The day’s Top Political News:
Obama assured of a chilly Russian welcome despite first signs of thaw
Obama will have few traffic problems getting to the Kremlin for his first summit with Russian president Dmitri Medvedev on Monday – the Obamamania that has swept much of the rest of the world is absent from Moscow; there will be no adoring crowds to greet him.
A recent poll by Russia's Levada Centre found only 23 per cent of citizens believe the US president will "do the right thing in world affairs", with many doubting his promise of change will heal antagonisms between Russia and the West.
A long list of issues – from Nato's eastward expansion, to missile defence, to human rights, to the contest for oil and gas in Central Asia – continue to poison relations between the former Cold War superpowers.
http://news.scotsman.com/world/Obama-assured-of-a-chilly.5429112.jp
Palin takes to Web for hints of political future
After staying out of the public eye for most of Saturday Palin indicated on a social networking site that she would take on a larger, national role, citing a "higher calling" to unite the country along conservative lines.
"I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint," the former Republican vice presidential candidate wrote in a posting on her Facebook page. Palin's spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton, confirmed Palin wrote the entry.
Palin shocked even her closest friends on Friday when she announced she would resign July 26, more than a year before her first term ends. But the controversial hockey mom has not revealed many details of bigger plans and national agenda.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090705/D9988SCG0.html
Former D.C. Mayor Barry charged with stalking
Police say former Washington Mayor Marion Barry has been arrested and charged with stalking a woman.
The United States Park Police said Barry, a current D.C. Council member, was arrested Saturday in Washington after a woman flagged down an officer and complained that Barry was stalking her.
Barry was charged with misdemeanor stalking and released.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090705/D9988JVG0.html
Opinion:
A time for a bit of plain speaking – especially about Obama’s “Healthcare on the cheap”.
First, a personal thought:
My greatest thought on this Fourth of July, was a recollection of my observation of that holiday on July Fourth, 1976. It was our bi-centennial celebration. A major event --especially in Washington. By invitation, I joined my daughter, Carolyn on the lawn of the White House. Along with President Gerald Ford (and a few thousand of his other closest friends) we watched an amazing display of fireworks, then tried to fight incredible traffic getting back to my apartment in Crystal City.
“Bumper to bumper” is as close as I can come to describing the mob. No one could move in any direction – my roomy of the time, the steely-eyed Bill Lee – couldn’t resist temptation. He picked up the mike of his CB radio and said to those listening “what’s the problem. We are totally in the clear over here”. In between doing GOP campaigns and reacting to whims of the RNC, Lee engaged in action with Green Berets.
That was more than a quarter century ago. Today I don’t visit the White House, applaud its current occupant, or support the incredible extremism being pushed by Obama and his very liberal movement.
In my personal view – it’s a movement that is downright impossible for any normal American to support – or fail to do all that is possible to defeat.
I stayed away from any serious discussion of where Obama may or may not have been born. I assumed that to be a minor dust up that had no credibility or basis. For a candidate for president to have not been vetted regarding a requirement as simple and basic as his place of birth – was a concept impossible to embrace. After all, it was the obligation of the DNC to certify the legal qualifications of all its candidates. Then I noted Obama had stonewalled media questions on the issue – despite having that media as a lapdog and actual participant in his campaign.
Then I began noticing the extreme and often frantic efforts to which Obama and his handlers went to avoid an honest answer. The Obama frenzy was highlighted by their posting of a totally phony document claiming to end the discussion. It had quite the opposite result.
After several months brushing off the clamor, I began giving it serious thought. I recalled how pregnancy for unmarried women was a major disgrace back in the days in which Obama entered the world. It was a major disgrace. Obama’s mother was no model of respectability, by any means. She eagerly sought out male companionship and intimacy with men of races other than her own. She despised America. She was an atheist.
