Amid the escalation of discord, verbal sniping, and finger-pointing within our government representatives, President Obama stated today in his speech to the nation about our lapses in security, “The buck stops with me.” It was Trumanesque, to be sure, but honorable. He took accountability for failures in national security that nearly had disastrous effects on Christmas Day.

The tone he struck calibrated the absolute fact that we are “at war.” The magnitude of his message must not be lost. He called out the CIA and others who had failed to “connect the dots” to the terrorist who had been trained in Yemen. Stopping short of firing individuals as a way of appeasing partisans, Obama set forth strident efforts to be implemented. In one of these changes, he will augment the number of federal air marshals in both domestic and international flights. And the correlation among agencies dealing with national security issues is to become intrinsic, not continue like a sibling rivalry.

As Americans we need to recognize that this war is unlike any we have known. Terrorists are organizing, not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but in Yemen and Somalia. Tomorrow another country may be added, and the day after that, yet another country. We need to nullify these terrorists, but it cannot happen through whining which transcends our purpose: to keep America safe. This is the most intellectual game of chess ever played. If we as a nation do not coalesce, we may find ourselves in checkmate. Obama has set the tone. It is incumbent upon our government officials not to eclipse this message and exacerbate our problems by continued discord and self-aggrandizement.

—cher

The war against health care reform was essentially lost by the Republican Party on Monday night, when all fifty-eight Democratic Senators and two Independents voted to end Republican attempts at endless procedural delays (i.e. filibuster). This comes as a great victory for the Obama Administration, who has worked tirelessly with both parties to craft a bill that would best serve the needs of the American people. Very early in the process of developing a comprehensive health care reform bill the Republicans made it clear they had no intention of giving Mr. Obama a political victory, even if it meant a continuation of sky-rocketing health care costs, and twenty-seven million Americans left without insurance or access to affordable health care. It is anticipated that a final bill will be given to the President for his signature by Christmas Eve. At that point, the Republican propaganda machine that has blitzed the airwaves for almost a year with mis-truths and scare tactics will be effectively shut down.

If nothing else, the process of enacting health care reform, which is clearly supported by the majority of the American people, has shown that a super-majority of sixty Senate votes are required to overcome obstructionist tactics on the part of the Republican Party. In essence, the power to enact significant legislation has passed to a few Senators (e.g. Joe Lieberman), whose swing votes were garnered by making major concessions to important provisions within the bill. A lasting legacy of the 2009 health care reform debate will most likely be anger among partisans on both sides of the aisle. The Republicans will continue to say that their opinions were ignored, and they were left out of the process. The Democrats will continue to say that Republicans refused to participate in the debate out of fear of giving a political victory to President Obama.

Fortunately, the health care bill, although not perfect, will be a good beginning to the process of reforming the industry that provides an essential service to the American public. The new legislation will set the stage for further reforms and fine-tuning that will be needed as time goes by. The conservative, reactionary voices on the right will no doubt continue to rant and rave for some time about how much better off we would have been if the insurance companies were left alone to provide health care insurance to whoever thay wanted, at whatever price they wanted, for whatever period of time they deemed appropriate. These voices will eventually become silent, however, just as they were when America first enacted Social Security and Medicare.

—Rich