Terrorists aloft over America skies, AWOL Obama aloof in Hawaii
At the risk of being branded a “birther”, is President Barack Obama’s post-Christmas Day Flight Northwest 253 terrorist attack a useful way to leave an impression that Hawaii is the place of his birth?
AWOL in Hawaii, Obama’s not coming back until Sunday. For certain his vacation has little to do with Christmas, which he tried to cancel on Christmas Eve with the symbolic passing of ObamaCare
.
Nor according to his royal self, does he particularly believe in Christmas. Describing their own account of the day when Christians celebrate the Birth of Jesus, the Obamas do not give presents to their own daughters.
The “other Michelle” (Malkin) gets it right on the button when she describes Obama’s “”four more full days of reinforcing his image as detached, aloof, and too damned tired to tackle the jihadi epidemic with the once-hyped energy and passion of a 48-year-old Super-agent of Hope and Change”. (michellemalkin.com Dec. 30, 2009).
Come to think of it, is Obama, who looks much younger, really 48? Is his birthday really August 4, 1961? Or was this Date of Birth, like so many other “factoids” about the Messiah arranged for him by his Marxist Creators?
When it comes to stewardship of the greatest nation on earth, there are those who would argue that Obama has been on a permanent vacation.
Malkin is also right on the money by stating in today’s column that “Team Obama’s stage managers and image gurus are all about symbolism”. “Wouldn’t the president send a more credible message to jihadi plotters around the world (and to Americans) by cutting his holiday break short and getting back to work in the White House, rather than by phoning in for the next four days?”
“And how many more tropical paradise pow-wows and basketball games with his Chicago cronies Valerie Jarrett, Marty Nesbitt, and Eric Whitaker does he need, anyway?”
Yes, everyone, there is a Messiah, and he was born on Christmas.
The knockoff is having a hard time practicing being the Messiah when he can’t keep jihadists off of aircraft even with warnings from the jihadists Daddy, let alone walk on water.
Ann Dunham’s little boy Barry can afford to play in paradise adding to the alleged myth of the State of his birth because the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) is working over the holidays to squeeze yet another $5 each from the great unwashed.
EXCLUSIVE: Oops! Wikipedia Pronounced Rush Limbaugh Dead
Looks like the folks at Wikipedia were prepared for the worst when it came to Rush Limbaugh. Actually they were a little too well prepared.
Shortly after the news broke that the conservative political radio talk show host was hospitalized, Wikipedia updated his page – and pronounced him dead.
Folks (like us) who happened to take a look at Limbaugh’s biography, saw this:
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III (pronounced /ˈlɪmbɔː/;born January 12, 1951, died December 30, 2009) is an American radio host and conservative political commentator. He is the host of The Rush Limbaugh Show, the highest-rated talk-radio program in the United States. It airs throughout the U.S. on Premiere Radio Networks.
That was posted shortly after midnight, EST.
Rush, of course, was very much alive and about 15 minutes later Wikipedia pronounced him so, altering their bio by removing the information that he had died.
Limbaugh remains hospitalized Thurday
Obama positioning for immigration reform (Instant Citizenship For Illegals)
Los Angeles Times
Senior White House aides privately have assured Latino activists that the president will back legislation next year to provide a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million undocumented workers now living in the United States.
In addition to the citizenship provision, the emerging plan will stress efforts to secure U.S. borders against those trying to cross illegally. But that two-track approach was rejected repeatedly in the past by Republicans and other critics who insist a border crackdown must demonstrate its effectiveness before any action on citizenship is considered.
Whatever proposal Obama puts forward will likely be complicated by the calendar: Midterm elections are in November, and polls show the public is more worried about joblessness and the fragile economy than anything else.
The White House already has a packed agenda for 2010: economic recovery, global-warming legislation and tougher regulation of financial institutions.
In an effort to enlist the kind of business support that helped drive its health-care initiative, for example, administration officials have reached out to the National Restaurant Association, which represents an industry that employs thousands of immigrants. Earlier this year, the new head of the association, Dawn Sweeney, met with Cecilia Munoz, a White House aide involved in the issue, and expressed interest in cooperating.
“It’s an extremely important issue for our members,” said Sweeney, whose group could exert grass-roots pressure on lawmakers.
As a candidate, Obama vowed to take up immigration during his first year in office. That deadline will come and go. Further delay could anger Latino voters, who came out in force for the president and congressional Democrats in 2008.
“The bulk of the people needing immigration reform are Latino,” said Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, D-Ariz. “There’s a level of disenchantment about where we’re going. … And if you don’t give the Latino community a reason to participate (in the elections) you weaken your base even more.”
For an immigration bill to have a realistic shot of passing next year, political analysts said, the particulars would have to be agreed upon by the spring. Delay would increase the likelihood of the issue being derailed by the November elections.
An immigration bill was introduced in the House earlier in the month, and Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., who chairs a subcommittee on immigration, is heading the effort to cobble together a bipartisan coalition in the Senate.
But Democrats may not have a lock on one prominent Republican who has worked in the past to revamp the immigration system: Arizona Sen. John McCain.
McCain backed George W. Bush’s failed attempt to overhaul immigration in his second term. But he has not committed to supporting the Obama bill, saying he worried the president would not endorse a temporary guest-worker program.
Organized labor, an important part of the Democratic base, has voiced opposition to a guest-worker program under which more immigrants could enter the country on a temporary basis. The White House would not reveal its position on guest-worker issue.
CIA chief confirms seven officers killed by Afghan bomb
Seven CIA agents were killed in a bomb attack in Afghanistan, the US agency’s director, Leon Panetta, has confirmed.
The dead include a mother of three who was the head of the CIA’s base in Khost Province, near Pakistan, the Associated Press (AP) news agency reports.
The Taliban said one of their members wearing an explosive vest and an army uniform had carried out the attack.
US President Barack Obama has sent a message of condolence to the agency’s staff praising the dead agents.
The attack was the worst against US intelligence officials since the US embassy in Beirut was bombed in 1983.
It has raised questions about the coalition’s ability to protect itself against infiltrators, analysts say.
Quoting a former senior CIA official, AP said the base chief would have led intelligence-gathering operations in Khost, a hotbed of Taliban activity because of its proximity to Pakistan’s lawless border region.
The unnamed official added that the bomber was being courted as an informant and was not frisked as he entered the base.
A total of 90 CIA employees have been honoured for their deaths in the agency’s service since its inception in 1947, according to the Washington Post newspaper.
‘Close to the enemy’
Paying tribute to the fallen, Mr Panetta said six other agents had been injured in Wednesday’s attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman.Continued
Obama admits failures, goes snorkeling
by Mark Silva
It’s not quite a Bush moment.
Not quite picking up a guitar while New Orleans is bailing out from Hurricane Katrina. Certainly not “heckuva job, Brownie.”
Not the same as letting the second graders in Sarasota finish their reading after being informed that two towers of the World Trade Center had been attacked.
There was no successful attack in the case of the botched bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner.
It might, in search of comparisons, be somewhat closer to former President George W. Bush, golf club in hand, telling reporters of the seriousness of the terrorism threat and then saying, “Now watch my swing.” Sans bravado.
Today, after a vacationing President Barack Obama conceded that both human and systemic failures of U.S. Intelligence had failed to bar a Nigerian man posing a reported security risk from boarding that Detroit-bound jetliner – a near-”catastrophic” breakdown in security – Obama left the reporters taking his words in Hawaii and went snorkeling.