But even liberal wackos such as Obama’s mother have families and I am told she was living with her mother and father at the time – and they lived in Seattle. I recalled a daily ferry runs up to Vancouver -- or did when I last spent time there. An easy out for a “girl in trouble” would have been for her to step on the ferry, spend a few days in Vancouver long enough to deliver baby Obama, then return and slip away to Hawaii where local law provided easy cover for such births – even certificates noting a “live birth” had occurred.
Chip shot to escape the humiliation that Obama’s birth represented in those days.
After all, Obama’s mother could hardly have anticipated her son could some day become president of the United States. She needed no further cover for her “problem”.
Thus the truth is obvious. Even if Obama was born in Kenya rather than Canada, he is still illegitimate in terms of constitutional requirement for president.
In either case, Obama was not born on US soil -- but nothing will be done about it. Even the top tier of our national government has caved on the issue -- Obama's birth certificate fraud ("hold me to those constitutional details, and I'll have rioters in the streets burning your cities) will succeed. Think of Obama's birth certificate scam as being Jesse Jackson on steroids. The image of cities burning if the first Black president was ousted for (what his rabid supporters will contend) a technical requirement, is in the minds of those obligated to dealing honestly with the issue.
Ergo, the fix is in, and will remain in.
Obama received the votes of a majority of Americans in the election, and the “powers that be” take that as trumping Constitutional requirements for eligibility.
Nuff said.
“Seniors have an obligation to die and get out of the way”.
That was the chilling position of former Colorado governor, Dick Lamm. The extremism and cold cruelty of that position outraged most decent Americans of that day and drew a lot of negative attention to Lamm himself.
Today, that way of thinking is on the verge of becoming national policy.
Bloomberg reports on the attitude of Obama assumed Healthcare Secretary. Former Senator Tom Daschle. (Daschle ran afoul of tax evasion problems and withdrew from consideration) Says Bloomberg: "Daschle says health-care reform will not be pain free.
Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them."
Obama has echoed that way of thinking. ?Don’t treat Americns over 49 – let them suffer and do the best they can – preferably die and get out of the way” is poised to become official US health policy.
“Suck it up, seniors, your days are behind you” would be an appropriate bumper sticker or bill board for the Democrat healthcare plan.
Not that younger Americans get much better. As they look forward to dark days of pain and suffering as they reach 49, they must realize government healthcare will also deny them quality care.
Qaulity care or Obama care on the cheap, is the basic issue as the House and Senate debate proposals.
It is crucial every American – no matter their age – understands what is really at stake and what liberals offer everyone:
“Healthcare on the cheap” – Obama policy, coming to doctors, hospitals, and care centers near us all.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=50304
Arizona Moves to Oppose Obama’s Expected Health Care Mandates
Fred Lucas, Staff Writer
CNS News: Voters in Arizona will decide next year whether residents will be subject to mandates in the pending health care reform that President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are promoting.
At least five other states – Indiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota and Wyoming – have considered proposals to take pre-emptive action against the pending federal mandates, but those proposals have either not made it out of committee, failed to get enough votes from one side of the legislature, or are still being crafted.
Only the Arizona Legislature introduced an initiative (HCR2014), which if passed, would amend the state constitution to codify that no resident would be required to participate in any public health care option. Arizonans will vote on the initiative in November 2010.
“HCR2014 is proactive and will protect patients’ fundamental rights,” Arizona State Rep. Nancy Barto, a Republican, said in a statement. “We are a front-line battle state to stop the momentum of this powerful government takeover of your health care decisions. Health care by lobbyists thwarts your rights and can be stopped here.”
(NOTE: More than quality healthcare is involved in this Arizona debate - as that state government moves to protect its people – it also assert state rights and the principle involved in the tenth amendment core – that states continue to have inalienable rights and the federal government cannot legitimately trump those rights unilaterally. Its among the most basic challenges to liberal omnipotence to be presented. Obama’s “healthcare on the cheap” could provide an easy target for reasserting the rights of states.)
The main issue is the core of the Obama health plan – a government run or “public option” – to compete with private health insurers. Some state lawmakers fear such legislation would force residents to buy into the public plan.
