Primary, Please

If there was ever a quote to invite a primary challenger, this is it. Here's Diane Feinstein's response to the ads targeting her for refusing to embrace meaningful health care reform:

“I do not think this is helpful. It doesn’t move me one whit,” she said. “They are spending a lot of money on something that is not productive.”

She isn't Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, or Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, where you can at least chalk up their douchiness to bad political advice over "what wins" in their home states. This is Diane Feinstein OF CALIFORNIA.

She's up for re-election in 2012. It's 100% her right to ignore her voters, let's just hope she pays the price for it.

Coup in Honduras

Sunday:

Honduras is now torn between two presidents: one legally recognized by world bodies after he was deposed and forced from the country by his own soldiers, and another supported by the Central American nation's congress, courts and military.

Presidents from around Latin America were gathering in Nicaragua for meetings Monday to resolve the first military overthrow of a Central American government in 16 years, and once again Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took center stage, casting the dispute as a rebellion by the region's poor.

"If the oligarchies break the rules of the game as they have done, the people have the right to resistance and combat, and we are with them," Chavez said in the Nicaraguan capital, Managua.

There is a deep rift between the outside world — which is clamoring for the return of democratically elected, but largely unpopular and soon-to-leave-office President Manuel Zelaya — and congressionally designated successor Roberto Micheletti.

As Matthew Yglesias points out, there is one major positive from the reaction to these events:

I’ll also note as a broader analytic point that one major benefit of their not being a cold war on, is that when something like this happens pretty much everyone is against it. Hugo Chavez and his leftist bloc in Latin America are strongly anti-coup, the Obama administration is anti-coup, the European Union is anti-coup, etc. A point that often gets overlooked in the oft-airy “democracy promotion” debate in US politics is that, in practice, the greatest gift to democracy our foreign policy can give is to create a situation in which we don’t have the kind of major great power conflict that helped fuel so many coups and insurgencies in the 1945-89 period.

Agreed. Having a foreign policy that isn't based on "overthrowing anyone we don't like" is always a good step towards democracy promotion. Our country's legacy of Latin American interventions is horrific, and the Reagan years alone are responsible for the current ruin of many states and over a hundred thousand deaths. The leader of the coup in Honduras is even a graduate of the notorious US backed "School of the Americas", proving that our past actions there continue to effect the region.

But like Yglesias said, the fact that everyone can agree on denouncing this coup is a big step forward for the relationship between the US and the rest of Latin America. After the history we've had, any progress is major progress.

Dana Milbank: Dick Whisperer

Last week, when Nico Pitney of the Huffington Post was called on for a question at Obama's press conference. Obama said he heard Pitney was soliciting questions from people in Iran using the internets, and wanted him to relay one of those questions. Now if Pitney had lobbed him a softball rather than asking him probably the toughest question of the night, I would understand peoples' concern. But since he did ask a tough question, it seemed simply like a smart move by the president (to appear concerned with the plight of the Iranian protesters) while also a cool use of technology (soliciting questions from people who are very far away and choosing the best one).

But not according to Dana Milbank. When you write a fluff column for the Washington Post, you know serious journalism:

In his first daytime news conference yesterday, President Obama preempted "All My Children," "Days of Our Lives" and "The Young and the Restless." But the soap viewers shouldn't have been disappointed: The president had arranged some prepackaged entertainment for them.

After the obligatory first question from the Associated Press, Obama treated the overflowing White House briefing room to a surprise. "I know Nico Pitney is here from the Huffington Post," he announced.

Obama knew this because White House aides had called Pitney the day before to invite him, and they had escorted him into the room. They told him the president was likely to call on him, with the understanding that he would ask a question about Iran that had been submitted online by an Iranian. "I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet," Obama went on. "Do you have a question?"

Pitney recognized his prompt. "That's right," he said, standing in the aisle and wearing a temporary White House press pass. "I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian."

Pitney asked his arranged question. Reporters looked at one another in amazement at the stagecraft they were witnessing. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel grinned at the surprised TV correspondents in the first row.

