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Here's the link to Wednesday's live blog.

10:15 am PDT: President Obama said Thursday morning that he has earmarked $100 million to support recovery and relief efforts in Haiti following Tuesday's 7.0 magnitude earthquake that has left the country in ruins.

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Conservatives are desperate. They understand that health care reform is going to pass, perhaps even this week. To that end, their corporate sponsors are ramping up the pressure and trying to whip enthusiasm to oppose it.

Tonight, Americans for Prosperity sponsored a tele-town hall meeting with concerned conservatives looking to defeat the House vote on health care reform tonight. Their special guest was Indiana Representative Mike Pence, who called on listeners to "pray for the battle", to call their Congressman and remind them that "no one wants this monstrosity to pass."

Americans for Prosperity, you might remember, is the astroturf non-profit lobbying arm of the Scaife empire and Koch Industries. Director Art Pope is a champion of oil and tobacco interests. They partner with organizations like the 912 Project to defeat anything that might resemble the will of the people. Rachel Maddow did a terrific takedown of their operation and the bankruptcy of their campaign against health care last summer.

Some highlights:

Tearful caller Pam is frustrated because her representative, Brad Ellsworth (D-Indiana), sent her a response indicating that he had decided how he would vote. Frustrated that her representative doesn't listen to her, she appeals to Rep. Pence for ideas. His response: "Write a letter to the editor."

Beverly in Nevada wanted to know "what it is this President does not understand? The American people do NOT want this health care bill." Hmm. Beverly might want to read this AP-GfK poll, where only 4% oppose any health care reform, and the largest number of respondents believe the system needs drastic changes.

The best moment might have been toward the end, when Pence rallied the troops for what he knows is a lost cause, and used this talking point:

"Once the American public becomes dependent on the federal government during that most vulnerable moment of illness of a loved one, a spouse, a parent, a child, a grandchild, those on the elite leadership of the left know...they’ll never let it [public healthcare] go."

Damn right.

As a final note, he calls for women to pray for the battle, those in the battle, wisdom for the Democrats. If the bill passes, will they see it as a sign from God?

I somehow doubt it.

An audio clip of the call's end is below. The full audio is here.

DOWNLOADS: 19
PLAYS: 9

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 3/8-10. Likely voters. MoE 4% (8/2-12/09 results)

Let's start with the governor's race:

Republican primary

Meg Whitman (R)   52 (24)
Steve Poizner (R) 19 (9)

(Tom Campbell, then in the governor's race, got 19 percent in August 2009 poll)

General election

Meg Whitman (R)   41 (36)
Jerry Brown (D)   45 (42)

Steve Poizner (R) 33 (34)
Jerry Brown (D)   48 (43)

Favorable/Unfavorable

Brown (D)   52/40 (48/37)
Whitman (R) 51/35 (41/30)
Poizner (R) 37/40 (35/27)

Poizner is the ultra-conservative teabagger candidate in the race, and going nowhere, so we're likely to get a Whitman/Brown matchup. Both those candidates are evenly matched in favorabilities, though the state's Democratic tilt gives Brown a bit of a head start. The results are still a bit surprising, however. Brown has run the most invisible, stealth campaign, in state history. Seriously, the dude is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Whitman has spent tents of millions of dollars in her campaign, and is running on near saturation television ads:

The campaign’s Gross Rating Point report, measuring total delivery of the current week’s broadcast ad schedule in 11 markets in California, shows that eMeg’s buy is comparable to what a fully-loaded campaign might ordinarily deliver in the closing weeks of a heated race – not three months before a primary that she’s prohibitively leading.

“These are some big fuckin’ numbers,” said Bill Carrick, the veteran Democratic media consultant after reviewing the report. “She’s buying the whole shebang.”

While she may be the prohibitive favorite in the primary, it's done little to bolster her general election standing. She's gained just two points on Jerry Brown since last August. And remember, that's against Brown's invisible campaign.

Brown dominates in the Bay Area 61-22, while Whitman does best down South, around San Diego, 56-34. Independents split 41-40, with Brown with the small but statistically insignificant edge. 19 percent of independents remain undecided.

The biggest undecided block are African Americans, who break 66-6 for Brown, but with 28 percent undecided. Getting them out to vote will be key for Brown. Same with Latinos, who give Brown a 60-27 edge, with 13 percent undecided.

Brown may be 255 years old (give or take a decade), but voters over 60 go for Whitman 45-38. The Millennials  remain the strongest Democratic age group -- 49-37 for Brown. They are also the least likely to vote. Thus Brown's early edge is one built on a shaky foundation -- strong support from the demographics least likely to turn out and vote. Whitman has been running a gaffe prone campaign thus far. If she gets her act together, this could be a real dogfight.

