Lately, there has been a lot of chatter on the right about Obama and what he meant by “Empathy” when he was describing what he was looking for in a Supreme Court justice nominee. The idea is that Obama was using a code word for “liberal activist judge.” The problem is, I’ve never heard that particular code word before. Now, “strict constructionist,” that’s a firmly established code word. But “empathy”? Not really. However, according to Orrin Hatch:

It’s a matter of great concern if he’s saying he wants people who will take sides. He’s also said that the judge has to be a person of empathy. What’s that mean? Usually, that’s a code word for an activist judge.

As I said, that doesn’t sound familiar to me. So I did a search for the term relative the Supreme Court nominees, and found this from last October:

“What I do want is a judge who is sympathetic enough to those who are on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless, those who can’t have access to political power and as a consequence can’t protect themselves from being — from being dealt with sometimes unfairly, that the courts become a refuge for justice,” said Mr. Obama, who taught constitutional law for years at the University of Chicago.

Several conservative observers of the court said they interpreted those remarks as code for Mr. Obama’s intention to select “liberal activist judges.”

“That comment was pretty remarkable to a lot of us,” said Neomi Rao, a teacher at George Mason University Law School who is a former associate counsel in the Bush White House and a former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. “When I hear about a judge who rules on the basis of empathy, I think of an activist judge.”

Hmmm. Still Obama, still conservatives reading into his statement. So I went farther back and found this statement:

I regard law as a discipline in which you have to have empathy for people you are trying to understand.

Aha! That quote was not by Obama, and it related directly to the nomination of a Supreme Court justice! So, what liberal activist judge said that? Let’s see… it was… Robert H. Bork.

Wow. I take an international flight and when I come back, Arlen Specter’s a Democrat.

I knew it might happen, but did not expect it to happen so soon. The Dems may now have their super-majority, some 21 months ahead of schedule. When Norm Coleman and/or Tim Pawlenty stop being asses and let Minnesotans have the senator they voted for, the Democrats will have the magic 60. Already, Democrats may now have enough to stop a filibuster, if they can get everybody on their caucus to vote for cloture on their bills.

One has to wonder why he did it now. Was he bargaining with the Dems for a powerful position and only now the deal came through? Was he negotiating with the GOP and they got far too tough with him? Or maybe both of those?

A big part of this, however, seems less about the GOP making threats to get Specter to toe the line and more about Specter realizing that he’s on a sinking ship. A new poll finds that while Democratic Party identification remains strong at 35%, only 21% of voters self-identify as Republicans, a low point for the party. “Independent” Americans now number 38%. Specter himself noted that 200,000 Republican Pennsylvanians had switched from Republicans to Democrats in the past year, a remark which has many saying that Specter is being quite open about this being more about winning an election and less about values and principles.

But Specter more clearly stated that it was about the GOP leaving moderates behind; it was about the party shifting too far to the right, making the Democrats more palatable to moderates. Whatever the strategic reasons Specter had, his point about the party leaving him behind is valid–in fact, that’s exactly why he no longer was a viable Republican candidate. Is it principled to hang on to a party which is increasingly alienating you and will likely vote you out of office in the primaries?

What has been said about the Republican Death Spiral seems to be coming true. The GOP’s solution is not to go big-tent, but to close the tent even tighter around the extremists–thus making more and more moderates leave the party, which makes the party more extremist still, which forces out more moderates. Remembering back to the 90’s, conservatives tried to make “liberal” a dirty word; today, they are trying to do the same with the “Democrat” Party. And while they have had some success, they have inadvertently made their own party’s name far more unpalatable simply by acting like enormous jerks.

The question is, is the GOP actually dying? How far does the party have to sink before it stops being viable? It might not be so bad for the GOP, because despite people not wanting to call themselves “Republican,” given only two choices, they may very well, more often than not, choose the Republican candidate. Hobson’s choice and all that. Look at McCain, how much of the vote that he got despite party identification being almost half of the percentage of actual votes he got. True, a lot of those votes were won with plain old smear tactics and the fact that there was a grizzled veteran war hero running against an inexperienced black guy. But I believe that a lot of people who voted for McCain were IINO–Independents In Name Only, Independents who used to be Republicans and simply could not bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. They may not identify as Republicans any more, but they still vote that way.

What I am waiting for is for someone to realize that there are probably now more conservatives out of the GOP than in it, and to fill that power vacuum occupying moderate Republicans and centrists. Right now there is no one because everyone still sees the GOP as monolithic, and another party leaning to the right might split the vote and get a Democrat elected. But if an “Independent Party” (better yet, an “Independence Party”) could address the voters from left-of-extremist Republicans to moderate Democrats, they might get enough of a vote that they could supplant the former Republican Party and marginalize them. In fact, such a move might be the only way that segment of the political spectrum can become credible again.

In a way, I hope they don’t–I hope the GOP continues to spiral into irrelevancy and disorder, putting more and more radical and laughable candidates up for the Democrats to shoot down. But if they do form a new party, maybe within say 2 or 3 election cycles they could become tenable enough to gain more Congressional seats than the GOP. They might even have a chance to win the presidency. I would not feel quite as bad about that relative to a present-day Republican taking office. Imagine John McCain as he was in 2000 winning. He was still conservative, but you at least felt that he would speak more truth and work across the aisle, instead of being just another GOP sock puppet, like he was this time around.

