Cheney * helping * Obama?

Columnist David Corn has a different take on the cheney criticism: that it is actually helping Obama.

Here's his reasoning:

Obama won the presidency partly because he was the anti-Bush (or anti-Cheney). An impressive person on his own, Obama especially looked good compared to the fellows on the way out.

Now that Obama is a president rather than a candidate, he has lost the advantage of comparison. A commander in chief stands on his own before the public for judgment. His policies are evaluated by voters on absolute terms: Are they working? People no longer ask: Are they better than the other guy's? . . . And even his best efforts and decisions might not lead to good outcomes on these fronts. There actually may not be solutions to implement. Obama could well end up in deep political trouble because of such challenges.

But by interjecting himself into the discourse, Cheney sends up a flare: Hey, don't forget about me and Bush! And that reminder is great for the White House. If the issue is, can Obama succeed in Afghanistan, there's reason for Obama and his aides to worry. If the debate is Obama versus the Old Gang, the president is the big winner.

Interesting take. In that case, Bring it on, old man XVP.

Ralph

A simple fact

Anthony Weiner (D-NY) has stated a simple fact that should become a main talking point for Democrats pushing the public option plan:

55 Republican opponents of the public option are themselves on Medicare, which is, of course, a government sponsored, single-payer health care system.

This makes them first class hypocrits for denying similar coverage to all Americans.

Let's "re-brand" the public option as "Medicare-for-All," and I'll bet it would pass with votes to spare.

Ralph

BRAVO ! ! !

Political analyst Lawrence O'Donnell said what needed to be said. On a recent TV show, Morning Joe, O'Donnell got into a heated debate with host Joe Scarborough over Dick Cheney's accusations that Obama is "dithering while America's armed forces are in danger." Said O'Donnell, as reported on HuffingtonPost:

The dithering thing is great because Cheney, of course, did not dither, did not dither for a minute, when the time came to make a wild guess, an outright crazy wild guess, about are there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And Cheney sat there in the White House and said, you know what, I've got everything I need to make my wild guess. On the basis of my wild guess I'm going to tell the country it's an actual fact, and then I'm gonna help send American soldiers there to die over a lie. No dithering when it came time to do that.

An upset Scarborough replied that "every major Democrat on the national scene, including Joe Biden, believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction." O'Donnell countered that no Democrats had access to the high-level intelligence available to Cheney, evidence that painted a far more skeptical picture of Saddam's nuclear capabilities than the one Cheney painted for the American public.

That is exactly what needed to be said -- again and again until dick cheney crawls back into his bunker over there on "the dark side."

Ralph

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/22/lawrence-odonnell-battles_n_330034.html

BRAVO Squared ! ! ! !

Retired General Paul Eaton, senior adviser to the National Security Network was even tougher in hitting back at Cheney's comments about Obama's "dithering." In a press release from NSN, Eaton let him have it:

The record is clear: Dick Cheney and the Bush administration were incompetent war fighters. They ignored Afghanistan for 7 years with a crude approach to counter-insurgency warfare best illustrated by: 1. Deny it. 2. Ignore it. 3. Bomb it. While our intelligence agencies called the region the greatest threat to America, the Bush White House under-resourced our military efforts, shifted attention to Iraq, and failed to bring to justice the masterminds of September 11.

The only time Cheney and his cabal of foreign policy 'experts' have anything to say is when they feel compelled to protect this failed legacy. While President Obama is tasked with cleaning up the considerable mess they left behind, they continue to defend torture or rewrite a legacy of indifference on Afghanistan. Simply put, Mr. Cheney sees history throughout extremely myopic and partisan eyes.

Now that's telling him. But Cheney's speech was at a hyper-partisan sort of Bush crowd reunion, at which they gave him an award as "Keeper of the Flame" and Scooter Libby was also honored. So who really cares what he says?

I try not to. But he is so outrageously wrong and contemptible that I can't help it. I want him to be publicly repudiated until he stops doing it.

Ralph

High Drama

It's not often that my life takes on the drama of a tv action movie. But it almost happened this morning.

