Before Medal of Honor, beer with Obama

Ex-Marine Dakota Meyer to be honored for saving 36 lives during Afghan ambush  Meyer: Battle was "worst day of my life"

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Rick Santorum Proposes Olds Die Off Sooner To Save Social Security

Who is the biggest threat to the Social Security benefits system alive today? Rick Santorum, he knows what’s what, he’ll tell you. He held a policy meeting with his secret “panel of advisers” (the rows of fetus jars stacked in his basement) and he’s got this brain buster to share: “We can’t afford the benefit [...]

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The Fix: Palin: The GOP's Pelosi?

Sarah Palin's unfavorable rating has spiked to a new high, adding further fuel to the argument that her presidential campaign may be doomed before it begins.

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Commerce Secretary Locke nominated for China ambassador post

President Obama on Wednesday officially nominated Commerce Secretary Gary Locke as the next U.S. ambassador to China, continuing a reshuffling of top administration officials over the past several months.

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Obama's Soul Mate Down Under May Go Down

William Pesek, Bloomberg
It’s as predictable as political leadership gets: When things go awry at home, escape overseas for a while, grip and grin with a foreign head of state and change the subject.Barack Obama may have this tried-and-true strategy in mind as he plans to visit Australia, which is about as far as a U.S. president can get from the rancor in Washington. Yet as he meets with Prime Minister Julia Gillard in November, it will be hard not to wonder about the weak leadership imperiling not only their economies, but also the world at large.

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Midday open thread

• Today's comic from Scott Bateman: Actual Audio: Rick Perry vs Social Security.
• NY-09, NV-02: We'll be liveblogging the results for the two House special elections in New York and Nevada tonight. Polls close at 9 PM ET in New York and 10 PM ET in Nevada.
• The Department of Homeland Security has apparently realized kids probably aren't terrorists:
  

  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the government will be rolling out a different airport pat-down policy for children under 12 in the coming months, and these children will no longer have to take off their shoes to be screened.
  Napolitano says the traveling public can expect to see some of these changes in the coming months.

  Some travelers and privacy advocates have complained that children, who don't appear to pose terror threats, are subject to intimate pat-downs that involve Transportation Security Administration screeners touching private areas.

  Children under 12 will also be spared the hassle of taking off their shoes as they go through check point security, Napolitano said.

• The future is going to suck.
• Um ... what?
  

  The police department in Santa Cruz, California, has begun an experiment that uses a mathematical algorithm to predict when and where certain crimes will be committed, and puts police on the scene before they happen.

  So far police have arrested five people using this technique of "predictive policing" and the rates of certain categories of crimes in the city have dropped significantly, perhaps as a result. The program has correctly predicted 40 percent of the crimes it was designed to monitor.

• Just a reminder: Rick Perry, the self-proclaimed pro-life fiscal conservative, has spent an awful lot of money killing people.
• And by the way, turns out Rick Perry was full of shit when he said he'd only taken $5,000 from Merck, the maker of the HPV vaccine that has gotten Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum so worked up. He's taken $30,000 directly, plus potentially tens of thousands more through the Republican Governors Association. The weird thing is this: why didn't he just say during the debate that just 0.1% of his campaign funds had come from Merck and leave it at that? Instead, he lies, adding to the speculation that where there's smoke there's fire.
• Big surprise:
  

  When it comes to her own potential presidential aspirations, however, Palin continues to be coy.

  ?I?m not going to let the media tell me or dictate when a drop-dead date should be,? Palin said.

  ?I still have that same old dopey, same old answer that I?m sure you guys are getting sick of hearing, and that is I?m still thinking about it, praying about it, contemplating, talking to my family. I?m sick of giving the same answer, believe me. I?m anxious to give an answer and get on with life one way or the other. But whichever direction life takes me, I?m going to continue to speak up for we the people and that tea Party movement and the mama grizzlies.?

  Shorter Palin: I'm too lazy to run for president, but I'm going to keep pretending I might, 'cause I still want you to pay attention to me.

• Windows 8 is coming.
• Very exciting news:
  

  A small pilot study has found preliminary evidence that squirting insulin deep into the nose where it travels to the brain might hold early Alzheimer?s disease at bay, researchers said on Monday.

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TX teachers clean classrooms as education 'reformers' stay silent on Obama plan to avert layoffs

Sabrina Stevens Shupe asks an extremely good question: Why aren't so-called education reform groups fighting "to ensure that every single American child can attend fully-staffed, modernized schools" by passing increased funding?

For instance, here [in President Obama's jobs plan] we have a proposal that will help stem the tide of teacher layoffs. Yet when you visit the StudentsFirst website, the first thing you?re asked to do is sign a petition to change how and which teachers are laid off. That?s an important conversation to have, but given that the large majority of teachers are capable and effective (a view shared by over 70% of Americans, despite endless criticism leveled at teachers in the media), shouldn?t keeping teachers in the classroom take precedence over pushing a nice-sounding but problematic layoff policy? Why don?t Michelle Rhee and company throw their weight behind efforts to keep teachers in their classrooms, and use their money to support promising professional development programs that would help teachers improve their professional practice right now?

