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First question, why is this man on my television screen instead of sitting in a jail cell somewhere? Karl Rove first claims that the stimulus package didn't work even though as Pat Garofalo over at the Think Progress' The Wonk Room noted:

...the Congressional Budget Office found that it has created or saved 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs, with plenty of punch still to come.

Rove is then asked by Greta Van Susteren if the Bush administration is responsible at all for the shape the economy is in. Rove tries to blame the economy melting down on Fannie and Freddie and on Chris Dodd and Barney Frank--it's all their fault! This is the same crap Rove was peddling in his Wall Street Journal column back in January. Barry Ritholtz does a nice job of debunking Rove's nonsense here--Karl Rove’s Factually Challenged Housing Revisionism.

VAN SUSTEREN: Here's the problem with what you suggest. I mean, that may be the suggestion for the economy, and I don't mean to suggest that decisions are made on politics. But to be sort of practical and realistic, the fact that there will be an election next November, if they cut the corporate tax, as you say, for big corporations, accelerate depreciation for small businesses, the first thing I would do as an opponent is saying, Well, he finally came around to the Republican thinking. And it took him a year or so or a year behind the ball on this in terms of the role of the recession. Plus, we've spent all this money in the stimulus package and we've got ourselves now in a huge spending situation. So you know, that solution may help the economy, but doesn't that make him more vulnerable politically?

ROVE: Well, it does say that he changes course. But I mean, look, it's not working. We were told that if we did nothing, unemployment would go to 8 percent. We did exactly what the president wanted, his $787 billion stimulus bill, and unemployment has gone to 10 percent. We've gone from a situation -- when he came into office, there were 142.1 million Americans working. Today there are 138.5 million Americans working. We did what he said and it has not gotten appreciably better.

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Sherrod Brown explains to David Shuster why he signed decided to co-sponsor Tom Coburn and David Vitter's amendment which would require members of Congress to enroll in whatever version of the public option ends up being passed in the health care bill.

Brown: Yeah, you often find out about amendments going on on the Senate floor and if my staff and I like one of the amendments we'll call an office and say, Republican or Democrat, I'd like to co-sponsor. We do that as a matter of course it happens across party lines all the time, hundreds of times a day. We did that with Sen. Coburn, nine times we said we wanted to co-sponsor--usually it takes once and they say yes--I've always accepted that. So has everybody I know in the Senate. Nine times we asked to co-sponsor and their office either just said we'll get back to you or ignored our calls and our emails because it was all a sham.

They don't, they clearly don't like the public option. They were making fun of it. Their whole game is to delay and deceive and to play political games. And when they offer an amendment saying sign up for the public option to force--tell members of Congress they have to join the public option--I think I should. I think we all should but they don't evenn like it themselves. And so it's just a little partisan game they're playing, and this is too serious for them to play those kind of games.

From Salon's War Room--Coburn, Vitter plan to ridicule public option backfires:

Now, as the Senate's debate over its version of reform legislation kicks into gear, two Republicans -- Sens. Tom Coburn and David Vitter -- have picked up that theme and are running with it. The two authored an amendment they want attached to the bill; it would require members of Congress to enroll in whatever version of the public option the final legislation creates, if it includes one.

Both Coburn and Vitter are vehement opponents of the public option, and they're hoping to prove themselves right by showing that no senator who's in his or her right mind would want their healthcare covered by it. They've gotten a surprise, though: Genuine support for their amendment from someone on the other side of the aisle -- and a proponent of the public option, at that -- Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

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Senators Franken, Dodd, and Mikulski also joined Sen. Brown in co-sponsoring the amendment. Here's Sen. Franken weighing in on the Senate floor.

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From Democracy Now, Robert Sheer weighs in on how difficult it is to cover Wall Street during a discussion about Wall Street's massive profits and bonuses while the economy for most Americans continues to deteriorate. The one bright spot here is that tonight the House Financial Services Committee approved Ron Paul and Alan Grayson's amendment to audit the Fed.

