The 6 Possible Meanings of Anthony Weiner's Announcement that He's Checking into Treatment.

1. Anthony Weiner has realized, in all sincerity, that his masturbatory use of the internet is an illness for which there is effective professional treatment, to which he will submit because he desires wellness, because wellness is good and because he needs to be well to do his duty to his wife, his expected child, and his constituents.

2. Anthony Weiner would like to deprive us of the capacity to criticize and mock him him, and if he can successfully impose the illness template on the controversy, the mockers and critiques will — instead of him — seem like the bad people. He hopes.

3. After the "Huma is pregnant" gambit failed to turn off the criticism, Weiner had to move beyond the manly, dignified insistence on privacy and on to the more pathetic, humble cry to be left alone.

4. If he's in treatment, he's physically out of sight. He's off somewhere, and that might work to close the door. Perhaps we'll wait until he emerges again. Time will have passed. Things will have cooled off. And the reemerging Weiner will be the new Weiner, the after-treatment Weiner, and people will — he hopes — speak about who this new man is.

5. Pelosi, Wasserman Schultz, and other Democratic Party leaders told him he had to get the hell out of sight, and he followed orders.

6. Weiner is not really going into treatment. He just needs some time by himself, with his computer, and his wiener.

Nancy Pelosi and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz call on Weiner to resign.

CNN reports.

UPDATE: "Rep. Anthony Weiner is asking for a temporary leave of absence from the House while he seeks professional treatment in the wake of his Twitter scandal. A spokeswoman for the New York Democrat says he has left for professional treatment and will focus on 'becoming a better husband and healthier person.'"

Oh! He went into treatment mode! The old "it's a addiction" gambit.

AND: Please remember that I said it at 2:12 p.m., Central Time, on June 6th, the moment I heard that Weiner was going to do that press conference that turned out to be his confession:

My prediction — and you heard it here first! — is that he'll announce he's entering treatment for sex addiction.

Then, when he did not do that I said, that day:

I think Weiner did a fine job of coming clean, taking responsibility, and apologizing. I had predicted that he would "announce he's entering treatment for sex addiction. Possibly with a grim/stoical Huma Abedin at his side." I'm glad he didn't do that. He didn't blame anybody else or any "outside force." He didn't use the nonapology "sorry if you were offended" form.

Now, it seemed pretty obvious that he would have continued deceiving us if he could have gotten away with it, but having made the decision to confess and apologize, he did that well. Of course, I'm assuming that there is nothing more to this story than what he spilled today.

But there was something more, and he needed to do more, and went ahead and did what I predicted he'd do and what I'd given him credit for not doing.

ALSO: Here's 13 seconds of me giving that credit:

"Resign? Hell no! I want Anthony Weiner to be the face of the Democratic Party."

Says John Hinderaker:

I completely fail to understand why any Republican would call for Weiner's resignation. Are you kidding? I want him in Congress forever, if possible! I want him representing his party on every other cable news show, as he has done for the last several years. I want people to snicker every time they see a "D" behind a Congressman's name. Anthony Weiner is the gift that keeps on giving, the twit that keeps on tweeting!

Yet the Democrats — it seems — would like the Republicans to do the work of ousting their masturbating boy. Here's Rush Limbaugh yesterday:

How about this headline: "Pelosi Wants a Weiner Probe.".. Okay, now, she was quick on the draw here, folks. ... Pelosi and the Democrats scared to death. "Oh, my God, this guy's poison! Get him out of here. Get him to the Ethics Committee."... Pelosi knows that the House is now in Republican hands. Therefore the Ethics Committee, at the end of the day, has a Republican majority....

The liberals are throwing Weiner under the bus and they're asking him to resign and a number of things, or could it be -- I just throw this out there as a possibility; I know it's gonna sound lame to some of you and it's gonna sound like a stretch but -- maybe Pelosi and the Democrats are hoping they send Weiner up there to the Ethics Committee and the Republicans go bonkers with it and start overreaching and turn Weiner into a victim of these rascally Republicans. She's doing this as a way of creating sympathy for the poor guy because these mean-spirited Republicans won't let him speak.

Now, I don't think this theory has any credence 'cause I don't think the Republicans have it in 'em to act that way. I don't think that they would overreach. But I do know that when it comes to the Democrats, everything is not what it appears to be on the surface. So I'm not totally convinced that simply demanding that the Ethics Committee take care of Weiner is, in fact, Pelosi and the Democrats wanting to wash their hands of Weiner. 

