The contents of these articles are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
SEIU Union pulls back on supporting bill
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) backed out of an event with other organizations promoting the Senate healthcare reform bill Wednesday over concerns about changes made to the legislation to accommodate centrist Democrats.
The SEIU had planned to participate in a Capitol Hill press conference along with the AARP, the liberal advocacy group Families USA, Consumers Union and the American Cancer Society Action Network. As recently as Tuesday morning, the organizations distributed an advisory to the news media that included the SEIU.
But the move by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to excise provisions of the healthcare reform bill to create a government-run public option health insurance program and to allow people between 55 and 64 years old to buy into Medicare gave the labor union pause, spokeswoman Lori Lodes said.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/72537-union-pulls-back-on-supporting-senate-bill
A Race to Win One More Vote for Health Bill
The White House and Senate Democratic leaders seem willing to give Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, just about anything he wants to win his support of major health care legislation. Anything, that is, but the item at the top of Mr. Nelson’s wish-list: air-tight restrictions on insurance coverage for abortions.
The bid to win Mr. Nelson’s support has become a race against the clock. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, has developed plans for a series of votes beginning at 1 a.m. Monday and round-the-clock Senate sessions intended to meet his deadline of completing the health care bill before Christmas.
But Mr. Reid is still at least one vote short of the 60 he needs to move the bill ahead, and as much as anyone, Mr. Nelson appears to hold the legislation’s fate in his hands.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/health/policy/18health.html?_r=1&hp
Democrats' Blues Grow Deeper in New Poll
Less than a year after Inauguration Day, support for the Democratic Party continues to slump, amid a difficult economy and a wave of public discontent, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
"For Democrats, the red flags are flying at full mast," said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted the survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. "What we don't know for certain is: Have we reached a bottoming-out point?"
The biggest worry for Democrats is that the findings could set the stage for gains by Republican candidates in next year's elections. Support from independents for the president and his party continues to dwindle. In addition, voters intending to back Republicans expressed far more interest in the 2010 races than those planning to vote for Democrats, illustrating how disappointment on the left over attempts by party leaders to compromise on health care and other issues is damping enthusiasm among core party voters.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126100346902694549.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
Opinion:
Florida’s Marco Rubio – the Anti-Crist. RINOs everywhere should tremble
This week, polling by Rasmussen showed the race for the US Senate between incumbent Governor Charlie Crist and conservative Marco Rubio has become a dead heat.
That’s bad news for Crist. It’s also very bad news for RINOs everywhere.
Crist is well known throughout Florida. He has been running and winning elections for years. He developed an aura of popularity and entered the Senate race as a seemingly undefeatable candidate.
Marco Rubio, a 37-year-old conservative cuban-american lawyer from Miami, is stepping down as Speaker of the Florida House, but is not known widely.
However, Crist made a serious misstep when he allied himself with President Barack Obama by agreeing to introduce the president at a Fort Myers rally supporting the Obama “stimulus” scam.
“Any attempts at federal stimulus must prioritize job creation and targeted tax relief for small business owners,” Crist said in a statement. “I am eager to welcome President Obama to the Sunshine State as he continues to work hard to reignite the U.S. economy.”
That eagerness backfired on Crist who already had a “moderate” image among Republican activists. Neither Obama nor his “stimulus” scheme are popular in most of Florida and no Capitol Hill Republican voted for the bill.
Thus began a serious slide for Crist that has resulted these days in his being deadlocked with Rubio. Few things are definite in politics, but history strongly indicates Crist is in serious trouble and Rubio’s momentum probably is unstoppable.
RINOs across the nation should be watching and watching closely. The Rubio surge indicates the sentiments represented by the tea party movement have now reached into next fall’s campaign in a tangible way. It is likely – maybe even certain – that Republican incumbents who are viewed as less than conservative and who have conservative primary opposition, should worry about their futures.
Democrats have taken most of the anger from the tea partiers, but Republicans who are thought of as less than conservative are in the political gun sights as well and may face serious opposition. Pruning the GOP tree of RINOs may be very likely in the upcoming primaries.
A problem in all this – from a conservative point of view – is an imperfect view of the actual philosophies and records of some Republican incumbents. It should be noted that most ALL Republicans in the House have voted against Obama’s far left programs. The Senate is a bit different. The two Maine Senators – Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, stand out as being the most liberal Republicans in the upper chamber. How Maine Republicans view them in the future, remains to be seen.
Republicans could emerge from next November in a commanding position. It is not impossible for them to take the House and secure enough victories in the Senate to enable them to block Obama’s far left agenda. Removing RINOs is not a party function. It is a function for Republican voters themselves. Marco Rubio is demonstrating how that can work if the challenging candidate has viable substance and the incumbent made a mistake by accommodating the left.
Buddy
The day’s top blogs:
1.