Of course, the formation of a new party might be hindered by the GOP, which, while dying, still would be a monolithic force with a massive support base, a force to be reckoned with. They will feel entitled to be the voice of the right wing, and those still inhabiting the party will not give up power so easily.

There are some who are still trying to bring the old party around. Interestingly, Olympia Snowe–one of three moderate Republicans, who, along with Specter, has come under fire from an increasingly hard-core and frightened GOP–wrote an editorial which urged the party to learn from this like they should have learned from the Jeffords defection. In short, stop moving even further to the right, and return to more moderate, Reaganesque big-tent roots that gained the party the power it squandered under Bush. The real question, however, is what Snowe is trying to say to her party. Is she hinting at and laying the groundwork for the potential that she too may defect if the GOP continues to radicalize itself and marginalize her? Or did she write the op-ed in the voice of a Reagan-era Republican in an attempt to immunize herself from the GOP panicking, lest they try to apply the thumbscrews to her even harder? Either way, one has to wonder if she really believes that the GOP is in fact capable at this point of moving back to the center; it is becoming increasingly difficult to see them doing so.

As a side note, here’s a thought: Obama may be garnering his Obama Republicans, just not the same way Reagan got his Democrats. Instead of working with the other party, pols who might otherwise have been Republicans are now joining the Democratic Party. As the GOP has shrunk to its core, the Democratic Party has expanded to include the middle (with Republicans at least claiming that they happily cede the traitorous wretches). The Democrats have Lieberman, Jeffords, and Specter now, along with a passel of “Blue Dog” Democrats. With a super-majority, Obama will be busy enough dealing with them. The GOP made it explicitly clear to Obama: “Our prime mission is to oppose you as a united front and try our best to make you fail.” No amount of bipartisanship can penetrate that; as the old saying goes, it takes two to Tango. The GOP has refused Obama’s invitation. But Obama can instead gain bipartisanship within his own party, in that there exist within it conservative Democrats who will hold Obama to a more centrist course.

Ironically, the Democrats have been criticized for taking in “anyone who looked capable of winning an election, beliefs be hanged.” First, the Republicans are the ones who abandoned their beliefs to gain power; that’s one of the main reasons they are in this fix now. Second, the Dems are not surrendering their beliefs, they are taking on the Reagan “big tent” strategy–including people in the center and dealing with them, as opposed to shutting them out. Again, another major reason Dems are gaining so much more. I have the feeling that if Republicans did this, nobody but the extremists would be accusing them of ditching their beliefs. Reagan was lauded for this; Obama is being criticized.

Of course, a lot of Democrats don’t appreciate being dragged more to the center, and protest when compromises are made to satisfy the more conservative elements of the party. But at least those compromises are being made in fact due to principles or at least voter pressure, and not because of political gamesmanship. Which means that the in-party wrangling going on is, ironically, the true bipartisanship.

Even Obama can say dumb stuff. His “Special Olympics” joke on the Tonight Show was uncalled for and very unlike him; his apology was at the least an absolute must.

Although people like Tim Shriver, the head of the Special Olympics, and moderate conservatives like Arnold Schwarzenegger understood that Obama’s heart was in the right place but just had a lapse of judgment in his words, not everyone was so forgiving:

“I was shocked to learn of the comment made by President Obama about Special Olympics,” said Palin, whose son, Trig, was born with Down syndrome last year. “This was a degrading remark about our world’s most precious and unique people, coming from the most powerful position in the world.”

This came 20 hours after the piece aired, and despite the fact that Obama apologized to Shriver profusely even before the segment was broadcast. And let’s not forget that Palin dragged poor Trig across the country during the campaign, unafraid to use him as a campaign prop; her statement smacked of political opportunism.

Not to mention that Palin’s own actions, contrary to her noble words, are less than sympathetic to these same kids. Palin, as Andrew Sullivan points out, accepted stimulus money where it applies to construction (despite her non-stop insistence during the campaign that she would always say “no thanks” to exactly that kind of federal funding), but refused to allow $170 million go to education, with some of that going to special needs children:

The biggest single chunk of money that Palin is turning down is about $170 million for education, including money that would go for programs to help economically disadvantaged and special needs students. Anchorage School Superintendent Carol Comeau said she is “shocked and very disappointed” that Palin would reject the schools money. She said it could be used for job preservation, teacher training, and helping kids who need it.

So, Obama works to get funding for special needs kids but makes a bad joke on a late-night show; Palin acts all offended at the joke in front of news cameras, but then blocks the money from getting to “our world’s most precious and unique people.”

Actions speak louder than words, don’t they?

Now the media is telling us that Obama is not allowed to point out facts that might acknowledge Bush’s faults:

In his inaugural address, President Obama proclaimed “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

It hasn’t taken long for the recriminations to return — or for the Obama administration to begin talking about the unwelcome “inheritance” of its predecessor.

Over the past month, Obama has reminded the public at every turn that he is facing problems “inherited” from the Bush administration, using increasingly bracing language to describe the challenges his administration is up against. The “deepening economic crisis” that the president described six days after taking office became “a big mess” in remarks this month to graduating police cadets in Columbus, Ohio.

