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You can't go wrong doing the opposite of almost anything Sen. Saxby "Toy Soldier" Chambliss, the man who specializes in smearing real soldiers like Max Cleland, proposes. And Dianne Feinstein, the woman who's never met a war or black-box op she didn't like? Rep. Jim McGovern, on the other hand, is a rare voice of reason:

A roundtable discussion on Afghanistan strategy from This Week with George Stephanopoulous:

STEPHANOPOULOS:There's a report in Newsweek this morning -- it's actually on the cover of Newsweek, where the vice president is pointing out that this year we're going to spend about $65 billion in Afghanistan, about $2.25 billion in Pakistan. And according to the report in Newsweek, this is what the vice president went on to say in the National Security Council meeting: "By my calculations, that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question: Al Qaida is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?"

What's the answer?

FEINSTEIN: Well, this whole situation is a bit of a conundrum. I basically agree with Senator Chambliss in what he said. I think reconciliation -- the first thing has to be to stop the violence. It has to be security. The Taliban has to know it cannot take over all of Afghanistan because the next step in Pakistan. And that's very serious.

And the Pakistanis are only recently beginning to show, I think, their mettle. I think Swat was a big wake-up call for them. I listened to the Pakistani foreign minister yesterday, and they -- they seemed to have much more get-up-and-go, to really be -- be able to work with us in securing some of the FATA areas and other -- other areas. So I think that -- that's really critical.

This is not an easy situation. Nothing is straightforward. Our allies have 39,000 troops. That's a lot of people over there. They, I gather, will continue their involvement on that level. I think we ought to press for them to increase it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's not going to happen.

FEINSTEIN: I think obviously -- I know it's not, but financially, we ought to have more financing from the rest of the world community. We cannot be everyone's gatekeeper, everyone's policeman, and I think what's lacking in the world is some universality of putting together movements which can change the dynamics in difficult situations.

STEPHANOPOULOS: General Keane, what do we do now in Pakistan? Three major attacks in the last week. Yesterday, the most brazen attack yet, the insurgents take over their army headquarters. It would be like coming in to the Pentagon. And how do you see the interrelationship between putting more troops in Afghanistan and putting more pressure on the situation in -- in Pakistan?

KEANE: Yes, the elephant in the room with Pakistan -- and, also, to a certain degree, with Afghanistan -- has always been, their lack of understanding that we're going to stay in that region. They -- they're not sure we are.

And -- and given our track record in Afghanistan and also in Pakistan, there's reason for that skepticism. That's why Musharraf and this regime to this day has a hedging strategy with the Taliban. We have to convince them that we're there, that Pakistan's stability is in our national interest. And we also have to prove that, as well, by stabilizing Afghanistan.

I agree with the senators. If we ever lost in Afghanistan, that contributes directly to destabilizing Pakistan. So our actions in Afghanistan relate clearly to Pakistan.

KEANE: The other thing, to get specifically to your point, we're starting to make some headway with Kiyani and the generals in Pakistan, to pull forces away from the Indian front, so to speak. We have great difficulty convincing them that the major threat to the nation-state is, in fact, the ranging insurgency inside the nation- state and not the external threat of India. To us, it's self-evident, but to them it's not.

STEPHANOPOULOS: It's not.

KEANE: And that's the reality of it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We're just about out of time. I want to go once around the table with this question: What's the one thing you want President Obama to have in mind as he makes these decisions?

CHAMBLISS: Our troops and the stability of our troops and -- and the fact that we're giving our troops what they need. And I mean, from the top down, we've got to make a decision from the leadership standpoint whether we're giving more troops, but we've still got to make that commitment of making sure that we're enforcing and reinforcing them like we need to.

MCGOVERN: I would urge them to keep in mind that stabilizing Afghanistan should not mean and does not mean enlarging our military footprint there. I think it would be counterproductive.

I also think we're going bankrupt. We have wars in Iraq, in Afghanistan, hundreds of billions of dollars that are all going on to our credit card. Our kids and our grandkids are paying for this. You know, we need to be smarter about where we deploy our -- our resources. And I think enlarging our military footprint in Afghanistan would be a mistake.

We need to come up with a strategy that includes an exit strategy because it'll also put pressure on the government of Afghanistan to step up to the plate, which it has not done so far.

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To the Villagers, the left have to be the ones to always, always compromise. If a president dares to govern to the left, it's mutiny in the Beltway. I don't remember the media getting all too upset when Bush's wingnut base freaked out over immigration reform and killed it. Tom Tancredo was invited to go on every talk show there was and even ran for president on it.

