The day’s top political news:
Russia “would be willing to discuss” a new missile defense structure with the United States but sees Iran's nuclear program as a separate issue.
In the deadlock over US anti missile protections in Europe, the Obama administration has blinked and is reported to have offered negotiations over the issue. (Bush had been stalwart in protecting Europe from a potential Iranian missile threat.
Asked about a report in the New York Times that U.S. President Barack Obama had written and offered to back off deploying a new missile system in Eastern Europe in return for help with the Iranians, Russians say signals from Washington were positive but the two issues were separate.
"If we are talking about any "swaps" (Iran for missile defence), this is not how the question is being put. This would not be productive," the Russians say of Obama’s attempt at surrender on the issue.
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2009/03/03/africa/OUKWD-UK-MEDVEDEV-OBAMA.php
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be “incendiary.”
Steele, newly elected as National GOP chairman, is scrambling to recover from his Biden-like gaffe.
“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”
The dust-up comes at a time when top Democrats are trying to make Limbaugh the face of the Republican Party, in part by using ads funded by labor. Americans United for Change sent a fund-raising e-mail Monday that begins: “The Republican Party has turned into the Rush Limbaugh Party.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19517.html
As 2009 opened the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9034. Yesterday the Dow fell another 4.24% to 6763, for an overall decline of 25% in two months and to its lowest level since 1997.
The dismaying message here is that President Obama's policies have become part of the economy's problem.
After five weeks in office, it's become clear that Mr. Obama's policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery.
From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence -- and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604419092515347.html
Opinion:
Obama – “terrorism? What terrorism?”
Democrats try to ignore the attacks on this country by the terrorists of radical Islam.
Clinton ignore the attacks throughout his terms and thus invited the attack on 9/11. Liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill have done all they can to ignore the Global War on Terror and its threats. In fact one Democrat committee chairman, the hapless Ike Skelton, even barred use of the term by his committee staff. The Liberal world of “if we don’t talk about it, it will go away”.
Intelligent people know better.
Note the record: the sometimes hysterical Nancy Pelosi attempted to cancel funding of our troops in combat time and time again. Over in the Senate, Harry Reid – never among the brightest of representatives – unilaterally declared the war lost months ago. As usual, Reid was dead wrong.
Our military has been successful in spite of the efforts of liberal Democrats.
Meanwhile, liberals have attacked and prevented efforts to protect American lives. They unilaterally outlawed stiff interrogation of terrorists captured on the battle field, and opposed efforts allowing the government to listen in on phone calls between terrorists.
Before the liberals were successful in their attempts to hobble our efforts against the Islamic terrorists, hundreds of American lives were protected. The radical terrorists have been deterred in their sworn commitment to slaughter all who refuse to accept their extremist version of religion.
But now, liberals dominate Capitol Hill and own the White House. That’s a chilling reality in today’s world.
Obama’s actions regarding Git Mo stand as an illustration of his efforts regarding terror and terrorists.
Buddy
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/12/obamas-outrageous-oversight/
EDITORIAL: Obama's outrageous oversight
President Obama clearly didn't do his homework before ordering the suspension of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects. We have learned that even his own legal counsel admitted that Mr. Obama erred in discussing details about terrorism with families of victims last week, and that the administration was ignorant of a key point that terrorists exploit to their advantage. In his rush to fulfill a campaign promise to his more fervid anti-war supporters, the president's legal oversights risk the disclosure of some highly classified information to terrorists.
Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 that was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11, was present at last Friday's White House meeting of families of terrorism victims. Her impression was that President Obama was saying the right words in general, but when it came to specifics he was uncertain, uninformed, and sometimes just plain mistaken. Ms. Burlingame is an attorney who has followed closely the legal aspects of the terrorism cases, and her detailed, probing questions were met with stammers, stares, and statements that betrayed an understanding of the law that was, she said, "flat out wrong."
