Not exactly the first time the Secret Service were a tad off.

Look at Dallas.

I think that trespassing and unauthorized access statutes may apply not to mention possibly lying to police officials.

Did anyone watch the address tonight?

Neocons are whining about the timeline schedule shit, but honestly look at Iraq how that government took American military presence for granted and basically dicked around for years.

In Baghdad and Kabul, we've spent our blood and dollar. In a bizarre way, Obama is Nixon after Tricky Dick inherited Vietnam to the corrupt, useless South Vietnamese regime: "Better get crackin' because we aint doing your job anymore."

I saw the address. I'm against the war and the escalation. But for those who support it or can be convinced to do so I thought it was a good speech.

I was at a dinner last night near West Point. Someone made a joke about one of the local politicians not being able to attend our dinner because he had to be at West Point so early because of the security, and made a point about our local security being better than at the White House.

I was SHOCKED at Uber Liberal Mike Lupica's column the other day, because he's been an Obama cheerleader for longer than any of the other New York writers.

My point: If Obama is losing the backing of even the most liberal writers, he might be in more trouble than I thought (in terms of his popularity and re-election chances).

President Obama is looking like former President George W. Bush with Afghanistan plan

Mike Lupica, New York Daily News

There was the press pass at the bottom of a drawer Sunday, from Jan. 9, 2008, Saint Peter's College, "Change We Can Believe In" written in great big white and blue letters. It was the first time I ever saw and heard Barack Obama speak in person, heard the highest language and ideals we had gotten from a presidential candidate since Robert F. Kennedy 40 years before him.

"We are at a defining moment in our history," he said that day.

Now, nearly two years later, Obama is President and Tuesday night he isn't in a basketball gym in Jersey City. Instead, he gives a speech to the whole country from the United States Military Academy, using West Point like the backdrop of a movie set.

This speech isn't about the change he talked about as a candidate, or the audacity of hope. It is expected to be about hopelessness, the President perhaps increasing troops in Afghanistan by as much as 50% over the next year-and-a-half. Somehow he is expected to outline his exit strategy at the same time.

Sure he will.

You know when we are going to be out of Afghanistan, where the United States has become just one more losing road team? Sometime around the 12th of Never. The more who die there, the more we send over. This is Obama's surge, just without him calling it that, because that would make him sound too much like the big war President before him.

If he makes this announcement about more troops Tuesday night, it is the beginning of Barack Obama's own approval ratings ending up where George W. Bush's did.

"We're going to finish the job there," he says, and really does sound more like Bush than ever.

Somehow Bush fooled the country into a second term. The way things are going for Obama, there isn't going to be one for him. It is why there is this growing sentiment, even from people who voted for him, that the gate-crashers at the White House aren't a former cheerleader and her husband (did the Secret Service learn defense from the Knicks?), it is the President and all those advising him.

Maybe he can explain himself better on Afghanistan than he has on health care, even as he prepares to send 30,000 more American soldiers, or 35,000, whatever it is, over to the world capital of heroin production to become targets. It doesn't make him right.

Obama's critics on the right aren't doing this to him, neither are career draft dodgers like Dick Cheney. The change candidate becomes just another President telling us that if we lose Afghanistan then there goes Pakistan next, and after that, look out, Minneapolis.

Was there a time when Afghanistan was the central front of the war on terror? There was. But that was before we let Osama Bin Laden walk out of a cave in Tora Bora and into Pakistan. We couldn't take him out and couldn't take out Mullah Mohammed Omar of the Taliban but now more troops are supposed to turn the whole thing around.

"You need to put everyone you can as quickly as you can and deliver a knockout punch to the enemy," Sen. Jon Kyl, a Republican from Arizona, said yesterday.

Kyl of Arizona: another politician who never served a day in the military in his life, wanting to tell you all about it, war and soldiers and victory in the mountains.

It is one thing for this President to trust this country's economic bailout to a bunch of huckster insiders from Wall Street. It is quite another to bail out a bum like President Hamid Karzai, even for the noblest of reasons, in Afghanistan.

Somehow we can take brave American kids and train them in a few months to go fight the Taliban. But after eight years we are waiting for Afghanistan to assemble a real army of its own. Still our generals call for more troops, even though it isn't the generals who will die in the mountains, it will be young Marines.