Tweety goes on and on saying the Democrats never even had fifty votes so if they wanted to use reconciliation they never had the votes to do it anyway, so they are just total failures. Really, Tweety? I wonder where he got his information from. A 900 number maybe...the Psychic Network...

Matthews: Yeah, so a lot of this has been talk, so Vick you pick up on this. Given the fact that the Senate's not going to approve a public option because they can't get any where near sixty...

Right...

...and by the way I'm wondering were they ever going to get fifty.

Yeah. And all these guys are going through reconciliation-- we're going to ram it through-- they never had fifty! Okay, that's just my hunch and my belief.

Matthews: And I would argue that if you're going to be the party that believes in government, which the Democrats do believe more than Republicans do, they believe in positive government-- you have to be able to govern and prove that you're affective at governing. If you blow it, you can't say you believe in government because you've failed at government. Thank you very much. That's a little redundant.

WTF does this mean? If you believe in government, but you fail to pass a bill---does that mean you don't believe in government? Isn't that what governing is all about? Republicans just say they hate the government so they can get elected to work FOR the government. Conservatives make a lot of money being IN the government, you freaking buffoon.

This type of health-care reform has never been done before. Ever. And with idiots on my dial only talking bullshit it really makes it hard for working families to ever get a fair shake. The Villagers like Tweety, with their million-dollar houses, actually think they represent average working-class families, but his rant just shows a lack of understanding about the basic workings of how political parties operate in America.

What does it mean to Chris when Bush (at one time Chris Matthews got very warm and fuzzy looking at the codpiece) failed to privatize Social Security? Lucky for us he didn't get a chance to destroy that also. OK...NEXT!

(h/t Heather at Video Cafe for the video)

When in doubt, I turn to Chris Bowers. He didn't disappoint me - he had ready a step-by-step explanation of what needs to happen to get the public option in the bill sent to the Senate floor:

The bad news is that we learned today that the Senate Finance Committee will not report a public option in its version of health care reform. The good news is that we also learned today that there are 51 votes in favor of Schumer's public option. Here is how we get to 51:

1. Take the 47 "yes" votes from the Washington Independent public option scorecard.
2. Add Bill Nelson and Tom Carper, who both voted for Schumer's public option today;
3. Add Claire McCaskill (who voted for Kennedy's HELP public option back in May);
4. Add Joe Biden

Arguably, proving that there are 51 votes in favor of Schumer's public option is the bigger news. This is because everyone knew the public option would be defeated in committee, but claims that there were 51 votes in favor of a trigger-less public option were pretty much all based on a post I wrote two weeks ago.

Because Democrats are not going to pursue reconciliation for the public option (see why here), the next step in the process does not actually involve Kent Conrad's Budget Committee, as I had previously reported. Instead, a source on the Hill confirms to me that the Senate HELP and Senate Finance committees will be merged by an informal, behind the scenes process involving the four major players in the Senate: Tom Harkin (Chair of HELP), Max Baucus (Chair of Finance), Harry Reid (Majority Leader), and the White House. Together, these four will meet and decide what sort of bill to send to the Senate floor.

Continue reading »

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Good old Mitch McConnell. You can always count on him for the IOKIYAR argument. He seems to have a bit of a memory problem when it comes to the use of reconciliation. Of course we can count on John King not to ask him about it either. Sadly that is all too typical of the media.

From Media Matters--LA Times reported McConnell's criticism of reconciliation without noting his past support of process:

The Los Angeles Times reported Sen. Mitch McConnell's criticism of Democrats' potential use of the reconciliation process to pass health-care reform without noting that he repeatedly voted in favor of using reconciliation to pass the Bush tax cuts.

Transcript:

KING: Well, I want you to listen, not to the president, but I want you to listen to your own voice. You spoke here in Washington on Friday to a conservative gathering about the health care debate and you voiced quiet confidence about the Republican position. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCCONNELL: We're seeing it today in the debate over health care. Ordinary Americans speaking their minds, dismissed and ridiculed by people in power. The reason they are doing this is clear, because we're winning the argument.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Define "winning" for me. Is winning blocking the Democratic plans and ending this year without a health care reform bill reaching the president's desk?

MCCONNELL: No, winning is stopping and starting over and getting it right. I don't know anybody in my Republican conference in the Senate who's in favor of doing nothing on health care. We obviously have a cost problem and we have an access problem.

But there's a very big difference about whether or not it's appropriate to have a major rewrite of about one sixth of our economy in the process. My members just don't think that's the right way to go. We want to fix the health care system, but we don't want to do or have a $1 trillion over 10-year cut in Medicare, not to make Medicare more sustainable, but to start a new program for others.

