New Developments III

[Big Magilla]

In today's NY Times, Frank Rich wrote a devastating and sadly spot-on column about Obama's pathological obsession with bipartisanship and conciliation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010....emc=rss

Yes, we know, Taki quoted it in its entirety a few posts down.

[Damien]

In today's NY Times, Frank Rich wrote a devastating and sadly spot-on column about Obama's pathological obsession with bipartisanship and conciliation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010....emc=rss

[kaytodd]

Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee, Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham, Hayley Barbour, Jim Demint, Scott Brown, Rick Perry?

I do not see Obama being beaten by any of them, despite Obama's best efforts to empower the GOP at the expense of the Democratic base. But the GOP has given every indication that they think it is a smart political strategy to demonize Obama and create gridlock over the next two years. Be patient, McConnell and Boehner will tell us. Once we get that evil commie Muslim out of the White House we can return to the quality of government we had during the GWB years. Sounds like a winning strategy?

One of the things that I find so amusing about the GOP's message is that its main point is: pay no attention to the way we governed four years ago when we had both houses of Congress and the White House. Put us in power and we will show you we have changed. This time, we will reduce the size of government, lower taxes for everyone, build up our national defense and intelligence community, improve our crumbling infrastructure, etc.

Well, I have seen the GOP leaders on the talking head shows for several weeks now and their explanations of how this will be accomplished boils down to "getting the federal government out of our lives" so that "the power and magic of the American people can be unleashed." Independents will see through that BS. And the GOP spends a lot of time and money demonizing the Democratic base to galvinize their own. The Latinos are in OUR country to deal drugs, live off welfare and behead law abiding productive American taxpayers. The only reason blacks are lagging behind other groups in the US is because they are just not as smart or hard working as white Americans. Claims of racism are typical whining.

Also, one way to improve the US economy is to put an end to the excessive salaries and benefits blue collar union workers are making. They blackmailed US industries to agree to these terrible contracts and it is time to break them. Conversly any attempt to reduce the salaries and benefits of corporate CEOs is interference of their contracts with the board of directors. And these CEOs are the geniuses and entrepeneurs who will lead us back to prosperity. It is far more important to take care of them than it is to improve the lives of ordinary Americans. I have even heard the term "trickle down" on recent talk shows.

There is little reason for progressives to be pleased with Obama. But I see even less reason for Independents to flock to the GOP or for progressives to sit out 2012.



Edited By kaytodd on 1291610210

[criddic3]

At this point I still think it likely that Obama will win re-election

That's a big assumption. The unemployment rate just went up to 9.8% and will not likely go down dramatically over the next year.

Aside from that he has a major problem in terms of keeping the coalition that brought him to office in the first place. He will have a tough time keeping Ohio in his column, along with other states that he won narrowly in 2008. He won't be able to rally independents to his side in the numbers they did in that year, nor will the former Bush voters who switched parties out of frustration with the Republican leadership. The freshness of Obama's candidacy is no longer something he can draw on, and neither are his once-exciting event appearances.

At this point, blocking his agenda (especially on several spending areas) will be viewed as a positive for Republicans in 2012. All of these things will be hard for President Obama to overcome. While an opponent like Sarah Palin might serve as a rallying call for Democrats, I'm not so sure that all independents would swing back to Obama. In any case, Palin is not guaranteed a spot on the next ticket and would rally Republicans even if she was. In 2012, that may not be such a bad thing for the GOP. The president now has a record and people are not currently very happy with his brand of governing. So yes, he CAN win re-election if he can somehow carve out narrow victories in some of those swing states that have been turning against him recently, but it will be much, much more difficult than it was in 2008 regardless of who runs against (short of a truly lousy campaigner like a Howard Dean or Fred Thompson).

____
Did a little research:

Ohio was won by Obama by 4.58%
Florida by 2.82%
Indiana by 1.04%
North Carolina by .32%

Ohio carried 20 electoral votes in 2008 (may be changed by the 2010 census).
Florida had 27, Indiana 11 and North Carolina 15.

