Rep. Bart Stupak, Democrat Representative from Michigan, is leading an effort among Democrats to add language to the bill that will specifically prohibit abortions, but is being fought by Pelosi and others.

If the Democrats really oppose abortion in the healthcare bill, why are they fighting so hard to keep out pro-life language?

Shut up, that’s why.

From The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room:

Rep. Bart Stupak said Speaker Pelosi is not pleased with his effort to change abortion-related provisions in the healthcare bill being crafted by the House.

During an interview on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” show, Stupak (D-Mich.) said he is undeterred in trying to ensure that taxpayer dollars do not pay for abortions. Stupak, who opposes abortion rights, acknowledged that some in his party are upset with his public campaign to change the bill.

“The Speaker is not happy with me,” Stupak said.

…

“This has been federal law since 1976,” he said, noting that President Barack Obama has vowed not to allow healthcare reform to pay for abortions.

“We have to have a vote,” he said.

If he doesn’t get one, Stupak said he and as many as 39 other Democrats will vote no on a procedural motion to bring the health bill to the floor. A House vote on healthcare reform could be taken next week.

1. Front page story — Primarily a liberal, human interest piece that few people read. It is sometimes very good, but often very bad.
2. Content — Almost wholly derived from AP, Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post, or “assembled from wire content.” So why do we buy this paper when we can get the same thing from Drudge?
3. Op-Ed - Almost uniformly liberal opinions, except that the Dallas Morning News generally endorses Republicans for elections after trashing them for six months. They hold a huge grudge against Texas governor Rick Perry, but are unable to articulate why they hold him in such low self-esteem.

Overall, a sad newspaper that doesn’t quite fit with its demographics. They spend way too much time trying to be the Austin American Statesman. The Dallas Morning News ranks third in losses out of the top 25 newspapers in the country. They have a very, very bad business model and still don’t understand why they’re failing. It’s too bad — Dallas needs a good newspaper.

Top 25 Daily Newspapers in New FAS-FAX

Top 25 Daily Newspapers in New FAS-FAX
By E&P Staff
Published: October 26, 2009 9:40 AM ET

NEW YORK Here are the top 25 newspapers in the country ranked by daily (Monday-Friday) circulation for the six months ending September 2009 from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The percent change compares the same six-month period ending September 2008.
Go here for more on this list by E&P Senior Editor Jennifer Saba, and here for a list of the top 25 papers on Sunday. For a list of the top 10 gainers this time around, go here.
…

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS — 263,810 — (-22.16%)

Hey liberals, where is your righteous indignation now?

From POLITICO: President Obama ties George W. Bush on golf - Patrick Gavin

Surprisingly, alcohol was involved.

From the New York Daily News:

Proctor Police Department

Dennis LeRoy Anderson, 62, pled guilty to driving his tricked-out La-Z-Boy while drunk.

At least he was in a comfy chair.

A Minnesota man has pled guilty to driving while drunk. The only hitch - he was driving a La-Z-Boy.

According to the Duluth News Tribune, Dennis LeRoy Anderson departed from a bar in Proctor, a town in northern Minnesota, and started to drive his chair home one night in August 2008.

However, the 62-year-old crashed the La-Z-Boy into a parked car. He was not seriously injured, but police found that his blood alcohol level was 0.29, more than three times the legal limit.

Anderson admitted to drinking eight or nine beers, a criminal complaint stated.

As for the chair, which was powered by a lawnmower engine and tricked out with headlights, a stereo and a steering system, is going to be auctioned off by police at an undetermined date.

The Minnesota senior will serve two years probation.

The decline in Barack Obama’s popularity since July has been the steepest of any president at the same stage of his first term for more than 50 years.

…

His current approval rating – hovering just above the level that would make re-election an uphill struggle – is close to the bottom for newly-elected president. Mr Obama entered the White House with a soaring 78 per cent approval rating.