Case in point: the president's knowledge of the role of the Classified Information Procedures Act or CIPA. This law governs the way in which classified information is used in trials. The Sixth Amendment guarantees defendants the right to confront their accusers and the evidence against them, but the government has an important interest in cases such as these in keeping sources and methods secret. Under CIPA rules, in cases where classified information is used, the government has the option of sharing the information with the defendant, or not using it.
The Bush administration sought to avoid this potential national security threat by resorting to other procedures in which 6th Amendment issues did not arise. But President Obama believes that the model for terrorism cases is the prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. Of course a number of those plotters escaped justice (some were found later hiding in Saddam's Iraq, but that's another story). More important, because of the openness of that process, al Qaeda learned a great deal about how to do a much better job next time - and even the classified information from that trial was in Osama bin Laden's hands within weeks.
The terrorists have learned a great deal about conducting legal guerrilla war, using rules like CIPA to their advantage. Notice that more and more terrorists are dismissing their appointed lawyers and representing themselves. This gives them direct access to the classified documents that will be used in evidence against them. In this way they can learn about U.S. intelligence sources and methods - how they were targeted, what information was collected, and who may have been the traitors in their midst. Even if the names of sources are omitted, for example someone who was present at a key planning meeting, the terrorist defendant will know enough about the circumstances to be able to narrow it down. After all, the terrorist is familiar with every aspect of the events; he knows much more about them than the intelligence community.
The alternative to handing over the secrets is for the government to not use the evidence in question. That creates the incongruous situation in which the defense wants to maximize the amount of evidence that implicates them, and the prosecution wants to minimize it. (Our legal system was not designed to accommodate defendants who welcome being put to death.) According to Ms. Burlingame, Obama's answer to this conundrum was "there is no reason we have to give [the terrorists] everything." Evidently the former editor of the Harvard Law Review seems to think that one of his powers as president is personally to pick and choose which constitutional rights apply to terror defendants and which do not. That's the very thing they were criticizing President Bush for.
White House Counsel Greg Craig, often seen whispering in the president's ear during question periods, admitted later to Ms. Burlingame that the chief executive was getting the facts of the law wrong during the discussion with the families. Craig asked her if CIPA covers a case in which terrorists defend themselves, noting that "this is something we hadn't contemplated." If nothing else, this admission of ignorance is more evidence that the decision to rush ahead with closing Guantanamo and shutting down the military tribunals was ill-conceived, poorly planned, and may ultimately be injurious to our national security. The president may talk a good game about "swift, certain justice," but it is becoming clear that justice will not be swift, is highly uncertain, and in the end may not even be just.
The day’s top Blogs:
First an overview:
1.
Extinguishing Physician Conscience
Mary L. Davenport, MD
The largest generational cohort in American history, the Baby Boomers, will be the first Americans to be denied available effective life-saving treatments for reasons of cost. The seeds for this mass liquidation have already been planted.
Imagine that it is 2016, and you are a 65 year old boomer. You have been admitted to your local community hospital with malaise, fatigue, vomiting and cloudy mental status. You have had blood pressure problems and diabetes for a few years, and have just been diagnosed with renal failure. As you drift in and out of consciousness, you are vaguely aware your old family practice physician, who had taken care of you for 20 years, is not around. A religious man, he quietly retired from medical practice in 2014, after the full force of the Obama administration‘s removal of conscience protection for physicians in February, 2009, came into effect.
2.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604419092515347.html
The Obama Economy
As the Dow keeps dropping, the President is running out of people to blame.
As 2009 opened, three weeks before Barack Obama took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9034 on January 2, its highest level since the autumn panic.[ Following his election & renewed anti-free enterprise comments HB ] Yesterday the Dow fell another 4.24% to 6763, for an overall decline of 25% in two months and to its lowest level since 1997. The dismaying message here is that President Obama's policies have become part of the economy's problem.
3.
http://townhall.com/columnists/EdFeulner/2009/03/03/preventing_the_return_of_$4_gasoline
Preventing the Return of $4 Gasoline
Ed Feulner
You may have forgotten what you did on vacation last summer -- but you probably remember how much it cost to fill your gas tank for the trip.
