Our political Quote of the Day comes from The Daily Beast’s John Avlon who addresses the prevailing question about whether Occupy Wall Street is the left’s version of the Tea Party movement. His answer, based on original reporting as well as analysis is: it is not a mirror image of the Tea Party movement at all. Here are some key quotes from his piece, which needs to be read in full. He begins: We are living in a time of decentralized populist political movements, fueled by economic anxiety...

It’s hard to find a company that seems in as muchlf-inflicted chaos as Netflix — one of my own personal favorite companies. In recent months it seemingly has not just shot itself in the foot but bit itself in the lower proximities. Is that an exaggeration? No. Just look at this story about a massive corporate about face: Netflix Inc. is abandoning its widely panned decision to separate its DVD-by-mail and Internet streaming services because it would make them more difficult to use. Subscribers...

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, says 150 CEOs have heeded his call to withhold campaign contributions from politicians of both parties, He stressed that this isn’t aimed at President Barack Obama, said the country sorely needs bipartisan cooperation and gave his ideas — which don’t have a talk show political culture tone to them as do most politician’s polarizing comments these days — on the economy. Here are a few tidbits...

Republican Presidential Candidates Response to Attack on Mitt Romney's Religion You’ve heard about the JFK book “Profiles in Courage?” This could be the inspiration for a book “Profiles in Political Jellyfish”: several Republican Presidential candidates are carefully parsing their words on the attack on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s religion and whether that rules him out for the Oval Office. They clearly don’t want to lose ANY voters so why...

SNL skewered Fox & Friends and Hank William’s Jr.’s controversial comparisons of Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler: And here’s the original for- real segment that got Hank Williams, Jr. axed from ESPN: The original almost plays like an SNL skit. I haven’t blogged on this, but the (hideous, reprehensible) analogy apart, Williams made the mistake that some celebrities do when they are hooked up with corporations and talk politics or make flip statements: corporations spend...

Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain continues to rise and soon he’ll probably get a lot of dough. Campaign contributions, that is. The latest: his strong showing in the Values Voter Summit straw poll which was another win for Rep. Ron Paul – but the real focus will be on Cain, since Paul increasingly seems like too much of a niche candidate to go beyond a certain degree of political support: Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, won the Values Voter Straw poll on Saturday with 37% of the...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is now opening dealing with an issue that yours truly and some other analysts have long contended has slowly simmered in the Republican Party, limiting his poll numbers and a kind of ticking time bomb issue: bigotry among some aimed at his religion. Now, a day after it boiled over in the surface, he’s starting to deal with the issue of bgotry head on: A day after a Dallas pastor’s comments shined a spotlight on Gov. Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith,...

And so the nuclear option has been used by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Expect old arguments that were made so passionately years ago to be swept under the rug by those who used to advocate its use years ago (Republicans and news and old news media Republican analysts) and those who didn’t (Democrats and old and new news media Republican analysts). But no matter what, expect to see “the nuclear option” used freely by both sides in the future in cycles where each party runs...

France is playing ketchup. The food police are out in force in France in the form of the French government which is banning ketchup from schools. Students can put it on one bet-you-can-guess-which-one side dish but in general its now taboo. Why? It seems more of an attempt to protect French culture from those evil, pernicious, foreign cultural gastronomic invasions (read that U-n-i-t-e-d S-t-a-t-e-s’ food influences): The Los Angeles Times reports: First France built a wall around its language...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from GOPer David Frum, who quotes Sarah Palin’s announcement that she would not jump into the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination race but would continue to “driving the discussion for freedom and free markets” and predicts it ain’t gonna happen. Unlike some pundits are writing about how her moment may be passed but — using journalistic hedges — she could be heard from in the future Frum, in a post titled “Palin: Already...

It’s now official what many people had predicted: former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has ended her political tease — which helped her promote books and raise money for her political groups — and has formally announced that she is not going to run for the 2012 Republican nomination: Sarah Palin is not running for president. Ms. Palin, the former governor of Alaska, ended her inscrutable cat-and-mouse game with the political establishment on Wednesday by saying that she would not...

Another timely animation from Taiwan’s Next Media Animation: Can Herman Cain deliver for the GOP?

Was that a long ago-echo in my ears? The other day I caught video of a big protest with demonstrators shouting, “The whole world is watching!” as police approached. Wasn’t that chant from 1968 when Chicago Mayor Richard Daley unleashed his police on anti-war demonstrators at the ill-fated Democratic convention? In the same video, some chanted “Un pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!” a worldwide protesters’ phrase stemming from a slogan used by the equally ill-fated leftist Chilean leader...