The bad polling news came as Mr Obama returned to the campaign trail to prevent his Democratic party losing two governorships next month in states in which he defeated Senator John McCain in last November’s election.

…

Governor Jon Corzine of New Jersey is in severe danger of defeat while Democrats are fast losing hope that Creigh Deeds can beat his Republican opponent in Virginia. Twin Democratic losses would be a major blow to Mr Obama’s prestige.

For her next performance, Nancy will explain why Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky wasn’t really cheating, because he was just reverting back to the state where he was before he married Hillary.

Strauss suffered the ignomy of being Hitler’s favorite living composer, and his references to Wagner are unmistakable. To Strauss’s credit, he used his position to protect Jews, including his daughter-in-law Alice and his friend, Stegan Zweig. There is evidence that he provided protection for other Jews as well, but he understandably left no contemporaneous notes.

Tonight’s performance is brought to you by the Kopper King hibiscus, which holds a special place in our front garden.

From The Hill:

Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) locked Republicans out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee room to keep them from meeting when Democrats aren’t present.

Towns’ action came after repeated public ridicule from the leading Republican on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), over Towns’s failure to launch an investigation into Countrywide Mortgage’s reported sweetheart deals to VIPs.

For months Towns has refused Republican requests to subpoena records in the case. Last Thursday Committee Republicans, led by Issa, were poised to force an open vote on the subpoenas at a Committee mark-up meeting.

At the crux of the matter are sweetheart VIP loan deals that Countrywide made to Senators Chris Dodd, Kent Conrad, and others with political influence. Republicans have discovered that Countrywide recorded calls with politicians and have apparently since destroyed them. Countrywide, now owned by Bank of America, is being kind of fuzzy about what happened to the tapes

Democrats first claimed the mark-up was canceled due to a conflict with the Financial Services Committee. Later they said it was abandoned after a disagreement among Democratic members on whether to subpoena records on the mortgage industry’s political contributions to Republicans. Finally, Democrats admitted that they were at a Georgetown frat party trying to score with some hot chicks.

Okay, I may have made up that last sentence.

Peter and Gordon had a string of Top 40 hits from 1964 to 1967. Their first, A World Without Love, was written by Paul McCartney under a pseudonym. McCartney wanted to know if he could write a number one hit that stood on its own merits rather than because it happened to be by The Beatles.

The careers of Peter and Gordon weren’t hurt by the fact that Paul dated Peter’s sister, Jane Asher. Peter can be seen in a number of Beatles television performances, including Hey Jude and All You Need is Love.

Take a peek below the fold at Peter and Gordon performing A World Without Love in 1965 — and 2008. Remember, someday the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus will look like this.

According to The Onion, "It's gonna require all of the President's diplomacy skills to make the fire see that putting itself out is what's best for both parties."

Here are The Beatles, performing “Hey, Jude” from the David Frost show in 1968.The introductory portion of the clip was filmed at Twickenham Studios, which Frost visited early in the day to make it appear as if the Beatles were actually on the show. The Beatles performed semi-live, over-dubbing live vocals over the pre-recorded studio version of the song. This version is allegedly an edit of takes 1 and 3.

Both John and George believed that Paul had written the song with them in mind.

Note at 2:47 how John forgets to come in with a backup vocal. John and Paul acknowledge this with a laugh, then continue the performance. John was well-known from his teenage years for forgetting the words to songs.

As always, it’s best to let Rush speak for himself. Here’s a teaser from the Wall Street Journal. Go and read the whole article.

Not to be outdone, Jesse Jackson, whose history includes anti-Semitic speech (in 1984 he referred to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York City as “Hymietown” in a Washington Post interview) chimed in. He found me unfit to be associated with the NFL. I was too divisive and worse. I was accused of once supporting slavery and having praised Martin Luther King Jr.’s murderer, James Earl Ray.

