There’s been a lot of chatter about how Obama isn’t focusing on the economy, how his plans have failed, etc.

Want to know the real story? Well, read on my friends, read on…

Yes, unemployment hasn’t dropped as quickly as we had hoped, but if the economic growth that has happened in the past quarter is any indication…if we hadn’t acted then the unemployment rate would have been MUCH worse. So while you can grouse about the administration’s inaccurate assessment about how high it would rise…I think some credit needs to be given to them for helping turn our economy around in such a dramatic fashion.

From Bloomberg…

One year after U.S stocks hit their post-financial-crisis low on March 9, 2009, the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has risen more than 68 percent, and it’s up more than 41 percent since Obama took office. Credit spreads have narrowed. Commodity prices have surged. Housing prices have stabilized.

“We’ve had a phenomenal run in asset classes across the board,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak & Co. in New York. “If he was a Republican, we would hear a never-ending drumbeat of news stories about markets voting in favor of the president.”

The economy has also strengthened beyond expectations at the time Obama took office. The gross domestic product grew at a 5.9 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter, compared with a median forecast of 2.0 percent in a Bloomberg survey of economists a week before Obama’s Jan. 20, 2009, inauguration. The median forecast for GDP growth this year is 3.0 percent, according to Bloomberg’s February survey of economists, versus 2.1 percent for 2010 in the survey taken 13 months earlier.

“You have to give them — along with the Federal Reserve – - a lot of credit,” said Joseph Carson, director of economic research at AllianceBernstein LP in New York. “A year ago, there was panic, as well as concern. And a lot of the expectations were not only that we were going to have declines in activity but they would stretch all the way to 2010, if not 2011.”

And about unemployment…

Since then, monthly job losses have abated, from 779,000 during the month Obama took office to 36,000 last month. Corporate profits have grown; among 491 companies in the S&P 500 that reported fourth-quarter earnings, profits rose 180 percent from a year ago, according to Bloomberg data. Durable goods orders in January were up 9.3 percent from a year earlier. Inflation is tame, and long-term interest rates remain low. [...]

While jobs have been slow to come back even as GDP is growing, the gains in productivity during the past year will strengthen the economy, said Greenhaus of Miller Tabak. Productivity grew at a 6.9 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter, capping the biggest one-year gain since 2002.

So…profits are rising and productivity is going up…but employers aren’t hiring? Well, Obama can’t force companies to hire people. But it’s only a matter of time before they start adding people again…well, let’s hope.

Still, most Americans don’t think he’s handling the economy very well. Gallup reports that his approval on the issue has gone from 59% favorable in Feb 2009 to 61% unfavorable in Feb 2010.

So, is this more of a communications challenge than anything? Can rhetoric turn the “reality” around? What do you think?

So yes, take a look…

Should have Obama done this sooner? Sure. But he has been stumping for healthcare, talking about these ideas for months now. So when people talk about a lack of leadership on this issue, I shake my head. This isn’t an proposal you can boil down into a sound byte. Of course saying that Obama’s ideas is something that only takes up several seconds, so I can understand why Americans are skeptical. The Republicans have been very consistent with their messaging, and, well, good for them. That’s how this game is played.

But ask yourself…which party will deliver real reform? Those who are trying to figure this out or those who have vowed to vote against most of their own ideas?

I leave you to it…

Don’t believe me? Take a look…

Personally, I think the notion that we start over on this legislation is just a political ploy by the Republicans and Obama shouldn’t do it. They weren’t able to get the job done for decades and they’re certainly not in any hurry now.

Still, can we reach a compromise? I think so. Because if you watched any of this health care summit today you’ll realize that there is broad agreement on a vast majority of the issues…it honestly leaves you wondering why they can’t just close these gaps and get something passed already.

So tell me why we can’t get there?

Wait, I can answer that…politics.

Yes, it just isn’t smart politics for Republicans to back this bill. Even with all the areas of agreement, they literally have nothing to gain. Can you imagine the backlash from the overhyped tea party movement? Glenn Beck? Limbaugh? Because that’s who they’re worried about, not the regular Americans who want compromise on health care reform.