Democrats can take at least a partial deep breath this morning: Democrat Earl Ray Tomblin won the race for West Virginia Governor. If he had lost experts agreed that it would be interpreted as one way: that President Barack Obama was utterly politically toxic and Democrats who’d like to be elected in 2012 might start looking for ways to keep their distance from him: Democrat Earl Ray Tomblin overcame weeks of Republican attack ads to win the West Virginia governor’s race Tuesday, successfully...

Our political Quote of the Day is from The Politico’s John Martin, Maggie Haberman and Ben Smith who say this is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s moment and if he doesn’t seize it it will be gone: If Mitt Romney can’t start locking up the GOP nomination now, he may never be able to. The former Massachusetts governor’s charmed path toward the presidential nomination was made even smoother Tuesday when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie opted out of a campaign and recommended...

The latest CBS News poll almost reads like a traveling story: former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who has wowed conservatives with his performance in recent Republican Presidential debates is going national — with his poll numbers going up. And Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who seemed not just not ready for Prime Time but not ready for Republican debates on not prime time, has going south. And the news no one expected to see: in this poll of GOPers, Cane is now tied with former Massachesetts...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has reportedly re-evaluated whether he should after all run for President and concluded he won’t jump in: Christie has called a 1 p.m. press conference in Trenton to announce the decision. His advisers acknowledged in recent days that he was taking a second look at the race after repeatedly denying interest in a bid. But, Christie was also quite open about his doubts about his readiness for the race and the challenges inherent in starting so late in the presidential...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from a must-read-in-full column in The Christian Science Monitor titled “Class warfare. War on teachers. War on business. War in America?” by Jeremy Shapiro, psychologist and director of YouCutTheBudget.com. Here are a few chunks from it: It is a common observation that American political discourse has become rife with hyperbole and hostility. Fierce partisans on both the left and right, not content to simply point out errors in each others’...

American politics has grown coarse, and ugly where name calling and swearing have somehow begun to impress some as intelligent. In fact, those who do politics this way probably should start a company selling lunch meats: Boorshead. Here’s a prime example of an act that is notably unclassy, cheered on by some and apparently lucrative financially. Warrning adult language in this link. His four letter battle cry that sparks cheers among supporters offers definitive evidence of how far our political...

Is the United States inching back bit by bit to the 1960s, where demonstrations and counter demonstrations were all the rage (literally and figuratively)? It could be. First came the conservative Tea Party movement with the angry town hall meetings and demonstrations of summer-fall 2010, which impacted the 2010 elections. Now come signs that the country’s left is toying with demonstrations that set up confrontations with police — demonstrations that this time have a broader theme than...

Saturday Night Live last night lampooed internet comments sections on weblogs and websites where people comment and say whatever pops into their heads using “pen names.” Another case of satire saying something far more effectively than a zillion serious words:

Here’s what certainly qualifies in several ways as a news brief: the maker of the underwear-bomber’s bomb is now believed to have been killed in that controversial U.S. drone attack in Yemen as well: A Saudi militant believed killed in the U.S. drone strike in Yemen constructed the bombs for the al-Qaida branch’s most notorious attempted attacks — including the underwear-borne explosives intended to a down a U.S. aircraft, and a bomb carried by his own brother intended to assassinate...

I’ve often said that at times the left becomes how it is caricatured by the right and at times the right becomes how it is caricatured by the left. Sometimes left and right seemingly blend. That’s what seems to be occurring in the controversy over the targeting and drone killing of U.S. born terrorist Anwar al-Aulaqi in Yemen. To hear Republican conservatives tell it, it was a no brainer . To hear the some on the Democratic left joined now by Republican Presidential nomination wannabe...

The national political melodrama over whether New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will jump into what many consider to be the tepid 2012 Republican Presidential nomination race sounds like it could indeed...really…no joking…not kidding…end with him NOT becoming the Republican version of Mario “Hamlet” Cuomo, who pondered whether to run for President so long that his political moment that he exasperated partisans and his political moment passed him by: a New Jersey newspaper...

Another major victory on the anti-terrorism front: it has been confirmed that American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed in Yemen and, CNN reports, this is now confirmed by American officials. He was pitchforked into the headlines this year in a major story when it was revealed that he exchanged emails with accused Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hassan: American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the public face of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has been killed in Yemen, the...