When Harry Met Harry

When my late father was alive, we would have raucous arguments over gay marriage. My dad was nominally a Democrat but considered himself a real law and order traditionalist. He was not your typical bigot - and he believed in some notion of civil unions - but claimed that "marriage" should be reserved for heterosexuals. His arguments were, of course, illogical and inconsistent, never mind that we were essentially arguing over a word. A big one for him had to do with nature. "If everyone were to become gay, the species would cease to exist". I pointed out to him, not always calmly, that his arguments were horse shit. Obviously, the whole world wasn't suddenly going to become gay and legalizing gay marriage wouldn't do anything to swell the number of homosexuals already extant. Further, homosexuality, since it existed in nature, was by definition natural. And regardless, none of these was a constitutional argument about governments and benefits and who may or may not register with the state as a couple. And on and on. Despite my relentless logic - and his offering no rebuttal argument other than "this is how I feel" - I made no inroads; on this issue he was hopelessly stubborn. (I have no doubt, but cannot prove, that had he lived to see this epic court battle in California, and had read any of arch-conservative Ted Olson's cogent articles, such as this one, he would have finally turned a corner). But here's the wild inconsistency that bothered me most. My whole childhood, whenever I would defend homosexuality (I was a precocious kid and quite literally grew up in the theater), my dad would complain about how promiscuous and indiscriminate gays were. "They'll stick their penises in a hole in the wall and not care who's on the other side," he told me on more than one occasion. He was appalled by this behavior. And yet he later saw no irony in the fact that when gays and lesbians wanted to settle down, get married, be monogamous - all the virtues of American life that he most propounded - that he wanted to discourage this behavior as well.

This very irony is the thing that strikes me most as I look at the arguments against marriage equality and against gays in the military. There is no doubt that these bans are based almost solely on animus toward a suspect class, because what the bigots clearly want more than anything is to deny those whose behavior they despise any semblance of a traditional American life with all its attendant perks and pleasures. After all, how can they convince the rest of us that homosexuality is an abnormal, aberrant, perverse and anti-social undermining of America's traditions if gays and lesbians are allowed to embrace those traditions? How will we ever continue to believe that homosexuals are all just a bunch of mincing girly-men or man hating shrews who hate American values if they are allowed to prove their mettle and their patriotism on the battlefield? Wanting the same traditional things the rest of us want goes against the narrative about homosexuals that their detractors have labored so long and hard to create. The only way for the opponents of equality to prevent widespread societal acceptance of homosexuality is to try and force gays and lesbians - by hook or by crook - to adopt the very behavior and lifestyle the bigots claim to despise. The irony is as deep as it is painful. "This isn't who you are," the haters seem to claim, "this is who you are! And don't you dare try to change one bit!"

It is a bedrock of conservative thought that marriage is one of our most important institutions and that when it is widespread, it is a net gain for society. It is also a conservative no-brainer that serving one's country is one of the most noble things one can do. To oppose gay marriage and gay military service, then, is to intentionally try to deny some American citizens those very things which you yourself believe are good for society and to force them to live what is in your own view a less virtuous, less honorable, less courageous, less noble, less fulfilling life than you are allowed to pursue. But what else is a gay hater to do? Without this self-fulfilling prophecy of a "degenerate" homosexual lifestyle, anti-gay sentiment loses a huge chunk of its raison d'etre, and naturally, committed homophobes just can't have that.

I'm reminded, bizarrely enough, of When Harry Met Sally. There's that scene in the deli, where Meg Ryan has the loud orgasm and Estelle Reiner, watching, envious, announces "I'll have what she's having". But what if Sally turned and yelled "No, I don't want you to have what I'm having, because old people having sex is gross and you don't deserve to have something that feels this good! That's reserved for us young, beautiful people! Fuck off, you old bag!" We would think she was a cold, heartless, selfish, mean-spirited bitch. And we would be right. But this is, in fact, exactly what the anti-gay forces are saying: "Hell yes, it feels fantastic... but we don't want you to have what we're having".

