The most disturbing moment of John Stewart’s interview with President Obama was when Obama claimed the soon-to-exit director of the National Economic Council, Larry Summers, had done a “Heckuva Job.” It was a statement both profoundly wrong and politically stupid. On so many levels, it was an awful thing to say just days before the election. It is a moment that has honestly made me question Obama’s judgment and basic intelligence.

Homeowners must take care of themselves and their families first and only. Neither banksters nor their enablers in the Obama Administration will.

I was on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan show at 4pm EDT discussing Barack Obama’s appearance on the Daily Show. There were some claims made about the impact of the health care bill that are, at best, obfuscations.

Poll after poll shows Prop 19 will come down to the wire. While polling for ballot initiatives is notoriously difficult – not to mention the possibility of a “Reverse Bradley Effect” – one thing has been clear: Latino voters are some of those most opposed to Prop 19.

In order to try to shore up any support amongst Latino voters in California, Just Say Now is launching a phone bank targeted at possible Latino voters and Spanish speakers, with a Spanish-language script to speak to these voters about voting Yes on Prop 19.

I think it’s a bit late to come into this argument, but it’s an important one to have. We cannot rely on the comity of the other side to use the filibuster judiciously.

President Obama sat down with some progressive bloggers yesterday for a Q&A, and this was one of his more puzzling responses.

Make Your Predictions for
FDL’s 2010 Election Challenge

Use the form below to cast your predictions for the 2010 midterm elections & 112th Congress.

There will be prizes for the winners!

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# of seats in House Democratic caucus

Currently 255

# of seats in Senate Democratic caucus

Currently 59

Will Prop 19 pass?

Yes

No

% Yes vote for
Prop 19

%

to the nearest 100th (ex: 5.02%)

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FDL will be featuring extensive election night coverage across the country, including the much-anticipated results of Prop 19. And the morning after, everyone will of course be diagnosing “what happened” with 20/20 hindsight. But who really did call the races in advance?

You can place your predictions in the FDL Election Projection Vault (patent pending), which will remain locked until the results are known. So, put on your finest Amazing Kreskin hat, and lay your bets.

Questions:

• How many House seats will Democrats hold in the 112th Congress?
• How many Senate seats will Democrats hold in the 112th Congress?
• Will California’s Proposition 19 pass?

Tiebreaker:

• What will the final percentage be for “Yes” on Prop 19?

What the president cannot seem to grasp is that people now hear his words—poetry or prose—in the context of their lives. And when Obama tells his one-time supporters that he has gotten 90 percent of what he wanted, those people have to wonder if what the president wants and what they want is still (or was ever) the same thing.

OK, here’s the truth: 53% of all Americans are worried about paying their next rent or mortgage payment. You can take that stat to mean that, since lots of people own their homes, “among people who actually have a rent or mortgage commitment in the first place, something like three-quarters are worried about having enough money to pay it.” This is an ENORMOUS problem, not one that requires picking through the pile making sure everyone “deserves” the help.

Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog asked President Obama a simple question: is DADT unconstitutional? The answer he got was anything but simple, and Obama managed to refer to Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in a reply that told LGBTs they were wrong to be disappointed in Obama’s strategy of “not now.”

Funny, but that’s not at all what King said. Obama’s reply makes it sound not like this is one of his “favorite pieces of literature” but something someone else read and gave him some talking points from.

Obama may want to re-read that letter — because the LGBTs sure act and sound like they’ve read it a lot more recently than Obama has.