Power to the Tweeple!

Is the ability to tweet an asset? I mean, what about Grassley?

Your friend Mark is a joke. But nobody is making a big deal out of it.
.
HALPERIN'S TAKE: 5 reasons to bet AGAINST major health care reform passing this year.
.
1. 1/6 of the economy can't be remade without genuine bipartisan support.
.
2. The sticker shock threatens to whittle the thing down to something well short of universal coverage.
.
3. The public is not demanding action.
.
4. The upside doesn't seem big enough now to give congressional Democrats sufficient cover to vote for a tax increase.
.
5. Most journalists still have health insurance.
.
http://thepage.time.com/halperins-take-5-reasons-to-bet-against-major-health-care-reform-passing-this-year/

What power?
.
We're being betrayed by the people we elected to represent our interests.

Universal coverage is cheaper. they will NOT put together a bill with an effective public option because the CBO will score it as revenue neutral over a ten year span.

On topic, my deepest concern is that DoD may look at Iran and see a domestic cyberwar threat from social networking tools.

5. Most journalists still have health insurance.
.
If I could figure out how to squeeze myself into the Intertoobz and "pull the plug" on the heath care coverage for the Congress and MSM journalists long enough for a meaningful public health care plan to emerge, I would.
.
Halperin's got an unintended grain o' truth there - these clowns won't do anything until it hits them right in their own wallets (or coverage policies).

3. The public is not demanding action.
.
Really? Did he share a cab ride with Tom Friedman this morning?
.
The best part about Halperin is that he looks like the brainless a-hole that he is.

afguy
.
What I think is actually going on is that the Beltway people covering this are in the 200K+ brackets that will fund any programs. Now, if they had half a brain, they would realize those increases would be LESS if the programs were CHEAPER. This is, of course, complicated by whether they get money from the people who make money retroactively rescinding coverage of cancer victims.
.
It is absolutely infuriating. With balanced, fact based coverage, this whole issue would have been done with six weeks after Obama's inauguration. The frickin' economist characterizes the US health care system as dysfunctional. This is graft, pure and simple.

Glen has posted a great column on Froomkin:
.
One of the rarest commodities in the establishment media is someone who was a vehement critic of George Bush and who now, applying their principles consistently, has become a regular critic of Barack Obama -- i.e., someone who criticizes Obama from what is perceived as "the Left" rather than for being a Terrorist-Loving Socialist Muslim. It just got a lot rarer, as The Washington Post -- at least according to Politico's Patrick Gavin -- just fired WashingtonPost.com columnist, long-time Bush critic and Obama watchdog (i.e., a real journalist) Dan Froomkin.
.
What makes this firing so bizarre and worthy of inquiry is that, as Gavin notes, Froomkin was easily one of the most linked-to and cited Post columnists. At a time when newspapers are relying more and more on online traffic, the Post just fired the person who, in 2007, wrote 3 out of the top 10 most-trafficked columns. In publishing that data, Media Bistro used this headline: "The Post's Most Popular Opinions (Read: Froomkin)." Isn't that an odd person to choose to get rid of?
.
Following the bottomless path of self-pity of the standard right-wing male -- as epitomized by Pete Hoekstra's comparison of House Republicans to Iranian protesters and yet another column by Pat Buchanan decrying the systematic victimization of the white male in America -- Charles Krauthammer last night said that Obama critics on Fox News are "a lot like [Hugo Chavez'] Caracas where all the media, except one, are state run." But right-wing polemicists like Krauthammer are all over the media.
.
In addition to his Rupert Murdoch perch at Fox, Krauthammer remains as a regular columnist at the Post, alongside fellow right-wing Obama haters such as Bill Kristol, George Will, Jim Hoagland, Michael Gerson and Robert Kagan -- as well as a whole bevy of typical, banal establishment spokespeople who are highly supportive of whatever the permanent Washington establishment favors (David Ignatius, Fred Hiatt, Ruth Marcus, David Broder, Richard Cohen, Howie Kurtz, etc. etc.). And that's to say nothing of the regular Op-Ed appearances by typical Krauthammer-mimicking neoconservative voices such as John Bolton, Joe Lieberman, and Douglas Feith -- and the Post Editorial Page itself. "Caracas" indeed.
.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

re: Froomkin...
This is a perfect opportunity for Time to pick up a real blogger who could bring something meaningful to swampland. Froomkin is the guy who can give Time the on-line credibility it tried to get when it hired Ana Marie Cox to launch Swampland....

With any luck WaPo will ideologically purify themselves right into Chapter 11.

pluk - TIME would have to make changes to the its blogging structure. As Karen has indicated before, blogging here is "extra," not part of the paid job. So having Froomkin guest blog here would be great, but if he's the only paid blogger that would probably cause some, um, friction.

Polls indicate slim slow slide of Obama popularity, major socialist agenda tanking among all demographics, DNC to re-hire Jimmy Carter.

...

http://twitter.com/HULAgate