Even Fox News is shocked at the Republicans for inviting Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu. And at Netanyahu for accepting.

Courtesy of Vox:  

Fox News is not exactly known as an ally of the Obama administration, especially when it comes to disputes between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, or disputes between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Yet two prominent Fox News hosts, Chris Wallace and Shepherd Smith, harshly criticized Boehner and Netanyahu on Friday for secretly arranging a Netanyahu speech to Congress that is transparently aimed at undermining President Obama, and set up without the White House's knowledge. 

The White House, State Department, and many foreign policy observers, including prominent former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, expressed outrage over the move. And, in a sign of just how many lines Boehner and Netanyahu crossed, so did the two Fox News hosts. 

"I agree 100 percent," Wallace said when Smith read a quote from Indyk criticizing the Boehner-Netanyahu maneuver. Wallace went on: 

"And to make you get a sense of really how, forgive me, wicked, this whole thing is, the Secretary of State John Kerry met with the Israeli Ambassador to the United States for two hours on Tuesday, Ron Dermer. The ambassador, never mentioned the fact that Netanyahu was in negotiations and finally agreed to come to Washington, not to see the president, but to go to Capitol Hill, speak to a joint session of congress and criticize the president's policy. I have to say I'm shocked."

I have to say when you do something so outrageous that even your propagandists cannot endorse, you HAVE to know that you have stepped over a line.

At least one would think.

You know if I were the Republicans I would think long and hard about how angry I wanted to make the President at them.

The man has been extraordinarily patient with them so far, but much like the Incredible Hulk, I don;t think they'd like him when he's angry. 

Question of the day: Does President Obama REALLY want to take military action in Syria, and is he setting it up so he doesn't have to?

Okay so the above question occurred to me a few times in the last week or so, but I was unable to reconcile that feeling with some of what John Kerry and the President were saying.

Then I stumbled across this article: 

After agonizing over this question (Whether Obama really intends to attack Syria) over and over I began to realize there is only one logical explanation. He does not. Only a month ago the GOP was accusing Obama of being weak for not acting when the “red line” was crossed. There was pressure for him not only from the US but from the world as well. The reputation of the great American defender was on the line. Still it was obvious at the time Obama did not want to rush into another quagmire, bogging down the rest of his tenure as our nation’s leader. But the evidence kept rolling in. He had to do something not only for his reputation as a world leader but for the United States as well. 

Cue the British Parliament to provide Obama with the perfect out. Just days after Britain’s governing body eliminated any joint action with the US to participate in a coalition to strike the Assad regime, Obama made a surprising and decisive move. Against the advice of all his advisors, he put any US participation in the hands of our do-nothing Congress with no chance they would give him the approval he needed. Not because it isn’t the right thing to do but because Obama was asking for it. The outcome is a given if you just take a step back and look at the situation rationally. And there is no way Obama is going to launch this attack once Congress says no. It would be political suicide. Bush may have gotten away with it but America is not going to let it happen again. The fallout would signal the end of any and all effectiveness the Obama administration for the remaining years of his presidency. And history would place him with the likes of war criminals like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Let me repeat this. Obama is not that stupid! 

So why then does our president appear to be beating the drums of war? The simple answer is he is now regarded as a hawkish leader before the US and the world. And he does so without having to fire a shot. He appears wholeheartedly in favor of a strike and is playing the part well. The hawk stands upon his perch without lifting a talon as Congress now takes any and all responsibility for lack of action on the part of the US. And during this entire debacle, he even manages to make republicans come out as anti-war; something even no one thought possible only a month ago. 

If this sounds like an improbable scenario I ask that you to ponder for a moment the potential outcome: 

No war 
Obama and America look strong and world leaders should not doubt Obama’s willingness to take action 
Congress was made to do their job 
Congress will take the responsibility of inaction 
Republicans have to pretend they are anti-war 
Americans comes out against any further wars thereby providing the beginning of the end to our perpetual war 
Puts pressure on the UN to take other action 
Suddenly the UN is eager to accept other harsh non-military actions against Syria 

And there is even the added bonus that the GOP weakening the push to shut down the government over the debt ceiling will not proceed with the intense battle anticipated. Next week Congress returns for only nine days. Nine days to act on the Syrian War, the debt ceiling, immigration, the Voting Rights Acts and many other important issues.

Many of the statements above make sense, and it WOULD fall in line with some of the other incredible chess moves this President has played in the past.

