Greg Sargent and Digby offer their views on Charlie Cook's doomsday prediction for Democrats, based largely on polling showing that Republicans plan to vote with far greater enthusiasm than Democrats. (Whether more of them vote is a different question, since you only get one vote per person, no matter how enthusiastic you may be.)

Digby:

You can't help but wonder if the Democrats have decided that having the votes of "liberals, African-Americans, self-described Democrats, moderates and those living in either the Northeast or West" just aren't worth having so they are going to fight the Republicans for every last one of those John McCain voters. How else to explain the ongoing derision of their rank and file? ("They look like absolute idiots" is the quote that comes to mind.)

If going for hard core Republican votes isn't their strategy, then someone might tell the president that for the next four months he might want to knock off his patented "one from column A one from column B" routine and stop making false equivalence between the Democratic base and teabaggers and lavishing praise on Blue Dogs who repeatedly punch hippies and stab him in back.

Sargent:

I tend to fall into the camp that holds that the Dem base's lack of enthusiasm is out of sync with the size and scope of the accomplishments racked up thus far by Obama and Dems. The excitement around Obama's victory was so intense, and the sense of a "big change moment" was so palpable, that people were bound to feel let down despite Obama's clearly historic achievements.

Here's yet another way of looking at it: The good news for Republicans is that their enthusiasm is at a record high, meaning they stand a realistic chance of retaking control of Congress.

The bad news for Republicans is that the prospect of a GOP majority might just be enough to fire up the Democratic base and left-leaning independents.

I actually think all three arguments have some validity and none of them are mutually exclusive. Taken together, they offer up a useful (though not fully comprehensive) guide for Democratic officials planning the fall campaign.

1. Don't be afraid to repeat the administration's and Congress's accomplishments ad nauseum. It will take time to break through, but eventually, it will.

2. Empower White House aides who connect well with the base and muzzle those who don't.

3. Use the looming prospect of a Republican takeover of Congress as a weapon against them. Make sure this election is a choice between GOP and Democratic governance.

Anyone who says with certainty they know how this election will play out is a snake oil salesman. And while Republicans may say they are more enthusiastic than Democrats, you only get one vote no matter how enthusiastic you are. So what counts is whether more of them vote than Democrats. So far this year, that hasn't happened. And there's no guarantee that it will happen in November. But it could happen. And it's important that we not let it.

TESTOSTERONE GEL INCREASES HEART RISKS. At least in older men with diabetes, etc. Speculation: “The problem is that as we age lots of mechanisms have gone so awry that stimulating them just causes them to go wrong faster. Though another recent study found that ovary transplants improve the health of aged female mice. Those ovaries pump out a lot of hormones and yet they deliver a net benefit. Maybe the reason the transplants deliver a net benefit is that the ovaries excrete multiple kinds of hormones and with hormone release patterns optimized to improve health. Internal organs have complex regulatory mechanisms. Whereas testosterone gels are not released in ways that precisely mimic what the brain will do.”

SUPERMODELS, then and now.

Jim McDermott, a co-author of the unemployment insurance extension bill that passed in the House yesterday, talked with HuffPosts's Arthur Delaney after the vote, and blasted the Republicans and deficit peacocks who've been blocking this critical funding.

"It's a class warfare issue," said McDermott in an interview with HuffPost after the House vote. McDermott, chairman of the Ways and Means Income Security and Family Support Subcommittee, lamented the fact that congressional deficit hawks squawked little during two wars and when Congress authorized a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry.

"Wall Street is saying to them, 'These deficits, they're making problems, we need to get this deficit down,'" McDermott said. "So the very people who took the money and were stabilized because we created deficits are now turning around and biting the hand that feeds them, that is, the taxpayers. It's unconscionable."
....

"The Social Security Act of 1935 made these entitlements, Social Security and unemployment insurance and welfare," he said. "The Republicans have been after all three of those programs ever since 1935. They got welfare a few years ago, because that's poor people. They could jump on them. But unemployment and Social Security is middle-class people -- they haven't been able to get them, but it isn't because they're not willing to try."

