Archive for July, 2009
Really Not Getting It
After Accepting Scores Of GOP Amendments, Senate HELP Committee Moves Health Care Legislation On Party Line Vote – TPMDC (7/15/09): The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has voted along party to move its health care reform legislation out of committee. The panel has been in mark-up for weeks now, and along the way, [...]
Healthcare Reform Gamesmanship
If you take the messages coming out of the White House and the Democratic leadership about healthcare reform, and roll them around on your tongue, you will get perfunctory notes of “Of course we want a public plan”, but the newly emerging theme seems to be: “Time is of the essence!” In other words, getting [...]
Is The Perfect (Speech) The Enemy Of The Good (Bill)?
You may have noticed that President Obama made another fine speech about healthcare reform yesterday. A lovely speech that drew much applause. I find it hard, though, at this stage, to applaud speechifying. Make all the fine speeches you want, Mr. President, but do please remember: the only important thing is getting it done. And [...]
The Dance Of The Seven Veils
Although the story broke on July 8, even now we have only the most shadowy notion of what the top secret program that Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to keep secret even from the Gang of Eight might actually involve. Investigative reporters have been forced to fall back on lots of heavy breathing; there haven’t [...]
Where Getting Doubly Screwed Leads to Awesome Contemplation
(1) Doubly Screwed Let it never be said that Geithner is not a true disciple of Hank Paulson. Paulson screwed us on the way in, when we bought all those lovely securities in troubled banks for way more than they were worth then: The Treasury secretary has made 174 purchases of banks’ preferred shares that [...]
Ensign Payoff Is Transparent Tax Dodge
The Republican Party’s ongoing Sex Scandal Duel between Erstwhile Presidential Candidates took an uncomfortable turn for John Ensign yesterday, making him the runaway star of the news cycle. Nevada Sen. John Ensign has acknowledged that his parents paid his mistress and her family $96,000 in April 2008, according to a statement made by his attorney [...]
Ugly Americans, Exposed
Ever since Rick Santorum brought man-on-dog sex in America out of the shadows, it was only a matter of time. And now the brave and courageous Brian Kilmeade of Fox News has outed America’s ugly little secret (because that’s what real journalists do, buddy, they tell the truth, no matter what chips may fall where). [...]
The Security Of The Homeland
George Bush and Dick Cheney are both extremely fond of claiming that it is one of their crowning achievements that they kept the country safe from another major terrorist attack after 9/11. Here’s how strong our security defenses have actually been: Plainclothes investigators sent to test security at federal buildings in four U.S. cities were [...]
Harry Reid Can Count to 51?
Reid Loses Patience on Health Bill – Roll Call (7/7/09): Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday strongly urged Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill. Reid, whose leadership is considered crucial if President Barack Obama [...]
All Public Plans Are Not Equal
Sen. Chuck Schumer is in the healthcare reform limelight again, and receiving pats on the back in some circles for his leadership in stepping forward and pressing for a public plan option: One of the leading Senate Democrats in the health care reform battle said that the seating of Al Franken has given the party [...]