As someone once said about Vietnam, "The only way out is the door."

Obama should never have given in to all the tinhorn generals in Congress and the media, all the others war experts who never wore a uniform in defense of this country for a single day. At a time when he is clearly afraid of being called weak, that would have been real strength from him. Saying no to all of them. He keeps looking for ways to say no to a second term instead.

The risk to a leader of appearing to play too nice with the other side is that your own side can lose patience with you-especially if your side is doing all the compromising.

Democrats lash out

This is an excellent new song by excellent rapper Sole.


My president is black,
an I know that it's historic.
Can't help but feel I been sold a bad product,
an I want my money back,
or the change that we demand.
I want a new deal - not a black republican.

This year was a bad year,
I knew it would be that,
they gave us some nice speeches,
but I cant eat that.
We voted for change,
but homie I don't see that.
Has a momententum at the start
Didn't know how to seize that.

Mr post racial - don't you understand?
There ain't no middle ground when you dealin' with the clan
we got drones up in Pakistan,
forget that - Afghanistan.
Just be a grown man, quit playing up in the sand.

We got some real problems,
they fuckin' with Glenn Beck.
What up wit da Amy Goodman
And some Juan Gonzales

An to my name I got three hundred dollas',
and to my credit I got ten or so albums
My Corolla's bullet grey,
and my wife owns that.
The car is in her name,
but the bank owns the debt

We just moved to Colorado, ain't no jobs here but dumb shit.
this ain't a recession; its a readjustment.
the late great USA owners of the world days are gone.
better learn to grow some food on your own.
Only thing about me that's rich
is the spices I use, the beats that I rock, the path that I chose.

We talking Hoover verse Roosevelt,
Fox news verse Rosa Parks,
Osama verse Fifty Cent.
a Phoenix can't swim with sharks.

So wake up them blue dogs,
kick dirt on them' red states.
And give us a single payer, fuck all the red tape.
And fuck having empire
we outta aspire; to more than pursuit of cash
relentlessly chasin' power

In high school they taught Latin
shoulda' taught Mandarin,
shoulda' taught Marxism,
shoulda' taught Blacksmithin'.

My money isn't green cause I'm livin' on credit,
only time i see green is when they say "cash back or debit."

I ain't mad at wall street, cause we all wanna ball
the planet's overpopulated and cant feed em' all
problem is a missile costs a couple of mils'
wanna' swim up in the beach but i'm swimming in bills
an there ain't no reprieve till Obama grow a spine
Its the death of a nation and don't need no common ground

It was November 08,
my home state was Blue, no New England was Red
so I threw my weight up in, a swing state instead
8 years of this damn war, couldn't face it to lose
so i drove to New Hampshire, walked'em straight to the booth
trooped the whole district holdin' signs and workin' phones
6am Election Day until the polls closed
then got back on the damn line, callin' Alaska
up to Wascilla, still gunnin' for Sarah
I ain't no Democrat, but this was fate by the throat
I believed in your promise, now where did it go?
Guantanamo's still open, Single Payer got dropped
this Bail Out was murder, tent cities popped up in the park!
Rendition's still on the table with no investigation
of war crimes or blatant Israeli invasion
man, what's the matter with you? Audacity's Hope
but you ain't done what you said or what we sent you to do...

My president is black,
we still cant relax.
The war will stop itself
single payer ain't passed.
My money's on the movement
we're not gonna stop.
Gotta keep on working,
black president or not.

yea, ask not what your president can do fr you
but what you can do to keep your presiient honest.
And i'm saying right now, get outta wall street homie.
Run the country, It ain't too late.

You can download his new album, Nuclear Winter Volume One, here.

Well the President and the voters have another three years to learn how Obama really handles himself against determined opposition and what his non-negotiables are.

I think it is a shame that currently the President is trying to sell a bill with no cost controls, mandated purchase of insurance, no public option and taxes on health care benefits as "reform".

I agree Lilo. I supported health care reform until I heard all of the bells and whistles of it. Subsidize those who need help paying premiums. Otherwise, leave it alone.

Sadly, I also agree. I just hope this isn't Obama's legacy.

The Jimmy Carter comparisons are not without merit (although Obama does have 3 years left to turn things around!). During Carter's Presidency we heard the term "ineffective" quite a bit. So far, it's not unfair to use that same word to describe Obama's first year in office.

