I watched a number of news shows this morning. There are a couple things about which I want to comment. First, I guess I should mention the Blago/Burris U.S. Senate seat for Illinois - in fact, Obama's seat. It now looks pretty much like the Senate is going to seat Burris. Burris has gained in stature - much more than he ever did from any of his campaigns - by the way he has handled himself going through this. He now has gone from a desperado who only could get in the Senate via a tainted appointment to a persistent, polite, intelligent, good-humored, and right on the law politician who got the best of Harry Reid, Durbin, and even Obama himself. Good for you Mr. Burris. I hope you make a good senator. I think you will, and may surprise people with how good you are. But, if you want to keep your seat, you better get out and travel the state non-stop in the next two years, hold a lot of town meetings, and avoid Sen. Moseley-Braun's mistake of never meeting her constituents.

Second, there was a lot of talk about congressional Dems being more upset about Obama's proposed economic stimulus plan than the republicans - mostly because of the proportion of tax cuts in the proposal to infrastructure improvement spending.

I wouldn't make too much of this. It really is a clever strategy. When Obama can't get that through congress, of course he is going to change to be more in line with his fellow Democrats rather than let the thing die - he says he have to have it and immediately. He can turn to the republicans and say - sorry guys and gals, but I tried for you - we're just going to have to go along with the Dems. It's going to be really hard for the republicans at that point to put up too much resistance to what Obama wants.

Obama was interviewed by Stephanopolous. It's the same interview he has given ad naseum for the last month or more. I found nothing really new in it, other than they have narrowed down the dog choice to one of two breeds. Obama refused to comment on what is going on in Gaza. Israel's Gaza strategy is turning out to not turn out so good - at least that how it seems to me. Not much improvement on the ground and the world turning more and more against Israel. There was some mention in one of the shows that Obama was considering "low level" diplomatic contacts with Hamas and Iran. Good thinking! The sooner the better. This strategy of just pretending they aren't even human by labelling them "terrorist" simply because they use violence as a tactic (what is Israel doing right now? Isn't that terrorism to the max?) is a dumb, counterproductive, artificial political stance that is doing the U.S. and the world no good.

I did agree with Newt Gingrich on one thing - that the so called "drug war" that is going on in Mexico is the most underreported story and the issue that Obama is going to have to deal with that isn't on the radar screen at all at the moment. I'm not professing to know what the facts are, but when non governmental forces are attacking police forces, politicians, and judges and creating chaos with a level of impunity, it is a sign that their society has serious problems, at least in certain parts of the country. I don't agree with Gingrich about much, that's for sure.