In today's Presidential capitulation triangulation news bulletin, the Obama administration has signaled that it will rethink a law that would require insurance plans offered by Catholic universities and charities to provide women with birth control without charging them. “We’re going to look for a way to move forward that both provides women with the preventative care that they need and respects the prerogatives of religious institutions," David Axelrod told MSNBC yesterday. "To turn it into a kind of political football to take advantage—to try and capitalize that isn't going to make it easier to resolve that issue," Obama For America's football coach said without a hint of irony. more ›

Whether it's refusing to use a national tragedy as a xenophobic soapbox, keeping their genitals out of the public eye, or nobly declining to have sex with prostitutes while wearing diapers, we can always count on our elected representatives to put aside petty differences and do what's right for America. But shocking new data shows that Congress has lost touch with average Americans and has grown richer over the last several decades, at a faster rate than even the richest 10% of the country. more ›

Besides Mississippi voters rejecting a controversial anti-abortion measure, and upstate NY voters rejecting candidates with artsy nude photos, there were other big elections around the nation which gave a glimpse into the country's current mood. Ohio voters rejected an anti-labor law, Arizona voters recalled the extremist Tea Party-friendly state senator, and as a result, Democrats are starting to feel confidant again. more ›

Politicians win elections and earn their salaries by promising their constituents things and then explaining later why those promises were broken. This is in the Constitution, or Federalist 35 or something. But what happens to voters when they've been pushed to the very brink of insanity by a corrupt, inane political system and a rotten economy? According to new polling by the ABC News/The Washington Post, we're about to find out in 2012! The data shows it will involve a lot of misery, culminating in a campaign that is "a dramatic shift from the hope-and-change enthusiasm generated by Obama's first run for the White House." more ›

Things are looking up for the Stormin' Mormon: according to various reports, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will endorse Mitt Romney's presidential bid at 3 p.m. Billionaire GOP donors have less than one hour to convince Christie to run unless they throw down a few million to stop Greenwich Mean Time so they can have that custom-made helicopter painted "Jersey Buff." more ›

It's been a long, strange, helicoptery trip, but Chris Christie has chosen life: the New Jersey governor is holding a press conference today at 1 p.m. to announce that he is NOT running for president. "He's not running. Mary Pat and the gov just called tier one [donor] group to say he was out," a source tells Politico. Those tier one donors shouldn't worry, as they can just shift their donations to Mitt Romney. Or they can shovel the cash into a giant pit in the earth, douse it in kerosene, and set it on fire. While both choices will have the same result, the primal urge to bask in the glow of combustion is considerably more exciting than Mitt Romney. more ›

Many economists believe that president Obama's $447 billion jobs bill will help stimulate the economy—albeit not quite as much as the administration is predicting—by bolstering the GDP and creating or keeping at least 275,000 jobs. To pay for the plan, the president has asked the wealthy to dig under their manatee-leather couch cushions and be taxed as much as middle class folk. New York Senator Chuck Schumer thinks this is a bad idea. "The main hangup is not the jobs bill itself," Schumer tells the Daily News, "[Obama] proposed ways of paying for it that are probably not the best way to garner the votes. We're looking for better ways." Schumer then began furiously scratching a stack of Instant Take 5s. more ›

New Jersey governor and all-but-anointed Obama-slayer Chris Christie gave a speech at the Reagan Library (let Gary Sinise give you a tour!) in California last night [pdf] that oozed Oval Office, despite his persistent denials that he is considering a run. Speaking of the president's performance, Christie said, "This is not a leadership style, this is a reelection strategy," neglecting to mention that he had spent the afternoon at a $15,000-a-plate luncheon. "We watch a Congress at war with itself because they are unwilling to leave campaign style politics at the Capitol's door…We still continue to wait and hope that our president will finally stop being a bystander in the Oval Office." more ›

While the country fervently wrings its Chris Christie t-shirts anticipating the announcement of the New Jersey governor's 2012 run, let's take a moment to meet the noble white billionaires who would make the dream possible. more ›

Thursday's Republican debate was ugly. Even the The Weekly Standard's official reaction was "yikes." So with only a month left until the filing deadline, the GOP establishment is breaking out their diamond-encrusted kneepads to beg New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to run, and the man who said just weeks ago, "I'm not running," is allegedly considering it. Newsmax reports, "the effort to draft Christie culminated in a hush-hush powwow in the past week with Christie and several notable Republican billionaires." Ahh, democracy. more ›

