The Hill blogspot reports Hillary Clinton with higher job approval rating that "Mitch" McConnell.

The Hill blogspot shows "Mitch" McConnell lags behind Hillary Clinton on job approval rating.
"Clinton tops list of popular D.C. leaders
By Jordan Fabian - 12/29/09 11:42 AM ET
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most popular political leader in the nation's capital, according to a poll.
"The survey taken by Harris Interactive shows that respondents gave Clinton a 48 percent positive rating as opposed to a 34 percent negative rating. The only other D.C. leader included in the poll who was ranked more positively than negatively is Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (28 percent to 21 percent).
"Other leaders about which respondents were asked are Vice President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
"President Barack Obama was not a part of the list.
"The poll surveyed 2,276 adults online between Dec. 7 and 14. It was taken before the Senate passed its version of healthcare reform.
"A majority of those polled were not familiar with all the leaders besides Clinton, Biden and Pelosi. Forty-nine percent were familiar with Gates.
""These findings confirm that only a minority of the public is familiar with more than a small number of leaders in D.C.," Harris analysts wrote.
"Among respondents who were familiar with the leaders, all except Clinton and Gates were ranked more negatively than positively.
"Most people with opinions continue to hold much more negative than positive feelings about Washington and most of our federal government leaders," its analysts said. "It is reasonable to expect this to continue until the economy is seen to be improving."
"Harris points out that secretaries of state are often ranked highly.
""Whether that is because fewer people blame them for the country’s economic and domestic problems or because they are often seen on a world stage, this survey does not tell us," its analysts wrote."
Let's elect more Democrats.

Health Care

On Christmas Eve, the Senate passed sweeping health care reform. Not one Republican voted in favor. Trying to deny Democrats a legislative victory was more important than expanding health care to millions of Americans who need it.
They will spend the next 11 months spinning our health care victory into a weapon and hitting us with it.

It's hard to believe that Republicans could be so united against legislation that will expand health care coverage to 31 million uninsured Americans, add choices and competition, force insurance companies to abide by strong new regulations and cut costs for families. The bill also reduces our national debt and ensures that Medicare will remain solvent. Republicans are on the wrong side of history on this one.

Now that they lost this battle, they will be focusing their fight -- and their millions and millions of dollars - on defeating us. That's why it's imperative that we match them now and at every fundraising goal from here on out.

"MITCH" on abc.

From the "Kick Them All Out" Project!

"Final words for 2009

I'd like to again thank everyone who is behind this campaign and everyone who is doing anything to fight the ruthless tyrants that are destroying our nation. Another entire year has gone by and what I'd like to ask everyone is how prepared are we to hold the current Congress accountable? Most of you who receive this newsletter already know how systemic the corruption is, how desperate our situation is. How many of you really understand that we have a golden opportunity coming in a few short months. The next election will be here before you know it. If we participate in the same way we usually do, the exact same criminals will get to keep their jobs. I guarantee it. Unless everyone who believes in this campaign starts supporting it and "actively" promoting it, the next election will arrive and we will show up as impotent as always. Most voters will trundle into the polls and act as if it's a legitimate process, vote along party lines and nothing will change.

There is still time for this campaign to go viral. Our task is simple. Our strategy is simple. If you want to hold members of Congress accountable we have to remove them from office. There is no other way. You have to make sure that those you sent pink slips actually lose their jobs. The WorldNet Daily campaign is great but they failed to mention one extremely important thing. Whoever gets a pink slip must get fired! You can't just send in pink slips and let them keep their jobs. A pink slip is not a warning. It's a notice that your employment is terminated!

Well, that's all the rant I can muster for 2009. We can take back our country but not unless we take back control of Congress. We have to hold Congress accountable for the first time in U.S. history and take back control of our election process, get rid of electronic voting machines, etc. I pray everyone engages more in 2010. Nobody is going to fix this mess for us. It's up to every one of us.

God Bless everyone and I hope you truly enjoy the holidays with all your friends and family.

Bruce McDonald"

Want better health care? Elect more Democrats!

Want better health care? Elect More Democrats!

President Obama "favorable ratings" 55%, to a mere 17% for "Mitch" McConnell in national poll.

