HC Senate Vote Imminent : Quick Thoughts before the Vote

UPDATE: As of after a few minutes after midnight CST tonight, the Senate health care bill has officially PASSED the U.S. Senate.

The Senate vote which will likely be the most crucial vote in this whole thing is scheduled to happen within less than ten minutes of this post.

It's almost a sure thing that it will pass, but what truly bugs me is how slow we will reap benefits and how that could really be a big problem for dems next year. In future pieces I will go into detail about what this may mean for democrats.

In the meantime, let's forget all that stuff of little relative significance, affordable health care is finally within reach and discriminatory acts by insurers will finally come to an end. We didn't get the most progressive bill, but considering how fragile the dem majorities are in the Senate, it doesn't need to be said that we are blessed to have actually gotten something out of the 'legislative black hole' that is the Senate. People will no longer need to fear dying from cancer or dying from some obscure complication of a treatable disease that wasn't taken care of because they lacked insurance.

I won't go on too long. Any comment I can make now has been repeated and retold in every way possible.

This truly is history. Such an emotional moment of solidarity this is for those whose lifelong cause has been for HC reform. I can just imagine how Vicky Kennedy and her family must feel right now. Most of Ted Kennedy's political life has been to make this moment a reality. Here we finally are.

Maybe one day when we reap the benefits of this bill the people of America will wake up and realize that the system we have is not as broken as they think. We still can make change happen. It might not be all of the change we would like, but we all make compromises in our every day life. That won't cease to happen in politics or in our daily lives.

Don't let your desire to 'get back' at republicans and desire to get the most progressive bill blind you from the real accomplishments of this bill. We can't deny that doing nothing is unacceptable and trying to lie to ourselves that having pushed a public option or a single payer system might have worked under some oppressive undertaking of reconciliation puts too much weight behind an option that could've been political suicide for the democratic party.

Let's remember the work that has been done to get here.

It is not for naught.

We have come through victorious, so let us take up our cross and walk. We have much work left to do to restore these blessed United States of America.

We did it, guys.

THE MEDIA SPOTLITE|| MSNBC||Unemployment rate unexpetedly drops to 10%

The blog will begin this segment that will happen sporadically when there's huge breaking news that is very consequential to Americans. All things featured on 'The Media Spotlite' will be credited to the appropriate copyright owner.

MSNBC.com

The Labor Department said the economy shed 11,000 jobs last month, the smallest monthly loss since December 2007. That's much better than the 130,000 losses Wall Street economists expected and also an improvement from the 111,000 cuts in October.

The unemployment rate fell to 10 percent from 10.2 percent in October, a 26-year high. Economists had expected the rate to remain unchanged.

***commentary to come shortlly***

WEEKLY SPECIAL FEATURE || Obama's TRUE plan for Aghanistan: A Road to Victory

Admittedly, Afghanistan and the war on terror poses one of the most difficult problems America has had to deal with in its history.

With so many variables, so many things going on at home, with a waning desire to war at home and a raging desire to defeat the western Goliath from Islamic extremists, there is really no room for errors in the decisions that must be made.

We can afford none of these decisions to be made in haste. What we do from here on out will be more consequential to whether or not we can stabilize Afghanistan than everything we've done in the past eight years. To that end, it is definitely a credit to our President that he took his time to review all available information and make his decision.

The defined mission in Afghanistan from the start has always been murky at best, but the reality of the situation is that our new objective there is to make sure Afghanistan can take care of itself, whether or not the administration will freely admit this. Our original mission was to find and kill Osama bin Laden and exterminate the Taliban and al Qaeda from Afghanistan, but it is my belief that the administration knows well that continuing to pursue that as victory is a lost cause and simply not possible. This, of course, would be a very tough message to convey to Americans and perhaps politically toxic.

We undoubtedly have our work cut out for us regardless of what our mission is for our stay there.

My estimation and perception of what the goals of Obama's plans are and the rewards they may or may not reap runs contrary to most criticisms out there. They contain good strategies that perhaps take the appearance of bad ones if you take the administration's goals and arguments at face value. My biggest point to make is that I believe that what the President hopes to do with this plan isn't what he's telling us publicly for the sake of not telling Americans a few hard truths.

While there is few who really care to argue the pointless 'war of necessity' vs 'war of choice' debate, Afghanistan and Pakistan are both countries with endemic corruption problems that are so bad, that a total of about 400 Taliban fighters in both countries are having the success of destabilizing Afghanistan over the long term, and increasing violence in Pakistan. As is the case in most insurgency wars, we find ourselves facing maybe a hundred Al Qaeda operatives in the entire country of Afghanistan in what amounts to trying to find a needle in a haystack. The country is largely urban with little villages sparsely covering the country's territory.