We don't think it's a good idea to raise taxes on small businesses and on individuals in the heart of a recession. There are some serious differences about what ought to be done. KING: I saw your speech just before I went over to see the president. So I asked him about it. Listen to this exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Mitch McConnell told the conservative group, we're winning the health care debate. What do you think of that?

OBAMA: Well, you know, they were saying they were winning during the election too.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: A confident president there, saying he will get health care. He also said in an interview with Univision that's airing this morning that he would love Republican votes, but I don't count on them. I don't count on them. Mr. Leader, let me ask you, if they go forward and they do this with all Democrats, what does that do to the environment down the road? Some Republicans have said well then don't expect our cooperation on financial reform. Don't expect our cooperation on Afghanistan. Is this one issue health care, or could it poison the well?

MCCONNELL: Look, it's not about winning or losing, it's not about the president, it's about American health care and getting it right. And if they try to use this legislative loophole called reconciliation, what they'll be doing, in effect, is jamming through a proposal to rewrite the economy with about 24 hours of debate.

Basically, a legislative loophole to do a massive rewrite of one sixth of our economy. I think that that will produce a very, very severe reaction among the American people, who are already, according to the Gallup poll, not in favor of the direction we're taking on this very important issue.

KING: Help me understand if there's a gap between the audience in the sense that you say here, it's not about winning or losing, but you were very clear to that conservative group, we're winning the argument.

MCCONNELL: Well, by winning, the definition of winning is to stop and start over and do it right.

Dr. Dean overcomes his natural shyness to share his thoughts on the Baucus bill and lobbies for using reconciliation to pass it:

Howard Dean, former Democratic National Committee chairman, minced no words about Sen. Max Baucus's health-care proposal, unveiled to the public this morning. "The Baucus bill is the worst piece of healthcare legislation I've seen in 30 years," Dean said last night at a healthcare town hall and book signing in Washington. "In fact, it's a $60 billion giveaway to the health insurance industry every year," he said. "It was written by healthcare lobbyists, so that's not a surprise. It's an outrage."

The Baucus bill leaves out some of the president's goals for healthcare reform, such as the controversial public option. While more palatable to Senate moderates, the Baucus proposal also drew criticism from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia, who said yesterday he would not vote for it in its current form.

"I'm glad Senator Rockefeller is not going to vote for it. I wouldn't vote for it at all under any circumstances," Dean added.

Instead, Dean said Senate Democrats should and would end up using the reconciliation process to pass a plan with the public option. "It can be done, and that's how it will be done," Dean said, pointing out that a majority of Senate Democrats still support a more robust bill.

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From Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asks Sen. Lamar Alexander about this statement he made to the Wall Street Journal:

"They either don't know how to operate in a bipartisan way or don't want to operate in a bipartisan way," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.). He warned that if Democrats use a parliamentary tactic called reconciliation to push through a bill by a majority vote in the Senate, "there'll be a minor revolution in this country."

Democratic leaders are leaving open the option of using reconciliation for parts of the bill. But with the political price for that tactic potentially high, they are hoping to avoid it.

As Media Matters reports Wallace and the Wall Street Journal are ignoring GOP's reconciliation double standard.

The Journal did not note that, during the Bush administration, Alexander voted to use the reconciliation process to pass tax cuts and voted against amendments that would have stripped reconciliation language from budget resolutions.

Howard Dean points this out during the segment but Chris Wallace changed the subject after he did rather than address it.

WALLACE: Senator Alexander, I want to ask you about something the president almost certainly won't talk about in his speech on Wednesday night, and that is the idea that they -- that Democrats may decide to just ignore the Republicans and push health care reform through the Senate through a parliamentary device associated with the budget called reconciliation, which means they won't need 60 votes to prevent a filibuster. They'll only need 51 votes.

You have said, and I quote, "That would wreck the Democratic Party and create a," quote, "'minor revolution in this country.'" Why?

ALEXANDER: Well, for two reasons. One, it would create a bad health care bill because under the provisions in the rules, the parliamentarian would write the bill, so all the senators would be voting on are tax increases or Medicare cuts, and you wouldn't get to put in the bill things like pre-existing conditions or buying insurance across party lines. So it would be a bad bill.

Second, it would be thumbing your nose at the American people who have been trying to say to Washington for the last several months, "Slow down. I mean, too many Washington takeovers, too much debt. You're meddling with my health care." Let's go step by step and do some things to reduce costs.

So thumbing their nose at the American people by ramming through a partisan bill would be the same thing as going to war without asking Congress' permission. You might technically be able to do it, but you'd pay a terrible price in the next election.