The president was wearing a navy blue suit and white striped shirt with no tie, and spoke only to reporters – unlike a televised appearance sans-tie that he had made the day before. Today, his words seemed sterner. Today, he was acknowledging a troubling breakdown in Intelligence and security surrounding air travel.
The “pool” (another odd word in this context) report: “The motorcade drove from Kailua through Waimanalo to the bay, one of the most popular attractions on the island. The snorkeling and swimming spot was empty because it is closed on Tuesdays to both commercial and private users to give the park some time to recuperate after busy weekends. Obama met his family at the beach. They had left earlier in the day.
“During the outing, the family is expected to have a picnic and snorkel… No sightings of Obama as he exited the motorcade.”
I’m the first of many, warns airline ‘bomber’ Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
A global search for accomplices in the Detroit airliner plot was
under way yesterday after an al-Qaeda group based in Yemen claimed responsibility for the operation and the would-be bomber was reported to have said that more attacks were being planned. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a terrorist cell led by a former personal secretary to Osama bin Laden, issued a statement saying that the failed attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a response to American-backed airstrikes on the group in Yemen this month. Yemeni government forces, acting on US intelligence and using what officials have admitted was American military hardware, launched air raids on suspected militants in the east of the country on December 17 and again on December 24. At least 60 people were understood to have been killed. Mr Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian who set himself alight in a packed Airbus approaching Detroit on Christmas Day, bought his one-way ticket from a KLM office in Accra, the Ghanaian capital, on December 16, indicating that his attack was planned well before these latest air raids. A US military effort to deny al-Qaeda a stronghold in Yemen has been under way for at least a year.Continued
Obama Family Friend Suffers Minor Injury In Hawaii
President Obama has left a golf course abruptly while vacationing in Hawaii on Monday for a “personal matter,” and an ambulance was seen speeding to the first family’s compound.
CBS 2 has learned that the incident does not involve any member of the first family, and that a young family friend traveling with them has suffered a minor injury. Sources say a child friend was injured by a surfboard, but no additional details on the injury were reported just yet.
Earlier, the president interrupted his holiday vacation Monday to make a statement on the alleged bomb plot by a Nigerian man accused of attempting to ignite explosives over Michigan while on a U.S. airliner.
The president said the national security team must keep up pressure on those overseas who want to harm the U.S. “We will not rest until we find all who are involved and hold them accountable,” the president said.
Obama also noted that he has ordered a thorough review of the U.S. watchlist system and airport screening procedures.
These were the president’s first public remarks since the Christmas day incident.
COPS fear that 25 British-born Muslims are plotting to bomb Western airliners.
The fanatics, in five groups, are now training at secret terror camps in Yemen.
It was there London-educated Umar Abdulmutallab, 23, prepared for his Christmas Day bid to blow up a US jet.
The British extremists in Yemen are in their early 20s and from Bradford, Luton and Leytonstone, East London.
They are due to return to the UK early in 2010 and will then await internet instructions from al-Qaeda on when to strike.
A Scotland Yard source said: “The great fear is Abdulmutallab is the first of many ready to attack planes and kill tens of thousands.
“We know there are four or five radicalised British Muslim cells in the Yemen.
“They are due back within months when they will be under constant surveillance.”
The 25 suspects, of Pakistani and Somali descent, were radicalised in UK mosques.
Some had been to university and studied engineering or computer sciences.
Others were former street gang members.
Special Branch monitored them as they flew to Yemen, in the Middle East, from British airports in the spring and summer.
In almost every case, their tickets were paid for in cash and bought less than a week before travel.
The source added: “Imams would have promised them rewards in heaven for becoming suicide bombers prepared to kill Westerners.”
PM Gordon Brown and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson were being briefed.
The warnings came as another Nigerian was last night held in Detroit on the same flight attacked on Christmas Day. It later emerged the man had fallen ill.
Al-Qaeda in Yemen warned the West four days before Friday’s attack that a bombing was imminent.
Terrorist Mohammed al-Kalwi issued the video threat in the wake of a Yemeni airstrike on a militant training camp.
Al-Kalwi was reportedly killed in another airstrike on Thursday.
President Barack Obama’s administration is to review all airport security.
Reports: NWA passenger was trying to blow up flight into Detroit
A man suspected of planning to blow up a Delta Air Lines flight in Detroit could face charges as soon as Saturday, according to an official familiar with the case.
The suspect, identified by a member of Congress as Abdul Mudallad, is a Nigerian national who claims to have ties to al-Qaida.
It was unclear today why the man wanted to attack the flight arriving from Amsterdam.
The plane, an Airbus 330, landed about noon in Detroit, and was carrying 278 passengers on a flight from Amsterdam. There were no major injuries.
Many on board were unaware of what had occurred at the front of the plane — learning about the incident only after they had left the aircraft and were questioned by FBI agents.
Others were keenly aware, having a bird’s-eye view of the man, who was tackled by passengers shortly after he tried to light what many thought was a firecracker.
“It was terrifying. I thought this was it,” said Richelle Keepman of Oconomowoc, Wis., who sat just rows in front of the suspect.
She said she thought she was going to die when she saw the flames and commotion.
Michigan native Melinda Dennis was sitting in first class when the suspect was placed in a seat across the aisle from her.
“He didn’t say anything,” said Dennis, who lives in Europe and was connecting to a flight to Arizona. “He was burned very severely on his leg.… He was very calm and didn’t show any reaction to pain.”
Passengers subdued the man and may have prevented him from detonating the explosives, officials said.
A White House official said the incident was an attempted act of terrorism.
Federal officials imposed stricter screening measures after the incident.
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., ranking GOP member of the House Homeland Security Committee, identified the suspect as Abdul Mudallad, a Nigerian. King said the flight began in Nigeria and went through Amsterdam en route to Detroit. There were 278 passengers aboard the Airbus 330.
I Volunteered For Obama in 2008, But His Support of Landmines Is the Last Straw
Obama’s cruel and pointless refusal to ban child-killing landmines was my personal breaking point against the candidate I worked hard to elect.
When friends of mine learn that I have broken my deal with Barack Obama, and no longer support the “light of the world” (as one English friend calls him), they passionately rally around his presidency, almost pleading with me to give him more time, to keep the faith, and asking, moreover: what choice do we have?
A calling to account is not the same as “a lazy cry of betrayal.” There’s nothing lazy about it: since day one of the inauguration, many of us have been shocked to see Obama going into reverse on his campaign pledges faster than Lewis Hamilton in an F1 car.
The president may have failed to protect low- and middle-income Americans from the Wall Street predators who created our financial mess — indeed, they are his closest advisers.
He may have brusquely fired or exiled some of his most progressive staff as unwanted baggage. And his attorney general is starting to act like one of George Bush’s henchmen: attempting to protect the previous administration’s torture enablers, such as the infamous lawyer John Yoo. Obama’s most recent Oslo speech, accepting the Nobel peace prize, on the heels of his caving in to his captor generals in sending 30,000 more soldiers into the Afghan bloodbath, was chilling in its implications, extending a long tradition, going back to Woodrow Wilson, of war-making for liberal, “humanitarian” reasons. No wonder politicians such as Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and a whole museum-load of neocons welcomed his Oslo “pragmatism” as “hardheaded and pro-American”.
