not in the way the state intended. DEC has been getting complaints by state workers that waterless urinals at their building have created a fetid mess complete...

What is proving to be a huge problem for President Barack Obama? It’s turning out to be members of his own political party — not that that many (including many who write on this site) didn’t predict that this could happen. But it’s becoming increasingly clear with each passing day that Obama has to battle two sides of his own party (liberal and more conservative Democrats) as he is all the while demonized and denounced by GOPers. CNN”s Gloria Borger summarizes the situation...

..someone says something else and you realize you’re wrong. Read this on Lou Dobbs. This is the kind of comment that would be considered “far out” and “flaky” in other times but today there is a)an audience for it and it gets big ratings, b)a need by many in politics to try and take someone out who they disagree with on policy. And the trending isn’t good: it seems to get worse with each month (but there is an audience for it, some love it, some drop all things...

The family of Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl — the American solidier captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan and put on display by his captors in an Internet statement — is overwhemed by the support flooding in. Details via this AP video:

As the news media gears up for the release sometime over the next two weeks of Michael Jackson’s autopsy results, the Michael Jackson media story narrative is shifting into a new stage: trying to unravel what factors led to his death and if there were signs that it could end the way it did. It’s happening now, amid some other new developments. CNN offers this panel discussion raising the question of whether his 1993 video statement denying child molestation gave clues about his drug use...