In light of all of this, I can't imagine how the Supreme Court can get around the fact that California's ban on gay marriage is based almost solely on the hatred of a specific class of people, which makes it a clear violation of the 14th Amendment. Because rather than celebrate that gays want to reform their alleged historical promiscuity and embrace a conservative ideal, which by all rights they should, the bigots are hellbent on making gays continue to sit in the back of the societal bus - all the while raving about the glorious view from the front.

Well sorry guys... it just doesn't work that way. What's good for the straight goose is good for the queer gander.

Celebrity Deaths

Howard Zinn... J.D. Salinger... in the wake of Citizens United, does Miramax count as #3?

The Rocky Road To Equality Begins January 11th

The Declaration of Independence gave the fledgling United States a mission statement: we were to be the country that acknowledged every citizen's unalienable rights; rights which included, but were not limited to, "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"; rights our government would never take any action to abridge. It is for this reason, in large part, that civil rights battles ought not be waged solely by those whose rights are being restricted or denied, but by anyone who believes in the America our founders so eloquently envisioned and encoded into law. And although oppressed minorities have often formed the passionate activist core of various bruising civil rights battles over the years, it has taken the participation of committed members of the majority to push those movements over the top. It took whites fighting for desegregation and the Voting Rights Act, it took men fighting for women's suffrage, and it takes heterosexuals - millions of of whom voted against Proposition 8 in California, even in a losing effort - to help advance the cause of gay rights.

I am one such heterosexual. In fact, I have long believed, and continue to argue, that marriage equality is the defining civil rights issue of my generation.

Although the opposition has gone to great lengths to confuse the public with innuendo, fear-mongering, appeals to personal prejudice and, in most cases, outright lies, the question of marriage equality is actually simple and bracingly clear: from a legal and constitutional standpoint, the government can no more deny gay Americans the right to civilly marry than it can deny them the right to use the post office. And how various pastors, rabbis, priests, imams or their congregants feel about either issue is, even if it were understandable, wholly irrelevant. The same can be said of our elected officials. They can huff and puff, block and bluster, delay and decry, but at the end of the day, whatever their personal beliefs and legislative tools, they may not be able to, despite their best efforts, undermine so solid a Constitution.

An America that willfully ignores the Constitution and continues to deny the LGBT community the equal protection of the laws is not an America I am proud to live in. There is very little I can personally do other than to continue to speak out for equality whenever I am given the opportunity and to use my admittedly limited powers of persuasion to try to open heretofore closed minds; to patiently and didactically explain to anyone who cares to pay attention the finer points of civil and constitutional law, hoping against hope that - self taught lay person that I am - I'm not mucking it all up.

Irrespective of how I or anyone else feels about gay marriage, however, the decision is going to be made for all of us - sooner than we realize - and it is going to come, as it should, from the courts. And although we'll hear a lot of screeching about judicial activists trying to shove their personal beliefs down the throats of a beleaguered, tax-paying, God-fearing majority, that is precisely what the courts are set up to do. There is a reason we have three branches of government, why we have the separation of powers, checks and balances. And the judiciary has been given very specific duties by the Constitution; chief among them is to interpret the law - and in the case of the Supreme Court, the document itself - and to enforce its protections, even if we citizens disagree.

On January 11th, 2010, opening arguments are set to begin in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California for what is arguably the most important civil rights trial since Loving v. Virginia in 1967, which struck down anti-miscegenation laws in the United States. The trial is Perry v. Schwarzenegger, et al and it claims that in light of Proposition 8, which amended the California State Constitution to exclude gays from the right to civilly marry, the California Constitution is therefore in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. If decided for the plaintiffs, Prop 8 would be overturned and gay marriage would once again be legal in California, as its state Supreme Court had previously held. Any victory in this venue, however, will be largely academic. There would likely be an emergency stay put on the ruling until it could be heard at the appellate level by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers California, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and the Eastern and Western Districts of Washington State. A victory at this level would again likely not go into effect before being heard by the United States Supreme Court, where it would, by definition, face its toughest test. And while victories at the district and appellate level would be heartening, proponents of gay marriage shouldn’t get too excited until that final determination is made.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger is remarkable on several fronts. For one, the named defendants are on the side of the plaintiffs. Gov. Schwarzenegger, despite being the titular defendant, was not in favor of Prop 8 and his administration has filed a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of the plaintiffs' position, as has Attorney General Jerry Brown, also named. Both are essentially throwing up their hands and conceding that the state has no valid legal argument in defense of its own constitutional amendment.

