At several points over the last year–gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, a senate race in Massachusetts–President Obama and Democratic National Committee tried to excite the 2008 Obama voters, and largely failed. In each case, the independent vote shifted towards Republicans by significant margins. Obama also faces a serious enthusiasm gap going into the [...]
Lindsey Graham effectively killed the Senate’s looming cap-and-trade package by yanking his support from the bill–and thereby did the Democrats a favor. I’m all in favor of combating global warming, although I think a straight-ahead carbon tax (refundable in the form of reduced payroll taxes) would do the job far more efficiently than cap-and-trade. But [...]
The Asheville Citizen-Times has a nice piece about what it is like to come upon the President of the United States on a tiny trail in the Blue Ridge mountains. “It was just a little nondescript trail that I was on, and I didn’t expect to find anybody there really, let alone the president,” [Karen [...]
The Obama Administration’s policy of containment and deterrence against Iran, in the hopes of bringing that regime into compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, has many aspects–there are the official sanctions that will be voted on in the UN next month. But there are also unofficial sanctions, the gathering campaign of major businesses deciding not [...]
Health reform proponents got another round of bad headlines today, as the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a report saying that the new law will increase costs. According to an AP story by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, the report is “a worrisome assessment for Democrats,” showing that while cost savings could [...]
On Thursday, Reuters ran a story describing a policy at insurance company WellPoint of automatically reviewing any customer who contracted breast cancer for possible fraud, leading to some patients losing their coverage. The company is contesting the story, with a lengthy, rather legalistic statement on its website. The story . . . misstates the role [...]
