Of Thee I Sing*

*Today our President published a children's book dedicated to his daughters. The book covers various inspirational American characters from Georgia O'Keefe to George Washington. Congressional Quarterly printed a brief blurb about the book, which drew the strangest comments. One post said,"If he has enough time for this, he ought to mow the White House lawn." Get It. "Why doesn't he spend time running the country." But leave it to Fox News to turn this children's book like Obama's Study Hard speeches to children on opening day of school into something sinister. President Obama also included Sitting Bull as a person who was a great healer. Of course, this means he sided with a person who killed a U.S.General. That's just what a Muslim terrorist-loving President would do.

Meanwhile get ready for the real Hate Obama campaign from Rep. Issa, who called President Obama "one of the most corrupt Presidents in American history." He called the stimulus package $750 billion in "political walk around money", which Obama gave to his political friends. Issa claims this has to be explained. Of course, it's not true but that doesn't matters any more. Issa promises investigations into the New Black Panthers and ACORN, which he claims the President was involved with.

Pat Caddell and Douglas Schoen, the pretend Democrats, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for President Obama to declare he's a one-term President and this way he would get bipartisan cooperation. They clearly haven't looked at the Republicans lately.

The latest CNN poll has Obama at 48% approval and 50% disapproval. But most interesting is that 9% who disapprove believe he's not liberal enough.

Republicans are acting like they have a mandate. It's important to point out that historically it's rather freakish to take only one House of Congress. This has only happened once before in the last century in 1930. It's not like this time it was a rousing standing ovation for their brilliant ideas.

Republicans will rule the House as if they have a mandate like they did in 2000 after being awarded the Presidency by one vote on the Supreme Court. However, only 11% of Americans believe there is a mandate. 50% in a CBS poll say Republicans will just block Obama's initiatives. The majority also believe that political polarization will get worse. Most polls are showing buyers' remorse.

What are the issues that concern most Americans? According to the latest Gallup poll, jobs/unemployment 33% and the economy in general 31%. Only 9% are concerned about the deficit and only 3% about war. In the CBS poll, this is lower--4% on the deficit and 2% about the wars.

The military is unanimous in support for the New Start Treaty, which President Obama negotiated with the Russians. However,the Washington Post claims it is up to senator Kyl of Arizona, who knows nothing about these matters. President Obama wants it ratified in the lame-duck Congress. But I'm doubtful that Republicans will think about national interest.

Eric Cantor joined other Republicans like Joe Lieberman and John McCain when he told Benjamin Netanyahu he had Israel's back against Obama. Republicans used to complain about Nancy Pelosi and others on foreign trips being traitors in their conversations with foreign leaders. Fortunately, for both the U.S. and Israel, Bibi ignored Cantor's advice and accepted the latest American offer on Mideast peace.

Country Last McCain seems to be in a pissing match with his wife over DADT. It seems he pressured Cindy to roll back her objection to it after she appeared in a video against hate. McCain is miffed that the Pentagon survey of the armed forces shows that repealing DADT would not affect anything. McCain refuses to go along with this, claiming more studies need to be done. McCain once said that if the military asked for it to be repealed he would support the move. They have repeatedly and the courts have ruled against it. But McCain will filibuster.

At this point, Obama should just sign an executive order repealing it. It's clear that the Supreme Court has already signalled that they would overturn the 9th Circuit Court's ruling it was unconstitutional. Obama's reticience to pursue the executive order option is his fear that another President would reverse it. I think it highly unlikely that once open gays can serve in the military that anyone will rescind that right. Sign it, Mr. President.

The infamous Bush Tax Breaks debate has been heating up again. The GOP thinks it would be OK to compromise over their extension for another two years because they know that it would be much harder to repeal then. I think it's stupid to maintain them. It's stupid policy-wise and ruinous economically. But I have no dog in the fight ultimately.

But Moody's has a different view. They claim that if the tax breaks are extended it may affect the credit-worthiness of the United States and signal the country can not get its fiscal act together. They threaten to downgrade America's Triple-A rating.

Also of concern is the growing Republican sentiment not to vote to raise the debt ceiling. A few commentators have suggested that the Democrats should get this commitment linked to the extension of the tax breaks for the wealthy. Others suggest they throw in extension of unemployment insurance.

Republicans are signalling their readiness to compromise on the tax breaks but not on extending unemployment insurance. Some of the millionaire tax breaks mean over $100,000 to the wealthy individual. Quite a gift when you are asking others to sacrifice. The United States has never not extended unemployment insurance when the unemployment rate was above 9.5%. Has never happened but I guess it might for the first time.

The mid-term campaign drew alot of attention to candidates like Buck in Colorado, Miller in Alaska and Lee in Utah who said they wanted the 17th Amendment repealed. The 17th Amendment allows for the direct election of Senators. Off-beat, a little kooky? Yes, but along comes Fat Tony Scalia, who gave a lecture last week and advocated the same thing. Scalia went into Glenn Beck territory claiming that the original intent of the constitution got all out of wack starting with the Progressive period and that we need to reclaim it.