Again, he does have three years to turn it around. Let's just hope he does!

This was Obama's best week since taking office. The health care plan, flawed as it is marks a giant step forward, and provides a framework that will lead to either a single payer system or real competition among insurance comapnies. Compare this to the original Social Security Act in the thirties...that law has been greatly enlarged over the year and so will the health care bill. Bottom line is he is the first president in history to pass a law that makes universal health care a right.

The Republicans did not oppose it so vehemently because in the short term it looks like a windfall for insurance companies and big pharma. They know the pasage of this law makes it inevitable that the anti trust exemption for healthcare insurance, or a single payer system or a public option, or a combination thereof is inevitable.

He's no Carter. I just finished Ted Kennedy's memoirs, and if you want to see what a tool Carter was as president read what Ted says.

Regardless of where you stand on the President or the proposed health care legislation, I think you might find this column about the President's communication and leadership style to be quite interesting. It's a very long piece of writing but it uses the health care fracas to suggest that Obama's preference for conflict-avoidance above all else may be a weakness, something with which I agree.

Obama's Leadership Style

It is still VERY early and two years down the line perhaps the President will have changed his approach to things. But I'm not sure that's possible. Time will tell.

I think what many of my "progressive" friends are missing here is that politics is the art of the possible. For all its problems the health care bill got past cloture 60-40. With a public option or a medicare buy in provision it would be dead.
What is the point of introducing legislation that is going to fail? Had Obama tried to ram something down the Senate's throat like Clinton tried he would have failed. There are a good number of Dems from places like Ohio, Montana, etc., who are not as far to the left as some might like, and their constituents are probably to the right of them. Lets see what the joint house-senate bill looks like, before we go off declaring Obama to be the next Jimmy Carter.

I don't say no to the idea that I'm impatient with what the President considers possible.


But....
Right now as it stands the Senate bill has these objectionable planks
* A federal mandate to purchase insurance
* No legally imposed price reductions for insurance policies/premiums
* No ability to import cheaper drugs from Canada
* No public option
* No Medicare expansion
* Fuzzy language about spending caps (I think that there are no lifetime limits on spending but there are annual limits with exceptions-for someone with a serious disease/condition this could be life and death)
* Cuts in Medicare to offset expansion of coverage
* Federal subsidies to private insurers
* Taxing of health care benefits (I have a selfish interest here-this will impact me) and is in direct opposition to what candidate Obama said. Do people remember how hard he went after McCain on exactly this issue when McCain endorsed the idea? It's also a backdoor tax increase on people earning less than $250K, which is also in opposition to what the President ran on.

So basically the bill as written forces everyone without insurance to buy insurance, cuts certain Medicare benefits, raises taxes and leaves the insurance and pharmaceutical companies free to charge as much as they like.

This is reform?
It is said "Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good". But this bill isn't good imo. I think all in all it's worse than the status quo. If the bill had just one of those planks or even a few of them I say ok, you don't get EVERYTHING you want. But all of those things together? No way.

Taking single payer off the table before negotiations even started was another bonehead move. It's like going into a car dealership and declaring that you MUST buy a car that day and MUST have a car from that particular dealership. The ensuing negotiation process will be a little different for you...

Lets see what comes out of the conference committee.

I am disappointed in what this bill lacks (as some of the things Lilo listed above). Yet, from what I understand, and have yet to read up on, is that there are many good things that are in this bill. One of which (and a program I'll be a part of in 2010)is these donut holes in the medicare program which, from what I understand, will help the seniors.

We still don't know exactly what the final bill will look like, but, flawed as it may be, this is a historic step forward, even if a small step.

Btw, I always felt my insurance is very good. I have a small co-pay, $100 hospital stay co-pay and pay no more than $10 for my prescriptions. Now, thank God, I've been pretty healthy and really don't use my insurance very much. What I should, and everyone should find out is IF their company has a limit on what they'll insure. Some stories I've heard during this past year is about cancer patients who have coverage stopped because they met the max the insurance will pay. I don't think most people even think about that.

TIS

The idea of taxing benefits is horrible. This will put plenty of people into another tax bracket, and is just another way of screwing the middle class. Do you know how much those benefits are worth?

