Transcendentobserver's Comments (289)

“ChelseaC: Well Mam, both you and Ed are dead wrong if you believe that Sen. Obama campaigned on a "public option". He in fact did not and took the most realistic approach to health care of all of the Democratic candidates, except for perhaps Hillary Clinton. He campaigned on health reform. The issue of a public option did not even emerge until the debate began to arise following the very surprising election results in Oregon and Minnesota. No responsible pundit or polling pointed to or suggested a super majority in the Senate, and then it was only realized with the vote of Lieberman. The constant and consistent mantra was for change, and President Obama has fulfilled that promise whether or not the left together with the right combine as they are both doing to obscure the reality of the statutory and legislative process, thereby rendering impossible the potential for change which the wingnuts on the right recognize the inevitability of full and complete reform through regulation, executive orders, and subsequent legislative tweaking. Such is their motivation, but what is that of his critics on the left?

Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi with the quiet backing and support of the Administration have done what historians and political scientists a year ago would have deemed impossible.”

“Reality check Liberals: Hey guys! The problem was not Lieberman on the healthcare polemics, but it was certainly not Obama. Neither the polls, nor the pundits in 2008 anticipated the super majority they now erroneously assert. For months after the election Dems lacked the 60 votes in the Senate requisite for passage of progressive legislation and then only because of the Minnesota senatorial upset. Not ONE Republican has voted on any piece of core domestic legislation: that folks is the problem. The President valiantly and consistently attempted to break that solid wall of knee-jerk GOP obstructionism; that he could not do so in spite of all attempts over 13 months is the problem for the progressive cause.

As obnoxious and immoral as have been been the positions of Sens. Nelson & Lieberman, they have indeed assisted to move the process along in spite of the fact that for different reasons both see objectively their respective future with conservative Republicans on domestic issues. Until we change the system, that is unfortunately the reality. Such whining and pseudo analysis as presented in this blog doesn't assist; it escalates the problem.”

“Reality check here folds! Implied criticism of the de minimus percentage of the appropriations bill identified as "pork" and the projects identified is patently ridiculous and the examples listed appear to be a good if rare example of legislative bipartisanship. Unlike the Bush/Paulson Wall Street bailout (unfortunately supported by then Pres. Elect Obama) the expenditures go directly to communities and projects which directly create wealth, result in capital formation in the form of infrastructure, and are consistent with positive economic stimulative goals. The "bailout mission" only compensated Wall Street and superbanks for what in retrospect were stupid and easily predictable decisions.”

“Ms. Hamsher: Do we understand your position(?) on this issue correctly?

Ms. Lieberman must be punished or otherwise sanctioned for advocating a cause independently of her husband because, uh....Wives are subordinate to the view of her spouse?... or...In politics pressuring a spouse or otherwise holding her/his mate as leverage in civic polemics....or ...All's fair in love and war!

As a proud feminist, don/t you think this tactic is a classic example of hypocrisy.”

“Reality check! Consider this blog myopia in print. What is emerging is more than a public option. [An option by definition is just that--an option which requires a subsequent structural model and implementation protocol.) The emergent bill has a built-in and scalable protocol utilizing existing public or quasi public agencies. The potential scalability of the model affords actuarially and competitively the purposes for which the "public option" were so vigorously argued. The GOP reaction to the realization it had been trumped by Leader Reid's strategy (and WaPo's pathetically pained editorial feigning surprise at the result) speak volumes to the legislative evolution.”

“While precision of words in defining precise meaning through logical syntactical structure more often than not is difficult to delineate, the "confusion" in the WaPo column forming this blog is hardly debatable. Pres. Obama's wording and precision of meaning would pass the most scrutable contract. Interpretive language variables while complex and nuanced were not so in this particular contextual structure.”

“One can only imagine what the Bard would do about this farce: "Much Ado About Nothing" pales to say the least.”

“Point taken! When then First Lady Hillary Clinton during the Clinton Administration's first term suggested in a speech that the solution to the Israel/Palestine dispute was recognition of a two-state existential reality, she was castigated by the Israeli lobby in the US and power structure in Israel. The Times was certainly absent in supporting her prescient comments then, and its back door support now is at best ingenuous.”

“While one can disagree with the strategy of Geitner regarding the focus of the recovery policy, this Nasiripour's relating a colloquy between a NeoCon congressment and his inquisitorial attacks in support of his oft stated opinion in his blog is questionable at best. In point of fact the contemporaneous assumptions of a year ago, as well as the projections of the incoming Obama administration was that the "jobs" creation would take a year and that the unemployment rate would reach double digits prior to its projected slow recovery. That this historic prescience is set forth as a negative is disingenuous.