However I have also heard more than one pundit make the assertion that IF Obama fails to get this vote from Congress that he will have lost a ton of political capital and essentially be a lame duck unable to move any of his policies forward in any significant manner and also negatively impact his party and the hopes for Democrats taking back the House or increasing their numbers in the Senate.

Now on that second part I am not sure I agree, but the first part seems like a reasonable assumption.

There is also the question as to why, if this is in fact the plan, that Hillary jumped on board to support a military strike in Syria? That would seem problematic for her moving forward. NOT political suicide, but still an added complication that it does not seem she would want.

Anyhow I thought I would put this out there and see what all of you might think about the possibility that Obama is manipulating the Republicans and Congress?  Feel free to weigh in, I am interested in feedback.

President Obama appoints Susan Rice as national Security Advisory. Essentially giving the Right Wing a giant middle finger.

Courtesy of NBC News:  

Hailing her longtime role as a “trusted adviser,” President Barack Obama formally named U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice as his next national security adviser on Wednesday. 

Obama tapped Rice, a target of Republican criticism in recent months, to succeed Tom Donilon; the president also nominated Samantha Power, a longtime foreign policy adviser, to take over Rice’s role at the United Nations. 

“I am absolutely thrilled that she'll be back at my side leading my national security team in my second term,” Obama said of Rice, a longtime confidant whose role in publicly explaining the administration’s initial assessment of last year’s terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, has made her a lightning rod for criticism.

This role will actually give Rice MORE access to the President, and she will be instrumental in helping to make virtually all of the foreign policy decisions, whihc means that in many ways it has more power than the Secretary of State position that, if she had been nominated, the Republicans threatened to filibuster.

Once again the GOP is playing checkers while the President plays a game of three tiered chess.

"How you like me now?"

Update: The victory lap.

Courtesy of the Obama Diary

Andrew Sullivan believes he now recognizes President Obama's long game.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

The left often talked of the fiscal cliff as if it were only win-win for Obama. It wasn't, in my view. He faced two dangers: of seeming unable to come up with a compromise (which is integral to his appeal) and of seeing the US economy sink under the weight of an imprudent and drastic reduction in demand. As Josh Marshall has noted, Obama always wanted a deal. No president wants to kick off his second term with a double-dip recession. He got half of a deal that will not have as drastic an effect as the full cliff-divers wanted. 

Does the promised debt-ceiling hostage-taking by the GOP render all this strategy moot? Maybe. But it seems to me that the GOP has hurt itself so far since the election on fiscal matters - appearing, especially last week, as a herd of feral, foam-flecked cats. I don't see their threatening to ruin America's credit unless they get to cut Medicare by $500 billion over a decade as a particularly strong political hand. Any party triggering a self-imposed credit crisis as the economy recovers will not be rewarded politically. On that, especially after 2011, the president has the upper hand. Americans do not like monkeying around with the national credit rating as a way to cut medical care for grandma. 

More to the point, the GOP has yet to even lay out the details of its proposed entitlement cuts (and campaigned in part against them). One way out would be for both parties to focus on cutting the Pentagon bloat - but that's not going to happen any time soon. And so I can see revenue-raising tax reform returning as a way to alleviate some of the political pain on both sides. 

In other words, I can see Obama's logic here. What he's getting - which is a gradual shift toward more fiscal responsibility, with key protections for the working poor and the unemployed in place - is all he really wants right now. Like many of Obama's incremental achievements, you can sometimes miss the forest for the trees. We have the biggest tax hike in decades - without a sudden recession. And we have huge, painful spending cuts looming unless new revenue is found through tax reform. The end result - for all its unseemly messiness right now - may still be a sane, graduated fiscal readjustment as the economy recovers. The sequester can be back-loaded a little to find that elusive sweet spot between structural fiscal rebalancing and economic growth. And we could even clean up the tax code a little. 

It's not great, but it will do. Sometimes, the little advances are preferable under certain circumstances to big breakthroughs. And Obama has to face a rabid Republican House probably for his next four years. They self-destructed on Plan B. They will almost certainly have to swallow hard and vote for big tax increases in the next day or so [and, in fact, now have].

Like most of you I have also been inundated with e-mails and text messages from those on the Left tearing at their hair and rending their clothing in frustration over what they see as Obama's acquiescence in the fiscal cliff deal, but  if I have learned ANYTHING about this President it is that he rarely focuses on short term victories and is usually thinking several moves ahead of his opponents.

