Obama Calls the Republi-CON Bluff to Balance the Budget

UPDATE V:  The only thing holding Obama back is a lack of will to confront the Republi-cons.  Read the Washington Post, The Green Lantern theory of the fiscal cliff.  

UPDATE IV:  Did you know that the Ryan budget would cut $897 billion from the federal government budget?

Since Obamney "has committed himself to keeping the Pentagon budget (Function 050) at 4 percent of G.D.P. By 2050, that would leave zilch under the Ryan plan for such separately funded programs as Veterans Benefits (Function 700); the administration of justice, including the F.B.I. (Function 750); Education, Train and Social Services (Function 500), and pretty much anything else."

Read The New York Times, The Ryan Sinkhole.  

UPDATE III:  The Naive-ocrats have finally gotten the chance to call the Republi-con budget bluff, and they are all-in.

"[T]o paraphrase H.L. Mencken, is that the Obama administration knew the fight they wanted, and now they’re going to get it good and hard.

Putting the Ryan budget at the center of the 2012 election has the tactical benefit of forcing Republicans to defend an unpopular proposal; more important, it has the long-term strategic benefit of potentially discrediting the Ryan budget as a political document. Prior to Ryan joining the ticket, a Romney loss seemed likely to strengthen the Republican Party’s conservative wing, because the defeat would be blamed on Romney’s moderate past. Now, if the Romney-Ryan ticket loses, it will vindicate skeptics of the party’s rightward shift, potentially strengthening the party’s moderates. That could produce a more cooperative opposition for Obama to work with in a second term.

But if Obama loses, Republicans will have won the presidency with a mandate to enact a deeply conservative agenda. Left to his own devices, Romney might have been a relatively pragmatic and cautious president. Instead, the Obama administration’s three-year effort to enshrine the Ryan budget at the heart of the Republican Party would prove to have been a crucial push toward enacting that budget into law."

Read the Washington Post, The White House’s huge gamble on Paul Ryan.

Actually, I bet that even if the Republi-cons win they won't even try to balance the budget, proving my theory it is all a con job.

UPDATE II:  It is "impossible to overstate how central the unjustified label of 'fiscal conservative' is to the Ryan brand and the GOP’s strategy."  Read the Washington Post, Recognizing Paul Ryan’s ‘tell’ when he is trying to avoid something.  

UPDATE:  "[H]ow will a Romney administration make its budget math add up? . .

[Obamney made] outlandish budget promises in order to win a Republican primary, . . . [and now he] is disavowing Ryan’s Medicare cuts mere days after naming him to the ticket?

This is simply not a credible budget plan, and Romney’s fast retreat from Ryan’s most unpopular cuts makes it even less credible. And yet Romney, who has never released the specific cuts that would make his numbers add up, repeatedly touts it on the campaign trail, and the media dutifully reports his promises to cut federal spending by more than $500 billion in 2016, and in fact to balance the budget by the end of his second term, which would require far larger cuts than what I’ve outlined here, despite the fact that everyone basically knows these cuts aren’t credible and will never happen.

I’m not sure what alternative there is, exactly, except to say, as clearly as possible, Romney’s budget plan is a fantasy, and it will never happen."

Read the Washington Post, Romney’s budget plan is a fantasy.  

I've been challenging Naive-ocrats to call the Republi-con bluff and balance the budget with tax cuts, a delusional fantasy of made-up facts and figures. 

You may remember, in 2003 the "prescription drug bill, creating a new federal entitlement that eased the financial burden on seniors while securing drug industry profits at taxpayer expense, with the legislation’s cost – $62 billion in 2010 alone, 12 percent of the federal government's Medicare's costs – covered by the same device used in the Romney and Ryan tax plans: a magic asterisk promising that somehow the numbers would work out.

The vote was contentious, with many conservatives voting against it. Ryan voted in favor. In doing so, he announced that he was a player. . .

The appetite for fantasy – the will to believe the magic asterisks really work – will be enormous. Ryan, the conservative icon, is the ideal emissary to inform the party's true believers that not everyone in this large, pluralistic, complex nation wants to dismantle the federal government at this particular moment. When you wish upon a magic asterisk, not all your dreams come true."

