Unlike JFK, Barack Obama’s defining moment has arrived, not in the clarity of going eyeball-to-eyeball with a foreign power over nuclear weapons but head to head with Congress in a muddled confrontation he failed to anticipate sufficiently or control. No matter how incredibly unfair it may be to compare the Cuban Missile Crisis to today’s impasse over health care, presidents don’t get to choose...

Sen. Bunning, reported tonight as giving the unsenatorial ‘middle digit’ to a reporter, also threw a hissy fit on camera. He was outraged that the press would dare to question him, he an elected public offical, about his purposely standing in the way of vulnerable others’ income support today, essentially monkey-wrenching the government. But wait, I remember in 2007, Bunning bent over backward...

Monte GOP Obstructionism This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Brian Beutler reports on the consequences of the 21% cut in Medicare payments to doctors that takes effect today:

Beverage metaphors abound as liberal Coffee Party activists rise up to counter the Tea Party Movement while Nancy Pelosi suggests that some House Democrats may have to drink hemlock to pass health care reform. “We’re not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress,” she said yesterday, pointing out Congressional opposition to Social Security and Medicare decades ago. “We’re...

Petar Pismestrovic, Kleine Zeitung, Austria This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Our political Quote of the Day comes from the always-highly-quotable MSNBC First Read team of Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Ali Weinberg who suggest that two circumstances may have brought the Democrats two votes closer to health care reform enactment: *** Dems pick up two votes? Are Democrats having their best health-care day in quite some time? Oddly enough, maybe. Today, it appears they’ve...

So says a new study that will be published in the March issue of Social Psychology Quarterly:

Isaiah J. Poole at Campaign for America’s future tells us that Sen. Jim Bunning’s refusal to allow even a temporary extension of unemployment insurance and COBRA funding that expires tomorrow “is going to end up costing cash-strapped states millions of dollars as well as potentially causing millions of workers to lose their unemployment benefits.” Continuing:

People, real people by the thousands every year, are dying for lack of medical treatment in the world’s richest nation, and after a week of politicians posturing over piles of paper, policy wonks are stunning us with this truth. A new study shows 68 Americans under age 65 die every day because they don’t have health care, a number that will rise to 84 by 2019–a total of 275,000 needless deaths...

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Now, at least, Sen. Bunning’s hard work is done and he can go home to a well-deserved rest and a truly awesome weekend:

Never have I been so befuddled trying to write a story after viewing seven hours of the health care debate between President Obama and Republican and Democratic members of both the House and Senate. Here it is a day later and I’m still stuck. A couple of impressions do stick in my brain. To drop it, walk away and pretend the rising costs and grievous and capricious conduct of the private insurance carriers...

So who were the highly touted health care summit’s winners and losers? People will disagree. Here’s a good segment (with all of the disagreements) that was on Hardball. Most notable part of this segment: Chris Matthews documents GOPers sticking to repeatable talking points: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I’m late getting to this, but, well, you know, the Olympics. Our women’s hockey team shut out the U.S. for a third straight gold, our men’s and women’s curlers both won their semifinal matches, and Joannie Rochette, a lovely and courageous young woman, skated to the bronze in women’s figure skating, with all of Canada behind her, just days after her mother’s death. Yesterday...

Greg Sargent is right: Yesterday’s summit was never about the Republicans:

Andrew Koenig appears to have completed suicide in Vancouver. My condolences to his family and friends. My heart goes out to them. A certified suicide prevention trainer, I’ve put suicide in the context of health care reform before. Commenters object, saying I use suicide to try to score a political point. I disagree. Going back to Kitty Dukakis and Betty Ford we have tried to raise awareness of mental...

No matter how much evidence I see every single day of the Republican Party’s heartlessness and seeming lack of even a shred of compassion for millions of Americans who don’t have jobs, can’t find jobs, are being evicted from their apartments and foreclosed out of their houses, must rely on food stamps and food pantries for nourishment, and can’t afford to see a doctor when they get sick,...

Not very, although John Boehner left the Summit looking like he had been in the dentist’s chair all day. Nancy Pelosi zinged as “not factual” his remarks about abortion in the House bill after the President had politely brushed off his robotalk with the observation, “Every time we get somewhere, we go back to the standard talking points.” Mitch McConnell was reduced to harping on the obvious,...