Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Obama: How low can he go.
Apparently 9/11 will now be National Service Day ( as explained to us by Mr. Obama).
I understand other people have asked the question, but why that day.
Is not the invoking of, 9/11, political. It was for over 7 years when Bush was president. Is not the very invocation of that date a political act? When Bush said anything on the 11th of September of any year after 2001, he was attacked as using that day for political purposes.
And why on 9/11 - why not March 2 or October 6? Why on September 11?
Why.
And don't say why not, because my response will mimic the last 8 years - its political, it is intended to wash away those memories ... help us forget, the war on terror (which according to Obama it isn't - it's a fight against al qaida) - the fact that millions wake up each day and want to kill you whoever you are and wherever you might be.
What a useless human being.
I hope the next president rescinds that action on January 20, 2013 at 12:01 pm.
Obama
Universal Health Care: Canadians come to the US en masse for health care.
Canadians visit U.S. to get care
Deal lets many go to Michigan hospitals
BY PATRICIA ANSTETT
FREE PRESS MEDICAL WRITER
Aug. 20, 2009
Deal lets many go to Michigan hospitals
BY PATRICIA ANSTETT
FREE PRESS MEDICAL WRITER
Aug. 20, 2009
Hospitals in border cities, including Detroit, are forging lucrative arrangements with Canadian health agencies to provide care not widely available across the border.
Agreements between Detroit hospitals and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care for heart, imaging tests, bariatric and other services provide access to some services not immediately available in the province, said ministry spokesman David Jensen.
The agreements show how a country with a national care system -- a proposal not part of the health care changes under discussion in Congress -- copes with demand for care with U.S. partnerships, rather than building new facilities.
Michael Vujovich, 61, of Windsor was taken to Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital for an angioplasty procedure after he went to a Windsor hospital in April. Vujovich said the U.S. backup doesn't show a gap in Canada's system, but shows how it works.
"I go to the hospital in Windsor and two hours later, I'm done having angioplasty in Detroit," he said. His $38,000 bill was covered by the Ontario health ministry.
Canada eyed in the health care debate
Dany Mercado, a leukemia patient from Kitchener, Ontario, is cancer-free after getting a bone marrow transplant at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit.
Told by Canadian doctors in 2007 he couldn't have the procedure there, Mercado's family and doctor appealed to Ontario health officials, who agreed to let him have the transplant in Detroit in January 2008.
The Karmanos Institute is one of several Detroit health facilities that care for Canadians needing services not widely available in Canada.
Canada, for example, has waiting times for bariatric procedures to combat obesity that can stretch to more than five years, according to a June report in the Canadian Journal of Surgery.
As a result, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care in April designated 13 U.S. hospitals, including five in Michigan and one more with a tentative designation, to perform bariatric surgery for Canadians.
The agreements provide "more immediate services for patients whose health is at risk," Jensen said.
Three Windsor-area hospitals have arrangements with Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, to provide backup, after-hours angioplasty. Authorities will clear Detroit-Windsor Tunnel traffic for ambulances, if necessary. The Detroit Medical Center also provides Canadians complex trauma, cancer, neonatal and other care.
"In the last few years, we've seen more and more Canadian patients," said Dr. J. Edson Pontes, senior vice president of international medicine at the DMC. They include Canadians such as Mercado, whose care is reimbursed by Canada's health system, as well as people who pay out of pocket to avoid waiting in Canada.
Pontes declined to give revenue figures for the DMC's international business, but said the program "always has been a profitable entity." About 300 of the DMC's 400 international patients last year came from Canada, he said.
Tony Armada, chief executive officer of Henry Ford Hospital, said the hospital received $1 million for cardiac care alone.
Critics of a health care system like Canada's -- a publicly funded system that pays for medically necessary care determined by provinces -- often cite gaps in Canada's care to argue that the United States should not allow its current debate over health care to move it to a socialized system.
No plan currently under discussion in Congress calls for a universal plan like Canada's, but opponents fear socialized medicine, anyway.
Tell a lie enough times, and even those who are charged with watching the lawmakers begin to believe it ... but for troublesome nuisances like Representative John Conyers, a Democrat.
Yes, the plan under discussion is for universal healthcare, like Canada.From Conyers webpage:
Single-Payer Health Care
Welcome to the new home for the movement for universal, single-payer health care! Here you can find information about my plan to expand health care coverage to all Americans, and ways to get involved. Please explore the new site and email me with any suggestions.
Canada's U.S. backup care "speaks volumes to why we don't need government to take over health care," Scott Hagerstrom, the state director in Michigan for Americans for Prosperity, said of the Canadian arrangements with Michigan hospitals. "Their system doesn't work if they have to send us their patients."
But Dr. Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University health economist who has studied the U.S. and Canadian health systems, said arrangements with cities like Detroit "are a terrific way to manage capacity" given Canada's smaller health care budget.
"This is efficient," he said. "At least in Canada, you don't worry about going broke to pay for health care. You do here."
Pat Somers, vice president of operations at Windsor's Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital, one of the hospitals that sends patients to Henry Ford, said the issue of finding ways to pay for and prioritize care requests is not in only Windsor.
"The ministries are quite aware of" waits for care in Sarnia and Hamilton, she said. "That's why we are investing in a wait list strategy" to best determine how to prioritize cases for people who need hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and treatment for cancer, for example.
Mercado, 26, faced a longer wait because he could not find a matching blood donor, even though his family conducted a broad search.
He said doctors told him money was limited for transplants, particularly ones using unmatched donors, which are riskier.
After his family's doctor wrote the Ontario ministry, the agency agreed to pay $200,000 for the operation.
The family, their church and Mercado's school, Conestoga College in Kitchener, raised another $51,000 to cover expenses going back and forth to Detroit.
"I think of this every day as a gift from God," Mercado said.
health care
Obama: Illegals Deserve Health Care
President Barack Obama said he would be okay with illegal immigrants being treated in emergency rooms in some situations under his health care plan.
The thing about this is, no one would be an illegal. The requirement under his immigration policy is - be here for 24 hours and you are a legal resident.
Ergo, no one would be illegal and this would all be sorted.
Obama
The thing about this is, no one would be an illegal. The requirement under his immigration policy is - be here for 24 hours and you are a legal resident.
Ergo, no one would be illegal and this would all be sorted.
Obama
Public Burials: More Expense for the Unplanned
A welfare state and a people who make poor choices. These are not the homeless, these are people who never saved or couldn't save, and I would suggest in part due to poor choices. So expect the government to fund it. I agree - we should - dig a hole and drop them in, collect a few and bury them at the same time, put a marker up - here rests Person A, Person B, Person C and Person D.
Demand rises for publicly funded burials
8/20/2009
USA Today
Donna Leinwand
The rough economy is inflicting hardship on people even in death.
Coroners and funeral directors in several cities say the number of people seeking government-paid funerals, cremations and burials is spiking. Most counties and states will use public money to cremate or bury people who are too poor to pay for private services.
"People just aren't in a position to pay $7,000 for a private funeral and burial," says Lt. David Smith of the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, where the number of people seeking county burial has nearly doubled since last year.
The percentage of people in poverty in the USA is climbing, says Gregory Acs, a senior fellow at The Urban Institute. When the recession started at the end of 2007, about 12.5% of the U.S. population was considered impoverished, up from 11.7% in 2001, he says.
Among the counties noting a surge in requests for indigent burials:
• The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office handled 205 indigent deaths in the last six months of 2007. This year, from Jan. 1 to June 30, the office handled 404 indigent deaths — a 97% increase. "It has put a major financial strain on this department," Smith says. "I need to come up with $12,000 a month in a budget that's locked up tight as a drum."
Then in February, the county crematory notified the coroner it was overflowing with natural death cases and couldn't handle cases from the coroner, who handles accidental deaths, homicides and unidentified people, Smith says. "My body count in my crypt swelled to near capacity," Smith says, as he sought a crematory to handle the excess corpses.
• Las Vegas has seen a 22% increase in indigent cremations and burials since last year, says Dan Kulin, a spokesman for Clark County, Nev. In the budget year that ended June 30, 2008, the county handled 741 indigent deaths. In the same period ending June this year, the county handled 904 deaths, he says.
"It's a sign of the times," Kulin says.
• Kenton County, Ky., is expecting a record year of indigent burials. The 29 indigent burials as of Aug. 13 are more than double last year's total of 12, says Don Catchen, whose funeral home has the county contract for indigent burials.
Catchen offers a minimal private funeral and cremation for $1,400.
"With the economy being what it is, some of the lesser-income families … are barely surviving and they don't have any money to pay for even a minimum funeral service," he says.
"I've had the (county) contract 14 years," he says, "and it's never been like this before."
[Maybe you should look at numbers back in 1982 or 1980. Also - expectations. Today, many people believe they are entitled to more than perhaps 28 years ago.]
death
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
ROFLOL - Joke of the Day
When Karl Rove was Chief of Staff at the White House under Bush, he was attacked by liberals for politicizing anything and everything in the White House. One example - the firing of the government attorneys. Democrats attacked Rove - he instigated it for political reasons they howled. In fact, everything Rove did, Democrats argued was political, and consequently, everything was tainted by political interest.
Then peruse the following ...
Obama spokesman announces interrogation unit
Aug 24 12:08 PM US/Eastern
By STEVEN R. HURST and DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama has approved creation of a new, special terrorism-era interrogation unit to be supervised by the White House, a top aide said Monday, further distancing his administration from President George W. Bush's detainee policies.
The administration has also decided that all U.S. interrogators will follow the rules for detainees laid out by the Army Field Manual, according to senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the decision. That decision aims to end years of fierce debate over how rough U.S. personnel can get with terror suspects in custody.
The new unit does not mean the CIA is now out of the interrogation business, deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton told reporters covering the vacationing Obama at Oak Bluffs, Mass.
Burton said the unit will include "all these different elements under one group," and it said that it will be situated at the FBI headquarters in Washington.
The unit would be led by an FBI official, with a deputy director from somewhere in the government's vast intelligence apparatus, and members from across agencies. It will be directly supervised by the White House, but the senior administration officials insisted the unit's agency bosses will make operational decisions, not the White House.
[To read the rest of the article, click on the title link]
So my question is - when Rove was in the White House, EVERYTHING the guy did was political. Now, under Obama, having the White House head the interrogation unit - THAT isn't political.
Obama
Then peruse the following ...
Obama spokesman announces interrogation unit
Aug 24 12:08 PM US/Eastern
By STEVEN R. HURST and DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama has approved creation of a new, special terrorism-era interrogation unit to be supervised by the White House, a top aide said Monday, further distancing his administration from President George W. Bush's detainee policies.
The administration has also decided that all U.S. interrogators will follow the rules for detainees laid out by the Army Field Manual, according to senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the decision. That decision aims to end years of fierce debate over how rough U.S. personnel can get with terror suspects in custody.
The new unit does not mean the CIA is now out of the interrogation business, deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton told reporters covering the vacationing Obama at Oak Bluffs, Mass.
Burton said the unit will include "all these different elements under one group," and it said that it will be situated at the FBI headquarters in Washington.
The unit would be led by an FBI official, with a deputy director from somewhere in the government's vast intelligence apparatus, and members from across agencies. It will be directly supervised by the White House, but the senior administration officials insisted the unit's agency bosses will make operational decisions, not the White House.
[To read the rest of the article, click on the title link]
So my question is - when Rove was in the White House, EVERYTHING the guy did was political. Now, under Obama, having the White House head the interrogation unit - THAT isn't political.
Obama
Switzerland: Break our laws, just make sure you pay us and we'll apologize.
Thank God it didn't happen in the US, or Obama would have done a lot more than apologize.
Swiss president apologises over Kadhafi son's arrest
by Imed Lamloum
August 20, 2009
Hannibal Kadhafi and his pregnant wife were arrested in a luxury Geneva hotel on July 15, 2008 after two servants claimed they had been mistreated.
The couple were freed after two days in custody on bail of 500,000 Swiss francs (312,500 euros, 444,000 dollars).
The complaint was dropped after a lawyer for their servants -- a Moroccan and an Tunisian -- said they had received compensation.
[This statement and the dropping of the lawsuit does not in any way address the complaint, simply that they were paid off. The Swiss are apologizing for a criminal act that did occur, but they want the money more than they care about the law.]
In October, Libya responded by suspending oil deliveries to Switzerland, withdrawing assets worth an estimated five billion euros from Swiss banks, ending bilateral cooperation programmes and placing restrictions on Swiss companies.
Two Swiss businessmen in Libya were also banned from leaving the country.
Merz said in response to a question that "the Libyans have assured me that they will be allowed to leave before September 1."
"Today I have fulfilled my mission and achieved my goals of wiping the slate clean of last year's incident and opening the Libyan market" to Swiss firms once again, Merz said after more than a year of strained relations.
"It is a satisfying outcome for me."
The Swiss president also had talks in Tripoli with Foreign Minister Mussa Kussa, a Libyan government official said earlier.
Mahmudi said Libya and Switzerland would set up a joint committee to examine what he called the "tragic incident" in Geneva.
"Today we have been able to take a first step towards solving this problem. Switzerland has presented its official and solemn apologies concerning the unjust arrest of the son" of Kadhafi, the Libyan premier said.
Last month Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey said her country was trying to organise a meeting between Merz and the Libyan leader to defuse the crisis.
For Switzerland the dispute is "a matter of law, while for Libya it is a matter of honour," she said.
The authorities in Tripoli had sought an apology over the so-called "Hannibal affair," and had also unsuccessfully asked for the people responsible for the arrest of the Kadhafis to be punished.
[The son had to get going - he had to take the killer of over 250 people home to Libya. He is a busy guy.]
Libya
Swiss president apologises over Kadhafi son's arrest
by Imed Lamloum
August 20, 2009
Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz apologised to the Libyan people on Thursday over the arrest in Geneva a year ago of a son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.
"I express to the Libyan people my apologies for the unjust arrest of a Libyan diplomat by Geneva police," Merz said at a joint news conference in Tripoli with Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi.Hannibal Kadhafi and his pregnant wife were arrested in a luxury Geneva hotel on July 15, 2008 after two servants claimed they had been mistreated.