“The eyes of the nation will be on Arizona next year to see what happens,” Christie Herrera, director of the Health and Human Services Taskforce with the American Legislative Exchange Council, told CNSNews.com. “If this succeeds in Arizona, other states will take notice and push harder.”
The Obama administration insists that the public option will provide another choice for Americans who are not insured or are unhappy with their current insurance and will force private companies to be more competitive.
Critics of the plan say private firms could not compete with a public option – with unlimited government resources – and thus would go out of business, leaving what is tantamount to a single-payer system in place.
What happens in Arizona could spur other states to pass similar laws or constitutional amendments, said Wisconsin State Rep. Lea Vukmir, a Republican, who sponsored similar legislation in 2008 that passed the House but failed in the Senate.
If the Obama administration’s “public option” becomes law before Arizonans vote in November 2010, their initiative would still allow the state the challenge the Obama plan.
Vukmir said that the Obama proposal could be unconstitutional, under the Tenth Amendment, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
“I’m a strong believer in the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment,” Vukmir told CNSNews.com. “The Tenth Amendment has been eroded by Congress and the Supreme Court for decades. We have to ask, does the Tenth Amendment have any meaning? We are supposed to have strong state governments and a weak central government. That has eroded away.”
Georgia State Sen. Judson Hill, a Republican, said that the Obama plan would put a big strain on state budgets and told CNSNews.com that he would be interested in introducing similar legislation in the Georgia state house.
Medicaid and S-CHIP payments to states already make cutting costs untenable for states in lieu of a benefit cut or tax hike, Hill said.
He has introduced legislation to use state medical grants to go directly to patients as a sort of medical scholarship. (S-CHIP is the acronym for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, run by the federal Health and Human Services, which provides matching funds to states that provide expanded health insurance programs for families with children in low- to moderate-income brackets.)
“I call them federal crack dollars,” said Hill. “States get addicted to health dollars sent by the U.S. government.”
Arizona’s Health Care Freedom Act, firstly, establishes the right of state residents to spend their own money to seek and receive health care and, secondly, the right to choose not to participate in any health care system of any type.
An advocacy group was started to campaign for the amendment.
“Protecting the rights of individuals to be in control of their health and health care must be a fundamental component of health care reform, so the Arizona legislature is to be congratulated for giving all Americans the opportunity to make certain our voices are heard,” said Dr. Eric Novack, chairman of the group Arizonans for Health Care Reform.
2.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KF30Ak02.html
Obama creates a deadly power vacuum
'Spengler'
There's a joke about a man who tells a psychiatrist, "Everybody hates me," to which the psychiatrist responds, "That's ridiculous - everyone doesn't know you, yet." Which brings me to Barack Obama: one of the best-informed people in the American security establishment told me the other day that the president is a "Manchurian Candidate".
That can't be true - Manchuria isn't in the business of brainwashing prospective presidential candidates any more. There's no one left to betray America to.
Obama is creating a strategic void in which no major power will dominate, and every minor power must fend for itself. The outcome is incalculably hard to analyze and terrifying to consider.
Obama doesn't want to betray the United States; he only wants to empower America's enemies. Forcing Israel to abandon its strategic buffer (the so-called settlements) was supposed to placate Iran, so that Iran would help America stabilize Iraq, where its influence looms large over the Shi'ite majority.
(NOTE: The real victor in the 2006 election that gave a major nod to liberal Democrats was Iran. Democrats made very clear they had no intention of opposing our enemies or defending out allies. Their traditional strategy of “cut, run, and surrender to the enemy” remains as consistent for liberals as ever…count on its result to be as disastrous as always. It leaves Israel isolated in a sea of enemies and makes Iran an almost certain entry into the nuclear society. Iran won, the US and its allies lost in 2006 – now Obama is compounding the Democrat “felony” with irresponsible policies of his own.)
America also sought Iran's help in suppressing the Taliban in Afghanistan. In Obama's imagination, a Sunni Arab coalition - empowered by Washington's turn against Israel - would encircle Iran and dissuade it from acquiring nuclear weapons, while an entirely separate Shi'ite coalition with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would suppress the radical Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This was the worst-designed scheme concocted by a Western strategist since Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery attacked the bridges at Arnhem in 1944, and it has blown up in Obama's face.