And so it goes…

I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning…

The Tea Party’s choice in the Florida Republican primary, Marco Rubio, began his address to a crowd of conservative conventioneers by taking a shot at President Obama for reading from a teleprompter. He did it while standing in front of two easily visible teleprompters.

It was unclear whether the devices were placed there for him or for other speakers at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference, or CPAC, at which he was a keynote speaker. A HuffPost reporter, however, watched his speech from the front row and Rubio could clearly be seen looking intently and repeatedly at the teleprompters. He also had a stack of papers with him at the lectern and flipped through them as the speech progressed, perhaps unwilling to take any chance he would flub the swipe at Obama.

Nonetheless, he supposedly killed.

Here are some choice cuts of Rubio’s speech…

Personally, I think Rubio offers a really intellectually dishonest speech there. Democrats don’t want to abandon the free enterprise system. And what does he mean by “changing” American as opposed to “fixing” America? The great thing about democracies is their ability to change when things are broken. And folks, if you don’t think things were broken, well, I’ve got some beachfront property I’d like to sell you in Kansas.

But I suppose this gets back to my core problems with conservatism. It really doesn’t seem to have evolved since Goldwater and Buckley. If anything, they’re becoming more entrenched and out of touch with what really drives our economic engine. Say what you will about Dems, but if you ask nearly any liberal politician what they think of our place in the world as a superpower or a global economic force, nobody is looking to lose and many are just as concerned about the deficit as your average Tea Partier. But what I’m hearing from Republicans and Libertarians and Tea Partiers is that they just want to return to unchecked Friedmanism. Well, it didn’t work and even Greenspan admitted that.

Regardless, keep your eye on Rubio as he could probably be the bridge between the Tea Party and the GOP that Republican politicos desperately want…and need.

Yes, he said that partisanship was out of control on both sides…

“There’s just too much brain-dead partisanship, tactical maneuvering for short-term political advantage rather than focusing on the greater good, and also just strident ideology. The extremes of both parties have to be willing to accept compromises from time to time to make some progress because some progress for the American people is better than nothing, and all too often recently, we’ve been getting nothing.”

But he also said…

“The people who are just rigidly ideological, unwilling to accept practical solutions somewhere in the middle, vote them out, and then change the rules so that the sensible people who remain can actually get the job done. The president I know is desperately trying to accomplish this. Congress needs to listen and the American people need to help with this process.”

Bayh could have landed a broadside on Obama’s ship by saying nothing about him, and yet he made a point to mention Obama as on the right side of this fight.

Meanwhile, Obama’s Gallup numbers have been steadily increasing reaching their highest levels in a few months. Reagan’s numbers were worse and Clinton’s were the same at this time in both their presidencies. Just saying…

Also, in case you’re buying the “Dems will lose the majority” meme, there are 5 Dem Senators and 6 Repub Senators retiring this year.

(Psst…the real reason Bayh quit? He’s going to run for President in 2016 and he can’t appear to be post-partisan while governing in the current environment. You heard it here first.)

Almost exactly 5 years ago, Wired.com ran an article chronicling the various reasons why nuclear energy was a decent idea. At the time, I was skeptical upon reading the headline, but once I dug into the article I was swayed and considered this alternative more seriously.

It was definitely a controversial piece, but it was hard to refute the conclusion: nuclear energy is essential to our long term “green” plans…

On a cool spring morning a quarter century ago, a place in Pennsylvania called Three Mile Island exploded into the headlines and stopped the US nuclear power industry in its tracks. What had been billed as the clean, cheap, limitless energy source for a shining future was suddenly too hot to handle.

In the years since, we’ve searched for alternatives, pouring billions of dollars into windmills, solar panels, and biofuels. We’ve designed fantastically efficient lightbulbs, air conditioners, and refrigerators. We’ve built enough gas-fired generators to bankrupt California. But mainly, each year we hack 400 million more tons of coal out of Earth’s crust than we did a quarter century before, light it on fire, and shoot the proceeds into the atmosphere.

