All Life Is Problem Solving

Two nights ago (September 14), Rachel Maddow, on MSNBC, during coverage of the DC tea baggers demonstration against health insurance reform, played a satirical clip called “Billionaires for Wealthcare,” in an attempt to give the alternative point of view to the demonstration. After commenting on it, she brought in Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for […]

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Two nights ago (September 14), Rachel Maddow, on MSNBC, during coverage of the DC tea baggers demonstration against health insurance reform, played a satirical clip called “Billionaires for Wealthcare,” in an attempt to give the alternative point of view to the demonstration. Just after the clip she made the point that Billionaires for Wealthcare had […]

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I think Republicans and Blue Dogs understand the power of “no.” But I’m afraid the progressives in Congress don’t understand it, and that’s why they’re losing the fight for health insurance reform, have sustained partial defeats on the stimulus package, and credit card reform bills, and are moving toward a partial defeat on the cap-and-trade […]

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Maybe my memory fails me; but I can’t remember when two members of the WaPo columnist in-group got into a public disagreement. It all began when Eugene Robinson, WaPo’s pulitzer prize-winning columnist, praised Eric Holder for re-opening nearly a dozen cases of alleged prisoner abuse and appointing a special prosecutor to carry out the investigation, […]

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The right-wing-nuttery continued its nattering today with its claims that the President’s speech to American schoolchildren would be biased and ideological and that he should not be speaking to them. Here’s an answer for Rush, the Michelles (Malkin and Bachmann), Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck, and all the other scoundrels, male and female, who are spewing […]

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This past Sunday, the New York Times ran an editorial supporting the plan of some Democrats to use the reconciliation procedure to by-pass a filibuster of health insurance reform in the Senate by Republicans. Reconciliation requires only 50 votes from Senators plus an additional tie-breaking vote from the Vice-President to pass in the Senate. To […]

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I get furious when the punditocracy doesn’t recognize that Cheney’s position on accountability for torture makes the Constitution a dead letter, and the President a dictator who can define what the law is by fiat. By extension, to refrain from prosecuting and convicting those who violated the law by engaging in torture, is to legitimate […]

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Is it time for progressives to push the reset button yet? The strategy of supporting the Public Option idea in hopes that Republicans, Conservatives, Blue Dogs, and the health insurance industry would be more friendly to it than they would be to a Medicare for All Government Health Insurance Plan has certainly failed. The opposition […]

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This week many of us are recalling and quoting Teddy Kennedy’s words “. . . the work goes on. The cause endures. The hope still lives. And the Dream shall never die.” But, in all the focus on these words, I think Teddy’s cause is getting lost. From earlier in his speech, here are his […]

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Yesterday afternoon, My wife and I, who live in Alexandria, and my daughter, who lives not far away in Arlington, drove to Reston, VA, to attend the Jim Moran/Howard Dean Town Hall. Jim’s been our Congressman since we moved to Alexandria in 1991 and Reston is familiar territory to us because we lived there for […]

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