The default rate for credit cards is getting out of hand, and the reform bill should cause it to go even higher. In the end the thieving and greed of the credit card companies should discourage people from ever having a credit card. People will reject revolving debt in the same way that people who lived through the Depression rejected the stock market and banks. It will be a generational thing.

Saturday, I had the pleasure of seeing and participating in the Ed Schultz radio show live from the beautiful Montante Center. Ed is hitting the road to remind Obama and Congress of the promises they made during the last election, in particular, Single Payer Health Care and the Employee Free Choice Act. Ed and his audience (several hundred people many of who are auto and steel workers or union members and retirees) believe that Congress and the President are attempting to weasel out of passing these essential pieces of legislation.

The folks who brought us "Harry and Louise" are back, and they've taken out the long knives again. They killed the Clinton health plan, and now they're getting ready to kill the Obama plan. And the Obama plan itself was watered down to begin with to appease the machine. What most Americans really want, i.e. "single payer," isn't even on the table, just a pale imitation in the form of a government run plan that would compete with the private system to keep it honest.

Senators Conrad, Baucus and Lieberman keep telling us that the votes are not there in the Senate for a public plan. Instead of relying on those Senators' words, we should work on determining who will support the public plan and who we need to continue lobbying. With 30 Yes votes and 8 Possible Yes votes, we need to get 12 more votes to get to 50 and have Biden be the tie-breaker.

President Obama tried very hard to put Israeli Prime Minister's Netanyahu's speech in the very best light possible even characterizing it as a "positive movement." No matter if it didn't offer any new concessions on Israel's part other than an offer to create a fragmented colonial dependency for the Palestinians. An offer the Palestinians were sure to reject (as they promptly did). Now we can see why Obama wanted so badly to portray Netanyahu's speech as concrete step forward, when in reality it was a step backward.

It will take a concerted effort to overcome the special interests and their supporters in Congress if we are to obtain new health insurance programs that provide for universal coverage and a government-sponsored health care option. I offer the following principles to guide us through getting a decent plan in the US.

The situation in iran is a potential watershed moment in the way America handles the growth of Democracy and freedom on the world stage. An examination of the situation clearly reveals that the right path and correct attitude is the one currently on display by President Obama. American adventures in democratic intervention do not have a strong history of success.

This week Iranians turned out in record numbers not seen since the beginning of the Iranian revolution to change their current President Mahmood Ahmadinejad. Their willingness to exercise their democratic right was both historic and uncommon in the Middle East. Iranians longed for change the same way people in the United States, and indeed worldwide, longed for a new beginning after the Bush years. They were tired of an increasingly delusional President who has thrown their country into economic turmoil and portrayed their country as a conflict seeking entity in the Middle East.

The health care debate in Washington is spinning over a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report which did an analysis of the costs and effectiveness of the Senate's current health care bill. According to the New York Times, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) thinks that the report shows that the costs of the bill in its current form is too high. I obtained a copy of the 615 page draft legislation last week. There is not a single sentence in that 615 pages which refers to the creation of a public plan.

No better illustration of the dangerous incompetence and unfitness of John McCain for the office of the presidency could be found than McCain's interview with David Gregory on the Today Show this morning. He is, and has always been, utterly incompetent to handle foreign affairs. As he demonstrated amply in his knee-jerk response to the Russian/Georgian conflict, he is ever-eager to pick a fight, regardless of the consequences to human life.

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