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Iran opened two days of nuclear talks with the United States, Russia and France on Monday with veiled public threats that it could back away from an agreement to ship more than three-quarters of its stockpile of nuclear fuel out of the country, unless the West acceded to Iranian demands to provide it with new fuel.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s forthcoming autobiography has been at the top of the Amazon book charts for weeks, and it hasn’t even been released yet. At least in the eyes of the political Left, she is now perhaps America’s most visible national Republican.

But new Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveying finds Palin losing handily in face-to-face march-ups with her two likeliest challengers for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Among likely Republican primary voters, Palin now trails former Arkansas governor-turned-Fox-TV-host Mike Huckabee by 20 points – 55% to 35%.

When her opponent is ex-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Palin loses by 15 – 52% to 37%.

The Senate Finance Committee filed its sweeping health care reform bill Monday and its release served largely to highlight the divisions among Democrats over the direction of reform.

The massive, 1,500 page bill is expected to serve as the backbone for Democratic reform efforts going forward and five senators expressed concerns about one of its main provisions, a 40 percent tax on high-end insurance plans.

The tax is designed to pay for reform and lower costs by making the so-called Cadillac plans less attractive for insurers to offer. Under the bill, a plan that costs an individual more than $8,000 and a family more than $21,000 annually would be subject to the tax.

But Democratic Sens. John Kerry, Chuck Schumer, Robert Menendez, Debbie Stabenow and Jay Rockefeller are concerned that the threshold that defines a Cadillac plan is too low and will whack middle-class people.

A half-marathoner and two other runners died during the Detroit marathon on Sunday, organizers said.

Daniel Langdon, 36, of Laingsburg, collapsed at about 9:02 a.m. between the 11- and 12-mile markers, said Rich Harshbarger, vice president of consumer marketing for the Detroit Media Partnership.

Rick Brown, 65, of Marietta, Ohio, collapsed at 9:17 a.m., near where Langdon went down, and 26-year-old Jon Fenlon of Waterford collapsed at about 9:18 a.m., just after finishing the half-marathon in 1:53:37, Harshbarger said.

It was unclear whether Brown and Langdon were participating in the 13.1-mile half marathon or the full race.

Harshbarger told the Free Press that there were at least six medical stations on the race course and that emergency personnel were on the scene within seconds.

Every runner must sign a medical release form, and they are encouraged to talk to their doctors before they run the race, Harshbarger said.

Those words could prove prescient after Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley said last week he wants to shutter clinics that sell pot for profit. Cooley's plan is the latest salvo in a prolonged conflict in California over whether medical marijuana is truly having its intended effect or is being abused by the larger population.

Until recently, raids on clinics typically led to federal prosecutions, but Cooley's remarks and similar ones from Attorney General Jerry Brown signal a new approach to clear the haze left by Proposition 215, the 1996 state ballot measure that allowed sick people with referrals from doctors and an identification card to smoke pot.

President Barack Obama called on Congress Wednesday to approve $250 payments to more than 50 million seniors to make up for no increase in Social Security next year. The Social Security Administration is scheduled to announce Thursday that there will be no cost of living increase next year. By law, increases are pegged to inflation, which has been negative this year.

It would mark the first year without an increase in Social Security payments since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975.

Sarah Palin fans can expect to see a new Palin political organization surface as her memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” hits the shelves next month.
There will be an announcement about it coming up,” Palin associate Tim Crawford said Wednesday.

The New York Post reported this week that Palin’s new group will be called “Stand Up For Our Nation.” (News Corp. owns both the Post and The Wall Street Journal as well as HarperCollins Publishers, publisher of Palin’s book.) Crawford, who is treasurer of Palin’s existing political-action committee, SarahPAC, refused to provide any details about the new organization’s purpose or structure.

But Palin supporters say the former Alaska governor and last year’s GOP vice presidential nominee is eager to keep the public’s attention, even as she rakes in big earnings. “She wants to continue to be in a position to help causes dear to her heart and help people close to her,” said Fred Malek, a former fund-raiser for Sen. John McCain.