Robert Sheer's latest article at Truthdig is Who Are You and What Have You Done With the Community Organizer We Elected President?

AMY GOODMAN: What about this new government report that’s found Goldman Sachs could have suffered dramatic losses if the federal government hadn’t intervened to bail out AIG, American International Group, the report by the special inspector general for the government bailout program raising doubts about Goldman’s previous claims that it was hedged against potential AIG losses?

ROBERT SCHEER: Yes, well, first of all, this has been—

AMY GOODMAN: What does all that mean?

ROBERT SCHEER: This is the big lie from Goldman, is that, you know, we didn’t—look, look what happened. Lehman was Goldman’s competitor, was allowed to go belly up, OK? The Secretary of the Treasury was a former head of Goldman Sachs. I don’t want to get into conspiracy theories here, but Robert Rubin was a head of Goldman Sachs, OK? And Paulson was a head of Goldman Sachs. They decide not to—you know, and Rubin was involved in these discussions, Lawrence Summers, Paulson and so forth. Timothy Geithner, who is our Secretary of Treasury, was head of the New York Fed for five years while all this was going on. So they say, “Let Lehman go, you know, down the tubes,” which is great for Goldman Sachs, because now you have basically two investment houses that are getting all the business. “But on the other hand, we’ll put all this money into AIG,” which was backing these junkie derivatives, these mysterious packages, “and it will be a pass through. People won’t notice, because we’re giving it to AIG.” $180 billion of our taxpayer money, we taxpayers get nothing in return, AIG is still in the toilet, but Goldman got its money. You know, it got upwards of $20 billion, that they don’t have to pay back. They make a big thing about “We’re going to pay back some of the TARP funds” and everything. And by the way, they were allowed to become a bank. No hearings, no judicial proceedings and so forth. You know, the very thing Lehman was asking for—“Let us become a bank so we can get some of this TARP funds and everything”—that was granted to Goldman Sachs.

You know, Ron Paul, by the way, who has been trying to go after the Fed, and he has an accountability piece of legislation that the Democrats have gutted, and said, “Let’s have an audit of the Fed. Let’s find out what does the Federal Reserve do. What are the deals they made? Where did the money go?” We don’t have that. And the inspector general of the Treasury Department, the inspector general, you know, Elizabeth Warren, all of these people have pointed—from the Congressional Oversight Panel—all of these people point out, “We don’t have the facts. We don’t know where the trillions are going.” We know trillions have been committed. We know all of these huge pools—Bank of America’s $300 billion of toxic assets have been backed up. But there’s no accountability.

I have covered the CIA, I’ve covered national security, and I’ve covered banking. I did it for the LA Times in one way or another for thirty years, OK? It is more difficult to cover Wall Street, in terms of secrecy and classification and their protection, than it is to cover the CIA and the Pentagon. That much I’ll tell you. You know, you get greater claim on the truth covering the Pentagon, as I did in my last book, than I’m having in my current book called The Great American Stick-Up that Nation Books is publishing. And, you know, these people go, “No, it’s proprietary. It’s our business. It has nothing to do with you.” And that goes for the Fed, which is supposed to be a government agency.

And so, for Chris Dodd to say, “No, we have to take power away from the Fed. We have to create a new independent agency to supervise these too big to fail institutions to make sure that they don’t go belly up and we taxpayers pay for them again,” he’s absolutely right. And people watching this, if there’s one thing they should demand from the Obama administration, is get behind the Dodd bill on taking power from the Fed and creating a new publicly accountable agency. That’s absolutely critical. Without that, we’re not going to get out of this mess, and we’re not going to prevent a future one.

From Sen. Chris Dodd--Republicans Block Dodd’s Effort to Immediately Stop Credit Card Rate Hikes:

Senate Republicans blocked Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodds (D-CT) attempt to pass legislation to stop credit card interest rate hikes.

