If you have gone to whitehouse.gov since Saturday you may not have noticed any real changes. On the outside this is true, but underneath the hood they just replaced the entire engine and drive train.

When President Obama took over at 1600 Pennsylvania one of the first things he did was order the people who manage the White House website to investigate new software. The outcome was a move from expensive and clunky proprietary software to a very familiar open source system – Drupal.

Now I don’t expect all our readers to know what Drupal is, but actually it should be very familiar. Drupal is the same software that powers Crooks and Liars. The software is extremely robust and can be extended beyond you imagination through contributed modules. In the coming months you will see more examples of this as we start rolling out our latest updated that includes countless new features to better engage you – the C&L community.

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President Obama was in my hometown of San Francisco Friday for a fundraising dinner and apparently was in a feisty mood. While teabaggers greeted him at the entrance of the hotel, Obama took the time to address his dinner crowd with some of the most partisan words I've ever heard from him:

But I know this is a Democratic event. And I want to talk to all of you just for a second. You know, there are going to be some fierce arguments over the next couple of weeks about health care. There should be. This is big. But understand that the bill you least like of the five bills that got passed would all provide billions of people who don’t have coverage, coverage. Would all prevent insurance companies from barring you from getting health insurance because of a pre-existing condition. Would all set up an exchange so that small businesses could compete and get the same deal that big businesses do for their employees. Would all provide subsidies to people who don’t have health insurance and give them a measure of security. All of them.

So as we’re going at it -- and we’re going to be going at it –- I just want all of you to understand: We are going to get this done. We are going to get this done.

Now, to the non-Democrats who may be watching today -– I want everybody to know we believe in a strong and loyal opposition. I believe in a two-party system where ideas are tested and assumptions are challenged -- because that’s how we can move this country forward. But what I reject is when some folks decide to sit on the sidelines and root for failure on health care or on energy or on our economy. What I reject is when some folks say we should go back to the past policies when it was those very same policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

Another way of putting it is when, you know, I'm busy and Nancy busy with our mop cleaning up somebody else’s mess –- we don’t want somebody sitting back saying, you're not holding the mop the right way. Why don’t you grab a mop, why don’t you help clean up. You're not mopping fast enough. That's a socialist mop. Grab a mop –- let’s get to work.

I think all of us in Washington have a greater purpose. We have a higher calling. And let me tell you, as long as I have the privilege of holding this office, I will do my very best to live up to my responsibilities to our country, to our children, to the future that we hold in common

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NicolasC at DailyKos says this is a phrase worth repeating to the whingeing Republicans:

Obama's come up with political gold to counter any attempt to pass a Republican mess off as his own, or criticize him for not cleaning it up fast enough. And we need to repeat it ad infinitum and scream it from rooftops. This needs to become the political catchphrase of the next year.[..]

Andrew Sullivan, over at the Daily Dish, knows gold when he sees it:

It's an inspired three-word challenge to the GOP. Devastating, actually - because it both reminds people of the damage the GOP did while not seeming to dwell on the past or to score partisan points (while actually doing both).

Now, understand here, I'm not trying to head off legitimate, substantive criticism of the president or his policies, be they from the left or the right. There's plenty of that and no three-word catch slogan could or should diminish those. But as a counter to the brain-dead, disingenuous, hypocritical, and often baseless criticism from the people whose messes he is cleaning, it doesn't get any better than this.

As one of Andrew Sullivan's readers put it:

If a Republican president had come up with this slogan, it would immediately have been put up as the main headline on Drudge (red font & siren optional), which inevitably leads to the main topic of conversation on conservative radio. Every damn Republican representative would be working every interview around those three words and the national narrative would be created ... unfortunately these are the Dems we're talking about, so the only people who will ever hear this are the ones politically interested enough to read blogs such as yours.

Sadly, (s)he's probably right. Unless we start hammering these words in now any time we see hypocritical and brain-dead talking points.

Republicans, you want to help this country? Then STFU and...GRAB A MOP!

One of the more laughable right wing attack lines against President Obama has been the number of "Czars" he has appointed. Of course, we know that former President Bush had more czars than Obama, but why would Fox News report that? During his health care reform speech last week, the president said "If you misrepresent what's in the plan, we will call you out"

Release the hounds, the pushback has begun:

Last week, when the President addressed the Joint Session of Congress in a speech on health reform, he referred to some of the untruths – okay, lies – that have been spread about the plan and sent a clear message to those who seek to undermine his agenda and his presidency with these tactics: "We will call you out." So consider this one of those calls.

