President Barack Obama is now running the political gauntlet on health care reform. The time to jumpstart the proposed legislation is past. Now it’s crunch time: Obama’s must get it passed to avoid him and his party from being politically crunched and the Republicans are hoping Democrats will crunch him for them as they make their own strongest effort to hear the snap. And, indeed, Obama faces some...

In an Editorial last Friday, USA Today discussed how the health summit exposed “irreconcilable differences” between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of health care reform. It said in part: That at least makes it clear where reform goes from here. Obama and his party have three choices: They can give up and blame GOP intransigence. They can try to settle for the same sort of incremental changes made...

WASHINGTON — For those who feared that Barack Obama did not have any Lyndon Johnson in him, the president’s determination to press ahead and get health care reform done in the face of Republican intransigence came as something of a relief. Obama’s critics have regularly accused him of not being as tough or wily or forceful as LBJ was in pushing through civil rights and the social programs...

We’re in a buyer’s market across the board. If you’re ready to spend money on a home, you’re a hot commodity. And if you’re ready to spend money to expand your business, you’re even hotter. When roughly one out of every ten Americans is looking for work, competition for jobs is fierce. So in this economic climate, these folks are pretty much out of luck: With the economy...

Nothing is a done deal until it’s done — and I’ve gotten my hopes up too many times to let down my guard until this thing is over the finish line — but I will say this much: Right now, the finish line appears to be inches away. Chris Bowers has the timeline:

Continuing with our coverage of an issue almost completely absent from what has come to be known as the mainstream media, we posted two articles today that touch upon the hemisphere’s newest alliance, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which is meant to be a U.S.-free answer to the Organization of American States. The first article, a news item from Spain’s ABC newspaper headlined,...

Sen. James Bunning, R-Kentucky, is going away, mercifully, because he is retiring at the end of this legislative session. Despite his mean, selfish arrogant demeanor, he leaves an indelible stamp on national fiscal policy that will not go away. Liberals won’t admit it. Only the hardest corp of Republican conservatives and Tea Partiers embrace it. “It” is the continued insanity of borrowing...

We’re asking all the wrong questions, thereby incorrectly framing our national debates. It’s no surprise we’re getting lousy answers and really moronic debates. Let’s break this dangerous impasse for the sake of our nation’s survival. We won’t get good answers unless we ask the right questions. We won’t be able to work through the difficult processes of correcting the many political,...

There’s lots of commentary out this morning about incumbent Rick Perry’s win over Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Texas GOP gubernatorial primary. The general take-away seems to be that Governor Perry benefited from (as Jonathan Martin puts it at the Politico) “an anti-Washington message in an already volatile political environment”. Considering the overwhelming wins yesterday by the incumbent...

Justin Elliott at Talking Points Memo traces the development of the “Al Qaeda seven” smear against Justice Department attorneys who represented Gitmo detainees before being hired by the DOJ.

Speculators are driving up gasoline prices in California, already the highest in the nation, in anticipation of West Coast refineries exporting large volumes of its supply to Chile in response to the massive earthquake there. The Chilean national oil company ENAP reported losing two major refineries and left with 10 days of diesel in the wake of the 8.8 magnitude quake. Repairs will take months and will seek...

The U.S. Postal Service, facing a $7 billion loss this year and $238 billion over the next decade, for the umpteenth time wants to cut Saturday mail delivery. Each time Congress has rejected the idea. Postmaster Gen. John Potter also wants rate increases from 3 to 10% for first class postage and merge the closing of thousands of post offices to relocate in large grocery and department stores. Similar proposals...

Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

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...

Everyone’s favorite irascible, nihilistic, profane, egotistical, self-centered, nasty and delusional U.S. Senator, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, may be onto something. The conservative Republican has used archaic and anti-democratic Senate rules to stop Federal legislation with respect to extending unemployment benefits, repealing the 21% reduction in Medicare Reimbursements to physicians, and halting basic federal...

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

As one CNN commentator just said, Bunning’s choice to stand on the ground of unemployment payments to demand that the U.S. government pays for what it spends is on the surface a strange one. In holding up unemployment benefits with the statement, “If we can’t find ten billion dollars for something we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of this U.S. senate”, he is knowingly...

The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad is one of my favorite European newspapers and I read it religiously. However, I did not read today’s edition and if I had not checked the internet, I would have missed one of the most interesting and candid interviews that a foreign newspaper has conducted with one of our politicians recently. The Handelsblad’s Tom-Jan Meeus conducted a wide-ranging interview with former...

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:

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:

[I started writing this last month but with the updated release it is even more topical.] When I was but a financial market acolyte, GDP was by far my favorite statistic. I definitely would have invited it as my date to the Econ Ball, and would have probably even proposed except for the fear that it’d lead to an onslaught of constitutional amendments, further enlightening our political discourse. It was...

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,...

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post was quite impressed by the insincerity and lack of concern for Americans’ health care needs demonstrated on the GOP side:

Congressional wars underlying the health care summit are making cynical headlines around the world but the US still has what it takes for domestic and foreign policy success. Its economy is 25% of global GDP and it has the ability to project power forcefully across oceans and continents. Combined with these unique powers, are two other great strengths. The US has the most innovative and educated people and...

For weeks the real big assumption has been that today’s health care reform summit would be riskier to Republicans than Democrats. But a new Gallup poll indicates the summer is packed with political danger for the Democrats — perhaps moreso than for the Republicans. And, specifically, it contains a big, fat political warning flag: most Americans will not be happy if the Democrats try to pass the bill...