In the Senate race:

Republican primary

Tom Campbell (R)  33
Carly Fiorina (R) 24
Chuck DeVore (R)   7

General election

Barbara Boxer (D)  47
Tom Campbell (R)   43

Barbara Boxer (D)  49 (52)
Carly Fiorina (R)  40 (31)

Barbara Boxer (D)  49 (53)
Chuck DeVore (R)   39 (29)

Favorable/Unfavorable

Boxer (D)    50/45 (49/43)
Campbell (R) 46/37 (38/29)
Fiorina (R)  35/43 (22/29)
DeVore (R)   34/42 (21/27)

Boxer has the early edge, but she's under the magical 50 percent safe mark. Fiorina and DeVore have terrible favorability numbers, leaving Campbell as Boxer's most serious competition.

Of course, this is familiar territory for her. In 2004 -- another strong GOP year -- the scary accurate Field Poll had Boxer head just 48-38 in February of that year. Boxer didn't break the 50 percent mark in that key California poll until May, and she never looked back. We'll see if she can repeat history in this, yet another challenging year for Democrats.

Against Campbell, who runs strongest against her, Boxer dominates the bay Area (63-24) and leads 2-1 in LA County (58-28). The Central Valley and San Diego area, on the other hand, are problems. Also, like Brown, her strongest demographics are also those least likely to vote -- young voters, African Americans and Latinos.

Still, Boxer starts off with the edge. And Campbell is nowhere near locking down his primary like Whitman. That contest appears to be anyone's game, especially with 36 percent still undecided.

A Mississippi school district has canceled this year’s prom at Itawamba Agricultural High School after the Mississippi ACLU urged school officials to allow a lesbian couple to attend. Administrators turned down requests from 18-year-old Constance McMillen and her girlfriend, another student at the school, who planned on wearing a tuxedo. The school cited “distractions to the educational process caused by recent events” as reason for canceling the event, suggesting that “a private group host an independent prom instead.” McMillen, however, said the district’s decision was “retaliation” for speaking out:

“Oh, my God. That’s really messed up because the message they are sending is that if they have to let gay people go to prom that they are not going to have one,” she said. “A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it’s really retaliation.”

School officials told McMillen last month that she could not bring her sophomore girlfriend to the prom and could not wear a tuxedo. The school then circulated a memo prohibiting same-sex dates.

“I asked my teacher about it, and she said, ‘Well, you have to remember where you are,’” McMillen said.

In neighboring Alabama last year, the Franklin County School system in Russellville “reversed its policy prohibiting a lesbian student from attending a prom with her girlfriend.” In Utah, the Salt Lake City-based Utah Pride Center hosts a gay prom every year, but “Executive Director Valerie Larabee said districts have not enforced same-sex date prohibitions for years.” In Los Angeles United School District schools, same-sex couples are permitted to attend the prom, and one of these schools has even elected a gay male prom queen.

– Nick McClellan

Alan Greenspan had a dream, or rather a nightmare. Greenspan seems to have woken up in a cold sweat one morning in fear that the period of "disinflationary pressures" that had kept inflation low since the 1990s was about to end.

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To listen to John Roberts, you'd think that mobs of pitchfork-waving Democrats had accosted a handful of trembling justices and demanded that they reverse themselves on the spot -- or else. Speaking to law students at the University of Alabama, Roberts said anyone is free to criticize the court. Except, apparently, not to the justices' faces.

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Never mind that within Republican ranks sit the following incumbents:

1. David "Diapers" Vitter

2. John "I screwed my top aide's wife (and she was also a staffer!)" Ensign

3. Mark "Hiking the Appalachian Argentine Trail" Sanford

Never mind that just 48 hours ago Republican House Leader John Boehner's leadership office was embracing Eric Massa's conspiracy theory and telling people to watch Glenn Beck to find out all about it.

Forget all that, because Republicans are now positioning themselves as the voices of truth and righteous indignation on all matters sexual -- as long as they have to do with former members of Congress...from the Democratic Party:

GOP wants Massa ethics probe reopened

WASHINGTON — House Minority Leader John Boehner wants the House ethics panel probe of former Rep. Eric Massa to be reopened.

The Ohio Republican said Thursday there are many unanswered questions surrounding the sexual harassment allegations that were made against the New York Democrat. Boehner (BAY'nur) said he plans to file a House resolution on the matter later Thursday.

Next thing you know, Boehner will claim that Massa's resignation was part of a conspiracy to cover up the truth, and he'll hold up Republicans as the paragon of transparency because their sex-scandal plagued incumbents decided to stay in office.

