A great page from PolitiFact – worthy of your bookmark:

“PolitiFact has compiled more than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter.”

The tally, at present (After all, it has only been a year):

The Obameter Scorecard

• Promise Kept 77
• Compromise 20
• Promise Broken 9
• Stalled 53
• In the Works 214
• Not yet rated 140

via PolitiFact | The Obameter: Tracking Barack Obama’s Campaign Promises.

via Daily Kos: A Historic Step Forward: Why I’m Supporting The Senate Health Reform Bill, by Sen. Al Franken

In 1917, progressives in America began a quest to create a system to provide health insurance to all Americans. Today, almost a century later, we are poised to take a giant step toward realizing that goal. Viewed through the lens of history, this is truly an amazing accomplishment.

To earn my vote, health insurance reform must improve access to affordable health care for Minnesota families – and this bill clears that bar with room to spare. This bill does not fix all the problems with our health care system, and I will not stop working to improve the quality and lower the costs of health care for all Americans. But progressives can be proud of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and take a large measure of credit for important provisions it will codify as the law of the land.

Requiring insurance companies to spend 85% of premiums on actual health services — not administrative costs, TV ads, or gargantuan CEO bonuses — is a big victory. Senator Rockefeller and I worked hard to get that provision included because it holds insurance companies accountable and will put an end to exploding premiums and obscene profits – a huge win for progressives…

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Be sure to follow the above link to read the rest of Franken’s Daily Kos diary entry.

Of course, Franken has been on my radar as of late.  Last week I posted a clip from Franken’s former life as a brilliant satirist.  His “Supply Side Jesus” is well worth watching if you haven’t seen it.

More relevant to the present health care reform debate in the Senate, I published a post over at Care2 entitled, “You Go, Al Franken!“  Published Dec. 18, the blog entry imparts some of his senate floor highlights from the week:  Franken’s verbal smack down of Republican Sen. John Thune & a procedural STFU for Sen. Joe Lieberman.

Again, Stephen Colbert displays why satire is the perfect lens through which to analyze the Republican Party.  Playing on comparisons of the RNC’s 10 requirements — of which potential candidates must adhere to eight to receive funding — to the Biblical Ten Commandments, Colbert listed some of its strict conservative prescriptions and noted, “They’re just like the 10 Commandments, if one of the tablets said ‘F’ and the other said ‘U.’”

(more below the clip)

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There is one bit of irony I wish Colbert would have touched on.  As I noted recently on Care2, the RNC’s decission to name their test after Ronald Reagan seems curious considering he — nor any other modern president — could have passed.

From the Care2 post:

What struck me most about Bopp’s memo was not its requirements, but its invocation of Reagan.  Employing his name becomes more significant when paired with first item on the purity list:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

That they have chosen to emphasize this economic platform along with its patron saint is certainly no coincidence.  Reagan’s conservative economic prescriptions have been touted as the height of Republican fiscal discipline so frequently that they’ve achieved commandment status within the party.  That this commonly held notion is demonstrably false speaks volumes about what this “purity test” represents… (Read More)

Brilliant satire from the Minnesota Senator, circa his SNL days. It comes as no surprise to those familiar with Franken, he’s turning out to be an even better Senator than he was a comedian.A true progressive — we can’t get enough of that, these days.

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How Right Wing Extremists Try to Paralyze Government Through Ideological Smears and Baseless Attacks

PFAW has assembled a nice, but alarming post, comparing the then & now of McCarthyism.  Perhaps what’s most frightening about its present manifestation is that there aren’t any Republicans with the stones to stand up to the baseless fear mongering.

From People for the American Way, published December, 2009:

McCarthy’s campaign against supposedly widespread communist infiltration of the U.S. government brought down sitting Senators and intimidated even President Eisenhower (who loathed McCarthy) and his advisors.  McCarthy’s campaign was boosted by conservative think tanks, media figures, and clergy, and abetted for years by the unwillingness of most of his colleagues to stand up against his false charges and clear abuses of power.

[snip]

Today’s McCarthyism has many faces and voices, including the household names of right-wing cable television, a plethora of radio hosts, Religious Right leaders, right-wing organizations and the bogus “grassroots” campaigns they generate – and Members of Congress and other Republican Party officials.  Together they engage in character assassination and challenge the loyalty and patriotism of their targets…

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