Now we'll get to see if the public really wants to dismantle the federal government.

But if "the [Romney-Ryan] ticket loses, the loss will discredit the Ryan budget, and empower those in the Republican Party who want to pivot back to the center."  

The 'Love Child Father' Who Could Have Been President

UPDATE V:  "Beware the extreme narcissist. Although he may radiate a seductive confidence, he can justify and forgive himself for just about anything, given his belief in his own exalted purpose. He’ll lose sense of the line between boldness and recklessness. And he’ll quit the stage reluctantly, because he can’t bear not to occupy the very center of it.

What once drew so many people to Edwards and to Gingrich? Both men had an exaggerated and infectious certainty about them. In Gingrich’s withering sneer and Edwards’s shampoo-commercial smile, there was a seeming estrangement from any and all doubt. It is the kind of thing that assuages a voter’s anxieties."

Read The New york Times, A Shared State of Defeat.  

UPDATE IV:  "A man who seemed headed for the Oval Office may be headed to jail, raising the eternal question: Why is the flesh always weak?"  Read The New York Times, Brutality of Servility, which notes "[i]t's a trial without heroes, just liars and an abhorrent trio of selfish people trying to spin the story their own way."

Reminds me of that once upon a time, fairy tale president, with who Edwards was often compared.

UPDATE III: "The Justice Department reportedly plans to accuse John Edwards of misusing presidential campaign funds to cover up an affair." Read The New York Times, Edwards to Face Criminal Charges.


UPDATE II: The story gets uglier. Read ABC News, Ex-Edwards Aide: $1 Million Spent to Cover Up Pregnant Mistress.

If Edwards knew of this he needs to go to jail, and it is hard to see how he wouldn't have known.


UPDATE: Are we blinded by celebrity? Read the Washington Post, From John Edwards, lessons on celebrity and politics.

Is lying about a 'love child' an impeachable offense? Read CBS News, What if John Edwards Were President?

Just another narcissistic politician. (Yes, I know, another tautology.)

BTW, the National Enquirer plans to enter the paper's work on the John Edwards scandal for a Pulitzer Prize. If it wins the National Enquirer would have one more Pulitzer than Hedgehog News.

Once Upon a Time, A Story of Fairy Tale President

The story of a 19-year old young lady who "was mysteriously offered [a White House] internship out of the blue — she never applied — a year after she briefly met the president while visiting the White House for a story for her prep-school newspaper. He seduced her over daiquiris her fourth day on the job." Read the Washington Post, JFK mistress Mimi Alford: Secret trips, Ted Kennedy, Cuban Missile Crisis — and why she did it.

Also read The New York Times, Sure, Mr. President, if You Really Want Me To, which notes that the book includes "a couple of truly vile episodes in which the president humiliated Mimi by telling her to service other men sexually."

Hardly the 'Camelot' image perpetuated by the Kennedy family.

Great Quote On So-Called Government Wisdom

For all you partisan and/or conspiracy groupies out there, "probably the most famous Swedish quotation in the English-speaking world":

"Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?"

Republi-CON Want to Crucify the Middle Class 'Upon a Cross of Gold', Part of the Republi-CON War on the Middle Class

UPDATE: Until recently, a "bargain — which emerged in stages between the 1890s and 1930s — established an institutional framework to balance the needs of the American people with the vast inequalities of wealth and power wrought by the triumph of industrial capitalism. It originated in the widespread apprehension that the rapidly growing power of robber barons, national corporations and banks (like J.P. Morgan’s) was undermining fundamental American values and threatening democracy. . .

The terms were straightforward if not systematically articulated. Capitalism would endure, as would almost all large corporations. Huge railroads, banks and other enterprises — with a few exceptions — would cease to be threatened with nationalization or breakup. Moreover, the state would service and promote private business.

In exchange, the federal government adopted a series of far-reaching reforms to shield and empower citizens, safeguarding society’s democratic character. First came the regulation of business and banking to protect consumers, limit the power of individual corporations and prevent anti-competitive practices. . .

The second prong of reform was guaranteeing workers’ right to form unions and engage in collective bargaining. The core premise of the 1914 Clayton Act and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 — born of decades of experience — was that individual workers lacked the power to protect their interests when dealing with large employers. For the most poorly paid, the federal government mandated a minimum wage and maximum hours.