Iran already has made clear that casting America's enemies in the leading role of an American operation has a defect, namely that America's enemies rather would lose on their own terms than win on America's terms. Iran's verbal war with the American president over the violent suppression of election-fraud protests leaves Washington with no policy at all. The premise of Obama's policy was that progress on the Palestinian issue would empower a Sunni coalition. As the president said May 18:
If there is a linkage between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, I personally believe it actually runs the other way. To the extent that we can make peace with the Palestinians - between the Palestinians and the Israelis, then I actually think it strengthens our hand in the international community in dealing with the potential Iranian threat.
Israel's supporters remonstrated in vain. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a prominent Obama supporter, wrote, "If there is to be any linkage - and I do not believe there should be - it goes the other way: it will be much easier for Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank if Iran does not have a nuclear umbrella under which it can continue to encourage Hamas and Hezbollah to fire rockets at Israeli civilians."
No matter: America made clear that it had annulled the George W Bush administration's promise that a final settlement would allow most of Israel's 500,000 "settlers" to keep their homes, in order to launch the fantasy ship of Iranian cooperation with America.
That policy now is in ruins, and Washington has no plan B.
David Axelrod, Obama's top political advisor, told television interviewers on January 28 that Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who spent the last week denouncing the United States, "Did not have final say" over Iran's foreign policy and that America still wanted to negotiate with Iran. This sounds idiotic, but the White House really has painted itself into a corner. The trouble is that Obama has promised to withdraw American forces from Iraq, and Iran has sufficient influence in Shi'ite-majority Iraq to cause continuous upheaval, perhaps even to eventually win control of the country.
By a fateful coincidence, American troops are scheduled to leave Iraq's urban centers on June 30. Overthrowing Saddam Hussein left Iraq open to Iranian destabilization; that is why the elder George Bush left the Iraqi dictator in power in 1990.
Offering Iran a seat at the table in exchange for setting a limit to its foreign ambitions - in Lebanon and Gaza as well as Iraq - seemed to make sense on paper. But the entity that calls itself revolutionary Islam is not made of paper, but of flesh and blood. It is in danger of internal collapse and can only assert its authority by expanding its influence as aggressively as it can.
After the election disaster, Iran's revolutionary leadership urgently needs to demonstrate its credibility. Israel now can say, "A country that murders its own citizens will have no compunction about massacring its enemies," and attack Iran's nuclear capacity with fewer consequences than would have been imaginable in May. And if an Israeli strike were to succeed, or appear successful to the world, the resulting humiliation might be fatal to the regime.
Israel may not be Tehran's worst nightmare. Iraq's Sunnis are testing the resolve of the weakened mullahs.
The suicide bombing that killed 73 people at a Shi'ite mosque in Kirkuk on June 20 and a second bombing that killed another 72 Shi'ites in Baghdad's Sadr City slum most likely reflect Sunni perceptions that a weakened Tehran will provide less support for Iraqi Shi'ites. Although Shi'ites comprise more than three-fifths of Iraq's population, Sunnis provided the entire military leadership and are better organized on the ground. America's hopes of enlisting Iran to provide cover for its withdrawal from the cities of Iraq seem delusional.
What move on the chessboard might Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei venture to pre-empt an Israeli air raid against the nuclear facilities?
Iran has the rocket launchers of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, and terrorist sleeper cells throughout the world. Iran might seek to pre-empt what it anticipates to be the next move from Israel by demonstrating its capacity to inflict injury on Israel or on Jewish targets elsewhere. That would require careful judgment, for a heavy handed action could provide a pretext for even more serious action by the Israelis and others. The same sort of consideration applies to Iranian support for Pakistan Shi'ites, for Hezbollah, and other vehicles of Iran's program of imperial expansion.
