The contents of these articles are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
Pelosi: US health overhaul will happen
Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday that President Barack Obama's historic health care drive was closer to passage after a high-stakes summit with Republicans opposed to the overhaul.
As Democrats wrestled with how best to push the ambitious legislation forward, Pelosi said the unusual seven-hour talks on Thursday "made a difference, and it moved us closer to passing a bill."
Pelosi said she was working with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on a way forward but invited Republicans to contribute more ideas to what would be the most sweeping shift of its kind in four decades.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.ce7b18ff74d1dcc6be3181f05e48255b.151&show_article=1
Cybersecurity bill to give president new emergency powers
Obama will have the power to “safeguard” essential federal and private Web resources under draft Senate cybersecurity legislation.
According to an aide familiar with the proposal, the bill includes a mandate for federal agencies to prepare emergency response plans in the event of a massive, nationwide cyberattack.
The president would then have the ability to initiate those network contingency plans to ensure key federal or private services did not go offline during a cyberattack of unprecedented scope, the aide said.
Congressman Charles Rangel, allowed to continue as Committee Chairman despite scandal swirling around him
Rangel taking major heat for having violated federal law by accepting corporate contributions. Rangel blames his staff for the violation.
Rangel is the top Democrat when it comes to tax matters and has never seen a tax or tax increase he cannot enthusiastically support. However, Rangel has apparently been cheating on his own tax liability for quite some time.
Despite pledges to craft the cleanest Congress ever, Nancy Pelosi presides over one chock full of violations and now stands by Rangel despite his missteps.
Opinion:
As expected, a full court press is on to impose Obamacare on an unwilling America
Brace yourself. Democrats are in the process of launching a major effort to convince the American public that Obama’s radical health care scheme is what they really want and that he won the day Thursday at Blair House.
Commentary by the usual suspects of the far left, are beginning to appear. These out of step columnists from sources such as the N Y Times, are beginning to praise Obama for his keeping his cool under stress during the summit on health care.
Surely they were not watching the same Obama as I. .
Those of us who actually watched know better. I had to listen and assess the process. (I filled up five BS bingo cards before the lunch break.
I saw Obama in a big time defensive mode. I saw him as desperate to score a game changer. He failed to do so and I have seen no cogent opposite opinion.
The Democrat strategy became clear from the start. It was to stress how close everyone Republicans as well as Democrats on this issue or that – even when that was not the case.
After all, the Democrats were playing to the cameras and the “folks at home”.
What was actually revealed was the chasm of difference. It is a schism reflecting a very simple contrast – Democrats, believe government must be involved in any solution. Health care reform, they claim, must have the brutish hand of Washington at the controls lest “the people” exceed their bounds. Democrats just cant swallow the idea that people can do better for themselves and make better choices than government.
Republicans come down on the side of people and on the side of the market place solutions. Republicans resist efforts by Democrats to provide government rules and regulation for all issues.
That’s a reason a majority of Americans reject the Democrat plan. Democrats claim they are engaged in health care reform – Democrats are actually involved in efforts aimed at government takeover.
Many House Democrats demand “public options” – the health scheme passed by the Senate didn’t include it. Cong. Barney Frank admitted on camera that public options are a pathway to single payer health care an American cousin to Canada-style socialized medicine.
What is not arguable is government-run health care will be of inferior quality. Additionally, access to care will be substantially limited if Democrats have their way.
Especially victimized by the Democrat plan are senior citizens. A brother of White House Chief of Staff (one of the guys who actually runs the Oval Office while Obama scampers about the world serving only as front man), is most famous for his insistence on plans that deny senior citizens care and leads the Democrat chorus chanting old people have an obligation to die and get out of the way. (Dick Lamm, Democrat governor of Colorado, shouted that mantra over a decade ago) Ezekiel Emanuel (“Zeke the freak”) is now marching with his brother and leading Obama’s efforts to change things at many levels of America.
Democrats just can’t stand how we have been doing or trying to do things based on our Constitution, and common sense.
Expect Democrats to continue turning deaf ears to a majority of Americans on health care, and begin making moves to imposing the scheme most Americans reject.
Reconciliation is on its way. That’s a legislative gimmick that allows imposition of proposals without allowing filibusters. Reconciliation means a health care plan that is strictly a Democrat thing – Republicans and the American public be damned.
ALL Americans must be made to understand this fact, and make absolutely certain Democrats pay a major price at the polls in November and beyond. This is not the way decent government – democratic government (with a small “d”) – government of free people, is conducted.
This will not be just another election.
Buddy
Top Blogs:
1.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522446
Rebuttals To Ryan? We're Still Waiting
Politics: Many viewers were wowed by the president's performance at the health care summit, his command of facts and ability to rebut every point the Republicans made. We must have been watching another channel.
'Obama dominates the room at health care summit" was the headline on a Reuters dispatch that found the president "always in command not only of the room but also the most intricate policy details, as he personally rebutted every point he disagreed with."
In a Washington Post column titled "Professor Obama schools lawmakers on health care reform," Dana Milbank marveled at how the president "controlled the microphone and the clock, (using) both skillfully to limit the Republicans' time, to rebut their arguments and to always have the last word."
Milbank went on to tell how Sen. John McCain got his "knuckles rapped" by the learned professor, how Sen. Mitch McConnell was made to "look small in his chair" and how various other Republican low-achievers felt the sting of Obama's "big rhetorical paddle."
But neither Reuters nor Milbank — nor many others, it seems — noticed Obama's conspicuous non-rebuttal to Rep. Paul Ryan.
It was the Wisconsin congressman who made the most pointed remarks about Obama's reform proposal. For example:
• "This bill does not control costs (or) reduce deficits. Instead, (it) adds a new health care entitlement when we have no idea how to pay for the entitlements we already have."
• "The bill has 10 years of tax increases, about half a trillion dollars, with 10 years of Medicare cuts, about half a trillion dollars, to pay for six years of spending. The true 10-year cost (is) $2.3 trillion."
• "The bill takes $52 billion in higher Social Security tax revenues and counts them as offsets. But that's really reserved for Social Security. So either we're double-counting them or we don't intend on paying those Social Security benefits."
• "The bill takes $72 billion from the CLASS Act (long-term care insurance) benefit premiums and claims them as offsets."
• "The bill treats Medicare like a piggy bank, (raiding) half a trillion dollars not to shore up Medicare solvency, but to spend on this new government program."
• "The chief actuary of Medicare (says) as much as 20% of Medicare providers will either go out of business or have to stop seeing Medicare beneficiaries."
• "Millions of seniors who have chosen Medicare Advantage (Medicare through a private insurer) will lose the coverage that they now enjoy."
2.
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2010/02/26/oba-kabuki_a_box-office_bomb
Oba-Kabuki: A Box-Office Bomb
Michelle Malkin
The Oba-Kabuki health care show at Blair House kicked off with a big lie on Thursday morning -- and it all went downhill from there. The taxpayer-funded infomercial backfired by exposing the president's thin skin, the Democrats' naked disingenuousness and the ruling majority's allergies to political and policy realities.
Responding to Sen. Lamar Alexander's opening call for Democrats to renounce parliamentary tactics designed to limit debate, circumvent filibusters and lower the threshold for passage of health care reform to a simple 51-vote majority, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sputtered indignantly: "No one's talking about reconciliation!" Everybody and their mother has been invoking the "R" word on Capitol Hill, starting with Reid.
In a letter on Feb. 16, four Democratic senators pushed Reid to adopt the procedure, normally reserved for budget matters. A few days later, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs discussed the option. Then Reid himself talked up reconciliation on a Nevada public affairs show as an option to ram the government health care takeover through in the next 60 days.
According to The Hill, Reid said that "congressional Democrats would likely opt for a procedural tactic in the Senate allowing the upper chamber to make final changes to its health care bill with only a simple majority of senators, instead of the 60 it takes to normally end a filibuster." A few days after that, Reid snapped that Republicans "should stop crying" about the abrogation of Senate minority rights, since the GOP had used the reconciliation process in the past.
So, the cleanest, most ethical holier-than-thou Congress ever is now defending the unprecedented adoption of ram-down rules for a radical, multitrillion-dollar program to usurp one-seventh of the economy on the grounds of "two wrongs make it right"? Hope and change, baby.
For his part, President Obama responded with one part pique and two parts diffidence. After the summit lunch break, Republicans pushed the reconciliation issue again in the face of the Democrats' refusal to disavow the short-circuiting of the deliberative process. "The American people," an annoyed Obama asserted, "are not all that interested in procedures inside the Senate." Oh, really? A new USA Today/Gallup poll reports that 52 percent of Americans oppose using the procedural maneuver to pass the health care bill in the Senate.
The survey also showed that Americans oppose Demcare-style health care "reform" by 49 percent to 42 percent -- with those "strongly" opposed outnumbering those "strongly" in favor by 23 percent to 11 percent. Obama's best and brightest team of Chicago strategists, new-media gurus and communications specialists still hasn't figured it out: Voters are as fed up with the corrupt process in Washington as they are with the White House's overreaching policies. It's both, stupid.
When he wasn't cutting off Republicans who stuck to budget specifics and cited legislative page numbers and language instead of treacly, sob-story anecdotes involving dentures and gallstones, Obama was filibustering the talk-a-thon away by invoking his daughters, rambling on about auto insurance and sniping at former GOP presidential rival John McCain. "We're not campaigning anymore," lectured the perpetual campaigner-in-chief.
