FOXNews.com – In Gamble, Obama and Dems Prepare to Ram Health Care Through.

So they are going ot use reconciliation(which means attach it to hte budget which means no debate) for an up or down vote.  since scott brown is a “moderate” I doubt he’s going to change the balance so this will go through.  Let’s see if hte dems survive this or not.  However voting for whomever the rebpubs put up is simply going to be voting for a less extreme dems in the vast majority of hte caes.  If you want to truly change things..voite for somebody who either truly represents your values or go thrid party because most of hte dempublicans and republicrats are not different form each other in the end.

- AP

- February 26, 2010

In Gamble, Obama and Dems Prepare to Ram Health Care Through

Obama strongly signaled at Thursday’s summit that Democrats will move forward on a health care overhaul with or without Republicans. At stake are Democrats’ political fortunes and the fate of Obama’s agenda.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama strongly signaled that Democrats will move forward on a health care overhaul with or without Republicans, preparing his party for a fight whose political outcome will rest with voters in November.

Delivering his closing argument at a 7-1/2-hour televised policy marathon Thursday, Obama told Republicans he welcomes their ideas — even ones Democrats don’t like — but they must fit into his framework for a broad health care remake that would cover tens of millions of uninsured Americans.

That’s the deal.

It’s a gamble for Obama and his party, and it’s far from certain that Democratic congressional leaders can rally their members to muscle a bill through on their own. At stake are Democrats’ political fortunes in the midterm elections and the fate of Obama’s domestic agenda pitted against emboldened Republicans.

“The truth of the matter is that politically speaking, there may not be any reason for Republicans to want to do anything,” Obama said, summing up. “I don’t need a poll to know that most Republican voters are opposed to this bill and might be opposed to the kind of compromise we could craft.

“And if we can’t,” he added, “I think we’ve got to go ahead and some make decisions, and then that’s what elections are for. ”

To the nearly 40 lawmakers in the room with him, the message was unmistakable.

“Frankly, I was discouraged by the outcome,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “I do not believe there will be any Republican support for this 2,700-page bill.”

Democratic leaders — who preside over majorities in both chambers– were having none of that.

“It’s time to do something, and we’re going to do it,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Still, no participant publicly called the daylong exercise a waste of time. Despite flare-ups now and then, they had a remarkably civil debate on an issue that has divided Americans and polarized political partisans.

Obama’s plan would require most Americans to get health insurance, while providing subsidies for many in the form of a new tax credit. It would set up a competitive insurance market for small businesses and people buying coverage on their own. Other changes include addressing a coverage gap in the Medicare prescription benefit and setting up a new long-term-care insurance program. The plan would be funded through Medicare cuts and tax increases.

At the summit, there were some areas of agreement, including barring insurers from dropping policyholders who become sick, ending annual and lifetime monetary limits on health insurance benefits and letting young adults stay on their parents’ health policies into their mid-20s or so.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has a track record of working across the political aisle, said he would try to broaden common ground. Obama said he was willing to incorporate medical malpractice changes into his plan.

Yet on the core issues of how to expand coverage and pay for it, the divide was as wide as ever. Democrats argue a stronger government role is essential, and with it higher taxes and new rules for private companies.

“We have a very difficult gap to bridge here,” said Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican. “We just can’t afford this. That’s the ultimate problem.”

A Democrats-only strategy is no slam-dunk. The House would have to pass a Senate bill that many House Democrats find unacceptable. Indeed, House Democrats appear to hold the key to the success of Obama’s gambit.

To make the Senate bill more palatable to the House, both chambers would pass a package of changes. In the Senate, that would be done under special budget rules allowing majority Democrats to get around the requirement for 60 votes to shut off bill-killing filibusters. Democrats are one vote shy.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., asked Democrats to swear off the tactic, known as “reconciliation.” Reid defended it.

Obama said Americans want a decision on health care, and most think “a majority vote makes sense.”

Yet a USA Today/Gallup survey released Thursday found Americans tilt 49-42 percent against Congress passing a health care bill similar to the ones proposed by Obama and Democrats in the House and Senate. Opposition was even stronger to the idea of Senate Democrats using the special budget rules, with 52 percent opposed and 39 percent in favor.