Next came writers in the sports world, like the Washington Post’s Michael Wilbon. He wrote this gem earlier this week: “I’m not going to try and give specific examples of things Limbaugh has said over the years because I screwed up already doing that, repeating a quote attributed to Limbaugh (about slavery) which he has told me he simply did not say and does not reflect his feelings. I take him at his word… . “

Mr. Wilbon wasn’t alone. Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made. Their sources, as best I can tell, were Wikipedia and each other. But the Wikipedia post was based on a fabrication printed in a book that also lacked any citation to an actual source.

I never said I supported slavery and I never praised James Earl Ray. How sick would that be? Just as sick as those who would use such outrageous slanders against me or anyone else who never even thought such things. Mr. Wilbon refuses to take responsibility for his poison pen, writing instead that he will take my word that I did not make these statements; others, like Rick Sanchez of CNN, essentially used the same sleight-of-hand.

The sports media elicited comments from a handful of players, none of whom I can recall ever meeting.

Most of us knew that when various branches of the government began to sever ties with ACORN, they would find ways to recreate those ties.

"The only thing that could really make [the love affair with Obama] end is utter failure on the part of Obama."

Obama is failing on every issue. If Barnes is correct, then the media love affair with Obama will end once it becomes apparent the the stimulus has failed, health care is unpopular, and the cap and trade bill does not pass..

"Obviously newspapers are going to shrink, they're going to be an elite phenomoon, in some cities, and there are going to be big cities without a newspaper."

"There was no reporting. The press seemed to resent the notion, that you mainly heard from conservatives, that they should report, that they should investigate Obama's relationship with people like Bill Ayers. The press didn't want to do that, and they didn't."

Click the picture for the video:

I noted yesterday that I doubted a helium balloon of that size could carry a 6-year child. Watch this snippet from CNN last night where Falcon Heene, when asked why he hid, said “We did it for a show.” Coupled with what looks like bad acting on behalf of his parents, I’m beginning to think that this family, who are no strangers to self-promotion on televsion, conducted a hoax to attract attention.

After an exceptionally fine bottle of MD 20-20 one evening, I thought that world peace would be a wonderful thing. I held that thought for five seconds until I caught the whiff of day-old pizza in the dumpster I was sitting next to. If I had remained focused just 5 seconds longer that fateful evening I would be $1.5 million wealthier tonight.

Update at 5:41 PM EST: According to Calgary Herald:

A young boy from a ‘science-obssessed’ family fell from an experimental balloon that had taken off with him aboard, according to reports.

One of Falcon Heene’s brothers is said to have told authorities that he saw his brother fall from the balloon, which took off Thursday morning and reached a height of nearly 8,000 feet before losing helium and coming back to earth.

There was no sign of Falcon when the balloon landed.

A ground search is currently under way around Fort collins, Colorado, where the Heene family live.

Emergency officials have shared a description of the child as being 3 feet tall, wearing a dark blue shirt and blue jeans. According to the Fort Collins Coloradoan, a local resident reported something dropping from the sky near Weld County Roads 41 or 43 and 28.

Update at 5:38 PM EST:  According to Teletext:

Rescue teams in the United States are carrying out an intense ground search for Falcon Heene, a six-year-old boy believed to have climbed into a balloon which took off and travelled for 60 miles before landing with no-one on board.

A Colorado sheriff’s official said the boy had climbed into a box attached to the balloon, but the box was not found when the craft landed.

Kathy Messick said one of the boy’s brothers saw him get into the box or basket, which was attached with pegs.

She said search teams were scouring the area from the house in the direction that the balloon flew. She added that investigators were examining every possibility, including whether the boy was ever in the balloon.

Update at 5:31 PM EST: To lift 1 kg, you need about 163 grams of helium.

===================

Lord, have mercy. Please watch over and protect Falcon Heene.

According to MSNBC, the father is saying that part of the compartment is missing.

From USAToday:

Update at 2:42 p.m. ET: KUSA TV says the craft is an experimental aircraft that has a large helium balloon attached at their home  in Fort Collins. 

Click here to link to KUSA’s live webcast of the unfolding incident.

Update at 2:52: p.m. ET: The Fort Collins Coloradoan reports that family and officials say the boy got onto the aircraft and detached the rope holding it in place.

Update at 2:58 p.m. ET: USA TODAY’s Doyle Rice says current winds around Fort Collins are out of the northwest at 14 mph, gusting to 20 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

Update at 3:16 p.m. ET: A Weld County sheriff’s spokesman said a sibling saw the boy climb into the basket before the balloon took off. The door on the balloon was unlocked, so it’s possible the boy had fallen out, she said.

Erik Nilsson, Larimer County Emergency Manager, told CNN affiliate KMGH, “The structure at the bottom of the balloon that the boy is in is made of extremely thin plywood and won’t withstand any kind of a crash at all.”

Update at 3:23 p.m. ET: The Colorado National Guard is sending an OH-58 Kiowa helicopter to try to rescue the boy, the Associated Press says.

The boy was seen climbing into the balloon and unleashing it by his brother. Here is a video of the the landing. Note how small the balloon is. I’m no balloonist, but as a scientist, I don’t see how a homemade balloon of this size could have lifted a 50-pound boy to seven or eight thousand feet.

Tonight's performance is brought to you by one of my favorite plants in our garden -- the Hot Lips salvia.

From Lawrence Kadish of WSJ.com: Taking the National Debt Seriously

If you think those town hall meetings over health care were fierce, wait until Americans come to understand the threat to our national financial survival posed by the interest on the government’s credit card.

When the government spends more than its revenue, there is a budget deficit. These deficits are paid for by Washington selling interest bearing Treasury securities. If the government were ever to default on its promise to pay periodic interest payments or to repay the debt at maturity, the United States economy would plunge into a level of chaos that would make the Lehman bankruptcy look like a nonevent.

It is the interest on the national debt that makes our future unstable. The exploding size of that burden suggests that, short of devaluing the dollar and taking a large bite out of the middle class through inflation and taxation, there is no way to ever pay down that bill.

As of Sept. 30, 2009, the national debt was almost $12 trillion and interest on that debt was $383 billion for the year, according to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Public Debt. The Congressional Budget Office on Oct. 7 estimated the 2009 budget deficit to be almost $1.4 trillion (about 10% of GDP). In August, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimated total government revenues at about $2 trillion. The revenue estimate included $904 billion from individual income taxes. This means the cost of interest on the debt represented more than 40 cents of every dollar that came in from individual income taxes.

Never. Which is the point.

In order to win in 2010 and 2012, the Republicans are going to have to do two things:

1. Run real conservative candidates. This seems obvious to everyone but the leaders of the Republican Party. For some reason, Republican leaders are afraid that the media is going to call them names if they field true conservatives as candidates. Of course they will – the problem is that any Republican candidate is going to called racist, sexist, extremist, and wanting children to breathe dirty air and drink dirty water. That’s the way the game works. We have to offer people a real alternative to liberalism.
2. Go on the attack with issues where liberals have failed. This should be mind-numbingly easy. The Democrats, as the article below shows, plan to run against Bush. One of the Republican 2010 campaign slogans be, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Beat the Democrats with their own words. Show a little girl crying while watching a meter spin as it shows the rising federal debt. This is the age of YouTube and there are plenty of clips with Pelosi, Reid, and others lying and saying nasty things. Tie Democrats to ACORN. Tie them to Charlie Rangel, John Edwards, and others.

From the New York Times:  Democrats’ Best Chances to Win Are With Harsher Attacks, Strategists Say.

New Jersey Republicans complain that Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, has turned nasty to gain ground in his re-election bid this year. Republicans elsewhere should brace themselves.

That is because Mr. Corzine’s strategy for a comeback victory has turned into a template for Democratic candidates to survive in the 2010 midterm elections. Its shorthand description: winning ugly.

