it's not a question of who is rght or wrong but what is right or wrong that counts.
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  		today

today

Friday March 12th, 2010



World & National News

States may hold back tax refunds for months

Residents eager to get their state tax refunds may have a long wait this year: The recession has tied up cash and caused officials in half a dozen states to consider freezing refunds, in one case for as long as five months.

States from New York to Hawaii that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn say they have either delayed refunds or are considering doing so because of budget shortfalls.

House panel to consdier healthcare bill Monday

The House of Representatives Budget Committee on Monday will consider a reconciliation bill that Democrats hope clears the way for final congressional approval of an overhaul of U.S. healthcare, House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer said on Friday.

Representative Jim Clyburn, a member of the House Democratic leadership, said he hopes a vote by the full chamber could be held on the measure within the next 10 days.

Pelosi, Dens Abandon Pro-Life Lawmakers to Keep Abortion in Bill

House Democratic leaders Thursday abandoned a long struggle to strike a compromise on abortion in their ranks, gambling that they can secure the support for President Barack Obama's sweeping health care legislation with showdown votes looming as early as next week.

In doing so, they are all but counting out a small but potentially decisive group whose views on abortion coverage have become the principal hang-up for Democrats fighting to achieve the biggest change in American health care in generations. Congressional leaders are hoping they can find enough support from other wavering Democrats to pass legislation that only cleared the House by five votes in an earlier incarnation.

Consumer sentiment dipped in early March

U.S. consumer sentiment declined slightly in early March, with Americans less positive about the job outlook, a survey released on Friday showed.

The reading, however, stayed close to its six-month average, and was significantly above the year-ago level, according to Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's Surveys of Consumers.

The preliminary March reading for the surveys' overall index on consumer sentiment was 72.5, down from 73.6 where it ended in February, and below the 73.6 forecast by analysts polled by Reuters.

Obama Plans 'Backdoor' Tax

A stealth provision in President Obama’s latest healthcare proposal dramatically increases taxes on the wealthy — extending Medicare taxes for the first time to “unearned” investment income.

The new 2.9 percent tax would apply to interest, dividend, annuity, royalty, and rent payments.

Under current law, Medicare payments come from salaries alone.

Al-Qaida Seen Eyeing Less Complex Attacks?

Ever since al-Qaida attacked the United States in 2001, U.S. authorities have worked to detect and prevent the next big terrorist strike.

But officials and counterterrorism experts say the Christmas airline plot and last November's shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, may have shown al-Qaida that smaller-scale attacks also can prove unsettling, without the complexity and risk of bigger attempts.

Obama Committed to Immigration Overhaul

President Barack Obama on Thursday assured immigration advocates frustrated by the wait for a promised overhaul of U.S. immigration laws that he remains committed to fixing a system he has said is broken. What remains unclear is whether Congress will send him a bill this year.

Obama also met separately later in the day with Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who gave the president an outline of a bill they are drafting. Obama said afterward in a statement that he "looked forward to reviewing their promising framework."

Obama urges China to cut currency
Steep value of yuan widens U.S. trade gap

President Obama is stepping up pressure on China to stop fueling the world's biggest trade imbalance by artificially depressing the value of its currency, and Beijing is signaling it may soon heed those pleas.

Under political pressure to address burgeoning job losses that many blame in part on China and its aggressive exports policy, Mr. Obama on Thursday reminded the Asian giant that it pledged last year at the Group of 20 economic summit to pare its lopsided trade surplus with the U.S.


Export nominee tied to 2 watch list firms

President Obama's pick to oversee export controls at the Commerce Department is a trade lawyer whose recent clients include two companies on a government watch list and a shipping business that agreed to pay millions of dollars last year to resolve a federal probe into shipments to Iran, Sudan and Syria.

All three companies have had recent interests before the government office that Eric Hirschhorn would oversee if he is confirmed as undersecretary of commerce for industry and security.


With ban, GOP calls duel on earmarks

In a move to break with the GOP's big-spending past, House Republicans voted Thursday to ban their members this year from requesting earmarks, the pork-barrel spending that directs money to pet projects in home districts.

The Republicans, who passed the moratorium by voice vote in a closed-door meeting, said they have now put pressure on the rest of Congress - Republicans in the Senate, and Democrats in both chambers - to follow their lead.


Obama Foreign Policy Paradox
Iraq and Afghanistan have been a success, but elsewhere the president looks weak.

These days, good news for the Obama administration comes from places like Iraq and Pakistan. Let's ponder the irony for a moment.

Three in five eligible Iraqis of all sects on Sunday defied terrorist threats and made their national elections a democratic marvel. President Obama helped make it possible, defying his anti-war base to keep a sizable American troop presence in Iraq.