But perhaps most remarkable of all, the plaintiffs' case is being argued by none other than Ted Olson, a major figure in the conservative legal movement. Olson was George W. Bush’s Solicitor General from 2001 to 2004 and was the lawyer who famously argued for the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore, the decision of which handed Bush the presidency. Equally surprising is that David Boies, Al Gore's representative in that watershed case, has joined forces with his former courtroom nemesis Olson to fight for marriage equality. And although this sounds at first blush like a real “kumbaya” moment in jurisprudence, not every interested party is on the same page. The ACLU, and many of the gay rights organizations that have been waging this battle the longest, do not agree with the strategy of taking it to the federal level or with the timing of the fight itself. Several of these groups put forth a motion to intervene as plaintiffs, but their motion was denied by judge Vaughn Walker who is hearing the case. He ruled, probably correctly, that Olson and Boies have the necessary legal and constitutional chops to proceed without assistance.

The skeptical and frustrated civil rights groups have some fair arguments. They have long advocated fighting these battles locally, often at the state-wide level, slowly winning hearts and minds and desensitizing voters to gay marriage without a potentially incendiary, all-encompassing federal ruling. It has been their fondest hope that by time the Supreme Court got involved, there would already be a broad consensus in support of gay marriage by the states. They further argue that the current make-up of the Supreme Court is not conducive to a ruling for the plaintiff and that if they were to lose, two things will happen: 1) There will be a devastating legal precedent on the books and 2) Olson and Boies will slink back to their high paid private practices and leave the pieces to be picked up by the very groups who were against the strategy in the first place and who are being excluded from participating in the trial in any meaningful way.

Regardless, the trial is going forward and we ought to all pay close attention as it proceeds because it has the potential of eventually making marriage equality the law of the land.

Ted Olson, for his part, has expressed full and total confidence that he will prevail. Publicly, he is behaving as if victory were a fait accompli and I would like to believe him. As Solicitor General he spent four years arguing in front of this same Supreme Court (sans newly minted Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor) on behalf of the Bush Administration. He is about as conservative a legal scholar as one can find and yet has gone on record as being completely mystified as to what legal argument Prop 8’s proponents could possibly proffer. And he certainly has, by all accounts, an encyclopedic knowledge of the Constitution and an intimate understanding of the current players on the Court.

I am not nearly as confident as Mr. Olson. To the extent that I’m hopeful, here’s why: Olson is right. Prop 8’s proponents don’t, in fact, have any legal argument whatsoever that could possibly hold constitutional muster in any objective sense. The language of the amendment in the California Constitution is nakedly discriminatory and a clear violation of the federal Constitution’s 14th Amendment and its Equal Protection Clause, especially in light of the precedent set by Loving v. Virginia. The good news for those of us who are fighting for marriage equality is that “marriage is sacred” is not a legal argument and the legalization of civil marriage has nothing to do with houses of worship, which will continue to be allowed to define marriage as they please and only perform those ceremonies which conform to their theological criteria. What the plaintiffs will argue, quite correctly in my view, is that no state is allowed to deny to any of its citizens the equal protection of the laws and that the federal judiciary has a constitutional obligation to enforce such equal protection against a violating state.

