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Maddow Fails to Question Huckabee On His Recent Anti-Gay Statements. Update: Maddow Responds
Posted by Ali Frick, Think Progress on November 21, 2008 at 10:01 AM.

Since Prop. 8's passage in California, which revoked same-sex couples' right to marry, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has been a powerful outspoken advocate of the rights of gay citizens. "The amendment does not just prohibit gay rights. It takes away rights previously enjoyed," she said. She has also called the vote a "rebuke to the incumbent rights of gay couples." Watch a mashup:

However, last night, Maddow was notably silent on the issue of gay rights when interviewing former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. On Tuesday, Huckabee had insisted that gay rights and civil rights were totally different because gay rights activists' "skulls" weren't getting "cracked." On Wednesday morning, Huckabee claimed that Prop. 8 "did not prohibit" gay marriage; it "simply affirmed that which already has and forever has existed," he said.

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Minnesota Recount Going Well for Franken
Posted by Matt Stoller, Open Left on November 21, 2008 at 9:02 AM.

Update (From Steve Benen): In Minnesota, Norm Coleman's lead over Al Franken is down to just 136 votes. As of last night, about 46% of the 2.9 million ballots had been counted as part of the statewide recount.

Looks like Norm Coleman is feeling the heat.  Here's Minnesota Monitor reporter Chris Steller being thrown out of a Coleman press conference.

I made it as far as the inside of a small press conference room at a drab office park in St. Paul where I was just about to settle into the chair that seemed least conveniently located to the exit when a staffer asked who I was with. When I said the Minnesota Independent, he said I'd have to leave. To my protest that MnIndy is a news outlet like others represented there, the staffer replied, "Right, and it's funded by George Soros," and he escorted me out.

Franken is picking up votes in GOP areas and doing a bit better than he needs to in order to take the seat.  It's still early but there is a reason Coleman is sweating.

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Iraqi Oil Exports Have "Nosedived"
Posted by Saadoun al-Jaberi, Azzaman on November 21, 2008 at 7:35 AM.

Iraq's oil exports are decreasing by nearly 100,000 barrels a day every month, said former Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahar al-Uloom.

Uloom said the drastic decline started last May and has slashed exports to 1.65 million barrels a day from about 2 million.

"Iraqi (oil) exports have nosedived 25 per cent since the beginning of 2008," Uloom said in an interview.

"This represents a big challenge to the government," he said.

He said he could not see how the government would be able to meet budgetary expenses for 2009.

"2009 budget has been based on the assumption of exporting two million barrels a day and an estimated price of not less than $80 for a barrel," he said.

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Kristol Continues His Love Affair With Sarah Palin
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on November 21, 2008 at 5:50 AM.

Bill Kristol defended yet again of the choice of Sarah Palin as McCain's Vice President during a breakfast conference on Thursday. But the prominent neoconservative pundit and Weekly Standard editor did make one small concession: had John McCain tapped Sen. Joseph Lieberman for his number-two post, the results could have been just as good, if not better for the GOP ticket.

Speaking at a National Journal 2008 campaign retrospective event, Kristol argued that had the Connecticut Independent been the Republican vice presidential nominee, McCain would have lost "20 percent of the vote at the convention," staff would have "left the campaign," there would have been protests on the convention floor, and the news media would have been obsessed with the inter-party friction for a solid month.

Nevertheless, he added, "I think it could have been managed and it could have ended up net-net by the time of the election. But that is a very tough choice to make in real time..."

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Obama's Team Makes Good on Threat of Bipartisanship
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 21, 2008 at 5:41 AM.

No one seriously expects congressional Republicans to roll up their sleeves and start working with Democrats on policy solutions. That's just not how this game is played.

The question is how open GOP lawmakers are to outreach. The New York Times reported yesterday morning that the House Republican caucus has "so far balked" at a chance to meet with the incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, but Emanuel spent the day on the Hill anyway, and had some individual meetings with Republicans willing to let him in their offices.

Incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said President-elect Barack Obama wants to work with Republicans, saying the new chief executive will "welcome their ideas" on how to resolve the ongoing financial crisis the country faces.

Emanuel met today with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the entire GOP leadership from that chamber for about 30 minutes, and is currently huddling with House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.). A one-on-one session with House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) will follow the Pence meeting.

