Republicans "got whiter and more male, and we now have a majority minority and female Democratic caucus."

Wasserman Schultz says.

"We have to double down in 2014. We’ve got to make sure we recruit more women for office, because It’s not just a slogan that when women run, women win. They do, and when women run, Democrats win."

Debbie Wasserman Schultz under maximum stress...

... as Anderson Cooper proves he's not a complete liberal hack. Amazing!

Via Instapundit.

Obama calls Marco Rubio "boy": "Tell your boy to watch it. He might get his ass kicked."

He said that to a woman he knew was "close to" Rubio after she said "maybe" to his question "Is your boy going to go for [vice president]?"

That's one story in Politico's new e-book "Obama's Last Stand."

There's other interesting stuff at the first link, including Obama's disrespect for Romney — who stands for “nothing” — and his fear that Romney will get to "take credit when the economy turns around." There's also a lot of fairly generic material about the troubles in the Obama campaign. Axelrod got mad at Stephanie Cutter. An internal polls showed people don't like hearing from Debbie Wasserman Schultz. That sort of thing.

"As a member of the House Budget Committee, I've seen firsthand just how extreme Paul Ryan is..."

"... so I'm not going to mince words: Paul Ryan in the White House would be a nightmare for the middle class," emails Debbie Wasserman Schultz, implying unconvincingly that under other circumstances she would mince words.

Not only does Congressman Ryan want to end Medicare as we know it and raise taxes on middle-class Americans to pay for tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, but he also supported a bill that could ban birth control and all abortions -- even in cases of rape and incest.

This isn't the kind of leader we can afford to have a heartbeat away from the presidency....

A bill that could ban birth control? Can I get a citation for that? I found this on BarackObama.com marshaling the facts about Ryan:

Paul Ryan is severely conservative...

Paul Ryan would take us backward on women’s health:

Ryan cosponsored a bill that could ban in-vitro fertilization, as well as many common forms of birth control, including the pill. It could also ban all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. He supported letting states prosecute women who have abortions and doctors who perform them.

Can we get a cite to the text of that bill? Banning "many common forms of birth control, including the pill" — really? I'm just going to assume this is a lie until the Obama people prove to me that it's not a lie. That's the way we're doing things now, right?

"I don't care about Chick Fil A or gay marriage. I do care about observing my friends engaging in groupthink right there in front of me...."

Writes Chip Ahoy, in the Chick-fil-A thread a few posts down.

Don't like that. It's a very unsightly thing to behold, everyone standing around agreeing that some old man who expressed a traditional opinion personifies HATE. Every happy gathering becomes some kind of mini political caucus where lines of thought are stroked and combed. I must toss a screwdriver into that. But in the end I am enjoying the company of other people less and less. It's not that I don't respect different opinions, it's that I don't respect poorly developed opinions and spoon-fed opinions, it's seeing my friends' personalities subsumed to the most radical expressions. So I go to a party and the conversation is whatever the present day activists out there say is is and gone are any unique points of view or any unique expressions. Conversations with the DNC, conversations with the most political active, not conversations with my friends, they are all mouthpieces now.

And then:

I just realized how to deal with that. Comically turn the speaker into into the person they sound like but pick an egregious example. "Tell me Debbie Wasserman Schultz, I'm very curious about this, what did that owner of Chick Fil A say exactly?" Just acknowledge that you're speaking to someone else.

Inquire thoughtfully, "Who should I put on to respond?"

Since we're using other peoples' words, other peoples' thoughts.

Ha ha. That reminds me: Back in the 1970s, one time — one time! — I defended Richard Nixon for something, and for quite a while after that, my then-husband thought it was funny to call me "Baruch."

"This will be my last political campaign, no matter what. I've got nothing else to run for."

President Obama, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, yesterday. The "I've got nothing else to run for" is a response to a sad "oh" that follows the "last campaign" remark.

