MSNBC has suspended Keith Olbermann “indefinitely and without pay” for making financial contributions to three Democratic congressional candidates. Per MSNBC.com:
The announcement came in a one-sentence statement from msnbc TV President Phil Griffin: “I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she will run for minority leader in a statement today. It had been widely expected that Pelosi, 70, would retire. But, after she spent much of the last two days calling virtually every member of her shrunken caucus, she said she came to the conclusion that her “work is far from finished.” From her …
In the ArenaUncategorized
Nancy Pelosi wants to run for House minority leader. A better idea: the Democrats need to find someone who reflects the middle of the country, and the problems average folks are facing in the middle of the country. Nominations, please?
This is the announcement today from AARP, one of the biggest backers of President Obama’s Health Care Reform law, via the Associated Press:
AARP adds that it’s changing copayments and deductibles to avoid a 40 percent tax on high-cost health plans that takes effect in 2018 under the law. . . .
“Most plan co-pays and deductibles have
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A couple weeks back, I wrote about the racial stereotypes Sharron Angle employed in her television spots in Nevada, and speculated that such strategies would pile up electoral baggage for the Republicans.
Well, it looks like the baggage got thrown at Angle. Here is the Las Vegas Sun’s Jon Ralston from his winners and losers column …
Senator-elect Mark Kirk meets with democratic rival Alexi Giannoulias at the Billy Goat Tavern November 3, in Chicago. (Photo by Frank Polich/Getty Images)
–The economy added 151,000 jobs in October, with private sector gains significantly outstripping government losses. The labor force shrank and the overall unemployment rate …
In the ArenaUncategorized
David Brooks is totally on target today. The Democrats lost, in large part, because they spent too much time on issues that either hurt the middle west middle class in the short-term (cap and trade) or seemed too peripheral or distant to their immediate needs (health care). By threatening to repeal health care and fixing on deficit …
In the ArenaUncategorized
Mitch McConnell has never been a very interesting leader or legislator. Over the past few days, he’s proved himself to be a vile and graceless public figure as well. Not even the slightest hint of comity, which, I expect is an effort by this eminently establishmentarian figure to woo the Teasies. Trouble is, he’s lying about his record …
Michael Grunwald and I teamed up to write this week’s cover story, a profile of the speaker-in-waiting, John Boehner.
It was striking in trying to coax Boehner into speaking to us – he never did – how much he wanted to avoid the limelight. The victory, his staff said, was not about him, but about a movement and about Barack …
These are the hazards of buying public stock footage. Here is Sarah Palin’s new pat-on-the-back election video. At 36 seconds, she says, “This is our morning in America,” as an apparent orange sunrise is shown behind the Statue of Liberty.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr3sj8q5lfY&fs=1&hl=en_US]
That stock footage is for …
In the ArenaUncategorized
Bill Galston has an elegant statistical analysis of what happened on Tuesday: it wasn’t so much that Republican enthusiasm was up or Democratic fervor was down–there was a near symmetrical shift from blue to red among independents. This stands to reason: almost all the action in the electorate takes place in the middle of the field, …
—A lot of good stuff in this week’s newsstand issue of TIME. That cover says a lot all on its own.
–Mitch McConnell will restate his priority of making Obama a one-term president today. It looks like a bad cop routine to compliment Boehner’s good cop one.
–Jim DeMint settles into his role and