The Taliban's ability to do so much with so little manpower has lent at least some credence to the argument that leaving Afghanistan might result in the re-establishing of the country as a safe haven-one of Obama's big selling points for this and the previous surge.

While the 'safe haven' argument has big holes in it, the government in Afghanistan now doesn't have the capability to deal with the insurgency that exists now. Leaving them suddenly does leave the possibility open for a successful coup in what would essentially be a power vacuum.

The President perhaps has overemphasized this point to try to sell his new war strategy, but the reality is that if the government we've helped create in Afghanistan is driven out of power, the entire mission in Afghanistan would have been for nothing, the mission will have been an utter failure, and the fault of which would immediately be placed on the President and the democratic party regardless of who actually initiated the war. There must be at least some confidence in the administration and military officials that there is still time to at least leave a legitimate and self sustaining government behind.

We won't eradicate the threat of terrorism there by killing a couple of Taliban fighters every few days and weeks as we have been for some time now. After so many history lessons, it's become apparent to everyone that guerilla warfare isn't susceptible to overwhelming force and huge war spending budgets. In Vietnam our combined forces against the Viet Cong numbered well over a million, outnumbering them two to one and that effort failed.

So why does the administration seek to expand troop numbers if overwhelming force doesn't work?

The key to POTUS' plan lies in the withdrawal date.

The administration has warned Hamid Karzai that the commitment in Afghanistan is not open ended, and despite Robert Gates' assertions to congress that the withdrawal date is flexible, there's several indications that the intention of having a withdrawal date is truly a last straw for our commitment in the country and it isn't to be taken as lightly as some would like to.

There is a big increase in funding for police and army training requested by the President, as well as a big increase in American military personal specifically assigned to train them. The withdrawal date puts pressure on Karzai to root out corruption and make sure funds are being used to train and equip soldiers. The withdrawal date is at the very least testing whether or not Afghanistan's government is serious about stabilizing their country. The time line, even if not followed through, forces the hand of Karzai into making at least some progress at the risk of losing our support.

The withdrawal date also serves as an exhortation to the nation and allows Afghans the chance for self actualization, to do what Iraqis have done and rise to the occasion of protecting their homeland; eventually having less ill will towards America as we become less and less involved.

This move combined with a significant temporary surge in combat troops gives legitimacy to the counter-insurgency strategy being used in Afghanistan. It gives the possibility of one day transferring control over by using the overwhelming force of combat troops to protect population centers as well as the areas where Afghans are being trained to defend their country. It also makes it possible to streamline the process for training Afghans with few interruptions and minimal deaths; something that had been a huge problem in Iraq.

The plan makes use of the best parts from Bush's Iraq surge strategy and has stronger versions of tactics used previously. However, the faults in the plan lie in how large the troop increases are, how expensive the increase will be, and our inability to act against al Qaeda in Pakistan.

If the plan to train, cut, and run indeed does work, adding over 50% more troops is probably pushing it. Lives will be needlessly lost and large amounts of money will be needlessly spent that is sorely needed at home. There also needs to be an increased consideration for expanding the drone bombing programs they have for attacking al Qaeda in Pakistan. Our policy towards them will be critical when trying to end this war.

If we do this correctly, we have a reasonable chance to turn things around in Afghanistan and leave something stable that can at least provide its citizens security. Clearly, the matter on what our mission in Afghanistan has shifted, and the war is now truly winnable. What we can accomplish and whether or not Afghans step up to the plate will determine success or failure. Iraqis ended up stepping up and doing very well for themselves. Here's to a repeat of that so we can bring our soldier's home soon.

Why you don't crash the President's party

The Virginia couple accused of crashing President Obama's first White House state dinner on Tuesday are named in at least 16 different civil suits in Fauquier County, sometimes as plaintiffs, sometimes as defendants.

A trawl through court records on Thursday revealed a more complete picture of Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who have left an extensive paper trail in federal bankruptcy and state court filings.

CNN.com

Say what you will about what it says about White House security that this couple was able to crash their party, but if one thing is sure, it's that if you cross President Obama, don't expect to get away with it just because they can't put criminal charges on you.

This whole episode and the media's handling of it definitely is reminiscent of how ruthless and assertive of a candidate Obama used to be during his first campaign in 1996 for a seat in my own hometown of Chicago. In the election he held himself like a tough Chicago politician, using election rules to knock all of his opponents out of the race by technicalities, even the incumbent. The media tears through reputations much like the well oiled Chicago political machine did during it's prime which leaves no doubt as to why there's always accusations of slanderous spin.