The couple were freed after two days in custody on bail of 500,000 Swiss francs (312,500 euros, 444,000 dollars).
The complaint was dropped after a lawyer for their servants -- a Moroccan and an Tunisian -- said they had received compensation.
[This statement and the dropping of the lawsuit does not in any way address the complaint, simply that they were paid off. The Swiss are apologizing for a criminal act that did occur, but they want the money more than they care about the law.]
In October, Libya responded by suspending oil deliveries to Switzerland, withdrawing assets worth an estimated five billion euros from Swiss banks, ending bilateral cooperation programmes and placing restrictions on Swiss companies.
Two Swiss businessmen in Libya were also banned from leaving the country.
Merz said in response to a question that "the Libyans have assured me that they will be allowed to leave before September 1."
"Today I have fulfilled my mission and achieved my goals of wiping the slate clean of last year's incident and opening the Libyan market" to Swiss firms once again, Merz said after more than a year of strained relations.
"It is a satisfying outcome for me."
The Swiss president also had talks in Tripoli with Foreign Minister Mussa Kussa, a Libyan government official said earlier.
Mahmudi said Libya and Switzerland would set up a joint committee to examine what he called the "tragic incident" in Geneva.
"Today we have been able to take a first step towards solving this problem. Switzerland has presented its official and solemn apologies concerning the unjust arrest of the son" of Kadhafi, the Libyan premier said.
Last month Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey said her country was trying to organise a meeting between Merz and the Libyan leader to defuse the crisis.
For Switzerland the dispute is "a matter of law, while for Libya it is a matter of honour," she said.
The authorities in Tripoli had sought an apology over the so-called "Hannibal affair," and had also unsuccessfully asked for the people responsible for the arrest of the Kadhafis to be punished.
[The son had to get going - he had to take the killer of over 250 people home to Libya. He is a busy guy.]
Libya
NO LOBBYISTS IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Obama told us that BEFORE he was elected. He has said his administration would be free of the imperfections that plague Republicans.
But lobbyist after lobbyist ... the hypocrisy is chilling.
Heather Podesta, The Insider's Insider Social Connections, Political Savvy and Boundless Energy Have Made Heather Podesta The It Girl of a New Generation Of Lobbyists
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 24, 2009
NEW YORK:
The chairman beams.
So many people just dying to see him, the business guys, the pols, the lobbyists -- lots and lots of lobbyists. They circle Charlie Rangel -- birthday boy, Democrat and, of course, House Ways and Means chairman -- circles like rings on a tree planted in the party room here at Tavern on the Green. Simple math: the more powerful the pol, the more rings on the tree. This is a very thick tree.
Not a problem, though, for Heather Podesta.
"It's like doing the tango!" she says, all smiles yet all business.
The lobbyist tango: She glides right in her red D&G heels and her periwinkle stockings, cutting through the outer rings with a smile here, a kiss-kiss there, a "Great to see you!" or two. Some guy yells out: "The most beautiful woman in the world!" She doesn't blush, and she doesn't linger. She wriggles left, gets blocked, reverses direction, gets blocked again, reverses direction again. She's in.
"Great party!" Podesta tells the chairman.
"Isn't it wonderful?" Rangel gushes back.
The chairman pecks the lobbyist's cheek, and they're done. Thirty seconds of face time. Mission accomplished.
"Doesn't get any better than that," Podesta says, amused by the surreal nature of the ritual she has mastered. "A kiss from the chairman."
And so it goes, in Heather's World. On this particular muggy night in Central Park, she's electrically caffeinated after taking the red-eye from Las Vegas the night before (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's energy summit) and she'll be turning around and flying west again in a couple of days (Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's donor shindig in Napa wine country). It may be summer recess, but this is not a time to rest. This is a time to go full-bore. This is a time like nothing we've seen for a long, long time.
We've had the Summer of Love. We've had the Summer of the Shark.
Now, get ready for the Summer of the Lobbyist.
In a glum economy, the lobbying business feels kind of bubbly. Every new Obama proposal comes with acres of fine print for corporate powers, interests groups and lobbyists to haggle over, profitably. Three gargantuan legislative challenges -- health care, the environment, the economy -- crisscrossing at once on Capitol Hill. Major health-care interests alone are spending $1.4 million this year lobbying Congress . . . per day, according to Common Cause, a government watchdog group. A lobbyist's delight created, ironically, by the let's-solve-all-our-problems-RIGHT-NOW approach of a president who pooh-poohed the excesses of lobbyists.
"This is a very good time to be a Democratic lobbyist . . . it's incredibly exciting to be able to engage with Democrats and really see things happen," Podesta says one afternoon at her office in one of those cool, restored red-brick buildings on E Street. "It's always a good time to be Heather Podesta."
There are more than 12,500 registered lobbyists -- about 23 for every member of Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics -- and some are getting richer while others stagnate or even dip a bit because of all of this pesky recession talk. But those who operate at the confluence of this summer's big three legislative streams are happiest of all.
Podesta is right there in the eddy, an It Girl in a new generation of young, highly connected, built-for-the-Obama-era lobbyists. She gets an undeniable boost from a famous name -- she is the sister-in-law of John Podesta, the insider's insider who was Bill Clinton's White House chief of staff and Obama's transition director, and the wife of über-lobbyist Tony Podesta. Heather and Tony run his-and-hers lobbying shops. His grew a staggering 57 percent in the first six months of this year compared with the same period the year before, taking in $11.8 million, fourth-highest among major lobbying firms. (Full disclosure: Tony Podesta has long represented The Washington Post, which paid him $10,000 in 2009 and $80,000 the year before, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.) Her six-person shop grew even faster, rocketing 65 percent to $3.4 million. The Scarlet 'L'
Few Washington lobbyists do "The Ask" with more whimsy than Heather Podesta, a leggy 39-year-old with striking streaks of silver in her black hair, a flirty style and a lawyer's eye for detail. In a sea of Washington gray, Podesta has a penchant for flamboyantly patterned dresses -- a Brazilian number featuring the image of a cassette tape one recent afternoon. She once read one of those networking manuals and she took its advice to heart: Wear interesting clothing or jewelry to spark conversations; no matter where you are, pretend you're the hostess.
This took some doing for the daughter of two academics who grew up in a Rochester, N.Y., home, far removed from A-list soirees. "There is this 12-year-old geeky girl in me who just wants to read books and have nothing to do with anyone," Podesta says. "Big glasses, jeans too short, wearing running sneakers. Total geek."
Now, it's all about hosting a luncheon for "kick-ass women" at the Pakistani Embassy and cheekily urging guests to "slip on your Birkenstocks" for a fundraiser in honor of that Senatorial Deadhead himself, Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Sometimes, she might be too cheeky, though -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California canceled a Podesta fundraiser in June amid the tut-tutting over an invitation sent out by Podesta that said "the prix fixe includes the Select Committee on Intelligence for the first course followed by your choice of Appropriations, Judiciary or Rules committees."
At last year's Democratic convention, Podesta wore a scarlet L to razz Obama for talking so much about curbing lobbyist enthusiasm. She rejected about a dozen mock-ups before settling on a Gothic-style letter, which became such a popular giveaway that she blew through 100 of them.
"Everybody was talking about it at the convention," says Podesta pal Leahy, the Senate Judiciary chairman, who says Heather is invariably "the most knowledgeable person in the room because she's done her homework."
In this Summer of the Lobbyist, Heather Podesta hits each of the big three. She's got health-care clients such as insurance giants Cigna and HealthSouth, drugmaker Eli Lilly and the breast cancer group Susan G. Komen for the Cure; financial powerhouses such as Prudential and Swiss Reinsurance Co.; and energy outfits such as Marathon Oil, the major utility Southern Co. and Climate Masters, a geothermal heating firm.
Cigna has her pushing for an employer-based health system, says the company's general counsel, Carol Petren; Eli Lilly has her bird-dogging drug regulation, especially in the "follow-on biologics" field considered promising in the fight against cancer, in hopes of "preserving incentives for innovation," says Joe Kelley, the company's vice president of government and public affairs.
There's so much work, in fact, that certain painful sacrifices are required. The couple used to escape to the beloved retreat they own in Venice 10 or 12 times a year, but "now we only maybe get there six times a year," Heather Podesta says. Leaving Washington doesn't always really mean leaving Washington. In Venice they've hosted, among others, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, though she was a mere governor back then, and hung with, by Podesta's count, something like 20 members of Congress (Nevada Rep. Shelley Berkley, New York Rep. Eliot Engel, even Teddy Kennedy).
When the whole gang is back in town, there's reconnoitering to do at the Capitol. Before big votes, she does her "Heather Tour" to see who's there. Once the action starts, she's not above firing text messages at staffers and the occasional member of Congress.
"Are you with us?" she always wants to know, on behalf of her clients who get the benefit of working with a lobbyist who also happens to have raised $2.4 million in the last cycle alone for various candidates and Democratic election committees.
Energy business to conduct? The Podestas hosted a fundraiser in June for Rep. Henry Waxman of California, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Money matters?
Fundraiser back in April for Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Health care? Fundraiser in June for Reid. A Whole Lotta Love
So does this mean they're buying friends? The Podestas have their answer down: "We mostly raise money for people who are already our friends, rather than to get to know people," Tony says. Lots of friends these Podestas have -- they figure they've donated to or held fundraisers for all but one or two Democratic senators. (Heather noses out even her husband -- no mean feat -- in political contributions this year, $48,250 to $47,750, according to federal disclosures. Together the couple has bestowed $558,195 of love to candidates since 2004, according to CQ Moneyline.)
[They donate $95k of $558k ... that is nearly 20% to POLITICAL sources. Imagine if some rich Republican with billions donated 20% of his income.]
The Podestas are certainly not alone -- most lobbyists live with their checkbooks out. Government watchdog groups generally rip this money-churning as blatant influence-buying. Lobbyists tend to sigh, saying it's what they have to do to survive and noting they're always getting hit up, from both near and far. Case in point: Heather Podesta was briefly introduced to a candidate for New York City comptroller at Rangel's birthday party. Within days, he's asking for some cash, even though she doesn't lobby there.
"It may look like just a social scene to people outside the process, but it's actually a lot of hard work," says Terry Straub, a client of Heather Podesta's who is a senior vice president at U.S. Steel. "You have to do that to stay well-informed and connected. She's incredibly savvy."
Savvy enough to sometimes whup her hubby in the race to sign clients.
"It takes a Podesta to take out a Podesta," Heather says one afternoon, over lunch of Mediterranean lite.
Sometimes they compete on Capitol Hill, like the time he was representing nursing homes and she was representing rehabilitation hospitals in a fight over Medicare payments. They kept the battle out of their house -- church/state separation, Tony says. In the end, Heather's side won.
The couple met -- why aren't we surprised? -- through a government connection. Dorothy Robyn, a top economic adviser to President Clinton and a self-described "amateur yenta," ran into Heather on the street one day in 2001. Through tears, Heather revealed her second marriage was kaput.
The yenta swung into action. After the opera one night, Robyn presented a list of three eligibles, with Tony Podesta -- whom Robyn had dated briefly -- at the bottom. Robyn moved him up, past "two wonky types," when Heather kept saying she just "loooooves MEN." Tony Podesta, Robyn decided, was sufficiently "larger-than-life" to satisfy her, even though he was more than a quarter century older.
A romance quickly blossomed, followed almost immediately by a living-together period and, in 2003, a show-stopping wedding reception, with guests the likes of Pelosi, Leahy, Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Celebrity chef Roberto Donna, of Iron Chef and Galileo fame, and Kaz Okochi, of Kaz Sushi Bistro, personally cooked for the guests.
She got the ring, but kept her name. Miller.
Married, yes, but maybe still a hottie at the Capitol, where she was a top congressional aide in her pre-lobbyist days. One afternoon, while subbing for her boss, California Rep. Bob Matsui, at a meeting, another congressman, apparently a naughty dude, was "visually undressing her," she says. She rolled her eyes to discourage him. But a Teamsters rep thought she was dissing him, and boy, did he give her bosses an earful. That is, until he learned that the aide he knew as Miller was married to a Podesta. Full stop. He backed off. Podesta power confirmed . . . which brought her, six months or so after saying, "I do," to a question: To Podesta or not to Podesta? (She had waited that long, she says, "to see if the marriage took.")
" 'There are going to be people who hate you without knowing you,' " she remembers her new husband telling her. " 'And there are going to be others who are loyal to you without knowing you.' I thought that was a lot cooler."
So did Tony.
"I'm the third husband, but this is the first time she's changed her name. That should tell you something," says Tony Podesta, now 65.
Tony, Italian bachelor that he was, came -- of course -- with a Mama: Mary Podesta, who died in 2007 after spending a chunk of her 88 years making pesto for Democratic fundraisers. "The Pesto PAC" get-togethers used to take place at Tony's home in Fairfax County, but they sold it and now party at their Woodley Park home while spending the past 2 1/2 years converting a large Kalorama home into the ultimate party pad -- its cellar will house Tony's wine collection, which runs into the thousands of bottles -- and showcase for their vast art collection. (The couple recently donated Shepard Fairey's iconic Obama "Hope" poster to the National Portrait Gallery.)
Real-estate adventures haven't slowed the gusher of Heather Podesta party e-mails. A recent invite to a lunch at Charlie Palmer's for Sen. Patty Murray of Washington came with reminders about two fundraisers the next day: breakfast for Rep. Steve Driehaus of Ohio and the ill-fated Feinstein lunch, and six more in the next five weeks.
"How do you throw all those damn fundraisers, Heather?" former Illinois congressman Marty Russo barked at Podesta at Rangel's birthday party.
"You ought to come sometime," she shot back.
On the flight up to New York (Podesta gave up her first-class seat to sit with me in steerage), she acknowledges that sometimes it's all too much.
"I have days when we're having a fundraiser at the house, and I just hit a wall and go upstairs and go to sleep," she says.