By themselves, this group of states added up to 73 electoral votes.

Let's see. Obama's 365 minus 73 is 292, and McCain's 173 plus 73 is 246. That would make a narrow re-election for Obama, if no other states changed. However a number of states were won by Obama with less than 10% that could also switch, plus states like NY are expected to lose electoral votes while Texas is expected to gain from the census. So that could also hurt Obama's ability to capture enough electoral votes to win again. This is particularly true if unemployment remains at 8% or higher by the end of 2011.



Edited By criddic3 on 1291584608

[Big Magilla]

The problem with Obama is he doesn't know how to negotiate. He gives things away in order to avoid confrontation instead of waiting for the showdown to make deals. The federal pay freeze is just the latest example. Instead of using it as an olive branch to the Republicans, he should have held it back as a bargaining tool in exchange for some sort of compromise on the Bush tax cut extensions instead of the total cave-in it is going to be.

In all likelihood the tax cuts will be extended another two years and serve as the battleground for the 2012 election. Depending on the outcome, they will either be made permanent or abolished. Republicans are banking on the former, Democrats are hoping common sense will return to the electorate and they will have sufficient power to end them once and for all.

I think the only legislation the Republicans will allow the Democrats to get through now will be extending unemployment benefits, perhaps as part of the Dems' deal to go along with the temporary extension of the tax cuts, though it may not get the 11 month extension the Dems are pushing for.

They will rally behind bigot-in-charge John McCain in preventing the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. They will rally behind obstructionist John Kyl in delaying the signing of the START treaty. They will continue to delay and obstruct everything else on the Dems' agenda.

At this point I still think it likely that Obama will win re-election, but unless the Dems win big all around in 2012 and pass legislation they believe in without his interfering cave-ins, the next six years will be as bad as the last two.

[taki15]

All the President’s Captors
By FRANK RICH


THOSE desperate to decipher the baffling Obama presidency could do worse than consult an article titled “Understanding Stockholm Syndrome” in the online archive of The F.B.I. Law Enforcement Bulletin. It explains that hostage takers are most successful at winning a victim’s loyalty if they temper their brutality with a bogus show of kindness. Soon enough, the hostage will start concentrating on his captors’ “good side” and develop psychological characteristics to please them — “dependency; lack of initiative; and an inability to act, decide or think.”

This dynamic was acted out — yet again — in President Obama’s latest and perhaps most humiliating attempt to placate his Republican captors in Washington. No sooner did he invite the G.O.P.’s Congressional leaders to a post-election White House summit meeting than they countered his hospitality with a slap — postponing the date for two weeks because of “scheduling conflicts.” But they were kind enough to reschedule, and that was enough to get Obama to concentrate once more on his captors’ “good side.”

And so, as the big bipartisan event finally arrived last week, he handed them an unexpected gift, a freeze on federal salaries. Then he made a hostage video hailing the White House meeting as “a sincere effort on the part of everybody involved to actually commit to work together.” Hardly had this staged effusion of happy talk been disseminated than we learned of Mitch McConnell’s letter vowing to hold not just the president but the entire government hostage by blocking all legislation until the Bush-era tax cuts were extended for the top 2 percent of American households.

The captors will win this battle, if they haven’t already by the time you read this, because Obama has seemingly surrendered his once-considerable abilities to act, decide or think. That pay freeze made as little sense intellectually as it did politically. It will save the government a scant $5 billion over two years and will actually cost the recovery at least as much, since much of that $5 billion would have been spent on goods and services by federal workers with an average yearly income of $75,000. By contrast, the extension of the Bush tax cuts to the $250,000-plus income bracket will add $80 billion to the deficit in two years, much of which will just be banked by the wealthier beneficiaries.

