Beck:Puerto Rican Statehood Ahead?

 Glenn Beck

I want to talk to you about the fundamental transformation of America. It could happen tomorrow.

But first, you have to understand progressives. What is it that progressives believe?

• Big government, power and control: It’s not about Democrats or Republicans, people. It’s power and control. You can’t choose for yourself. You’re too dumb, so progressives will choose and regulate everything for you

• Democratic elections: This is important to progressives. You’ll hear it “democratically elected” to refer to leaders like Hitler, Chavez and Castro — all democratically elected

• Social justice: Collective redemption through the government: Call it socialism, Marxism, whatever — it’s all about the redistribution of wealth

Now, I want to talk to you about Puerto Rico. Understand: This is not about Hispanics. It’s not about freedom. It’s about power and control.

Puerto Rico is a self-governing commonwealth, but is subject to U.S. jurisdiction and sovereignty. It’s been a U.S. territory since after the Spanish-American War of 1898. They’re not an independent country. It’s similar to Guam, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa. Some people like it, others don’t; they get to enjoy many of the benefits of America — like protection — and they don’t have to pay any taxes. That’s a pretty sweet deal.

So it’s no wonder “the people” have consistently voted against becoming America’s 51st state; three times since 1967 — the latest in 1998. It’s always been the same question: Do you want to be a state?

Now, let’s take you to Washington, where there’s important vote happening: HR 2499 — it’s called “The Puerto Rico Democracy Act.” Gosh darn it, who could be against that? The bill is a non-binding resolution, supposedly to support Puerto Rico’s “self-determination” on if they want to be a state or not.

That’s so cute. Wait, I thought they already had a right to vote? They do. So I’m left with the question: Why do they need a non-binding resolution to support their self-determination? Is there something going on that I’m not aware of that is so important that we need to take attention away from the economy or immigration?

We’ve asked some of the Republicans in Congress who are supporting this bill and here are some of the answers:

“This is a vote about freedom.”

“This vote does not grant Puerto Rico statehood, it simply gives Puerto Ricans the right to determine if statehood is something they want for themselves.”

See, I thought they already had that. Three times they voted on that. It’s almost like something else is going on. But remember, they keep telling me it’s “non-binding.”

If I just trusted progressives. With progressives, democratic elections always comes with a trick. For instance, Hitler was democratically elected. But as the chancellor, not the furor. Whether it be through parliamentary tricks or corruption, it’s important to progressives to have the appearance of “the republic.” Remember: They went through the democratic process for health care.

So what’s the trick?

HR 2499 — if it passes — would force a yes or no vote in Puerto Rico on whether Puerto Rico should maintain the “current status” of the island. Wait, that’s not a vote on statehood. That’s a vote on do you want to “maintain the status quo.”

Let me ask you this: Do you want to maintain the status quo of America? ACORN’s Bertha Lewis would agree with me and say no, I don’t want our current direction. But we would disagree on the reasons why.

See the trick?

In the past, statehood fails because some people like the status quo, some want to be a state and some want to be independent. There are too many choices, too many options. They need to unite people. Do you want to maintain the status quo unites them, not on the answer but on the question.

See, the folks that like the status quo are more likely to vote for statehood than independence.

In 1998, there were five options on the ballot: Limited self-government; free association; statehood; sovereignty and none of the above. Which one won? None of the above.

But now, the vote is going to happen in two stages. The first stage: Do you want to maintain the status quo? Then a chair is removed. The second vote leaves you with three choices: statehood; full independence or modified commonwealth.

Remember, full independence and modified commonwealth historically get less than 3 percent of the vote. So those options will be the only thing standing in the way of Puerto Rico becoming a state.

But Glenn, it’s non-binding. Big deal!

True, but here’s where if you don’t know history, you are destined to repeat it. Let me introduce something to you called the Tennessee Plan. (This is probably going to sound like a conspiracy theory, but I have one thing the conspiracy theories never have.)

OK — so the Tennessee Plan, you’ve probably never heard of it unless you are from Tennessee or Alaska. Apparently, some of those who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution haven’t heard of it either. When Tennessee first came to the Union, it had a different name; it was first called “Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio.” It was a U.S. territory, just like Puerto Rico is now.

But instead of waiting for Congress to decide if they wanted to make the territory a state, they took a different, bold route: They forced the issue themselves:

• They elected delegates for Congress

• They voted on statehood

• They drafted a state constitution

• And applied for statehood

• Then, when Congress dragged their feet, they went to the Capitol and demanded to be seated

Congress was unsure of how to proceed; this was the first territory going for statehood. They relented and Tennessee became America’s 16th state. Alaska did many of the same things.