On inauguration night, Heather and Tony organized a D.C. dinner for Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. The couple is close to Rendell -- Tony was a top strategist for Rendell's 2006 reelection campaign.
The Podestas booked every table at Posto, where they are regulars, for Rendell's supporters. But the Podestas also brought a few guests of their own.
"They were not there just to celebrate the victory, but wanted to talk to me about some things," Rendell says. "Tony and Heather are always working."
But lobbyist after lobbyist ... the hypocrisy is chilling.
Heather Podesta, The Insider's Insider Social Connections, Political Savvy and Boundless Energy Have Made Heather Podesta The It Girl of a New Generation Of Lobbyists
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 24, 2009
NEW YORK:
The chairman beams.
So many people just dying to see him, the business guys, the pols, the lobbyists -- lots and lots of lobbyists. They circle Charlie Rangel -- birthday boy, Democrat and, of course, House Ways and Means chairman -- circles like rings on a tree planted in the party room here at Tavern on the Green. Simple math: the more powerful the pol, the more rings on the tree. This is a very thick tree.
Not a problem, though, for Heather Podesta.
"It's like doing the tango!" she says, all smiles yet all business.
The lobbyist tango: She glides right in her red D&G heels and her periwinkle stockings, cutting through the outer rings with a smile here, a kiss-kiss there, a "Great to see you!" or two. Some guy yells out: "The most beautiful woman in the world!" She doesn't blush, and she doesn't linger. She wriggles left, gets blocked, reverses direction, gets blocked again, reverses direction again. She's in.
"Great party!" Podesta tells the chairman.
"Isn't it wonderful?" Rangel gushes back.
The chairman pecks the lobbyist's cheek, and they're done. Thirty seconds of face time. Mission accomplished.
"Doesn't get any better than that," Podesta says, amused by the surreal nature of the ritual she has mastered. "A kiss from the chairman."
And so it goes, in Heather's World. On this particular muggy night in Central Park, she's electrically caffeinated after taking the red-eye from Las Vegas the night before (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's energy summit) and she'll be turning around and flying west again in a couple of days (Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's donor shindig in Napa wine country). It may be summer recess, but this is not a time to rest. This is a time to go full-bore. This is a time like nothing we've seen for a long, long time.
We've had the Summer of Love. We've had the Summer of the Shark.
Now, get ready for the Summer of the Lobbyist.
In a glum economy, the lobbying business feels kind of bubbly. Every new Obama proposal comes with acres of fine print for corporate powers, interests groups and lobbyists to haggle over, profitably. Three gargantuan legislative challenges -- health care, the environment, the economy -- crisscrossing at once on Capitol Hill. Major health-care interests alone are spending $1.4 million this year lobbying Congress . . . per day, according to Common Cause, a government watchdog group. A lobbyist's delight created, ironically, by the let's-solve-all-our-problems-RIGHT-NOW approach of a president who pooh-poohed the excesses of lobbyists.
"This is a very good time to be a Democratic lobbyist . . . it's incredibly exciting to be able to engage with Democrats and really see things happen," Podesta says one afternoon at her office in one of those cool, restored red-brick buildings on E Street. "It's always a good time to be Heather Podesta."
There are more than 12,500 registered lobbyists -- about 23 for every member of Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics -- and some are getting richer while others stagnate or even dip a bit because of all of this pesky recession talk. But those who operate at the confluence of this summer's big three legislative streams are happiest of all.
Podesta is right there in the eddy, an It Girl in a new generation of young, highly connected, built-for-the-Obama-era lobbyists. She gets an undeniable boost from a famous name -- she is the sister-in-law of John Podesta, the insider's insider who was Bill Clinton's White House chief of staff and Obama's transition director, and the wife of über-lobbyist Tony Podesta. Heather and Tony run his-and-hers lobbying shops. His grew a staggering 57 percent in the first six months of this year compared with the same period the year before, taking in $11.8 million, fourth-highest among major lobbying firms. (Full disclosure: Tony Podesta has long represented The Washington Post, which paid him $10,000 in 2009 and $80,000 the year before, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.) Her six-person shop grew even faster, rocketing 65 percent to $3.4 million. The Scarlet 'L'
Few Washington lobbyists do "The Ask" with more whimsy than Heather Podesta, a leggy 39-year-old with striking streaks of silver in her black hair, a flirty style and a lawyer's eye for detail. In a sea of Washington gray, Podesta has a penchant for flamboyantly patterned dresses -- a Brazilian number featuring the image of a cassette tape one recent afternoon. She once read one of those networking manuals and she took its advice to heart: Wear interesting clothing or jewelry to spark conversations; no matter where you are, pretend you're the hostess.
This took some doing for the daughter of two academics who grew up in a Rochester, N.Y., home, far removed from A-list soirees. "There is this 12-year-old geeky girl in me who just wants to read books and have nothing to do with anyone," Podesta says. "Big glasses, jeans too short, wearing running sneakers. Total geek."
Now, it's all about hosting a luncheon for "kick-ass women" at the Pakistani Embassy and cheekily urging guests to "slip on your Birkenstocks" for a fundraiser in honor of that Senatorial Deadhead himself, Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Sometimes, she might be too cheeky, though -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California canceled a Podesta fundraiser in June amid the tut-tutting over an invitation sent out by Podesta that said "the prix fixe includes the Select Committee on Intelligence for the first course followed by your choice of Appropriations, Judiciary or Rules committees."
At last year's Democratic convention, Podesta wore a scarlet L to razz Obama for talking so much about curbing lobbyist enthusiasm. She rejected about a dozen mock-ups before settling on a Gothic-style letter, which became such a popular giveaway that she blew through 100 of them.
"Everybody was talking about it at the convention," says Podesta pal Leahy, the Senate Judiciary chairman, who says Heather is invariably "the most knowledgeable person in the room because she's done her homework."
In this Summer of the Lobbyist, Heather Podesta hits each of the big three. She's got health-care clients such as insurance giants Cigna and HealthSouth, drugmaker Eli Lilly and the breast cancer group Susan G. Komen for the Cure; financial powerhouses such as Prudential and Swiss Reinsurance Co.; and energy outfits such as Marathon Oil, the major utility Southern Co. and Climate Masters, a geothermal heating firm.
Cigna has her pushing for an employer-based health system, says the company's general counsel, Carol Petren; Eli Lilly has her bird-dogging drug regulation, especially in the "follow-on biologics" field considered promising in the fight against cancer, in hopes of "preserving incentives for innovation," says Joe Kelley, the company's vice president of government and public affairs.
There's so much work, in fact, that certain painful sacrifices are required. The couple used to escape to the beloved retreat they own in Venice 10 or 12 times a year, but "now we only maybe get there six times a year," Heather Podesta says. Leaving Washington doesn't always really mean leaving Washington. In Venice they've hosted, among others, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, though she was a mere governor back then, and hung with, by Podesta's count, something like 20 members of Congress (Nevada Rep. Shelley Berkley, New York Rep. Eliot Engel, even Teddy Kennedy).
When the whole gang is back in town, there's reconnoitering to do at the Capitol. Before big votes, she does her "Heather Tour" to see who's there. Once the action starts, she's not above firing text messages at staffers and the occasional member of Congress.
"Are you with us?" she always wants to know, on behalf of her clients who get the benefit of working with a lobbyist who also happens to have raised $2.4 million in the last cycle alone for various candidates and Democratic election committees.
Energy business to conduct? The Podestas hosted a fundraiser in June for Rep. Henry Waxman of California, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Money matters?
Fundraiser back in April for Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Health care? Fundraiser in June for Reid. A Whole Lotta Love
So does this mean they're buying friends? The Podestas have their answer down: "We mostly raise money for people who are already our friends, rather than to get to know people," Tony says. Lots of friends these Podestas have -- they figure they've donated to or held fundraisers for all but one or two Democratic senators. (Heather noses out even her husband -- no mean feat -- in political contributions this year, $48,250 to $47,750, according to federal disclosures. Together the couple has bestowed $558,195 of love to candidates since 2004, according to CQ Moneyline.)
[They donate $95k of $558k ... that is nearly 20% to POLITICAL sources. Imagine if some rich Republican with billions donated 20% of his income.]
The Podestas are certainly not alone -- most lobbyists live with their checkbooks out. Government watchdog groups generally rip this money-churning as blatant influence-buying. Lobbyists tend to sigh, saying it's what they have to do to survive and noting they're always getting hit up, from both near and far. Case in point: Heather Podesta was briefly introduced to a candidate for New York City comptroller at Rangel's birthday party. Within days, he's asking for some cash, even though she doesn't lobby there.
"It may look like just a social scene to people outside the process, but it's actually a lot of hard work," says Terry Straub, a client of Heather Podesta's who is a senior vice president at U.S. Steel. "You have to do that to stay well-informed and connected. She's incredibly savvy."
Savvy enough to sometimes whup her hubby in the race to sign clients.
"It takes a Podesta to take out a Podesta," Heather says one afternoon, over lunch of Mediterranean lite.
Sometimes they compete on Capitol Hill, like the time he was representing nursing homes and she was representing rehabilitation hospitals in a fight over Medicare payments. They kept the battle out of their house -- church/state separation, Tony says. In the end, Heather's side won.
The couple met -- why aren't we surprised? -- through a government connection. Dorothy Robyn, a top economic adviser to President Clinton and a self-described "amateur yenta," ran into Heather on the street one day in 2001. Through tears, Heather revealed her second marriage was kaput.
The yenta swung into action. After the opera one night, Robyn presented a list of three eligibles, with Tony Podesta -- whom Robyn had dated briefly -- at the bottom. Robyn moved him up, past "two wonky types," when Heather kept saying she just "loooooves MEN." Tony Podesta, Robyn decided, was sufficiently "larger-than-life" to satisfy her, even though he was more than a quarter century older.
A romance quickly blossomed, followed almost immediately by a living-together period and, in 2003, a show-stopping wedding reception, with guests the likes of Pelosi, Leahy, Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Celebrity chef Roberto Donna, of Iron Chef and Galileo fame, and Kaz Okochi, of Kaz Sushi Bistro, personally cooked for the guests.
She got the ring, but kept her name. Miller.
Married, yes, but maybe still a hottie at the Capitol, where she was a top congressional aide in her pre-lobbyist days. One afternoon, while subbing for her boss, California Rep. Bob Matsui, at a meeting, another congressman, apparently a naughty dude, was "visually undressing her," she says. She rolled her eyes to discourage him. But a Teamsters rep thought she was dissing him, and boy, did he give her bosses an earful. That is, until he learned that the aide he knew as Miller was married to a Podesta. Full stop. He backed off. Podesta power confirmed . . . which brought her, six months or so after saying, "I do," to a question: To Podesta or not to Podesta? (She had waited that long, she says, "to see if the marriage took.")
" 'There are going to be people who hate you without knowing you,' " she remembers her new husband telling her. " 'And there are going to be others who are loyal to you without knowing you.' I thought that was a lot cooler."
So did Tony.
"I'm the third husband, but this is the first time she's changed her name. That should tell you something," says Tony Podesta, now 65.
Tony, Italian bachelor that he was, came -- of course -- with a Mama: Mary Podesta, who died in 2007 after spending a chunk of her 88 years making pesto for Democratic fundraisers. "The Pesto PAC" get-togethers used to take place at Tony's home in Fairfax County, but they sold it and now party at their Woodley Park home while spending the past 2 1/2 years converting a large Kalorama home into the ultimate party pad -- its cellar will house Tony's wine collection, which runs into the thousands of bottles -- and showcase for their vast art collection. (The couple recently donated Shepard Fairey's iconic Obama "Hope" poster to the National Portrait Gallery.)
Real-estate adventures haven't slowed the gusher of Heather Podesta party e-mails. A recent invite to a lunch at Charlie Palmer's for Sen. Patty Murray of Washington came with reminders about two fundraisers the next day: breakfast for Rep. Steve Driehaus of Ohio and the ill-fated Feinstein lunch, and six more in the next five weeks.
"How do you throw all those damn fundraisers, Heather?" former Illinois congressman Marty Russo barked at Podesta at Rangel's birthday party.
"You ought to come sometime," she shot back.
On the flight up to New York (Podesta gave up her first-class seat to sit with me in steerage), she acknowledges that sometimes it's all too much.
"I have days when we're having a fundraiser at the house, and I just hit a wall and go upstairs and go to sleep," she says.
On inauguration night, Heather and Tony organized a D.C. dinner for Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. The couple is close to Rendell -- Tony was a top strategist for Rendell's 2006 reelection campaign.
The Podestas booked every table at Posto, where they are regulars, for Rendell's supporters. But the Podestas also brought a few guests of their own.
"They were not there just to celebrate the victory, but wanted to talk to me about some things," Rendell says. "Tony and Heather are always working."
Debt and the Deficit
I suppose, Democrats could say - see, if Bush had not gotten us into a war in iraq and Afghanistan, we would only have a $5-6 trillion dollar deficit, or about half the entire national debt.
As it is - the deficit is nearly equal to the entire national debt (give or take).
Listening to a democrat lecture on economic issue is like listening to a pathological liar explaining why they are not a liar. Listening to a Republican explain economic issues is not as bad, but equally as confusing.
Obama to raise 10-year deficit to $9 trillion
Fri Aug 21, 2009
By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit projection to approximately $9 trillion from $7.108 trillion in a report next week, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.
The higher deficit figure, based on updated economic data, brings the White House budget office into line with outside estimates and gives further fuel to President Barack Obama's opponents, who say his spending plans are too expensive in light of budget shortfalls.
The White House took heat for sticking with its $7.108 trillion forecast earlier this year after the Congressional Budget Office forecast that deficits between 2010 and 2019 would total $9.1 trillion.
"The new forecasts are based on new data that reflect how severe the economic downturn was in the late fall of last year and the winter of this year," said the administration official, who is familiar with the budget mid-session review that is slated to be released next week.
"Our budget projections are now in line with the spring and summer projections that the Congressional Budget Office put out."
The White House budget office will also lower its deficit forecast for this fiscal year, which ends September 30, to $1.58 trillion from $1.84 trillion next week after removing $250 billion set aside for bank bailouts.
