Conventional Wisdom in both main stream and non-traditional media have passed judgement on both the debt ceiling legislation and the bipartisan deficit reduction super committee it begat. Conventional Wisdom informs us that we have seen this movie before and we know how it ends. Conventional Wisdom tells us the bipartisan Super Committee will fail. Problem being – Conventional Wisdom is wrong.

Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) just may have come up with something to bridge the gap between Dmes and the Repubs on the debt ceiling negotiations. It even has Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) coming back to the table… “The plan has moved significantly, and it’s [...]

It’s come to the attention of this reporter that the Rapture is, in fact, going to occur. Documents leaked earlier today describe how a bi-partisan team of Senators, dubbed the Gang of 14, working closely with President Obama have developed and set into motion a plan to save Humankind – FROM GOD! It seems a [...]

Last week, in the Republican controlled House of Representatives, with Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner supporting the continued funding of the unneeded engine, it was finally defeated. Credit to President Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates for reaching out to Republican legislators and the new crop of Tea Party supported freshman Republican representatives who stood up to their own leadership.

Big time speech today from the guy who definitely has his eye on the White House. Here’s the video… I’ll offer the transcript below after my analysis. Personally, this feels disingenuous from a guy like Bloomberg who has repeatedly used the government to regulate New York City businesses and consumer behavior six ways to Sunday. [...]

Ezra Klein throws it out there, and I could see it working. From Wash Post: On Feb. 5, 2011, the president signed the Economic Growth and Deficit Reduction Act of 2011 into law. The legislation lifted the employer-portion of the payroll tax for a year, approved more than $50 billion in infrastructure investments, and cut [...]

For some people, the development of the new Coffee Party USA organization seemed like a godsend in response to the more extreme elements in the Tea Party movement. At first I thought that this could be the grassroots movement I’d been waiting for – one that actually included moderates independents, and actively worked across ideological [...]

Could the following be the new Crossfire? Let’s hope, and we have 4 different programs to show us. First, the War on Drugs… I encourage you to follow this program and share it with your friends. Because that’s the only way we’ll be able to get this type of debate into the mainstream. Next up [...]

Almost exactly 5 years ago, Wired.com ran an article chronicling the various reasons why nuclear energy was a decent idea. At the time, I was skeptical upon reading the headline, but once I dug into the article I was swayed and considered this alternative more seriously. It was definitely a controversial piece, but it was [...]

For my money, Scarborough is one of the best political talking heads around. He’s sincere, thoughtful and genuinely seems like he wants to get to the bottom of the issues. Recently he penned a must read column over at Huffington Post that’s already feels timeless. Here’s how he starts… Ten years ago, Charles Krauthammer took [...]

I found this over at Power Line and I’m reprinting it in full… I’m delighted to be collaborating with Joe Trippi, one of my favorite liberals, on a bipartisan project to support America’s veterans. The project is called the Eleven Eleven campaign; the objective is to get 11 million Americans to contribute $11 apiece to [...]

The bill that Baucus passed today didn’t have a public option in it. Let me repeat that…Baucus’ bill had NO PUBLIC OPTION in it. Yes, there are decentralized not-for-profit co-ops, but that’s definitely not a public option as had been proposed. Here’s more about what’s in the bill, from Politico: The bill requires individuals to [...]

And [our predecessors] knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil [...]

As many of you already know, Obama is set to give a speech next week that will either save or scuttle health care. I think we can all agree on that much. The question is: what will he propose? Well, at least one unlikely Republican health care reform advocate is already floating his trial balloon [...]

The Finance Committee keeps plugging away and the Maine senator talks to Andrea Mitchell about it… Yes folks, it’s all about co-ops. That will allow the moderate Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats enough cover to vote for this thing. The only question now is will the left wing of the Democratic party accept this [...]

Not a whole lot of good has come the way to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) these days. The only organization I can think of that gets more right wing scorn has been ACORN, who I think mostly get picked on because they don’t fight back. Another ally, Health Care for America Now (HCAN), [...]

In my last post I detailed some of the roadblocks that have kept the Democratic leadership in Washington from finding a way to pass a major health care reform bill with a public option. They’ve whittled the cost of the bill down a few hundred billion dollars by negotiating concessions from drug companies and hospitals, [...]

The Obama administration has managed to collect some concessions from hospital groups and drug companies, to the tune of over $200 billion in savings over ten years. This is nothing to sneeze at, but it still leaves the lion’s share of the proposed legislation searching for funding. Setting a requirement for employers to pay a [...]

Does anyone care about the opinions of former Senate majority leaders? What if one was once his party’s presidential nominee and another one nearly became President Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services? Today, former Senate majority leaders Bob Dole, Tom Daschle and Howard Baker released a health care plan they claim includes the kind [...]