Quote: President Abraham Lincoln
December 20th, 2009
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves,” President Abraham Lincoln
McCain Blows Off Palin Hat Hype
December 20th, 2009
This is not the Hat mentioned in article
Sen. John McCain brushed off the semi-controversy over his former running mate’s visor Sunday, attributing the blog and talk show chatter about Sarah Palin’s vacation attire to “hysterical attacks” from the left.
The former Alaska governor was photographed wearing a “McCain-Palin” visor with McCain’s name crossed out while she was on vacation in Hawaii. She claimed she was just trying to go “incognito,” but reportedly cut her vacation short.
McCain told “Fox News Sunday” he understands Palin’s explanation, and said he has a “wonderful relationship” with her family.
“Can’t you take her at her word?” he said. “She’s going to be a force in the Republican Party for a long time and the hysterical attacks on her from the left continue to validate that.”
White House backs healthcare deal, sees victory
December 20th, 2009
The White House on Sunday sought to preserve the fragile alliance of Democratic liberals and moderates backing broad healthcare reform legislation, with tough decisions looming on abortion and a new government-run insurance program.
Republicans vowed to continue to fight the measure, but admitted they probably were helpless to stop it in the Senate.
Senate Democrats planned a series of crucial procedural votes scheduled to begin at 1 a.m. on Monday, with debate possibly concluding with final Senate passage on Christmas Eve on Thursday.
Asked if Republican senators could do anything to stop the Senate from passing it by Christmas Eve, Republican Senator John McCain told “Fox News Sunday,” “Probably not. But what we can do is continue winning the battle of American public opinion.”
The White House predicted that the bill, President Barack Obama’s top legislative priority, will win final congressional passage, and called it a major achievement even if it does not give Obama and his fellow Democrats everything they want.
“While it is not perfect, the bill pending in the Senate today is not just good enough — it is very good,” Vice President Joe Biden wrote in a New York Times opinion piece.
Democratic holdout Ben Nelson announced his support for the Senate legislation on Saturday after securing language aimed at ensuring federal funds are not used to pay for abortions and winning extra healthcare funds for his home state of Nebraska.
Nelson’s support gave Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid the 60 votes he needs in the 100-seat Senate to pass Obama’s top domestic priority by Christmas.
But Democrats still have a lot of hard work ahead as they look toward ironing out differences between the healthcare bill already passed by the House of Representatives last month and the version Senate Democrats hope to pass this week.
The Senate bill would extend coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans, expand the Medicaid government health insurance program for the poor, provide subsidies to help some people pay for coverage and halt industry practices like refusing insurance to people with pre-existing medical conditions.
House and Senate negotiators will have to work out abortion language that satisfies abortion opponents like Nelson and Representative Bart Stupak without chasing off liberal abortion rights supporters. Stupak, who pushed more restrictive language on abortion in the House bill, said the compromise Senate language crafted by Nelson was “not acceptable.”
PUBLIC OPTION
Democrats must decide on including a government insurance program to compete with private insurers. Liberals want the “public option,” which is in the House bill, but not the Senate one. And they will have agree on how to fund the reform, with the House and Senate versions taking two different approaches.
Nelson told CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday that if the final bill that emerges from the House-Senate negotiations includes a public option, he could not vote for it. He also indicated that if the legislation is paid for the way the House measure proposes, “That would break it.”
Democratic Senator Kent Conrad, a fiscal hawk and chairman of the Budget Committee, said the final bill will have to hew closely to the Senate’s version in order win final passage.
“Anybody who’s watched this process can see how challenging it has been to get 60 votes,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Congress has been tied up for months in acrimonious debate over healthcare reform legislation, with Republicans saying the Democratic measure is too costly and too intrusive into the healthcare sector.
Healthcare costs devour 16 percent of the U.S. economy — burdening states and the federal government while also hurting the competitiveness of U.S. businesses — even as tens of millions remain with no public or private health insurance.
White House senior advisor David Axelrod predicted congressional passage but declined to say when he thought the two chambers would iron out their significant differences, or which version he preferred.
“I think it will pass the Congress,” Axelrod said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I think we’re going to get it done.”
Republicans said they would continue to erect procedural roadblocks even with Senate passage likely.
More improvements are possible after the bill becomes law, Axelrod said. The Obama administration will seek to allow Americans to buy prescription drugs that have been imported from other countries such as Canada, where medicines often cost less, he said. The Senate turned back efforts to include drug re-importation in the healthcare bill.