We desperately need to have reform. However, not on the backs of the working poor and the middle class. And that's what this will do. For those people who work in menial jobs for a good company, say a receptionist for IBM, the benefits that would get taxed just may screw them in the long run.

I agree, SB. We should be encouraging employer health plans and packages. This sours the benefits. I would be a little surprised if this occurs. Taxing health benefits has been proposed over the years mostly by democrats, but there has always been strong opposition.

This bill is nothing more then a hand out to the insurance companies. After the bill passed the Senate stocks of insurance compaines on wall street went through the roof. The only thing this bill does is force people to BUY insurance. Its not free. And if u dont buy it u get fined. If Iam a ceo of an insurance company today Iam very very very happy.

Where did you get these G.O.P talking points? Joe Scarborough or Fox?

It's a sickening idea. As a retired union member and business agent, I'm appalled that it's even being considered. I still post on the AFL-CIO blog and enjoy reading their webpage. Here's a short article from their website that I think makes all the sense in the world.

Fix Health Care Right—Don’t Tax Benefits

By Seth Michaels

We’re continuing our campaign for real health care reform with a new AFL-CIO TV ad that sends a clear message: “Pass Health Care. Don’t Tax Health Benefits.” The ad, which started running in key markets around the country over the weekend, emphasizes that taxing benefits will lead companies to cut benefits and will shift cost burdens to families that can’t afford it. It urges Congress to pass health care reform all Americans can afford.

The Senate’s health care bill would set a tax on health plans worth more than $8,500 per year for individuals and $23,000 per year for families. For workers in high-risk occupations, for retirees 55 or older and for residents in the 17 highest-cost states, the bill would tax plans worth more than $9,850 for individuals and $26,000 for families.

This would amount to an enormous tax on workers’ health care benefits, one that would grow rapidly, as insurers increase premiums by an equivalent amount. It would shift health care costs onto the backs of workers—including many of the most vulnerable workers—without bringing down the cost of health care.

Here’s a fact sheet on why this new tax on middle class families’ benefits will hurt workers. This policy could:

Increase premiums, cut benefits and raise out-of-pocket costs for middle-class families.

Hurt one in five workers by 2016.

Punish workers who are older, sicker or in dangerous jobs.

Hit workers whose plans are more costly not because of extravagant benefits but because of the kinds of work they do or where they live.

There’s a right way to pay for health care. The House passed a better, fairer reform bill, and it’s paid for by a surtax on the very wealthiest earners-the ones who benefited from big Bush-era tax cuts for the rich.

We need health care reform-but we shouldn’t hurt middle-class workers and their health benefits in the process. Contact your Senators and ask for real reform.

AMEN, PB! I have heard this tax on benefits is going to get thrown out in the conference committee. It is a terrible idea, and I agree... tax everyone making more than $500,000, or better impose an even higher tax on everyone making more than a million dollars, and impose a 40% tax on anyone making more than 20 million (stop these crazy bonuses!)

I am reading there are rumblings about a VAT tax in our future. All in all not a terrible idea.

"After the bill passed the Senate ..." When did that happen? The Senate will not vote on its version of health reform until Thursday. As DT as indicated, it will then go to a conference committee to reconcile its provisions with those in the bill passed by the House.

Here's a great video with Al Franken getting all over Senator Thume regarding how he's "spinning" health care reform.


TIS

That was pretty funny.

I think most (all?) politicians change their minds, get new facts, face new realities upon election or whatever. That's just the way politics are. There are always gaps between campaign rhetoric and governance. And I think anyone that voted for the President thinking he was going to lead some sort of Progressive Restoration was sincerely deluded. He's a President, not a King.

That said though, the issue is that the President really did run as a different sort of politician and make some pretty specific statements about health care reform. It's an unwise move for him politically to claim that there is no difference between what he said he wanted and what is taking shape now. Not just for the bill, though I think it's bad. But because this process and gap between reality and rhetoric could increase apathy, disillusionment and cynicism among the voters who supported him in 2008. They may not be there for the 2010 election or beyond if they start to believe that no matter how they vote, they don't get what they want.

*******************
After Ripping Clinton And McCain, Obama Embraces Their Policies
Ryan Grim
ryan@huffingtonpost.com


In an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday, President Barack Obama challenged his critics to identify any "gap" between what he campaigned on last year and the health care legislation Congress is on the verge of passing.