"Daily Kos Weekly State of the Nation Poll
Research 2000, Adults MoE 2%, Dec 20, 2009 - Dec 24, 2009 (last week's results in parentheses)
Full Crosstabs FAVORABLE UNFAVORABLE DON'T KNOW NET CHANGE
PRESIDENT OBAMA 55 (54) 41 (42) 4 (4) 2

PELOSI: 42 (41) 50 (49) 8 (10) 0
REID: 31 (30) 59 (60) 10 (10) 2
McCONNELL: 17 (18) 65 (64) 18 (18) -2
BOEHNER: 17 (16) 63 (64) 20 (20) 2

CONGRESSIONAL DEMS: 39 (38) 55 (56) 6 (6) 2
CONGRESSIONAL GOPS: 15 (16) 68 (69) 17 (15) 0

DEMOCRATIC PARTY: 41 (40) 54 (54) 5 (6) 1
REPUBLICAN PARTY: 28 (27) 62 (63) 10 (10) 2"

Brothers and Sisters, we've got to elect more Democrats. Kenneth Stepp.

More Kentucky U.S. Senate polling results!

"Polling and Political Wrap-Up, 12/22/09
by Steve Singiser
Tue Dec 22, 2009 at 07:48:05 PM PST
Not much to prop up the ole holiday spirit in tonight's edition of the Wrap (or, as the incomparable James L. over at Swing State put it earlier today: "A fresh dose of suck").
* * *
"KY-Sen: Paul, Conway Leaders in Senate Primaries
Earlier today, Markos brought the intriguing news that physician and Ron Paul progeny Rand Paul has opened up a nineteen-point edge in the GOP Senate primary in Kentucky over Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson. In other news from that PPP poll, we find that state Attorney General Jack Conway has opened up his first lead of the campaign, with a four point (37-33) edge in his battle with state Lt. Governor Dan Mongiardo. Interestingly, in a sign of how politically irrelevant being a statewide officeholder other than a Governor can be, only Mongiardo (whose standing with his own party is fairly mediocre: 40/27) has name recognition that exceeds 50%."

What kind of Democrat are you?

QUESTION: What kind of Democrat are you

KENNETH STEPP: A Democrat for the little man, for small businesses, for small children, for families, for seniors. I am a Democrat that believes in an excellent education and health care for all of the citizens. This can only result in a strong, vibrant, and prosperous Commonwealth and Kentucky Fifth District.

Polling results for KY U.S. Senate race.

"Polling and Political Wrap-Up, 12/23/09
by Steve Singiser
Wed Dec 23, 2009 at 07:38:05 PM PST
If the volume of campaign news was flagging slightly on Monday and Tuesday, it slowed to a trickle on this day-before-Christmas Eve. Only a couple of new polls, and a small handful of campaign stories, including a late-breaking story about the GOP trying to romance another Democrat. You might be a little surprised at who it is...and surprised by what he said.

KY-Sen: Either Grayson or Paul Holds Seat For GOP, Says PPP
This is more than a little disappointing, to be sure, but PPP follows its sadly optimistic poll for Michele Bachmann yesterday with another downer on Wednesday--either Kentucky's GOP Secretary of State (Trey Grayson) or the new darling of the Paulites (Rand Paul) have modest leads (PDF File) over either Democrat competing for the Senate seat now occupied by retiring U.S. Senator Jim Bunning. As one might expect, Grayson is the more electable of the two Republicans, but both men have leads of at least six points over either state Attorney General Jack Conway or state Lt. Governor Dan Mongiardo. Conway does slightly better against Grayson (Grayson leads 40-33) than does Mongiardo (Grayson leads 44-35). Against Rand Paul, both men trail by identical 42-36 margins."

Let's bring the troops home, now!

"Is Afghanistan Just a New War of Attrition?
by Meteor Blades
Thu Dec 24, 2009 at 10:00:04 AM PST
Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and 1969 West Point graduate who served in Vietnam and in the Persian Gulf, is now a professor of international relations at Boston University. A sharp critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, where his son, a first lieutenant, was killed by an improvised explosive device two and a half years ago, his most recent book is The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.

Bacevich is no DFH, or even moderate progressive, but rather a small "c" conservative. He critiques today's American foreign policy through the prism of empire. That overly militarized, interventionist policy is bipartisan, he says, not merely the fruit of a single administration but one whose seeds were planted by Woodrow Wilson and cultivated by Democrats and Republicans alike throughout most of the 20th Century with no end in sight as we enter the second decade of the 21st.

