Our Woebegone President and the Cesspool on the Hill

Well, the entire Left has thrown President Obama under the bus. Just fill in the blank on what issue. Senator Harkin opines that if Obama caves on the tax cuts for the rich he should pray that Palin will be his rival in 2012 because the voters will turn on him.

Remember the recent failure of President Obama's Asian trip. If you followed our media, President Obama did not seal a massive sale with India, was not greeted with rapture in Indonesia but blew the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Pact and was heckled by China and Europe over the Fed's "quantitive easing" policy. The President weakly suggested that he wanted the Free Trade Pact re-negotiated to benefit the United States more. Well, yesterday the Pact materialized, which will mean thousands of jobs for Americans and better conditions to export American goods to Korea. This received a small note in the Washington Post and was dutifully denounced by Jane Hamster of Fire Dog Lake fame saying that the UAW was bought off with a few jobs while thousands of American jobs will be lost. The Free Trade deal is the first major trade pact for the United States in over ten years.

President Obama has been pre-occupied with nuclear proliferation since his graduate school days. Last year he initiated a global program to locate and eliminate loose nuclear materials around the world. Neoconservatives snorted at it and Fox News spent hours of air time exploring the crypto-islamic nature of the logo for the submit--it was actually an abstract rendition of a neutron. Russia has already shipped its enriched plutonium to the U.S. and a covert action in Kazakstan removed loose nuclear material, which would have built thousands of nuclear weapons. Even Belarus is getting in the act.

Enter yesterday one Warren Buffett, who is putting up $50 million for a new initiative aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons as more nations seek nuclear energy. The idea is to create a nuclear bank under the auspices of the United Nations and the International Atomic Agency where nations could receive nuclear materials for reactors as well as supervised technical expertise on peaceful energy uses. The idea was first proposed by former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn in 2006 and has since been endorsed by President Obama. The approval of this idea became a priority of President Obama and with its approval and the funding by Buffett and the matching support from the United States Government it is now a reality. It will address the demand for nuclear energy from dozens of countries, including many in the conflict-prone Middle East. As John McCain said, the President is very inexperienced.

The actual votes to repeal DADT, which McCain claims is solely an issue because of President Obama's campaign pledge to the Left, are there. Now whether the Senate will actually vote on the matter remains to be seen. Yesterday's hearings only raised the question of the psychopathology of Senator McCain's resistance to repeal. Steven Benen in the Washington Monthly wrote how McCain's supporters kept telling people after his brutal primary fight and his re-election McCain would change his mind. But alas as Benen points out that McCain really, really hates gays and has only doubled down on his position.

A Gay blogger suggests that McCain was a spoiled rich kid at Episcopal here in Alexandria and probably bullied kids who McCain thought were sissies and that this attitude was become more reinforced as he has aged.

After receiving the professional opinion from the military that DADT should be repealed,McCain and Inhofe tried to fish around for personal opinions. A few took the hook to say that DADT should be repealed but not when we're fighting two wars and maybe not until 2012 (wink!). Inhofe took up McCain's war cry from the previous day's hearings that the Pentagon Survey did not explicitly ask whether the armed forces approved of the repeal of DADT. Here the Pentagon stood its ground by saying that it is inappropriate to survey enlisted personnel about policy options. But McCain concluded the day saying that it was not the right time to repeal DADT because we're fighting two wars and the economy is in the tank.

After the hearings both Scott Brown and Susan Collins said they would vote for repeal. There are at least 3 other Republicans. But be warned a repeal will probably be implemented over some time, not immediately. Basically, what the Obama Administration will have to do is suspend any actions to discharge gay members as a first step and secondly to restore those already discharged that still want to serve.

Keith Olbermann seems to have developed a new programming formula to boost ratings. He is inviting old Republicans on to basically show there was once a rational party of that name in America. Last night David Stockman actually appeared in studio to lament the Republicans insistance on continued tax cuts for the wealthy and tell the audience that Ronald Reagan's legacy is being sullied because the Gipper actually believed in creating wealth by actually building things and selling real products and not by speculative bubbles. Next Olbermann will substitute the Reaganite dissenters on torture for Jonathan Turley. With Dean Martin, "Swizzle Stick" Boehner taking over the House,MSNBC could lead a whole revival of sane Republicans by featuring the sober heads of yesteryear in contrast to the wingnuts of today. He might even bring Mike Castle on to discuss the teabaggers. By the way it seems Keith's new formula is working--is ratings are up 3% and Rachel Maddow's up over 24%.