“By any measure,” he said during a March 4 event calling for government-contracting reform, “my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster.”

Obama’s more frequent and acid reminders that former president George W. Bush left behind a trillion-dollar budget deficit, a 14-month recession and a broken financial system have come at the same time Republicans have ramped up criticism that the current president’s policies are compounding the nation’s economic problems.

And which one of these things is not a rock-solid fact? If people on the right work constantly and tirelessly to blame Obama for every piece of bad economic news despite the fact that he has barely had time to do anything to effect the situation, then should not Obama be allowed to point out the obvious realities? If Obama wants to have any chance of being effective in this crisis, he has to maintain a level of confidence from the American people; he cannot do a good job if he cannot defend himself against baseless charges of malfeasance which erode the public’s trust in him.

I don’t fault the Bush administration for having said in their first year or even year and a half that they inherited their fiscal state from Clinton; they did. I fault them for their bad policy decisions to correct it, and their continued attempts to blame Clinton even well into Bush’ second term. If Obama, two years from now, is still saying that every new downturn in jobs is all Bush’s fault and not in any way due to his administration, then he should come under criticism for similarly faulty incriminations.

The fact that Obama is not doing what he has every right to do–actively investigating and prosecuting the blatant illegalities of the Bush administration–has demonstrated a rather strong commitment not to go to lengths to attack the previous administration. The last administration clearly violated the Fourth Amendment as well as other Constitutional principles, condoned, conducted, and legitimized torture, started an illegal war, and made an absolute mockery of the legal system in a plethora of illegal ways. This goes way beyond what is covered in the usual gentlemen’s agreement not to kick the outgoing administration on their way out.

So to fall all over Obama for stating truth in defense of smears as a means of allowing him to do his job, that’s going more than a tad too far. For some reason, there is a persistent meme out there that Obama, in order to be bipartisan, has to not only extend a hand, but he has to allow those on the right to bash him incessantly while he just stands there and takes it.

I noted this story in Google News and wrote the post in reaction to it. After writing this and getting ready to publish, I noticed that Steve Benen in The Washington monthly wrote a similar post.

People were making a big deal recently about how Obama’s job ratings had fallen to only 63%. Some dishonestly tried to make the claim that he had fallen 15% by comparing the 63% against pre-inaguration polls asking how Obama was handling the transition, when in fact, Obama started his presidency off at 68%. And, as it turns out, Obama is back up to 67% now. The thing is, save for his most recent dip to 59%, the variations are pretty much within the margin of error, and have been going up and down several times since Obama took office. Here’s a chart showing Gallup’s daily tracking poll:

The trend before today did seem to be going downward, and we’ll have to see where today’s figure lies in the broader arc, whether it’ll stay that way or if this is an anomalous tick upwards.

It is also informative to see why Obama’s numbers fell at all; as it turns out, the answer is Republicans. Looking at figures going up to this week, Obama’s ratings among Democrats remained stellar, hovering at between 80 and 90%. Among Independents, he was at about 50%. And the telling point is that with Democrats and Independents, Obama’s ratings had actually gone up, not down. But look at the Republicans: Obama had fallen slightly with liberal and moderate Republicans, but dropped sharply among conservative Republicans, from 36% to 22%.

In short, Obama is not becoming less popular among Americans in general–in fact, he’s becoming more popular with the mainstream–he was only dropping amongst the far-right wing, and not surprisingly since these people are probably watching Fox News non-stop, where they are more or less constantly calling the president a treasonous communist weasel.

The surprising thing, then, is that the latest uptick in the polls came because right-wingers seemed to shake off the fog of Fox News for a moment at least, and support for Obama climbed again amongst their numbers:

While Democrats and Independents saw an uptick of 4 to 8 points since Obama’s all-time low on Feb. 21, Republicans’ approval of Obama jumped 15%, from 27 to 42%.

Something happened between those two dates to make a lot of Republicans turn around and approve Obama. So what was it?

Did Obama make a speech or something?

This is a return to something we saw during the campaign: when the American people see Obama through the prism of the right-wing press, Obama’s ratings go down; when they see Obama himself, direct and unfiltered, they remember why they like him so much. This speech was Obama’s chance to win back what the talking heads had taken. And Republicans seemed most moved by it.

Maybe it was his soaring rhetoric, maybe his bipartisan tone (subtracted from a bit by the Democrat’s over-the-top reaction to the mention of the inherited deficit), maybe the easy crowd-pleasers of how to stop the idiotic and un-American policies of the Bush administration, or maybe his constant reminder of fundamental themes such as family, responsibility, education, service, and hard work. Or maybe it was the stark contrast between Obama’s grand speech and Republican Bobby Jindal’s horrendous response. Whatever the cause, right-wingers seemed to respond very well to Obama’s speech.

This is Obama learning from Reagan, speaking directly to the people (even when technically addressing Congress), gaining those Obama Republicans. And hopefully Obama is knocking enough sense into Republicans in Congress so they won’t have the fortitude left to carry out their plan of ruining the nation so as to make the other party look bad. But we’ll have to see on that last one.

