[ Posted Wednesday, February 12th, 2014 – 17:22 UTC ]
The official numbers are in for January, showing that Obamacare signups beat the monthly projection for the first time. This is good news for the White House, as is the new overall signup total of 3.3 million. After a very rocky rollout, the Obamacare website seems to now be back on track. The numbers are good, but they will likely fall short of the overall goal of seven million signed up by the deadline, currently set for the end of March. This will leave the White House with a rather obvious path to make up the difference: slip the individual mandate deadline by one month, to the end of April. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Obama chooses this route, likely in the middle of next month.
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[ Posted Friday, February 7th, 2014 – 19:18 UTC ]
Americans across the land are banding together to solve one of the country's most pressing problems, it seems: demanding that Justin Bieber be deported!
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 4th, 2014 – 17:17 UTC ]
If you buy car insurance and then get into an accident, when the insurance pays for your repairs, have they "bailed you out"? Most people would answer "no," because planning for risks in advance by buying insurance is a responsible thing to do. There is no "bailout" involved at all. But that's the basic concept Republicans are planning on selling, if today's rumors are to be believed.
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[ Posted Monday, February 3rd, 2014 – 16:23 UTC ]
President Obama just had -- relatively -- the best month in job approval polling he's had for his entire second term. The reason for the qualifier in that previous sentence is that in absolute terms, Obama's poll numbers are still pretty bad, but when measured by month-to-month change, January was the best month Obama's had since the afterglow of his re-election. But then a picture is clearer than all these words, so let's take a look at the chart:
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[ Posted Friday, January 31st, 2014 – 18:21 UTC ]
Republicans in the House have announced they are now ready to do something on immigration. I only mention this in passing here, because the entire talking points section is going to be devoted to a warning for Democrats: there will be traps laid by the Republicans, so Democrats have to be vigilant about defusing each one as it pops up.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 28th, 2014 – 22:38 UTC ]
OK, as usual, I'm sitting down to write this without really dipping into the oceans of ink (and electrons) that are being spilled right now by other pundits, so that my reactions to both the "State Of The Union" speech and the Republican response are untainted by either groupthink or the herd mentality. So there's a very good chance (as always) that what I thought will be a long way away from what others think (on both sides of the aisle).
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[ Posted Monday, January 27th, 2014 – 16:46 UTC ]
As the city of Washington prepares for its time in the spotlight tomorrow night (the "State Of The Union" speech being approximately Washington's "Oscar night" on primetime television), pundits will go into overdrive on the question of "what it all means," for roughly the next week or so. Every paragraph of the speech will be examined microscopically, supporters will cheer, opponents will boo, and conclusions will be drawn among the inside-the-Beltway set.
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[ Posted Friday, January 24th, 2014 – 18:37 UTC ]
Sooner or later, though, whether it is 2014 or 2016 or beyond, the "Year Of The Marijuana Voter" is coming.
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 22nd, 2014 – 17:42 UTC ]
A new and extensive interview with President Obama recently appeared in the pages of The New Yorker magazine. In the middle of this wide-ranging piece there is a short section where interviewer David Remnick asks the president -- after previously discussing his "evolution" on gay marriage -- about his views on marijuana and the law. Obama answered with as honest an evaluation as I think I have ever heard from an occupant of the Oval Office, during my entire lifetime. Which makes me wonder a bit, since it is indeed that season of year when presidents traditionally "run a few things up the flagpole to see who salutes" (as they say). In the weeks just before the State Of The Union address, pet policy ideas are often floated in just such a fashion, in an attempt to gauge public reaction to new ideas or proposals. Perhaps I'm wrong about all of this, but the timing did seem more than a little coincidental.
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[ Posted Friday, January 10th, 2014 – 17:43 UTC ]
Welcome back to our regular Friday roundup of politics! We've been on hiatus for quite a while now, since we took two weeks off to dole out our year-end awards, and then last week we were just sick as a dog, which precluded all rational thought (much less trying to type coherently). So we've got a lot to cover this week, and our apologies in advance for all the stuff we're bound to have missed in the past month.
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