Now that Democrats control the White House, Congress and most governorships, voters’ discontent with the status quo represents their burden, which has Democratic strategists considering tactics to push back challengers.

…

The Seats Up for Grabs
By Mr. Cook’s assessment, Democrats currently have 28 House seats in jeopardy to the Republicans’ 14; 7 Senate seats to Republicans’ 6; 13 governorships to Republicans’ 9. And he sees the nation’s continuing economic struggles turning the political environment darker, not brighter.

In last month’s New York Times/CBS News Poll, nearly 8 in 10 Americans rated the economy as fairly or very bad. That is only a modest improvement from a year ago.

The fallout for Democratic Congressional candidates is clear. In a recent Gallup survey, independent voters preferred Republican candidates for Congress by 45 percent to 36 percent; last October, they favored Democratic candidates 46 percent to 39 percent.

…

Moreover, the White House counts on lingering distaste for President George W. Bush’s eight-year administration to help insulate Mr. Obama and his party from today’s economic discontent. The question is whether that insulation will prove enough to prevent major Democratic losses next fall.

On the Offensive in Two States
In Virginia’s off-year governor’s race, the Democratic candidate, R. Creigh Deeds, has homed in on an old academic paper by his Republican opponent, Robert F. McDonnell, to cast Mr. McDonnell as a right-wing radical on social issues. Mr. Deeds still trails substantially in a state where Democrats have won recent elections for senator and governor.

Mr. Corzine has made more headway — and gotten even more personal — in New Jersey’s close race for governor. He has mocked his heavy-set Republican opponent, Christopher J. Christie, in an advertisement that claimed Mr. Christie “threw his weight around” to avoid traffic tickets.

…

Playing Down the Issues
Few Democrats next year will be able to match the overwhelming campaign spending advantage enjoyed by Mr. Corzine, a wealthy former Wall Street executive. On the other hand, party strategists hope that economic anxiety will ease next year if Washington acts on health care and energy legislation, both of which Mr. Obama calls vital to long-term economic growth.

But I’m not very conspiracy-minded and believe that they are just a bunch of numbskulls trying to make socialism work – something that has never happened anywhere it has been tried.

The oil-producing Arab states publicly deny that they are trying to peg the value of oil to something other than the dollar, perhaps a currency basket, but gold keeps rising on the seemingly well-sourced rumors. China is proposing a one-world currency and there are indicators that they are pushing the Yuan to be that currency.

CNBC’s Larry Kudlow is offering advice to the administration – policies that have worked every time they have been tried.

I try to be optimistic about better earnings, a stock market rally and economic recovery. And I’m sticking to my guns. But what we’re seeing right now is pretty darn close to what we witnessed in the 1970s—the rise in gold and inflation really cuts into the stock market.

So what’s the way out?

Well for starters, we need a stable dollar to stop inflationary pressures. And we also need lower tax rates to spur the economy, help it grow, and reduce unemployment. I’ve been calling this the Mundell-Laffer supply-side solution, after Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Mundell and my mentor, former Reagan advisor Arthur Laffer. It was put to work with great success nearly thirty years ago to stop stagflation. It also launched a twenty year bull market recovery.

Put simply, the Mundell-Laffer model exercises monetary restraint to save the dollar—and low marginal tax rates for economic growth incentives that benefit investors, risk takers, small businesses and workers. Right now, for therapy, the Fed should begin moving excess cash from the economy and they should raise their target rate. Take a page from the Reserve Bank of Australia’s playbook and move rates higher.

In addition, the Treasury ought to get out there and buy these unwanted dollars in the marketplace. Just go out there and bid for them. And they need to stop printing so much debt from Congress. All this massive spending and borrowing is killing us. We need to be slashing tax rates on large and small businesses. There’s just no better place to begin job creation. And leave the Bush tax cuts in place for heaven’s sake.

ACORN willing to help folks out setting up a child slavery prostitution ring? Aw, only rightwing conspiracy nuts believe that. Who are you gonna’ believe, the Democrats or your lying eyes?

