Questions of competence begin to dog Obama

By: Chris Stirewalt | August 20, 2009 | The Examiner

President Barack Obama's fellow Democrats are again in an uproar over health care.

Liberals say they'll blockade any bill that doesn't include a government-run insurance program. And labor says it will sit out the 2010 elections if the president doesn't come across with a stout public plan.

Meanwhile, the moderate Democrats who were wooed for weeks by the administration are sidling toward the door, saying that the best thing would be just to start over.

Many at the White House no doubt wish they could take that advice.

It's been 177 days since Obama made his initial pitch for a health care overhaul to a joint session of Congress. That the president's team is still spending so much time stroking the Democratic base is evidence of how dire the situation is for this young administration.

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Why 'Obama-Care' is Failing

By Jonah Goldberg | August 19, 2009 | Real Clear Politics
To listen to the White House and its supporters, in and out of the media, you would think that opposition to "Obama-care" is the hobgoblin of a few small minds on the right. Racists, fascists, Neanderthals, the whole "Star Wars" cantina of boogeymen and cranks stand opposed to much-needed reform.

Left out of this fairly naked effort to demonize a great many with the actions of a tiny few is the simple fact that Obama-care -- however defined -- has been tanking in the polls for weeks. President Obama's handling of healthcare is unpopular with a majority of Americans and a majority of self-proclaimed independents.

Focusing on the town halls certainly has its merits, but if you actually wanted Obama-care to pass, casting a majority of Americans as being stooges of racist goons may not be the best way to go.


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MSNBC said white racists came to Obama event with guns

They edited their video to hide this man's race. MSNBC is worse than RACIST. They're nothing but liars and frauds.

Miller Time

Topics include Barney Frank, MJ's doc and Brad Pitt.

Barney Frank: whath's the matter with you all? I don't underthstand your mentality . . .

line by line

"When I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely..."

-- Barack Obama, 9/26/2008

"What I've done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut... I want to go through the federal budget line by line..."
-- Barack Obama, 10/15/2008

David Axelrod's Very Big Problem

Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 6:27 PM

The allegations in this Bloomberg story --if true-- pose a huge problem for a senior advisor to the president, David Axelrod. This is the heart of the problem:

Axelrod was president and sole shareholder of AKPD from 1985 until he sold his interest after Obama’s victory, government records show. The firm owes Axelrod $2 million, which it’s due to pay in installments beginning Dec. 31. Axelrod’s son, Michael, still works there. He didn’t return a phone call. The firm’s Web site continues to feature David Axelrod’s work on the Obama campaign. (Emphasis added.)

The problem is that Axelrod's former firm is currently receiving huge fees "from Healthy Economy Now, a coalition that includes the Washington-based Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA," as well as AARP, the SEIU and other big players in the health care debate.

If Axelrod has been negotiating any part of any deal involving any of these players which are funneling money to the firm that owes him money, or if he is advising the president on the deals with any of these groups, that's a conflict of interest. Laundering the money through a "coalition" doesn't remove the conflict much less the appearance of impropriety. The coalition is in effect partially funding David Axelrod's severance package though its members might have done so unknowingly. These forthcoming payments to Axelrod are much more significant than the sort of "retained ties" that Democrats blasted Dick Cheney for vis-a-vis Halliburton even though there was no high level negotiations between the vice president and his former company.

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Their Goal: eliminate private insurance altogether

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The key points come at 2:31, 4:44, 5:15, and 7:15, but the 5:15 is when the light dawns for Scarborough.

S: It sounds like you’re saying you think there is no need for us to have private insurance in health care.

W: I’ve asked you three times. What is their value? What are they bringing to the deal?

S: Again… I’m astounded by your question. It sounds like you’re suggesting that there’s no need to have a country that’s run on free market principles.

W: Time out. Let’s focus on one thing at a time. This isn’t a commodity, Joe. Health care isn’t a commodity.

S: You’re saying that health care is different than everything else.

W: Health care is not a commodity.

S: But you are making the conservatives’ point. You are making the point of the people at the town hall meetings who say this is Barack Obama’s opportunity to get rid of private health care and turn it completely over to the government. I’m sitting here stunned, saying Oh My God, you’re making the point of the health care protesters.

W: If Barack Obama doesn’t want to do it, I want to do it.

Public Option or Die

Debate's Path Caught Obama by Surprise
Public Option Wasn't Intended as Major Focus
By Michael D. Shear and Ceci Connolly
Wednesday, August 19, 2009

President Obama's advisers acknowledged Tuesday that they were unprepared for the intraparty rift that occurred over the fate of a proposed public health insurance program, a firestorm that has left the White House searching for a way to reclaim the initiative on the president's top legislative priority.

Administration officials insisted that they have not shied away from their support for a public option to compete with private insurance companies, an idea they said Obama still prefers to see in a final bill.

But at a time when the president had hoped to be selling middle-class voters on how insurance reforms would benefit them, the White House instead finds itself mired in a Democratic Party feud over an issue it never intended to spotlight.

"I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We've gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don't understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform."

"It's a mystifying thing," he added. "We're forgetting why we are in this."

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What happened to the antiwar movement? Cindy Sheehan hits 'hypocrisy' of Left, Democratic allies

By: Byron York | 08/18/09 11:19 PM EDT | The Examiner

After my column, "For the left, war without Bush is not war at all," appeared Tuesday, I got a note from Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist who was the subject of so much press coverage when she led a protest against the Iraq war outside then-President George W. Bush's ranch in Texas. This is what the note said:

I read your column about the "anti-war" movement and I can't believe I am saying this, but I mostly agree with you.

The "anti-war" "left" was used by the Democratic Party. I like to call it the "anti-Republican War" movement.

While I agree with you about the hypocrisy of such sites as the DailyKos, I have known for a long time that the Democrats are equally responsible with the Republicans. That's why I left the party in May 2007 and that's why I ran for Congress against Nancy Pelosi in 2008.

I have my own radio show, "Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox," and I was out on a four-month book tour promoting the fact that it's not about Democrats or Republicans, but it's about the system.

Even if I am surrounded by a thousand, or no one, I am still working for peace.

Sincerely,

Cindy Sheehan

read what Cindy said in a phone call to Byron