Holiday dinners with my husband's mostly moderate-Republican family in Reno, Nevada always provide me with new, interesting political insights quite different from my UCLA-educated, NPR-listening, Southern California liberal perspective.

Thanksgiving 2007 "gave me great hope for the 2008 presidential elections," especially my husband's Uncle Jack, a retired Army veteran and West Point attendee, who praised John McCain of old, but sadly commented, "I'm not so sure about John McCain anymore... " He then held little hope for any potential Republican presidential candidates. And his assessments two years ago were dead-on correct.

Thanksgiving 2009 with the same libertarian-leaning crowd offered an equally revealing take on the pressing issues of the day... but it all boils down to Clintonesque cliche: It's the economy, stupid!

The middle-aged husbands of two cousins, an orthopedic surgeon and an urban planner, are facing unanticipated salary cutbacks and diminished professional prospects, causing financial woes for these fathers of three children each... kids who range in age from 7-year-old twins to a 16-year-old college-bound high school junior.

Fortunately, these two men are among the lucky ones in northern Nevada: they're employed, their wives have returned to the work force (teaching and part-time nursing), and they're in no danger of losing their comfortable homes, although both houses have plunged in value. But both men have heart-rending stories of long-time friends or colleagues who are jobless, and a few who are homeless...

Meanwhile, Uncle Jack, the sharp-witted 80-year-old patriarch of the clan, pronounced that President Obama is "wishy-washy," and that Mitt Romney "is my guy" in 2012. Jack admires Romney in large part because of his economic expertise, but also because he's a leader and a "moral," stand-up guy.

When I asked him about Sarah Palin, Uncle Jack looked down at the table, shook his head, and quietly commented that he doesn't trust her, and that she knows... well, nothing. She has no substance, in his opinion; he doesn't take her seriously. And plainly, he wishes she would go away.

The only other topic of concerned discussion was over the No Child Left Behind Act. One of the cousins returned to elementary teaching after a six-year hiatus, and she's disgusted by new, undue pressures placed by NCLB mandates on both teachers and her fourth-graders to achieve, at all costs, high standardized test scores.

We talked about the inherent complexities in effectively inspiring fourth-graders to learn, and the unfairness of linking a teacher's salary to the performance of a classroom of young students to the results of one federally-approved test series.

No one had praises for President Obama. Or for Democrats. Or for Republicans, either.

I was left by my Nevada in-laws with a distinct impression not of anger, but of anxiety and bone-deep weariness. And of a gnawing, desperate hunger for bold change and smart, strong leadership.

Unlike my positive epiphanies at Thanksgiving 2007, Thanksgiving 2009 dinner table talks for our family conveyed an unmistakable discontent with all political incumbents... and an extraordinary desire for any measures or policies to stem unemployment and to bolster lagging real estate values.

For Thanksgiving 2009, U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will feast on 467,499 pounds of turkey, 199,779 pounds of ham and beef, 61,813 pounds of stuffing, and 68,020 pies and cakes.

They'll also consume 13,231 cans of sweet potatoes and 8,952 cans of cranberry sauce, per the Defense Logistics Agency via USA Today. (Cans? Our troops aren't worth fresh produce and home-style cooking?)

Sadly for both our troops and our country, they'll likely also experience Thanksgiving 2010 in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The White House leaked word yesterday that President Obama will finally announce, next week, his verdict regarding committing more troops to Afghanistan. And, as liberals who voted for Obama in 2008 feared, Obama is apparently poised to send another 34,000 troops to the endless, futile fighting in Afghanistan.

After Obama's addition of 34,000 more troops, the U.S. will have more than 220,000 soldiers embattled in two fruitless Middle East wars: 102,000 in Afghanistan, and as of now, more than 120,000 remaining in Iraq. (For the latest, see Iraq War Facts & Statistics at Nov 20, 2009.)

Despite being mired in disastrous economic doldrums at home, the U.S. continues to spend $7.3 billion monthly in Iraq, plus $3.6 billion for Afghanistan, per a Congressional Research Service report dated September 28, 2009.

You read that correctly: $10.9 billion now spent monthly on two losing, directionless, corporate-enriching wars.

And yet Obama, who won the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination by billing himself as the anti-"dumb war" candidate, plans to up the ante with more troops, more spending, more casualties, more catastropic injuries... all for naught, as history has richly illustrated. Frankly, nothing could be much dumber than throwing untold tens of billions more down the black holes of Iraq and Afghanistan.

My fervent Thanksgiving prayer is that our so-called brilliant President comes to his senses, and announces full and immediate withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from the Middle East, leaving less 40,000 American soldiers in both countries combined for a limited, well-defined post-U.S. peacekeeping transtion period.

To do otherwise... to order 34,000 more U.S. soliders to Afghanistan... would be incalculably devastating for the U.S. economy. Would be cruelly demoralizing for the U.S. armed forces, which are already badly demoralized as epitomized by record-high suicide and desertion rates.

And I fear will be as deadly to President Obama's fledgling tenure in the White House as Vietnam was to Lyndon Johnson's presidency.

If Obama loses his liberal base, he basically has no more supporters, as Palin-loving conservative crazies and the rest of the Republican Party will never, ever support him. And significantly increasing the Middle East war effort will cause liberals to irrevocably lose what remains of their beleaguered faith in Barack Obama. Period!

