Information travels too fast these days to maintain that kind of charade when you’re actively working against against your own base. Rahm thought that you could fool all of the people this time, that in the end they could package a “goody bag” and Obama could sell it to his supporters and call it health care reform — even though he had campaigned against the very back room deal making with PhRMA and other stakeholders that formed the underpinnings of the health care bill. When insurance stocks soared, people understood. When the PhRMA deal leaked out, they got it.

Yesterday, Obama called for another bipartisan sit down about health care reform. This time, his bipartisan sit down will be televised. The half-day meeting will take place on 25 February, after a congressional break between 15 to 19 February. The move comes after complaints that Mr Obama’s efforts have been too partisan and secretive. Republicans [...]

Democratic leaders met Thursday to work on a way forward with health care reform. Even though there is a growing concensus in the caucus around using a reconciliation sidecar strategy to pass the Senate bill along with a set of fixes, it looks like the leadership is not yet firmly behind the idea. Perhaps more [...]

President Obama has proposed ending one of the more wasteful crony capitalism programs currently funded by the federal government. The government provides students loans in two ways–the first and most effective of which is to just directly loan money to students. This is done through the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program. The other [...]

Vote now for the 2010 FDL Fire Dogs NY Congressman Eric Massa shotup from #6  to overtake Arizona’s Raul Grijalva for the #3 spot in the week-long contest where the FDL community votes to determine who will be the 2010 FDL Fire Dogs. Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts also leaped from #27 to #16 after [...]

So who is Sallie Mae looking toward in the Senate to help them kill student loan reform? Well, these are the Senators who have received money from Sallie Mae in this election cycle:

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), drunk on the power and joy of obstructionism, has decided to bring our government to a halt until Democrats promise to give his state some pork. Shelby has put an hold on every single one of Obama’s pending nominees. The genie is out of the bottle with this abuse of Senate [...]

Student loan reform, which would cut out middle-men pariahs like Sallie Mae and save $87 billion over the next 10 years which could go directly to students instead, is now in danger — thanks to the efforts of Jamie Gorelick.

Steven Pearlstein, in his column today, attempts to address the issue of our broken Senate and the problems with bipartisanship. He rightly address how the system should work, even though it clearly does not. The only way a democratic system like ours can work is if the majority party acknowledges that winning an election means [...]

In the wake of Palin’s demand that Rahm Emanuel be fired for calling a bunch of liberal activists “f–king retards,” a bunch of people have asked how she will react to Limbaugh’s tirade on the air yesterday.