DAYLEE PICTURE: Corfe Castle on the Isle of Purbeck in the county of Dorset in the UK. From the Daily Mail of the UK.
"Republicans struggled to round up the votes until McConnell and his top lieutenant, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, stepped forward to vote “yes.” Both men face primary election challenges this year from the small-government Tea Party movement that propelled Cruz to the Senate in the 2012 election."
Before O-Care debacle, Sebelius made many trips to White House from The Hill
"While Sebelius has said the president was not aware of HealthCare.gov’s problems, more than 750 pages of documents obtained by The Hill through a Freedom of Information Act request show she made scores of visits to the White House."
I find it interesting how this reporter makes the story a knock on Obama's story that he didn't know about the website problem, something that this new information doesn't address directly. Never mind the widely reported story at the same time that Sebelius never met with Obama before the rollout. This new info completely debunks the latter story.
Obamacare Finally Clears the Tower from Politico
"The Obamacare rollout is changing in front of our eyes — turning from a running joke into one big shoulder shrug. And that’s good news for the White House, because at this point, even basic competence is good news."
Obamacare Gained More Young Adults in January, U.S. Says (Alex Wayne) from Bloomberg
"Obamacare health plans enrolled 3.3 million people through January, with young adult participants increasing 65 percent from a month earlier, the U.S. government said."
As the Media Gets Bored With Obamacare, Is the Public Starting to Get on Board? (Charles Ornstein) from ProPublica
""...we are close to being able to say that the March 31 open enrollment period is already a success. And let me break it down for you."
House Republicans Say Cruz Scuttled Immigration Reform [subscription wall] from the San Antonio Express News
"Texas Sen. Ted Cruz may have scuttled a compromise on immigration reform with just one sound bite."
Ted Cruz Just Made Life Miserable for Republican Leaders Once Again (David Graham) from the Atlantic
"The Senate passed a measure to raise the debt ceiling, but not before two Republican leaders had to cast perilous votes."
Tea Party's Fringe Isolation (Paul Rosenberg) from Salon
"From economics to immigration, fear of mythical evil characterizes the loony right -- and now they'll pay the price."
Easy to say! We'll see if we see these type of headlines after the GOP primaries. This emerging meme about the "decline of the Tea Party" stinks of beltway conventional wisdom - the same wisdom that put Chris Christie as the 2016 "frontrunner". The Tea Party may be somewhat marginalized ... in DC. But out in the states they are very much a force to be reckoned with. State Republican parties continue to bleed long-time centrist establishment types in droves.
How Progressives can Turn the Deep South Blue (Benjamin Jealous) from MSNBC
"There are more than 600,000 unregistered black Americans in Georgia, plus thousands of unregistered Latinos, Asian-Americans, women and millennials. At an average cost of $12 per registration, it would cost less than $8 million to register virtually all of Georgia's unregistered black voters. If even half of them had voted for President Obama in 2012, we would be having a very different conversation today."
How House Republicans Screwed Their Next Presidential Nominee (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine
"The white share of the vote is rapidly collapsing in Florida, having fallen from 72 percent of the vote in 2004 to under 66 percent in 2012, and is projected to keep dropping fast. Only a precipitous spike in white support for Republicans, probably in keeping with the general white southern reaction against Barack Obama, has kept the state even close..."
With Hastings Retirement, Republican Revolutionaries Mostly Gone (Alex Roarty) from National Journal
"Only five of 73 House Republicans elected in the class of 1994 will be in Congress after this year."
Chris Christie's Entire Career Reeks: It's Not Just the Bridge from the New Republic
"What is remarkable about this meltdown is that it isn’t the result of some deep secret that has been exposed to the world, revealing a previously unimagined side to the candidate. Many of the scandals and mini-scandals and scandals-within-scandals that the national media is salivating over have been in full view for years."
Speaking of has-beens:
In the Darkness of Dick Cheney (Mark Danner) from the New York Review of Books
"Launching an immediate surprise attack on Syria, Cheney tells us in his memoirs, would not only “make the region and the world safer, but it would also demonstrate our seriousness with respect to nonproliferation.” This was the heart of the Bush Doctrine: henceforth terrorists and the states harboring them would be treated as one ..."
OBSCURE KNOWLEDGE NUGGET!!
41 Things You Need To Know Right Now, For No Reason In Particular from the Huffington Post
"How have you lived this long without seeing a walrus sleeping on a submarine? All of these are picture based so there's really no excuse to refrain from spending the roughly two minutes it'll take to learn everything. We expect you to nod your head slightly and say, "hmm," or "oh, so that's what that looks like," in a mildly amused tone quite a few times throughout this post."
DOG NUGGETS!!
This Bulldog Says You Best Not Be Messing With His Rescue Kitten Family from the Huffington Post
""When Hammie first met [the kittens] he was so gentle," Parden told HuffPost. "He would gently try to round them up like he was going to nurse them. He very carefully would lift his paw over them and caress the kittens.""
These 15 Insanely Enormous Dogs Remind Us That Beauty Can Come With Lots Of Slobber from the Huffington Post
"There are big dogs, and there are really big dogs. Some people may view a 100-pound, slobbering ball of fur as an inconvenience, but we know a massive pup is just chock full of extra lovin'. Don't believe us?"
CHIMP RESCUE NUGGET!!
The Touching Moment Jane Goodall is Hugged by Rescued Chimp from YouTube
The Daily Mail has the story here.
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