Obama's Awesome First Day

From MSNBC:

"In just a few hours yesterday, President Obama completed the equivalent of a diplomatic decathlon -- from pledging nuclear disarmament with the Russians, to facing down critics about the American economic way of life. It was a week's worth of international diplomacy packed into 12 hours, and he’s back at it again today. Already, Obama has met with Korean leaders, participated in G-20 breakfast, took a G-20 class photo, attended a plenary session, and attended a G-20 leaders lunch. "

Pretty good for his first day. 

Ted Stevens Dodges a Huge Bullit

Former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens dodged a bullet yesterday when attorney general Eric Holder filed to discontinue the prosecution of Ted, even after he was convicted. Ted was awaiting sentencing but the new AG is now trying to void his conviction. 

There were three reasons for this. Ted is 85, he lost his senate seat, and there were major errors on the part of the prosecution. Very bad errors from what I saw. The prosecutors on a couple of occasions withheld evidence during disclosure. There were a couple of big items the prosecutors "forgot" to disclose.

At the end of the day, the old man is no longer in power, he lost in disgrace and because of the misconduct of the prosecutors, I like this decision to let him off. 

Obama's Image Still Strong

The AIG fiasco of a couple of weeks ago had several dems worried that the dem/Obama image might take a beating from all the outrage. But it turns out he's doing just fine and with him asking for and getting the resignation of the GM CEO, doesn't hurt his image either. '

Its a twofer. First, he looks like he's taking a hard line on the CEO's who have been getting paid tons on the tax payer dime. Second, the union workers get little angry with him as well. Why is the worker anger a good thing. Obama has to appear balanced between his job and the liberals. He/Biden have been working to get EFCA through and eventually it will get through. But, right now, for the rest of society to see that he's will to stand up to some groups that support him is good for his longterm image.

At the end of the day, the unions will continue to support Obama because he is working for their goals.

The Budget Reconciliation Process

The expression The Budget Reconciliation Process (BRP) has been shot around as a way to get important health care and climate stuff passed. What is BPR?

The meat of it is this:

"Created in a budget resolution in 1974 as part of the congressional budget process...First used in 1980 this process was used at the end of a fiscal year to enact legislation to fine tune revenue and spending levels through legislation that could not be filibustered in the Senate." (emphasis mine)

The point of it is this, whenever passing budget stuff, in order to move the legislation along quickly, 60 votes aren't needed to end debate. It comes up for a straight vote only needing 51 votes to pass.

Why is this important? The dems can use anything that might create revenue or spend money as a way to attach it onto this type of bill. Thus, controversial stuff like health care reform, global warming reform, or anything that deals with money, can be used in this process.

It is a shitty process but for those of you not up to date, the repubs filibuster anything they don't like so that it NEVER gets voted on.

The repubs are up in arms right now saying "This is undemocratic!" But their short term memories only go back about a year because they used this several times to get things passed when they were in charge.

I say go for it and forget about the repubs whining about being left out. The country elected someone else to drive for a while.

Victory for Franken (But Its Not Over)

Today the Minnesota court has rule that only 400 ballots, of the almost 1000 that Coleman and Franken had asked to be recounted, be recounted in the election. Almost ensuring that Franken will maintain his lead and thus be named as the freshman senator from Minnesota.

Does that mean its over for Coleman. Oh, hell no. His lawyer is already shouting appeal:

“If the court does not reverse its decision, it will give us no choice but to appeal that order to the Minnesota Supreme Court.”

Why the long drawn out process. At this point in time Coleman doesn't give a rats ass about the citizens of Minnesota. Its all political for this one. The GOP is better served not having Franken in DC because that means the dems would stay at 58 senators and not 59. 1 shy of the glorious 60 needed to end GOP's fillibustering.

What happens at the end of this long line? Well, some say that once the Minnesota Supreme Court rules, (most likely in Franken's favor), the state could give Franken a certificate and let him temporarily represent Minnesota awaiting any further appeals.

At the end of the day, Coleman sees the writing on the wall. He has a new job and is dealing with his other legal problems. It seems his wife has getting paid by an insurance company to do nothing. Fishy stuff.

Harry Reid is A Moron

Harry Reid, the senate majority leader, is a total and utter moron. He has little to no power in the senate and seems willing to get railroaded by repubs. But his most recent comments take the cake. In Politico, he's quoted as saying:

“Roberts didn’t tell us the truth. At least Alito told us who he was,”

He's bitching that Roberts was not totally honest during the senate confirmation hearings. What in the hell did he expect?  Of course he lied on his responses. He wanted the job.

4 years ago two supreme court seats became available and Bush, ultraconservative, appointed a fairly unknown, Roberts, to the bench as chief justice. With little known about the man, dems asked a series of questions and seemed satisfied with the candidate. (Truth being they should have filibustered to the hilt. A moderate was needed and they got a radical. Pussies!)

Now, 4 years later, Reid is telling us that the candidates Bush appointed were not honest. This is sooooo infuriating. Not because of Roberts lied but because of Reid's ingnorance. Reid knew very well who Bush would appoint.  He knew what was going on. Dems do this all the time. Their desire to actually legislate overrides their common sense. They take it in the ass and then say "whow, what just happened?"

This situation is a perfect example. Dems don't want to appear as if they were obstructing government so they went along. The repubs on the other hand really don't care about government so they put a radical in to move their agenda. At the end of the day, we have a nutter as chief justice and all the dems can do is complain about being lied to. 

Update: Not only is Harry complaining about Roberts. He's asking liberal groups to stop nagging moderate dems to do their job: enacting Obama's agenda. The same Obama that was elected by a large percentage of the population to change our government. 

GOP's Budget Has No Numbers

GOP introduced their new budget yesterday (Thursday) to great media coverage. The only problem was their budget had no numbers. The most embarrassing part was when Minority Leader Boehner, after quoting Obama's line from his press conference "we haven’t seen a budget out of [Republicans]", was asked "where is the budget?" he replied "We'll have that out next week."

Turns out, they have no numbers. Yesterday's fiasco was about the outline. Which royally pissed off the press because they were told on Tuesday night that "Given the President’s comments [Tuesday] night... we wanted to make sure you're all aware that we are introducing our Republican Budget Alternative tomorrow."

The really ironic part is that their real budget is coming out April 1st. AKA: April Fools.