“Drops of Jupiter” was one of the biggest radio airplay songs of the decade*?
Man, has a) pop culture generally and b) the role of radio changed a lot since 2001.
*I know the song was released in 1998. Just going by the airplay stats in the linked article.
In an uncharacteristically impassioned and frank speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) challenged “courageous” Republicans to “break from their leadership” and “work together to pass health care reform.” Baucus argued that the Republican party was more interested in winning seats during the 2010 election than offering sensible alternatives to the health care crisis. He also accused the Republican leadership of pressuring members of ‘Gang of Six’ to abandon bipartisan negotiations.
Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Mike Enzi (R-WY), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) “wanted to pass health care reform,” Baucus insisted. “They asked very good questions,” but “one by one by one they started to drift away. They wanted to pass health care reform, they wanted to act in a bipartisan basis but they were pressured, pressured from their political party not to do it.”
At one point, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) tried to argue that so-called “Gang of Six” members wanted to support a compromise, but “it dawned on them that my friends on the outer side of the aisle wanted to Europeanize the health care system of the United States of America.” Baucus responded angrily. “I want to tell this Senator that is not what happened,” he shouted, waiving his index finger at Wicker:
BAUCUS: I want to tell the Senator that that is not what happened. I was in the room constantly, constantly. I talked to those Senators many many times. That is not what happened. I”ll tell you what did happen. Your leadership pressured them, pressured them, pressured them not to work together. There is no European style effort in that room, that is a totally untruthful statement. Totally untruthful statement. None whatsoever….That assertion of working towards a European solution is entirely untrue. It’s entirely false.
Watch it:
“I just want the public to know that we worked very hard to get a bipartisan bill that side of the aisle started working with us but gradually they began to bleed politically,” Baucus said. They realized “that they would do a better chance in the 2010 elections by just not working with us, but just attack attack attack attack attack and try to score political points to defeat any honest effort to get health care reform.”
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
Rachel Maddow reported tonight that Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) referenced John Kennedy’s “profiles in courage” to urge Democrats to vote no on health care. Maddow noted that Kennedy was a champion for health reform. Watch it:
This afternoon, in uncharacteristically impassioned and frank speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) challenged “courageous” Republicans to “break from their leadership” and “work together to pass health care reform.” Baucus argued that the Republican party was more interested in winning seats during the 2010 election than offering sensible alternatives to the health care crisis and accused the Republican leadership of pressuring members of ‘Gang of Six’ to abandon bipartisan negotiations.
Sens. Snowe, Enzi and Grassley “wanted to pass health care reform,” Baucus insisted. “They asked very good questions,” but “one by one by one they started to drift away. They wanted to pass health care reform, they wanted to act in a bipartisan basis but they were pressured, pressured from their political party not to do it.”
At one point, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) explained the unanimous Republicans opposition by suggesting that members of the Gang of Six wanted to support a compromise but “it dawned on them that my friends on the other side of the aisle wanted to Europeanize the health care system of the United States of America.” Baucus responded angrily. “I want to tell this Senator that is not what happened,” he shouted, waiving his index finger at Wicker:
I want to tell the Senator that that is not what happened. I was in the room constantly, constantly. I talked to those Senators many many times. That is not what happened. I”ll tell you what did happen. Your leadership pressured them, pressured them, pressured them not to work together. There is no European style effort in that room, that is a totally untruthful statement. Totally untruthful statement. None whatsoever….That assertion of working towards a European solution is entirely untrue. It’s entirely false.
Watch it:
“I just want the public to know that we worked very hard to get a bipartisan bill that side of the aisle started working with us but gradually they began to bleed politically,” Baucus said. They realized “that they would do a better chance in the 2010 elections by just not working with us, but just attack attack attack attack attack and try to score political points to defeat any honest effort to get health care reform.”
I wanted to control it:
— Lamar Alexander has evidently never taken a bus.
— DC Airports need more frequent bus service.
— These five fallacies in the coverage of the Copenhagen Accord are really just errors, not fallacies, but it’s still a good article.
— “Conflict minerals” makes the buzzwords of the year list; it’s an idea CAP’s Enough project has been involved in popularizing.
— Remember when American foreign policy was run by crazy people?
Camera Obscura “French Navy” would be on my best songs of the year list, if I were compiling such a list.
President Bush’s presidential library at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas (the “George W. Bush Presidential Center”) will house a think tank called the George W. Bush Institute, which will promote ideas centered around “the principles of freedom, opportunity, responsibility and compassion.” The Huffington Post reports that the Institute will co-produce a new television show titled “Ideas In Action”:
The George W. Bush Institute — the “action- oriented think tank” that is part of Bush’s Presidential Center — will co-produce a public television show hosted by its executive director, Ambassador James Glassman.
“Ideas in Action” will premiere in February and will be co-produced by Andrew Walworth, who produces PBS’s “Think Tank.” Glassman, the former Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy under President Bush and one-time moderator of CNN’s “Capital Gang Sunday,” will lead a discussion on public policy issues in front of a live audience at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He will remain executive director of the Institute.
The show will be distributed by Executive Program Services (EPS) to public television stations nationwide, including many PBS affiliates. Beginning in January, EPS will also begin distributing repeats of “Think Tank,” currently distributed by PBS.
Given the vast unpopularity of Bush’s “ideas in action” over the past eight years, it will be interesting to see how his team continues to revise the historical record.
A member of congress with the right attitude about his job:
Perriello said there is a difference between being targeted and being vulnerable, and he said his support for health-care and energy reform are not as out of touch with his constituents as his opponents say. But even he seemed to acknowledge the challenge of winning next year as he described how he has sought to govern since taking office in January.