Prodded and nurtured by Washington, the Pakistanis have at last started a crackdown on the Taliban in their sanctuaries. If last month's arrest of the Afghan insurgents' military chief is followed by bigger Taliban and al Qaeda ...

Obama family health care fracas
A doctor savages his cousin Barack's reform plan

"Primum nil nocere."First, do no harm. This guiding principle is a bedrock of medical care. Sadly, those politicians who would rewrite our health care laws do not live in the same universe as do the doctors and health care professionals who must practice it.

Imagine if, like physicians, politicians were personally held to the incredibly high level of scrutiny that includes civil and financial liability for any unintended consequence of their decisions. Imagine if they were forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on malpractice insurance and still faced the threat of multimillion-dollar lawsuits with every single decision they made. If so, a government takeover of health care would be the furthest thing from their minds.


Waiting for Godot
The Obama Years
    by Geoff Metcalf
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
        -- Bertrand Russell

Reasonable people can (or should be able to) reasonably disagree if or when they honestly consider facts that may contradict their preconceived opinions and prejudices. However, unfortunately, especially in the partisan environment of politics, reason, honest analysis and fairness too quickly become victims of the “us versus them” thing.  Politics has become a blood sport where the only golden rule is “the team with the gold makes the rules”.

Politicians who were elected to represent the best interests, wants and desires of their constituents, morph into petty, agenda driven competitors quick to eschew reason for partisanship. Sadly, this axiomatic reality is universal and not exclusive to any one party. Politics is supposed to be the art of compromise. However, increasingly, politics is a blood sport personifying the absolute worse elements of abuse of power under the color of authority.

President Barack Obama, a year after promising "change" and a Kumbaya tsunami of bi-partisan cooperation, now reluctantly admits he has not succeeded in bringing the country together. In a recent People magazine interview, the president begrudgingly  acknowledged an atmosphere of divisiveness that has washed away the lofty national feeling surrounding his inauguration a year ago. 'That's what's been lost this year ... that whole sense of changing how  Washington works,' Obama said.

"What I haven't been able to do in the midst of this crisis is bring the country together in a way that we had done in the Inauguration," he said, referring to last January 20 when hundreds of thousands flooded into Washington to see him sworn in as America's first black president...before reality and buyer's remorse.

The simple reality is Obama has failed because he and his party's leadership (or critics will argue LACK of leadership) have failed...failed to do what they said they would do...and failed to do anything the "way" they promised.  

Notwithstanding lofty eloquance, concensus and "unity' cannot be mandated by imperial decree. Partisan acrimony is not and cannot be bridled by harangue, bullying or bludgeon.  Politics is the art of compromise and the facts in evidence demonstrate that this administration and this Democrat led congress has not been disposed to engage in compromise. Rather the democrats have embraced a hamfisted "our way or the highway" forced imposition of their will.  

Now, in the wake of  spelunking poll numbers, rampant buyers remorse, and a previously unimagined nostalgia for the Carter administration, democrats seem shocked, amazed and confused that over half the country does not approve of not only what they are trying to do, but how they are doing it.  Blaming the dark sky and coming ice age on Bush (or Reagan or Nixon or Eisenhower or Lincoln) is a worn out dog that flat out ain't gonna hunt.

When Mr. Cool was promising "change" little did ANYone assume that change might result in a republican winning Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat.

It is a sad reality that at the same time our military has significantly improved the quality of the U.S. Troops who serve, the civilian leadership and politicians have regressed to a level reminisent of uneducated fuedal bullies. The military is smarter, more fit, better equipped, and as committed as any generation from Valley Forge to Iwo Jima or Pleiku to Bosnia. We have an all-volunteer military that is dedicated to protecting YOU. Conversely, the political arena is littered with disingenuous, duplicitous partisans who long since have abadoned their constituents for the next political victory (and/or pork laden earmark).

I have recently re-read Dr. Robert Humphrey's 'Living Values for a New Millenium' in preparation for an upcoming  February seminar.

In a 1997 speech before he passed away, Dr. Humphrey said, top leadership, in both our civilian or military government, is afraid even to discuss this apparent decisive need for new thinking both at home and overseas.  It was 13 years ago he observed, the news media and public opinion polls advise, "The people sense a moral bankruptcy in Washington" with a bickering inability in government to face these deeper problems.

Wherever you go, you are little bit safer because of the military and yet more at risk because of the coat room schenanigans of congress. Wherever the military sets a boot EVERYONE has a friend, a defender and a champion. However politicians seem more concerned about the next PAC contribution than the wants, needs or well being of the very people they were elected to represent.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard once wrote,“Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong. Everything can be explained away, especially by journalists. Life is one great moral mush—sophistry washed down with Chardonnay.”



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