Monday March 8th, 2010



World & National News
Obama Makes Pitch

Seeking to add fresh urgency to his drive for a health-care overhaul, President Barack Obama took insurance companies to task Monday, saying rising premiums underscore the need for reform.

"How much higher do premiums have to rise until we do something about it?" Mr. Obama said in a speech at Arcadia University here.

Mr. Obama's focus on health-insurance premiums comes as he looks to muster support for a nearly $1 trillion overhaul package. The administration wants the House of Representatives to pass a Senate-approved measure by March 18, but it is unclear if the bill has enough support among Democrats.

Bullock wins; 'Hurt Locker' takes bes picture at Oscars

Sandra Bullock paid her dues in Hollywood for more than 20 years, beloved by the moviegoing public if not always the critics. She was rewarded Sunday, winning the best-actress Oscar for playing a tough white Southern woman who adopted a black child in "The Blind Side."

Bullock had repeatedly said she didn't think she was going to win for the part she initially turned down, although the 45-year-old actress was a heavy favorite.


Obama Pitch to Dems: Trust Me

In private pitches to Democrats, President Barack Obama says he will persuade Congress to pass his health care overhaul even if it kills him and even if he has to ask deeply distrustful lawmakers to trust him on a promise the White House doesn't have the power to keep.

That, in a sometimes darkly joking way, is what the president is telling Democratic House members as he begins an all-out push to coax Congress into passing his proposals despite voters' misgivings and Republicans' dire warnings.

Rahm vs. Axelrod

In the days of the old Pravda, one could determine who was winning secret Politburo power struggles by just looking at the official Soviet newspaper. Those winning simply got better press.
 
Perhaps it may be no different here in the United States.
 
This week two of the heaviest guns in American media, The Washington Post and The New York Times, unloaded their missiles at Obama adviser David Axelrod while heralding White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel as a centrist and pragmatist.

Rep Massa says Dems Ousted him over healthcare

Rep. Eric Massa says the House ethics committee is investigating him for inappropriate comments he made to a male staffer on New Year's Eve — and that he's the victim of a power play by Democratic leaders who want him out of Congress because he's a "no" vote on health care reform.

"Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill," Massa, who on Friday announced his intention to resign, said during a long monologue on radio station WKPQ. "And this administration and this House leadership have said, quote-unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill. And now they've gotten rid of me, and it will pass. You connect the dots."


Justices to hear case over protests at miliary funerals

A small Kansas church that has gained nationwide attention for protesting loudly at funerals of U.S. service members will receive a Supreme Court hearing over free speech rights.

The justices Monday accepted an appeal from the father of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq over efforts to keep members of the Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church from demonstrating near memorial services and burials.


The end of the road for Barack Obama?
Barack Obama seems unable to face up to America's problems, writes Simon Heffer in New York.

It is a universal political truth that administrations do not begin to fragment when things are going well: it only happens when they go badly, and those who think they know better begin to attack those who manifestly do not. The descent of Barack Obama's regime, characterised now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate. It was just 16 months ago that weeping men and women celebrated his victory over John McCain in the American presidential election. If they weep now, a year and six weeks into his rule, it is for different reasons.

Despite the efforts of some sections of opinion to talk the place up, America is mired in unhappiness, all the worse for the height from which Obamania has fallen. The economy remains troublesome. There is growth – a good last quarter suggested an annual rate of as high as six per cent, but that figure is probably not reliable – and the latest unemployment figures, last Friday, showed a levelling off. Yet 15 million Americans, or 9.7 per cent of the workforce, have no job.


National debt to be highter than White House forecast
   
President Obama's proposed budget would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday. Proposed tax cuts for the middle class account for nearly a third of that shortfall.

The 10-year outlook released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is somewhat gloomier than White House projections, which found that Obama's budget request would produce deficits that would add about $8.5 trillion to the national debt by 2020.


China foreign minister says U.S. ties "disrupted"

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said on Sunday that relations with the United States had been "seriously disrupted," after a rise in friction between the two big powers.

"The responsibility does not lie with China," said Yang, speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the annual session of China's parliament.

Beijing and Washington have recently gone through a rough patch, with quarrels in January and February over Chinese Internet censorship, trade disputes, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, and President Barack Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader.

Cyberwar declared as China hunts for the West's intel secrets

Urgent warnings have been circulated throughout Nato and the European Union for secret intelligence material to be protected from a recent surge in cyberwar attacks originating in China.

The attacks have also hit government and military institutions in the United States, where analysts said that the West had no effective response and that EU systems were especially vulnerable because most cyber security efforts were left to member states.

Reid's Gaffe Undercuts Momentum

It had been a good two weeks for Majority Leader Harry Reid, who used tough parliamentary tactics to push through the Senate three measures, all of which could be described as "jobs bills."

Then Friday, he stepped on that message, taking to the Senate floor to praise that morning's news that the economy shed 36,000 jobs in February as "really good." What he meant was that the numbers were not as bad as expectations, but what he actually said earned a blaring red banner headline on the Drudge Report.

Iran Begins Production of Cruise Missiles

Iran announced Sunday that it has started a new production line of highly accurate, short range cruise missiles, which would add a new element to the country's already imposing arsenal.

Gen. Ahmad Vahidi told Iranian state TV that the cruise missile, called Nasr 1, would be capable of destroying targets up to 3,000 tons in size.

The minister said the missile can be fired from ground-based launchers as well as ships, but would eventually be modified to be fired from helicopters and submarines.

Obama to tap Army Intel Honcho For TSA

President Barack Obama plans to appoint a former senior Army official with a career in intelligence to lead the Transportation Security Administration.

The president is expected to announce his choice, retired Gen. Robert Harding, on Monday, according to an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement is not yet public.

The president's decision to appoint someone with an extensive intelligence background is significant because it comes after the attempted Christmas airliner attack, when the government's intelligence programs came under scrutiny and attacks by critics who said the Obama administration wasn't doing enough to foil would-be terrorists. The incident prompted a review of U.S. security policies.

That Other Government Takeover
What else may go into 'reconciliation.'

Everyone knows Democrats are planning to use the budget reconciliation process to get ObamaCare through the Senate. Less well known is that Democrats are plotting add-ons to that bill to get other liberal priorities enacted—programs that could never attract 60 votes.

One of these controversial measures rewrites the Higher Education Act to ban private companies from offering federally guaranteed student loans as of this July. Congress has already passed laws in recent years discouraging private lenders from making loans without a federal guarantee. But most college financial-aid departments still want private companies to originate and service the guaranteed loans. That's because the alternative—a public option run by the Department of Education—has been distinguished by its Soviet-style customer service.

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.”