Congressional aides said top Democrats will take a few days to gauge the summit’s impact on the public and, perhaps more importantly, on moderate House members who will likely determine whether any health care bill will pass.

If the effort fails, Democrats may try a scaled-back plan to insure about 15 million more Americans, rather than the 30 million covered under the congressional bills. Among other things, the fallback plan would require insurance companies to let people up to age 26 stay on their parents’ health plans.

This article sums it up.  Too many inconsistencies…..

I Don’t Buy the Official Story of Joe Stack.

Warning To Schools: Your Conduct Can Constitute A FELONY – The Market Ticker.

People wonder why I ma highly distrustful of the gov’t and anything to do with it?

FOXNews.com – President Heads to Denver to Lend Hand to Endangered Democratic Senator.

So far everywhere obama has gone he has failed.  I think Colorado is going to be another Democratic defeat in 2012.

The warming lobby is now claiming that global cooling is a part of global warming, and that we must still lower our living standards and pay carbon taxes, while all the real environmental problems are ignored or actively made worse by the same power brokers demanding that we make sacrifices in the name of fighting a non-existent threat.

via Global Warming Doublespeak: Snowmageddon Blizzards Are Part Of Heating Trend.

I have not comment.  Global warming just simply defies logic.  there’s no way to think otherwise unless you are intentionally denying reality.

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minutes – The Presidential Assassination List January 28 2010.

Greetings to all,

I just had to comment on this. To find the story, here is the link: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=35018#c1

I think I know the direction that Mr Buchanan was heading for. The problem is, I never agreed with his whiny words and policies. Even now, people are still blaming “W” for their woes. You want to know the true reason why for our decline? The fact is, the US has been pointing fingers at others for over 30 years. JB tries to make this point, but it is lost after recital of rhetoric garbage. The way the US can get out of this is for all of us to ‘take ownership’, stop the blame game, and do what needs to be done.

But here is the crux: what is it that needs to be done. You will hear “we have so many problems..”, “the issues are numerous and vast..”, “there isn’t a simple solution or steps of solutions..”. Dont you believe them. In order to figure out what the problems are, we need to figure out who we, as a people and nation, are.

So, what is the United States of America? Now, you may be thinking “Gawd, not another history lesson..”. Well, too bad. The reason why schools push for 12 years of history is two fold: to rewrite history for selfish malicious use, and to get people sick of history to forget about it. It is like navigating a ship, driving a car, or even just walking from point A to point B: if you don’t know where you are at and how you got there, how can you plot where you are going to go?

Anyways, what were our American ancestors? Here is a link describing “American Colonists” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_colonists . While I will not recite the whole page, I would like to copy the first paragraph: The term colonial history of the United States refers to the history of the land from the start of European settlement to the time of independence from Europe, and especially to the history of the thirteen colonies of Britain which declared themselves independent in 1776.^[1] Starting in the late 16th century, the English, Scottish, French, Swedes, Germans and the Dutch began to colonize eastern North America.^[2][3] Many early attempts—notably the Lost Colony of Roanoke—ended in failure, but successful colonies were soon established. The colonists who came to the New World were from a variety of different social and religious groups who settled in different locations on the seaboard. The Dutch of New Netherland, the Swedes and Finns of New Sweden, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Puritans of New England, the English settlers of Jamestown, and the “worthy poor” of Georgia, and others—each group came to the new continent for different reasons and created colonies with distinct social, religious, political and economic structures.^[4]

^{Now, there is something very very wrong with this summary. Can you tell what it is? Is it incorrect? No. Are there any wrong references? No. The problem with this summary is that it is watered down. It does not have the heart and soul of what was done and accomplished. Let me explain.}

^{Imagine yourself a colonist. You board a ship, overcrowded with people, a ship that is maybe 80 ft in length and you are lucky if 12ft in width. You travel from one continent to another, that is, over 3000 miles of water that at any point, you could drown. Sickness was always rampant. If you were a woman, you always had to worry about rape. You were lucky you would eat once a day. You finally come over to America. You have very little with you, because of no space on the ship, or, you were poor and had very little to begin with. You are on a land that you have no familiarity with. You are melded into a society of people you do not know about. You have very little to no money, and if you had money, you could buy very little. There were homes with no heat save a fireplace, no air conditioning, very few clothes you could wear. And why would anyone put themselves through this? Because, for the chance. The chance of being free, free of clergy persecution, free of corrupt government officials, free of unfair tax levies, free of social miscreants and fools, etc etc. The concept of freedom. The thought of freedom, but derived from pure sacrifice, devotion, belief, and faith.}

^{Do you see the difference between the two summaries of American colonists? Which one has the heart? Which one excites the senses, the fears, the digust, the joy of hope? The first is definition through society’s acceptance of language. Mine, is a definition of the heart and soul. And, there is the basic problem/solution that we need in this country. Do you think the colonists pointed fingers at others for their problems? (well, in a way they did..hence why they were colonists..but other than that). Do you think they looked for handouts? Did they expect to be clothed, fed, sheltered, given money, health services, financial pensions, 3 cars in the driveway, cell phone for every family member, laptop and LCD plasma TV for each person, twittering their facebooks, worried about keeping up with the neighbors, going green while finance going red, etc etc? I know, I put in ‘modern everyday concerns’ with that of old. But I did this with purpose. Do you see what the average ‘joe’ now worries about vs even just 100 years ago? 100 years. That is simply 4 generations? Maybe 3?}

^{Ok, enough of the history lesson. I did mention that the steps to turn things around are simple. And they truly are: that is, IF you keep what our founding fathers/mothers went through.}

^{1: Only if you are a citizen, or going through the path of legal citizenship, STOP all entitlements. This means, no health care, no welfare, no government handouts of any type. These services have been paid for by citizens and soon to be citizens. We have over 12 million illegals in this country. If each one is given $10,000 of various handouts, that is $1.2 trillion dollars handed out.}

^{2: Those that are citizens and on welfare, cut out the fat. How many times has each one of us saw some woman with 2 or 3 kids, in a grocery store, with more gold bling on her body, looking like she just came out of a salon, driving a nicer car than you own, pay for groceries with food stamps? It is said that 1 out of 12 adults are receiving food stamps. If only 1% of them are cheating, that is still over 83,000 adults. Average amount of food stamps is $250 a month. That is almost 21 million a month, nearly $250 million a year.}

^{3: Hand the bill to the country for every illegal we transport back to them. It is estimated that it costs over $80,000 per illegal we catch and transport back to their country of origin. This, is a service. If we merely catch and transport 25,000 illegals, that is $2 billion a year. The actually number is much higher, closer to a million. But think about that. If 25,000 brings in invoices over 2 billion, then a million would be over $80 billion dollars. Let us just invoice Mexico alone at 25,000 illegals. You know they would enforce and beef up their own border patrols just to prevent this!}

^{4: Invoice other nations. What do I mean? Invoice every other country that asked us for help on a military level since 1963. Every military base we have overseas, every military action we performed at the host country’s request, etc etc. Then, take these ‘bills’ to the UN and tell the UN to shove it up its arse, proving “we are doing the job you sworn to do”. Now, reality is, they won’t do a thing. But, show to others that we have been the ones shouldering the load with an ungrateful lot. But lets say payments do come through. Take every dime of those payments and pay to the veterans, current military personnel, and those survived by the military personnel that died performing their duty and love to this country.}

^{5: Present each bill/law on the table of House, Senate, and Presidency that is no more than 50 pages in length AND it can only contain material directly related to the bill. Too much pork in each bill, too much bureaucracy. Take again, military pay increase. That should be its own bill. A good subtopic is increasing the payments of veterans who have severe medical disabilities. That, would be a valid sub topic. Trying to get a grant for a farm in San Francisco area for 33 million dollars to grow soybeans and peanuts have nothing to do with this bill. It should be its own seperate issue. To enforce this, allow the people in each house and senate district to do a ‘recall’ of the person they elected every 6 months if 25% of the citizens agreed it is within bounds for review. What do I mean? If a senator is going crazy, not listening to their constituents, and causing severe distress and embarassment to their representative community, then, hold a vote and a meeting to see if that person should be removed from office. This would force elected officials to be more honest and stop wasting our taxpayer monies for their salaries and their personal agendas.}

^{6: Now, when it comes to voting, I personally feel that there should be a compentcy test passed. Not anything specific about the candidates or anything like that, but a test on basic government structure and process. So many people who are voting are ignorant of the jobs, dutites, and responsibilities for each branch of local, state, and federal government. So, an example of just 10 questions each about the local, state, and federal government, with a 70% success rate to pass would allow you to vote. People may say that this goes against the Bill of Rights. I say, the blatant stupidity among the public of not knowing their own government, party, and candidates that they are voting on is against my right as a US citizen. Example: The day of the presidential election 2008, a reporter asked 513 confirmed Obama voters simple questions that pertained to Obama, Biden, and top Congressional democrats. 12 questions were asked of each person (the same 12 questions). 0.5% got all 12 questions right. The other percentages of questions/answers were staggering. However, when asked about questions of McCain and Palin, and the questions asked had lies as answers, each one of these people answered those questions “correctly”. They were also asked about Sarah Palin seeing Russia from her backyard and I think 85% said that Palin did say that (it was actually Tina Fey in her famous SNL skit, Sarah Palin never ever said that). What this test showed, is that the general public, ignorant of their own electoral system, can be programmed of how to vote. This video does exist, a little bit of searching can find it. I went through the trouble and found the Zogby poll link for everyone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9htwW21K8s . Bill of Rights. I believe in it with all my heart. I just don’t believe in the people generally anymore. Not until this trend turns around.}

I could go onward with other points, and I shall in another post. At the moment, this is enough for everyone to digest all this information properly. Until then, take care.

W/R

Hause.

Employers will not be required to offer their workers coverage, being subject to a $750 annual penalty if they fail to do so, a figure most analysts say is not high enough to prevent employers from dropping their plans, meaning that more people will be forced to buy government health care.

via Obamacare To Cost Middle Class Families $15,000 A Year.

&750/year fine for employers but 15k for the workers?  This is to kill private insurance.  Basically the entire population will be on the gov’t dole.

Health bill would leave millions uninsured – Washington Post- msnbc.com.

Health bill would leave millions uninsured

Even as Democrats seek the biggest expansion of health coverage in decades, as many as 23 million people could still be without insurance by 2018, illustrating the complexity of achieving the long-held Democratic goal of universal health care.

The legislation that the Senate passed Christmas Eve, which is expected to resemble closely the final bill that is hashed out between the House and Senate over the next month, would leave about 8 percent of the population under age 65 without health insurance, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It would extend insurance to 31 million of an estimated 54 million who would have no coverage without the legislation.

“The impact of the reform overall is that we can focus more on care and less on how we pay for the uninsured, but the problem is still going to be there,” said Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, a lobbying group that has endorsed the Democratic plan.

But those who would be left uninsured have drawn little attention. This is in part because their ranks would include many who choose not to get health insurance, even though they can afford it — such as some healthy people under 30, who have little effect on rising health-care costs because they rarely go to the doctor. Though starting in 2014, individuals would face fines if they do not buy coverage, some may still refuse.

Illegal immigrants
About a third of the uninsured would be illegal immigrants. Neither party supports expanding insurance to cover them, even though states spend millions caring for them at hospitals, where emergency rooms accept patients regardless of coverage.

Some Republicans have seized on the uninsured number to attack the health-care legislation, even though they oppose mandating the purchase of insurance and covering illegal immigrants. “After raising billions in new taxes, cutting about a half-trillion dollars from Medicare, and imposing stiff new penalties for people who don’t buy insurance and increasing costs for those that do, 23 million people will still not even have health insurance,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said before the Senate vote.

White House spokesman Reid Cherlin countered that “tens of millions of Americans will gain affordable coverage under this bill.”

Despite complaints about those left uninsured, some health-care experts defend the legislation, noting the difficulty of reaching 100 percent coverage.