Dodd went to the Senate floor to ask for consent for the Senate to take up and pass his Credit Card Rate Freeze Act, which would prevent credit card companies from hiking interest rates, fees and finance charges on customers existing balances until Credit CARD Act protections take effect in February. Regrettably, Republican Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) objected to Dodds request, blocking the bill from Senate passage.

Consumers obviously have a responsibility to spend within our means and to pay what we owe. We bear that responsibility. But the credit card industry as well has a responsibility to deal with their customers honorably. There is nothing honorable about whats happened with these significant rate increases and fees. Most importantly, they dont have a right to rip off American families, especially when the Congress has already gone on record opposing the very actions they're engaging in, Dodd said on the Senate floor.

Happy Holidays from the GOP.

John Amato:

This is outrageous. The Republicans are actually blocking freezes on credit card rate hikes as the holidays approach us? What would Santa say? Where's the outrage from the Democrats and the Villagers? Will David Broder write a juicy article showing his disdain for the treatment of the American people by republicans? I mean he's the ultimate bipartisan scold. I bet if you asked the teabaggers waiting to see Sarah Palin at a book signing, they would say that it's un-American and Socialist to stop credit card companies from raising their rates. "That's their right as Americans if you support freedom and the Constitution." Maybe Palin will write something about it on her Facebook page for the media to lap up. You know, the Democrats are trying to use death panels on the poor credit card companies in a down economy. That's can't be good, right Katie?

Digby writes:

These people are sticking up for credit card companies who are gouging their customers during the holidays in the middle of a recession! What do they have to do to provoke some outrage from the Democrats, gun down Tiny Tim? (Of course, the Republicans would simply say they were defending their constitutional right to bear arms.)

Honestly, this should provoke a Democratic outcry of epic proportions because it's good policy and it's good politics. They missed the boat by failing to draw attention to the fact that the Republicans blocked the unemployment insurance extension for over a month but this issue is hitting both the employed and the unemployed, all across the country.

Rob Simmons is former congressman from Connecticut now campaigning to win the Republican nomination to take on Senator Chris Dodd next year. A moderate, Simmons was one of the last Republicans in the House of Representatives before New England had the good sense to rid themselves entirely of them.

As we've seen earlier this year with Rob Simmons championing the efforts of radicals in the Tea Party movement, Simmons seems to be having no qualms at all about moving hard right to appease these extremist elements which will make up a large portion of the Republican primary voters, their "base". In some cases he's even abandoned positions he had voted in favor of while in congress. As he says on the Simmons' campaign blog:

I was wrong about two issues I supported in Congress – the Employee Free Choice Act (also known as “card check”) and “cap and trade.” After hearing more from the people who would be most affected by these bills, I became convinced they would cause more harm than good and I would oppose them in the Senate.

I learned of the enormous burden these two proposals would impose on job producers in the form of dramatically higher operating costs, and how those costs would be passed in turn onto workers and consumers. The net result will be an even weaker economy and fewer jobs.

The Hartford Courant noted this phenomenon in a piece sarcastically titled "A change of heart or a sharp turn to the right by Rob Simmons?"

Rob Simmons has long burnished his reputation as a moderate Republican in the classic New England mode: conservative on fiscal matters, liberal on social issues. He supports abortion rights, earned top grades from a national gay rights group and sits on the honorary board of Republicans for Environmental Protection.

He's also been a supporter of two bills long championed by liberals, union members and environmentalists.

The first is the Employee Free Choice Act, commonly known as "card check,'' which would permit workers to form a union if a majority sign pro-union cards, instead of voting by secret ballot. The second is a climate change bill known in political shorthand as Cap and Trade.

Simmons backed both measures when he served in Congress. But now, as a candidate for U.S. Senate, he has changed his mind.

At least one of his Republican opponents has noticed and is derisively calling out Simmons on his bullshit 'change of heart'.

"While Rob Simmons can spin this all he wants, he is in a primary battle and is desperate to get the support of real, principled Republicans,'' Tiffany Romero Grossman, spokeswoman for Sam Caligiuri, said in an email this morning. Both Caligiuri and Simmons are seeking the Republican nomination to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd.