But here’s why I am not as sanguine as Mr. Olson about our chances: the current Supreme Court majority. Olson, the victor in the legally loathsome and indefensible majority opinion in Bush v. Gore (which literally, stunningly, declared “this is a one-time only decision and should not be considered precedent”), should know better than anyone: the four so-called conservatives on the Supreme Court – Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito – are the true “judicial activists” that conservatives claim to despise and raise so much campaign cash railing against. This far-right wing cabal has shown no compunction in ignoring the law, and its own precedent, in order to advance a pre-conceived social agenda; those four are the living definition of “activist”. Because they don’t want to see gay marriage as the law of the land, they will likely do legal contortions – as they did in Bush v. Gore – to reach the conclusion they want to reach. So egregious was their activism in 2000 that it prompted former Charles Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi to write a piece for the Nation called “None Dare Call It Treason” in which he argued that the majority decision on behalf of Bush was not just wrong, but, in fact, downright traitorous. (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010205/bugliosi)

I have no reason to believe that any of those four justices will suddenly have an epiphany and realize, like Olson apparently has, that supporting marriage equality is the true conservative stance. Nor do I expect them to say “We personally hate the idea of gay marriage but the Constitution is clear”, which is what by all rights they ought to say. Instead, they will likely twist themselves – and their words – into a legal pretzel and come up with some cockamamie rationale for voting against it which will be both an insult to the intelligence and an assault on the Constitution they swore to uphold. If we assume that the more liberal four – Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer and Sotomayor – rule to uphold the Ninth Circuit’s still theoretical decision in favor of the plaintiffs, then this leaves Anthony Kennedy. Justice Kennedy, if indeed he’s the tie-breaking vote, will be single-handedly responsible for forever changing the face of America in favor of equal rights for all or, conversely, for setting the civil rights movement back in a potentially irreparable way.

Kennedy is hard to read. He certainly has a mostly conservative bent. He has ruled with the conservative majority in some pretty shocking decisions, not the least of which was Bush v. Gore. However, he also wrote the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, in which he and Sandra Day O’Connor voted with the liberal bloc to strike down anti-sodomy laws in Texas, and, by extension, any other state that had them on the books. The 6-3 ruling was decided on 14th Amendment grounds, with five justices holding that it violated Due Process guarantees and O’Connor holding separately that it violated Equal Protection guarantees. Naturally, Scalia, Thomas and then Chief Justice William Rehnquist dissented. It should not be assumed, however, that just because Kennedy voted to decriminalize private, consensual gay sex between adults that he will vote to force gay marriage on the states.

I could be (and profoundly hope I am) wrong, but I fear that it goes against Kennedy’s nature to want to be responsible for such a sweeping decision - one that will trump “voters' rights” and cause such major social upheaval - even if the law is crystal clear. And I imagine he will be under tremendous pressure from the Chief Justice and his fellow conservatives on the Court to rule with them. He certainly has not been immune to their jurisprudent charms in the past, and we have no reason to believe he will be this time, especially on a case with such wide-ranging social consequences. It is for these reasons that I will be more than shocked if the Supreme Court reaches the legally correct decision, despite Mr. Olson’s stated - dare I say "supreme" - confidence.

Only time will tell if my pessimistic prediction proves correct. First, we have to win at the district and appellate levels (and such wins, though likely, aren’t a slam dunk), and then wait until the Supreme Court hears the case. It's going to be awhile. In the meantime, I think it would behoove us to pay close attention to the initial trials and the rationales that are used in the resulting decisions. When oral arguments are at long last heard by the Supremes, we will be on the verge of – and perhaps one single justice’s vote away from – either one of our country’s greatest civil rights victories or, like the “separate-but-equal” decision Plessy v. Ferguson, one of its most embarrassing legal stains.

Wherever one stands on the issue of gay marriage, or on the wisdom of fighting Perry v. Schwarzenegger at this time or in this venue, the wheels are in motion; the judicial train has left the station. Now all we can do is sit back and wait to see what kind of country we have: an honorable one that doesn’t just pay lip service to protecting every citizen's unassailable right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”, but actually does it... or a hypocritical one that upholds the Constitution only when it doesn’t get in the way of its own petty prejudices. I sincerely hope it's the former, not just for my gay friends, but for all of us.

