All Life Is Problem Solving

A little while ago I did a piece on tweeting the fear card, and the attempts of certain supporters of the Democrats in this year’s elections to persuade dissatisfied and angry progressives that severe damage will be done to the country if the Republicans take over the House, the implication being that severe damage will […]

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Earlier this month, Thomas Geoghegan wrote a piece for The Nation telling the Democrats the ten things they could do to really get the base excited, and at the same time do good things for the country. Here’s his list. 1. Raise Social Security to 50 percent of working income. 2. Let’s extend Medicare to […]

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[Ed. note: This series has been re-posted by Joe Firestone (a.k.a. letsgetitdone) on behalf of author Nancy Bordier with her express permission.] By Nancy Bordier See the series introduction here. All U.S. House of Representatives seats and one third of Senate seats in Congress will be up for re-election in 2012. The U.S. House of […]

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Orszag’s maiden voyage at the New York Times entitled “One Nation, Two Deficits,” is full of myths, and that’s the polite way to say it. I’ll review these and comment on each of them one-by-one.

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For the Democrats in Congress, winning in November isn’t rocket science; it’s about having the will to pursue survival ruthlessly. The key to winning is giving the American people what they’ll like, and not allowing any of the normal Washington obstacles to stand in the way. But, for Dems to act that way depends on […]

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Ezra Klein is known as a bright young policy wonk who enlisted in the DC village, by becoming a blogger and correspondent for the Washington Post with a corner on the health care “reform” debate. Many of his writings have been very sophisticated analyses of one or more obscure feature of the House and Senate […]

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Bill Moyers hosted an interesting conversation the other day among Robert Kuttner, Matt Taibbi, and himself about health care reform, the performance of the Administration to this point, and the relations of progressives with the President. The conversation focused in part on how Taibbi and Kuttner would vote on the Senate’s pending legislation, if it […]

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On reading my evaluation of the “band-aid” period between 2010 and 2013, specified in Nancy Pelosi’s compromise bill, Bonnie commented: ”I think the House ought to include a special subsidy for the 31,000 families of uninsured people who will die annually from lack of insurance during the band-aid period, so that they can afford to […]

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When the Democrats, at the start of the present session, organized the Senate without changing the procedural rule allowing for the filibuster, and requiring a cloture vote of 60 members to end one, they took on responsibility for giving Republicans and blue dogs inordinate influence over the legislative process. The filibuster is a long-standing tradition […]

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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy Alan Grayson’s been making waves lately. His calling out members of the Republican Party as “foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging neanderthals,” was good for a laugh. And then, when they howled and demanded an apology, he refused to apologize to them, but, instead, said that he […]

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