If you want to see an old-style Senate filibuster, check out C-Span.org.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who conferences with Senate Democrats, launched a filibuster at 10:30 am Friday against President Obama’s tax-cut compromise with congressional Republicans. He shows no sign of letting up.

He’s getting occasional help from other senators. Democrats Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Mary Landrieux of Louisiana have come to the floor to assist him. He also has a Twitter feed going where you can follow along.

via Sen. Bernie Sanders Filibusters Tax-Cut Deal : It’s All Politics : NPR

But this is what Democrats should have been doing for the last decade. Maybe this is how they will get it in for the next two. Some other Senators should get in on the practice. Also, Sen Landrieux can kick rocks. On many other votes she was one of the “adult” “reasonable” centrists who watered down Democratic legislation.

When a close friend of (and former advisor to) Martin Luther King Jr. is calling for a primary challenge to Obama, something very big is happening.

via Suburban Guerrilla » Blog Archive » Change in the wind.

First off, being held in close confidence to Martin Luther King, Jr. and a figure in the Civil Rights movement makes you relevant on subjects of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights movement in a historical context.

I think the “I was near MLK/JFK, so I am free to make claims based on that experience” opinion clearing house for the left is just as bad as the corporatist “I was a successful CEO/Reagan confidante so I know how to lead anything” opinion clearing house that resonates in right wing echo chambers. Jones reminisces with the recounting of a protest song and then lays blame at Obama’s feet for not satisfying the progressive base. He says Obama voters have been abandoned.

The pursuit of the war in Afghanistan in support of a certifiably corrupt Afghan government and the apparent willingness to retreat from his campaign commitment of no further tax cuts for the rich, his equivocal and foot dragging leadership to end DADT, his TARP for Wall Street, but, equivocal insufficient attention to the unemployment and housing foreclosures of Main Street, suggest that the template of the 1968 challenge to the reelection of President Lyndon Johnson now must be thoughtfully considered for Obama in 2012.

via Clarence B. Jones: Time to Think the Unthinkable: A Democratic Primary Challenge To Obama’s Reelection.

The result of the 1968 challenge to Johnson? Nixon.

The result of the 1980 challenge to Carter? Reagan.

Now it’s also odd Jones says that Obama needs to be challenged like Johnson. President Johnson got a lot of things done. He is known as the fighter and arm twister that many say Obama should be. Never the less, Jones agrees with the fact that like Johnson was, Obama needs to be challenged to leave Democrats and our nation better off. Basically, if he wants Obama challenged by Johnson he wants him out. Does Jones want a 2012 Nixon?

It’s funny Jones never mentions blue dog Senate Democrats, aka centrists, who vote with every deficit multiplying, pro business bill you can imagine while dragging their heels on the social platform issues of the Democratic Party they selectively campaign upon. Jones sees more value in mounting a primary challenge against a sitting Democratic president dealing with nuclear Iran, a belligerent North Korea, two wars and a recession with 9.8% employment than finding ways to pressure Senate Democrats to actually implement the party platform. Jones also neglects to mention filibuster reform which is the real issue that would allow majorities to exercise the power they were intended to in the “most exclusive club”.

Jones is upset, but he sees the risk of a one term Obama as a risk he is willing to take. I don’t. Sure, if you are a Democrat or a liberal or progressive, you should have disappointments with the President. But they should extend to the Senate Democrats as well who back loaded legislation already passed out of the house into the Lame Duck session. Take the Bush tax cuts issue. The same ire should be reserved for Democrats Webb,  Manchin and Nelson who for various reasons felt that Bush tax cuts should be extended for all. Obama has to compromise from that point because that’s the votes he has.

I remember how disappointed I was when Kerry lost in 2004. I haven’t been that disappointed during this administration. Obama is not the same as Bush. McCain wouldn’t have done the same things Obama did (would we be at full scale war with North Korea now? Remember McCain wanted to resort to arms over the Georgia conflict). Hillary Clinton was just as, if not more, moderate. I’m not voting for some 2012 Kucinich  just to make a point.

In short, a $60 billion tax cut for the richest will be unsavory to some people, but it’s become a vehicle for historic tax relief for average Americans. Of the six stimulus ideas analyzed by the CBO in the summer, this deal has four, including the two most stimulative: jobless benefits and a payroll tax cut, both of which target the middle- and low-income Americans.

From a long-term perspective, however, this deal is a potential budget buster. There is no official cost estimate, but it will certainly add hundreds of billions of dollars to the 2011 deficit. This makes the case for deficit reduction all the more necessary in the next few years.

Today, Americans at every income level got a major stimulus. But tomorrow’s deficit debate just got louder and more urgent.

via The Bush Tax Cut Deal: Is It Worth It? – Derek Thompson – Business – The Atlantic.

Really what we have here is a tax cut/unemployment insurance stimulus. Less effective than Obama’s revenue rich original tax plan, but it’s the best we can get.  The trade off was tax cuts for all of the  income of the rich. Hopefully, the Democratic congress understands the issue here is time. They need to get this compromise passed and to the president’s desk so that START, DADT and DREAM (doubtful on the last one) can be brought to the house and senate floors.

The label “Government Motors” quickly stuck, evoking images of clunky committee-built cars that burned banknotes instead of petrol—all run by what Sarah Palin might call the socialist-in-chief.