The consequences aren’t pretty. Burning coal and other fossil fuels is driving climate change, which is blamed for everything from western forest fires and Florida hurricanes to melting polar ice sheets and flooded Himalayan hamlets. On top of that, coal-burning electric power plants have fouled the air with enough heavy metals and other noxious pollutants to cause 15,000 premature deaths annually in the US alone, according to a Harvard School of Public Health study. Believe it or not, a coal-fired plant releases 100 times more radioactive material than an equivalent nuclear reactor – right into the air, too, not into some carefully guarded storage site. (And, by the way, more than 5,200 Chinese coal miners perished in accidents last year.)

Burning hydrocarbons is a luxury that a planet with 6 billion energy-hungry souls can’t afford. There’s only one sane, practical alternative: nuclear power.

Sure, we had the boogeymamn of Three Mile Island, but that was a blip on the radar of this new energy revolution. Also, when you consider that many other first world nations have embraced this tech (including France…in a big way), it becomes even more compelling.

Maybe that’s why we didn’t see too many objections in the left blogosphere to Obama’s nuclear energy proposals in the State of the Union speech? After all, there are over 100 nuclear reactors in operation right now in the US and they provide almost 20% of the nation’s electricity.

Well, now we hear he’ll be freeing up some tax credits to catch up with the rest of the world…

President Barack Obama next week will announce a loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the United States in almost three decades, an administration official said Friday.

The two new Southern Co. reactors to be built in Burke, Ga., are part of a White House energy plan administration officials hope will draw Republican support. Obama’s direct involvement in announcing the award underscores the political weight the White House is putting behind its effort to use nuclear power and alternative energy sources to lessen American dependence on foreign oil and reduce the use of other fossil fuels blamed for global warming.

Loan guarantees for other sites are expected to be announced in the coming months, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the decision had not yet been made public. The federal guarantees are seen as essential for construction of any new reactor because of the huge expense involved. Critics call the guarantees a form of subsidy and say taxpayers will assume a huge risk, given the industry’s record of cost overruns and loan defaults.

I think criticism is fair when it comes to cost overruns, but as far as the science goes…this is essential. We need to put the demons of the past in proper perspective and focus on the future. Nuclear is safer than many energy technologies and we should pursue it until something can replace it. So, for the next 50 years, this will help us move away from “clean” coal and to a more productive, environmentally responsible solution.

Agreed?

Does it need the GOP to be legitimate? No.

However…having somebody like Sarah Palin certainly got them a lot of attention last week.

Still, one Tea Party leader doesn’t like it one bit…

A prominent Tea Party leader from Texas is warning that the movement “is becoming nothing more than a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party,” and slamming Sarah Palin as representing “a growing insider’s attack to the heart of the Tea Party.”

Dale Robertson, the founder of TeaParty.org, is just the latest Tea Partier to express concern that the movement is being hijacked by the GOP.

In a lengthy statement — entitled “Warning: Tea Party In Danger” — posted yesterday on the TeaParty.org homepage, Robertson instructs his felllow Tea Partiers to “[b]e alert to turncoats and deceivers being herded into the Tea Party by usurpers from the weakened Republican Party for the sole purpose of capturing our populist movement.”

So what do the Tea Partiers want? Glenn Reynolds digs in and finds something surprising…

There were promises of transparency and of a new kind of collaborative politics where establishment figures listened to ordinary Americans. We were going to see net spending cuts, tax cuts for nearly all Americans, an end to earmarks, legislation posted online for the public to review before it is signed into law, and a line-by-line review of the federal budget to remove wasteful programs.

These weren’t the tea-party platforms I heard discussed in Nashville last weekend. They were the campaign promises of Barack Obama in 2008.

Mr. Obama made those promises because the ideas they represented were popular with average Americans. So popular, it turns out, that average Americans are organizing themselves in pursuit of the kind of good government Mr. Obama promised, but has not delivered. And that, in a nutshell, was the feel of the National Tea Party Convention. The political elites have failed, and citizens are stepping in to pick up the slack.