Wash their hands of Weiner... Pelosi Wants a Weiner Probe... Rush loves to dabble in the deniable dirty talk. But don't you think he's right that the Democrats would like to find a way to lure Republicans into the ones who end up looking bad? Those terrible Puritans, who want to end sex for everybody.

"[I]f the Democrats, who called this hearing, hoped to blunt the momentum of the legal challenges by showing that the lawsuits had no merit, they failed in their objective."

Randy Barnett has some thoughts about the Senate Judiciary Committee on the constitutionality of the health care law. (Which we've already talked about here, here, and here.)

Randy says:

If anything, press coverage generally reflected the view that both sides made strong arguments, and that only the Supreme Court could settle the matter. Indeed, my impression is that the hearings served to advance the credibility of the challenges. 

Clearly, we've advanced beyond "Are you serious? Are you serious?"

Randy "was particularly struck by the cordiality and collegiality shown to all the witnesses by Senator Durbin."

Not only did he genially greet each one of us beforehand and thank us individually afterwards, he paid close attention to everything each of us said, and what each fellow Senator said, for more than two hours of the hearing. 

He listened, he really, really listened!

Now, that's nice, but, really, the hearing, from Durbin's perspective, was probably the Theater of Listening. If the courts are going to uphold the law, it will be because they decide that the appropriate judicial role is deference to Congress's decision that it has power under the Constitution to pass the law. Looking terribly interested in the details of the legal arguments creates the impression that you deserve deference.  

Look! I'm living up to my independent role of determining that the law I'm drafting and voting for is constitutional.

Of course, having the hearing after the law is passed (and after the threat from the courts has materialized) doesn't really inspire the confidence that is needed to justify judicial deference to Congress.

But that's all the more reason to do good theater.

How Pelosi handed the gavel to Boehner compared to how Boehner handed the gavel to Pelosi.

Byron York points out the difference.

One thing I noticed (and York doesn't mention) is that Pelosi made a snide remark about the size of the gavel Boehner picked out for the gavel-passing ritual:

I now pass this gavel, which is larger than most gavels here but the gavel of choice of Mr. Speaker Boehner…

Now, my ears have been tuned by decades of immersion in feminism and Freudianism, and I say that's an intentional reference to the phallus and the will toward domination it symbolizes. Nancy Pelosi intended to provoke disrespectful titters, I think — with deniability, of course.

Instead of calling Pelosi on her disrespect, comedian Jimmy Kimmel runs with the feminism and visualizes domestic* violence:



_________

* It's the House, so domestic is apt.

"Deficit reduction has been a high priority for us. It is our mantra, pay-as-you-go."

Said Nancy Pelosi.

"Most days Mr. Boehner, 61 years old, spends the early-morning hours vacuuming his apartment or ironing."

"He eats breakfast alone at Pete's Diner, a cramped eatery a few blocks from the Capitol, and checks his Facebook page on an iPad. At night, he stops whatever he's doing at 10 o'clock."

That's my favorite part of the WSJ's profile of John Boehner.

Boehner's got a nice, humble image that suits the times — these post-Pelosi times. I like the picture of the man who's replacing the woman being a man with a vacuum cleaner...

... and it's not even a metaphorical vacuum cleaner. (I seem to remember a magazine cover illustration of Gerald Ford after the Nixon resignation. He was vacuuming the Oval Office.)

How can they take away the mortgage interest deduction?

It's one of the deficit commission's proposals:

“The mortgage interest deduction is one of the pillars of our national housing policy,” said Michael D. Berman, chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association. “Limiting its use will have negative repercussions for consumers and home values up and down the housing chain.”...

But:

[O]nly those in the top third of wage earners even itemized their deductions, meaning that two-thirds of taxpayers weren’t eligible for the break.

“No one can make a serious intellectual argument in favor of the mortgage interest deduction,” [said Calvin Johnson, a tax professor at the University of Texas]. “Why should the government subsidize homeowners rather than renters? The only thing it’s good for is middle-class votes.”

Then why did "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blast[] the commission’s suggestions, saying it would force middle-class homeowners to subsidize tax breaks for the wealthy"? I guess there are a lot of "middle class" people in the top third of taxpayers.

