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Harry Reid's Remarks Don't Compare to Trent Lott's
Tweet Share on Facebook January 11, 2010 Comment (28)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Granted that Harry Reid was stupid and insensitive and--this bears repeating--stupid in his comments about Barack Obama's presidential candidacy. But Republicans can't be serious when they compare his remarks to the ones which ended Trent Lott's tenure as senate majority leader. Because to make such a comparison displays a breathtaking lack of understanding of what made Lott's comments wrong.
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Harry Reid's Remarks Raise Questions About Democratic Leadership
Tweet Share on Facebook January 11, 2010 Comment (17)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
A couple of comments about the Sunday talk show dust-up over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's ridiculous remark about the Obama candidacy, as reported here by USA Today:
Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele demanded that Reid step down after reports of his 2008 comments that Obama could win the presidency because he was "light-skinned" and did not employ a "Negro dialect."
Much to his credit, Reid immediately apologized about the remark, which he must have made in a defensive manner about whether an African-American could be elected president. No one can doubt Senator Reid's early commitment to and support of the Obama candidacy.
That said, it shows how out of touch the senator is in his attitudes toward race. Perhaps it is a matter of his age and his generation's more race-conscious approach toward politics and everything else. No matter what a politician's generational affiliation, however, that does not mean he can be forgiven for being so out of touch with the times.
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Grim News Will Hurt Democrats’ Fundraising and Recruiting
Tweet Share on Facebook January 8, 2010 Comment (6)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Political analyst Charlie Cook, who is not known for being overly friendly to the Republicans, has some bad news for the Democrats.
"Come November, Senate Democrats' 60-vote supermajority is toast. It is difficult, if not impossible, to see how Democrats could lose the Senate this year. But they have a 50-50 chance of ending up with fewer than 55 seats in the next Congress."
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Liberals Hit the Panic Button in Race for Kennedy Senate Seat
Tweet Share on Facebook January 8, 2010 Comment (41)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The tightening of the special election to fill Ted Kennedy's senate seat is making liberals nervous--or at least is making them try to scare their donors into coughing up a few more bucks for Democratic nominee Martha Coakley's campaign.
From a fundraising email MoveOn.org sent out this afternoon (emphasis theirs):
In 11 days, we could lose progressive hero Ted Kennedy's Senate seat—and with it, any hope for passing major progressive legislation this year. ... We can't let a right-winger take over Ted Kennedy's seat because not enough progressives are paying attention. Coakley urgently needs help before it's too late. Your contribution in the next 24 hours will help her expand her all-out campaign for victory. Can you contribute $5 to Coakley's campaign right away?
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Obama Taking Blame for Terrorist Attack Was Presidential
Tweet Share on Facebook January 8, 2010 Comment (20)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
As much as I criticize the Obama administration for not being ready for prime time, I must also credit the president with acting extremely "presidentially" earlier this week when he actually took the blame for the Christmas Day airline bombing attempt. The Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz noted:
"Declaring that 'the buck stops with me,' President Obama on Thursday released the results of an internal investigation into the Christmas Day airline bombing attempt and ordered a series of incremental measures meant to close gaps in the U.S. intelligence system that failed to detect it in advance," says the L.A. Times.
Can anyone imagine such an apology from former President Bush? It takes more self-confidence and, indeed, honesty, to admit mistakes as the leader of the free world than it does to use the Bush approach of denying everything. It's a refreshing and much-needed change at the top and for that, I laud President Obama.
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Shame on Republicans for Politicizing Christmas Terrorist Attack
Tweet Share on Facebook January 8, 2010 Comment (14)By Julia Piscitelli, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the 23-year-old Nigerian who allegedly attempted to detonate a bomb on board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day) was trying to gain a huge audience, al Qaeda needs a new communications strategy. Although most Americans eventually heard about the attempted bombing (probably somewhere between Christmas dinner and the third argument of the evening between cousins who only see each other once a year), it didn't get nearly the initial attention that it would normally have received. In fact, this incident has some eerie similarities to Richard Reid's attempt to detonate a shoe bomb on Dec. 22, 2001. The attacks were carried out over the holiday season when most in the mainstream press were traveling or on vacation. Another similarity was that both presidents were away from the White House. In 2001, President Bush was at Camp David when the attacks occurred. It wasn't until Bush was at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, six days later, that he finally addressed the nation regarding the incident. President Obama was with his family in Hawaii when the 2009 incident occurred. But at least he addressed the nation within three days. But that's where the similarities stop, because 2010 is an election year, folks.
