The man vying to become Alabama’s first black governor is battling some unlikely critics — black Democratic leaders who were on the front lines of the civil rights movement.
AP – U.S. Congressmen said Tuesday they are urging Afghan President Hamid Karzai to delay the next parliamentary ballot until electoral reforms are in place or risk American financial support for his government.
AP – Internet postings purportedly written by a Nigerian charged with trying to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day suggest a fervently religious and lonely young man who fantasized about becoming a Muslim holy warrior.
Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who served as a top aide to former president George W. Bush, and his wife of 24 years have divorced.
In just one year, liberals have altered the course of this country so dramatically that current U.S. policy is almost unrecognizable from the conservative values on which we built this country.
America cannot survive on this new course. Fortunately 2010 offers us a chance to hold the far left accountable and elect Representatives who will stand up for our American values in Congress.
Yikes and a half. You mean the far left?
Referencing his own travels to Yemen, and meetings with unnamed U.S. officials, the senator chirped: “Iraq was yesterday’s war, Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war.”
Lieberman, whose refusal to serve in the military when he could have during the Vietnam era has never prevented him from spouting hawkish views so over-the-top that his wiser colleagues to keep him off committees that deal with issues of war and peace, seems to be unaware that “acting preemptively” in the manner he suggests, is an act of war.
Take the Tea Parties, for example. Liberals don’t give nearly enough credit to the technological sophistication of the Tea Partiers. Back in the old days — you know, like 2005 or so — getting several hundred people together at several hundred different locations would have required months of planning. But thanks to the Tea Partiers’ ability to find one another on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and so forth — and to some extent the megaphone of Fox News — these protests can come together fairly spontaneously. The left’s use of the Internet has been much more heralded, but obviously has been exceptionally impressive too, particularly the extent to which the most listened-to people on the left (think Markos Moulitsas or Jane Hamsher) tend to come from nonpolitical backgrounds. Then there are things like the Ron Paul movement, which would have gotten absolutely no traction without the Internet.
Republicans, it seems, are going to run on repealing health care reform. Bad call. They are, I believe, misreading the polling.
It’s true that the health care bill is unpopular. But as many people have pointed out, a significant fraction of those who say they disapprove of the bill disapprove from the left. And more generally, answers to the question “Do you approve of the Senate bill?” are not the same as answers to the question, “Do you want to roll back what’s in the bill?”
Consider Massachusetts. As I’ve pointed out in the past, the MA health reform has low approval ratings — yet 79 percent of the state’s voters want the reform to continue.
Indeed, just 11% of voters there want to repeal MA’s health reform law. And as Krugman points out, even though voters have been decidedly negative on the bills before Congress, voters have consistently said the nation would be better off with health care reform than without it.
If Republicans — as seems overwhelmingly likely — do end up running on a “repeal” pledge, they may be making a mistake, but it’s important to remember that Democrats could make a similar mistake, for they too must decide how to position themselves relative to health care reform.
Broadly speaking, once it passes, there are three different positions one can take on health care reform:
For Republicans, the choice is between options #2 and #3 — “Mend it” vs. “End it.”
For most Democrats, the choice is between options #1 and #2 — “Mission Accomplished” vs. “Mend it.”
Just as Republicans are erring by opting for the absolutist “End it” positioning, Democrats would err by opting for the absolutist “Mission Accomplished” positioning. Instead, they should claim credit for the good things in the health care reform bill — insurance reforms, expansion of coverage, closing the Medicare Part D “doughnut hole,” starting cost containment inside Medicare — but own up to the fact that this bill doesn’t finish the job. Health care spending is still out of control, and we aren’t getting enough for it. Health care costs must come down, and they must come down significantly.
Conceding that this bill doesn’t fix every problem under the sun doesn’t condemn the bill, it’s a simple recognition that the problems with our health care system are massive and can’t be fixed in one step.
