Once in a great while I’ll happen upon a blog post that I just have to print out and put in my “Don’t Forget” file. I hit one of those today. It was written by Jeff Fecke of Alas! A Blog and deals with a topic that has been bothering me for some time. He entitled it “The Choice.” I hope you’ll go read the whole thing.

Barack Obama is imperfect. I can understand being frustrated by him. I can understand even wanting to primary him with a “perfect” candidate, though I disagree strongly with the idea that such a candidate exists. But I cannot understand looking at a choice between Obama and any of the Republican candidates and thinking that the Republican would be better. The choice that progressives and liberals have is not between perfect and evil. It is between Obama and evil. And if you’re willing to choose evil to spite Obama — well, in my mind, that makes you as bad as the evil itself.

Amen.
 

With G.O.P. Unity at Risk, Boehner Tries Tougher Style

John Boehner

WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner is a laid-back leader who likes to say that his role is to let the House work its will. But with the nation’s economic standing and his own political future at risk, Mr. Boehner jettisoned his usual laissez-faire approach on Wednesday.

“I didn’t put my neck on the line and go toe to toe with Obama to not have an army behind me,” Mr. Boehner declared at a private party meeting, according to some House members. He demanded the fealty of conservatives who were threatening to sink his budget proposal and deny him the chance to confront the Senate with a take-it-or-leave offer on a debt ceiling increase.

(That’s President Obama to you, sir.)

Meanwhile, every member of the Democratic caucus in the Senate — including Independents Lieberman and Sanders — signed a letter to Mr. Boehner today assuring him that his plan would be dead on arrival in the Senate and urging him to seek a more sensible and realistic solution:

Speaker John Boehner U.S. Capitol, H-232 Washington, DC 20515

Dear Speaker Boehner,

With five days until our nation faces an unprecedented financial crisis, we need to work together to ensure that our nation does not default on our obligations for the first time in our history. We heard that in your caucus you said the Senate will support your bill. We are writing to tell you that we will not support it, and give you the reasons why.

A short-term extension like the one in your bill would put America at risk, along with every family and business in it. Your approach would force us once again to face the threat of default in five or six short months. Every day, another expert warns us that your short-term approach could be nearly as disastrous as a default and would lead to a downgrade in our credit rating. If our credit is downgraded, it would cost us billions of dollars more in interest payments on our existing debt and drive up our deficit. Even more worrisome, a downgrade would spike interest rates, making everything from mortgages, car loans and credit cards more expensive for families and businesses nationwide.

In addition to risking a downgrade and catastrophic default, we are concerned that in five or six months, the House will once again hold the economy captive and refuse to avoid another default unless we accept unbalanced, deep cuts to programs like Medicare and Social Security, without asking anything of the wealthiest Americans.

We now have only five days left to act. The entire world is watching Congress. We need to do the right thing to solve this problem. We must work together to avoid a default the responsible way – not in a way that will do America more harm than good.

Sincerely,

Only five days left before default. Five. Days.

The Republicans own this one. Lock, stock and barrel.
 

Democrats Explicitly Call Out GOP For Sabotaging The Economic Recovery

They’ve made it explicit. Democrats are accusing Republicans of trying to sabotage the recovery — or at least stall it — by blocking all short-term measures to boost the economy, even ones they previously supported.

In a Capitol press conference Wednesday, the Senate’s top Democrats argued that Republicans don’t want to pass measures like a temporary payroll tax holiday for employers because they’ll improve President Obama’s re-election chances.

“Our Republican colleagues in the House and Senate are driven by putting one man out of work: President Obama,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL).

The harshest denunciation came from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the man who crafted the Dems’ new “jobs first” message.

“We are also open to hiring incentives, perhaps in the form of a payroll tax cut for employers that was floated by the administration…. [T]hat might not be our first choice, that shows how willing we are to work with the Republicans to create jobs. It’s pro-business, it’s a tax cut, and many Republicans have been for it in the past. But now all of a sudden they’re coming out against it,” Schumer said.

John Boehner called it a gimmick, Paul Ryan called it sugar high. Lamar Alexander and Jeb Hensarling both criticized it as short-term stimulus — apparently that’s a bad thing. Would Republicans really oppose a tax cut for business that created jobs? This is sort of beyond the pale. So if they’d oppose even something so suited to their tastes ideologically, it shows that they’re just opposing anything that would help create jobs. It almost makes you wonder if they aren’t trying to slow down the economic recovery for political gain.

It’s not like there haven’t been enough hints already. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had this to say way back in October of last year:

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

Come on, Democrats, get with the program!
 

Nancy Pelosi should hold her hearings to determine if any laws were broken or any rules of the House of Representatives violated. If so, appropriate action should be taken. If not, we should move on and let him and his family sort this out.

I’ll close by saying that nothing that is happening right now comes as a surprise to me. I knew there would be some skeletons escaping from his closet as soon as I heard he was going after Clarence Thomas. It hurts me, though, that a bottom feeder like Andrew Breitbart should gain any credibility or notoriety from this.

And that, friends, is all I have to say about that.
 

Wasserman Schultz Picked as D.N.C. Chairwoman

Wasserman Schultz

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida was named Tuesday as the new chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, with President Obama selecting her to lead the party’s fund-raising and organizational efforts heading into the 2012 election cycle.

Ms. Wasserman Schultz, 44, accepted the position during an afternoon call with the president. She succeeds Tim Kaine, who served as the party’s national chairman for the last two years but announced earlier Tuesday that he is running for a Senate seat in Virginia.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. disclosed the decision to members of the Democratic National Committee, asking them to “welcome her as President Obama’s choice.” The president, who is locked in a budget showdown with Republicans, did not publicly announce the news.

“In selecting Debbie to lead our party, President Obama noted her tenacity, her strength, her fighting spirit and her ability to overcome adversity,” Mr. Biden said. “President Obama expressed great admiration for her as a leader, and he was honored that she accepted this important challenge on behalf of the Democratic Party.”

I do not yet know Rep. Wasserman Schultz. It will be interesting getting to know her and I look forward to working with her.
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNN90u6bnuY

A transcript of the President’s remarks follows the break.

Hello, everybody. By the way, for those of you who are curious, we’re using this room because we’ve got about a hundred volunteers decorating the White House. So we’re spending a little more time in the EEOB.

I just wrapped up a meeting with leaders from both parties. It was our first chance to get together face to face since the election to talk about how we can best work together to move the country forward.

It’s no secret that we have had differences that have led us to part ways on many issues in the past. But we are Americans first, and we share a responsibility for the stewardship of our nation. The American people did not vote for gridlock. They didn’t vote for unyielding partisanship. They’re demanding cooperation and they’re demanding progress. And they’ll hold all of us –- and I mean all of us –- accountable for it. And I was very encouraged by the fact that there was broad recognition of that fact in the room.

I just want to say I thought it was a productive meeting. I thought that people came to it with a spirit of trying to work together. And I think it’s a good start as we move forward.

I think everybody understands that the American people want us to focus on their jobs, not ours. They want us to come together around strategies to accelerate the recovery and get Americans back to work. They want us to confront the long-term deficits that cloud our future. They want us to focus on their safety and security, and not allow matters of urgent importance to become locked up in the politics of Washington.

So today we had the beginning of a new dialogue that I hope –- and I’m sure most Americans hope -– will help break through the noise and produce real gains. And, as we all agreed, that should begin today because there’s some things we need to get done in the weeks before Congress leaves town for the holidays.

First, we should work to make sure that taxes will not go up by thousands of dollars on hardworking middle-class Americans come January 1st, which would be disastrous for those families but also could be crippling for the economy. There was broad agreement that we need to work to get that resolved before the end of the year.

Now, there’s still differences about how to get there. Republican leaders want to permanently extend tax cuts not only to middle-class families but also to some of the wealthiest Americans at the same time. And here we disagree. I believe, and the other Democrats who were in the room believe that this would add an additional $700 billion to our debt in the next 10 years. And I continue to believe that it would be unwise and unfair, particularly at a time when we’re contemplating deep budget cuts that require broad sacrifice.

Having said that, we agreed that there must be some sensible common ground. So I appointed my Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, and my budget director, Jack Lew, to work with representatives of both parties to break through this logjam. I’ve asked the leaders to appoint members to help in this negotiation process. They agreed to do that. That process is beginning right away and we expect to get some answers back over the next couple of days about how we can accomplish our key goal, which is to make sure the economy continues to grow and we are putting people back to work. And we also want to make sure that we’re giving the middle class the peace of mind of knowing that their taxes will not be raised come January 1st.

I also urged both parties to move quickly to preserve a number of other tax breaks for individuals and businesses that are helping our recovery right now and that are set to expire at the end of the year. This includes a tax credit for college tuition, a tax credit for 95 percent — a tax break for 95 percent of working families that I initiated at the beginning of my presidency, as well as a tax cut worth thousands of dollars for businesses that hire unemployed workers.

We discussed a number of other issues as well, including the importance of ratifying the New START treaty so we can monitor Russia’s nuclear arsenal, reduce our nuclear weapons, and strengthen our relationship with Russia. I reminded the room that this treaty has been vetted for seven months now; it’s gone through 18 hearings; it has support from senators of both parties; it has broad bipartisan support from national security advisors and secretaries of defense and secretaries of state from previous administrations, both Democrat and Republican; and that it’s absolutely essential to our national security. We need to get it done.

We also talked about the work of the bipartisan deficit reduction commission and the difficult choices that will be required in order to get our fiscal house in order. We discussed working together to keep the government running this year -– and running in a fiscally responsible way. And we discussed unemployment insurance, which expires today. I’ve asked that Congress act to extend this emergency relief without delay to folks who are facing tough times by no fault of their own.

Now, none of this is going to be easy. We have two parties for a reason. There are real philosophical differences -– deeply held principles to which each party holds. And although the atmosphere in today’s meeting was extremely civil, there’s no doubt that those differences are going to remain no matter how many meetings we have. And the truth is there’s always going to be a political incentive against working together, particularly in the current hyperpartisan climate. There are always those who argue that the best strategy is simply to try to defeat your opposition instead of working with them.

And, frankly, even the notion of bipartisanship itself has gotten caught up in this mentality. A lot of times coming out of these meetings, both sides claim they want to work together, but try to paint the opponent as unyielding and unwilling to cooperate. Both sides come to the table; they read their talking points; then they head out to the microphones -– trying to win the news cycle instead of solving problems, and it becomes just another move in an old Washington game.

But I think there was recognition today that that’s a game that we can’t afford. Not in these times. And in a private meeting that I had without staff — without betraying any confidences — I was pleased to see several of my friends in the room say, let’s try not to duplicate that. Let’s not try to work the Washington spin cycle to suggest that somehow the other side is not being cooperative. I think that there was a sincere effort on the part of everybody involved to actually commit to work together to try to deal with these problems.

And they understand that these aren’t times for us to be playing games. As I told the leaders at the beginning of the meeting, the next election is two years away, and there will be plenty of time for campaigning. But right now we’re facing some very serious challenges. We share an obligation to meet them. And that will require choosing the best of our ideas over the worst of our politics.

So that’s the spirit in which I invited both parties here today. I’m happy with how the meeting went. And I told all the leadership that I look forward to holding additional meetings, including at Camp David.

Harry Reid mentioned that he’s been in Congress for 28 years; he’s never been to Camp David. And so I told him, well, we’re going to have to get them all up there sometime soon.

And I very much appreciate their presence today. I appreciate the tenor of the conversations. I think it will actually yield results before the end of the year, and I look forward to continuing this dialogue in the months ahead.

Thank you very much, everybody.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jcSBv74z7Y

The clip of President Obama is from a speech he gave at a large DNC sponsored rally at the University of Wisconsin on September 28.
 

