Got to love all that Change he's working for...

First some spot on, must see political toons about Obama's Health Care Reform plan:






And aside from Health Care, it's good to know that we're doing the same kind of crap that Bush and previous Administrations did... which of course helped stoke the fires overseas and make 9/11 happen.

Last week when there was a Christmas plane incident, practically identical to the Richard Reid shoe bomber situation, it was learned that the guy had ties to Yemen.

So what does Holy Joe Lieberman do? Call for pre-emptive strikes! Of course, murder is the ONLY solution to deal with potential murderers!

However, one has to wonder what the hell Joe is talking about since we already have been preemptively striking Yemen for OVER A YEAR.

In fact just a week before the failed "attack" (I say that loosely because one moron trying and miserably failing to do something of this scope really isn't an all out "attack"), we were killing people in Yemen. Illegally I might add. We have not declared war on Yemen.





Look, if al-Qaeda is actually plotting attacks in Yemen or anywhere else, the route to go is not military action. It's cooperating with other governments and rounding up suspects personally. Not using planes or drones and blanketing an area with bombs. What tends to happen when we do this is we kill civilians (in this case 63 of them, 28 being children). What happens when you kill those civilians? You killed mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters and you turn off those people to your cause... and worse you probably just recruited family and friends of the victims to fight with your enemy.

And then situations like last week occur.

You reap what you sow. If you always go up to someone and slap them in the face and tell them it's for their own good, you'd better expect it when they finally get tired of it and punch you in the stomach out of retaliation.

Two wrongs don't make a right. This guy needs to be tried and convicted and get a life sentence... just as Reid did. However, we're still committing wrongs in these situations too and we need to realize that we are accountable for our actions. And what we have done to people in Iraq and Afghanistan may seem hard to control today but when the kids there who suffered through the violence we brought to them grow up... we'll have a much bigger base of angry people (or "terrorists" as we'll label them) looking for revenge... revenge that we earned against us.

Rp

Democrats push bills that could split Republican votes...

You'd think in this world there would be some sensible Republicans out there. For the past 7 years though, it's been pretty hard to find any of them.

Luckily, Democrats are finally forcing the rational ones to make a stand. Live or die with this President and his policies and you'll pay a steep price with your constituency.

As this Washington Post article points out, the Democrats are pushing some solid bills with titles that will make it very hard for Republicans to explain to their constituents why they refused them.

Front and center is a Children's Health Insurance Program re-authorization bill. The SCHIP program has worked rather well by all accounts and expanding it seems like a good idea in the day and age where it is blatantly obvious health care in our country is unavailable to too many people.

Even Republicans know the program works and seem ready to step up and vote for it. Not President Bush though, he hates health care for children and has said he will veto the bill.

This will test the mettle of the Republicans who claim to be independent of their historically unpopular leader.

The House Democrats while not being successful on ending the war or attempting impeachment, certainly will have a lot to crow about.

A couple other bills they are working on include strengthening Homeland Security, which Bush has said he will veto and a Congressional Ethics bill which will dramatically cut the influence of lobbyists and the gifts they give to representatives.

Republicans don't like the lobbyist cutbacks because K-Street is their lifeblood. All the work they do is not for their constituents but rather for big corporations and they have always kept those Congressmen well fed at that corporate trough thanks to campaign contributions and lobbyist gifts. But they can't go back to their constituents, the ones who will be voting on them in 2008 and tell them they sided with lobbyists and special interests over the interests of the people the represent.

The Democrats though, have received high marks even from some House Republicans.

"They've had a pretty strong quarter," said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), who praised the insurance bill as "creative" and suggested the homeland security bill would pass overwhelmingly. "The first quarter was not so good, and that's why they're not looking so good in the polls, but this quarter is looking very good for them. They can send their members home crowing about their accomplishments, and they've done it in a bipartisan way, which is exactly what they promised to do," LaHood said.

Another bill that could pass and face a Bush veto is the Farm bill. For years corporate farmers have been able to use loopholes to reap financial windfalls at the expense of the American people and family farmers who struggle more and truly need the help to stay in business.

As someone who lived on a farm for 5 years, you cannot truly appreciate the amount of work, dedication and love family farmers put into their business and certainly they are the heart and soul of what America was, is and still can be.

The bill on the House floor is intended to close those loopholes and use tighter corporate tax rules including forcing Corporations to pay their taxes rather than being allowed to use off shore tax shelters to avoid paying their tax bills.

But hey, there is ONE bill the Administration will sign. ONE bill they want passed. What could this terrific idea be?

Nuclear warhead testing.

What did you expect from the most aggressive, neo-con, chicken hawk outfit in power today?

As usual Bush comes to the rescue of the corporations and threatens another veto.

So let's run down the Bush checklist.

Children's Health Insurance = Bad.

Homeland Security = Bad.

Family Farmers = Bad.

Making Corporations pay their fair share in taxes = Bad.

Stopping Lobbyists from buying votes = No word from Bush but Republicans hate it.

Nuclear Warhead testing = Good.

Corporate tax avoidance = Good.

Sick, dying children without healthcare = Good.

Perpetual war = Good. (okay that's unrelated to what I was talking about in this column, but it's a gimmie)

-Rp

Republicans About to Break Records on Obstructionism

From our friends at Prognosis-Progressive:

Conservatives usher in era of unprecedented obstructionism

This year, “Senate Republicans are threatening filibusters to block more legislation than ever before.” The pattern of obstructionism is demolishing previous records:

Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes — 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office.

McClatchy provides this statistical analysis:



If that doesn't say it all...

But hey, just *possibly* we finally found a bill that Republicans will override a veto on. The highly successful S-CHIP program that provides Health Care for Children is up for passage and of course Bush, being the bastard that he is, wants to veto it. Republicans believe in the program and may line up to override the veto with Democrats. After all can't play the family values meme if you're screwing children over can you?

But this was the line I found to be the most repugnant in the article on this possible veto override by the LA Times:

As they tell the story in Texas, when George W. Bush was governor, he fought hard to put austere limits on a new federal-state plan to provide health insurance for children of low-wage workers in the state. Outmaneuvered by Democrats, he corralled the program's chief sponsor on the statehouse floor and conceded defeat, saying, "You crammed it down our throats."

Well apparently Bush has a habit of attempting to deny children health insurance. Nice to know this was nowhere to be found when the average guy you want to have a beer with was being touted by the media as a family friendly every-man.

-Rp