Both logic and econometric models suggest that employment based jobs creation, by large quantitative employers at least, is morphing into qualitative outsourcing and small boutique specialty skills compensated by contract and/or cooperative venture are growing geometrically aided by exponential explosion in IT interaction. Recent economic growth in support services has been dramatic, but is not easily isolated when juxtaposed to jobs creation, and then largely by dramatic reductions in traditional but arcane industrial age generated models. Some quantitative data, however, can be extracted by the unprecedented enrollment in technical and educational courses over the last few years.”

“Hey NoVaTNDem: You clearly miss an underlying message of this diabolic machination in the form of the two press releases which both Dem and GOP embraced vociferously both for the record and during the debate: "Keep the jobs in the US!" The employment base for delivery of healthcare jobs are obviously here anyway. Gerentech, however as a subsidiary of a Swiss global corporate giant, obviously desires that the obscene profits from health care products and services continue to flow out of the country in any reform model. The response and protestations of the congresspersons who used them in the debate are pathetic.”

“No, an economist. The consequences of each option are quite simple. This blog argues: "We should reduce the principal on the homeowner's debt." The Obama plan says: "No, we should reduce the interest." To the home owner/borrower, it generally makes no practical difference; the monthly house payment is the same, and the cash monthly demand on his/her budget is identical. To the IRS however, the interest paid on the monthly payment is reduced by the increased interest collectively deducted by the millions of taxpayers whose loans are modified. The consequence of the principal reduction model would result in a a corresponding reduction in future tax revenue thereby adding to a Federal deficit in future years because this advocacy blog's model would increase tax deductions because of much higher interest which is all tax deductible, of course. The Obama plan has a built-in mechanism for reimbursement of the $75 B advanced.

Also by maintaining the principal at a higher ratio vis a vis the loan it secures, the homeowner is discouraged from burdening the equity in his/her home from the viscissitudes of home equity loans which are as much to blame for the current crisis as subprime mortgages.”

“Foreclosure options for resolving the reality that millions of homes are undervalued so far as underwriting standards are concerned are problematic to say the least; however, the solution is not a reduction in principal as opposed to interest is concerned. The solution your economist presents would have just the opposite affect--all other variables being equal, of course. Either model would result presumably in a reduced monthly payment to the homeowner which be the same payment in either model so far as periodic P&I payment obligation to the borrower is concerned. Inasmuch as interest is deductible from Federal taxes, and principal reduction is not so deductible, the bottom line effect of his model would be a reduction in future years' revenue to offset the subsidy the present law funds to such homeowners. Over the average span of home occupancy by borrowers, appreciation will replace the diminution of present equity (or we are indeed in trouble.) Furthermore, depending on the gross amount of equity writedown suggested, the collective quantitative result could well encourage pressed homeowners to repeat financing against the home equity, thereby creating a collective debt bubble which was as significant as the subprime lending frenzy in precipitating the present crisis.”

“Lest we become too sanguine or rationalizing last night's gubernatorial defeats, remember that 2010 is census year, and governorships play an important role in determining for the next ten years the makeup of congressional representation.”

“You are correct, and in editing the comment, I changed my point. The "unified budget" was first used in 1968 and continued through subsequent administrations substantially unchanged until the nineties; however, the fund was not been "raided" for domestic or war purposes before or since.”

“Well tiredoldsteelworker, your memory is very wrong on this point at least. It was Richard Nixon and a Republican Congress who removed the independence of the Social Security Trust Fund and included its revenue streams in the Federal Budget. In point of fact, LBJ's was the only administration before Clinton to provide a surplus which it did the last year of his administration even though the Trust Fund was separately accounted from the budget, and the Viet Nam war was in full swing.”

“Professor Goodwin is certainly aware of the historical fact that the domestic agenda LBJ successfully guided through the southern dominated leadership of an overwhelmingly conservative Democratic Congress was facilitated by the national remorse over the assassination of JFK whose domestic agenda formed the core of the LBJ civil rights and anti poverty agenda. LBJ was prescient in his realization that the pressure applied to achieve this political task would destroy for generations the Democratic Party in the South, and its political base paradoxically was supplanted by the present reactionary GOP power structure. Absent the existential political reality of the '60's it is doubtful that such pressure would be nearly as effective today.”

“One must challenge this nonsensical debate in press release syntax. What, pray tell, does an adjective inserted into a news conference by Speaker Palosi only fairly recently in the process of formation of a healthcare policy description? "Robust" has no legal or practical meaning relating to the costing which this blog implies. It most certainly cannot logically be associated with a policy decision of whether or not clinical rates are "negotiated". One of the principal issues in the last presidential campaign and the overriding issue in the Medicare Part D plan was whether the government, as part of a Federal--indeed optional--drug plan could "negotiate" with manufacturers on behalf of its Medicare beneficiaries and thereby afford them the same benefits of those covered by private insurance. In the ensuing bill the government was prohibited from doing so. Permitting, nay, insisting that "robust" negotiations with healthcare providers seems a more appropriate syntactical description than a questionable argument that a bureaucrat should be a "decider" in order to have a "robust" public option in a bill.”

“Come on Liberals!
One would think that the Tea Party videos had mistakenly replaced by the legitimate protest against the Wall Street Brokers Protective Society masquerading as bankers. The tenor of the protester spokespersons, their self designed mob demeanor, and platform rantings are ill devised to impress anyone of the justice of the cause.”

“Brown v. Topeka was the unanimous decision to overcome the fallacies of the majority court in Plessy v. Ferguson-- as, no doubt, in the future Supreme Courts will overturn the Roberts/Scalia NeoCon orthodoxies. Caterpol, that's the way its done.”

“Based on this tortured rationale, Scalia would have also dissented in the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison wherein Chief Justice Marshall first elucidated and persuasively presented the doctrine of Federal implied powers. He would also no doubt take exception to the "equal protections" clause of the 14th Amendment which was adopted in 1865 upon which Brown v. Topeka was based. [Enforced separation by law is inherently unequal.] Of course NeoCons (for whom Scalia is the most articulate and empowered spokesman) continue to argue that this amendment was never properly ratified.”

“Come on, Moulitsas! When a person as naive in real politiks as you when compounded by the arithmetic deficiency you display, those of us whose immediate liberal cause is focused on healthcare reform can only repose in quiet desperation. There are NOT 60 Democrat votes in the Senate. Reality is confronted by an indisputable fact: Independent Lieberman is not a Democrat;yet his vote on crucial issues has been necessary and has often been secured for the limited implementation to date of Obama's agenda has been achieved through the negotiative skills of Sen. Reid. To engage a unified GOP opposition, not only on the healthcare issue but on equally polemic confrontations, Reid must unfortunately deal with this jerk or risk a right curve in practical legislative power toward the GOP.”

“The only other sitting president to be awarded the Nobel Prize was Woodrow Wilson. His idealism in foreign affairs, like Pres. Obama's was vociferously opposed by jingoistic Republicans in Congress and whose selection was similarly demeaned by the isolationists who led that party. Indeed the GOP refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles which was the core of Wilson's progressive foreign policy and the domestic legislative support it needed. The substance of Wilsonian democracy, however, over the succeeding decades forever changed the imperialist policies of the World powers as well as destruction of monarchical and autocratic governance which for centuries had dominated the world's power structures. Ironically, but hopefully not presciently so far as Obama is concerned, Wilsonian democracy and foreign policy was defeated by the Republicans nearly a century ago, and was not legislatively successful during his presidency or even his life, but the impact of Wilsonian democracy on the world has endured and now largely institutionalized., Obama's election to the presidency erased the problematic racial assumptions which Wilson's southern roots had defined Wilson's conservative domestic civil rights positions vis a vis racial racial equality.”

“Unfortunately congressional action implementing "MOST" of the country is procedurally established as 60 votes at some point in the Senate enactment protocol. Normal democratic decisions are based upon majority plus 1. Reality folks: Howard Dean, as eloquent as he is, cannot deliver 60 votes in the Senate. By compromise time and persuasion, perhaps Obama, and enact a law which will set the course of health care--a realism Howard Dean doesn't have to face.”

“Reality check, Political Amazon: What mandate did "we" give to Pres. Obama? Health care? His position throughout the campaign was among the more conservative of the Democratic candidates--his consistent position evidence of his of his empirical judgment of the present bitter debate on healthcare now. The mandate "we" handed him was a surprising result of Raum Emanual's selection of electable, now elected" conservative Democrats in marginal districts whose respective re-election hopes are subject of centrist and conservative voters. Health reform is a sea change process which will take years to effect. Obama consistently and repeatedly said that the process was a congressional responsibility, and its progress to date is a consequence of Obama's skills--not a repudiation of an extreme liberal mandate he has never had!”

“Stein: You bought into Secretary Gates conflation of two very different concepts. While Gates confusion was somewhat understandable given the existential context resulting from the ridiculous format of Sunday a.m.'s superficial interrogation by entertainers presenting themselves as "broadcast journalists", your subsequent editorial critique is not so easily dismissed.

"Exit strategy" is a calculus of multifarious options given objective protocol of convergence at a given point in time of social, military, economic, and political variants. Setting a date certain for withdrawal of military forces is only one factor in considering such options. It should be obvious to any objective observer that consideration of such existential realities is the first and overriding consideration to any empirical consideration of troop withdrawal.”