It seems that the whole dinner thing was a security gaffe more than anything else, given the details of the story.

Granted the couple didn't lie to the secret service, they probably won't face criminal charges. If they did lie, they're in a whole mess of trouble and will have a lot more to worry about than their bankruptcy.

If they didn't lie, then the message from the Oval Office is quite clear, and it should be known to anyone who tries such a stunt, don't try to pull one on the White House or a public personality or the media will air your dirty laundry.

Even if they can't hit you with legal action, the media will never miss an opportunity to prey on your life story and personal details like piranhas. That's a nice little weapon to have in your passive presidential war chest. You don't have to really do anything, the media will take care of it for you.

When your troubles include..

Oasis has $965,000 in liabilities.

more than $60,000 in credit card debt and an "unknown" amount in federal back taxes.

"Debtor has not filed corporate taxes since tax year 2006," the filing says. "Has always previously had business loss, with refund flowing to shareholders."

Nearly $3,000 in gasoline purchases to Exxon-Mobil and more than $95,000 in legal fees.

Two pending lawsuits against Oasis, one for more than $300,000 for "catering services" and one judgment against the company.

A 2004 Aston Martin worth $150,000 when it was repossessed.

A repossessed boat valued at $90,000 with $56,000 still owed.

A closed business checking account, $3,800 in the red.

$224,000 owed "for rental of FedEx Redskins Suite and related hospitality services,".

..all that, I would think that the last thing you would want to do is crash a presidential party if you considered the consequences for even a second. It seems that with all the problems these two people had, they still must've somehow thought it a foregone conclusion that they wouldn't get caught.

Oy vey, the stupidity of some people.

Talk about delusions of grandeur.

SPECIALfeature: Obama's Big Unemployment Problem: A Threat to re-election

SUMMARY
*persistent high unemployment may mirror Jimmy Carter and shape perception of Obama administration.
*expert economists agree the stimulus package wasn't sufficient and more direct help from the Federal government is needed.
*Obama's priorities will be tackled in a specific order, but the order they are arranged in is a mistake and may cause him and democrats big problems.
*returns on huge investments need to come sooner, rather than later at the risk of endangering the administration's agenda and possible re-election.

We remain only eleven months after Obama's inauguration, and while we find ourselves in a much better position than we were during Obama's first few weeks in office, there is widespread discontent at the state of the economy as perceived by the common man.

We've freed ourselves from the recession, but the pain felt at home-still without real income except for an unemployment check makes it difficult to look at stock market numbers and agree with Robert Gibbs and Tim Geithner that the economy is getting better.

The erosion of patience is understandable when the ambitious promises behind much of the measures passed this year turned out to be overly optimistic.

Surely, there is no doubt that the real economy is improving, that there is more money being pumped into the economy by consumers in almost all sectors relative to this same time last year when we were in dire straits. The housing market in October saw a ten point one percent increase in home sales and car sales have come back strong even after the government's Cash for Clunker's program ceased to exist.

As extraordinary and confidence inspiring signs that these are, the administration's initial goal with the stimulus program was to avoid the jobs market slipping into ten plus percent unemployment rate territory; a big point of sale for the stimulus program. However optimistic you may want to be about what the stimulus has done for the economy, in this respect, it has been an utter failure.

It has also failed to spur consistent increases in retail sales, instead resulting in seesawing months were there is alternating growth and contraction. Retail sales tend to be important because growth in retail jobs fueled a lot of the job growth in years past.

What is the most worrying and most alarming is to see that this far through the stimulus package and being at the point where the economy is showing some strength (2.8% GDP growth revised in the third quarter), the job market is STILL shedding jobs. We have a long way to go before the unemployment rate gets back to normal. The longer that takes, the longer it will take for consumer spending to pick up. The longer that takes, the longer it will take for robust economic recovery to take hold.

If we all really wanted to be honest with ourselves, we can't say we didn't know that the unemployment rate would still reach ten percent. Expert economists, Paul Krugman and Mark Zandi both had testified to the congress and made it known to the president that the stimulus bill needed to be bigger. They warned that if the goal was to keep the jobs market in check, barring a bigger stimulus bill, the congress would need to come back to consider a second round of stimulus. Failure to do this would result in high unemployment for several years to come.

Zandi and Krugman both also predicted then and still do now that job growth will be stunted if there's no more stimulus, and thus real GDP growth will be flat because of stagnating consumer spending. So far they have consistently been proven right. Despite all this, there is seemingly little more focus from the administration except to hold a so called 'jobs' summit, giving Americans little reassurance that the economy will begin show visible signs of a recovery.

