Just When You Thought it Was Safe to Go Back on Room 8

The dance of reconciliation. OK, what I don't understand is why some Repubs in the House didn’t vote for reconciliation. The rationale was perfect. "The Health Care Reform Law sucks, but this makes it suck a little less." Gets rid of the cornhusker kickback, closes the Part D donut, and cuts Medicaid costs for the states…. Would they really have preferred the bill passed on Sunday without these changes? Schmuck of the day has to be Long Island's Peter King who, by voting against a bill which delays the tax on Cadillac plans has told the unions he usually sucks up to, to suck an egg.

Look, even if the President did propose changing our national anthem to "The Internationale", it would still beat the top two "Tea Party" choices: "Dixie" and "Deutschland Uber Alles"

Paul Ryan serves of Ayn Rand libertarianism while discarding it few redeeming nuggets of goodness.

Why won't my fellow liberals stand up for this liberal and feminist heroine?

I watched the "debate" on Sunday and was shocked–I expected to hear Republicans score a few points about flaws in the bill, but instead they sounded like a lynch mob. I haven't heard anything as inciteful since the words of Bibi in the weeks before Rabin was assassinated.

My disdain for the miserable paper this appears in (which I read for local political reasons) is manifested by the fact that I only link their articles on the Sabbath–but for the second week in a row they've improbably run a winner. Newark was where my paternal grandfather settled when he arrived in this country, and where my paternal grandmother and my father were born. Once home of a thriving Jewish community, I now visit it only for the cemeteries and the Iberian cuisine.

This would be a great Cialis commercial, though it might require one lasting more than four hours.

The title is appropriate, since it got its conservative Republican author, David Frum, fired by the conservative American Enterprise Institute (which, I might add, is their right, but surely speaks volumes)

Sez Hendrik Hertzberg: "The Politburo has dealt appropriately with David Frum, the notorious left devationist antisocial element. Frum has been frog-marched from his Kremlin office and exiled to a minor position in Nobuxograd."

"an obdurate commitment to a variety of liberalism that emanates from the heart while affecting not to have one"–Nicolas Lemann on Michael Kinsley, but I'm claiming it as my personal brand.

Hertzberg makes the case against the constitutionality of the filibuster (not sure he's makes the case, but it's so well written you shouldn’t miss it) and calls George Will a weasel (and surely makes the case).

A real life version of Operation Shylock, crossed with a bit of Exit Ghost.

Friedman explains the necessity of our policy shift, why it's good for Israelis too, and in passing lays the blame where it belongs "The collapse of the Oslo peace process, combined with the unilateral Israeli pullouts from Lebanon and Gaza — which were followed not by peace but by rocket attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas… on Israel — decimated Israel’s peace camp and the political parties aligned with it."

Let's give National review credit for editorial integrity and the Weekly Standard credit for being litter box lining

Tip for Vegetarians: Do not eat Streit's Matzohs with red wine.

Note to my Republican friends (including Mr. Cantor himself): This is the proper way to respond to such atrocious and despicable conduct. Note the absence of any equivocations about understanding people's frustrations.

That rarity of rarities: a great bi-partisan idea:

Given the context, it may well be we would ultimately prefer the Doveleh we know, but I can't help but think that this an appropriate time for Pharoh to get his comeuppance

Far be it from me to defend a Republican, but Ben Smith, who is Jewish, should know better than to make fun of Carly Fiorina for using the term “breaking bread” to describe a Seder. During the seder, we say the motzi (thanking G-d for giving us bread from the earth) before we eat the matzah. We say of matzah: "this is the poor bread, the bread of affliction." By every religious definition, matzah is bread. And there is surely no bread that breaks more frequently than matzah.

If she had served the chicken soup, but had not given us the gefilte fish; DAYENU! If she had served the gefilte fish, but had not given us the brisket; DAYENU!

Not only is Obama not a socialist, but he's never been particularly left–here's left academic Adolph Reed on his State Senator back in 1996: "In Chicago, we've gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program — the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics" Arcticle also has similar criticism from BILL AYRES

Gatemouth's credo:

People tend to hate me
'Cause I never smile
As I ransack their homes
…They want to shake my hand

Focusing on nowhere
Investigating miles
I'm a seeker
I'm a really desperate man…

…I learned how to raise my voice in anger
Yeah, but look at my face, ain't this a smile?
I'm happy when life's good
And when it's bad I cry
I've got values but I don't know how or why

Gatemouth's credo part two:

Well in between the pages of the glossy magazines
There's a coffee table world I could never ever fit in
l shout about how I could never buy it
But I stand up and fight For the right to go and try it

l'm a born fighter