Last July, soaring gasoline prices had everybody talking. Presidential candidates called for energy independence. Congressional leaders hauled oil company executives in for hearings. Gas prices seemed to jump by a dime a day. They topped $4 per gallon and looked as if they’d never stop climbing.
Yet suddenly they did. A global recession slashed demand and gas prices fell, dropping back to today’s roughly $2 per gallon.
But that doesn’t mean our energy problems are over. In the months and years ahead the global economy will improve; the demand for oil will increase, and prices will rise again.
1.
Extinguishing Physician Conscience
Mary L. Davenport, MD
The largest generational cohort in American history, the Baby Boomers, will be the first Americans to be denied available effective life-saving treatments for reasons of cost. The seeds for this mass liquidation have already been planted.
Imagine that it is 2016, and you are a 65 year old boomer. You have been admitted to your local community hospital with malaise, fatigue, vomiting and cloudy mental status. You have had blood pressure problems and diabetes for a few years, and have just been diagnosed with renal failure. As you drift in and out of consciousness, you are vaguely aware your old family practice physician, who had taken care of you for 20 years, is not around. A religious man, he quietly retired from medical practice in 2014, after the full force of the Obama administration‘s removal of conscience protection for physicians in February, 2009, came into effect.
You feel vaguely uncomfortable as you are placed in a darkened room in the Comfort Care wing of the hospital. In moments of lucidity, you wonder if you shouldn't have some oxygen, an IV or SOMETHING! But the appropriate therapy, kidney dialysis, is not on the approved list of treatments for patients over 65, having been deemed too expensive. The new regulations from the Department of Health and Human Services were presented just last month to your hospital's Futile Care Committee. It was decided at the highest levels that for those over 65 years of age, renal dialysis would not be a beneficial treatment, that the alternatives of a kidney transplant were too expensive, and that your quality of life on chronic dialysis would be too diminished.
Your children wonder why you are not in an ICU. They are told that you will be placed on a morphine drip to make you more comfortable as you pass away, and that this is the highest standard of care for your diagnosis and age. It is called terminal sedation. You signed an advanced directive indicating that you did not want extraordinary care for a terminal condition, and under the new protocols renal failure, although treatable, qualifies as a terminal condition.
Your children frantically try to find their old family doctor. But your health plan replaced him with a large group of younger physicians, the hospital's Consortium for Health, a private-public foundation that was created to promote efficiency and reduce wasteful spending in medical care. By 2014 when he left, your family doctor was a dinosaur, having been trained in an earlier era. His medical school was one of the last to retain the original Hippocratic Oath. It affirmed the covenantal relationship between the physician and patient, overseen by God, and that whatever the physician did would be for the patient's benefit. You had felt safe entrusting your health to Dr. O'Brien's professional judgment.
Not only did the Hippocratic Oath your doctor took decades ago took specifically forbid physician assisted suicide and abortion, it also established patient confidentiality so that your secrets would never be disclosed. That is, until 2012, when physicians participating in the national healthcare system, which included ALL licensed physicians, were mandated to submit your visits to the unified electronic medical record system. This data base was created in 2003 to coordinate medical care, detect emerging health threats, and exchange clinical information. Your doctor was very uncomfortable with this policy despite reassurances that HIPAA regulations would maintain your privacy.
But forces beyond any individual's control began to erode your relationship with your doctor long before he left the practice of medicine. The insurance companies stopped paying him in the late 1990's for hospital care, preferring to hire "hospitalists" or "intensivists" for greater efficiency in reducing hospital stays. Since office visits were reimbursed at lower and lower rates, your doctor had to see more and more patients in the office to just stay even. So although O'Brien knew you well and was trained to treat conditions such as renal failure or pneumonia, he stopped treating patients in the hospital.
