The 60 to 37 vote follows House approval of a similar measure last week and appears to save the government plan from an unexpected early shutdown. The White House supports extending the program, and the new funds are predicted to last until Labor Day, Transportation Department officials have said.javascript:void(0) Read More......
ABC's "This Week" beat NBC's "Meet the Press" in a clean ratings fight for the first time in a decade, Nielsen Media Research said on Thursday.I don't know anyone who thought David Gregory was a good choice for "Meet the Press." And, he hasn't been a good choice.
It was June 1999 when ABC's show last beat NBC's program in a contest without substitute hosts, sports pre-emptions or presidential visits.
It's an ominous sign for David Gregory, who was called upon to take over NBC's long dominant Sunday morning show following Tim Russert's death from a heart attack last year. While it's only one Sunday in August, "This Week" has been steadily gaining ground since the beginning of the year.
In another sign that Dems are worried that misinformation campaigns about health care pose a real threat, the DCCC is going up with Google ads steering people over to a new fact-check site that debunks the more pernicious health care falsehoods making the rounds.Now the Dems are worried. Priceless. Read More......
The new site, HealthCareFactCheck.com, is very aggressive in tying GOP leaders directly to the more lurid claims being made about health care reform. Its lead story pairs what looks like a mug-shot of John Boehner with the debunked claim that reform could lead to mass “government-encouraged euthanasia.”
....Anecdotal evidence from around the country suggests that claims such as the “euthanasia” one are gaining some traction, and Dems in marginal districts are being forced to spend time rebutting them to constituents. It’s hard to quantify how well such debunking efforts are working, but at a minimum Dems are hoping the new effort gives organizers a resource to combat the claims that are hosing down voters from the other side.
The window for reform is closing. If we don't do it soon, we may not have this opportunity for a long while. And I'm not just talking about health reform. It is just as true of the reforms of the financial system that we were repeatedly promised months ago. As Paul Krugman put it, "by rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely."Read More......
Cobb has done a number of other political satire videos on YouTube, most under the auspices of “The Public Service Administration,” a comedy YouTube channel he founded during the 2008 campaign which has received more than 4 million views.I think Andy is a big part of it. Read More......
His most-viewed production was a McCain-focused riff on willi.i.am’s pro-Obama video, “Yes We Can.” Cobb’s version was “john.he.is.” In addition to his YouTube hijinks, Cobb has done video production work for left-leaning causes and organizations. Both he and Funk are veterans of The Second City improvisational theater group.
Cobb said he got the idea for the Cillizza-Milbank parody on Friday night, filmed it Sunday and edited and posted it to the web on Monday.
“More than anything, I think it speaks to the power of new media to influence traditional media,” he said. “We could do a sketch and put it on YouTube, but if it hadn't echoed around the web on sites like Kos, HuffPost, Americablog, Eschaton, Wonkette, Media Matters, Andrew Sullivan, Twitter, etc., it wouldn't have meant much. The combined influence of new media has the power to influence the discussion in a way that prevents the traditional media from getting away with lazy s—- like Mouthpiece Theater. I'm happy to be a small part of that.”
Federal Judge Jed Rakoff said the parties had not explained why $33 million was appropriate, or whether those funds might have actually come from federal bailout dollars.Read More......
“The proposed consent judgment in no way specifies the basis for the $33 million figure or whether any of this money is derived directly or indirectly from the $20 billion in public funds previously advanced to Bank of America as part of its 'bailout,'" Rakoff wrote in his judgment.
Rakoff added that the agreement did not get to the bottom of the “very serious allegations” the SEC had made against Bank of America.
Drug industry lobbyists reacted with alarm this week to a House health care overhaul measure that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices and demand additional rebates from drug manufacturers.Weak, weak response from Mr. Messina. He and Mr. Emanuel were supposed to be the two smartest, toughest, savviest guys around. They were going to impose order and get things done. Instead, they were outsmarted by Billy Tauzin. And, there are potential repercussions for losing at this high stakes game:
In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul. The Obama administration had never spelled out the details of the agreement.
“We were assured: ‘We need somebody to come in first. If you come in first, you will have a rock-solid deal,’ ” Billy Tauzin, the former Republican House member from Louisiana who now leads the pharmaceutical trade group, said Wednesday. “Who is ever going to go into a deal with the White House again if they don’t keep their word? You are just going to duke it out instead.”
A deputy White House chief of staff, Jim Messina, confirmed Mr. Tauzin’s account of the deal in an e-mail message on Wednesday night.
“The president encouraged this approach,” Mr. Messina wrote. “He wanted to bring all the parties to the table to discuss health insurance reform.”
The new attention to the agreement could prove embarrassing to the White House, which has sought to keep lobbyists at a distance, including by refusing to hire them to work in the administration.The White House staffers look like amateurs. And, why does the drug industry warrant such an insider deal? Read More......
The White House commitment to the deal with the drug industry may also irk some of the administration’s Congressional allies who have an eye on drug companies’ profits as they search for ways to pay for the $1 trillion cost of the health legislation.
The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits fell sharply last week, a government report showed on Thursday, boosting views the labor market and the economy were stabilizing.That's still over half a million new people filing for unemployment. But, hopefully, it's starting to turn around. The operative word appears to be "stabilizing." Read More......
Initial claims for state unemployment insurance fell 38,000 to a seasonally adjusted 550,000 in the week ended August 1 from 588,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said.
Even if the partnership does not result in legislation, Democratic leaders are already contemplating ways to preserve much of what it produces as they look to unite their party and pick up Republican votes when the health-care debate moves to the Senate floor in the fall. The Finance Committee coalition is seeking compromise on some of the most complex issues facing Congress, including how to compel employers to continue providing insurance to their workers; how to more fairly distribute government subsidies for coverage; and who and how many should be allowed to remain uninsured.Of course, this "gang of six" giveaway to the insurance industry also has no public option. We pretty much expected that from Baucus and McConnell.
For years, [Fromme] was one of Manson's few remaining followers, as many other "Manson Family" members have shunned him. A prison spokeswoman would not say whether Fromme continues to correspond with Manson.The Sacramento Bee has some great photos from the events in 1975.
Fromme was convicted in 1975 of pointing a gun at then-President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California. Secret Service agents prevented her from firing, but the gun was later found to have no bullet in the chamber, although it contained a clip of ammunition.
In a 1987 interview with CNN affiliate WCHS, Fromme, then housed in West Virginia, recalled the president "had his hands out and was waving ... and he looked like cardboard to me. But at the same time, I had ejected the bullet in my apartment and I used the gun as it was."
She said she knew Ford was in town and near her, "and I said, 'I gotta go and talk to him,' and then I thought, 'That's foolish. He's not going to stop and talk to you.' People have already shown you can lay blood in front of them and they're not, you know, they don't think anything of it. I said, 'Maybe I'll take the gun,' and I thought, 'I have to do this. This is the time.' "
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