Obama's irresponsible and dangerous decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 conspirators in U.S. court in New York City

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (R) and co-defendants Walid Bin Attash (C) and Ramzi Bin al Shibh at a Gitmo hearing last year

Nothing good can come of the decision by President Obama and Attorney General Holder to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four of his co-conspirators in federal court in Manhattan a few blocks from the hole in the ground where the World Trade Center used to be. The Administration has chosen an irresponsible and dangerous path -- and an unnecessary one.

All five of these guys were set to go on trial last year before the Military Commissions established by Congress for that purpose. On December 8, 2008, the five informed the military judge that they wished to withdraw all motions made on their behalf by their lawyers and plead guilty, even though they faced a possible death penalty. They told the judge that they had made this decision "without being under any kind of pressure, threat, intimidation's or promise from any party.

If the military tribunals had been allowed to continue their proceedings, KSM and his cohorts likely would already have been tried, convicted and sentenced. However, immediately on taking office, President Obama announced that he would close Guantanamo within a year and ordered that the proceedings of the Military Commissions be suspended as his team considered what to do with the Gitmo detainees. Thus, the impending trial of the five 9/11 plotters was put on the back burner.

If today's announcement of trials in federal court was necessary because the Administration had ruled out the use of the military tribunals for whatever reason, it might make some sense. But Obama actually reinstated those tribunals in May with some added due process protections for detainees. Even more inexplicable, even as the KSM five are being hailed into court in New York's Foley Square, four other al Qaeda operatives now held at Gitmo -- including Abd-al-Rahim al Nashiri, accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen -- will be tried before a Military Commission.

Why all nine of these characters cannot be tried before Military Commissions, when four of them can be, is beyond me. There is a lot of rhetoric being thrown around today by supporters of the Obama-Holder move to the effect that it shows the world that we have absolute confidence in our courts and system of justice. If so, why try al-Nashiri and three others before military tribunals? On top of that, the Obama Administration has made clear that it can and will hold some captured terrorists indefinitely without any trial, if they deem them too dangerous to release. So pardon me if I decline to see today's announcement as some sort of triumph of "justice."

While there is nothing on the plus side for this decision, there are plenty of things on the down side:

First, KSM and the others, assured of a big platform at the epicenter of the worldwide media, will now plead not guilty and use the trial to put the United States government on trial. They will do their best to push out daily propaganda to millions of Muslims around the world. It will be one huge show trial -- a show for the defendants!

Second, our nation's best and brightest lefty lawyers will be falling all over themselves to get a piece of this defense. Dozens of lawyers will demand disclosure of virtually everything about the actions of U.S. intelligence and the actions of allied and friendly countries in pursuing and capturing this al Qaeda crew. While the court will probably curb their appetite, they will win some disclosures, perhaps a lot more than is safe, depending on the judge.

Third, New York City, already the most desired (and hit) target of al Qaeda and its sympathizers, will have a big new reason to worry about being hit again. Only those who believe foolishly that al Qaeda has been vanquished never to be heard from again, can dismiss the obvious attraction of striking New York in the middle of KSM's trial. They may not be able to hijack airliners anymore, but, as last week's Fort Hood massacre ought to show everyone, there are lots of ways that deadly terror attacks can happen without elaborate schemes, 20-man crews and major resources.

Finally, although it's not likely, the government might not win convictions for one or more of these defendants. It only takes one juror to hang a jury, and those smart defense lawyers will do everything they can to assemble a jury that includes at least a few members they think will be open to a defense that turns the tables on the government. What then? There is no chance that any Administration will ever let any of these guys walk free. So it will all be back to square one.

It's utterly irresponsible and dangerous to do this. It's a choice that President Obama may turn out to regret.

What are your thoughts? Post a comment.

Fort Hood Killer, Nidal Hasan, was in contact with many Islamist extremists, not just one

Really, is there anyone left who is surprised by this latest piece of news?

Fort Hood shooting suspect Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had been in contact with numerous Muslim extremists -- some of whom are under federal investigation -- before last week's rampage, two U.S. officials told The Washington Times on Wednesday.

Maj. Hasan made some of the contacts while visiting known jihadist chat rooms on the Internet, according to one of The Times' sources, a senior FBI official. He said that several people with whom Maj. Hasan was in contact had been the focus of investigations by the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The other source, a military intelligence official, said those in contact with Maj. Hasan are located both in the U.S. and overseas. The official said they are "broadly known and characterized as Islamic extremists if not necessarily al Qaeda."

No time to lose ramping up that Congressional investigation into why this guy wasn't nailed.

Any thoughts? Post a comment.

Daily leaks turning Obama's Afghanistan strategy review into an embarassing farce

President Obama meets with his badly leaking "war council"

Another day, another set of embarrassing -- and potentially dangerous -- leaks from President Obama's ongoing review of U.S. Afghanistan war strategy.

Today's unbelievable "leak" -- actually more of torrent of presumably sensitive national security information -- features the appearance two and a half months into this process of apparent objections to any increase in U.S. troops from the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and former top U.S. military commander there, Gen. Karl Eikenberry. This story, served up by "three [unnamed] senior American officials," also includes a characterization of what questions Obama asked at a meeting of his top national security team and a supposed insight into the President's thinking:

Mr. Obama asked General Eikenberry about his concerns during the meeting on Wednesday, officials said, and raised questions about each of the four military options and how they might be tinkered with or changed. A central focus of Mr. Obama’s questions, officials said, was how long it would take to see results and be able to withdraw.

“He wants to know where the off-ramps are,” one official said.

The president pushed for revisions in the options to clarify how — and when — American troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government. He raised questions, officials said, about the exit strategy for American troops and sought to make clear that the commitment by the United States would not be open-ended.