It's a complex policy question, and since there are other, offsetting tax breaks, it's hard to see who will be hurt the most. But generally, isn't it fairer to have lower tax rates than a bunch of deductions? With deductions, they only help if they're more than the standard deduction and if you do the thing the government has decided to favor.

Wouldn't it be better if you made housing decisions — rent or buy, big or small — without the government adding weight to one side? But if you've already bought a house, and the government's encouragement factored into your decision, you might feel cheated if they take that deduction away. Of course, the government always had the power to take the deduction away, and there's always the argument that you should have factored that in when you made your decision.

But that argument is going to piss people off unless they can remain calm long enough to see that a lowering of the tax rates more than offsets the bottom-line value of their deduction. But is that true? Does anyone know?

Who should be TIME's Person of the Year?

Here's a list. They are taking votes. Inanely, Lady Gaga is in first place by a lot. I'm going to say Nancy Pelosi.

"Kennedy-Sorensen Dems Wouldn't Recognize Obama-Reid-Pelosi."

"[Sorensen] gave voice to America's historic aspiration for greatness and achievement. He believed in an America that was 'second to none,' and that dared to dream of doing big and important things."

Says John R. Guardiano.

Oh, but Obama-Reid-Pelosi did plenty of big and important things. That's what really hurt.

A long way from San Francisco/Nancy Pelosi.

A Democratic candidate's anti-hippie/anti-Pelosi ad:



Ha. I hadn't seen scary hippies — outside of Halloween — in quite some time.

"The momentum is with us."

Sayeth... Nancy Pelosi.

A Democratic member of the House joked that Nancy Pelosi might die and got a laugh from his audience and how does the NYT report the incident?

"Conservative Democrat Jokes That Pelosi Might Die."

Those terrible conservatives!

"How is this opposition to the mosque being funded? How is this being ginned up?”

Asks Pelosi, going all conspiracy theory. It just can't be that people — and it's the vast majority of Americans! — actually read/hear news reports and commentary and arrive at opinions.

Meanwhile, the right is headed over to the conspiracy place too.

Nancy and The Word.

Pelosi brings her Catholicism to the project of governing America:

The worst part of that is:
	Her politics don't correlate well to Christianity.
	We don't want religion in our politics.
	We don't want politics in our religion.
	She's not being honest.
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"Starting this year, insurance companies will be banned forever from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions." That's what Obama said.

But it's the text of the law that matters, and:

The fine print differs from the larger political message. If a company sells insurance, it will have to cover pre-existing conditions for children covered by the policy. But it does not have to sell to somebody with a pre-existing condition. And the insurer could increase premiums to cover the additional cost.

If they screwed up something that important, what else did they screw up? Or do you think they deliberately gave the insurance companies that loophole, in which case, the question is what other surprises are tucked away in the 1000s of pages of fine print?

ADDED: This suggests an answer to mystery — discussed yesterday — of why the insurance companies didn't barrage us with "Harry and Louise"-type ads this time. They lobbied behind the scenes and got the language they wanted in the bill. Who put that language in? Who wrote the statute? We know the members of Congress who voted for it probably didn't even read much of it. They went on assurances and assertions about what was in it. And there was that outrageous idea — said with a straight-face by Nancy Pelosi — that they had to pass the bill to find out what's in it.

Now, maybe the idea was to set up the insurance companies. They'd read the text and see they could do something and shock the people by saying no to the extremely sympathetic people who have sick children and who were so trusting and happy when they saw the bill pass.

Whether that was planned or not, it is the spin now. From the first link, above:

Congressional Democrats were furious when they learned that some insurers disagreed with their interpretation of the law.

“The concept that insurance companies would even seek to deny children coverage exemplifies why we fought for this reform,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the Senate commerce committee, said: “The ink has not yet dried on the health care reform bill, and already some deplorable health insurance companies are trying to duck away from covering children with pre-existing conditions. This is outrageous.”

Oh! Bad corporations! Evil, greedy, selfish corporations! We'll hear that old refrain once again, with melodramatic new feeling. What a great opportunity to soften everyone up for the next big reform, when the government takes over everything. Down with the child-killing insurance companies! 

How do we really feel about Nancy Pelosi?

