A number of TPM Readers have sent in their pics of the election celebration for Houston Mayor-Elect Annise Parker. So we’re making a Monday morning slideshow. If you’ve got more you’d like us to include, please send them in.
Please note, they must be pictures you took and own the rights to.
A few thoughts from TPM Reader BS …
I’m pretty darn lefty, but Obama does not disappoint me; he’s more honest than most politicians, and is doing pretty much what he campaigned on — albeit on a bit of an unexpected learning curve, given that most of us saw him only after his campaign had accumulated much skill. But he’s a good person whose values are not warped, who
doesn’t give up, who doesn’t believe in the power of speech but of action … all things more important than his exact political alignment.On the other hand, in my opinion, based on observations of the last year, we are suffering from a plague of incompetent, irresponsible Democratic voters. Obama is partly responsible for this, on account of his early, slogan-based campaigning, but as time progresses his share of the blame is lessening. So who are these irresponsible voters?
It’s starting to seem like it may just be better for Dems to try to make a deal with Olympia Snowe, kick Joe Lieberman out of the party and be done with it. The leadership in the senate thought that Lieberman was on board with the latest compromise. But in an appearance on Face the Nation and later in a sit-down with Sen. Reid, Lieberman said he’d join the Republican filibuster if the Medicare buy-in remained in the bill.
What’s most telling about Lieberman isn’t his positions, which are not that much different from Sen. Nelson’s and perhaps Sen. Lincoln’s. It’s more that he seems to keep upping the ante just when the rest of the caucus thinks they’ve got a deal.
If it happened once, a misunderstanding might be a credible explanation. But it’s happened too many times. Sen. Nelson has driven Dems to distraction on this bill. But his demands have been fairly consistent over time. Lieberman just doesn’t seem to be negotiating in good faith. He keeps pulling his caucus to some new compromise, waiting a few days and then saying he can’t agree to that either.
It’s coming to a breaking point.
Breaking tonight, Brian Beutler looks at how Joe Lieberman’s announcement casts real doubt on whether reform can pass in the senate and, if it does, whether it will be reconcilable with anything that comes out of the House.
From Brian’s lede …
In a move that senior leadership aides say has left them stunned, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that he will filibuster a tentative public option compromise unless it’s stripped of its key component: a measure that would allow people aged 55-64 to buy insurance through Medicare.
The development casts substantial doubt on whether or not a health care reform bill can pass in the Senate, and even more doubt on whether a bill that does pass the Senate will be reconcilable with substantially more progressive House legislation in such a way that a final reform package can once again pass in both chambers of Congress.
Read the rest here.
If you took off early Friday, maybe to knock out a chunk of your Christmas shopping, you might have missed the killer Michael Steele slideshow we put together from photos Steele recently took with the RNC interns. So get your Monday started off right, and remember, next time you do a photo shoot with your interns, you can never ham it up too much:
In advance of today’s meeting with financial service industry executives, President Obama tells 60 Minutes, “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of … fat cat bankers on Wall Street.” That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
Sarah Palin surprises William Shatner on The Tonight Show by reading his autobiography. Watch.
Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln may be the most endangered senate Democrat in 2010. And the push to meet her with a primary challenge makes her position even more precarious. But it looks like SEIU has her back back home.
This should be fun. One tea party group is staging a “die in” tomorrow on Capitol Hill to protest health care reform. I’ll leave it to the organizer to describe how this twist on the lefty protest tactic will work:
“The intention is to go inside the Senate offices and hallways, and play out the role of patients waiting for treatment in government controlled medical facilities. As the day goes on some of us will pretend to die from our untreated illnesses and collapse on the floor. Many of us plan to stay there until they force us to leave.”
It’s not clear how they will convey to passersby that they are in a “government-controlled” medical facility as opposed to all the people who are already dying from illnesses not treated by private health care providers. But that’s probably a distinction lost on these protesters.