It would start with offsetting the cost of benefits for the first time: "If you say that you can't feed people because you don't have the money right now, that is a real new precedent."

Those deficit peacocks in the House have been pushing Pelosi to consider, for the first time in history, to cut other programs in order to extend unemployment insurance. It's the argument Senate Republicans and Ben Nelson have also been using, suggesting everything from the sheer length of this crisis making it no longer an "emergency" to the laziness of the unemployed, the latter-day "hobos" who just don't want to go back to work.

That's what the Blue Dogs opposing UI extension (Baird, Berry, Bright, Cooper, Hill, Markey (CO), Marshall, McIntyre, Minnick, Nye, Shuler) and Ben Nelson are endorsing.

The White House has announced that it's releasing $795 million in 66 new broadband grants and loans across the country in the latest rollout of stimulus funding.

The awards range from a $5.2 million network infrastructure grant in McCarthy, Alaska to $17.5 million to anchor community institutions in Washington D.C. that will serve residents with high-speed Internet access.

In a speech this morning at Andrews Air Force Base, Obama described how the awards will create jobs 5,000 immediate jobs and more in the long term.

"And once we emerge from the immediate crisis, the long-term economic gains to communities that have been left behind in the digital age will be immeasurable," he said. The announcement came amid a lackluster jobs report this morning, reported by my colleague Neil Irwin.

So far, the administration has doled out $2.7 billion in grants, which is less than half of the $7.2 billion set aside in the stimulus plan for broadband Internet projects. The new funding will come from the Department of Commerce. That agency's National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Department of Agriculture have been responsible for the dispersement of stimulus funds.

The administration says this will result in "5,000 immediate jobs," in in the long term will help bring rural and under-served Americans up to speed, so to speak. But in the wake of the this month's bad jobs report, it's seems a little late, and a little puny. Yglesias:

I think this episode highlights some of the tensions and problems that have plagued our efforts at doing discretionary fiscal stimulus on an adequate scale. In the popular imagining, the big problem with government is that it’s wasteful and inefficient. So if you want to build political support for an agenda of activist government, in practice it’s crucially to be extremely careful with how you dole out the money. But care is the enemy of speed.

Speed, and a good dose of spending the money that's already been targeted as stimulus is the last hope for job creation in the near term, like before November. It would also undercut the Republicans' argument for using unspent stimulus funding for unemployment benefits, a drum they've been beating for the entire 11 weeks in which they've been blocking the UI extensions.

The White House needs to find a way to pivot off of the strong focus on the stabilization of the economy and the accomplishments of the stimulus, to acknowledging the reality of the desperate need to do more. They can do both, in fact, by pointing out the success of the stimulus thus far and saying "look, we've proved government spending works, so let's get more out there, because the country needs it."

TIP: Use Scotch Tape or Nail Polish to Relieve an Itchy Mosquito Bite.

With the furor over the inadvertent public airing of RNC Chairman Michael Steele's attack on President Obama growing, Chairman Steele is scrambling to do damage-control.

After an amateur video from a closed-to-the-media event surfaced that had Steele saying of the war in Afghanistan:

"Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama's choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in."... you know that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan."

... RNC spokesman Doug Heye tried to downplay the remarks, saying that Steele did not, "say or suggest that (a) we shouldn't be there, (b) we can't win or (c) he didn't support the surge." But Steele quite clearly did, so Steele has now come out with a statement of his own:

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama made clear his belief that we should not fight in Iraq, but instead concentrate on Afghanistan. Now, as President, he has indeed shifted his focus to this region. That means this is his strategy. And, for the sake of the security of the free world, our country must give our troops the support necessary to win this war.

“As we have learned throughout history, winning a war in Afghanistan is a difficult task.   We must also remember that after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, it is also a necessary one. That is why I supported the decision to increase our troop force and, like the entire United States Senate, I support General Petraeus’ confirmation. The stakes are too high for us to accept anything but success in Afghanistan.

... which does absolutely nothing to address what Steele did say when he thought his words would never be made public.

And of course he doesn't address the fact that as the head of the Republican Party, he blatantly and stupidly lied about the President, and about when, why and how the war in Afghanistan began.