So, if Obama can deliver more on his campaign promises…will the Tea Party crowd fall in line?

Consider me highly skeptical of that…

Just so we’re clear…

Here’s the original quote that Bloomberg clearly didn’t get right:

“I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system. I do think that the compensation packages that we’ve seen over the last decade at least have not matched up always to performance. I think that shareholders oftentimes have not had any significant say in the pay structures for CEOs.”

And here’s another:

“Listen, $17 million is an extraordinary amount of money. Of course, there are some baseball players who are making more than that who don’t get to the World Series either. So I’m shocked by that as well. I guess the main principle we want to promote is a simple principle of “say on pay,” that shareholders have a chance to actually scrutinize what CEOs are getting paid. And I think that serves as a restraint and helps align performance with pay. The other thing we do think is the more that pay comes in the form of stock that requires proven performance over a certain period of time as opposed to quarterly earnings is a fairer way of measuring CEOs’ success and ultimately will make the performance of American businesses better.”

And yet even folks from the left are crying foul.

Here’s Krugman calling Obama clueless…

Oh. My. God.

First of all, to my knowledge, irresponsible behavior by baseball players hasn’t brought the world economy to the brink of collapse and cost millions of innocent Americans their jobs and/or houses.

Did Obama say that? As evidenced by the quotes above, not at all. The Bloomberg reporters clearly cherry picked quotes and mischaracterized his statements. Because Obama clearly DOES begrudge undeserved bonuses.

Paul, please, go back to just being an economist. Because with friends like these…

Moving on…

Well, this weekend they’re holding their convention in Nashville, Tennessee and former Congressman Tom Tancredo was a speaker.

And boy did he deliver the red meat.

And boy did the crowd eat it up.

Check it out…

Yes, that’s just the type of hearty, bombastic rhetoric that builds strong coalitions of independent and swing voters.

I also liked how he talked about voting tests in one breath and socialism in the next, thus proving that irony is indeed dead…and least in Nashville this weekend.

Well done Tom!

For whatever reason, this talk isn’t embeddable right now, but the talk was good (you can see it here.

It certainly wasn’t as contentious as his talk with Republicans, but Obama fielded some tough questions from his own party, particular by Senators like Blanche Lincoln. She shared a story about a constituent of hers who said he doesn’t think the White House understands what it means to try and make payroll every week.

Obama responded and The Hill has more…

Obama responded by defending steps his administration has taken to right the economy and said “Moving forward, Blanche, what you’re going to hear from some folks…[is that] the only way to provide stability is to go back and do what we did before the crisis.”

The president reiterated that he would not return to past policies.

“If the price of certainty is for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place for eight years leading up to the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression…the result is going to be the same.”

But Obama conceded that “Blanche is right that we sometimes get bogged down in ideology.”

Once again, Obama comes off as not only highly knowledgeable about every single topic, but also can defend why he has made the decisions he has made at every turn…something his predecessor couldn’t or wouldn’t do.

All I can say is I hope he continues these talks with both sides because this is the type of dialogue we need to see. In other words, this should be the standard, not the exception.

Fingers crossed.

Check out the dialogue here and tell us what you think in the comments…

Long story short, don’t fall for the media’s/blogosphere’s talking points about Obama winning. Because that’s the tired, combative narrative they want you to fall for. If we’re to truly move forward and have a constructive debate, we have to look at this for what it is…a productive dialogue that will hopefully lead to more. On this point I hope we can all agree.

More in a month…fingers crossed.

So, what did you think?

First, the relevant facts about the budget that’s set to be released on Feb 1…

About $447 billion will be devoted to funding the government — the parts that aren’t mandated by law (the entitlements) or aren’t related to defense, intelligence, veterans or national security issues. Obama will promise to veto any budget that exceeds that threshold, NOT adjusted for inflation, over the next three years. $250 billion would be saved over the baseline.

So now…what does it mean?

Well, it’s not an overall freeze and nobody from the White House ever said it was. But the media has been reporting it is as such, and, well…yeah.

