The threat to Medicare is very real and pressing. Last night the President suggested he still wants to change Medicare in a way “some in his party” won’t like. We are seeing a convergence of deficit hysteria, a Democratic president who wants to have a “Nixon goes to China moment” with Medicare and powerful corporate lobbyists in pursuit of bigger profits.

It seems President Obama as expected grabbed hold of the Joe Lieberman’s trial balloon and is now also pushing to raise the Medicare retirement age to 67. From Huffington Post: According to five separate sources with knowledge of negotiations — including both Republicans and Democrats — the president offered an increase in the eligibility age [...]

There is no liberal plan that Sen. Joe Lieberman won’t try to scuttle. Now he is pushing cuts in Medicare as a way to reduce the deficit on the backs of elderly Americans. Hell of a guy, isn’t he?

The oft confused Sen. Lieberman gets taken to the woodshed by Nobel winner Paul Krugman. It turns out that the best way to hold down costs is not to cut Medicare but expand it.

He’s the least popular man in the Senate with the public: only 24% of Connecticut voters say they’d vote for him again. His sheer bottom-scraping numbers are causing likely opponents to drool at the thought of challenging him. But in the House of Lords, they love him. Politico reports “Senior Democrats” are urging Joe Lieberman to run again

Sign the Petition: Investigate the TSA, Not John Tyner Help stop TSA’s porno scanners, aggressive groping and abuse of power. The TSA is opening an investigation targeting John Tyner, the man who earned himself an aggressive “pat down” at the airport when he refused to go through the TSA’s new AIT “porno scanners.” But it’s [...]

Joe Lieberman’s Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will hold a hearing today at 3:15pm EST to discuss “Closing the Gaps In Air Cargo Security” with TSA Director John Pistole. Lieberman got a head start on the issue, of course. He was on MSNBC yesterday in an interview with Andrea Mitchell, who brought up conversing about full body scanners and security “pat downs.” When asked whether or not he believed that the procedures are invasive, he responded, “I come down on the side of pat downs.”

In the last few days, several bloggers – among them Jon Cohn and Ezra Klein — have written faulty defenses of the health care bill. They used theoretical, counterfactual alternatives in defense of the health care legislation they’ve supported, calling to mind Voltaire’s classic, Candide. In it, Voltaire heavily mocks the extreme optimism of Pangloss, [...]

I noticed that earlier this year we were overwhelmed by a wave of anti-deficit grandstanding throughout the Democratic Party while the Catfood Commission was sending up trial balloons about cutting Social Security benefits, raising the retirement age (which is just a sleight-of-hand way of cutting benefits) or cutting the health care benefits for military service [...]

To the surprise of — well, absolutely nobody I guess — Harry Reid is rolling in drug money. Tim Carney reports that “no incumbent is receiving as much air support from the drug industry as is Reid, who championed a health care bill that pads drug company profits”: Right after [PhRMA head Billy] Tauzin’s July [...]