Obama just spoke to and took questions from the House Republican Caucus at their retreat in Baltimore. I don’t know if any of you had occasion to see this. Whichever side you’re on, this was fascinating television. I don’t recall ever seeing this before in my life. You will be unsurprised to learn that I [...]
Interesting comments from my esteemed colleagues on the Chilcot inquiry. Sounds like Blair’s questioners would make excellent Democratic senators from red states.I continue to be, I must say, alarmed by invocations like the PM’s that 9-11 changed everything to such an extent. What he’s really trying to say without exactly saying it is that 9-11 [...]
Item one: There was a vote in the Senate yesterday to establish pay-as-you-go budgeting principles, which are just what they sound like they are. You’d think Reps would like this sort of thing. In the past, at least four sitting GOP senators have said they support this. So what was the vote? 60-40 in support, [...]
The Pentagon is unveiling its plan to repeal don’t ask, don’t tell next week. Kind of amazing. It’s not a piece of legislation, just a preliminary plan. Even so, good for them. Of course, it ultimately does have to take the form of legislation, which means it needs 60 votes in the dear old Senate. [...]
You know what they say. Words make the man. Or woman. Actually maybe they don’t say that, but I do.As I said, I got a bit tired of the grammar thing, so it occurred to me that this is a new seam we can mine. And it can go on for a while, because while [...]
I let this stuff go 99% of the time, but sometimes I just can’t. Two early comments on my last piece deserve mention. First, this gem by MacRandall. Trying to disprove my assertion that “Republicans are least popular of all,” s/he produces a sentence that says: “A month after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s showdown with [...]
Now Obama must work out how to harness any momentum the speech generates and stay in control of the agendaThe main task before Barack Obama in his state of the union address was to push the reset button. To reclaim some control over the agenda, which he had basically lost since about last October, when [...]
If you watch cable teevee and listen to the pundits and, oh, read Tomasky’s commenters, you’d think Obama was finished, and of course you’d know — for a fact — that this November’s elections were going to be a wipeout for him. So I was interested to see this, from yesterday’s NBC/Wall St. Journal poll. [...]
So this is all James O’Keefe, the Acorn-pimp-fraudster arrested in Louisiana the other day, was up to? Wow:The incident occurred a month after Landrieu announced her support for the Senate health care bill. As the vote neared, conservatives complained they were unable to register protests at her offices because their calls were referred to voice [...]
I meant to do this yesterday, but Indiana congressman Mike Pence, very conservative Rep, decided not to challenge Dem Evan Bath for the Senate in 2010. That helps the D’s hold a seat they could lose. Although if you think it means Bayh might feel the freedom to be a little less cautious, I [...]