Around 2007 both the hospital and office physicians began to be paid by a formula that rewarded them for saving money on medical care. When your family doctor was forced to join the Consortium in 2012 because the health plans stopped contracting with individual physicians, a powerful new computer system tracked each doctor's prescribing habits, referrals to specialists, and utilization of expensive lab tests. But your doctor was an "outlier" in this new system, having been brought up in Hippocratic tradition of doing what was necessary for the individual patient, rather than the Greater Good, the newer communitarian ethic followed by the younger doctors. He was financially penalized for doing too much for his patients, since the formulas based 30% of physician income on "efficiency."
Your old doctor could tolerate the erosion of his income, but had trouble with the new regulations that insisted that he discuss and refer for "all legal procedures." Since by 2013 physician assisted suicide was legal in 21 of 50 states, the Consortium enumerated the conditions that mandated the "euthanasia talk", including multiple sclerosis, metastatic breast cancer, and many others. He could never actually bring himself to violate his original Hippocratic Oath that not only forbade assisting his patients in committing suicide but also prohibited even mentioning it. It was impossible to rid himself of the idea that a physician's role was to assist in healing and that medical killing was antithetical to his professional integrity.
Back in 2007, ACOG, the ob/gyn's professional organization, issued Ethics Committee Opinion 385, contending that ob/gyn doctors had the duty to either do abortions or have offices in close proximity to abortion doctors to whom they would refer patients. There was an outcry from professional organizations of pro-life ob/gyns, Catholic physicians, and other Christian doctors. Especially troubling to many was the assertion in Committee Opinion 385 that defined conscience as a sentiment, and measured its "authenticity" by the degree to which a provider would suffer "guilt, shame or loss of self esteem" if it were violated. Your doctor and many of his colleagues regarded medical killing as anathema, and were incensed by describing their integrity as a physicians as a "feeling". But by 2013 the protests had died down, and the ethics committee recommendation for ob/gyn's had evolved into a mandate for family practice doctors under new rules enforced by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The final blow came in early 2014. Back in 2008, in Benitez v North Coast Women's Care Medical Group, the California Supreme Court ruled against ob/gyn doctors who did not want to provide intrauterine insemination to a lesbian couple because of their religious beliefs. Although most European nations did not allow the buying or selling of eggs or sperm, and restricted fertility therapies to heterosexual married couples, the California courts not only permitted but required health care providers to cooperate in any reproductive therapies for any patient regardless of sexual orientation or marital status.
Although the birth of octuplets in 2009 with assisted reproductive technology to a single woman with six other children initially created a brief public uproar, ultimately no legislation was passed protecting physicians who did not want to participate in a patient's procreative endeavor. Your physician had a 68 year old bipolar single male patient who wanted to have an heir. The patient requested that your doctor appeal to the Consortium to provide him with a donated egg and surrogate mother for his desired offspring. Since your doctor did not want to be used as a tool in his patient's peculiar agenda and was legitimately afraid of an expensive lawsuit that would decimate his dwindling retirement funds if he refused, he decided at this point to quit medicine altogether and move to a sunny warm state.
Your family doctor had been inspired as a young man by study of the U.S. Constitution and other foundational documents that he thought would forever ensure his liberty. He had studied the same "Rules of Civility" that the young George Washington had encountered in 1747. One of the most memorable of these maxims was "Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." It was clear to him that conscience here referred to man's innate understanding of moral right and wrong. When the American Founders would later declare independence from Great Britain in 1776, it was by virtue of this "spark of celestial fire" that they would establish the principles of human equality, unalienable rights, and government by consent as the foundations of American constitutional government.
Just before he left for his retirement home, your doctor was deeply disturbed to see the concept of conscience mocked in the New England Journal of Medicine by University of Wisconsin law professor R. Alta Charo in her article "The Celestial Fire of Conscience - Refusing to Provide Medical Care." Charo's presentation did not acknowledge that many Americans do not believe that abortion, assisted suicide, and embryonic stem cell therapies are legitimate medical care in the first place. Her article also did not distinguish between emergency and elective care, and merely regards the health care provider as a tool for whatever ends the patient wants to achieve. Attorneys such as Ms. Charo claimed the right to take whatever cases they want, but seem deny the same basic right to physicians. Patients can always seek the care of other providers.