It's not just StudentsFirst?other groups claiming concern about education are more concerned with raising private money to divide the existing public pie more to their liking than with making the pie higher bigger.

Meanwhile, in Rick Perry's Texas, one school district has avoided laying off teachers by laying off custodians and having teachers clean their own classrooms. If your instinct was to think this doesn't affect the educational experience for students, think again. Even setting aside the strain on teachers doing more than their full-time jobs,

High school and middle school classrooms must be cleaned within 15 minutes of dismissal. That can cut into time teachers set aside to meet with students. According to a cleaning manual the district distributed to teachers, if the rooms are not swept ?room numbers will be logged and reported to respective principals.?

?If a student comes in the middle of your sweeping, you either have to say. ?No, I can?t help you,?? she said, or stop and risk that it will not get done in time.

Groups of students have been helping out by cleaning classrooms as community service. But it's a national scandal that these are the choices school districts are having to make?between professionally cleaned schools and enough teachers, between clean classrooms and one-on-one attention for students?while groups raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fight to lay off teachers in their preferred ways, rather than throwing their weight behind proposals to fund schools more fully.

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Reliable Source: Obama gets laughs at first Gridiron Club dinner as president

It took three attempts, but the Gridiron Club -- a vestige of swampland-era Washington -- finally got President Obama to show up for their annual dinner Saturday night. And yet what did they get? No respect, we tell you -- no respect!

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Republican Debate Night #4 (Tea Party Express edition)

Talk about it here. Watch it live on CNN or CNN.com.

5:42 PM PT: Bachmann once again says her economic plan would have been to throw the country into default. She says lifting the debt ceiling was giving Obama a blank check. Yeah, uh, except Congress approves all spending.

5:43 PM PT: This is awesome:

@ThadMcCotter: Tigers 0 - White Sox 1, Top of 2nd. Go Tigers!

Couldn't have said it better.

5:45 PM PT: It's the return of Mitt Romneybot: Romney's way of saying we need good education: We want "institutions that create fantastic human capital."

5:48 PM PT: Ron Paul goes after Rick Perry: says Perry doubled taxes in Texas, and increased spending, and that 170,000 of the jobs he "created" were government jobs. Perry responds by saying he's cut taxes by billions, and that people love going to Texas, so Paul couldn't be right. I get the feeling Perry was lying, but I also get the feeling his target audience won't give a damn.

5:50 PM PT: Every time Newt Gingrich opens his mouth, I think to myself: "Who is this guy, what is he doing there, and what the hell is he trying to say." He just LOVES the sound of his own voice.

5:53 PM PT: We're at the second commercial break of what has been a fairly boring debate. More thoughts on that in the next thread.

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A Country Came Together, Now It's Divided

Over the past ten years unity and bipartisanship in DC has eroded.

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Tim Wakefield Earns 200th Win: Red Sox Knuckleballer Beats Blue Jays

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As Foreign Banks Stumble, Next Crash Is Certain

Jim Jubak, MSN Money
Financial markets are behaving as if they expect a European banking crisis that would require the bailout or nationalization of some European banks. That would feel like a replay of the financial crisis that followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2008. Only this time, the epicenter would be Europe instead of the United States, and the ripples would expand from the eurozone outward into global financial markets.How realistic is that fear? Very, I'm afraid. European banks are facing a very real liquidity and capital crisis that could lead to the need for a government...

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Abbreviated pundit roundup

Visual source: Newseum

Dana Milbank looks at Rick Perry's lackluster performance at last night's Republican debate:

The applause identified Rick Perry as the crowd favorite when he took the stage in Tampa for Monday night?s Tea Party debate, greeting his lesser rivals as ?fellas.?

But two hours later, those fellas ? and a gal from Minnesota ? had made some serious progress toward exposing the broad-shouldered Texas governor as an empty suit.

Sometimes they challenged Perry from the left (on Social Security and Medicare) and sometimes from the right (on immigration, taxes and mandatory vaccines), but it all came back to the same thing: The frontrunner was befuddled ? seemingly stunned that his rivals would question his right to the Republican presidential nomination.

Tom Curry asks if Americans will be "scared" by Rick Perry:

What?s emerging from the GOP presidential debates is a portrait of Perry ? painted by his opponents ? as one scary guy, a threat both to young and old.
If you believe the image being created by the frontrunner's rivals, Perry's a threat both to the frail elderly, by scaring them over the future of Social Security benefits, and to innocent young girls, at least in Texas, by allegedly ?forcing? them to have vaccinations to prevent cervical cancer.

Andy Kroll looks at what's a truly scary Perry proposition made at last night's debate:

At Monday's CNN-Tea Party Express debate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the GOP presidential frontrunner, claimed that it was important to "free up" Wall Street in order to create jobs and grow the US economy. This is a common talking point for Perry, who last month said the government needs to "free" the "Wall Street investor from the over-regulation and the over-taxation."

