http://blog.cagle.com Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:40:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 en http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/20/turkey-holocaust-day-09/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/20/turkey-holocaust-day-09/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:40:53 +0000 Will Durst http://blog.cagle.com/?p=7371 http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/20/turkey-holocaust-day-09/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/20/marthas-big-adventure-whats-so-funny/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/20/marthas-big-adventure-whats-so-funny/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:31:28 +0000 Martha Randolph Carr http://blog.cagle.com/?p=7369 http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/20/marthas-big-adventure-whats-so-funny/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/stimulus-equals-deception/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/stimulus-equals-deception/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:00:18 +0000 Michael Reagan http://blog.cagle.com/?p=7367 http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/stimulus-equals-deception/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/19/gary-brookins-gone-missing/ http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/19/gary-brookins-gone-missing/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:08:18 +0000 Daryl Cagle 8.1273 http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/19/gary-brookins-gone-missing/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/do-you-buy-the-war-industrys-political-theater/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/do-you-buy-the-war-industrys-political-theater/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 Gene Lyons http://www.caglepost.com/article/9af8e8d1-bcda-406e-a82f-2444723e7752.html
No less influential a military mind than the Washington Post's David Broder declares that even a bad decision about Afghanistan would be better than a postponed decision. Conceding that "a flood of leaks" has shown that "the perfect course of action does not exist," Broder nevertheless counsels haste. "[T]he urgent necessity," he writes "is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right."

Read that again. Better to do something stupid, the man says, than for President Obama to ask too many tough questions.

Not even about such seemingly consequential matters, according to White House counter-leaks, as the Afghan government's epic corruption, whether or not Gen. Stanley McChrystal's counterinsurgency plan includes an exit strategy, and how the United States can sustain a troop "surge" in Afghanistan estimated to cost $1 million, per soldier, per year.

There's another sentence to read twice. One million tax dollars to support each American soldier in Afghanistan, every year. A substantial proportion, alas, spent flying coffins home to Dover AFB.

Almost every time you turn on the television, somebody's carrying on about the projected trillion-dollar cost of Democratic health-insurance reforms -- derived by multiplying the $100 billion yearly cost by 10, and often by ignoring the projected $11 billion yearly savings to the U.S. budget deficit.

Pentagon spending this year alone, however, columnist David Sirota points out, is projected at $673 billion, for a 10-year total of $6.73 trillion. That's assuming costs don't rise. (Fat chance.) Giving McChrystal the soldiers he wants, along with training and equipping an Afghan army of dubious loyalty, is projected to cost an additional $40 to $50 billion each year. Yet nobody's supposed to ask how anything that happens in that remote land could possibly justify the costs.

Time was when Republican politicians sneered at "nation-building" -- particularly in remote places like Afghanistan that aren't nations to begin with. Today, however, to think is to "dither." Virtually every pundit in Washington appears to have accepted former vice president Dick Cheney's formulation. Never mind Cheney's own eight-year record in Afghanistan: The time for action is now.

But why? Are the barbarians at the gates? Hardly. There are no battlefronts, no standing armies, and no immediate military threat to the United States. U.S. intelligence estimates that maybe 100 rag-tag Al Qaeda fighters remain scattered across the Afghan outback.

For all its brutality, the Taliban rebellion is mainly a localized, nationalist effort to expel foreigners -- one reason Gen. McChrystal hopes to be able to pacify them, as his mentor Gen. David Petraeus bought off Iraqi insurgents. With winter approaching, Taliban fighters will soon be forced into semi-hibernation. Any U.S. buildup will take at least a year to complete.

The big rush, in other words, has less to do with military necessity than Washington political theatre: specifically the war lobby's ability to force President Obama's hand. Actually, "war industry" might be more apt. It's both more concise than the "military-industrial complex" President Eisenhower warned against and takes into account the "privatization" of military jobs once done by soldiers -- such as driving supply convoys (Halliburton), guarding embassies and other U.S. facilities (Blackwater) and training Afghan soldiers (DynCorp International).

One needn't accept World War I-era radical Randolph Bourne's formulation that "war is the health of the state," to worry about the connection between corporate warfare and corporate welfare: corporations that donate to political campaigns, hire ex-politicians (such as Cheney) and generals (too many to count) as executives and board members, not to mention as lobbyists, publicists, etc. Sometimes over the table and sometimes under.

Only last week, we learned that yet another big Washington hawk had a secret piece of the action. According to The New York Times, following on research by Norwegian journalists, Peter Galbraith, the Clinton administration's ambassador to Croatia and a leading Democratic voice urging the U.S. invasion of Iraq, stands to gain "perhaps a hundred million or more dollars" from a previously undisclosed stake in Iraq's oil industry. The son of the late economist J.K. Galbraith, in March 2009 he was made the U.N.'s second-in-command in Afghanistan at the insistence of the Obama White House.

Remember when only leftist crackpots and Arab conspiracy theorists said invading Iraq was more about oil than democracy?

Following upon David Barstow's 2008 Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times expose about blatant conflicts of interest among Pentagon-coached retired generals posing as disinterested "military analysts" on every TV news network you can think of, Americans can no longer afford to be blase about the war industry.

They're selling us endless war the way they sell cell phones and Viagra.

The question is: How much is President Obama buying?

]]> http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/do-you-buy-the-war-industrys-political-theater/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/weekly-review-4/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/weekly-review-4/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 Harpers Magazine http://www.caglepost.com/article/7d1275b4-fbe4-4652-ae28-168b6adec9b2.html
President Barack Obama traveled to Shanghai, China, where he addressed a town-hall meeting attended by members of the Chinese Communist Party Youth League, whose questions were pre-screened. The president described himself as "a big supporter of non-censorship." The meeting, which the White House called the "marquee event" of Obama's trip to China, was not mentioned in official Chinese government news broadcasts. References to Obama's remarks on Chinese Web sites were removed within hours. Officers from Beijing's Industry and Commerce Administration stopped the sale of "ObaMao" merchandise showing Obama dressed as Mao Zedong.

The Republican National Committee said that its health-insurance plan would no longer pay for abortions. The Cheesecake Factory agreed to pay $345,000 to six male employees who were sexually harassed by other male employees, the number of Americans lacking dependable access to food reached its highest levels on record, and a New York woman who cut off her father's penis and burned it on the stove began taking cooking classes in jail.

Sarah Palin published a memoir, "Going Rogue," in which she offered her views on evolution ("I didn't believe in the theory that human beings -- thinking, loving beings -- originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea"), the war on terror ("I knew the history of the conflict, to the extent that most Americans did") and political experience ("There's no better training ground for politics than motherhood").