It started really early: just a week or so after Obama won the election, right-wingers were already calling our current economic crisis the “Obama Recession.” Remember, these are the same people who were still blaming Clinton for the recession for years into Bush’s term. They couldn’t even wait for Obama to actually step into office, they had to start blaming him for the economic woes a full two months before he could even start doing anything about it.

Apparently, right-wingers are applying the Pottery Barn rule, only in reverse: “you bought it, you broke it” seems to be their new motto. Hell, there are right-wing bloggers out there saying that we should measure the “Obama economy” based on the economy’s performance from the time of his nomination in June last year. Give them time, and they’ll find a way to pin the blame for the Great Depression on him.

Now that they have established that every economic downturn since people even heard about Obama is all his fault, the question now becomes, how much can we bash Obama if the economy fails to boom within x number of months or years? Remember, for Bush this was not supposed to be an issue. Remember back in 2004 when Bush was claiming that a recovery was “just around the corner”? That was almost four years after Bush took office, and Bush’s commerce secretary was still saying stuff like, “The president inherited a Clinton recession and turned it into the early stages of Bush prosperity.” That was for a recession that started two months after Bush took office (though they tried real hard to apply revisionist history on that), as opposed to this recession, which started in December 2007–a full thirteen months before Obama took office.

And yet, just a month into his presidency, and the pundits are coming down on Obama every time bad news comes out. Somehow, bad economic news in a recession that began after he left office was Clinton’s fault for years after he was gone, and yet somehow Obama is responsible for a recession in its 14th month despite just barely having unpacked his suitcases.

Of course, I should not be surprised. Goodness knows I have never faulted conservatives for their relentless sense of consistency.

Most current approval ratings:

A lot of people are beginning to realize that Obama just won a bigger victory that everyone has been thinking. In fact, one way of looking at it is that Obama just won a double victory, with the help of the GOP itself.

First, despite all the changes that were made, the bill that got passed is very, very close to what Obama originally wanted, before he started asking for more–essentially, it all got scaled back to Obama’s original proposal. He wanted x, he then asked for x + y, and the Republicans negotiated back to x.

Second, Obama has made a big deal about bipartisanship. Despite Republican whining about how Obama has failed in that regard, few have failed to notice that Obama tried, that he went to Capitol Hill and met face-to-face with Republicans, something I am pretty sure Bush never did; that Obama made (or seemed to make) all kinds of compromises. While John “I’ll buck my party” McCain went straight along party lines, Obama was often at odds with his party, who claimed he was compromising too much. In the end, the distinction was clear: Obama extended his hand and Republicans partisanly slapped it away. Note that despite media leanings against Obama and favorable to such a small right-wing minority, the emphasis was never on how Democrats voted in lockstep, but how Republicans did.

So Obama comes out of his first battle with more or less exactly the legislation he wanted, and bears the sheen of bipartisanship while the Republicans come across as partisan obstructionists who voted almost entirely against a job-creation and tax-cutting bill that will help America get out of a dire economic mess the Republicans created.

It was easy to doubt Obama many times during all of this, perhaps quite a bit because as a Democrat, one wanted to see payback or at least a more assertive pose. But that would have seemed more partisan on Obama’s part, and could have worked for the GOP. Instead, Obama positioned himself so that he could bend to Republicans’ demands and yet still end up making them bend to his will–adept political jujitsu, that.

One has to keep in mind that Obama is no dummy. During the campaign, he showed himself to be a keen tactician and strategist. He’s not naive about the intent of the Republicans. He had to have known that they would never agree to bipartisanship, that they would take every opportunity to obstruct. Which means that he knew that he would go in and get slapped around. But he made that work for him.

So, what’s next?

Gallup asked Americans:

Of course, the Republicans will not react to this; they will continue to threaten the filibuster and bully their way to steer a hundred billion dollars or more of the stimulus away from education and infrastructure building and toward their precious tax cuts instead.

As Obama is set to address the nation in a prime-time press conference. I suppose it’s too much to hope for to expect Obama to have an “American President” moment and take the opportunity to tell Americans that he tried everything he could to placate and compromise with the Republicans, but that after exhaustive attempts at bipartisanship, all he got were one or two Senators and no Representatives from that party, at the cost of too many valuable aspects of the bill, and so he plans to revert the bill back to its original form and will call for a straight up-or-down vote, and every American please contact your representatives in both houses and urge them to allow the straight vote, NOW.

Yeah, I know, it’s fantasy. Obama will almost certainly praise Republicans for trying, Kumbaya and all that, and will simply push for the bill as it is presently formed for immediate passage. Backtracking in that fashion would be gutsy but not Obama’s style.

What we’re getting is better than nothing, but it’s galling that so much of value had to be cut in order to get even the minimal approval of the party which so many Americans–even conservatives–feel is wrong and off-track. It just doesn’t feel right. Hopefully, Obama has learned his lesson and will not give up anything up front ever again, will start from a better negotiating position in the future, and will be tougher on the Republicans and play a harder game. One can hope.

