My friends at Delawareliberal went all out describing Americans who did not believe that President Barack Obama did not deserve the Nobel Peace prize as wingnuts with no fewer than nine major posts . The general theme was possibly best expressed by Delawaredem, who opined that when you have President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, you have the recipe for Peak Wingnut. The only problem, CNN now reports , is that a majority of Americans (which would require a lot of Democrats to make up that majority, one presumes) don't think President Obama deserved the Nobel Peace prize: About a third believe the president deserved the prize, according to this week's CNN/Opinion Research poll. Fifty-six percent say they disapprove of the Nobel Prize Committee's decision to honor him, the survey found. This would appear to mean one of three things: 1) Americans in general reality test much better than our local liberal/progressive bloggers, and realize that the primary reason Presid...

From a political perspective, the proper response to Glenn Beck in the past few weeks would have been to stand by Van Jones and Yosi Sergant. [I realize both had become political liabilities, but not even one-tenth the extent a political liability that being seen to cave into a talk show host creates.] Now that Beck is going after Valerie Jarrett, the proper political response would be (a) for the White House to ignore him and support Jarrett, while (b) sending out some heavy-hitting political surrogates to take him on. Having White House officials directly challenging Beck on an official White House website does not debunk Beck, it elevates him. Hell, at this point he appears to be getting more of Barack Obama's attention than General McChrystal in Afghanistan. At the same time it diminishes the power of the Presidency. Why? Because it says, in effect, This man has developed such a following that his lies now require the official attention of the government in lieu of real thin...

President Obama insists that mandatory health insurance is not a tax, and compares it to automobile insurance. But now we also know that, under at least the Baucus bill, if you don't purchase health insurance you may be fined $25,000 and sent to prison for a year. The necessity for this non-taxation is driven by the President's assertion that we all need to become one big health insurance risk pool : He noted that consumers currently pay higher health insurance premiums due to the costs run up by hospitals and other facilities providing care to uninsured people. Those unable to afford health insurance should get government help, Obama said, but others who can afford coverage but choose not to get it should face coverage requirements similar to those for auto insurance. "What it's saying is ... that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you any more than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance,...

It's not just President Obama, but he does tend to fall into the trap too often. I don't really know anybody who has taken seriously those supposedly inspiring Presidential anecdotes that crop up in speeches all the time. Carter, Reagan, Clinton, the Bushes--they all embellished the stories that their speech-writers fed them. But it can really bite you on the ass in a speech that is at least partly about other people distorting the truth : Last week, when the President addressed the Joint Session of Congress in a speech on health reform, he referred to some of the untruths – okay, lies – that have been spread about the plan and sent a clear message to those who seek to undermine his agenda and his presidency with these tactics: "We will call you out." Unfortunately, as Lynn Sweet at Politics Daily points out , that speech came with an anecdote that ... wasn't true: When Obama spoke to Congress about health care reform on Sept. 9, he attempted to put a human face...

I'm starting to wonder. With key Democrats like Max Baucus and Nancy Pelosi taking massive contributions from the health insurance lobbyists; with President Obama likewise accepting such contributions and cutting a sweetheart deal with the pharmaceutical companies, it looks more and more like the original plan may have been to feint left, then cut back to the right the whole time. Look what corporate America has so far achieved: Big Pharma, for a bribe of only $150 million, has been indemnified against losses in excess of $80 billion over the next decade. Big Insurance, in exchange for having to actually treat some of its current customers, is seeing the purchase of its product made mandatory by the government, leading to the addition of tens of millions of new customers and rules that allow it to spread risk and cost across greater [possibly even inter-state] populations. Big Law has managed to keep tort reform completely off the table, despite President Obama's carefully par...

... on President Obama's speech. [I'd like to say this was from my own daughter, but she's in the eighth grade now, and apparently wasn't paying too much attention. This is from our neighbor's 12 year-old, who generally hates school.] She told me on the way to dropping them at soccer practice that her social studies teacher had stopped class for the speech. Then she said, "It was really interesting. He talked about his life and how tough it was to go to school. I never thought about a president having a hard time in school. I liked him." I asked her what the social studies teacher did with the speech afterward, and she waved a hand, saying, "I don't know. After Obama stopped talking, I quit paying attention. Like, we heard the speech and we got what he was saying, so why's the teacher got to obsess about it for the rest of the period?" Interesting for three reasons 1) Love him or hate him, the man can give a speech. And all those p...

... you plan to keep your children out of school or ask them to be removed from the class when President Obama speaks, like these idiots. Three reasons you are an idiot: 1) If President Obama in thirty minutes or less can indoctrinate your children into whatever socialist values you think he's going to be selling, then as a parent attempting to build the character and values of your children you are not only an idiot but failure. 2) If you have so little respect for the Office of the President that you wish to convey to your children that they should not show respect to the President even when he belongs to a different political party, you are an idiot who is contributing to the disintegration of the American identity. [And if you use the they disrespected Bush argument you are not an idiot in this case but a less-on. A less-on is someone who, if they were twice as smart would be a moron.] 3) If you sincerely believe that President Obama's message is going to be anything ot...