No one can or should second guess the President on how he makes a fateful decision on war policy or what tough questions he puts to his advisers. He is also entitled to take as much time as he deems necessary, within reason, to reach a conclusion. And Obama would be foolish if he did not evaluate policy choices with an eye to the length of the U.S. commitment and the outlook for bringing it to a successful conclusion under various scenarios.

But the details of this process don't belong in the newspapers! In particular, his looking for the "off-ramps" isn't something that ought to be discussed in public, lest it encourage the Taliban, discourage NATO, Afghan and Pakistani allies, move friendly Afghans to sidle up to the Taliban, and affect the morale of American fighting forces.

This is really elementary. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates understands this, and it's why he's getting really angry about the leaks:

“I have been appalled by the amount of leaking that has been going on in this process,’’ Mr. Gates told reporters en route to a Wisconsin factory that is churning out thousands of armored trucks manufactured specifically for the rough terrain of Afghanistan.

“I think a lot of different places are leaking,” he said. “I’m confident that the Department of Defense is one of them.To have details or options that are being considered out there in the middle of the president’s deliberative process I think does not serve the country and it does not serve our military.’’

Mr. Gates then added a threat.

“And frankly if I found out with high confidence anybody who was leaking in the Department of Defense, who that was, that would probably be a career-ender,’’ he said.

Let's hope his message is taken seriously by the other people around that big table in the White House Situation Room.

The trouble is that Gates' authority does not extend to most of them. Only the President can tell everyone to shut up, as he should without further delay. This drawn-out process -- accompanied by leaks that tell us one day that Obama is close to a decision to send 30,000 troops and tell us the next that he's a long way from a decision and may not send any more troops -- has become a farce. It gives the impression of an Administration wracked by conflict and a lack of resolution and seriousness. It's embarrassing to the nation, the Administration and the President himself. Even worse, it could be dangerous, since whatever Obama final decides to do, American strategy will be subject to endless questioning based on these weeks of news reports, regardless of whether any of them are accurate.

President Obama must impose discipline on his own house -- now, without further delay.

What do you think" Post a comment.

On Veterans' Day, let's remember the forgotten veterans of the Korean War

Marines in battle, November 1950


The 1st Marine Division fought its way out of encirclement in harsh winter and rough terrain

The U.S. Navy destroyed port facilities at Hungnan after troops were evacuated

On days of remembrance like this one, we always say that the sacrifices of our veterans will never be forgotten. Yet, for decades, while WWII veterans have been lauded as "the greatest generation" and Vietnam veterans have been recognized as well, little is ever said about the hundreds of thousands of veterans of the Korean War. At that war's peak, nearly half a million American troops were engaged on the Korean peninsula, along with a like number of United Nations allies. Some 36,000 Americans were killed and nearly 100,000 wounded.

The pictures above are from one of the bloodiest campaigns of the war -- the two-week battle by the 1st Marine Division and an Army Task Force to retreat from the Chosin Reservoir to the port of Hungnan in November 1950. After UN forces flanked the North Koreans at Inchon and chased them almost to the Chinese border, Mao's China joined the conflict in huge numbers. Americans were encircled at Chosin and had to fight their way out. In the largest naval operation of its kind in U.S. history, they were evacuated at Hungnan and the port destroyed by the U.S. Navy. Marine and Army casualties in the two-week battle totalled 1,029 killed, 4,582 wounded, and 4,894 missing. The remains of most of those initially categorized as missing were recovered in an exchange with the Chinese after the battle, bringing the total dead to some 6,000. Other remains have been recovered since the war but many marines and soldiers remain to this day unaccounted for.

What are your thoughts on this Veterans' Day? Post a comment.

Congress must probe how the FBI and the Army failed to "connect the dots" to prevent Fort Hood massacre

Fort Hood killer sent emails to this radical jihadist cleric in Yemen

It's time to cut out all the bullshit and launch a thorough, detailed Congressional investigation into how and why the FBI, the Army brass, and anyone else involved failed miserably -- and fatally for 12 soldiers and one civilian at Fort Hood -- to connect the many glaring warning signals about the Fort Hood mass killer -- Malik Nidal Hasan -- and take action that would have prevented his deadly jihadist rampage.

We now know that U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted 10-20 emails that Hasan sent to Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born radical jihadist cleric and al Qaeda sympathizer now living in Yemen who served preached at a Virginia mosque where Hasan (and three of the 9/11 hijackers) worshipped.

Reportedly, the FBI decided that these repeated efforts by a serving Army officer to reach out to a well-known radical didn't warrant an investigation -- and dropped it. Meanwhile, the Army knew about Hasan's deeply disturbing and offensive "lecture" and PowerPoint presentation to other military doctors at Walter Reed in which he clearly showed his jihadist sympathies. Some in the audience complained to their superiors but nothing was done. Hasan was promoted to major and sent to Fort Hood where, among other things, he argued about the war with soldiers he was supposed to be counseling.

Forget everything else we have learned or think we have learned about Hasan so far. Forget the sterile and pointless disputes that have emerged in the media and on the blogs about whether we should call his shooting up Fort Hood "terrorism" or "crime" or the actions of a "madman" or someone "stressed" by the nature of his job. If the FBI and the Army had connected these two dots -- Hasan's contact with al-Awlaki and his often bizarre and hostile conduct -- it would have been impossible to allow him to remain as a psychiatrist on a military post.

After 9/11 and after the 9/11 Commission's recommendations were adopted, we were assured that this sort of missing the crucial connections would not happen again. But it did, and 13 people are dead.