Again, the Tennessee plan in a nutshell:

• Unsuccessfully petitioning Congress for admission

• Drafting a state constitution without prior congressional intervention

• Holding state elections for state officers, U.S. senators and representatives

• In some cases, sending the entire congressional delegation to Washington to demand statehood and claim their seats

• Finally, Congress has little choice but to admit a new state through the passage of a simple act of admission

Congressmen, voting for HR 2499 are like sheep being led to slaughter. They’ll say the people of Puerto Rico have a right to vote for themselves. They’ll vote yes. The progressives will then present a false choice to the people. Instead of saying “do you want to be a state?”it’s “Do you want the status quo?” If voters vote no, the next vote removes the status quo from the ballot, leaving statehood against two far less popular options. They’ll vote yes for statehood. Then they’ll elect their congressman and senators, they’ll demand to be seated and a 51st star will be attached to the flag.

How could this happen? Look at the immigration debate. What are Arizona and Texas being called? Racists. Anyone opposing Puerto Rico as state 51 would be called a hatemonger. Why do you hate Puerto Ricans so much? Why do you hate freedom?

This is not about Hispanics or freedom or sovereignty. It’s about power and control. If progressives convince Hispanics that everyone besides progressives are racist, you’ll have their vote for 60 years. But it’s more than that.

Why are Democrats and Republicans for this? Because it’s not about Republicans and Democrats. The progressives in our country know that this is the moment they’ve been waiting for; every Marxist daydream they’ve ever had, now is their time to get it done. They are not going to let it pass.

That’s what’s happening: The fundamental transformation of America. And this is only the beginning.

I told that this sounds like a conspiracy theory. But who is orchestrating this effort in Puerto Rico? Lo and behold, the New Progressive Party; from their own party platform:

“The New Progressive Party adopts the Tennessee Plan as an additional strategy for the decolonization and the claim for the admission of Puerto Rico as the 51st State of the United States of America.”

And: “This shall be done through legislation which will establish a process for the adoption and ratification of the Constitution of the State of Puerto Rico, and the election of two senators and six federal congresspersons to appear before Congress in Washington D.C. to claim their seats and the admission of Puerto Rico as the 51st State of the United States of America.”

They’re going to paint this as a vote for freedom, but Puerto Rico has already voted and they’ve already spoken. When they send the delegates to Washington, if you stand against this you’ll be labeled a racist.

Read the original article FOXNews

US military jury clears SEAL in Iraq abuse case

Associated Press

BAGHDAD (AP) — A U.S. military jury cleared a Navy SEAL Thursday of failing to prevent the beating of an Iraqi prisoner suspected of masterminding a 2004 attack that killed four American security contractors.

The contractors’ burned bodies were dragged through the streets and two were hanged from a bridge over the Euphrates river in the former insurgent hotbed of Fallujah, in what became a major turning point in the Iraq war.

The trial of three SEALs, the Navy’s elite special forces unit, has outraged many Americans who see it as coddling terrorists.

Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas, 28, of Blue Island, Illinois, was found not guilty by a six-man jury of charges of dereliction of duty and attempting to influence the testimony of another service member.

The jury spent two hours deliberating the verdict.

Huertas is the first of three SEALS to face a court-martial for charges related to the abuse incident. All three SEALs could have received only a disciplinary reprimand, but insisted on a military trial to clear their names and save their careers.

 The trial stems from an attack on four Blackwater security contractors who were driving through the city of Fallujah west of Baghdad in early 2004. The images of the bodies hanging from the bridge drove home to many the rising power of the insurgency and helped spark a bloody U.S. invasion of the city to root out the insurgents later that year.

 The Iraqi prisoner who was allegedly abused, Ahmed Hashim Abed, testified Wednesday on the opening day of the trial at the U.S. military’s Camp Victory on Baghdad’s western outskirts that he was beaten by U.S. troops while hooded and tied to a chair.

 Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Kevin DeMartino, who was assigned to process and transport the prisoner and is not a SEAL, testified he saw one SEAL punch the prisoner in the stomach and watched blood spurt from his mouth. Huertas and the third SEAL were in the narrow holding-room at the time of the incident, he added.

 But defense attorneys tried to cast doubt on the beating claims, showing photographs of Abed after the alleged beating in which he had a visible cut inside his lip but no obvious signs of bruising or injuries anywhere else.

