After appearing to back down from its support of a public healthcare option, the White House is signaling that the public option is not dead:
An administration official said tonight that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius “misspoke” when she told CNN this morning that a government run health insurance option “is not an essential [...]

It seemed increasingly obvious this week that the White House would eventually nix the public healthcare option, and we’re just about there:
President Barack Obama and his top aides are signaling that they’re prepared to drop a government insurance option from a final health reform deal if that’s what’s needed to strike a compromise on Obama’s [...]

In case anyone has forgotten, President Bush is still responsible for the sorry state of the economy.
Bruce Bartlett, a former Republican economist who was influential in the development of supply-side economics and ultimately fled the GOP as it grew more insane, has penned a thorough take-down of the conservative activists who are blaming our current [...]

Roger Simon writes that we have entered the “age of rabid response”:
The purpose of rabid response is to scorch the earth, to raise the stakes, to go nuclear in the hope that your opponent will be so shellshocked he can make no response at all. The purpose of rabid response is to grab the public [...]

Washington Post writer Dana Milbank has effectively pissed off everyone by now. You could call him an “equal opportunity provocateur,” as Politico’s Michael Calderone does, or you can call Milbank a dick, if you’d prefer not to mince words.
Calderone, whose work I generally appreciate, treats Milbank with kid gloves in his most recent piece and [...]

Sarah Palin goes off the deep end and writes in a Facebook note (because World Net Daily wouldn’t publish this horseshit, I guess) that reform of the health care system would mean that “my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on [...]

Slate media critic Jack Shafer takes issue with the Washington Post’s decision to can “Mouthpiece Theater,” a thoroughly unfunny online video series featuring Chris Cillizza’s made-for-print delivery style and Dana Milbank’s repugnant pomposity, after Milbank suggested that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should drink a ‘Mad Bitch’ ale.
Shafer first defended the “Mouthpiece” episode on August [...]

TNA is back from a weeklong hiatus. I spent a couple of days in the Bahamas with my family and my beautiful girlfriend. I also had the pleasure of getting my wisdom teeth out today, which should explain any weird shit I say in the near future. I think.
Prior to my vacation, I had been [...]

The Wall Street Journal reviews the findings of its latest WSJ/NBC poll and concludes: “Support Slips for Health Plan.”
The poll shows cause for alarm for the White House: 46 percent of people now disapprove of Obama’s handling of health care reform, compared to only 41 percent who approve. But the poll does not actually indicate [...]

By now, any casual observer not wearing blinders knows that Sarah Palin’s image needs rehab. Unfortunately for Palin, the people who have her ear aren’t willing to tell her this.
She appears to be surrounding herself with enablers, sort of like Michael Jackson, but instead of encouraging drug abuse, her posse is telling her that hosting [...]