Joe Scott 3: The Body Politic

Arnold: Hollywood beckons

31 July 2009 |permalink | email article

The actor-turned governor elected at a recall election, who once had approval ratings approaching 70 percent, has now plunged to just 28 percent of all adults. It is the lowest that any governor had been ranked since August 2003,… read full story

White House beer summit

30 July 2009 |permalink | email article

President Obama sits down late this afternoon at a picnic table on the lawn with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley over beers to try and reconcile the recent incident in Cambridge, Mass.

Huffington Post reported White… read full story

Terminator strikes again

29 July 2009 |permalink | email article

Disgraced Gov. Schwarzenegger talked about the “good, bad and ugly” in signing a revised $85 billion budget on Tuesday, using his line-item veto authority to save an additional $656 million that will let California restore a reserve fund he… read full story

Health care: clock’s ticking

28 July 2009 |permalink | email article

Only a quarter of Americans trust House Speaker Nancy Pelosi according to a new Public Strategies/Politico poll but the San Francisco Democrat says she frankly doesn’t give a damn. She’s vowed passage of a health-care overhaul in the House… read full story

Valerie Jarrett, Obama consigliere

27 July 2009 |permalink | email article

One wonders about President Obama’s thought pattern when at the end of a prime-time news conference on overhauling the U.S. health care system he stepped on his policy message by lashing out at police for acting “stupidly” in arresting… read full story

Palin: in from the cold?

26 July 2009 |permalink | email article

Perhaps the most enduring paragraph in Todd S. Purdum’s recent Vanity Fair cover story on what turned out to be the “quitter” governor was this: “The first thing [John] McCain could have learned about Palin is what it means… read full story

California budget deal a disgrace

25 July 2009 |permalink | email article

Odd as it may seem, considering that they make up just 37% of the legislature, Republicans look like winners in the state spending plan which includes no new taxes and deep cuts in health and welfare programs that actor-turned… read full story

O44: health care setback, popular leader

24 July 2009 |permalink | email article

Barack Obama used his fifth full-scale White House news conference of his six-month-old presidency to press the case for overhauling the U.S. health care system. But the pitch lacked the authentic passion of previous pressers.

In trying to reclaim… read full story

Sacramento budget: the dream delayed

23 July 2009 |permalink | email article

Less than a day after Gov. Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders announced a plan to close the state’s massive budget – with a vote expected tonight – all hell has broken loose.

More than 180 California cities have passed… read full story

Obama lays it on the line

22 July 2009 |permalink | email article

Tonight’s pivotal press conference by President Obama is about selling health-care reform, and the commander in chief is much more comfortable when he has a real foe like the Republican Party to blister and run against. The Washington Post/ABC… read full story

California failing

21 July 2009 |permalink | email article

The once Golden State has reached an apparent budget accord which could go to the Legislature in days. Whether it will be approved is far from certain.

But a smiling Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who gives new meaning to ineptitude,… read full story

Dignity in America

20 July 2009 |permalink | email article

One of the least mean-spirited conservative columnists in America today is David Brooks of The New York Times who recently addressed a rare and important subject: dignity in politics.

Here’s an excerpt: “Whatever policy differences people may have with… read full story

GOP and the nonwhite vote

19 July 2009 |permalink | email article

How Republicans approach the issue of regaining the nonwhite vote is now a riveting issue in national electoral politics. Michael Steele, the first black chairman of the Republican National Committee, joked last week that he would welcome blacks to… read full story

Buchanan meets his match

17 July 2009 |permalink | email article

MSNBC pundit Pat Buchanan, who’s been urging Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to oppose the Sonia Sotomayor nomination over affirmative action issues, finally met his match in an epic battle with Rachel Maddow on her show Thursday… read full story

Buchanan to GOP: hit Sotomayor on race

16 July 2009 |permalink | email article

The MSNBC right-wing commentator is obsessed with destroying the prospects of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and has gone over the top in urging Republicans on the Judiciary Committee to derail her path toward confirmation by the full Senate.