Well, if Republicans want to have a "sex-scandal" debate between the parties, by all means, bring it on...with the widest stance possible. They can scream about Eric Massa's resignation...as long as they explain their incumbents, Vitter, Ensign, and Sanford.

Among investigators' questions: why a federal agency charged with understanding the health impacts of the contamination didn't realize until recently that benzene — a fuel solvent known to cause cancer in humans — was among the substances found in drinking water at Camp Lejeune. For years, the Marines apparently didn't provide documents about the benzene to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which has worked for nearly two decades to understand the contamination and its health impacts, said Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., the chairman of the oversight panel on the House Science and Technology Committee.

» noticia original

One of the right’s most often used scaremongering tactics is to warn of “liberal indoctrination” and to claim progressives are using schools to push their own agenda.

Fox News has been fanning the flames of this conspiracy theory in recent weeks with paranoid reporting about the Texas State Board of Education’s deliberations over how to alter its social studies curriculum. In a series of reports it is calling the “Texas Textbook Wars,” Fox has openly speculated that founding fathers such as George Washington are going to be removed from textbooks, Independence Day will be deleted, Christmas will be removed, and that the Texas Board of Education has reccomended starting the teaching of history at 1877.

ThinkProgress has compiled a montage of some of Fox’s outlandish and inaccurate claims. Watch it:

Now, the Texas Education Agency is firing back. It has put out a press release slamming Fox for “repeatedly [broadcasting] highly inaccurate information” and has done a point-by-point debunking of Fox’s fearmongering. Some of the debunks:

Fox: Independence Day and Veteran’s Day are being deleted from the textbooks.
The truth: Again, the new history textbooks have not been written yet but they will be based on the curriculum standards adopted by the board. The standards currently under consideration cover Independence Day in kindergarten, second and fifth grades. Veteran’s Day is included in kindergarten, first, second and fifth grades.

Fox: References to Christmas have been deleted.
The truth: A TEKS review committee briefly recommended removing Christmas from a list that mentioned one major holiday for each of the world’s religions. The committee recommended leaving Easter in the document. The State Board immediately rejected this idea and a reference to Christmas was restored in the standards months ago and can be found in sixth grade in standard 19(b).

The truth is, the Republican-dominated Texas Board of Education has been doing anything but deciding to use textbooks to indoctrinate students with liberal propoganda. After a heated debate this past January, the Board voted to have textbooks cover the Moral Majority and the Heritage Foundation, voted against requring the coverage of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and the country’s first hispanic Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and decided to require textbooks to teach students the difference between legal and illegal immigration.

The Rachel Maddow Show did some digging and it appears that Bart Stupak may not actually have all the votes he's claiming he has to stop the health care bill from being passed in the House. As Rachel also notes, since Stupak's requests for changes to the bill are either impossible to get passed under reconciliation or just based on lies about what's even in the bill, it's pretty obvious that he's just doing his best to get himself on the television for some face time so he can demagogue the abortion issue and it has nothing to do with the health care debate.

Bart Stupak might come to regret that if Rachel doesn't let up on the reporting she has done on the C-Street House and The Family. And as Susie noted, he's now got himself a primary challenger.

Maddow: Congratulations sir. I hope you’re enjoying your fifteen minutes. Now, who’s been paying your rent? Bart Stupak, you want to be famous? You’re getting famous right now. In terms of America getting to know you there is still one big piece of the puzzle you continue to dodge our questions about. Who sir has been paying your rent? Who paid your rent for years? You even got asked about it by your good friends at Fox today.

(Cut to Fox clip)

Maddow: Always paid fair market value. Um… here’s why we’re a little worried about that claim. As we’ve talked about before Bart Stupak lived at C-Street House in Washington for at least seven years. The C-Street House is a $1.8 million, twelve bedroom, maid service townhouse right near the Capital. We have documented it is owned by the secret religious group The Family even though The Family has recently denied that fact. The Family has in the past acknowledged subsidizing the rent for members of The Family who live in the house, reportedly charging about $600 a month. Even though Mr. Stupak denies being a member of The Family it seems clear from news reports at least that he was paying below market rent to live there. And if he wasn’t all he has to do is answer the questions that we have put to him repeatedly.

Who did you pay your rent to Congressman Stupak? How much did you pay? And do you know who was subsidizing the rest? Did you report that subsidy as an in kind donation? Did you report it as income to the IRS? These questions don’t go away because you moved out when the heat got to you. Mr. Stupak you have succeeded in using this abortion stunt to get on TV a lot. If you really want Americans to know who you are tell us who has been paying your rent. We just learned that Bart Stupak now has a Democratic primary challenger back in Michigan. Her name is Connie Saltonstall. She said she decided to challenge him because of this anti-abortion grandstanding on the health care issue. Turns out this is going to be a very exciting year for Bart Stupak after all and it’s not because he’s going to kill health reform.