Over the past several weeks, we've seen with increasing frequency and volume issues raised around the use of "czars" by this Administration. Although some Members have asked serious questions around the makeup of the White House staff, the bulk of the noise you hear began first with partisan commentators, suggesting that this is somehow a new and sinister development that threatens our democracy. This is, of course, ridiculous. Just to be clear, the job title "czar" doesn’t exist in the Obama Administration. Many of the officials cited by conservative commentators have been confirmed by the Senate. Many hold policy jobs that have existed in previous Administrations. And some hold jobs that involved coordinating the work of agencies on President Obama’s key policy priorities: health insurance reform, energy and green jobs, and building a new foundation for long-lasting economic growth

But of course, it’s really the hypocrisy here that is noteworthy. Just earlier today, Darrell Issa, a Republican from California and one of the leaders in calling for an investigation into the Obama Administration’s use of "czars", had to admit to Fox News that he had never raised any objections to the Bush Administration’s use of "czars". Many of these members who now decry the practice have called on Presidents in the past to appoint "czars" to coordinate activities within the government to address immediate challenges. What is clear is that all of this energy going into these attacks could be used to have a constructive conversation about bringing this country together to address our challenges moving forward – and it doesn’t take a "czar" to bring that about! Just some folks willing to act in good faith. Read on...

This is a blogger with a spine. The blog post was written by Anita Dunn, and she goes on to nail numerous right wing politicians and pundits, calling them out on the nutbaggery. It's worth clicking through to the original to read it all.

As we live through another anniversary of the man-made disaster on the Gulf Coast and the shocking lack of a federal response that caused thousands to die needlessly, thoughts turn again to whether anybody remembers New Orleans and its environs, and whether the proper resources are being deployed to rehabilitate the region. If you listen to the President, of course, his Administration is doing a heckuva job down there. Lots of cabinet members have visited the region, to be followed by the President later this year. The White House has untangled some bureaucracy to allow for more federal assistance to reach the Gulf Coast, and the stimulus has enhanced recovery efforts. And even some local Republicans have praised his approach, particularly the renewed sense of confidence in FEMA.

But that's the White House's spin. And not everyone agrees with it. The Institute for Southern Studies has reported on coalition groups blasting the Army Corps of Engineers for their slow response to restoring the natural barriers - wetlands, marshes, and barrier islands - that could help prevent future hurricanes. New Orleans resident Harry Shearer has more on that. To their credit, the White House has created a federal task force to speed up coastal restoration projects. But on other issues, the ISS has given the Administration low marks.

The Institute of Southern Studies recently released a report that assesses how Washington has handled the storm's aftermath. The ISS asked 50 community leaders to grade the Obama administration's Katrina recovery efforts: Obama got a D+, and Bush was given a D-. If graded on an E for effort curve, Bush probably would have gotten the edge given his authorization of millions in Gulf Opportunity tax credits and bonds, and an extension of time under which developers could use them.

Meanwhile, Obama has done little in seven months beyond distributing $50 million in housing vouchers. Unfortunately, families either won't be able to use them because there aren't enough houses built yet, or the vouchers will be of little use because they only cover a fraction of rents, which have risen substantially since Katrina. He's also instituted a plan to sell FEMA mobile units to families for $1 or $5, but many of those trailers are toxic from formaldehyde leaks.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) did little for recovery and reinvestment in the Gulf Coast area that needed it the most. Since calculations were made based off current population numbers -- many displaced people throughout the country are still waiting to return -- fewer ARRA dollars reached these congressional districts. ARRA's tax credit exchange program, which cashes in states' low income housing tax credits, also excluded the Go Zone tax credits, leaving over 17,000 housing units hanging in the balance.

The Lower Ninth Ward, already struggling prior to the flood, has been particularly slow to return to stability. Only 20% of its residents have returned full-time, and the area has lagged far behind the tourist spots and the Garden District.

The neglect of the Gulf both during and after the storm will not get turned around quickly or easily. I'm tempted to cut the White House a little slack on this one. But on the current trajectory, New Orleans is looking more and more in the post-Katrina period like a restored home for the rich and connected, and a nightmare for the voiceless. And given the moral outrage that the response to the storm correctly engendered, that is unacceptable. We have an obligation to those who were left to rot in the fetid waters, not just to give them a return to the same inequality, but a chance at a better life. Should Obama visit the city before the year ends, he shouldn't go to Bourbon Street, but the Lower Ninth, and he should not just tell them what he will do, but back it up.

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From AC360, Fran Townsend defends the Bush Whitehouse against the latest allegations made by Tom Ridge, that he felt the administration was using the Department of Homeland Security to scare the bejesus out of everyone for political gain. Of course Townsend feigns innocence and says they'd never do that. Her excuses here sound a whole lot more to me like Alberto's "I can't recall" testimony on the Attorney General scandal than any type of straight answers.