I went to the SunTrust branch bank right in the middle of the medical complex of hospitals in my quiet suburb of Sandy Springs. I pulled into the drive through and put my deposit in the pneumatic tube and sent it off. After a minute of sitting there reading my paper, a young woman teller came on the little screen and said: "We have a security issue here, and I'm going to have to return your deposit."

My first thought was she meant the computers were down due to a computer security issue. Then someone pulled down the venetian blinds that closed off the real window into the bank building, and that did make me wonder. But I thought they just meant to indicate that they were closed.

So I got my deposit back and drove off. It did occur to me that maybe there was a bit more of an ominous tone -- and as I drove around through the parking lot to get back onto the street, the thought went through my mind that maybe I should tell that nicely dressed business man about to go into the back that he shouldn't. And then I thought -- had she really been trying to tell me to call the police? I even looked at my deposit slip to see if she had written a note on it. But no.

So I pushed those thoughts aside as being overly dramatic. Until two blocks up the road -- here they came 1 . . . 2. . . 3. . . 4. . . 5 police cars one right after the other, really speeding with blue lights flashing, heading to the bank.

Nosey as I am, I turned around and drove back by. The bank was surround with police with guns drawn and all looking expectantly at the entrance -- and even more police cars coming from the other direction.

That's all I know, except that I went back a couple hours later to try to make my deposit -- and to find out what happened. The bank was locked and a sign said: Closed due to an emergency over which we have no control."

How's that for a quiet morning in Sandy Springs? The chilling thing is that I could just as well have decided to go in to make the deposit, because I have a CD that's about to mature and I need to find out what the renewal interest rate would be. If I had decided to do that this morning, I would have been inside instead of safely at the drive through.

Whew !!! It's nice to have a little high drama when you're safe. But I worry about the tellers who I've come to like over the years. I hope no one was hurt.

Ralph

"Don't give comfort to the enemy"

Every voter should know who tried to prevent the American people from having effective health care reform -- and they should vote accordingly in 2010 and 2012.

Steve Champlin , a lobbyist for America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)

, the major private insurance trade group, had this advice for Republicans:

"There is absolutely no interest, no reason Republicans should ever vote for this thing. They have gone from a party that got killed 11 months ago to a party that is rising today. And they are rising up on the turmoil of health care. So when they vote for a health care reform bill, whatever it is, they are giving comfort to the enemy who is down."

"Long before the Republicans discovered that the House bill was a strategy to kill seniors and all that kind of stuff the plan was already unpopular," he added, underscoring why Republicans shouldn't attach themselves to the legislation. (from Sam Stein at HuffingtonPost).

Unpopular? Republicans have tried to scare people into being confused and afraid. But people want reform and they want a public option plan -- by a huge majority.

Any unpopularity is the result of lies and distortions by just such people as this lobbyist and those he works for.

Ralph

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/22/ahip-lobbyist-to-gop-dont_n_329828.html

MidEast nukes -- good news?

Two pieces of news today could be harbingers of a major change in MidEast nuclear tensions.

1. Iran's negotiating minister has accepted a plan whereby Iran would ship a major portion of its enriched uranium to another country for conversion into peaceful energy use. This would reduce their stockpile and buy at least a year's time before Iran could build a bomb, thus allowing for more definitive negotiations. It has yet to be ratified by Iran's leaders, and they could derail it; but it's a lot further down the road than anything the Bush administration even tried to obtain.

2. Haaertz.com, a reliable Israeli news source, is reporting a secret meeting in Cairo in late September between a representative of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission and a senior Iranian official. Iran has denied it. But Haaertz's information gives details of the meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo under the auspices of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.

Also participating were representatives of the Arab League, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, along with European and American officials.

We don't know how much Obama directly brought about these two promising events, but he has certainly made a major about face in the U.S. position in this part of the world, which is undoubtedly a necessary step for such movements toward peace to occur.

Ralph

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wires/2009/10/22/iran-and-israel-hold-secr_ws_329720.html