Tuesday in the New York Daily News, he wrote:

On the march to Baghdad, back when America's war on terror was young, a rising star in the United States military lobbed this enigmatic bon mot to an accommodating reporter: "Tell me how this ends." Thus did then-Maj. Gen. David Petraeus in 2003 neatly frame the issue that still today haunts the U.S.-led effort to defeat violent anti-Western jihadism.

To know how something ends implies knowing where it's going. Yet eight years after it began, the war on terror is headed back to where it started. The prequel is the sequel, Afghanistan replacing Iraq as the once and now once again central front.

So are we making progress? Even as President Obama escalates the war in Afghanistan, that question hangs in the air, ignored by all. Rather than explaining how the struggle will end, the President merely affirms that it must continue, his eye fixed on pacifying a country of which his own secretary of state recently remarked "We have no long-term stake there." ...

The revival of counterinsurgency doctrine, celebrated as evidence of enlightened military practice, commits America to a postmodern version of attrition. Rather than wearing the enemy down, we'll build contested countries up, while expending hundreds of billions of dollars (borrowed from abroad) and hundreds of soldiers' lives (sent from home).

How does this end? The verdict is already written: The Long War ends not in victory but in exhaustion and insolvency, when the United States runs out of troops and out of money.

Advocates of the administration's escalation policy in Afghanistan often ask in a tone of gotcha: What is your alternative? Bacevich is not shy about offering one.

It consists not of increasing a strong state presence backed by a big army and police force - which, as even President Hamid Karzai has pointed out, Afghanistan can't make payroll for until sometime after 2024. Rather Bacevich recommends reducing the clout of the power-brokers in Kabul and putting more decisions at the provincial and local level. He calls for a new policy that focuses not on demonizing Karzai but rather giving him incentives to cut his ties with the corrupt and murderous warlords that the Cheney-Bush administration helped bring to power. The United States should concentrate on nudging Karzai to make a partnership not with the warlords but with the Afghan people.

Such a policy, Bacevich explains, would persistently seek a dialogue with the parliament, civil society organizations, and the armed opposition. "A lasting peace will require reconciliation among Afghanistan’s warring factions: the government; former jihadi leaders; and the many insurgent groups, particularly the Taliban."

While the current administration and its predecessor have each declared that no military solution exists in Afghanistan, that is not how they have behaved. In March, for instance, President Obama spoke of a civilian surge to accompany what turned out to be the deployment of 34,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. That civilian surge has yet to fully deploy. Another civilian surge is supposed to take place as 30,000 troops arrive.

But the reality of the situation is amply displayed in spending. Policy follows budget. The 2010 military budget for Afghanistan is $65 billion. Added to that will be $30 billion, the administration has said. So far, however, the cost of deploying a single soldier to Afghanistan has clocked in at $1.1 million. So the cost of those 30,000 extra troops would actually be $33 billion a year. But even before the President gave his speech on Afghanistan earlier this month, the Pentagon was making noises about needing as much as an extra $50 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, at the very least, one can expect the cost of the war there to run $100 billion over the next year.

And civilian spending? Development assistance for Afghanistan in 2010 is set at $2.611 billion. The military to civilian ratio: 38:1. How does that imbalance embrace the concept that there is no military solution in Afghanistan?

Bacevich writes in the Boston Review:

In the wake of 9/11, a with-us-or-against-us mentality once again swept Washington. "Terrorism" assumed the place of communism as the great evil that the United States was called upon to extirpate. This effort triggered a revival of interventionism, pursued heedless of cost and regardless of consequences, whether practical or moral.

In the Pentagon, they call this the Long War. With his decision to escalate the U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan, President Barack Obama—effectively abandoning his promise to "change the way Washington works"—has signaled his administration’s commitment to the Long War.

Yet, as with the Cold War, the Long War rests on a false premise. To divide the world into two camps today makes no more sense than it did in Dulles’s time. Rather than creating clarity, indulging in this sort of oversimplification sows confusion and encourages miscalculation. It allows Americans to avert their eyes from the gathering forces—largely beyond the control of the United States—that are actually reshaping the international order. Sending U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan sustains the pretense that we ourselves, exercising the prerogatives of global leadership, are somehow shaping that order.

