Jennifer Senior’s New York magazine article analyzing President Obama’s ubiquitous media presence contains one superb observation: Rahm Emanuel is, she says, “so profane he’d embarrass a toilet.” But as I read Senior’s depiction of a White House fully comfortable using every communications method available, I found myself wondering to what end. The president’s poll numbers have […]
August 3, 2009 – 10:58 am
Earlier this summer, a friend who keeps his ear to the ground on these things told me he’d heard that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, during his trip to China, told Chinese officials concerned about rising US deficits that the Administration is gearing up to propose a value-added tax targeted specifically to debt reduction following the […]
August 1, 2009 – 10:52 am
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to take a strikingly aggressive tone against insurance companies — you know, the entities that make reliable health care available to a couple hundred million Americans. Politico reports: “The glory days are coming to an end for the health insurance industry in our country,” Pelosi told reporters Friday afternoon. “This is […]
After yesterday’s posts on beer and football, let’s get back to health care, because President Obama doesn’t want us to get distracted from the big issues. Politico today publishes a memo from House Democratic leaders advising members on how to gin up support for a government takeover of health care during their August “District Work […]
It’s almost August and the smell of pigskin is in the air as teams hit training camps throughout football nation. (Yeah, I just wrote that.) While NFL news has focused on players getting out of prison, mostly avoiding prison, or heading to prison, one player is generating some delayed attention for just visiting a very […]
I find polls interesting not so much for the top-line issue they seek to illuminate, but for the quirky results that often lie underneath. Like, who are those 3 percent of respondents who can’t even identify the name Dick Cheney? Another example in today’s Playbook, as Mike Allen calls our attention to a Rasmussen poll […]
Here’s Sarah Palin’s farewell speech from this weekend. Here’s William Shatner giving the beginning of the speech a poetic twist on last night’s Tonight Show.
Recognizing the escalating concern about his remarks in reference to the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police department during Wednesday’s press conference, President Obama went to the briefing room this afternoon to announce that he’d just spoken with James Crowley, the officer at the center of the story, and to acknowledge that he had probably gone too far […]
At Wednesday night’s press conference, President Obama sought to get to the heart of Americans’ concerns about health care: I realize that with all the charges and criticisms that are being thrown around in Washington, a lot of Americans may be wondering, “What’s in this for me? How does my family stand to benefit from […]
The big health care presser wasn’t the only press conference President Obama held Wednesday. Earlier in the day he held a joint press conference in the Rose Garden with Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki of Iraq. It was brief – just one question on each side – but each leader said something important. President Obama […]
Any doubt that Republicans (and conservative Democrats) are winning the argument over health care reform was erased within moments of President Obama opening his mouth at tonight’s press conference. While delivering his opening statement, the president looked and sounded chastened – like the teacher’s pet who got unexpectedly scolded in front of class. The president […]
Under the category of “never waste an opportunity to point out what a dope Sarah Palin is,” Vanity Fair edits her resignation announcement “to whip it into publishable shape.” Which would be awesome if Sarah Palin had written a piece for Vanity Fair. But she made a speech to the people of her state and to millions […]
Here’s House Speaker Nancy Pelosi explaining to Politico why she wants to lift the income level at which the proposed surtax to pay for a government takeover of health care would kick in: “I’d like it to go higher than it is,” Pelosi said Friday. The speaker would like the trigger raised to $500,000 for individuals and […]
I’m not surprised that Paul articulated my point about the wider implication of the Miller/Obama student loan proposal even better than I could. As Paul says, the federal government has long paid a subsidy to private loan providers in the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program. That’s because banks incur costs when they originate and […]
New Haven firefighters Frank Ricci and Ben Vargas spoke at Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing Thursday. But why? Commentators across the board remarked that Ricci’s and Vargas’s statements were moving and emotional. Surely everyone could empathize with their situation — denied promotions they deserved and initially denied redress in the courts. But I thought we […]