"Everyone has the right to change their mind on where they stand - but doing so years later, once confronted with a competitive primary, simply stinks of political pandering,'' Grossman said in the email.

The Connecticut Democratic party put out yesterday one of the more salacious and offensive political ads I've ever seen. They did so by simply taking some WWE clips from YouTube and mixed that with a voice-over from former WWE CEO Linda McMahon, now running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Connecticut.

Within an hour of this web ad going up YouTube removed the clips in question. The fact remains though that few political candidates usually want their names associated with simulated rape, public sex acts, and necrophilia.

From a press release put out by CT Dems Colleen Flanagan:

As WWE Chief Operating Officer, Linda McMahon presided over programming that showed simulated rape, public sex and necrophilia, and now she wants to be our U.S. Senator? People across this state, not to mention the millions of women who are the victims of sexual violence every year, would be horrified and embarrassed to know that the person who seeks to represent them condones this kind of behavior. That kind of programming has no place in our society, and Linda McMahon has no place in the U.S. Senate.

This is certainly good news. I don't know if it has a snowball's chance in hell of passing, but you never know:

Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Russ Feingold (D-WI), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) announced today that they will introduce the Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act, which eliminates retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that allegedly participated in President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program.

“I believe we best defend America when we also defend its founding principles,” said Dodd. “We make our nation safer when we eliminate the false choice between liberty and security. But by granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies who may have participated in warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, the Congress violated the protection of our citizen’s privacy and due process right and we must not allow that to stand.”

Senator Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said, “Last year, I opposed legislation that stripped Americans of their right to seek accountability for the Bush administration’s decision to illegally wiretap American citizens without a warrant. Today, I am pleased to join Senator Dodd to introduce the Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act. We can strengthen national security while protecting Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. Restoring Americans’ access to the courts is the first step toward bringing some measure of accountability for the Bush-Cheney administration’s decision to conduct warrantless surveillance in violation of our laws.”

“Granting retroactive immunity to companies that went along with the illegal warrantless wiretapping program was unjustified and undermined the rule of law,” Feingold said. “Congress should not have short-circuited the courts’ constitutional role in assessing the legality of the program. This bill is about ensuring that the law is followed and providing accountability for the American people.”

Linda McMahon has begun airing tv ads in Connecticut in her quest to secure the Republican nomination and take on Chris Dodd for the U.S. Senate next November. When she recently stepped down as the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) it was known her approach would be a little different. And from not bothering to vote, to publicly supporting Democrats from time to time, not to mention her own wrestling antics, her entering an already crowded Republican field guarantees Connecticut politics won't be boring.

I haven't seen Michael Moore's new movie, but Howie Klein has, and while he praises it, he excoriates Moore for dredging up the discredited Chris Dodd Countrywide story, which has been picked over to death, with nobody finding any impropriety.

First, everyone who has seriously looked at the claims of a sweetheart deal has dismissed them: the Senate Ethics Committee; an independent compliance firm; the (not exactly Dodd-loving) Hartford Courant. And not once, but twice.

This is not the definition of the word "is." The man got a mortgage. He was told that he would get enhanced customer service, and assumed it was because of his good credit score. He got the exact same mortgage rate that anyone else buying a mortgage at the time would have gotten. He didn't know the CEO of Countrywide, nor anything about a Friends of the CEO program [...]

Why does this feel like, in the interest of being able to sit on Leno and say, "I went after Democrats too!," Moore passed up the real story here? It would have been really powerful if he made the connection between the bullshit allegations about Dodd and the banking industry desperately wanting to put the breaks on important housing and foreclosure legislation that Dodd was championing in the Senate at that very moment. Well, mission accomplished assholes, excuse me, the Sheriff is here to foreclose on my house (is it possible its the same one from Roger and Me? Oh, the irony) [...]