Obama didn’t even point out this discrepancy — as he might have, had he chosen to make a stirring call for shared sacrifice rather than just hand the Republicans a fiscal olive branch that they could then use as a stick to beat him. He was too busy tending to his other announcement of the week: dispatching Timothy Geithner to lead “negotiations” with the Republicans on the tax cuts. This presidency has been one long blur of such “negotiations” — starting with the not-on-C-Span horse-trading that allowed corporate players to blunt health care and financial regulatory reform. Next up is a “negotiation” with the United States Chamber of Commerce, which has spent well over $100 million trying to shoot down Obama’s policies over the last two years. It’s enough to arouse nostalgia for the “beer summit” with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the Cambridge cop, which at least was transparent and did no damage to the public interest.

The cliché criticisms of Obama are (from the left) that he is a naïve centrist, not the audacious liberal that Democrats thought they were getting, and (from the right) that he is a socialist out to impose government on every corner of American life. But the real problem is that he’s so indistinct no one across the entire political spectrum knows who he is. A chief executive who repeatedly presents himself as a conciliator, forever searching for the “good side” of all adversaries and convening summits, in the end comes across as weightless, if not AWOL. A Rorschach test may make for a fine presidential candidate — when everyone projects their hopes on the guy. But it doesn’t work in the Oval Office: These days everyone is projecting their fears on Obama instead.


I don’t agree with almost anything Chris Christie, the new Republican governor of New Jersey, has to say. But the popularity of his leadership right now is instructive. New Jersey has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992, with Obama carrying the state by a landslide margin of almost 15 percentage points. Yet Christie now has a higher approval number (51 percent) in the latest Quinnipiac state poll than either Obama or New Jersey’s two senators, both Democrats.

Christie’s popularity among national right-wing activists and bloggers has been stoked by a viral YouTube video where he dresses down a constituent in a manner that recalls Ralph Kramden sending Alice “to the moon.” But the core of Christie’s appeal at home is that he explains passionately held views in concrete, plain-spoken detail. Voters know what he stands for and sometimes respect him for his forthrightness even when they reject the stands themselves. This extends to his signature issue — his fiscal and rhetorical blows against public education. He’s New Jersey’s most popular statewide politician despite the fact that a 59 percent majority in the state thinks public schools deserve more taxpayer money, not less.

G.O.P. propagandists notwithstanding, Christie’s appeal does not prove that New Jersey (and therefore the country) has “turned to the right.” It does prove that people want a leader with a strong voice, even if only to argue with it.

No one expects Obama to imitate Christie’s in-your-face, bull-in-the-china-shop shtick. But they have waited in vain for him to stand firm on what matters to him and to the country rather than forever attempting to turn non-argumentative reasonableness into its own virtuous reward. It’s clear now the shellacking was not the hoped-for wake-up call. For starters, Obama might have robustly challenged the election story line pushed by the G.O.P. both before and after Nov. 2 — that deficit eradication and tax cuts for all are voters’ No. 1 priority. Repeating it constantly — as McConnell and John Boehner do, brilliantly — does not make it true. But the myth becomes reality if there’s no leader to trumpet the counternarrative.

In the summer before the election, the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (of June 21) found that only 15 percent of respondents thought the deficit should be the government’s top priority (behind jobs and economic growth, at 33 percent); the Washington Post/ABC News survey just a week before Election Day found that only 7 percent chose the deficit as the most important issue influencing their vote (again well behind the economy, at 37 percent). After constant G.O.P. fear-mongering about the budget — some of it echoed, rather than countered, by Obama — deficit reduction did jump to first place in Nov. 2 exit polls as voters’ highest priority for the next Congress. The disciplined Republican message had turned the deficit into a catchall synonym for America’s entire economic health. But at 40 percent, deficit reduction still was neck and neck with “spending to create jobs” (37 percent). Cutting taxes was chosen by only 18 percent.

We’re now at the brink of a new economic disaster that will eventually yank a chicken out of every pot. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that the extended Bush-era tax cuts will contribute by far the largest share to the next decade’s deficits — ahead of the recession’s drain on tax revenues, Iraq and Afghanistan war spending, TARP and Obama’s stimulus. The new Congress’s plan to block any governmental intervention on behalf of 15 million-plus jobless Americans guarantees that the unemployment rate, back up to 9.8 percent as of Friday, will remain intractable too.