Where Obama is succeeding is in dividing what remains of the American left between a majority of Obama-no-matter-what-he-does partisans and a minority of undeniers like myself
McCain, GOP secretly courting another Dem to switch
Republicans are stepping up their efforts to persuade more House Democrats to switch parties and are zeroing in on a second-term Pennsylvanian who acknowledged the efforts but said he has “no plans” to do so.
Democratic Rep. Chris Carney received a phone call Wednesday from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asking him to consider becoming a Republican, a top GOP official told POLITICO.
Carney’s office at first did not comment other than to acknowledge the call, but Carney released a statement Wednesday night saying, in part, “I appreciate the Republican Party’s outreach, but I have no plans to change parties.”
DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen spoke to Carney Wednesday and received assurance that the Pennsylvanian was not switching, according to a senior Democratic aide.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s aides talked to Carney staffers, as well, and received the same assurance.
In a brief interview, McCain declined to offer details about his conversation with Carney.
“I just said, ‘Whatever you do, I know that you’ll make the right decision for the country,’” said the Arizonan.
Obama Smacked for Telling the Washington Post: ‘I Didn’t Campaign on the Public Option’
ABC News’ Teddy Davis reports:
A liberal group, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (P.C.C.C.), is launching a television ad, criticizing President Obama for endorsing a Senate health care bill which includes a mandate to buy insurance but no government insurance option. The ad was produced overnight, according to the group’s co-founder, to respond “to the anger” that progressives are feeling about President Obama telling today’s Washington Post: “I didn’t campaign on the public option.”
The ad, which is starting with only $40,000 behind it, is being launched in Wisconsin, in addition to Washington, D.C., in the hopes that Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., will “be a hero and insist on a public option.”
Watch the ad below
The top prosecutors in seven states are probing the constitutionality of a political deal that cut a funding break for Nebraska in order to pass a federal health care reform bill
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The top prosecutors in seven states are probing the constitutionality of a political deal that cut a funding break for Nebraska in order to pass a federal health care reform bill, South Carolina’s attorney general said Tuesday.
Attorney General Henry McMaster said he and his counterparts in Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas and Washington state — all Republicans — are jointly taking a look at the deal they’ve dubbed the “Nebraska compromise.”
“The Nebraska compromise, which permanently exempts Nebraska from paying Medicaid costs that Texas and all other 49 states must pay, may violate the United States Constitution — as well as other provisions of federal law,” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said.
McMaster’s move comes at the request of Republican U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
In a letter to McMaster, Graham singled out the deal to win Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson’s vote on the massive health care bill the Senate is expected to adopt Thursday. Nelson held out as fellow Democrats worked to get 60 votes to foreclose a GOP filibuster and the bill was amended to shield Nebraska from the expected $45 million annual cost tied to expanding Medicaid programs.constitutionality of this Nebraska compromise as it results in special treatment for only one state in the
“We have serious concerns about the nation at the expense of the other 49,” Graham and DeMint wrote. “Nebraska does not have to come up with a single dollar.”
Nebraska wasn’t alone in getting Medicaid breaks. Vermont, Louisiana and Massachusetts also got help with their programs.
Along with Texas, officials in Washington, Alabama, Colorado and Michigan confirmed they were working with McMaster.
Now I’m Really Getting Pissed Off: By David Michael Green
”
Hey did you hear about the iconic African-American guy who plays golf, and whose relationship with the public is in a free-fall lately?
No, as a matter of fact – I’m not talking about Tiger Woods.
You know, I’ve really been trying not to write an article every other week about all the things I don’t like about Barack Obama.
But the little prick is making it very hard.
Like any good progressive, I’ve gone from admiration to hope to disappointment to anger when it comes to this president. Now I’m fast getting to rage.
How much rage? I find myself thinking that the thing I want most from the 2010 elections is for his party to get absolutely clobbered, even if that means a repeat of 1994. And that what I most want from 2012 is for him to be utterly humiliated, even if that means President Palin at the helm. That much rage.
Did this clown really say on national television that “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of you know, fat cat bankers on Wall Street”?!?!
Really, Barack? So, like, my question is: Then why the hell did you help out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street?!?! Why the hell did you surround yourself with nothing but Robert Rubin proteges in all the key economic positions in your government? Why did you allow them to open a Washington branch of Goldman Sachs in the West Wing? Why have your policies been tailored to helping Wall Street bankers, rather than the other 300 million of us, who just happen to be suffering badly right now?
Are you freakin’ kidding me??? What’s up with the passive president routine, anyhow, Fool? You hold the most powerful position in the world. Or maybe Rahm forgot to mention that to you. Or maybe the fat cat bankers don’t actually let do that whole decision-making thing often enough that it would actually matter…
But, really, are you going to spend the next three interminable years perfecting your whiney victim persona? I don’t really think I could bear that. Hearing you complain about how rough it all is, when you have vastly more power than any of us to fix it? Please. Not that.
Are you going to tell us that “I did not run for office to be shovel-feeding the military-industrial complex”? But what – they’re just so darned pushy?
“…I did not run for office to continue George Bush’s valiant effort at shredding the Bill of Rights. It’s just that those government-limiting rules are so darned pesky.”
“…I did not run for office to dump a ton of taxpayer money into the coffers of health insurance companies. It’s just that they asked so nicely.”
“…I did not run for office to block equality for gay Americans. I just never got around to doing anything about it.”
“…I did not run for office to turn Afghanistan into Vietnam. I just didn’t want to say no to all the nice generals asking for more troops.”
Here’s a guy who was supposed to actually do something with his presidency, and he’s turned into the skinny little geek on Cell Block D who gets passed around like a rag doll for the pleasure of all the fellas with the tattoos there. He’s being punked by John Boehner, for chrisakes. He’s being rolled by the likes of Joe Lieberman. He calls a come-to-Jesus meeting with Wall Street bank CEOs, and half of them literally phone it in. Everyone from Bibi Netanyahu to the Japanese prime minister to sundry Iranian mullahs is stomping all over Mr. Happy.
And he doesn’t even seem to realize it.
Did you see him tell Oprah that he gave himself “a good solid B+” for his first year in office? And that it will be an A, if he gets his healthcare legislation passed?
Somebody please pick me up and set me back on my chair, wouldya?
I am seriously beginning to worry that this cat is delusional. He has lopped off twenty full points from his job approval rating in less than a year’s time, falling now below fifty percent. His party, once dominant in generic congressional election poll questions, is today almost even with hated Republicans in the public mind. Last month, Obama’s inverted coattails (don’t even ask where those go) got two Democrats clobbered running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia. The otherwise obnoxious George F. Will (very) rightly points out that in Kentucky, “a Republican candidate succeeded in nationalizing a state Senate race. Hugely outspent in a district in which Democrats have a lopsided registration advantage, the Republican won by 12 points a seat in Frankfort by running against Washington”. Wow. Obama is now wrecking state senate races! What’s next? Will local Republican candidates for sheriff win office just by opposing the embarrassment in the White House who chooses abysmal policies and then refuses to fight for them, lest he should ruffle any feathers?
Democrats’ Unintended Consequences – It Isn’t Over, Far From It.
By Skip MacLure
12/22/2009 06:27:37 AM EST
This paragon of virtue put on his best TRIAL LAWYER’S FACE and spewed enough venom to wipe out a small city, saying that we AMERICAN CONSERVATIVES are desperate to `break’ Barack Obama. No Senator, we are not desperate because Barry Hussein is breaking himself and he’ll be out in 2012 as well. No president in history has lost the faith of the American people as fast as feckless, bombastic Barry. He went on to say that the `birthers’…birthers? Just what are birthers, Sheldon?
