Ben Nelson Needs A Reality Pill Or Two Hundred

10:44 pm EST July 31st, 2009 | News | 8 Comments

Ben Nelson – Democrat – is really a piece of work. The folks at Health Care Can’t Wait are running an ad and petition to get real and meaningful health care reform – with a public option – through the senate. How does Nelson respond?

In a statement issued late in the afternoon by Nelson’s office, spokesman Jake Thompson warned that if the new series of ads calling out the Senator’s “stalling” on reform were “an indication of the politics going into August, then health care reform may be dead by the end of August.”

These are the words and statements of people with no grasp on reality when it comes to this legislation. Ben Nelson (and Harry Reid) just don’t get it. They seem to think that the support they got in 2006 and beyond is going to keep them up if they just have a (D) behind their names. Conservative democrats who obstruct meaningful progress in Washington are the political equivalent of Bush Republicans, and they’ll be treated that way.

Do your job, Senator.

Topic: Democratic Senate, Health Care

Dana Milbank: How About Some “Mad Bitch” Beer For Hillary Clinton

10:30 pm EST July 31st, 2009 | Media | 9 Comments

Oh this was the high brow kind of journalism that Dana Milbank was lecturing the Huffington Post over. Consider us all schooled.

Time for another one of those blogger ethics panels.

Topic: Washington Post

The South Is Source Of GOP Rot

2:22 pm EST July 31st, 2009 | Republicans | 90 Comments

GOP birther concentration focuses on the south. At some point these yahoos are going to try and get “Dixie” as the national anthem and replace the currency with confederate dollars.

The Base & Their Money Bins

7:07 am EST July 31st, 2009 | News | 91 Comments

I Hope One Day To Pay The Higher Taxes Associated With The Kind Of Person Who Owns A Home Like This

Conservative republican efforts to whip up sympathy for the uber-rich is always funny. Look, the vast majority of us work hard and would love to have the burden of being in the tax bracket of folks like Paris Hilton and Rush Limbaugh, but none of us who are sane remotely feel like we need to have a telethon for Marie Antoinette.

Topic: Economics

Rush Limbaugh’s Premature Galt

12:26 am EST July 31st, 2009 | News | 48 Comments

Remember when Rush Limbaugh said the high taxes of New York were forcing him to leave? Well… he didn’t. Shocker.

Topic: Rush Limbaugh

GOP Looks To The Future With Steamboats

12:08 am EST July 31st, 2009 | Republicans | 32 Comments

Link

The Democrats have Renaissance Weekend, and now conservatives are trying to catch up with their own weekend of policy brainstorming. Several tell our Suzi Parker that they are planning for the Steamboat Institute Inaugural Freedom Conference, slated for August 28-29 in Colorado.

As usual the same old retreads like Grover Norquist are involved in the conference, and if its anything you want associated with conservatism is the guy who declared that he wants government to be drowned like a baby in a bathtub.

He got what he wanted in the Republican response to Katrina, so what’s he so cranky about still?

He Must Have Known I Was Coming To Training Camp

11:58 pm EST July 30th, 2009 | Sports | 7 Comments

I’ll be there Friday, and when I do – Brian Orakpo has signed officially with the Redskins.

Topic: NFL, Redskins

And Some Times Powerline Should Shut Up

11:55 pm EST July 30th, 2009 | News | 9 Comments

Powerline adds their stupid right-wing opinion to the growing mass of wrong-headed right-wing opinion piled up around the Henry Gates arrest:

This suggests to me that, as far as African-Americans are concerned, ‘race politics’ will continue unabated, as if Obama had never been elected president.

This suggests to me that right-wingers insist on pretending as if racism is solved. As if the election of President Obama is just the latest marker they can point to (previous faves were Clarence Thomas and Colin Powell) in order to minimize and delegitimize every other incident of racism.

We’re a long ways from Selma, but that doesn’t mean racists and racism doesn’t still influence our lives in America. And when it does flare up we have to snuff it out immediately and without equivocation. In the process of doing that, it would help a lot to have the aid of conservatives and the conservative movement rather than the casual acceptance of bigotry that is the default position of so much of the right. Try it. It isn’t hard.

Topic: Race, Racism

Conservatives In A Nutshell

11:40 pm EST July 30th, 2009 | Politics | 59 Comments

Will Smith Can’t Save Us From The Right

Ezra Klein

In my chat today, a reader asked me to respond to Megan McArdle’s lengthy case against national health insurance. The problem is that, well, there’s not a lot to specifically respond to. In 1,600 words, she doesn’t muster a single link to a study or argument, nor a single number that she didn’t make up (what numbers do exist come in the form of thought experiments and assumptions). Megan’s argument against national health insurance boils down to a visceral hatred of the government.

If you’ve ever taken the time to watch congressional activity on C-SPAN, particularly in the House, you see this a lot. There are people, Democrats, talking about important things of serious significance. I don’t even necessarily agree with these people all the time, but there’s no disputing the fact that they’re talking about an issue, and then a conservative Republican will get his or her turn at the microphone and begin a conversation about how Barack Obama has enlisted a legion of robots to drain us of our blood. They say these things, and then thanks to the rules of decorum in congress the other side can’t bust out laughing or scream “what the fuck”. They just have to go back to what they were discussing. On earth.

Obama Approval

3:52 pm EST July 30th, 2009 | News | 80 Comments

Clearly President Obama has dropped a bit in the approval polls, but I don’t see it as anything to worry about. I frankly lay more of the blame for this at the feet of Sen. Reid and Sen. Baucus whose dithering has caused the delay in passage of health care reform. If there’s any fault by the President its in not pushing on congress hard enough (they seem to have taken too much of a lesson from President Clinton’s fight with this), though at the end of the day I think we will have a bill (though not a great one) that will be signed.

I think the poll of polls is a bit skewed because it includes wonky numbers from Rasmussen and Zogby, but yes its down to about 52%… more than double Bush’s approval, so while Obama’s numbers are down we are legions away from a presidency that appealed to only zealots.

Here’s what I said before: