Break too-big-to-fail, move your money to community banks

Arianna Huffington and Rob Johnson have penned a piece recommending that we being moving our money out of the too-big-to-fail banks and into community banks.

The big banks on Wall Street, propped up by taxpayer money and government guarantees, have had a record year, making record profits while returning to the highly leveraged activities that brought our economy to the brink of disaster. In a slap in the face to taxpayers, they have also cut back on the money they are lending, even though the need to get credit flowing again was one of the main points used in selling the public the bank bailout. But since April, the Big Four banks -- JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo -- all of which took billions in taxpayer money, have cut lending to businesses by $100 billion.

Meanwhile, America's Main Street community banks -- the vast majority of which avoided the banquet of greed and corruption that created the toxic economic swamp we are still fighting to get ourselves out of -- are struggling. Many of them have closed down (or been taken over by the FDIC) over the last 12 months. The government policy of protecting the Too Big and Politically Connected to Fail is badly hurting the small banks, which are having a much harder time competing in the financial marketplace. As a result, a system which was already dangerously concentrated at the top has only become more so.

We talked about the outrage of big, bailed-out banks turning around and spending millions of dollars on lobbying to gut or kill financial reform -- including "too big to fail" legislation and regulation of the derivatives that played such a huge part in the meltdown. And as we contrasted that with the efforts of local banks to show that you can both be profitable and have a positive impact on the community, an idea took hold: why don't we take our money out of these big banks and put them into community banks? And what, we asked ourselves, would happen if lots of people around America decided to do the same thing? Our money has been used to make the system worse -- what if we used it to make the system better?

More...

Watch the video, then click here to find the most sound community banks in your area:

Rep. Eric Massa goes after Dick Cheney, Ed Schultz goes pitbull

Bravo, Eric!

Points:
Cheney was responsible (partly) for releasing two of the associates of the Undie-Bomber from Gitmo in 2007.

Rep. Senator Jim DeMint has blocked the confirmation of a TSA head for 9 months, placing the American traveling public in danger. (He also voted against passing a bill called the Improving America's Security Act of 2007, which among other things provided $250 million for airport security. Hypocrite.)

Then Ed calls Dick Cheney a coward and reminds us that 9/11 happened on Bush's watch while they "sat on their fat ass on vacation and did nothing about it".

Why can't Democrats grow some balls and tell it like it is?



I also particularly enjoyed Bob Cesca's new piece at HuffPost on Cheney's dig at Obama:

Needless to say, Cheney is well-qualified to take an authoritative posture when it comes to terrorism. After all, he and his little buddy "kept us safe" from terrorist attacks for eight years, right? Other than the worst terrorist attack in American history, of course, along with the Anthrax Attacks, the Beltway Snipers, the thousands of terrorist attacks on our contractors and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the attacks on our allies in London and Madrid, Cheney did a fine job keeping us safe (more about this in my book). Good job, Mr. Cheney!

So it wasn't any surprise when Cheney stopped thumbing through Uncle Billy's misplaced $8,000 long enough to fire off a few words about the failed Underpants Bomber attempt and the Obama administration's response. And since Dick Cheney is a very serious terrorism expert -- mainly because more Americans died in terrorist attacks on his watch than any other vice president ever -- the media gobbled it up, practically unchallenged.

Being in "exotic", "foreign" Hawaii hurts Obama's terror response

Is there any low they won't stoop to?

Now the GOP heads are saying that many Americans perceive Hawaii as "foreign", "exotic", and "tropical". Being there, instead of Crawford, Texas, hurts the Presidents response to terror because of "surfers in the background".

Srsly?

Was Hawaii responsible for Rush heart attack as well?

Family values: Karl Rove's (second) divorce

(Huff Post)

Famed Republican strategist Karl Rove got divorced last week, Politico reports.

Spokeswoman Dana Perino said, "Karl Rove and his wife, Darby, were granted a divorce last week. The couple came to the decision mutually and amicably, and they maintain a close relationship and a strong friendship. There will be no further comment and the family requests that its privacy be respected."

Karl married Darby Hickson in 1986. They have one son, Andrew. Rove's previous marriage to a Houston socialite ended after a year.

Actor Randy Quaid recently complained in a letter to a judge that Rove hit on his wife, Evi.

Glenn Beck's America: The rise of the Preppers

Paranoia, fueled by the right, results in soccer moms storing blood-clotting agents. Please note the first paragraph and see who Beck is selling this to...

(Newsweek)

Lisa Bedford is what you'd imagine of a stereotypical soccer mom. She drives a white Tahoe SUV. An American flag flies outside her suburban Phoenix home. She sells Pampered Chef kitchen tools and likes to bake. Bedford and her husband have two young children, four dogs, and go to church on Sunday.

But about a year ago, Bedford's homemaking skills went into overdrive. She began stockpiling canned food, and converted a spare bedroom into a giant storage facility. The trunk of each of her family's cars got its own 72-hour emergency kit—giant Tupperware containers full of iodine, beef jerky, emergency blankets, and even a blood-clotting agent designed for the battle-wounded. Bedford started thinking about an escape plan in case her family needed to leave in a hurry, and she and her husband set aside packed suitcases and cash. Then, for the first time in her life, Bedford went to a gun range and shot a .22 handgun. Now she regularly takes her two young children, 7 and 10, to target practice. "Over the last two years, I started feeling more and more unsettled about everything I was seeing, and I started thinking, 'What if we were in the same boat?'" says Bedford, 49.

On underwear bombs and the juxtaposition of freedom and feardom

So a guy gets on a plane in Lagos - paying cash and not checking any bags... oh and he's on a terror watchlist - and almost blows up a plane over Detroit.

Are we all on board with this so far?

He tries to set off the bomb over Detroit but the detonator malfunctions and all he manages to do is burn his penis off.

Still good? Here it is as a math problem:

Foreign embarkation + blatantly suspicious behavior + terrorist watch list = X (solve for X)

This guy getting on the plane is the equivalent of the Salahis getting into the White House. People fucked up.

And because of this, there is a whole host of other restrictions being put (sloppily) into place: no standing in the last hour of flight, no GPS-capable devices allowed, no blankets allowed, don't take a long time in the crapper (have they eaten their own food?).

The goal of terrorism isn't death, but fear. And so in that aspect, Undie-Bomber succeeded. We've allowed ourselves to get our collective shit scrambled. Again. While the President reminds us that: "We will never give in to fear". Right.

Undie-Bomber was from London and flew to Lagos to board the plane. Are we seeing the REAL problem here? The real problem is not domestic security, but security in third-world airports. Like Lagos. Where you can buy/bluff your way onto an airplane.

