On President Obama’s speech yesterday:

The process is exactly what we predicted a week ago.
The president and the leaders in the House and the Senate had decided they are going to go to reconciliation, which is, essentially, we are going to do it one-party, a party-line vote. That’s what they are going for.
But they wanted to present it to the American citizenry as having tried to reach out. That’s why you had the charade of the summit last week, seven hours of discussion when it was already pre-cooked that that wouldn’t change anything.
That’s why you had yesterday, the release of the changes that Obama was heralding as leaning over towards Republicans. For example, tort reform, which are absolutely insignificant and almost comical. With tort reform he is offering for a problem that we heard earlier in the program costs the American medical system $100 billion, $200 billion a year — he is offering a few pilot programs which are utterly meaningless and will amount to one-half of one-hundredth of 1 percent of the cost of Obamacare.
But that’s part of the deal. He wants to appear to be offering to incorporate Republican proposals. And now the pivot, which we had today. Obama says I tried, I reached out, Republicans are stubborn, oppositionists and nihilistic. I’m going to go for on a party-line vote.
For a man who campaigned as the man who would transcend partisanship, it’s rather ironic that this is what he has decided to do.

On Charlie Rangel’s stepping down from his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee:

He had to step down. If you are the chairman of the tax writing committee and you have these offenses — pending accusations of not paying your taxes or declaring income — it’s serious stuff.
Nonetheless, these are not political felonies. It’s an abuse of power. If you are in power for as long as he has, you stretch the perks a little bit.
And in a sense, it’s a tragedy. He has been an iconic, historic congressman, and I take no pleasure in seeing what I think is probably his slow exit.
Schadenfreude is reserved for the evil, not the people who have [merely] overstepped . . .