Yet the doomsayers were wrong. Unlike, say, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, who used public funds to support Renault and Peugeot-Citroën on condition that they did not close factories in France, Mr Obama has been tough from the start. GM had to promise to slim down dramatically—cutting jobs, shuttering factories and shedding brands—to win its lifeline. The firm was forced to declare bankruptcy. Shareholders were wiped out. Top managers were swept aside. Unions did win some special favours: when Chrysler was divided among its creditors, for example, a union health fund did far better than secured bondholders whose claims should have been senior. Congress has put pressure on GM to build new models in America rather than Asia, and to keep open dealerships in certain electoral districts. But by and large Mr Obama has not used his stakes in GM and Chrysler for political ends. On the contrary, his goal has been to restore both firms to health and then get out as quickly as possible. GM is now profitable again and Chrysler, managed by Fiat, is making progress. Taxpayers might even turn a profit when GM is sold.

via General Motors: Government Motors no more | The Economist.

The problem is they are wasting a reasoned argument rebutting people who actually think or cynically suggest that Obama is a socialist.

Summaries like this are in the right direction and work as simple rebuttals to broken fiscal ideology. The president’s deputies should be able to anticipate the need for and execute these kind of voter friendly presentations as opposed to the awkward video where Obama showed us how to use Healthcare.gov.

Reagan, raiser of taxes.

Reagan’s Tax raises during a recession would qualify him as a president who was an idiot, and engaged in class war fare according to elected Republicans, Tea Partiers and 2012 GOP hopefuls.

Everyone remembers Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. His admirers are less likely to tout the tax hikes he accepted as the 1981 recession and his own tax cuts began to unravel his long-term fiscal picture–a large tax increase on business in 1982, higher payroll taxes enacted in 1983 and higher energy taxes in 1984. A decade later, when a serious recession and higher spending began to upend the fiscal outlook again, the first President Bush similarly raised taxes on higher-income people in 1991; Bill Clinton doubled down and raised them again in 1993.

via Even Reagan Raised Taxes – Forbes.com.

The no taxes at all costs platform is just stupid and cynical fiscal posturing.

President Barack Obama meets with his national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Situation Room of the White House, June 23, 2010. Seated at the table are, from left, General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command, Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Vice President Joe Biden, the President, National Security Advisor Gen. James L. Jones, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Deputy National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Woodard’s new book Obama’s Wars aims to expose the Obama Administration’s inner workings.

The most explosive revelations, however, center around the Obama’s decision last year to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan but set a controversial July 2011 timeline for beginning to withdraw — an awkward compromise that Woodward’s sources seem eager to portray as very much the president’s own. And Bob’s got the goods: Obama, who comes across as deeply skeptical about the war and overwhelmingly concerned with finding an “exit strategy” rather than winning, personally dictated a six-page “terms sheet” outlining the conditions under which he was sending the troops. Woodward describes a tense Nov. 29, 2009, meeting where the president demanded that each participant read it and raise any objections “now.” According to the Post, “The document — a copy of which is reprinted in the book — took the unusual step of stating, along with the strategy’s objectives, what the military was not supposed to do.”

As Woodward describes it,  the memo represented Obama’s attempt to keep the military from boxing him in and pushing to escalate the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan (a storyline we’ve heard before, though with fewer details). At one point, Woodward says, Obama told military leaders, “In 2010, we will not be having a conversation about how to do more. I will not want to hear, ‘We’re doing fine, Mr. President, but we’d be better if we just do more.’ We’re not going to be having a conversation about how to change [the mission] … unless we’re talking about how to draw down faster than anticipated in 2011.” It’s not clear just who’s boxing in whom at the moment, though. The Post remarks on the irony that Petraeus has been tasked with implementing a strategy with which he clearly does not fully agree, but the general has been pretty savvy about thus far about establishing that the withdrawals will be “conditions-based.”

Obama told Gates and Clinton at another meeting that he didn’t want to stay in Afghanistan for a decade: “I’m not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars.” He also made a similar remark to Lindsey Graham, telling the South Carolina senator, “I can’t let this be a war without end, and I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

Republicans are going to have a field day with this one.

via Woodward strikes again | FP Passport.

Elected Republicans are going to have a field day with this one and Democrats may just be glad to hear that the President doesn’t want an open ended commitment to the Afghanistan War.

WASHINGTON – Dr. Lawrence H. Summers, Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, announced his plans to return to his position as University Professor at Harvard University at the end of the year.

Dr. Summers is the chief White House advisor to the President on the development and implementation of economic policy.  He also leads the President’s daily economic briefing.

“I will always be grateful that at a time of great peril for our country, a man of Larry’s brilliance, experience and judgment was willing to answer the call and lead our economic team.  Over the past two years,  he has helped guide us from the depths of  the worst recession since the 1930s to renewed growth.  And while we have much work ahead to repair the damage done by the recession, we are on a better path thanks in no small measure to Larry’s wise counsel.  We will miss him here at the White House, but I look forward to soliciting  his continued advice and his counsel on an informal basis, and appreciate that he has agreed to serve as a member of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board,” said President Obama.

via Dr. Lawrence H. Summers, Director of the National Economic Council, to Return to Harvard University at the End of the Year | The White House.

Obama’s “tax cuts for the middle class” aren’t actually tax cuts for the middle class. They’re tax cuts on all family income up to $250,000. So if you make $300,000 a year, you’re getting a tax cut on $250,000. That’s a serious tax cut!

via Ezra Klein – Tax cuts for the middle-class are also tax cuts for the rich.