TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Florida's Clemency Board has posthumously pardoned singer Jim Morrison of The Doors for his 40-year-old conviction on indecent exposure and profanity charges.

Outgoing Gov. Charlie Crist requested the pardon Thursday. The Clemency Board unanimously granted it.

Reading Americablog after Obama's presser was funny.  Oh my god.  He really believes this crap.  He won't fight.  He thinks he's being pragmatic by caving!  Well, duh, guys and dolls.  He never lied about it.  He thinks left and right are equally wrong.  He thinks you make progress by getting everyone around a big table, listening to their ideas, and bringing everyone to a happy golden mean - with him at the table.  That's the critical part.  He said that.  His aversion to conflict was presented as a SELLING POINT.  Not like that nasty, partisan Hillary.  And now he's getting a ton of crap from his former allies for doing, or trying to do, exactly what he said he was going to do exactly the way he said he was going to do it.  In a way, I don't blame him for being pissed off.  

Obviously his approach hasn't worked, and he really doesn't get it; he's lost.  That shouldn't be a surprise either.  It was obvious during the primaries that he didn't get the economic crisis, health care policy, the political terrain, the opposition he would encounter, the robber-baron (you might even say crypto-fascist) nature of the modern Republican party.  He didn't get that his own Blanche Lincolns and Ben Nelsons would betray him.  I think this mostly got buried during the GE because the economy had collapsed, and McCain/Palin got it even less - or just didn't care.

Now it's clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,  here I am, stuck in the center left with ... nobody.  I'd like to primary this President, oppose him from the left, shoot down this crappy tax bill, and send a message to the Republicans: don't bother negotiating with this President because he can't deliver.  I was never a true believer anyway, and any support I had for the guy was, and is, conditional.

But me and whose army?  Former pro-HRC compatriots at places like the Confluence who long ago went stark raving mad?  Those who think things have to get worse before they'll get better, so let's make them worse? (Jesus, people, do you realize that approach usually results in dictatorship? That to a horrifying degree FDR and the New Deal rather than Charles Lindbergh or worse was a matter of luck? That we're already dangerously, frighteningly close to "worse" and not a scintilla of resistance has appeared?)  Kos and similar who stopped at nothing - at no slimy, disgusting thing - to get The One the Democratic nomination, and have now turned on Him?  I'm sorry people, but you are all clowns and jokers, and I don't think I'd join you in crossing the street.

 From CNN:
-- Defying President Obama, House Democrats vote not to bring up tax deal he negotiated with GOP in its current form.

I wonder - when the House changes hands and the Repubs pass it to the Senate - would the Dems filibuster their own Pres' deal?

Anna Ardin, one of the two complainants in the rape and sexual assault case against WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange, has left Sweden, and may have ceased actively co-operating with the Swedish prosecution service and her own lawyer

One source from Ardin's old university of Uppsala reported rumours that she had stopped co-operating with the prosecution service several weeks ago, and that this was part of the reason for the long delay in proceeding with charges -- and what still appears to be an absence of charges.

Paul vowed in an interview with The Hill last month that as chairman he would shine a light on the Fed's policies, which he called opaque and destructive. If necessary, he would be willing to subpoena Fed officials to come testify before his panel, he said.

Paul has introduced legislation in the past to abolish the central bank, and pushed hard in a failed effort to include a provision in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that would require a complete audit of the Fed's operations.

Bachus said the committee's first priority will be to "end the taxpayer funded bailout of Fannie [Mae] and Freddie [Mac]."

the tax bill, repeal of DADT, START, not sure about the DREAM act.

but I have this "feeling" that is all may happen.

The WH concedes that if the mandate gets tossed, so does the pre-existing requriement.

From a fact sheet passed out at the WH briefing yesterday:

If the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act's individual responsibility requirement ultimately prevails, it would mean that provisions preventing health insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions would also be invalidated by the court because the two are inseparably linked. If insurance companies are required to cover those with pre-existing conditions, who are potentially more expensive to cover, without requiring everyone--both sick and healthy people--to have insurance, premiums will increase rapidly. Similarly, other provisions - including banning insurers from discriminating based on health status, age and gender - would also fall.

Why I'd rather my daughter marry a rich man than have a brilliant career

The new breed of intelligent, jet-set housewives really do seem to have it all...

   "He has no fixed principles," Nader said, of Mr. Obama. "He's opportunistic -- he goes for expedience, like Clinton. Some call him temperamentally conflict-averse. If you want to be harsher, you say he has no principles and he's opportunistic."

    "He's a con man," Nader continued. "I have no use for him."

    "I'm not foreclosing the possibility [of running]... There are just other things to do," he continued. "And it's time for someone else to continue. I've done it so many times. When I go around the country, I'm telling people they need to find somebody."

Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 - and House Democrats don't have a clue that he did. In the deal struck this week, the president negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than his $814 billion 2009 stimulus package. It will pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years - which just happen to be the two years of the run-up to the next presidential election. This is a defeat?