Welcome to the Democratic Party's Civil War
Michelle Malkin
Seems like only yesterday the Washington establishment had proclaimed the death of the GOP. Pundits churned out public autopsy reports faster than the L.A. County Medical Examiner. Liberals gloated over the supposedly irreparable fissures between right-wing populists and Beltway Republican elites.
Conservatism, we were told, was suffering brain death and heart failure. My, how quickly things -- ahem -- change.
Social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, the GOP leadership, Sarah Palin's heartland supporters, conservative think-tank intellectuals, D.C. and Manhattan conservatives, Big Business and small-business conservatives, Joe the Plumber conservatives, and every stripe and flavor of conservative in between are all united against the Democrats' proposed government takeover of health care. All.
It's the left, not the right, cracking up. It's the party donkey, not the elephant, now in a rabies-crazed frenzy. Funny, though, how internecine rancor on the right always puts conservatism in its last, final, permanent death throes (again and again), but internecine warfare on the left is merely a matter of healthy, principled disagreement.
Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean went on the "YEARRGGH!"-path again -- dressed in Tea Party-esque drag -- and exhorted the majority to "Kill the Bill" and start over with a public option. White House senior adviser David Axelrod -- echoing criticism of Dean more commonly heard on the right -- promptly pronounced the Vermont liberal's rantings "insane." White House spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed Dean as irrational. And this was just the left-wing Punch and Judy show preview.
"Progressive" blogger and Hollywood producer Jane Hamsher declared war on Sen. Joe Lieberman's wife, Haddasah, to punish him for his opposition to Harry Reid's massive Medicare expansion "buy-in" plan. Best known for disseminating an online image of Sen. Lieberman in blackface to support failed liberal challenger Ned Lamont in 2006, and for issuing a death threat to conservative author Kate O'Beirne ("the b*tch is dead meat"), Hamsher demanded that the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation fire Mrs. Lieberman from her role as a "global ambassador."
"Progressive" documentarian Michael Moore one-upped Hamsher's attack by threatening to boycott the entire state of Connecticut until it started a recall of Lieberman: "People of Connecticut: What have u done 2 this country? We hold u responsible. Start recall of Lieberman 2day or we'll boycott your state," Moore wrote on his Twitter account. Recalls, alas, are unconstitutional in Connecticut. Not that "progressives" would ever let any state or federal constitution get in the way of a bloody ideological vendetta.
Obama's BFF and most frequent visitor, SEIU president Andy Stern, threw the president's own words back at him in a cri de couer to Big Labor's brothers and sisters: "President Obama must remember his own words from the campaign. His call of 'Yes We Can' was not just to us, not just to the millions of people who voted for him, but to himself."
And moving toward the middle, moderate Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson is having his own Joe Wilson moment. On Thursday, he announced he couldn't support his colleagues' abortion language "compromise," which he said failed to restrict government funding for abortion services.
Meanwhile, House Democrats are blaming Senate Democrats and the White House for the legislative meltdown. The Nobel Peace Prize winner-in-chief himself has come under fire. Democratic Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin carped that "the Obama administration is sitting on the sidelines." Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan accused the White House of selling out to the insurance industry.
It all feels very 1990s -- the period between 1992 and 1994, specifically -- when liberals smugly declared the premature death of the GOP only to be walloped by the midterm conservative backlash.
The ruling majority got greedy, overreached and lost touch with average Americans. With the support of the public, Republicans united to slay Bill Clinton's stimulus monstrosity and Hillary Clinton's health care monstrosity. And the core differences between the parties could not have been clearer.
Then, as now, GOP strategists flirted with hapless "rebranding" programs in the wake of failed presidential campaigns. They bought into the public autopsy reports of their friends in New York City media green rooms and Georgetown parlors.
Then, as now, it took a grassroots conservative groundswell to remind the Beltway bubble boys and girls that adhering to the core principles of fiscal conservatism -- lower taxes, less government, more freedom -- was the key to party unification and would open the door once again to power.
And then, as now, conservative talk radio helped galvanize the revolt against a Democrat-spearheaded attempt at a government health care takeover. Local Seattle talk-show host Kirby Wilbur's huge protest against Hillary Clinton's visit in July 1994 was the turning point. National media outlets could not ignore the public booing of the first lady in the liberal Emerald City and the legislative doom it portended.
One major difference now is the vast proliferation of alternative media -- through Facebook, Twitter, blogs and Fox News -- that has facilitated the spread of information about Democrats' big-government designs and given rise to Tea Party activism. The right's ability to change the narrative is greater than ever. The Democratic crack-up reminds us that there are no faits accomplis in politics. Political coroners, take heed.
2.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-gutierrez-immigration-billdec16,0,7931444.story
Immigration reform: New bill offers path to legalization for 12 million undocumented immigrants
U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez champions bill, which is drawing fire from both left and right
Raising the curtain on what promises to be a new round of debate over Immigration reform, a group of Democratic lawmakers introduced a comprehensive bill Tuesday in Washington that, among other provisions, offers a path to legalization for the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.