All in all, still love Moore, still want everyone to see the movie, but kind of wish he hadn't decided to jump ugly with one of the most progressive Senators in the Senate -- the guy responsible for the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Credit CARD Act, who voted for cramdown, worked to make that disaster of a bankruptcy bill better, then voted against it twice, voted for a 15% cap on interest rates, and is co-sponsoring another cap that is likely to come up again, is a leader on direct-student-loan reform, is in favor of a consumer financial protection agency and stripping the fed of some of its regulatory authority, and just last week introduced legislation to reign in the diabolical overdraft fee practice-- all stuff, if you are keeping score, which Moore clearly wasn't, that banks would rather paint a hammer and sickle on their walls than accept! I wish Moore hadn't got played like a three dollar harmonica. He should donate the 10 grand to Dodd's campaign.

It appears that the premise of Moore's film is that banking interests have taken over the government and prevented any meaningful regulation on the industry. Dodd's case can be an example of that, but not in the way Moore thinks. The banking lobby has consistently kneecapped him, with old charges that have a Whitewater quality to them, with all the same innuendo and the same lack of factual detail, right at the moments when Dodd was trying to get things passed to crack down on them. Dodd could have given away the Banking Committee Chair to completely-in-the-pocket Tim Johnson, but he didn't. And in the last few days, Dodd has introduced the aforementioned legislation to end the practice of banks charging overdraft fees on debit cards automatically, with 1000% interest, instead of giving customers the opportunity to have a transaction denied; introduced a plan for a single bank regulator that is at odds with the Obama Adminstration and his House counterpart Barney Frank, as well as being hated by the banking industry; and has taken the lead on weakening the power of the Fed, which is deeply desirable. In other words, despite the many slings and arrows, Dodd is basically doing the job Michael Moore would expect someone in his position to do, and doing it with gusto. He should be commended and not smeared.

We're going to have to watch this corporatist tool like a hawk. Not as if we didn't have to watch Dodd, mind you, but still:

If Senator Tim Johnson ascends to the chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee, the biggest winners will be Wall Street, pay-day lenders and credit card companies. The biggest losers: widows and orphans.

No, really.

In late 2006, the South Dakotan spoke out against an effort by his fellow Democrats to cap the interest rates that members of the military pay for short-term loans. "This time it's military. Who's to say it isn't going to be widows and orphans or other sympathetic groups in the future?" he griped in an interview with the American Banker.

That's the man who's next in line to lead the Banking Committee if the current chair, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), as expected, vacates the position to take the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chair left empty by the death of Ted Kennedy.

Meanwhile, Democrats are hoping to push through the most sweeping financial regulations in a generation, including the creation of a government panel that would regulate financial products with an eye toward consumer protection. All of that will have to go through the Banking Committee.

Consumer advocates and backers of a regulation overhaul are deeply concerned that handing the committee to Johnson would be a death sentence for reform.

"He's got a long track record of supporting small predatory loan companies, pay-day loan companies," said one longtime consumer advocate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he would have to work with Johnson as banking chair.

In 2003 and again in 2005, Johnson intervened with federal regulators on behalf of pay-day lenders, sending a letter to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,

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The Hill:

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said on Sunday that Vicki Kennedy should be considered to replace her late husband in the Senate.

Hatch, one of Kennedy's closest friends in the Senate, said on CNN's State of the Union that Vicki Kennedy is well-qualified to serve, even if only until a January special election to fill the rest of the term.

"I think Vicki ought to be considered. She's a very brilliant lawyer. She's a very solid individual. She certainly made a difference in Ted's life, let me tell you. And I have nothing but great respect for her," Hatch said on CNN.

Another close friend of Kennedy, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), acknowledged that Vicki Kennedy has not expressed much interest in filling in for her husband, but said he would support her next step.

"Whatever Vicki wants to do, I'm in her corner," Dodd said on State of the Union. "She knows that. And she's expressed to me her own sort of reluctance to [fill in for Kennedy], but she could change her mind. If she did, I'm for it. I think she'd be great."

"She brings talent and ability to it, and to fill that spot I think is something the people of Massachusetts would welcome. We could certainly use her in the Senate," Dodd said. "But I leave that up to her. She's got a lot on her mind right now, and frankly, I'll leave it up to her decision-making process."