We're told that the escalation in Afghanistan will start being reversed just 18 months from now, a date already slipping given that the full complement of additional troops won't be deployed by next July, as originally declared, but rather by next November. It stretches credulity to believe they will start coming home nine months later. The idea that the Long War will be shortened bears no relationship to the reality of what the struggle in Afghanistan - and, increasingly, in neighboring Pakistan - is all about. Nor does it mesh with the reality of more than a century of U.S. foreign policy."
My solution? Let's bring the U.S. troops home now! Kenneth Stepp.

The Interrogation of Santa Klaus!

Merry Christmas from President Obama.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU, FROM KENNETH AND WILMA, CARSON, CONRAD STEPP

Pontiac muscle car!

I saw with sadness in the newspaper this week that GM is shutting down production of their Pontiac brand of automobile.
I used it have a Pontiac. It was a muscle car that I bought new--a 1970 Pontiac LeMans Sport with a 351(?) cubic inch engine, with wire spokes on the wheels and a brogham (green vinyl) roof.
When I was in Naval Officer Candidate School in Rhode Island early in 1968, I believe it was Officer Candidate Giordano that had a Pontiac GTO--which was similar to a LeMans. I liked the sleek looks of it, and thought I'd like to have a Pontiac.
I finished up in Rhode Island, was commissioned an Ensign, received orders to Monterey, returned to South Carolina, got married, and moved to Monterey.
It was at Butts Pontiac/Cadillac in Monterey CA that I talked with the salesman. I told my wife Ann (she's deceased now) that I had talked with [his first name] about a car. She said, "You're buying one, aren't you."
I asked, "What makes you think that?"
She said, "You called him by his first name. You always do that when you are making a deal with someone."
Well, she had me figured me pretty well. We ordered a brand new 1970 Pontiac LeMans that day in late 1969. When it came, it was a beauty, and it had plenty of chrome on it too. It took four trips down to Disney land (Disney World wasn't open yet), down the Big Sur road a few times, up to San Francisco a few times, and to Yosemite. Finally our Pontiac muscle car took us back East, 'cause I had been assigned as Gunnery Assistant and Second Division Officer to the USS Blakely, a Destroyer Escort out of Charleston, S.C.
For the next two years, our 1970 Pontiac LeMans Sport muscle car toured me up and down the East Coast. I had a Naval Gunnery School that I attended in Dam Neck, Virginia, where the other Officers joked about "Dr. Zivagho" 'cause it was a place with big (10 foot long) guns that were covered with snow--just like on the Dr. Z. movie. Our muscle car brought me up to Dam Neck for my classes, and back down to Charleston for weekends with my wife.
Finally, it was time to leave Charleston, 'cause I had orders to report for duty to the United States Navy's Atlantic Fleet Weapons Range on the East Coast of Puerto Rico. What to do with the muscle car? Well, the Navy would ship it to Puerto Rico for free for me. That's what we did.
For the next year and a half, our 1970 Lemans was riding around Puerto Rico, from Roosevelt Roads to the glitzy night life in San Juan, and the ancient fort of El Morro built by the Spaniards to protect San Juan from invasion. When my first son Brian was born in the Navy base there, he came home in the Pontiac.
Finally, it was time to leave Puerto Rico, and go the University of Georgia Law School. You guessed it! The Navy shipped the 1970 Pontiac Lemans Sport back to the States to me at no charge, and it plied the roads of Georgia and the Carolinas while I qualified to be a lawyer. When my second son Mark was born at Athens, he came home in the same Pontiac muscle car.
Finally, I graduated from that law school at Athens, Georgia, and took my family and my muscle car to Jackson Georgia where I gave legal advice to prisoners at the state prison there.
Later that year, I returned to Athens, and got my Law Degree and my bar membership certificate. After a month of job interviews, I took the family and the muscle car to Columbus Georgia where I commuted across town in my 1970 Pontiac to the Law Offices of H. Norwood Pearce. Later, I was commuting cross town in the Pontiac to our partnership, the Law Offices of Hawkins, Fitt, Messner, and Stepp in the Corporate Center in Columbus, Georgia.
Finally, when it had about 140,000 miles on it, the Pontiac's timing chain broke. It was a few weeks getting repaired, and it blew smoke out of the exhaust after it was running again. It had been rear-ended by a careless driver in Athens, so the trunk leaded. I finally sold it in Columbus, Georgia for a few hundred dollars.
Pontiac Motors Division of GM is shutting down, but I'll always have fond memories of the Pontiac that I owned from 1969 to approx. 1978, our 1970 Pontiac LeMans Sport muscle car. Kenneth Stepp.