“If you’re at 84 percent and you are going to 94 percent, you picked up roughly two-thirds of the problem, which is big,” said John Holahan, director of the Health Policy Center at the liberal Urban Institute, referring to the percentage of legal U.S. residents who will have health insurance under the Senate plan. “If the economy comes back, you can pick up a good chunk of the rest. Most European countries don’t get 100 percent — the data I’ve seen is always 98 or 99 percent.”

The CBO has not released a breakdown of who would make up the 23 million. Along with illegal immigrants and people who choose not to buy coverage, there are two groups of people likely to be uninsured: those who are eligible for Medicaid but don’t sign up for it, and those who would qualify for an exemption from the coverage mandate because paying for insurance would take up more than 8 percent of their income.

Penalties
The CBO estimates that the House version of the legislation would expand insurance to 36 million people, reducing the ranks of the uninsured to about 18 million. It would offer slightly higher subsidies for low-income people, reducing the number who cannot afford insurance, and it has stronger penalties for companies that do not offer insurance to workers and individuals who do not purchase it. But the House legislation would cost more than $1 trillion, compared with the $871 billion Senate package.

Latino activists and some Democratic lawmakers have complained about a provision in the Senate bill that bars illegal immigrants from purchasing insurance in new health insurance exchanges, which would serve people who do not have affordable employer-based coverage. Without access to those exchanges, such immigrants would have few health insurance options, although it’s not clear how many could afford or would want to purchase coverage.

There is little support in Congress for extending health insurance through Medicaid or subsidies to the millions of illegal immigrants in the United States.

Congress is seeking to cover people who are under 30 and who find insurance an expense they can live without because they are generally healthy; many in this group hold part-time jobs that do not offer coverage. Lawmakers’ goal is twofold: reducing the burden on hospitals to care for the uninsured and broadening the pool of people with insurance, since including those who are healthy helps lower costs for the ill. The legislation would create health plans with low monthly costs designed to appeal to young people.

Some experts say this group — 13 million Americans, according to some estimates — will remain sizable despite the mandate. But David Cutler, an economist at Harvard who advised Barack Obama on health care during the presidential campaign, said this group could be almost universally insured if the law was implemented properly, thereby reducing the total number of uninsured to much less than 20 million.

He said that if the bill becomes law, the government should look to Massachusetts, which passed a requirement in 2006 that every resident get insurance. The state ran commercials during the broadcast of Boston Red Sox baseball games encouraging people to sign up, helping reach young men. Only about 45,000 of the nearly 4 million who filed taxes last year in Massachusetts were fined for refusing to buy insurance.

Cutler said a similar effort could encourage people who would newly qualify for Medicaid, which would be expanded to cover most households earning less than $30,000 a year.

“If we do it right,” Cutler said, “I’m not very worried we will have lots of uninsured.”

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34664303/ns/politics-washington_post/

You know it’s going to be bad and that the media is lying about how we are done with the recession when they put this stuff out:

I like it how Karl Denninger calls cnbc cnbs..msnbc could be msnbs as well.  Along with fox, dnn, abc and cbs.  With many of our manufacturing jobs permanently offshored don’t expect us to come back anytime soon.  Remember Japan’s “lost decade”?  We are about to have one as well.  runaway gov’t spending along with domestic hostile policies are going to continue to send jobs offshore as wlel as our money.  If you think this was incompetence…think again.  This is purposeful.

A decade of high unemployment is looming

WASHINGTON – Call it the Terrible Teens.

The decade ahead could be a brutal one for America’s unemployed — and for people with jobs hoping for pay raises.

At best, it could take until the middle of the decade for the nation to generate enough jobs to drive down the unemployment rate to a normal 5 or 6 percent and keep it there. At worst, that won’t happen until much later — perhaps not until the next decade.

The deepest and most enduring recession since the 1930s has battered America’s work force.

The unemployed number 15.4 million. The jobless rate is 10 percent. More than 7 million jobs have vanished. People out of work at least six months number a record 5.9 million. And household income, adjusted for inflation, has shrunk in the past decade.

Most economists say it could take at least until 2015 for the unemployment rate to drop down to a historically more normal 5.5 percent. And with the job market likely to stay weak, some also foresee another decade of wage stagnation.