Emanuel noted that he personally had spoken to almost two dozen Republicans in the last two weeks to tell them that the new administration is serious about bipartisan cooperation.

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Poll: Public's Loathing of the GOP Hits All Time High
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on November 21, 2008 at 5:32 AM.

In the latest Gallup poll, Americans' antipathy for the GOP has increased yet again, with only 34% saying they view the GOP favorably and 61% saying they view the GOP unfavorably, "the highest Gallup has recorded for that party since the measure was established in 1992."

Couldn't happen to a nicer party.

Here's the real fun, though:

The Republican Party heads into the New Year with its brand tattered by the election after decisive losses in the 2008 presidential and congressional races. Such a defeat inevitably leads to introspection in party circles about its message going forward.

Gallup addressed this issue in the recent poll with a question asking, "Over the next few years, would you like to see the Republican Party and its candidates move in a more conservative direction, a less conservative direction, or stay about the same?"

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Bush Is Pushing Hard to Gut the Endangered Species Act
Posted by Ryan Powers, Think Progress on November 21, 2008 at 5:15 AM.

The Associated Press reported yesterday that, as part of its long-fought campaign to gut the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Bush administration is pushing a last-minute regulatory change that would significantly weaken the ESA:

The rules would eliminate the input of federal wildlife scientists in some endangered species cases, [by allowing] the federal agency in charge of building, authorizing or funding a project to determine for itself whether a project would be likely to harm endangered wildlife and plants.

At today's White House press conference, a reporter asked if the Associated Press had accurately described the proposed regulatory change. Perino responded first by saying she didn't have the documentation with her, but suggested that the rule change would have little effect because the ESA doesn't help protect "any species, including ours" anyway:

PERINO: I don't have [the documentation] with me. I know conceptually what we support. And I know that the Endangered Species Act is a tangled web that doesn't actually help support any species, including our own. ...

Q: (Laughter) So you're proposing eliminating it?

PERINO: No.

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Stephen Baldwin Is a Liar and an Ass
Posted by Lisa Derrick, Firedoglake on November 21, 2008 at 5:01 AM.

The only downside of the presidential election:  Born-again Christian and McCain supporter Stephen Baldwin will not be leaving the country, which he'd promised to do if Obama was elected:

The liberal Democrats who didn't get that I was joking need to lighten up. Obama is obviously talented and intelligent, and I have great respect for the man. He's got my full support, and I'm gonna be praying for him and his administration.

If they legalize gay marriage in all 50 states in my lifetime, I'll get a Billy Ray Cyrus tattoo on my butt to go with the Hannah Montana one.

Based on his ability to keep promises, don't expect to be seeing that piece of ink anytime soon. Not that you'd want to look at his butt.

See (Literally) Why Al Franken is Gaining Votes
Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet on November 20, 2008 at 5:14 PM.

The reason Minnesota's Democratic senatorial candidate, Al Franken, is poised to catch up with and possibly beat the Republican incumbent, Norm Coleman, is vividly demonstrated on the Minnesota Public Radio website.

This report shows varieties of sloppy writing by voters who used pens to mark their paper ballots -- marks that could not be read by optical-scan computer counters. You literally can see examples of ballots that were not counted in the tally on Election Night and decide how you would count them: for Franken or Coleman.

Apparently, Franken is benefiting from what appears to be sloppier writing by Democrats than Republicans. As of late Wednesday, he was trailing by 168 votes and gaining on Coleman.

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Why Would Obama Stick With Gates as Defense Secretary?
Posted by Chris Bowers, Open Left on November 20, 2008 at 4:03 PM.

Remember who the last Secretary of Defense was under a Democratic President? It was a Republican:

On December 5, 1996, President Clinton announced his selection of Cohen as secretary of defense. Cohen, a Republican about to retire from the United States Senate, was the "right person," Clinton said, to build on the achievements of William Perry, "to secure the bipartisan support America's armed forces must have and clearly deserve." In responding to his nomination, Cohen said that during his congressional career he had supported a nonpartisan national security policy and commended the president for appointing a Republican to his cabinet.

Who will be the next Secretary of Defense under a Democratic administration? Seems like a Republican appointee:

Barack Obama and Robert Gates are negotiating policy issues with a view toward Gates remaining Defense secretary, the Financial Times reports, a move that would make the Bush appointee a key member of a bipartisan cabinet that resembles Abraham Lincoln's "team of rivals."