For good or for ill, history begins January 11th. I'm going to be a witness to it. I hope you'll join me.

One Year In

On this first anniversary of the election, I thought I'd post one of my favorite blogs ever. It's just a collection of homemade videos of election night parties from cities all over America. The polls close in The West and everyone thinks CNN is going to call California for Obama... instead they call the election. Mayhem ensues. Scroll down. Click. Enjoy.

Countdown To Victory

THE PUBLIC OPTION - MY PEDANTIC PRIMER

Going into tonight's big health care speech by Obama, I just need to rant for a second. Because I've found that a lot of people I speak with - even supporters of health care reform - are confused about what a "public option" is and why it needs to be "robust". So here's the skinny:

Right now, let's say you can choose from three insurers - Aetna, Kaiser Permanente and Blue Cross. Each of the three can charge whatever they want for premiums, whatever the market will bear. And the market will bear far, far more than it should, because, you know, people don't want to go bankrupt trying not to die. But these are for profit companies, and they need to please their shareholders and their boards and pay out huge bonuses and spend untold millions on marketing and political lobbying. How do they do that? By denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, refusing to pay for tests and treatments that doctors deem medically necessary, and, of course, continuing to raise premiums.

So what's a public option? It's company number four. It's the Uncle Sam Insurance Company. It would not mean free coverage. People would still pay to be covered. But because there is no profit motive - and less bullshit overhead - there is no reason to exclude people with pre-existing conditions, and denial of care won't be necessary and costs can still stay low. And anyone who tells you that it will mean "government bean counters will be making medical decisions" is just plain wrong. First of all, right now, insurance company bean counters are making medical decisions. How is that any better? And they make those decisions - usually to the patient's detriment - because they have a profit motive. Without that motive, there's no reason for bean counters to screw policy holders out of doctor recommended care.

Why does the public option need to be "robust"? Because unless the government administered insurance is nationwide and strong, it won't have the leverage and bargaining power to keep costs low and coverage fair.

So why are so many people against the "public option"? Well, the misinformed oppose it because they misunderstand it. They think it means the government dictating care to doctors - or deciding when people live or die - when it's actually just a cheaper, more effective way for people to get insurance. And since insurance companies are already making those life or death decisions, what's the difference? Why wouldn't you want an option which had less incentive to deny care?

For those who know full well what a public option is and still oppose it, it's because it threatens the one thing they hold most dear - their bloated profits (or political war chests). The very argument used to oppose the public option is the proof that it's effective. Opponents claim that the coverage will be so good, and so inexpensive, that private insurers won't be able to compete. It's hardly the truth. There will still be plenty of people who opt to stay with their private plans. And if people run in droves to the public option then it is solely because it is effective. Which means that the private insurance is ineffective. Politicians who oppose the public plan are simply protecting insurance companies from having to be effective! How exactly is that competition?

The public plan by definition won't be Cadillac Coverage - that would be untenable if costs are to remain low. Which is why private insurance companies will always have a very lucrative role. There will always be Americans willing to pay a premium for what they believe to be better coverage. Generic ketchup is cheap and accessible - and it gets the job done on your hamburger - but millions of us still buy Heinz. The brand names - in this case the major insurers - aren't going away.

A public option is not single-payer (where private insurers disappear and doctors and hospitals get to bill a single government source which then pays out all reimbursements), it's not government run health care, it's not socialized medicine, it is absolutely no different than the medicine we have now. It's simply another insurance option, one that by definition will be so cost effective and successful and popular that politicians want to kill it because it will be too cost effective and successful and popular.

AETNA is Heinz Ketchup. Kaiser is Hunts. Blue Cross is Del Monte. And the public option is the grocery store's brand. The store's ketchup is cheaper because it doesn't have the marketing expenditures and corporate bonuses that the other brands have. And plenty of people buy it because they have to save money wherever they can but still desperately need their condiments. Regardless, most Americans still buy the brand names and Heinz, Hunt and Del Monte thrive. And just because the store itself also owns the generic brand, and can use the product as a loss leader, giving it an "unfair advantage", those are the rules of the marketplace and we all take them for granted. Maybe it even forces the big guys to lower the price of ketchup in a way they could have collectively avoided before. Nobody is rioting in the streets over this. It's how business works. At the end of the day, we all manage to get the ketchup that works for us and plenty of money is made, and God bless us everyone.

