December 18, 2010
Michael Kinsley has a must-read review of former President George W. Bush's memoir,
Decision Points.
"It would be nice to say that Bush grew in office -- like Henry V, the wastrel youth and son of a famous father to whom he was often compared. But judging from this book, it didn't happen. Although Bush is admirable for stopping, he probably was more fun when he drank."
"Maybe it will require another election."
-- Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), quoted by the
Washington Post, insisting the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" was "in direct repudiation of the message of the American people" even though polls actually found
overwhelming support for the action.
Despite two highly anticipated votes in the Senate today, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) "was nowhere to be found," the
Washington Post reports.
"Manchin's absence stood in contrast to the presence of another Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who despite a recent diagnosis of prostate cancer, made it in for Saturday's votes."
A Machin spokesman to the
Charleston Gazette: "While he regrets missing the votes, it was a family obligation that he just could not break."
The Senate "struck down the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, bringing to a close a 17-year struggle over a policy that forced thousands of Americans from the ranks and caused others to keep secret their sexual orientation," the
New York Times reports.
"By a vote of 65 to 31, with eight Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate approved and sent to President Obama a repeal of the Clinton-era law, known as 'don't ask, don't tell,' a policy critics said amounted to government-sanctioned discrimination that treated gay and lesbian troops as second-class citizens."
Washington Post: "As recently as this morning, Obama was calling wavering senators to
ensure the bill's passage, a White House official said. Saturday's
successful vote delivered a significant victory for Obama, who promised
during his 2008 campaign to end the ban during his presidency."
The president will sign the bill into law next week.
Senate Democrats could muster only 55 votes in support of the DREAM Act, "a measure that would have created a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children," the
Washington Post reports.
"Under Senate rules, Democrats needed 60 votes to overcome Republican opposition to the bill. The House of Representatives had passed the measure earlier this month, 216 to 198."
"The irony of the DREAM Act's failure is that it had strong bipartisan support at the start of the administration, and advocates believed it could generate momentum for more controversial policy changes."
December 17, 2010
The Census Bureau will release its official state population totals next week along with the resulting allotment of House seats for the next decade.
Cook Political Report: "For some states, there isn't much suspense. Georgia, Nevada, and Utah are all but certain to gain an additional seat in the House, while Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are all but certain to lose a seat and Ohio is all but certain to lose two seats. However, much like NCAA basketball teams anticipate Selection Sunday, some states are 'on the bubble' and won't know how many seats they will have until Tuesday. According to population estimates released by Election Data Services' Kimball Brace, the ten states in contention for the 'last five' seats in the House (in order of likelihood to make the cut) are South Carolina, Florida, Minnesota, Washington, Texas, New York, California, Arizona, North Carolina, and Illinois."
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) told the
Duluth News Tribune that he wished he had run for another term now that he knows Republicans will control the legislature.
Said Pawlenty: "Yes, if I would have known then what I know now, given what I've been through and hoped to accomplish, but that (the DFL-controlled Legislature) blocked. But you can't predict the future. And of course, I made my decision after the 2008 election when President Obama and the Democrats swept everything... Hindsight is 20/20."
It doesn't sound like someone with serious presidential aspirations.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told
The Hill that he plans to sit down with incoming Senate campaign chief Patty Murray (D-WA) at her request.
Said Lieberman: "She said, 'I want to sit down and talk with you soon.' We just had that exchange earlier today."
But the
Hartford Courant notes "back in Connecticut, far from the cozy confines of the U.S. Senate, Joementum is getting a more tepid reaction."
A
Magellan Strategies poll in New Hampshire finds President Obama in little danger in the unlikely event he's challenged in a Democratic presidential primary.
He leads Hillary Clinton by 31 points, 59% to 28%, and tops Howard Dean by 68 points, 78% to 10%.
Politico: "With the site of the 2012 Democratic convention expected to be decided in a matter of weeks, insiders in the selection process believe it has come down to a choice between St. Louis and Charlotte, N.C., with the other two finalist cities, Minneapolis and Cleveland, all but out of the running."
The
Boston Globe looks at Rep. Patrick Kennedy's (D-RI) upcoming retirement which "will break a bond between the nation's capital and Camelot. When the new House is seated in January, it will mark the first time since 1947 -- the year a 29-year-old John F. Kennedy was sworn in as a Massachusetts congressman -- that no member of the Kennedy family will be serving in the House, Senate, or White House."
"We take turns sleeping."
-- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, quoted by the
New York Times, when asked during his annual telethon who runs the country when he and President Dmitri Medvedev are sleeping.
A new
Washington Post-ABC News poll finds 59% of Americans flatly rule out voting for Sarah Palin for president -- substantially more than say there's no way they'd vote for President Obama.
A new
University of Maryland study finds that those "who had greater exposure to news sources were generally better informed... There were however a number of cases where greater exposure to a news source increased misinformation on a specific issue."
Key finding: Fox News viewers were were "significantly" more likely than non-viewers to erroneously believe false information about the economy, taxes, climate change, bailouts and whether President Obama was born in the United States.
"These effects increased incrementally with increasing levels of exposure and all were statistically significant. The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it."
