Monday after the long weekend

The Senate actually begins debate on the healthcare bill, after debating about whether to begin debate on the bill. Gotta love that one. Obama is going to announce on Tuesday at Westpoint troop increases to Afghanistan while explaining that this is how to leave the country. Merry Christmas!

As an aside, why do Project Managers and Resource managers at my office assume that December is a full month for planning and delivering projects? Hello? Everyone is gone, or key people will be out at some point during the last 2 weeks of December and 1st week of January. This always happens, yet it's planned that people will be available and working. Come on! If getting this work done was so vital to year end goals, it should have been done in September and August and October, not November and December. New Rule: When planning, December is only 2 weeks long. Anyways...

Paul Krugman is pounding on the jobs creation platform. He's completely correct. This is yet another indictment of so-called 'trickle-down theory'. Look, we've given the banks BILLIONS of dollars in free money, and yet where's the money going? To the top! David Frum says that the Bush tax cuts should be extended by 5 years and not expire next year, because taxes are bad bad bad. His last point argues for more TARP, because the banks kept all the initial TARP money for themselves. And so more TARP does...what, exactly? Mr. Frum has really started to go oddly backwards in his ideology in the last couple of posts. Trickle-down theory is DEAD, Mr. Frum. It doesn't work. Why is it that when rich people screw up, the demand a do-over? When other people mess up, too bad! Welcome to capitalism. David Brooks admits he is a die-hard Bruce Springsteen fan. Great. Now how can he be a fan and Republican? Does he just ignore the lyrics? Does he just pretend that Springsteen is liberal? I'm confused. Wait, I just realized how: I like Mr. Brooks, but like all Republicans, he can hold conflicting ideologies in his head with no problems whatsoever. Wait, that holds true for Democrats, too. So is being a pundit just his day job, then? Augh!

Finally, the CBO is saying that Health Care Reform would lower costs! How about that?

Daniel Mitchell over at the right-wing think tank the Cato Institute is defending Obama and blaming Bush for the colossal deficit we find ourselves in. He then goes on to say that Obama will probably be worse than Bush in the long run. We'll see.