She weighs her words very carefully to make sure she never actually answers Coopers's questions, or when she does, she throws Ridge under the bus. We never wanted to pressure him to repeat our taking points...he asked for them...lol. Yeah, right. I give Cooper a good grade for asking the right questions here, and a bad one for not doing any kind of follow up. Heaven forbid anyone on CNN is going to push a Bushie even when they know full well they're lying to their face. That wouldn't be polite, would it?

Transcript below the fold.

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From The White House blog:

The President talks about how the chatter and ruckus around health insurance reform on television obscures the reality of what's happening in America. He discusses how in most towns people and Members of Congress are having constructive conversations, and how people are learning how reform will help them and their families with the real problems they have faced with the insurance system.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Someone suggested today on one of my listservs that President Obama ought to be campaigning as hard for health-care reform as he did for his election. I don't know if that's a fair shot, but you have to say, after watching his performance today in New Hampshire at the town hall meeting on health care, they may have a point: He was electric, charming, persuasive, and powerful.

The major thesis:

This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don't believe anyone should be in charge of your health insurance decisions but you and your doctor. (Applause.) I don't think government bureaucrats should be meddling, but I also don't think insurance company bureaucrats should be meddling. That's the health care system I believe in.

Making it personal:

And I have to say, this is personal for Lori but it's also personal for me. I talked about this when I was campaigning up here in New Hampshire. I will never forget my own mother, as she fought cancer in her final months, having to worry about whether her insurance would refuse to pay for her treatment. And by the way, this was because the insurance company was arguing that somehow she should have known that she had cancer when she took her new job -- even though it hadn't been diagnosed yet. So if it could happen to her, it could happen to any one of us.

And I've heard from so many Americans who have the same worries. One woman testified that an insurance company would not cover her internal organs because of an accident she had when she was five years old. Think about that -- that covers a lot of stuff. (Laughter.) They're only going to cover your skin. (Laughter.) Dermatology, that's covered; nothing else. (Laughter.)

Another lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered he had gall stones that he hadn't known about when he applied for insurance. Now, that is wrong, and that will change when we pass health care reform. That is going to be a priority. (Applause.)

Under the reform we're proposing, insurance companies will be prohibited from denying coverage because of a person's medical history. Period. (Applause.) They will not be able to drop your coverage if you get sick. (Applause.) They will not be able to water down your coverage when you need it. (Applause.) Your health insurance should be there for you when it counts -- not just when you're paying premiums, but when you actually get sick. And it will be when we pass this plan. (Applause.)

Now, when we pass health insurance reform, insurance companies will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because no one in America should go broke because they get sick. (Applause.)

And finally -- this is important -- we will require insurance companies to cover routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies -- (applause) -- because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and prostate cancer on the front end. That makes sense, it saves lives; it also saves money -- and we need to save money in this health care system.

So this is what reform is about. For all the chatter and the yelling and the shouting and the noise, what you need to know is this: If you don't have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. (Applause.) If you do have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need. And we will do this without adding to our deficit over the next decade, largely by cutting out the waste and insurance company giveaways in Medicare that aren't making any of our seniors healthier. (Applause.) Right. (Laughter.)

And a response to the astroturfing mob-makers:

Now, before I start taking questions, let me just say there's been a long and vigorous debate about this, and that's how it should be. That's what America is about, is we have a vigorous debate. That's why we have a democracy. But I do hope that we will talk with each other and not over each other -- (applause) -- because one of the objectives of democracy and debate is, is that we start refining our own views because maybe other people have different perspectives, things we didn't think of.

Where we do disagree, let's disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that's actually been proposed. (Applause.) Because the way politics works sometimes is that people who want to keep things the way they are will try to scare the heck out of folks and they'll create boogeymen out there that just aren't real.

I've already heard whining from the Fox talkers that no one asked tough questions. Which is to say, no one stood up and yelled at the president and called him a socialist.

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You know the opponents of health-care reform -- which obviously includes nearly every talking head who appears on Fox News -- are getting desperate when they start trying to scare elderly people by suggesting that President Obama's health-care plans will mean euthanization for old folks when they get hurt.

That's what the crew at Fox & Friends this morning did, led by "Fox News legal analyst" Peter Johnson Jr., and aided and abetted by Brian Kilmeade and Gretchen Carlson. First they played a snippet of Obama at a town-hall meeting on health care:

But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that's not making anybody's mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know, and your mom know, that you know what, maybe this isn't going to help, maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.

This became the launching pad:

Kilmeade: Dying?!! Sucking it up?!! And not having surgery?

Johnson: Too sick, too expensive.

Kilmeade: Well, that's what this whole trend is!

Johnson: Absolutely. And some people are saying, 'Well, this isn't health care reform,' and other people are saying -- maybe me -- that this is a subtle form of euthanasia. And when you start looking at the proposals, you say, 'God, what's happening?'