... and finds out that a prophet is generally without honor in his own country. DV publishes a fisking of National Security Advisor James Jones' interview in which he claims we're killing a lot more terrorist now, but I can't tell you how many because we don't keep count, but it's impressive and we talk to a lot of people around the world that Bush ignored so everything is better now: It was pretty easy to pick apart a Bush loyalist especially when they would put out vague statements and watch the media lap them up. Well, here we have an Obama guy doing the same thing, and, well, the same thing happens. You should go read every damn word Donviti wrote. Despite my remaining questions about the size of his mangos, this is the first honest piece of blogging in the Delaware 'Sphere to take on the gigantic inconsistencies, outright fabrications, and continued Bushco policies in the Obama administration. Here's the crux of his point: you cannot evaluate this stu...

To be clear: I have serious doubts about the efficacy of tort reform in driving down medical costs, and anyone who has examined Tom Baker's seminal research on medical malpractice will probably share them as well. That said, it is politics and not policy that drives what goes into the health insurance reform bill, as Shirley quotes Howard Dean as admitting: "The reason why tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on, and that is the plain and simple truth. Now, that’s the truth.” Actually, that's not the truth. It's not like the people drafting the bill wanted to take on tort reform but were somehow afraid of a confrontation with trial lawyers. Not hardly. Here's what progressive strategist George Lakoff has always maintained about tort reform and trial lawyers : Another multifaceted conservative strategic initiative is "tort reform," w...

.... and it has finally [at least at WaPo ] managed to figure out that President Barack Obama continues to receive advice on foreign policy and economics from many of the same people who advised President George W. Bush, and continues to advance many of the former President's policies in minimally modified forms. And the piece ends with an observation being made here for several months: All this leaves Obama in an uncomfortable position, drawing fire from conservatives while making his liberal friends nervous. It is a clear example of the difference between campaigning for president and actually being president. Ah, Demopublicans, what would we do without them? Oh. Yeah. We'd enjoy the potential of real political change in America.

Keith Hennessy explains . The logic and documentation are lengthy and wonkish; if you have doubts read the entire post yourself. What Hennessy concludes is that the President routinely says things like this: Now, what I’ve proposed is going to cost roughly $900 billion — $800 billion to $900 billion. That’s a lot of money. Keep in mind it’s over 10 years. So when you hear some of these figures thrown out there, this is not per year, this is over 10 years. So let’s assume it’s about $80 billion a year. It turns out that about two-thirds of that could be paid for by eliminating waste in the existing system. Problem? Best estimates and the loading sequence of the benefits are calculated to average $160 billion per year rather the $80 billion the President keeps claiming. Moreover: current predictions are that by 2019 the cost will have reached a annualized $202 billion . Here's what Hennessy concludes: So the President is off by at least a factor of two. This becomes partic...

Here's how President Obama characterized the Afghan elections today, as reported by that legend of objectivity Voice of America : U.S. President Barack Obama says Afghanistan's elections appear to have been successful, despite attempts by the Taliban to disrupt them with violence. Here, to help us define success as the Obama Administration apparently sees it, is Anti-war.com : Polls in Afghanistan closed today at 5 pm local time (8:30 am EST), following a one hour extension announced by authorities hoping to get the reportedly anemic turnout to a more respectable number. It does not appear to have been very effective, however, as the turnout has been quite a bit lower than officials had hoped. Turnout was particularly low in the Pashtun-heavy south, a sign of Taliban strength in the region but also potentially a negative sign for President Karzai’s chances of winning reelection in the first round , as he was seen to need a significant Pashtun turnout to claim such a victory w...

But it did. WaPo : Armed men seen mixing with protesters outside recent events held by President Obama acted within the law, the White House said Tuesday, attempting to allay fears of a security threat. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said people are entitled to carry weapons outside such events if local laws allow it. "There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally," he said. "Those laws don't change when the president comes to your state or locality." Anti-gun campaigners disagreed with Gibbs's comments, voicing fears that volatile debates over health-care reform are more likely to turn violent if gun control is not enforced. "What Gibbs said is wrong," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "Individuals carrying loaded weapons at these events require constant attention from police and Secret Service officers. It's crazy to bring a gun to these events. It endangers ev...

