The Daily Strike-8/10/09-Dog Days

Good evening and welcome to the Daily Strike. Congressional recess is really, really difficult for the blogosphere.

THE WHITE HOUSE: Virtually nothing has happened in the political world since this morning, when I wrote the Weekly Strike. The President held a joint press conference with the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada, and made one newsworthy comment. Obama said that he hopes to get an immigration bill drafted in Congress by the end of the year, but he probably won't get one passed until 2010 at the earliest. He reiterated that his primary goal is to pass health reform, which he said will eventually get done because more "sensible and reasoned arguments" eventually will emerge. That's an obvious reference to the conservative town hall mobs, and their enablers in the right-wing media and among Republican politicians. When asked how these efforts might affect Democrats in the midterm elections, Obama said "we'll do fine." If Republicans continue to marginalize themselves, I think President Obama might be right. Even as the Democrats overreach a bit in their legislative goals, and some of these goals may seem scary to the American people at first, they will be seen eventually as being the party that solves problems. That is, if moderates know what's good for them and support Obama's agenda.

The President heads to Portsmouth, NH tomorrow to hold a town meeting on health reform. He will be joined by New Hampshire Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, and Democratic Reps. Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter. We'll have full coverage for you, including any potential wing nut protests.

WING-NUTTERY: Speaking of wing-nuts, I don't like using childish names, but Bill O'Reilly calls people "pinheads" every day, so I feel a little better about it. Plus, I don't think there is any other way to describe the people involved in this extraordinary statistic:

According to a poll to be released tomorrow, only 24% of Republicans in North Carolina think that Barack Obama is an American citizen. That is absolutely insane. It's a reminder to all of us though, that even something so obviously false can be pedaled consistently by those with large megaphones, and can be accepted as the truth. It's really, really dangerous. The positive side, is that we can put the "birther" face on all of our political opposition. The same people screaming about how Obama hasn't produced a long-form birth certificate are the people raising hell at town meetings across the country. The arguments against health reform are a lot more easily discredited coming from these people.

That's it for a short entry today. Hopefully the length of this entry will inspire the Big Picture to write his long overdue grading of Obama's 8 priorities. See you tomorrow!