Obama’s initial approval ratings as president, while not exceeding Kennedy’s, are still very high–68% approve, 12% disapprove. What surprises me? That only 12% disapprove. Why does that surprise me? Because the incessant, virulent, some might even say hysterical, right-wing line of smears and attacks against Obama have not only not abated, they seem to have intensified. As John Stewart points out comically:

With an entire television news network and dozens of popular rabid, frothing pundits continuing to excoriate Obama on a daily basis, that only 12% of the nation disapproves of Obama is startlingly positive news for the new president. It is hard to see how the a majority of the hardcore right wing 30% who still think that Bush did a good job somehow approve of Obama when their main news source is continuously shouting at them that the new president is a dangerous Socialist traitor who must fail if the nation is to survive.

Even for less than one week, you have to be pretty resilient to withstand that pounding.

The Vatican is pissed:

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life at the Vatican, described President Barack Obama’s signing of an executive order allowing U.S. tax dollars to fund pro-abortion organizations beyond the shores of the United States saying it is “the arrogance of someone who believes they are right, in signing a decree which will open the door to abortion and thus to the destruction of human life,” as quoted by Italian daily Corriere della Sera on January 24.

The outspoken prelate, who also once denounced what he termed as “racism” on the part of instructors at the Academy, added “What is important is to know how to listen… without locking oneself into ideological visions with the arrogance of a person who, having the power, thinks they can decide on life and death.”

Let’s take a look at what we’re dealing with, shall we?

First of all, the Mexico City Policy, also called the Global Gag Rule, was about far more than “funding pro-abortion organizations,” a highly misleading characterization. It sounds like it means that the U.S. government is giving money to groups whose objective it is to perform abortions, which is not what we’re talking about. The term “pro-abortion” itself is highly biased and politicized charged, like calling pro-life “anti-choice.”

The Global Gag Rule was a set of rules that went so far as to essentially force a strict, zero-tolerance pro-life agenda on all medical organizations that received U.S. funds. You did not have to be a “pro-abortion” to have your funds cut off. You simply had to be an institution which did not fully and utterly eschew any and all references to abortion. For example, let’s say that you received U.S. aid for performing vaccinations, but one part of your hospital, completely disassociated from the funded program except for being in the same hospital, provides not abortions, but rather family planning advice which could include a reference to legal abortion as one choice. The Global Gag Rule cuts off your funding for this. Unless your entire organization toes the line with conservative pro-life politicians halfway around the world, even to the point of not even talking about abortions, you get nothing from the United States to help heal people and save their lives. Hospitals around the world were even afraid to hand out condoms or give other family planning advice for fear of getting their essential funding slashed.

In short, the gag rule shoves a far-right political agenda down the throats of doctors worldwide, holding the lives of innocent patients as hostage to these demands. That’s arrogance.

The gag rule is objectionable for many reasons, that being one of them. It effectively legislates local American political policy worldwide where it has no right to do so. It restricts free speech and the right for doctors and patients to discuss all medical options which may be legal in that country. In fact, such a policy, enacted within the United States itself would be illegal–here, we have the freedom of choice. Imagine if a foreign country tried to shove their morals down our throats. Yet, here we are telling people they have to accept a policy that would not even be allowed within our own borders.

There is no evidence that this policy even does what is intended–reducing the number of abortions. To the contrary, it does what any anti-abortion policy tends to do, which is to displace them, allowing for more unsafe procedures that only cost more life in the end.

In the end, it is not Obama, but this dick in the Vatican who is so arrogant as to think he can dictate terms of life and death. But the lifting of the gag rule? Not about life and death. It’s about freedom of speech. It’s about free access to medical consultation. But most of all, it’s about not giving Obama or the Vatican the power to decide–it’s about giving each and every person to right to decide for themselves, on an issue which is morally ambiguous at best, how they wish to believe.

You’ve probably heard a lot about the stimulus plan, but what you have probably not seen is exactly where the money is going. So many reports in the news and on blogs mention major elements of the plan, general categories and notable expenditures–but you probably have not seen a dollar-by-dollar breakdown of everything in the plan as proposed by Obama (before the Congress leaves its mark). After searching, I found a great report in the New York Times that gave the details I was looking for. Below is the NYT’s Catherine Rempel’s pie-chart breakdown. The pink “???” slice represents money that was not listed in the summary she reviewed (presumably a large number of programs not specified in the report?).

You can also follow this link to a PDF (or better, right-click to download) for the House Committee on Appropriations’ 13-page report detailing each segment of the plan and how much it will cost.

The plan includes $275 billion in tax cuts, maybe Obama’s proposed middle-class tax cuts we heard about earlier (PDF report on Obama’s proposal alongside McCain’s). Possibly not, though–I am not sure if this is the first step towards achieving that, or if it is something completely different–perhaps this is a one-year measure as opposed to a permanent change. Republicans are suddenly proposing a middle-class tax plan which, on the surface, is even bigger than Obama’s. We can confidently read this as hypocritical pre-midterm-election posturing–the GOP never forwarded this kind of a middle-class tax cut before. It is probably nothing more than congressional Republicans forwarding a plan they know will never pass but they can later claim, “we tried to pass bigger tax cuts for you, but the damn Democrats nixed it!”