Charles Krauthammer: "If Barack Obama wins reelection in 2012, as is now more likely than not, historians will mark his comeback as beginning on Dec. 6, the day of the Great Tax Cut Deal of 2010... With his stunning tax deal, Obama is back. Holding no high cards, he nonetheless managed to resurface suddenly not just as a player but as orchestrator, dealmaker and central actor in a high $1 trillion drama."
"And Obama pulled this off at his lowest political ebb. After the shambles of the election and with no bargaining power - the Republicans could have gotten everything they wanted on the Bush tax cuts retroactively in January without fear of an Obama veto - he walks away with what even Paul Ryan admits was $313 billion in superfluous spending."
PolitiFact picks the phrase "government takeover of health care" as the Lie of the Year.
"Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats' shellacking in the November elections... The phrase is simply not true."
On Larry King's final show last night,
Tom Shales notes there was "a fleeting bit of embarrassment" involving the term "zipper club."
King noted that he and Bill Clinton, who was a guest via satellite, "were both members of that fanciful aggregation, an unfortunate reference considering that, earlier, Ryan Seacrest had clumsily asked King whether the fly on his trousers had a zipper or buttons."
King belatedly explained that the "zipper club" is for men who've had open-heart surgery. "I'm glad you clarified that," Clinton said, with a forgiving smile.
Chicago mayoral hopeful Rahm Emanuel did indeed store stuff in the Chicago home he rented to a tenant when he moved to Washington, the
Chicago Sun Times reports. His lawyers visited home and took pictures after his tenant testified nothing was there.
Emanuel has argued "the fact they left the items there while Emanuel went to Washington D.C. to work as President Obama's chief of staff shows he always planned to return to Chicago -- and therefore should be eligible to run for mayor."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) will undergo surgery on Monday for early-stage prostate cancer, the
New York Times reports, "potentially denying Democrats a crucially needed vote at the end of an extremely busy lame-duck session."
Said Wyden: "I scheduled the surgery for the Monday before Christmas anticipating that the Senate would have recessed by that time and that there would be no disruption to my work in Oregon or Washington. However it now appears that I will be missing votes tomorrow and possibly next week while I prepare and undergo this procedure. I expect to be back to work full-time when the Senate reconvenes in January."
Sarah Palin told
ABC News that she doesn't support the "lousy" tax deal brokered by President Obama and congressional Republicans.
Said Palin: "I think it's a lousy deal and we can do better for the American people," noting the "new Congress is seated the first week of January and it is better to wait until they are seated and get a good deal for the American public than to accept what I think is a lousy deal, because it creates a temporary economy with even more uncertainty for businesses and it does increase taxes."
She also ripped President Obama: "I would say that it is a flip flop in his position on taxes because he was so adamant about not allowing the tax cut extension to take place for job creators, and then all of a sudden one day he was fine with it. He, you know, can term it compromise. I term it flip flop."
Late last night, Congress approved an $801 billion package of tax cuts and $57 billion for extended unemployment insurance. Supporting the overall measure were 139 Democrats and 138 Republicans; opposed were 112 Democrats and 36 Republicans.
New York Times: "The White House and Republicans hailed the deal as a rare bipartisan achievement and a prototype for future hard-bargained compromises in the new era of divided government. But the accord also showed that policy-makers remain locked in an unsustainable cycle of cutting taxes and raising spending that has proven politically palatable in the short term but could threaten the nation's fiscal stability in years ahead."
Washington Post: "But for Obama, the two-year window represents an opportunity to tackle the ambitious task of overhauling the federal tax code. By sunsetting current policies immediately after the 2012 presidential election, lawmakers in both parties said the measure sets a natural timetable for developing a tax-reform plan - an essential step toward reining in the rising national debt."
President Obama is expected to sign the package into law today.
On December 26, the
Chicago Sun Times notes Richard M. Daley will surpass his late father, Richard J. Daley, as Chicago's longest-serving mayor, having served 7,917 days -- 21 years and eight months.
"Comparing father and son is difficult because of the vastly different eras in which they served. The mayor's powers have been diminished by demographic changes, union contracts and the Shakman court decree banning political hiring and firing. A prolonged recession, shrinking federal and state funding and a more aggressive news media have also made the mayor's job more difficult. But comparisons are unavoidable, particularly about which Mayor Daley was more powerful."
December 16, 2010
Senate Democrats have "given up on their plan to pass a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill in the face of unified Republican opposition,"
The Hill reports. "The bill's collapse will take with it more than 6,000 earmarks as well as more than $1 billion in funding for implementation of health care reform."
Democrats will now move to other priorities: the DREAM Act, which would grant permanent legal residency to illegal immigrants under a certain age, and a repeal of the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy.
A
Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll finds that just 29% of the registered voters said they believed President Obama would win re-election in 2012 while 64% said they expected him to lose.
Of course, this result doesn't square with yesterday's
NBC/WSJ poll that found Obama beating a generic Republican candidate, 42% to 39%.
The Fix notes that of the last 12 party-switchers in the House of Representatives, just six won their next elections. Of the last four party-switchers in the Senate, only Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) won re-election.
"The problem with party-switching is twofold: the party you leave takes it personal affront and does everything it can to beat you AND the party you join is skeptical about your real motives with doubts lingering about whether you are a wolf in sheep's clothing."
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