We need to know what happened. The FBI is now conducting an "internal review" to see whether its actions were appropriate. There is absolutely no reason to leave it to the FBI to make that judgment. The Army cannot be trusted to investigate itself either. Even without knowledge of Hasan's contacts with al-Awlaki (and we cannot yet be sure the Army was not told about this), the chain of command blundered unbelievably in ignoring the obvious problems with Hasan. If that happened because of any undue timidity in confronting Hasan because he was a Muslim of Arab descent, we need to know about it (or if not, that it was just incompetence). When the Army's Chief of Staff, General George Casey, says a couple of days after a dozen of his troops were murdered at home that he's concerned about a backlash against Muslims serving in the military -- a backlash that has never happened in America despite the 9/11 attacks and all the other acts of terrorism and terrorist plots by jihadists -- we have to wonder whether the Army's leadership has its priorities straight.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is already launching an inquiry to determine what happened. Other Congressional panels with jurisdiction have also indicated an interest in investigating. While there is always a danger of Congressional inquiries politicizing any subject they handle -- including national security -- it is essential in this case that Congress step up. We must know what happened, why, who did or did not do their jobs well, and what steps we need to take to ensure that nothing like the Fort Hood massacre happens again.

What's your take? Post a comment.

UPDATE: ABC News is reporting that Hasan had "more unexplained connections to people being tracked by the FBI" than just al-Awlaki and that the names and countries of these connections would emerge soon. Meanwhile, the finger pointing has started with the Pentagon claiming (via an unnamed "top defense official," of course) that the FBI never told the Army about the intercepted communications with al-Awlaki.

On November 9, 1989, 20 years ago today, the Berlin Wall fell and East Europe's path to freedom was open

With the wall, the Soviet Empire came crashing down and Europe began a new era of liberty and democracy.

The Purple Center nominated for Weblog Award as best new political blog of 2009

You -- anyone -- can vote for The Purple Center by going here.

Hey, give the moderate center a chance. There are plenty of smart lefty and righty blogs out there -- but precious few that support pragmatic, centrist politics without the bombast and verbal bomb-throwing of the ideological partisans.

AARP stabs senior citizens in the back, endorses $400 billion of cuts in Medicare, so it can make more money selling insurance!

Video of AARP staffer telling "members" to take a flying leap last August

The so-called American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has endorsed the House health care bill in a move that stabs its millions of senior citizen members in the back. Why? So that AARP can sell more insurance policies -- its biggest source of revenue, that's why. From the Chicago-Tribune:

Why else would the nation's largest lobbying organization, sworn to protect the interests of senior citizens, watch silently as Congress plans to cut Medicare spending by $400 billion to pay for its health reform legislation? Could it be that the interests of seniors and AARP are not exactly aligned?

Let's follow the money. AARP takes in more than half of its $1.1 billion budget in royalty fees from health insurers and other vendors that market services with the organization's name. Medicare supplementary policies, called "Medigap" plans, make up the biggest share of this royalty revenue.

AARP has an interest in selling more, not fewer, Medigap plans, of course. But there is a competitor on the block.

A growing number of seniors are enrolling in a new form of Medicare coverage Medicare Advantage where they don't need Medigap.

[snip]

Congress' health reform bills would cut spending for Medicare Advantage by at least $150 billion. President Obama has singled out Medicare Advantage, saying it is a give-away to private insurance companies. But virtually all of the extra money goes back to seniors in the form of better benefits, so it's seniors who have the most to lose.

AARP is endorsing a bill that will deliver a huge blow to Medicare -- one that will lead over time to fewer doctors accepting Medicare, longer waits for seniors, and an inevitable decline in accessible quality care -- so that AARP can make more billions of dollars selling Medigap insurance.

Where does all that money AARP rakes in from insurance and other products it sells go? Beats me, although the pretense that AARP is a "lobby" for seniors can no longer be used as the rationale for its enormous budget. As they've proved time and again, older folks are well able to do their own lobbying by contacting their representatives and voting for candidates that fight for their interests. And seniors are very much aware of how much they stand to lose under health care "reform," as virtually every poll has shown for months.

AARP is not a membership organization in any sense. It's a self-appointed service entity -- sort of like AAA -- that peddles products with coupons and discounts for its "members." The "members" did not vote on AARP's endorsement of massive cuts in Medicare (does anyone really doubt the outcome if they had been given that opportunity?). As an AARP member, you don't even get to elect delegates to some representative body or the group's top leaders, like many unions and professional organizations. In fact, you can spend all day navigating AARP's elaborate website and you won't even find a mechanism to send the group an email to protest! (On the other hand, you can easily sign up for "action" to back the group's stand on health care.)

I think AARP has just managed to destroy its reputation as a non-partisan representative of the interests of senior citizens. The group's huge staff need not worry about losing their phony baloney jobs, though. They can always start selling memberships to 45 year olds. Why not 35 year olds, come to think of it? Those coupons and discounts might look just as good to people of any age.

What's your opinion? Post a comment.

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As right wing smashes "RINO" in NY-23, the Democrat wins! But another GOPer. Rob Astorino wins more a big race without right-wing help

Big Conservative loser, Doug Hoffman




Big Republican winner, Rob Astorino



Of course, the big stories of election night, 2009, are the Republican victories in Virginia, where Barack Obama's 2008 win had set up high expectations of that traditionally "red" state turning "blue," and in New Jersey, often regarded as among the deepest of the "blue." (Looks like purple is getting to be an even more popular color!)

In some ways, though, the most fascinating outcome of the night was in the special election to fill an historically Republican House seat in upstate New York's 23rd Congressional District. There, Doug Hoffman, a conservative candidate running on the Conservative Party line after failing to get the GOP nomination, ran a tough campaign against the Republican nominee, Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava. Hoffman drew an outpouring of support from conservatives around the nation who regarded Scozzafava's nomination as an abomination, due to her having taken a wide range of moderate and even liberal positions. Hoffman was endorsed by Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson, Tim Pawlenty and a veritable who's who of the conservative movement. And he appeared so many times in recent days on Sean Hannity's and Glenn Beck's TV programs that it was a wonder he had any time to campaign in the district!

