For a few minutes Monday, the cable news networks turned live to a presidential press conference in Guadalajara, Mexico, an event most American viewers experienced as a brief respite from the regularly-scheduled health care reform horror show–the looped videotapes of angry protesters screeching at town hall meetings, the attack ads …
White House
More Fact Check: The Obama Flip-Flop On Medicare Drug Prices
The New York Times reported Saturday that the pharmaceutical industry has “authorized its lobbyists to spend as much as $150 million on television commercials supporting President Obama’s health care overhaul.” By all appearances this seems like clear payback for Obama’s decision to, among other things, reverse his campaign promise on …
The New White House “Reality” Website
The White House has released a new website, the “Reform Reality Check,” the latest “fact-check” sites, aimed at debunking some of the more egregious characterizations of the still-amorphous health care reform effort. It is a signal that the Obama Administration is settling in for a long slog against its conservative critics, a fight not …
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah…
Sarah Palin, via her Facebook page, is the latest to spread the most bizarre rumor about what is in the health care legislation that is being drafted on Capitol Hill.:
The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his
…
1,000 Words
A photo by fellow Swamplander Brooks Kraft, via our White House Photo Blog. So what do you figure is in there, anyway?
With Great Hope Comes Great Responsibility
Comparing the national mood in the summer of 2009 with the national mood in the summer of 2001 is a bit like comparing bald eagles with chickens. Not only are they different birds altogether, but they live in entirely different environments. In the summer of 2001, the unemployment rate was 4.5 percent. In the summer of 2009, it stands at …
Obama and PhRMA: Deal or No Deal?
Yesterday’s New York Times report of a behind-the-scenes deal between the White House and the drug lobby is causing no small degree of consternation among Democrats on Capitol Hill. Over at HuffPost, Ryan Grim is reporting that Senators received assurances from the White House that there was no deal that would prevent Medicare from …
Obama’s Secret Deal With The Drugmakers
Shrewd politics–or cynical ones? In today’s NYT, David Kirkpatrick shines a light on the secret deal that the Obama White House made with the pharmaceutical industry to keep it at the table in health reform negotiations. It turns out that even as they were applauding their deal to find $80 billion in savings, they weren’t telling us …
Gibbs Retracts On Iran
This from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs via Reuters:
“Let me correct a little bit of what I said yesterday. I denoted that Mr. Ahmadinejad was the elected leader of Iran. I would say that’s not for me to pass judgment on,” Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“He’s been inaugurated. That’s a fact. Whether any
…
Re: YouTube Wars…
That “Shock Uncovered” video is from the very same health care forum that I posted about yesterday. And as I noted then, there was indeed a shock — to Obama, who showed up unprepared, and (I am convinced) without any real idea what, specifically, he wanted to do about health care reform.
As I also noted yesterday, that was not the …
YouTube Wars: The White House Vs. DrudgeReport
We live in a land where a person who goes by the name “NakedEmperor” with editing software and a laptop can rattle the President of the United States. On Monday, Matt Drudge began teasing this video on his website, a scattershot work of highly edited oppo.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-bY92mcOdk&hl=en&fs=1&]
On Tuesday, …
Should Judd Apatow Have Been On TIME’s Cover?
Health care, schmelthcare…
[brightcove exp=1896788584&vid=31270497001&w=450&h=338]
You can read Joel Stein’s profile of Apatow here.
Obama’s Health Care Learning Curve
The Washington Post is running excerpts from Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson’s new book about the 2008 campaign–must-read for political junkies, because the two veteran Washington Post reporters give us a lot of insights from the key players themselves. They also have access to important emails and documents, like Obama political strategist …