The day Rahm met a real gay rights advocate

A funny thing happened to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel during the reception for the hate crimes bill. Someone in Washington, DC finally stood up to him. And it was a lesbian mom from Newton, Mass... Read the rest of this post...

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AMERICAblog may send you updates on this and other important campaigns by email. If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from our email list, you may do so by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. Read the rest of this post...

Boehner's latest lie: "We accept moderates in our party"

This doesn't pass the straight-face test:

"Clearly [Scozzofava] would be on the left side of our party," said Boehner, who had financially supported the campaign of the New York assemblywoman. "...We accept moderates in our party and we want moderates in our party."

Who is "we"? It's certainly not the base of the GOP. The teabaggers don't accept or want anyone who doesn't adhere strictly to their hard-core, extreme right-wing philosophy. As I wrote yesterday:

There is no room for different ideas in the modern day GOP. The teabaggers rule their world.

Read the rest of this post...

Frank Rich on the NY House race from hell

As always, spot on.

The same could be said of Beck, Palin and their acolytes. Though they constantly liken the president to various totalitarian dictators, it is they who are re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode. They drove out Arlen Specter, and now want to “melt Snowe” (as the blog Red State put it). The same Republicans who once deplored Democrats for refusing to let an anti-abortion dissident, Gov. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, speak at the 1992 Clinton convention now routinely banish any dissenters in their own camp.

These conservatives’ whiny cries of victimization also parrot a tic they once condemned in liberals. After Rush Limbaugh was booted from an ownership group bidding on the St. Louis Rams, he moaned about being done in by the “race card.” What actually did him in, of course, was the free-market American capitalism he claims to champion. Limbaugh didn’t understand that in an increasingly diverse nation, profit-seeking N.F.L. franchises actually want to court black ticket buyers, not drive them away.

This same note of self-martyrdom was sounded in a much-noticed recent column by the former Nixon hand Pat Buchanan. Ol’ Pat sounded like the dispossessed antebellum grandees in “Gone With the Wind” when lamenting the plight of white working-class voters. “America was once their country,” he wrote. “They sense they are losing it. And they are right.”

Great ending too:

To the uninitiated, the tea party crowd comes across like the barflies in “Star Wars.”

There is only one political opponent whom Obama really has to worry about at this moment: Hamid Karzai. It’s Afghanistan and joblessness, not the Stalinists of the right, that have the power to bring this president down.

Read the rest of this post...

Joe Lieberman admits he prefers we don't pass health care reform at all

As someone tweeted on Twitter last night:

Got the Joe Lieberman costume ready. Gonna stand in front of porches and block kids from getting candy.

Joe Lieberman is now saying that he prefers no health care reform at all, if the choice is between a bill with the public option and no bill at all. The thing is, Lieberman just got caught in a lie. As ThinkProgress points out, Lieberman opposed Baucus' health care bill, legislation that didn't include the public option at all. Not to mention, three years ago when Lieberman was up for reelection, he was in favor of universal coverage. Now, not so much.

Joe Lieberman is in favor of being the center of attention, regardless of how many promises he has to break, or how many people he hurts. Lieberman owes his committee chairmanship, and his election in part, to Barack Obama. Perhaps this is another issue the President might some day choose to weigh in on. Read the rest of this post...

Republican endorses Democrat in NY House race

Wow. Now that is the definition of a civil war. Brought to you by your local teabaggers. Read the rest of this post...

Why the President can't wait until conference to weigh in on health care

As you may know, for the health care bill to become law first a bill must pass the US Senate and the US House of Representatives. It doesn't have to be the same bill, they can be completely different. Once the Senate and House pass their own health care reform bills, somehow you have to reconcile the differences in the two bills. In order to do that, the Senate and the House each appoint their own negotiators to meet together in what is called a Conference Committee. They get together and go through both of their bills, line by line, difference by difference, and haggle over each provision. Finally, when the "conferees" have gone through all the differing provisions, and have agreed on a unified bill, that merged bill is sent back to the Senate and House for one final vote. If each body passes the bill, then it goes to the president for his signature.

As you also may know, there's been a lot of concern of late that the President hasn't weighed in with individual members of Congress in order to get their support for the strongest health care bill possible, and that this is a good part of the reason why the robust public option appears to have failed in both the Senate and the House. Joe posted some video below of Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner lamenting the fact that the President has refused to get involved, and explaining how it has hurt our chances to get a strong bill. The President's critics, the accusations that the President has refused to help us get a strong bill, are no longer anonymous.

A commenter who frequently defends the President's actions on health care reform, write this yesterday:

[The President will] get more involved when the bill makes its way to conference committee. It is silly to spend political capital right now when the Senate bill is not even going to be the final bill.

In fact, that's absurd. As it currently stands, the President's inaction has not only killed any chance of getting a single payer system, it has killed the robust public option in the Senate and the House. The robust public option is not going to be in the House or Senate health care reform bill. Once that legislation goes to conference, there is no way to improve it beyond what is in the two bills before it. The best we can get is the best that's included in the two bills, period. Now that the President's inaction has let the robust public option die on the vine, it's gone. And all the king's horses and all the king's men can't bring it back in conference.

The President's unwillingness to fight for his own campaign promises has already severely wounded health care reform. This is why we've been writing so much of late about the White House's refusal to get involved, refusal to lobby individual members to support a robust public option, to support Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi in their efforts to get as good a bill as possible. There is no "give him time," there is no "it's only his first year, give him a break." This administration is only getting one shot at health care reform. It's not coming back for another vote in a year or two when the White House finally gets its sea legs. The President's inaction has real consequences now.

The White House needs to stop fighting for mediocrity, and start fighting for its beliefs. Read the rest of this post...

Is Obama going to step up and actually advocate for the strong health insurance reform bill?

NOTE FROM JOHN: The sources are no longer anonymous.

With several of the top spokespeople from the White House on the talk shows today, it's important to hear what they have to say about the President's role in the health insurance reform debate. How much is he actually doing on Capitol Hill to get the strongest possible bill with the best public option? Because, indications from the Hill are that he's not doing so much. Rep. Anthony Weiner said as much on Rachel Maddow's show on Thursday. Taylor Marsh transcribed the key points and the video is below. Weiner's message:

You know, the idea that the President could have maybe come in and said, you know what, here’s ten guys that I can sway. If the President of the United States calls it’s tough to say no. We’ve kind of been left to do this on our own and you really need the full-throated support of a president at a moment like this when we’re having a big national debate. … But really, I don’t think we can close this out unless the President really helps us.” –

Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

The White House is sending out its top dogs again this week: Valerie Jarrett, Axelrod, Geither and David Plouffe. Republicans are sending out their leaders, too: Joe Lieberman, Rush Limbaugh and House Minority Leader John Boehner.

Expected topics are the economy, health insurance reform and how the teabaggers now own the GOP.

Full listing after the break.

Here's the full lineup:

ABC's "This Week" — White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.

___

CBS' "Face the Nation" — White House senior adviser David Axelrod; Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.

___

NBC's "Meet the Press" — Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner; David Plouffe, former Obama presidential campaign manager; author Jon Krakauer.

___

CNN's "State of the Union" — House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio; Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss.

"Fox News Sunday" _ Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio talk show host.

Read the rest of this post...