 In her closing arguments, Huertas’ civilian attorney Monica Lombardi pointed to inconsistencies between DeMartino’s testimony and nearly every other Navy witness. She also reminded the jury of the terrorism charges against Abed, who is in Iraqi custody and has not yet been tried, saying he could not be trusted and may have inflicted wounds on himself as a way of recasting blame on American troops.

 But prosecutor Lt. Cmdr. Jason Grover said DeMartino said the SEALs were itching to abuse Abed as payback for the killings of the Blackwater guards — two of whom were former SEALs.

Read the original article FOXNews

Roger Ailes to Fox News’ Glenn Beck haters: Stop ‘shooting in the tent’

 Soraya Roberts

Fox News‘ founder is asking the network’s Glenn Beck haters to stop “shooting in the tent,” claiming the in-house anti-Beck vitriol is unprecedented in the company’s 14-year history.

Roger Ailes dropped by Fox’s Washington bureau Wednesday to give his staff a pep talk before the annual Radio and Television Correspondents’ dinner, mediabistro.com reports.

The topic of conversation quickly turned to conservative commentator Glenn Beck, whose hyper-opinionated commentary is a ratings boon for Fox — but also a recently revealed source of tension for the network’s other journalists. 

A column in the Washington Post on Monday revealed that some Fox staffers are concerned the celebrity pundit is “becoming the face of the network.”

Ailes pointed out that the information in The Post’s column was leaked by Fox’s Washington bureau.

“For the first time in our 14 years, we’ve had people apparently shooting in the tent, from within the tent,” he told them.

But the Fox chairman clarified that Beck’s opinions were not that of the network and were firmly within his rights as a commentator.

“We prefer people in the tent not dumping on other people in the tent,” he added.

Ailes warned that people who found it hard to stand in Beck’s shadow had another option besides denigrating their own team.

“If I couldn’t defend the family, I’d leave,” he said. “I’d go to another family.”

Read the original article NY Daily News

O’Connor: Is Obama a half-term president or a political genius?

Santa Claus isn’t coming to town. The Grinch, Scrooge, and numerous bill collectors are already here-knocking on doors — looking for you, and the Democrats.

You need help. Better advice. And a new direction.

So, in my own, “audacity of hope,” I am giving you a Christmas present. It is a big box, with several items inside. The first item, is a dose of bare-knuckle truth.

A dose of bare-knuckle truth
You are in danger of becoming a “half-term President.”

The Republicans, with a clear message of “No”, are gaining ground.

Sarah Palin is within one point of your approval rating; Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are within spitting distance of your job, and the GOP is leading in the Congressional generic ballot box question.

Let me put this in sports terms. Specifically, boxing. Several rounds into your presidency, your legs are starting to wobble.

You prefer fancy footwork, dancing around the ring, and playing to a crowd that enjoys spectacles. That worked well during the campaign, but gets you nowhere while governing.

Even when you are on the ropes (as you are now), you seem incapable of landing a punch, much less scoring a knockout.

You avoid confrontation because that locks you in the clinches, and your opponent’s rabbit punches bottle up your carefully-crafted showmanship.

Stop dancing around the ring

When the Soviet Union was disintegrating, a reporter asked President Gorbachev (who, like you, was more popular outside his country than in) the following question: “Mr. President, is it fair to say you are moving to the right?”

Gorbachev responded: “Actually, I’m going around in circles.”

So, too, are you, Mr. President.

You continue with your Chicago-style razzle dazzle, globetrotting and speechifying, while the country is engulfed in joblessness, foreclosures, escalating wars, and an economy that makes us poorer and more frightened by the day.

Bowing to the Emperor of Japan, the Princes of Saudi Arabia, and trying to charm the heads of Europe isn’t selling anymore.

Stay home

The U.S.  is adrift, in the midst of a transformational period — one that pits the new “globalism” against a new “nationalism.”

While this may constitute a less violent civil war, it is still fracturing the country.

Your attempts to pivot the country’s attention away from the near intractable core causes of economic dislocation, is unworthy of any American President.

Using a scatter gun approach may be a clever strategy to keep criticism from gaining a footing. However, it mostly just confuses and alarms people.

The equally disingenuous attempt to shame those who dissent from this whirling dervish approach, by labeling them as selfish perpetrators of racism, diminishes us all.

Turning Americans against Americans, by using age, class, religion, education, and geography as wedges is crass politics — even if, by design, only your surrogates practice it.

Stick to your promises.

Promising one thing and delivering another is not just deceitful, it is corrosive to the body politic.

So, inside your gift box, I have included a pen and some paper to”make a list and check it twice.”

Making a list and checking it twice

Write down every campaign promise you made and check it twice. Be honest.

– Winding down or ending wars? No.
– Ending lobbyists’ influence in politics? No.
– Providing money to Wall Street to save Main Street? No.
– Guaranteeing transparency? No.
– Bringing America together? No.
– Halting foreclosures? No.
– Providing widespread mortgage relief? No.
– Reigning in Wall Street? No.

Sad, isn’t it?

Next inside the gift box: A magnifying glass to focus better on your own Administration’s job performance.

Find out who’s naughty or nice

Skip trying to silence Fox News, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, or anyone on the left, or right, or middle who disagrees with you. As of now, most of America does!

According to the latest Rasmussen poll, 65 percent of the American people believe the country is on the “wrong track.” And according to the latest polls, you have recorded an all-time low job approval ratings in each of the following:

Quinnipiac — 46 percent
Marist — 46 percent
CNN/Opinion Research — 48 percent
Ipsos/McClatchy — 49 percent
CBS News/New York Times — 50 percent

Trying to spin a political reality at odds with the country’s economic one is a losing proposition.

You may have told “60 Minutes” Sunday night that you, “did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street,”  but the reality is otherwise.

“What’s really frustrating me right now is that you’ve got these same banks who benefited from taxpayer assistance, who are fighting tooth-and-nail with their lobbyists …up on Capitol Hill, fighting against financial regulatory control,” you said.

But saying it does not make it so! Clever to blame Congress and the lobbyists. The Democrats control Congress. You cut deals with the lobbyists.

Read an alternative explanation by Matt Taibbi, in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

Your guys are the bankers’ guys.

Or as Glen Greenwald writes, about your Nobel Peace Prize speech, “Like all good politicians, Obama is adept at paying homage to multiple, inconsistent views at once, enabling everyone to hear whatever they want in what he says while blissfully ignoring the rest.”

Want real change?

Say what you think. Do what you say. Forget the verbal parsing.

Fire those that gave away taxpayers’ money to the big banks — without mandating quid pro quo home loan modifications and an end to foreclosures; namely, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner.

Even the Harvard faculty voted “no confidence” in Summers when he was the university’s president. Geithner’s penchant for giving money to Wall Street when he was at the New York Fed is legendary.

They both should go. Let them, “spend more time with their families” or take positions at the bonus haven of Goldman Sachs. The American taxpayer can no longer afford their services.

Promote those still trying to salvage a middle class in America — namely, economic advisor Paul Volcker, TARP Congressional Oversight Chair Elizabeth Warren, and FDIC’s Chair Sheila Bair.

Add a sheriff to your Cabinet. President Johnson wished Kennedy had at least one local cop among all those theorists.

Harvard does not have a monopoly on intelligence. Bring in some outside help. Hire someone with “street smarts.”

You need more integrity and grit in the White House; not more “breezy arrogance,” or clever double speak.

Get rid of your non-stop public relations team still shilling “talking points” to the press, and a “new narrative” to the American people.

David Axelrod may want to “tell a story,” but most Americans want more substance and less picture book.

The photos ops are too obvious. As are the now tortured “firsts;” first dinner date, first dog, first day at Camp David, first six months, first 100 days, first Cabinet retreats, first West Point cadets for your war speech, first Christmas with Oprah, etc.

Same with the silly quips, “Grab a mop.” “Pick up a mop.” “Clean up the mess.”

Frankly, the Republicans are mopping the floor with you. (Just as the Democrats did with Bush and his once “brilliant,” now devastatingly ridiculous, “Mission Accomplished” stunt.)

The press is not your friend. Even if you did give GE (parent of NBC, MSNBC) government help, and lots of reporters jobs, and way more taxpayer money than conscionable their parent company’s subsidiaries. For which, of course, they gave you wonderful coverage.

Read the original article and more San Diego News

Glenn Beck’s Experimental Melodrama

The Fox News star terrifies America with his realistic news theater.

Greg Beato from the December 2009 issue

In late September, President Barack Obama conducted a series of five one-on-one White House interviews with reporters from CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and Univision. For some reason—perhaps he’s housing a secret civilian security force in the Roosevelt Room and doesn’t want any fair and balanced reporters snooping around—the president didn’t invite Fox to participate. For Glenn Beck, the host of the hottest show on cable news, this Oval Office slight offered an opportunity to provide some trenchant perspective. “Does the president consider Fox some sort of enemy?” he exclaimed, chortling with amiable resentment. “I mean, no, it can’t be that, because, no, he’ll sit down with our enemies. He’s even offered to sit down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And that guy, I mean, you call me nuts?”

The bit was Beck at his best: shrewdly self-marginalizing, bitingly funny, and executed with perfect timing. A radio veteran who got his first job in the business at the age of 13, Beck, it turns out, is also a TV showman on par with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. But while America’s favorite fake newsmen have clear-cut identities as comedians, the question of how to categorize Beck is more perplexing.

When Beck was 8 years old, his mother gave him a record of old radio programs that included Orson Welles’ famous performance of War of the Worlds. Apparently the fictionalized news report of an alien invasion became a foundational text for him, an archetypal example of how you could create crazy, vivid, apocalyptic drama out of mere words. To pay tribute to Welles’ work, Beck starred in a live version of War of the Worlds that aired on his syndicated radio show on Halloween night in 2002. Shortly thereafter, an heir of the radio play’s author sued Beck and his producers for copyright infringement and won an injunction that prevents Beck from ever performing the play again.

The injunction, however, doesn’t prevent Beck from spinning his own doomsday visions every day. In January he jumped from CNN Headline News to the Fox News Channel and began experimenting in earnest. Comedy Central’s The Daily Show had paved the way by showing you didn’t have to stick to the same old tried-and-true conventions when presenting the news. Anchormen could be more expressive. You could use music and graphics and video clips more creatively. And if you could do so in pursuit of comedy, why not also in pursuit of melodrama?

In February, while discussing what it’s like to be angry and enfranchised in America, legislated to the edge of Armageddon, Beck introduced a new visual technique: His image appeared simultaneously in two windows on the screen, one a typical headshot, the other a close-up of his eyes, the better to showcase his distressed but strong sincerity. On April Fool’s Day, as Beck kicked off a segment on America’s drift toward fascism, his image started shrinking until he was just a tiny torso at the bottom of the screen, looking over his shoulder at World War II footage of marching Nazis. “Enough!” Mini-Beck shouted. Then the screen went black behind him, dramatically framing his shrunken head and body as he continued his soliloquy. It was news commentary as expressionist theater.

Beck’s subjects became equally avant garde. On one show, experts tutored the host on how to survive the kind of financial meltdown in which shopping centers were ghost malls and streets were crawling with functionally illiterate meth-heads. A week later, he started investigating the rumor that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was building concentration camps around the country. When that didn’t pan out, he set about exposing the secret communist artwork adorning Rockefeller Plaza and other buildings in New York.

Whatever the subject of any given episode, a common theme always unites it with every other installment of the show: Something isn’t right with America. The country is changing somehow, subtly but surely, right under our very noses, and hardly anyone else is noticing.

In August, Beck turned his attention to the mysterious entities—alien invaders, you might say—who had infiltrated the White House with barely any scrutiny at all: Obama’s czars. Van Jones, Obama’s adviser on green business initiatives, was a former member of a communist group and a self-described revolutionary, Beck reported. Next, he aired video footage of Mark Lloyd, diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission, praising Hugo Chavez’s “incredible revolution” in Venezuela. The Van Jones episode garnered Beck’s highest rating in weeks, attracting nearly 800,000 more viewers than his previous show had. The Mark Lloyd episode, boosted by an endorsement from Sarah Palin to her Facebook followers, did even better, attracting slightly more than 3 million viewers, according to the Nielsen Company.

It was the first time Beck’s program had broken the 3 million barrier, an incredible achievement for a cable news show airing at 5 p.m. After Beck unveiled more information about Jones, including the fact that the adviser had signed a petition that suggested high-level Bush administration officials may have deliberately allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur, Jones resigned from his position at the White House. Beck followed up with revelations about a National Endowment for the Arts conference call in which artists were encouraged to create works promoting President Obama’s political agenda, and suddenly it seemed as if the crusading New Canaan populist might single-handedly save America from the attacking hordes of progressive pod people armed to the teeth with stimulus dollars.

Not everyone gives Beck’s efforts positive reviews, even on the right. New York Times columnist David Brooks accused him of “race-baiting” after Beck said Obama is “racist” toward white people. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum called one of Beck’s many vettings of a White House appointee (Cass Sunstein in this case) “beyond sloppy, beyond ignorant, proceeding straight toward the deceptive.” “How on earth did this crackpot get a national TV show?” asked Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher.

In Dreher’s question we have what is perhaps the most concise history yet of media in the Internet era. With every new technological breakthrough, it gets easier and easier to push unregulated information into the national discourse, potentially exposing millions to misinformation masquerading as news. As President Obama exclaimed in a September interview with the Toledo Blade, it sometimes seems as if we’re moving toward a future where there’s “no serious fact checking” and “no serious attempts to put stories in context.”

In theory, a charismatic paranoiac like Beck is the poster boy for this dystopian future. He’s got a very loud megaphone. His communication skills are world-class. He’s ideologically driven (even if no one can quite figure out what that ideology is). And he’s willing to entertain some pretty dubious notions. But look at his track record so far. He couldn’t sell FEMA death camps because the facts weren’t there to back the story up. His exposé of communist art at Rockefeller Plaza went nowhere because even Beck’s viewers realize an old relief of a naked farmer holding some wheat isn’t much of a threat. The Van Jones story had legs, by contrast, because most of its facts were solid. With a change in background music and a few minor edits, in fact, Beck’s first long piece on Jones could have served as an advertisement for the activist’s achievements—in part because its script closely followed a 2005 newspaper article that was written as a positive portrait of Jones.

Context, meanwhile, is Beck’s forte. He is constantly urging his viewers to connect the dots and look at the big picture, even when the picture exists only in his head. He is forever advising them to consider stories not as transient, random, isolated phenomena, as most newscasts do, but as parts of a larger, ongoing narrative that grows more and more meaningful (and menacing) the longer you study it. In a fractured, distracting mediascape, where thousands of outlets vie for our attention, it’s a smart approach that others are sure to copy. Legally barred from re-enacting Orson Welles, Beck may have to settle for being the 21st century’s answer to Edward R. Murrow.

Read the original article and listen to audio at Reason.com

House Health Care Bill Has Nowhere To Go In Senate

RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — The glow from a health care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama on Sunday as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate.

 Speaking from the Rose Garden about 14 hours after the late Saturday vote, Obama urged senators to be like runners on a relay team and “take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people.”

 The problem is that the Senate won’t run with it. The government health insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who hold the balance of power in the Senate

If a government plan is part of the deal, “as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent whose vote Democrats need to overcome GOP filibusters.

 ”The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said dismissively.

 Democrats did not line up to challenge him. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has yet to schedule floor debate and hinted last week that senators may not be able to finish health care this year.

 Nonetheless, the House vote provided an important lesson in how to succeed with less-than-perfect party unity, and one that Senate Democrats may be able to adapt. House Democrats overcame their own divisions and broke an impasse that threatened the bill after liberals grudgingly accepted tougher restrictions on abortion funding, as abortion opponents demanded.

 In Senate, the stumbling block is the idea of the government competing with private insurers. Liberals may have to swallow hard and accept a deal without a public plan in order to keep the legislation alive. As in the House, the compromise appears to be to the right of the political spectrum.

 Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who voted for a version of the Senate bill in committee, has given the Democrats a possible way out. She’s proposing to allow a government plan as a last resort, if after a few years premiums keep escalating and local health insurance markets remain in the grip of a few big companies. This is the “trigger” option.

 That approach appeals to moderates such as Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. “If the private market fails to reform, there would be a fallback position,” Landrieu said last week. “It should be triggered by choice and affordability, not by political whim.”

 Lieberman said he opposes the public plan because it could become a huge and costly entitlement program. “I believe the debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today,” he said.

 For now, Reid is trying to find the votes for a different approach: a government plan that states could opt out of.

 The Senate is not likely to jump ahead this week on health care. Reid will keep meeting with senators to see if he can work out a political formula that will give him not only the 60 votes needed to begin debate, but the 60 needed to shut off discussion and bring the bill to a final vote.

 Toward the end of the week, the Congressional Budget Office may report back with a costs and coverage estimate on Reid’s bill, which he assembled from legislation passed by the Finance Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The Finance Committee version does not include a government plan.

 Reid has pledged to Obama that he will get the bill done by the end of the year and remains committed to doing that, according to a Senate leadership aide.

 Both the House and Senate bills gradually would extend coverage to nearly all Americans by providing government subsidies to help pay premiums. The measures would bar insurers’ practices such as charging more to those in poor health or denying them coverage altogether.

 All Americans would be required to carry health insurance, either through an employer, a government plan or by purchasing it on their own.

 To keep down costs, the government subsidies and consumer protections don’t take effect until 2013. During the three-year transition, both bills would provide $5 billion in federal dollars to help get coverage for people with medical problems who are turned down by private insurers.

 Both House and Senate would expand significantly the federal-state Medicaid health program for low-income people.

 The majority of people with employer-provided health insurance would not see changes. The main beneficiaries would be some 30 million people who have no coverage at work or have to buy it on their own. The legislation would create a federally regulated marketplace where they could shop for coverage.

 The are several major differences between the bills.

 –The House would require employers to provide coverage; the Senate does not.

 –The House would pay for the coverage expansion by raising taxes on upper-income earners; the Senate uses a variety of taxes and fees, including a levy on high-cost insurance plans.

 –The House plan costs about $1.2 trillion over 10 years; the Senate version is under $900 billion.

 By defusing the abortion issue — at least for now — the House may have helped the long-term prospects for the bill. Catholic bishops also eager to expand society’s safety net may yet endorse the final legislation.

 Lieberman appeared on “Fox News Sunday,” while Graham was CBS’ “Face the Nation”

Read the original article on The Indy Channel

Analysis: President pushes back, Chicago style

WASHINGTON–It is the political equivalent of Chicago gangland warfare, one that pits an American president with more fight in him than many anticipated against his worst ideological enemies, the makers of Fox News.

And while many Democratic supporters are cheering a White House campaign to squeeze the ultra-conservative Fox outlet to the margins, others are cringing that the strategy does such a disservice to democracy that it ultimately will backfire.

Chicago-style political warfare keeps coming up in descriptions of Team Obama’s no-holds-barred assault on Fox – a decision that came to a head on Thursday when the White House made good on a promise to blacklist the network by offering interviews with a senior policy official to every other news outlet except Fox.

The strong-arm tactic failed when the Washington bureau chiefs of CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS, in a rare moment of journalistic solidarity, rallied to Fox’s defence, forcing the White House to relent.

But the confrontation, which capped a week in which the White House mobilized officials for a full-frontal bid to characterize Fox as “not a real news organization,” has galvanized opinion in Washington, raising much concern over the wisdom of the tactic.

“I am delighted to see President Obama fighting back. These are people who are trying not simply to undercut everything he does, they are trying to destroy him,” veteran Democratic speech writer Eric Schnure told the Toronto Star.

“It does feel like Chicago. And to paraphrase that great line from The Untouchables, `President Obama isn’t gonna bring a knife to a gunfight.’ And it appears to be working.”

Schnure, a veteran of the Clinton White House, said “history teaches us that a Democratic strategy of ignoring conservative critics is a formula for losing everything.” (more…)

H1N1 Deaths Reach Over 1,000 in U.S.

 ATLANTA —  More Americans have been vaccinated against seasonal flu this fall than ever before by this time of year, federal health officials said Friday.

Sixty million people have gotten the winter flu vaccine — probably because they’re paying more attention to flu warnings in general, thanks to swine flu. It’s an unprecedented number of seasonal flu shots for October; most usually aren’t given until later in the fall.

Part of it is due to supply: There are already 85 million doses of seasonal flu vaccine available, a much larger amount than usual for this early in the fall. Most years, roughly 100 million doses are used during the season.

But a big factor probably is that swine flu — also known as the 2009 H1N1 virus — is drawing attention to public health warnings that seasonal flu is also a deadly illness that can be prevented through vaccinations, said Joe Quimby, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There’s been a heightened awareness in the American public due to H1N1 this year,” said Quimby.

Meanwhile, swine flu is more widespread now than it’s ever been, and has resulted in more than 1,000 U.S. deaths so far. Flu illnesses are as widespread now as they are at the winter peak of normal flu seasons, said CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden.

INTERACTIVE: Track H1N1 Vaccine State to State

“Many millions” of Americans have had swine flu so far, according to an estimate he gave at a Friday press conference. The government doesn’t test everyone to confirm swine flu so it doesn’t have an exact count.

Frieden updated some other estimates, too, saying there have been more than 20,000 hospitalizations.

Nearly 100 swine flu deaths in children have been reported, CDC officials also said.

Forty-six states now have widespread flu activity. The only states without widespread flu are Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey and South Carolina. There are at least two different types of flu causing illnesses; tests from about 5,000 patients suggest that nearly all the flu cases are swine flu.

This year’s seasonal flu vaccine won’t protect against swine flu; a separate swine flu vaccine is needed. Vaccine production takes several months, and the work on seasonal vaccine was already well under way when swine flu was first identified in April. It was too late for the swine flu virus to be included in the seasonal doses.

Because of swine flu production delays, the government has backed off initial, optimistic estimates that as many as 120 million vaccine doses would be available by mid-October. As of Wednesday, only 11 million doses had been shipped to health departments, doctor’s offices and other providers across the country, CDC officials said.

