Archive for August, 2009
Benchmarks For Success
CNN: The Obama administration is creating 50 benchmarks to measure success in Afghanistan at a time when the United States is struggling to beat back a virulent Taliban presence there, senior U.S. officials say. Maybe it’s time to also create a similar document for the domestic front? Something like: “Five benchmarks to measure whether the [...]
Snake-In-The-Grassley, Part Two
According to Roll Call, Obama‘s number one Republican healthcare buddy in the Senate doesn’t even consider himself to be negotiating: “I don’t even think it’s right for me to call [the Finance discussions] negotiations,” Grassley said, inside a steamy community center packed with a standing-room-only crowd of about 350 people. “We’re talking.” So how does [...]
The Proof Of The Pudding
There is nothing President Obama wants more dearly than to have a few Republican votes in support of healthcare reform. Back when he thought he faced a choice between a bill that gives him 100% of what he wants with 52 votes or one that gives him 85% of what he wants with 70 votes, [...]
Messiah Complex
Sen. Dick Durbin: Then we go into conference committee and President Obama has to roll up his sleeves and see if he can bring us all together. And when I’ve spoken to him about this a couple times, all he’s said is: ‘Get me to a conference committee. Let me bring these folks into a [...]
The Next Step For Glenn Beck?
Glenn Beck isn’t there yet, but maybe as advertisers start to cancel their advertising on his show left, right and center he will finally go stark, raving mad enough to order killings to boost his ratings? Police have accused a TV presenter in Brazil of being involved in organised drug trafficking and ordering killings to [...]
Media Lunacy, Take Two
How’s this for an example of “world class reporting” by one of the members of “the best political team on television”, a standard-bearer of “the most trusted name in news”: Lou Dobbs, for example, has been getting increasingly nutty as the year progresses, and this week he lashed out at Howard Dean. “I thought we [...]
Health Care Reform Related Program Activities
Awesome: “I have not said that I was a single payer supporter.” – President Obama, at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire this afternoon. “I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care plan.” – Obama, at a Senate campaign rally in 2003. Related: Are there any Obama supporters at [...]
Debunking What Cannot Be Put To Death
How absurd is it when the L.A. Times has to run an article that treats “Does the (healthcare reform) legislation include provisions to encourage senior citizens to commit suicide?” as a question that needs to be taken seriously and answered with a straight face: No. This has become one of the most misleading, inflammatory claims [...]
Whatever Happened To Three-dimensional Chess?
It strikes me that as hope for any real and meaningful reform of our healthcare mess has rapidly dwindled over the last month, the one thing we have stopped hearing from believers in Obama Magic is how our president is deep into some intricate three-dimensional chess game that none of us can really hope to [...]
Hope
After July’s Turmoil, Obama Needs ‘a New Chapter’ in August – WaPo (8/8/09): Obama needs his party’s lawmakers to return to Washington after Labor Day ready to move on health care. If failure is not an option, as so many Democrats say, August will have to be a time in which consensus takes shape. Obama [...]