BOSTON — Mayor Tom Menino looks around the elevator and reaches instinctively for the hand of the only person in the car he’s never met. “Where are you from?” he asks the young man. “Somerville,” the young man replies. The mayor almost recoils. “Somerville!” he exclaims with a dismissive wave — there are no votes for him in Somerville —...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — who has made noises about running for President before but did not go ahead with it — sounds as if he really intends to throw his hat (and presumably his prolific Twitter feed) into the 2012 Presidential nomination race. The Politics Daily caught this latest delicious political item — a comment Gingrich made on CSPAN: Callista and I are going to think...

The public option is dead. Long live the public option. That’s the situation now prevailing on a key sticking point in health care reform. GOPers hate the public option because they say it would symbolize the Obama administration’s encroachment into the private sector and be a huge step into socialized medicine. Democrats are split, with some progressives nearly making support of the public option...

Just talking myself through the news of the day. Again. the way one does in a trauma/ triage situ. Most minds dont follow a straight path when learning the news. They veer into old memories. They look for patterns. They try to understand, so they can see, what can be done to help. Today, I’m saying to myself… Don’t go numb like it’s the farm report, pork bellies up, oats and soy down. Don’t...

As we noted two weeks ago, there has been considerable speculation that CNN’s Lou Dobbs is seeking to jump ship to Fox Business News — speculation that increased after he met with Fox News chief Roger Ailes. The latest development: Not if Fox’s Geraldo Rivera has anything to do about it. Geraldo even reportedly called Ailes who he says assured him it ain’t gonna happen (which does not...

Mike Keefe, The Denver Post This cartoon is copyrighted and authorized to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

A Saudi Arabian court sentenced a female journalist to 60 lashes because she worked for a television station that aired the sexual confessions of a Saudi man, she and her attorney said today. The Reuters news agency said the woman, who requested only her first name used, was unaware her Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. did not have proper authorization to operate in the Islamic kingdom. “The verdict was just...

Campaign attacks on Barack Obama and his crew as latte-drinking elitists are finally coming into play in their war of words with Rupert Murdoch’s rough-and-ready outback minions. Any country boy could have told them a basic rule of rural life: Never get into a contest with a skunk. Now, the Administration is finding itself befouled by controversy as an ABC correspondent asks at a briefing why “one...

Bill Schorr, Cagle Cartoons This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

It’s now official and in a stage beyond just warnings: President Barack Obama has declared swine flu a national emergency: President Barack Obama has signed a proclamation declaring swine flu a national emergency, the White House said Saturday. “In keeping with the administration’s proactive approach to H1N1 Flu, President Obama last night signed a proclamation declaring 2009-H1N1 Influenza...

When I received my daily polling update from Rasmussen this weekend I’ll admit that I was in for a surprise. The polling agency went back to the well with their periodic series of questions as to which party Americans trust more on the top ten issues of the day. You wouldn’t be able to tell from a lot of the media circus we watch on a daily basis, but the Republicans actually ran the table. For the...

There’s something almost adorable about the way some people with a limited grasp of our nation’s constitution attempt to lean on, twist and otherwise molest the document in an attempt to support their own world view. The latest incident came after a reporter asked Nancy Pelosi where the Constitution empowered Congress to enact an individual health insurance mandate. Her response, calling the question...

Guest Post By C.L. Smith C.L. Smith aka “Leonidas” is a frequent, right of center commenter on The Moderate Voice and has been invited as a Guest Voice. ********** Well President Obama tried to muzzle Fox News yet again but this time as the Red State blog puts it, “White house tries to muzzle media; draws back bloody stump“. So this administration had what passes for a brainstorm among...

Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons.com This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

No matter what your politics, you’ve got to love this.

The question, which came from a reporter for the right-wing Internet publication CNS.com:

Reports from Bratislava, Slovakia, today indicate NATO defense ministers support Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendations to increase counterinsurgency strategy, nation building and additional troops in Afghanistan. Easy for them to say. More than two-thirds of the 28-country NATO forces totalling 104,000 troops are American and far less than those one-third are involved in combat operations. The ministers...

What’s the Obama administration’s problem with Fox? asks Joe Klein:

If you had any doubts that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin intends to run for President in 2012 and her upcoming book wasn’t enough for you, then here’s a second sign: she has sided with the party’s conservative activist base against the Republican party establishment to endorse the conservative party’s candidate in a closely watched New York state race. The LA Times’ Andrew Malcolm...

Guest post by Frankie Sturm Frankie Sturm is communications director at the Truman National Security Project and a free-lance journalist. I work with veterans on a daily basis. Lately, I’ve been burning the midnight oil as part of Operation FREE, a coalition of veterans groups and national security organizations that are looking to raise awareness about the links between climate change and national security. We’re...

The newest critique against the Federal Government limiting executive salaries in companies that it has essentially saved from liquidation or in which it holds a major ownership interest, is that it will cause a brain drain of the best people to other companies. I have one response to such a meritless argument: Bullshit. Some of our private sector oligarchs are so narcissistic, greedy and arrogant that they...

I am not saying this is that big of a  deal, the script said Al Sharpton and I can easily see where when you are used to reading the words on the page you can make a mistake. We’re all human and I’ve certainly been looking at a friend and for no reason in particular called them by the wrong name. But imagine if this happened on Fox, how would the left have reacted ?

It would appear from this angry article in Iran’s rigidly state-controlled Kayhan newspaper, that when it suits its own interests, the leadership in Tehran condones listening to the music of the Rolling Stones. With allusions to the all-seeing-eye of the Freemasons and a section on how Americans abuse women, this is the regime’s latest verbal assault on the United States. The author, Kian Mokhtari,...

Hasn’t it been back for weeks now? I mean, I’ve written several posts about this very thing at TMV, haven’t I? Am I hallucinating?

If I hadn’t just used this formulation for another post, I would have titled this one, “Dude, Where’s My Oil Contract?”