“It’s frustrating to all of us. We wish there were more vaccine available,” Frieden said.

The flu virus has to be grown in chicken eggs, and the yield hasn’t been as high as was initially hoped, CDC officials explained. “Even if you yell at them, they don’t grow faster,” Frieden said.

He added that 5 million new doses became available in the past week, and vaccine should be more plentiful soon.

Read more articles at FoxNew.com

Losing: Helen Thomas, NYT, and The Nation Object to White House Fight With Fox News

Well, it’s not the first time the Grande Liberal Dame of the press corps has had words for the Obama White House, but today Helen Thomas is voicing more unlikely sentiments by telling the White House attack dogs to heel in the Fox News fight.

 

In an interview with MSNBC, the columnist — who is promoting her new book on presidents and their campaigns — also stressed the White House ought to “stay out of these fights.”

“They can only take you down. You can’t kill the messenger,” said Thomas, who has covered every president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama.

The New York Times also joined the chorus of folks telling the White House to chill this weekend. The Grey Lady may be in danger of being labeled a “wing of the Republican Party,” for using such uncharacteristically sharp language in criticizing the president, but I’m sure they’ll scrub the offending parts when the White House rings. In the meantime, enjoy:

 

Even though almost all the critiques contained a kernel of truth, in each instance the folks who had the barrels of ink, and now pixels, seemed to come out ahead. So far, the only winner in this latest dispute seems to be Fox News. Ratings are up 20 percent this year, and the network basked for a week in the antagonism of a sitting president. …

It could all be written off as a sideshow, but it may present a genuine problem for Mr. Obama, who took great pains during the campaign to depict himself as being above the fray of over-heated partisan squabbling. In his victory speech he promised, “I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.”

Or not. …

Tactics aside, something more fundamental is at risk. Even the president’s most avid critics admit he exudes a certain cool confidence. The public impression of him is that if anyone were to, say, talk trash on the basketball court with Mr. Obama, he would not find much space for rent in Mr. Obama’s head. …

People who work in political communications have pointed out that it is a principle of power dynamics to “punch up “ — that is, to take on bigger foes, not smaller ones. A blog on the White House Web site that uses a “truth-o-meter” against a particular cable news network would not seem to qualify. As it is, Reality Check sounds a bit like the blog of some unemployed guy living in his parents’ basement, not an official communiqué from Pennsylvania Avenue.

The American presidency was conceived as a corrective to the royals, but trading punches with cable shouters seems a bit too common. Perhaps it’s time to restore a little imperiousness to the relationship.

When you’ve got the Helen Thomas, the NYT, and The Nation lining up against you, it’s time to admit defeat, boys. But alas, Axelrod and Emanuel can’t help themselves.

Posted by Mary Katharine Ham

Read more articles at weeklystandard.com

Senate Leaders Begin Difficult Task of Merging Health Care Reform Bills

All eyes are on Senate Majority Leader Reid, who has said he wants to complete the wedding quickly and get historic health care overhaul legislation onto the floor the week after next.

WASHINGTON — Health care talks slip back behind closed doors Wednesday as Senate leaders start trying to merge two very different bills into a new version that can get the 60 votes needed to guarantee its passage.

All eyes are on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who has said he wants to complete the wedding quickly and get historic health care overhaul legislation onto the floor the week after next.

Both bills were written by Democrats, but that’s not going to make it easier for Reid. They share a common goal, which is to provide all Americans with access to affordable health insurance, but they differ on how to accomplish it.

The Finance Committee bill that was approved Tuesday has no government-sponsored insurance plan and no requirement on employers that they must offer coverage. It relies instead on a requirement that all Americans obtain insurance.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill, passed earlier by a panel in which liberals predominate, calls for both a government plan to compete with private insurers and a mandate that employers help cover their workers. Those are only two of dozens of differences.

President Barack Obama acknowledges it’s not going to be easy. Speaking Tuesday in the Rose Garden, Obama called the 14-9 Finance Committee vote “a critical milestone” toward getting a health care overhaul this year. The legislation won its first Republican support when Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine broke ranks with her party, saying she was answering the call of history.

Obama wasn’t ready to bask in the bipartisan glow.

“Now is not the time to pat ourselves on the back,” he said. “Now is the time to dig in and work even harder.”

There was no victory lap either for Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana. “The bottom line here is we need a final bill, a merged bill, that gets 60 votes,” he said. “Our goal is to pass health care reform, not just talk about it.”

Read the rest @ FoxNews.com