Thank You Senate Staff

To both Democratic and Republican Senate staff members,

The last cloture vote was just announced which enabled an engrossment vote tomorrow and I wanted to take a moment and thank you for all of your hard work.

Unlike all of the political BS, you are the ones that scheduled all of the meetings. You are the ones that actually had to read the whole bill and decipher it. You are the ones that made sure that every measure was legal and you probably crafted much of the bill as well.

I've never seen a legislative body work as hard as I've seen the U.S. Senate this past month and I have to say I'm really impressed. 1AM votes and votes on Christmas Eve must not be fun, but for those of us that believe that at least some attempt must be made to insure more Americans, we are very thankful for your efforts.

The Filibuster

So apparently people on the right and on the left all fight about how wrong the filibuster is when THEY are in power. Here's the thing. Currently the filibuster is being abused and it's been increasing over the past 10 years or so. I still believe the filibuster is an important tool for legislative minorities to stop legislation that they deem really, really bad for the country and in this case, I guess that is health care reform for today's Republican party.

The Republicans are entitled to their filibuster but here's the compromise. You should only get 10 filibusters TOTAL; thats including procedural votes. The filibuster should be available but it really should only be used when the Senate is ready to engross its bill. And I have one final rule, a filibuster should actually be a really annoying process; in order for a filibuster to occur, all senators must be locked within the chamber with only water and basic food available to them (and some slightly cushy chairs for the Senators older than 80), no cots, no sleeping, no breaks.

That's what should be the point of a filibuster. This legislation is soooooooo bad I'm willing to do anything to stop it.

For example, last night the Republican minority did something really classless. They promised to vote en masse against the military funding bill. Yes, you heard me right. Not the healthcare bill, but the Military Appropriations Bill. They threatened a filibuster on legislation THEY SUPPORTED! just so they could delay a final vote on the healthcare bill. They brought 91 year old Senator Robert Byrd out at 1AM for the Military Appropriations Bill. Sure, do that for the healthcare vote but not for stuff you support, that's just not intellectually honest.

Democrats voted for the Iraq War and voted for No Child Left Behind because there were things for them in those bills to support. Trust me, there are things in this bill that will help many small businesses and middle class Republican families obtain affordable healthcare. Republican Senators could have made this a better bill if they had participated fully, but they chose not to even play and it's a crappier bill because of that. As I said previously, I would have rather given up some compromises to Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins from Maine than Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, but even they cannot bring up the courage to vote their conscience.

Congress has done its job. The far right doesn't like the bill. The far left (including me on some measures - I would trade major tort reform for a small public option - anyone?) doesn't like the bill. This is a good thing. The political center has been served, and America is better off for it, I just wish Republicans had played a larger role in the debate.

La Boheme, The Movie - Premieres on PBS Wednesday, December 23rd!

An interview with the lovely and talented (and dare I say, super hot) Anna Netrebko.



Full disclosure: I work at Great Performances, but I loved Anna long before!

Really???

Oh North Carolina.

These guys should read the First Amendment and Article VI of the Constitution.

Wowie.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Relevant passage of Article VI.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Eugene goes to Copenhagen

Enjoy...

Screw Joe Lieberman

He is officially useless. Against a proposal he championed as Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee in 2000 and supported most recently 3 months ago. Senate Democrats would be better off just giving concessions to Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Just give Maine a couple million dollars or healthcare jobs and be done with it. It accomplishes three main goals.

1. Screwing Joe Lieberman by not stroking his ego. Let him be the little bitter man who's pissed off that no one was interested in him in 2004 and had a challenge from the left and lost his party's nomination in 2006. If he wants to be a Republican, he can be one.

2. Instead of passing a healthcare bill with "just Democrats" you get to say that you passed the bill with "bipartisan support."

3. Maine is a much better state than Connecticut, by a long shot.

Look, usually I'm not into the kinds of people who kick out moderates of their party. I think it's a strategy that is incredibly stupid in the long term. However, Joe was a moderate before this recent shift to the right. Back in 2000, Joe was always hawkish on foreign policy and law and order issues (i.e. drugs and censorship) and a fairly standard middle class liberal on domestic policy (healthcare, union jobs, higher minimum wage, etc.) He is no longer that man and the sad thing is, is that it appears that he's doing it just because he's upset. I don't think you do that dramatic a shift in 3 months when you're not up for re-election.

Court Snowe and Collins and if you get Lieberman on-board next year, that's just another junior Republican Senator on board.

The Obam - "duh" Doctrine

So apparently conservatives are all surprised and a flutter that our Democratic President, or as they would say "Democrat" President stated in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech that he believes that war is necessary some times.

Wow. I know this is really controversial and I can't believe that a Democrat would ever believe that sometimes war is justified to meet threats and human rights violations. That we must do our best to negotiate and use other means of persuasion first, but that force can and must be used when the time calls for it against leaders like Hitler and Milosevic and whoever the bad guys are in Darfur.

Duh. This is not crazy political science or theory here. The Bush Doctrine on the other hand, while admirably liberal in policy was not realistic. To be fair, the doctrine was really half crazy conservative and half crazy liberal.