Critics, however, do have a few of his campaign pledges to point to. Most notably, Obama launched high-profile attacks against two of his campaign opponents for taking policy positions that are now reflected in the final Senate bill.

Obama made health care in general a major part of his campaign so that when he won, he could claim a mandate and push for reform during his first year. In doing so, Obama savaged his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, for arguing that people should be mandated to buy health insurance.

"If a mandate was the solution, we could try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody buy a house," he said on a CNN morning show on Super Tuesday during the election. "The reason they don't have a house is they don't have the money. So our focus has been on reducing costs, making it available. I am confident that if people have a chance to buy high quality health care that is affordable, they will do so. And that's what our plan does, and nobody disputes that."

Obama ripped into his general election opponent, John McCain, for supporting a tax on private insurance, blanketing swing states with mailers and ads saying that McCain was raising taxes and that his plan would lead employers to drop coverage.

"He gives you a tax credit with one hand -- but he raises your taxes with the other," Obama said at the time. "Many employers will drop their healthcare plans altogether."

The mandate and the tax are now major portions of the Senate bill. Indeed, within months of inauguration, Obama was opening up to a tax on benefits. And while McCain's tax would have immediately captured more plans, Obama's tax on insurance -- aimed at so-called "Cadillac plans" -- will capture more and more as costs rise.

Obama also pledged to go after the anti-trust exemptions that drug makers and insurers enjoy: "When I'm President," he said in Iowa in early 2007, "we're going to make drug and insurance companies compete for their customers just like every other business in America. We'll investigate and prosecute the monopolization of the insurance industry."

The antitrust exemption is not revoked in the current Senate bill.

Obama also pledged to take on drug makers. "Congress specifically exempted Medicare from being able to negotiate for the cheapest available price. And that was a profound mistake," he said in 2007.

"We will break the stranglehold that a few big drug and insurance companies have on the health care market....It's become clear that some of these companies are dramatically overcharging Americans for what they offer.... We're not going to get change unless we can overcome the resistance the drug companies, the insurance companies, the HMOs, those who are making a major profit from the system currently."

But the Senate bill does not allow Medicare to negotiate with drugmakers thanks to a deal the White House cut with Big Pharma.

"And then we'll tell the pharmaceutical companies, 'Thanks, but no thanks, for overpriced drugs.' Drugs that cost twice as much here as they do in Europe and Canada and Mexico. We'll let Medicare negotiate for lower prices....We'll allow the safe reimportation of low-cost drugs from countries like Canada," he said.

The bill does not allow reimportation. The White House worked against it, citing that same Pharma deal.

"The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies. And you know what? The chairman of the committee, who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making two million dollars a year," Obama said. "That's an example of the same old game playing in Washington. You know I don't want to learn how to play the game better, I want to put an end to the game playing."

Obama was referring to Billy Tauzin, the head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the group the White House is now playing games with.

WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats passed a landmark health care bill in a climactic Christmas Eve vote that could define President Barack Obama's legacy and usher in near-universal medical coverage for the first time in the country's history.

Well, this is pretty scary. A woman threatens to kill Michelle Obama. Evidently she has a history of making threatening phone calls. Sounds like a whack job, but then isn't that the ones you need to watch??


Kristy Lee Roshia, 35, was charged with threatening a family member of the president and assaulting a federal agent after being arrested Saturday less than two miles from the Kailua home where the Obama family planned to stay during a holiday visit later this week.

Roshia called the Secret Service's Boston office last month and told a receptionist, "I will kill Michelle Obama" and "I will kill Marines," according to a Secret Service affidavit.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/23/politics/main6013062.shtml


TIS

WASHINGTON - GOP Chairman Michael Steele thinks Republicans have "screwed up" for the most part in the years since Ronald Reagan was president. And, he adds in an interview on the heels of his new book's release, Republicans won't win back the House in fall elections and might not be ready to lead even if they do.

That forecast of failure sparked a pushback Tuesday at the GOP's own National Republican Congressional Committee, whose aim is to elect Republicans, and delight at its counterpart, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Asked Monday by talk-show host Sean Hannity if Republicans can regain the House in November, Steele said, "Not this year." He added: "I don't know yet, because I don't know all the candidates yet. We still have some vacancies that need to get filled, but then the question we need to ask ourselves is, if we do that, are we ready?"