And hey, how about that Taliban? They’re now our very special friends, pose no threat to America, and will help us fight al Qaeda. What could be more awesomely awesome?

Obama is adopting the preposterous assumption that the Taliban can play a role in running Afghanistan and, if we leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone. Of course, Obama doesn’t want the Taliban to totally govern Afghanistan, but, you know, they can help out and stuff. Meanwhile, our troops, who will supposedly only have to keep al Qaeda weak (not destroy them), will be working with our new friends.

While our troops are being slaughtered, Obama will find all sorts of good news, abetted by his media cheerleaders, that will allow him to totally pull out of Afghanistan. This will pacify his extreme left base who, after the 2008 election, have suddenly decided that we really don’t need to fight in Afghanistan after all. Declare victory and run away.

God help us. There will be blood on Obama’s hands.

In case anyone has forgotten how brutal the Taliban are, how they have helped al Qaeda in the past, and how they ignore the most basic of human rights, check out the links in this story from About.com:

The Taliban’s long lists of edicts and decrees took an especially misogynistic view of women. Schools for girls were closed. Women were forbidden to work or leave their homes without verifiable permission. Wearing non-Islamic dress was forbidden. Wearing make-up, sporting western products like purses or shoes, was forbidden. Music, dancing, cinemas, any form of non-religious broadcasting and entertainment were banned. Lawbreakers were beaten, flogged, shot or beheaded.

In 1994, Osama bin Laden moved to Kandahar as a guest of Mullah Omar. On Aug. 23, 1996, bin Laden declared war on the United States and exerted increasing influence on Omar, helping to fund the Taliban’s offensives against other warlords in the north of the country. That lavish financial support made it impossible for Mullah Omar not to protect bin Laden when Saudi Arabia, then the United States, pressured the Taliban to extradite bin Laden. The fates and ideology of al-Qaeda and the Taliban became intertwined.

At the height of their power, in March 2001, the Taliban demolished the two enormous, centuries-old Buddha statues of Bamiyan, an act that showed to the world in ways that the Taliban’s wanton massacres and oppression should have much earlier the ruthless, distorted Puritanism of the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam.

From FOXNews.com:

WASHINGTON — President Obama is inclined to send only as many more U.S. troops to Afghanistan as are needed to keep Al Qaeda at bay, a senior administration official said.

The official, in an interview with The Associated Press, also added that the president is prepared to accept some Taliban involvement in Afghanistan’s political future, reiterating what Obama said in March.

The assessment comes from an official who has been involved in the president’s discussions with his war council about Afghanistan strategy.

Aides say the president’s final decision on Afghanistan strategy and troop levels is still at least two weeks away, but the emerging thinking suggests he would be unlikely to favor a large military ramp-up of the kind being advocated by his top commander in Afghanistan.

McChrystal’s troop request is said to include a range of options, from adding as few as 10,000 combat troops to — the general’s strong preference — as many as 40,000.

Obama’s developing strategy on the Taliban will “not tolerate their return to power,” the senior official said. But the U.S. would fight only to keep the Taliban from retaking control of Afghanistan’s central government — something it is now far from being capable of — and from giving renewed sanctuary in Afghanistan to Al-Qaeda, the official said.

Recognizing the U.S. can neither win in Afghanistan nor succeed more broadly against Al Qaeda without Pakistan’s cooperation, Obama’s war council is weighing a new role for Pakistan in the 8-year-old struggle in the region.

Obama’s national security team marked the war’s eighth anniversary on Wednesday with a three-hour session in a secure room in the White House basement. The focus on Pakistan, the suspected hiding place of Usama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda terrorists as well as Taliban leaders, could provide a hint into the president’s leanings.

Members of the president’s national security team argued that the Taliban in Afghanistan do not pose a direct threat to the U.S., officials told The New York Times. It was unclear if everyone in the war council accepted the premise.