The third ingredient was social insurance. Unemployment insurance (1935), Social Security (1935), and, later, Medicaid and Medicare (1965) were grounded in the recognition that citizens could not always be self-sufficient and that it was the role of government to aid those unable to fend for themselves. The unemployment-insurance program left unrestrained employers’ ability to lay off workers but recognized that those who were jobless through no fault of their own (a common occurrence in a market economy) ought to receive public support.

Read the Washington Post, The real grand bargain, coming undone.

"Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said earlier this week, referring to Mr. Bernanke: 'If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous — er, treasonous, in my opinion.'

In the 19th century the agricultural sector, particularly in the West, favored higher prices and effectively looser monetary policy. This was the background for William Jennings Bryan’s famous 'Cross of Gold' speech in 1896; the 'gold' to which he referred was the gold standard, the bastion of hard money — and tendency toward deflation — favored by the East Coast financial establishment." [Cross of Gold link changed.]

Read The New York Times, A Second Great Depression, or Worse?

All part of the Republi-CON war on the middle class!

As I stated before, the Naive-ocrats have been too stupid to call the bluff -- give the public what it claims it wants until they don't want it anymore.

Obama the One Term President, Hell Hath No Fury Like a Liberal Chumped Again

UPDATE III: Happy Birthday Obama! "The good news is that, although unemployment remains hideous, you, personally, are employed, which is always good for a man at the half-century mark in an economy that increasingly views middle-aged workers as health care time bombs. The bad news is that you may get laid off in just 17 months. I don’t think that’s the likeliest outcome, but recent events have made the 2012 election look very much in play.

[Of course, t]he Republicans may yet bail you out by nominating someone who wants to return to the Gold Standard, or who says flouride in the drinking water is a communist plot, or who has pledged fealty to a demon dwelling in the hollow Earth. But I think it’ll be Mitt Romney. Romney’s not the perfect candidate, but he’s not going to scare 2/3rds of the electorate like some of the GOP hopefuls. He’s the frontrunner and frontrunners usually win."

Read the Washington Post, Obama Five-oh.


UPDATE II: "When handling budget negotiations, Troll Obama should never have let the Republican billy goats clomp over his bridge." So says Stephen Colbert as he recounts Obama's negotiating style in a storybook adaptation he calls, "Three Billy Goats Gruff" Budget Negotiations:

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UPDATE: Some Naive-ocrats now realize they've been chumped again by the Republi-cons.

"Jon Stewart, the most intellectually astute of the left's comic darlings, went after President Obama in hilarious fashion", in a piece called Dealageddon, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Compromise:

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The debt deal farce "will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status." So says the 2008 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. Read The New York Times, The President Surrenders.

And another commentator speculates that Obama is just 'playing the angles and wonders whether we are "living through yet another failed presidency." Read The New York Times, The Diminished President.

NAIVE-ocrat and Republi-CON Family Values Hypocrisy, Cont.

UPDATE V: Colbert explains how "Weiner's sadly delicious sordid saga proves that Democrats don't share Republican values":

The Colbert Report
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UPDATE IV: Colbert "admires the fiscal discipline it takes to resist launching a federal investigation of Anthony Weiner's groin":

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Anthony Weiner Addresses Twitter Scandal
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UPDATE III: "The young woman who was sent a lewd photo from the Twitter account of Rep. Anthony Weiner says she doesn’t think the New York Democrat was hacked, but that he may have been trying to send it to a porn star with a similar name." Politico, Seattle student: Weiner photo meant for porn star.

I'm sure his wife is happy to hear that.


UPDATE II: For more on Weiner's pickle, read the Washington Post, 'Weinergate' theory: private photo, public embarrassment.

Maybe his staff should consider "'congressional control software.' Motto: 'Know with certitude what your member’s up to.'" Read the Washington Post, Track your teen lawmaker.


UPDATE: There must be something in the water fountains in Congress. Read The Daily Caller, #Weinergate: Married congressman’s Twitter account shares lewd photo.

Gingrich, Sanford, Souder, Ensign, Craig, Foley, Vitter -- now Chris Lee. Read the Washington Post, Rep. Chris Lee (R-Craigslist).