The bill, championed by U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., was decidedly more pro-Immigration than previous bipartisan legislation that he and others drafted in search of compromise with Republicans wanting more restrictions and enforcement, only to be defeated in Congress two years ago.
The latest version, introduced in the House in hopes of creating a groundswell that would push the Obama administration to act fast, drew immediate fire from the left as well as the right. Groups opposed to legalization derided it as a form of amnesty, and more liberal factions complained that it relies too heavily on enforcement.
Besides legalization, the bill proposes to get rid of a federal provision that empowers local police to act as Immigration agents, provides 100,000 extra visas for immigrants from countries with high rates of illegal Immigration and expedites legal Immigration for close relatives of U.S. citizens and lawful residents.
The bill also calls for beefing up border security and overhauling the federal detention system for jailed immigrants to provide for better medical treatment and other services.
Gutierrez, one of 87 House Democrats sponsoring the legislation, said the 700-page bill is based on months of discussions with community organizations, unions and other groups around the country in hopes of gaining enough momentum to get reforms passed.
"Now, there's a bill with a following," Gutierrez said.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Gutierrez's former partner in previous Immigration bills, issued a statement Tuesday that said he was "disappointed" by the new legislation.
With conservative groups already sending blast e-mails and faxes against the bill, said Gutierrez in a telephone interview, "the president's going to need that (grass-roots support) when he gets ready to act. We all need popular support, and I think we're going to have it this time."
But any serious consideration seems months away.
A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is not a bill sponsor, said she supports it but wants to wait on the Senate to act first on the issue. A more moderate Immigration bill is expected to be introduced in the Senate next month, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., saying he hopes to launch a debate there during the first half of next year.
President Barack Obama has said he expects to take up the Immigration issue after the health care debate is over and Congress finishes work on energy reforms and regulating financial markets -- potentially driving the debate close to midterm elections in November.
Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA in Washington, called the bill's timing a tactical error, predicting the bad economy would derail it.
"At a time when we have this incredible unemployment, when we have a mismatch of the number of workers in this country with the number of jobs, it's just incredible to introduce legislation that will increase the number of workers by importing more (immigrant) workers," said Beck, whose group advocates reducing all forms of Immigration.
Beck conceded, however, that he supports one bill provision that requires employers using special-skills visas to prove they tried to hire Americans before bringing in more foreign workers.
In Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities with large immigrant populations, the bill was received with enthusiasm by immigrant advocates, but also with some worry that there are not enough protections for immigrants' rights.
Sung Yeon Choi-Morrow, an organizer for the Asian American Institute in Chicago, was happy the bill emphasizes family reunification -- a prevalent issue among Asian immigrants with families waiting on U.S. visa applications for as many as 10 years.
But the tighter rules for special-skills visas could potentially force more Asian immigrants out of the country, Choi-Morrow said.
"For us, that's a big concern," she said.
3.
http://www.infowars.com/un-chief-we-will-impose-global-governance/
UN Chief: We Will Impose Global Governance
Paul Joseph Watson
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has again publicly admitted that the agenda behind the Copenhagen summit and the climate change fraud is the imposition of a global government and the end of national sovereignty.
Speaking about the agenda to impose targets on CO2 emissions, as well as a global tax on financial transactions and a direct tax on GDP, Ban Ki-moon told the Los Angeles Times in an interview, “We will establish a global governance structure to monitor and manage the implementation of this.”
“We need to have a very strong, robust, binding political deal that will have an immediate operational effect. This is not going to be a political declaration, just for the sake of declaration. It is going to be a binding political deal, which will lead to a legally binding treaty next year,” he told the Times’ Bruce Wallace, adding that a formal treaty would be signed by mid-2010.
Ki-moon also hinted that the arrival of President Barack Obama could grasp victory from the jaws of defeat for the globalists, who up until now have looked like failing in their efforts to secure a multilateral agreement at Copenhagen that includes China, India and the United States.
Could Obama roll in as the “savior” of Copenhagen in an eleventh hour turnaround?
The Secretary General has not been shy in proclaiming the unfolding agenda for a global dictatorship to override national parliaments.
In an October New York Times editorial entitled “We Can Do It,” Ki-moon wrote that efforts to impose restrictions on CO2 emissions “Must include an equitable global governance structure.”
Fellow globalist and environmentalist David De Mayer Rothschild also disclosed the agenda for global governance in a recent interview with Bloomberg news.
“It’s past the point of talking. We know historically that the global governance sort of agenda to these issues is very hard to… with all the best intentions it’s very hard to actually activate.” Rothschild noted.
New EU President Herman Van Rompuy said earlier this month that the Copenhagen conference was, “The first step towards the global management of our planet.”
Similarly, Al Gore said in a speech earlier this year that attempts to regulate CO2 emissions would be driven through “global governance and global agreements.”
Ten years ago, people who warned about a coming new world order bossed by a global government were called paranoid conspiracy theorists. Is the march towards a one world government still a conspiracy theory, even as its architects openly announce its implementation?
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