Record-breaking deficits have raised concerns about America's ability to finance its debt and whether the United States can maintain its top-tier AAA credit rating.
Politically, the deficit has been an albatross for Obama, a Democrat who is pushing forward with plans to overhaul the U.S. healthcare industry -- an initiative that could cost up to $1 trillion over 10 years -- and other promises, including reforming education and how the country handles energy.
DEFICIT WORRIES
Republicans have pounced on Obama for planning to spend too much when deficits are so high, and the issue is likely to loom large in next year's Congressional elections.
Obama, who has promised to halve the deficit by the end of his four-year term and likes to remind constituents he inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit from former President George W. Bush, says bringing down healthcare costs is critical to long-term deficit reduction.
Treasury markets have been worried all year about the mounting deficit. The United States relies on large foreign buyers such as China and Japan to cheaply finance its debt, and they may demand higher interest rates if they begin to doubt that the government can control its deficits.
"It's one of those underlying pieces of news that is liable to haunt the bond market at some point in the future," said Kim Rupert, managing director of global fixed income analysis at Action Economics LLC in San Francisco, referring to the revised 10-year deficit projection.
Many economists think it is unlikely the government can curtail spending, which means taxes would have to go up to cover the rising costs of providing retirement and healthcare benefits to aging Americans.
Higher taxes, which could slow economic growth, are also a major concern of voters on both sides of the political divide. Obama has promised not to raise taxes on Americans making less than $250,000 a year.
taxes
As it is - the deficit is nearly equal to the entire national debt (give or take).
Listening to a democrat lecture on economic issue is like listening to a pathological liar explaining why they are not a liar. Listening to a Republican explain economic issues is not as bad, but equally as confusing.
Obama to raise 10-year deficit to $9 trillion
Fri Aug 21, 2009
By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit projection to approximately $9 trillion from $7.108 trillion in a report next week, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.
The higher deficit figure, based on updated economic data, brings the White House budget office into line with outside estimates and gives further fuel to President Barack Obama's opponents, who say his spending plans are too expensive in light of budget shortfalls.
The White House took heat for sticking with its $7.108 trillion forecast earlier this year after the Congressional Budget Office forecast that deficits between 2010 and 2019 would total $9.1 trillion.
"The new forecasts are based on new data that reflect how severe the economic downturn was in the late fall of last year and the winter of this year," said the administration official, who is familiar with the budget mid-session review that is slated to be released next week.
"Our budget projections are now in line with the spring and summer projections that the Congressional Budget Office put out."
The White House budget office will also lower its deficit forecast for this fiscal year, which ends September 30, to $1.58 trillion from $1.84 trillion next week after removing $250 billion set aside for bank bailouts.
Record-breaking deficits have raised concerns about America's ability to finance its debt and whether the United States can maintain its top-tier AAA credit rating.
Politically, the deficit has been an albatross for Obama, a Democrat who is pushing forward with plans to overhaul the U.S. healthcare industry -- an initiative that could cost up to $1 trillion over 10 years -- and other promises, including reforming education and how the country handles energy.
DEFICIT WORRIES
Republicans have pounced on Obama for planning to spend too much when deficits are so high, and the issue is likely to loom large in next year's Congressional elections.
Obama, who has promised to halve the deficit by the end of his four-year term and likes to remind constituents he inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit from former President George W. Bush, says bringing down healthcare costs is critical to long-term deficit reduction.
Treasury markets have been worried all year about the mounting deficit. The United States relies on large foreign buyers such as China and Japan to cheaply finance its debt, and they may demand higher interest rates if they begin to doubt that the government can control its deficits.
"It's one of those underlying pieces of news that is liable to haunt the bond market at some point in the future," said Kim Rupert, managing director of global fixed income analysis at Action Economics LLC in San Francisco, referring to the revised 10-year deficit projection.
Many economists think it is unlikely the government can curtail spending, which means taxes would have to go up to cover the rising costs of providing retirement and healthcare benefits to aging Americans.
Higher taxes, which could slow economic growth, are also a major concern of voters on both sides of the political divide. Obama has promised not to raise taxes on Americans making less than $250,000 a year.
taxes
Barack the Big Spender: What National Debt.
Our combined total public debt, when Clinton took office was $4 trillion, 175 billion. When Bill left office, the debt was $5 trillion 727 billion. Democrats were happy. He lowered the debt, well, at least they figured he did, but it went up 1.5 trillion. When Bush took office, the national debt was $5,711 billion. When Bush left office, the national debt was $10,628 billion. Enough to choke on. Bush raised the debt over $5 trillion in 8 years. (public debt which excludes intragovernmental)
Between the time Barack took office and August 24, the US national debt has increased $1.1 trillion.
Liberals were having apoplectic fits over the debt increases Bush caused and or permitted. Screeching, howling, hissing, spitting fits. Now, yes, we understand - they will say that X and Y and Z is really behind it and it isn't his fault. Neither is war anyones fault - we did not ask to be attacked, we did not ask to be the very nearly only state to pay for the worlds funding against terrorism. But for liberals that sort of expenditure isn't good, good for liberals is social spending, equality - not freedom.
Using the most conservative analysis of financing - we, as a country can manage a $6 trillion debt, we can even do a $10 trillion without too much stress. We can go to $15 trillion and manage fine. We could probably make our way to $20 trillion without too much trauma. However, beyond that number we are in dire straits. According to the White House, with the $9 trillion deficit, we have just breached the $20 trillion mark and that is not including every other source for debt. Dire straits and how many liberals are screeching now?
Not that I watch news, but I don't read anything about liberals caring one iota about Obama raking up more than a $1 trillion in 7+ months.
That isn't the worst part ... our deficits are one part of the national debt. We incur national debt from other 'sources' in addition to the deficit. Keeping that in mind .....
White House projects bigger deficits, bigger debt
By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer
August 25, 2009
WASHINGTON – The federal government faces exploding deficits and mounting debt over the next decade, White House officials predicted Tuesday in a fiscal assessment far bleaker than what the Obama administration had estimated just a few months ago.
Figures released by the White House budget office foresee a cumulative $9 trillion deficit from 2010-2019, $2 trillion more than the administration estimated in May. Moreover, the figures show the public debt doubling by 2019 and reaching three-quarters the size of the entire national economy.
Obama economic adviser Christina Romer predicted unemployment could reach 10 percent this year and begin a slow decline next year. Still, she said, the average unemployment will be 9.3 in 2009 and 9.8 percent in 2010.
"This recession was simply worse than the information that we and other forecasters had back in last fall and early this winter," Romer said.
The grim administration projections came on a day of competing economic news. The Congressional Budget Office, which has predicted less economic growth than the White House in the past, was also scheduled to announce revised budget projections on Tuesday.
Obama himself may have drowned out the rising deficit news with the announcement Tuesday that he intends to nominate Ben Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Bernanke news could neutralize any disturbance in the financial markets caused by the high deficit projections.
The deeper red ink and the gloomy unemployment forecast present President Barack Obama with an enormous challenge. The new numbers come as he prods Congress to enact a major overhaul of the health care system — one that could cost $1 trillion or more over 10 years.
Obama has said he doesn't want the measure to add to the deficit, but lawmakers have been unable to agree on revenues that cover the cost.
What's more, the high unemployment could last well into the congressional election campaign next year, turning the contests into a referendum on Obama's economic policies.
Republicans were ready to pounce.
"The alarm bells on our nation's fiscal condition have now become a siren," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said. "If anyone had any doubts that this burden on future generations is unsustainable, they're gone — spending, borrowing and debt are out of control."
The revised estimates project that the economy will contract by 2.8 percent this year, more than twice what the White House predicted earlier this year. Romer projected that the economy would expand in 2010, but by 2 percent instead of the 3.2 percent growth the White House predicted in May. By 2011, Romer estimated, the economy would be humming at 3.6 percent growth.
Both Romer and budget director Peter Orszag said this year's contraction would have been far worse without money from the $787 billion economic stimulus package that Obama pushed through Congress as one of his first major acts as president.
At the same time, the continuing stresses on the economy have, in effect, increased the size of the stimulus package because the government will have to spend more in unemployment insurance and food stamps, Orszag said. He said the cost of the stimulus package — which spends most of its money in fiscal year 2010 — will grow by tens of billions of dollars above the original $787 billion.
For now, while the country tries to come out of a recession, neither spending cuts nor broad tax increases would be prudent deficit-fighting measures. But Obama is likely to face those choices once the economy shows signs of a steady recovery, and it could test his vow to only raise taxes on individuals making more than $200,000.
Still, 10-year budget projections can be "wildly inaccurate," said Stan Collender, a partner at Qorvis Communications and a former congressional budget official. Collender notes that there will be five congressional elections over the next 10 years and any number of foreign and domestic challenges that will make actual deficit figures very different from the estimates.
The Obama administration did tout one number in its budget review: The 2009 deficit was expected to be $1.58 trillion, $263 billion less than projected in May. That's largely because the White House removed a $250 billion item that it had inserted as a "place holder" in case banks needed another bailout.
Orszag, anticipating backlash over the deficit numbers, conceded that the long-term deficits are "higher than desirable." The annual negative balances amount to about 4 percent of the gross domestic product, a number that many economists say is unsustainable.
But Orszag also argued that overhauling the health system would reduce health care costs and address the biggest contributor to higher deficits.
"I know there are going to be some who say that this report proves that we can't afford health reform," he said. "I think that has it backwards."
Between the time Barack took office and August 24, the US national debt has increased $1.1 trillion.
Liberals were having apoplectic fits over the debt increases Bush caused and or permitted. Screeching, howling, hissing, spitting fits. Now, yes, we understand - they will say that X and Y and Z is really behind it and it isn't his fault. Neither is war anyones fault - we did not ask to be attacked, we did not ask to be the very nearly only state to pay for the worlds funding against terrorism. But for liberals that sort of expenditure isn't good, good for liberals is social spending, equality - not freedom.
Using the most conservative analysis of financing - we, as a country can manage a $6 trillion debt, we can even do a $10 trillion without too much stress. We can go to $15 trillion and manage fine. We could probably make our way to $20 trillion without too much trauma. However, beyond that number we are in dire straits. According to the White House, with the $9 trillion deficit, we have just breached the $20 trillion mark and that is not including every other source for debt. Dire straits and how many liberals are screeching now?
Not that I watch news, but I don't read anything about liberals caring one iota about Obama raking up more than a $1 trillion in 7+ months.
That isn't the worst part ... our deficits are one part of the national debt. We incur national debt from other 'sources' in addition to the deficit. Keeping that in mind .....
White House projects bigger deficits, bigger debt
By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer
August 25, 2009
WASHINGTON – The federal government faces exploding deficits and mounting debt over the next decade, White House officials predicted Tuesday in a fiscal assessment far bleaker than what the Obama administration had estimated just a few months ago.
Figures released by the White House budget office foresee a cumulative $9 trillion deficit from 2010-2019, $2 trillion more than the administration estimated in May. Moreover, the figures show the public debt doubling by 2019 and reaching three-quarters the size of the entire national economy.
Obama economic adviser Christina Romer predicted unemployment could reach 10 percent this year and begin a slow decline next year. Still, she said, the average unemployment will be 9.3 in 2009 and 9.8 percent in 2010.
"This recession was simply worse than the information that we and other forecasters had back in last fall and early this winter," Romer said.
The grim administration projections came on a day of competing economic news. The Congressional Budget Office, which has predicted less economic growth than the White House in the past, was also scheduled to announce revised budget projections on Tuesday.
Obama himself may have drowned out the rising deficit news with the announcement Tuesday that he intends to nominate Ben Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Bernanke news could neutralize any disturbance in the financial markets caused by the high deficit projections.
The deeper red ink and the gloomy unemployment forecast present President Barack Obama with an enormous challenge. The new numbers come as he prods Congress to enact a major overhaul of the health care system — one that could cost $1 trillion or more over 10 years.
Obama has said he doesn't want the measure to add to the deficit, but lawmakers have been unable to agree on revenues that cover the cost.
What's more, the high unemployment could last well into the congressional election campaign next year, turning the contests into a referendum on Obama's economic policies.
Republicans were ready to pounce.
"The alarm bells on our nation's fiscal condition have now become a siren," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said. "If anyone had any doubts that this burden on future generations is unsustainable, they're gone — spending, borrowing and debt are out of control."
The revised estimates project that the economy will contract by 2.8 percent this year, more than twice what the White House predicted earlier this year. Romer projected that the economy would expand in 2010, but by 2 percent instead of the 3.2 percent growth the White House predicted in May. By 2011, Romer estimated, the economy would be humming at 3.6 percent growth.
Both Romer and budget director Peter Orszag said this year's contraction would have been far worse without money from the $787 billion economic stimulus package that Obama pushed through Congress as one of his first major acts as president.
At the same time, the continuing stresses on the economy have, in effect, increased the size of the stimulus package because the government will have to spend more in unemployment insurance and food stamps, Orszag said. He said the cost of the stimulus package — which spends most of its money in fiscal year 2010 — will grow by tens of billions of dollars above the original $787 billion.
For now, while the country tries to come out of a recession, neither spending cuts nor broad tax increases would be prudent deficit-fighting measures. But Obama is likely to face those choices once the economy shows signs of a steady recovery, and it could test his vow to only raise taxes on individuals making more than $200,000.
Still, 10-year budget projections can be "wildly inaccurate," said Stan Collender, a partner at Qorvis Communications and a former congressional budget official. Collender notes that there will be five congressional elections over the next 10 years and any number of foreign and domestic challenges that will make actual deficit figures very different from the estimates.
The Obama administration did tout one number in its budget review: The 2009 deficit was expected to be $1.58 trillion, $263 billion less than projected in May. That's largely because the White House removed a $250 billion item that it had inserted as a "place holder" in case banks needed another bailout.
Orszag, anticipating backlash over the deficit numbers, conceded that the long-term deficits are "higher than desirable." The annual negative balances amount to about 4 percent of the gross domestic product, a number that many economists say is unsustainable.
But Orszag also argued that overhauling the health system would reduce health care costs and address the biggest contributor to higher deficits.