So what's the big fuckin' deal? Private insurers might be forced by a public option to lower premiums and increase coverage and stop denying care to make a buck? Bonuses might be pared down, you say, to allow for this? It may make their absurd profits merely ridiculous? Am I demonizing the insurance industry? You bet your ass I am.

It is the job of the American government to protect the American people, not to use all the power at its disposal to protect a specific industry from having to adapt or die. A public option is merely one more choice in a menu of choices. Why shouldn't we all have the opportunity to pay less and get decent coverage? Why is protecting the insurers from irrelevance more important than protecting American consumers from being forced to overpay for a shitty product? Why is it so terrible and un-American to keep them honest?

If Blue Cross decided on its own to unilaterally drop prices and increase coverage and never turn anyone down, would those against the public option scream that Blue Cross was unfairly forcing the other two companies to compete with it? Would Blue Dogs and the GOP ask the government to intervene and force Blue Cross to re-raise their prices and water down their coverage to meet what Aetna and Kaiser were doing? It's absurd on its face, but that's what opposition to the public option is: rage at the idea that private insurance would have to negotiate deals as effectively as a supposedly ineffective government. Are we really trying to protect the industry's unfettered right to collude against us?

So for the record, any so-called health reform without a public option is no reform at all. It is merely a reinforcing of the health insurance oligarchy and it ensures less choice, not more, and more "take it or leave it" behavior from the few companies that monopolize the industry; lets 'em gouge with impunity. I am not anti-business or anti-profits. I am, however, against profits, particularly grotesque profits, when they are earned by harming consumers and not giving them the quality product that they paid for... especially when there is then no recourse. Jump to one of the competitors, you say? They've all agreed to behave the same way. Only a public plan would have the teeth to be a truly viable alternative; would afford you the opportunity to give the insurance company you want to punish a big "fuck you". Only a public option would have the ability to force the monoliths to change their ways and behave like good corporate citizens. They ain't gonna do it on moral grounds (you hear me, Evangelicals?), or principle, so what else is going to motivate them?

Single-payer does away with private insurance altogether. And although I think that would be terrific, that's not what a public option does in any way, shape or form. It's just another insurance company... one that's less expensive, more effective and, because profits are not an issue, one that allows decisions about care to be made by doctors and not bean counters looking for any way to screw you out of coverage. After all, you can't really claim out of one side of the mouth that Obama is for unlimited, profligate spending and then claim out of the other that he wants a bureaucrat to kill grandma so he can save a few bucks.

And as a little coda: I'm not one who goes around suggesting that people flout the law. Far from it. I pay my taxes accurately and on time and I don't even itemize although I'd probably save money. But if legislation is passed - as is currently being contemplated - requiring that all Americans buy some kind of insurance or pay a tax penalty, but a public plan is not one of the options we are allowed choose from, not only will I refuse to buy the insurance (because I will not allow the government to force me to enrich a private company under penalty of law) but I won't pay the tax penalty either. Let 'em throw me in jail. At least in there I'll be able to see a doctor for free.

Said It Before, Will Say It Again

Roland Burris is a disgrace. He is not only a buffoon, he's also a liar. I have no love lost for most politicians, but having a joke like Burris in the Senate is a true embarrassment for the Democrats.

Burris is one of the most blatantly, transparently power hungry politicians I have seen in quite some time - it's kind of breathtaking actually - and I imagine he would have been very comfortable in a Banana Republic or some Third World dictatorship. He is smug, maniacal (ego and megalo) and obnoxiously coy; he may even be a tad delusional. But although he's a comical figure worthy of mockery and derision, he's also dangerous, the kind of guy who puts his own political ambition ahead of human life: while running for Illinois governor from his post as state attorney general, he is alleged to have continued to pursue the execution of a demonstrably innocent man. His own deputy resigned her job in protest.

