Last year, speaking at the Heritage Foundation,
Sen. John McCain said that the Republicans laid the groundwork for reconciliation because of how they had used it:

MCCAIN: I fully recognize that Republicans have in the past engaged in using reconciliation to further the party’s agenda. I wish it had not been done then, and I hope it will not be done now that the groundwork has been laid.

But now that reconciliation, a simple up or down vote, is actually going to be used to pass a mish-mash of conservative GOP and Democratic ideas under Obama's watch? Suddenly it is the nuclear end of the world:

I am going to put this on the front page for now and demote it when it is done. (It is over)

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Anyone think he will give them the same treatment he gave to the GOP House "Lion's Den" he visited last week? (Seemed more like a GOP kitty litter box when he was done burrying them and their questionable talking points...)

promoted by roxy. Originally posted 2010-01-27 17:20:57 -1000

Michael Collins

Just a few cynics doubted the magnificent procession of then Senator
Barack Obama to the highest office in the land. He was the redemption
of our past sins, the proof that we were a better nation than we had
been. After all, race has been at the center of American politics since
Bacon's Rebellion was crushed in 1667 but we were  moving beyond that.  And we did.   Race was set aside for most of those who voted.

Michael Collins

The underpants bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is a curious
terrorist.  He became disillusioned with his privileged life as the son
of a bank chairman and member of the Nigerian elite, it would seem. 
Rather than pursuing his studies in London, he retreated to Yemen to
learn the ways of al Qaeda inspired terrorism.

Farouk was so indiscreet that his father reported him
to the U.S. Embassy as a potential terrorist in November.   A month
later, he managed to get on a jumbo jet headed for Detroit to complete
a terror mission.   Despite his training in engineering at the
prestigious London School of Economics, Farouk failed
in his mission.  He couldn't  mix his explosives to achieve the desired
effect.  He apparently forgot to detonate the explosive device in mid
flight, waiting until just before landing in Detroit to start his
task.  He retrieved and set off the chemicals to create the explosion
in full view of passengers.

What kind of terrorist is this?  He doesn't know when, how or where to conduct his criminal enterprise.

Is this the best al Qaeda can do?

Was this, as Time magazine suggests, really the “Decade from Hell?”

Actual reality, of course, can't be broken up into the neat packages of time, such as decades, that humanity has devised in the form of clocks and calendars. We worship those inventions, and it is universally accepted to place in them the inordinate powers we prescribe to anniversaries and other features of an occult-like numerology.

The validity of calendars lies in their capacity for bringing all of humanity onto the same page.

Was this, as Time magazine suggests, really the “Decade from Hell?”

Actual reality, of course, can't be broken up into the neat packages of time, such as decades, that humanity has devised in the form of clocks and calendars. We worship those inventions, and it is universally accepted to place in them the inordinate powers we prescribe to anniversaries and other features of an occult-like numerology.

The validity of calendars lies in their capacity for bringing all of humanity onto the same page.

Michael Collins

The myth that the Democratic plans for health reform will produce anything by the target date of 2014 is only exceeded in absurdity by the myth that the world will end on December 21, 2012.

"New media" pundit Eric Alterman is down on his knees, genuflecting before the graven idol of Democratic Party interests. He wrote a full fledged justification supporting the current idol with feet of clay, the Democratic health care reform effort ongoing in the United States Senate. The article looks like talking points hot off the press from the White House Office of Disinformation since he's giving the president credit for all the good things which have materialized as if by magic in the latest Senate's efforts.

To begin with, he failed to note these very real issues in the health care debate: the immediate need by tens of millions for adequate health care and financial relief from exorbitant prices; the preservation of insurance companies at the center of public health care, companies with no interest in or obligation for the public welfare; and, the gross hypocrisy of the president demanding that health reform not add one penny to the deficit while he spends hundreds of billions for the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq - pure deficit operations with no discernible benefit to citizens.

Alterman starts out with this catchy header:

Posted with permission of author Nicholas Benton, Owner/editor of the Falls Church News Press.

President Obama's address to a global television audience Tuesday night about his intent to send 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan was a sobering reminder of the unbelievable mess that he inherited from George W. Bush when he entered the White House last January.

Michael Collins

Michael Collins

U.S. Afghan Envoy Urges Caution on Troop Increase

"WASHINGTON
-- The United States ambassador to Afghanistan, who once served as the
top American military commander there, has expressed in writing his
reservations about deploying additional troops to the country, three
senior American officials said Wednesday.

"The position of the ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, puts him in stark opposition to the current American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who has asked for 40,000 more troops. New York Times, Nov. 11

This isn't just any envoy.  General Karl Eikenberry
has served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, the second as head of the
Combined Forces Command.  After the second Afghan tour, Eikenberry was
Chairman of the NATO
Joint Military Committee.  He's a West Point graduate with advanced
degrees from Harvard and Stanford and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

General McChrystal has asked for 50,000 troops in early October.  By October 28, the president was said to favor a "McChrystal light" number as low as 15,000. On Nov. 7, just four days before Eikenberry's statement, McClatchy Newspapers put Obama's preferred number at 30,000. At this moment, the president is reported have rejected all of the troop increases on the table, according to Associated Press at 12:02 am EDT, today, November 12.

How did we get from McChrystal's request for 50,000 troops
in early October to Eikenberry's "written reservations about deploying
additional troops" just days before President Obama's planned decision?

Written by Nicholas Benton, owner/editor of Falls Church News Press. Posted with his permission.

It is surprising that so few progressives mortified by the aggressive assault tactics of the embittered right wing in America seem to appreciate the consequence of their own actions to deprecate the achievements of the Obama administration.

1965 - President Lyndon Johnson signs Medicare bill
while President Harry Truman looks on.  Truman signed up for Medicare
right away.  Image

Published with permission from Robert Reich.

Latest word from the White House is that the President still supports a public option but is also standing by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's remark last weekend that a public insurance plan is "not the essential element" of health-care reform. So where, exactly, is the White House on the public option? Just about where it is on the question of whether it agreed with Big Pharma to bar Medicare from using its bargaining clout to get lower drug prices -- or didn't. In other words, we don't know.

Universal health care is President Obama's biggest issue, and he needs strong public support if he's going to overcome the vested money interests in Washington. Which brings us to the question of where the people who voted for Obama stand on all this.

Paul Krugman outline's the healthcare proposal now on the table and questions why the Blue Dog Democrats are opposing it. An Incoherent Truth . He states the case:

Right now the fate of health care reform seems to rest in the hands of relatively conservative Democrats — mainly members of the Blue Dog Coalition, created in 1995. And you might be tempted to say that President Obama needs to give those Democrats what they want.

But he can’t — because the Blue Dogs aren’t making sense.

posted with permission of Mark Karlin

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

By Mark Karlin 

He promised us fundamental change and the diminished power of the "K Street" lobbyists, but on the healthcare reform bill -- regretfully -- President Obama acts like a man who has little control over money-fueled profiteerinng lobbying that imperils that very change and hope that he promised us.