I guess he really is running:

Mr. Dobbs, who left the network last week, has said in recent days that he is considering a third-party run for a New Jersey Senate seat in 2012 [. . .] First, though, Mr. Dobbs is working to repair what a spokesman conceded is a glaring flaw: His reputation for antipathy toward Latino immigrants. In a little-noticed interview Friday, Mr. Dobbs told Spanish-language network Telemundo he now supports a plan to legalize millions of undocumented workers, a stance he long lambasted as an unfair "amnesty." [. . .] Mr. Dobbs twice mentioned a possible legalization plan for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., saying at one point that "we need the ability to legalize illegal immigrants under certain conditions."

Via Media Matters -- Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino -- "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."

Where's Rudy when you need him?

The top recommended diary at Daily Kos:

You have raised your flag in protest against a troop increase in a war the President, as a candidate, called a "war of necessity." The President didn't hide his feelings from you.

I knew my time alone in support of "finishing the job" in Afghanistan would be shortlived. Welcome to the bandwagon, Obama fans.

This is an Open Thread.

Our good friend John Amato critcizes WaPo's Ruth Marcus for urging Democrats capitulate on the public option. I have a problem with John's criticism for two reasons. First, Ruth Marcus does not believe in a public option. Why should she argue that Democrats should hold the line for a policy she does not believe in?

But my real criticism of John is his willful blindness regarding the fact that more influential people in the Media, who CLAIM to believe in a public option, say precisely the same thing Marcus does about the public option - that Dems should give it up. Yes, I am talking abvout the Village Blogosphere - Josh Marshall, Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, Kevin Drum and others to come (just watch). Why is John silent about these voices, whose positions are much more disingenuous? Their voices are much more influential than Marcus' and their lack of forthrightness about what they really think about the public option seems to me to be much more worthy of discussion than Marcus' urging a course of action in line with her stated policy views. I am not a fan of urging people to not argue for their policy views. I am strongly in favor of urging people to argue HONESTLY in favor of their policy views.

Speaking for me only

The winner of Dancing With the Stars will be named tonight.It's between Donny Osmond, Mya and Kelly Osbourne.

Technically, the best dancer is Mya, but there's something off-putting and cold about her and she doesn't have the fan base Donny and Kelly do, so while she's the judges' favorite, I think there's a good chance Donny Osmond may win.

I'm rooting for Donny and second for Kelly. Donny is the most entertaining to watch. Kelly is very endearing and upbeat and has made so much progress. And I love watching Sharon and Ozzy get all teared up as they watch her. As for Mya, sorry, but I just don't see star quality there, and the show is called "Dancing With the Stars."

V is also coming to a close for the year tonight. No big loss, it's gone downhill since the first two episodes. This is an open thread, all topics welcome, tv related or not.

The Government ought to give John Gotti, Jr. a rest. After 9 days of deliberations in a 4th retrial, the jury announced it was deadlocked. But the Judge gave them the dynamite charge, rather than let them go.

The end seemed near for the fourth racketeering trial of Gotti when the jury said it could not reach a unanimous verdict in a note late in its ninth day of deliberations, a record for the Gotti trials. Gotti, 45, blew a kiss to his family before taking his seat.

After rejecting a defense request to declare a mistrial, U.S. District Judge Kevin P. Castel summoned the jury and delivered a so-called Allen charge, instructing jurors to try hard once more to come to a consensus.

[More...]

Tonight on PBS, Frontline airs The Card Game, a report on the consumer loan and credit card industry:

In a joint project with The New York Times, [Lowell] Bergman and the Times talk to industry insiders, lobbyists, politicians and consumer advocates as they square off over new regulation and the possible creation of a consumer finance protection agency. How are the credit, debit and pre-paid card industries repositioning themselves to maintain high profits under the new rules? The stakes couldn't be higher as many fear the consumer loan industry could be at the center of the next crisis.

