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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

NEWS AND COMMENT

"Progressive bloggers were in an uproar Sunday night after a White House "adviser," speaking on condition of anonymity, urged them to 'take off their pajamas and get serious about politics.'

Hey, how about those bloggers that don't wear pajamas.

On the substance, this quote was in the context of the speech about gay rights. It is a bit shameful that President Obama has not moved more quickly on the foolish don't ask don't tell policy. Every day the armed forces are needlessly losing valuable people and people are being hurt by losing their opportunity to serve.

We progressive, or left-wing, bloggers are serious about politics. This blog has discussed many issues and can summarize some views.

I wholeheartedly support Obama and am proud and grateful that he is our president in these difficult times and am glad that he received that Nobel prize. He may possibly be proved right but I have believed that he has been wrong to defer so much to Congress. He should have had his highly capable staff lay out proposals for the stimulus and for health care reform and then pushed hard for enactment. The effort to emphasize bipartisanship was misguided.

On health care, it is unfortunate that it is mostly limited to insurance reform and not reform of the provision of goods and services. If you believe that health care is the right of every citizen, the approach should be how best to provide it and not how to have insurance to pay for it.

Nevertheless, we are where we are and I have been waiting for Obama to apply strong pressure on Democrats that are not supporting his administration. The least that should happen is that every Democratic Senator should vote for cloture, even though some may vote against the final bill. Those that might not cooperate in the cloture vote should be threatened with loss of chairmanships, committee assignments, etc.

On Afghanistan, I think that President Obama will decide on some type of middle ground, which I support. We cannot build this nation, nor can we withdraw from the region. We have to prevent return ao a terrorist base and we have to help Pakistan. So all of the choices are of mixed appeal and the final one is not likely to be wholly right.

So these are serious issues and serious politics.

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