In any case, the other major elements of Obama’s plan, sorted by cost, are:

• $87 billion for a temporary increase in the Medicaid matching rate;
• $79 billion in state fiscal relief to prevent cutbacks to key services, including $39 billion to local school districts and public colleges and universities distributed through existing state and federal formulas, $15 billion to states as bonus grants as a reward for meeting key performance measures, and $25 billion to states for other high priority needs such as public safety and other critical services, which may include education;
• $43 billion for increased unemployment benefits and job training;
• $41 billion to local school districts through Title I ($13 billion), IDEA ($13 billion), a new School Modernization and Repair Program ($14 billion), and the Education Technology program ($1 billion);
• $39 billion to support those who lose their jobs by helping them to pay the cost of keeping their employer provided healthcare under COBRA and providing short-term options to be covered by Medicaid;
• $32 billion to transform the nation’s energy transmission, distribution, and production systems by allowing for a smarter and better grid and focusing investment in renewable technology;
• $31 billion to modernize federal and other public infrastructure with investments that lead to long term energy cost savings;
• $30 billion for highway construction;
• $20 billion to increase the food stamp benefit by over 13% in order to help defray rising food costs;
• $20 billion for health information technology to prevent medical mistakes, provide better care to patients and introduce cost-saving efficiencies;
• $19 billion for clean water, flood control, and environmental restoration investments;
• $16 billion to repair public housing and make key energy efficiency retrofits;
• $15.6 billion to increase the Pell grant by $500;
• $10 billion for transit and rail to reduce traffic congestion and gas consumption;
• $10 billion for science facilities, research, and instrumentation;
• $6 billion to weatherize modest-income homes;
• $6 billion to expand broadband internet access so businesses in rural and other underserved areas can link up to the global economy;
• $6 billion for higher education modernization;
• $4.1 billion to provide for preventative care and to evaluate the most effective healthcare treatments;
• $4 billion for state and local law enforcement funding.

I have hardly done a thorough analysis, but a quick read of that list is pretty hard to argue with. Emphasis on middle-class tax cuts and local-level services are a direct reversal of Bush administration policies, and about time, too–I don’t see anything in there at all that is aimed at the nation’s wealthy, or at corporations specifically (the only corporate tax breaks I found are tied to job creation). You know that if this had come out of the Bush administration, it would have asked to give more upper-income and corporate tax cuts, repeal of the estate tax, and all other kinds of giveaways to the rich which would not benefit the nation one bit. Instead, here we have a plan which leaves us with a dramatically improved infrastructure: better schools, more affordable education, improved roads, bridges, & highways, energy grids, housing, Internet, law enforcement–in short, instead of coming out with richer rich people and corporate coffers overflowing even more than before, we instead come out with a better and more solid national infrastructure which will pay off many times over in the future. Hell, even without an economic crisis, this plan would be a good idea.

With the passing of this plan, Obama would live up to a large number of his campaign promises–about 500 of which are tracked on this web page. Once the plan is launched, you can track its progress and how the money is being spent on this page. Remember how the Bush administration had similar web pages to show how all the money was spent on the Iraq War and the bank bailout? Of course you don’t, because there was never any such accounting. Another sign of change–we will have transparency, a switch from the years where corrupt Republicans could shovel billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of huge corporations and then claim “national security” or “we’re just not interested in telling you” as reasons why we never got a straight accounting.

We’re hardly there yet, but we are starting on the way towards a far better, fairer, stronger, and more competitive America.

(Note: yeah, I know, I’m still blogging daily. Harder to stop than I thought!)

A year and nearly three weeks ago, I wrote a blog post detailing how Obama might be the Democratic Reagan, and specifically, I noted that he would probably pick up a Reagan technique for selling his initiatives:

From 2009, we might start hearing people talk about “Obama Republicans,” like we heard of “Reagan Democrats” in the 80’s. Obama could get these the same way Reagan did, by speaking directly to the nation in a way that would cause a popular upswell, bringing enough Republicans nervous about their electability over to Obama’s side. And he would not need too many Republicans to get the bills he wants passed, as Congress will likely still have a Democratic majority.

And that’s pretty much exactly what he’s doing now, selling his stimulus plan via his weekly address.

(For better-quality video, click on the “HQ” button in the YouTube menu at lower right after the video starts playing.)

While he is not yet suggesting Americans contact their representatives in Congress and urge them to vote for the bill, this is close to that. And there is evidence of those “Obama Republicans” in Congress, as we saw with the passing of the Lily Ledbetter Act, shot down by Republicans previously, was passed with the votes of all Democrats and a few Republicans, including Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe, considered key swing votes.

By the way, I am very impressed with the new administration’s use of hi-resolution video over broadband Internet. Have you seen the high-quality MP4 version of his weekly addresses on the White House web site? 1280 x 720 resolution (or 720p, HDTV quality), and it downloads dang fast. The whole picture is like this on a 15“ Macbook Pro screen:

With the pixel-for-pixel image quality being this:

Hell, when they get to the closer shot, you can almost count the stars on his lapel-pin flag.

Obama freezes higher White House salaries, forbids lobbyists’ gifts or leaving the White House to become a lobbyist, and issues a new policy saying that things become classified only for good reason: “Information will not be withheld just because I say so. It will be withheld because a separate authority believes my request is well grounded in the Constitution.” This after suspending the trials at Gitmo. So, on his first day, so far, we have austerity, anti-corruption, and government transparency, with rule of law being worked on.