Scientists found water on the moon. Lou Dobbs left CNN, and families in Mexico were sending "reverse remittances" to support unemployed relatives in the United States. A bomb-sniffing dog that went missing in action in Afghanistan more than a year ago after its handler was wounded in a gunfight was found by U.S. soldiers and returned to its Australian unit; Sabi, a black Lab, is eligible for both the War Dog Operational Medal and the Canine Service Medal. A Greek Orthodox priest in Tampa Bay was beaten with a tire iron by a Marine reservist whom he approached for directions. The reservist, Jasen Bruce, insisted that Father Alexios Marakis had made sexual advances and yelled "Allahu Akbar." "That's what they tell you right before they blow you up," explained Bruce.

General Motors announced quarterly losses of more than $1 billion. "We've been encouraged by the results we've seen," said CEO Fritz Henderson.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a national apology for the country's role in the forced migration throughout the Commonwealth from the 1930s to the 1970s of 150,000 poor British children, whose relocation was intended to relieve social-service costs in Britain and improve the "good white stock" of the Empire.

German art collector Udo Fritz-Hermann Brandhorst granted his mistress custody of their daughter in exchange for the rights to two works by Damien Hirst, including a 20-foot-long pill cabinet entitled "In this terrible moment we are victims clinging helplessly to an environment that refuses to acknowledge the soul."

Window Media, the nation's largest publisher of gay and lesbian newspapers, folded.

World leaders agreed not to agree to a comprehensive climate-change deal at next month's Copenhagen conference, and Jeffrey "Matches" Boyle, who served two years of a six-year arson sentence for starting at least 20 fires, was granted a $50,000 annual pension by the Chicago Fire Department, from which he retired before beginning his prison term.

A goat born with six legs, four testicles and three penises was granted a reprieve from sacrifice in the Indian city of Varanasi. "I have seen goats with the name of Allah or the holy number 786 on their bodies," said one resident, "but a goat with six legs is definitely unique and special."

]]> http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/weekly-review-4/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/the-deadly-triumph-of-statistics/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/the-deadly-triumph-of-statistics/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 Steve and Cokie Roberts http://www.caglepost.com/article/8c4e2539-a7cb-49e9-b888-cc993a5238fc.html
"They acknowledge more women between 40 and 49 will die," sputters Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has introduced legislation aimed at making women in the under-50 group more aware of their breast-cancer risks. As someone diagnosed at 41, the congresswoman knows how important it is for women in that age range to understand that the tumors they develop are likely to be more aggressive and diagnosed at a later stage than those of older women. That's why breast cancer is the No. 1 cancer killer of women between the ages of 40 and 49.

Given that, why would a prestigious government panel make this ridiculous recommendation? Statistics. (As in, "There are lies, damn lies and statistics.") Even though, as the group admitted, 40-year-olds who are screened are 15 percent less likely to die of breast cancer than women who don't have mammograms, the members apparently found other numbers more compelling: 1,904 women in their 40s have to be screened to prevent one breast-cancer death. Tell that to the kids of the 45-year-old whose life was saved by mammography. Ask them what they think of those statistics!

In what can only be described as insulting conclusions, the panel judged that the number of false positives -- people whose screenings turn up something that a biopsy shows is not cancer -- and the number of slow-growing, nonlethal cancers unnecessarily treated cause a high level of anxiety among women. Please. Are women such delicate flowers that they can't handle a few days of worry versus the possibility of death? These are people, after all, who raise teenage sons. "It's patronizing to assume that women are going to get hysterical over information," insists Wasserman Schultz. "They are basically saying we know more women will die, but saving 1,900 from angst is more important."

Though some doctors say they will ignore the new guidelines, the real danger here is that insurance companies will use these recommendations as an excuse to stop paying for mammograms, after years of militancy to make mammography coverage a legal requirement in most states. Advocates thought the fight had finally been won in 2003 when the American Cancer Society endorsed regular mammograms starting at age 40. That group's chief medical officer, Dr. Otis W. Brawley, issued a statement vowing to stick with that decision: "As someone who has long been a critic of those overstating the benefits of screening, I use these words advisedly: This is one screening test I recommend unequivocally, and would recommend to any woman 40 and over."

Already there's evidence that these wrongheaded recommendations mean fewer women are showing up for their potentially lifesaving screening. There's nothing fun about a mammogram. But after years of drumming in the message that early detection saves lives, close to two-thirds of women in their 40s and more than 70 percent of women over 50 say they have had the test in the past two years. Funny thing -- that increase in screening coincides with the decrease in mortality from breast cancer, by about 2 percent a year since 1990. How could it make sense to stop those strides in their tracks?

Women are now confused about what they should do -- even high-risk women the panel says should continue regular screenings. Wasserman Schultz points to her own example -- she, an educated woman who had worked on breast-cancer bills as a state legislator, had no idea that she was at an increased risk for breast cancer because she is an Ashkenazi Jew. Once she learned she had breast cancer, she also learned that she carried the gene predisposing her to the disease.

The congresswoman is now battling to make sure that insurance companies and the Department of Health and Human Services don't adopt these recommendations, which could be toxic not only for women but for health-care reform. The panel has provided excellent talking points for radio-talk-show hosts screaming that the legislation will result in rationing. These statistically minded scientists were at best naive, at worst unethical.

What were they thinking?]]> http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/the-deadly-triumph-of-statistics/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/palin-came-off-lookingpretty-good/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/palin-came-off-lookingpretty-good/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 The New Republic http://www.caglepost.com/article/45233e45-4af3-4eb1-9d05-2852f0d693df.html
Overall, I thought the in-studio bits weren't particularly compelling. Palin seemed way too amped up, almost manic in her perkiness, and not terribly at ease, especially when compared to the low-key, soothing tones of Earth Mother Oprah.

For those who don't obsessively follow politics (presumably the bulk of Oprah's audience), Palin offered up a few new tidbits about her disappointment with the McCain campaign and her ongoing tabloid-rific spat with her grandbaby's daddy, Levi (and his "aspiring porn," as she calls his recent Playgirl shoot). She also voiced her annoyance over the double standards to which both she and her family were subjected during the election (that mean old Katie Couric wasn't nearly so tough on Joe Biden), though none of that will be new to anyone who's heard Palin open her mouth in the past year. She handled some questions better than others, and at no time did I feel we were seeing beneath the surface of Sarah Palin, Conservative Icon and Self-Styled Rogue. But it was a straightforward, safe, perfectly respectable interview.

Far better were the photos and taped bits with Sarah and the Palin clan at home in Wasilla celebrating Halloween. We saw Sarah snuggling with baby Trig, then handing him off to the ever-supportive Todd so she and Piper could dash out into the cold to go work out. ("Sweat is my sanity!" she told Oprah.) We saw Trig wobbling around the house in his chicken costume -- an image so heart-warming it made the audience go "awwwww." We saw Sarah and Piper making caramel apples and, later, trick-or-treating. In perhaps her most winning bit, Palin talked about how she had promised Piper this year that she would stay in the car so she wouldn't cramp her daughter's style -- a complaint with which parents are all too familiar. The photo of Trig asleep on Sarah's chest as she checked her Blackberry with one hand seemed a little odd and could cut either way: overworked, relatable, multi-tasking mom or distracted, career-obsessed negligent parent. But, in general, if Palin made up any real ground with women voters, it was likely in this portion of the show.

All things considered, the sit-down should prove a plus for Palin. That said, it did raise a few questions about the long-term prospects for her reinvention tour. This is clearly a woman who has neither forgotten nor forgiven the many injuries she feels were unfairly visited on her last year by the media, the Democrats, the McCain campaign, and other "haters." It's possible she realizes that she made some significant mistakes, but that realization is clearly buried under a massive glacier of resentment and irritation at others. Asked point blank by Oprah if, when she got the call from the McCain campaign, she had even a moment of wondering whether she was ready for the job of vice president, Palin stuck with the "I didn't blink" assertion and reminded us of all her executive experience. The only failure or naivety Palin remains willing to acknowledge is that she didn't realize the perfidy or self-interestedness of those around her. Palin is charming and charismatic enough that this wasn't a big problem for the length of an unexceptional Oprah interview. But it promises to make any future political runs verrrrry interesting.

]]> http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/palin-came-off-lookingpretty-good/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/pharmas-win-your-loss/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/pharmas-win-your-loss/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 The New Republic http://www.caglepost.com/article/6919dfe4-f1fb-47b7-983e-5dbb53779c9d.html
Over the weekend, in a terrific piece of reporting, Robert Pear of the New York Times got a hold of an e-mail that went out from a lobbyist representing the biotech giant Genentech to members of Congress. The e-mail urged that members read statements into the record, hyping the importance of biotech to the nation's economy. Forty-two House members, split almost equally between the parties, did just that, sometimes lifting the words precisely.

The words didn't actually affect the outcome of legislation. But they are emblematic of the type of power that the drug industry -- and, more generally, various stakeholders in the health care business -- wield. And that power comes at the expense of the public interest.

If we want to spend less money on medical care, that will, by definition, mean putting less money into the pockets of the people and companies that provide or produce it. Either we have to buy less care, pay less for the care that we buy, or some combination of the two -- which is, more or less, what health care reform seeks to do.

For reasons that are as understandable as they are predictable, the people and companies that provide medical care don't find this idea particularly appealing. They fight these efforts and, all too frequently, they win. The drug industry struck a deal in which it supposedly agreed to give up $80 billion in revenue -- a pittance, by any measure, considering that most experts would argue they're not giving up anything. Lobbyists for other groups in the health care business -- hospitals, doctors, device makers -- have won concessions of their own. There's overwhelming evidence that all of these groups could relinquish more money without harming patients; indeed, many cost-cutting efforts would actually yield to better medical care. But the lobbyists are powerful. Every dollar they save for their clients is another dollar in health care spending not saved.

To be sure, reformers have won some fights. It seems likely, for example, that insurance companies will have to give up some or all of the government subsidies that go into the Medicare Advantage program -- subsidies that non-partisan government agencies have repeatedly found unjustified. Other sectors -- including the hospitals and, yes, the drug industry -- are being told to expect changes that will force them to focus more on cost-effective care. (My article in the new print edition, available soon online, explains why.)

Still, there's more that can and should be done. As legislation moves through the Senate and then, hopefully, to conference committee, there will be opportunities to push the health care industry even farther. The House bill, for example, seeks to save more money on drug purchases than the Senate bill likely will. Ideally, the House version will prevail.

And if it doesn't, there will be opportunities to revisit legislation after it passes. It happened that way with Medicare. Years after the program's creation, lawmakers, concerned over its costs, introduced a pair of sweeping changes to the way it pays hospitals and then doctors. Although lobbyists representing both groups had long resisted such changes, eventually the political pressure for cost control became too great. The lobbyists usually win. But not always.

]]> http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/19/pharmas-win-your-loss/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/jones/2009/11/18/sarah-palin-up-up-and-away/ http://blog.cagle.com/jones/2009/11/18/sarah-palin-up-up-and-away/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:36:09 +0000 Taylor Jones 10.727 http://blog.cagle.com/jones/2009/11/18/sarah-palin-up-up-and-away/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/greenberg/2009/11/18/the-old-college-spirit/ http://blog.cagle.com/greenberg/2009/11/18/the-old-college-spirit/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:44:58 +0000 Steve Greenberg 5.441 http://blog.cagle.com/greenberg/2009/11/18/the-old-college-spirit/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/18/old-small-obama/ http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/18/old-small-obama/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:22:46 +0000 Daryl Cagle 8.1265 http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/18/old-small-obama/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/18/a-little-deja-vu/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/18/a-little-deja-vu/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:59:46 +0000 Phil Brennan http://blog.cagle.com/?p=7294 http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/18/a-little-deja-vu/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/17/more-daryl-and-susie-in-israel-comics/ http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/17/more-daryl-and-susie-in-israel-comics/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:57:38 +0000 Daryl Cagle 8.1260 http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/17/more-daryl-and-susie-in-israel-comics/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/17/kid-activist-vs-the-beltway-octopus/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/17/kid-activist-vs-the-beltway-octopus/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:22:08 +0000 Will Durst http://blog.cagle.com/?p=7283 http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/17/kid-activist-vs-the-beltway-octopus/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/17/stupak-pitts-shoves-women-to-back-of-bus/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/17/stupak-pitts-shoves-women-to-back-of-bus/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 Bonnie Erbe http://www.caglepost.com/article/d774aadb-b21b-421f-b8b1-7032edeb02d4.html
How did we end up here? We were pushed back six decades in time courtesy of an amendment to the House version of health care reform, approved this past weekend, called the Stupak-Pitts amendment.

One account describes the amendment thusly: "The Stupak amendment forces insurance companies that currently provide abortion coverage to choose between continuing that coverage, or dropping it for all women if they want to participate in health insurance exchanges, and sell their product to government-subsidized consumers." http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/opinion/feature/2009/11/09/Stupak

The reaction from Democratic female members of Congress was vehement and immediate. I received an e-mail from Congressional Women's Caucus co-chair Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D, Il.) saying she and many other prominent female House members would vote to kill health care reform if Pitts-Stupak is included. By late Monday, Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado had collected more than 40 signatures from fellow members who vowed they would not vote for a combined House-Senate health care bill if it contains language "that restricts women's right to choose any further than current law." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120254656

On the Senate side, New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand was a bit more guarded. But she, too, said: "This is government invading the personal lives of many Americans, establishing for the first time restrictions on individuals who pay for their own private health insurance."

"Proposing that women ... purchase a separate abortion rider is not only discriminatory, but ridiculous," she said, noting that in five states that do require such riders, it's nearly impossible to find coverage for abortions. "This anti-choice measure poses greater restriction on low-income women, denying low-income women reproductive coverage in this way is discriminatory and dangerous."

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2009/11/stupak-amendment-invading-priv.html#ixzz0WUF7QCHK

Dangerous, yes, and in addition to that, Pitts-Stupak represents the greatest Congressional invasion of privacy rights in decades. Since 1976, the infamous Hyde Amendment has barred the use of federal funds for abortion. One could argue the Hyde Amendment's rationale is that as taxes are paid by people who are pro- and anti-choice, people who are anti-choice (and there's no way to separate their money from anyone else's) don't want their tax dollars going to fund abortions. I don't agree with that rationale, but I understand it.

What is less comprehensible (and one would think, entirely unconstitutional) is for Congress to use government's sway in the private insurance market to put out of business insurance companies offering plans that pay for a perfectly legal medical procedure.

Writer Jeff Shalet raises an even bigger question posed by Pitts-Stupak. That is, how far will Democrats go to try to lure pro-life evangelicals and Catholics into the fold: a constituency that rarely votes Democratic in any event? "Last time the Democrats possessed this much power in Washington, the Dixiecrats tried to hold the party hostage. Now, it's the faith-based Democrats. Dixiecrats were racists, plain and simple; the faith-based Democrats are a more complicated bunch, a mix of genuinely moral conservatives, many of them to the left on economic issues, political cowards, and default Blue Dogs. They're anti-choice and anti-gay but, by God, they're about love, not hate, a gentler fundamentalism, a faith based in the conflation of Christianity and the Constitution, not the substitution of one for the other."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/11/10/stupak_pittso the Democrats really need

In the long run, this is a crowd that looks backward, not forward. They cling to a 1950s vision of American society, and women's place in it, that no longer exists. I'm not a fan of health care reform in its current configuration. And I sure do not believe that pursuit of health care reform merits tossing women's rights over the side as so much detritus. We all understand that politics is the art of compromise. But compromise in pursuit of a crowd Democrats will never please seems risible at best and irresponsible at worst.]]> http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/17/stupak-pitts-shoves-women-to-back-of-bus/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/17/scozzafava-no-gop-moderate/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/17/scozzafava-no-gop-moderate/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 Deroy Murdock http://www.caglepost.com/article/5d7eb97f-192a-4df5-a620-77de020fc051.html
However this develops, one big myth on this front demands correction, before it hardens into "fact." Dede Scozzafava is no moderate Republican. The GOP state assemblywoman who abandoned this special election boasts a record far Left of the GOP's center, or even its wobbly port flank -- home of Maine senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.

Nonetheless, the GOP's detractors are showcasing Scozzafava as "proof" that reasonable centrists are unwelcome in today's intolerant, extreme, far-Right Republican Party.

The Washington Post's Jason Horowitz called the six-term legislator "a little-known state assemblywoman with moderate Republican views and a mouthful of a surname." As CBS News' Steve Chaggaris remarked: "Conservative Republicans will undoubtedly claim victory in sidelining the moderate GOPer, Scozzafava."

Scozzafava is no upstate version of Long Island's Peter King (2008 American Conservative Union rating: 50) nor Florida's Lincoln Diaz-Balart (52), truly centrist congressional Republicans who somehow go astray without offending the Party's beliefs nor enflaming its base. Conversely, Scozzafava's career lowlights reveal a donkey in an elephant costume:

-- Scozzafava earned just 15 out of 100 on the New York Conservative Party's latest legislative report card. Sheldon Silver, an ultraliberal Manhattan trial lawyer and State Assembly Democratic leader, earned a 10. Conservative Party chairman Mike Long observed that among state legislators, "46 Democrats have voting records more conservative than the Republican pick for Congress!"

-- Scozzafava voted 190 times to raise or extend taxes. There is nothing moderate about so badly abusing the GOP's core, tax-limitation plank.

-- Scozzafava favors "card check" legislation that would kill secret ballots in union-organizing elections. She also accepted campaign cash from the Longshoreman's, Electrical Workers', and Service Employees' unions, and the National Education Association, the notorious teacher's union that just screams "No!" to nearly every school-choice initiative.

-- "...I was first on the Planned Parenthood board when I returned to the North Country," Scozzafava said as she accepted the Family Planning Advocates' 2008 Margaret Sanger Award for pro-abortion activism.

-- Scozzafava was endorsed by the Leftist, ACORN-associated Working Families Party and ran on its ballot line with 2008's Obama-Biden ticket and 2004's Kerry-Edwards team.

-- Citing polling numbers that plunged after the district's mainly GOP voters recoiled at her record, Scozzafava suddenly fled the race on Halloween, just three days before the election. Most nominal Republicans would have mirrored the Republican National Committee and endorsed Conservative Hoffman, or at least stayed neutral. Instead, Scozzafava did something truly un-Republican: She embraced Democrat Bill Owens. With Scozzafava's backing, Owens edged Hoffman 49 percent to 45 on November 3, with Scozzafava scoring 5 percent.

If elected, Hoffman would have rebuffed Nancy Pelosi's ObamaCare bill on November 7. That might have persuaded Rep. Ahn Cao, R, Louisiana, to reverse his lone GOP "yes" vote and join his conference in unanimously rejecting Pelosi's 1,990-page behemoth. Seeing 100 percent Republican opposition might have inspired another Democrat to spurn this legislation. ObamaCare then would have failed by exactly one vote, and this entire sick mess would have flat lined. Thus, Dede Scozzafava is as plausibly responsible as anyone for keeping ObamaCare alive.