Obama up in Michigan

15 July 2009 |permalink | email article

The President departed from his script and took off the gloves Tuesday and finally sounded more like FDR striking back at his New Deal critics in 1933:

“I love those folks who helped get us in this mess… read full story

GOP pundits to Palin: where’s the beef?

14 July 2009 |permalink | email article

Her short-notice resignation as Alaska governor is easier to understand in the wake of a New York Times story detailing her meltdown after returning home from the presidential campaign as a now questionable future prospect for a party fast… read full story

All Palin, all the time

13 July 2009 |permalink | email article

However you slice it Sarah Palin still dominates the 2010 political news cycle. Take, for example, Maureen Dowd’s NYT spoof of an unflattering exchange of tweets between the quitting Alaska governor and John McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee who… read full story

Clinton: ‘Amnesty’ for jailed reporters?

12 July 2009 |permalink | email article

Since their June 8 conviction for entering North Korea illegally the fate of American journalists Laura Ling and Lisa Ling, sentenced to 12 years at a hard labor camp, all media coverage disappeared.

In a July 2 post this… read full story

Will Sotomayor make history?

10 July 2009 |permalink | email article

Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor who will replace Justice David Souter, begin starting on Monday. Al Franken, the Senate’s newest member, met with her yesterday and, while not a lawyer, has been assigned to… read full story

Stimulus conundrum: history matters

09 July 2009 |permalink | email article

One question rarely raised about the Bush administration is why it never tried to jump-start the troubled U.S. economy in 2008. Another is why House Minority Leader John Boehner, now out front in ranting about the alleged failure of… read full story

Arnold: time to ape Reagan

08 July 2009 |permalink | email article

California’s failure to pass a timely budget and reliance on IOUs – aside from the gap increasing to 26.3 billion from $24.3 billion within days – has hit another critical fiscal barrier. Fitch Ratings downgraded the state’s long-term bond… read full story

Sarah Palin has gone fishing

07 July 2009 |permalink | email article

Was her Wasilla abdication from stage right the end or the real beginning of the Alaska governor’s flirtation with politics?

Nobody, not movement conservatives, Republican strategists or Beltway columnists – except perhaps admirer Bill Kristol, editor of the… read full story

Michael Jackson, legend

06 July 2009 |permalink | email article

THE Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in a four-day poll of a thousand people 18 and over after the pop icon’s sudden death in Los Angeles June 25 found that nearly two out of three… read full story

Is California governable?

05 July 2009 |permalink | email article

The Sunday New York Times magazine piece by staff writer Mark Leibovich is compelling. It takes a look at the cast of characters lining up to succeed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former Mr. Universe and action-hero star, who gets… read full story

July 4th, a powerful reminiscence

04 July 2009 |permalink | email article

In Amarillo, at the depth of the Great Depression, Texans stitched together what was called the largest American flag, a tribute to President Franklin Roosevelt during a visit. Then it started to rain.

People strained to hold the giant… read full story

Sarah Palin, heat in the kitchen?

03 July 2009 |permalink | email article

The Alaska governor announced Friday that she would resign her office by the end of the month and not seek re-election, a stunning decision which could free her to run for president in 2012 without the restraints of running… read full story

Ling and Lee: will diplomacy work?

02 July 2009 |permalink | email article

Since the June 8 conviction in communist North Korea of two American television journalists for politically motivated ‘crimes,’ an eerie media silence has fallen since their sentence of 12 years’ hard labor.

Alleged details of the case involving reporters… read full story

Sarah Palin: political and personal

01 July 2009 |permalink | email article

The 9,800-word piece by Todd S. Purdum, Vanity Fair’s national editor, in the August issue – “It Came from Wasilla” – is a must-read. Despite her disastrous performance in the 2008 election, as Mike Allen reports in Politico, she… read full story