The Obama administration has put itself in a peculiar bind. It has demanded that the Pakistani army suppress the Taliban, after Islamabad attempted a power-sharing agreement that left the Taliban in control of the Swat Valley.
To root out the largely Pashtun Taliban, Pakistan's largely Punjabi army has driven a million people into refugee camps and leveled entire towns in the Swat Valley. Tens of thousands of refugees are now fleeing the Pakistani army in the South Waziristan tribal area. Punjabis killing Pashtuns is nothing new in the region, but the ferocity of the present effort does not augur well for an early end to the conflict.
While the Pakistan army holds nothing back in attacking the Taliban, American troops in Afghanistan have been told that they no longer can call in air strikes if civilians are likely to suffer. That will put American forces in the unfortunate position of the Pirates of Penzance, who exempted orphans. Once this became generally known, everyone they attempted to rob turned out to be an orphan.
The Taliban need only take a page from Hamas' book, and ensure that civilians are present wherever they operate. The US has made clear that it will not deal in civilian blood, the currency of warfare in that region since before the dawn of history. It will not be taken seriously in consequence.
What will the administration do now? As all its initiatives splatter against the hard realities of the region, it will probably do less and less, turning the less appetizing aspects of the fighting over to local allies and auxiliaries who do not share its squeamishness about shedding civilian blood. That is the most dangerous outcome of all, for America is the main stabilizing force in the region.
The prospect of civil wars raging simultaneously in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq is no longer improbable.
The Israel-Palestine issue is linked to all of these through Iran, whose credibility depends on its ability to sustain such puppies of war as Hezbollah and Hamas. Whether or not the Israelis take the opportunity to strike Iran, the prospect of an Israeli strike will weigh on Iran's proxies in the region, and keep Israel's borders in condition of potential violence for the interim.
America's great good fortune is that no hostile superpower stands ready to benefit from its paralysis and confusion.
When Soviet troops landed in Afghanistan in December 1979, America was in the grip of an economic crisis comparable to the present depression. American diplomats at the Tehran Embassy were still hostages to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. The price of gold doubled from around $400 to $800 after the Russian invasion because most of the world thought that Russia would win the Cold War. If America lost its dominant superpower status in the West, the dollar no longer could serve as a global reserve currency. To the superpower goes the seigniorage, the state's premium for providing a currency.
By contrast, the gold price barely fluttered all through the present crisis.
America remains the undisputed global superpower for the time being. America's creditors express consternation about its $1.8 trillion budget deficit and many trillions more of guarantees for the banking system, but there is nothing they can do about it for the time being but talk. That is how one should interpret a June 25 Reuters report that a "senior researcher with the ruling Communist Party" had urged China to shift some of its $2 trillion in reserves out of dollars and into gold.
Li Lianzhong, who heads the economic department of the Party's policy research office, said China should use more of its $1.95 trillion in foreign exchange reserves to buy energy and natural resource assets. Speaking at a foreign exchange and gold forum, Li also said that buying land in the United States was a better option for China than buying US Treasury securities.
"Should we buy gold or US Treasuries?" Li asked. "The US is printing dollars on a massive scale, and in view of that trend, according to the laws of economics, there is no doubt that the dollar will fall. So gold should be a better choice."
There is no suggestion that Li, even though he is a senior researcher, was enunciating an agreed party line.
The last thing China wants at the moment is to undercut the US dollar, for three reasons.
First, as America's largest creditor, China has the most to lose from a dollar collapse. Second, Americans would buy fewer Chinese imports. And third, the collapse of the dollar would further erode America's will to fulfill its superpower function, and that is what China wants least of all.
America remains the indispensable outsider in Asia. No one likes the United States, but everyone dislikes the United States less than they dislike their neighbors.
India need not worry about China's role in Pakistan, for example, because America mediates Indian-Pakistani relations, and America has no interest in a radical change to the status quo. Neither does China, for that matter, but India is less sure of that. China does not trust Japan for historical reasons that will not quickly fade, but need not worry about it because America is the guarantor of Japan's security. The Seventh Fleet is the most disliked - and nonetheless the most welcome - entity in Asia.