Via Drudge, which is continuing its black-and-white theme, now with Putin top and center — crouching and exposing his muscular arms — above a smiling Romney and an eye-blacked Drew Brees. The picture of Obama is, as it was yesterday, in the right-hand column. Today, it's a photograph — a nice photograph, with a hint of a smile. Also in Obama's column, Chinese ideograms above a link "China Ascends to No. 2 on FORTUNE 500..." Maybe the ideograms say "We're #2" (or "We try harder"). The stack of links between Obama's image and the Chinese writing reads:

'This Will Be My Last Political Campaign No Matter What'...
GALLUP: APPROVE SLIPS TO 44%...
Women outnumber men on US Olympic team...
Swedish billionaire's son arrested as U.S.-born wife found dead...

I'm getting a decline-of-Western-civilization theme out of Drudge's new black-and-white trend. There's Putin on top, looking hyper-masculine. The Chinese are rising up (economically). And Obama's all used up. Nowhere to go. We talked about that back in April, after I received email from his campaign saying  "In a few days, I'll be hitting the trail for my last campaign." I said:

The man is 50 years old. His career is young. He's packing it in so early? This troubles me. Why no more stamina in the political arena?

I mean, what if he loses in November? He could run again. He could let 3 presidential terms pass and come back and only be as old as Romney is right now!

But even if he wins, what's he going to do? He can't run for President again, but there are other elective offices. Look at John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, and Andrew Johnson. All of them went on to seek other elective office and to win....

Why doesn't Obama have more gumption? It makes him seem too weak even now as he seeks reelection. Last campaign. That's annoying.

By contrast, Putin has gumption. Stamina. Staying power. And, by the way, he's sending warships to Syria.

But what's in Drudge's column 1? The only photograph of a person is Obama's brother — George Obama — the one who lives in a hut. (Rush Limbaugh's been riffing about that for years.) The other Obama is being used in some right-wing propaganda film. Easy pickings.  The man needs some money.

The top photograph in column 1 is Saturn. (Yesterday's Drudge had us worrying about the sun.) There's a "Strange Vortex Discovered on Saturn Moon...." Just above Saturn is "Wasserman Schultz: 'It Would Be Nice If We Had Candidate for President Who Was Committed To America'..." Yes, yes, let's stick with the strange vortex that is the American presidential election. For some reason, the Wasserman Schultz line is the only thing Drudge italicizes. Perhaps that's a prompt to read the quote sarcastically.

Clicking through, I see that Wasserman Schultz has radically changed her hairstyle since her appearance on Fox News Sunday (June 8). Did someone decide she needed to look more conservative/conventional/feminine?

Wasserman Schultz point, in this new clip, in this new hair, is about Mitt Romney stashing money outside of the United States:

Mitt Romney needs to come clean and release multiple years of his tax returns so we can see why he invested in a Bermuda corporation and transferred it to his wife's name the day before he became Governor of Massachusetts.

So we can see why he's invested in Swiss bank accounts and accounts in the Cayman Islands. And you know, we also need to know why does -- what is the allure of investments out of the country. When he headed up Bain Capital, he was a pioneer in outsourcing and shipped jobs overseas.

It would be nice if we had a candidate for president who was committed to America. Mitt Romney is committed to making sure that either he makes the most money as humanly possible, or his investors do. 

Imagine a man who tried to make as much money as possible! The Democratic Party is hoping Americans have been trained to think of that as a bad thing.

It's the decline of Western civilization, when we no longer flex muscles, we give up and let China take over. There's nothing else to run for.

We can always run for... cover.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz offers to "make a deal on this email thing."

Email thing. That's the way this woman addresses me (in email received this morning). She's referring to the thing of her sending fundraising email on Saturdays.

But I'm doing it because the stakes this year are so incredibly high....

So let's make a deal:

You pitch in $3, or really whatever you can, before our critical FEC fundraising deadline tonight to help those Democrats out...

And I promise you, this will be the last email you get from me today.

Comedy. It's what's for breakfast.

Annoying email annoys me.

"Wisconsin recall: DNC’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz sees no national impact if Democrats lose."

Ha.

Translation: Debbie Wasserman Schultz knows the Democrats are going to lose.

The Democrats' "jewbag" problem.