I think she's going to come out of all of this very well. Here's my salute to her:



In the comments to the "Stump Nightclub" open thread last night, kentuckyliz prodded our resident animator Chip Ahoy: "photoshop this pic with a teabag dangling down into her mouth. Or clip her out and paste her onto the background for The Scream." She meant this picture:



Not my stump picture:



And Chip said: "Gnarly root Medusa tea-bag Pelosi but nobody is allowed to look at it except for kentuckyliz and Rialby. And now I must go and pray to repent for God told me he's going to totally kick my ass."

So, of course, we looked:



Oh, lord! That's so wrong and so right. But that's another kind of salute to the lady who has claimed her place in American history. There was a time when we pulled our punches when a woman was involved. I say Chip's GIF is a landmark in the journey toward equality for women.

And God have mercy on us all.

"Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi scored a giant gain for feminism last weekend."

"In shoving her controversy-plagued healthcare reform bill to victory by a paper-thin margin, she conclusively demonstrated that a woman can be just as gritty, ruthless and arm-twisting in pursuing her agenda as anyone in the long line of fabled male speakers before her. Even a basic feminist shibboleth like abortion rights became just another card for Pelosi to deal and swap."

Ha ha. Camille Paglia's column is up.

... Pelosi's hard-won, trench-warfare win sets a new standard for U.S. women politicians and is certainly well beyond anything the posturing but ineffectual Hillary Clinton has ever achieved.

Paglia loves the macho approach to achievement, but what happens when the seeming victory deflates? It will deflate, won't it? If it doesn't deflate in 4 hours, call your doctor.

Not that Paglia loves the healthcare bill. She does not:

This rigid, intrusive...

Call the police!

... and grotesquely expensive bill is a nightmare.... Massively expanding... Steel yourself for the deafening screams...  jammed, jostling anterooms....

I'm screaming already. The government needs to stop jamming our anterooms. 

Obama sure needed a lift and got it from Pelosi. The administration has seemed to be drifting lately. Obama has dithered for months about a strategy for Afghanistan -- another rats' nest we should pull our troops out of overnight. Then there was the bizarre disproportion in Obama's flying to Denmark to flog a Chicago Olympics yet not having time to make it to Germany to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall -- which suggests a frivolous provincialism as well as ignorance of history among the president's principal advisors. And Obama's muted response to last week's massacre at Fort Hood has exposed ambiguities and uncertainties in the U.S. government and military about how to respond to homegrown militant Islam. The presidency is a heavy burden -- a prize that can become a curse.

You'd think that the man who was once seen as a master of political imagery would not have allowed himself to generate so much material to fit that very specific and negative template.

"President Obama yesterday did his best impression of a high-school sophomore participating in his first Model UN meeting, retailing pious clichés he learned from his pony-tailed social studies teacher."

Rich Lowry talks about Barack Obama's U.N. speech.

Has an American president ever expressed such implicit hostility toward his own nation's pre-eminence in world affairs? Or so relished in recalling its failings, or so readily elevated himself and his own virtues over those of his country?...

"For those who question the character and cause of my nation," Obama said, "I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months." In other words, he's the redeemer of a nation....

Ugh. Sigh. And I thought Gaddafy was the clown. But that was yesterday, as I watched TV with the sound off, under the influence of post-toe-op drugs.

I'm torn. I was just thinking that Obama would have been so much better if he had made foreign policy the centerpiece of his presidency instead of perversely investing his reputation in complicated health care puzzles. Now, I'm thinking perhaps we're better off that he's gotten hopelessly distracted by insoluable insurance problems.

***

You know, Lowry's description made me think of Mr. Van Driessen on "Beavis and Butt-Head." I was going to embed some apt video clip of the hippie teacher — maybe something with him lecturing the boys about world peace — but all I could find was this and my inner Nancy Pelosi scolded me about this balance between freedom and safety.

Nancy chokes up.

I guess you've seen this ridiculous mash of political will and phony emotion.

"But, again, our country is great because people can say what they think and they believe, but I also think that they have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause."

Okay, then, I think that you are desperate and depleted of arguments on the merits of the atrocious, amorphous health care reform you thought the American people would swallow whole simply because you won an election and we tend to regard Barack Obama as a well-meaning person. And now you are babbling and whining about the way people are talking.

And I hope you will take responsibility for this embarrassing display. You haven't done your job and now you are crying in public — you, the first female Speaker of the House. Crying. Pretending to be afraid of violence when the talk that troubles you so hasn't even included threats of violence.

UPDATE: Michelle Obama tries to one-up Nancy.