It is apparent that the Wall Street and bank bailout in combination with the stimulus package has left the country with no appetite to digest further government spending to save the economy, especially when it seems like the returns on our investments are either lost or too slowly materializing. The administration's handling of the TARP program ended too similar to George Bush and former Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson; mismanaged and riddled with loopholes that gave banks the upper hand on important issues to taxpayers such as bonuses.

Because of this, the Obama administration is going to have a very tough time finding the votes to get any type of necessary second stimulus passed.

While it is of utmost importance that the Obama administration get to health care and reshaping one sixth of the country's economy as soon as possible, it is of even greater importance to the overall economy and even for Obama's re-election for the labor markets to recover.

Obama has already spent most of his political capital on health care. It seems like critics who claim the order of Obama's priorities are a mistake might have a point. Health care truly could've waited a few months, but those already unemployed for almost two years truly have no more time that they can spare.

If the state of the job market remains the same, regardless of what Obama accomplishes on health care, his presidency may mirror Jimmy Carter's and be defined majorly on persistently high unemployment and perhaps threaten chances of democrat's and his own re-election.

Those who worry about deficits and debt have legitimate reasons to worry, big deficits and debts are definitely not sustainable for long periods of time. However, most economists including Mark Zandi and Paul Krugman point towards the United States having an eighty percent debt to GDP ratio in 1950, they point to Italy and Belgium's around ninety percent debt to GDP during World War II, and they point to the ease they all had in getting out of the debt. Krugman correctly argues that the key to these types of debts aren't paying them off, but managing them and letting economic growth handle the rest.

Projected growth in the economy for the next several years dwarf the debt levels that economists believe are needed to really get the labor market back on track. America and congress simply need to get past the flawed notion that government stimulus and Keynesian economics doesn't work, when clearly, history proves otherwise.

There is some good news for the Obama administration. The recent jobs reports are showing that the job markets have slowed job loss and may within a relatively short amount of time begin adding jobs again, albeit at a likely slow pace.

It's unfortunate to say that at this point there is no honeymoon to protect the president. Patience has worn out with independents and patience is wearing thin even with the most loyal supporters. Despite what opposition may come, Obama really needs to take the reigns and really put the foot to the gas on the jobs situation at the risk of undermining his and the democratic party's agenda.

There is a definite opportunity for Obama to take this jobs summit and rally support for job stimulus even if it must be done under the guise of something else. This is going to take some incredible maneuvering, creativity, and leadership by the president.

This may turn out to be the administration's biggest flop or it may turn out to be its biggest accomplishment. There is still time to make this a victory, but whether or not the administration begins to see the need to again address the problem instead of giving the situation more time will really determine if they fail or are successful in 2012.


("The Obama Delusion" Special Feature will be postponed for the next topic. Stay tuned)

preview SPECIAL FEATURE: The Obama Delusion

This is a preview of an upcoming piece that will be titled "The Obama Delusion". The piece will be posted sometime this week.


With the familiar and infamous closing line to virtually every presidential speech, "..and may God bless the United States of America", new President, Barack Obama waved goodbye to a packed crowd in Chicago's Grant Park with the understanding of the 'change' mandate that he had just gotten from America's voters.

The president surely knew the change he was going to bring, but as sure as America was of who they wanted to be their 44th president, few people understood what it was that he would do. Failing to understand that resulted in really low or exceedingly high expectations for him and inevitably has caused some reservations among those who voted for Obama. People naturally resist change, so to have so much of it already done has caused unease about gambling on such an ambitious agenda with so much change at a time when a turn for the worse could have proved disastrous.

Progressive democrats embraced his message, taking to heart his words and having a perception of Obama's agenda being more ambitious and more leftist than any president has tried in the past.

Centrist independents couldn't separate the incumbent republican candidate to his predecessor, and thus they took the mantra of change to simply mean something other than George Bush. In making this judgment, independents seem to have underestimated how much change Obama intended to bring. This is partly to blame for increased calls for the president and congressional democrats to slow down their efforts to make significant changes to address monumental problems.

Mainstream democrats on a whole tend to be quite satisfied with the president's job performance, however, they also seemed to miscalculate how hard he would push for bipartisan votes, whether or not the piece of legislation necessitated a republican to cross over for passage. This route has angered many, battered the patience of others, and it has caused dissatisfaction at the concessions being made for the sake of bipartisanship that it almost makes one forget the democratic party has super majorities in the congress.