The Bush Doctrine essentially is a mix of two primary concepts preemption and freedom in the form of Democratic government for everybody on the earth. The first principle was preemption; we must attack possible threats first before they become real threats. Unfortunately, that concept isn't legal nor is it a smart use of our limited military power, as we have learned recently troops cost money (money we don't have). How can you guess the right country to attack? Iran may attack Israel, at what point are we justified in bombing their nuclear facilities. The mere chance of an attack is not reason enough to start a war.

The second concept is freedom should be everywhere and we should use military force and diplomatic isolationism to press countries to move towards democratic governments. Sometimes a military dictatorship can be our friend. For example, when Gen. Pervez Musharraf was President of Pakistan he did a much better job than the current president in fighting Pakistani Taliban and Al-Qaida even though the current President has created a more democratic government.

The Obama Doctrine basically states that we're going to go after and kill some bad guys who aren't interested in negotiating or peace. We're going to negotiate with the weirdos who may or may not have bad intentions, people like Kim Jong-Il and Ahmedinejad. And we'll only use force if it's for our absolute security or if it's a real crime against humanity such as sectarian violence in Darfur, but Europe needs to step up to the plate and help. Because unlike other doctrines of past presidents we don't want to be the only policeman in the world, it costs a ton and it's not worth the problems. We've got problems here that we need to fix. As Obama correctly stated in his Afghanistan speech, "the nation I'm most interested in building is our own."

Tip to the world. We're back to the time when America won't attack unless you've demonstrated a history of being an evil-doer. So that's yes to Al-Qaida and no to Iran, because Iran's people are more pro-American than their government, so isolating that country further pushes those fans away, get it?

Just remember this bad guys, "Nobody makes me bleed my own blood."

Quote of the Day

"The purpose is to make it clear to [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai and his government, who up until now has been unwilling to step up to the ball. … 'Fellas, you've got to step up to the ball.' "
—Using a made-up idiom to deliver a tough message to Karzai's government in an interview with CBS's Early Show, Dec. 2, 2009

Love the Biden.

Hat tip to Slate.com

The civil rights issue of our time, Part II

Unfortunately, the New York Senate voted down the Gay Marriage bill by a vote of 38-24. Here is Senator Diane Savino (D) - Staten Island giving a very well argued speech about her vote to support the bill.

Why Obama's Afghanistan decision is the right call

Much like the Iraq surge the success of the continuation of our conflict in Afghanistan will not depend on how many troops we send to the region. What success does occur will happen largely as a result of the change of strategy.

Unlike some of my liberal colleagues, I supported the Iraq surge under President Bush, but I did so not because I believed that more troops would necessarily be the answer. My support was conditional upon a complete change of strategy. When Bush decided to make General David Petraeus, the man who helped develop counter insurgency strategy, the primary commander of the Iraq operation, I had the sense that a more sizable troop presence might help provide that security while providing our soldiers the added benefit of needed reinforcements.

The "surge" time line should be short and sweet. Personally, I only have the stomach to be militarily engaged there for 2-3 more years. I'm glad that President Obama did not adopt the McChrystal strategy wholesale as some of the area's extremely mountainous regions will never be able to be "held" by military forces. Afghanistan is the kind of terrain that is designed for extremely light special forces in the hills and a more traditional army presence in the major population centers. (Thank you Vice-President Biden for that policy movement)

We owe this to Afghanistan. We totally messed them up in the 80's when we used them to fight a proxy war with the Soviet Union, and our Central Intelligence Agency trained a promising young upstart in guerilla warfare named Osama bin Laden to do so. Anyone ever heard of him? I thought so. I would much rather have a communist Soviet Union than Islamic terrorism be the primary enemy of the United States, you can at least negotiate with a COUNTRY. However, I digress.

We again messed Afghanistan up in 2002-2005 when we actually did some good to start by ousting a terribly repressive regime. But then we sent a large majority of our forces there to fight a completely unnecessary war in Iraq. Now you can see why the war in Iraq was doubly stupid. Anyway, we are there now, and we owe the people of Afghanistan a good faith attempt at helping them create a civil society, one where women and girls go to school, one where literacy rates are higher, one where there's more subsistence farming and less poppy farming (perhaps more on that later), and where they have a government that can respond to their needs.

Again, I believe we owe them this shot at a workable stable country. They don't get a free police force for eternity as some would like. The Afghanistan Government gets 2-3 years to shape up, with substantial help. If they can't do that hopefully Afghans will remember the time that America tried to help rather than refer to the time "The Americans left again."

Let's hope.

Please look to my fellow blogger PaleThunder for an articulate argument of his concerns.

Hector Projector?

Have you ever read the theory of Freudian Projection? When I saw the chart below it made me think of it. Basically Freud said that we project our own neuroses or problems onto others or the outside world at large. In essence, the things that we are most mad at in ourselves we blame on outside forces.

Whenever I catch family or friends do this I call them Hector Projector. For example, Jillian Michaels from NBC's the Biggest Loser is defintely a Hector Projector, she hates the fat and lazy person inside of her and that's what she hates in others. Is the average American family being a hector projector about the deficit? Click above at the debt as a share of GDP for the American Household on the left and then look at Government Debt on the right.

Hat tip to The New York Times for the chart. If you want to read the article, click here.