Talk about a case of amnesia. Let's not forget, it was all those "freed," under-regulated banks, mortgage companies, and investment firms that imploded the economy. Years of deregulatory policy under Democratic and Republican presidents?including tearing down the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, which walled off commercial banking from more risky investments and speculation, and passing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000, which essentially transformed Wall Street into a casino?helped bring the financial markets to their knees in 2008.

Beth Reinhard and Alex Roarty ask if Perry's maiking Mitt Romney a better candidate:

Rick Perry has cost Mitt Romney his lead in the polls but made him a better candidate and potentially, a more formidable nominee.

The former Massachusetts governor, long disparaged as a fragile frontrunner for the nomination, is showing a spark that seemed elusive when he topped the national polls. He delivered his second confident debate performance against Perry on Monday, raising more questions about the Texas governor?s position on Social Security even as Perry tried to close out the discussion by vowing the benefits were ?slam-dunk guaranteed?? for current recipients. [...]

Going head-to-head with his swaggering, cowboy-boot wearing rival, Romney showed the political chops that have frequently been lacking during his many years on the presidential campaign trail. Voting won?t begin for months in the Republican contest so there?s plenty of time for the dynamic to shift again, but Romney showed Monday night that his rival?s sudden surge hasn?t left him on the ropes.

Ben Adler points out the lack of substance, despite the heated rhetoric:

At the Tea Party Express/CNN debate in Tampa, Florida, on Monday the Republican presidential aspirants mostly agreed on the best way to solve our fiscal and economic woes: magic. Whenever moderator Wolf Blitzer or a Tea Party activist in the crowd or via video asked how exactly they would achieve their twin goals of balancing the federal budget and spurring job growth, they had no actual answer. Instead, they seemed to think the tooth fairy would leave $1 trillion under their West Wing pillow.

Every Republican wants to cut taxes and yet somehow prices to reduce the deficit. So they were asked, as they should be, what exactly they would cut. You might think it would be bad if one of them offered, say, food stamps, for the chopping block, but at least that would contain a proposal for progressives to engage. Instead they were even more mendacious by refusing to give an honest answer. Newt Gingrich ludicrously stated that there is enough waste, fraud and abuse to balance the budget without actually cutting any of the funding that finds its way to legitimate beneficiaries. Rick Santorum and Rick Perry both refused to say they would undo the massive Medicare prescription drug benefit enacted under President Bush, which Santorum voted for. In other words, they are all lying. Either they will increase the deficit or they will propose devastating spending cuts they were afraid to campaign on, or both.

 Jeffrey Rosen analyzes the U.S. Supreme Court's pending review of GPS tracking and surveys the landscape of digital surveillance:

To preserve our right to some degree of anonymity in public, we can?t rely on the courts alone. Fortunately, 15 states have enacted laws imposing criminal and civil penalties for the use of electronic tracking devices in various forms and restricting their use without a warrant. And in June, Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, introduced the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, which would provide federal protection against public surveillance. [...]

It?s encouraging that Democrats and Republicans in Congress are coming together to preserve the expectations of anonymity in public that Americans have long taken for granted. Soon, liberal and conservative justices on the Supreme Court will have an opportunity to meet the same challenge.

If they fail to rise to the occasion, our public life may be transformed in ways we can only begin to imagine.

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National Briefing | WASHINGTON: Fast-Track for Disaster Aid Is Blocked

Republicans blocked an effort Monday by Senate Democrats to quickly pass a $7 billion aid package for victims of recent natural disasters.

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Obama formally delivers jobs bill, urges Congress to pass it right away

Speaking at the White House a few minutes ago, President Obama announced that the White House had formally delivered his Americans Jobs Act to Congress and he called on members to pass it right away.

On the substance, it was pretty much the same thing that President Obama said on Thursday and Friday about his jobs plan, but a couple of things about the politics of the event caught my attention.

First, he was surrounded by teachers, first responders and veterans. That might seem like political stagecraft 101, but it hasn't been something the White House has done a very good job of. But the visuals here worked. It was a far cry from the dreary debt limit debate. It was good to see.

Second, President Obama continued to take an aggressive approach, repeatedly challenging Congress to put politics aside and do what is right for the country. He quoted directly from this Politico story in which an anonymous aide says that Republicans shouldn't do anything on jobs because it could help Obama's re-election campaign:

?Obama is on the ropes; why do we appear ready to hand him a win?? said one senior House Republican aide who requested anonymity to discuss the matter freely. ?I just don?t want to co-own the economy by having to tout that we passed a jobs bill that won?t work or at least won?t do enough.?

Obama also once again renewed his call for the public to contact their members of Congress to demand action. He seems to understand that this isn't a battle that he can win on his own?but it's also a battle that can't be won without him following through.

9:04 AM PT: Here's video of President Obama's remarks:

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