Social Security News.

On Wednesday, December 16, 2009, the U. S. House of Representatives passed the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 2847 - Jobs for Main Street Act, 2010. The bill primarily deals with additional economic stimulus provisions. However, the bill also contains two provisions of great interest to Social Security and SSI practitioners.
Under the bill passed by the House, these two provisions, (a) direct payment of fees in SSI cases, and (b) the program by which certain non-attorneys become eligible for direct payment of fees, would become permanent. Without legislation, these two provisions are slated to expire on February 28, 2010.
The bill now moves to the Senate, where it will be considered early next year. It is uncertain whether the Senate will pass the bill in its current form because of the economic stimulus provisions. However, we are encouraged that legislation to make these two Social Security/SSI provisions permanent has been passed by one House of Congress. We remain optimistic that Congress will act on these provisions before they are set to expire. NOSSCR

North American trading partner of U.S. "bumps off" labor union.

"Mexican Government Fires 44,000 (SME) Union Workers. Mexican Electrical Workers Union
"by: Hillbilly
"Mon Dec 14, 2009 at 19:10:25 PM EST
"Merry Christmas from Mexico to Corporate America?
"The Mexican government is sending a message to American Corporations and the message is this: Send us your jobs and we'll provide cheap labor, no unions here and we'll help to keep your labor cost down in America by sending illegal aliens to America as long as your government continues to turn a blind eye. We'll even smuggle drugs into America, if your government will continue look the other way.
How's that for a plan to drive down wages in Mexico and the United states of America and get high all at the same time?
Hillbilly :: Mexican Government Fires 44,000 (SME) Union Workers. Mexican Electrical Workers Union
United Steelworkers
PITTSBURGH – The United Steelworkers (USW) today accused the Mexican government of violating its own Constitution and labor laws, as well as Convention 87 of the International Labor Organization by unilaterally liquidating Central Light & Power Company (LyF); firing all 44,000 employees of LyF; and effectively dissolving the SME union by this mass firing, by the interference in the SME internal elections and by the freezing of SME assets.

In a letter to Mexican ambassador Arturo Sarukhan, USW International President Leo W. Gerard called for the government to reconsider its action.

“It is clear to us that all of this was done with the intention to destroy the SME, one of the few independent and democratic unions in Mexico,” Gerard wrote, “and that these actions constituted a dramatic violation of Mexico's obligations under by ILO Convention 87 and under the NAALC.”

Gerard also urged the Mexican government to return the status quo by returning all 44,000 workers to their prior jobs immediately; unfreezing the assets of the SME; and negotiating with the SME, and its designated leaders, as the legitimate representative of these workers. Only such remedial actions will bring Mexico in compliance with its own laws as well as international norms governing the labor relations of nations.

“Further,” Gerard wrote, “until these remedial steps are taken, we call upon the Mexican government to extent social security protections, for a period of at least one year, to all active employees of LyF.”

A fact-finding team, which included a USW senior associate general counsel, went to Mexico City late last month. While in Mexico City, the delegation met with leaders, members and attorneys for the SME union; Mexican Congressional Representatives; the Mexican Labor Ministry and the U.S. and Canadian Embassies."
The Union PACs better start supporting Democratic candidates before the Republicans have the North American labor unions wiped out. Kenneth Stepp, former Democratic Nominee for U.S. House KY-5.

Stop the madness, rein in federal spending in Iraq and Afganistan!

Fellow Progressives,

Within the next several days Congress will be voting on whether or not to RAISE our legal national debt limit from the current 12.1 trillion dollars by ANOTHER 1.8 trillion!

They’re doing this because, by law, the government can’t borrow any more money to pay for inflated spending unless they first raise the limit.

And they want to raise it by 1.8 trillion so it will be “enough” to cover what they want to borrow and spend until after the 2010 elections. So they won't have to vote on it "again" - until after they ask you to vote for them next November.

They want to do it during the holidays when they think few people will be paying attention and hope that most people will forget about it by next year.

This comes at the end of a year of record, runaway federal spending on everything from the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, corporate bailouts, bank bailouts, auto bailouts, and the Hal Rogers "earmarks”. Even the White House predicts our current Hal Rogers policies will leave us with $20 trillion in debt by the end of the next decade.

This madness has to stop. But we have to let Congress know we’re paying attention.

Contact your members of Congress and tell them to OPPOSE increasing our national debt limit.