It is also important to point out that if it were not for corporate special interests and a dysfunctional Senate, this bill could have done even more. The fact that those obstacles exist does not mean the bill doesn’t do good things, but it does mean that there is still work left to be done.
With the finish line in sight, declaring “Mission Accomplished” must be an awfully sweet temptation. But doing so would be an blunder of Rovian proportions. It might feel like good politics, but it wouldn’t be good politics.
If Americans must choose between “Mission Accomplished” and “End it” when it comes to health care reform, the political system will have failed them once again. There’s no telling which side will prevail. But if the choice is between “Mend it” and “End it,” mend it will win every single time.
In the wake of the attempted terrorist bombing of a U.S. airliner, the actions of Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) is giving new meaning to the phrase, “ugly American.”
It isn’t enough for Hoekstra to just try and on attempted terrorist attacks, he’s also decided to do a media tour to peddle :
Hoekstra says the U.S. needs to be more forward-leaning in its approach to terrorism and put into place the latest technology for dealing with it.
Well, sure, except when Hoekstra is that technology:
… A full 108 Republicans voted against the conference version, including Boehner, Boehner, Hoekstra, Pence, Michelle Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Darrell Issa, and Joe Wilson.
The conference bill included more than billion for “screening operations,” including .1 billion in funding for explosives detection systems, including 8 million for buying and installing the systems.
And at some point, perhaps some of our Democratic representatives might consider stepping up and pointing out the ugly hypocrisy and politicizing of terror that is coming from their “friends across the aisle.”
Apparently, for right-wing Congressman and gubernatorial aspirant Peter Hoekstra, it wasn’t enough for him to sprint from TV camera to TV camera trying to siphon off as much exposure for himself during the recent news flurry surrounding the terror attempt aboard a Detroit-bound flight. He now is seeking to on the aborted attack:
U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra was blasted Monday for using an attempted terrorism attack to raise money for his campaign for governor.
A fundraising solicitation Hoekstra’s campaign e-mailed Monday criticized the response by President Barack Obama administration’s to a failed attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it neared landing at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
The solicitation showed poor judgment, according to a campaign spokesman for Rick Snyder, an Ann Arbor venture capitalist and 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidate.
The letter itself, the text of which can be found , is far from subtle:
For almost a decade I have been a leader on National Security and at the forefront of the war on terror. I understand the real and continuing threat radical jihadists pose to our great state of Michigan and our great Nation.
I have pledged that I will do “everything possible” to prevent these terrorists from coming to Michigan.
But I need your help.
If you agree that we need a Governor who will stand up the Obama/Pelosi efforts to weaken our security please make a most generous contribution of , , 0 or even 0 to my campaign.
Hoekstra made the decision earlier in 2009 to leave his western Michigan-based seat in the Congress (where he has served for seventeen years) in order to run for Governor of Michigan. He faces an exceptionally competitive primary, which includes not only Snyder, but also state attorney general Mike Cox and Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard.
The Democratic frontrunner, thus far, is state Lt. Governor John Cherry, although some other Democrats could be competitive (including former Michigan State football coach George Perles), while others are still eyeing the race.
In the aftermath of the of a U.S. airliner on Christmas day, we’ve learned a number of things: that Republicans, while burnishing their Party of No creds, funding the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), that two of the al Qaeda leaders allegedly behind the plot by the Bush administration into an “art therapy rehabilitation program,” and that there is no permanent head of the TSA Jim DeMint (R-SC):
An attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration — if there was one.
The post remains vacant because Sen. Jim DeMint , R- S.C. , has held up President Barack Obama’s nominee in opposition to the prospect of TSA workers joining a labor union.
So, we have Republicans refusing to fund anti-terrorism efforts, Republicans who made poor decisions on releasing terrorists, and a Republican who is playing politics with the TSA because he doesn’t like unions.
All which can mean only one thing. The attempted terrorist attack that occurred last week is all President Obama’s fault.
Politico – Karl Rove and his wife, Darby, are divorcing after 24 years of marriage.