Politics
-
Heartache
Commenter Bubba in my previous post describes how what is happening to our country makes his heart ache. Heartache is a good word to describe how I feel, too. It amazes me how easy a time the forces of greed and powerlust are having, how weak the resistance. About a 1/3 of the electorate is
-
Quote of the Day: Digby
At this point there's no longer any reason to assume that Obama doesn't get it or is just trying to get his legislation through and doesn't want to alienate Republicans. He is what he appears to be, which is a dry, pragmatic, status quo, technocrat who makes symbolic leftward gestures while offering center right policies.
-
Quote of the Day: Stuart Whatley
Perhaps the most enervating element of the BP-Deepwater Horizon disaster is its eerie familiarity—the sheer, inexorable predictability of it all. There is poetic injustice in its propinquity on the calendar to the Obama administration’s decision to expand offshore drilling last month, and to the Supreme Court decision just this year that further did away with
-
Quote of the Day: Ed Rendell
"I don't think we have a battle for our soul — I think we have lost our soul," he said. "We have been cowed into [sic] stop talking about the things that made us Democrats in the first place; that we believe the government can and should make a difference in people's lives; that we
-
Charisma Wasted; Opportunities Lost
If you were Barack Obama and were pursuing the policies that he ended up pursuing, would you want Dawn Johnsen in charge of the office which determines the scope of your legal authority as President? Greenwald Things going on in my real life have kept me from posting the last two weeks. There's just not
-
The Individual Mandate
The individual mandate is a fundamental element in the flawed architecture of this HCR bill, and the best thing about it is its not going into effect for another four years. I think there's a good chance that by the time 2014 rolls around it won't be part of the new HCR system. Already people
-
The GOP Mindset
From the ATF Archive, 11/21/06: Somewhere over the weekend I read someone describe the braintrust that has hijacked the GOP as the "chess club on steroids." Think Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, Bill Kristol, Karl Rove, and Paul Wolfowitz: very smart, geeky guys with second and third rate souls holding weird, strongly held, sometimes extremist, nerdish,
-
Reich on New Deal vs. Reaganism
Robert Reich at TPM: Most Americans continue to be suspicious of government. That distrust is deeply etched in our culture and traditions. Our system of government was devised by people who distrusted government and intentionally created checks and balances, three separate branches, and almost insuperable odds against getting big things done. The period extending from
-
A Progressive/Populist Alliance?
Digby reposts a piece she wrote taking a long look at the problems with such an alliance, foremost among which is the inherent nativism that fuels the fires of populist political passion. Populists have a tendency to bash elites–not just the financial elites, but progressives, whom they perceive as elites because of their cosmopolitan sanctimony.
-
Unprecedented
Ezra Klein: The fact that Democrats had to break more filibusters last year than in the 1950s and 1960s combined is, quite literally, unprecedented. . . . Congress needs to decide how the place is going to be run and then rewrite the rulebook so that it actually works that way. Otherwise, it's just going