(You can even send a personalized blast message to ALL Senators or House members, state delegations or all Republican or Democrats members as a group)

Don’t let them be able to claim that they never heard from you.

Tell them to “STOP the Spending”!

Kenneth Stepp, former Democratic Nominee for U.S. House KY-5.

The Big Bucks Behind Health Care Sabotage

2009 - 10:33 am | 59 views | 0 recommendations | 1 comment
"The Big Bucks Behind Health Care Sabotage
"by John Wasik
"I know what the future of America holds if health-reform isn’t passed.
"More people will be uninsured. Premiums will rise. More employers will either drop coverage or raise out-of-pocket costs. Self-employed folks like me will either lose coverage or pay exorbitant premiums because of chronic conditions or expensive diseases like cancer (our situation now). More people will be bankrupted. More will die because they can’t afford life-saving care.
"This is not the forecast of a health-care economist, a politician or even Ralph Nader. It is a guaranteed fact because of the current health-insurance business model, the aging of America and the way politics is financed.
"Money, politics and health-care lobbies are in a dysfunctional marriage. It’s an unholy union that isn’t good for most people.
"Claims are losses, in insurance lingo. As people get older and sicker they have more health issues. A vast swath of the population is overweight, underexercised and eating poorly. There’s a heap of hurt coming to those who have to pay future bills, which is everyone.
"As a progressive — someone interested in a shared prosperity — it mystifies me why the concept of a fair and affordable national health program is imperiled. We all need it. To me and many others it should be a basic human right and part of our constitution.
"Yet as I explore the ecology between political financing, lobbyists and political agendas, the mystery is solved. Let’s follow the money.
"When Senator Byron Dorgan’s (D-North Dakota) amendment finally surfaced last week to import drugs from Canada, the Senate debate melted down. Who could possibly be against allowing Americans to afford life-saving medication?
"Dorgan’s fellow Democrats Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg from New Jersey had a big problem with Dorgan. It didn’t surprise anyone that they would object: New Jersey is home to more than 50 pharmaceutical companies and tens of thousands of jobs in that industry.
* * *
"Here’s another case where big-money politics is completely at odds with the needs of the American people.
"I know Canadian (or anywhere outside the US for that matter with national health programs) prices are cheaper because I’ve priced my wife’s chemo-anti-nausea medicines and can save more than half on what they charge at my local pharmacy. It’s the same medicine at lower, much more affordable prices. What a concept!
"Let’s look at a senator from a state with relatively little Big Pharma presence: Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. There are five major pharmaceutical facilities in the Bluegrass State, representing a fraction of the workers that New Jersey employs.
Horse breeding is likely a much bigger industry in the Senate Minority Leader’s Commonwealth. Yet drug company PACs were the single-largest contributor to McConnell in the current cycle — some $262,785 out of a total $416,285.Ironically, McConnell has a good reason to refuse drug company money. In 2003, the Kentucky Attorney General sued the nation’s five largest drugmakers for allegedly boosting prices on drugs for that state’s Medicare and Medicaid programs, overcharging them an estimated $100 million.
But McConnell’s loyalty to the idea of keeping drug prices high was worth less than a half million dollars. What a bargain for Big Pharma!What’s more important to politicians than getting industry money for a campaign? Not getting it. A half-million dollars is still a lot of money in Kentucky. And it still takes tens of millions to run a successful Senate campaign, even if you’re an incumbent.
"Notice I haven’t said a word about the even-bigger behind-the-scenes player in the health-care debate: the insurance industry. They know whatever happens, they will win big. The current House and Senate plans leave most of the private industry in place.
"Insurers — exempt from federal anti-trust laws — will likely get even bigger with 30 to 40 million more policies to write if health-reform passes. A handful of companies dominate most states.
"While Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), are seeking to repeal the antitrust exemption, it’s largely a side issue at this point that hasn’t been seriously discussed.
"The House’s recently passed financial reform bill does nothing to aggressively regulate insurance companies, which are monitored by much weaker state agencies.
"As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said in a recent blog:
“From the start, opponents of the public option have wanted to portray it as big government preying upon the market and private insurers as the embodiment of the market. But it’s just the reverse. Private insurers are exempt from competition. As a result, they are becoming ever more powerful. And it’s not just their economic power that’s worrying. It’s their political power, as we’ve learned over the last 10 months.”
* * *
"Once again the corporate state has subverted democracy. Public-interest politics continues to be hijacked by billions in campaign dollars that flow like effluent. Everybody outside of the power circles of K Street and boardrooms suffer as a result. Can we have meaningful reform in anything without disconnecting the big bucks lobbies from campaign funding?
"You can crow all you want about letting the free market create competition and keeping government out of health care. Yet when it comes to votes in the most exclusive club on earth — the U.S. Senate — big bucks lobbies have cornered the market." John Wasik

Job Approval Ratings of Pres. Reagan and Pres. Obama compared.