Obama should have pounded home the case against profligate tax cuts for the wealthiest before the Democrats lost the Senate. Even now Warren Buffett — not a socialist, by the way — is making the case with a Christie-esque directness that usually eludes the president. “The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll all go out and spend more, and then it will trickle down to the rest of you,” he told Christiane Amanpour on “This Week” last Sunday. “But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.”

Everyone will have caught on by 2012, but that will be too late for many jobless Americans, let alone for Obama. As the economics commentator Jeff Madrick wrote in The Huffington Post, the unemployment rate has been above 7 percent only four times in a presidential election year since World War II — and in three of the four the incumbent lost (Ford, Carter, the first Bush). Reagan did win in 1984 with an unemployment rate of 7.2 percent, but the rate was falling rapidly (from a high of 10.8 two years earlier), and Reagan was as clear-cut in his leadership as Christie (only nicer).

But as Madrick adds, there has never been a sitting president over that period who has had to run with an unemployment rate as high as 8 percent — which is precisely where the Fed’s most recent forecasts predict the rate could be mired when Obama faces the voters again in 2012. You’d think he’d be one Stockholm Syndrome victim with every incentive to break out.

[OscarGuy]

Perry knows such a pardon would blow up in his face. I doubt DeLay's favorability numbers and a desire for government accountability would fly with most citizens of Texas.

[Sonic Youth]

What are the chances of this thing succeeding?

SREC to consider calling for DeLay pardon
By Jason Embry | Wednesday, December 1, 2010, 06:13 PM
Statesman.com

Members of the State Republican Executive Committee will consider a resolution this weekend calling on Gov. Rick Perry to immediately pardon former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who last week was convicted on felony counts of conspiracy and money laundering.

The call for a pardon will be presented Friday to the SREC’s Resolutions Committee. If approved there, it would go to the full SREC. Of course, it carries no legal weight in DeLay’s case.

The SREC consists of two members from each of the state’s 31 Senate districts, and it serves as a board of directors, of sorts, for the state party. Members are elected at the state GOP convention.

[taki15]

Ouch!
And sadly it's all so true.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/opinion/03krugman.html?_r=1&hp

Freezing Out Hope
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: December 2, 2010

After the Democratic “shellacking” in the midterm elections, everyone wondered how President Obama would respond. Would he show what he was made of? Would he stand firm for the values he believes in, even in the face of political adversity?

On Monday, we got the answer: he announced a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking — successfully, it seems — to destroy him.

So I guess we are, in fact, seeing what Mr. Obama is made of.

About that pay freeze: the president likes to talk about “teachable moments.” Well, in this case he seems eager to teach Americans something false.

The truth is that America’s long-run deficit problem has nothing at all to do with overpaid federal workers. For one thing, those workers aren’t overpaid. Federal salaries are, on average, somewhat less than those of private-sector workers with equivalent qualifications. And, anyway, employee pay is only a small fraction of federal expenses; even cutting the payroll in half would reduce total spending less than 3 percent.

So freezing federal pay is cynical deficit-reduction theater. It’s a (literally) cheap trick that only sounds impressive to people who don’t know anything about budget realities. The actual savings, about $5 billion over two years, are chump change given the scale of the deficit.

Anyway, slashing federal spending at a time when the economy is depressed is exactly the wrong thing to do. Just ask Federal Reserve officials, who have lately been more or less pleading for some help in their efforts to promote faster job growth.

Meanwhile, there’s a real deficit issue on the table: whether tax cuts for the wealthy will, as Republicans demand, be extended. Just as a reminder, over the next 75 years the cost of making those tax cuts permanent would be roughly equal to the entire expected financial shortfall of Social Security. Mr. Obama’s pay ploy might, just might, have been justified if he had used the announcement of a freeze as an occasion to take a strong stand against Republican demands — to declare that at a time when deficits are an important issue, tax breaks for the wealthiest aren’t acceptable.