Today, Senate Republicans defeated tax cuts for the middle-class, making the GOP's position clear--they are only interested in tax cuts for the wealthy and no one else. Or as I wrote the other day and Allen Grayson said it on the House floor,they are only for tax cuts for themselves. All the Senate Republicans are multi-millionaires and would receive several hundred thousand apiece if tax cuts for the rich were extended.

President Obama lamented today's action but said that by Jan.1 there would be a solution. As I wrote yesterday, the White House's private negotiations with the GOP continue, much to the chagrin of the Democrats, who are concerned that President Obama will be rolled. It really depends on what he gets from the compromise. On the table is a year extension of unemployment comp, various other wonky sounding bills and some downpayment on a new initiative to create jobs. I happen to like Obama's way of negotiating these issues but it does have the liability of looking like he is weak. As we saw in the mid-terms, none of the far-reaching reforms he won out of Congress benefited the Democrats at all because voters were appalled at the process and never focussed on the results.

Missing in action on the former Republican Secretaries of State endorsing the New Start Treaty has been Condi Rice. Her office told Rachel Maddow's Show that she thought the op-ed by her former colleagues was good but that she was working behind the scenes and would have something to say at the appropriate time. Hmmm. Interesting.

While the Senate screwed up the Food Modernization Security Act, even though it passed it by a 75-25 vote in a rare moment of bipartisanship, the House is likely to correct the Senate's mistakes and re-pass it. This is another Obama initiative that has gotten almost no press. It is the first time since 1938 that there has been a renovation of our food safety regulations. Which means nothing to you unless you come down with Salmonella. It is precisely meant to avoid this year's million egg recalls by mandating periodic inspections of primary food suppliers. Check this off on the President's list. According to Glenn Beck, this act will lead to mass starvation.

Speaking of which there is a new website called Glenn Beck Unhinged, which documents his best, insane quotes. It is a must read and would spare everyone really listening to him.

I want to tip my hat to Charles Blow, who has adopted the policy of not writing about Sarah Palin until she has done something significant like announce for the presidency, otherwise he's going to ignore the Queen of Tweet. I think that's a good recipe for maintaining one's sanity, which is priority number one these days.

Good news, Jesus will return on May 21, 2011. Billboards will be going up to announce this soon in Tennessee. My concern is whether this will conflict with the construction of the Creationist theme park in Kentucky. Maybe he could be persuaded to delay his arrival until Noah's Ark is completed--with taxpayer's funds by the way.

I'm sorry Cub great Ron Santo has died at the age of 70. Santo was part of the infield which sported Glenn Beckert,Ernie Banks and , I think, Don Kessinger (?). I used to watch these guys at Wrigley Field when I was at the University of Chicago. Santo suffered from diabetes and had his legs amputated. He died, however, from cancer. He had been voted best player not to have been voted into the Hall of Fame.

Also Gil McDougall died at the age of 83. The Yankee shortstop during another period of their heydays.

The Yankees are still acting creepy to Jeter but have at least upped their offer. You would think the Yankees would love to have at least one Yankee hitting 3,000 hits. Jeter is only about 70 hits away from this milestone. He also won the Golden Glove. OK, his batting average was the worse of his career but still not bad.

Back to the Middle East. Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas says he'll throw in the towel if the peace talks don't proceed and let Israel manage the West Bank. If the talks succeed, Hamas says they would reluctantly accept them if there was a referendum among the Palestinian people. And meanwhile, both the United States and Israel are concerned about the resurgence of Syria in the region. Today, Israel threatened to bomb Syria. You have to keep the excitement going.

Remember the Israeli plans to bomb Iran, the new mega-drones, the secret bases in Saudi Arabia? I think this was part of a massive deception campaign. This past week the leading Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated and the nuclear program has been sabotaged by a computer virus, which is specifically designed for the components in Iran's nuclear program. Now the Iranians can not tell which centrifuges are usable and which are damaged beyond control. There is virtually no way the Iranians can recoup quickly after this supervirus and the way it works. While the Iranians announced the fueling of their Russian-made nuclear plant this week, I found it odd that they announced it would not produce energy for 6-9 months.


Is the Iranian nuclear program really kaput? Even American intelligence officials are pooh-poohing the Wikleaks cables concerning the shipment of North Korean ballistic missiles to Iran. They're saying it didn't happen.

Maybe it's time to liberate South Ossetia.