Of course, all they had to do was watch the entire set of remarks on this by Obama in their context to realize what's happening: that effective reform means cutting the waste created by a medical establishment that thrives on unnecessary procedures -- he wasn't suggesting that people be denied life-saving operations.

Obama made this clear up front:

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I know the White House wants no part of this discussion, and the media wants no part of this discussion, but without a public insurance option providing the same kind of coverage that private insurance provides, particularly for women, you don't really have legitimate competition.

Up to this point, the administration has avoided discussing this issue directly, despite increasingly frenzied congressional debate on abortion's place in health reform. During President Obama's July 1 health-care “town hall” event in Annandale, Virginia, the topic of women’s health care never came up; the White House had preselected many of the audience questions. In a March interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, chief White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes -- who once sat on the board of Planned Parenthood -- claimed she had never spoken to the president about whether or not abortion services should be covered under a universal health-care system. “We haven't proposed a specifics benefits package or a particular health-care proposal, so we're going to be engaging with Congress to have this conversation,” she said.

If there's one question I wish I could have asked in yesterday's town hall meeting it would have been about this. Clinton apparently was pretty adamant that public plans cover what most private plans cover in 1993. About 90% of all private insurance companies cover abortions, a legal medical service available to women. If you follow the Hyde Amendment, which restricts abortion services through Medicaid, in the public plan, you basically both deny legal services to women and make the public plan significantly less attractive to them. And as I wrote last week, the idea that this would represent "government funded abortions" is a lie:

In addition, the entire premise of Matthews' critique, ripped from the pages of The Weekly Standard, is just wrong. As the just-released House Tri-Committee bill describes, the public insurance option is completely self-sustaining and pays for everything out of its own premiums. There's public money involved in the sense that the Health and Human Services Secretary would have to hire administrators, but basically this is a self-funded insurance program.

SELF-SUFFICIENCY
Public option must be financially self-sustaining, as private plans are.

Public option will need to build start-up costs and contingency funds into its rates and adjust premiums annually in order to assure its financial viability, as private plans do.

As Goldstein notes, the Hyde Amendment, that law from the 70s that Tweety cites, "is not under threat from any of the proposed House or Senate health reform bills." Meaning that Medicaid and other public health programs will continue to deny legal abortion services as part of their coverage. It's sad that Democrats are already conceding that, but Republicans want more. Not only do they want reproductive choice banned from a self-sustaining public option, they want it banned from any private insurance company that offers coverage inside these "insurance exchanges" designed to provide small businesses and individuals more choice and greater purchasing power to receive health insurance. As said before, 90% of all private insurers include abortion services in their coverage. Anti-choice Republicans don't just want to follow existing law, they want to create new policy that says anyone the federal government does business with cannot offer abortion services as part of their coverage to consumers. The Hyde Amendment already discriminates against poor women who cannot afford health insurance; the anti-choicers would extend that.

I'm sorry this is a messy matter, and everyone feels icky about it, but this is not a common-ground issue. Either women have the right to choose their own medical care or they don't. Leaving them out in the cold is not good enough.

From the White House blog:

The President explains his plan to address one of the major causes of the current economic crisis -- the breakdown of oversight leading to widespread abuses in the financial world. The new Consumer Financial Protection Agency will have the sole job of looking out for the financial interests of ordinary Americans by banning unfair practices and enforcing the rules. This is a cornerstone in America’s new economic foundation.

Transcript below the fold.

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The wingnuts were just wild over the fact that President Obama ordered Dijon mustard on his burger. Well, C&Ler David sent in this White House web page full of Independence Day recipes: What a hoot. Dear Instapundit, Jon Stewart never mentioned anything about mustard in his burger piece and wasn't that the point of your silliness? However, your Holy leader George Bush really loves his Dijon mustard too.

President and Laura Bush's Deviled Eggs Recipe

12 large eggs, boiled hard and peeled
1 Tbsp (plus) soft butter
1 Tbsp (plus) mayonnaise
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp Yucatan Sunshine Habanero sauce
Salt to taste

Cut eggs in half and set aside. Put egg yolks in food processor and add all ingredients. Process for 20 seconds or until mixture has blended. Check for taste and increase mustard, salt or Habanero sauce if desired. Place mixture in piping bag with star tip and pipe into egg halves. Sprinkle with paprika and chopped parsley. Chill for about an hour before serving.

I bet he loved his arugula too.

February 03, 2009 C-SPAN
Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer and other members talked about their principles for climate change legislation. They focused on ways in which the proposed legislative initiatives would improve the economy. They also answered questions from reporters. Speakers include Senators, Whitehouse, Boxer, Sanders, Klobuchar and more. See more CSPANJunkie videos here.