Have you noticed this controversy? It's the kind of thing that makes you want to say that if Republicans made a misstep like this we would never hear the end of it. It would be a "macaca" moment.

The staffer for DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz who posted the controversial 'Jewbag' photo on her Facebook page in 2006 is no anonymous aide -- but the daughter of Mark and Nancy Gilbert, two major Florida donors who have raised more than $500,000 for the Obama campaign.

Danielle "Dani" Gilbert, according to party sources, was tapped by Wasserman Schultz to serve as a liaison to the Jewish community, even though party officials and people close to Obama told her that more senior Democrats were already handling those responsibilities.

Wasserman Schultz has thus far refused to fire or discipline Gilbert, whose gallery of candid photos and personal commentary has since been removed from her public Facebook page, according to Democrats.

(Also on POLITICO: Wasserman Schultz says Mormonism off limits)...

Thanks, Politico. Thanks for inserting Wasserman Schultz's banal pronouncement about that other religion. I guess there's some relevance. Let's read that:

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz fired back Wednesday at Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch’s claim that Democrats would attack Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith in the fall election, saying the charge was “nonsense” and that the issue of religion was off-limits....

“That suggestion is utter nonsense. Let’s remember that President Obama has had so many things hurled at him – birth certificate questions, whether he is or is not a Christian,” Wasserman said. “For them to suggest that religion will be injected [into the election] by President Obama and the Democratic Party, I mean, I think they need to take a look inward at the accusations that their party and their supporters have hurled before they take that step.”

Well, I hope she's right about that, but of course, there will be many things the DNC won't control. It's hasn't been the RNC going after Obama over his religion, has it? And I seem to remember John McCain going out of his way to put Obama's religion far out of bounds, even declining to use the terribly juicy anti-American spoutings of Obama's pastor.

ADDED: What does "jewbag" mean? Urban Dictionary has definitions like "cheap; selfish person," "A greedy jew or a handful of greedy jews," and "someone who screws over another person on an extreme level." The "conservative web site" referred to in the Politico article is The Washington Free Beacon, which says:

The Democratic Party’s newly appointed Jewish outreach liaison is pictured on Facebook in a series of provocative photos with her friends holding dollar bills and referring to themselves as “Jewbags” and the “Jew cash money team.”

I'm inferring that the "-bag" part refers to moneybags, rather than — to point to other meanings of "bag" —  

1. an "unattractive or elderly woman," which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, goes back to 1924 (P. Marks Plastic Age xviii. 202,   "I don't... chase around with filthy bags or flunk my courses"); or...   

2. "scrotum," which the OED locates back in the 1598 writing Frenche Chirurg: "The Scrotum, which we call the bagg wherin the testicles are contayned," which is the use of "-bag" in the present-day political slang term "teabagger," though I note that the 4th most-approved-of definition of "jewbag" at Urban Dictionary includes a second meaning "the action of tea-bagging a jew or someone of jewish descent."

Why did Mitt Romney say "Planned Parenthood, we're going to get rid of that"?

I saw that he said that because I just got a fundraising email from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee which begins:

Here's Mitt Romney's proposal for reducing the deficit, according to an interview he gave yesterday:

"Planned Parenthood, we're going to get rid of that."

That's right, he said he'd get rid of Planned Parenthood -- the more than 90-year-old organization that one in five American women has depended on for health care, and that for many women is their only option for cancer screenings, clinical breast exams, and critical preventive care. Apparently, we can't afford it.

Here's what he says we can afford: Protecting and expanding tax cuts for the wealthy, and "that includes the top 1 percent."

Mitt Romney's actually willing to cut off women's access to health care to help fund tax benefits for millionaires and billionaires.

If you had any doubts that these attacks are real, or think they're just a side effect from a nasty GOP primary season, consider this a reality check.

I'm urged to donate to the Democratic Party "to fight back against Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and every Republican in Congress who repeatedly thinks a woman's health is their chip to barter."

I looked up the quote to put it in context. Of course, Romney wasn't talking about hurting Planned Parenthood in any way other than cutting funding:

As for ways to reduce debt, he suggests a few cuts.