All of this may change drastically, quickly, and for the worse.
Obama's policy reduces to empowering America's enemies in the hope that they will conform to American interests out of gratitude. Just the opposite result is likely to ensure: Iran, Pakistan and other regional powers are likely to take radical measures. Iran is threatened with a collapse of its Shi'ite program from Lebanon to Afghanistan, and Pakistan is threatened with a breakup into three or more states.
Obama has not betrayed the interests of the United States to any foreign power, but he has done the next worst thing, namely to create a void in the region by withdrawing American power. The result is likely to be a species of pandemonium that will prompt the leading players in the region to learn to live without the United States.
In his heart of hearts, Obama sees America as a force for evil in the world, apologizing for past American actions that did more good than harm. An example is America's sponsorship of the 1953 coup in Iran that overthrew the left-leaning government of Mohammed Mossadegh.
"In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government," the president offered in his Cairo address to Muslims on June 5. Although Iran's theocracy despises Mossadegh - official Iranian textbooks call him the "son of a feudal family of exploiters who worked for the cursed Shah, and betrayed Islam" - Iran's government continues to reproach America for its role in the coup. "With a coup they toppled the national government of Iran and replaced it with a harsh, unpopular and despotic regime," Ahmadinejad complained in a January 28 speech.
It is a bit late to offer advice to Obama, but the worst thing America can do is to apologize. Instead, it should ask for the gratitude of the developing world. Weak countries become punching-bags in the proxy wars of empires. This was from the dawn of history until the fall of the last empire - the "evil" empire of Soviet communism.
The Soviets exploited anti-colonial movements from the 1917 Bolshevik coup until the collapse of the Afghanistan adventure in the late 1980s. Nationalists who tried to ride the Russian tiger ended up in its belly more often than on its back. Iran, Chile, Nicaragua, Angola and numerous other weak countries became the hapless battleground for the contest of covert operations between the Soviet Union and America - not to mention Vietnam and Korea.
The use of developing countries as proxy battlefields and their people as cannon fodder came to an end with the Cold War. As a result, the past 20 years have seen the fastest improvement in living standards ever in the global south, and a vast shift in wealth towards so-called developing countries.
By defeating Russia in the Cold War, America made it possible for governments in the global south to pursue their own interests free from the specter of Soviet subversion. And by countering Soviet subversion, America often averted much worse consequences.
Many deficiencies can be ascribed to the Shah of Iran, but a communist regime in the wake of a Mossadegh administration would have been indescribably worse. The septuagenarian Mossadegh had his own agenda, but he relied on the support of the communist Tudeh party. The US feared a Soviet invasion of Iran, and "the [Harry S] Truman administration was willing to consider a Soviet invasion of Iran as a casus belli, or the start of a global war", according to Francis J Gavin's 1999 article in The Journal of Cold War Studies.
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with help from British intelligence helped the shah overthrow the left-leaning regime. But this was no minor colonial adventure, but a flashpoint with the potential to start a world war.
It is painful and humiliating for Iranians to recall the overthrow of a democratically elected government with American help. It would have been infinitely more humiliating to live under Soviet rule, like the soon-to-be-extinct victims of Soviet barbarism in Eastern Europe.
The same is true of Chile, where the brutal regime of General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in 1973, with help from the CIA. Allende was surrounded by Cuban intelligence operations. As Wikipedia reports:
Shortly after the election of Salvador Allende in November 1970, the [Cuban Directorate of Intelligence - DI] worked extremely closely to strengthen Allende's increasingly precarious position. The Cuban DI station chief Luis Fernandez Ona even married Salvador Allende's daughter Beatrice, who later committed suicide in Cuba. The DI organized an international brigade that would organize and coordinate the actions of the thousands of the foreign leftists that had moved into Chile shortly after Allende's election. These individuals ranged from Cuban DI agents, Soviet, Czech and North Korean military instructors and arms suppliers, to hardline Spanish and Portuguese Communist Party members.
