The Whole Delivery

It has really been highly peculiar and damaging to our process the attack that House Democrats have received this week, especially from highly credible and usually rational sources. And as the week has progressed, the anger directed at them for not giving the 218 votes for the Senate's bull of a bill on health insurance reform has been staggering. But instead of the likes of Paul Krugman and Matthew Yglesias among others placing the blame on House Democrats (specifically progressives) for just being realistic and fighting for the American people, they need to again direct culpability on the damn Senate. If this Hackio report is true (because Lord knows how Hackio is), then I suggest Krugman, Yglesias, and others demanding that the House Democrats wise up and get the 218 to WISE UP themselves: Part of the negotiations center on whether Reid can provide an ironclad guarantee that the Senate will not leave the House in the lurch, aides said. If the House agrees to pass the ...

Let the right be in more unexpected glee. Not very helpful Paul Krugman : Maybe House Democrats can pull this out, even with a gaping hole in White House leadership. Barney Frank seems to have thought better of his initial defeatism. But I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in. This is weird from Krugman. He gets on Obama now, even though he didn't do that after the horror that is the Senate bill was revealed in its final form. He then proceeds to call out FDL and Marcy Wheeler over their legitimate digging of Jonathan Gruber. Now, in a move where Obama is arguably doing the best thing by not demanding as of the moment that the Senate bill get rammed down the House's throat , is now giving up by seeing this? Krugman picked the wrong moment to lose hope in Obama. It would have been justifiable if he felt this way o...

Just last week I had a conversation with a so-called "friend" of mine on the topic of universal health care. Providing some background information, I write "friend" in quotations because this individual was more like a student government partner, with our collective work serving as Presidents of our respective constituents, which often overlapped. Basically, that was the extent of our relationship with each other. This individual posted a link to a NY Times editorial advocating that in order to enact universal health care, a system of rationing must be implemented. He then advocated ethically indefensible statements, including "On that note, since when do we have the right to long or healthy life? The fact that we're living so long is a product of our scientific progress, medical advancement, and financial incentives" and "The free market has enabled us to experience a side of life which is unnatural... and now that we're convinced we...

Photo from TPM (via image caption from Fox) Here we go. Today's worthless photo op of the week (see above) happened just an hour or so ago, as Obama, Bush the Shrub, Clinton, Bush the Father, and Jimmy Carter met (and are still meeting secretly). The stance from both the President-elect and Harry Reid has changed on seating Roland Burris. Expect some fool on CNN to say that Blagoveich outsmarted Obama and that this is a loss for him. Speaking of CNN, the argument against Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General has intensified. Paul Krugman is apart of that opposite , feeling that another insider who hasn't gotten things wrong in the past is being rewarded. That feeling is based of the famous Michael Moore-Gupta battle over Sicko, where Gupta got his facts wrong in trying to smear Sicko and its director: What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he’s uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actu...

Photo from Indybay.org The global market is failing. Iceland, instead of asking the States to bail it out, asked Russia. Fall Street is spreading all over the world. (And yes, the journalists at CNBC, plus Bloomberg too, blame the companies and the government, but really, should hold themsleves accountable first for doing shoddy journalism that should place them in shame forever.) And both Vladmir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev have been rubbing it in . "Trust in the United States as the leader of the free world and the free economy, and confidence in Wall Street as the center of that trust, has been damaged, I believe, forever," Putin said. "There will be no return to the previous situation." Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev have repeatedly accused the U.S. of responsibility for the crisis and called for changes in the world financial system. But to be honest, Putin is honestly right. How can you trust something when it has caused a change effect of international ma...