Thursday March 4th, 2010



World & National News

Pelosi says Dems not in crisis?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today the American people ought to know more about what she called "total obstruction" by the Republican Party in the Senate. Referring to Sen. Jim Bunning's hold-up of unemployment benefits earlier this week, Pelosi said, "It's not about rules, it's about a decision they've made to obstruct."

"The idea you need 100 percent in order to proceed is something the American people should know more about," she said.

Is Obama Selling Judgeships for Health Care Votes?
Obama names brother of undecided House Dem to Appeals Court.

Barack Obama hosted ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he's obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes.

One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson's brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Pelosi: Healtcare concerns can be satisfied

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday she was confident of satisfying Democratic concerns about a Senate-approved healthcare bill and passing the measure.

Pelosi made the comment at her weekly news conference -- just hours after one lawmaker said a dozen House Democrats opposed to abortion were willing to kill the legislation unless it satisfies their demand for language barring federal funding of the procedure.

Their threat to kill healthcare reform came a day after President Barack Obama launched a final push to pass the overhaul, a top domestic priority, and urged Democrats in Congress to vote on the bill this month, even without Republican support.

Rangel's replacement on Ways and Means
   
Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan was chosen Thursday as acting chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, a post that plays a major role in health care and billions of dollars in expiring tax cuts.

Levin replaces Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., who stepped aside Wednesday as chairman while the House ethics committee investigates his fundraising and finances.

Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark, D-Calif., held the acting chairmanship for a day under House rules, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a meeting of all House Democrats Thursday that Levin was the choice to run the committee.
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Dems Push Ending Ban on Gays in Military

A group of US Senators are introducing legislation to end a ban on gays serving openly in the military -- a plan backed by President Barack Obama but opposed by some top brass.

The current law, dubbed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," calls for service members to be discharged if they disclose that they are homosexual.

The law "is inconsistent with our most important national values and diminishes our military readiness," one of the bill's sponsors, Connecticut independent Senator Joe Lieberman told reporters.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice May Step Down????

John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, is seriously considering stepping down from the nation’s highest court for personal reasons, RadarOnline.com has learned exclusively.

Roberts, known for his conservative judicial philosophy, has served on the Supreme Court  since 2005, having been nominated by President George W. Bush after the death of former Chief William Rehnquist.

New issues push Iraq off Obama radar

Despite persistent violence and a critical election coming up, President Obama hardly ever mentions the war in Iraq - where more 110,000 U.S. troops remain - and leading American news outlets have drastically scaled back coverage of the conflict, moving on to domestic issues such as health care and the troubled economy.

In 2009, 149 American troops died in battle in Iraq - a higher loss rate than all but two of the 10 years U.S. forces have been in Afghanistan. But in 2010, Mr. Obama has mentioned the Iraq war just three times during formal speeches - twice in a single sentence during back-to-back events in early February for the Democratic National Committee and once in his Jan. 27 State of the Union address.

4 sentenced in plot to bomb U.S. targets

Two German converts to Islam and two Turkish men were convicted Thursday in a foiled 2007 plot to attack U.S. targets in Germany and given prison sentences ranging up to 12 years.

The four men, operating as a German cell of the radical Islamic Jihad Union, plotted bombing attacks against American citizens and facilities including the U.S. Air Force's Ramstein base in Germany, the Duesseldorf state court found.


Republicans fear study bias on gays in military
Lieberman, Democrats introduce legislation

The Pentagon's upcoming study on gays in the military is biased, some Republican lawmakers already contend, because it assumes Congress will repeal the 1993 law known as "don't ask, don't tell."

Republicans are likely to use that argument as they try to erode the credibility of the planned review, which Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates envisions as the first comprehensive look at the 17-year-old policy.


Administration Pushes for Wall Street Regulations

The Obama administration waded into negotiations over Wall Street regulations Wednesday, calling for limits on the size of financial institutions and insisting that consumer protections remain a central objective of legislative attempts to rein in the industry.

In the Senate, talks continued on how to create a consumer protection entity. Republicans pressing for a watered-down consumer agency even as they voiced optimism that they could reach a deal with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, within a week.

Former Gitmo Detainee Running Afghan Battles?

A man who was freed from Guantanamo more than two years ago after he claimed he only wanted to go home and help his family is now a senior commander running Taliban resistance to the U.S.-led offensive in southern Afghanistan, two senior Afghan intelligence officials say.

Abdul Qayyum is also seen as a leading candidate to be the next No. 2 in the Afghan Taliban hierarchy, said the officials, interviewed last week by The Associated Press.

The story of Abdul Qayyum could add to the complications President Barack Obama is facing in fulfilling his pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo by sending some current prisoners back to their home countries or to other willing nations, while putting others on trial.

Paul Ryan v. the President
The Republican dissects ObamaCare's real costs. Democrats stay mute.

'Every argument has been made. Everything that there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everybody has said it," President Obama declared yesterday as he urged Democrats to steamroll his plan through Congress. What hasn't been heard, however, is even a shred of White House honesty about the true costs of ObamaCare, or its fiscal consequences.

Nearby, we reprint Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan's remarks at the health summit last week, which methodically dismantle the falsehoods—there is no other way of putting it—that Mr. Obama has used to sell "reform" and repeated again yesterday. No one in the political class has even tried to refute Mr. Ryan's arguments, though he made them directly to the President and his allies, no doubt because they are irrefutable. If Democrats are willing to ignore overwhelming public opposition to ObamaCare and pass it anyway, then what's a trifling dispute over a couple of trillion dollars?

Bring Back the Robber Barons
There's a big difference between entrepreneurs who make a fortune in the market, and those who do so by gaming the government.

Faced with high, painful unemployment as far as the eye can see, the government naturally is here to help.

The Senate passed a $15 billion "jobs bill." Its proudest piece is a tax credit for employers who hire a person out of work at least 60 days. The employer won't have to pay the 6.2% Social Security payroll tax for what remains of this year. If the worker stays on the job at least a year, the government will give the employer $1,000.

As to the earlier $787 billion stimulus bill, Vice President Joe Biden praised it in Orlando this week as an engine of job creation, while he stood before a pile of broken concrete and asphalt. The subject was highways.


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.”