Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

It's a big foreign policy day for your president who is in New York CIty at the United Nations. He's got a slew of meetings, including a trilateral with the Prime Minister of Israel and the President of the Palestenian Authority. That's the one likely to get most of the attention, although Obama is also doing a session on climate change, meeting with the President of China and speaking to the Clinton Global Initiative. All in a day's work.

Meanwhile, the Senate Finance Committee begins marking up the Baucus bill today. Baucus already made some changes to his own bill. The real Democrats on that committee need to make a lot of changes to make this legislation reasonable and workable for real people -- and it needs a public option. We should be getting answers to our questions on health insurance reform for Senator Sherrod Brown later today. I'll post as soon as we get the video.

The Massachusetts legislature should give final approval to the bill allowing an interim appointment for the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Ted Kennedy. The appointee would hold the seat until the election of a replacement, which is scheduled for January 19, 2010 (with a primary on December 8th.) The interim appointment would bring the Democratic caucus in the US Senate back to 60 instead of waiting until January.

Lots going on...