Health Care Bill: The Democrat Martyrdom Operation

We have to pass the Health Care Bill so that we can see what is in it.




Parliamentary Hurdle Could Thwart Latest Health Care Overhaul Strategy

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and ROBERT PEAR
Published: March 9, 2010 NY Times

WASHINGTON — The White House and Democratic Congressional leaders said Tuesday that they were bracing for a key procedural ruling that could complicate their effort to approve major health care legislation, by requiring President Obama to sign the bill into law before Congress could revise it through an expedited budget process.

An official determination on the matter could come within days from the House and Senate parliamentarians, and could present yet another hurdle for Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders as they try to lock in support from skittish lawmakers in the House.

Meanwhile, Congressional leaders and top administration officials met in the offices of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, on Tuesday evening trying to resolve outstanding policy differences between the chambers.

House leaders were still navigating potential pitfalls, including a dispute over provisions related to insurance coverage of abortion, while opponents of the legislation, including a leading business group, planned a new onslaught of television advertisements attacking the proposal.

Many rank-and-file House Democrats are reluctant to approve the Senate-passed health care measure without a guarantee that the Senate would follow up with changes in a budget reconciliation bill. The Senate measure included a number of provisions House members dislike, including special deals intended to secure the support of individual senators, like extra Medicaid money for Nebraska.

Democratic leaders had been contemplating an intricate legislative two-step, by which the House would approve the original Senate health care measure and both chambers would adopt a package of changes in a budget reconciliation bill. Both measures would then be sent to Mr. Obama for his signature.

Some officials said House leaders were holding out hope for a favorable ruling by the parliamentarians that would allow them to proceed as planned — or to circumvent the problem.

But Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Budget Committee, said the reconciliation instructions in last year’s budget resolution seemed to require that Mr. Obama sign the Senate bill into law before it could be changed.

“It’s very hard to see how you draft, and hard to see how you score, a reconciliation bill to another bill that has not yet been passed and become law,” Mr. Conrad said. “I just advise you go read the reconciliation instructions and see if you think it has been met if it doesn’t become law.”

The procedural maneuvering highlighted the acute sensitivity around virtually every step in the Democrats’ push to achieve Mr. Obama’s top domestic priority.

As Democrats considered the potential parliamentary maneuvers, a coalition of business groups announced Tuesday that it was beginning a television advertising campaign to stop the health care legislation.

The advertisement says “we thought Washington understood” that jobs and the economy should be the top priority for Congress. But instead, it says, “Congress is trying to use special rules to ram through their same trillion-dollar health care bill,” with “billions in new taxes and more mandates on businesses.”

The executive vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, R. Bruce Josten, said the groups were spending $4 million to $10 million on the advertisements. Sponsors include the chamber, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Retail Federation.

Separately, America’s Health Insurance Plans, a lobby for insurers, said Tuesday that it was buying more than a million dollars’ worth of television advertising time to explain why insurance premiums had been rising.

Obama administration officials have unleashed a barrage of criticism of insurers, as part of their final push for support of the health legislation. They say the industry is reaping huge profits and overpaying top executives. But insurance companies say premiums have shot up because of soaring medical costs.

“What’s inside the health care cost pie?” the advertisement asks. “Some in Washington say it’s all health insurance. But health insurance is one of the smallest slices. Health insurance companies’ costs are only 4 percent of health care spending. Doctors, hospitals, medicines and tests are the biggest slices.”

The Senate Democratic whip, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, said there was no timetable for a budget reconciliation bill. The budget bill might include a major overhaul of the student loan program, he said, but only if it helped secure health care votes.

The most immediate question seemed to be how parliamentarians would rule on the steps that Democrats must follow. The reconciliation instructions require that committees “report changes in laws” that help meet deficit reduction targets.

Democrats are planning to use budget reconciliation to make the final health care revisions because it circumvents a Republican filibuster in the Senate and can be adopted by a simple majority vote rather than 60-vote supermajority normally required.

Republican leaders have been working to fan distrust of the Senate among House Democrats, warning that Mr. Obama and the Senate would have little reason to pursue the budget reconciliation process once the House approves the Senate-passed bill.

At that point, the Republicans suggest, Mr. Obama might just as well hold a signing ceremony and declare the legislation completed, even though it would include the objectionable provisions that the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, inserted.

“We believe what the president is doing is asking House Democrats to hold hands, jump off a cliff and hope Harry Reid catches them,” Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the No. 3 Republican, said on Tuesday. “And Senator Reid is not going to have any incentive to catch them because by the time the reconciliation bill gets to the Senate, the president will have already signed the health care bill into law and he’ll be well on his way to Indonesia.”

Some Democrats are hoping that the House will vote on the Senate bill by March 18, before Mr. Obama leaves for a weeklong trip to Guam, Indonesia and Australia. Congress also leaves March 26 for a two-week recess.

What Really Happened at 'The Boston Massacre?' - Mark Levin

The al-Qaeda 7 of the Obama Administration and the misuse of a comparison to John Adams defending British uniformed troops in Boston with lawyers, who once defended Islamic terrorists, now in Eric Holder's DOJ.

Nigeria Muslims Slaughter 500 Christian Men Woman and Children.

Nigeria BBC

Mark Lipdo of the Stefanos Foundation said he witnessed the massacre

Some 500 people, including many women and children, are now reported to have died in a weekend religious clash near Nigeria's city of Jos, officials say.

The figure had previously been put at about 100 but it is always difficult to verify casualties. Local officials said dozens of arrests had been made.

They said three mainly Christian villages near Jos were attacked from nearby hills by people with machetes.
There is a long history of local tension between Muslims and Christians.

The attacks are said to have been in revenge for the killing of several hundred people around Jos in January.
Although sectarianism is blamed for such clashes, correspondents say poverty and access to resources such as land often lie at the root of the violence.

'Heinous act'

Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has put security forces on alert to stop the flow of weapons to the area.

The AFP news agency reports that troops and military vehicles have entered the villages, which are now said to be calm.

An adviser to the Christian-dominated Plateau state government, Dan Manjang, told AFP: "We have been able to make 95 arrests but at the same time over 500 people have been killed in this heinous act."

Another Plateau state official, Gregory Yenlong, urged people to "remain calm and be patient as the government steps up security to protect lives and property in this state".

Many of the dead in the villages of Zot and Dogo-Nahawa are reported to be women and children.

Mark Lipdo, from the Christian charity Stefanos Foundation, said the village of Zot had been almost wiped out.
He said: "We saw mainly those who are helpless, like small children and then the older men, who cannot run, these were the ones that were slaughtered."

A resident of Dogo-Nahawa said the attackers had fired guns as they entered the village before dawn on Sunday in defiance of a curfew.

"The shooting was just meant to bring people from their houses and then when people came out they started cutting them with machetes," Peter Jang told Reuters news agency.

Some witnesses said villagers were caught in fishing nets and animal traps as they tried to escape and were then hacked to death. Mud huts were also set on fire.

Mass burials took place on Sunday and scores more bodies were laid out in the streets of the three attacked villages, awaiting further burials on Monday.

Figures given for the death tolls in the religious clashes have varied widely, sometimes to achieve political ends or to reduce the risk of reprisals, or simply because victims are buried quickly.

Jos lies between the mainly Muslim north of Nigeria and its largely Christian south.

Analysts say the latest attack seems to be in reprisal for the clashes between Christians and Muslims in January, which claimed the lives of at least 200 people and displaced thousands of others.

Hundreds of people have fled from Jos in the aftermath of the fighting, the International Committee of the Red Cross says.

The religious clashes represent a challenge for the acting leader, Mr Jonathan. He formally took over last month from President Umaru Yar'Adua, who has a heart problem.

Mr Yar'Adua returned from three months of treatment in Saudi Arabia two weeks ago but has still not been seen in public.

Mr Jonathan is a Christian from the Niger Delta and President Yar'Adua is a Muslim northerner.

Last week their ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) said it would field a northerner as its candidate in next year's presidential election, ruling out Mr Jonathan.

Under an unwritten power-sharing agreement within the PDP, the party's candidates for the presidency alternate between north and south after every two terms in office.

Mr Yar'Adua became president in 2007, succeeding Olusegun Obasanjo, a southern Christian who served two terms.

WHAT CAUSED THIS TO HAPPEN?

Would you believe Miss World?

Hallelujah!

Officers: Pakistan arrests American-born al-Qaida


This is very good news, indeed! Be thankful Obama and Holder didn't get him.

Mar 7, 2:17 PM (ET)

By ASHRAF KHAN

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - The American-born spokesman for al-Qaida has been arrested by Pakistani intelligence officers in the southern city of Karachi, two officers and a government official said Sunday, the same day Adam Gadahn appeared in a video urging U.S. Muslims to attack their own country.

The arrest of Gadahn is a major victory in the U.S.-led battle against al-Qaida and will be taken as a sign that Pakistan is cooperating more fully with Washington. It follows the recent detentions of several Afghan Taliban commanders in Karachi.

Gadahn - who has often appeared in al-Qaida videos - was arrested in the sprawling southern metropolis in recent days, two officers who took part in the operation said. A senior government official also confirmed the arrest.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

Gadahn grew up on a goat farm in Riverside County, California, and converted to Islam at a mosque in nearby Orange County.

He moved to Pakistan in 1998, according to the FBI, and is said to have attended an al-Qaida training camp six years later, serving as a translator and consultant for the group. He has been wanted by the FBI since 2004, and there is a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

The 31-year-old is known by various aliases including Yahya Majadin Adams and Azzam al-Amriki.

He has posted videos and messages calling for the destruction of the West and for strikes against targets in the United States. The most recent was posted Sunday, praising the U.S. Army major charged with killing 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas, as a role model for other Muslims.

A U.S. court charged Gadahn with treason in 2006, making him the first American to face such a charge in more than 50 years. He could face the death penalty if convicted. He was also charged with two counts of providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Gadahn has appeared in more than half a dozen al-Qaida videos. The video released Sunday appeared to have been made after the end of the year, but it was unclear exactly when.

Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Southfield, Mich., condemned Gadahn's call for violence, calling it a "desperate" attempt by Al-Qaida's spokesman to provoke bloodshed within the U.S.

Walid, a Navy veteran, said Muslims have honorably served in the American military will be unimpressed by al-Qaida's message aimed at their ranks.

"We thoroughly repudiate and condemn his statement and what we believe are his failed attempts to incite loyal American Muslims in the miltary," he said.

Imad Hamad, the senior national adviser for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, based in Dearbon, Mich., condemned al-Qaida's message and said it would have no impact on American Muslims.

"This a worthless rhetoric that is not going to have any effect on people's and minds and hearts," he said.

Al-Qaida has used Gadahn as its chief English-speaking spokesman, and he has called for the destruction of the West and for strikes against targets in the United States. In one video, he ceremoniously tore up his American passport. In another, he admitted his grandfather was Jewish, ridiculing him for his beliefs and calling for Palestinians to continue fighting Israel.

---

Associated Press Writers Patrick Quinn and Maamoun Youssef in Cairo and Rick Callahan in Indianapolis contributed to this report.

Barack's Entreprenuership Summit

Obama calls 'entrepreneurship summit' with Muslims

(AFP) – 19 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday announced a "summit on entrepreneurship" to build economic ties with the Islamic world, part of President Barack Obama's outreach to Muslims.

The White House said it has invited participants from more than 40 countries over five continents for the April 26-27 conference in Washington.

"The summit will highlight the role entrepreneurship can play in addressing common challenges while building partnerships that will lead to greater opportunity abroad and at home," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Obama first spoke of the entrepreneurship conference in his signature June 4 speech in Cairo to the Islamic world.

In the closely watched address, Obama said the United States was seeking a "new beginning" with the Islamic world to rebuild relations that had sharply deteriorated over the past decade.

Obama promised at the time that he would convene a "presidential summit on entrepreneurship" by the end of 2009.

He said that the meeting would "identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world."

ht: what is occupation?

Remember Sami al-Arian? He was an entrepreneur in Florida. He had his hands in all kinds of businesses including car dealerships and was a respected professor at the University of South Florida. A real go-getter. As it turns out, he was the number one man for Hamas in the USA and guess where that money was going.

Here's another point of view.

Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? What Would You Do with that Gal?

Obama's Prudence and Judgement Deficit

What a Disaster Looks Like
Peggy Noonan

ObamaCare will have been a colossal waste of time—if we’re lucky.

The Wall Street Journal: March 4, 2010

It is now exactly a year since President Obama unveiled his health care push and his decision to devote his inaugural year to it—his branding year, his first, vivid year.

What a disaster it has been.

At best it was a waste of history’s time, a struggle that will not in the end yield something big and helpful but will in fact make future progress more difficult. At worst it may prove to have fatally undermined a new presidency at a time when America desperately needs a successful one.

In terms of policy, his essential mistake was to choose health-care expansion over health-care reform. This at the exact moment voters were growing more anxious about the cost and reach of government. The practical mistake was that he did not include or envelop congressional Republicans from the outset, but handed the bill’s creation over to a Democratic Congress that was becoming a runaway train. This at the exact moment Americans were coming to be concerned that Washington was broken, incapable of progress, frozen in partisanship.

His political mistakes were myriad and perhaps can be reduced to this:

There are all sorts of harm a new president can do to his presidency. Right now, part of the job of a new president in a hypermediaized environment is harm avoidance. This sounds defensive, and is at odds with the wisdom that presidents in times of crisis must boldly go forth and break through. But it all depends on what you’re being bold about. Why, in 2009, create a new crisis over an important but secondary issue when we already have the Great Recession and two wars? Prudence and soundness of judgment are more greatly needed at the moment.

New presidents should never, ever, court any problem that isn’t already banging at the door. They should never summon trouble. Mr. Obama did, boldly, perhaps even madly. And this is perhaps the oddest thing about No Drama Obama: In his first year as president he created unneeded political drama, and wound up seen by many Americans not as the hero but the villain.

In Washington among sympathetic political hands (actually, most of them sound formerly sympathetic) you hear the word “intervention,” as in: “So-and-so tried an intervention with the president and it didn’t work.” So-and-so tried to tell him he’s in trouble with the public and must moderate, recalibrate, back off from health care. The end of the story is always that so-and-so got nowhere. David Gergen a few weeks ago told the Financial Times the administration puts him in mind of the old joke: “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one. But the lightbulb must want to change. I don’t think President Obama wants to make any changes.”

Sometimes when I look at the past three chief executives, I wonder if we were witnessing not three presidencies but three psychodramas played out on an intensely public stage.

What accounts for Mr. Obama’s confidence and certainty?

Well, if you were a young progressive who’d won the presidency by a comfortable margin in a center-right country, you just might think you were a genius. You might not be surprised to find yourself surrounded by a cultish admiration: “They see him as a fabled figure,” said a frequent White House visitor of some on the president’s staff.

You might think the great strength you demonstrated during the campaign—an ability to stay in the game you’re playing and not the game someone else is playing, an ability to proceed undistracted by the crises or the machinations of your opponents, but to just keep playing your slow and steady game—is a strength suitable to your presidency. If you choose to play health care, that’s the game you play, straight through, no jeers from the crowd distracting you.

If you were a young progressive who’d won the presidency against the odds, you probably wouldn’t see yourself as someone who lucked out, with the stars perfectly aligned for a liberal victory. And you might forget we are more or less and functionally a 50-50 country, and that you have to keep your finger very much on the pulse of the people if you’re to survive and prosper.

And now here are two growing problems for Mr. Obama.

The first hasn’t become apparent yet, but I suspect will be presenting itself, and soon. In order to sharpen the air of crisis he seems to think he needed to get his health-care legislation passed, in order to continue the air of crisis that might justify expanding government and sustaining its costs, and in order, always, to remind voters of George W. Bush, Mr. Obama has harped on what a horror the economy is. How great our challenges, how wicked our businessmen, how dim our future.

This is a delicate business. You can’t be all rosy glow, you have to be candid. But attitude and mood matter. America has reached the point, a year and a half into the crisis, when frankly it needs some cheerleading. It can’t always be mourning in America. We need some inspiration from the top, need someone who can speak with authority of what is working and can be made to work, of what is good and cause for pride. We are still employing 130 million people, and America is still competitive in the world, with innovative business leaders and practices.
The president can’t be a hope purveyor while he’s a doom merchant, and he appears to believe he has to be a doom merchant to justify ramming through his legislation. This particular legislation is not worth that particular price.

All this contributes to a second problem, which is a growing credibility gap. In his speech Wednesday, demanding an “up or down” vote, the president seemed convinced and committed—but nothing he said sounded true. His bill will “bring down the cost of health care for millions,” it is “fully paid for,” it will lower the long term deficit by a trillion dollars.

Does anyone believe this? Does anyone who knows the ways of government, the compulsions of Congress, and how history has played out in the past, believe this? Even a little? Rep. Bart Stupak said Thursday that he and several of his fellow Democrats won’t vote for the Senate version of the bill because it says right there on page 2,069 that the federal government would directly subsidize abortions. The bill’s proponents say this isn’t so. It would be a relief to have a president who could weigh in believably and make clear what his own bill says. But he seems to devote more words to obscuring than clarifying.

The only thing that might make his assertions sound believable now is if a group of congressional Republicans were standing next to him on the podium and putting forward a bill right along with him. Which, obviously, won’t happen, for three reasons. First, they enjoy his discomfort. Second, they believe the bill is not worth saving, that at this point no matter what it contains—and at this point most people can no longer retain in their heads what it contains—it has been fatally tainted by the past year of mistakes and inadequacies.

And the third reason is that the past decade has taught them what a disaster looks like, and they’ve lost their taste for standing next to one.

Obama Caught Lip-Syncing Speech