But he didn’t. Instead, he apparently intended the pay freeze announcement as a peace gesture to Republicans the day before a bipartisan summit. At that meeting, Mr. Obama, who has faced two years of complete scorched-earth opposition, declared that he had failed to reach out sufficiently to his implacable enemies. He did not, as far as anyone knows, wear a sign on his back saying “Kick me,” although he might as well have.

There were no comparable gestures from the other side. Instead, Senate Republicans declared that none of the rest of the legislation on the table — legislation that includes such things as a strategic arms treaty that’s vital to national security — would be acted on until the tax-cut issue was resolved, presumably on their terms.

It’s hard to escape the impression that Republicans have taken Mr. Obama’s measure — that they’re calling his bluff in the belief that he can be counted on to fold. And it’s also hard to escape the impression that they’re right.

The real question is what Mr. Obama and his inner circle are thinking. Do they really believe, after all this time, that gestures of appeasement to the G.O.P. will elicit a good-faith response?

What’s even more puzzling is the apparent indifference of the Obama team to the effect of such gestures on their supporters. One would have expected a candidate who rode the enthusiasm of activists to an upset victory in the Democratic primary to realize that this enthusiasm was an important asset. Instead, however, Mr. Obama almost seems as if he’s trying, systematically, to disappoint his once-fervent supporters, to convince the people who put him where he is that they made an embarrassing mistake.

Whatever is going on inside the White House, from the outside it looks like moral collapse — a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction.

So what are Democrats to do? The answer, increasingly, seems to be that they’ll have to strike out on their own. In particular, Democrats in Congress still have the ability to put their opponents on the spot — as they did on Thursday when they forced a vote on extending middle-class tax cuts, putting Republicans in the awkward position of voting against the middle class to safeguard tax cuts for the rich.

It would be much easier, of course, for Democrats to draw a line if Mr. Obama would do his part. But all indications are that the party will have to look elsewhere for the leadership it needs.






P.S. Sorry Mister Tee.

[Sonic Youth]

Report: Bush lifted quotes for his memoir
Huffington Post says 'Decision Points' passages mimic others' accounts
Msnbc.com

Former President George W. Bush lifted passages from other writings and passed them off as his own thoughts in his new memoir, "Decision Points," an article published Friday on the Huffington Post website alleges.

The article by Ryan Grim, senior congressional correspondent for the Huffington Post, said Crown Publishing promises readers "gripping, never-before-heard detail" but ended up delivering "a mash-up of worn-out anecdotes from previously published memoirs written by his subordinates, from which Bush lifts quotes word for word, passing them off as his own recollections."

The book, which came out Tuesday, had opening day sales of at least 220,000 and an initial printing of 1.5 million copies.

The Huffington Post article and an accompanying slideshow present 16 instances of similarities between Bush passages and previously written books, newspaper or magazine articles.

In response, a Crown official said the similarities speak to the book's inherent accuracy and that Bush had not done anything inappropriate, The Huffington Post reported.

A key passage The Huffington Post cites is the retelling of the inauguration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Bush did not attend the event, HuffPo notes. But his book recounts this scene: "As Karzai walked across the tarmac alone, a stunned Tajik warlord asked where all his men were. Karzai, responded, 'Why, General, you are my men. All of you who are Afghans are my men.'"

The article then compares that passage to one by Ahmed Rashid, author of "The Mess in Afghanistan," who wrote in the New York Review of Books: "At the airport to receive [Karzai] was the warlord General Mohammad Fahim, a Tajik from the Panjshir Valley .... As the two men shook hands on the tarmac, Fahim looked confused. 'Where are your men?' he asked. Karzai turned to him in his disarmingly gentle manner of speaking. 'Why General," he replied, "you are my men — all of you are Afghans and are my men.'"

Among other situations cited in The Huffington Post:

•Bush quotes Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's backing of the Iraq surge as if he were talking to the president, but a Washington Post newspaper story shows McCain was talking to reporters instead.

