If your foes insist there’s an elephant in the room and it isn’t the elephant that symbolizes their party, how does it help you to keep raising the issue of the supposed elephant in the room? This was an issue big in the beltway on talk radio. Average Americans aren’t heatedly discussing it at the cooler (if those still exist) or Starbucks (if they can still find one).

In what it is already proving to be a controversial decision, President Barack Obama announced that he is scuttling the Bush administration’s plans for a Poland and Czech missile defense system and insteady opting for a different “redesigned plan” — a major foreign policy reversal for an administration that has been both praised (mostly on the right) and criticized (mostly on the left) for conducting a foreign policy most notable for its general continuity. The decision has...

Translation: cut away all the spin, folks, you’re facing the “toughest midterm elections…ever.” Is 2010 slated to be another 1994?

If a country just has an election is that democracy? And, if it isn’t what kind of dilemmas does this pose for foreign policy decision makers? In a must-read article on RealClearWorld, Dominique Moisi, a visiting professor at Harvard University and the author of “The Geopolitics of Emotion,” looks at the issue. Here’s the intro: Elections stolen in Iran, disputed in Afghanistan and caricatured in Gabon: Recent ballots in these and many other countries do not so much mark...

A beer cooler as part of a successful scientific mission in Outer Space — returning photos no less? Not a joke, but for real. It’s a story that shows how young, enterprising scientific thinking and MIT rock. Details here.

How many times can I write about Rush Limbaugh hitting a new low? So I’ll let direct you to Megan McArdle, Andrew Sullivan, Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher, and Conor Friedersdorf, let them do it. And you can find some others on this page. I’ll just say: “Ditto.” His fans will always insist, “You don’t get Rush.” Or “Rush was only joking.” Or they will go on the attack and try to discredit anyone who they doesn’t “get...

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’s plan has been released — and has set off a flurry of news articles, analysis and blog posts on the left, center and right, many of which take positions on the proposed plan. In response to a reader’s email about offering a compact roundup on the plan, here are some must reads/must views. The Christian Science Monitor offers this summary: Among the notable ways in which the Baucus plan differs from other healthcare bills now progressing...

From Public Policy Polling (sigh): We’ve been uncovering a remarkable level of anger toward Barack Obama in a lot of our recent polling so for New Jersey we decided to go a step further in determining how extreme some people’s feelings are about the President and asked respondents if they think he is the Anti-Christ. 8% said yes. 13% aren’t sure. Among Republicans 14% said yes and 15% weren’t sure. Pretty eye popping numbers. The extent to which some people already hate Obama...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from Dick Polman on apparent Presidential candidate wannabe Republican Rick Santorum: Speaking of Santorum, he has voiced the worst hypocrisy of the week (so far). In a conference call with reporters yesterday, sponsored by the Republican party, the ex-Pennsylvania senator said it would be an “abomination” for the Senate Democratic majority to pass health care reform via the parliamentary maneuver known as the “budget reconciliation process,”...

Japan is facing a demographic crisis – and Japan’s new government is hoping for a baby boom. Here’s an AFP report:

Accurate or not? Here’s John Henke’s take.

For those of you who thought American politics now looks like professional wrestling, your belief may soon get a bit of validation and closure: Linda McMahon, CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. has quit her post to devote her time a campaign aimed at getting the Republican nomination and running against Democratic Senator Chris Dodd: Linda McMahon, the chief executive officer of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. announced today she is resigning to run for Senate in her home state of Connecticut....

Has one largely publicized consequence of the saber and nuclear power rattling of the Iranian government been the emergence of a new counter-Iran conventional power balance in the Gulf? In an article on RealClearWorld, Michael Knights, a Boston-based Lafer fellow of The Washington Institute, specializing in the military and security affairs of Iraq, Iran, and the Persian Gulf states, argues that it has. Here’s the beginning and end of his piece: In a September 7 interview with al-Jazeera, U.S....

The debate on all sides goes on. Here’s a good roundup.

If you assert that most Americans support Rep. Joe Wilson’s shouted comments during President Barack Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress, then you lie, a new Gallup poll shows: Americans come down strongly in opposition to South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” outburst during President Obama’s address to Congress on healthcare last Wednesday, though majorities on both sides of the issue do not seem passionate in their views. Sixty-eight percent...

I mean really — read this. I’ve run out of words to use that mean “vile…..reprehensible.” I’m about to leave today on a long trip that will require me to drive long distances throughout the West. I just installed satellite radio and will use it on this trip. Can you guess why?

A zilllion blog posts on centrist, liberal and progressive Republican websites have addressed part of this but now the Los Angeles Times brings it all together: there are growing fears that the Republican conservative resurgence is being matched by a drift to the extremes. It’s not a small issue — IF a party’s goal is to not just consolidate its base but to expand its “customers” to include those who need to be sold and convinced: Amid a rebirth of conservative activism...

A slight discrepancy has broken out between a conservative activist, the new media and a member of the old media quoted as a source for some in the new media: it’s only a matter of the whether the size of yesterday’s protest in Washington is being touted as having 940,000 more people then were actually there. So ABC News has issued a strong statement trying to set the record straight and its likely some of the new media sites will clarify it as well. But here’s a bet: expect to...

A slew of websites (old and new media) are now running photos of a sign that has appeared at today’s conservative anti-tax, anti-government spending, anti-health care reform rally in Washington — and it once again raises the question: Is the Republican party now morphing into a political organization that only wants to reaffirm it’s existing members’ political grudges, outrage or hatreds? Or is it possible for the party to rebound by actually making a positive, affirmative...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from the Washington Post’s prize-winning columnist Eugene Robinson, writing about the Republican civility breakdown that he and several pundits say was visible on several levels during President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress on health care reform: House Republicans were particularly ostentatious in showing their disrespect not just for Obama but for the office he holds. The outburst by Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina — who shouted “You...

And so it begins: an attempt to obscure and downplay something that happened — something that Republican party elders clearly did not want to happen and moved quickly to get the person involved to rectify. Rep. Joe Wilson yelled out “You lie” during Barack Obama’s speech to Congress and that was the issue last night. But now, via the Drudge Report and other new and old media pundits, an all too familiar shell game is going on. It’s an attempt to distract from the issue:...

And some visit his office to congratulate him for calling breaking traditional and shouting out and calling a President delivering an address to a joint session of Congress a liar.

The St. Petersburg Times’ Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact has its Truth-O-Meter look at Rep. Joe Wilson’s shouted “You lied!” to President Barack Obama and finds: Wilson erred. It’s an extensive post that needs to be read in full, but here is the conclusion: The best argument that we find that health reform would help illegal immigrants is that some might be able to purchase the public option — if it passes, and it might not — on the new health insurance...

A new poll brings unwelcome news for U.S. policymakers.

An appointment in L.A. for non-blogging business meant that I’d miss part of President Obama’s speech on health care but I knew I could catch at least some of it on the radio. Switching the dial, I heard always-lively conservative talker Mark Levin talking over Obama’s speech, making sarcastic negative comments throughout. So I switched to trusted news radio KNX for the unfiltered speech — but only heard part of it. Then, when my business was through, I turned on the radio...