"The test is pretty simple. Is the program so critical, it's worth borrowing money from [C]hina to pay for it? And on that basis of course you get rid of Obamacare, that's the easy one. Planned Parenthood, we're going to get rid of that. The subsidy for Amtrak, I'd eliminate that. The National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities," he said.

There you have it. Make of it what you will. The lines are being drawn. Do you want these institutions starved?

So now the theory is that we don't accept apologies when we perceive ulterior motives?

Democrats, hoping to keep Rush Limbaugh's Fluke floundering going, reject his apology:

By the time he apologized, online protesters had been organizing for days on social networking Web sites and liberal hubs like Daily Kos. They called on companies like ProFlowers to remove their ads from “The Rush Limbaugh Show” and appeared to be having some success, as companies like Sleep Train said they had suspended advertising....

Mr. Limbaugh’s critics dismissed his apology as having been forced by the advertiser pressure. Reflecting those feelings on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, said, “I know he apologized, but forgive me, I doubt his sincerity, given that he lost at least six advertisers.”

Eric Boehlert of the liberal media monitoring group Media Matters for America predicted on Sunday that the apology would not “stop the pressure that’s being applied to his advertisers.”

“His comments were so egregious, naturally advertisers will have doubts about being associated with Limbaugh’s brand of hate,” Mr. Boehlert said in an e-mail message.

Now, I believe in general principles, and I want to know what the general principle is about accepting apologies. I'd like to nail down people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Eric Boehlert, because their candidate, Barack Obama, is one of the greatest purveyors of apologies in the history of the world!

Why did Obama apologize for the burning of Korans in Afghanistan? Should his apology be rejected as insincere because it didn't come from pure recognition that Americans had done wrong? Obviously, the apology was motivated by American self-interest. He wanted to stop the violent reaction.

The tendency in recent years has been to demand apologies. But these demands are bogus unless apologies are accepted. Now, some people criticize our culture of apology. Santorum didn't like Obama's apology for the Koran burning.

And Rush Limbaugh is the furthest thing from an apology guy:


February 20, 2012: "Why did Clinton bother with all the public apologies with Jesse Jackson and so forth over the Lewinsky stuff? Because it offended people's sense of decency where it comes to family values. He had to get 'em back."

October 12, 2011: "Leaked cables show Japan nixed a presidential apology to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for using nukes to end the overseas contingency operation known as World War II. Will the next president apologize for the current one? The obsessive need of this president to apologize for American exceptionalism and our defense of freedom continued recently when Barack Obama's State Department (run by Hillary Clinton) contacted the family of al-Qaeda propagandist and recruiter Samir Khan to 'express its condolences' to his family....We apologized for killing a terrorist before he could help kill any more of us. It's yet another part of the world apology tour that began with Obama taking the oath of office to protect and defend the United States and its Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, something he immediately felt sorry for."

January 31, 2011: "[W]e're minding our own business on September 11th; our own airplanes are hijacked by Islamist Muslim radicals, 3,000 people end up dead, and we think we have to reach out to Muslims. Obama gets elected, he goes over there, and gives this speech in Cairo as an apologist for the United States. It's always perplexed me.... Obama has been to Egypt. He apologized for us. He told everybody over there, 'We've been wrong and we're gonna make it right. I'm president now, and we're not gonna do these horrible, rotten things to you that my predecessors have done. I'm apologizing,' and still with Barack Hussein Pharaoh Obama now, President of the United States going into his third year, there's still anti-American sentiment in Egypt. How can this be? Where is the love? Where his the consensus?"

July 22, 2010: "People have asked me about this woman Sarah Spitz, who's now 'apologized,' and they want my reaction to it. And this is another thing I'll react to it but I really don't want to. This bores me as well, this whole concept of forcing people to apologize for things they meant to say. Why is she gonna apologize? She meant to say it, she wrote it, stand by it. You want to watch me die, Sarah? Say it! Where are your guts? Well, she's 'apologized.' 'A producer for an NPR-affiliated radio station has apologized for saying she would 'laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out' if she were to see conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh suffering a heart attack."