"I know there are going to be some who say that this report proves that we can't afford health reform," he said. "I think that has it backwards."
CIA: Blackwater Please Kill Al Qaida
August 20, 2009
The New York Times
C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help to Kill Jihadists
By MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.
Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.
The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said.
It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations.
Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune.
Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program.
Blackwater, which has changed its name, most recently to Xe Services, and is based in North Carolina, in recent years has received millions of dollars in government contracts, growing so large that the Bush administration said it was a necessary part of its war operation in Iraq.
It has also drawn controversy. Blackwater employees hired to guard American diplomats in Iraq were accused of using excessive force on several occasions, including shootings in Baghdad in 2007 in which 17 civilians were killed. Iraqi officials have since refused to give the company an operating license.
Several current and former government officials interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing details of a still classified program.
Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, declined to provide details about the canceled program, but he said that Mr. Panetta’s decision on the assassination program was “clear and straightforward.”
“Director Panetta thought this effort should be briefed to Congress, and he did so,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “He also knew it hadn’t been successful, so he ended it.”
A Xe spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, also declined to give details of the program. But she praised Mr. Panetta for notifying Congress.
“It is too easy to contract out work that you don’t want to accept responsibility for,” she said.
The C.I.A. this summer conducted an internal review of the assassination program that recently was presented to the White House and the Congressional intelligence committees. The officials said that the review stated that Mr. Panetta’s predecessors did not believe that they needed to tell Congress because the program was not far enough developed.
The House Intelligence Committee is investigating why lawmakers were never told about the program. According to current and former government officials, former Vice President Dick Cheney told C.I.A. officers in 2002 that the spy agency did not need to inform Congress because the agency already had legal authority to kill Qaeda leaders.
One official familiar with the matter said that Mr. Panetta did not tell lawmakers that he believed that the C.I.A. had broken the law by withholding details about the program from Congress. Rather, the official said, Mr. Panetta said he believed that the program had moved beyond a planning stage and deserved Congressional scrutiny.
“It’s wrong to think this counterterrorism program was confined to briefing slides or doodles on a cafeteria napkin,” the official said. “It went well beyond that.”
Current and former government officials said that the C.I.A.’s efforts to use paramilitary hit teams to kill Qaeda operatives ran into logistical, legal and diplomatic hurdles almost from the outset. These efforts had been run by the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, which runs operations against Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks.
In 2002, Blackwater won a classified contract to provide security for the C.I.A. station in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the company maintains other classified contracts with the C.I.A., current and former officials said.
Over the years, Blackwater has hired several former top C.I.A. officials, including Cofer Black, who ran the C.I.A. counterterrorism center immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks.
C.I.A. operatives also regularly use the company’s training complex in North Carolina. The complex includes a shooting range used for sniper training.
An executive order signed by President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 barred the C.I.A. from carrying out assassinations, a direct response to revelations that the C.I.A. had initiated assassination plots against Fidel Castro of Cuba and other foreign politicians.
The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that attacked the United States and has pledged to attack it again, was no different from killing enemy soldiers in battle, and that therefore the agency was not constrained by the assassination ban.
But former intelligence officials said that employing private contractors to help hunt Qaeda operatives would pose significant legal and diplomatic risks, and they might not be protected in the same way government employees are.
Some Congressional Democrats have hinted that the program was just one of many that the Bush administration hid from Congressional scrutiny and have used the episode as a justification to delve deeper into other Bush-era counterterrorism programs.
But Republicans have criticized Mr. Panetta’s decision to cancel the program, saying he created a tempest in a teapot.
“I think there was a little more drama and intrigue than was warranted,” said Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
Officials said that the C.I.A. program was devised partly as an alternative to missile strikes using drone aircraft, which have accidentally killed civilians and cannot be used in urban areas where some terrorists hide.
Yet with most top Qaeda operatives believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of Pakistan, the drones have remained the C.I.A.’s weapon of choice. Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has embraced the drone campaign because it presents a less risky option than sending paramilitary teams into Pakistan.
CIA
The New York Times
C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help to Kill Jihadists
By MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.
Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.
The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said.
It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations.
Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune.
Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program.
Blackwater, which has changed its name, most recently to Xe Services, and is based in North Carolina, in recent years has received millions of dollars in government contracts, growing so large that the Bush administration said it was a necessary part of its war operation in Iraq.
It has also drawn controversy. Blackwater employees hired to guard American diplomats in Iraq were accused of using excessive force on several occasions, including shootings in Baghdad in 2007 in which 17 civilians were killed. Iraqi officials have since refused to give the company an operating license.
Several current and former government officials interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing details of a still classified program.
Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, declined to provide details about the canceled program, but he said that Mr. Panetta’s decision on the assassination program was “clear and straightforward.”
“Director Panetta thought this effort should be briefed to Congress, and he did so,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “He also knew it hadn’t been successful, so he ended it.”
A Xe spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, also declined to give details of the program. But she praised Mr. Panetta for notifying Congress.
“It is too easy to contract out work that you don’t want to accept responsibility for,” she said.
The C.I.A. this summer conducted an internal review of the assassination program that recently was presented to the White House and the Congressional intelligence committees. The officials said that the review stated that Mr. Panetta’s predecessors did not believe that they needed to tell Congress because the program was not far enough developed.
The House Intelligence Committee is investigating why lawmakers were never told about the program. According to current and former government officials, former Vice President Dick Cheney told C.I.A. officers in 2002 that the spy agency did not need to inform Congress because the agency already had legal authority to kill Qaeda leaders.
One official familiar with the matter said that Mr. Panetta did not tell lawmakers that he believed that the C.I.A. had broken the law by withholding details about the program from Congress. Rather, the official said, Mr. Panetta said he believed that the program had moved beyond a planning stage and deserved Congressional scrutiny.
“It’s wrong to think this counterterrorism program was confined to briefing slides or doodles on a cafeteria napkin,” the official said. “It went well beyond that.”
Current and former government officials said that the C.I.A.’s efforts to use paramilitary hit teams to kill Qaeda operatives ran into logistical, legal and diplomatic hurdles almost from the outset. These efforts had been run by the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, which runs operations against Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks.
In 2002, Blackwater won a classified contract to provide security for the C.I.A. station in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the company maintains other classified contracts with the C.I.A., current and former officials said.
Over the years, Blackwater has hired several former top C.I.A. officials, including Cofer Black, who ran the C.I.A. counterterrorism center immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks.
C.I.A. operatives also regularly use the company’s training complex in North Carolina. The complex includes a shooting range used for sniper training.
An executive order signed by President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 barred the C.I.A. from carrying out assassinations, a direct response to revelations that the C.I.A. had initiated assassination plots against Fidel Castro of Cuba and other foreign politicians.
The Bush administration took the position that killing members of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group that attacked the United States and has pledged to attack it again, was no different from killing enemy soldiers in battle, and that therefore the agency was not constrained by the assassination ban.
But former intelligence officials said that employing private contractors to help hunt Qaeda operatives would pose significant legal and diplomatic risks, and they might not be protected in the same way government employees are.
Some Congressional Democrats have hinted that the program was just one of many that the Bush administration hid from Congressional scrutiny and have used the episode as a justification to delve deeper into other Bush-era counterterrorism programs.
But Republicans have criticized Mr. Panetta’s decision to cancel the program, saying he created a tempest in a teapot.
“I think there was a little more drama and intrigue than was warranted,” said Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
Officials said that the C.I.A. program was devised partly as an alternative to missile strikes using drone aircraft, which have accidentally killed civilians and cannot be used in urban areas where some terrorists hide.
Yet with most top Qaeda operatives believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of Pakistan, the drones have remained the C.I.A.’s weapon of choice. Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has embraced the drone campaign because it presents a less risky option than sending paramilitary teams into Pakistan.
CIA
What's good for the Goose is good for Obama !
Firms with Obama ties profit from health push
By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer
August 19, 2009
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's push for a national health care overhaul is providing a financial windfall in the election offseason to Democratic consulting firms that are closely connected to the president and two top advisers.
Coalitions of interest groups running at least $24 million in pro-overhaul ads hired GMMB, which worked for Obama's 2008 campaign and whose partners include a top Obama campaign strategist. They also hired AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama's campaign and now to the White House. AKPD did work for Obama's campaign, and Axelrod's son Michael and Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe work there.
The firms were hired by Americans for Stable Quality Care and its predecessor, Healthy Economy Now. Each was formed by a coalition of interests with big stakes in health care policy, including the drug maker lobby PhRMA, the American Medical Association, the Service Employees International Union and Families USA, which calls itself "The Voice for Health Care Consumers."
Their ads press for changes in health care policy. Healthy Economy Now made one of the same arguments that Obama does: that health care costs are delaying the country's economic recovery and that changes are needed if the economy is to rebound.
There is no evidence that Axelrod directly profited from the group's ads. Axelrod took steps to separate himself from AKPD when he joined Obama's White House. AKPD owes him $2 million from his stock sale and will make preset payments over four years, starting with $350,000 on Dec. 31, according to Axelrod's personal financial disclosure report.
A larger issue is a network of relationships and overlapping interests that resembles some seen in past administrations and could prove a problem as Obama tries to win the public over on health care and fulfill his promise to change the way Washington works, said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a government watchdog group.
"Even if these are obvious bedfellows and kind of standard PR maneuvers, it still stands to undercut Obama's credibility," Krumholz said. "The potential takeaway from the public is 'friends in cahoots to engineer a grass roots result.'"
White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said that Axelrod has had no communications with Healthy Economy Now or with Americans for Stable Quality Care, and his payments aren't affected by the ad contracts. Axelrod's son, a salaried AKPD employee, doesn't work with either coalition "or stand to benefit from that work," LaBolt said.
"David Axelrod has fully complied with the toughest-ever ethics rules for administration officials, including divesting from AKPD before the administration began," LaBolt said.
Ken Johnson, a PhRMA senior vice president, said GMMB and AKPD were the only two firms working on the $24 million in ads. He declined to reveal how much each was paid beyond saying that each received a small percentage of the total. The coalition's campaign team decided to hire the two firms, he said.
"In a perfect world, it's a distraction we don't need right now, but these are very gifted consultants who have done very good work," Johnson said. "And it's also important to remember that at the end of the day, the coalition partners determine the message."
Healthy Economy Now spokesman Jeremy Van Ess said the two firms were hired because "they are the best at what they do. Period." The coalition didn't seek approval or direction on any of its activities from the White House, said Van Ess, a partner in a consulting firm that has worked on Democratic Senate election activities and a former speechwriter for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
AKPD and GMMB both proudly proclaim their connections to Obama on their Web sites.
AKPD has a full page on Axelrod that includes pictures of Obama. In one photo, Obama hugs Plouffe on election night.
"We are deeply honored to have been part of Barack Obama's historic campaign to change America and the world," GMMB says on its Web site. GMMB's partners include Jim Margolis, a senior strategist for Obama's presidential campaign.
Both GMMB and AKPD also have worked for Democrats this year. The Democratic National Committee paid AKPD at least $106,000 for polling, media production, communication consulting and travel costs from February through April. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee paid GMMB roughly $75,000 from February through June for ads. And GMMB took in at least $9,000 this year from Senate leader Reid's political action committee for communications consulting.
good for the goose
By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer
August 19, 2009
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's push for a national health care overhaul is providing a financial windfall in the election offseason to Democratic consulting firms that are closely connected to the president and two top advisers.
Coalitions of interest groups running at least $24 million in pro-overhaul ads hired GMMB, which worked for Obama's 2008 campaign and whose partners include a top Obama campaign strategist. They also hired AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama's campaign and now to the White House. AKPD did work for Obama's campaign, and Axelrod's son Michael and Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe work there.
The firms were hired by Americans for Stable Quality Care and its predecessor, Healthy Economy Now. Each was formed by a coalition of interests with big stakes in health care policy, including the drug maker lobby PhRMA, the American Medical Association, the Service Employees International Union and Families USA, which calls itself "The Voice for Health Care Consumers."
Their ads press for changes in health care policy. Healthy Economy Now made one of the same arguments that Obama does: that health care costs are delaying the country's economic recovery and that changes are needed if the economy is to rebound.
There is no evidence that Axelrod directly profited from the group's ads. Axelrod took steps to separate himself from AKPD when he joined Obama's White House. AKPD owes him $2 million from his stock sale and will make preset payments over four years, starting with $350,000 on Dec. 31, according to Axelrod's personal financial disclosure report.
A larger issue is a network of relationships and overlapping interests that resembles some seen in past administrations and could prove a problem as Obama tries to win the public over on health care and fulfill his promise to change the way Washington works, said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a government watchdog group.
"Even if these are obvious bedfellows and kind of standard PR maneuvers, it still stands to undercut Obama's credibility," Krumholz said. "The potential takeaway from the public is 'friends in cahoots to engineer a grass roots result.'"
White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said that Axelrod has had no communications with Healthy Economy Now or with Americans for Stable Quality Care, and his payments aren't affected by the ad contracts. Axelrod's son, a salaried AKPD employee, doesn't work with either coalition "or stand to benefit from that work," LaBolt said.
"David Axelrod has fully complied with the toughest-ever ethics rules for administration officials, including divesting from AKPD before the administration began," LaBolt said.
Ken Johnson, a PhRMA senior vice president, said GMMB and AKPD were the only two firms working on the $24 million in ads. He declined to reveal how much each was paid beyond saying that each received a small percentage of the total. The coalition's campaign team decided to hire the two firms, he said.
"In a perfect world, it's a distraction we don't need right now, but these are very gifted consultants who have done very good work," Johnson said. "And it's also important to remember that at the end of the day, the coalition partners determine the message."
Healthy Economy Now spokesman Jeremy Van Ess said the two firms were hired because "they are the best at what they do. Period." The coalition didn't seek approval or direction on any of its activities from the White House, said Van Ess, a partner in a consulting firm that has worked on Democratic Senate election activities and a former speechwriter for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
AKPD and GMMB both proudly proclaim their connections to Obama on their Web sites.
AKPD has a full page on Axelrod that includes pictures of Obama. In one photo, Obama hugs Plouffe on election night.
"We are deeply honored to have been part of Barack Obama's historic campaign to change America and the world," GMMB says on its Web site. GMMB's partners include Jim Margolis, a senior strategist for Obama's presidential campaign.
Both GMMB and AKPD also have worked for Democrats this year. The Democratic National Committee paid AKPD at least $106,000 for polling, media production, communication consulting and travel costs from February through April. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee paid GMMB roughly $75,000 from February through June for ads. And GMMB took in at least $9,000 this year from Senate leader Reid's political action committee for communications consulting.
good for the goose
Democrats on Parade - Brownshirts and Nazi Guards
Nazi guards, Brown shirts.
Funny.
A video link after the story is worth watching.
August 13, 2009
Baird apologizes for 'brown shirt' comments
Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) apologized yesterday for accusing town hall protesters of "brown shirt tactics" and comparing them to a "lynch mob."
Baird, who originally decided against holding town hall meetings because of expected protests, now says he'll schedule some forums during the August recess.
"Frankly, I have had concerns about how we can have constructive dialogue and, unfortunately, in response to some of the things we've been seeing across the nation I have said some things myself that I regret," Baird said, according to the Tacoma News Tribune.
"I want to express that regret directly and announce that we will be holding a series of five town halls so people can express their opinions and ask questions."
Baird made headlines last week by comparing town hall protesters to Nazi guards.
"What we're seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics," Baird told the Columbian. "I mean that very seriously."
*********************************
Video Link:
Congressman baird at a Townhall meeting!!
Brilliant
Funny.
A video link after the story is worth watching.
August 13, 2009
Baird apologizes for 'brown shirt' comments
Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) apologized yesterday for accusing town hall protesters of "brown shirt tactics" and comparing them to a "lynch mob."
Baird, who originally decided against holding town hall meetings because of expected protests, now says he'll schedule some forums during the August recess.
"Frankly, I have had concerns about how we can have constructive dialogue and, unfortunately, in response to some of the things we've been seeing across the nation I have said some things myself that I regret," Baird said, according to the Tacoma News Tribune.
"I want to express that regret directly and announce that we will be holding a series of five town halls so people can express their opinions and ask questions."
Baird made headlines last week by comparing town hall protesters to Nazi guards.
"What we're seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics," Baird told the Columbian. "I mean that very seriously."
*********************************
Video Link:
Congressman baird at a Townhall meeting!!
Brilliant
Obama and Bush: Bush never said he was a partner with God in life and death.
Paging liberals! When Bush said he prayed often, you mocked him. That he should commune with God on such issues as war, life and death - you mocked.
Now your Savior has said what amounts to something similar - although he does not mean it in the same way - in this, Obama is suggesting we are co-partners wirth God in deciding who lives and who dies, but we'll leave that aside given the lack of foundation for it.
August 19, 2009
'We are God's partners in matters of life and death'
A reader points out that President Obama's call with the rabbis today — as recorded in Rabbi Jack Moline's and other clerics' Twitter feeds — freights health care reform with a great deal of religious meaning, and veers into the blend of policy and faith that outraged liberals in the last administration.
"We are God's partners in matters of life and death," Obama said, according to Moline (paging Sarah Palin...), quoting from the Rosh Hashanah prayer that says that in the holiday period, it is decided "who shall live and who shall die."
The president ended the call by wishing the rabbis "shanah tovah," or happy new year — in reference to the High Holidays a month from now.
Obama
Now your Savior has said what amounts to something similar - although he does not mean it in the same way - in this, Obama is suggesting we are co-partners wirth God in deciding who lives and who dies, but we'll leave that aside given the lack of foundation for it.
August 19, 2009
'We are God's partners in matters of life and death'
A reader points out that President Obama's call with the rabbis today — as recorded in Rabbi Jack Moline's and other clerics' Twitter feeds — freights health care reform with a great deal of religious meaning, and veers into the blend of policy and faith that outraged liberals in the last administration.
"We are God's partners in matters of life and death," Obama said, according to Moline (paging Sarah Palin...), quoting from the Rosh Hashanah prayer that says that in the holiday period, it is decided "who shall live and who shall die."
The president ended the call by wishing the rabbis "shanah tovah," or happy new year — in reference to the High Holidays a month from now.
Obama
Monday, August 24, 2009
Europe v US: Work Ethic
European attitude toward work:
Europe is a class-based system, whether in practice today or historically. Like anyone burdened by traumatic events (in this case a classed society - aristocracy and nobility versus peasants), they live under that past and have never escaped from its allure. Who doesn't want to be nobility - to not work, to lazy around all day and eat grapes. Marx believed we should all become poets. For Europeans, work is a bad thing, it is something you do in order to do something you prefer doing. Work is a bad thing - a place you go for punishment. The ideal for Europeans is to not work, to be like the aristocrats - to be free of work.
In America, we value work - we value the entrepreneur, we value the ideal of freedom achieved through work. We do not seek to become aristocratic, we seek to be free.
Europeans seek to be equal to the best - to sit on the chaise and gobble down grapes.
Two different value systems.
I prefer ours in terms of where I would want to live and raise children.
I prefer theirs in terms of a place to go for vacations.
European
Europe is a class-based system, whether in practice today or historically. Like anyone burdened by traumatic events (in this case a classed society - aristocracy and nobility versus peasants), they live under that past and have never escaped from its allure. Who doesn't want to be nobility - to not work, to lazy around all day and eat grapes. Marx believed we should all become poets. For Europeans, work is a bad thing, it is something you do in order to do something you prefer doing. Work is a bad thing - a place you go for punishment. The ideal for Europeans is to not work, to be like the aristocrats - to be free of work.
In America, we value work - we value the entrepreneur, we value the ideal of freedom achieved through work. We do not seek to become aristocratic, we seek to be free.
Europeans seek to be equal to the best - to sit on the chaise and gobble down grapes.
Two different value systems.
I prefer ours in terms of where I would want to live and raise children.
I prefer theirs in terms of a place to go for vacations.
European
The Honeymoon is Over - the Fog has Lifted, let the cat fights begin.
The thrill is gone for Obama and the media
Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
August 24, 2009
Washington Examiner
There’s nothing like a summer vacation to rekindle a romance. So maybe a week on Martha’s Vineyard can bring back some of the magic between the Obama administration and the media.
Before White House press secretary Robert Gibbs left town, he tried to clarify President Barack Obama’s comment that “everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up.” Gibbs explained to reporters that what the president meant was that they were a bunch of bed wetters who made too much out of the implosion of the White House health care strategy.
Gibbs has grown more sardonic and patronizing as the summer wears on and Obama’s poll numbers wilt.
The press secretary has lectured reporters on the nature of their jobs — apparently to defend the administration against “misinformation” rather than asking impertinent questions like “How will you pay for it?”
When asked recently about the administration’s endless evasions on the public option, Gibbs instead opted to define a monopoly.“If you had one place to eat lunch before you came to the briefing, do you think it would be cheap?” Gibbs demanded of CNN’s Ed Henry.
Henry should have asked Gibbs to define monopsony: a market in which one buyer is so large that it can control suppliers and ruin competitors. Henry could then explain he’d rather pay too much for the sandwich he wanted than have to eat at a government chow line opened across the street to encourage “competition.”
Gibbs is so crabby because, incredibly, the administration blames the media for the president’s problems.
It tried blaming Republicans, but the GOP is too far out of power. When the leader of the free world is complaining about a posting on the former governor of Alaska’s Facebook page, he’s got problems.
Team Obama tried blaming special interests, but that was a bust too. The president’s deal with the pharmaceutical industry gets him $150 million worth of ads to boost his plan, whatever it is.
The same people who bombard us with ads for products that promise to prevent hardened arteries or encourage hardening elsewhere will soon be selling you Obamacare.
“If you experience doubts about the plan lasting more than four hours, seek immediate help from Organizing for America.”
Democrats tried blaming the “mobs” of “un-American” protesters and “evil mongers” who were giving raspberries to members of Congress at town halls.
That flopped too, leaving the administration to blame the messenger.
And one can understand why Gibbs would be a bit shocked by the slightly less accommodating tone of the media.
Reporters who traveled with the Obama campaign tell horror stories about the organization — dishonesty, rudeness and abysmal access. But those reporters still served up the glowing coverage.
Obama was the hottest news story of their generation. Rather than covering the long-shot freshman senator who would be crushed in February, Obama campaign reporters experienced the reflected glory of being along for a historic journey. There was plenty of motivation to keep that journey going.
Conversely, Obama making a hash out of health care provides plenty of good copy for the White House press corps. And because Obama fatigue has set in with the reading and viewing public, skeptical stories match the national mood.
Some are still in the tank for Obama. But many liberal reporters think the president is blowing the Left’s big chance.
In talking about how everything got so “wee-weed up,” Obama observed that in August of 2008 the media predicted doom because John McCain began to close the gap after picking Sarah Palin.
In trying to explain that the president was talking about media incontinence, Gibbs referred to August and September of 2007, when most predicted Hillary Clinton would roll to victory in Iowa.
So not only are Obama and his people still reliving the campaign, they’re drawing the wrong lessons from it.
At this point in 2007, Obama was coming up in the polls, making Iowa a three-way race with Clinton and John Edwards. Now, the president’s numbers are sinking.
And if the trend line in the late summer of 2008 had held, Obama would have lost. It took a tsunami of bad economic news and the McCain campaign’s mishandling of it to put Obama back on top.
But there is no opponent here other than public opinion and no finish line other than the end of his term.
With only the steady breeze of favorable coverage of a typical Democratic president instead of the gale of positive press that once helped drive Obama to victory, it’s going to be a very long journey.
Obamanation
Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
August 24, 2009
Washington Examiner
There’s nothing like a summer vacation to rekindle a romance. So maybe a week on Martha’s Vineyard can bring back some of the magic between the Obama administration and the media.
Before White House press secretary Robert Gibbs left town, he tried to clarify President Barack Obama’s comment that “everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up.” Gibbs explained to reporters that what the president meant was that they were a bunch of bed wetters who made too much out of the implosion of the White House health care strategy.
Gibbs has grown more sardonic and patronizing as the summer wears on and Obama’s poll numbers wilt.
The press secretary has lectured reporters on the nature of their jobs — apparently to defend the administration against “misinformation” rather than asking impertinent questions like “How will you pay for it?”
When asked recently about the administration’s endless evasions on the public option, Gibbs instead opted to define a monopoly.“If you had one place to eat lunch before you came to the briefing, do you think it would be cheap?” Gibbs demanded of CNN’s Ed Henry.
Henry should have asked Gibbs to define monopsony: a market in which one buyer is so large that it can control suppliers and ruin competitors. Henry could then explain he’d rather pay too much for the sandwich he wanted than have to eat at a government chow line opened across the street to encourage “competition.”
Gibbs is so crabby because, incredibly, the administration blames the media for the president’s problems.
It tried blaming Republicans, but the GOP is too far out of power. When the leader of the free world is complaining about a posting on the former governor of Alaska’s Facebook page, he’s got problems.
Team Obama tried blaming special interests, but that was a bust too. The president’s deal with the pharmaceutical industry gets him $150 million worth of ads to boost his plan, whatever it is.
The same people who bombard us with ads for products that promise to prevent hardened arteries or encourage hardening elsewhere will soon be selling you Obamacare.
“If you experience doubts about the plan lasting more than four hours, seek immediate help from Organizing for America.”
Democrats tried blaming the “mobs” of “un-American” protesters and “evil mongers” who were giving raspberries to members of Congress at town halls.
That flopped too, leaving the administration to blame the messenger.
And one can understand why Gibbs would be a bit shocked by the slightly less accommodating tone of the media.
Reporters who traveled with the Obama campaign tell horror stories about the organization — dishonesty, rudeness and abysmal access. But those reporters still served up the glowing coverage.
Obama was the hottest news story of their generation. Rather than covering the long-shot freshman senator who would be crushed in February, Obama campaign reporters experienced the reflected glory of being along for a historic journey. There was plenty of motivation to keep that journey going.
Conversely, Obama making a hash out of health care provides plenty of good copy for the White House press corps. And because Obama fatigue has set in with the reading and viewing public, skeptical stories match the national mood.
Some are still in the tank for Obama. But many liberal reporters think the president is blowing the Left’s big chance.
In talking about how everything got so “wee-weed up,” Obama observed that in August of 2008 the media predicted doom because John McCain began to close the gap after picking Sarah Palin.
In trying to explain that the president was talking about media incontinence, Gibbs referred to August and September of 2007, when most predicted Hillary Clinton would roll to victory in Iowa.
So not only are Obama and his people still reliving the campaign, they’re drawing the wrong lessons from it.
At this point in 2007, Obama was coming up in the polls, making Iowa a three-way race with Clinton and John Edwards. Now, the president’s numbers are sinking.
And if the trend line in the late summer of 2008 had held, Obama would have lost. It took a tsunami of bad economic news and the McCain campaign’s mishandling of it to put Obama back on top.
But there is no opponent here other than public opinion and no finish line other than the end of his term.
With only the steady breeze of favorable coverage of a typical Democratic president instead of the gale of positive press that once helped drive Obama to victory, it’s going to be a very long journey.
Obamanation
Swedish Mockery
Of course it was a silly writer and no one paid any attention to it, with no evidence, only slander and hate - the next step was taken - to call the Israeli Ambassador to answer.
Sweden summons Israeli ambassador
21 Aug 09
The Local.se
Israel's ambassador to Sweden, Benny Dagan, has been summoned by Sweden's foreign office to discuss the diplomatic discord following an article in a national newspaper claiming Israeli soldiers harvest the organs of dead Palestinians.
The meeting, with the foreign ministry cabinet secretary Frank Belfrage, had already been planned to discuss routine matters but has now taken on an altogether different importance, according to a TT news agency source.
The diplomatic spat has its source in the decision by the Aftonbladet newspaper to publish the article which details allegations of the systematic harvesting of the organs of Palestinian men.
