Anthony Weiner, Glenn Greenwald and Joe Scarborough pointed out the obvious this morning– the public option is substantially more popular than the Senate/White House bill. Now that only 50 votes are needed, there is no good argument to be made for passing a bill without one — it’s simply a way to pay off Rahm Emanuel’s back room deals.

Weiner has also been outspoken on the subject of ending the insurance industry anti-trust exemption. He is one of the FDL Fire Dogs we’ll be helping in 2010, so if you’d like to donate to his campaign through ActBlue, you can do it here.

I spent the day at the New School listening to Glenn Greenwald and Daniel Ellsberg speak on “The Recurrence on Limits of Knowledge.” Joining them was Chris Capozzola of MIT and David Barstow of the NYT, subbing for Eric Lichtblau.

As amusing as it would’ve been to see Glennzilla scrap with Litchtblau, I loved hearing Barstow speak. He broke the Pentagon Generals story, one of the best pieces of investigative journalism in recent memory, and advocated for government contractors being subject to FOIA requests.

I have to say, I like that suggestion a lot.

Props needed: football (optional), left over from prior seasons’ FISA and war funding performances. Slightly used, but never seems to get old.

These are sophisticated marketing techniques. And they’re being cynically run by sophisticated people (who know they’re peddling bullshit) on the not-so-sophisticated (who believe what they want to believe). The question with regard to those peddling the TANG defense is always going to be: are they they playing the role of bullshit artist, or the dupe?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the EconomyLast night following the equality march in DC, John Harwood appeared on MSNBC saying that the White House viewed these “base” problems as “part of the internet left fringe.” He quoted a White House “adviser” who said that “bloggers need to take off their [...]

Here is Glenn’s fine piece on the subject, which he also wrote about in a piece entitled “Why the health care debate is so important regardless of one’s view of the ‘public option.’”  Well worth reading, and deserving of all the praise given by Moyers.