GOP voters and activists at least grudgingly can accept moderate Republicans who sometimes violate Reaganite principles, especially in states like New York that are not quite Texas or Utah. But henceforth, GOP leaders must understand that picking Scozzafavian candidates is a recipe for revulsion among party stalwarts. If GOP elders prefer to see teardrops rather than confetti falling on election night, they should nominate more Democrats in drag, like Dede Scozzafava.]]> http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/17/scozzafava-no-gop-moderate/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/17/democrats-eat-their-own-over-health-care/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/17/democrats-eat-their-own-over-health-care/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 Donald Lambro http://www.caglepost.com/article/9925645d-b725-41a1-805f-655ac34caaf8.html
In the age of Obama and McCain-Feingold campaign limits, voters are still free to support or reject whom they wish -- especially those who all too often pose as members of one party but vote with the other.

But these same Democratic officials, who had lectured Republicans on party etiquette, were as quiet as a tomb when their rank and file attacked 39 House Democrats who dared to vote against Nancy Pelosi's $1.2 trillion healthcare bill. These Democrats who voted their conscience were called turncoats, traitors and worse.

In a tribe that does not tolerate any dissent from the party line, the gang of 39 had committed an unpardonable and unforgivable sin: They voted no on the centerpiece of President Obama's domestic agenda. When they returned home to gauge their district's reaction, they were greeted with a vendetta of e-mails, phone calls and crowds of protesters.

Heading the protest pack was the leader of the party's leftist Netroots army, fiery blogger Markos Moulitsas, whose Daily Kos Web site is widely read by millions of devoted foot soldiers. Kos does not treat ideological deviants with forbearance. Indeed, he's urging his followers to boycott any and all contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which contributes heavily to its House incumbents.

The DCCC is interested in only one thing, Kos said, "incumbent retention, and they're (necessarily) issue agnostic. They'll be dumping millions into defending these seats. Instead, give to those elected officials who best reflect your values."

The DCCC isn't about to pull back its support for Democrats who voted no on the healthcare bill because most of these lawmakers come from more conservative-leaning districts that are among their party's most vulnerable seats in 2010.

But mounting attacks on these Democrats from their party's left send a threatening signal that they could lose much of their base in next year's elections, improving the GOP's chances of picking up a number of seats that they lost in recent elections.

In many districts, the attacks have been fierce. In central Florida, first-term Rep. Suzanne M. Kosmas, whose re-election is rated a "tossup" at best, was called "a traitor." In North Carolina, freshman Rep. Larry Kissell's vote enraged liberal bloggers who had supported him. One of them, Chris Bowers, a blogger on OpenLeft.com, said Kissell's campaign donors should demand their money back.

In Utah, liberal Democratic state Sen. Scott McCoy said he was thinking about challenging five-term Rep. Jim Matheson in next year's party primary, then apparently backed away from his threat.

Matheson, who has a reputation for voting with Republicans, said he opposed the bill on moral and fiscal grounds. A "one-size-fits-all nationally run plan that doesn't acknowledge the different health demographics in the states isn't the answer," he said the day before he voted against the bill.

Even veteran Democrats were not immune from attacks. The day after the House vote that narrowly sent the bill to the Senate by a five-vote margin, a crowd of protesters gathered outside the Jefferson City district office of 17-term Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. The demonstration, mounted by Grass Roots Organizing, a liberal advocacy group, had some protesters arrive in a rented Cadillac filled with uninsured Missourians to remind voters of the gold-plated congressional health-insurance plan that lawmakers such as Skelton enjoy.

"We were trying to make the point that we are providing them with some great public healthcare choices. How can they then say that we can't have what they've got?" protest organizer Robin Acree told me. "I find that appalling."

In New Mexico, Rep. Harry Teague, whose shaky re-election prospects are also threatened, came under attack from local labor unions, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). In a statement before he cast his no vote, Teague said he wanted to support a bill that guaranteed access to affordable health insurance and reduced healthcare costs to shrink the budget deficit. "Unfortunately, the current bill before Congress falls short of that, and I am left with no choice but to vote against it," he said.

These and other House Democrats, who could not stomach their party's costly healthcare bill, had to deal with the same untenable situation that wavering Senate Democrats now face. Several recent polls show the country is split right down the middle on the Democrats' spending plans in Congress, and Democratic senators such as Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and perhaps a half-dozen others from conservative states are weighing the political consequences of their vote.

The irony is that a no vote will only enrage their party's liberal base, dividing their party even more than it already is in the healthcare battle that has handed the GOP its strongest weapon in the midterm sweepstakes to come.

]]> http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/17/democrats-eat-their-own-over-health-care/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/16/going-hungry-in-america/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/16/going-hungry-in-america/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:49:47 +0000 Martha Randolph Carr http://blog.cagle.com/?p=7275 http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/16/going-hungry-in-america/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/16/broelman-bbc-and-palin/ http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/16/broelman-bbc-and-palin/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:40:46 +0000 Daryl Cagle 8.1254 http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/16/broelman-bbc-and-palin/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/15/to-thine-own-self-be-true/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/15/to-thine-own-self-be-true/#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 Kathryn Lopez http://www.caglepost.com/article/793574e1-c68c-43ec-9784-6821a4da7d7f.html
Carrie Prejean has a new book out, telling her story. The title, "Still Standing: The Untold Story of My Fight Against Gossip, Hate, and Political Attacks," about says it all. The winner of the Miss California beauty pageant, who was runner-up at the Miss USA contest this year, was asked a question by an Internet gossip columnist. She answered it honestly, according to her principles. And for that, every mistake in her life has been fodder for tabloids, every decision she makes has become subject to public scrutiny.

Prejean was asked, "Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit? Why or why not?"

It's becoming increasingly clear that there really was only one right answer to the question. And that's not the one she gave. So much for tolerance.

In retrospect, Prejean says she knew what she was getting into. "I was being dared -- in front of the entire world -- to give a candid answer to a serious question. I knew if I told the truth, I would lose all that I was competing for: the crown, the luxury apartment in New York City, the large salary -- everything that went with the Miss USA title. I also knew, or suspected, that I was the front-runner, and if I gritted my teeth and gave the politically correct answer, I could be Miss USA."

But she went ahead and gave the "wrong" answer. She said: "I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman." She continued "No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."

And since then, we've heard a lot more about Carrie Prejean, things we've no real business knowing, thanks to the politically correct and the scandal-thirsty, who saw in this young woman a potential martyr and a sexy story.

Some may argue that Prejean made the decision to become a public figure, and is thus subject to the slings and arrows of outraged liberal commentators. She's written a book. She's been a spokeswoman. She's taken positions. She's appeared on Sean Hannity's TV show!