It's no surprise that Republicans are pouncing on reports that Burris may have perjured himself in his testimony to Congress and are now calling on him to resign. Well, it's not just Republicans - you can add my voice to that same list. Burris is execrable and he has got to go.

The U.S. Senate is already a circus, the last thing it needs is another crazy clown.

HOW IS THE STIMULUS PACKAGE LIKE THE INVASION OF IRAQ?

When Resident Bush was told by military experts that the size of the fighting force he was sending to Iraq was too small - that he needed more troops if he wanted to wage his war effectively - they were dismissed, in some cases quite literally. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki - now Obama's Secretary of Veterans Affairs - was fired after he warned the administration that it would need hundreds of thousands of troops in order to be successful. It was only later, when Bush belatedly called for his "surge" and it began to bear fruit, that Gen. Shinseki was vindicated.

The uber-competent Barack Obama wants to wage his war against this devastating recession effectively, so he is listening to economic experts - and he is taking their considered advice to heart. To a person, and from both sides of the liberal/conservative divide - those whose job it is to understand economics (and I certainly don't mean senators or congressional representatives) are telling him that any stimulus meant to jolt this woeful economy - the "financial fighting force" he must send if you will - must be enormous if it is to be effective. And as Obama himself noted in his first prime time press conference, these economists include former advisors to John McCain and both Bushes.

Now, judging by his current posturing in the Senate, a President McCain might very well have ignored or fired such advisors and opted instead for a too small, tax cut laden stimulus that fit into his rigid political world-view but would have had catastrophic effects; later, after things went to Hell in a handbasket - he'd have needed an additional "surge" in order to get things working properly. And if past is prologue, we can assume that McCain would've then crowed about the success of the surge, hoping that everyone would forget his initial opposition to funding things properly from the get go.

Well unlike his inept predecessor, or his erstwhile opponent, President Obama is actually taking the experts' advice and making a good faith effort to do things right, right out of the gate, even though it's not an easy sell. While tiresome GOP politicians are, no shock, screaming that we're spending too much - and trying to score cheap political points - world class economists of all stripes have made it abundantly clear: the stimulus must be massive if it's going to work. Obama has listened and, unlike the arrogant, willfully ignorant former president, has no intention of second guessing the educated and the expert, despite the potential political consequences if a package of that scope were to fail. We can disagree about the specifics of the package itself, but any way you slice it, President Obama is, blissfully, a serious man for serious times.

Now it's entirely possible that the stimulus is, in fact (believe it or not), too small, or that specific items in the package won't work as intended, so that further monies will be needed down the road to keep the economy afloat. But the odds of that necessity have been reduced drastically because we finally have a president who gets sound advice from people who know their business and doesn't dismiss it out of hand because it gets in the way of his pre-conceived notions or plans. A president, in short, who wants to get it right the first time.

So let's just beat the crap out of the horse, despite the fact that rigor mortis has long since set in: had George Bush listened to the experts who warned him that he needed a huge initial "expenditure" of "troop capital" in order to be successful in Iraq, the subsequent surge wouldn't have been necessary and a lot of pain, heartache and devastation would've been avoided. Instead, Bush fired those experts and bulldozed ahead with his woefully inadequate, poorly thought out, but more politically palatable plan. The consequences were dire.

Thank God that in this time of global economic crisis we have a thoughtful, sober president like Barack Obama at the helm, one who puts sound policy before political ideology or gamesmanship. As Obama himself said, the last thing he wanted for his presidency was to have to come in and spend close to a trillion dollars we don't have. But rather than offer a more easy-to-swallow package at half the price (as the increasingly unserious McCain put forth) only to watch it fail spectacularly, spawning the inevitable public mea culpa and then a scramble to clean up the attendant (but avoidable) mess, we have a chief executive who believes that if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right - and he's not shooting the highly knowledgeable messengers who have told him in no uncertain terms how it needs to be done.