Next on the schedule: closing Gitmo.

Sounds to me like someone is restoring honor and dignity to the White House. I guess that you gotta pay more attention to what people do than to what they say.

A lot of people are talking about how Obama’s inaugural address was lacking because it did not have memorable phrases. Well, I think that “we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” “a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous,” and “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist” are all pretty memorable. But that misses the point: meaningful is far more important than memorable. People came away from that speech with the impression of someone who was strong, principled, even-handed, and capable. I’d rather have all of that than a catchphrase.

I know that the WSJ is right-wing and probably got even more so since it got bought by Murdoch, but this opening paragraph to an article made me gag:

House Minority Leader John Boehner recently attacked the potential “wasteful spending” and “mountains of debt” in President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan. A few days later, he warmly invited Mr. Obama to address House Republicans, saying, “We do not want partisan differences to stall achievement.”

In light of what has happened over the past eight years, do I even need to explain why this made me gag?

The filibuster mentality, interestingly, is noted quickly in the article:

Republicans can’t simply be “the party of ‘no,’ ” Mr. Boehner, of Ohio, said in an interview this month, but must offer solutions to voters’ problems. “We have to give the American people reasons to take a look at us,” he said.

However, the gag-inducing opening paragraph made clear that the usual GOP Reality Distortion Field is at full strength–as if they have not been the ones responsible for the exploding budget deficit, or that they have not been ultra-partisan for the past decade and more.

We’ve heard this conciliatory tone from them before, and it has come to nothing before; I don’t trust them to be any more non-partisan than is in their own self-interest, and usually they find that it is not at all in their interest.

I have the feeling that Republicans will simply do what they do best: lie and smear. Likely, they will simply run against themselves–as it was put in an article someone showed me a few months ago, they will run out the back door, come around to the front, and start shouting in protest against the house they built. They will now blame all of the mess that Republicans created over the past eight years on the majority; they will loudly protest against every necessary and painful hard choice that must be made to correct things. They will put forth as their “ideas” unworkable, pandering, pipe-dream “solutions” which they know will never be tested but which will sound nice to voters, from whom Obama will ask for sacrifice instead. When Obama asks for work, Republicans will say that Americans deserve to rest; when Obama asks the wealthy to pay their fair share, they will scream bloody murder about “taxing Americans to death”; when Obama tries to introduce reasonable regulations on businesses so as to avoid more of the kind of economic disasters we now face, Republicans will say he’s anti-business and is destroying the economy, and that we should trust the marketplace.

We’ve seen the “ideas” that the GOP is enamored of, and we now suffer the damage those ideas bring. Hopefully, the American people will be able to see beyond the attractive fluff they will throw up. But do not believe for a second that the lies and obstructionism are a thing of the past. At best, we’re going to see a new set of sheep’s clothing for the wolves, but it’s still the same old pack of wolves. While the pack has been decimated, they still have teeth, and they are still wolves. That, so far, has not been subject to change.

Wow. Some are actually saying that Obama should re-take the oath of office because he partially followed Robert’s flub and put “faithfully” at the end of the oath instead of near the beginning. As if it made the least bit of difference in actual meaning.

Adverbs can come before the verb or at the end of the sentence, which is why Robert’s flub came out the way it did–in a natural speech pattern.

To suggest that this somehow meant that Obama did not actually take the oath of office is, to be as generous as possible, completely ludicrous.

Welcome to the extreme wingnut’s view of reality, which we’ll be seeing inordinate amounts of over the next four to eight years.

Fascinating that the election of 2000, with the Supreme Court electing a president, with illegal election fraud perpetrated by state officials stealing an election away from the rightful winner is somehow authentic, but because an adverb is moved from one legitimate position to another, somehow that is enough to nullify a presidency.

Simply astonishing.

Update: Just to be sure, Obama re-took the oath. Overdoing it, if you ask me, but if it clears up one more messy detail that the wingnuts would use to generate disorder, maybe it’s worth the effort.

I have to say, I am impatient to see Obama at work. I do not buy into the right-wing mockery which suggests that Obama supporters expect magic ponies to fly out of certain executive orifices. But it will be nice to see some long-standing conservative monoliths tumble, like 4th-Amendment violations or constant favoritism toward corporations and the wealthy over the simple common-sense well-being of the American people. That’ll be just as good if not better than seeing Obama elected, to see him overturn the stupid, ignorant, corrupt, and illegal policies we have had to endure over the past eight years.

Bring it on, Barack.

Feinstein made a nice speech, but you know it’s going to pale to what Obama will say.

Rick Warren: God is great, god is more important than anything and everything, etc. Still, I think it might have been the right choice–his voice speaks to a lot of people who might now be willing to give Obama more of the benefit of the doubt, people who were screaming “Muslim!” and “Traitor!” just a few months ago. But–“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Um, yeah, right. Sorry, but that grates coming from a stolid right-winger.

Aretha Franklin, brilliant as you would expect her to be.

Obama is taking it all in stride, as if he does this every day. Can’t blame him–he’s got to be the most unimpressed person there. Well, aside from Michelle, perhaps.