A comparison of Ronald Reagan job approval rating and Barak Obama job approval rating approaching first midterm elections of Presidential Administration.

It's Obama 53% and Mitch McConnell 17% in national approval ratings!Daily Kos Weekly State of the Nation Poll

Daily Kos Weekly State of the Nation Poll
Research 2000, Adults MoE 2%, Dec 07, 2009 - Dec 10, 2009 (last week's results in parentheses)
Full Crosstabs FAVORABLE UNFAVORABLE DON'T KNOW NET CHANGE
PRESIDENT OBAMA 53 (52) 42 (41) 5 (7) 0
PELOSI: 40 (41) 50 (50) 10 (9) -1
REID: 29 (30) 60 (59) 11 (11) -2
McCONNELL: 17 (16) 65 (67) 18 (17) 3
BOEHNER: 15 (14) 65 (65) 20 (21) 1
CONGRESSIONAL DEMS: 39 (40) 55 (55) 6 (5) -1
CONGRESSIONAL GOPS: 16 (14) 68 (69) 16 (17) 3
DEMOCRATIC PARTY: 41 (42) 54 (53) 5 (5) -2
REPUBLICAN PARTY: 26 (25) 64 (65) 10 (10) 2

Should Democrats Play- to-Lose?

Playing to win
by Jed Lewison
Mon Dec 07, 2009 at 10:36:03 AM PST
Two weeks ago, we started tracking voter intensity in our weekly poll, asking people how likely they were to vote in the 2010 congressional elections. The results were striking: Democrats said they were far less likely to vote next November than Republicans.

Last week's results were basically unchanged: 56% of Democrats said they were likely to vote, compared to 82% of Republicans. Three times as many Democrats (37%) as Republicans (13%) said they were unlikely to vote.

Surprisingly, there's been a persistent line of argument in response to these numbers, dismissing them as unimportant -- or even as good news. That argument goes like this: Yes, Democrats are less motivated than Republicans, but there are so many more Democrats than Republicans that it doesn't matter.

This pushback is wrong, as I'll show below, but there are some nuggets of truth contained within it. It is absolutely true that there are more Democrats than Republicans. It is also absolutely true that this fact means Democrats can still win large victories even with lower voter intensity than Republicans. But it is equally true that when the intensity gap grows large enough, then Democrats are poised for trouble, and that's where we are now.

Let's look at the math, using our poll's weighting for partisan split, which is that 31% of adults are Democrats and 22% are Republicans. Looking just at people who are Democrat or Republican, that gives Democrats nearly a 3:2 advantage, just shy of 60%. If you do the math, you'll see that 49% of the people in this group who say they will vote are Democrats and 51% are Republicans. (Last week, Democrats had a slight advantage.)

The point that people make is that concern about the intensity numbers is misplaced, because the actual partisan turnout is currently likely to be roughly even.

This pushback is right on one point: our polling numbers suggest equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans will turn out to vote in 2010.

The problem here is the assessment that such an outcome is acceptable. Democrats currently control 60 seats in the U.S. Senate and nearly 60% of the seats in the House. Returning to a 50/50 scenario -- or even close to a 50/50 scenario -- would represent a historic shift in power, even more significant than the one that took place in 1994.

Yes, we'd be tied -- or close to it -- but right now, not only do we have a supermajority, we're up against the craziest, looniest Republican Party in decades, if not ever. An electoral tie with these guys would be a fail of epic proportions. Democrats should be slaughtering the Republican Party. Instead, Democrats are on track to tie the Republican Party.

If you think it's okay to tie this Republican Party, then I suggest you ought to consider raising your standards.

We can't play for a tie, especially not against these clowns. We've got to play to win. And if there's any Democratic political operatives in DC that don't get that, they should get out of the game now, because if they don't, they're going to get rolled over like it's 1994.

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