You can Send The Democrats A Message They Can Understand and make a donation at Blue America to help Bart Stupak's challenger Connie Saltonstall among others.

The news: House Dems are moving to eliminate earmarks that appropriate funds for the direct benefit of for-profit companies.

The method: The adoption of a rule banning such earmarks by the House Appropriations Committee.

The reason: The PMA lobbying scandal, recently investigated by the House Ethics Committee. The committee's report concluded that no direct relationship could be established between campaign contributions and earmarks, but clearly everyone's still concerned that there's a relationship, anyway. Hence the new rule.

Will it work? Well, sort of. Here's what the watchdogs had to say:

The good government advocates believe that the Senate will likely take up the slack from the House. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, said Wednesday he does not plan to impose any such ban. His position was seconded by Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Thad Cochran, R-Miss., who argued members' right to earmark funds is protected by the Constitution.

"The Senate hasn't been as haunted by the ethics problems, so they don't feel like it is their scandal to have to worry about," [Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington executive director Melanie] Sloan said.

Yeah. Well, that and the fact that there are other ways to direct spending:

The ban won’t apply to universities and non-profit institutions. It also won’t apply to items in bills that aren’t technically appropriations earmarks, but function in much of the same way. For example, the narrowly-targeted items that were included in the Wall St. bailout bill, like the repeal of a tax on wooden arrows, or the porky items from the stimulus bill, wouldn’t be banned. And unlike the earmarks in appropriations bills, which are subject to strict disclosure rules, it’s almost impossible to figure out who sponsored or is benefiting from the earmark-like items in non-appropriations bills.

Then again, Congress is supposed to have control of the federal pursestrings. The modern argument against earmarks, however, is that they've gotten out of control. But directing federal spending is one of the basic functions of Congress, and it's only in modern practice that more and more of that authority has been ceded to the executive branch, through its various departments and agencies. And as any of the remaining Congressional fans of earmarks (or "directed spending" as they prefer to call it, to keep it grounded in its original purpose) will tell you, its arguably better to have elected officials making direct spending decisions than leaving them up to unelected bureaucrats. Maybe, maybe not. But that's the argument.

At any rate, the ban certainly seems like a step in the right direction no matter how you look at it. Slicing off chunks of taxpayer funding and sending them to for-profit companies seems like the wrong thing to be doing, especially in an age where we're constantly being told that the free market can magically solve all problems, and that we need to rely on it more than ever on account of... our federal budget deficts.

Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame call Rove book 'a hoax'

Former Bush senior adviser Karl Rove has a new book out, Courage and Consequence, in which he attempts to justify his years in the White House. Longtime investigative journalist Michael Isikoff, however, is not impressed.

"It is a selective cherry-picking of history," Isikoff told MSNBC's David Shuster on Thursday. "Rove picks out various parts of the record that make him and the Bush White House look great and omits and distorts everything that contradicts him."

Isikoff is particularly irate over the "highly skewed" way in which Rove "portrays himself as an improbable Jean Valjean—an innocent man who, like the persecuted hero of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, is relentlessly hounded by an obsessed lawman determined to put him behind bars."

According to Isikoff, Rove's self-portrayal as an innocent victim hounded by Patrick Fitzgerald overlooks the fact that it was he himself who let the "persecution" play out by not acknowledging at the time that he was the person who confirmed Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA officer to columnist Robert Novak. Instead, he allowed press secretary Scott McClellan to lie on his behalf when the scandal broke and continued to let that lie stand over the next two years.

"There was Scott McClellan," Isikoff emphasized, "saying any suggestion that Karl Rove was involved was totally ridiculous. ... But the one thing that Rove acknowledges in the book is that he knew from the get-go that he had talked to Robert Novak for his original column. He was worried enough about it that he says in the book he talked to President Bush and told him about it, he talked to Andy Card, the chief of staff, he talked to Alberto Gonzales."

Isikoff added that two days after his initial column, Novak wrote a follow-up referring to his second source, and "Rove knew instantly that Novak was talking about him In fact, he writes in the book, 'I was sick to my stomach.'"

"He never sets the record straight," Iskoff concluded. "In fact, nobody at the Bush White House ever sets the record straight. They publicly said, 'Karl Rove was not involved.' ... Rove portrays himself as an innocent victim being hounded by an obsessive special prosecutor ... but never acknowledges that his own actions contributed to that."

