I don’t want to scare anyone, but if you really believe President Obama’s government-run health care option is just a benign attempt to inject some competition into the health care system (I’m lookin’ at you, Paul and Robert Reich), take a look at what Congressman George Miller is proposing for the student loan industry. In […]
Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing began today and the end of the process is about as foregone a conclusion as you’re likely to find in politics. Which is probably good. Judge Sotomayor has three crucial qualities going for her: (1) The president wants her to be the newest justice of the Supreme Court (and he […]
How did we get by without him? Example number 487, from Sunday’s Politico Playbook by Mike Allen, quoting “senior White House officials” on health reform: “This is probably the most difficult legislation attempted by anybody, EVER. We’ve never been closer on health care, in 50 years.” Seriously? Over the last 50 years, the federal government gave birth […]
Interesting that Vinca and Julia picked up on that workout metaphor offered by President Obama last week. I also noticed it, and it got under my skin – not because it’s sporty, but because it’s condescending. “This is a town where there was just a belief that nothing could get done…. Folks have been sitting […]
Sarah Palin’s decision to resign as governor of Alaska initially was hard to comprehend. Why would a woman who has huge (if not fully understood) potential within the Republican Party, but whose biggest liability is her lack of experience, leave her executive office? Her statement Friday wasn’t so much rambling as unorthodox. I thought it […]
The last several posts on Robert Reich and Sarah Palin brought to mind one thought: sex appeal. But before anyone protests the direction of our family-friendly blog, it turns out www.whitehouse.gov is working blue, too. Speaking with Energy Secy Steven Chu about “new efficiency standards on fluorescent and incandescent lighting” in the federal government, President Obama […]
Robert Reich is my favorite liberal. I don’t know him from Adam, and I disagree with his take on policy roughly 94 percent of the time. But I generally find him to be congenial on television and well thought-out in print. When I saw that he had written an op-ed about health care reform in […]
Unsurprising 3:00 pm update: Governor Sanford acknowledges he was having an affair with a woman in Argentina. Original post: To the relief of apparently no one who knows him well, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford returned from his magical mystery tour today. While staff had told the press and other public officials that the governor was AWOL […]
President Obama today issued some of his strongest words about the situation unfolding in Iran. Opening his 378th press conference, the president said: The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days. I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I […]
President Obama has been reserved in his comments about the situation unfolding in Iran, and politicians and commentators across the political spectrum are urging him to say more. The president’s low-volume strategy is undergirded by two assumptions: first, that public support from the US president will feed the Iranian regime’s efforts to pin the protests […]
I don’t want to get into name-calling, but some people in Washington have become VERY sensitive about how they’re addressed. Yesterday Politico tattled on Elizabeth “For the love of God, don’t call me Liz” Becton, a Congressional scheduler who teed off on a K Street executive assistant for mistakenly using the L-word in an email. In a […]
One of the quirks of Republican speechmaking is that for all their bluster about small government, Republicans often define their achievements by how much money they spend. President Bush, for instance, touted the extra education funding he doled out alongside the reforms of No Child Left Behind. I’ve always thought it’s a bit of a […]
Today’s Wall Street Journal takes a humorous look at the proliferation of acronyms in stimulus-era Washington. They include the ugly (RAT Board), odd (LUST Trust), and potentially profane (FCCCER). But the Commerce Department (AKA DOC) takes the cake: Some government departments have described their stimulus plans almost entirely in acronyms, such as the Department of Commerce, […]
Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson today asks a question vexing conservatives: “Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage [as President Obama has]?” His answer: no – and that’s not healthy. Samuelson points to a new Pew study that attaches some numbers to the sense of coziness between the Administration and the […]
