Politics and Heartburn

Lately I have been getting the unsettling feeling in my stomach from following the events on Capitol Hill. The stimulus is small, it is focused on tax cuts, the press is relentlessly focused on center-right dialogue, more financial bailout money going to waste, time for some pepto. But not all is bad. I need to remember that we did actually elect a Democrat and his name isn't Harry Reid, it is Barack Obama.

This way when I read a positive article or blog post regarding Social Security and Medicare like this one at the Washington Monthly, I won't be so surprised. I strongly believe that progressives need to get their act together and continue to keep up the pressure, but positive signs have been so hard to find in the last 8 or even 12 years that you forget to expect them. I keep bracing for more bad news, my shoulders are cramped up from all the tension. I am very glad that President Obama (Bush is checked out, forget this PEOTUS sillyness) is planning to leave Social Security alone and fix Medicare as part of a larger push to fix health-care. This is the right kind of framing. It is really nice to see.