The truth is that some spending will go up, like money for health care, clean energy and education. Other spending will be go down.

More on that from TPM:

The cuts would target “duplicative,” “ineffective” and “inefficient” spending withing government, the official said on a conference call with reporters.

“This is not a blunt, across-the-board freeze,” the official said, adding that some agencies will see spending increases while some will see spending cuts as the total remains constant.

Naturally, the knee jerk blogosphere is crying foul and Krugman is up in arms…

And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.”

I’m sorry…where exactly is he embracing the policies of McCain? Because his officials decided to use the word freeze to accurately talk about the spending that won’t go up?

Jeezus…I really hate my party sometimes.

But, to the point of the post…what does mean for you? It’s not complicated. More or your tax dollars will be spent on things that directly effect the economy and less will be spent on things that don’t. So, eventually, some of it might find its way back to your pocket because the economy picks up sooner rather than later.

More as it develops…

While the polls remain tight, there is evidence of an emerging groundswell of support for Coakley among Massachusetts Democrats.

UPDATE: Word is, the president is going “all-in” and will be campaigning for Coakley in Massachusetts on Sunday. We’ll soon see if he can still play a winning hand.

My answer? Ummm…no.

Well, at least with anything political. I’d trust him to borrow a garden hose, but that’s about it.

Because if even one tenth of what’s in the new book ‘Game Change’ is true about Edwards (and his wife) it would be enough. The book paints Edwards as a reckless opportunist, an ego monster, a guy who’s so blinded by the need for power that he would do nearly anything to get it.

For instance, after it was well established inside the Edwards camp that he was having an affair, it didn’t stop him. Not for a moment. In fact, he became even more brazen. So much so that he proposed the following deal to Obama after Iowa…

Yet Edwards had no intention of going quietly into any good night. He had a contingency plan. Two months earlier, he had asked Leo Hindery, a New York media investor who was one of his closest confidants, to convey an audacious proposal to Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader and a mentor to Obama: If Edwards won the caucuses, Obama would immediately drop out of the race and become his running mate; if Obama won, Edwards would do the converse. Wounding though a loss in Iowa would be to Hillary, she might be strong enough to bounce back. The only way to guarantee her elimination would be to take the extraordinary step of uniting against her.

Hindery had presented the proposal to Daschle, with whom he’d long been friends. Daschle brought it to the Obama campaign. The talks were tentative; nothing had been decided.

Now, with the results of Iowa in, Edwards determined it was time to make the deal. A little while before taking the stage to deliver his concession speech, he summoned Hindery to his hotel suite and issued a directive: “Get ahold of Tom.”

Hindery considered the timing miserable. Obama just frickin’ won Iowa, he thought. Give him a chance to savor it. But Edwards wanted to set the wheels in motion—immediately.

Edwards knew that the Rielle Hunter affair could explode at any moment, but his ego was willing to pull the entire Democratic party down with him. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s world class douchebaggery at its very douchbaggiest.

Thankfully Obama rejected the offer. After all, he was on a roll and Edwards didn’t bring a lot to the table. Also, it’s not like he added very much to Kerry’s ticket in 2004. The deal made no sense.

Oh, but that didn’t stop John…

Clinton’s astonishing comeback in New Hampshire put an end to Obama’s hopes of a quick finish to the nomination contest—and led Edwards to believe that there was still an opening to strike a bargain. On the eve of the South Carolina primary two weeks later, he again dispatched Hindery to make a revised offer, this time a trade for Edwards’s endorsement.

“John will settle for attorney general,” Hindery e-mailed Daschle.

Daschle shook his head. How desperate is this guy?

“Leo, this isn’t good for John,” Daschle replied. “This is ridiculous. It’s going to be ambassador to Zimbabwe next.”

When Obama heard about the suggested quid pro quo, he was incredulous. That’s crazy, he told Axelrod. If I were willing to make a deal like that, I shouldn’t be president!

Indeed.