The argument has escalated further after comments on Thursday by the Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman slamming Stockholm for distancing itself from a statement by Sweden's Ambassador to Israel Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier expressing outrage at the article.
Lieberman compared the allegations in the article to old antisemitic lies, such as Jews offering up Christian children for the ritual sacrifice to collect their blood.
"It is regrettable that the Swedish foreign ministry does not intervene when it comes to a blood libel against Jews, which reminds one of Sweden's conduct during World War II when it also did not intervene," a Israeli government statement quoted Lieberman as saying.
The comments have caused irritation at the Swedish foreign ministry, according to the TT source.
Lieberman stated that he intended to send a strongly worded protest to Sweden's foreign minster Carl Bildt, but this protest had not been received by midday on Friday.
Avigdor Lieberman, who is also the leader of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, also issued a sweeping criticism of Sweden and the foreign ministry over moves to distance itself from comments made by the Swedish ambassador to Israel, Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier, in which she condemned the newspaper's decision to publish.
In 2006, the Swedish government closed a website down that had images of Mohammad. It condemned the insensitive nature of the materials.
I would expect the Swedish government to apologize a) for the newspaper, b) for the writer of the article, c) for the Foreign Minister who called the Israeli Ambassador into his office, and d) for offending every Israeli citizen.
What are the chances.
Swedes
Sweden summons Israeli ambassador
21 Aug 09
The Local.se
Israel's ambassador to Sweden, Benny Dagan, has been summoned by Sweden's foreign office to discuss the diplomatic discord following an article in a national newspaper claiming Israeli soldiers harvest the organs of dead Palestinians.
The meeting, with the foreign ministry cabinet secretary Frank Belfrage, had already been planned to discuss routine matters but has now taken on an altogether different importance, according to a TT news agency source.
The diplomatic spat has its source in the decision by the Aftonbladet newspaper to publish the article which details allegations of the systematic harvesting of the organs of Palestinian men.
The argument has escalated further after comments on Thursday by the Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman slamming Stockholm for distancing itself from a statement by Sweden's Ambassador to Israel Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier expressing outrage at the article.
Lieberman compared the allegations in the article to old antisemitic lies, such as Jews offering up Christian children for the ritual sacrifice to collect their blood.
"It is regrettable that the Swedish foreign ministry does not intervene when it comes to a blood libel against Jews, which reminds one of Sweden's conduct during World War II when it also did not intervene," a Israeli government statement quoted Lieberman as saying.
The comments have caused irritation at the Swedish foreign ministry, according to the TT source.
Lieberman stated that he intended to send a strongly worded protest to Sweden's foreign minster Carl Bildt, but this protest had not been received by midday on Friday.
Avigdor Lieberman, who is also the leader of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, also issued a sweeping criticism of Sweden and the foreign ministry over moves to distance itself from comments made by the Swedish ambassador to Israel, Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier, in which she condemned the newspaper's decision to publish.
In 2006, the Swedish government closed a website down that had images of Mohammad. It condemned the insensitive nature of the materials.
I would expect the Swedish government to apologize a) for the newspaper, b) for the writer of the article, c) for the Foreign Minister who called the Israeli Ambassador into his office, and d) for offending every Israeli citizen.
What are the chances.
Swedes
Global Warming - Isn't. We are getting colder therefore we have global warming.
Drop in world temperatures fuels global warming debate
By Robert S. Boyd McClatchy Newspapers
August 19, 2009
WASHINGTON — Has Earth's fever broken?
Official government measurements show that the world's temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998.
That's given global warming skeptics new ammunition to attack the prevailing theory of climate change. The skeptics argue that the current stretch of slightly cooler temperatures means that costly measures to limit carbon dioxide emissions are ill-founded and unnecessary.
Proposals to combat global warming are "crazy" and will "destroy more than a million good American jobs and increase the average family's annual energy bill by at least $1,500 a year," the Heartland Institute, a conservative research organization based in Chicago, declared in full-page newspaper ads earlier this summer. "High levels of carbon dioxide actually benefit wildlife and human health," the ads asserted.
Many scientists agree, however, that hotter times are ahead. A decade of level or slightly lower temperatures is only a temporary dip to be expected as a result of natural, short-term variations in the enormously complex climate system, they say.
"The preponderance of evidence is that global warming will resume," Nicholas Bond, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, said in an e-mail.
"Natural variability can account for the slowing of the global mean temperature rise we have seen," said Jeff Knight, a climate expert at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter, England.
According to data from the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala., the global high temperature in 1998 was 0.76 degrees Celsius (1.37 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average for the previous 20 years.
So far this year, the high has been 0.42 degrees Celsius (0.76 degrees Fahrenheit), above the 20-year average, clearly cooler than before.
However, scientists say the skeptics' argument is misleading.
"It's entirely possible to have a period as long as a decade or two of cooling superimposed on the long-term warming trend," said David Easterling, chief of scientific services at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
"These short term fluctuations are statistically insignificant (and) entirely due to natural internal variability," Easterling said in an essay published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in April. "It's easy to 'cherry pick' a period to reinforce a point of view."
Climate experts say the 1998 record was partly caused by El Nino, a periodic warming of tropical Pacific Ocean waters that affects the climate worldwide.
"The temperature peak in 1998 to a large extent can be attributed to the very strong El Nino event of 1997-98," Bond said. "Temperatures for the globe as a whole tend to be higher during El Nino, and particularly events as intense as that one."
El Nino is returning this summer after a four-year absence and is expected to hang around until late next year.
"If El Nino continues to strengthen as projected, expect more (high temperature) records to fall," said Thomas Karl, who's the director of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville.
"At least half of the years after 2009 will be warmer than 1998, the warmest year currently on record," predicted Jeff Knight, a climate variability expert at the Hadley Centre in England.
John Christy, the director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who often sides with the skeptics, agreed that the recent cooling won't last.
"The atmosphere is just now feeling the bump in tropical Pacific temperatures related to El Nino," Christy said in an e-mail. As a result, July experienced "the largest one-month jump in our 31-year record of global satellite temperatures. We should see a warmer 2009-2010 due to El Nino."
Christy added, however: "Our ignorance of the climate system is still enormous, and our policy makers need to know that . . . We really don't know much about what causes multi-year changes like this."
In addition to newspaper ads, the Heartland Institute sponsors conferences, books, papers, videos and Web sites arguing its case against the global warming threat.
The skeptics include scientists such as Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who thinks that climate science is too uncertain to justify drastic measures to control CO2. He calls the case for action against global warming "silly" and "grotesque."
Others go further. For example, Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, thinks the world is in a 30-year cooling phase.
"The most recent global warming that began in 1977 is over, and the Earth has entered a new phase of global cooling," Easterbrook said in a talk to the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting in San Francisco in December.
Government scientists strongly disagree. "Claims that global warming is not occurring . . . ignore this natural variability and are misleading," said NOAA's Easterling.
In reality, global warming "never ceased," said Karl, the climate data center director.
global warming
By Robert S. Boyd McClatchy Newspapers
August 19, 2009
WASHINGTON — Has Earth's fever broken?
Official government measurements show that the world's temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998.
That's given global warming skeptics new ammunition to attack the prevailing theory of climate change. The skeptics argue that the current stretch of slightly cooler temperatures means that costly measures to limit carbon dioxide emissions are ill-founded and unnecessary.
Proposals to combat global warming are "crazy" and will "destroy more than a million good American jobs and increase the average family's annual energy bill by at least $1,500 a year," the Heartland Institute, a conservative research organization based in Chicago, declared in full-page newspaper ads earlier this summer. "High levels of carbon dioxide actually benefit wildlife and human health," the ads asserted.
Many scientists agree, however, that hotter times are ahead. A decade of level or slightly lower temperatures is only a temporary dip to be expected as a result of natural, short-term variations in the enormously complex climate system, they say.
"The preponderance of evidence is that global warming will resume," Nicholas Bond, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, said in an e-mail.
"Natural variability can account for the slowing of the global mean temperature rise we have seen," said Jeff Knight, a climate expert at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter, England.
According to data from the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala., the global high temperature in 1998 was 0.76 degrees Celsius (1.37 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average for the previous 20 years.
So far this year, the high has been 0.42 degrees Celsius (0.76 degrees Fahrenheit), above the 20-year average, clearly cooler than before.
However, scientists say the skeptics' argument is misleading.
"It's entirely possible to have a period as long as a decade or two of cooling superimposed on the long-term warming trend," said David Easterling, chief of scientific services at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
"These short term fluctuations are statistically insignificant (and) entirely due to natural internal variability," Easterling said in an essay published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in April. "It's easy to 'cherry pick' a period to reinforce a point of view."
Climate experts say the 1998 record was partly caused by El Nino, a periodic warming of tropical Pacific Ocean waters that affects the climate worldwide.
"The temperature peak in 1998 to a large extent can be attributed to the very strong El Nino event of 1997-98," Bond said. "Temperatures for the globe as a whole tend to be higher during El Nino, and particularly events as intense as that one."
El Nino is returning this summer after a four-year absence and is expected to hang around until late next year.
"If El Nino continues to strengthen as projected, expect more (high temperature) records to fall," said Thomas Karl, who's the director of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville.
"At least half of the years after 2009 will be warmer than 1998, the warmest year currently on record," predicted Jeff Knight, a climate variability expert at the Hadley Centre in England.
John Christy, the director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who often sides with the skeptics, agreed that the recent cooling won't last.
"The atmosphere is just now feeling the bump in tropical Pacific temperatures related to El Nino," Christy said in an e-mail. As a result, July experienced "the largest one-month jump in our 31-year record of global satellite temperatures. We should see a warmer 2009-2010 due to El Nino."
Christy added, however: "Our ignorance of the climate system is still enormous, and our policy makers need to know that . . . We really don't know much about what causes multi-year changes like this."
In addition to newspaper ads, the Heartland Institute sponsors conferences, books, papers, videos and Web sites arguing its case against the global warming threat.
The skeptics include scientists such as Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who thinks that climate science is too uncertain to justify drastic measures to control CO2. He calls the case for action against global warming "silly" and "grotesque."
Others go further. For example, Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, thinks the world is in a 30-year cooling phase.
"The most recent global warming that began in 1977 is over, and the Earth has entered a new phase of global cooling," Easterbrook said in a talk to the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting in San Francisco in December.
Government scientists strongly disagree. "Claims that global warming is not occurring . . . ignore this natural variability and are misleading," said NOAA's Easterling.
In reality, global warming "never ceased," said Karl, the climate data center director.
global warming
Swedish Stories: Lies versus Truth
Several stories, different sources -
Jewish soldiers harvesting Palestinian organs? Reporter has 'no clue' if the claims are true
By Stephanie Gutmann
August 20th, 2009
The writer of the article entitled “They Plundered the Organs of Our Sons,” which ran in Sweden’s largest circulation daily newspaper earlier this week, now says he has “no clue” whether the explosive allegations he levelled at IDF soldiers are true or not. “It concerns me, to the extent that I want [Palestinian accusations of IDF theft of organs for harvesting] to be investigated, that’s true,” he told Israel’s state-run radio station on Wednesday, “But whether it’s true or not - I have no idea, I have no clue.”
CNN has helpfully weighed in, stressing over and over in its account that the Aftonbladet article was merely “an op-ed.” “[Article author Donald] Bostrom stressed that he has no proof that Israeli soldiers were stealing organs,” said CNN, “and that the purpose of his opinion article was to call for an investigation into numerous claims in the 1990s that such activity was going on.”
If the article was just “opinion”, just musings on the passing scene, then the Swedish newspaper handles op-eds very differently than papers in the US and the UK. “They Plundered the Organs of Our Sons” was a “double truck”; in other words, it was splashed over two full facing pages, topped with a large banner headline, and illustrated with ghoulish full-colour photos. In most newspapers, such treatment is used to highlight an article whose allegations are the product of months of scrupulously careful reporting, which would mean something more substantial than the claims of several people in an area where wild conspiracy charges are common.
But all is not totally rotten in Sweden. One of the most eloquent denunciations of the Aftonbladet insinuation fest has come from rival daily, Sydsvenskan:
“We have heard the story before, in one form or the other. It follows the traditional pattern of conspiracy theory: a great number of loose threads that the theorist tempts the reader to tie into a neat knot without having been provided with any proven connection whatsoever,” wrote Mats Skogkär of Sydsvenskan.
“Whispers in the dark. Anonymous sources. Rumors. That is all it takes. After all we all know what they [the Jews] are like, don’t we: inhuman, hardened. Capable of anything. Now all that remains is the defence, equally predictable: Anti-Semitism? No, no, just criticism of Israel.”
*****************************
Swedish daily: IDF killed Palestinians for organs
Article published by Aftonbladet reporter claims soldiers snatched Palestinian youths and returned their dismembered bodies a few days later. Foreign Ministry: Shocking example of Israel's demonization
Roni Sofer 08.18.09
YNetnews
Leading Swedish daily Aftonbladet claimed in one of its articles that IDF soldiers killed Palestinians in order to trade in their organs.
On Tuesday the Israeli Foreign Ministry responded by saying that the article "is a shocking example of Israel's demonization." According to the ministry, the Stockholm-based paper accused the Israeli army of organ theft.
The report mentioned Brooklyn resident Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who is accused of involvement in the recent human organ-trafficking case that caused a storm in the US and Israel. The report said Palestinians claim youngsters were forced to give up theirs before being executed. This suspicion, the report said, may lead to an international war crimes investigation against Israel.
The report went on to say that about half of all kidneys used in transplants in Israel since 2000 were purchased illegally in Turkey, Eastern Europe and Latin America, adding that the Israeli Health Ministry was aware of the phenomenon but did nothing to curb it.
Aftonbladet also said Palestinian youths who were snatched from their villages in the middle of the night were buried after being dismembered. The reporter, Donald Boström, said he was informed of the alleged atrocities by UN employees while he was working on a book in the West Bank.
According to Bostrom, a Palestinian from Nablus who for a number of years headed stone-throwing attacks against IDF soldiers was shot to death in May because he interfered with the activity of the "Israeli conquering forces."