(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria, editing by Vicki Allen and Will Dunham)
Quote: President Roosevelt
December 12th, 2009
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort,” President T. Roosevelt.
Senators Lieberman and Palpatine: Side By Side
December 12th, 2009
Someone beat me to this. When posting a previous article, I noticed there was a string similarity between the two.
Spending Bill Moving Forward
December 12th, 2009
The Senate voted Saturday to limit debate on a $446.8 billion spending measure that finances much of the federal government, clearing the way for final approval Sunday as Congress struggles to wrap up its year-end business while contending with a health care overhaul.
With the Senate meeting for the second weekend in a row, Democrats assembled the minimum 60 votes needed to force a final vote on the omnibus spending bill, which pays for transportation, justice, foreign, labor, health, education and veterans programs.
The roll-call vote extended for more than an hour as supporters of the measure were rounded up and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, an observant Jew, walked more than three miles from his synagogue to the Capitol. “Shabbat shalom,” Mr. Lieberman said in the traditional Sabbath greeting as he entered the Senate chamber still wearing his jacket and scarf.
Three Democrats and 31 Republicans sought to block the final vote, pointing to increases in many agency budgets and the 5,000 home-state projects, typically called earmarks, included in the bill by lawmakers of both parties. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and a critic of earmarks, took the floor to list many of the projects, which he said totaled nearly $4 billion.
“You are spending money like a drunken sailor, and the bar is still open,” Mr. McCain told his colleagues.
Republicans also criticized the fact that six different measures were rolled into one.
“We don’t have this money,” said Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate. “We are borrowing it.”
Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat and a member of the Appropriations Committee, pointed out that the individual measures had all been approved by the committee with bipartisan support.
“To come before us today and argue that the majority is cramming these votes and bills down the throats of members without giving them opportunity is to ignore what came before,” he said.
The six bills represent a spending increase of about 10 percent over last year and include a 2 percent pay raise for federal workers. When required spending for Social Security, Medicare and other programs is added in, the measure tops $1 trillion.
The bills were due Oct. 1, but, as has been the pattern in recent years, Congress failed to complete them on time. The government is currently operating under a stop-gap spending law that expires on Friday.
With the omnibus measure headed for passage, the lone spending bill still to be approved is a $600 billion measure that pays for Pentagon operations. Since that is always a must-pass measure, Congressional Democrats are planning to use it to carry along a hodgepodge of final bills for the year.
In addition, Democrats plan to attach a provision that would raise the federal debt limit by $1.8 trillion — a move that has taken on new political significance given the increasing political fight over federal spending.
American Detained in Cuba
December 12th, 2009
An American contractor working for a Maryland-based economic development organization called Development Alternatives, Inc has been detained by Cuban Authorities.
Jim Boomgard, DAI’s president and chief executive, said the person arrested is part of a new USAID program intended to “strengthen civil society in support of just and democratic governance in Cuba.”
“Our prime concern is for the safety, well-being, and quick return to the United States of the detained individual,” Boomgard said in a statement. Boomgard said the company is working with the State Department to ensure this is a top priority.
It is not yet known why the contractor was detained. The name of the employee has not been released due to privacy laws.
Copenhagen climate change rally leads to arrests
December 12th, 2009
Thousands of protesters marched through Copenhagen to demand action on global warming from delegates at the UN climate change summit.
Quote: Theodore Roosevelt
December 6th, 2009
“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.” – On Criticizing the Presidency
“Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star”, 149 May 7, 1918
More and More Americans Think We Should Mind Our Own Business
December 6th, 2009
As President Barack Obama is looking to thrust the United States ever more into global affairs, from Afghanistan to climate change, the American public is turning more isolationist and unilateralist than it has at any time in decades.
A survey by the Pew Research Center released last week found 49% of Americans think that the United States should “mind its own business internationally” and leave it to other countries to fend for themselves.
It was the first time in more than 40 years of polling that the ranks of Americans with isolationist sentiment outnumbered those with a more international outlook, Pew said.
The United States also is growing more unilateralist, with 44% saying that the country “should go our own way in international matters, not worrying about whether other countries agree with us or not.”
That was the highest percentage since the question was first asked in 1964.
The survey of 2,000 U.S. adults was taken from Oct. 28-Nov. 8 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Oh, yes — China: A plurality of Americans, 44%, now say that China is the world’s top economic power, while just 27% say it’s the United States. That’s a sharp reversal from nearly two years ago, when 41% thought America was the No. 1 economic power, and 30% thought it was China.