My Latin American friends who still mourn the victims of Pinochet's "night and fog" state terror will not like to hear this, but the several thousand people killed or tortured by the military government were collateral damage in the Cold War. Like Iran, Chile became the battleground of a Soviet-American proxy war. The same is true in Nicaragua. (Full disclosure: I advised Nicaragua's president Violeta Chamorro after she defeated the Cuban-backed Sandinistas in the 1990 elections; I did so with no tie to any government agency.)
Obama's continuing obsession with America's supposed misdeeds - deplorable but necessary actions in time of war - is consistent with his determination to erode America's influence in the most troubled parts of the world.
By removing America as a referee, he will provoke more violence than the United States ever did. We are entering a very, very dangerous period as a result.
Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman, Associate Editor of First Things (www.firstthings.com)
3.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090703/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_overhaul
Under Senate health care plan, either way you pay
WASHINGTON – First you paid to insure your car. Soon you may have to add health insurance premiums to that stack of monthly bills as well.
In a revamped health care system envisioned by senators, people would be required to carry health insurance just like motorists must get auto coverage now. The government would provide subsidies for the poor and many middle-class families, but those who still refuse to sign up would face fines of more than $1,000.
(NOTE: Additionally, that healthcare Americans are being ravaged to support, will not be quality healthcare. With the government in charge, kiss quality good bye. We are being offered, Obama care – best describes as “healthcare on the cheap”. Save a buck and pay with your life. Seniors need not look for help or support in any case.)
The details were unveiled Thursday in a health care overhaul bill supported by key Senate Democrats looking to fulfill President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated the fines would raise around $36 billion over 10 years.
Senate aides said the penalties would be modeled on the approach taken by Massachusetts, which now imposes a fine of about $1,000 a year on individuals who refuse to get coverage. Under the federal legislation, families would pay higher penalties than individuals.
Called "shared responsibility payments," the fines would offset at least half the cost of basic medical coverage, according to the legislation. The goal is to nudge people to sign up for coverage when they are healthy, not wait until they get sick.
In 2008, employer-provided coverage averaged $12,680 a year for a family plan, and $4,704 for individual coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's annual survey. Senate aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the cost of the federal plan would be lower but declined to provide specifics.
The legislation would exempt certain hardship cases from fines, which would be collected through the income tax system.
The new proposals were released as Congress neared the end of a weeklong July 4 break, with lawmakers expected to quickly take up health care legislation when they return to Washington. With deepening divisions along partisan and ideological lines, the complex legislation faces an uncertain future.
Obama wants a bill this year that would provide coverage to the nearly 50 million Americans who lack it and reduce medical costs.
In a statement, Obama welcomed the legislation, saying it "reflects many of the principles I've laid out, such as reforms that will prohibit insurance companies from refusing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and the concept of insurance exchanges where individuals can find affordable coverage if they lose their jobs, move or get sick."
The Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions bill also calls for a government-run insurance option to compete with private plans as well as a $750-per-worker annual fee on larger companies that do not offer coverage to employees.
Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said in a letter to colleagues that their revised plan would cost dramatically less than an earlier, incomplete proposal, and help show the way toward coverage for 97 percent of all Americans.
The Congressional Budget Office, in an analysis released Thursday evening, put the net cost of the proposal at $597 billion over 10 years, down from $1 trillion two weeks ago. Coverage expansions worth $645 billion would be partly offset by savings of $48 billion, the estimate said.
However, the total cost of legislation will rise considerably once provisions are added to subsidize health insurance for the poor through Medicaid. Those additions, needed to ensure coverage for nearly all U.S. residents, are being handled by a separate panel, the Senate Finance Committee. Bipartisan talks on the Finance panel aim to hold the overall price tag to $1 trillion.
The Health Committee could complete its portion of the bill as soon as next week, and the government health insurance option virtually assures a party-line vote.
In the Senate, the Finance Committee version of the bill is unlikely to include a government-run insurance option. Bipartisan negotiations are centered on a proposal for a nonprofit insurance cooperative as a competitor to private companies.
