Obama cannot persuade us that more blood and treasure should be spent in Afghanistan, bring our troops home. Olbermann, of course, says it much better

Bill Maher tells Obama ‘no more mister nice guy, be an ASSHOLE’

The President talks straight with kids… without your brain power and your focus now our country is doomed ( I am paraphrasing). But hey, lets cut back on education spending like we do in Oregon and increase spending on corrections because without an education a life of crime mights seem like the only alternative to rural disadvantaged youth.

So today, I want to ask all of you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a President who comes here in 20 or 50 or 100 years say about what all of you did for this country? Read the transcript

Now, your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books and the equipment and the computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part, too. So I expect all of you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down. Don’t let your family down or your country down. Most of all, don’t let yourself down. Make us all proud.

Bill Moyers, ever eloquent lays out the line for President Obama and recommends he reframe the argument from public option to allowing people to voluntarily opt in to medicare before the age of 65.

As it is, we’re about to get health care reform that measures human beings only in corporate terms of a cost-benefit analysis. I mean this is topsy-turvy — we should be treating health as a condition, not a commodity.

As we speak, Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker, has been fined a record $2.3 billion dollars as a civil and criminal — yes, that’s criminal, as in fraud — penalty for promoting prescription drugs with the subtlety of the Russian mafia. It’s the fourth time in a decade Pfizer’s been called on the carpet — and these are the people into whose tender mercies Congress and the White House would deliver us?

Come on, Mr. President. Show us America is more than a circus or a market. Remind us of our greatness as a democracy. When you speak to Congress next week, just come out and say it. We thought we heard you say during the campaign last year that you want a government run insurance plan alongside private insurance — mostly premium-based, with subsidies for low-and-moderate income people. Open to all individuals and employees who want to join and with everyone free to choose the doctors we want. We thought you said Uncle Sam would sign on as our tough, cost-minded negotiator standing up to the cartel of drug and insurance companies and Wall Street investors whose only interest is a company’s share price and profits.

Meanwhile, back at the White House, newly released visitor logs show the pressure being placed on Obama to cave on public option.

Just yesterday, the White House reluctantly released a partial log of who has visited with Obama’s staff on so-called “healthcare reform” and it reads like a who’s who of Big Pharma and health insurance lobbyists.

Let’s stop the pretense of Obama making some bold move here.

Remember Medicare Part “D”? That was when Bush stuffed money in the pockets of Big Pharma by getting more prescription coverage for seniors, but only because the government was prohibited from negotiating or setting prices for the medications. In short, Big Pharma dictated the bill and has made billions of dollars and contributed to the Medicare shortfall at an an exorbitant rate. Medicare Part “D” helped seniors, but its real purpose was to loot the public treasury in order to fatten the profits of Big Pharma.

Chris Hayes discusses the audacity of Cheney’s continued defense of torture with Rachel. Hayes calls for the Obama administration to prosecute rather than ignore acts of torture and the defense of torture and provides some history in his recent article in The Nation.

…thanks to the work of the Church Committee. Chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church in 1975-76, the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities labored for sixteen months to produce a 5,000-page report that is a canonical history of the secret government. Over the past three decades the Church Committee has faded into relative obscurity. (I was somewhat surprised to discover how few people my age had heard of it.) But in the wake of further disclosures of crimes and abuses committed by the Bush administration and the escalating war of words between the CIA and Congress over just how much Congress knew about (and approved) these activities, the specter of the committee has begun to haunt Capitol Hill.

Mostly, the Church Committee is invoked by conservatives as a cautionary tale, a case of liberal overreach that handicapped the nation’s intelligence operations for decades. Dick Cheney bemoaned the fact that his time as President Ford’s chief of staff was “the low point” of presidential authority, thanks to a feckless Congress “all too often swayed by the public opinion of the moment.”

More than a few people I have spoken with voted less for Barack Obama than they voted against Sarah Palin. In my opinion, she did more to help elect the first black president than almost anyone else and for that little bit of progress we all owe her a big thank you. But McCain undeniably was irresponsible in tapping her as a running mate. Andrew Sullivan says it so much better than I ever could.

I want to explain why I think the Palin drama is actually important. It’s not because of her: she’s a delusional, narcissistic and disturbed person who would be voted off a reality show in the first rounds. It’s because of John McCain, the Republican establishment and the mainstream media. What happened last fall was a warning sign to all of us about how corrupt and cynical the GOP, McCain and the MSM are. They colluded in such a way that this unstable, erratic, know-nothing beauty queen could actually have been president of the United States. What matters is that all those in on this scam be exposed and their way of conducting themselves be reformed until they stop risking the fate of the country and the world on their own vanities and cowardice.

McCain knew full well that Palin was unqualified to be commander-in-chief at this period of time; and he knew there was no way she could ever learn enough to do the job. So his decision to pick her was pure cynicism and irresponsibility. The MSM knew full well that there were very serious questions about this unknown person’s background, lies, mental stability, and secrecy – but they were so terrified of being called biased they refused to do the proper vetting.

Sullivan rightly asks McCain to step away from public office.

John Hodgman elaborates on his nerd vs geek analysis of the new nerd-in-chief