Are you talking about American citizens who say they’ve never seen convincing evidence of this President’s eligibility to hold the office? I don’t consider myself a birther. Far from it. And I’m not into unsubstantiated conspiracy theories…they are boring and make rotten subject material. Still, judging what hard evidence I can find, and there’s not much, one has to wonder who vetted this man. Certainly not the DNC, they were too busy catching rainbows and taking orders from George Soros and his ilk, or worse. The evidence I’ve seen is not convincing, NO ONE of my knowledge has seen a valid birth certificate. As I’ve said here before, my kids had to be more thoroughly vetted to play Pop Warner and Little League than Obama was to become President.
Unemployment funds going ‘absolutely broke’
The recession’s jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years and need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks.
The shortfalls are putting pressure on governments to either raise taxes or shrink the aid payments.
Debates over the state benefit programs have erupted in South Carolina, Nevada, Kansas, Vermont and Indiana. And the budget gaps are expected to spread and become more acute in the coming year, compelling legislators in many states to reconsider their operations.
Exclusive Wikileaks is in the process of making a cache of documents and files from eleven different neo-Nazi organisations readable, and readily available, online.
Secret neo-Nazi documents published
By John Oates • Get more from this author
Exclusive Wikileaks is in the process of making a cache of documents and files from eleven different neo-Nazi organisations readable, and readily available, online.
The membership records and private messages are currently being formatted to make them easy for non-techies to read and will be released on the Wikileaks site shortly.
The organisation got massive publicity last year when it published a BNP membership list handed over by a disgruntled ex-member.
The raw data is already available but needs formatting so: “your grandmother can read them and google can find them… Journalists won’t write about it otherwise.”
The site is asking for volunteers with enough database skills to be able to expand fields and dumping to text.
The compressed data is about 54MB.
The internal documents include more than just membership lists. There are what seem to be private internal messages, forum posts and email addresses.
Groups who have lost data, or had it stolen, include Aryan Nations, Blood and Honour, White Revolution, Volks Front and the Hammerskin Nation.
The data should be available online from the usual sources shortly. Feel free to discuss this below, but please do not post direct links to the files. ®
Tallying the Health Care Bill’s Giveaways
In criticizing the Senate’s health care bill today, Sen. John McCain complained of the “Cornhusker kickback,” the “Louisiana purchase” and the “Florida flim-flam.”
McCain was echoing Republican criticism that votes for the bill, as Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia said, “have been bought.” But what exactly did he mean?
Critics say the “Cornhusker kickback” was added to the health care bill to appease Ben Nelson, the Nebraska Democrat (pictured at left) who until this weekend was the final holdout keeping Democrats from getting the 60 votes they needed to overcome filibuster.
The deal gives Nelson’s home state of Nebraska “a permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid expansion for Nebraska, meaning federal taxpayers have to kick in an additional $45 million in the first decade,” as Politico notes.
The “Louisiana Purchase,” of course, is the name given to the United States’ acquisition of a large swath of what is now the middle of the country in the early 1800s. But within the context of the health bill, it’s the name critics have given the inclusion of $100-$300 million in added federal aid for Medicaid recipients in Louisiana, the home state of Sen. Mary Landrieu. (Notes Foxnews.com: “The actual Louisiana Purchase was considerably cheaper.”)
On his twitter feed, McCain described the “Florida Flim Flam” as “a deal to grandfather Medicare Advantage enrollees in Florida – apprx $5 Billion.” That provision is tied to Florida Democrat Bill Nelson, who denies that he negotiated a special deal for Democratic south Florida.
Priest outrages police by telling congregation: ‘My advice to poor is to shoplift’
A clergyman has been criticised as ‘highly irresponsible’ after advising his congregation to shoplift following his Nativity sermon.
Father Tim Jones, 41, broke off from his traditional annual sermon yesterday to tell his flock that stealing from large chains is sometimes the best option for vulnerable people.
It is far better for people desperate during the recession to shoplift than turn to ‘prostitution, mugging or burglary’, he said.
The married father-of-two insisted his unusual advice did not break the Bible commandment ‘Thou shalt not steal’ – because God’s love for the poor outweighs his love for the rich.
Howard Dean, Sen. Russ Feingold And Liberal Activists Blame Obama
Dean faults White House for death of the public insurance option
By Michael O’Brien – 12/21/09 01:13 PM ET
The administration is to blame for the public option’s exclusion from healthcare legislation, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Monday.
“Yes,” Dean flatly answered during an appearance on MSNBC when asked if the Obama administration was culpable for losing the public option.
Democratic leaders in the Senate removed the provision from their healthcare bill in a concession to win centrist Democrats’ votes.
But liberal activists and even Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) have begun to focus blame on President Barack Obama, faulting him for never having thrown the full weight of the White House behind the controversial insurance option.
“I’ve been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring healthcare spending down,” Feingold said Sunday in a statement. “Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle.”
Health Bill Passes Key Test in the Senate With 60 Votes
WASHINGTON — After a long day of acid, partisan debate, Senate Democrats held ranks early Monday in a dead-of-night procedural vote that proved they had locked in the decisive margin needed to pass a far-reaching overhaul of the nation’s health care system.
The roll was called shortly after 1 a.m., with Washington still snowbound after a weekend blizzard, and the Senate voted on party lines to cut off a Republican filibuster of a package of changes to the health care bill by the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada.
The vote was 60 to 40 — a tally that is expected to be repeated four times as further procedural hurdles are cleared in the days ahead, and then once more in a dramatic, if predictable, finale tentatively scheduled for 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
Both parties hailed the vote as seismic.
Democrats said it showed them poised to reshape the health system after decades of failed attempts.
“Health care in America ought to be a right, not a privilege,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut. “Since the time of Harry Truman, every Congress, Republican and Democrat, every president, Democrat and Republican, have at least thought about doing this. Some actually tried.”
Republicans said that the bill was fatally flawed and that voters would retaliate against Democrats at the polls in November.
“It’s obvious why the majority has cooked up this amendment in secret, has introduced it in the middle of a snowstorm, has scheduled the Senate to come in session at midnight, has scheduled a vote for 1 a.m., is insisting that it be passed before Christmas — because they don’t want the American people to know what’s in it,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee.
Mr. Alexander added, “Our friends on the Democratic side seem determined to pursue a political kamikaze mission toward a historic mistake.”
Each side blamed the other for the extraordinary series of votes — at dawn Saturday, after midnight Monday, at dawn again on Tuesday, at 1 p.m. on Wednesday and finally on Christmas Eve, when most Americans will be sequestered for the holiday.
The Democrats charged the Republicans with obstinately throwing every procedural obstacle in their way, including filibusters and the full 30 hours of debate allowed under the rules after each filibuster is broken by a vote of 60 senators.
The Republicans charged the Democrats with recklessly rushing to adopt a dizzyingly complex 2,700-page bill that would affect virtually every American, and would reshape one-sixth of the nation’s economy at a cost of $871 billion over 10 years.
“If the Republicans want to exercise every single right they have under the rules, they can keep us here until Christmas Eve, no doubt about it,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. “But to what end, I ask? To what end? We’re going to have the vote at 1 a.m. that requires 60 votes, and then why stay here until Christmas Eve to do what they know we’re going to do?”
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said he and his colleagues had a duty to fight until the last minute.