It seems the new credit card rules won't do much to help consumers. [More...]

The Washington Post announced today it will close its bureaus in LA, NY, and Chicago on Dec. 31.

"At a time of limited resources and increased competitive pressure, it's necessary to concentrate our journalistic firepower on our central mission of covering Washington and the news, trends and ideas that shape both the region and the country's politics, policies and government," the newspaper's top editor, Marcus Brauchli, wrote in a memo to employees that was obtained by Reuters. ..."We are not a national news organization of record serving a general audience. Nor are we a wire service or a cable channel," Brauchli told the Post's media columnist and reporter Howard Kurtz.

The Post says "We will continue to cover events around the country as we have for decades, by sending reporters into the field." What about international events-- will it still cover those? What about big trials -- will it still dispatch reporters to courthouses outside D.C.?

These are indeed tough times for newspapers.

NYTimes:

President Obama said on Tuesday that he will announce his decision on how many more troops to send to Afghanistan next week, and that it is his intention to “finish the job” that began with the overthrow of the Taliban government in the fall of 2001.

As a longtime proponent of "finishing the job" in Afghanistan (and President Obama's positions on Afghanistan), I look forward to being joined by the Obama blogs in my position next week when President Obama announces he is sending in more troops to help "finish the job."

Speaking for me only

Matt Taibbi:

[T]he reporters mostly all worshipped [Obama] [. . .] That part of the media-conspiracy narrative is definitely true. [. . .] Needless to say nothing like that went on in the Hillary press corps, or more especially in the McCain plane, where the more likely back-of-the-plane recreation was a reporter musing out loud about the benefits of hanging himself over continuing even one more minute on that assignment.

Told you so. Anyway, I am not a fan of Taibbi (his hit job on Wes Clark in 2003 shows he knows how to wield a hatchet himself), and I think he really misses the mark in this section:

Taking his brownnosing Beltway Dems to new heights, Ezra Klein writes:

To make a bit of a heretical point, most of those cases prove that Bush's domestic agenda was a capitulation to liberalism, not that Democrats were spineless wimps. NCLB and the Medicare prescription drug bill were both longtime Democratic ideas. The problem with NCLB was implementation, and while the problem with Medicare Part D was that its design was a giveaway to drug companies, it was also hundreds and hundreds of billions funneled towards the largest expansions of Medicare since the program's creation. [. . .] The war stuff is, well, the war stuff. [. . .] The tax cuts were free money, and the bankruptcy bill was indefensible. But on the whole, Bush's domestic record is more a tale of co-opting liberal ideas and adding money for corporations than it is a tale of achieving longtime conservative ends.

Wow! Just wow! Klein call his take heretical. I call it an embarrassment.

Speaking for me only

Noam Scheiber:

Geithner's decision not to nationalize some subset of banks looks like the right move in retrospect. Citigroup and BofA are still struggling, of course, and it's hard to know when they'll recover (though much of that seems tied to the unemployment rate). But the rest of the country's biggest banks are chugging along reasonably well. The stress tests restored confidence and allowed them to raise capital privately rather than rely on the government.

Say what? So the fact that the government owns 42% of Citibank, has been the only source of equity capital for Citibank, that Citibank is struggling and "it is hard to know when they'll recover" is the evidence that not putting Citibank into receivership was the "right move?" Hell, I would love to see Scheiber's case for ever nationalizing Citibank. We can argue about a lot of things, but arguing that Geithner's handling of Citibank is evidence of what he's doing right is shocking to me. The federal government dumped hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars into Citibank and has got nothing to show for it (Citibank's new loan originations are anemic.) The only people who have benefitted from Geithner's actions on Citibank are Citi CEO Vikram Pandit and his band of merry Citi bankers. Hell, Geithner would have been better off throwing money onto the street as economic stimulus. As a defense for Geithner, Scheiber has convinced me that Geithenr should go.

Speaking for me only