Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 56

The Obama press conference | Michael Tomasky

Most of the press conference was devoted to the economy, so most straight news stories would probably lead with that. But the most humanly interesting part, the part where he actually spoke from the heart, was the last question, about the lower Manhattan mosque and the civil rights of Muslim Americans.

It was all the more striking because he was given a chance to say something different. He was asked: okay, we all agree that they have the right to build, but what about the common sense, the...

Senate: the good and the bad | Michael Tomasky

The good news is that George Voinovich - those of you burdened with longer memories will know I've been waiting for this guy for a year to bolt from the GOP Theatre of No - says he's backing Obama's small-business tax package announced in Cleveland the other day, so that should become law before the elections.

Voinovich was sorta harsh on Mitch McConnell:

In an interview, Voinovich said he could no longer support efforts by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to delay the...

Friday quiz: among the moderns | Michael Tomasky

If you asked me to list my top five or ten books, a high and prominent place would be taken by All That Is Solid Melts Into Air by Marshall Berman. It's a study of modernism that ranges from Goethe to Marx to the architecture of St. Petersburg to Baudelaire and a hundred other things serving Berman's thesis of "the state of perpetual becoming" of the modern world. I should re-read it and see if I still love it as much, but at the time (19...90?) it made me drunk with excitement. Buy it at...

Run, Rahm, Run | Michael Tomasky

I should say up front that I don't really really know what goes on in the White House. I don't cover it, the way a younger Tomasky once covered City Hall. And I don't really know a lot of the folks, just some of them. One in my position hears things a lot, but it's sometimes hard to know whom to believe, and anyway my thirst for palace intrigue isn't what it was when I was young.

All that said, it has long been my suspicion that Rahm Emanuel's influence has been more negative than positive...

They mean business on the GOP side | Michael Tomasky

As you know, GOP senator Lisa Murkowksi recently lost the Alaska senate primary to Joe Miller. She has been mulling a third-party candidacy of some sort.

Today, Roll Call reports:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) will likely be forced out of her party leadership position should she decide to launch a write-in or third-party candidacy, a Senate Republican said Wednesday.

Murkowski, who conceded the GOP primary last month to Fairbanks lawyer Joe Miller, could announce as soon as Thursday whether...

In Tomasky's America... | Michael Tomasky

Hillary Clinton has spoken a second time, using the occasion of a big foreign policy speech, to denounce the Qu'ran burning coming up Saturday in Florida. And, since yesterday, a few more Republicans have come out against the event, including the old Embarracudah herself.

But here's an idea. Why shouldn't Clinton go down there Saturday and confront this ignorant jackanapes of a pastor? Not with the expectation of stopping these people. But bearing calm witness against it. In full awareness...

Guess who still benefits? | Michael Tomasky

Via Yglesias I see this fairly remarkable fact: even if only the "middle-class" tax cuts remain law, who will benefit the most? Yep, you guessed it. The well-off and rich. For example, if only the middle-class tax cuts are kept, someone making $40,000 to $50,000 will save $916, but those making between $100,000 and $200,000 will save on average $3,766.

Why? Well, in a way it stands to reason, right? Tax rates are marginal, i.e., every dollar earned up to a certain amount is taxed at a certain ...

From drill baby drill to burn baby burn | Michael Tomasky

You've probably read about the Florida pastor who wants to burn the Qu'ran Saturday, the ninth anniversary of 9-11. General David Petraeus said this was a bad idea and says there are already plans for demonstrations against America in Kabul occasioned by the news of the burning. Hillary Clinton and other administration officials have denounced it.

Interesting, Republicans have been awfully silent on the question. Yesterday at Slate, Fred Kaplan wrote about this. Kaplan writes that there have a...

Line in the sand on taxes | Michael Tomasky

Let us say first that yes, on balance, I probably think that the Bush tax cuts should be repealed for everybody, or nearly everybody. I don't say that lightly, because I understand that a return to the old higher rate - which is a tax increase, at the end of the day - might be hardship for many people.

On the other hand, actual dollar amounts for taxpayers at the US median, around $52,000, would be really small. I went to this handy-dandy calculator set up by the Tax Foundation and plugged in ...

Taxes and inequality (and Lady Gaga's meat bikini) |Michael Tomasky

Peter Orszag, Obama's former budget director, wrote a buzzy column (as in, it's getting some) in the Times today in which he came out for extending the Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers, upper-bracket ones included, through 2013, and then letting them all expire (middle- and lower-brackets included).

Robert Gibbs came out today and said no, the president doesn't agree, and he still supports letting the cut expire (which it will do next year, under the rules of how it was passed) for households e...