Hello
Tension, tension, tension.
The White House is making it clear to wavering congressional Dems that if they'll vote against HCR, they can forget from president Obama's well known fundraising skills.
A one-night presidential appearance can bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds which would otherwise take months to accumulate through cold-calling by campaign volunteers.
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CBO: Student Loan reform will save the government $40 billion
The student lending bill easily passed the House last September by a vote of 253 to 171. The legislation eliminated the role of private lenders, which have received billions of dollars in federal subsidies and guarantees over the last 35 years to encourage them to lend to students. Instead, students would now get their loans directly from the Department of Education starting July 1 of this year.
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For those was wants to know what's really in the final HC bill, including the Student Loan reform, 2309 pages can be found HERE. Temperatures runs high enough here, so i'll just suggest that people will take a look, even if no one can read 2309 pages - You'll see how much good there's in there. As the president told Dennis Kucinuch yesterday: "It's been so long since the government has done something good for ordinary hard working Americans".
This is once in a lifetime chance to make good of the whole promise behind the Democratic Party. And i honestly think that any Dem who'll vote against this bill - Should be kicked out of the party. Rep. Dan Maffei is not one of them, as he announced that he'll vote YES.
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Jonathan Chait destroys David Brooks over his ridiculous column in the NYT today:
Today David Brooks has written the platonic ideal of a David Brooks column. It is in some sense the template for nearly every David Brooks column, but it captured the major elements so perfectly that it almost feels as if every previous David Brooks column has been an homage to this one....
....So using a majority vote procedure to pass legislation that the minority party has used strict partisan discipline into whipping its members into opposing is fundamentally about denying the humanity of the Other. It is a sad thing, and both parties sadly share some blame, but on the matter before us, the Republicans are in fact correct...
...So there you have it: a fun little sociological discussion followed by a reluctant, utterly incorrect defense of the current Republican position. If I ever get to glimpse Plato's world of ideal forms, this column will be there, preserved under glass.
And Ezra too:
Everything David Brooks says about reconciliation is wrong
I want to do a serious job on it. The factual statements Brooks uses in his argument are wrong. Not arguable, or questionable, or suspicious. Wrong. And since everything else flows from those wrong facts, the rest of the column can't be taken seriously...
...To recap, Brooks argued that reconciliation is being used more frequently, and that past reconciliation bills, like Bush's tax cuts and prescription drug benefit, were significantly bipartisan. Reconciliation is, in fact, being used less frequently, past reconciliation bills like the tax cuts were not significantly bipartisan by any stretch of the imagination, and the prescription drug benefit did not go through reconciliation. Brooks isn't wrong in the sense that "I disagree with him." He's wrong in the sense that the column requires a correction.
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I usually agree with Al Giordano, and this time is no different:
...The US left (if such a thing has even existed in recent decades) for once in a lifetime did not fall for the orgy of petty bickering that led to so many previous epic fails, and what we see now is a convergence of forces, from the grassroots up, that can be defined as A. Pragmatic, in its multiple expressions in favor of advancing the ball down the field, and in rejecting the calls for "all or nothing" that had so defined many squandered US progressive political efforts over the past 30 or 40 years, and, B. Disciplined, including in the miraculous appearance of organizing to insist on discipline in the ranks of anyone who traffics in the term "progressive" to promote themselves.
I don’t know how it came to be, for so many years, that pragmatism and discipline were considered dirty words in many US activist circles. But the truth is, political battles have never been won without pragmatism and discipline...
...It has been 62 years since President Harry Truman first proposed national health care reform. And if, as momentum seems to be turning, perhaps as soon as this coming weekend the health care bill pushes through to historic triumph, it will be because pragmatism and discipline are no longer considered dirty words on the US left. That would be a miracle, and also harbinger of better days, and more victories, yet to come.
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And something to release the stress a little bit. For those who are not familiar with Slate' awesome feature: Barack Obama's Facebook Feed here's a sample from the last edition. Go check the previous stuff. It's terrific.
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Finally, a twist!!! ;)
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Those were taken during 2010 International Women of Courage Awards ceremony last week, and they're courtesy of U.S. Department of State's flicker photo stream.