Hoffman did succeed in driving Scozzafava out of the race. She withdrew last weekend and then threw her support to Democrat Bill Owens. Conservative pundits, bloggers and "tea party" activists, along with Hannity, Beck and other on-air personalities, all whooped it up about this big victory over the detested "RINO," Scozzafava. On the eve of the election, the righties were throwing down the gauntlet to moderate Republicans everywhere, threatening a dozen or more challenges next year, based on their great success in NY-23.

Only one problem with that. Hoffman lost, and the Democrat, Bill Owens, won! It's hard to see that the whole Hoffman phenomenon amounts to anything more than a right-wing hissy fit that winds proving the contention of level-headed Republican leaders that their party needs to welcome folks into a "big tent" or risk losing more elections to Democrats. Not incidentally, Owens was chosen as a moderate Democrat who would reflect the mood and views of voters in a district that has been reliably Republican for a century but not necessarily all that conservative. Good call by the Democrats.

Meanwhile, in downstate Westchester County (population, about one million) -- running a race for County Executive that received virtually no media attention -- Rob Astorino, host of a Catholic radio show and a sometime politician, beat a three-term incumbent Democrat by a whopping 58-42 margin, despite the county's huge, two-to-one Democratic advantage in registration and its recent history of delivering big victory margins to Democrats.

Unlike Hoffman, Astorino did not have big national Republican and conservative names endorsing and campaigning for him: no Sarah Palin, no Fred Thompson, no Sean Hannity, no Glenn Beck. Astorino also had no upsurge of excitement in the right-wing blogosphere and no deluge of outside campaign contributions. Astorino's campaign also had basically one message: taxes in Westchester County are too high, and it's the long-time Democratic County Executive's fault.

So there was Hoffman moaning and groaning on Fox News about the nation going to hell in a basket due to those tax and spend liberal Democrats and their me-too RINO chums like Dede, supposedly to inspire the GOP "base" to new heights of enthusiasm and voting in a heavily Republican district. He lost. Meanwhile, Astorino ran a conventional campaign and delivered a simple, low-key message that resonated with voters in an overwhelmingly Democratic county. He won big.

I wonder which approach makes more sense?

What are your thoughts about Election 2009? Post a comment.

UPDATE: In New York City's other big suburb, Nassau County, the Republican challenger to the Democratic incumbent County Executive appears to have lost by only 237 votes. No word on any recount yet, but such a tiny margin is bound to be challenged.

Unbelievable provocation: Russians war game a nuclear attack on Poland!

Kaliningrad: A Russian enclave on Baltic between Poland and Lithuania

Coming hard on the heels of the Obama Administration's "reset" of US-Russian relations and scrapping of planned U.S. missile defense installations in Poland and The Czech Republic, Vladimir Putin's Russia has radically upped its pressure on Poland, the Baltic states and the rest of the former Soviet-controlled eastern Europe in a forceful assertion of what it regards as its rightful sphere of influence. Needless to say, Poles are upset by Russian war games that included a mock nuclear attack on Poland and an exercise in which troops stormed a "Polish beach," actually on the Baltic coast of Kaliningrad, the small Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania:

The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops.

Poland, which has strained relations with both countries, was cast as the "potential aggressor".

The documents state the exercises, code-named "West", were officially classified as "defensive" but many of the operations appeared to have an offensive nature.

The Russian air force practised using weapons from its nuclear arsenal, while in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which neighbours Poland, Red Army forces stormed a "Polish" beach and attacked a gas pipeline.

The operation also involved the simulated suppression of an uprising by a national minority in Belarus – the country has a significant Polish population which has a strained relationship with authoritarian government of Belarus.

Karol Karski, an MP from Poland's Law and Justice, is to table parliamentary questions on Russia's war games and has protested to the European Commission.

His colleague, Marek Opiola MP, said: "It's an attempt to put us in our place. Don't forget all this happened on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland."

The post-Soviet democracies, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, The Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and Albania, are all NATO allies. Their ties to the West -- and particularly to the United States -- are their only guarantee of freedom from future domination from Moscow. For the past decade and a half, they have been able to count on strong U.S. support, even as the new Russian strongman, Putin, began to flex his muscles. Nothing has changed. There is nothing the West can or will get from Russia -- in the Middle East, Central Asia or anywhere else -- that would come close to offsetting the abandonment of half of Europe less than two decades after the collapse of Soviet power. President Obama must make chrystal clear to Russia that the West does not take kindly to Russian imperial revanchism .

Any thoughts? Post a comment.

Pelosi and House Democrats stick it to seniors with health care "reform" bill that will slash Medicare by $400 billion

Nancy Pelosi announces a bill to strip millions of seniors of their quality care

The House health care plan unveiled yesterday by Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a lot that is commendable in its 2000 pages. But it's not at all commendable that the bill, which will cost $894 billion over 10 years, is "deficit neutral" only because it slashes more than $400 billion from Medicare in that period. Senior citizens are to see a significant decrease in the accessibility and quality of their health care, in order to pay for nearly half the cost of extending coverage to others.

The Congressional Budget Office's scoring of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act -- which might as well be named the Medicare Reduction Act -- cites these "savings" to be achieved in the Medicare program:

Permanent reductions in the annual updates to Medicare’s payment rates for most services in the fee-for-service sector (other than physicians’ services), yielding budgetary savings of $229 billion over 10 years...

Setting payment rates in the Medicare Advantage program on the basis of Medicare spending per beneficiary in the fee-for-service sector and changing the way that payments to Medicare Advantage plans reflect differences in the health status of enrolees, yielding savings of an estimated $170 billion...over the 2010–2019 period.