“There is nothing inevitable about this,” Mr. Cornyn said. “The only thing I think inevitable about it is in the light of the unpopularity of what is being jammed down the throats of the American people, there will be a day of accounting. We don’t know when that day of accounting will be. Perhaps the first day of accounting will be Election Day 2010.”
Adoption of the legislation is not a certainty.
The Senate bill, once completed, must be reconciled with the bill adopted by the House last month, and there are substantial differences between the two. The House measure, for instance, includes a government-run health insurance plan, or public option, that was dropped from the
Senate bill.
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has said the House would not just accept the Senate bill. And some Senate Democrats have warned that they could turn against the bill if changes made during negotiations with the House are not to their liking.
Given the late hour, the White House did not immediately issue a statement after the Senate vote.
The health care legislation, which President Obama has called his top domestic priority, seeks to extend health benefits to more than 30 million people who are currently uninsured. The bill would require nearly all Americans to obtain health insurance, or pay financial penalties for failing to do so, and it would provide federal subsidies to help moderate-income Americans buy private coverage.
About half of the people who would gain coverage, some 15 million, would do so through a broad expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for low-income Americans, and growth in the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
To pay for the new coverage, the bill would impose an array of fees and taxes, including an increase in the payroll tax for individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning more than $250,000 and a new excise tax on high-cost insurance polices. The bill also calls for major reductions in government spending, by slowing the growth of Medicare.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that the $871 billion cost of the bill would be more than offset by the new revenues and cuts in spending, so that it would reduce future federal budget deficits by $132 billion between 2010 and 2019.
The outcome of the Monday morning vote was effectively decided on Saturday, when Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, the last holdout, announced that he would support the bill and Mr. Reid unveiled his final “manager’s” package of changes. Mr. Reid’s amendment included provisions aimed at winning over Mr. Nelson and others. Republicans derided the changes as akin to bribery.
On Sunday, any lingering doubts were put to rest. Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, who voted in favor of several Republican amendments to the health care bill, issued a statement saying he would support the measure. And Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, who had been in intense talks with the White House, issued a statement saying she would vote no.
But the late-night session was not without drama, thanks to the tremendous snowstorm on Saturday that buried much of the Northeast, and limited the travel options of some senators caught away from Washington. With Amtrak experiencing severe delays, a government plane was sent to retrieve Senators Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrats.
Because the Democrats nominally control the votes of 60 senators — 58 Democrats and two independents aligned with them — which is the precise number needed to overcome filibusters, the absence of even one lawmaker would have changed the outcome of the vote and would probably have forced Democrats to miss their deadline of adopting the health care legislation by Christmas.
The most senior senator, Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, who turned 92 years old last month and uses a wheelchair, was invoked by both sides as a victim of the parliamentary warfare that has the Senate convening at all hours of the day and night.
The 1 a.m. Monday vote was on a motion to cut off debate on Mr. Reid’s manager’s package. A simple majority vote to approve the package is scheduled for roughly 7 a.m. on Tuesday.
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Open Call to Congressional Republicans WALK OUT and STAY OUT!
By JB Williams
Excerpt
Republicans have only ONE chance left!
To save themselves from being painted with the same Marxist brush appropriate for today’s Democrats, stop the current slaughter of Americans sovereignty, security and prosperity, and unite the 60% of Americans in desperate need of leadership, congressional Republicans have ONE play remaining.
WALK OUT and STAY OUT!
- Walk out of congress TODAY!
- Force leftist Democrats to destroy this nation all alone!
- Publicly name every vote bought off with state pork in the last ten months!
- Call it what it is, a complete sham and rape of this nation!
- Refuse to provide any form of cover for this sham and return home!
- Once home, meet with state legislators to erect Tenth Amendment walls of defense at the state lines!
US Senate Vote to End Debate on Healthcare Tonight at 1:01 am
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Olympia Snowe to filibuster health bill
been saying Christmas is just too soon for several days now, but today, after Democrats rounded up 60 votes in their own caucus, she made it official. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) will oppose (and filibuster) health care reform. “Having been fully immersed in this issue for this entire …
http://beltwayblips.dailyradar.com/story/she-s-a-no-snowe-confirms-opposition-to-health-care/tweets/
Dreading our future (” President Obama, for whom I voted, is a profound disappointment.”)
Iam a baby boomer, which is to say my life has coincided with turbulent and awesome times. From the Cold War to Vietnam, from Watergate to Monicagate, through the horrors of 9/11 and the stunning lifestyle advances, my generation’s era has been historic and exciting.
Yet for all the drama and change, the years only occasionally instilled in me the sensation I feel almost constantly now. I am afraid for my country.
I am afraid — actually, certain — we are losing the heart and soul that made America unique in human history. Yes, we have enemies, but the greatest danger comes from within.
Watching the freak show in Copenhagen last week, I was alternately furious and filled with dread. The world has gone absolutely bonkers and lunatics are in charge.
Mugabe and Chavez are treated with respect and the United Nations is serious about wanting to regulate our industry and transfer our wealth to kleptocrats and genocidal maniacs.
Even more frightening, our own leaders joined the circus. Marching to the beat of international drummers, they uncoupled themselves from the will of the people they were elected to serve.
President Obama, for whom I voted because I believed he was the best choice available, is a profound disappointment. I now regard his campaign as a sly bait-and-switch operation, promising one thing and delivering another. Shame on me.
Equally surprising, he has become an insufferable bore. The grace notes and charm have vanished, with peevishness and petty spite his default emotions. His rhetorical gifts now serve his loathsome habit of fear-mongering.
Sen. Whitehouse: foes of health care bill are birthers, right-wing militias, aryan groups.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I) today took shots at those who are not supporting the health care legislation. During a floor speech, he excoriated Senate GOP members for up holding the pending health care bill and accused their supporters of being birthers and fanatics in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups.
After explaining why absent GOP members who did not vote for the Department of Defense spending bill was tantamount to a “no” vote, he went on to say that Republicans and their supporters just want to “break” the momentum of President Obama.:
“Voting ‘no’ and hiding from the vote are the same result. Those of us on the floor see it. It was clear the three of them who did not cast their yes votes until all 60 Senate votes had been tallied and it was clear that the result was a foregone conclusion. And why? Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? All to break the momentum of our new young president.
They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist. That is one powerful reason. It is not the only one.”
I approached Senator Whitehouse following his speech on the floor, and his responses to my questions were puzzling, to say the say the least. Mr. Whitehouse said he stood by his speech, but would not admit that he was accusing anyone who was against the health care bill as racist. He did reiterate that birthers are part of the group that is against the bill and are attacking president However, when I asked the Senator from Rhode Island what he meant by describing those who do not support the bill as “aryan,” he responded “No, I didn’t say that….again, pay attention to the speech.”
According to the transcript above, Mr. Whitehouse did say what he seems to be denying. Perhaps he should pay more attention to what he says on the floor.
“Progressives For Obama” Change Name To Omit Their President
“This is what I meant a year ago when I said the next year will determine whether Barack Obama will be an Uncle Tom” Ralph Nader
The left’s anger over the public option and the anti-Obama revolt is long overdue, says Ralph Nader. Benjamin Sarlin talks to the self-professed “pioneer” of the current progressive rage.
Democrats are steaming over the White House’s capitulation to liberal nemesis Joe Lieberman’s demands to remove a public option and Medicare buy-in from the Senate’s heath-care bill. Progressive figures including Howard Dean and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas have gone so far as to suggest scrapping the bill entirely and starting over, sparking rebukes from White House officials like David Axelrod, who called such a move “insane” in a Morning Joe interview on MSNBC on Thursday. With polls already showing many Democrats planning on sitting out 2010 midterms, the conflict has drawn comparisons to Ralph Nader’s third-party run in 2000, which many Democrats blame for tipping the election to George W. Bush—and for leaving Lieberman to wreak havoc in the Senate.
This is all good news to Nader, a vocal critic of the bill who considers the health-care debate a turning point in the left’s relationship to Obama.
“This is what I meant a year ago when I said the next year will determine whether Barack Obama will be an Uncle Tom groveling before the demands of the corporations.”
The four-time presidential candidate said he was particularly encouraged Thursday morning, when he read Dean’s op-ed in The Washington Post.
“Good for Howard Dean,” Nader said, adding that his only criticism was the former Democratic National Committee chairman didn’t go after the bill hard enough.
Obama praises a climate flop
WASHINGTON — After a day spent frantically darting around Copenhagen trying to locate world leaders, getting snubbed by China’s premier and crashing a meeting where he had initially been kept out, President Obama heralded a last-minute, largely toothless UN global-warming summit deal that drew fast fire from all sides as a sham.
Almost no one was happy with the outcome of the two-week confab and even the president, who was slammed by liberals and Republicans alike, along with other world leaders, admitted that the pact doesn’t legally commit any of the nations involved — the point of the summit in the first place.
Obama may become known as “the man who killed Copenhagen,” said Greenpeace US head Phil Radford, one of many activists to rap the president for the flimsy agreement with India, South Africa, Brazil and China, which thwarted the president throughout the conference.
The deal, which would have to be accepted by all nations to be adopted, asks all parties to list how they’ll cap emissions by set amounts, among other general goals.
But critics say it pushes any legally binding steps into the future.
It was roundly blasted as a farce from all quarters.
“The president has wrecked the UN and he’s wrecked the possibility of a tough plan to control global warming,” said Bill McKibbon of the progressive group 350.org. “It may get Obama a reputation as a tough American leader, but it’s at the expense of everything progressives have held dear.”
Andy Martin is interviewed for over 1-1/2 hours by NBC News ( Obama’s Missing Documents)
(NEW YORK)(December 18, 2009) Illinois U. S. Senate candidate and Internet Powerhouse Andy Martin returned to network television Thursday with a searching interview by NBC News. “I could not believe they asked questions for over 1-1/2 hours Martin said. “I don’t know how much they will use in their broadcast. But they were very prepared. There was a dark room with bright lights. It was ‘Mike Wallace noir They kept asking questions for over 1-1/2 hours with no break.
“We answered all of them.
“Only a few days ago a New York Times magazine writer suggested my forty-year career as a broadcaster and reformer/crusader against political corruption was over. I guess the Times was wrong, again. There are not many people on the national media stage with the experience and guts to stand up to and challenge Barack Obama. I am one of them.
“Friday we open a two-day conference in New York City on the ‘Mysterious Mr. Obama We will be conducting the historic National Conference at the World Trade Center from a suite on the 52nd floor of the Millenium Hilton overlooking Ground Zero.
“And we will begin the conference with a dramatic reaffirmation of my commitment to the victims of 9/11, their families and my pledge to the American people.
“As a U. S. Senator I will obviously and diligently attend to my duties to serve the daily needs of Illinois citizens. But as ‘America’s Senator I will never ever allow Barack Obama to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan/Pakistan until we capture Osama bin Laden and his associates.
“There is no substitute for victory.
“Barack Obama’s defeatist strategy is to set arbitrary time limits on our participation in the search for bin Laden. Obama’s approach is an outrageous manipulation and capitulation to terrorism abroad and liberalism here at home. As United States Senator I will fight to keep the CIA and U. S. Army in Afghanistan and Pakistan until we capture bin Laden and destroy her terror network. I will not allow Obama to impose arbitrary limits on pursuit of bin Laden in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
“Interestingly, our conference was scheduled before Obama’s ‘capitulation’ speech at West Point, in which he promised to start withdrawing the U. S. military from Afghanistan before the start of the 2012 Democratic Party primary election season in the summer of 2011.
“Obama traveled to Pakistan as a young student. He says his family was poor. He does not appear to have had jobs while in college. Where did the money come from for Obama to travel around the world to Pakistan as a college student? Who paid? Obama refuses to answer.
“Obama refuses to release his original, typewritten 1961 birth certificate; he has only issued a laser-printed sheet from a Hawai’i state database. He refuses to release his Occidental College records, his Columbia University recordsLaw School records.
“The documents we are seeking are the original source material of American history. Whether you love or hate Obama, he is now an important figure in American history. Documents related to him and his early life are part of our national archives, especially when, for example, his mysterious trip to Pakistan as a college student could shed light on his latest policy revisions concerning Pakistan and Afghanistan. What is Obama trying to cover up in his past? What happened in Pakistan when he went there as a student, who paid for him to go there, and why was he there at a time of internal upheaval in that nation? and his Harvard
Andy Martin slaps Wikipedia/Wikimedia Foundation with a fraud lawsuit
U. S. Senate candidate Andy Martin slaps Wikipedia/Wikimedia Foundation with a fraud lawsuit
Martin says the Wikipedia/Wikimedia operation is a tax-exempt protosocialist scam that seeks to harass Republicans, conservatives and Obama opponents
Andy Martin says the Wikimedia Foundation is nothing more than a tax-exempt division of Barack Obama’s political operations
Martin’s lawsuit charges that Wikimedia falsely invokes the Communications Decency Act to defraud federal and state judges as to the true nature of Wikipedia’s operations
Martin is seeking an injunction against Wikimedia/Wikipedia
(NEW YORK)(December 17, 2009) Republican U. S. Senate candidate and insurgent “Internet Powerhouse” Andy Martin will hold a New York news conference Thursday, December 17th to announce that he has sued the “protosocialist” Wikipedia/Wikimedia operation for using tax-exempt resources to run a hate campaign against him at the behest of Wikimedia’s Barack Obama supporters.
Martin is in New York for the Second national Conference on Barack Obama’s Missing Birth Certificate and College Records.
“No one could characterize the Wikipedia entry on my extraordinary life of public service and personal sacrifice as ‘neutral and impartial�� Martin says. “It is obviously nothing more than a political smear by Barack Obama’s rabid supporters. Wikimedia and Wikimedia are tax-exempt protosocialist scams that target conservatives, Republicans and opponents of Obama. I am a triple threat when it comes to being the target of Obama agents.
“I am fighting back. We need to expose Wikimedia’s scams. Wikimedia/Wikipedia use tax-exempt resources to spew their venom on innocent victims Martin says. “The public is also a victim of fraud by these leftist Obamabots. I want to bring the facts and the truth about these protosocialist provocateurs to the attention of the American people; nothing less, nothing more
Remove mandate, or kill this bill: Markos Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos
“Insurance companies win,” Markos Moulitsas tweeted last night. “Time to kill this monstrosity coming out of the Senate.”
This was, for progressives, a frustrating vote. But the flip side of it being morally unconscionable for Joe Lieberman to put the bill at risk over something as small as Medicare buy-in for 3-or-so million people is that the absence of Medicare buy-in — and of the weak public plan — is not reason enough to oppose the bill, either.
Klein’s argument seems to be:
- If we need more money for subsidies, we can later throw more money at the system,
- If costs aren’t held down, then there’ll be a better argument for a public option in the future.
My take is that it’s unconscionable to force people to buy a product from a private insurer that enjoys sanctioned monopoly status. It’d be like forcing everyone to attend baseball games, but instead of watching the Yankees, they were forced to watch the Kansas City Royals. Or Washington Nationals. It would effectively be a tax — and a huge one — paid directly to a private industry.
Without any mechanisms to control costs, this is yet another bailout for yet another reviled industry. Subsidies? Insurance companies are free to raise their rates to absorb that cash. More money for subsidies? More rate increases, as well as more national debt. Don’t expect Lieberman and his ilk to care. They’re in it for their industry pals.
If you want a similar model, watch how universities increase tuition to absorb increased financial aid opportunities. And since the Senate and its industry-bought Senators won’t allow insurance premium caps or an end to the insurance industry’s anti-trust exemption (much less a public option to compete against them), there is nothing keeping those companies from jacking up rates to screw people. In fact, that’s been their modus operandi for years.
Provisions prohibiting rescissions are fine and dandy, and fairly non-controversial, but they are toothless. The legislation allows rescissions based on “fraud” and “willful misrepresentation”. I’m still not sure what that means, but if the insurance company doesn’t want to pay for your expensive care, seems they can assert those clauses and refuse to pay. Then what? You have to fight for coverage, get lawyers, hit the courts, hope you survive long enough to resolve the issue. Looks a lot like the status quo, doesn’t it? Indeed, insurance companies already cite fraud or misrepresentation as the excuses for rescissions.
The insurance industry began 2009 fearing genuine reform that would force them to become responsible corporate citizens, and they are exiting it on the cusp of a dramatic government-sanctioned windfall. It pays to be an industry that’s too big to fail.
Strip out the mandate, and the rest of the bill is palatable. It’s not reform, but it’s progress in the right direction. And you can still go back and tinker with it at a later time. Whether this passes or not, any further reforms will still need new legislation. And any new legislation will be just as furiously opposed as this one was. It’s not like the opponents of health care are motivated by reason. They are motivated by the health insurance industry’s bottom line. Nothing we do with this current bill will change that.
New NBC/WSJ poll should worry Dems
There’s a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll out. The numbers are grim for Democrats and Barack Obama, but more to the point, the country continues to express a general and very real disgust.
Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Ali Weinberg of NBC’s First Read summarize the major findings this way:
In the poll, Obama’s approval has dropped below 50% (to 47%); his party faces its first net-negative fav/unfav since Sept. 2007; and one-third think he has the right goals and priorities to fix the economy….
In the poll, 55% think the country is on the wrong track; 61% believe the country is in a state of decline; and a whopping 81% believe the past year in Congress has been marked by division and a lack of willingness to compromise. (Compare that with the 52% who thought, immediately after Obama’s presidential victory, that unity would prevail in 2009.) What’s more, Sarah Palin’s fav/unfav is 32%-40%, up a tick since her book tour. And the Republican Party’s fav/unfav is 28%-43%. Indeed, the anti-Washington sentiment is so strong that the conservative, libertarian-leaning Tea Party movement has a net-positive fav/unfav, 41%-23%. Populism is alive and well, folks. And it’s up for grabs. Washington-establishment types watch out: 2010 could be the year of the outsider and turn into the THIRD-STRAIGHT change election cycle, an unprecedented level of political volatility in this country.
Looking ahead to next year’s midterms, Democrats enjoy only a two-point advantage on the generic ballot, 43%-41%, which is their smallest edge on this question since 2004. In addition, unlike was the case during the 2008 election season, Democrats are now the ones facing an enthusiasm gap. According to the poll, 56% of Republicans said they were “very interested” in next year’s midterms, compared with 46% of Democrats who said that…. Moreover, when you look at the generic-ballot score among high-interest voters, Republicans have an eight-point advantage, 47%-39%.
Yesterday, the House narrowly passed, 217-212, a $174B jobs bill, just hours after raising the national debt ceiling (another) $300B. Not a single Republican voted for it, and 38 Democrats (including, obviously, a lot of Blue Dogs) voted “nay” along with the Republicans.
Of its passage, Obama said:
Continued
Obama told China: I can’t stop Israel strike on Iran indefinitely
They said Obama warned President Hu Jintao during the American’s visit to Beijing a month ago as part of the U.S. attempt to convince the Chinese to support strict sanctions on Tehran if it does not accept Western proposals for its nuclear program.
The Israeli officials, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the United States had informed Israel on Obama’s meetings in Beijing on Iran. They said Obama made it clear to Hu that at some point the United States would no longer be able to prevent Israel from acting as it saw fit in response to the perceived Iranian threat.
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The Israeli officials say the Americans now understand that the Chinese agreed to join the condemnation announcement only because Obama made a personal request to Hu, not as part of a policy change.
The Chinese have even refused a Saudi-American initiative designed to end Chinese dependence on Iranian oil, which would allow China to agree to the sanctions, said the Israeli officials.
Obama vs. the liberals: Pass the tea to the left
By Dana Milbank
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Tea parties — they aren’t just for conservatives anymore.
Liberals are turning against President Obama with an energy that until now has been reserved for Fox News viewers who wear tri-corner hats and wave yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flags:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in a news conference Wednesday, declares that she won’t ask House members to support Obama’s Afghanistan troop increase in a January vote. “The president’s going to have to make his case,” she says, calling it a “vote of conscience.”
About the same time, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) holds a news conference to denounce Obama’s renomination of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. “When the people voted for change in 2008,” he says, “they did not vote to have one of the key architects of the Bush economy be reappointed.”
Howard Dean goes on the radio and says of the Senate health-care bill, which Obama is fighting mightily to pass: “The best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill.”
MoveOn.org calls a protest outside the White House to demand that “the president to stand up to Joe Lieberman and fight for the health care reform principles he campaigned on.”
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who gained fame by saying Republicans think Americans should “die quickly,” holds a news conference to denounce Obama’s Afghanistan policy and reads a petition on the House floor asking members to vote against sending more troops.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), in a series of outbursts, criticizes Obama over Afghanistan, health-care reform and the handling of the Guantanamo Bay prison.Continued
Are Blacks Abandoning Obama? by Lloyd Grove
Danny Glover, Jesse Jackson, and other activists talk to Lloyd Grove about disappointment in the African-American community with the president’s first year.
Danny Glover heaved a sigh when I asked him recently what he thought of President Obama’s performance so far.
It wasn’t a sigh of relief.
“I think the Obama administration has followed the same playbook, to a large extent, almost verbatim, as the Bush administration. I don’t see anything different,” the activist movie actor said of Obama’s policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. “On the domestic side, look here: What’s so clear is that this country from the outset is projecting the interests of wealth and property. Look at the bailout of Wall Street. Why not the bailout of Main Street?”
“He may be just a different face, and that face may happen to be black—and if it were Hillary Clinton, it would happen to be a woman,” says Danny Glover. “But what choices do they have within the structure?”
More in sorrow than in anger, Glover went on: “What choice does he have—in four years, eight years? Let’s just call a spade a spade. Really. There are no choices out there. He may be just a different face, and that face may happen to be black—and if it were Hillary Clinton, it would happen to be a woman—but what choices do they have within the structure?”