By the way, the entire excerpt about Edwards is well worth the read over at New York Magazine. Because it’s not just about the the affair. Lots of behind the scenes revelations, including the difference between the public Elizabeth Edwards and the private one…who appears to be just as egomaniacal and power hungry as her husband.

The green energy revolution is in full swing and it’s supported by the White House.

From NY Times:

President Obama announced on Friday the award of $2.3 billion in tax credits for clean energy manufacturing — part of a broader push by his administration to stimulate job growth during the highest period of sustained unemployment in decades. [...]

In a statement, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said the tax credits would spur an additional $5 billion of private capital investment in the clean energy manufacturing sector.

The tax credits are worth up to 30 percent of the cost of each project, resulting in a total investment of about $7.7 billion. Funding for the tax credits will come from the $787 billion economic recovery package approved by Congress in early 2009.

And this will mean jobs…

Tax credits were awarded to 183 projects in 43 states, and will create more than 17,000 jobs in clean technology manufacturing, the White House said. The projects must be in service by 2014, but approximately 30 percent of them will be completed by 2010, the administration estimated.

No doubt that this is the way forward and more companies will be jumping on this bandwagon. The question is how fast wil they adopt this tech?

More as it develops…

On Meet The Press today, John Brennan (Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism) said the following when asked about Cheney’s comments:

“I’m very disappointed in the vice president’s comments,” Mr. Brennan said, describing himself as neither a Democrat nor a Republican. “Either the vice president is willfully mischaracterizing this president’s position both in terms of the language he uses and the actions he’s taken, or he’s ignorant of the facts.

“And in either case it doesn’t speak well of what the vice president is doing. The clear evidence is that this president has been very, very strong. In his inaugural address he said we’re at war with this international network of terrorists. We continue to say that we’re at war with al Qaeda.”

Mr. Brennan added that “partisan politics should be put aside when something as important to national security as the threat of terrorism . . . continues to haunt us. And we have to make sure that we stay focused on al Qaeda. And so that’s what I’m going to do in this job. I don’t care what Republicans or Democrats say out there. We need to continue to prosecute this war because al Qaeda the organization needs to be destroyed.”

Cheney doesn’t care what the facts are, he doesn’t care about the consequences of his words…he simply wants to harm Obama (and Dems) in the eyes of all conservatives and possibly even right leaning independent hawks. It’s shameful stuff, but there it is nonetheless.

My question: what will make Cheney stop?

In a story about a White House adviser being briefed about the underwear bomb technique in October comes this tidbit at the very end…

White House officials say President Obama has been keenly focused on the Qaeda threat from Yemen for months. As the NEWSWEEK story reports, the president has authorized a covert war in the country: when Yemeni jets bombed Qaeda targets on Dec. 17 and 24 (including a strike that tried, but failed, to kill al-Awlaki), the United States supplied intelligence, missiles, and military support. American spies and special forces are on the ground, assisting the Yemenis.

So we were actually helping hit al Qaeda targets in Yemen even before we were attacked?

A logical first question…could the underwear bomb be considered blow back? I think it’s safe to say that the answer is “no” based on some additional intel about Anwar al-Awlaki. Because, as many of you already know, he has become a key figure in recent months and this has apparently been in the works before we tried to get him…

Al-Awlaki, who had had contacts with two of the 9/11 hijackers, is the same imam who had been exchanging e-mails with the U.S. Army psychiatrist who later killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas. He is a now central figure in the Detroit investigation: prior to the Christmas incident, the National Security Agency had intercepted communications between a phone used by al-Awlaki and Abdulmutallab, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official tells NEWSWEEK. The official says that al-Awlaki may also have been involved in other intercepted communications indicating that Al Qaeda was planning to use an unidentified “Nigerian” in an attack over the holiday season. As NEWSWEEK reported on Friday, U.S. intelligence officials at a White House Situation Room briefing on Dec. 22 presented President Obama with a document on pre-holiday terror threats called “Key Homeland Threats.” But a senior administration official said there was no mention of Yemen in the written briefing document. The official would not say whether Yemen was discussed at the briefing.