DEAN: See, actually, Chris, I disagree with that. I think this has been used 23 times before, including by George Bush's really controversial tax cuts when he first got in. And I don't think the American people care about the process. I think they care about the result.

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Someone mentioned today that Rep. Anthony Weiner was Jon Stewart's college roommate. Imagine what that duo was like. This guy is smart, passionate and willing to go the extra mile on healthcare reform. I'm glad he's doing what he does.

Now watch how upset Tweety gets when Weiner says he'd use reconciliation to ram the healthcare bill through with 51 votes. He seems to take it as a personal affront:

MATTHEWS: But you never... You would be willing to blow up the Senate rules and basically push it through that.

WEINER: What do you mean, blow up the Senate rules? Look, there's a reason that there's a Democratic House, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic presidency. That middle bloc of Americans want us to get this done.

MATTHEWS: What do you think the Republican reaction would be if you ignored the rules and pushed through a bill?

WEINER: Honestly, waiting for a Republican senator to be pleased with this process is something I'm not prepared to do.

MATTHEWS: No, what would they do? No. When war begins... Look, we've been through goddamned wars in this country, they're easy to start, it's tough to end them. How do you stop a war that starts in the United States Senate right now because you jammed through a bill with less than 60 votes?

WEINER: What do you mean, jammmed, started a war?

MATTHEWS: What are the 40 Republicans going to do? What are they gonna do?

WEINER: Look, outside of this town, the American people really don't care about whether Grassley voted for it or not.

MATTHEWS: Will the government still function if you try to jam this through with 51 votes?

WEINER: I think it will.

MATTHEWS: You think Republicans will put up with it.

Now, you notice anything there? Tweety thinks the Republicans aren't at war with the Democrats! How much worse does he think it's going to get? Arlen Specter told us at Netroots Nation that the Republican caucus decided - before the inauguration - that they wouldn't support any stimulus bill at all in order to break Obama.

During the Bush era, the Republicans wouldn't even let the Democrats sit in on their committee meetings and used every procedural trick in the book to shove legislation through.

Don't you think it's about time the Democrats stopped playing "Mother, May I?"

Howard Dean on Morning Joe this morning:

"The president knows very well that you aren't really going to have health care reform without a public option. But he also knows he has to get this out of the Senate," Dean said on "Morning Joe." "He's got a very important member of the Finance Committee, Kent Conrad, who doesn't want to vote for this bill if it's got a public option in it. And he knows he's not going to get any Republican votes, of any kind. So at the end of this day, this bill is going to be written by Democrats. It's got to get out of the Senate. And you only need a few Democrats to take out the public option."

He added that with Republicans unlikely to support any version of health care legislation, he had no doubt that the final reform bill would be passed with the help of reconciliation, which means Democrats need only to muster 50 votes in the Senate rather than the usual 60.

Dean told RCP earlier this year that a health care reform bill without a strong public option was pointless. "If it doesn't, all we have is the same old stuff, and I don't think it's worth spending $634 billion on what we've already got," he said.

Yet another from the over-stuffed cabinet of Iraq invasion and occupation "nobody could have anticipated" files. And another sign that all is not the rosy victory that the right would wish us to believe it is. (h/t Kat)

Marine Maj. Gen. John F. Kelly told The Associated Press that his greatest "mission failure" was his inability to bring together the government in Baghdad and the Sunnis in Anbar to take advantage of the steep decline in violence.

"What the Iraqi government in Baghdad should have done is said Anbar is getting peaceful, let's commit," Kelly told the AP in a telephone interview from his headquarters southwest of Baghdad, as he begins to make preparations to hand over command of 23,000 Marines next month to Maj. Gen. Richard T. Tyron.

"It drives me to distraction," he said. "I would count it as a mission failure."

Reconciliation? Meh, not so much. The many faction feuds and sectarian rivalries which helped make Iraq so bloody are still there, just tamped down for a while - hopefully long enough for the US to declare victory and (pretend to) withdraw. I'm mostly OK with that, since it's the Iraqi people's "pottery barn" and it should always have been their perogative to break it more or mend it as they see fit. I just wish the US government, politicians, militrary and mainstream media would be honest about it.

By the time it flares up again, US leaders appear to be hoping, those troops left in Iraq will be rebranded as trainers and securely inside fortified bases where they can get on with their original primary mission, as conceived by neo-whatevers from left and right, of being the US dog in the Gulf manger.

And I fully expect the Obama administration's strategy for Afghanistan to be doing exactly the same thing there.