So please, Mr. President, do the right thing next week by telling our great country that most of our troops will finally be returning home sooner, not later, and that no more Americans will be sent to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And please tell those brave fighting men and women that next year, they can enjoy Thanksgiving turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, and lovingly homemade sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce, with their families, not in a mess hall thousands of miles away from home.

(Photo taken on November 22, 2007 of a U.S. soldier at the Baghdad eating Thanksgiving dinner with his weapon close at hand: Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

The Senate Health Care Refom bill (the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," H.R. 3590), which begins debate on November 30, 2009, thankfully stripped away the pro-life abortion language found in the House's controversial Stupak Amendment.

Instead, the Senate health care bill, which was unanimously supported by Senate Democrats for discussion and debate, replaced onerous Stupak Amendment prohibitions with mandates consistent with the Hyde Amendment, which has promulgated simply since 1976 about the use of federal funds:

"None of the funds... shall be expended for any abortion except when it is made known to the federal entity or official to which funds are appropriated under this Act that such procedure is necessary to save the life of the mother or that the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest."

The House's Stupak Amendment rightfully riled up pro-choice activists by expanding the pool of funds that may not be expended on abortions, to, in the future, cover all plans, both private and public, included on the insurance exchange established by both the House and Senate health care bills. Explains Jill of Feministe:

"What the Stupak amendment does is block funds not only from federally-funded health care programs, but from private programs as well. While it doesn't outlaw private insurance companies from covering abortion, it does block them from offering abortion coverage to people participating in the health care exchange; those numbers are expected to be fairly large, creating an incentive for companies to cut abortion coverage over time."

My colleague, Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties, crows that "... this was a pro-choice victory bolstered by one of the largest grassroots lobbying efforts in the history of the movement. We flooded our senators with calls, emails, and letters--and so far, it appears to be working."

Tom then urges, "Now let's continue to push our senators to make sure that the Senate language, rather than the House language, appears in the final bill."

I agree with Tom, of course: Hyde Amendment language is far preferable to the more restrictive Stupak Amendment wording if federal funds will, indeed, continue to be barred from payments for abortions.

But abortion rights extremists need to remember that this is health care legislation, not abortion legislation. Debate of the Senate health care refom bill will be a long, hard, often bitter slog, and will necessarily require difficult compromises by all participants. And some of those compromises might be about the use of federal funds and federally-offered plans to perform abortion procedures.

To deprive 31 million uninsured Americans of all health care services because a vocal minority refused to compromise on one issue that would affect a tiny fraction of Americans would be both cruel and immoral in my common sense view.

And while my colleague, whom I greatly admire, doesn't like it when I label such actions as a "self-absorbed overreaction" riddled with "selfish dramatics," that's precisely what it would be.

For the full text of what my colleague takes issue with, read Pro-Choice Advocates Are Wrong to Block House Health Care Bill .

Essential Reading

• Key Provisions of the Senate Health Care Reform Bill
• Full Text of Stupak Amendment to Prohibit Government-Funded Abortions

(Photo taken on November 19, 2009: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

As much as one can analyze a 1,274-page health care bill in a few days, I've taken a first in-depth glance at the Senate Health Care Reform Bill, and find it to be a good enough start.

(Read my summary at Key Provisions of the Senate Health Care Reform Bill.)

The problem, of course, is that this legislation will only get less, not more, liberal as the Senate endlessly debates and nitpicks the bill. But I digress, as that dilemma is down the road, and hardly today's challenge.

Briefly, the primary difference between the House Health Care Bill, which was passed by the House on November 7, 2009, and this Senate companion bill, the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," H.R. 3590, is NOT in coverage and benefits for U.S. citizens and legal residents: those appear to be remarkably similar, including a watered-down Medicare-like public plan option.

Instead, the primary difference between the House and Senate health care reform bills lies in planned sources of funding for the public plan option: while the House bill relies mainly on levying employers who fail to provide coverage for their employees, the Senate version relies more on new taxes and levies on the health care and pharmaceutical industries, and on high-income individuals, especially those with employer-provided "cadillac plan" health care coverage.

An interesting new wrinkle introduced by the Senate Health Care Reform Plan is a 5% tax on elective cosmatic surgery. (Pardon the "wrinkle" pun... I couldn't resist.)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has set Saturday evening, November 21st, for a Senate cloture vote to begin debate of the proposed legislation. Three moderate Democratic senators from notoriously conservative states... Landrieu of Louisiana, Nelson of Nebraska, and Lincoln of Arkansas... are said to be dragging their feet in support of this vote, which requires 60 senators to vote YES.

My guess is that these three senators will do the right thing (especially after being lured by pricey legislative goodies), and vote to let Senate debate formally commence on this overdue, urgently needed measure.

Of course, to garner the requisite 60 votes, Democrats will also need the support of former Democrat, Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, since presumably, no Republicans will vote to advance debate of the bill.

God only knows how attention-seeking, liberal turncoat Lieberman will vote tomorrow. And I shudder to even imagine what Democrats might have to concede to get this political narcissist's support on this bill.

But undoubtedly, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid will do what he must to move health care reform forward. And post-Thanksgiving, the fireworks of the Senate health care reform bill debate WILL begin!