That is essentially what Sullivan is pointing out with his article, and I have to say that I agree with his point of view. I firmly believe that in the end Barack Obama will go down in history as one of the greatest President's this country has ever produces, and I also bet that there will be a lot of "aha" moments for most of us looking back at this from the future that we are just too close to the political sausage making to see right now.

Mitt Romney's post debate euphoria comes to a crashing halt. Update!

Courtesy of the Huffington Post:  

The cheering stopped on Mitt Romney's campaign plane Friday morning. 

The day before, aides had whistled and clapped when the Denver control tower commended the Republican presidential nominee's debate performance. It was a rare moment of exuberance for a campaign that had fallen behind President Barack Obama in a number of polls. 

The euphoria ended after the morning report that the nation's unemployment rate had dropped to 7.8 percent, its lowest level in Obama's presidency. Romney and his team sat stone-faced and quiet on the flight to Virginia's coal country, taking in the good news for the country that's bad news for their political prospects.

I have been hearing some conspiracy theorists suggest that Obama already knew about the unemployment numbers before stepping out on that stage in Denver.

I don't know about that, but I do know that this news made the Right Wing apoplectic.

They were in fact SO pissed off that they simply refused to accept the validity of the numbers. Which eventually ended up making them look like poor losers and lunatics.

Like I said I don't KNOW for a fact that the President knew of the numbers ahead of time, but I will say it certainly would not surprise me to learn that one of the best three dimensional chess players of all time was several moves ahead of his opponent.

Update: BY the way here are some polling numbers that might put some minds to ease as well, from close of business Friday.

And of course there's also this.

I'm feeling pretty good, how about all of you?

Ready for some MORE good news about "Obamacare?" Update!

Courtesy of Forbes (December 2, 2011):

The true ‘bomb’ contained in Obamacare and the one item that will have more impact on the future of how medical care is paid for in this country than anything we’ve seen in quite some time. Indeed, it is this aspect of the law that represents the true ‘death panel’ found in Obamacare—but not one that is going to lead to the death of American consumers. Rather, the medical loss ratio will, ultimately, lead to the death of large parts of the private, for-profit health insurance industry.

Today, that bomb goes off. 

Today, the Department of Health & Human Services issues the rules of what insurer expenditures will—and will not—qualify as a medical expense for purposes of meeting the requirement. 

As it turns out, HHS isn’t screwing around. They actually mean to see to it that the insurance companies spend what they should taking care of their customers. 

Here’s an example: For months, health insurance brokers and salespeople have been lobbying to have the commissions they earn for selling an insurer’s program to consumers be included as a ‘medical expense’ for purposes of the rules. HHS has, today, given them the official thumbs down, as well they should have. Selling me a health insurance policy is simply not the same as providing me with the medical care I am entitled to under the policy. Sales is clearly an overhead cost in any business and had HHS included this as a medical cost, it would have signaled that they are not at all serious about enforcing the concept of the medical loss ratio.

So, can private health insurance companies manage to make a profit when they actually have to spend premium receipts taking care of their customers’ health needs as promised? 

Not a chance-and they know it. Indeed, we are already seeing the parent companies who own these insurance operations fleeing into other types of investments. They know what we should all know – we are now on an inescapable path to a single-payer system for most Americans and thank goodness for it.  

If you thought that the Obama Administration chickened out on pushing the nation in the direction of universal health care for everyone, today is the day you begin to understand that the reality is quite the contrary. 

If you believe that the end of private, for-profit health insurance is some type of nefarious step towards a socialist society, then you might want to attend church this Sunday to mourn the loss of health insurers being able to worm out of covering the bills of a cancer patient because she forgot to write down on her application that she had skin acne for three months when she was a teenager. 

Of course, those of you who fear the inevitable arrival of universal health care really shouldn’t be too fretful. There will always be a for-profit health insurance industry for those who want to pay for it. The only difference will be that those who cannot afford private coverage will also have an opportunity to get their families the medical care that they need.

Everyone wins-except the for-profit health insurers.

So now are you beginning to understand why the Republicans have been trying so damn hard to smear the ACA, and why, at the same time that health insurance companies were publicly supporting the bill, they were also secretly funneling millions of dollars to an anti-reform lobbying group in the hopes of sabotaging it?

They must have realized that President Obama, chess player extraordinaire, was positioning his pawns to put them in checkmate.  And so he has.

Update: It looks like support for the Affordable Care Act is on the rise now that it has been held up by the Supreme Court.  And the good news just keeps on coming.

President Obama, super cool, Ninja chess master.

The GOP throws everything they can think of at the man, but he seems to always be one step ahead of them every time.

Your move Republicans.