•Bush and Gen. Tommy Franks in "American Soldier" both use these identical quotes: "If we have multiple, highly skilled Special Operations forces identifying targets for precision-guided munitions, we will need fewer conventional ground forces. That's an important lesson learned from Afghanistan." Both also quoted Bush identically at the same meeting: "But we cannot allow weapons of mass destruction to fall into the hands of terrorists. I will not allow that to happen."

•Bush's memoir sounds a lot like Bob Woodward's "The War Within" and "Bush at War" recounting a National Security Council Meeting: "I said, 'just want to make sure that all of us did agree to this plan, right?' I went around the table and asked every member of the room. They agreed."

[taki15]

I agree with Mister Tee that there are people like Hamsher whose shrillness actually undermines the liberal causes they supposedly work for. But you got to admit that Obama and the White House have proven repeatedly that they have a tin ear when it comes to satisfying the Democratic base.
As Josh Marshall said almost a year ago (and have posted back then) people weren't furious with Obama because he didn't pass public option, didn't end DADT and DOMA or failed to pass imigration reform. They were furious because he didn't fight for them.

Just look what happened the last two days. Obama saying that his biggest mistake was that he didn't compromise enough with Republicans is not only insulting the intelligence of everybody that follows politics during the last two years, but an affront to all those people that defended him against Republican obstructionism and intransigence.
And floating the name of Melissa Bean (one of the most bank-friendly Democrats) as the head of the newly created Consumer Protection Agency was the surest way to anger and disappoint reformers who thought that there was a chance for the administration to crack down on predatory lending.

Actually, Obama's trajectory until now reminds me of Nixon.
Both took over during a major crisis, only four years after their party had suffered major defeats.
They had to confront a financial downturn and an unpopular war.
They were both well into the mainstream of their parties but the opposition demonized them, despite the fact that they tried to incorporate a lot of its ideas.
Both faced a major protest movement (anti-war students/hippies for the first, teabaggers for the second),
Their elections heralded the beginning of a new era in American politics.
And most important, they both ran as a conservative/liberal and eventually governed as moderates, to the point that they angered the bases of their parties.
And as of now Obama is likely to face some right-wing extremist in 2012, just like Nixon faced McGovern.

Curiously though, these two couldn't be more different character-wise.

[Mister Tee]

They can gripe, say it was the wrong time, and the Firebaggers of the world can persist in their "It didn't socialize medicine, ergo it was nothing" stance. But a balanced reading says, they used those majorities to achieve something that no administration/Congress together has managed in 8 decades of trying. Bravo.

You keep undermiming what the "imbalanced" view (as opposed to the "balanced" view, I guess) is by making sure you use words like "socialization" in place of "progressive" - which is a lack of balance on your part - but have you ever once defined what this it was that the administration did? Because for a year the only acheivement I've seen you crow about is that the bill managed to get passed. If it's not progressive, and it's not status quo redux, what is it?

I've had limited computer access for two days, so haven't been able to get to answer you.

My response is, I do think the health care bill was a progressive achievement, for all the reasons most Democratic supporters do -- adding 30 million people to the rolls of the insured; eliminating exclusion for pre-existing conditions, and ending lifetime caps; allowing young adults to stay on their parents' policies; fixing the Medicare gap; allowing negotiation through the health exchanges. This isn't to say I didn't want more. In fact, I wanted most of the things the disgruntled did -- certainly the public option at this juncture, but, ideally, something closer to the Canadian system. I wasn't at all meaning to demean those liberal/progressive goals. I merely am maddened by the fact that, once it became clear such wide-sweeping changes weren't in the cards at this point, those styling themselves as The Only True Progressives turned into the "Kill the bill" crowd" -- willing to toss away someone else's half a loaf because it didn't meet their standards of lefty purity. Maybe I can be too dismissive of them. But when I see Jane Hamsher on TV cackling with delight about Democratic losses, it's hard to work up much understanding for her group's position.