Massachusetts lawmakers, spurred by a letter from Kennedy himself, have begun discussing new legislation that would allow Gov. Deval Patrick (D) to appoint a temporary replacement to serve until an election. State law passed when Gov. Mitt Romney (R) was in office took the power to appoint a replacement away from the Republican when Sen. John Kerry (D) appeared in strong position to win the presidency.

Kennedy was reportedly worried that the Democrats would fail in their health care reform push without that 60th vote and wanted to make sure that Patrick could appoint someone before that January special election. You gotta love that about Teddy, optimistic 'til the end that the Dems would find their spines.

Meanwhile, BoldProgressives has started the Honor Senator Kennedy petition:

PETITION TO THE SENATE: "Ted Kennedy was a courageous champion for health care reform his entire life. In his honor, name the reform bill that passed Kennedy's health committee 'The Kennedy Bill' -- then pass it, and nothing less, through the Senate."

Sign it, it's getting passed on to the Senate today as they come back from recess.

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Republican efforts to roadblock meaningful health care reform take on the fantastic and bizarre at times, and this example of Theatre of the Absurd is no exception. MyLeftNutmeg, a Connecticut blog, puts their silly manoeuvres into perspective:

This is a revealing moment from Monday's markup of the health care bill in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee that illustrates the level of procedural obstruction Senate Republicans are willing to rise to in order to impede its progress and in the hopes of killing its momentum.

At the opening of Monday's hearing, Sen. Dodd asked Sen. Enzi (R-WY), the ranking Republican on the committee, if he would agree to accept by unanimous consent a total of 64 Republican amendments. After a whisper from an aide, Enzi, a little perplexed and not a little embarrassed, refused to allow the 64 Republican amendments to be accepted, lowering his voice to mumble, "I think some of our members want votes on some of those." Dodd's visible exasperation and disbelief is priceless.

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I feel like I'm turning into Jerry Seinfeld: Have you ever noticed how only Democratic deficits are a problem? Republicans are sticking to their Frank Luntz-authored talking points on health care (as Chris Dodd points out about Lindsey Graham on This Week this morning) and pulling their beards, speaking ponderously of the horrors of spending money to save money:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Republicans seem to be digging in, Senator Graham, on a couple of big issues. On the issues of taxes to pay for health care, on the issue of a public health insurance plan. But let me show you this New York Times poll that's just out this morning showing 72 percent, 72 percent of the public supports a government health insurance plan and 57 percent of the public is willing to pay more taxes for universal health care. They seem to be ready for the kind of change that Republicans are fighting.

GRAHAM: Well, it's just not Republicans, George. The reason you're not going to have a government run health care pass the Senate is because it would be devastating for this country. The last thing in the world I think Democrats and Republicans are going to do at the end of the day is create a government run health care system where you've got a bureaucrat standing in between the patient and the doctor. We've tried this model -- people have tried this model in other countries. The first thing that happens -- you have to wait for your care. And in socialized health care models, people have to wait longer to get care and the government begins to cut back on what's available because of the cost explosion.

Lindsey, you silly thing! I know you're only saying what Frank told you to say, but since you've apparently had government-run health care most of your adult life (in the military and in public office), you probably don't know: We already have bureaucrats standing between us and our doctor. We already wait for care, and it's already rationed. That's why these talking points from Frank aren't working - they're not our reality.

The CBO estimates were a death blow to a government run health care plan. The finance committee has abandoned that. We do need to deal with inflation in health care, private and public inflation, but we're not going to go down to the government owning health care road in America and I think that's the story of this week. There's been a bipartisan rejection of that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, you call it a death blow. Let me just press that point. Are you saying now that Republicans just as we saw in the stimulus where I think only three Republicans voted for the president's stimulus package -- if there's a government run health insurance plan, are Republicans going to vote on that against this package?