But all Prejean ever really decided to do was answer a question honestly. That should not have to be a brave decision. But it was. And she should be applauded and defended for doing so. Why aren't groups like the National Organization for Women using this opportunity to show that they actually care about women, and not ideology? The moment Prejean started being attacked for a salacious video she sent a boyfriend in years past -- an incident she's called "the biggest mistake" of her life -- they should have come to her defense in outrage. Enough!

Alas.

But Prejean is "Still Standing." I don't know what the future holds for her. There are clearly people gunning for her. I wish her the best. She's clearly a smart gal who has some sense of what's good, and wants to contribute to it. I hope she continues to do so.

But the backlash at her truth-telling goes way beyond the issue of marriage. It has to do with our collective honesty. Look at, for instance, the coverage of the massacre at Fort Hood. Reporters and others have fallen over themselves trying to avoid identifying the murder suspect as a Muslim. It took a U.K. newspaper, the Telegraph, to report that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan "once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats." This happened at Walter Reed Medical Center, years before he would find himself at Fort Hood.

The Prejean story and the Hasan story are related inasmuch as ideology and political correctness direct how these news items are reported and how the people involved are treated. This ultimately leads to how we view ourselves as a society. Are we a people who protect the innocent? Or are we a people who line up on the side of the loudest, the most intimidating, regardless of what is factual, regardless of what is justice, regardless of what is just? There's a definite pattern in the answers we're collectively giving to those questions.

]]> http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/15/to-thine-own-self-be-true/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/14/apple-approves-bobble-rep/ http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/14/apple-approves-bobble-rep/#comments Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:36:39 +0000 Daryl Cagle 8.1245 http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/14/apple-approves-bobble-rep/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/13/white-house-disconnect-ignores-economic-reality/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/13/white-house-disconnect-ignores-economic-reality/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 Donald Lambro http://www.caglepost.com/article/133c89b9-bfb7-4e33-8465-88e5cd8b6b30.html
There seems to be a huge disconnect between what the president has been focusing his attention on and what almost all Americans believe is the most important issue of our time. Unemployment is at 10.2 percent, or 17 percent if you count those who have given up looking for work. One out of 10 workers is out of a job. Seven million jobs have been lost just since Obama signed his dubious government stimulus plan.

Two weeks ago, the Democrats lost two major governorships, in large part because of the economy and mounting joblessness, and growing fear that Obama's fiscal policies are plunging the country into trillions of dollars of debt, endangering the country's global credit, devaluing the dollar and undermining the hope of future prosperity.

The post-off-year election talking points coming out of the White House said the election had nothing to do with the administration or its agenda, Obama remains popular, the economy is coming back, and the stimulus is working according to plan.

But that's not what Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg and Clinton strategist James Carville discovered in their new Democracy Corps poll, which found that more Americans are losing confidence in how Obama and the Democrats are handling the economy and now think the GOP's message makes more sense.

"Republican messages on the economy were slightly stronger overall (than Democrats), generated more intensity, and were significantly more potent with independent voters," they said.

"The strongest Republican message centered on a straight spending argument, claiming that Democrats had approved $5 trillion in new spending, added to the deficit, and left a 'mountain of debt' for our grandchildren to pay back. This message was convincing to 58 percent of voters (very convincing to 32 percent)," the two Democratic strategists said.

Their findings of deepening pessimism about the economy -- confirmed by other recent polls -- showed that "the country is not ready to listen to a narrative about how Democrats have brought the economy 'back from the brink' and averted an even worse disaster, as articulated by the president in his joint-session address to Congress earlier this year."

Their advice to the White House is to show how the stimulus plan has worked to create jobs and improved the economy. But the early evidence suggests the stimulus has been a flop, creating relatively few full-time jobs.

The Associated Press reported last week that preliminary job-creation numbers put out by the administration were exaggerated at best or bogus at worst. For example, a Florida child-daycare center that said its stimulus funds saved 129 jobs had used the money to give raises to its employees.

The Gallup Poll's Economic Confidence Index last week "fell to a 15-week low, the job situation didn't improve, and consumer spending remains down 34 percent from the same week a year ago. A 26-year high in the unemployment rate and a new 2009 high in gas prices seem to have more than offset any potential economic confidence associated with the gains in the Dow," Gallup reported.

All of this has contributed to increasing support for the Republicans in the midterm-election cycle, far sooner than anyone expected it to happen.

For the first time this year, Gallup said last week, the "Republicans have moved ahead of Democrats by 48 percent to 44 percent among registered voters in the latest update on Gallup's generic congressional ballot for the 2010 House elections -- after trailing by six points in July and two points last month."

Perhaps the most stunning manifestation of the GOP's advance in the polls is the gain among independents. In Gallup's latest poll, "independent registered voters favor the Republican candidate by 52 percent to 30 percent. Over the course of the year, independents' preference for the Republican candidate in their districts has grown, from a one-point advantage in July to the current 22-point gap."

Ohio may be the clearest example of how the Democrats' collapse in the polls is changing the national political landscape faster than many of the political reporters here are willing to acknowledge.

A mere seven weeks ago, Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland led former Congressman John Kasich by 10 points, 46 percent to 36 percent, in a Quinnipiac poll of the governorship race. Last week, Quinnipiac said the race was in a dead heat, 40 percent to 40 percent.

What's driving the GOP's ascendancy in this Democratic-trending state? Ohio voters tell pollsters the Republican challenger would do a better job of handling the state's battered economy and out-of-control budget.

In the meantime, Obama is traveling abroad -- again -- to promote his popular global image, while Gallup says his daily average job-approval score has dropped to 50 percent, 19 points below his 52-week high. And more and more economists say they fear we are headed toward a long and dismal jobless recovery.

]]> http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/13/white-house-disconnect-ignores-economic-reality/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/13/us-military-ignored-glaring-islamic-threats/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/13/us-military-ignored-glaring-islamic-threats/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 Diana West http://www.caglepost.com/article/50632309-31bc-46aa-84dc-3d8c49685acf.html
Hesham Islam, an Islamic aide to then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, rejected what Coughlin's brief said about Islamic jihad, even though the brief, which I've had the opportunity to attend, relies solely on authoritative Islamic sources. Under Islam's tutelage, England and the rest of the Pentagon brass preferred outreach -- you know, Muslim outreach -- even to unindicted Muslim co-conspirators in government terrorism cases. Long story short: Muslim outreach was "in," and Coughlin and his famous brief on jihad doctrine (later transformed into a masters thesis published by National Defense Intelligence University as "To Our Great Detriment: Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad") were "out."

That was January 2008. Fast forward to November 2009.

The Washington Post this week published a story about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan headlined: "Fort Hood suspect warned of threat within the ranks." The story opens by explaining that Hasan, using a PowerPoint presentation, "warned a roomful of senior Army physicians a year and a half ago that to avoid 'adverse events'" -- meaning such events as the 2003 jihad attack on Army personnel in Kuwait by Sgt. Hasan Akbar, killing two and wounding 14 -- "the military should allow Muslim soldiers to be released as conscientious objectors instead of fighting in wars against other Muslims."

Good idea. More sensational was the fact that the senior Army psychiatrists who witnessed the 50-slide PowerPoint presentation, based not on medical research as scheduled, but rather on classical jihad doctrine from the Koran and Hadiths, did nothing that rid the armed forces of this jihad threat in uniform. Hasan's presentation, called "The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military" and viewable online at the Washington Post, describes, in Hasan's words, "what the Koran inculcates in the minds of Muslims and the potential implications this may have for the U.S. military." This series of Islamic lessons culminates in the message: "Fighting to establish an Islamic State to please Allah, even by force, is condoned by Islam."

And what did the Army's senior shrinks do about this? As NPR reports, they essentially went into denial, discussing, but not addressing, the threat they believed Hasan posed to others, including the U.S. military, as recently as last spring.

This dereliction of every kind of duty is staggering, and I wish I could convene a court martial myself. But here's the thing. Using standard, non-"extremist" Islamic texts, Hasan warned of the Muslim threat to the U.S. military from within. Using standard, non-"extremist" Islamic texts, Coughlin warned of the Muslim threat to the U.S. military from without. The Koranic intersection of these warnings is significant. So is the fact that both were shut down for similarly PC reasons: the institutional aversion to facing facts about Islam and jihad, either as they pertain to what the military knows as the "enemy threat doctrine," or, in Hasan's case, as they pertain to the enemy threat within -- Hasan himself, for instance.

Now that Hasan has fulfilled his own jihad prophesy, is anyone taking Islam and jihad more seriously? Not so long as our PC senior military leadership remains in place to fret, as Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey frets, about the fate of "diversity" post-Fort Hood. "Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength," Casey told NBC's "Meet the Press." "And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse."

Only a zealot could say such a thing, a zealot whose duty is to prioritize "diversity" over the lives of his troops. And only a "diversity"-zealot could be blinded to the Fort Hood-underscored fact that the teachings of Islam are irreconcilable with the goals of the U.S. military, and that anyone who takes those teachings seriously shouldn't be serving in the U.S. military.

The zealotry lives on, even as Fort Hood buries its dead.

]]> http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/13/us-military-ignored-glaring-islamic-threats/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/13/a-message-to-sarah-palin/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/13/a-message-to-sarah-palin/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 Donna Brazile http://www.caglepost.com/article/d8851d0a-f408-4ab7-b768-4cab4132d102.html
Congratulations on the release of your autobiography, "Going Rogue: An American Life," which has already achieved best-seller status even before it hits the bookstores on, coincidentally or not, the same week your former fellow Republican governors gather in Austin to discuss among themselves who should best lead the GOP to victory in 2012.

As a fellow author, I know this is an exciting time for you and your family. How very interesting, not to mention clever of you, to embark on a campaign-style bus tour of small- and medium-sized towns in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania -- to name just a few of the key electoral states that fill your book tour's itinerary.

>From everything I have read about your book, it tells us about your experiences as Sen. John McCain's running mate, your views ...

...snip...

>... Twitter that you two discussed everything: your marriage and family, the campaign trail and whether you wanted your own talk show.

Governor, despite our many political differences, I would like to encourage you to use your book tour not just to sell books but to also motivate women to run for office and help set a new tone in American politics. You can make a difference.

Although women are the majority of voters, we continue to lag behind and are underrepresented in American politics. In fact, American women rank an embarrassing 71st in the world when it comes to holding elected positions. It's time we hurry history to encourage more women to enter politics.

My point, governor, is that this is not just your moment to be heard and to set the record straight, this is our moment as women to inspire and be inspired to step up and get involved in governing our diverse country.

Since the 2008 presidential campaign, you have been living in "Sarah Palin's America." While most Americans are clamoring for both major political parties to come together to solve some of the toughest problems of our time, the tone of your public comments and Facebook messages have played to a narrow crowd and not helped change the all-too-often divisive tenor of our national political debate.

And there have been repercussions. Republican Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, the woman you helped defeat in the 23rd N.Y. congressional race this month, warned against them when she recently observed, "I don't think it's good for the health of our party -- any party -- that just tries to purge members that might have any sort of independent thinking. ... I think any sort of party has to be willing to solve the problems. And in order to solve problems, you have to look at things sometimes differently. And you do have to drive towards some sort of consensus building. Otherwise, you have ideology that's really not based on any sort of substance that can move an agenda forward, that can really help people in this country."

So, governor, will you help build, not purge, the GOP?

There are people who believe that your vision for America is too limited and polarizing to help the GOP stage a comeback. Others, including the moderates who still remain in your party, are worried that if you cannot take command of the GOP, then you will, ahem, go rogue and secede from the party with your own faction in pursuit of a narrow agenda that focuses solely on guns, gay marriage and immigration.

Still others are betting that if you implode during your campaign tour -- excuse me, governor -- your book tour, there will be lasting impact on the GOP, one that will make it tough to unify the party in time for the important midterm congressional elections. They wonder, "What happens when the rogue can't control her fellow rogues?"

All of which takes me back to my earlier message to you. Use this moment, governor, to help change the tenor of American politics and to encourage young women and girls to pursue careers in public service. Talk about the lessons you learned on the national stage and how women can confront a media bias that all too often stereotypes women candidates as not being ready for prime time by focusing on what they wear and not on where they stand on important issues.

Governor, this is a moment to demonstrate once and for all that Sen. McCain did more than take a risky gamble in putting you on the ticket. Rather, he made a bold calculation: Women candidates are ready for prime time.

Prove him right. Prove your detractors wrong. And for the sake of our great country, go rogue against those who doubt you by inspiring us to come together as a people.

Governor, can I hear a "You betcha!"?

]]> http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/13/a-message-to-sarah-palin/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/13/obama-must-face-reality-to-protect-america/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/13/obama-must-face-reality-to-protect-america/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:16:40 +0000 Floyd and Mary Beth Brown http://blog.cagle.com/?p=7258 http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/13/obama-must-face-reality-to-protect-america/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/12/marthas-big-adventure-the-observer/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/12/marthas-big-adventure-the-observer/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:55:31 +0000 Martha Randolph Carr http://blog.cagle.com/?p=7255 http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/12/marthas-big-adventure-the-observer/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/12/daryl-and-susie-in-israel-comics/ http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/12/daryl-and-susie-in-israel-comics/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:31:35 +0000 Daryl Cagle 8.1237 http://thisiswhatconcernsme.com and she's posting a new day of the trip every day now as she paints them in.]]> http://blog.cagle.com/daryl/2009/11/12/daryl-and-susie-in-israel-comics/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/news/2009/11/12/chain-letters-claim-of-australian-conservative-cartoons-false/ http://blog.cagle.com/news/2009/11/12/chain-letters-claim-of-australian-conservative-cartoons-false/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:12:51 +0000 Rob Tornoe 2.1172 http://blog.cagle.com/news/2009/11/12/chain-letters-claim-of-australian-conservative-cartoons-false/feed/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/12/will-reid-decide-on-reconciliation-to-get-health-care-bill/ http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/12/will-reid-decide-on-reconciliation-to-get-health-care-bill/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000 Morton Kondracke http://www.caglepost.com/article/2338aaf2-e482-4974-9998-586339a7f447.html
Even though polls and the Nov. 3 election returns indicate increasing disapproval of Democratic management, House leaders plowed ahead with government-heavy health care reform, barely passing it.

The Democrats' logic, as stated by pollster Mark Mellman at a recent breakfast with reporters is, "We gotta get things done if we want to win in 2010."

That argument was reinforced by former President Bill Clinton in a meeting with Senate Democrats on Tuesday, where he attributed Democrats' loss of their congressional majority in 1994 to failure to pass his health care reform measure.

In the Senate, Reid says he's determined to pass a health care bill by the Christmas recess.

Details of the of bill that he's drafting are still secret, but he's announced it will include a government-run public-insurance option -- a swerve to the left from the measure approved by the Senate Finance Committee, which contains a nonprofit cooperatives plan.

Reid's spokesman, Jim Manley, says his boss "is working tirelessly" to collect 60 votes for his health care reform bill in order to pass it under "regular order," but increasingly that looks next to impossible.

As a result, there's increasing speculation, notably among health lobbyists, that Reid will opt to bulldoze reform through under budget reconciliation rules -- requiring only 51 votes -- and risk all-out rebellion from Republicans.

Manley says reconciliation "is always an option, but it's not what we're looking at now."

And there are lots of reasons why Reid doesn't want to go that route apart from the fact that Republicans likely would shut down all other Senate business in protest.

For one thing, as former Senate Republican staffer Bill Hoagland told me in an interview, Reid's bill would have to be subjected to a "Byrd bath" to identify purely policy provisions that do not meet budget reconciliation standards.

Under the rule named for former Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), Hoagland said, any line item in the bill that has no budget effects is subject to being stricken -- such as authorization of prevention and wellness measures.

Hoagland said he's not certain whether insurance reforms such as guaranteed issue and elimination of annual caps on coverage -- considered a vital part of health care reform -- would pass Byrd muster.

A public insurance plan probably could be scored as saving money and would pass muster.

So, besides incurring GOP wrath, Reid's bill would risk being significantly narrowed if he tried to push it through on reconciliation.

Moreover, trying to pass a measure affecting every citizen and one-sixth of the U.S. economy on the basis of a bare majority would be attacked -- and not just by Republicans -- as blatant disregard for popular opinion.

Polls increasingly indicate that more voters oppose "Obamacare" than support it -- by 10 points according to a Nov. 1 Ipsos/McClatchy poll and 8 points in a Nov. 3 CNN poll.

On the other hand, it's looking increasingly impossible for Reid to round up 60 votes to pass health care reform -- especially by the end of the year. Resorting to reconciliation may be his only option.

To get 60 votes, Reid needs all 58 Democrats and both of the Senate's Independents to vote with him. He'd like one or two Republicans, too.

But a government-run health care plan -- especially a "robust" one like that approved by the House and by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee -- surely will be opposed by all Republicans, plus Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) and up to five Democrats.

Lieberman said he will filibuster any public option, and he's likely to be joined by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.).

In addition, Reid has problems over abortion language -- with Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) likely to insist on restrictive language supported by the Roman Catholic Church, while several female senators adamantly oppose it.

And Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) reportedly is balking because the bill may reduce Medicare reimbursement rates for California hospitals.

On top of all that, if Reid goes the "regular option" route, Republicans are promising "weeks and weeks" of debate on "hundreds" of amendments -- practically guaranteeing that health care can't be passed this year.

If President Barack Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Reid and other Senate leaders were looking at the Nov. 3 election results and most every poll, they'd pull back, limit the scope and cost of health care reform and abandon the public option.

They might even incorporate some Republican ideas to make their measure bipartisan.

Local conditions surely dominated in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, but Republicans won largely because independent voters who supported Obama in 2008 supported the GOP in 2009.

And almost every poll indicates that Obama's approval ratings are plummeting -- as is approval for most of his policies.

On Nov. 3, Gallup reported that Obama's overall approval rating had dropped from 67 percent in February to 51 percent recently and that his drop in the period from June to September "was the highest such drop in Gallup's history of tracking first-term presidents."

On Nov. 4, Gallup reported that, by 54 percent to 34 percent, voters view Obama's policies as "mostly liberal" rather than "mostly moderate," whereas more Americans now regard themselves as conservative (40 percent) than moderate (36 percent) or liberal (20 percent.)

In 2008, Obama won by carrying 52 percent of the independent vote. According to a Fox News poll, his support among independents in January was 64 percent. As of mid-October, it was 42 percent.

For sure, the public has no great regard for the Republican Party, especially congressional Republicans.

A late-October Wall Street Journal poll showed approval for the GOP at 25 percent, and a Washington Post/ABC poll showed confidence in congressional Republicans at 19 percent.

Yet, on Wednesday, Gallup reported that the GOP had a 4-point lead in the 2010 generic ballot -- and that, by 22 points, independents said they would vote for GOP candidates for Congress rather than Democrats.

All this is surely a warning to Democrats to pull back and rethink. But to Democrats, it seems to mean charge left. If Reid is hearing that message, he may push the Senate over a cliff.

]]> http://blog.cagle.com/2009/11/12/will-reid-decide-on-reconciliation-to-get-health-care-bill/feed/