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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (77436)	2/10/2010 12:26:08 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

*** Ya Right! Obeyme's halfway will be no different than debating facts with a LWE - halfway will be 95 % of Pelosi's version for Health Care or Obeyme will claim we were completely unwilling to negotiate. *** Obama Says He'll Meet GOP 'Halfway' on Health AP WASHINGTON -- Signaling he'd meet critics part way on health care, President Barack Obama said Tuesday he's willing to sign a bill even if it doesn't deliver everything he pursued through a year of grinding effort at risk of going down as a dismal failure. The Democrats' massive health overhaul legislation is stalled in Congress by disagreements within the party and the loss last month of their 60th Senate vote, and with it, control of the agenda. Republicans suspect that Obama's invitation to a televised health care summit Feb. 25 is a thinly disguised political trap. On Tuesday, the president tried to change the dour dynamic, indicating he could settle for less in order to move ahead. "Let's put the best ideas on the table," Obama told reporters after meeting with congressional leaders of both parties. "My hope is that we can find enough overlap that we can say, this is the right way to move forward, even if I don't get every single thing that I want." Obama's overarching goals are to rein in medical costs and expand coverage to millions of uninsured. Specifically, Obama said he'd be willing to work on ways to limit medical malpractice lawsuits -- one of the main ideas Republicans have for reducing costs, by addressing the problem of defensive medicine. Democrats, who count trial lawyers among their most generous contributors, especially in an election year, have blocked all previous attempts to tackle the issue. "I'm willing to move off some of the preferences of my party, in order to meet them halfway, Obama said. "But there's got to be some give from their side as well." Obama's flexibility marks a contrast with the approach former President Bill Clinton took in the 1990s when his health care overhaul got bogged down in Congress. Clinton sternly waved his veto pen at lawmakers and threatened to reject any legislation that fell short of his goal of covering all Americans. The bill died, and Democrats lost control of Congress in the 1994 midterm election. Still, Republican leaders expressed renewed skepticism about Obama's call for bipartisanship and reiterated their demand that Obama jettison the Democratic bills and start from scratch. "It's going to be very difficult to have a bipartisan conversation with regard to a 2,700-page health care bill that the Democrat majority in the House and the Democrat majority in the Senate can't pass," said House Republican Leader John Boehner. "It really is time to scrap the bill and start over." Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell echoed those sentiments, even though the White House says Obama has no plans to set the clock back to beginning. But even Obama's fellow Democrats are expressing skepticism about what the summit can accomplish. Sen. Chris Dodd, who shepherded the legislation through the Senate's health committee, said the GOP has had plenty of chances to offer input, and Republicans and Democrats know each others' positions so well that "this meeting could occur an hour from now." "We could play each others' hands, that's how much familiarity we've had with this issue," Dodd said. "This idea we all don't know what the other side wants, there isn't a person left around here" who doesn't, Dodd said. Republicans may run political risks if they just say no. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that most Americans want Congress and the president to keep working on a comprehensive health care overhaul. Two-thirds supported the goal in the survey, released Tuesday. Nearly 6 in 10 said Republicans aren't doing enough to find compromise with Obama, while more than 4 in 10 said Obama is doing too little to get GOP support. Obama said he's not interested in starting over on health care, with five congressional committees holding new rounds of hearings and bill-drafting sessions. "What I don't think makes sense -- and I don't think the American people want to see -- would be another year of partisan wrangling around these issues," he said. But he said he's open to "starting from scratch" as long as three major goals are met: reducing costs, curbing insurance company practices such as coverage denials, and expanding coverage to millions of people who buy their own policies or work for a small employer. "I will be open to any ideas that help promote these goals," Obama said. If lawmakers can't overcome partisanship and policy differences and the health care bill dies as a result, Obama said the alternative is not good. He pointed to a 39 percent premium hike just announced by California's largest for-profit seller of individual health insurance policies, Anthem Blue Cross. Insurers say part of the problem is that healthy people hit by the economic downturn are dropping coverage, raising premiums for everybody else left in the pool. "If we don't act, this is just a preview of coming attractions," Obama said. "Premiums will continue to rise for folks with insurance, millions more will lose their coverage altogether, our deficits will continue to grow larger." Although Republicans have cast Obama's approach as a big-government power grab, a report by government economic experts last week found that even without health care overhaul, government programs will soon be paying slightly more than half the nation's health care tab. The reason? Private insurance coverage is shrinking because of the economy, while Medicare and Medicaid are growing. Some Republican activists worry that the summit is designed to portray their health care proposals as thin. A shaky GOP showing could embolden congressional Democrats to make a final, aggressive push to overhaul health care, with or without any Republican votes. The House's top two Republican leaders have openly questioned Obama's sincerity and hinted they might skip the meeting. Others in the GOP sounded more positive. "It could be a serious, constructive endeavor and hopefully it will be," moderate Sen. Olympia Snowe said Tuesday. foxnews.com