Three committees are collaborating in the House on legislation expected to come to a vote by the end of July. That measure is certain to include a government-run insurance option.
At their heart, all the bills would require insurance companies to sell coverage to any applicant, without charging higher premiums for pre-existing medical conditions. The poor and some middle-class families would qualify for government subsidies to help with the cost of coverage. The government's costs would be covered by a combination of higher taxes and cuts in projected Medicare and Medicaid spending.
4.
Dems won unexpected GOP support for their new high tax bill
Jared Allen
House Democrats were surprised at the number of Republican votes they won on the razor close climate change vote, which allowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to let a few more Democrats cast their own no votes.
In what Democrats are readily admitting was their toughest vote since they took back power in 2007, the eight Republican votes proved critical to letting Pelosi hand out as many free passes as she could to members who thought that it would be too difficult to selling the bill in their districts.
The climate change bill passed 219-212, by just two votes more than were necessary for passage. Forty-four Democrats bucked their leaders and voted no on the legislation.
Republicans have been relentless in attacking Democrats who supported the bill, which would set up a carbon cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that Republicans have tried to label as “cap and tax,” citing studies that many consumers could see their local utility rates increase.
Some of the Republicans also cast their votes early, as dozens of Democrats were holding off on making their decisions.
“The early yes votes from them surprised us,” said a Democratic leadership aide. “We had assumed that Republican leaders had asked their yeses to hold their votes until the end.”
Instead, at least two Republicans voted yes very early in the 15-minute voting window, including Rep. Bono Mack (R-Calif.) and Rep. John McHugh (R-N.Y.), Obama’s choice to serve as Secretary of the Army.
Democrats, who whipped the bill for weeks and right up until the last minute, had counted on winning over anywhere from two-to-four GOP members.
And the majority wouldn’t have been surprised if Republican support had been limited to a single yes vote from Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), the lone GOP supporter of the bill as it fought its way through the Energy and Commerce Committee.
(NOTE: the list of all eight GOP defectors who supported the bill that means new and higher taxes for us all: Bono Mack (R - CA), Castle (R - DE), Kirk (R - IL), Lance (R - NJ), LoBiondo (R - NJ), McHugh (R - NY), Reichert (R - WV). Smith (R-NJ).
In spite of that, Democrats contended that they had enough votes of their own to pass the bill, but used the GOP cushion to allow some members to go ahead and vote no and other members who had promised Pelosi they wouldn’t let their no votes sink the bill keep their no votes in place.
Aides would not say who those members were, but said there were as many as six Democrats who were prepared to switch their votes at the last minute in order to save the bill from failing if necessary.
“We knew that if we had that many Republicans, then we had more people who wanted to vote no who could vote no,” a leadership aide said. “There were a few of them who told us that they didn’t want the bill to go down from their no votes.”
No Democrats changed their recorded votes.
Democrats credited the stronger-than-expected GOP showing to the Speaker’s direct outreach to a hand-picked group of moderate Republicans in the week leading up to the vote.
Through two meetings in her office – one a listening session and the second an education effort – Pelosi, bill authors Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (Mass.) and conservative Democratic Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) were able to convince many of moderate Republicans to support the massive climate change bill.
The Republicans who cast yes votes – Bono Mack, McHugh, and Reps. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Mike Castle (R-Del.), Dave Reichert (R-Wa.), Leonard Lance (R-N.J), Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), and Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) – spent the week getting blasted on conservative talk radio.
Throughout the 111th Congress, House Republicans have put up a number of united fronts against the Democratic agenda, often denying Pelosi and Obama even a single vote in support of their legislative priorities.
But despite a intense whipping effort and a rousing floor speech against the bill by Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) that won widespread praise throughout the conference, Republicans couldn’t hold their line quite so intact.
“There was never a who’s with me, who’s against me count,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said of the Republican outreach. “It was just a genuine attempt at listening to their concerns and explaining to them how we were able to address those concerns. A lot of what they were concerned about had been taken care of by [Agriculture Chairman Collin] Peterson.”
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