Flee-ocrats

UPDATE: Democratic state legislators are also fleeing the party in record numbers.

"The 2010 election was devastating for Democrats across the country, but the South was at the epicenter of the destruction. . .

Since the election, things have gone from bad to worse for Democrats in the South. In Louisiana, the state's attorney general and five state legislators - all Democrats - have switched to the Republican side since the 2010 midterms.

The Republican consolidation of the South over the past two years is hard to dispute. But is it a permanent reality or simply the latest swing of the political pendulum in the region? Not surprisingly, the two parties offer vastly different assessments."

Read the Washington Post, Will the South stay solidly Republican?

"Lawmaking can be a frustrating business, especially when you're outnumbered. But some Democratic state legislators have recently embraced a simple tool to gain leverage: the empty chair." Read the Washington Post, Democratic legislators embracing tactic to gain leverage: Fleeing.

A sad commentary on the the party.

Time to Call the Republi-CON Bluff

UPDATE V: "Republicans are popping up with new schemes on the debt ceiling. They don't just want to extract big cuts in spending; they actually want to refuse to raise the debt ceiling." Read the Washington Post, Do the GOP debt-limit schemes make sense?

I dare, no I double dare them to not raise the debt-ceiling limit and balance the budget immediately!


UPDATE IV: Read The New York Times, About That $100 Billion, which notes:

"It has been four months since John Boehner, now speaker of the House, first proposed to cut $100 billion from this year’s budget, an idea that was later elevated to a “pledge to America” in the 2010 campaign. Last week, Mr. Boehner finally specified his first actual cut: $35 million from House lawmakers’ office budgets.

Precisely because it is puny and painless, the cut passed the House with broad support, showing once again that the path to bipartisanship in Washington is paved with giveaways (like deficit-increasing tax cuts) and grandstanding (like trivial spending cuts dressed up as deficit reduction).

The road to fiscal responsibility is a harder one. . .

House Republicans claim that voters elected them in November to cut spending. Let’s hear the specifics, and then see what the people want."

UPDATE III: "Another conservative economic miracle bites the dust, with implications for the nation. . . Right now, triumphant conservatives in Washington are declaring that they can cut taxes and still balance the budget by slashing spending. Yet they haven’t been able to do that even in Texas, which is willing both to impose great pain (by its stinginess on health care) and to shortchange the future (by neglecting education). How are they supposed to pull it off nationally, especially when the incoming Republicans have declared Medicare, Social Security and defense off limits?" Read The New York Times, The Texas Omen.


UPDATE II: Will the Naive-ocrat be chumps again? Read the Washington Post, Raise debt limit to avoid national catastrophe, Geithner warns Congress.


UPDATE: Countdown to April 2011, when the debt ceiling is reached. The Naive-ocrats were chumps last time. But here is their chance to call the Republi-con bluff. And some are predicting a political 'blood bath.' Why? Because Republi-cons aren't " interested in helping the economy as long as a Democrat is in the White House." Read The New York Times, There Will Be Blood.

The Republi-con jihad against America continues.

Fear, anger, and hatred -- a great campaign strategy, but not much of a governing philosophy.

Now "[t]he new Republican House majority is facing a choice between cultural or intellectual dissent." Read The New York Times, G.O.P. Faces Choice in How to Oppose.

The Naive-ocrats have been too stupid to call the bluff -- give the public what it claims it wants until they don't want it anymore.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does, Obama Style, Cont.

UPDATE: "After the pummeling in the midterm elections, has President Obama suffered a moral collapse?" Read The New York Times, Freezing Out Hope.

And "[w]hat is the Democratic Party's bottom line? Who knows?" Read the Washington Post, Democrats lost in the wilderness.

"At risk of overgeneralizing, the problem isn't that Dems aren't capable of winning an argument. It's that they don't think they're capable of winning a protracted political standoff, even on an issue where the public is on their side, once Republicans start going on the attack. They seem to set their goal early on at salvaging a compromise, rather than going for the win. As a result, they tend to telegraph weakness at the outset, sending a clear message that they'll essentially give Republicans what they want as long as they can figure out a way to call it a compromise. " Read the Washington Post, Dems too quick to internalize that losing feeling.