Even beyond the bill itself, I wanted to see the narrative changed. The history of the fight for health care in this country, esp. in the past 40 years, has been of liberals wanting more than the system could bear, rejecting a halfway approach, and ending up with not just nothing, but with the growing presumption that health care was always going to be a bridge too far for the progressive coalition. Ted Kennedy was said to have regretted, later in life, not snapping up Nixon's blueprint -- a blueprint widely seen as more progressive than anything Hillary ever proposed in '94. In that year, '94, the GOP (well, Chafee/Dole) offered a paler-still plan (though it was at least as progressive as what we got this year) -- but, once again, liberal Dems rejected it as not enough. It's easy to see the trajectory here, and it's not something the left should be thrilled with. (Another 20 years along that route, plans would be lucky to include Wal-Mart prescription cards) I (along with the president, and many in Congress) thought this was the time to finally plant a flag -- make it clear that health care is an essential right for citizens, one in which the government is willing to take a part in insuring.

The law is not, no one needs to be told, perfect. But it's also not finished. The history of the beloved Democratic programs (Social Security, Medicare, Civil Rights) is that, once they get a wobbly foothold, they are improved upon in subsequent years. The Republicans (and their insurance allies) realize this, which is why they fought so hard to prevent its passing. They know it'll be far harder to dislodge, or prevent the advance of, a law already in place than to prevent passage of a still-theoretical bill. So, my celebration of the health care bill is for both its specific achievements, and for the future gauntlet it throws down.

[Okri]

I do hope Tee does one of his trademark summations after this is over.

See if this suffices.

It did indeed. Thanks.

[OscarGuy]

Let's also go back for our history lesson.

Historically, mid-term elections mean the party in power loses seats. There are only 10 instances of 50 where the party in power did not lose seats in the last 100 years. Only 3 of those 10 were house increases or no-changers.

And let's recall Ike's 1958 losses: 13 senate seats and 48 house seats. Harding lost 8 and 75 in 1922. Taft 10 and 57. And while I'm only highlighting the Republicans to show that it's not a party-specific issue, there were also Democrats who fared poorly (FDR, considered one of history's greatest presidents, lost 9 and 45 in 1942; Truman lost 12 and 55 in 46, but still managed to gain re-election in '48; Clinton lost 9 and 54 in '94 and went on to victory in '96).

So, you can make this all about Obama's policies or the tanking economy, but he was going to lose seats in the house and senate regardless of what he did. And if you take out the factor that losses were expected, the only thing that makes the Dem losses so high was the +R PVIs of several districts that had Dems just managed to shift back to how the district typically votes. So, the people who got punished most in this election were the Dems that, as Republican's might call them, DINOs.

[Big Magilla]

NEW YORK – MSNBC says Keith Olbermann will be back on the air Tuesday, ending his suspension for violating NBC's rules against making political donations after two shows.

MSNBC's chief executive Phil Griffin said late Sunday that after several days of deliberation, he had determined that two days off the air was "an appropriate punishment for his violation of our policy."

The left-leaning cable network's most popular personality acknowledged donating $2,400 apiece to the campaigns of Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway and Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords. NBC News prohibits its employees from making political donations unless an exception is granted in advance by the network news president. In this case, Olbermann's bosses didn't know about them until being informed by a reporter.

"We look forward to having him back on the air Tuesday night," Griffin said in a statement.

Liberal groups had taken on Olbermann's suspension as a cause. An online petition calling for his reinstatement, run by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, had exceeded 300,000 signatures Sunday, and Michael Moore had tweeted his support. The committee's Adam Green said Griffin was repeatedly e-mailed updates on the petition drives.

"Progressives proved that when one of our own are targeted, we will have their backs," he said.

Left unanswered is the question of why Olbermann would do something he undoubtedly knew would be provocative, or whether he was trying to make a statement against NBC's policy. He did not immediately return an e-mail message seeking comment Sunday.

On his Twitter page, Olbermann wrote: "Greetings from exile! A quick, overwhelmed, stunned THANK YOU for support that feels like a global hug."