The massive $229-billion reduction would drive hoards of doctors to refuse to participate in Medicare -- and there are already far too many who don't, due to reimbursement rates far below those of private health plans.

Oh, but Democrats are saying in stage whispers that no one should worry about the reduced fee-for-service payments, because they'll "fix" that in a separate bill. Of course, that makes the claim of deficit neutrality for H.R. 3962 duplicitous. But seniors also need to worry that the Democrats may not be able to keep their promise of a sly "fix." If the bill passes, as is, it becomes the law of the land, period. By the time that happens, who knows what the political environment will be like. How many people predicted early last summer that we'd be into November with no health care bill passed by either the House or the Senate? Seniors would be foolhardy in the extreme not to worry that H.R. 3962 will set the terms of their health care for a long time to come.

The Medicare Advantage plans from which $170 billion would be cut currently enroll 11 or 12 million seniors. These plans have been cast by Democrats as too generous to the insurance companies that offer them, because the companies get as much as 14% more from the feds than providers under the regular Medicare program. There are two things wrong with that argument: first, as indicated above, the regular Medicare reimbursement rates are lower than they should be to ensure that providers accept Medicare patients; and second, the whole point of the Advantage programs was to pay insurers more to induce them to offer managed-care (HMO) plans that would provide better overall quality of care for patients with multiple health problems, emphasize wellness and prevention, and eliminate the need for seniors to navigate through mountains of Part A, Part B and Part D insurance paper work. That's why a quarter of all Medicare enrolees prefer Advantage plans.

Anyway, didn't President Obama and other Democrats say over and over about health care reform that if you like your current plan and your current doctors, you won't have to change? Well, if this bill passes, Medicare Advantage plans will disappear and millions of seniors will be thrown into regular Medicare. Not incidentally, these millions will be chasing many of the same doctors and other providers who might opt out of Medicare anyway.

Medicare arguably is one of the signal achievements of the Democratic Party of the last 50 years. Why would Democrats want to eviscerate one of their great successes? Republicans may exploit the huge negative impact on Medicare of the House bill as a talking point -- but Republicans are not going to stand up for Medicare in the long run.

Democrats who support the House bill may think they can bob and weave around the issue of Medicare cuts and hope that seniors remain in the dark or confused about the impact of the bill (or distracted by minor additional benefits for Medicare recipients in the bill, such as an increase in drug coverage). If so, they would be wise to think again. Seniors are already well aware of the fact that they will get the short end of the stick under health care "reform." That's why only 36% of people over 65 support the proposal in a recent poll. Seniors are by far the most reliable voters. It will be tough to conceal the impact of the cuts when they actually happen, and seniors will be really, really pissed when they go to the polls.

What do you think? Post a comment.

Hot supermodels strip to cool down in 350 climate change video

Hey, if the folks at 350.0rg, International Day of Climate Action, keep putting out powerfully persuasive informational material like this, they might be able to lower the carbon target to 300. In any case, it sure does beat Al Gore!

Any thoughts? Post a comment.

Public option still dead after all, as Joe Lieberman says he'll filibuster it

Joe Lieberman to Majority Leader Reid: "Ha, gotcha that time, Harry!"

Wow, that was quick.

Yesterday, Harry Reid announced that the previously dead public option was alive and that he was bringing a health care bill to the floor that included a public option with an opt-out provision for states. Because Harry did not appear to have the 60 votes needed to pass such a bill over the unified opposition of every Republican, some cynics speculated that he was just trying to appease labor and other constituencies that matter in his own 2010 reelection bid.

Today, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman confirmed that Reid does not have the votes:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill.

Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid has said the Senate bill will.

"We're trying to do too much at once," Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now."

Lieberman added that he’d vote against a public option plan “even with an opt-out because it still creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line."

Joe will get a lot of pressure to change his mind, but the guy is not easily swayed by mere pressure. What's more, Joe has staked out a position that makes it easier for other reluctant moderate Democrats like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln to say simply, ditto that.

Reid may have screwed himself by alienating the one Republican who actually voted for one of the Senate reform bills. Maine's Olympia Snowe put herself out on a limb by doing so, with the clear stipulation that there was to be no public option except through a "trigger." Now, Snowe is ticked off at what seems to have been a humiliating bait and switch.

Nice work, Harry!

What do you think? Post a comment.

UPDATE: Hard on the heels of Lieberman's announcement, his 2006 opponent, Ned Lamont, said his was getting a lot of e-mails urging him to run again in 2012. Sure, the MoveOn.org-DailyKos crowd would love to knock off Joe, but Lamont wisely sidestepped. He managed to best Joe in the 2006 Democratic primary in a campaign fueled by the peak of liberal opposition to the war in Iraq. But Joe, running as an independent with a Republican also in the race, beat him soundly (by 10 points) in the general election. Besides, 2010 is a long way off.

UPDATE 2: Another Democratic moderate, Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas reiterates her opposition to a public option.

Here's why Obama and the Democrats need to govern from the center

If they want to govern successfully, President Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress must govern from the center and not be constantly distracted by the objections and demands of their party's left wing.

This is true for the simplest of reasons: not enough Americans are liberals to form a strong enough base of support for a sharp turn to the left.

The results of Gallup's latest survey of how Americans identify themselves ideologically, shows this breakdown:

Conservative 40%

Moderate 36%

Liberal 20%

In other words, three quarters of all Americans are not liberals. Couple this with Gallup's map of ideological identification by state (which I described in an earlier post here), and the reason for the powerful pull in American politics towards the center is clear.