Why apologize? Sarah, this is where you people just flummox me. You wrote it. You meant it. Stand by it. She apologizes to "anyone I may have offended and I regret these comments." She doesn't regret 'em, and she hasn't apologized to me. She just apologized to anybody she "may have offended," but why apologize in the first place? She's buckling to pressure. She meant to say it.

She meant it. (interruption) What, Snerdley? What? (interruption) I don't know who is pressuring her to apologize. I have no idea who's pressuring here. You'd have to ask her. But I don't know why she's apologizing. She meant it! Stand by it. She knows damn well she meant it. Everybody on that website, in that listserv, meant everything they wrote. It's just fascinating to see they don't have the guts to stand by it. So that's my reaction. If you want to know what I think about it, that's it. (interruption) If she apologized to me directly? I don't know what I would do, but... (sigh) (interruption) Well, yes, I know I'd be gracious, but I'd just... (interruption) Well, I don't know if it will ever happen, but the point is that the latest trend in apologies, "That's not who I really am." You know, "That's not the person I am." Bull! It is who you are! You are a commie! You are a full-fledged Marxist liberal! You do wish I was dead. It is who you are.

I don't care whether it's Tiger Woods saying, "You know, that's really not who I am." It is. It is who you are! What, did somebody steal your personality for a day and grab hold of your hands and start typing on your keyboard and it wasn't you? "This is not who I am. I want everybody to know, as a publicist I understand and this is not who I am." It is who you are! This is one of the big problems we have in this country: People don't have the guts to be who they are and stand up for who they are and admit what they really are, especially under fire. "Oh, that wasn't me. I don't know what happened there! We were just hanging around with a bunch of like-minded people and then you saw it, and that means 'that's not who I am.'" I bet the other people in this group are a little upset she's apologizing.

Ha ha. I'll stop there. I hit the mother lode. LOL. Ha ha ha.

So, what do you say? Anyone looking for consistency here?

Debbie Wasserman Schultz utters a bizarre sentence about Obama's position on the Keystone Pipeline.

On "Meet the Press" today:

It would take 45 years if the Keystone Pipeline were in place, to produce as much oil as President Obama's policy to — on fuel efficiency standards for American automobiles would in increasing those over the next few years.

David Gregory presses her: "So President Clinton had it wrong when he encouraged President Obama to get behind [the Keystone Pipeline?" And with a second shot, she makes the point more clearly:

It would take 45 years to produce out of oil shale from the Keystone Pipeline as much oil as we save in the increase in fuel efficiency standards from President Obama's policy that would be implemented by the middle of the next decade.

So... don't bother developing new oil sources because it's also possible to cut way back on consumption? Don't we need to do both? How small and light are our cars supposed to be? And "the middle of the next decade"? You mean, like around 2025? I can't believe voters will swallow that argument.

In "Combative Top Democrat Gains Clout in Campaign," a Wall Street Journal piece on Debbie Wasserman Schultz...

... the most interesting part is personal:

[S]ince being named national party chairwoman last spring, Ms. Wasserman Schultz has struggled to meet the demands from the party, from her husband and their three young children and from her South Florida congressional district filled with senior citizens. "I have three full-time jobs," she says. "There's a lot of tension."

At 6 a.m. in her Weston, Florida, home one recent day, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, wearing wet hair, no makeup and a coral-colored suit, talked to two staff members assembled in her kitchen about possible topics for her appearance within the hour on MSNBC. While she packed her bag of diet food to combat the few pounds she gained after breast-cancer treatment, her husband Steve Schultz fed their youngest child and four barking dogs....

She didn't tell her House colleagues, constituents or even her children about her breast-cancer diagnosis and treatment until after it was finished. Ms. Wasserman Schultz wanted to protect her then 8-year-old twins and 4-year-old, but says she also didn't want others stopping her from fulfilling her congressional and political roles.

