Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The President is in Japan today. He'll be in China, Singapore and South Korea over the next couple days.

Congress has been in recess, but it's looking like the Senate will start its debate on health insurance reform next week. We'll all have to be very vigilant. There's going to be a lot of pressure to ram through a weak bill. Democrats on the Hill are seeing bad poll numbers. Instead of leading, they'll end up caving, just to get health care done.

Later today, we're going to see video of a top Obama administration official, Melody Barnes, speaking in very human and supportive terms about marriage equality. The White House made this into a big deal by denying Barnes said anything, then delaying the release of the video. Everything about LGBT issues seems complicated for the Obama administration. Obama is on the wrong side of history on marriage equality and I suspect many of his staffers know it.

One of the best things of the week was watching Cartman morph into Glenn Beck:


Let's get threading...