This doesn't mean that the current Democratic agenda is unpopular. Far from it. Gallup's respondents may think the words liberal, moderate and conservative mean many different things, after all. A good many of the self-described moderates undoubtedly lean Democratic and are inclined to follow Democratic leaders. What's more, on some issues -- boosting the economy, regulating Wall Street, reforming health care, for example -- ordinary voters may be a lot more open to a range of solutions than their self-identifations imply.

Still, the gravitational pull of the center cannot be escaped. Pushing too far to the left -- or the right -- will inevitably result in the voters' slapping you down. I don't think there is the slightest doubt that if the Obama Administration consistently pursues the course demanded by the House Progressive Caucus, MoveOn.org, the liberal commentariat and the left-wing blogosphere, the 2010 elections will produce a huge backlash against Democrats. There is no clever political strategy that can forestall such a development. It will happen because of the nature of the electorate.

Fortunately, so far, centrist Democrats -- in particular, 15 or so moderate Democratic Senators -- have held back a foolishly leftward lurch. But the Democratic Party has been known before to shoot itself in the foot. Much depends on Obama's good sense and smart leadership. We'll see.

Any thoughts? Post a comment.

White House Nixonian assault on Fox News is wrong, wrong, wrong

Congressman: Republicans and Fox News are "the enemy of America"

When the President of the United States allows or encourages the White House staff to launch an all-out attack on a purveyor of news and opinion he doesn't like, declaring Fox "not a news organization" and following up by trying to ban Fox from the White House TV press pool, it is not just politically foolish or dumb, although it is both those things. It's just wrong, wrong, wrong. Indeed, it's positively Nixonian. In some ways, it worse than anything Nixon and Agnew did in their public pre-Watergate campaign to smear the "liberal media."

For decades, whenever I've heard people on the right complain about what they perceived to be a liberal slant at The New York Times, the Washington Post or CNN, my attitude was always, well, let them get their own newspaper or all-news TV channel. The Sulzberger family, Katherine Graham and Ted Turner were entitled to push whatever politics suited them, just as William Randolph Hearst and Henry Luce had done in earlier years. That's the essence of First Amendment rights (the three broadcast networks, with their public franchises, occupy different ground). If they showed bias, people would notice, and those who didn't like it would stop relying on them. And that's exactly what happened.

That's why the Washington Times exists today. It's why The Wall Street Journal is now competing directly with the NYT and WaPo on a wide range of non-business news. And its exactly why Roger Ailes started Fox News.

The White House makes the argument that Fox is different from MSNBC or CNN. All these networks have opinion shows, but Fox supposedly allows bias into its regular news programming, while the others, it's implied, don't. Even if that were true, so what? The counter-argument is that MSNBC, in particular, is just as biased in what stories it chooses to cover or not cover and how it presents them. So when a Republican becomes President again, will it be OK for the White House to ban MSNBC?

Of course not. Anyway, news bias is in the eyes and ears of the consuming public. News organizations have always been politically biased. That's why so many newspapers were originally named "Democrat" or "Republican." That's why the Hearst organization's support was considered crucial for several generations of national politicians. It's why Henry Luce's Time magazine was a powerful force behind the Old Guard GOP. It's why liberals were beside themselves when the old Dorothy Schiff-owned New York Post was bought by Rupert Murdoch. The three broadcast networks have to be held to a different standard because they're using our airwaves. But there are scores of perfectly good cable channels going unused, so anyone who doesn't like the news seen on CNN or MSNBC can start their own. Oh, they did!

It is, of course, shockingly thin-skinned of Obama to fret so much about Fox News that he sends his people out to delegitimize Fox as a GOP propaganda outfit. But it's worse than that. The Executive is enormously powerful. The clear message has been sent to all the other media that they had better not "follow" Fox when it breaks stories, even solid stories, that the White House doesn't like, lest they wind up persona non grata with the President, too. As seen in the video above, members of Congress are taking their cues from the President to ramp up the bitter partisan rhetoric which Obama promised he would eschew. And naturally, the left blogosphere has exploded with applause.

Fortunately, the rest of the mainstream media has not been easily herded into line with the White House. All the other TV news networks refused to conduct White House-organized interviews if Fox was to be excluded from the pool. ABC's White House correspondent, Jake Tapper, asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs pointedly where he got off declaring "one of our sister organizations" not a legitimate news organization. Influential liberal commentators have weighed in critically too. And some moderate Democrats in Congress are already voicing concerns about the White House attacks on Fox and others coming back to bite them.

The press does not have to be immaculately "objective" -- as if that were ever possible. And it certainly does not need to be deferential or even impeccably polite to the people in power. We're all better served by a press that makes noise, upsets apple carts, disturbs the serenity of those we've entrusted with governmental authority. Rather than try to delegitimize such folks as "enemies," Obama should get used to it. That's not to say that Obama needs to go on Sean Hannity's show and subject himself to hostile and silly questioning. And every White House has a right to play favorites among the press. But Obama should not be so insecure as to worry about members of his Administration getting a few tough questions from Chris Wallace, Major Garrett or Shepard Smith.

What do you think? Post a comment.

UPDATE (Oct. 27): Fox News ratings have soured since the White House attack, up nearly 10% across the board. "As for competition against the cable also rans, Fox News is sweeping the top 11 cable news slots in the 25-54-year old demographic...and the top 13 slots in all demos."

Sports that might welcome Rush Limbaugh

Rush's money is no good in the NFL, but who says the guy can't find a sporting place to park some of his millions?

For openers, there is this bunch.



The Australian cricket team can probably use a few bucks.



Ditto that for these guys. En guard!.



If you don't know what hurling is, keep it quiet around this mob from County Kerry.



And what about the true roots of football?!



On the lighter side, this really is an Olympic sport!



So is this. OK, I don't understand what they're doing anymore than you do.



And last by hardly least, the world would be a better place if we had more competition in the ancient Scottish art of the caber toss.



