Centrist writer and commentator John Avlon has announced his latest Wingnuts of the Week: former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Lyndon LaRouche. Here’s his lead in on the CNN blog: It’s become the summer of the wingnut. Unhinged eruptions at town halls are becoming standard operating procedure, as forces from the right face off against forces deployed by the left. Politics, it turns out, follows the line of physics: every action creates an equal and opposite reaction. This week’s wingnuts...

Our Quote of the Day comes from Glenn Reynolds, who quotes from a Robert Reich column where the former Clinton administration Labor Secretary criticizes Obama and the Democrats for not having an actual healthcare plan in place which then left an opening for health care protesters. Reynolds writes: Remember how Bush was supposed to be the idiot who went into Iraq without a plan, while Obama was supposed to be the cool methodical one? But Reich is admitting that despite all the Administration hoopla,...

The reason: an ongoing and spreading hatefest is raising official concerns.

A new Gallup poll finds that the angry Town Hall protests against President Barack Obama’s health care reform are scoring points for the anti-health care side — and picking up support among independent voters. As we’ve noted here often, independent voters are not a monolithic block and in recent years some pollsters and analysts have contended that part of the reason for the increase in independent voter numbers has been due to Republicans who were not happy about the direction...

A new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation has bad news for former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin: 7 percent of those polled now have a less favorable opinion of her since May — and apart from overall erosion in her support, the drop is attributed to her loss of Republican support: Thirty-nine percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday have a favorable opinion of the former Alaska governor and last year’s Republican vice presidential nominee....

A new Marist poll indicates President Barack Obama is starting to lose independent voter support. It has some good news for Obama: his overall approval rating numbers ( 55 percent of registered voters) has remain largely unchanged. And he continues to have solid support (90 percent) from Democrats. But as President George Bush’s two terms in office indicated, a President is not in a strong position if he risks becoming a President of his party’s base. Obama isn’t there yet but...

One of the most loosely used words in current American political discussion and screamfests (the two are not always the same) is the word “lie.” A difference of perspective and an actual lie are not the same thing. So what are the actual “lies’ in the healthcare debate? Watch this CNN report on rumors about healthcare reform that are being spread as fact — not just on the Internet but on some talk shows. Note that neither side comes out pristine on this: Embedded video...

Advisory for President Barack Obama: history has not been kind to Presidents who tried to reform health care.

The emerging narrative in a lot of the major press coverage of heatlh care reform is that President Barack Obama has lost control of his message, which is why he was out on the hustings today at a town hall meeting. But now The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder writes that he now senses a slight relief at the White House. Why? Because, according to Ambinder, there’s a growing feeling that the Republicans may have lost control of their message and that GOPers at Town Halls have provided a picture...

As a former Political Science major who has been in both political parties, and been both a liberal and a conservative, depending on the era, I’ve been watching the increasingly frenzied battle over heath care reform and a little voice has been nagging me, whispering in my head: “Didn’t the Democrats see this coming? Did they forget political history? Weren’t they prepared for a brutal fight? Wasn’t this response on their scenario list?” Great Minds Think Alike:...

The new and old media like nothing better than a You Tube moment that seemingly reveals the “real” public figure — not the one who’s scripted or the one who’s answering policy questions, but shows you a bit how he or she really is “offstage” and what he or she may really think. And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton provided one that will be re-run for a long time to come. A translator yesterday mistranslated a question in Africa asking her what her HUSBAND...

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the younger sister of the late President John F. Kennedy who founded the Special Olympics and promoted it to the very depths of her soul, has died at 88. As someone who used to write obituaries as part of my stint as a staff reporter on two newspapers (the old Wichita Eagle in Wichita, Kansas and the San Diego Union in San Diego, CA) I know full well the “boilerplate” obits that are run — obits that are in many cases written way in advance and ready to...

The White House has made it clear that it does not agree with the charge made by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, in an op-ed piece that Town Hall protesters who are disrupting meetings are indulging in behavior that is “un-American.” In fact, the White House response is quite similar to what we suggested in THIS POST on the quickly breaking controversy -= that someone can be critical of the tactic but the word “un-American”...