“My ultimate goal is not to get reelected,” he said. “It’s to know that I did the best damn job I could representing the people of the 5th District and making a difference. That’s just a different litmus test than some of the powers that be are used to working with.”
That’s right on. It does the world no good for members in marginal seats to put districts at risk over unimportant things, or lost causes, but casting tough votes on the big issues is what members of congress come to Washington to do. After all, it’s not as if the nation’s homeless shelters are filled with former members of congress. We’re heading into what’s likely to be a tough election cycle, and it’s important that people focus their resources on helping the really good members of congress. Keep articles like this in mind.
Yesterday, RNC Chairman Michael Steele said that Senate Democrats’ effort to pass health care reform in the face of Republican obstructionism means “they’re willing to basically flip the bird to the American people and slip it in in the dead of night.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid condemned Steele’s incendiary language as “crass.” MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs today for President Obama’s “take.” Gibbs responded with a quip about Steele’s lucrative side career as a paid speaker, asking, “How much did that interview cost them?”:
Gibbs was referring to new revelations, reported today by the Washington Times, that Steele is “using his title to market himself for paid appearances nationwide, personally profiting from speeches with fees of up to $20,000.” Former RNC Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf said this practice is highly unusual and ripped Steele: “Holy mackerel, I never heard of a chairman of either party ever taking money for speeches.” “The job of a national chairman is to give speeches,” Fahrenkopf said. “That’s what the national party pays him for.”
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) called Steele’s comment “foolish language.”
I really dig this post by quadmoniker over at PostBourgie about the need for Hollywood to get more women directors in the mix. She writes, of the stunning excellence that is The Hurt Locker (probably my vote for best movie I’ve seen this year):
I’m not going to say that this was due to Bigelow’s special woman-sense or anything, because we don’t know why she was able to make it so good. That’s kind of the point….If we leave out half the population from movie-making, we’re leaving out half the perspectives that might be able to bring something new to the table. The major studios would be better off if they brought it, because I’d love to see more movies like The Hurt Locker.
The one thing I’d add is that we don’t know that “half the perspectives” would necessarily be gendered. It turns out that just as I didn’t need a woman to make a movie about enduring female friendships in New York City, I didn’t need someone with specific combat experience to make an astonishing movie about war: I needed Kathryn Bigelow. The reason to finance movies by female directors is not because you’ve suddenly discovered that shucks, ladies go to the movies and they have all this money to spend on fancy shoes so why not on tickets, and broads will attract broads, right? The reason to back movies by female directors is that they’re just as well equipped as male directors to capture the entire spectrum of humanity.
When he did it yesterday I thought maybe he was just free-associating or something, but Media Matters observes that yesterday in formal remarks on the Senate floor Lindsay Graham again argued that South Carolina deserves a fair share of Medicaid money specifically by citing the fact that black people live there:
Graham seems to have some combination of the belief that all black people are poor, only black people are eligible for Medicaid, all poor people are black, or something. The reality is that South Carolina is, in fact, a state with a lot of poor people—its 15.1 percent poverty rate in 2007 put it above the national average, and the number will have only gone up since the recession hit. But of course poor people can be white, black, Asian, whatever. And Matt Finkelstein observes that there are more white Medicaid recipients in South Carolina than black ones.
I guess the thing to do next is play dumb and say I don’t I understand why Senator Graham wants to drag race into this conversation. But let’s just say that to be charitable about it, he’s really stupid and I can also think up some less charitable explanations.
Yesterday, the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released their latest home mortgage data, which covers the third quarter of 2009. The OCC and the OTS compile data on mortgages held by national banks and thrifts, which account for about 65 percent of mortgages nationwide, and the numbers show just how ugly the housing crisis still is:
[T]he percentage of current and performing mortgages dropped for the sixth consecutive quarter to 87 percent of the servicing portfolio, serious delinquencies rose to 6.2 percent, and foreclosures in process surpassed 1 million mortgages…Of particular note was the deterioration among prime mortgages, the largest category of mortgages. Serious delinquencies at the end of the third quarter increased to 3.6 percent of prime mortgages, up almost 20 percent from the previous quarter and more than double a year ago.
This is the first time ever that more than 1 million mortgages held by national financial institutions have been in foreclosure in a single quarter. But the point about the foreclosure plague spreading even further into prime mortgages is perhaps the most disheartening, as the foreclosure prevention programs that have been put in place so far by Congress and the administration aren’t meant to handle these sorts of problems.
The growth in prime mortgage foreclosures confirms that unemployment — not subprime lending — is now the factor driving most foreclosures. Indeed, the OCC/OTS data is making the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel’s October report on the administration’s foreclosure prevention plans seem spot-on:
[The Home Affordable Modification Program] was not designed to address foreclosures caused by unemployment, which now appears to be a central cause of nonpayment…The foreclosure crisis has moved beyond subprime mortgages and into the prime mortgage market. It increasingly appears that HAMP is targeted at the housing crisis as it existed six months ago, rather than as it exists right now.
So as Daily Finance’s Lita Epstein pointed out, “the elephant in the room…is how to help the millions of people who have lost their jobs stay in their homes.” Included in the regulatory reform bill passed by the House last week was a $3 billion program for providing loans to borrowers who have “lost their jobs but who have a reasonable prospect that they will be able to resume full mortgage payments.” This is a decent enough start, but it can’t be the end, unless Congress and the administration want to rely on programs that aren’t really up to the task.
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