After ostentatiously disputing the GOP's claims that health care premiums would rise under his plan, Obama walked it back. Confronted with more GOP pushback on the failure of Demcare to control costs, Obama told GOP Rep. Paul Ryan that he'd rather not "get bogged down in numbers." Not numbers that he couldn't cook on the spot without staff consultation, anyway.
Obama and the Democrats labored mightily to create the illusion of almost-there bipartisanship by repeatedly telling disagreeing Republicans that "we don't disagree" and "there's not a lot of difference" between us. But the dogs weren't riding the ponies in this show.
This was a set-up from the start. The "we're so close" mantra is the rhetorical wedge the White House will use to blame Republicans for fatal obstructionism, while whitewashing festering opposition from both pro-life Democrats who oppose the government funding of abortion services still in the plan and left-wing progressives in the House who are clinging to a full, unadulterated public option.
While Republicans came off well, the six-hour blowhard-fest was a monumental waste of time. Obamacare Theater tied up GOP energy and resources as the White House readies its "Plan B" (expanding government health care coverage, just at a slower pace) and Democratic leaders prep their reconciliation ram-down for early next week. This Washington box-office bomb is a prelude to much bigger legislative horrors still to come. Don't you love farce?
3.
http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2010/02/26/toyota_and_the_price_of_modernity
Toyota and the Price of Modernity
Charles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON -- Amazingly, the congressional hearings on Toyota were relatively civilized. Apart from some inevitable theatrical hectoring, the questioning was generally respectful, the emotions controlled.
This was all the more remarkable given the drama of some of the testimony, such as that offered by a tearful Rhonda Smith, who recounted how, in her runaway Lexus, she had called her husband because "I wanted to hear his voice one more time."
Such wrenching and compelling stories might impel you to want to string up the first Toyota executive you find. But the issue here is larger and highly complex.
Industrial society produces an astonishing array of mass-produced products -- cars, drugs, medical devices -- that are at once wondrous and potentially lethal.
The wondrousness sometimes eludes us. Even the lowliest wage earner has an automobile that conveys him with more luxury, more freedom, more comfort than any traveling king ever experienced in all the centuries before the 20th. And modern medicines -- why, vaccines alone -- have prevented more suffering, more debility and more death than anything ever conceived by man.
But these wonders can be lethal. And sorting out the endless complaints about these products is maddeningly difficult -- though sort you must, otherwise every complaint would require shutting down the factories, and we'd have no industrial society at all.
The question is: How do you distinguish the idiosyncratic failure from the systemic -- for example, the single lemon that came off the auto assembly line versus an intrinsic problem inherent in that model's engineering? How do you separate one patient's physiology producing a drug side effect versus an intrinsic problem with a drug that makes it unacceptably dangerous?
Consider the oddity of those drug commercials on television. Fifteen seconds of the purported therapeutic effort, followed by about 45 seconds of a rapidly muttered list of horrific possible side effects. When the ad is over, I can't remember a thing about what the pill is supposed to do, except perhaps cause nausea, liver damage, projectile vomiting, a nasty rash, a four-hour erection and sudden death. Sudden death is my favorite because there is something comical about it being a side effect. What exactly is the main effect in that case? Relief from abdominal bloating?
And how many sudden deaths does it take until we say: "Enough," and pull the drug off the market?
It's not an easy calculation. Six years ago, Vioxx, a powerful anti-inflammatory, was withdrawn by the manufacturer because it was found to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke from 0.75 percent per year to 1.5 percent. The company was pilloried for not having owned up to this earlier, but some rheumatologists were furious that the drug was forced off the market at all. They had patients with crippling arthritis who had achieved a functioning life with Vioxx, for which they were quite willing to risk a long-shot cardiac complication. The public furor denied them the choice.
And don't imagine that we do not coldly calculate the price of a human life. In 1974, the speed limit was lowered to 55 mph to conserve oil. That also led to a dramatic drop in traffic fatalities -- approximately 3,000 lives every year. This didn't stop us, after the oil crisis, from raising the speed limit back to 65 and beyond -- knowing that thousands of Americans would die as a result.
The calculation was never explicit but it was nevertheless real. We were quite prepared to trade away a finite number of human lives for speed, and for the efficiency and convenience that come with it.
This is not to let Toyota off the hook simply because all products carry risk. Toyota executives have already admitted that they had underplayed the reports of sticking accelerators. They seem finally to have made a very serious, almost frantic, effort to correct what can be corrected -- the floor mat and sticky accelerator problem -- while continuing to investigate the more elusive possibility (never proved, perhaps never provable) of some additional electronic glitch.
But it is no disrespect to the memory of those killed, and the sorrow of those left behind, to simply admit that even the highest technology produced by the world's finest companies can be fallible and fatal, and that the intelligent response is not rage and retribution but sober remediation and recognition of the very high price we pay -- willingly pay -- for modernity with all its wondrous, dangerous bounty.
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