In yesterday’s Swim, I linked to this story in the Dallas Morning News.

Did you know, Truth equals Condescension, but singular analogy equals a true and correct believe amongst all liberals?

Featuring music of Sara Tavares and State Radio.

Sarah Palin mistakes her cheat sheets from high school English for the keynote address to the Tea Party.

You can argue about the health care landscape if we instituted this reform or that reform. There’s no argument about how dangerous and cruel the landscape will be under the status quo.

Ben Nelson just issued a statement saying he’ll vote no on cloture for Craig Becker tomorrow.

Warning: The webisodes based on this trailer contain extremely adult themes and images. NSFW. 18 and over only.

John Roecker’s new web show Svengali is a gender-bending parody of television detective shows, riffing on cliches and plunging headfirst into a cesspool of camp. Svengali is described by Roecker as possessing

epic bad taste proportions

This is not an exaggeration.

A Financial Times article about President Obama’s November 2009 trip to China highlights the dangers of a close-knit group dominating Administration policy. On our relationship with China, which is one of the most challenging policy issues we face, we’ve got tourists dominating the policy, not experts.

The filibuster is not a campaign issue. It’s a governance issue. If you have 59 votes in the Senate and an artificial construct that demands 60, and a minority party committed to lockstep obstructionism over anything else, you have a governance problem. To be sure, Democrats have other levers at their disposal to get their agenda passed, and there are two most frequently cited – 1) using reconciliation for budgetary items, which cannot be filibustered – and which is basically the plan for passing a health care bill; and 2) highlighting and essentially shaming Republicans over their willingness to obstruct, the “make them filibuster” approach which starts with a coordinated information campaign of the kind we’re starting to see. Both of these are means to a governance end, not a campaign end.

Congressional Republican’s clearly don’t want this health care reform bill to pass. They made the political calculation that allowing Obama to achieve victory on this bill will only help Democrats in 2010. So, with this televised, bipartisan meeting scheduled for February 25th, the question is how will the Republicans play the meeting to get the upper hand.