Why Republi-CONs and Naive-ocrats?

This sums it up pretty well -- although the economic bailout program was approved primarily with Naive-ocrat support, most of the companies that received federal bailout money are making campaign donations to Republi-con candidates. Read the Washington Post, Companies that received bailout money giving generously to candidates.

Palin Told Ya So

UPDATE II: Just in time for Halloween -- Palin says "we can see 2012 from our house."





Run, Rogue Diva, Run!


UPDATE: Good article about our next next Republi-con presidential nominee. Read the Washington Post, Five myths about Sarah Palin.

BTW, I initally said she couldn't win. But the Naive-crats are so inept, I'm reconsidering to probability.

In July 2009, I said that Palin quit the governor's office to "build her network for 2012 by campaigning and fund raising for other candidates. . . and to cash in with a book and some speeches, maybe a little paid commentary on not-the-FoxNews.

And that's what she's doing. Read the Politico, Miller-Palin camps feud over e-mail, which notes that recently revealed emails that show squabbling between the Miller and Palin camps "serve as the biggest hint to date that Sarah Palin has presidential ambitions."

2012 is gonna be a great year for politics!

Run, Rogue Diva, Run!

A Republi-CON Civil War Told Ya So

UPDATE II: What effect will this civil war have in November? Will independent voters abandon the Republi-con party? Not so says one pundit.

"Contrary to popular belief, this week’s Tea Party victories haven’t hurt the electoral prospects of Republicans in November." Read The New York Times, The Backlash Myth.


UPDATE: For more analysis of the meaning of the last group of primary election read the Washington Post, Republicans ride the tea party tiger, Righty pundits on 'suicide' watch, and Bill Clinton: New-look GOP makes Bush look liberal.

Today's top election story is Christine O'Donnell beats Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware Republican Senate primary, which finds this primary outcome "the latest in a string of embarrassments for the Republican establishment this year, underscoring the civil war that continues to rage in the party." As a result, in Delaware Senate race "the Republicans went from being extremely likely to win the race to extremely likely to lose it."

But I (and others) foresaw the civil war.

From an October 2008 post: "Suddenly, the conservative writers are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism their side courted and encouraged has begun to consume their movement." -- Is The Unholy Alliance Coming Apart (which quoted Washington Post, Civil War on the Right)

Other posts and updates over the past year regarding the Republi-con civil war:

A Preview of the 2010 Republi-CON Cat Fight

Are You Ready for Some Republi-CON Smack Down

But the Republi-con know they risk losing in the general election if they don't reach out to independents and moderate Republicans. Look how Rubio has 'veered from the Tea Party script.'

Is it possible the Naive-crats retain control of the House and Senate?

Is Palin a 'Democratic Double Agent'?

"That’s the only plausible explanation for the last two years.

First she charms John McCain, gets into his campaign and promptly extinguishes any chance he had of winning the presidency in 2008. Then she leads large sections of the G.O.P. into an intellectual cul de sac. She destroys any chance the Republicans have to take back the Senate. She promotes Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party candidate in Delaware. And now that O’Donnell has won the G.O.P. primary, suddenly it is likely the Dems will hold the Senate and with it the upper chamber."

Read The New York Times,The New York Times, The Nutsiness of Politics.

Does Republi-CON Election = Tea Party Agenda?

That is the Naive-ocrat election strategy. See the newly unveiled DNC website, RepublicanTeaPartyContract.com.

And the 2010 election season begins in earnest.

Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold, on Oprah

UPDATE: "Once more putting the diss in dysfunction, Elizabeth Edwards last week promoted the paperback version of her best seller, “Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities,” making her feelings of betrayal by her ex, her ex’s mistress and her ex’s sycophant perfectly clear." Read The New York Times, Kicking the Hornet’s Nest.

"Not quite Rockwell: The Edwards’s searing, sensational saga, painful to watch, continues."

Would you forgive your husband, who was running for president at the same time his mistress was "making a baby that could well be his," while you were raising young kids and battling deadly cancer? Read The New York Times, John Edwards’s Wife Speaks About His Affair and A Complicated Question, which includes the following:

"Elizabeth said when they married, the only gift she asked John for was to be faithful.