Kind of remarkable that every time Democrats seek elite media and political credibility for having a "bi-partisan" cabinet, they turn to Republicans to manage the Pentagon. Kind of makes you think that Democrats believe Republicans are better at managing both national security, and what is by far the largest department of the federal government. There have been no Democratic Defense Secretaries since 1996, and only eight years of Democratic Defense Secretaries since 1968.

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Econ-ocalypse: Dow Drops Below 7,600, No Deal Reached on Auto Bailout
Posted by Ian Welsh, Firedoglake on November 20, 2008 at 2:52 PM.

Well, the Dow has broken 8,000.  As Jane noted there is no technical support below 8K, so where it ends now is not known.  A historical low for a bear market, as I've written in the past is 6K, which is about 7 times earnings. 

The issue isn't just technical trading, it's the spiral of margin calls, where the lower the market goes, the more investors who have borrowed funds to invest have to sell in order to keep enough value in their accounts to cover the loans they've taken out.  The term for this is an Ohmstead break, and if one occurs, the drop will become uncontrollable.

In the meantime, I am amused that the same White House and Senate who supposedly passed the bailout bill to save the market wasn't willing to push cough 25 billion to stop this meltdown from occuring.  When the White House and Congress failed to pass a restructuring bill, investors got scared, because even if politicians are stupid enough to be stampeded by Paulson, then too stupid to understand what 3 million job losses will do the US economy, investors know that it would devastate the economy.

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Franken Camp: We're Doing Even Better Than Reported
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on November 20, 2008 at 2:04 PM.

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Karl Rove the Hypocrite Doles Out Advice for Obama
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 20, 2008 at 1:37 PM.

I'm trying to pick my favorite part of Karl Rove's latest column in the Wall Street Journal. There are so many gems to choose from.

There are ... plans to use the Obama campaign's email list to lobby for Mr. Obama's policies. The Chicago Tribune, reporting comments from Obama spokesman Steve Hildebrand, summed up the plan this way: the email list could be used "to challenge Democratic lawmakers if they don't hew to the Obama agenda."

Just one problem. It's illegal. There are statutory prohibitions on the White House from using tax dollars to directly lobby Congress by unleashing emails, calls and visits. That's up to outside groups to do.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons, both of which Yglesias tackled nicely. First, Rove is confused about the law. Second, it's ironic to hear Rove encouraging Obama to steer clear of White House legal transgressions, given Rove's role in helping Bush ignore legal restrictions they found inconvenient.

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Obama Taps AZ Gov. Janet Napolitano to Head Homeland Security
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on November 20, 2008 at 12:22 PM.

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano has been tapped by President-Elect Obama to head the Department of Homeland Security, pending vetting.

I guess it's too much for which to hope that her first order of business will be to defang and rename the creepily fascistic DHS.

Because I don't really like this department or its (over)reach (I'm way more conservative than most conservatives on this one; leave it to them to love the federal bureau with the most Nazified name), I have what I'll call "not a good reaction" when I read stuff like:

She was the first governor to call for National Guard troops to secure the U.S.-Mexico border

as if that's a good thing.

The entire department is also a dysfunctional mess; as Steve notes: "Since its creation in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration's management of the newest cabinet agency has been a terrible mess. (A few years ago, House Democrats released a report noting that DHS set 33 clear goals for itself—and failed to meet all of them.)"

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Senate Gives Convicted Felon a Standing Ovation
Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress on November 20, 2008 at 11:32 AM.

Today, Ted Stevens -- Alaska's defeated Republican senator and a convicted felon -- was granted time on the Senate floor to deliver his farewell speech. Steven's said that he still can’t believe that he’s "privileged to speak on the floor of the United States Senate." He also added that he "doesn’t have a rear-view mirror. I look only forward, and I still see the day when I can remove the cloud that currently surrounds me."

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) then took the floor and said farewell to his "distinguished colleague." Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had previously called for Stevens’s resignation, recalled the longest-serving Republican's "extraordinary accomplishments." Watch it:

Matt Yglesias writes: "I cannot believe that (a) Ted Stevens got a standing ovation from his fellow senators, and (b) Harry Reid is now delivering an ode to him. I mean, the man’s a criminal. Senatorial courtesy is a really bizarre institution."

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