Biden takes his oath. Boy, does he seem like he means it. Meet the Vice President.

Yo Yo Ma rocks! To the familiar style of John Williams. Shut up, Blitzer. Let the moment be.

Still, a salient point: oath or no, constitutionally, after noon DC time, Barack Obama is now President of the United States of America.

Now comes the moment we’ve been waiting for: the oath. (Who bumbled–Roberts or Obama?)

That’s it–Mister President.

“Our collective failure to make hard choices.” Wow. That’s what you call a precursor.

Know this America: they will be met!

We are here because we have chose hope instead of fear–a slight to Bush and/or McCain?

The speech.

Greatness must be earned … it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things … who have carried us up … For us, for us … our capacity remains undiminished … our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions–that time has surely passed … We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil … All this we can do, all this we will do … restore the vital trust between a people and their government … without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control–and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous … we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals … know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more!

When Obama speaks of humility and restraint, you can sense that he actually means it.

We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness … we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. … they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves … it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all … to take a most sacred oath … Let it be told to the future world … that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive … that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet (it).

With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come.

Not just a powerful speech, but meaning that speaks volumes. He made clear that he would be making “unpleasant decisions,” and emphasized “the spirit of service.” He’s not promising a turkey in every pot, he’s asking for sacrifice, something Bush steadfastly refused to do. This is no panderer, this is a leaser, as leaders are the ones who ask their people to do the hard things. Bush asked people to shop; Obama asks them to sacrifice.

Despite his gracious introduction praising Bush, he made it explicitly clear that he feels that Bush was asleep at the wheel. “Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions–that time has surely passed. … Without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control … We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” Not very subtle, that.

Wow… Obama with a flag pin, hand over his heart, and singing the national anthem: a host of wingnuts’ heads must be exploding right now.

And now, a bit later, the magical moment: Obama leads Bush to the helicopter. “Former President Bush,” that has a definite ring to it. And there it goes, there he goes. Sorry to be ungracious, but good-bye and good riddance. Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. Not a moment too soon.

The Onion, eight years ago, led with the headline, “Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’” Incredible prescience there. More on that later, but the point: Our Long National Nightmare of War and Depression Is Finally Over.

There’s no lack of coverage of the inauguration here, but not because Japanese TV is doing a great job–only NHK is paying attention right now it, aside from the obligatory CNN coverage. But streaming Internet coverage (the old Internet pipes must be at full pressure right now) is just fine. Oddly, CNN is blocking Internet video streaming outside the U.S. But other networks make up for it. AP is streaming over lesser web sites, but the major news networks have their own broadcasts on. I’m watching MSNBC; I can’t resist Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow ushering in Barack Obama, I must admit. And the picture, at full-size on my 24-inch screen, is actually pretty darn good.

Strange: NHK’s video is slightly ahead of MSNBC’s Internet stream, but CNN’s TV video is a full second or two behind MSNBC’s. Go figure.

Quick thought: whatever satellite is over the East Coast right now should be taking high-res images of DC. Are you listening, Google? Get those snapshots and let’s browse them later.

Amazing. No, stunning. As many as two million people have swarmed over the capitol, a sea of people, most of whom brave the cold and the crowds knowing that all they will see is an image on one of the large screens erected, but coming and staying nonetheless simply because they know that this is history in the making, and they want to say that they were there.

As Obama enjoys record pre-inauguration approval ratings, and has the support of the people in that they do not expects miracles nor do they expect everything to get better soon, these massive crowds can only act to cement Obama’s influence in Washington D.C. right now. In a city where numbers speak to greatest effect, this cannot fail to give a deep sense of pause and caution to the members of Congress in attendance: this president has the support of the people.

As much as the people are willing to be patient for solutions, I have a very strong feeling that they will not be supportive of obstructionism. They know that the problems we face will not be swept aside easily, and they are willing to bear down and suffer through tough times–but that does not mean that they will be OK if bill after bill is filibustered yet again by a Republican minority, as has happened for the past two years. If you recall, Trent Lott famously said, “The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. So far it’s working for us.”

Well, after the 2008 elections, with Obama winning and Democrats making huge gains–again–in Congress, I don’t think obstructionism worked very well for them after all, did it?

With Republicans in Congress having the lowest ratings of anyone in Washington and Democrats enjoying much better numbers, with one more cycle of past Republican Senate wins ready to be swept clean and replaced with Democrats in 2010, with Obama being so astronomically popular–the Republicans may now obstruct at their substantial peril. Minimum wage hike, making a hard life barely livable for millions of hard-working Americans, blocked by Republicans? The ability of government health care agencies to use their buying power to negotiate lower drug costs, saving Americans billions of dollars, blocked by corporate-bought right-wing politicians? Improved health care, work bills, bringing soldiers home, closing Guantanamo, giving the middle class a long-awaited tax cut while the wealthy finally pay their share, shoring up Social Security–the list goes on and on. If the GOP believes that it can filibuster its way to popularity, then it is sadly mistaken.

One has the sense that things are going to get done. Whether they are enough, whether they will work, remains to be seen. But seeing this day as it unrolls, it is hard to imagine that things will not move.

Things will, for lack of a better or more appropriate word, change.