President Obama yesterday : The war in Afghanistan is "fundamental to the defense of our people," President Obama said Monday, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars conference in Phoenix, Ariz. -- but the fight will not be easy. "The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight. And we won’t defeat it overnight," the president said. "But we must never forget. This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9-11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. " Of course, this is also President Obama yesterday : “That is why I announced a new, comprehensive strategy in March. This strategy recognizes that Al Qaeda and its allies had moved their base to the remote, Tribal Areas of Pakistan,” The News quoted Obama, as saying. So the Afghan insurgency didn't develop overnight [because it coul...

How many points does it take to make a line? Today I have three. Point 1: The Obama administration backs away (but doesn't back away, but then again does) from the idea that a public option is essential to a successful health insurance reform bill. No matter what they say from this point on, they have wounded the public option as gravely as if it were an embattled Supreme Court nominee (remember Harriet Myers?) about whom a President says, I'm standing behind her 1000% percent . Point 2: Democratic Senator Kent Conrad says, “Look, the fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the U.S. Senate for the public option, there never have been.” . That last clause-- there never have been the votes for a public option --has been more or less ignored in the MSM thus far. That's a mistake: it is critical to the political process. The American political process--kind of like the free market-- always sets up a "middle" whether the parties or the candidates wa...

David Boaz of Cato looks at the poll numbers which suggest this might be happening and then he concludes: Libertarian—or fiscally conservative, socially liberal—voters are often torn between their aversions to the Republicans' social conservatism (and, for some of them, military adventurism) and the Democrats' fiscal irresponsibility. Usually they end up voting on the basis of economics. Research that David Kirby and I have done shows that libertarian-leaning voters have typically given up to 70 percent of their votes to Republicans. But in 2004 and 2006, that number fell off sharply. Republican congressional candidates barely held a majority of libertarian votes in 2006, and of course the Republicans took a pounding in that election. Why did those voters turn away from the Republicans? Well, Bush and the Republican Congress stuck to their social-conservative guns: they sought to ban gay marriage, limit stem cell research, and insert the federal government into Terry Schiavo’s...

On Shirley's advice [wow--Shirley in this post and Chainsaw in the previous one--this is becoming a curmudgeonly night) i have visited Keith Hennessey . I am going to have to give up my Biggest Wonk hat. Anyway, Keith makes a long and convincing argument that the shift in language from health care reform to health insurance reform does not signify an attempt by President Obama to carve out a fallback plan by which he could "declare victory" with a reduced plan that only reforms insurance and does not provide a public option: Other than the shift in communications strategy, I see no other signs of a change in strategy by the President or his team. They do not appear to be preparing for a health-insurance-only fallback bill. I cannot see how one would make such a bill work in practice. You need the individual mandate, the subsidies, and offsets to make it work as a policy matter. Even if you could make the policy work, going with a narrower insurance-only bill would...

As a spectator sport it is always fun to watch folks jump through intellectual hoops to rationalize a sell-out as part of the normal course of politics (though honesty forces me to admit that the blogger with the testicular fixation has come right out and named names, goring the guilty and admitting he was had )... ... it is less amusing to realize that many of President Obama's fervent supporters are now OK with exactly the things they (and he) criticized about President Bush, Congressional GOPers and the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. To wit; from American Progress : The new Medicare legislation stripped out provisions both to allow Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower prices and for Americans to reimport FDA-approved medication from Canada, where it sells much more cheaply.... instead of standing up to pharmaceutical companies and allowing Medicare to negotiate to drive down inflated prices, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), in continuing...

WaPo : As the Obama administration expands U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, military experts are warning that the United States is taking on security and political commitments that will last at least a decade and a cost that will probably eclipse that of the Iraq war. Since the invasion of Afghanistan eight years ago, the United States has spent $223 billion on war-related funding for that country, according to the Congressional Research Service. Aid expenditures, excluding the cost of combat operations, have grown exponentially, from $982 million in 2003 to $9.3 billion last year. The costs are almost certain to keep growing. The Obama administration is in the process of overhauling the U.S. approach to Afghanistan, putting its focus on long-term security, economic sustainability and development. That approach is also likely to require deployment of more American military personnel, at the very least to train additional Afghan security forces. Later this month, Gen. Stanley A. McChrys...

From NYT : WASHINGTON — The drug industry has authorized its lobbyists to spend as much as $150 million on television commercials supporting President Obama’s health care overhaul, beginning over the August Congressional recess, people briefed on the plans said Saturday. The unusually large scale of the industry’s commitment to the cause helps explain some of a contentious back-and-forth playing out in recent days between the odd-couple allies over a deal that the White House struck with the industry in June to secure its support. The terms of the deal were not fully disclosed. Both sides had announced that the drug industry would contribute $80 billion over 10 years to the cost of the health care overhaul without spelling out the details. This is the part where you see just how much advertising President Obama has purchased: By comparison, President Obama’s presidential campaign spent about $236 million on television commercials while the campaign of the Republican candidate, Senator ...