It seems like the only group who didn't underestimate where the president intended to go with his agenda were republicans, but even they didn't expect Obama to be as pragmatic as he has been. His pragmatism has caused him the most problems within the party and within the congress. Republicans supported his first Afghanistan surge in almost greater numbers than democrats. Today, this is being repeated as he nears another troop decision. His moderate stance on gay marriage has angered part of the base and his support of second amendment rights has forced conservatives to claim the stance as a facade.

When it comes right down to it, most people simply projected their own perception of change and led themselves to miss the mark...

FULL BLOG POST UP LATER THIS WEEK

Election Day 2009: The Real Lessons for democrats & republicans

Despite hard work to the opposite end, the ruling party lost two key governorships last night in what many conservative and some liberal pundits are calling a warning to the White House and the ruling party for 2010.

However, the now conventional wisdom about the election tends to be completely missing the mark and, thankfully some pundits are realizing this as much as many democrats who turned out in 2008 but didn't this week.

Mid-term elections tend to have much lower voter turnout and off-year elections tend to be much worse. The reality for any election is that turnout will drive the winners, and records like the one Virginia has where their governor's mansion has for 3 consecutive decades gone to the opposite party that's in the White House tends to prove this reality.

The ruling party is always at their peak during a presidential campaign and the idea that the same party would be just as energized about gubernatorial elections less than 12 months after the last year's election is pretty hard to fathom. This is almost never the case and very few presidents have been capable of maintaining sky high approval ratings through their first couple of years.

Considering that the President's political capital is largely spent in the first year or two and the historical erosion of the ruling party's hold on congressional seats in mid-term elections after a White House win, what's being read into this week's election is whether or not people are satisfied with Obama, not whether the citizens of New Jersey are satisfied with Governor Corzine who was actually on their ballot. Presidential approval ratings in NJ holding strong at 57% should end any question about this, despite the expectation that congressional republicans and pundits will not let this go.

The real lessons that dems should take from this election are as follows.

The more time is wasted and the more delays there are before a health care bill passes the more there's a chance that dems will have a flat to humbling defeat in 2010. It's been said before, but there's almost no uncertainty in the thought that if democrats manage to pass a health care bill before the spring and next year's elections, then dems will retain a large part of the congressional seats that are in play and might even come out with an additional House seat or two.

The biggest realization is that democratic GOTV (Get out the vote) campaigns in 2009 were completely ineffective and that 2010 GOTV campaigns could be headed for similar failure if the youth base isn't riled up enough to show up. In this week's campaigns, the youth vote was almost halved in New Jersey and Virginia from last year.

While a 10% difference probably doesn't seem like much, considering the margins between Corzine and Christie was four percentage points, it would seem of utmost importance for all democratic candidates to get the youth to turn out for them.

There's no quick answer as to how to get the youth to show up in strength on off-year elections, but their support for democrats in recent years is steadfast and them showing up to the polls can be key to maintaining democratic majorities for a long time to come.

Bill Owens of New York is the first democratic candidate to win the New York-23 seat in over 140 years.

NY-23 offers lessons for both parties, both good and bad ones. What republicans need to take away from this is that while the race was close, they did lose an almost 'safe' republican seat following the biggest defection since Senator Arlen Specter (PA) switched parties to become a dem in a similar 'purity purge' by conservatives. Republicans are unlikely to stop this type of thing if the purging continues to be done by voters and less likely to stop if national republican candidates for 2012 keep undermining RNC candidates by endorsing Conservative Party and other independent candidates.

There's a very real possibility of a republican party split, and it's not likely to become apparent to the republican and even democratic leadership until next year's elections. More commonly occurring third party spoilers could be key next year in deciding the balance of power.

The most worrying thing for republicans about this is that the split in their party may very well be de facto, as independent candidates flock to appear on the ballot and garner more of the conservative vote as the 20% of Americans willing to call themselves republicans figure continues to fall.

The split may not seem real or even actually occur until election day a year from now when vote tallies come in. A scenario where the party implicitly splits and creates a legitimate third party is unlikely, but dissatisfaction with the republican party could very likely result in the support of non-mainstream candidates; an irrefutable win for democrats. If there are significant third party spoilers in 2010, then there is a very high likelihood that democrats will come out flat or on top in 2010 and beat the historical odds of losing a few seats.

There are undoubtedly a lot of signals that 2009 sent both parties, but in my opinion what is now becoming conventional wisdom is completely getting it wrong. 2010 will be a big opportunity for both parties, but what either party manages to get together or have fall apart by next year's elections will be difficult to predict and precisely what decides who will eventually end up on top. 2009 wasn't a referendum on anyone, it was a pre-season game to what will be a contentious political season next year.