This raises a question that keeps cropping up with the new Republican crowd. I have lived my life during the period of history when the United States was at the zenith of its power, militarily, politically, and economically. Now teabaggers, Tony Scalia and Republicans are claiming that America somehow went wrong starting in the progressive period. This means that they would like to repeal the days of America's greatness. How do they think we became a superpower? This is the strange disconnect with the small, limited government imperialists. You can not square the circle without recognizing the contributions to America of progressive policies.

You're really going to enjoy the next Congress, over half the new Republicans have never, ever held any type of public office, even a member on the local schoolboard.


For those concerned with the national debt, the Commonwealth Fund published a study this week that the Health Reform bill will save $143 billion from 2010-2019 and then $1.2 trillion from 2020-2029.

Maybe the Democrats should recruit the new Republican member who ran against Obamacare but demanded to know yesterday why his congressional medical insurance didn't take place immediately. He wanted a temporary policy until he's sworn in.

Friday in Crazy Town

My apologies--It's the "Al Qaeda Seven", not six, who are the DOJ lawyers who defended the detainees. I saw Liz Cheney's vile little ad last night. Rachel Maddow probably had the best attitude--just laugh at it and mock it. But lawyers defending the rights of the accused being attacked as somehow in bed with terrorists is disgusting and not even good McCarthyite theater.

Former President of Notre Dame, Father Hesburgh once told me,"The greatest tragedy in life is that the young must grow up in a world created by 80 year old men." Since Colin Powell threw John McCain under the bus by calling for the repeal of DADT, the elderly McCain held court in the Senate by citing a letter signed by 1,000 former generals and rank officers demanding that DADT not be repealed. The problem with this letter is that the average age of the signatories is 74 years old with many on the list over 90. One general's wife signed his name while the man had Alzheimer's and had not been able to communicate for six years. Another widow signed for a man already dead. And several are now protesting they weren't even asked but they found their names on it anyway. None of the signatories served in the military during the time of DADT.

Not to be outsmarted again by Barack Obama, John McCain and Joe Lieberman are introducing the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010 ,which will create a "high value detainee" team,made up of the intelligence agencies" to determine how a detainee is to be interrogated and whether that person should be declared "unprivileged enemy belligerents", meaning they would not have constitutional rights and could be detained indefinitely. Both men have serious problems with understanding anything about law. The ACLU is rightfully challenging this mess as unconstitutional. Besides the legal problem, this would ensure that detainees didn't talk to American officials. All those charged under civilian procedures have talked and provided invaluable intelligence to authorities.

Old geezers are complaining that the Coffee Parties I previously wrote about are fronts created by Organizing for America (OFA) at President Obama's behest. Leftwing blogs actually say they are creations of moderate Republicans ,who are too shamed of the tea parties. If its OFA, I say,"Bravo, David Plouffe".

Charlie Cook claims that there is no way the Republicans will not take the House. Anyone predicting anything about the 2010 elections is nuts. We're cranking up to 20 retirements per party and we're looking at a vast amount of primaries, which will determine the face of the general election. The Beltway pundits have not a clue as to what is going on. Republicans have to beat something with something and as yet they have been unable to articulate anything they believe in--let alone anything anyone could believe. In the last ten days, there has been considerable pushback against Republican obstructionism. Jim Bunning has become the poster child of the party, effectively cutting off the unemployment insurance for over 1 million and ending several hundred thousand transport workers.

What will be clear in the next few months will be the shape of the races for the state houses. here it is looking more predictable.

President Obama yesterday read to representatives from the health insurance industry letters he receives from citizens who can no longer afford insurance or who have lost coverage. he and Secretary Sibelius demanded the companies post their rate hikes on the internet and the reasons for these rate increases.

Later in the day he met with progressive Democrats, who were threatening to vote against the health care bill because it lacks a public option. His message was simple and clear: think about the 30 million uninsured who will benefit; and think about how hard it would be to pass anything progressive if this failed. Apparently, the attendees got the message.

Appparently, Bart Stupak from Michigan isn't buying. He is threatening to bring the house down over the abortion issue.

This raises an issue that has been bothering me. The pro-life movement has enormous number of men protesting and agitating, and even killing doctors. Why aren't the men who favor reproductive rights out in the streets in the same way? The campaign against Planned Parenthood is destructive to health care for women. Over 89% of their work has nothing to do with abortions. Yet, we have candidates now running against them, promising to cut their funding as if this old group is ACORN in disguise. And we have states like Utah trying to make miscarriages a capital offense. And these bills are introduced by men. In the whole health care debate, the first people thrown under the bus for some political compromise are women. Those who believe Roe v. Wade finished the issue have to wake up to the steady, consistent erosion of the woman's right to choose.