Stumped about what happens next to that pole? Watch the video below.


Any other ideas for where Limbaugh can invest his dough? Post a comment.

Fate of health care bills still in hands of moderate Democrats

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark), one of a dozen moderate Democrats whose votes are needed to pass any health care reform proposal

As I posted many times before (most recently here), the fate of the various health care bills in the House and Senate is in the hands of from eight to a dozen or so moderate Democrats in the Senate (and to a lesser extent, their counterparts in the House).

The almost daily combat covered widely in the media for months pitting reform supporters against Congressional Republicans and the conservative commentariat has obscured the real issue: what approach will secure the votes of all 60 Senate Democrats? Now that Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) has voted to report out the Senate Finance Committee bill, the number of Democrats needed may be 59 (although it's still far from clear what final bill Snowe might support). Getting to 59 is still a steep climb, considering the centrist tendencies of this lot.

As Politico reports, a final bill is a long way off:

Senate Democrats took their new found momentum for health reform into closed-door talks with White House aides Wednesday but still faced a months-old problem: centrist Democrats who aren’t sold on Obama-style reform even now.

If Democratic leadership hoped Republican Olympia Snowe’s decision to cross party lines Tuesday would inspire her fellow middle-of-the-roaders, they were mistaken.

[snip]

“There are many competing views on how best to reform health care within my caucus,” Reid acknowledged Wednesday before ducking into the first of what will be many negotiating sessions with Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, who ushered a bill through the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “I know this isn’t going to be easy.”

And it's not going to get any easier if action slips into election year 2010, when many not-so-moderate freshman and sophomore Democrats elected in 2006 and 2008 may not want to hand their opponents a high-profile issue:

And on the House side, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer raised the prospect that the bill might slip past Christmas and into 2010 – which could be politically disastrous for President Barack Obama, who is trying to pass health reform this year to put some distance between the vote and the midterm elections.

Nonetheless, many liberal Democrats continue to bang the drum for a more expensive and government-heavy plan -- one with a "public option" -- than the one pieced together by Max Baucus to attract support from moderate Democrats and snare Olympia Snowe in the bargain. And the left wing of party is throwing a hissy fit, demanding that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid discipline his caucus and punish any moderates who won't toe the party line. It's interesting to note that a year ago, the same lefty talking heads and bloggers were praising the virtues of the Democratic Party's big tent politics, compared to the narrow ideologically-driven conservatism of the GOP. Well, welcome to the big tent, guys!

Here's my take: the public option is dead, dead, dead, and trying to resurrect it will only result in further delay in forging a consensus bill that can pass both Houses. Push it out to the Christmas break, and there will be no bill at all come January.

What's your take? Post a comment.

Corzine mocks Christie's waistline. Will other fatso politicians weigh in?

In their increasingly nip-and-tuck race for Governor of New Jersey, incumbent Jon Corzine, running behind, has taken to thinly veiled mockery of his opponent, Chris Christie, for being, er, a bit on the tubby side. As you can see in the picture above, Christie does have a lot of weight to throw around. But what about all the other fatsos who have made it in politics without having to give up pizza and donuts or knock themselves out running, jogging, biking, or clearing brush? Will they leap (or at least step up) to Christie's defense?

For starters, this guy could chip in some heavyweight advice about wielding power -- and some tips on good cardiologists, too!



Barney Frank always has something to say.



John Murtha is one porker who knows how to deliver pork.



Chris Dodd is further living proof that Irish politicians can out-eat and out-drink all comers.



Then, there's Big Albert.



And the current Secretary of State for minor third-world countries may not pack heft in her portfolio, but......



Then, there is His Rotundness himself, New York's Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who makes Christie look like a marathon runner.



Got any favorite fatso politicians? Post a comment with a link.

Eight Senate moderate Democrats urge go-slow approach to health care bill

Eight moderate Democrats in the Senate -- whose votes are crucial to passing any bill -- have urged Majority Leader harry reid to slow down, allow time for the independent Congressional Budget Office to score the Senate Finance Committee (Baucus) bill and publish it online 72 hours before any vote.

In a letter to Reid, the eight wrote:

"At a time when trust in Congress and the U.S. government is unprecedentedly low, we can begin to rebuild the American people's faith in their federal government through transparency and by actively inviting Americans to participate in the legislative process," the Democratic senators wrote to Reid."

The senators, led by Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind., said they wanted legislative text of the bill posted online, along with complete Congressional Budget Office cost estimates, 72 hours before the Senate takes its first procedural vote on the bill.

[snip]

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., one of the eight Democrats that wrote the letter to Reid, said she is worried about the impact of the bill on the federal budget.

"Democrats are really good at expanding coverage and programs, not really that great at doing it in a cost-effective manner," she said. "We feel very strongly about doing this in the most cost-effective manner possible."

Gee, you'd think doing it "in the most cost-effective manner possible" would be a no-brainer for all 100 Senators.

Make no mistake: the health care "debate" is not between Dems and the GOP, which can only carp from the sidelines, but among the three factions of the Democratic Party -- the "progressives," the moderates and the rest.

In addition to Lincoln, Bayh and Landrieu, the Senators signing the letter were:

Joseph I. Lieberman, Claire McCaskill, Ben Nelson, Mark L. Pryor and Jim Webb.

Any thoughts? Post a comment.

Polls: Public opposes health care reform 50 to 44

Click on image for details

According to Pollster.com, not much has changed since the end of August. Obama and the Congressional Democrats have their work cut out for them.

Got an opinion? Post a comment.

Cokie Roberts on Roman Polanski: "Take him out and shoot him" (video)

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," veteran ABC News correspondent Cokie Roberts expressed in a few words the very non-Hollywood opinion about Roman Polanski shared by millions in this country and around the world:

Roman Polanski is a criminal. He raped and drugged and raped and sodomized a child. And then was a fugitive from justice. As far as I'm concerned, just take him out and shoot him.