Your doctor (and many other Americans) believed that failure to protect physician conscience will destroy the trust and accountability that is essential to the physician patient relationship. If the physician and patient cannot freely collaborate, ultimately another agenda -- that of the health plan or state -- will replace it, to everyone's detriment.
2.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604419092515347.html
The Obama Economy
As the Dow keeps dropping, the President is running out of people to blame.
As 2009 opened, three weeks before Barack Obama took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9034 on January 2, its highest level since the autumn panic.[ Following his election & renewed anti-free enterprise comments HB ] Yesterday the Dow fell another 4.24% to 6763, for an overall decline of 25% in two months and to its lowest level since 1997. The dismaying message here is that President Obama's policies have become part of the economy's problem.
Americans have welcomed the Obama era in the same spirit of hope the President campaigned on. But after five weeks in office, it's become clear that Mr. Obama's policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence -- and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.
The Democrats who now run Washington don't want to hear this, because they benefit from blaming all bad economic news on President Bush. And Mr. Obama has inherited an unusual recession deepened by credit problems, both of which will take time to climb out of. But it's also true that the economy has fallen far enough, and long enough, that much of the excess that led to recession is being worked off. Already 15 months old, the current recession will soon match the average length -- and average job loss -- of the last three postwar downturns. What goes down will come up -- unless destructive policies interfere with the sources of potential recovery.
And those sources have been forming for some time. The price of oil and other commodities have fallen by two-thirds since their 2008 summer peak, which has the effect of a major tax cut. The world is awash in liquidity, thanks to monetary ease by the Federal Reserve and other central banks. Monetary policy operates with a lag, but last year's easing will eventually stir economic activity.
Housing prices have fallen 27% from their Case-Shiller peak, or some two-thirds of the way back to their historical trend. While still high, credit spreads are far from their peaks during the panic, and corporate borrowers are again able to tap the credit markets. As equities were signaling with their late 2008 rally and January top, growth should under normal circumstances begin to appear in the second half of this year.
So what has happened in the last two months? The economy has received no great new outside shock. Exchange rates and other prices have been stable, and there are no security crises of note. The reality of a sharp recession has been known and built into stock prices since last year's fourth quarter.
What is new is the unveiling of Mr. Obama's agenda and his approach to governance.
Every new President has a finite stock of capital -- financial and political -- to deploy, and amid recession Mr. Obama has more than most. But one negative revelation has been the way he has chosen to spend his scarce resources on income transfers rather than growth promotion.
Most of his "stimulus" spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest.
His Treasury has been making a similar mistake with its financial bailout plans. The banking system needs to work through its losses, and one necessary use of public capital is to assist in burning down those bad assets as fast as possible. Yet most of Team Obama's ministrations so far have gone toward triage and life support, rather than repair and recovery.
AIG yesterday received its fourth "rescue," including $70 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program cash, without any clear business direction. (See here.) Citigroup's restructuring last week added not a dollar of new capital, and also no clear direction. Perhaps the imminent Treasury "stress tests" will clear the decks, but until they do the banks are all living in fear of becoming the next AIG. All of this squanders public money that could better go toward burning down bank debt.
The market has notably plunged since Mr. Obama introduced his budget last week, and that should be no surprise.
The document was a declaration of hostility toward capitalists across the economy. Health-care stocks have dived on fears of new government mandates and price controls. Private lenders to students have been told they're no longer wanted. Anyone who uses carbon energy has been warned to expect a huge tax increase from cap and trade. And every risk-taker and investor now knows that another tax increase will slam the economy in 2011, unless Mr. Obama lets Speaker Nancy Pelosi impose one even earlier.
Meanwhile, Congress demands more bank lending even as it assails lenders and threatens to let judges rewrite mortgage contracts.
