Murkowski to GOP: Focus on jobs, not health care
messaging

post from Daily Kos on 20 January 2011 07:55:14 PM. © Daily Kos

Thank you Joe Miller for freeing up Lisa Murkowski to tell the truth: That Republican leadership needs to quit playing the messaging game on health care repeal. Instead, it's time they focus on the important task of economic growth and job creation:

The real question is how much time do we as a Congress spend on this messaging? We’ve got a situation where our economy continues to be in the tank, the longest extended period of high unemployment since World War II….As important as making sure that we’re reigning in our health care costs — spending a lot of time on the messaging vote? I don’t think that’s what the American public wants us to do. …I don’t think what people want is kind of the messaging that’s going on.

Voters agree. According to the latest CBS/NYT poll, job creation is the public's top priority -- well over twice as many Americans want Congress to focus on job creation as want them to focus on relitigating the health care battle.

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us-on-jobs,-not-health-care-messaging

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Top Corporate Lawyer Claims Mortgage Rates Will
Skyrocket Without MERS

post from Firedoglake on 20 January 2011 07:40:54 PM. © Firedoglake

Laurence Platt, a partner at the firm K&L Gates, which defended Wells Fargo and US Bank in the Ibanez case, basically threatened the American homeowner with sky-high interest rates if the banks aren't allowed to run their own private land recording[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/1EFu1rTh_Bw/

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Opinions Versus Facts

post from Where's the Outrage? on 20 January 2011 07:28:24 PM. © Where's the Outrage?

I think that everyone in America would agree that we are all entitled to our own opinions. As a[...]

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http://www.whereistheoutrage.net/wordpress/2011/01/20/opinions-versus-facts/

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Cantor holds implementation of Affordable Care
Act hostage for Senate action

post from Daily Kos on 20 January 2011 07:20:04 PM. © Daily Kos

Harry Reid has made it clear that the Affordable Care Act repeal effort will die in the Senate, so Eric Cantor has been trying to goad him into holding a vote and has upped the ante by (as usual) taking hostages.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters Tuesday afternoon that his party will employ delaying and defunding tactics if Wednesday’s vote to repeal the reform law goes nowhere in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has already pledged to block the repeal bill.

"We will do everything we can to delay and defund provisions of the bill so we can get some discussion going on how to replace it," Cantor said.

That Cantor can promise. The "replace" part of their "repeal and replace" mantra apparently still eludes the GOP: "Cantor was unable to predict when Republicans will propose an alternative to the reform law." The excuse is that they don't have the committees in place yet to work on the "replace" part. Never mind that they've had two years to come up with an alternative plan, and have yet to come up with anything better than tort reform.

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tation-of-Affordable-Care-Act-hostage-for-Senate-action

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Georgetown Times introduces citizen fourm

post from The Politics of Jamie Sanderson on 20 January 2011 07:01:50 PM. © The Politics of Jamie Sanderson

The Georgetown Times has decided to establish a forum for its readers and is similar to Marty Tennant's Citizen's Report.

Publisher John Carr had this to say about the endeavor:

We recently launched a forum section of our website. It is just getting started. It is my hope it will be a place where a wide range of local topics will be discussed by interested citizens. Might take a bit to get going. Just wanted to let you all know in hopes you will check back from times to time. Hopefully you will participate as well.

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http://thepoliticsofjamiesanderson.blogspot.com/2011/01/georgetown-times-introduc
es-citizen.html

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Trouble Brewing For Boehner

post from Talking Points Memo on 20 January 2011 07:01:38 PM. © Talking Points Memo

One of the big questions coming into the new Congress was how would the existing GOP power structure in the House assimilate the big tea party freshmen class. Brian Beutler reports for us on some very important developments over the last couple of days[...]

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_for_boehner.php

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Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing

post from Talking Points Memo on 20 January 2011 07:01:38 PM. © Talking Points Memo

A touching moment on the usually loveless Hardball just now, with Chris Matthews effusing to a certain guest, "Josh Marshall, I'm falling in love with you." Video after the jump:[...]

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video-hardball.php

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Hate group supports President Obama's appeal of
the anti-gay DOMA

post from AMERICAblog News on 20 January 2011 07:00:29 PM. © AMERICAblog News

Seriously the wrong side of history.

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sident-obamas.html

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SOTU Multi-crises, Obama in Denial, Tea-GOP Nuts,
No Adults

Now match that list of actual problems against anything we've heard from the Obama Administration or the new Tea-GOPer Congress about their priorities. There's almost zero overlap. There's no jobs program, no mortgage solution, no state budget rescue, no[...]

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Polling: Voters Wonder What Democrats Stand For

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I know John already wrote about this, but I wanted to reiterate this one point in the new Democracy Corps poll, because it's important:

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's apparent willingness to consider cuts in Social Security benefits may be winning him points with Washington elites, but it's killing him with voters, who see the program as inviolate and may start to wonder what the Democratic Party stands for, if not for Social Security.
That's the conclusion of three top progressive pollsters who spoke to reporters Wednesday at a briefing sponsored by the Economic Policy Institute, the Century Foundation and Demos.
"For the public, cutting benefits is the problem, not the solution," said Guy Molyneux, a partner at Hart Research Associates.

Precisely. If the Democratic Party doesn't stand for public education, helping unemployed workers during a recession, and Social Security, what the hell do they stand for?

Do you suppose maybe we're having a little marketing problem? Our potential supporters aren't quite clear on our core values, Look at the reason Republicans won the midterms: They flooded the airwaves with commercials that said the Democrats were cutting a half-trillion dollars from Medicare. And now the polls show that voters trust the Republicans more than Democrats on saving Medicare.

Think about that. First of all, voters actually believed that Democrats would cut a half-trillion dollars from Medicare, the same people who have always defended it. Sounds like they're not quite sure anymore, huh?

This shouldn't have been difficult. All the Democrats had to do was run response ads, pointing out this had to do with Medicare Advantage, the part where private insurers are raping and pillaging the treasury. Now, I don't know about where you live, but we were inundated with these GOP attack ads in Pennsylvania -- and the Democrats never answered them.

It seems to me that the Democratic Party, like any organization that's adrift, needs to define itself. We can be the party of working people --- or we can be the party of the bankers. But we can't be both, and obviously most voters are just as annoyed and confused about it as I am.

In the private sector, we'd remove our attention and resources from anything that wasn't in line with our core mission. It would help if the Democrats did that, but first they'll have to figure out what, exactly, that is.