GULF SPILL UPDATE: WH Admits Missed Oil Containment Deadline Missed.

Related: Volunteers Beached In Gulf By Feds? “Over 20,000 people have offered assistance in on-shore cleanup efforts in the region, but only a sixth of those have been put to work. . . . The cleanup effort has run aground, and it’s a failure of leadership. Small wonder House Democrats blocked its members from traveling to the Gulf to see the situation for themselves and the White House is blocking media access.”

VIDEO: Swarm of maggots forces plane to land. “There was no explanation given for why someone wanted to transport rotten meat or how the TSA screeners missed the live insects but won’t let anyone else through security with 4 ounces of contact solution.”

• Rand Paul's campaign explains what it meant by calling for an underground electronic fence on the Mexican border:

  Paul raised quite a few eyebrows in Republican circles last week when the news broke that his campaign Web site listed a plan for "an underground electric fence, with helicopter stations to respond quickly to breaches of the border." Even NRSC chair John Cornyn was baffled, wondering aloud to The Huffington Post: "How would that work?" But Paul's spokesman Jesse Benton is now clarifying to me that the Web site is wrong -- the fence Paul envisions, while electronic, is not meant to be underground. "That's a stupid word that was put in by whoever is writing for our Web site and we need to remove it," Benton told me.

• It seems that Florida's Republican primary race for governor between Bill McCollum and Rick Scott has turned into a contest over who hates gays the most.
• Yet another crazy ad from a Republican candidate -- this one by New Hampshire Senate candidate Jim Bender.
• Someone, please, make the stupid stop:

  Last night, on Fox Business Happy Hour, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) attempted to make the case for why the language of the 14th amendment — which states “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States” — should be “clarified” to exclude the children of immigrants.

  Some of us were traveling to the Middle East last August, a year ago. And a lady on the plane was telling one of our group that they were about to have their second granddaughter. Her husband was with Hamas, her grand — I’m sorry her son-in-law was with Hamas. And that they were going to do with the second as they did with the first grandchild. Daughter is going to come to America right before it’s born on a tourist visa. Have the baby. They just like the option of having American citizens in the family. [...]

  We’re bringing them over here on tourist visas, some illegally, letting them be born here and saying this is an American citizen. So come back in 20, 25 years when you’re ready to blow us up.

• From Blue Virginia:

  Another day, another crazy/stupid/politically tone deapf appointment by Bob McDonnell, pfollowing on the heels of his appointments of corrupt "Jew counter" Pfred Malek and massive conflict-of-interest guy Bob Sledd. Now, it's our old pfriend, former McCain gaffesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer, who believes that Northern Virginia - the economic and demographic engine of the state - isn't a "real" part of Virginia.  Now, as a reward for not believing Northern Virginia is "real Virginia," McDonnell has appointed Pfotenhauer to "the governing board of the largest University in 'Fake Virginia'" - George Mason University!  As Ben says, although I'd spell it differently, "What the Pfuck?"  Another day in the not-ready-for-prime-time administration.

• Not exactly breaking news:

  The Supreme Court has gradually come to act more like a political institution. The share of one-vote majority rulings has risen more than four-fold in the past six decades, compared to the half-century prior, based on a RealClearPolitics analysis of rulings from 1801 to the present.

• Did you buy one of the new iPhones?

  Apple on Friday promised to offer a fix for the problems that have plagued some users of its new iPhone 4, who said they saw a dramatic decline in the reception bars when they held the phone a certain way. The company said the iPhone 4’s antenna works just fine. The problem, Apple said, is with how the phone displays the bars.

• Holy vuvuleza! The Netherlands came from behind to beat Brazil 2-1 and advance to the World Cup semifinals.
• Could it happen?

  Could a blind person drive a car? Researchers are trying to make that far-fetched notion a reality.

  The National Federation of the Blind and Virginia Tech plan to demonstrate a prototype vehicle next year equipped with technology that helps a blind person drive a car independently.

• Contrary to popular belief or hyped headlines, discoveries that stun scientists are few and far between. But this one might turn out to be just such a discovery. -- DS