So if the problem is in Lagos, why are we concentrating on Charlotte? Of course I'm asking this is a government that invaded one nation who didn't have anything to do with 9/11 (Iraq) and just re-invaded another 8 years after they ceased to be a real threat to us (Afghanistan).

Oh, and Erroll Southers, former FBI and the president's pick to run the TSA, still isn't on the job because Republican Senator Jim DeMint is blocking his appointment. Over union issues.

Bet'cha a million dollars that CNN won't raise THAT particular issue.

What color is the sun in wingnut world?

Are you shitting me?

This is more of the 'if we say it long enough, the sheeple will fall in line' theory of politics that the right-wing is basing their hopes on. No solutions, no answers, just lies and misdirection.

"I was there, we inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation’s history. And President Bush dealt with it and within a year of his presidency within a comparable time, unemployment was at 5 percent."

Mary Matalin suggesting that Bush inherited 9/11

DougJ at BalloonJuice asks why Republicans aren't held to the same standards as Democrats?

It’s an outright lie and not just because they didn’t “inherit” 9/11—unemployment was actually 5.7% December 2001, as compared with 4.2% when Bush took office, and it rose to 6.3% by 2003.

At what point does America stop taking these clowns seriously? Why does the media pander to their lies? How do the "serious journalists" at CNN not call her on the obvious baldfaced lie she told?

You are being ripped off

Best chart EVER!

National Geographic (via Andrew Sullivan) has this chart showing health care expenses (left axis) and life expectancy (right axis).

Just look. That's all. Look at it with an open mind.

This National Geographic chart, which I stumbled upon while reading that magnificent magazine on the airplane, truly blew me away. If anyone can look at this and not see a simply insane way to distribute health care, a system so inefficient no socialist country could ever replicate it, then they have stronger rationalization skills than I possess.

Americans are being ripped off. The current reform will only move this line marginally, but it will begin that vital process - because it will almost certainly improve the health outcomes of the 30 million or so people who will soon have access for the first time to insurance. And its cost-control measures, pushing back ever so slightly against fee-for service medicine at a time of limitless healthcare potential, might help too.

What this this graph does do is show why the current system, while providing excellent care for many, nonetheless does so at crippling expense to everyone. Without the kind of reform Obama has initiated, there's no way this will get better. We should think of this health insurance reform as the beginning, not the end, of some public policy sanity. And conservatives would do better to help add more cost-controls than run around screaming socialism when the current system has failed so dramatically in any collective or economic sense.

Teabagger in tears, fears prayers for Byrd's death ricocheted and hit Inhofe. Really.

This shit is priceless. You cannot make this up. Courtesy of our friends at ThinkProgress.

Just before the Senate vote on the first of three procedural motions to move its health care reform bill toward final passage, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) appeared to urge Americans to pray that a member of the majority caucus would not show up to vote, thus leaving the Democrats one vote shy of breaking the GOP filibuster:

COBURN: What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray.

As it turned out however, all 100 U.S. senators voted on the measure, which passed on a party-line 60-40 vote. This morning, the Senate health care reform bill jumped the second procedural hurdle, with all 60 senators in the Democratic caucus voting to pass the measure. However, only 39 Republicans voted against passage. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) was the Republican who missed the vote.

On C-Span this morning, a caller wondered if perhaps Coburn’s prayer request had “backfire[ed]” against his own party:

CALLER: Yeah doctor. Our small tea bag group here in Waycross, we got our vigil together and took Dr. Coburn’s instructions and prayed real hard that Sen. Byrd would either die or couldn’t show up at the vote the other night.

How hard did you pray because I see one of our members was missing this morning. Did it backfire on us? One of our members died? How hard did you pray senator? Did you pray hard enough?

While Barrasso didn’t answer the question directly, he said he didn’t know why Inhofe missed the vote.

For the record, Inhofe is still alive. As is Byrd. The caller's intellect sadly died in utero.

Watch the video, because the guy's voice... well, just watch.

Glenn Beck: Misinformer of the Year

Obama calls into radio show as "Barry from D.C." with a "traffic question"

This is just so cool. WTOP was doing it's monthly "Ask the Governor" show with VA Gov. Tim Kaine when the President called in posing as "Barry from D.C."

Arguments for the health care bill (in pictures, for those who don't like all those - you know - words)

Jon Cohn lays out the insurance cost savings for working and middle class families. You should definitely read the whole write-up here, but meanwhile here's the chart:

Kill the bill = swatting a fly on your arm with a chainsaw

Jane Hamsher at firedoglake is advocating killing the senate health care bill because it will bring about the end of the western world and force you to remove your uterus and send it to Nebraska. Or some such.

Jon Walker, also at FDL, comes to their defense:

What I have heard from people like Howard Dean, Markos Moulitsas, Keith Olbermann, Jane Hamsher, etc… is that they simply want to kill the current version of the Senate bill. None of them, to my knowledge, have advocated ending all efforts to pass a health care reform bill. I believe each and every one of them have advocated for simply passing a different bill through different means.

He goes on to argue that there are at least 4 scenarios whereby progressives can get a better bill out of the Senate using reconciliation.

Here's the problem: it might not work. In fact, it probably won't. Most progressives discovered the term "reconciliation" over the summer and now use it as a mantra. Kind of like "Beetlejuice". Say "reconciliation" 3 times and single payer appears.

Let me make two points:
1) The current Senate HCR bill is not bad. It's not perfect, in fact it's not even great. But it's good and makes a great framework to hang other legislation on in years to come. Without it though, health care is dead in my lifetime. The nation won't go through the last 6 months again as a progressive do-over. Not happening. Period.

2) There is a long way to go. anyone who thinks the Senate bill won't be changed during the conference with the House to merge the bills is short-sighted or nuts. The House bill is a more progressive bill and the Senate bill is going to go in that direction. And there's going to be a fight over it. save your bullets for that one.

As the much-smarter-than-me Nate Silver lays out, in exhaustive fashion, there are huge problems with the thought process of those who think reconciliation is a magic bullet.

The failure to use reconciliation does not reveal any lack of courage on behalf of Harry Reid or the White House. It is, rather, a reflection of reality. The more unadorned, straightforward versions of reconciliation might not work and would probably result in objectively worse policy than the bill that the Senate is considering now. The more exotic versions might or might not result in better policy, but almost certainly wouldn't work.