GRAHAM: I don't think it's just going to be Republicans. You've got Senator Conrad talking about a co-op. You've got other Democrats running away from the government-run health care where the bureaucrat stands between the doctor and the patient. I think this idea is unnerving to the members of the Senate and will be to the public when they understand what it means, that you'll wait longer to get treated and you'll get health care the government decides for you, not that of your doctor. So yes, I think this idea needs to go away and replace it with something maybe like Kent Conrad's proposal.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Now Senator Dodd, I think that Senator Graham talked about the public there. We just saw that hole. But his read of the Senate seems pretty accurate right now. You have not only Republicans but several of your Democratic colleagues, including the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Baucus saying the public option isn't going to fly in their committee. They want something bipartisan and that can't include this public health insurance option.

DODD: Well, again, I'm delighted to hear Lindsey talk about the possibility of having something like a co-op and non-profits. I happen to support a public option, I don't think you can bring down costs without it. If there isn't some competition out there to drive down the overall cost -- costs have gone up 86 percent since '96, 1996. Forty-five percent might stay the loan, increase in health care cost. The American average working family can't afford this. A family of four now. it's $12,000. We're being told in 20 years, it could be half the gross income of a family spent on health care premiums. That is just unacceptable.

Now how we get those costs down -- you use a lot of these buzz words. No one I know is for socialized medicine. We're going to develop a U.S. plan, not a Canadian or a U.K. plan, one that meets our needs in our country. It's designed for Americans, by Americans, that isn't socialized medicine. But you've got to drive down these costs. We need quality, accessible health care in bringing down those costs are absolutely critical, or we're going to bankrupt the country. It's unsustainable. That's why we're at the table.

Now, let me make that even clearer: Dodd's right when he says the present situation is unsustainable. Borrowing money to fix this is rational, the same way borrowing to fix a major structural problem with your house is. As economist Brad DeLong pointed out this week:

America's long-run fiscal problems are caused by health care, and will not be appreciably made worse by this half-decade's federal fiscal stimulus. If restructuring the health care system can bend the curve on the rise in overall (and hence public as well as private) health care costs, then America has ample debt capacity to borrow whatever we wish in this crisis--and to borrow it at extraordinarily favorable rates as well.

If the curve of rising health-care costs is not bent, then the government's long-term finances are in trouble and so is the growth of private-sector non-health living standards: health care costs that rise as fast as CBO is projecting in the baseline cause lots of long-run economic problems, of which government fiscal bankruptcy is not the worst. Health care reform to bend the long-run curve of costs is now just what it was back in 1993: the most important issue for the American political system to deal with.

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Senator Dodd just got his first primary opponent yesterday when virtual unknown Merrick Alpert announced his candidacy at his home. Alpert has no prior experience but apparently has the money to burn. A few hours later he would go on Fox News, where his appearance was more important than a White house press briefing going on at the same time. Alpert's talking points in this clip are straight out of the republican handbook. Earlier in the day he called Chris Dodd "Bambi", and that Dodd was part of the "culture of corruption" in Washington.

Dodd also has to contend with two real republican weasels who are vying for his job in the U.S. Senate.

Should be an interesting 18 months until the election. Or as one CT journalist succinctly put it,

"Somewhere, Glenn Beck and Rob Simmons are smiling."

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Sean Hannity of Fox News tried this week to goad Republican challengers Sam Caliguiri and Rob Simmons into calling Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) "a lying weasel" on national tv. One gladly took the bit in his teeth and ran with it, one did not. Hannity's glee came from a local Connecticut rag publication, the New Haven Register.

The knives have come out in earnest for Senator Dodd in recent weeks in the wake of the AIG bonuses fiasco, and some recent bad poll numbers, and we can expect more yellow journalism in the coming months as this plays out until the senate election some 18 months away.

If these republicans want to lay with the likes of a Sean Hannity, intent on negative campaigning for the duration, then I fully expect Senator Dodd to recover. In recent years three republican congressmen in Connecticut have gone down to defeat employing such tactics, one of them being Rob Simmons himself.