The reporter quoted Palestinian witnesses as saying that Bilal Ahmad Ranian was shot in the chest, leg and stomach and then evacuated in serious condition by helicopter to an unknown location.
Five days later, Bostrom said, Ranian's body was returned to his village, wrapped in hospital bandages.
Aftonbladet published a photo of the body, which had a scar running from the face down to the stomach.
********************************
Swedish Tabloid: IDF Kills Arabs to Trade their Organs
by Gil Ronen
(IsraelNN.com)
he tabloid Aftonbladet, one of Sweden’s most popular newspapers, published a report Tuesday that claimed IDF soldiers execute Arabs in Judea and Samaria, harvest their organs and sell them. The report carried a photograph that purportedly shows the body of a victim of such an execution, with a large scar running from his chin to his abdomen. It notes the IDF’s explanation that the scar is from an autopsy which is routinely performed on people who are killed in fighting – but seems not to give it much credit and prefers a completely unsubstantiated claim by Arabs regarding forced organ harvesting.
The report, which appears under the heading, in quotes, "Our sons plundered for their organs,” begins with snippets from a transcript of an FBI recording of a Jewish man who was arrested in July, in connection with a corruption scandal in New Jersey involving elected officials, rabbis, money laundering and illegal organ trading.
Immediately after providing a short description of the FBI’s suspicions against that group, reporter Donald Boström takes his readers across the ocean to discuss the organ trade in Israel, without explaining what connection there may be between the two matters. He describes “a strong suspicion” among Palestinians that young men’s organs were harvested by the IDF “as in China and Pakistan.” Boström repeats that this is “a very serious suspicion” and suggests that the International Court of Justice should open an investigation into it.
The paper says that half of the kidneys that are used in transplants in Israel are purchased illegally from Turkey, Eastern Europe or Latin America and that Israeli health authorities have full knowledge of the matter, but do nothing to stop it. It then connects the shortage of body parts in Israel to stories of Palestinian men who, it says, are killed and returned to their villages five days later by the IDF.
17 year old eyewitness account
The reporter then gives what he says is his own eyewitness account from 1992 -- 17 years ago -- of an IDF raid on a village in which a rioter named Bilal Achmed Ghanaian was shot and severely injured. He was taken away by a military helicopter and brought back by the army five days later, dead. As his family members buried him, they saw a large scar running from his stomach to his chin.The report then quotes Arabs who claim that their sons were used as forced organ donors but provides no support for this claim.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said that the newspaper had “turned the demonization of Israel into a sacred cause.” He called upon Swedish citizens to express their disgust with “the incitement to hate crimes that the report includes.”
Aftonbladet claims to be the leading daily newspaper in Sweden and in Scandinavia, with a readership of more than 1.5 million.
********************************************
and to ensure we get the truth, why not a report from the Palestinians themselves ...
Aug 23, 2009
Palestinian news agency 'confirms' organ snatching story
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
The Bethlehem-based Palestinian news agency Ma'an published a report over the weekend which it said confirmed allegations that IDF soldiers kill Palestinian civilians to harvest their organs.
The charges appeared last week in Sweden's left-leaning Aftonbladet newspaper and have since been widely quoted in Palestinian and Arab newspapers.
"They plunder the organs of our sons," read the headline in Sweden's largest daily newspaper, which devoted a double spread in its cultural section to the article.
Ma'an, which is funded by Denmark and the Netherlands, headlined its feature:
"Disappearances, Holding Bodies, Organ Theft - Intertwined Crimes."
The feature is based on an interview with Abdel Nasser Farwaneh, a former security prisoner in Israel who is described by the news agency as an "expert on prisoners' affairs."
Farwaneh is quoted as saying that the "findings" published by the Swedish newspaper are true.
"All the facts, evidence and testimonies over the past few decades regarding the way the occupation forces were treating and killing innocent civilians don't leave room for doubt about the credibility of the report in the Swedish newspaper," he said.
The "expert" claimed that hundreds of Palestinian and Arab prisoners have disappeared in Israeli detention centers and prisons.
"This policy of hiding prisoners is surely connected to what the Swedish newspaper published," Farwaneh said. "It's possible that all those missing prisoners, or a large number of them, were deliberately killed so that their organs could be stolen and used illegally. The remains of these prisoners are then hidden in secret cemeteries known as the Cemeteries of Numbers."
Farwaneh told the agency that there was also good reason to believe that the allegations were true because many bodies of Hizbullah gunmen that were returned by Israel were missing organs.
He also claimed that IDF soldiers had "executed" more than 50 civilians after arresting them during the second intifada, which began in September 2000. "This could be related to what the Swedish newspaper reported about organ harvesting," he said.
Farwaneh expressed deep admiration for the Swedish newspaper and the journalist who reported the allegations, Donald Bostrom, and called on the international media to follow suit and expose Israeli "atrocities and war crimes" against Palestinians.
I am sure if we look into the columns written in the Swedish and Palestinian newspapers, we would find evidence to prove the existence of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and aliens. Palestinians and Swedes - on top of every breaking story.
I am waiting for a new rash of stories on the Israelis sending prostitutes with AIDS into Egypt to force Arab males to contract AIDS unwillingly, and the unquestioned truism for many in the Arab world, that the Jews use the blood of non-Jewish babies in their pastries. All these stories are reported and retold as if fact also, right up there with organ harvesting and aliens.
Arabs
Jewish soldiers harvesting Palestinian organs? Reporter has 'no clue' if the claims are true
By Stephanie Gutmann
August 20th, 2009
The writer of the article entitled “They Plundered the Organs of Our Sons,” which ran in Sweden’s largest circulation daily newspaper earlier this week, now says he has “no clue” whether the explosive allegations he levelled at IDF soldiers are true or not. “It concerns me, to the extent that I want [Palestinian accusations of IDF theft of organs for harvesting] to be investigated, that’s true,” he told Israel’s state-run radio station on Wednesday, “But whether it’s true or not - I have no idea, I have no clue.”
CNN has helpfully weighed in, stressing over and over in its account that the Aftonbladet article was merely “an op-ed.” “[Article author Donald] Bostrom stressed that he has no proof that Israeli soldiers were stealing organs,” said CNN, “and that the purpose of his opinion article was to call for an investigation into numerous claims in the 1990s that such activity was going on.”
If the article was just “opinion”, just musings on the passing scene, then the Swedish newspaper handles op-eds very differently than papers in the US and the UK. “They Plundered the Organs of Our Sons” was a “double truck”; in other words, it was splashed over two full facing pages, topped with a large banner headline, and illustrated with ghoulish full-colour photos. In most newspapers, such treatment is used to highlight an article whose allegations are the product of months of scrupulously careful reporting, which would mean something more substantial than the claims of several people in an area where wild conspiracy charges are common.
But all is not totally rotten in Sweden. One of the most eloquent denunciations of the Aftonbladet insinuation fest has come from rival daily, Sydsvenskan:
“We have heard the story before, in one form or the other. It follows the traditional pattern of conspiracy theory: a great number of loose threads that the theorist tempts the reader to tie into a neat knot without having been provided with any proven connection whatsoever,” wrote Mats Skogkär of Sydsvenskan.
“Whispers in the dark. Anonymous sources. Rumors. That is all it takes. After all we all know what they [the Jews] are like, don’t we: inhuman, hardened. Capable of anything. Now all that remains is the defence, equally predictable: Anti-Semitism? No, no, just criticism of Israel.”
*****************************
Swedish daily: IDF killed Palestinians for organs
Article published by Aftonbladet reporter claims soldiers snatched Palestinian youths and returned their dismembered bodies a few days later. Foreign Ministry: Shocking example of Israel's demonization
Roni Sofer 08.18.09
YNetnews
Leading Swedish daily Aftonbladet claimed in one of its articles that IDF soldiers killed Palestinians in order to trade in their organs.
On Tuesday the Israeli Foreign Ministry responded by saying that the article "is a shocking example of Israel's demonization." According to the ministry, the Stockholm-based paper accused the Israeli army of organ theft.
The report mentioned Brooklyn resident Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who is accused of involvement in the recent human organ-trafficking case that caused a storm in the US and Israel. The report said Palestinians claim youngsters were forced to give up theirs before being executed. This suspicion, the report said, may lead to an international war crimes investigation against Israel.
The report went on to say that about half of all kidneys used in transplants in Israel since 2000 were purchased illegally in Turkey, Eastern Europe and Latin America, adding that the Israeli Health Ministry was aware of the phenomenon but did nothing to curb it.
Aftonbladet also said Palestinian youths who were snatched from their villages in the middle of the night were buried after being dismembered. The reporter, Donald Boström, said he was informed of the alleged atrocities by UN employees while he was working on a book in the West Bank.
According to Bostrom, a Palestinian from Nablus who for a number of years headed stone-throwing attacks against IDF soldiers was shot to death in May because he interfered with the activity of the "Israeli conquering forces."
The reporter quoted Palestinian witnesses as saying that Bilal Ahmad Ranian was shot in the chest, leg and stomach and then evacuated in serious condition by helicopter to an unknown location.
Five days later, Bostrom said, Ranian's body was returned to his village, wrapped in hospital bandages.
Aftonbladet published a photo of the body, which had a scar running from the face down to the stomach.
********************************
Swedish Tabloid: IDF Kills Arabs to Trade their Organs
by Gil Ronen
(IsraelNN.com)
he tabloid Aftonbladet, one of Sweden’s most popular newspapers, published a report Tuesday that claimed IDF soldiers execute Arabs in Judea and Samaria, harvest their organs and sell them. The report carried a photograph that purportedly shows the body of a victim of such an execution, with a large scar running from his chin to his abdomen. It notes the IDF’s explanation that the scar is from an autopsy which is routinely performed on people who are killed in fighting – but seems not to give it much credit and prefers a completely unsubstantiated claim by Arabs regarding forced organ harvesting.
The report, which appears under the heading, in quotes, "Our sons plundered for their organs,” begins with snippets from a transcript of an FBI recording of a Jewish man who was arrested in July, in connection with a corruption scandal in New Jersey involving elected officials, rabbis, money laundering and illegal organ trading.
Immediately after providing a short description of the FBI’s suspicions against that group, reporter Donald Boström takes his readers across the ocean to discuss the organ trade in Israel, without explaining what connection there may be between the two matters. He describes “a strong suspicion” among Palestinians that young men’s organs were harvested by the IDF “as in China and Pakistan.” Boström repeats that this is “a very serious suspicion” and suggests that the International Court of Justice should open an investigation into it.
The paper says that half of the kidneys that are used in transplants in Israel are purchased illegally from Turkey, Eastern Europe or Latin America and that Israeli health authorities have full knowledge of the matter, but do nothing to stop it. It then connects the shortage of body parts in Israel to stories of Palestinian men who, it says, are killed and returned to their villages five days later by the IDF.
17 year old eyewitness account
The reporter then gives what he says is his own eyewitness account from 1992 -- 17 years ago -- of an IDF raid on a village in which a rioter named Bilal Achmed Ghanaian was shot and severely injured. He was taken away by a military helicopter and brought back by the army five days later, dead. As his family members buried him, they saw a large scar running from his stomach to his chin.The report then quotes Arabs who claim that their sons were used as forced organ donors but provides no support for this claim.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said that the newspaper had “turned the demonization of Israel into a sacred cause.” He called upon Swedish citizens to express their disgust with “the incitement to hate crimes that the report includes.”
Aftonbladet claims to be the leading daily newspaper in Sweden and in Scandinavia, with a readership of more than 1.5 million.
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and to ensure we get the truth, why not a report from the Palestinians themselves ...
Aug 23, 2009
Palestinian news agency 'confirms' organ snatching story
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
The Bethlehem-based Palestinian news agency Ma'an published a report over the weekend which it said confirmed allegations that IDF soldiers kill Palestinian civilians to harvest their organs.
The charges appeared last week in Sweden's left-leaning Aftonbladet newspaper and have since been widely quoted in Palestinian and Arab newspapers.
"They plunder the organs of our sons," read the headline in Sweden's largest daily newspaper, which devoted a double spread in its cultural section to the article.
Ma'an, which is funded by Denmark and the Netherlands, headlined its feature:
"Disappearances, Holding Bodies, Organ Theft - Intertwined Crimes."
The feature is based on an interview with Abdel Nasser Farwaneh, a former security prisoner in Israel who is described by the news agency as an "expert on prisoners' affairs."
Farwaneh is quoted as saying that the "findings" published by the Swedish newspaper are true.
"All the facts, evidence and testimonies over the past few decades regarding the way the occupation forces were treating and killing innocent civilians don't leave room for doubt about the credibility of the report in the Swedish newspaper," he said.
The "expert" claimed that hundreds of Palestinian and Arab prisoners have disappeared in Israeli detention centers and prisons.
"This policy of hiding prisoners is surely connected to what the Swedish newspaper published," Farwaneh said. "It's possible that all those missing prisoners, or a large number of them, were deliberately killed so that their organs could be stolen and used illegally. The remains of these prisoners are then hidden in secret cemeteries known as the Cemeteries of Numbers."
Farwaneh told the agency that there was also good reason to believe that the allegations were true because many bodies of Hizbullah gunmen that were returned by Israel were missing organs.
He also claimed that IDF soldiers had "executed" more than 50 civilians after arresting them during the second intifada, which began in September 2000. "This could be related to what the Swedish newspaper reported about organ harvesting," he said.
Farwaneh expressed deep admiration for the Swedish newspaper and the journalist who reported the allegations, Donald Bostrom, and called on the international media to follow suit and expose Israeli "atrocities and war crimes" against Palestinians.
I am sure if we look into the columns written in the Swedish and Palestinian newspapers, we would find evidence to prove the existence of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and aliens. Palestinians and Swedes - on top of every breaking story.
I am waiting for a new rash of stories on the Israelis sending prostitutes with AIDS into Egypt to force Arab males to contract AIDS unwillingly, and the unquestioned truism for many in the Arab world, that the Jews use the blood of non-Jewish babies in their pastries. All these stories are reported and retold as if fact also, right up there with organ harvesting and aliens.
Arabs
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