Why would the Blue Dogs say yes or no now when there’s still so much negotiation to come? Committing this soon only decreases your influence over the final product; so long as The One’s nervous about losing 60 and committed to keeping everyone happy, Nelson and Pryor can more or less set their terms. In fact, to the extent that Snowe’s vote lays down a marker about how far left the bill can go before it becomes too far left, it’s actually a help to the GOP. Politico’s already warning about a Democratic civil war if House progressives decide that Baucus’s plan isn’t nearly socialist enough for their tastes. If Reid buckles and includes a public option, Snowe walks away, the Blue Dogs are denied their political cover, and all hell breaks loose between the centrists and the left. Like her or not, given the electoral realities in the Senate, yesterday’s yes vote isn’t the worst thing that could have happened to fiscal conservatives.

Russia and the United States have tentatively agreed to a weapons inspection program that would allow Russians to visit nuclear sites in America to count missiles and warheads.

The plan, which Fox News has learned was agreed to in principle during negotiations, would constitute the most intrusive weapons inspection program the U.S. has ever accepted.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said publicly Tuesday that the two nations have made "considerable" progress toward reaching agreement on a new strategic arms treaty.

The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires in December and negotiators have been racing to reach agreement on a successor.

Clinton said the U.S. would be as transparent as possible.
+++++++
Not transparent on Obamacare but will let Russia see our nukes.

WTF?

Russia is weighing changes to its military doctrine that would allow for a “preventive” nuclear strike against its enemies — even those armed only with conventional weapons. The news comes just as American diplomats are trying to get Russia to cut down its nuclear stockpile, and put the squeeze on Iran’s suspect nuclear program.

In an interview published today in Izvestia, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Kremlin’s security council, said the new doctrine offers “different options to allow the use of nuclear weapons, depending on a certain situation and intentions of a would-be enemy. In critical national security situations, one should also not exclude a preventive nuclear strike against the aggressor.”

What’s more, Patrushev said, Russia is revising the rules for the employment of nukes to repel conventionally armed attackers, “not only in large-scale, but also in a regional and even a local war.”

For some reason, Rush Limbaugh's mooted purchase of a sports franchise has prompted CNN and others to distribute far and wide what appear to be entirely fabricated racist quotes by Rush. As Tim Blair points out:

Bizarrely, nobody running these career-killing “quotes” seems to question why they weren’t of previous interest.

Just so. What's the theory here? He said these things on the air in 2006 and nobody noticed? 2001? Maybe 1995, back when Clinton was blaming him for Oklahoma City? Hey, let's not get hung up on details. Just because nobody can find any evidence anywhere of Rush saying these "quotes" doesn't mean he didn't say 'em. As someone called Jason Whitlock says:

Limbaugh doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt on racial matters.

RUSH: Folks, also, I don't know what to do today. I really don't know what to do. The audio sound bite roster is, again, 95% about me. The reason for my indecision here is that — well, I've talked to you about this before. People lob attacks at you and when you respond to them they think, a-ha, we've hit home runs here. There's so many outrageous, fabricated lies. There is a genuine full-fledged smear campaign being orchestrated by liberal sportswriters and picked up by other liberals in the State-Controlled Media that it's breathtaking. I'm used to being taken out of context, but we have sourced it, we have found where it was found, these fake, totally made up quotes attributed to me which are being repeated without any fact-checking at all by liberal sportswriters

Charles Johnson was against fake but accurate before he was for it.

No link for the idiot. I'll just quote him. From a thread:

Top 10 Rush Limbaugh Racist Quotes.

All out of context, and sarcasm. Right?

That link I've left in provides a flurry of extremely dubious Limbaugh "quotes" — and not a single link or citation. Including the ones created wholesale by noted scholar "zedladdy" and spread by no lesser authority than "cobra."

The Senate Finance Committee's 14-9 vote to send a health-care bill to the Senate floor marked the culmination of months (and months) of debate, hand-wringing and cajoling, and likely set off weeks (and weeks) of debate, hand-wringing and cajoling as the White House seeks to drive the legislation to final passage.

But, yesterday's vote serves as a convenient bookmark in the attempt to reform the health care system and affords us the opportunity to look at some of the winners and losers in the debate to date.

A new Susquehanna Polling and Research survey finds that only 31% of Pennsylvania voters believe Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) should be re-elected, and 59% believe it's time to give someone else a chance.

Said pollster Jim Lee: "When I see a re-elect in the low 30s, that's … near fatal."

In the general election, Specter remains locked in a statistical dead heat with Pat Toomey (R), 41% to 41% with 12% undecided.

In a Democratic primary, Specter holds a 44% to 16% lead over challenger Rep. Joe Sestak (D), with 22% of voters undecided. Interestingly, 18% of those polled said they would not vote for either candidate or would vote for someone else.