While getting the Senate to confirm judges is a perennial problem for presidents, Obama is on track to perform even worse than his predecessor, due to particular rancor in Washington and, some critics say, because the White House focus has been on other priorities.

"The question will be, over the course of Obama's first term, did he do as well as George Bush?" said Russell Wheeler, an analyst at the Brookings Institution who studies the judiciary.

About 87 percent of Bush's appointees to the bench were confirmed in his first term. Obama's confirmation rate for nominees currently hovers around 62 percent, including nominees who were recently submitted to the Senate, according to the White House.

Obama currently has about 55 judicial nominees pending before the Senate and he is likely to nominate others this fall. The pressure is building because of the presidential election next year -- getting nominees confirmed becomes increasingly unlikely as the year progresses.

If the Senate does not confirm Obama's pending judicial candidates this fall, it must agree unanimously to keep the nominations pending; if it does not, the nominations expire and the president will be forced to renominate them in 2012.

All told, about 200 appellate and district court judges were confirmed during Bush's first term. Just 97 of Obama's nominees have been confirmed to date. In other words -- he must double the rate of confirmations in the next year to reach parity with Bush -- an unlikely scenario.

It's great to lead in percentages of diversity picks, although when the numbers are close to zero in all those categories, even one or two picks amps up the percentages vis a vis other presidents.  Kudos to him for doing that.  But he's dragged his heels on these nominations, and now, going into an election year, we will see very few vacancies filled.

Trying to think if having our liberty eroded and our markets further rigged with the help of a culturally diverse judiciary is any different than liberty erosion and market rigging almost exclusively at the hands of old crackers.  

I hope you are mentoring the next wave of Greek cooks, so that you can have the luxury of not having to work so hard on the one hand, and gaining the pride and satisfaction that comes from passing on the traditions to a new generation, on the other.

The reason for-profit medical corporations push for this change is simple. Kicking seniors out of Medicare means they will be forced, by the individual mandate in Obama's Affordable Care Act, to buy far more expensive, and inefficient, private insurance that pays higher rates for services. The move will also shrink Medicare's market size, making it harder for Medicare to get the lowest prices for the government as possible. It is effectively adopting Paul Ryan's Medicare privatization plan for people between the ages of 65-67, creating a gradual but clear path to Ryan's vision through a series of similar age increases.

This change would be a massive financial windfall for the industry, mostly at the expense of Americans about to retire. Essentially it steals money from old people to give to large corporations, and there is a very real possibility this will happen. link