To: Sully- who wrote (77436)	2/10/2010 12:43:12 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Drillgate: Secretary Salazar's Cover-Up IBD Edieorials Posted 02/08/2010 06:54 PM ET Energy: The administration asked for public comments on a plan to expand offshore drilling. When they came in 2-to-1 in favor, the Interior Department sat on the news. Time for a "Texas tea" party? When you ask for public comment on a major policy issue, at some point you should make the results public, not hide them until you can figure out a way to spin the public reaction to support a conclusion you've already drawn. On its last business day in office, the Bush administration published a proposed draft of a five-year plan to lease areas in the Atlantic and Pacific waters for oil and natural gas drilling. The plan authorized 31 energy exploration lease sales between 2010 and 2015 for tracts along the East Coast and off the coasts of Alaska and California. Hopes that America would soon develop vast untapped energy reserves were dashed when the incoming Obama administration ordered all federal agencies and departments to halt all such pending regulations until they could be reviewed by incoming staff. Incoming Interior Secretary Ken Salazar extended the public comment period by 180 days. Last April, Salazar said President Obama told him regarding the comment period "to make sure that we have an open and transparent government" and to make sure that DOI was "maximizing the opportunity for the public to give us guidance on what it is they want us to do" about expanding domestic energy exploration and development. Well, the public provided no small amount of guidance. The Interior Department announced in September it had received more than 530,000 comments. It did not say, however, how many supported or opposed expanded drilling. It's now four months after the close of this extended comment period, so where are the results? What happened to the open and transparent process? Instead, on Jan. 6 Salazar announced plans, as the energy news service Greenwire put it, that "will require more detailed environmental reviews, more public input and less use of a provision to streamline leasing." In other words, we were being promised more stalling, not more drilling. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's group, American Solutions, wanted to know and filed a Freedom of Information Act request on the comment period tabulation on Oct. 26, 2009. After weeks of delay and a second FOIA request, some 500 pages of e-mails were received from the DOI's Minerals Management Service (MMS). Gingrich's group had heard from sources that the result of the tabulation was a 2-to-1 lopsided victory for expanded drilling. An e-mail dated Oct. 27, 2009 from MMS Director Liz Birnbaum to other senior MMS and DOI officials, including Salazar's chief of staff, confirmed the result and discussed ways of hiding it from the American people. The e-mail reads, in part: "We do have a preliminary tabulation of the comments, (but) it has not yet gone to the Secretary. So the Secretary can honestly say in response to any questions that he's (sic) has not yet seen any analysis of the comments — staff is still working on it. I did, however, confirm to him the 2-1 split these guys (American Solutions) are emphasizing." A recent Congressional Research Service Report says that if all our energy resources are added up and converted to a barrels-of-oil equivalent, the U.S. has the largest energy reserves in the world. "Our overwhelming coal, natural gas and oil resources represent tens of trillions of dollars in wealth and millions of American jobs," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who, along with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, released the report last fall. The American people support increased domestic energy development by the same numbers and with the same fervor as they opposed the nationalization of health care. Certainly we need the domestic energy. Yet in both cases the administration dismisses the will of the people. In this case, it's sitting not only on vast stores of energy, but on the truth about what the people want. investors.com

To: Sully- who wrote (77436)	2/10/2010 4:02:49 PM
From: ManyMoose	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

My take in 50 words or less: Message 26310479

To: Sully- who wrote (77436)	2/11/2010 10:33:40 AM
From: Peter Dierks	2 Recommendations Respond to of 90947

Crib Notes Technology Cost Analysis February 10th, 2010 12:20 pm Most politicians use “crib notes” of some kind while giving speeches. Some bring 3×5 cards listing key points. Others refer to handwritten rough drafts. And some even read from pages on which the entire speech has been printed out. But Barack Obama and Sarah Palin each have their own unique crib notes technology. The two diagrams below analyze how much each type of technology costs per speech. pajamasmedia.com