Former Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame have weighed in on the Rove book as well, describing it as "a hoax."

"The chapters that relate to the CIA leak scandal are yet another attempt to deflect attention from his central role in the betrayal of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a covert CIA officer," they write. "His distortions and fabrications are consistent with his approach throughout this sordid and criminal affair. Wasting his opportunity to tell the truth, he offers absolutely nothing new, and his selective use of facts and quotes are a transparent effort to continue his long campaign to confuse people, unfortunately consistent with his past behavior. ... Karl Rove betrayed his nation; now he has betrayed history."

This video is from MSNBC's News Live, broadcast March 11, 2010.

Download video via RawReplay.com

Modesty in Washington? Humility? The ability to draw new lessons from long-term experience? None of the above is evidently appropriate for “the indispensable nation,” as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once called the United States, and to whose leaders she attributed the ability to “see further into the future.” None of the above is part of the American arsenal, not when Washington’s weapon of choice, repeatedly consigned to the scrapheap of history and repeatedly rescued, remains a deep conviction that nothing is going to go anything but truly, deeply, madly badly without us, even if, as in Iraq, things have for years gone truly, deeply, madly badly with us.

» noticia original

The ever-colorful and controversial Michael Moore fleshed out his thesis that Democrats are wimps by mimicking them as babies and likening them to scared animals, during an appearance on MSNBC Wednesday.

"Democrats are in for an ass-whipping of biblical proportions in November if they don't get off the dime and do the job they were sent there to do," he said on The Rachel Maddow Show. "Don't they see that?"

Moore acknowledged Maddow's point that the party controlling the presidency almost always loses seats in the mid-terms historically, but claimed Democrats can avoid that "by having the courage of their convictions."

Echoing remarks from his interview with Raw Story last week, the filmmaker contrasted the purportedly tepid Democratic spirit with the zeal Republicans have in advancing their agenda when in power.

"When the Republicans come into town, they get in the hummer, and they drive down Pennsylvania Avenue and mow down anybody in sight," Moore quipped. "They walk into Congress with both guns blazing, and they say 'we were sent here to do a job,' and then they do the job."

"Democrats come in," he continued, proceeding to mock them in a baby voice "and go, 'Oh, hi, hi. I guess we don't need universal health care for everybody. We can, we can, no we can compromise. It's okay.'"

Pulling no punches, he said, "They used to at least sing 'Kumbaya.' Now they go in like frightened animals. I don't understand it."

Maddow played a clip from Moore's latest documentary Capitalism: A Love Story and asked the Oscar-winning filmmaker why Democrats haven't implemented stronger banking regulations "even in the midst of the financial system collapsing."

"They are blind and they are deaf to all of this," Moore said, predicting that "the next collapse or crash is right around the corner." He alleged that the issue hasn't been dealt with because banks are "lining the pockets of our members of Congress."

He argued that the American public admires leaders with courage, even if they disagree with their political views.

"Americans don't really see themselves as Democrats or Republicans. They want somebody in there who believes in something, who's going to go for it," he said, claiming that progressives are likely to be "depressed" and stay home in the November elections if Democrats don't assert the power of their majority status.

Summing up their very friendly exchange, Moore called Maddow a "force for good and a national treasure."

"Whoa," responded The Nation's Washington editor Chris Hayes on Twitter. "Lefty media stars of the world, unite!"

In a cut scene from Capitalism that Moore provided exclusively to Raw Story, he interviews a former New York Times reporter who alleges that capitalism is bringing about the downfall of humanity by allegedly encouraging society to ignore climate change.

Although Moore has a devoted following of progressives, he is often criticized as being too unwavering and extreme in his political viewpoints.

This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast March 10, 2010.

Download video via RawReplay.com

The New York Post reports that golfer Tiger Woods has hired former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer to help repair his public image:

Two sources in the golf community have told The Post that Ari Fleischer, the former presidential advisor to George W. Bush and the man who was brought in to help repair the steroid-shattered image of Mark McGwire, has been huddling with Woods, plotting a strategy for his return to golf — at the Arnold Palmer Invitational starting March 25 at Bay Hill in Orlando.

“They were in his living room this week going over a strategy for how to handle Bay Hill in two weeks,” one source told The Post.

Since his time as President Bush’s top spinmeister, Fleischer has become a consultant for the sports industry. Fleischer has advised Mark McGwire on his return to baseball and public admission about using steroids, the Green Bay Packers on “how to deal with the fallout from their breakup with Brett Favre” in 2008, and “college football’s BCS on how to repair an image that has been ridiculed.” Unclear whether Fleischer’s advice to Woods will include the Brit Hume suggestion to convert to Christianity.