The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world -- Iran included -- that the American press isn't as free as advertised. But yesterday wasn't so much a news conference as it was a taping of a new daytime drama, "The Obama Show." Missed yesterday's show? Don't worry: On Wednesday, ABC News will be broadcasting "Good Morning America" from the South Lawn (guest stars: the president and first lady), "World News Tonight" from the Blue Room, and a prime-time feature with Obama from the East Room.

. . .

But yesterday's daytime drama belonged primarily to Pitney, of the Huffington Post Web site. During the eight years of the Bush administration, liberal outlets such as the Huffington Post often accused the White House of planting questioners in news conferences to ask preplanned questions. But here was Obama fielding a preplanned question asked by a planted questioner -- from the Huffington Post.

Pitney said the White House, though not aware of the question's wording, asked him to come up with a question about Iran proposed by an Iranian.

Those crazy liberals, getting angry when Bush dressed up a male prostitute as a journalist and let him ask questions like this:

"Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid was talking about soup lines. And Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work – you've said you are going to reach out to these people – how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

Yep, that sounds like the right comparison for Pitney's staged softball:

"Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad, and if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there isn't that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working for?"

Accusing the president of betraying the demonstrators in Iran? Clearly a set up. And with all the extensive reporting Milbank did on the LEGITIMATE Gannon controversy (Zero Columns), I'm glad he's chosen now to unleash his outrage.

Anyway, somehow his outrage lasted into the weekend when Pitney and Milbank faced off on Howard Kurtz's CNN show. There was a predictably heated exchange between the two, where once again, Milbank refused back up any of his claims that Obama's team asked Pitney for a softball. That part was predictable. What happened next, according Pitney himself, was not:

The only thing that surprised me was when Dana turned to me after our initial sparring and called me a "dick" in a whispered tone (the specific phrase was, I believe, "You're such a dick"). Howie Kurtz wrote on Twitter that he didn't hear it, which is understandable -- he was doing the lead-in for the next part of the segment on the ABC White House special. But it happened (I urge Howie to watch the video of the panel during the ABC intro) and it was frankly pretty odd.

And with that, it was born:

Dana Milbank: Dick Whisperer

Israel Being Israel

The Israeli Government seems to be firmly committed to the foreign policy that's led them to such a peaceful existence over the last 40 years:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has authorized the building of 300 new homes in the West Bank, defying U.S. calls for a halt to settlement growth.

Activists for Bimkom association, which works for justice and human rights in planning and knows a thing or two about the situation in the territories, have discovered that Barak recently authorized the Civil Administration to submit a plan for the construction of 300 housing units in the unauthorized outpost of Givat Habrecha, near the community of Talmon.

U.S. President Barack Obama has pressed Israel to halt settlement activity as part of a bid to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians

This reaction isn't too surprising, simply because no one has ever stood up to Israel on settlement building/anything they do. But now that Israel's made their intentions clear, will Obama take his stance on settlements to the level and break out the foreign policy sticks? And by foreign policy sticks, I mean casually mentioning that we fund the military that allows you to build houses on other peoples' land.

Joe The Plumber Returns!

After a brief hiatus from the Republican party "talking to crazy people" circuit, everyone's favorite non-plumber is back!

Wurzelbacher has a reputation for being a blunt, politically incorrect speaker. Referring to Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., more than once, Wurzelbacher asked, "Why hasn't he been strung up?"

I'm not sure I'd use the term "politically incorrect" for calling for the lynching of a sitting US Senator. But don't stop him, he's rolling.

Referring to the Constitution as "almost like the Bible," Wurzelbacher said of the Founding Fathers: "They knew socialism doesn't work. They knew communism doesn't work."

Here, Joe is undoubtedly citing that totally kickass Federalist Paper in which Alexander Hamilton and James Madison put the beatdown on Marx and Engels. Suck it, leftards!

After speaking, Wurzelbacher signed autographs and posed for pictures with the crowd. In a brief interview Thursday, he said a recent Time magazine report that he had left the Republican Party was false.

We need to do whatever we can to keep him in the news until the 2012 cycle, where he could host one of the debates, or maybe even be a surprise VP candidate! Who knows? In today's Republican party, the sky's the limit for this blithering idiot!

Train of Thought Lounge: Leave Me Alone

Like Ta-Nehisi said, I feel like this is somehow appropriate:

R.I.P. Michael Jackson, the Undisputed King of Pop