Despite the recent (possible) location of his spine, President Obama's "numbers" continue to tumble. A recent Gallup poll shows that 56 percent of respondents believe Obama is "about the same" or "worse" than President George W. Bush. It's also worth noting that nearly 30 percent of people polled don't know who the Vice President is, and 73 percent didn't know what the "Cold War" was (Häagen Dazs vs. Breyers, right?) more ›

While President Obama's call to tax the wealthy at the same proportion of the middle class is strongly supported by moderates and independents, politicians of all stripes whose districts have moats around them aren't so sure about this whole "fairness" thing. Among them is important apple juice-purifier Chuck Schumer, who told CBS, “$250,000 makes you really rich in Mississippi but it doesn’t make you rich at all in New York." Indeed: the check average at the Whole Foods on Bowery last month was $245,325. more ›

As poll after poll shows his support eroding among independents and his base, perhaps President Obama has finally started losing some sleep. Tomorrow, Obama will propose a new tax rate for millionaires so that they will pay at least the same percentage as the 15 or so people still in the middle class. Dubbed the "Buffett Rule," after the billionaire grandpa you never had who has repeatedly said that the rich aren't taxed enough, Obama is seeking to force Republicans to choose between defending the wealthy and helping everybody else. Can you guess which side the Republicans will choose? Hint: it rhymes with "itch people." more ›

The race for Anthony's Weiner's old seat in Queens' solidly Democratic Ninth District has given voters a somewhat crappy choice in Tuesday's special election. Neither candidate knows much about their district, and while Republican candidate Bob Turner has indiscriminately picked up endorsements from Donald Trump, Ed Koch, and Rudy Giuliani, while mostly keeping his mouth shut, Democrat David Weprin has released an idiotic 9/11-invoking ad, stupidly cancelled a debate, and is hoping a video of him dancing in 2009 will make him seem less like a wet Saltine to voters. As of yesterday, Turner is up by six percentage points. more ›

Whenever we try to think about the problems the country faces our head starts to hurt and we crave chili fries. This is why corn-dog scarfing cyborg Michele Bachmann is sure to win the presidency in 2012: she offers simple explanations to complicated problems. Just a few days ago, Bachmann told us that when she's president, she'll lower the price of gas to $2 gallon. How? Shut up, that's how! So we were relieved when we heard Bachmann's explanation at a campaign appearance in Florida this weekend for why the Northeast has been hit with a Hurricane and an earthquake in less than seven days. HINT: He's omniscient and bearded and was named-dropped a few times at last night's VMAs. more ›

Sure he may have charmed a few of us by forcefully opposing the Iraq war and the bogus premise behind it, but is there any other reason to pay even the slightest bit of attention to Paul's presidential campaign? Paul finished a mere 152 votes behind Iowa straw poll winner Michele Bachmann, but no one seems to be giving him the press he deserves. Paul's campaign manager tells Politico, "We think people are missing a very big story here." Probably not! Here are three (of many) reasons why Ron Paul will never, ever be elected president. more ›

Slick Willie has some thoughts on Governor Goodhair. At a gathering of the International Association of Fire Fighters this morning in Manhattan, William Jefferson Clinton told the audience, "I got tickled by watching Governor Perry announce for governor, for president. He's a good looking rascal." Uh-oh, Rick. Better rescind that fall internship application at the Clinton Foundation unless you want to be "eating pizza" behind closed doors! more ›

We weren't joking when we repeated the fact that Michele Bachmann is a futuristic automaton bent on enslaving mankind in the Lipton mines. But Newsweek seems to have taken a different tact by calling her "The Queen of Rage," with a delightfully demonic photo of her using her ocular gamma rays to give Obama a weird rash from thousands of miles away. Naturally, people are upset by the magazine's cover that is still significantly less offensive than that Princess Di Photoshop job they pulled in June. more ›

