I'm in a New York State of mind tonight. In the news: Rudy Giuliani may be attempting a comeback with a run for NY Governor. Which is the reason President Obama suggested Gov. Patterson not run again. Polls show Rudy would handily beat Paterson but lose to Andrew Cuomo. [More...]

David Letterman's show is getting more political. President Obama is the only guest tonight. Tomorrow night, Bill Clinton will be on.

Obama has a few jokes tonight. When Letterman asks him about Jimmy Carter's statement that racism is behind many of the attacks on him, Obama responds, "It's important to realize that I was actually black before the election."

On the serious side, Obama talks health care and war -- again. This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The judge presiding over the military commission proceedings of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and three other detainees at Guantanmo issued a stay order today putting the cases on ice until November 16, so President Obama can decide whether he prefers to have the cases transferred to federal criminal courts.

The military had flown some family members of 9/11 victims in for the hearing. The defendants didn't appear in court which disappointed them -- and the prosecutor. The prosecutor asked they be brought from their cells but the judge refused. [More...]

Update: 2:00 pm: Mohammed Zazi is ordered released on bond, he will be on home detention and can go home as soon as it's installed in the house (could take a few days.) The Government did not seek to detain him. A detention hearing is set for Thursday at 9:00 a.m. for Najibullah Zazi. He will remain in custody until then. His lawyer Arthur Folsom will continue to represent him.

Bump and Update 1:30 pm MT: The Government has filed notices in both the cases of Najibullah Zazi his father Mohammed Zazi that it will be introducing and/or using evidence obtained from FISA electronic surveillance and searches. The notices read:

.... the United States intends to offer into evidence, or otherwise use or disclose in any proceedings in the above-captioned matter, information obtained and derived from electronic surveillance and physical search conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (“FISA”), as amended, 50 U.S.C. §§ 1801-1812 and 1821-1829.

Their initial appearances in court were at 1:30 p.m. Zazi's lawyer, Arthur Folsom, arrived at 9:45 a.m. (I ran into him in the clerk's office, he was getting a "green card" that allows lawyers to bring phones with cameras into the building.)

Mohammed Zazi has asked to have the public defender appointed for him. [More...]

Brian Beutler:

[T]he dispute boils down to a question of whether Democrats should be willing to test the limits of what's technically feasible under the law and Senate rules--whether they should go farther than even the Republicans went when they used reconciliation to pass the Bush tax cuts--or whether doing so would steer U.S. politics on to a course so fraught and unpredictable that the consequences could outstrip the substantive gains they'd make by passing a comprehensive health care bill.

This is not the dispute at all, even though Mark Schmitt, whose Theory of Change has been thoroughly discredited, wants you to think it is. Sen. Chuck Schumer nicely described the "liberal" position:

It's the afternoon on the East Coast.

What's going on today?

This is an Open Thread.

The Beltway bloggers and pundits advocating for BaucusCare are having a hard time with this one:

In the most contentious exchange of President Barack Obama’s marathon of five Sunday shows, he said it is “not true” that a requirement for individuals to get health insurance under a key reform plan now being debated amounts to a tax increase. But he could look it up — in the bill. Page 29, sentence one of the bill introduced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) says: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.”

In contortions that would make a Bush apologist proud, the Beltway bloggers and pundits have tried to turn reality into well, their own myth. It won't work. And it is embarrassing. When Politico can make you look silly, you may want to reconsider your tactics.

Speaking for me only

While I strongly oppose the BaucusCare Mandate Tax, I do want to make clear that I support both individual and employer mandates. The solution is simple, UNLESS you are mainly concerned about the profits of the health insurance industry.

The solution is a simple one. BaucusCare provides:

Excise Tax. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax. [. . .]

Instead, this should state "Autoenrollment In a Public Insurance Option. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be auto-enrollment into a public insurance option."

There. Problem fixed.

Speaking for me only

The Beltway "progressives" have discovered there is only so much get along from actual progressives in their drive to pass an Health Insurance Industry Profits Protection Act. This puts them in an awkward position. For example, they have to, as Matt Yglesias does here, ignore, even misstate, the fact that the BaucusCare they are championing does in fact include an "excise tax" (Max Baucus' phrase, not mine) for those Americans unable to afford to purchase health insurance. Yglesias calls the Baucus excise tax "regulation" -- "Not being a politician, I can just note that we generally speak the English language in the United States and we’ve never previously taken the word 'tax' to include all regulations that increase some people’s costs of buying stuff."

Ahem, it is rather ridiculous to complain about BaucusCare being described as containing an excise tax when in fact Max Baucus himself included a provision titled "Excise Tax," that provides for taxing people unable to afford to buy health insurance. That is the reality of the mandates without a public option. It is a tax on the less well off created to insure the profits of the health insurance industry. That is the reality. Deal with it Beltway Villagers.

Speaking for me only

Woe onto the Democrat unprepared to throw the public option under the bus. Ezra Klein ran his series of attacks on Dean and the public option. Ron Brownstein, no doubt a JournOLister, ripped Dean. And now Ed Kilgore compares Dean's opposition to an excise tax on the middle class (Yes Democrats, that's what a "mandate" is. Even their patron saint Max Baucus calls it that) IF a public option is not included in health care reform with Joe Lieberman's stance that a mandate is good but a public option is bad. Kilgore decided to misstate Howard Dean's position and Joe Lieberman's on health care reform:

Suzy Khimm's post at The Treatment about Howard Dean's latest remarks on health care reform strategy shows the perils of the obsession with the public option on both sides of the barricades. After a fiery demand that progressives refuse to relent on the public option, the good Doctor allowed as how if we can't get that, he'd be fine with legislation that just regulated health insurance abuses.

[MORE. . . ]

A declassified version of a report by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal on the war in Afghanistan predicts the U.S. will lose the war there if more troops aren't provided. McChrystal is the top U.S. and Nato Commander in Afghanistan.

"Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."

The Washington Post has published the report here. President Obama is studying the report. [More...]

digby thinks Howard Dean is where the attacks will end:

[P]rivileged village insider Ron Brownstein [. . .] being a snotty little twit: "Howard Dean is becoming living proof that health care reform should offer a universal entitlement to Valium."

It won't be just Howard Dean and it was not just Ron Brownstein. I guess digby missed Ezra Klein's series of criticisms of Dean. But noting that would violate the logrolling rule.

Speaking for me only