From our White House Photo Blog, this scene from President Obama's trip to China:
Swampland Contributors
Swampland Categories
- health care (183)
- congress (158)
- democrats (84)
- senate (69)
- gop (65)
- white house (57)
- republicans (41)
- 1,000 words (23)
- Max Baucus (21)
- elections (19)
- economy (27)
- bailout (14)
- people (342)
- barack obama (280)
- nancy pelosi (25)
- sarah palin (23)
- harry reid (18)
- hillary clinton (12)
- michelle obama (8)
- news media (12)
- foreign policy (10)
- corruption (9)
- ted kennedy (8)
Swampland Favorite Links
- ABC News’ The Note
- Andrew Sullivan
- CBN’s Brody File
- Ezra Klein
- Foreign Policy’s The Cable
- Juan Cole
- Lynn Sweet
- Marc Ambinder
- Matthew Yglesias
- MSNBC’S First Read
- Nate Silver
- NRO’s The Corner
- NYT’s The Caucus
- Politico’s Ben Smith
- Powerline
- Talking Points Memo
- The American Prospect’s Tapped
- TNR’s The Plank
- Tom Ricks
- Washington Monthly’s Political Animal
- WashPost’s 44
- WashPost’s The Fix
- WSJ’s Washington Wire
A blog about politics.
Senate Democratic leaders are wooing Senators Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln -- the last three hold outs who have not pledged to vote for the motion to proceed tomorrow night to start the debate on health care reform. Lincoln, an embattled Arkansas centrist, has been demanding 72 hours to read the bill -- something she got since the bill was released online Wednesday night. No word what Nelson is holding for. But Landrieu -- who still hasn't said if she'll vote to proceed -- just got $100 million in federal aid for low-income people in Louisiana. $100 million just to start the debate: imagine how much lawmakers are going to demand to vote to end it?
Forget WWJD. The new question is apparently What Would MLK Do? A coalition of politically and theologically conservative Christian leaders, including nine Roman Catholic bishops, who have just signed a declaration saying they will not comply with laws that could require them to recognize same-sex unions or allow their institutions to support abortions are arguing that the move is of a piece with King's call for civil disobedience during the civil rights movement.
The declaration reads, in part: "We will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other antilife act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent."
Instead of debating whether these causes belong in the same category as providing equal rights and treatment to racial minorities, the better question may be: Why now?
Read More…
I have this on TIME.com.
I've always had trouble understanding the opt-out version of the public option. Or more specifically, I've had trouble understanding why any state would actually opt out of something that some might find ideologically objectionable, but that doesn't actually cost them anything, gives their citizens a choice, and might actually bring in some government money down the line.
In that sense, the opt-out reminds me of all those Governors who made a lot of noise about rejecting the stimulus money, but then took it. As Doug Holtz-Eakin, a Republican and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who is now a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, puts it: "If the default is, you're in, the legislative momentum has to be found to get you out. ... You have to make the case that eliminating a choice is a good thing."
That's why I'm a little puzzled at this passage in CBO's preliminary analysis of the health bill that will go to the Senate floor in the next few days:
Read More…
I'm still wading through the Congressional Budget Office's preliminary analysis of the health care bill that Majority Leader Harry Reid will be taking to the Senate floor, but here's a Power Point circulating among Senate Democratic staffers that gives you a
basic tour of the bill, with some comparisons to other versions.
UPDATE: For those of you who were having trouble opening the link that your technologically challenged blogger put up, commenter Stuartzechman comes to the rescue with a pdf. Thanks, SZ!
Let me get this straight: Dov Hikind is not only a U.S. citizen, but also a member of the New York state legislature...and he wants to buy property in an illegal Jewish settlement, in an East Jerusalem neighborhood that the U.S. government considers a disputed area where no additional construction should be taking place? Indeed, it is an area that would be the capital of Palestine, if and when we achieve a two-state solution.
This U.S. policy is not new. It has stood through Republican and Democratic Presidents since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967. There is a reason for that: the United States believes that it is in our national interests that the Israeli occupation end. Since the presidency of George W. Bush, the official policy has been that the occupation end with a two-state solution. Even before Bush, in the deal negotiated by Bill Clinton (and foolishly rejected by the Palestinians), and in every negotiation since, the assumption is that Jerusalem would be the capital of both Israel and Palestine. The continuing illegal construction of Jewish colonies in East Jerusalem makes such a deal less likely, if not impossible.
Therefore, Dov Hikind is acting against the best interests of the United States, as defined by Presidents of both parties over the past 40 years. He has, of course, every right to disagree and campaign against those policies. But I wonder, as an American citizen, what it means when he acts against our national interests, by seeking to buy property in a Palestinian area. Is that legal? Just barely, I'd guess. Is it patriotic? You make the call.
It may not rise to the level of an American doing business with North Korea or Iran, in contravention of sanctions. But Hikind is flaunting a warped form of Israelophilia, putting Israel first, that is not in the best interests of the United States, the country where he continues to live and prosper. (Add: And it's not, in my opinion, as a lifetime supporter of the Jewish state, in Israel's best long-term interests, either.)
E.J. Dionne has an interesting column today on the Republican party's Senate strategy of forcing a cloture vote on everything, even on the few provisions they support. A few months ago, I wrote that the G.O.P. had become a party led by nihilists. This is further evidence of that. I have doubts about some of the legislation the Democrats are producing, especially those bills that aggrandize their special interests at the expense of the public interest. It would be nice if we had a proper opposition party to provide a creative check, and balance, on such bills. But we don't. What we have is the Party of Snit, refusing to participate in the governing of our country. It would be nice if the public demanded a price to be paid for this, but I doubt that will happen.
Can we talk? I've got something on my chest.
Count me among Kate's colleagues who are flummoxed by this report. I think it proves that even scientists can be pinheads. My issue is not with their recommendations on when and how often women should get mammograms. That seems worthy of debate. What I don't get is their finding that women should not even do self-examinations. And why? Because if we find a lump, it might make us worried. Congresswoman and cancer survivor Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was right on the mark when she said this represents a "very patronizing attitude that these scientists have taken…It's pretty outrageous to suggest that women couldn't handle more information.”
That got me thinking a bit about my own history, which on one level might seem to vindicate these findings. I'm a cancer survivor; it has been almost 22 years since I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which required surgical removal of my thyroid, followed by two years of radioactive iodine. I was lucky, especially given the fact that the lump in my thyroid had been there for eight years, misdiagnosed as benign.
But breast cancer was my first big scare--at age 19, when I discovered lumps in both my breasts that didn't go away after a couple of menstrual cycles.
Read More…
RSS