After the worst day for the Dow Jones since December 2008, the index was up 1.83 percent this morning, and the Nasdaq climbed up 2.85 percent, stemming some of the damage done in yesterday's 634-point freefall. $8.1 trillion has been lost from global markets since July 24, in what the Times calls an "epidemic" fear among investors. Treasury bonds did quite well, despite the S&P's credit downgrade, so why do we care about what the S&P thinks anyway? Oh, right, the market's run by lemmings. "When you get declines of this sort, it is technical factors and emotion that drive markets—fundamentals are largely irrelevant," one expert says. more ›

After esteemed ratings agency Standard & Poor's lowered the United States' credit rating from AAA to AA+ (and three "Great Job!" stickers down to one) the markets are still taking time to "bottom out," in the words of Alan Greenspan, and Washington and Wall Street find themselves mired in the Kübler-Ross model of the Five Stages of Grief. Grab a bottle of Night Train and cut your last Prozac in half so you can make your journey through America's psyche go a little smoother. more ›

Yesterday FOX News ran a story about how President Obama, instead of creating jobs by abolishing taxes, chose to spend his birthday party on Thursday night just cold being "urban" at a "Hip-Hop BBQ" that included hip-hoppy guests like Jay-Z and…uh, UBS Investment Bank President Robert Wolf. The crowd probably shot dice and took bets on how much Olde English Attorney General Eric Holder could chug before the spinners on Joe Biden's Camaro wound to a halt. But Fox's executive VP of programming Bill Shine told Yahoo News that there is a perfectly logical explanation for the headline: it wasn't their fault. more ›

Editor-at-large of DIY indie zine Time Magazine Mark Halperin was back in his role as a MSNBC political analyst today on Morning Joe. It was the first time in a month that Halperin was on since his indefinite suspension for calling President Obama a "dick." The Daily News reports that the cast made no mention of Halperin's slip up, and that he was "subdued." But more interestingly, Pat Buchanan apologized for referring to President Obama as Al Sharpton's "boy" on Sharpton's program last night. "Some folks took what I said as some kind of slur. None was meant, none was intend, none was delivered," Buchanan said. How DARE anyone accuse a former Nixon staffer of racism. more ›

Democratic New Jersey county official Louis Magazzu resigned yesterday after nude photos that he took of himself surfaced on a Republican blogger's website. The Daily News reports that the 53-year-old freeholder for more than a decade has been separated from his wife for two years, and sent the pictures to a woman in Chicago who he met online, but has never seen in person. "I did not know that she was working with an avowed political enemy to distribute these pictures," Magazzu said. The pol will be sentenced to 3 years in prison for didn't actually break any laws but apparently it's tough to govern when people have seen your naughty parts. At least if you don't show them around the old fashioned way. more ›

After the House's passage of the debt-ceiling "compromise" that will raise the debt ceiling through 2013 and cut more than $2.1 trillion in government spending without raising taxes or closing corporate loopholes, the Senate passed the bill today 74-26. The bill is expected to be signed by the president "immediately." Among the lawmakers who voted against the legislation was New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who said in a statement, "This deal…is an unbalanced approach that cuts deeply into discretionary spending while being overwhelmingly stacked in favor of large corporations. It is simply not in the best interests of the middle class." Middle class? What middle class? more ›

Showing a fire that they completely lacked during the actual negotiations for a debt-ceiling deal, Vice President Joe Biden and House Democrats called tea party Republicans "terrorists" in a closed-door meeting today to rally support for the debt-ceiling compromise. According to Politico, Congressman Mike Doyle said, "We have negotiated with terrorists," referring to the fact that Democrats foolishly accepted a deal that included zero tax increases on the wealthy to make the deadline before default. Biden agreed: "They have acted like terrorists." This has been said before, but we guess the GOP was right: Democrats do negotiate with terrorists, and it's not such a good thing. more ›

As expected, Majority Leader Harry Reid failed to keep his debt-ceiling bill alive in the Senate earlier today, but now the Times reports that Reid has approved an agreement signaled earlier today by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that would cut the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion and raise the debt-ceiling limit through 2013, a provision that prevents this entire battle from being re-fought during the election season. If the Democrats approve, we should see a vote scheduled for the Senate this evening. more ›

Are you a veteran, receiving Social Security, a government contractor, or of one of the recipients of the 70 million checks the federal government mails out every month? Your payments may be drastically affected (along with the American economy) next month if the debt-ceiling limit isn't raised in 10 days. more ›