The powers in Congress -- unrebuked by Mr. Obama -- are ridiculing and punishing the very capitalists who are essential to a sustainable recovery. The result has been a capital strike, and the return of the fear from last year that we could face a far deeper downturn. This is no way to nurture a wounded economy back to health.
Listening to Mr. Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, on the weekend, we couldn't help but wonder if they appreciate any of this. They seem preoccupied with going to the barricades against Republicans who wield little power, or picking a fight with Rush Limbaugh, as if this is the kind of economic leadership Americans want.
Perhaps they're reading the polls and figure they have two or three years before voters stop blaming Republicans and Mr. Bush for the economy. Even if that's right in the long run, in the meantime their assault on business and investors is delaying a recovery and ensuring that the expansion will be weaker than it should be when it finally does arrive.
3.
http://townhall.com/columnists/EdFeulner/2009/03/03/preventing_the_return_of_$4_gasoline
Preventing the Return of $4 Gasoline
Ed Feulner
You may have forgotten what you did on vacation last summer -- but you probably remember how much it cost to fill your gas tank for the trip.
Last July, soaring gasoline prices had everybody talking. Presidential candidates called for energy independence. Congressional leaders hauled oil company executives in for hearings. Gas prices seemed to jump by a dime a day. They topped $4 per gallon and looked as if they’d never stop climbing.
Yet suddenly they did. A global recession slashed demand and gas prices fell, dropping back to today’s roughly $2 per gallon.
But that doesn’t mean our energy problems are over. In the months and years ahead the global economy will improve; the demand for oil will increase, and prices will rise again.
That means today’s cheaper prices are an opportunity. The U.S. needs to act now so we’ll have enough supply in the years ahead to keep costs reasonable. The key: increase domestic oil production.
Last summer President Bush took a sensible first step, lifting an executive order (put in place by his father) that prohibited oil drilling off America’s coasts. A few months later (even though gas prices were finally falling) Congress allowed its own moratorium to expire.
Together, these bans had kept about 85 percent of America’s territorial waters off limits to exploration.
Even with lower gas prices, Americans grasp the need for more drilling. A Harris Interactive poll taken in February shows that 62 percent support “increased domestic access to offshore oil.” Only 26 percent oppose it. Yet our government isn’t moving quickly enough.
The Interior Department has taken a tentative first step. It has announced a draft program to provide offshore leases, and it has given the public 60 days to comment. Unfortunately, President Obama’s new secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, has already (long before the initial comment phase would have ended) announced he’ll extend it for six months. He’s also told his agency to gather additional information on the estimated amounts of oil and natural gas in these offshore areas.
To be fair, drilling offshore is hardly a crisis that needs immediate action. But some steady progress would help. Unfortunately, Salazar seems determined to slow any progress as much as possible. He called the two-month comment period “a headlong rush of the worst kind.” Really? Even though the public had plenty of time to comment?
Meanwhile, he’s hinted that he may want to delay exploration indefinitely. “The Bush administration was so intent on opening new areas for oil and gas offshore that it torpedoed offshore renewable energy efforts,” he’s said, ignoring at least one offshore wind project Bush promoted. Besides, electric wind farms are completely different from oil fields, as Salazar must know.
It takes years to develop an oil field, which is why we should get started this year, while prices are still low. Salazar’s own Interior Department estimates there are 19 billion barrels of oil available in U.S. waters, and such estimates tend to be on the low side. But we won’t know until we start looking.
This isn’t the first time Salazar has opposed exploration, by the way. Last summer, when the Bush administration wanted to sell some public land in Western states so oil companies could take a closer look at harvesting fuel from oil shale, Salazar disliked the program.
“A fire sale will not lower gas prices. It will not accelerate the development of commercial oil shale technologies,” he wrote in The Washington Post. Again, true as far as it goes. But without exploration, we’ll never know if oil shale can be made to work.
Our country needs more oil exploration, as quickly as is prudent.
Otherwise, prepare for the eventual return of $4 or higher gasoline.
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