Morning in America

The American taxpayers made a profit over $25 billion from the Citibank stock sale, showing our socialist President still knows how to make money. By the way, last year he actually cut the budget deficit by the largest amount in American history.

So what gives with the tax deal. Pat Buchanan and Dick Morris are trumpeting the tax cuts for the rich as a total Republican victory. But there is silence from all the tweeting GOP congressmen. Literally no one has commented on it.Right-wingers are posting their anger at the RINOs for bowing to the socialist President.For their part, the Left is in an uproar. The Democratic Underground and DailyKos had a field day of people arguing that progressives must primary President Obama and testimonies from former Obama campaign aides saying they are fed up with him. Bill Maher calls him a "wuss", Ed Schultz has thrown in the towel and former Republican Young Turk Cenk says that the President has been rolled. Democratic congressman Ellison told Ed Shultz he won't be used to criticize the President because the problem was the Republicans and the President fought for the poor. Bernie Sanders says he will filibuster the Senate agreement and outgoing Republican Senator George Voinovich said he will vote against extending any of the Bush era tax cuts. The House Democrats apparently left the White House yesterday angry as hell.

If you want a sense of where President Obama is coming from, you should listen to his speech yesterday in North Carolina where he outlined at length where he wants America to go in order to economically compete in the future. It is clear that his eyes are on a larger prize than whether rich people get tax cuts. He outlined the disadvantages the United States finds itself in with regard to education, infrastructure, alternative energy supplies and computer science. Buried beneath the tax cut deal was the President of the United States calling on the nation to step up to this generation's "Sputnik Moment". If you take this speech with his MIT speech, you will get a clearer idea of where the President is coming from and going to--and it's not liberal, conservative or even moderate.

The great Monday morning strategists in D.C. think Obama should have the tax cuts extend only a year so he can make it an issue in 2012 and force a vote then. Others believe that he should have extracted more from the Republicans. Still others thought he should have stood firm and let all the tax cuts go down on principle. Katherine Vander Heuval thinks Obama has just made himself a one-term President because his base now will abandon him. Paul Krugman says that the President comes off as weak.

The other day I said I liked how Obama made decisions and I warned it did make him look weak. But let' examine the deal. He extracted 13 more months of unemployment insurance from the Republicans, the payroll tax holiday, which will benefit all those earning less than $100,000,the child tax credit, the student tax credit, the business tax credits, which the GOP really did oppose, and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Yes, the rich get their Christmas gift and yes these all increase the deficit. But notice that the Republicans suddenly forgot about the deficit when the rich got their goodies.

In short, as Ezra Klein pointed out, forestalling the deficit emphasis for a few months, the Obama Administration actually came out of this deal with an ugly, maybe not so efficient stimulus package, which the Republicans swore they were against. What this lays the framework for is the infrastructure debate in the next Congress. And Congressman Ellison was right--the President's part of the bargain helps the poor and the unemployed in this country.

Now what I want to know is what ideas do the Republicans have any more. They got their way with the tax cuts for the rich but they virtually have run out of ideas. They've run the whole Just Say No strategy. There's nothing left. In looking at the prospects of the next Congress, the Obama Administration knew the tax deal was the last gasp for any stimulus--ugly or not. So they went ugly. I loved my Lakers alot growing up but the Celtics always beat them going ugly.

We are now down to the remaining items of the Lameduck session. The New Start Treaty, which I gather was an ancillary topic in the tax discussions, the Dream Act and DADT. Harry Reid who owes his re-election to Hispanics wants to bring up the Dream Act before the Defense Appropriations. It's hard to remember that there was wide bipartisan aupport for the Dream Act. John McCain was even one of its cosponsors. Not anymore. I think it is dead. The gay military personnel believe the New Start Treaty can wait until the next Congress so that DADT can be repealed . I disagree. If the New Start Treaty isn't approved now, the whole committee process has to start again with the new Congress. And now Mitt Romney has penned an Op-Ed opposing the New Start treaty,going against the collective wisdom of the last five Republican Presidents. The votes are almost there for the New Start Treaty. If not now, it would not be approved for the rest of Obama's first term.

On DADT, Mitch McConnell is basically lying--no surprise--about the time it takes to pass the Defense Appropriations Act. It has already been debated five times already. Democratic aides have researched his assertions that it needs about two weeks to pass. Almost every defense appropriations bill over the last five Administrations has taken five days and even less. McConnell then claims that this bill is contentious because it allows for military health care to pay for abortions. Give me a break. But Bob Gates told the soldiers yesterday he was very pessimistic about DADT being repealed by this Congress and he feels the courts will make them. Jolting Joe Lieberman shocked everyone yesterday by saying that he thinks the Senate should stay in session past Christmas to repeal DADT. Here it really does come down to President Obama and Hapless Harry Reid. They really shouldn't have the issue hung up by the incredibly shrinking John McCain.

The Prop 8 trial has started and the first part of the proceedings was a wangle about whether the defendents had standing. The government of California refused to defend the case and the question is whether proponents of a ballot measure actually have the legal weight to argue in its defense. One other issue was whether a clerk from Imperial County, made famous by the David Lynch movie "Inland Empire",is a state or local official and whether Imperial County has any stake in the decision. The second half of the proceedings was taken up with the three judge panel asking pretty sharp questions of the anti-gay lawyer.

I think the San Francisco Chronicle article this morning is on the right track. The judges will issue a narrow decision--one that might not take it to the Supreme Court. Their questions appear to be zeroing in on a Colorado ruling that took rights away from gays, which courts later overruled. In the Prop.8 case, you have some gays that are married in California, some not allowed to, and this creates different classes of people with and without rights. I think the Court will overrule Prop 8, ratify Vaughn Walker's opinion but not embrace its full meaning. In any event, gays will be allowed to marry at the end of the day.

I am betting now on DOMA being the case that makes it to the Supreme Court on gay rights. That's too bad because I think Ted Olson and david Boies have been beyond superb.


Meanwhile in the world of Wikileaks, Julian Assange is in prison in the UK and denied bail. According to Wikileaks spokespeople, if Assange was jailed, the files on BP, Bank of America and Gitmo will be released. If actually imprisoned or killed, the insurance file will be dumped on the world stage.