The President met briefly with the press just prior to the meeting. He was asked if he would use a woman’s right to choose as a ‘litmus test’ when selecting a nominee…

You know, I am somebody who believes that women should have the ability to make often very difficult decisions about their own bodies and issues of reproduction. Obviously this has been a hugely contentious issue in our country for a very long time. I will say the same thing that every President has said since this issue came up, which is I don’t have litmus tests around any of these issues.

But I will say that I want somebody who is going to be interpreting our Constitution in a way that takes into account individual rights, and that includes women’s rights. And that’s going to be something that’s very important to me, because I think part of what our core Constitution — constitutional values promote is the notion that individuals are protected in their privacy and their bodily integrity, and women are not exempt from that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXM0TnlLpk8

Good answer.

A full transcript of the press availability follows the break.

THE PRESIDENT: All right, everybody. We are here to talk about the Supreme Court. Obviously, we have lost one of — the services of one of the finest Supreme Court Justices that we’ve seen. Justice Stevens announced that he will be retiring at the end of this term. Those are going to be some tough shoes to fill. This is somebody who operated with extraordinary integrity and fidelity to the law.

But I’m confident that we can come up with a nominee who will gain the confidence of the Senate and the confidence of the country, and the confidence of individuals who look to the Court to provide evenhanded justice to all Americans.

Last time, when I nominated Sonia Sotomayor, I have to say that all the individuals who are sitting here — Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, Jeff Sessions and Patrick Leahy — worked very cooperatively on what I considered to be a smooth, civil, thoughtful nomination process and confirmation process. And I very much thank particularly the Ranking Member and the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee for running a smooth process.

My hope is, is that we can do the exact same thing this time. Last time the nomination went up at the end of May. We are certainly going to meet that deadline and we hope maybe we can accelerate it a little bit so that we have some additional time. But my hope is that we’re going to be able to get a Supreme Court nominee confirmed in time for the next session.

As Justice Stevens said, I think it’s very important, particularly given the important cases that may be coming before the Supreme Court, that we get this process wrapped up so that a new justice can be seated and staffed and can work effectively with his or her colleagues in time for the fall session.

So I just want to again thank all of these gentlemen for their input. They are here to consult with me. One of the things that we did last time was to listen to the thoughts and views of our colleagues before I nominated a candidate. I take this process very seriously. And so I’m going to be interested in hearing their thoughts and concerns before any final decisions are made.

All right. With that, let me call on one question. Ben, you get the shot.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Would you be willing to nominate someone who did not support a woman’s right to choose?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, I am somebody who believes that women should have the ability to make often very difficult decisions about their own bodies and issues of reproduction. Obviously this has been a hugely contentious issue in our country for a very long time. I will say the same thing that every President has said since this issue came up, which is I don’t have litmus tests around any of these issues.

But I will say that I want somebody who is going to be interpreting our Constitution in a way that takes into account individual rights, and that includes women’s rights. And that’s going to be something that’s very important to me, because I think part of what our core Constitution — constitutional values promote is the notion that individuals are protected in their privacy and their bodily integrity, and women are not exempt from that.

All right. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Q Are you getting close to a decision?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, I think we’ve got some terrific potential candidates.

Congress approves final piece of health care overhaul

Congress Thursday passed and sent to President Barack Obama the final piece of landmark health care legislation intended to change dramatically how most Americans buy, use and maintain insurance coverage.

The House approved the bill by a vote of 220 to 207 Thursday night, hours after the Senate passed the measure by a vote of 56 to 43. No Republicans in either chamber voted for either bill.

This legislation, combined with the bill signed into law on Tuesday, will bring the most significant change in health care policy since Medicare was created in 1965 to provide health insurance coverage for seniors and the disabled.

The new laws will extend health insurance coverage to 32 million people who currently are uninsured. They will expand coverage to 94 percent of eligible Americans. Consumers will find a host of changes in how they deal with doctors, insurers, hospitals and the rest of the health care system.

Done, of course, without a single Republican vote. I hope people remember that come November.