If Republicans retake both Houses of Congress this November, President Obama and Vice-President Biden should resign after the new Congress is seated in early January 2011. Following the U.S. Constitution and Federal Law, the person next in line to the Presidency would be the Speaker of the House. If the House were controlled by Republicans, then they would choose the next Speaker and thus the President. It...

Older Americans may find solace in David Brooks’ report today on longitudinal studies “producing a rosier portrait of life after retirement. These studies don’t portray old age as surrender or even serenity. They portray it as a period of development…” So much for Charles DeGaulle’s famous aphorism, “Old age is a shipwreck,” and Freud’s assertion, “Old...

The Republicans in Congress must think American voters are really stupid. During the Bush administration they supported trials in federal court for Richard Reed and dozens of other accused terrorists. Now they don’t. They supported the TARP bailout of banks. Now they don’t. They supported a bipartisan commission to address deficit reduction. Now they don’t. They supported a pay-as-you-go spending...

The watchwords in 2010 — more than ever — will likely be “budget” and “deficit,” in light of the President Barack Obama unveiling a proposed $3.8 trillion budget, coupled with his comments that the fiscal situation remains “unacceptable.” Get ready for a serious — and, in the scheme of 21st century politics in some cases extremely loud and outraged and not-so-serious...

Obama, Year One: A Report Card Raging Moderate, by Will Durst When asked how he thought his first year as 44th president of the United States had proceeded, Barack Obama gave himself a B+. To say other parties have been less enthusiastic is like saying Tiger Woods is unlikely to receive the NOW Husband of the Year Award. Although the Divorce Lawyers of America might be coerced into throwing a testimonial or...

For too long we have lived under the myth that the U.S. is better, smarter, stronger, richer, uniquely special, and simply “exceptional” when compared with the rest of the world. The past few years should have put to rest that massive delusion. Many well-known commentators and pundits in the blogosphere and Media have lamented for years our nation’s utter inability to accept good ideas if somehow they...

I don’t know about you guys, but to me it seems like our politics and economics are growing increasingly surrealistic and absurd. I’m growing increasingly convinced that we are actually in the largest performance art piece the world has ever seen, and at some point millions of people will just be like, “Surprise! We got you!” I recently discovered that this phenomenon isn’t unique,...

Within 24 hours this weekend, the President tackled two national shortfalls–dollars and cents in the government’s income vs. expenditures, civility and sense in the partisan debate over remedies for an economy ravaged by recession. In his weekly address yesterday, Mr. Obama zeroed in on seven Republicans who had sponsored a bipartisan commission for deficit reduction but then voted against it in...

Author’s Note: At the suggestion of a TMV reader, the title of this post has been changed.

I am not an economist, so I cannot comment in depth as to the “real” meaning and consequences of what I believe is some real good news that I read this morning about our economy, our country. The New York Times and several other publications report that the U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in over six years during the last quarter: Gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in...

This has to be seen to be believed — and having seen the whole thing, I still am having trouble believing it. You can watch the video at Crooks and Liars; John Amato’s text explanation is below:

Apologies for being tardy commenting on President Obama’s first State of the Union address. I had slept 36 hours as a result of some viral. I awakened for a bit of nourishment and watched the speech, followed by the Republican response, and went back to bed for another 12 hours. If I were a political science professor, I would grade Obama’s speech a D. Before even reading the reviews other pundits...

The Senate approved a $1.9 trillion increase to the debt ceiling, which will get us through the end of the year (yes our debt is increasing $2 trillion this year). It seems like only yesterday when $10 trillion was reached, no wait, it was early Oct. 2008. That means that in two years time we will have increased it 40%. Incredible. This increase will see us reach about 100% of the debt to GDP number, which historically...

I was watching the State of the Union address last night and, as I saw half our legislators sit on their hands while their president tried to rally the nation, it dawned on me what a difficult task this man, this Mr. Obama—this mere mortal—has ahead of him. And for some reason I thought of the Creation. Now, don’t get me wrong. Trying to fix the mess our country finds itself in doesn’t even...

The McNugget President by David Goodloe When I was fresh out of college and working as a reporter for a daily newspaper in central Arkansas, I found myself in the press entourage that covered then–former Gov. Bill Clinton and his opponent in the gubernatorial runoff for the Democratic nomination. Typically, the reporters who were assigned to cover the candidates followed in a separate plane as the candidates...

AMERICAblog’s John Aravosis was one of the first to point it out, in his SOTU live-blogging:

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Couran This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett met with direct resistance from David Gregory when she claimed that the president had turned the economy around: Let’s, let’s just remember where we were a year ago, David. We were losing 700,000 jobs a month. We were in the middle of the worst economic meltdown in our nation’s history. Our financial system was on the brink of collapse. We had the largest federal...

Ezra Klein made this point on Countdown last night:

Will the real Barack Obama, who appeared as Everyman during his presidential campaign, step up and govern for crying out loud. I’m growing disenchanted with the president who suddenly has donned the cloak of a populist which is akin to David Dukes joining the NAACP. Taxing banks and capping salaries is a bogus effort circumventing the real issues. Whatever the president is, he’s lost the patience...

Headlines from the President’s State of the Union speech have been leaking all week–a three-year spending freeze on domestic programs today following yesterday’s package of tax credits for child care, caps on student loan payments and automatic retirement savings for employees. After whatever revelation the White House is saving for tomorrow morning, by the time Barack Obama faces both houses...

Normally I don’t like to devote much time to punditry about political tactics because a) it’s almost always just a tempest in a million teapots and b) I like to preserve my naivete that the quality of policy ideas matters at all. Also I’m far too masochistic to debate short term issues that resolve quickly and far prefer talking about long term structural issues that will take decades to resolve. That...

Glenn Greenwald’s article about the automatic, unquestioned exemption of military spending from inclusion in the spending freeze Barack Obama reportedly plans to announce in the SOTU tomorrow evening has this stunning pie chart:

“Ever since I started covering politics, the Democratic ruling class has been driven by one fantasy: that voters will get so furious at people with M.B.A.’s that they will hand power to people with Ph.D.’s. The Republican ruling class has been driven by the fantasy that voters will get so furious at people with Ph.D.’s that they will hand power to people with M.B.A.’s. Members of the ruling class...

Greg Sargent, noting a new CNN poll that shows, for the first time since Barack Obama has been in office, that a higher percentage of Americans think that Democratic Party control of Congress is bad for the country than think it’s good for the country, puts the question to us: