Get ready for the 2011 Republican Congress

I have a feeling they won't be as cute as this... It's going to be an interesting year.

Merry Christmakwanzakah!

Happy Holidays everyone! I thought I'd post a video that's been making it around the interwebs of people getting the best present EVER! Enjoy!

Don't Ask, Don't Tell REPEALED 65-31!

I've promised myself that I'm going to lose some weight next year. (Yeah!)

It's time to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Amazingly, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell will probably be brought to the Senate floor sometime in the near future (probably today or tomorrow).  It's time for us to join our allies like Great Britain and Israel in the makeup of their armed forces.  Like the addition of black soldiers and women soldiers, this will only make our force stronger and make our country safer.



Remember, gays are already in the military. They are just lying about it to their co-workers.  And considering that most of the men and women in combat are 18-25, they are from our generation and they most likely have good "gay-dar." They already know that they work with gay servicemembers and it's not a big deal. There will be no "coming out" en masse as predicted. The only thing repeal will do is give a sizeable minority of our troops the ability to be themselves without worrying about being fired from the job they love and denied the opportunity to serve the country they love.

We owe them that much.

Please call your Senator to support repeal.

UPDATE: Please call Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) to thank him for his support at (202) 224-4543.

A filibuster, FOR REAL

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is filibustering filibustered the Obama Tax Deal with Republican leadership.

He's been talking for 4  He talked for 8.5 hours now.

Go Bernie.

The way a filibuster should be done.  I'm looking at you John McCain.

President Obama, Pragmatist

I've long told my conservative friends that Obama was never, nor will ever be, an ideological leftist.  He is a liberal in his beliefs and values, but he is operationally a conservative (which I believe is similar to the American character i.e. black emancipation and suffrage, women's sexual and economic freedom, DADT, etc - "Let's do this major social change but let's just do it very slowly so we can make sure it works out all right").  He is willing to deal and compromise to help move the country slowly, methodically forward in--his own estimation--the right direction. When we look back on his presidency, the story will outline progressive ideas and policies legislated, enacted and executed in a conservative manner.

GOP leadership approves $900B worth of new stimulus-wait...what?

This stimulus is actually the deal on the extension of the Bush tax cuts announced earlier today (technically yesterday) by President Obama.  Key quote from the New York Times article (emphasis mine):

"The package would cost about $900 billion over the next two years, to be financed entirely by adding to the national debt, at a time when both parties are professing a desire to begin addressing long-term fiscal imbalances."

Oh, that's right.  I forgot that it's not deficit spending if you spend it on the crap you want to buy. I get it now Republicans! See, if Democrats want to use the country's credit card to buy some construction workers to fix a bridge, that's deficit spending. But if Republicans want to give more money to millionaires with the country's credit card, money that in all likelihood those millionaires will save.  That money comes from a special magic Republican fund that doesn't come from borrowing!

Remember folks, you only have to find a way to pay for a program if it affects someone who might actually need the money, like unemployment insurance extensions for those laid off during the great recession (those lazy bums) and food stamps (if more poor kids are starving, they might be more motivated to find work, right!?).

Now that I'm done with my little rant, I actually think the deal President Obama got on the "Bush tax cuts" is probably the best he could get considering the circumstances. And if you remember, this deal between the President and Republican leadership, I advocated for earlier on this blog (it's actually former OMB director Peter Orzsag's - but I'll take the credit). And if this deal helps pave the way for the ratification of START and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, then overall I think it was the right thing to do. Losing some important chess pieces in order to control the rest of the game is worth it.

Statesmen into stockbrokers

David Brooks, conservative columnist for the New York Times, gives his diagnosis of the current iteration of the GOP; crass horse-trading in place of governance.



The full debate "How Much Government is Good Government?" at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), between Mr. Brooks and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is a must watch.  Click here to check it out.

Quote of the Day

“We have a gay guy [in the unit]. He’s big, he’s mean, and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cared that he was gay.”
 - quote from a special ops soldier from the DADT survey which was released on Tuesday, November 30th

Senator John McCain's cowardly delay in today's hearings is absolutely shameful.  The overall result of the survey is that 60-70% of the force believes that repeal of DADT would essentially be a non-event.  A plurality of survey respondents described themselves as "neutral" to the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and roughly 30% reported slightly negative or strongly negative feelings.

However when President Truman desegregated the Army in 1951, 80-90% of the force was against it. Desegregating the army was the right thing to do then, and repealing DADT is the right thing to do NOW.

UPDATE: The full report is available and has been posted in a searchable format on nytimes.com.  Click here to read the report in full.