• Reihan Salam: Obama Is the Left’s Worst Enemy
Glover is among a growing chorus of African-American opinion leaders who are publicly and privately expressing varying degrees of resignation, disappointment, and outright anger concerning a presidency on which so many hopes have ridden. Who can forget the iconic image of the tear-streaked Rev. Jesse Jackson—who in 1984 and 1988 waged formidable campaigns of his own for the Democratic presidential nomination—as he stood overcome with emotion amid the jubilant crowd at Chicago’s Grant Park as Obama gave his victory speech?
These days Jackson is decidedly dry-eyed.
“Let me distinguish African-American support for the president from the need to challenge policies and protect our interests,” Jackson said. He argues that vocal and effective activism on Obama’s left flank could alter the political dynamic and help him accomplish such goals as health-care reform, job creation, and stricter regulation of Wall Street—in much the same way that civil-rights marches in the South, and the media attention they received, captured the nation’s moral imagination and helped Lyndon Johnson pass landmark legislation in the mid-1960s. “But this doesn’t always turn on a race-based analysis,” Jackson cautioned. “It doesn’t always have to be a function of animus” of one African American for another.
Yet in recent weeks, such prominent voices as Rep. John Conyers, the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and New York Times columnist Charles Blow have been among those taking shots at Obama over his policies, rhetoric, and political positioning.
“A lot of people are pissed off out there,” said one well-known political player who slams the president for embarrassing African-American Gov. David Paterson of New York by trying to shove him out of next year’s Democratic primary election in favor of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and campaigning vigorously for New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine’s unsuccessful reelection race while ignoring African-American candidate Bill Thompson’s closer-than-expected mayoral bid against Mike Bloomberg. “Thompson could have won that race,” says this politico, who—for the moment, anyway—is keeping his powder dry and declining to criticize the president on the record.
Conyers, in a remarkable outburst to The Hill newspaper, recounted how he cut Obama off a few weeks ago when the president phoned to demand an explanation for the congressman’s blunt criticisms of the troop surge in Afghanistan (“he’s getting bad advice from clowns”), Obama’s compromises on health-care reform (“bowing down” to the “nutty right wing”), and his alleged mishandling of the promised prison shutdown at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
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Obama and Pelosi be criminally prosecuted:Grand Jury Presentments were served upon the FBI in Mohave County, Arizona by Maggie Passaro.
See attached a receipt (on FBI FORM) here for the Grand Jury presentments served upon Jeremy Schwartz, Department of the FBI.
The following report was sent to American Grand Jury by Maggie Passaro:
He would not sign on OUR document. Agent Schwartz only had to say to me that “ALL PERSONS UP FOR ELECTION ON BALLOTS ARE CHECKED ON THEIR BACKGROUND BY THE FBI…”
My response was “if the the FBI did indeed do a thorough background check on Obama, did they document the fact that Obama is NOT a “NATURAL BORN CITIZEN?” Agent Schwartz had no comment on this.”
I had to re-affirm to agent Schwartz, several times, as he kept saying “citizen” that Obama is NOT a “NATURAL BORN” citizen and that Obama openly admitted this in public and through his writings.
The meeting closed with Schwartz stating that it would take him a couple of days to thoroughly read all the information and if he had any questions he would contact me, and that ultimately the entire stack would be handed over to the Phoenix Office for further assesment and investigation.
I assured him that we do not take this matter lightly and are hoping that someone with proper authority will have the courage to uphold and defend the Constitution as per their OATH of office.
We shook hands and he walked me to the door as we left.
The meeting concluded at 1:09 pm.
Maggie Passaro
Howard Dean “‘Kill This Bill!”-Rockefeller Dean: ‘Nonsense,’ ‘irresponsible’-Traitor Joe? -Michael Moore “boycott Connecticut”
Former DNC Chairman Howard Dean’s calls to kill the Senate healthcare bill are “nonsense” and “irresponsible,” Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said Wednesday.
Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore on Thursday called for a boycott of the state of Connecticut in reaction to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-Conn.) opposition to key provisions of healthcare reform legislation.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recently removed the public option and Medicare-buy in proposal, which the centrist Lieberman opposes, from the bill in order to attract centrist votes. Reid needs 60 votes in order to break a Republican filibuster of the bill.
Moore focused his anger on the Connecticut voters who reelected Lieberman in favor of liberal candidate Ned Lamont (D-Conn.) in the 2006 elections. He tweeted:
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.
Lieberman has become the scourge of the left for withholding his vote on healthcare reform due to the inclusion of the public health insurance option and the Medicare buy-in proposals.
There is no provision in the state of Connecticut to recall public officials.
CNSNews.com As Obama Pushes For Second Stimulus, Federal Audit Agency Says States Have Only Spent One-Quarter of Funds Set Aside for Them in First Stimulus (hmmm?)
(CNSNews.com) – As President Obama and congressional Democrats push for a second stimulus package, a federal auditing agency is reporting that less than one-quarter of the economic stimulus money allocated for spending by the states has been used–the majority of which went to cover increases in Medicaid.
In a December report to Congress, the Government Accountability Office said that as of Nov. 27, only $69.1 billion, “or about one quarter of the approximately $280 billion of total Recovery Act funds for programs administered by states and localities had been paid out.
That means that only 24.7 percent of the available funds had been spent by that date.
Are Americans a Broken People? Why We’ve Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression
By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet.
Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not “set them free” but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States?
Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further?
What forces have created a demoralized, passive, dis-couraged U.S. population?
Can anything be done to turn this around?
Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not “set them free” but instead further demoralize them?
Yes. It is called the “abuse syndrome.” How do abusive pimps, spouses, bosses, corporations, and governments stay in control? They shove lies, emotional and physical abuses, and injustices in their victims’ faces, and when victims are afraid to exit from these relationships, they get weaker. So the abuser then makes their victims eat even more lies, abuses, and injustices, resulting in victims even weaker as they remain in these relationships.
Does knowing the truth of their abuse set people free when they are deep in these abuse syndromes?
No. For victims of the abuse syndrome, the truth of their passive submission to humiliating oppression is more than embarrassing; it can feel shameful — and there is nothing more painful than shame. When one already feels beaten down and demoralized, the likely response to the pain of shame is not constructive action, but more attempts to shut down or divert oneself from this pain. It is not likely that the truth of one’s humiliating oppression is going to energize one to constructive actions.
Has such a demoralization happened in the U.S.?
In the United States, 47 million people are without health insurance, and many millions more are underinsured or a job layoff away from losing their coverage. But despite the current sellout by their elected officials to the insurance industry, there is no outpouring of millions of U.S. citizens on the streets of Washington, D.C., protesting this betrayal.
Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the taxpayer bailout of the financial industry, yet only a handful of U.S. citizens have protested these circumstances.
Remember the 2000 U.S. presidential election? That’s the one in which Al Gore received 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush. That’s also the one that the Florida Supreme Court’s order for a recount of the disputed Florida vote was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in a politicized 5-4 decision, of which dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens remarked: “Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.” Yet, even this provoked few demonstrators.
When people become broken, they cannot act on truths of injustice. Furthermore, when people have become broken, more truths about how they have been victimized can lead to shame about how they have allowed it. And shame, like fear, is one more way we become even more psychologically broken.
U.S. citizens do not actively protest obvious injustices for the same reasons that people cannot leave their abusive spouses: They feel helpless to effect change. The more we don’t act, the weaker we get. And ultimately to deal with the painful humiliation over inaction in the face of an oppressor, we move to shut-down mode and use escape strategies such as depression, substance abuse, and other diversions, which further keep us from acting. This is the vicious cycle of all abuse syndromes.
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