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Republicans Are Normal, Democrats Are Not
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2009 Comment (46)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
My U.S. News column this week is on the roadblocks the Obama administration is encountering to its expansive budget and economic policies. Ours is not a parliamentary democracy like Britain's, where the majority party can push its program through the legislature without much trouble. Members of Congress are, to a considerable extent, independent operators, beholden not to the president but to their own constituents, and act accordingly. Obama's big plans on energy and taxes affect different states and congressional districts in different ways, ways that cut across party lines. So he's encountering roadblocks, and it's not clear whether he'll get around them.
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Harley-Davidson to America: Let's Ride
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2009 Comment (13)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Here is a little product placement for my friends at the great American motorcycle company: Harley-Davidson.
Yesterday, Harley bought a two-page ad in the Sunday New York Times with a message that all Americans, in these difficult economic times, should read.
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Health Insurance Blacklists Almost Make National Healthcare Look Good
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2009 Comment (46)I'm totally against nationalized healthcare of any sort. I've heard horror stories from too many friends living in countries where healthcare is nationalized. One Canadian told me about having to wait months for a CT-scan to find out whether her brain tumor was benign or malignant.
An Italian national described being required to show up at a public clinic every three days for prescription drugs (because nationalized healthcare is too cheap to give them out in 30-day supplies.) But the Miami Herald ran an investigation into how insurance companies secretly blacklist millions of Americans with common ailments. The investigation's results are so infuriating it's enough to make even me think socialized medicine might be an improvement (just kidding.) At the very least, as the Obama administration tackles healthcare, this sort of thing ought to be banned and its perpetrators dragged to the public square and punished:
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Obama's Afghanistan Surge--A Primer
Tweet Share on Facebook March 27, 2009 Comment (11)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
President Obama announced his new Afghan strategy today, with significantly higher funding and more troops to the region.
As my colleague Anna Mulrine has reported, one of the biggest hurdles facing Obama's plans is the endemic corruption in the Afghan government:
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Animals Feel Pain, and Jesus (Likely) Knew It
Tweet Share on Facebook March 27, 2009 Comment (49)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
To anyone who still believes animals don't experience pain, here's a new study to shock you into reality:
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If Women Ran the World the Economy Wouldn't Need Fixing
Tweet Share on Facebook March 27, 2009 Comment (11)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
This very insightful commentary is from a man--a former colleague of mine from the Bush #41 speechwriting shop, Mark Lange of the Christian Science Monitor. The headline reads: “What if women ran the world? Male hubris has made a mess.” -
Barack Obama's Teleprompter and Glenn Beck's Idiotic Demagoguery
Tweet Share on Facebook March 27, 2009 Comment (164)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Broadcast nutter Glenn Beck is the latest right-winger to pick up the Obama/Teleprompter meme. He does so with typical, ahem, gusto, calling the president a "Manchurian candidate."
Give Beck credit for this: At least he has distilled this charge to its inane core.
Let's be clear, again (and again): A teleprompter is a tool without any magical properties. The main difference between using a teleprompter and having a speech typed on paper in front of you is that teleprompters are reportedly harder to use.
A president (or any politician, or for that matter, television commentator) using a teleprompter signifies ... that his remarks have been prepared ahead of time.
So where exactly is the problem?
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Notre Dame Inquisition: Obama Commencement Flap and a Fading Catholic Church
Tweet Share on Facebook March 27, 2009 Comment (36)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
The controversy over Notre Dame University's invitation to President Obama to deliver this year's commencement address is too tempting for me not to join, so here goes. My colleague Dan Gilgoff has been doing a stunning job of recounting the battle, blow by blow.
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Drug Testing for Welfare Recipients Is Stupid
Tweet Share on Facebook March 26, 2009 Comment (206)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
This is one of the dumbest things I've heard recently coming out of state legislatures, forcing thinking people to pose the question: And what is your point?
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Obama Adviser Tyson: "The Democratic Coalition Is Badly Broken"
Tweet Share on Facebook March 26, 2009 Comment (7)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In case you're looking for another sign that the strain of fixing the economy is taking its toll on the Democrats, I give you Laura Tyson, an economic adviser to Barack Obama during the campaign and now a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
"The Democratic coalition is badly broken already," she said. "We have Sen. [Kent] Conrad already eviscerating the budget of the president."
