Hold Fast

Yesterday I wrote a long memo on the process surrounding the health care legislation in the Senate, focusing on cloture votes. It is up on the SEIU blog and is reprinted below.
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The health care debate has been long and hard fought. As we near the time when we expect the Senate to take […]

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This might actually be one of the biggest differences between President Obama and President Bush.  The AP notes:
Obama’s predecessor, President George W. Bush, visited the families of hundreds of fallen soldiers but did not attend any military funerals or go to Dover to receive the coffins.
Seeing the human consequences of a war are critical to […]

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Sheryl Gay Stolberg really missed the point here:
The story of these two lobbyists — a Republican who found favor with a Democratic White House and a Democrat on the outs — illustrates the complexities Mr. Obama faces in the health care endgame. The president had some early success in bringing industry on board. But as […]

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Steve Benen is pretty spot-on in his spanking of Dana Milbank’s idiotic column attacking Harry Reid for caving to the left on the public option. Benen writes:
Obviously, Milbank is entitled to his opinion. If he thinks Reid agreed to a public option compromise — a public plan with a state opt-out — primarily to make […]

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Dana Milbank is such a dick.

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I love to see that the adjudication of left/right political slant on blogs is being made based on whether an outlet reflexively supports Obama. It’s so much simpler this way!

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I really don’t know what the New York Times’ editors are doing with Ross Douthat. Publicly pushing for a religious war between the Anglican-Catholic church and Islam is just nonsensical. It’s offensive. It’s stupid. And it’s clear that Douthat has absolutely no conception of the meaning of the words he puts to page. Calling for […]

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Joe Nocera of the New York Times has an article today on Obama administration pay czar Kenneth Feinberg’s efforts to rein in top executive pay at banks bailed out by the American taxpayer. You know, a story on the novel subject of accountability and transparency in American business, something that cuts as close to fiction […]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKz5ZHM8kFM

Alan “Big D” Grayson’s exchange with Georgia Republican Paul Broun is pretty remarkable. First, Grayson absolutely schools Broun on the unconstitutionality of bills of attainder. Broun is reduced to repeatedly reading off of a talking points memo - on camera - to try to respond to Grayson’s Socratic line of questioning. Second, Grayson has yet […]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDR47EKTrCQ

Media Matters has a great video, posted above, rebutting the idea that the Obama administration has started a war on Fox News. As anyone who’s actually waged Fox or paid attention to what they say and do, it’s clear that the war has been waged by the characters at Fox News for the entire tenure […]

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