Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hospitalized For Pancreatic Cancer

NPR reports:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman currently serving on the nation’s highest court, underwent surgery at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City on Thursday for removal of a cancerous tumor from her pancreas.

"White House sources say that the president's top legal aides have already begun compiling lists of potential replacements in the event that any of the justices retire this year. And even before the news broke about Ginsburg, speculation focused heavily on potential female candidates. "

Related NPR Story

• Jan. 2, 2009 - Obama Could Appoint 2 Supreme Court Justices

According to the court’s statement:

According to Dr. Murray Brennan, the attending surgeon, Justice Ginsburg will likely remain in the hospital approximately 7-10 days.

Justice Ginsburg had no symptoms prior to the incidental discovery of the lesion during a routine annual check-up in late January at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. A Computerized Axial Tomography (CAT) Scan revealed a small tumor, approximately 1 cm across, in the center of the pancreas.

Ginsburg, who will turn 76 yrs of age in March, has served on the court since 1993. She was treated for colon cancer 10 years ago.

It's good that Justice Ginsburg’s pancreatic cancer was discovered early, in the course of a routine annual screening, and we wish Justice Ginsburg a speedy recovery and good health, but medical literature says even in this circumstance, a patient’s five-year survival chances range from 10 to 30 percent. Barack Obama will perhaps turn out to be the "just in time President" on this front too.

36 G.O.P. Senators Vote For All Tax Cut Stimulus

36 Republican Senators, including both both Texas’ Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, voted for Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-SC) G.O.P. “American Option: A Jobs Plan That Works” alternative stimulus plan amendment, that replaces all of Obama’s stimulus spending with a series of G.O.P. tax cuts.

To emphasize the point, that means all but four Republican Senators are perfectly happy to scrap the core assumption of the president's plan. The four Republican Senators are: Susan Collins (ME), George Voinovich (OH), Arlen Specter (PA), and Olympia Snowe (ME).

The Senate GOP’s alternative “plan” will cost $3.1 trillion over ten years, more than 3.5 times the cost of Obama’s, according to a Think Progress Wonk Room analysis.

Not surprisingly, the Senate GOP’s alternative plan consists of permanent tax breaks for corporations and for the wealthy.

As Paul Krugman says on his blog,

"If one thing is clear from the stimulus debate, it’s that the two parties have utterly different economic doctrines. Democrats believe in something more or less like standard textbook macroeconomics; Republicans believe in a doctrine under which tax cuts are the universal elixir, and government spending is almost always bad. Obama may be able to get a few Republican Senators to go along with his plan; or he can get a lot of Republican votes by, in effect, becoming a Republican. There is no middle ground."

Speaking at the Energy Department on Thursday Feb 5, 2009, President Obama issued a strong critique of the GOP's dogmatic adherence to supply-side tax-cutting Reaganomics as a "cures-all" economic strategy:

"In the last few days, we've seen proposals arise from some in Congress that you may not have read but you'd be very familiar with because you've been hearing them for the last 10 years, maybe longer. They're rooted in the idea that tax cuts alone can solve all our problems; that government doesn't have a role to play; that half-measures and tinkering are somehow enough; that we can afford to ignore our most fundamental economic challenges -- the crushing cost of health care, the inadequate state of so many of our schools, our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

So let me be clear: Those ideas have been tested, and they have failed. They've taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars, and they've brought our economy to a halt. And that's precisely what the election we just had was all about. The American people have rendered their judgment. And now is the time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action."

Obama's stimulus plan could create as many as 286,000 jobs in Texas, according to an estimate released by the White House. The legislation could help cushion Texas against expected job losses over the next two years. According to an article in the Dallas Morning News, Bernard L. Weinstein, director of the Center for Economic Development and Research at the University of North Texas said, "It appears the 286,000 jobs might just offset the anticipated losses over the next two years."

Related:

• For the GOP It's 1933 Déjà vu All Over Again
• Reconstituting Conservative Ideology As Good Government

The Action Americans Need

Washington Post
By Barack Obama
Thursday, February 5, 2009

By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring.

What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis. . .

. . .In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. . .

. . .So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. . .

The writer is president of the United States.

Read President Obama's full editorial in The Washington Post

The President's Weekly Address

From CNNMoney:

In a sign that job loss is felt in every corner of the nation, unemployment rates rose in 98% of metropolitan areas across the country in December, according to a recent government report. The Labor Department reported that the unemployment rates in 363 of 369 metropolitan areas rose in December 2008, compared to the same month in the prior year. In November, 364 of 369 areas reported higher unemployment rates. According to the report, 168 areas reported jobless rates of at least 7%, compared to just 33 a year ago, and 40 areas reported rates that were higher than 10%.

Call both both Texas’ senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) and John Cornyn (R) and tell them you do not agree with their stand to filibuster (vote no on the cloture motion to end debate and allow a floor vote) President Obama's economic recovery plan!

Senate Democrats Don't Have Votes for Stimulus Package

Washington Post: "Senate Democratic leaders conceded yesterday that they do not have the votes to pass the stimulus bill. . . "

Meaning that 41 Republican Senators have merely said they would vote against any cloture motion to end debate and allow a floor vote on Obama's stimulus bill.

The way that Senate rules work is that a mere threat of a no vote on any cloture vote motion by 41 Senators amounts to a stealth filibuster. Democrats in the Senate do not seem ready to make Republicans actually stand on the Senate floor and publicly filibuster in front of the Senate cameras.

Neither do Democrats seem ready to threaten the "nuclear option," to eliminate filibustering from Senate rules, as Republicans did against Democrats when the G.O.P controlled the Senate.

So far the new era of bipartisanship in Washington is more uni-lateral that bi-lateral. Obama's stimulus package passed the in the U.S. House, but with zero Republican votes. Obama, who had hoped for a widely supported bill, got stonewalled despite doing three things for Republicans:

1. fashion roughly 1/3 of the package out of tax cuts, which the GOP loves;
2. went to the House Republican caucus and asking for their input; and
3. pulled provisions from the bill that Republicans didn't like

Obama kindly offered Republicans a bipartisan olive branch and extended them a place at the table of ideas. House Republicans acknowledged President Obama's olive branch and thanked him, then trash talked Democrats and voted in mass against the bill anyway. Forty-one Republican Senators have now effectively filibustered Obama's stimulus package too.

Attempts at bipartisanship may be futile. As Paul Krugman says on his blog,

"If one thing is clear from the stimulus debate, it’s that the two parties have utterly different economic doctrines. Democrats believe in something more or less like standard textbook macroeconomics; Republicans believe in a doctrine under which tax cuts are the universal elixir, and government spending is almost always bad. Obama may be able to get a few Republican Senators to go along with his plan; or he can get a lot of Republican votes by, in effect, becoming a Republican. There is no middle ground."

Republican obstructionism on President Obama's proposed stimulus spending seems less than a principled stand, considering a G.O.P congress was complicit not just in reckless and massive deficit spending by the Bush Administration, but also the creation and collapse of the mortgage bubble that now imperils the nation. We should not forget that a Republican controlled congress was in full partnership with President Bush as he presided over the biggest annual growth rates in discretionary spending in the last 45 years. Now Republicans call themselves "fiscal watchdogs" as they oppose President Obama's stimulus bill - PLEASE, are they serious!

The story of how the mortgage bubble caused a near collapse of the American financial system and was the catalyst for the end of a period of sustained global economic growth is at once insanely complex and, by now, almost too familiar. We now know that dereliction of duty ran rampant in the Bush Administration and the Republican controlled congress as they stubbornly and naively adhered to their conservative ideology of tax cutting and "unfettered free market" deregulation. The failures are owned by every conservative in Congress who championed and rubber-stamped conservative deregulation and the conservative philosophy of governing. Repeat: It was a Republican president with the aid of a Republican Congress implementing Republican policies that got us into this economic mess. The truly compelling story of this decade is one that conservatives want to ignore and forget – the rapid and dramatic failure of conservative government.

Yet, even in their reduced numbers in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House they continue to demand that the nation must follow their conservative ideals of government. They reject President Roosevelt's Obama's approach to economic recovery through stimulative government spending and support only tax cuts, as they have since Hoover Reagan was President. The conservative approach to government has failed the nation and it's time to move on - as the citizens of America mandated on November, 4, 2008!

From Talking Points Memo: Behind all the back and forth over the Stimulus Bill is a simple fact: the debate in Washington is rapidly moving away from any recognition that the US economy -- and the global economy, for that matter -- is in free-fall. The range of outcomes stretches from severe recession to something closer to a replay of the Great Depression, though that label is perhaps better seen as a placeholder for 'catastrophic economic collapse' since the underlying place of the US economy in the world economy is very different from what it was in 1929. This reality was palpable in the political debate until as recently as a few weeks ago. But Republicans are using a strategy of conscious denial to push it off the stage. Take stock of the last few weeks and you can almost visualize the two conversations -- path toward economic calamity and debate over Stimulus Bill -- diverging. The other key into the current debate is that the Republican position is ominously similar to their position on global warming or, for that matter, evolution. The discussion of what to do on the Democratic side tracks more or less with textbook macroeconomics, while Republican argument track either with tax cut monomania or rhetorical claptrap intended to confuse. It's true that macro-economics doesn't make controlled experiments possible. And economists can't speak to these issues with certainty. But in most areas of our lives, when faced with dire potential consequences, we put our stock with scientific or professional consensus where it exists, as it does here. Only in cases where it goes against Republican political interests or economic interests of money-backers do we prefer the schemes of yahoos and cranks to people who study the stuff for a living. Of course, at some level, why would Republicans be trying to drive the country off a cliff? Well, not pretty to say, but they see it in their political interests. Yes, the DeMints and Coburns just don't believe in government at all or have genuinely held if crankish economic views. But a successful Stimulus Bill would be devastating politically for the Republican party. And they know it. If the GOP successfully bottles this up or kills it with a death of a thousand cuts, Democrats will have a good argument amongst themselves that Republicans were responsible for creating the carnage that followed. But the satisfaction will have to be amongst themselves since as a political matter it will be irrelevant. The public will be entirely within its rights to blame Democrats for any failure of government action that happened while Democrats held the White House and sizable majorities in both houses of Congress. --Josh Marshall

Should the Democrats Change the Senate Filibuster Rule to make it more difficult for Republicans to stall Senate business in the 111th congress as they did in the 110th congress?

Related Links and Postings:

• Denial As Political Strategy
  
• GOP Continues To Say, "It's My Way Or No Way!"
• Biggest Drop In GDP In 27 Years
• Conservatives: No Second New Deal
• Democrats Better for the Economy Than GOP
• FDR's New Deal
• The Economy Crumbled
• For the GOP It's 1933 Déjà vu All Over Again
• Reconstituting Conservative Ideology As Good Government