Still, I think it’s clear at this point that the CIA/FBI were asleep at the wheel when it comes to the watch list situation. Because the administration was obviously addressing the threats posed in Yemen, but somehow Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was still able to make it onto that plane. Thankfully crisis was averted and we can learn from this mistake instead of mourning it.

More as it develops…

Ezra Klein did some digging and finds that the health care plans Obama proposed during the campaign season (pdf) closely mirrors what is currently on the table.

First, what he said then…

The Obama-Biden plan provides new affordable health insurance options by: (1) guaranteeing eligibility for all health insurance plans; (2) creating a National Health Insurance Exchange to help Americans and businesses purchase private health insurance; (3) providing new tax credits to families who can’t afford health insurance and to small businesses with a new Small Business Health Tax Credit; (4) requiring all large employers to contribute towards health coverage for their employees or towards the cost of the public plan; (5) requiring all children have health care coverage; (5) expanding eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs; and (6) allowing flexibility for state health reform plans.

So how does that compare to the current HRC bill on the table?

We don’t know what the employer mandate will look like once the House and the Senate merge their bills, and the exchanges look likelier to be run by states or regions than by the government (though there will also be a national exchange overseen by the Office of Personnel Management), but those are really the only differences. And it’s not even clear they’re differences.

Nor were there aggressive cost controls outlined in Obama’s white paper but abandoned amid the legislative process. The Senate bill is quite a bit stronger on controlling costs than the campaign paper, which makes no mention of prudential purchasing or the excise tax on high-cost health insurance or the Medicare Commission or specific delivery-system reforms. The paper promises investments in comparative effectiveness research and health information technology, and the Obama administration delivered on both in the stimulus.

Also, Rick Ungar rounds up the major changes to the new bill. Too much to post here, but there are a lot of similarities.

That’s why I have no idea why so many progressives are crying foul. But this is what we often hear from Obama’s detractors on the left. They don’t actually pay attention to what he said during the campaign. So this notion of “selling out” is usually misinformed and juvenile in its intellectually simplicity.

Folks, this legislation is a BIG step in the right direction and just because the Daily Kos crowd didn’t get a public option doesn’t mean this isn’t going to help people. Also, did progressives ignore the part where the moderate Dem Senators said they wouldn’t vote for a public option under any circumstances? But I suppose this is why Dems are so often snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Rick Ungar reminds…

Do you like Social Security? Did you know that, as initially passed, millions of people were left out of the program, particularly African-American citizens? As time has progressed we’ve fixed it, constantly improving the entitlement to treat everyone more fairly. Do you like Medicare? Did you know that, as initially passed, the coverage did not extend nearly as far nor as deep as it does today?

And to that broader point…these reforms will actually help a lot of people…

A handy chart from Erik Kain (via Jonathan Cohn)

It’s not perfect. No legislation is. So to my Democratic friends I say this…manage your expectations appropriately and stop whining.

Oh boy…here we go…

On the Rusty Humphries show on Thursday, Sarah Palin said the following…

Humphries: Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?

Palin: I think the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue ’cause I think there are enough members of the electorate who still want answers.

Humphries: Do you think it’s a fair question to be looking at?

Palin: I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past associations and past voting record — all of that is fair game. You know, I’ve got to tell you, too: I think our campaign, the McCain/Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area. We didn’t call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were and perhaps what their future plans were. And I don’t think that that was fair to voters to not have done our jobs as candidates and as a campaign to bring to light a lot of the things that now we’re seeing made manifest in the administration.

Humphries: I mean, truly, if your past is fair game and your kids are fair game, certainly Obama’s past should be. I mean, we want to treat men and women equally, right?

Palin: Hey, you know, that’s a great point, in that weird conspiracy-theory freaky thing that people talk about that Trig isn’t my real son. And a lot of people say, “Well you need to produce his birth certificate! You need to prove that he’s your kid!” Which we have done. But yeah, so maybe we could reverse that and use the same type thinking on them.

And, here’s the video. It’s 7min45sec in.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…I’ll never forgive McCain for turning Palin into a conservative folk hero.

Ugh.