“It didn’t occur to me that at a fancy hotel in New York, where he sat with a potential donor to his antipoverty work,” Elizabeth writes in her book, “he would be targeted by a woman who would confirm that the man at the table was John Edwards and then would wait for him outside the hotel hours later when he returned from a dinner, wait with the come-on line ‘You are so hot’ and an idea that she should travel with him and make videos. And if you had asked me to wager that house we were building on whether my husband of then 28 years would have responded to a come-on line like that, I would have said no.”

She may be smart, but she doesn’t seem to know much about men."

Anyone ready to defend men? But I digress:

"Like Hillary with Monica, the feminist struck out at the girlfriend, implying that Rielle was a wacky stalker.

“We’re basically old-fashioned people,” Elizabeth told O magazine. “So this was a pretty big leap for him. Maybe it’s being so different is what was attractive.”

She’s still helping her husband hedge on Rielle’s baby, whom she refers to as “it,” telling Oprah that she has “no idea” if the baby is John’s, and adding: “It doesn’t look like my children, but I don’t have any idea.”

Asked by Oprah in a taping for Thursday’s show whether she’s still in love with her husband, she replied, “You know, that’s a complicated question.”

The really complicated question is what she hopes to gain from this book. "

I'll tell you what she hoped to gain, revenge.

Stupid People Shouldn't Be President

You've got too little brains and too much money if you are famous and pay $540 for a private late might massage in your hotel room. Read the Washington Post, National Enquirer says it decided not to pay for Gore sex story interview.

Now you know why I call' em Naive-ocrats.

Class Today at NoBullU on WEBY

UPDATE: Meet Susan Frishkorn at the Santa Rosa County Democratic Party Luau, 3-7 p.m., Gulf Breeze Shoreline Park, South, (cost for the luau is $25, Susan will gab with ya about politics for free):
Flier for Santa Rosa County Democratic Party Luau

Listen to the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- No political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- Just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

NoBullU will broadcast today from 4:05 to 6:00 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY and on line, courtesy of Cyber Smart Computers.

Topics:

Local and regional: teacher beware, 15-years boys will get ya 15 months, first comes the laswuit, now two graduations, is it better to be a dog than a black man in the South, who's your family?, and

Nation and international: countdown to dismissal, are you ready to protest, Cha-Ching, Baby, Cha-Ching, Justice Hillary Clinton?, Oprah unmasked, is it collateral damage, or murder?, more changey stuff, now it's Scrabble, is there no more respect for tradition anymore, I Wish I Was in Dixie (this after rise up and be counted Confederate Southern Americans (we love our country, we only wish it didn't exist and we still had slaves), does christian fundamentalism threaten world peace? , will it create a 'Communist Chocolate Hellhole', and religious evil or anti-Semitic like bigotry?

But I'll discuss anything. (Disclaimer: the host reserves the right to end any discussion and hang up on you.)

So tune-in, call-in, but only if you can handle some ass kickin' discussion of politics and current events!

How Now Republi-CONs

Which party will lead the way forward? Read The New York Times, Who’s Up for Building Bridges?

"It takes more than just saying no to thrive in the 21st century."

It All Down Hill From Here, For Health Care Reform That Is

UPDATE: The cost of doing nothing, paying about 75% more for health care:



Read The New York Times, The Cost of Doing Nothing on Health Care.

We pay one way or another, since half the people in the country cheat and get their health coverage courtesy of Uncle Sam.

Of course the health care industry calls it profit, which is why they oppose reform.

There was a 'summit' yesterday. In topography, a summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. Mathematically, a summit is a local maximum in elevation. The topographic terms "acme", "apex", "peak", "summit", and "zenith" are synonyms.

But in this case it was a health care 'summit' with politicos (can you say boring) so I skipped it. If you did too, read the recaps in The New York Times, Afflicting the Afflicted and Not as Dull as Expected!

Obama claims his plan will cover XX million uninsured. He should challenge the Republi-cons to come up with a plan that would credibly cover half that number. Then, if they do, he should promise to pass both proposals on one condition -- if the the Republi-cons proposal fails to achieve that number within one year, it would automatically be canceled and replaced by his plan.

Call the Republi-con bluff!