When you read something LIKE THIS how can you ever bother reading or listening to that person again? Will this become a new talking point? Each day the quality of American political “debate” sinks lower and lower. We’re already past the septic tank level. (FOOTNOTE: I had many arguments with my late father about this commentator, who I didn’t agree with but loved his verbal and written analysis. Dad: you were right..)

A lot of pundits (including me) have been highly critical of the rhetorical Hiroshimas that some Republicans use when battling Democrats or trying to gain political support by mobilizing their political base. And now we have a classic one coming from the Democrats: the use of the label “un-American” to describe town hall protesters who are effectively drowning out discussion of health care reform: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, insisting at the start of a...

Lost in the new and old media focus on “hot button” stories such as health care town hall meetings, Iran’s latest outrage, the latest tragedy story, and whatever Sarah Palin has said to that grabbed more big headlines is the U.S. ongoing — and evolving — relationship from the country that is its biggest rival: China. RealClearWorld has a must read that provides a good overview. Here’s the intro and a bit of the beginning: Frank Ching is a journalist and commentator...

It has been a tempestuous 2009 and so the question comes up: if you use polling as a key indicator, which politicians are now more popular and unpopular than then were six months ago? Daniel Stone at Newsweek’s The Gaggle blog lists some of them. In a nutshell: President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Ted Kennedy are down. Stone then asks: ” But has anyone been able to cash in on Obama’s lost footing?” He notes that Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh are down,...

Isn’t it time to ask the question? Isn’t it perhaps time to consider deep sixing the traditional big-issue Town Hall meetings held by elected officials? Haven’t these meetings now become little more than media events, events literally begging to be manipulated by interest groups on each side? Aren’t traditional Town Halls now overwhelmed by the power and impact of new media, increasingly strident talk radio and far left and right special interest groups to flood the venue...

The always-thoughtful Dave Schuler has some required foreign policy reading: If you only read one thing today, read the for-the-record answers from the Director of National Intelligence to questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee in April 2009. At the very least read the tickler summary from the blog of the Federation of American Scientists, which has done a genuine service in obtaining this document under the Freedom of Information Act and is hosting it on its site (hat tip: Washington Post). There...

In his weekly You Tube-radio address, President Barack Obama says there are hopeful signs on the economic front and makes his pitch for health care reform — noting “outlandish rumors” about health care reform including the one raised by talk show hosts and conservative politicians about it including a “death panel”: Embedded video from CNN Video The “death list” charge is yet another sign of how how readily some will reach to create and push a hot button...

History was made today as Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in to serve on the Supreme Court, the first Hispanic in history to serve on the court. Here’s MSNBC’s report: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy ABC News has THIS VIDEO (cannot embed). CBS News has THIS VIDEO (won’t embed since it will loop and play over and over) Fox News Video: Reuters: Judge Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in on Saturday as the first Hispanic associate justice on the U.S....

Our political Quote of the Day comes from the Atlantic’s always perceptive Marc Ambinder who offers this perspective on the increasing ugliness of the healthcare Town Hall meetings: There’s lots of lamenting on the left about all the teabaggers showing up and town hall meetings on health care being held by returning members. The right’s all atwitter about organized labor and the left sending people to these meetings. I’m not sure any of it is really bad. Obviously, death threats,...

Our political Quote of the Day comes from Philadelphia Inquirer columnist/blogger Dick Polman on the increasingly tempestuous Town Hall meetings held by Democrats to discuss health care reform and the role of Town Hall meeting protesters and heckers. First, the beginning of his analysis, titled “Goon Power”: I was in college when I first witnessed goon squads in action. Back in those distant days, left-wing radicals would storm into the auditorium and shout down conservative speakers...

When you read THIS about a protester encouraging others to bring guns and also to get violent you have to ask — isn’t it clear where this is heading? And then there’s THIS threat from an apparent protest saying if things keep up the town hall proponents are going to find out about the second amendment. This is a classic escalation. Can’t we just envision the future headline now? Note the role of talk radio hosts (Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh) in helping to get out listeners,...

Now this is a crisis that truly impacts Cuba’s bottom line: Cuba, in the grip of a serious economic crisis, is running short of toilet paper and may not get sufficient supplies until the end of the year, officials with state-run companies said on Friday. Officials said they were lowering the prices of 24 basic goods to help Cubans get through the difficulties provoked in part by the global financial crisis and three destructive hurricanes that struck the island last year. Cuba’s financial...