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Tax Cuts and Slashed Budgets--A Dumb Idea for Our Dumb Era
Tweet Share on Facebook January 8, 2010 Comment (5)By John A. Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In recent days my various electronic mailboxes and homepages have been filled with messages from all sorts of whiny fellow citizens.
We need to save the local ride-on bus route. We can't let budget cuts end a local summer concert series. We must preserve the Yiddish program at the University of Maryland. We have to take action to keep funding elementary school violin classes.
One of my favorites came from a grouchy Republican friend of mine, well-off but getting on in years, who is always bombarding me with those right-wing Internet fables--you knosw, the ones that keep snopes.com in business. In this case he was ranting about the fact that there is no cost-of-living increase in Social Security payments this year.
I actually considered writing back, and explaining that the reason there is no COLA this year is that we overpaid him and his fellow seniors last year, that inflation is down, and that the Democrats are so terrified of elderly voters that the president and Congress have caved in and promised them more money anyway. But what is the sense of micturating into the gale?
Americans, it seems, are a seething mass of grievances, but each with a favorite ox that must be preserved. And so, as a patriotic gesture, I offer a stupid solution to match our stupid citizenry. Since we appear to have drifted beyond the point where elected officials can make reasoned judgments about what to cut and what to fund, we should implement a one-time across-the-board cut in taxes and spending.
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Thank Heaven--and Fox--for Glenn Beck
Tweet Share on Facebook January 7, 2010 Comment (44)By John A. Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The doctor has ordered me to lose weight, and that is why yesterday, channel surfing as I waddled on a treadmill like a tubby rat, I was watching Glenn Beck. Speaking of tubby ra--Nope. I won't go there. That would not be nice.
Anyhow, Glenn was in full blackboard mode, explaining how, in the 1930s, our economy was on the rocks, but that the Great Depression wasn't really that awful because we still had had such terrific inventions as television, and refrigerators, and jet airplanes in our future.
Not so today, said Beck. Even if our soft, emasculated working men could come up with a great idea, he said, the Chinese would make it cheaper. And so we are, basically, doomed.
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Dorgan, Dodd Retirements Are a Very Big Deal
Tweet Share on Facebook January 7, 2010 Comment (6)By Doug Heye, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
"If Dorgan and Dodd spur a stream of Democrats, it will prove a real problem. But let's wait for the pattern to develop before pronouncing judgment on it," Robert Schlesinger wrote earlier today on the issue of Democratic retirements. Dorgan and Dodd, however, are already a part of a stream of Democratic retirements.
As I wrote last month, Democratic retirements in the House of Representatives have already created a problem for the Democratic Party. When Bart Gordon, chairman of the House Committee of Science and Technology, announced he was stepping down, he was following several others, including Reps. Brian Baird, Dennis Moore, and Gordon's Tennessee colleague, John Tanner. Add to that the defection of Alabama Congressman Parker Griffith, who last month joined the Republicans, and you've got your stream.
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Democrats’ Secrecy Fuels Health Reform Disapproval
Tweet Share on Facebook January 7, 2010 Comment (8)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The healthcare endgame will involve a game of legislative ping-pong between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who have separately indicated the strategy they intend to use to pass the final bill is intended to box out not only the Republicans, but some Democrats who may have last-minute objections. Pelosi and Reid have apparently determined that private negotiations between leading Democrats on Capitol Hill, coupled with input from the White House, is the only way to write a final bill that can pass both chambers and that President Barack Obama will sign. This process for moving forward—know as "ping pong"—eliminates the need for the kind of formal negotiations that C-SPAN's Brian Lamb recently requested be made open to the media.
Those requests, by the way, have been rejected by Pelosi and Reid.
As reported Monday in The Hill, senior Democratic aides said the decision to go with ping-pong had been made "out of concern that Republicans in both the House and the Senate would employ a series of procedural delaying tactics."
The first set began formally with healthcare meetings held Tuesday at the White House. Unlike a game of real ping-pong, however, no one can be sure who is playing because the matches are being held in secret. Once the negotiators agree on language that all parties involved can live with and Speaker Pelosi believes she has the votes to pass it, the legislation will be brought to the floor of the House for a vote.