Even though the economy will likely keep growing, the pace is expected to be plodding. That will make employers reluctant to hire. Further contributing to high unemployment is the likelihood of more people competing for jobs, baby boomers delaying retirement and interest rates edging higher.

All this would come after a decade that created relatively few jobs: a net total of just 464,000. By contrast, 21.7 million new jobs were generated between 1989 and 1999.

Economist David Levy, chairman of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center, says the country faces a new era of chronically high unemployment, averaging 8 percent or more over the next decade.

The “New Abnormal,” he calls it.

Levy thinks the New Abnormal also means average pay will dwindle, along with consumer prices. That would make it harder for households to pay down debt, he warns.

By the Federal Reserve’s reckoning, the jobless rate could remain as high as 7.6 percent in 2012. And it would take two or three years after that for the job market to return to normal, the Fed says.

It’s possible jobs won’t return to pre-recession levels at any point over the next 10 years, Levy says.

That’s mainly because the economy’s recovery, sluggish by historical standards, isn’t expected to regain its vigor over the next few years. As a result, companies will be in no rush to ramp up hiring.

Other analysts think the economy will recover the jobs wiped out by the recession by 2013 or 2014 but that the unemployment rate will stay high. They note that the healing economy will cause more people to stream back into the labor force, vying for too-few jobs.

In addition, baby boomers whose retirement accounts have shrunk could put off retiring and stay in the work force longer. That would leave fewer positions available for the unemployed.

Other contributing forces — businesses squeezing more work from employees they still have and relying more on part-time and overseas help — have intensified. And record-high federal budget deficits and the threat of inflation could drive up interest rates, which could hobble growth and restrict job creation.

All those factors could combine to keep unemployment high.

“It will be the mother of all jobless recoveries,” predicts economic historian John Steel Gordon.

On the other hand, it’s possible some technological innovation not yet envisioned could generate a wave of jobs. Yet at the moment, most economists aren’t betting that any such breakthroughs will rescue the labor market.

The last time the jobless rate reached double digits, in the early 1980s, it took six years to bring it down to normal levels.

Unemployment hit a post-World War II high of 10.8 percent at the end of 1982 as the country was emerging from a severe recession. The rate fell to around 5 percent in 1988. It took less than two years for the number of jobs to return to its pre-recession level.

In this recovery, the economy is far more fragile.

Hard-to-get credit is exerting a drag. Wounds from the banking system’s worst crisis since the Great Depression will take years to fully heal. People and companies, scarred by the crisis, are likely to restrain borrowing, spending and investing.

Some analysts think the jobless rate might have already peaked at 10.2 percent in October. But most economists predict the rate will peak at around 10.5 percent by the middle of next year.

“We are digging out of a very deep hole,” says Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego and chief economist for the National Association for Business Economics.

Reaser estimates it will take until 2015 for the unemployment rate to drop to 5.5 percent.

A sputtering job market carries other consequences. One is flat wages. When many people compete for few jobs, employers have no incentive to raise pay.

The economic shocks of the past decade already have cut into Americans’ incomes. That’s among the reasons why people feel they’re standing still economically.

Median household income, adjusted for inflation, fell to $50,303 in 2008, according to the U.S. Census. That gauge combines wages and salaries, investment income and government benefit payments like Social Security. It’s down 4 percent from a peak of $52,587 in 1999, when incomes were bolstered by stock gains from the dot-com boom.

That bubble burst in 2000. Since then, workers have seen meager wage gains. Adjusted for inflation, wages grew about 13 percent in the past 10 years — the slowest pace in five decades, according to calculations made by Scott Hoyt of Moody’s Economy.com.

That trend is predicted to continue.

“There will be a continued hollowing-out of the middle class,” says H.W. Brands, a historian at the University of Texas.

He points to productivity growth, which has let companies produce more with leaner work forces, the offshoring of service-sector jobs and the shrinking of factory jobs.

That’s why Vicki Adriano, 51, who works at a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, looks ahead to the coming decade with trepidation.

The economic wreckage of the past year means she’ll probably have to work longer than she had expected at the factory —  at least seven more years. She frets about the loss of economic security.

“Everything you worked for all those years can be gone in a minute,” she says.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34601256/ns/business-us_business/