PLAYING POLITICAL GAMES

This marathon business with congress may be more theater than substance. I was informed by C-Span that they were to meet at midnight to discuss foreign policy. It seems that the funding bill from our troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere expires tonight at midnight without an extention. But they are not above playing the tackiest political games with the lives of our servicemen. But as Randy Rhodes pointed out on her noon show today, if you’re a democrat you can vote against a certain bill “for conscience sake” and the leader will seek for another to “cover” your vote. You only need vote the party line when every democratic vote will be needed. Bearing this in mind, Russ Feingold stated that he was opposed to the Afghan war and wanted to vote down this funding bill but with everything on the line he voted to break a republican led filibuster. You heard right. The republicans were filibustering the pay of our troops. So they are pretty bogus. They are the ones who are pro war but against our troops. Meanwhile Thad Cochrin of Mississippi was preparing to cut a deal for his vote. He got 45 pork barrel items for the military in his state. And after getting this major concession he still voted to uphold the filibuster thus voting against his own amendment. By the way the amendment went through but he can go back to his voters and try to claim that he voted no on all of that extra pork. Mc Cain was going on and on today about pork spending and of all of the unnecessary things in this bill. It sure gets exasperating.

Obama is a total fraud. I’ve always wondered what the President’s heart was made of and now we find that it’s pure Jell-O. I’m not talking about the climate meeting in Copenhagen that went nowhere this week. That was expected. I’m talking about all of Obama’s psychophant apologists such as Randy Rhodes. These are the ones who say that we have this “one shot” at getting health care passed and it has to be this year, or all is lost. Yet at the same time these same people say “We should go for the insurance reform and try and get the really good stuff at a later date”. If one premise is true, it knocks out the other one, so which is it? These Presidential apologists play you on a lot of false premises. First of all who says that December 24^th is a deadline. This is a self imposed rule and they can change it at any time. They could scrap the whole bill and come back next year with a better bill if they want. But it’s a falocy that passing a small portion of this bill will make it easier to pass the rest. It will make it harder. Because maybe the “easy” stuff can get passed with 75 votes. But now the portion of the senate that will go for the more serious reforms such as a public option, will have shrunk to about forty votes without a prayer of the thing getting passed. Do you see the problem? So what is “really going on” with these people like the President who want a bill passed at any price? Well this week the President personally scuttled a drug importation bill. This would have allowed pharmacists and doctors to import drugs from Canada and Europe. But the President had to nix this idea fast because he’s already in bed with the drug and insurance companies and has probably already cut a deal with them that he would continue t restrict imports. The President campaigned on this issue of liberalizing drug imports and now is actively fighting the idea. So of course he wants the insurance companies to have their extra billions from the added business. There is another little fact in that you can’t say, as some might try, that “Well look at all the millions of American citizens dying every year from not having a health bill”. But the provisions of this bill under the best odds don’t kick in for another four years. Also there are yet people who say “Well, pass the bill and work it all out in the conference committee”. But as you know, bills tend to get weaker and not stronger on conference committees, and what comes out may lack some of the “good stuff” that hasn’t been taken out of this bill - - yet, such as ninety percent of the premiums actually going for health care.

The question arises why the Senate doesn’t pass a more potent health care bill by using the process of “reconciliation” where you need only 51%, One senator today said “We are too far down the road for that”. What road? It was used in the Ronald Reagan administration to pass COBRA and it was used in the Clinton administration to pass the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and in the Rush administration it was used for funds cuts in Medi-Care and Medicade. So why can’t it be employed now for the spending portions of this bill? Then they can pass all the insurance regulation stuff in a whole other bill. In a third bill they could eliminate the anti trust exemption that Insurance companies enjoy now. It seems to me the only sensible thing to do. Howard Dean is saying that the entire health care bill should be scrapped. That wouldn’t be a bad idea since we have no assurance the republicans won’t even try to strip more provisions out of this bill. Four of the five original health care bills to make their way through congress had a public option. How do you average four out of five and come up with “None”? Essentially of Obama doesn’t pass this bill, he’s been wasting his time this whole first year of the administration. He’s put all of his eggs in this one basket and hyped the idea as a number one priority, ahead of several other priorities the voters might have wanted. I can’t picture a Roosevelt or a Johnson having such a major failure.

And then we have Afghanistan. Here is another area where the president is looking farcical. It would seem that Pakistan continues to be a question mark as to just which side of this conflict they are on. We wanted the Taliban to be “between a rock and a hard place” to eliminate them. But instead they have the soft, secure underbelly of Pakistan to take refuge in. Apparently it’s estimated that it would take 600,000 troops, I kid you not, to successfully quell all insurgent action in Afghanistan. It’s said that the President decided on the figure of thirty thousand because it’s a figure that might make the hawks happy and it’s the “upper limit” on a figure that the American people would deem politically tolerable. But of course the President’s poll numbers have dipped to below fifty percent. Randy Rhodes suggests that liberals lie to the polsters and say they like the President even when they don’t because “this will give the President the added confidence that he needs to get the job done”. Well excuse me! I thought our leaders were supposed to be “self starters”. It’s their job to motivate us- - rather than the other way around. I’ve always said “Let’s end this campaign before it starts”.

Iraq may have hacked into our drone monitoring system so they can get early warning of all of our attacks, and Afghanistan may have done the same thing, for some software that you can purchase for $26.00. Now Iraq and Iran in conflict over some disputed oil fields. It wouldn’t be the first time that a world war started over some dispute between two nations that mushroomed out of control after one nation after another chose up sides to back.