None of this is to say that the reconciliation strategies are impossible. They might work. But the hurdles are much more significant than what Jon has implied, and reconciliation might also "work" but produce a worse, perhaps much worse, policy outcome. Even if one were willing to ignore the political fallout, it would be a fairly poor strategy. And when the consequences for the Democrats' electoral fortunes are taken into account -- as well as their compromised ability to pass policies like a jobs bill and financial reform next year -- it seems like a very poor risk.

Observations from a football weekend

So with the view house looking like this...


It seemed like a good day to watch football. However, as an Eagles fan, ESPN greeted me with the following graphic. On one hand, that's an awesome achievement. On the other hand, the only team on that list without a Super Bowl win in that run is... you guessed it.



Watching the J - E - T - S loseloselose, I snapped this picture of Mark Sanchez. Apparently he has control of the Department of Homeland Security terror watch list on his wristband. "Cover 2, threat level 4. I'll just toss a pick here."



Here's the disturbing part of the day. Chevy is running a series of commercials with Howie Long, one of him is a spot featuring him and the obligatory precocious little girl with curls.

That's not the disturbing part. The disturbing part is in this still. Her pointing, not at the Chevy, but at Howie's junk. Like, right at it.

You be the judge.



"Mr. Long, why do have the keys down your pants?" If you have a better caption, post it here.

Christopher Hitchens on Sarah Palin

BRILLIANT (and wouldn't Christopher Hitchens literally on Sarah Palin be a sight to see)

[Sarah Palin is] anti-Washington except that she thirsts for it, and close enough (and also far enough away to be "deniable") to the paranoid fringe element who darkly suggest that our president is a Kenyan communist.
...

At least Richard Nixon had the ill fortune to look like what he was: a haunted scoundrel and repressed psychopath. Whereas the usefulness of Sarah Palin to the right-wing party managers is that she combines a certain knowingness with a feigned innocence and a still-palpable blush of sex. But she should take care to read her Alexander Pope: That bloom will soon enough fade, and it will fade really quickly if she uses it to prostitute herself to the Nixonites on one day and then to cock-tease the rabble on the next.

Wow.

(via West Wing Report)

Lieberman is just as big of an asshole when he's a puppet

Why this bill is important

1: Improvability (and yeah, I think I just invented a new word)

(via Bob Cesca)

This is really great stuff. Bernie Sanders has successfully added $10 billion for primary care. Some details:

-Forgives medical school debt for doctors who choose primary care, increasing the number of primary care doctors by 20,000.

-More than doubles the number of primary care clinics.

-Eases the burden on Medicaid.

-Creates primary care access for 25 million Americans.

Senator Sanders is also working with Ron Wyden to establish the groundwork for state-based single-payer plans. These are the kinds of improvements that can be added to this work in progress over time -- another reason why passing this bill is so important to the long-term effort.

Bernie Sanders is doing great unheralded work on HCR. Let's thank him later. Noting it now would just attract the ire of Lieberman.

2. A new paradigm

(Paul Krugman)

...it represents a rejection of the view that the solution for all problems is to cut some taxes and remove some regulations. In that sense, what’s happening now, for all the disappointment it represents for progressives, is a historic moment.

And let’s also not fail to take note of those who had a chance to join in this historic moment, and punted.
...

I’m talking instead about the self-described centrists, pundits and politicians, who have spent years lecturing us on the need to make hard choices and actually come to grip with America’s problems; you know who I mean. So what did they do when faced with a chance to help confront those problems? They made excuses.
...

And the lesson I take from that is that these people are insincere. They like posing as defenders of fiscal rectitude; they like declaring a pox on both houses; but when push comes to shove, their dislike of social insurance, their refusal to consider any government economy measures that don’t involve punishing people with lower incomes, trumps their supposed concern about acting responsibly.

Gentlemen — everyone I can think of here does happen to be male — this was your moment of truth, your test of character. You failed.

The bigger picture

No, it's not what we wanted. Yes, there is still work to do - a public option can be added to HCR later via reconciliation. But read Ezra, he's right. We need to look at this in a macro sense.

Imagine telling a Democrat in the days after the 2004 election that the 2006 election would end Republican control of Congress, the 2008 election would return a Democrat to the White House, and by the 2010 election, Democrats would have passed a bill extending health-care coverage to 94 percent of Americans, securing trillions of dollars in subsidies for low-income Americans (the bill's $900 billion cost is calculated over 10 years, but the subsidies continue indefinitely into the future), and imposing a raft of new regulations on private insurers. It is, without doubt or competition, the single largest social policy advance since the Great Society.

The known universe

From the American Museum of Natural History. Makes our problems, and our lives, seem incredibly insignificant, doesn't it?

Jon Stewart destroys Laura Ingraham for comparing health care to the Holocaust

(Huff Post)

Jon Stewart took on the most recent Tea Party protests last night. And while much as been made of the crowd itself, Stewart was quick to point out that the speakers were just as over-the-top as the rowdy masses.

Steve Lonegan, state director for Americans For Prosperity, tried to echo the sentiments of the crowd, exclaiming that "we cannot allow the pen to become mightier than the sword." Stewart knocked Lonegan for the statement, saying that the pen being mightier than the sword is "only the basis for our civilization."

But the speaker taking the cake was Laura Ingraham. The radio personality paraphrased a famous Holocaust poem, "First They Came, " in an attempt to make an analogy to her stance against health care reform. Her evocation of the Nazis was a tad hyperbolic in the eyes of Stewart, who seemed to doubt that Ingraham recognized that "came for" was a euphemism for "round up and kill."

Stewart closed by making a pledge to Ingraham:

"If the government begins to round up and kill the rich and the landowning and those who choose to exercise the right to bear arms...I'll speak up."

So this looks pretty good

It feels kind of pithy to post a movie trailer right now, but I'll admit that Iron Man 2 looks really good. But did they have to do anything to put Mickey rourke in character, or did he just roll onto the set like that?

Colbert: senile Lieberman goes from "Joe-mentum" to "Joe-mentia"

Fucking Lieberman and why we should pass the bill anyway

Recap:

Joe Lieberman didn't like the public option - an exchange like Travelocity where private insurance would have to compete with a government-run health plan. The public option would have forced competition on a monopolistic system and by everyone's guess, it would have meant lower end rates for the consumer.

But Joe threatened to filibuster the bill and since he's number 60, he got his way. Public option dead.

The next plan was a Medicare buy-in for those between 55 and 65. It would have given millions of people a lower-cost option to get good insurance. However Joe's corporate masters in Hartford didn't like it, so he again threatened to filibuster.

And Rahm Emmanuel and the White House caved and the Medicare buy-in is no more.

Which is where the first part of the title comes from. Lieberman even admits he came to oppose the Medicare buy-in - which he supported 3 months ago - because liberals and progressives liked it so much.

I was with Howard Dean in his "kill the bill" sentiments. At first.

However, notice the relative quiet from the GOP lately. They're letting Democrats kill each other in a circular firing squad. They're thinking "we don't need to touch this bill, Lieberman and the Dems will do it for us." So killing the bill plays into their hands.

Matt Yglesias notes the real reason not to oppose this bill: because human lives are at stake. Lieberman might not care but:

Lieberman has unlimited control over what happens, and no incentive to compromise, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he’s being uncompromising. Can’t liberals be just as stiff-necked as Lieberman? Sure, they could. But liberals members do have an incentive to compromise—the tens of thousands of people who die every year for lack of health insurance. The leverage that Lieberman and other “centrists” have obtained on this issue (and on climate change) stems from a demonstrated willingness to embrace sociopathic indifference to the human cost of their actions.

As Nate Silver writes, progressives would be crazy to oppose this bill. Is it flawed? Yes. has the Senate sold us down the river? Yes. But this bill will save families thousands of dollars on their health care expenses.


And as Bob Cesca observes, there is an alternate path to the end goal.

Tim F. at Balloon Juice has an interesting solution:

I say pass the Liebermanized bill and let the President sign it. Then use reconciliation to get the rest.

As he explains, all of the insurance regulations, which can't be passed via reconciliation, would remain in the current bill, and the public option, Medicare buy-ins, etc, would be passed with reconciliation.

Of course this begs the question: Would Lieberman filibuster the Senate bill anyway if he caught wind of the public option and Medicare buy-in being passed in a separate reconciliation bill? He might. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he did.

Adding... Ezra Klein wrote about the same idea:

A lot of e-mailers have asked whether Congress could pass health care now and then come back in a year and pass the public option, or Medicare buy-in, through reconciliation. The answer is yes, they absolutely can. They'd need to plan for it in the budget, as reconciliation instructions have to be passed at the beginning of the year. But there's nothing stopping them from doing that.
The question, in fact, is not "can they," but "will they?" And that depends, I guess, on a couple of things. First, the amount of sustained attention activists give to the issue. Second, how the issue plays in the 2010 midterms.

Obama's worst enemy is his own party

Excellent reporting from Bob Cesca here and here. This is all his, I'm quoting verbatim:

Prepare to lose your shit.

Two key senators criticized the most recent healthcare compromise Sunday, saying the policies replacing the public option are still unacceptable. Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) both said a Medicare “buy-in” option for those aged 55-64 was a deal breaker.

“I’m concerned that it’s the forerunner of single payer, the ultimate single-payer plan, maybe even more directly than the public option,” Nelson said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Lieberman said Democrats should stop looking for a public option “compromise” and simply scrap the idea altogether.

Motherf-ckers.

For the record, Ben Nelson is of Medicare age. I wonder if he enjoys single-payer health insurance. Anyone want to dig and find out if Nelson and Lieberman are on Medicare? Anyone?

Adding... Can someone tell me how President Obama could ever have pushed Medicare For All past these guys?

Also... It's clear that healthcare reform can't pass the Senate. If Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin can come up with a reconciliation path that doesn't eviscerate the bill, they should seriously be looking into it. If for no other reason but to hurl a gigantic "EFF YOU" in the direction of the Lieberdems who are crippling this process.

Benen on the political impact of writers like Taibbi (more on the Taibbi RS article here and here):

Over the last several months, the right has come to believe that the president is a fascist/communist, intent on destroying the country, while at the same time, many on the left have come to believe the president is a conservative sell-out. The enraged right can't wait to vote and push the progressive agenda out of reach. The dejected left is feeling inclined to stay home, which as it turns out, also pushes the progressive agenda out of reach.

My ongoing concern is the same as Benen's. Will this conflict on the left flank help to elect more Republicans? The more I (anecdotally) hear progressives revisiting names like Ralph Nader, I think the answer is yes. My memories of the 2000 election are still fresh -- as is my memory of pressing the button for Nader in the voting booth because I was disillusioned with the Democratic Party and (very mistakenly) thought Al Gore was Just Like Bush. Huge mistake.

Benen also adds:

Remember: nothing becomes law in this Congress unless Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman approve. Literally, nothing. That's not an encouraging legislative dynamic, and it's not within the power of the White House to change it.
It is within the power of voters to change it.

Obama has asked Congress to deliver on a pretty large-scale agenda. For all the talk about the president's liberalism or lack thereof, the wish-list he's presented to lawmakers is fairly progressive, and it's not as if Obama is going to start vetoing bills for being too liberal.

In short: if progressives get pissy and stay home, more conservadems and Republicans will be elected. This must not happen. Nothing the president does can change the fact that the Senate is ruled by five people right now.

It's also my contention that as soon as the far-left abandons the White House, the sooner the White House will grapple onto the conservadem middle. Regardless of whether Obama or his left flank is to blame for this, it's what could surely happen.

I know how easy it is to be angered and frustrated by otherwise friendly politicians. I also understand how there might be a lot of leftover angst from the Bush years and the Democratic primary campaign. I think the only way to improve the situation in our favor is to put mistakes and missteps into perspective, instead of kneejerking over every leak and compromise.

And finally, Matt Yglesias offers this:

The fact of the matter is that Matt Taibbi is more liberal than I am, and I am more liberal than Larry Summers is, but Larry Summers is more liberal than Ben Nelson is. Replacing Summers with me, or with Taibbi, doesn’t change the fact that the only bills that pass the Senate are the bills that Ben Nelson votes for.

Exactly. Ask yourself how President Obama can govern progressively with Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman filibustering with Republicans.

Obama caught in his own web on the PhRMA deal

Over the summer Obama made a deal with PhRMA, the drug companies lobbying arm, to cap drug cuts at $80 billion over 10 years in exchange for their support of his health reform.

Well, health reform as we knew it in July (ie: a public option, among many others) has blown up but the President is sticking by his deal. Or trying to. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) has proposed a bill to allow for the reimportation of pharmaceutical drugs from Canada. Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) is working to keep the amendment from coming to a vote, ostensibly at the behest of the White house, who intends to stand by its deal.

The amendment has the support of a number of other Republicans, including Sens. John McCain (AZ), Charles Grassley (IA), John Thune (SD) and David Vitter (LA).

Huff Post reports: Opponents of the amendment worry that many more Republicans may join the amendment not because they agree with it, but because they want to put the health care bill in jeopardy.

So the White House and the drug makers are trying to persuade as many Democrats as they can to oppose the amendment despite their previous support for it.

"I don't think that's going to get my vote," Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said when HuffPost asked about the reimportation amendment. He said that even though he is a supporter of reimportation, he is concerned that if it passes it could blow everything up.

"I'm not messing around with anything without 60 votes. Nothing," he said. "And I'm a co-sponsor of the amendment."

Why the fuss?

According to Huff, Within a decade, reimportation would save consumers roughly $80 billion and the federal government $19 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But that would mean $100 billion more in lost revenue than the powerful Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) lobby agreed to bear-- in exchange for being supportive of the overall health reform effort.

Obama HAS to walk away from this deal. HAS TO. He cannot appear to be in bed with the pharmaceutical lobby in opposition to further savings for the American consumer. He cannot let the GOP get any leverage. Right now, they (along with Joe Lieberman) appear to be the whores for big pharma and big insurance - more interested in protecting their corporate masters than helping the American taxpayer.

That's HUGE leverage come 2010 and 2012. Obama must walk away.

The difference between a Pacifism Prize and a Peace Prize

Lawrence O'Donnell to Presidential historian Michael Beschloss on Obama's Nobel (start at 13:42):

...this is not the Nobel Pacifism Prize. This is the Peace Prize that went to President Wilson after World War One. The expectation that you have to be a pacifist to get it, has not been historically correct.

O'Donnell makes a great point about the difference between peace and pacifism. Although I have great reservations about the Afghan strategy, I can't say I didn't know it was coming. Obama campaigned on it.

I also refuse to be brought in as an accomplice of the right wing, who are using this issue to try to split progressives and liberals.

Conflict of interest: Goldfinger Glenn

Glenn Beck, fanning the flames on his nightly fear-cast, frequently shouts loudly about the decline of U.S. currency and encourages people to buy gold. Presumably, when the apocalypse comes, roving bands of socialist brigands will still respond to shiny objects. Oh wait, that's Beck's audience that responds to shiny objects.

Jon Stewart has found a possible explanation for Beck's interest in gold. Ironically, it appears to be cash.

FAIL!: Mitch Mcconnell flip-flops on Medicare

(TPM)

For decades, the Republican party has been the scourge of Medicare, hostile to it as a wasteful government program, and happy to see it, in the words of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, "wither and die on the vine." Over the past several months, as Democrats propose paying for health care reform with savings wrung from waste in Medicare, Republicans have tried to position themselves as Medicare saviors. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) took to the Senate floor recently to warn that health care reform will make seniors "die sooner."

Today, Democrats will unveil the above poster board--taken from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's comm shop--on the Senate floor. That the two press releases were issued on consecutive days seems to heighten the contradiction.

More on the hypocrisy from BCGDAB

WHOSE deficit is "spending us into oblivion", Mr. Beck?

(Huff Post)

The emerging narrative in political circles is that the White House has a deficit problem. Glenn Beck, over at Fox News, insists that Obama is "spending us into oblivion." Politico called the recent round of job-stimulus appropriations a "spending binge." Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) deemed this an era of "fiscal recklessness and irresponsibility," the extent of which is "shocking to the American taxpayer."

(B)udget analysts say...the hysteria over the deficit misses a fundamental point: the country's fiscal problems largely aren't due to Obama but rather his predecessor.

A forthcoming study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concludes that the $1.4 trillion annual deficit run by the government has little to do with current White House policies and much to do with George W. Bush's actions.

Colbert on the Republican purity test

(Huff Post)

In an attempt to reclaim both houses in the 2010 election, the Republican party has proposed a "Purity Test," a screening process that would weed out candidates who don't adhere to "core conservative principles." As the ten stipulations of the test revolve around opposition to the Obama administration, Colbert compared them to the 10 Commandments - "if one of the tablets said 'F' and the other said 'U.'"

Colbert called out the GOP out for the hypocrisy of the plan, describing them as "a party of white Christian men, who call Obama a Nazi, pushing the concept of purity." He added that adhering to a checklist would not provide the assurance the GOP needs, so he presented an alternative -- putting moderate Republicans in life-threatening situations that reveal their true beliefs...like in the move "Saw."

Gore shoves back on ClimateGate, Palin

As world leaders convene in Copenhagen for the global climate conference, Former Vice President Al Gore has been making the interview rounds pushing back on "ClimateGate" and promoting his new book , Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.

His frustration with the hacked-email fallout is palpable. "The basic facts are incontrovertible. What do they think happens when we put 90 million tons up there every day? Is there some magic wand they can wave on it and presto!--physics is overturned and carbon dioxide doesn't trap heat anymore?" Gore asked, and pressed his point harder: "And when we see all these things happening on the Earth itself, what in the hell do they think is causing it?

Video at Huff Post

We might just have a health care bill, with a public option by another name

From the amazing Bob Cesca, here and here:

Chris Bowers writes that the battle for the public option was fairly successful, despite the compromise:

--4 million more people covered by Medicaid, which is a public option, than the July version of the House bill
--1-2 million covered by a Medicare buy-in, which is also a public option, and which was entirely absent in the July version of the House bill

--An increase, from 85% in the July House bill to 90% now, in the percentage of money companies receive on health insurance premiums that must be spent on health care.

These are all concessions directly made to progressives in return for dropping a Medicare +5% public option that would have covered 10 million people. Not bad.

And this doesn't even count future expansions. I don't know what to make of the compromises yet, but I don't think they can be interpreted as a loss. In fact, I think the Medicare buy-in will have a better chance of expanding into something like Medicare For All than the opt-out public option would've.

As near as I can tell, here's the substance from the Gang of 10 negotiations.

--Public option becomes a trigger.

--The (Swiss) OPM plan replaces it. Non-profit policies negotiated by the government. If the privates don't offer adequate non-profit deals, the public option is triggered. My hunch is the CBO will score this as having much better premiums than the opt-out public option.

--Medicare buy-in for high-risk people 55-64 beginning a year from now. Everyone else 55-64 can buy in when the exchanges begin in 2014. Don't tell your favorite conservadem, but this is our path to single-payer. This bill will establish a precedent for lowering the buy-in age for Medicare. Expect further lowerings over the years, but only if we demand it. Single-payer was always going to be a work in progress, but now we have a template.

--Increased regulations on the private insurers, according to Brian Beutler. This is great news. Now what will this include?

Overall, I hesitate to call this good news. Anything we like will probably be dropped before Noon.

Benen:

As for the political implications, how on-the-fence senators will respond to the compromise is anyone's guess. Will Lieberman balk because there's a trigger? Will Snowe reject it because of Medicare expansion? Will House Dems oppose it over changes to the public option? Will Ben Nelson move away from the bill just because?
Even senators within the Team of 10 aren't sure. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) was delighted with the deal, but Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) hinted that he's now on the fence because of changes to the public option.

Fox under attack: Colbert air quotes them; Stewart calls out Gretchen Carlson for "dumbing herself down"

(Huff Post)

Fox News came under fire recently after the network was caught using footage from Sarah Palin's vice-presidential campaign to illustrate one of her book signings. This prompted the network to issue a pledge of zero tolerance for on-screen errors.

During the segment "Tip of the Hat/Wag of the Finger," Stephen Colbert called out the network for its stupidity: "What are you doing? You're fair and balanced. To be fair, you have to balance every fact with corresponding bullshit." His solution: using air quotes during the newscast. This strategy would allow the network to let the audience know that they are being ironic when reporting the news.

He went on to give an example to help clarify:

Sarah "Palin's" New "Book" Has Been Released "Excellent" Reviews. And many people are "reading" it.

Colbert then added that if that measure was not enough, they should have Sean Hannity do every show wearing an ironic "Journalist" t-shirt.

(Huff Post)

Jon Stewart went after "Fox & Friends" host Gretchen Carlson last night. Saying she plays the "troubled mom, just trying to make sense of this modern country," Stewart explained Carlson seems to be dumbing herself down in order to connect with an audience that sees intellect as an elitist flaw.

After showing clips of Carlson talking about Googling the words "ignoramus" and "czar," Stewart was flabbergasted:

How do you get a job on television if you appear to be one of those people who need to pin their address to their coat so a stranger can help them find their way home?

Determined to get to the bottom of it, Stewart conducted a Google search of his own. According to his findings, this "troubled mom" is a graduate of Stanford and a classically trained violinist. With this in mind, Stewart challenged Carlson: "I don't want to have to turn you on tomorrow to see you're actually surprised that the Interior Secretary is in charge of the outside stuff."

Colbert impersonates a nuclear bomb

Colbert does an interview with Joseph Cirincione from the Ploughshares Fund. during the interview he plays Sanction, Bomb Marry and then does a dead-on impersonation of the old 1960's nuclear bomb film. The rickey shack disappearing is particularly awesome. Start at 3:30.

Obama never had a chance with the GOP on Afghanistan

Obama never had a chance. In giving the generals exactly what they wanted, he's being torn to shreds by the right wing. "We must end this now," they cry. But I'll ask you to be truthful... what would they have said if we pulled out immediately?

He literally never had a chance. He inherited Bush's war and was set up to fail. Not in the mission, mind you, but in the perception. The right wing HATES him and will do whatever is necessary to see him hurt him.

Watch the video clip. In the first minute Rush Limbaugh, the leader of those saying that we don't criticize the president in a time of war when Bush was in the Oval, now abandons that scenario. They have no scruples, no sense of honor, and are seemingly all about hypocrisy for power's sake.

(Media Matters)

It didn't matter what decision he came to regarding troop levels in Afghanistan, or what he said about the ongoing conflict there, because Fox News and the rest of the conservative media had already reached two conclusions. First, he took too long. Second, he was wrong.

Since the Bush administration stuck him with the untended-to mess in Afghanistan, Obama had to make a choice -- more troops, fewer troops, withdrawal. When Obama signaled that he actually wanted to consider his options before making a decision, the Fox News followed the lead of Dick Cheney -- one of the primary authors of the Afghanistan debacle -- in accusing the president of "dithering" and "inaction." Glenn Beck, never one to be subtle or reasonable, accused the president of "letting our troops literally bleed and die" and said Obama would "pay for it" in the hereafter.

Of course, Cheney's idea of "dithering" is another man's idea of a "substantive discussion" that came as part of a "good" process. That other man just so happens to be Gen. David Petraeus, who was asked by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on December 2 if Obama had been "dithering" as Cheney alleged. Petraeus responded: "This process was actually quite good, Joe. It was a very substantive discussion. Everybody's assumptions and views were tested. I think out of this have come sharpened objectives, a very good understanding of the challenges and the difficulties and what must be done in a much more detailed and nuanced fashion."

Fiscally responsible health care (choose your punctuation [.], [?], [!])

Mixed pot of health-care news:

Health care reform hangs in the balance. Its fate rests with a handful of "centrist" senators — senators who claim to be mainly worried about whether the proposed legislation is fiscally responsible.

But if they’re really concerned with fiscal responsibility, they shouldn’t be worried about what would happen if health reform passes. They should, instead, be worried about what would happen if it doesn’t pass. For America can’t get control of its budget without controlling health care costs — and this is our last, best chance to deal with these costs in a rational way.

Paul Krugman

Bad news for Aetna customers. Actually, bad news for health care customers. More correctly, bad news for everyone, because if you don't tyhink YOUR policyholder will do this, you're just goin' Palin.

Health insurance giant Aetna is planning to force up to 650,000 clients to drop their coverage next year as it seeks to raise additional revenue to meet profit expectations.

In a third-quarter earnings conference call in late October, officials at Aetna announced that in an effort to improve on a less-than-anticipated profit margin in 2009, they would be raising prices on their consumers in 2010. The insurance giant predicted that the company would subsequently lose between 300,000 and 350,000 members next year from its national account as well as another 300,000 from smaller group accounts.

Best system EVER! As Bob Cesca asks, how many wingnuts and tea partiers are Aetna customers?

And Politico reports that there is a serious option on the table that is basically the Swiss health system:

There appeared to be serious consideration of a new proposal on the table: a national health plan similar to the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan, which provides insurance to members of Congress and federal workers. It would be administered by the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the federal plan, and all of the insurance options would be not-for-profit.

Commentary:

This is basically the Swiss health insurance system. Private but non-profit and government operated. But, in this plan, the privates are literally forced by the Office of Personnel Management to negotiate lower rates if they want to participate -- and the plans can't earn a profit.

Jobs growth coming?

(Bob Cesca)

While we aren't quite feeling it yet, it's entirely possible that this month or next month will show jobs growth.



It's no easy feat to go from 700,000 job losses per month to job growth within a year. Adding the balance of the TARP funds to a jobs package might supercharge the process even more.

The story behind the Afghan surge

The New York Times ran an incredible piece by Peter Baker detailing the behind-the-scenes maneuvering in the weeks of deliberations leading up to the president's decision to send up to 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. It's well worth your time to read this:

On the afternoon he held the eighth meeting of his Afghanistan review, President Obama arrived in the White House Situation Room ruminating about war. He had come from Arlington National Cemetery, where he had wandered among the chalky white tombstones of those who had fallen in the rugged mountains of Central Asia.

How much their sacrifice weighed on him that Veterans Day last month, he did not say. But his advisers say he was haunted by the human toll as he wrestled with what to do about the eight-year-old war. Just a month earlier, he had mentioned to them his visits to wounded soldiers at the Army hospital in Washington. “I don’t want to be going to Walter Reed for another eight years,” he said then.

The economic cost was troubling him as well after he received a private budget memo estimating that an expanded presence would cost $1 trillion over 10 years, roughly the same as his health care plan.

Now as his top military adviser ran through a slide show of options, Mr. Obama expressed frustration. He held up a chart showing how reinforcements would flow into Afghanistan over 18 months and eventually begin to pull out, a bell curve that meant American forces would be there for years to come.

“I want this pushed to the left,” he told advisers, pointing to the bell curve. In other words, the troops should be in sooner, then out sooner.

When the history of the Obama presidency is written, that day with the chart may prove to be a turning point, the moment a young commander in chief set in motion a high-stakes gamble to turn around a losing war.

More...

Gordon Brown decries "anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics"

(Telegraph UK)

"With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn't be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics. We know the science. We know what we must do.”

Correction of the Year: Washington Post

presented without comment, as it needs none


Hit me....

Craig Ferguson and bagpipes

This is filthy, but it's really, really funny.

Love haggis....

Don't give up, don't EVER give up

One of the greatest speeches I've ever heard. The speech was given in 1993, when Jimmy was 47 years old. He died less than 2 months alter. 16 years on, the message resonates. Rest in peace, Jim.

December 2-8, 2009 is Jimmy V week. jimmyv.org

Zombie Reagan raised from grave to lead GOP

Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP

Colbert takes on Beck for latest hysterical attack on Obama

(Huff Post)

Glenn Beck was fired up that Obama would have the audacity to make a decision (on Afghansitan), seemingly calling into question the President's place on the military chain of command. Said Beck: "You do what your military advisers ask for...Who is the President?"

Colbert "echoed" Beck's "logic," pointing out that, "Obama is acting like he is some kind of chief who is commander of the armed forces."

The contents of Obama's Afghan Speech

Huff Post

A look at the text of the president's speech, as provided by the White House, however, suggests far less neoconservative idealism and thinly-veiled religiosity than what George W. Bush brought to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In its place, words were chosen that emphasized foreign policy pragmatism and acknowledgments of shades of gray in times of war.

On Tuesday night, the President said the words:
Democracy: 2 (once to talk about the U.S. Capitol building the other to describe Pakistan)
Freedom: 3 times
Terrorism: 0 times (though three mentions of "terrorist")
Extremism: 4 times

By contrast, the President uttered the words:
Security: 28 times
Allies: 11 times (one mention of alliance)
Responsibility: 7 times
Resources: 6 times
Diplomacy: 3 times
Clear: 16 times
Goal: 6 times.

Click here for a slideshow of the 9 key points of the speech

Limbaugh gets Shat on

I asked the other day why it is that only comedians seem to be asking the probing questions. It turns out I was wrong. We also have method overactors from the final frontier doing the job of the 4th estate.

Huff Post

On an upcoming episode of William Shatner's "Raw Nerve" Shatner grills guest Rush Limbaugh on health care. The conversation is heated, and the setting -- the two men sit on an S shaped love-seat in front of a lit fireplace -- is downright surreal.

"Here's my premise and you agree with it or not," Shatner posited. "If you have money, you are going to get health care. If you don't have money, it's more difficult."

Rush skirted the issue and chose to talk about real estate instead. "If you have money you're gonna get a house on the beach. If you don't have money you're gonna live in a bungalow somewhere."

"Right," Shatner responded, "but we're talking about health care."

"What's the difference?"

Shatner pressed on. "The difference is we're talking about health care, not a house or a bungalow."

The stimulus is working; why the poll numbers are down

via BCGAB

Suck it, Republicans:

Between 600,000 and 1.6 million jobs were created or saved through September as a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to a Congressional Budget Office report.

The data, released Monday, say the real inflation-adjusted gross domestic product was 1.2 percent to 3.2 percent higher than it would have been had the $787 billion stimulus package not passed in February. Also, the stimulus lowered the unemployment by between 0.3 and 0.9 percentage points, according to the report.

Yeah, 10.2 percent unemployment is awful and the Democrats need to pass another jobs bill right away or else. But this proves that spending equals growth equals jobs equals recovery. It's the ridiculousness of the corporate press and the Republicans that put this very basic economic notion into doubt, but don't hold your breath waiting for a retraction of all the red-baiting and concern-trolling we endured last February/March.

As Matt Yglesias points out, it shouldn't be surprising that Obama's poll numbers aren't that great. In fact, there's historical evidence for this.

One frustrating aspect of “horse race” coverage of the U.S. political system is that the people who insist on covering important policy debates as a kind of game are also pretty bad at analyzing the game.

Nor should it surprise anyone that 11 months of deteriorating economic conditions have taken a toll on Obama’s popularity.

Look at Ronald Reagan’s approval rating:


At the time there were probably lots of clever stories written about why Reagan was doing better or worse on whichever day. But looking back at things from 20 years later, the moral of the story seems to be pretty simple “recessions and giant scandals make presidents unpopular.” And of course they do!

So the next time you hear Doucheborough talking about how the numbers show Obama is tanking, remember he's looking at snapshots and trying to get you to tune in tomorrow for the political equivalent of "How'd the Celtics do last night?"

I'll also remind you of this post from last week, showing that the only place Obama is down is among Republicans. It used to be that a lot of them hated him. Now even more do.

The Road trailer

Why this is not in wide release (read: in a theater I don't have to drive 2 hours each way to) is beyond me. The book is magnificent.

Biden on health care: Who do you trust?

Olbermann: "Declare victory and get out"

Mr. President, it now falls to you to be both former Republican Senator George Aiken and the man to whom he spoke, Lyndon Johnson. You must declare victory, and get out.

You should survey the dismal array of options in front of you -- even the orders given out last night -- sort them into the unacceptable, the unsuccessful, and the merely un-palatable, and then put your arm down on the table and wipe the entire assortment of them off your desk -- off this nation's desk -- and into the scrap heap of history.

Unless you are utterly convinced -- willing to bet American lives on it -- that the military understands the clock is running, and that the check is not blank, and that the Pentagon will go to sleep when you tell it to, even though the Pentagon is a bunch of perpetually 12-year old boys desperate to stay up as late as possible by any means necessary -- get out now.

We are, at present, fighting, in no particular order, the Taliban; a series of sleazy political-slash-military adventurers, not the least of whom is this mountebank election-fixer Karzai, and what National Security Advisor Jones estimated in October was around eight dozen al-Qaida in the neighborhood.

But poll after poll, and anecdote after anecdote, of the reality of public opinion inside Afghanistan is that its residents believe we are fighting Afghanistan. That we, Sir, have become an occupying force. Yes: if we leave, Afghanistan certainly will have an occupying force, whether it's from Pakistan, or consisting of foreign fighters who will try to ally themselves with the Taliban.

Can you prevent that? Can you convince the Afghans that you can prevent that? Can you convince Americans that it is the only way to un-do Bush and Cheney policy catastrophes dating back to Cheney's days as Secretary of Defense in the '90s? If not, Mr. President, this way lies Vietnam. If you liked Iraq, you'll love Afghanistan with 35,000 more troops, complete with the new wrinkle, straight from the minder-binder lingo of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22."

President Obama will be presenting an exit strategy for Afghanistan. The exit strategy that begins by entering still further. Lose to win, sink to swim, escalate to disengage. And even this disconnect of fundamental logic is predicated on the assumption that once the extra troops go in, when the President says "okay, time for adult swim, Generals, time to get out of the pool and bring the troops with you," that the Pentagon is just going to say "Yeppers."

The Pentagon, often to our eternal relief, but just as often to our eternal regret is in the War business. You were right, Mr. President, to slow the process down, once a series of exit strategies was offered to you by men whose power and in some case livelihoods are predicated on making sure all exit strategies, everywhere, forever, don't really result in any service-man or woman actually exiting.

These men are still in the belly of what President Eisenhower so rightly, so prophetically, christened the military-industrial complex. Now and later as the civilian gray eminences with "retired" next to their names, formally lobbying the House and Senate and informally lobbying the nation through television and the printed word, to "engage" here, or "serve" there, or "invest" everywhere, they are, in many cases, just glorified hardware salesmen.

It was political and operational brilliance, Sir, to retain Mr. Bush's last Secretary of Defense Mr. Gates. It was transitional and bipartisan insight, Sir, to maintain General Stanley McChrystal as a key leader in the field.

And it was a subtle but powerful reminder to the authoritarian minded War-hawks like John McCain, and the blithering idiots like former Governor Palin, of the Civilian authority of the Constitution it was a picture drawn in crayon for ease of digestion by the Right, to tell our employees at the Pentagon, to take their loaded options and go away and come back with some real ones.

You reminded them, Mr. President, that Mr. Gates works for the people of the United States of America, not the other way around. You reminded them, Mr. President, that General McChrystal is our employee, not our dictator. You've reminded them Mr. President. Now, tonight, remind yourself. Stanley McChrystal.

General McChrystal has doubtless served his country bravely and honorably and at great risk, but to date his lasting legacy will be as the great facilitator of the obscenity that was transmuting the greatest symbol of this nation's true patriotism, of its actual willingness to sacrifice, into a distorted circus fun-house mirror version of such selflessness.

Friendly fire killed Pat Tillman. Mr. McChrystal killed the truth about Pat Tillman. And that willingness to stand truth on its head on behalf of "selling" a war or the generic idea of America being at war to turn a dead hero into a meaningless recruiting poster, should ring essentially relevant right now.

From the very center of a part of our nation that could lie to the public, could lie to his mother, about what really happened to Pat Tillman, from the very man who was at the operational center of that plan, comes the entire series of plans to help us supposedly find the way out of Afghanistan? We are supposed to believe General McChrystal isn't lying about Afghanistan?

Didn't he blow his credibility by lying, so obviously and so painfully, about Pat Tillman? Why are we believing the McChrystals? Their reasons might sound better than the ones they helped George Bush and Dick Cheney fabricate for Iraq, but surely they are just as transparently oblivious of the forest.

Half of them insist we must stay in Afghanistan out of fear of not repeating Iraq, while the other half, believing Bush failed in Iraq by having too few troops, insist we must stay in Afghanistan out of fear of repeating Iraq. And they are suddenly sounding frighteningly similar to what the Soviet Generals were telling the Soviet Politicos in the 1980s about Afghanistan.

Sure it's not going well, sure we need to get out, we all see that. But first let's make sure it's stabilized and then we get out. The Afghans will be impressed by our commitment and will then take over the cost of policing themselves, even though the cost would be several times their gross national product. Just send in those extra troops, just for awhile. Just 350,000.

I'm sorry, did I say 350,000? I meant 35,000. Must be a coffee stain on the paper. Mr. President, last fall, you were elected. Not General McChrystal, not Secretary Gates, not another Bushian Drone of a politician. You. On the Change Ticket. On the pitch that all politicians are not created equal.

And upon arrival you were greeted by a Three Mile Island of an economy, so bad that in the most paranoid recesses of the mind one could wonder if the Republicans didn't plan it that way, to leave you in the position of having to prove the ultimate negative, that you staved off worldwide financial collapse, that if you had not done what you so swiftly did, that this "economic cloudy day" would have otherwise been the "biblical flood of finance."

So, much of the change for which you were elected, Sir, has thus far been understandably, if begrudgingly, tabled, delayed, made more open-ended. But patience ebbs, Mr. President. And while the first one thousand key decisions of your presidency were already made about the economy, the first public, easy-to-discern, mouse-or-elephant kind of decision comes tomorrow night at West Point at eight o'clock.

You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our economy than the cost of supply for 35,000 new troops. Nothing will do more to slow economic recovery. You might as well shoot the revivified auto industry or embrace John Boehner Health Care Reform and Spray-Tan Reimbursement.

You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our status in the world than for us to re-up as occupiers of Afghanistan and for you to look like you were unable to extricate yourself from a Military Chinese Finger Puzzle left for you by Bush and Cheney and the rest of Halliburton's hench-men.

And most of all, and those of us who have watched these first nine months trust both your judgment and the fact you know this, Mr. President: unless you are exactly right, we cannot afford this war. For if all else is even, and everything from the opinion of the generals to the opinion of the public is even, we cannot afford to send these troops back into that quagmire for second tours, or thirds, or fourths, or fifths.

We cannot afford this ethically, Sir. The country has, for eight shameful years, forgotten its moral compass and its world purpose. And here is your chance to reassert that there is, in fact, American Exceptionalism. We are better. We know when to stop making our troops suffer, in order to make our generals happy.

You, Sir, called for change, for the better way, for the safety of our citizens including the citizens being wasted in war-for-the-sake-of-war, for a reasserting of our moral force. And we listened. And now you must listen. You must listen to yourself.

Jon Stewart, meet Party Crashers