Attaway, Cokie!

Anyone disagree? Post a comment.

British Army chief warns of "terrifying defeat" in Afghanistan, backs McChrystal; Brits ready to send more troops

General Sir David Richards, Chief of the British General Staff

America's most important ally would seem to be publicly pressing President Obama to back his own general in the field. From The Telegraph:

In an unprecedented intervention, the chief of the general staff described the conflict as "this generation's war" and added that failure by Nato would have an "intoxicating effect" on militant Islam.

[snip]

He said: "If al-Qaeda and the Taliban believe they have defeated us – what next? Would they stop at Afghanistan? Pakistan is clearly a tempting target not least because of the fact that it is a nuclear-weaponed state and that is a terrifying prospect. Even if only a few of those (nuclear) weapons fell into their hands, believe me they would use them. The recent airlines plot has reminded us that there are people out there who would happily blow all of us up."

The general's intervention comes at a crucial time, with the US General in charge of operations in Afghanistan calling for more troops to be sent to the country to fight the Taliban.

[snip]

Sir David has issued his unprecedented warning because he believed the public and even members of the government had not "woken up" to the "enormous risks" which would result if the war was lost.

He said: "Failure would have a catalytic effect on militant Islam around the world and in the region because the message would be that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have defeated the US and the British and Nato, the most powerful alliance in the world. So why wouldn't that have an intoxicating effect on militants everywhere? The geo-strategic implications would be immense."

[snip]

The Army chief declared that Britain was ready to send more troops to Afghanistan if called on to do so in the wake of the revised strategy which has been drawn up by Gen Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of Nato troops in southern Afghanistan.

And for good measure, Richards went out of his way to criticize what seems to be shaping up as the Joe Biden plan:

The general criticised plans put forward by some members of President Obama's administration – notably those of Vice-president Joe Biden, who is believed to support the view that Nato should reduce troop number in Afghanistan and concentrate on counter-terrorist operations using special forces. Sir David said this was a strategy which would not work.

Any thoughts? Post a comment.

Who's the mope in the White House who persuaded Obama to make a personal pitch for Chicago Olympics?

CNN anchor is dumbfounded at Chicago's first-round elimination

Sure, in a perfect world, Chicago's losing its Olympic bid is no big deal, and the President would be congratulated for giving it the old college try.

But politics is politics, and when the President of the United States very publicly -- and in the face of criticism -- puts the prestige of his office behind something -- anything -- losing has a cost, at least in political terms. As Politico's Ben Smith put it within minutes of the news:

There's a reason the president is rarely dispatched to a summit whose outcome is uncertain.

And Chicago's elimination in the first round of voting has to raise questions about whether the White House was getting accurate information about how competitive this was from Chicago's Olympics organizers.

The White House staked, and lost, some prestige on that one.

Exactly. So who in the White House called it so very wrong and urged Obama to change his mind publicly and make the 11th hour trip to Copenhagen? When the trip was announced, just about everyone assumed that it must be because Chicago was going to win, since no one would be foolish enough to put the Presidency behind a loss at a time when there really are so many other bigger fish to fry. After all, no one would have faulted Obama had he stuck with his original plan to send the First Lady.

It had to be one or more of the Obama Chicago crew: Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, political advisor David Axelrod, or family friend and consiglieri Valerie Jarrett -- or maybe all three. OK, maybe they got misleading intelligence from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley or were hoodwinked by the IOC. Still, it's their job to figure these things out. And it's just politics, not rocket science.

My money is on Jarrett who has the deepest ties to Chicago's elite and whose White House portfolio of "public engagement and intergovernmental affairs" means that liaison with Chicago's leadership on matters like this is her prime responsibility.

Obama's campaign team last year was widely lauded for its smarts and effectiveness, but their record in the White House isn't up to that standard. Look for changes as the second year of Obama's term draws near.

Got an opinion? Post a comment.

UPDATE -- I should add that I thought a Chicago Olympics would have been a good thing for Chicago, the USA and the Olympics. Why the IOC chose Rio, which is widely believed to be a cesspool of flith, crime and degradation, is utterly beyond me.

UPDATE 2: Unbelievable. "A sense of stunned bewilderment suffused Air Force One and the White House. Only after the defeat did many advisers ask questions about the byzantine politics of the Olympic committee. Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior adviser and a Chicago booster who persuaded him to make the trip while at the United Nations last week, had repeatedly compared the contest to the Iowa caucuses.

"But officials said the administration did not independently verify Chicago’s chances, relying instead on the Chicago 2016 committee assertions that the city had enough support to finish in the top two. Mr. Obama, Michelle Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Ms. Jarrett worked the phones in recent weeks without coming away with a sense of how behind Chicago really was."

UPDATE 3: Larry Sabato asks the obvious question, "Will anyone’s head roll for causing Obama this acute embarrassment on the international stage?"

Polanski update: Not all sexual predators get off as easy as famous movie directors

For 30 years, Oscar winner and child rapist fugitive Roman Polanski, rather than serving his time in a California prison, has been luxuriating at numerous homes in France and Switzerland -- like this tranquil Swiss chalet (more pics here) where he often retreats, hopefully without any children in the neighborhood:



Meanwhile, less notable sex offenders -- who actually served their sentences (richly deserved, no doubt) but lack both wealth and powerful friends like Harvey Weinstein -- have been living in shantytowns under interstate overpasses, like this guy in Miami:



Ah, but let's not forget that Weinstein, Woody Allen, Whoopi Goldberg and so many of their Hollywood friends are all strongly for equal justice.

Thoughts about Polanski? Post a comment.