When some colleagues saw her on the shortlist to be party chair, they held an "intervention" of sorts. "We wanted her to reassure us that the extra work wouldn't be a threat to her personal well-being," says Rep. Bruce Braley, a close friend.

"Does Allen West hate women?... [T]he answer seems to be more that Allen West hates everyone."

Oh, boy. It's Amanda Marcotte responding Michelle Goldberg:

That doesn't spare him from being a sexist, however, since his hatred for women has an ugly, gendered tone to it, as evidenced by his strange war on Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose main sin seems to be a willingness to disagree with West while in possession of a vagina, causing West to claim she's "not a Lady."...

That said, calling a Democrat "not a Lady" and claiming that liberal women are the source of the country's economic woes because we supposedly neuter men are, if anything, the least worrisome parts of the entire Allen West phenomenon. 

Wait. West said ball-busting women have wrecked the economy? Let's refer to the source material: Michelle Goldberg:

Liberal women, he claimed, helped cause the debt by “neutering American men,” which apparently undermined their fiscal rectitude. 

No link for that quote. Isn't it funny that Shirley Sherrod is suing Andrew Breitbart for presenting a quote of hers out of context? Imagine if the law permitted that! We'd all be afraid to say anything. But, okay, I'll go find the context myself. Here. It's a bit rambly, but he's calling for people to be strong and staunch in their conservative virtues. Speaking to a group a women, he praises strong women — even quotes Sarah Palin's "fight like a girl" — but calls on women to demand strength from men. Palin's "fight like a girl" was a "poke in the chest" to men, goading men to fight.

A little more Marcotte:

As Goldberg recounts, West acts erratically, lashes out randomly, has a victim complex that makes Sarah Palin look thick-skinned, and has acted out violently from his rage issues. But the space between Tea Party ideology and unhinged rage is whisker-thin.

So... Palin and West are telling conservatives to stand up and fight, and Goldberg and Marcotte are, really, trying to say no, don't fight. They are happier with tame, sedate Republicans. The method they are using is to portray the fighting Republicans as angry and crazy. I'd like to say that Marcotte and Goldberg are hacks using a boring old rhetorical device, but I think these angry/crazy characterizations do leave an impression.

People are trying very hard to ruin Allen West right now, before he gets anywhere, and they are trying to ensure that Sarah Palin stays down where they think they crushed her.

ADDED: Instapundit says:

Yeah, first Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, now Amanda Marcotte: What is it with the Democrats sending white women to attack a black man, anyway? Are they trying to play on gendered racial fears among white voters? It’s some kind of dog-whistle, isn’t it?

Allen West calls Debbie Wasserman Schultz "vile, unprofessional, and despicable."

And "from this time forward," she needs to "understand that I shall defend myself forthright against your heinous characterless behavior."

In other news... West is saying:

I believe we are headed towards the ultimate ideological clash in America....

I must confess, when I see anyone with an Obama 2012 bumper sticker, I recognize them as a threat to the gene pool.

What's with West? Is he — as Think Progress would have it — into "making outrageous statements just to provoke a reaction"? Or have media folk on the other side of that "ideological clash" decided that the way to ruin Allen West's potential for a brilliant career is to portray him as hotheaded and irrational?

In this context, let's remember all the discussion about how Barack Obama had to fend off the "angry black man" stereotype:

"Folks are waiting for a Samuel Jackson 'Snakes on the Plane' moment from this president as in: 'We gotta' get this $#@!!* oil back in the $#!!* rig!' But that's just not who Obama is,'' says Saladin Ambar, a political science professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania....

"It would have fed deeply into a pre-existing set of narratives about the angry black man," [says William Jelani Cobb, author of "The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress."] "The anger would have gotten in the way. He would have frightened off white voters who were interested in him because he seemed to be like the black guy they worked with or went to graduate school with -- not a black guy who is threatening."...

"Rev. Wright almost cost him his run for the presidency because of fears of the angry black man," [says author and political activist Paul Street] ....

"He is Mr. Equanimity and Mr. Consolation," says Street. "That's how he negotiated his way through multiple worlds, and reached out across bridges."

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: