Liberal FOX boycott big failure, now it's crush Lou Dobbs over aliens and birthers

There has been a movement by some folks to boycott Lou Dobbs, because he has given airtime to supporters and opponents of the theory that President Obama was not born in Hawaii. Such boycotts rarely are effective, because most viewers are not one issue.

However, CNN is generally liberal and too often PC. You would think that Fox News would be a target of overly excited liberals, not CNN. Perhaps, there has been a movement to squash Fox. If so, it has been a failure.

TV by the numbers most recent report breaks out viewership as follows with Fox destroying the competition:

Morning programs (6:00AM-9:00AM) P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
FOX & Friends- 867,000 viewers (290,000) (566,000)
American Morning- 415,000 viewers (143,000) (219,000)
Morning Joe-312,000 viewers (104,000) (197,000)
Squawk Box- 149,000 viewers (56,000) (96,000)
Morning Express w/ Meade- 209,000 viewers (121,000) (156,000)

5PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
(FOX) Glenn Beck– 2,136,000 viewers (524,000) (969,000)
Situation Room—802,000 viewers (206,000) (319,000)
Hardball w/ Chris Matthews—688,000 viewers (189,000) (308,000)
Fast Money—238,000 viewers (92,000) (135,000)
Prime News–264,000 viewers (121,000) (141,000)

6PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
(FOX) Special Report with Bret Baier– 1,799,000 viewers (395,000) (770,000)
Situation Room—830,000 viewers (224,000) (332,000)
Ed Show—586,000 viewers (168,000) (271,000)
Mad Money—209,000 viewers (73,000) (121,000)
Prime News — 208,000 viewers (81,000) (84,000)

7PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
Fox Report w/Shep Smith–1,554,000 viewers (350,000) (737,000)
Lou Dobbs Tonight—688,000 viewers (191,000) (286,000)
Hardball w Chris Matthews— 661,000 viewers (190,000) (372,000)
Kudlow Report —158,000 viewers (64,000) (106,000)
Issues– 424,000 viewers (136,000) (240,000)

8PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
(FOX) The O’Reilly Factor– 3,467,000 viewers (805,000) (1,508,000)
Campbell Brown- 787,000 viewers (226,000) (335,000)
Countdown w/ K. Olbermann– 904,000 viewers (286,000) (455,000)
CNBC Reports- 142,000 viewers (a scratch w/ 37,000) (76,000)
Nancy Grace – 826,000 viewers (253,000) (425,000)

9 PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
(FOX) Hannity –2,258,000 viewers (544,000) (979,000)
Larry King Live—1,100,000 viewers (329,000) (547,000)
Rachel Maddow—886,000 viewers (273,000) (419,000)
Marijuana Inc–366,000 viewers (165,000) (179,000)
Issues- 463,000 viewers (163,000) (284,000)

10 PM P2+ (25-54) (35-64)
(FOX) On the Record w/ Greta—1,762,000 viewers (454,000) (769,000)
Anderson Cooper 360—1,085,000 viewers (351,000) (580,000)
Countdown w/ K. Olbermann— 552,000 viewers (179,000) (317,000)
Ultimate Fighting: Fistful- 324,000 viewers (197,000) (153,000)
Nancy Grace –324,000 viewers (151,000) (212,000)

Prez popularity drops among liberals, too

Someone on the White House staff should consider that the diminishing popularity of the President and certain of his bills is not just a turn by the American people to Republican values.

In fact, it may be just the opposite.

A polling question that asks whether you approve of something or someone is answered yes, no, don't know.

Populists asked in recent days whether they approve of the job Obama is doing may well answer that they don't approve. Reason: he has not been forceful and he has allowed Rahm Emanuel too much leeway in dealing with blue dogs and other mutts in congress.

Do you approve of the healthcare bill? Progressive answer is no, because it is not single payer. The Republicans are quoting these polls, but they may not mean what they seem on the surface.

Is White House behind NDC deal?

Healthcare bill castration report today:

"The House changes, which drew immediate opposition from liberal lawmakers, would steer away from using Medicare as the blueprint for a proposed government insurance option, reduce federal subsidies to help lower-income families afford coverage, and exempt additional businesses from a requirement to offer health insurance to their workers.

"The House deal was worked out over hours of talks that involved not only Democratic leaders but also White House officials eager to advance the bill."

The pressure should be on the White House, because it looks like they are in cahoots with the opponents to single payer.

Rahm Emanuel, addressing the Democratic Leadership Council national convention last year, started out with "I just want you to know that NDC passes for friendship." NDC is New Democrat Coalition - Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, et al. Those are his friends and they oppose public option. List of NDC Senate members at http://www.fwdpost.com/2009/07/americans-have-lost-health-reform.html

Current or recent New Democrat Coalition House members, according to Wikipedia, include:

The following members of the House of Representatives currently belong to the New Democrat Coalition.[3]

Alabama
Artur Davis (AL-7), Vice-Chair

Arizona
Harry Mitchell (AZ-5)
Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-8)

California
Lois Capps (CA-23)
Adam Schiff (CA-29)
Jane Harman (CA-36)
Loretta Sanchez (CA-47)
Susan Davis (CA-53)

Colorado
Ed Perlmutter (CO-7)

Connecticut
John B. Larson (CT-1)
Joe Courtney (CT-2)
Chris Murphy (CT-5)

Florida
Kendrick Meek (FL-17)
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20)
Ron Klein (FL-22)

Georgia
John Barrow (GA-12)
David Scott (GA-13)

Illinois
Melissa Bean (IL-8)

Indiana
André Carson (IN-7)
Baron Hill (IN-9)

Iowa
Bruce Braley (IA-1)

Kansas
Dennis Moore (KS-3)

Kentucky
Ben Chandler (KY-6)

Louisiana
Charlie Melancon (LA-3)

Missouri
Russ Carnahan (MO-3)

Nevada
Shelley Berkley (NV-1)

New Jersey
Rush D. Holt (NJ-12)

New York
Steve Israel (NY-2)
Carolyn McCarthy (NY-4)
Gregory W. Meeks (NY-6)
Joseph Crowley (NY-7), Chair
Eliot L. Engel (NY-17)
Mike Arcuri (NY-24)
Brian Higgins (NY-27)

North Carolina
Bob Etheridge (NC-2), charter member
David Price (NC-4), charter member
Mike McIntyre (NC-7), charter member

Oregon
David Wu (OR-1)

Pennsylvania
Jason Altmire (PA-4)
Joe Sestak (PA-7)
Patrick Murphy (PA-8)
Chris Carney (PA-10)
Allyson Schwartz (PA-13)

South Dakota
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD)

Texas
Charlie Gonzalez (TX-20)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28)

Virginia
Jim Moran (VA-8), charter member

Washington
Jay Inslee (WA-1)
Rick Larsen (WA-2)
Brian Baird (WA-3)
Adam Smith (WA-9), Vice-Chair, charter member

Wisconsin
Ron Kind (WI-3), Vice-Chair, charter member

Former members

Former Representatives
Members who have left Congress:

Bob Matsui (CA-5), charter member, deceased
Juanita Millender-McDonald (CA-37), deceased
Jim Davis (FL-11), charter member, did not seek re-election
Peter Deutsch (FL-20), charter member, did not seek re-election
Denise Majette (GA-4), did not seek re-election
Ed Case (HI-2), did not seek re-election
James A. Barcia (MI-5), charter member, did not seek re-election
Bill Luther (MN-6), charter member, lost re-election following redistricting
John J. LaFalce (NY-29), charter member, did not seek re-election
Karen McCarthy (MO-5), charter member, did not seek re-election
Thomas C. Sawyer (OH-14), charter member, lost re-election following redistricting
Bob Clement (TN-5), charter member, did not seek re-election
Harold Ford (TN-9), did not seek re-election
Max Sandlin (TX-1), charter member, lost re-election following redistricting
Jim Turner (TX-2), charter member, did not seek re-election
Charles Stenholm (TX-17), charter member, lost re-election following redistricting
Ken Bentsen (TX-25), charter member, did not seek re-election
Chris Bell (TX-25), lost re-election following redistricting
Tim Mahoney (FL-16), lost re-election in 2008
Nick Lampson (TX-22), lost re-election in 2008
Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-20), appointed to Hillary Clinton's vacant Senate seat

If new plan is cheaper than Medicare will it be allowed to exclude seniors?

Someone should investigate whether or not the new subsidized plan is going to be better than Medicare. In other words, seniors have paid into Medicare for decades, and now have to pay $96 a month for Part B, plus supplemental insurance for $200 to $300 a month. That's for EACH INDIVIDUAL.

Will the new government subsidy be cheaper for seniors making, say $30m, with subsidies, for coverage for a couple? Will the plan cost less than $600 to $800 now out of pocket for Medicare (and that doesn't count co-pays, etc.)

Or, will the government exclude seniors and tell them they have to keep Medicare and pay more than everyone else.

It would lower healthcare costs and kill some of the elderly, since higher costs for medical does equate with more senior starvation. Call it bipartisan murder, and it will get good reviews from cable, because it shows our leadership is "working together."

Destroying public option and Medicare

In addressing the AARP townhall yesterday, President Barack Obama said:

"And the other thing that we do want to do — now, this is controversial, and I understand some people are worried about this — we do think that it makes sense to have a public option alongside the private option. So you could still choose a private insurer, but we’d also have a public plan that you could choose from that would be non-for-profit, wouldn’t have, hopefully, some of the same high administrative costs, and would be potentially more responsive to your needs at a lower cost. I think that helps keep the insurance companies honest because now they have somebody to compete with.

"And I have to say, the reason this has been controversial is a lot of people have heard this phrase "socialized medicine" and they say, we don’t want government-run health care; we don’t want a Canadian-style plan. Nobody is talking about that. We’re saying, let’s give you a choice. You can choose the private marketplace, or this other approach.

"And I got a letter the other day from a woman; she said, I don’t want government-run health care, I don’t want socialized medicine, and don’t touch my Medicare. (Laughter.) And I wanted to say, well, I mean, that’s what Medicare is, is it’s a government-run health care plan that people are very happy with. But I think that we’ve been so accustomed to hearing those phrases that sometimes we can’t sort out the myth from the reality."

The dirty little secret about the Republican and New Democrat Coalition effort to remove the public option from proposed healthcare legislation is that the next step is Medicare. First, we are seeing some $300 billion in cuts to the program, which means that hospitals will not provide certain services in a covert manner. The next step will be higher premiums and more co-pays.

Medicare is far inferior to Medicaid. People who pay no taxes get excellent healhcare and seniors who paid Medicare taxes for decades get a lousy, inferior program that often bankrupts them.

Already, more than 25% of general practitioners refuse to accept Medicare patients, forcing seniors into clinics and other less desirable solutions. Private insurance pays full price, in most cases, and Medicare pays half, quarter, tenth of the amount for the same procedure. Our politicians in recent years have allowed this to happen, because they want to kill Medicare, even if it means killing some seniors at the same time.

What's with these birthers?

Birthers are also questioning if Barack Obama is a citizen, not just a natural born one.

The U.S. code clearly states that citizens include: Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is an alien and as long as the other parent is a citizen of the U.S. who lived in the U.S. for at least five years (with military and diplomatic service included in this time).

However, that law applies to naturalized citizens, not native born, so Obama's mother was exempt from the requirement. In addition, Obama's father was a resident immigrant (green card), going to college in Hawaii at the time, and he was subject to the laws of the United States.

Obama's mother was born and raised in the U.S.

So, the conspiracy would be that his mother knew that he would run for president, so she forged his birth certificate when he was a baby?

Interview with former CIGNA VP Wendell Potter

This is an interview with Wendell Potter, who was a spokesman for CIGNA. He reveals how the healthcare insurance companies mislead us, and he was the guy in charge of the propoganda.

http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2009/7/16

Krugman questions Blue Dogs' reasoning

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com
Paul Krugman, like many others, has noticed the essential incoherence in the Blue Dog stance on health care reform, and takes up the matter in his Times opinion column today. The Blue Dogs are (suddenly and at last) concerned with how much health care reform is going to cost, keeping watch for the next CBO report whose scoring does not land close to the deficit-neutral target. And yet, the alternatives they propose for health care reform would all -- uhm...drive... (more: www.huffingtonpost.com)

Reply: Let's be honest. It's not just blue dogs; it is also members of the New Democrat Coalition, including Harry Reid, who always want to obstruct anything that helps human beings at the expense of business or the rich.

They are behind the lousy mortgage bill, stupid credit card "reform", and Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, et al, just don't want healthcare reform that includes anything else except a boondogle for the healthcare corporations. They will happily approve a fortune to add 47 million new customers to the industry, but they will stop the public option, or strip it of any value. These are vicious, hateful, creeps, who don't deserve reelection.

No round girls, but most gay shows on HBO

Here's something to add to your knowledge base.

In its third annual Network Responsibility Index, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation found that of HBO's 14 original prime-time series, 10 included content reflecting the lives of gay, bisexual and transgender people. That totaled 42 percent of the network's programming hours, in series such as "True Blood," "Entourage" and "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency."

By contrast, on NBC and CBS only 8 percent and 5 percent, respectively, of prime-time hours included them, the report said.

The conclusion is that gays represent about 5% of the population and 42% of the programming on HBO. That's eight times as much exposure as would be required in a quota system. This is the same network which will not show round girls in boxing matches because of feminazi objections.

ABC had 24% and Showtime, 26%. Fox had 11%. Unfortunately, some of the programming decisions to include gays is more for the snicker than brainwashing us to see a world in proportions that don't match reality.

Kent Conrad earns more industry contributions

There are still liars pushing the phony idea that we need 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. Real men and women would challenge the other side to filibuster, and when they ran out of breath, the bill would pass.

The AP reports today that even though the Democrats enjoy a majority in the Senate, some are skittish about the financial or political costs of the proposals.


"Look, there are not the votes for Democrats to do this just on our side of the aisle," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., the chairman of the powerful budget committee.

Conrad - don't forget to send a copy of this blog to your healthcare "friends," so they know you deserve special campaign contributions for obstructing legislation that would save American lives. "Let them eat cake" has been replaced with "let them die."

WHO says no swine flu reports needed

The World Health Organization has issued some lame excuses for not publishing the totals weekly for swine flue infections. This is the same group that has labeled swine flu a world pandemic. Read their brilliant conclusion:

"For all of these reasons, WHO will no longer issue the global tables showing the numbers of confirmed cases for all countries. However, as part of continued efforts to document the global spread of the H1N1 pandemic, regular updates will be provided describing the situation in the newly affected countries. WHO will continue to request that these countries report the first confirmed cases and, as far as feasible, provide weekly aggregated case numbers and descriptive epidemiology of the early cases.

"For countries already experiencing community-wide transmission, the focus of surveillance activities will shift to reporting against the established indicators for the monitoring of seasonal influenza activity. Those countries are no longer required to submit regular reports of individual laboratory-confirmed cases to WHO."

This is an obvious ploy to keep the public calm. No reason to mention that hundreds of thousands of people have been infected worldwide, that Europe is planning vaccine injections within a month, and the U.S. is dragging its heels while figuring out how somebody can make an extra buck out of our misery.

As of Friday, the United States had 43,771 cases of swine flu and 302 deaths. New York had the most deaths, 63, and illegal alien-friendly Wisconsin reported the most cases,6,222. The flu originated in Mexico, and no real efforts were made by the United States to contain it and restrict diseased folks from crossing the border into our country. As a result, we lead the world in infections.

Stupidly, Congress has also been asleep during this crisis. Republicans appear influenced by the chamber of commerce types who hate bad news because it could hurt the tourist business in Mexico. The New Democrat Coalition and Democratic Leadership Council seem to be in their usual mode of hating anything resembling American nationalism or self interest. Protecting Mexican interests is in the NDC and DLC spheres of NAFTA love, and they work at blaming the United States for everything wrong with that elitist-run sweatshop south of the border.

Electric rate emergency in PA

Pennsylvania residents and businesses will soon face the biggest electric rate hike in history. Sign the petition against it.

http://www.stoptheparipoff.com/

DC - "The Family" - political Mafia?

Can you imagine a group of Democrat and Republican Congress members meeting together in a common crusade? This is a little scary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_(Christian_political_organization)

Some of the New Democratic Coalition folks are members - Senators Ben Nelson and Bill Nelson - but most are Republcans. If you look at statements of the group's leaders in the article, it makes other conspiracy theories seem weak.

And the issue of separation of Church and State? Forget it.

Some media members have recently mentioned the cheap rents paid by some of these officials boarding in Washington's "Family" housing, and it would be important to know if the checks are going to a religious organization (illegal tax deduction) or not. I guess we could ask that the books be opened, but don't hold your breath.

This is just a brief excerpt from the Wikipedia article (read the whole thing - link above):

"A large number of United States Senators and Members of Congress, primarily Republican, as well as high-ranking military leaders, are known as either "associates" or "close friends" of the Fellowship. Many have resided at properties owned by the Fellowship or an affiliated entity such as Youth with a Mission (YWAM) where they pay below-market rents. The low level of rent, tax-free status of the Fellowship, and secrecy of its members which includes not disclosing the scandals of its politician members, among others, has raised concerns.

"Boarders at the C Street Center currently include Senators Tom Coburn, R-OK; John Ensign, R-Nev.; and Jim DeMint, R-SC; and Representatives Zach Wamp, R-TN; Bart Stupak, D-Mich.; Joseph Pitts, R-PA; Heath Shuler, D-N.C.; and Mike Doyle, D-Pa.

"Other members, some of whom have lived at C Street Center or the Cedars, include Senators Sam Brownback, R-KS; Mark Pryor, D-AK; Charles Grassley, R-IA; James Inhofe, R-OK; Susan Collins, R-ME, and Bill Nelson, D-FL; Representatives Ben Nelson, D-NE; Frank Wolf, R-VA; Todd Tiahrt, R-KS; Mike McIntyre, D-NC; John R. Carter, R-TX and Ander Crenshaw, R-FL; as well as former Senators Pete Domenici, R-NM; Don Nickles, R-OK; George Allen, R-VA; Conrad Burns, R-MT; and Mark O. Hatfield, R-OR; and former Representatives Steve Largent, R-OK; Mark Sanford, R-SC; Chip Pickering, R-MS, Ed Bryant, R-TN, John E. Baldacci, R-ME, and J.C. Watts, R-OK."

Conclusion - Trilateral and Kissinger

The following excerpt is the conclusion of a recent speech by Henry Kissinger to the Trilateral Commission. Part two was yesterday.

THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION
2009 PLENARYMEETING - TOKYO, JAPAN, APRIL 26, 2009
THE INTELLECTUAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE TRILATERAL PARTNERSHIP IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Henry Kissinger:

So, it is an enterprise that must be undertaken, but it is an enterprise also that needs to be looked at or studied in the excruciating detail that it involves. It is not something that you can achieve with placards or in outbursts of pacifism. It is because when you ask yourself of the impact on the world of the reduction of nuclear weapons, each phase of this has its own aspects and each phase will lead to a very complicated political discussion.

I have been very much engaged in putting Russian-American relations on a new basis. In dealing with Russian strategists one learns that the notion we had in the 1970s of a Russia with unlimited reserves of manpower, threatening Europe militarily with its conventional force, that had to be opposed with nuclear weapons on the ground is totally reversed. It is Russia today that thinks that it is surrounded by countries with unlimited reserves of manpower and unlimited ideological commitment and that it, therefore, had its own necessities for nuclear weapons which cannot be simply analyzed in terms of the overall deterrence of the United States and Russian equation.

The issue of nuclear weapons has similarities to the Schleswig-Holstein Question in the 19th century, about which Lord Palmerston said there were only three people who had ever understood it: one was dead, the second was in a lunatic asylum, and he himself was the third and he had forgotten all about it. We have to be the third on this issue and we have to learn about it. This is one of the great challenges before us.

All of us here have been affected by the rise of China, and it has been an explicit and an unspoken aspect of many of our discussions. It has never happened before that a country of such magnitude entered the international system without conflict and yet this is precisely the challenge that our international order faces.

There are two aspects to this. One is, What is Chinese policy? Is it Chinese military policy to dominate the region? This is something one can affect, and must affect, by discussions. The second is the weight of China. Regardless of the intentions of Chinese leaders, the weight of China will increase. It is inevitable; it is a fact of life; and it must, therefore, be considered in any discussions we have about a new international system.

This requires, on the side of China, wisdom and restraint, and it requires, on the side of its surrounding countries, comparable wisdom and restraint. Looked at from this point of view, no conversation in the world today is more important than the American and Chinese strategic dialogue.

This does not derogate from any of our alliances; it is not a way of governing the world. Quite the contrary, it is a dialogue that makes it possible to create a multipolar world based on the recognition by two of the countries that are the principal carriers of international economic and strategic power of the role that they must play in this.

So what we need to think about is this. What matters can only be done, or can best be done, on a global basis? What matters should be done on a regional basis? What issues require specific, limited groupings to deal with them?

This afternoon, we have heard about the issue of Afghanistan, and that issue and the Pakistan issue involve, really, two problems. One is the traditional military problem of how do you deal with the challenge to order that has presented itself. But secondly, there is the necessity of creating a political system in the region that enables all of the countries that are potentially affected by this to act in a unified manner over an extended period of time.

On this we could find that India, China, Russia, Iran, and the United States have parallel objectives, and the challenge will be, first of all, to define these objectives to ourselves in a way that can be translated into action and, secondly, to use the combined pressures that they can exercise to diminish the purely American military aspect of it and merge it into this international system.

In a deep way, this is exactly the problem we face also with respect to North Korea and Iran. Whatever the debate is about the military significance of their weapons, the fact is that we have a situation in which the international community has expressed its determination that there not be nuclear weapons programs in those countries. If they now occur anyway, how can one then still speak of a meaningful international consensus? Of course, there could be a negotiation to achieve this.

Having described all of these complexities, let me leave us with a positive feeling. First, the international financial crisis can help the creation of an international political order for a negative reason. Every country is so preoccupied with its own domestic issues; no country has a great surplus of resources that it can devote to international adventures. So, if political leadership can develop, this is a good objective circumstance.

Secondly, we are living in a period in which, for the first time that I know of, no major country is challenging the international system. All of the challenges to the international system come from countries that, in relation to the overall order, are relatively fringe countries or from non-state actors. So, the opportunities that we can see in developing the global patterns that are inherent in this situation are very great despite the fact that the surface knowledge is the opposite.

To all of this I think this Trilateral Commission can make a significant intellectual contribution. It can raise issues; it can define them in a long-range point of view; and it can help with one of the great needs of this period, which is that governments are so preoccupied with the immediate issues that there is sometimes no focal point for a consistent application of long-range visions.

So we can raise issues, we can indicate directions, and in this way we can fulfill the vision that created the Trilateral Commission when it operated in a smaller framework and when one of its primary purposes was to bring Japan into a North Atlantic framework. Now it can help bring Asia and Russia into a coherent global framework.

Henry A. Kissinger is Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc., New York, NY; former U.S. Secretary of State; former U.S. Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs; and Lifetime Trustee, Trilateral Commission

Kissinger and Trilateral Commission - Part 2

The following excerpt is Part 2 of a recent speech by Henry Kissinger to the Trilateral Commission is fascinating. Part one was yesterday. Tomorrow's post will be a continuation.

THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION
2009 PLENARYMEETING - TOKYO, JAPAN, APRIL 26, 2009
THE INTELLECTUAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE TRILATERAL PARTNERSHIP IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Dr. Henry Kissinger

Therefore, some of the disagreements that have existed between Europe and the United States are not due primarily to the personality of American leaders, though they were not aided by some of the arguments that the American leaders made. Their fundamental cause is the fact that European public opinion is very reluctant to engage in foreign policy beyond soft power. It is not a lack of loyalty to the alliance; it is not a lack of understanding of what the issues are; it is the fact that in Europe, the nation-state—based on its experience in two world wars—cannot conduct a strategic foreign policy involving significant sacrifices, and the European Union has not yet substituted a political concept.

Therefore, a wise policy will keep that in mind, and I believe the Obama administration has acted wisely in Afghanistan in not making an issue of the disparity between the formal NATO commitment and the willingness of the Europeans to support it. I would prefer a different attitude, but I think that if we push that issue, we will weaken our relationship. And in a more fundamental way, as we think of the way the international order is likely to evolve, we need to understand what Europe can and cannot do and how the North Atlantic alliance needs to be defined to fit the current circumstances.

In other parts of the world, the notion of sovereignty has also collapsed, but for quite different reasons. In the Islamic world, particularly in the Middle East, the notion of a sovereign state conducting an autonomous foreign policy was brought in at the end of World War I by the European countries. It, therefore, has not ever, and certainly does not now, attracted the loyalties that the European nation-state had at its fully developed period. What has emerged is a concept of Islamism that challenges the notion of the secular state and, in some cases, the existence of the actual states.

The principal country in that area that is conducting a traditional foreign policy in some respects is Iran because it has the tradition of an empire. It has had a national identity, but it is now using it, at least in part, to support the Islamic movements that undermine the secular state.

The principal place where the traditional international system still exists in its more or less pure form is in Asia. The nations of Asia have the kind of national loyalties that were characteristic of the European states. Strategic conflict between the European states is practically inconceivable. In Asia, war is highly unlikely, but there is a tendency to consider each other as potential strategic adversaries. At any rate, a balancing of power of the various states is always in the back of their minds.

So, as the center of gravity of international affairs moves to the Pacific and to the Indian Ocean, there are, in a way, two somewhat contradictory approaches to international affairs that are being conducted, and, if other conditions had not changed, one would predict for Asia some of the kinds of conflicts that existed previously in the evolution of European history.

The reason that conflict is not likely is the emergence of global issues that can only be dealt with on a global basis—issues like climate, the environment, energy, trade, weapons of mass destruction—and they impel a global approach. And there is another element. The nations of Europe went to war with each other because they thought the consequences of defeat were worse than the consequences of war.

Nobody with modern weapons can have any illusions that the consequences of war will not have the most drastic impact on modern societies. And so, the rise of Asia has to be accommodated in an international system that is based on cooperation and on dialogue without the recourse to military measures that used to dominate international affairs.

But that raises the question of how does one do this? In history, international orders emerged either by consensus or by some application of a balance of power. Now, ideally, one would like to see order emerge out of consensus. But history teaches, and our own experience teaches us, that in groups based on consensus there is very often an unequal willingness to assume risks and, therefore, leadership groups emerge within the consensus group that assume responsibility, or the whole thing will gradually stagnate and fall apart.

But then, the question arises, how does one apply this in the multipolar world that I have described? How can one get either consensus or equilibrium when the various actors are states but they can also be NGOs and they can also be non-state groups. This is the challenge of our time, and this is where a group like this can be of great importance. This group can raise questions that the governments sometimes do not find it possible to address, and it can provide a possible consensus to which governments can repair or which they can use as they make their decisions.

This applies to a number of issues. Let me give one example that was raised by President Obama in Prague, the issue of a world without nuclear weapons. That is a goal every American president has avowed since the beginning of the nuclear age and it has attracted enormous support and been supported by any number of intellectual groups. But the fact is that as a practical matter it is extraordinarily difficult to reach and, in fact, impossible to reach under present circumstances.

At the Munich Security Conference, I quoted Senator Sam Nunn, who is a colleague of mine, on having talked about this project, together with George Shultz and Bill Perry. Senator Nunn puts it this way: “The project is like trying to climb a mountain that is covered in clouds. And you announce that you want to reach the summit but you have no idea what the summit looks like.

On the other hand, you will never understand what the summit looks like until you begin the journey and start going into the clouds, and in that process it may become clearer to you. In fact, you cannot do it unless you undertake that journey.” Now the reason I and others who have been in my office and who were known as hardliners have cooperated in this project is that we have all had the experience of asking ourselves, “What would we do if we had to make the decision to use nuclear weapons?”

Each of us understood that this was a decision of a magnitude that goes beyond anything in previous political experience and probably of a magnitude that can have no moral justification.

(continued tomorrow)

Kissinger raps U.S. at Trilateral Commission plenary meeting in Tokyo, Japan

The following excerpt of a recent speech by Henry Kissinger to the Trilateral Commission is fascinating. Tomorrow's post will be a continuation.

THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION
2009 PLENARYMEETING - TOKYO, JAPAN, APRIL 26, 2009
THE INTELLECTUAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE TRILATERAL PARTNERSHIP IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Dr. Henry Kissinger

When the Trilateral Commission was started in 1974, the world was essentially a bipolar world. The idea of David Rockefeller and his colleagues was to bring Japan into a dialogue with what was then the center of global thinking and power, namely, the North Atlantic area. China had just begun its relationship with the United States—it was not a significant economic factor—and Japan was an outpost in Asia for the concerns that were evolved primarily in the North Atlantic context. Since then, the international system has changed fundamentally.

Let me talk about the nature of the international order and the issues in relation to the international order that I see emerging and which require some global group that addresses them.

Since 1974, we have seen the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unification of Germany, the rise of China, and the abandonment by India of its non-alignment and its active participation in global affairs.

We have also seen the rise of nongovernmental organizations—some terrorist, some nongovernmental organizations that undertake positive work, but all of them active in a manner that was marginal or nonexistent when we conducted Middle East policy in the administration in which I served. Terrorism was a very marginal phenomenon. We dealt with governments and we thought we had a difficult time, but those governments were only marginally affected by the groups that avowed terrorism.

We have seen the shift of the center of gravity of international affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and that is one of the major themes of this new period. We have seen the collapse of the financial system that had been believed to be—in the 1980s and 1990s— the pillar of the economic financial order.

About this I will make a few observations. Some of the discussions with respect to the economic system create the impression that their advocates believe that, at the end of the current crisis, we will go back to a slightly improved version of the previous system, with perhaps some more regulation. I do not believe that that is possible. There are a number of reasons why that will not be the case.

I do not think it will be possible or desirable to restore the dominant position of the United States, and one of the key issues that needs to be discussed in this group and others is how one can have an international economic system that has various centers of power, not one that is dominated by one country.

In fact, one of the consequences of the financial crisis is a certain loss of confidence in the United States across the board. Many governments and many countries had become used to the proposition that in the political world we have flights of inspiration that prove temporary. But in the economic world it had been assumed that the US model was the one that was correct and that would be permanent. The fact that this has proved not to be the case will affect the American ability to prescribe solutions in a fundamental way.

I also think that the role of government in the next period, for better or worse, will be much larger and that attention will have to paid to the fundamental flaw of the globalized economic system as it existed before, which was that the economic model and the political model were out of sync with each other.

The global economic model assumed that there were principles that could be applied universally and that it was self-regulating. For that reason it was not believed to be necessary to have a political safety net for the economic system. But the fact was that whenever a crisis occurred, or whenever any group felt significantly disadvantaged, they would go to the political institutions that they knew, which were the national governments.

Therefore, there was an inherent discontinuity between the way economics was dealt with and the way politics would react. This has been shown by the fact that in the first round of this crisis, the solutions are attempted on a national basis—which are then coordinated—and not on a global basis. So, all of these matters will need attention and they will need attention in a very special context. Every country that holds the views that I described, which is most of them, has two contradictory motivations.

On the one hand, they want to make themselves independent of the forces that produced the crisis and, at the same time, they recognize that the solutions require a global answer. The result will have to be the evolution of some kind of multipolar leadership of the international system.

Let me now turn to that issue. The political world is in a period of fundamental change. When I taught international politics, we dealt with the concept of sovereignty as the organizing principle of the international system, both for foreign policy and for domestic policy. But now the notion of sovereignty is under attack or in the process of change in many parts of the world. Europe, which originated the concept of the nation-state, has voluntarily surrendered part of its sovereignty to the European Union.

But the European Union has not been able, up to now, to generate the political loyalties that the nation-state did. Therefore there is a gap in Europe between the way foreign policy used to be conducted when the nation-state was the repository of all national loyalties and the current situation where on the economic level the European Union becomes stronger but there is no repository for the kind of strategic foreign policy that used to be characteristic of Europe.

(continued tomorrow)

Baucus lobby money is $1.5m

Cable news yesterday finally noticed what many readers of this post have long realized - Max Baucus and other New Democrat Coalition right-wingers have taken plenty of healthcare lobby money. Baucus had a total of some $1.5 million from various "healthy" sources.

The Washington Post's Dan Eggen reports "drugmakers, hospitals and insurers continued to pour millions of dollars into lobbying during the second quarter of this year, hoping to limit the damage to their bottom line as lawmakers and the Obama administration wrangle over landmark health-care legislation.

"New disclosure reports that began arriving Monday in Congress showed familiar players at the top of the health-care influence heap, including $6.2 million in lobbying by the dominant Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and $4 million by the American Medical Association.

"Many health companies and associations increased their first-quarter lobbying expenditures, sometimes dramatically. The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association upped its lobbying expenditures by a full million, to 2.8 million dollars in the second quarter; GlaxoSmithKline's spending jumped from $1.8 million to $2.3 million; Novartis grew from $1.4 million to $1.8 million; and Metlife Group reported $1.7 million, up nearly 50 percent. Allstate, which spent less than $900,000 on lobbying through March, boosted its spending to more than $1.5 million from April to June."

This is really the weakness in President Obama's approach of letting Congress originate bills rather than using strong outlines coming from the White House. Nobody really knows what Obama wants for sure, and his method is cover your ass. If Congress comes up with a lousy bill, it isn't his fault. If they come up with soething great, he's responsible.

If the people who are there to serve the voter, instead serve lobbyists for corporations, the only chance we have is an independent White House that tells Congress what the President wants. If Congress fails, at least the American public knows whom to blame.

Clinton: Reports Of My Demise Premature

Hillary will always be in the back seat, because the White House is not in love with her Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) trappings, and her husband's cowtowing to corporate interests. But, there are still a ton of DLC stars appointed to the new administration, including Rahm "the bomb" Emmanuel. Obama is sharp and he seems to be waking up to all the bad advice on subverting change to please Republicans and right-wing Democrats.

A response to http://www.huffingtonpost.com — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says she is comfortable in her position as President Barack Obama's top diplomat and has been consistently involved in foreign policy decisions despite a fractured elbow that kept her out of the limelight for a month. "I broke my elbow, not my larynx," she told reporters Thursday, brushing aside speculation about a loss of influence within the administration.

Swine Flu - 263 dead in U.S., 40,000 infected

The CDC only reports Swine Flu cases weekly - infections and deaths. I wonder if this is just a way to keep a lid on the consequences here of such a pandemic. Friday's report showed:

• Alabama - 477 cases, 0 deaths
• Alaska - 218 cases, 0 deaths
• Arizona - 762 cases, 11 deaths
• Arkansas - 47 cases, 0 deaths
• California - 3,161 cases, 52 deaths
• Colorado - 155 cases, 0 deaths
• Connecticut - 1,581 cases, 7 deaths
• Delaware - 364 cases, 0 deaths
• Florida - 2,188 cases, 12 deaths
• Georgia - 174 cases, 1 death
• Hawaii - 722 cases, 1 death
• Idaho - 143 cases, 0 deaths
• Illinois - 3357 cases, 15 deaths
• Indiana - 282 cases, 1 death
• Iowa - 165 cases, 0 deaths
• Kansas - 186 cases, 0 deaths
• Kentucky - 143 cases, 0 deaths
• Louisiana - 232 cases, 0 deaths
• Maine - 133 cases, 0 deaths
• Maryland - 732 cases, 3 deaths
• Massachusetts - 1343 cases, 5 deaths
• Michigan - 515 cases, 8 deaths
• Minnesota - 660 cases, 3 deaths
• Mississippi - 219 cases, 0 deaths
• Missouri - 70 cases, 1 death
• Montana - 94 cases, 0 deaths
• Nebraska - 264 cases, 1 death
• Nevada - 406 cases, 0 deaths
• New Hampshire - 247 cases, 0 deaths
• New Jersey - 1,350 cases, 14 deaths
• New Mexico - 232 cases, 0 deaths
• New York - 2,670 cases, 57 deaths
• North Carolina - 395 cases, 4 deaths
• North Dakota - 61 cases, 0 deaths
• Ohio - 161 cases, 1 death
• Oklahoma - 176 cases, 1 death
• Oregon - 465 cases, 5 deaths
• Pennsylvania - 1,914 cases, 8 deaths
• Rhode Island - 188 cases, 2 deaths
• South Carolina - 244 cases, 0 deaths
• South Dakota - 39 cases, 0 deaths
• Tennessee -247 cases, 1 death
• Texas - 4,975 cases, 24 deaths
• Utah - 966 cases, 14 deaths
• Vermont - 59 cases, 0 deaths
• Virginia - 319 cases, 2 deaths
• Washington - 636 cases, 4 deaths
• Washington, D.C. - 45 cases, 0 deaths
• West Virginia - 227 cases, 0 deaths
• Wisconsin - 6,031 cases, 5 deaths
• Wyoming - 106 cases, 0 deaths
• American Samoa - 8 cases, 0 deaths
• Guam - 1 case, 0 deaths
• Puerto Rico - 18 cases, 0 deaths
• Virgin Islands - 44 cases, 0 deaths

Total - 40,617 cases, 263 deaths

Unfortunately, this is no longer news for the cable shows, which are two busy parading New Democrat Coalition anti-healthcare types, or talkin about Palin every day.

New 1040 is Health Care Reform Bill

Here's link to latest proposed healthcare bill from House Education and Labor:

http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/markup/FC/HR3200-AmericasAffordableHealthChoicesActof2009/MILLCA_158.pdf

For those of you into irony, it is 1040 pages.

DLC notices "free trade" child labor

The Democratic Leadership Council, which favors moving American jobs overseas, recently released this statement on child labor:

"Total number of children 5-14 years, 2004: 1.2 billion. Child workers worldwide, 2004: 166 million.

"International Labor Organization researchers, quoting children working in rural northern Ghana.

"Stress; exhaustion; sunburn; too much heat; backache; long working hours; a lack of good drinking water; falling trees; tripping on ropes; wounds from machetes; using bare hands to apply fertilizer...."

"Their experience is the typical one: More than two-thirds of the world's working children are on the land. The ILO's 2006 report The End of Child Labor: Within Reach, noted that (as of 2004) about 190 million of the world's 1.1 billion children aged 5-14 were "economically active" and that 166 million of them were engaged in child labor.

"Supplemented last week by a new report focusing on girl workers, the ILO's research divides the totals as follows:

"Agriculture: Roughly 115 million child laborers, 69 percent of all working children, are on farms, including both small-scale family farming and larger-scale plantations. Last week's update suggests that agriculture employs about 61 percent of the world's working girls, and 70 percent of the working boys.

"Urban services: About 22 percent of working children, or 37 million, are in low-level services work. These are fields like maids, newspaper carriers, restaurant workers, street sweepers, and so on. Many more girls -- 30 percent of all working girls -- are in these fields.

"Industry: Industrial work accounts for the remaining 9 percent of child workers, or 15 million. Most, according to the 2009 update, are in manufacturing, including factory work and home production. A smaller number are in construction, and about 1 million are in the especially dangerous mining and quarrying industries.

"The 2006 report, though full of still unhappy statistics, was optimistic. It found child labor rapidly declining. One reason is the general decline in poverty; World Bank researchers find that child labor rates tend to fall by 4.7 percent in poor countries with each additional $100 jump in per capita GDP. Another is that child labor seems to be an area in which innovative government policies, especially in Latin America, have worked.

"In the late 1990s, many Latin governments, led by Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, began paying small stipends to low-income families who can show good school attendance. The ILO found Latin child labor rates nose-diving, down by two-thirds from 16 million in 2000 to 5.7 million by 2004. And while Latin America's progress was fastest, child labor rates were falling everywhere, especially for young children and in abusive industries.

"The 2009 follow-up is more worried than optimistic, especially for girls. After a decade of rapid progress, it suggests, this year's financial crisis may push many children in rural areas out of school and into work, as parents and older siblings lose urban factory and construction jobs and families fall into poverty. The report believes that girls are at especially high risk, since low-income parents often pull girls out of school before boys.

"Short-term options to reduce the risk will include emergency financial support for laid-off adult workers and preservation of stipends for low-income parents during budget cuts. In a longer perspective, though, the ILO remains optimistic, looking to generation reduction of poverty, universal education, and effective labor-inspection (especially in agriculture) as proven ways to reduce and (one hopes) to end child labor."

The next time the Democratic Leadership Council or New Democrat Coalition urges passage of another free trade bill (like their vaunted NAFTA), they should consider the harm to the poor, including child workers. Trade that enables more and more people to live in poverty here and abroad is not free trade, but a free-for-all to benefit big business.

DLC wins again? Card Check dead?

The usual suspects have struck again, this time knocking out the card check provision promised to Labor by Democrats in the Presidential election, according to the Old Gray Lady.

The New York Times reported that "The abandonment of card check was another example of the power of moderate Democrats to constrain their party’s more liberal legislative efforts. Though the Democrats have a 60-40 vote advantage in the Senate, and President Obama supports the measure, several moderate Democrats opposed the card-check provision as undemocratic."

"Several moderate Democrats, including Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, have voiced opposition to card check, convinced that elections were a fairer way for workers to unionize. They were swayed partly by business’s vigorous campaign, arguing that card check would remove confidentiality from unionization drives and enable union organizers to bully workers into signing union cards."

A Democratic Leadership Council web story from January, 2001, explains Blanche Lincoln's role as a member of the New Democrat Coalition:

"New Democrat Blanche L. Lincoln of Arkansas made history in November 1998 when, at age 38, she became the youngest woman ever elected to the Senate. She quickly made her mark in the chamber as a founding member of the Senate New Democrat Coalition.

"Now Lincoln has a chance to make history again from her new seat on the pivotal Finance Committee in the evenly divided Senate. There she will be in a position to influence not only tax policy, but critical health matters such as prescription drug coverage and Medicare reform.

The Finance Committee "is where the most action is," says Lincoln. "With the number of seniors in this state and with the highest poverty rate among seniors in the country, it was important for the committee to have the kind of perspective we have in Arkansas."

Those average folks in Arkansas can be sure that the anti-union Senator will continue to do her best to uphold the ideals of the right-wing New Democrat Coalition, and she will also be working hard on behalf of the big drug companies and health insurers to make sure that the new health bill benefits business, not consumers.

Shame on NY Times for quoting this Republican in Democrat clothing as a moderate spokesperson, because they know what she represents - anti-union and pro-business to a fault.

The Times also elaborated that Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, a senior member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has led a group of six Democrats who have worked closely with labor to revamp the bill. The other senators are Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Charles E. Schumer of New York, and Arlen Specter.

Besides Lincoln, DLC favorites include Brown and Carper. Specter is a Republican, who serves as a Democrat to keep a liberal Dem from running for his seat in PA.

The Times interviewed some anonymous labor leader, who tried to paint a pretty picture about giving up card check. That person is a disgrace to a movement where people died for their ideals.

Late DLC obstruction news from Huffington Post today:

A bipartisan group of centrist and conservative senators sent a letter to the Democratic and Republican leaders on Friday urging delay in consideration of health care reform.

The letter, obtained by the Huffington Post, was drafted by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and is also signed by Democratic Reps. Mary Landrieu (La.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.). Independent Joe Lieberman (Conn.), who caucuses with Democrats, signed on, as did Maine Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins -- moderates heavily courted by President Obama.

Law passed to exempt workers under ten

Watching Henry Paulson explain the trillions of dollars spent on the banks today, it didn't make me yearn for the good old days when capitalism was even more unfettered than presently. He, and his friends Tim Geitner and Larry Summers, epitomize what happens when bankers and their lackeys run America.

Conservative politicians and commentators (have a "Rush") agree that all our problems today are caused by government regulation of business and taxes levied. Those regulations restrict capitalist freedom, the right of companies to do what they want in the marketplace.

Which brings me to the free market utopia of the past - particularly Great Britain in the early 1800s. For hundreds of years the working class in that richest nation in the world lived better than some residents of Africa and Asia. That prosperity included rented houses and bread and butter.

There was a down side. Like today's Americans, both husband and wife had to work. Fortunately for capitalism the work day was 12 hours, not eight, and six days a week, not five. That's 72 hours. But you got Sunday off to thank God for your blessings.

There was another difference between then and now. You didn't need a babysitter for children over eight, which saved money, as any working mother will explain today.

However, the children weren't actually in childcare. They had jobs, to teach them responsibility and earn extra money for family luxuries, like coal to heat the house.

Speaking of coal, the mines were big employers of children. Here is a quote from http://www.dmm.org.uk/.

Drawers pulled heavy carts of cut coal to the pits surface with heavy chains around their waists.
" I am a drawer, and work from six o'clock in the morning to six at night. stop about an hour at noon to eat my dinner: I have bread and butter for dinner; I get no drink.
I have a belt round my waist, and a chain passing between my legs, and I go on my hands and feet. The tunnels are narrow and very wet where I work. My clothes are wet through almost all day long." Girl aged 10

And life for children in the mines was dangerous. Another quote:

A trapper, only 10 years old killed in an explosion.
A horse driver aged 11. Crushed by horse.
A driver, aged 14 fell off limmers and was crushed between the tubs and a door.
A token keeper aged 14. Crushed by surface wagons on branches.
A screenboy aged 12. Crushed by surface wagons.
A trapper aged 12. Crushed by tubs.
A driver aged 12. Horse fell on him.
A bank boy aged 11. Caught by cage.
A driver aged 12. Head crushed between tub top and a plank while riding on limmers.
A trapper aged 13. Head crushed between cage and bunton while riding to bank.
Tub Cleaner, aged 13. Fell down the shaft off a pumping engine.
Boy aged 14, drowned.
Boy, aged 7. Killed in an explosion.
Trapper , aged 9. Killed in an explosion.
Driver, aged 14. Crushed against wall by a horse.
Screen Boy, aged 15. Head crushed between a tub and screen legs; too little room.

Unfortunately for free market purity, in 1847 the government passed a law forbidding the working of women and girls in mines, and all boys under the age of ten.

When we hear about deregulation, like the kind advocated by the Democratic Leadership Council, the New Democrat Coalition and the Republican Party, remember the children of years ago, and realize history teaches us that our grandchildren will face an onerous life if business is allowed to do whatever it wishes.

New Democrats face ad blitz on healthcare

The battle is on for healthcare reform, and members of the New Democrat Coalition may not be happy campers as they are targeted for continuing opposition. While some have agreed to let average Americans get a break on healthcare costs, others continue to posture for corporate lobbyists.

In the news today:

Obama's political organization is launching a series of 30-second television ads on health care, which will begin airing Wednesday in Washington, D.C., and on cable TV nationally. A version will run on local stations in eight states — Arkansas, Indiana, Florida, Louisiana, Maine, North Dakota, Nebraska and Ohio to prod senators to back the health care effort. They will run for two weeks.

Here is a list of mentioned states, except Ohio and Maine, and the Senators who are members of the New Democrats:

• Arkansas: Blanche Lincoln
• Indiana: Evan Bayh
• Florida: Bill Nelson
• Louisiana: Mary Landrieu
• North Dakota: Kent Conrad
• Nebraska: Ben Nelson
  

The Maine advertising is to appeal to cover for liberal Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Ohio advertising is probably a swing state move for a loyal Democrat in Sherrod Brown.

Lincoln and Bayh were founders of the New Democrat Coalition, an offshoot of the Democratic Leadership Council. Their most famous member was President "Wild" Bill Clinton. They are opposed to allowing the Democrat Party to appeal too much to poor people, unions, minorities, etc., and believe that big business is the great hope for our country.

Landrieu is the Louisiana founder of the coalition. Kent Conrad is often quoted by the media, so he could be considered the spokespersn for the group.

3,000 more swine flu cases here in week

Ignored by the media, the swine flu outbreak continues to sweep across America. Some 37,246 cases have been reported in the U.S., including 52 deaths in New York, 31 in California and 21 in Texas. Total American deaths now stand at 211, according to the CDC report released Friday - 40 more dead than the previous report.

The CDC does not report deaths or infections daily, even though they have the ability. Instead, they wait seven days between reports. Keeps the number out of the media, especially those box score type counters in newspapers and tv. Any fan of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce will tell you that "another ten Americans died yesterday from swine flu," is a depressing report, and would have a bad effect on consumer confidence, sales and borrowing.

Did I say "swine flu?" I meant "novel H1N1 virus," which is now the pc term. The pig farmers' lobby objected to the word, swine. Even worse, some people initially wanted to call it Mexican flu, because it started in Mexico. That would have appeared bad for trade, anti NAFTA, a swipe at Mexico. And quarantining the infected tourists, workers and others from Mexico - would have crushed tourism, espcially the profits of Mexican resorts and stores, and don't forget those folks who walk across the border to cut rich people's grass and watch their spoiled brats.

Back to the statistics. Wisconsin has the most swine flu reports of infections - 6,031, followed by Texas, 4,463; Illinois, 3,259; and New York, 2,582. These numbers don't equate with population by state. Does anyone reading this post understand why Wisconsin, for example?

The World Health Organization (WHO) has not updated its death and infecction report since July 6, even though they held "an extraordinary meeting in Geneva to discuss issues and make recommendations related to vaccine for the pandemic (H1N1) 2009." Among the WHO concerns is how much vaccine will be available, and how much will the virus spread and/or mutate into something even more deadly.

Worldwide, WHO reported 94,512 cases. The U.S. leads the world in infections with about three times the Mexico total of 10,262. Canada, another NAFTA partner, had almost 8,000 cases.

In contrast, countries that are concerned with their residents and quarantine where necessary, seem to have fewer cases: France, 310; Germany, 505; China, 2,040; India, 129; Italy, 146; and Poland, 25.

The people who originally pushed for the U.S. embrace of WTO and NAFTA, particularly the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and former President "Wild" Bill Clinton, might be excused for ignorance in the 80s, but the current DLC and New Democrat Coalition know better.
Not only have we been exposed to job losses by outsourcing and moving factories to Mexico, now we see that pandemics quickly cross borders that are undefended, just like the movement of drugs and gang violence.

Lowering American living standards to match Mexico's appears to be the goal of the DLC and its idol, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

First, they took our jobs by bringing in foreign workers, then they closed our factories and opened them up overseas, and now they allow foreign disease easy access to our towns and cities.

Propoganda from the Associated Press?

The word today - the right wing has succeeded in delaying the healthcare reform bill, and the winners are members of the Democratic Leadership Council and New Democrat coalition.

"The administration's Democratic partners in Congress hinted they would not deliver legislation before leaving town for an August recess. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said Obama should be pleased with lawmakers' progress; Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said "there really is plenty of time." The delay would be a blow to the White House and to Democrats' electoral prospects. - Associated
Press

Is it odd, or propoganda, that the AP talks about White House Democrat partners and only quotes two senators, both big shots with the DLC. Of course, they is "plenty of time," especially when you don't want meaningful healthcare.

The DLC is funded by corporations and takes consistent positions in favor of big business. In fact, it is proud to have separated itself from so-called populist stands - lower taxes for the poor, more flexibility for union organizing, and the public healthcare option.

Sen. Max Baucus is apparently leading the healthcare delay scheme, as he meets with lobbyists week after week. Another big shot with the DLC, Baucus is the one who took single payer off the table before recent healthcare discussions even began in the Senate.

The Republicans also agree with Baucus, Stabenow and Conrad. This is revealed in the following from today's AP report:

"There is no chance that it's going to be done by August," said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. "President Obama was right about one thing: He said if it's not done quickly, it won't be done at all. Why did he say that? Because the longer it hangs out there, the more the American people are skeptical, anxious and even in opposition to it."

The media fascination with so-called moderates from the Democrat Party is not just manifested in AP reporting, but on cable shows from channels like MSNBC, where we see Pat Buchanan representing the right, and Harold Ford, Jr. representing the left. Only problem is that Ford is chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, so what MSNBC has done is present two right-wingers and protray it as balanced opinion to the American public.

Fox Business says bank sues itself

For years I have watched CNBC for financial news, but in the past year or so, they have become absurdly against the average person. One example, the constant repetition by pundits that the current depression was caused by citizens spending too much on credit cards and mortgages, and totalling ignoring the Wall Street speculation which really caused our downfall.

Fox Business on the web has produced some excellent reports in recent weeks, including the following excerpted piece:

Al Lewis: Wells Fargo Bank Sues Itself

Al Lewis -- A DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
COLUMN FOXBusiness

You can't expect a bank that is dumb enough to sue itself to know why it is suing itself.

Yet I could not resist asking Wells Fargo Bank NA why it filed a civil complaint against itself in a mortgage foreclosure case in Hillsborough County, Fla.

"Due to state foreclosure laws, lenders are obligated to name and notify subordinate lien holders," said Wells Fargo spokesman Kevin Waetke.

Being a taxpayer-subsidized, too-big-to-fail institution, it's possible that one of the few ways for Wells Fargo & Co. to know what it is doing is to notify itself with a court filing. In this particular case, Wells Fargo holds the first and second mortgages on a condominium, according to Sarasota, Fla., attorney Dan McKillop, who represents the condo owner.

As holder of the first, Wells Fargo is suing all other lien holders, including the holder of the second, which is itself. "The primary reason is to clear title and ownership interest in a property to prepare it for sale," Waetke said in an email exchange. "So it really is not Wells Fargo vs. Wells Fargo."

Yet court documents clearly label "Wells Fargo Bank NA" as the plaintiff and "Wells Fargo Bank NA" as a defendant.

Wells Fargo hired Florida Default Law Group., P.L., of Tampa, Fla., to file the lawsuit against itself. And then Wells Fargo hired another Tampa law firm -- Kass, Shuler, Solomon, Spector, Foyle & Singer P.A. -- to defend itself against its own lawsuit, according to court documents.

Wells Fargo's defense lawyers even filed an answer to their client's own complaint.

"Defendant admits that it is the owner and holder of a mortgage encumbering the subject real property," the answer reads. "All other allegations of the complaint are denied."

Is this dumb, or just someone giving business to lawyers? We will never know, but we do know that billions of dollars have been shoveled into this bank and you and I will pay the bill. We will probably pay it in taxes to redeem treasury notes, bought by bailed-out banks, who will also receive interest on "their" money.

Sen. Ensign's former aide's house for sale

If you ever wondered what was wrong with the Senate, look at these pictures of the house for sale by Sen. John Ensign's former staffer, Douglas Hampton, and his wife, Cynthia -also a former Ensign campaign staffer and reported former mistress. They are asking $1,660,000. Address is 2004 Slow Wind St., Las Vegas, NV 89134 The place has five Bedrooms and 5.5 Baths, and 4,360 sq. feet of lovely living space.

Hampton earned $144,146.71 in 2007 from his Ensign job as "administrative assistant" according to http://www.legistorm.com/ . She earned about $16,000 the same year. Together, that's about $160,000, which is a lot of taxpayer money. And there were many more on staff, although most were probably not as accomodating as Cynthia.

According to Zillow, the house was purchased for $1,230,000 in August, 2006. Property taxes in 2009 were only $8,466. How many administrative assistants live this high on the hog, or more like pigs at the public trough.

President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and DLC-NV Harry Reid should review the salary structure of congressional aides. I would guess our legislators are each spending a million dollars a year on staff, and that there is no regulation. Are they just hiring mistresses, or are there people doing actual work - not just screwing around.

Since Republicans and their Democratic Leadership Council friends are always talking about cutting taxes for the rich and lowering benefits for the middle class. Here's their chance to show leadership by leading the fight to reduce excessive staff and extravagant salaries by Congress.

Hold your breath...

Blue Dog Coalition barks and bites Barack

Blue Dog (neo-Republican) members of the House are howling and snarling at President Barack Obama and his healthcare reform proposals.

As the vaunted Associated Press related today:

"In the House, Democratic leaders had hoped to release an ambitious bill Friday that would achieve Obama's goals of holding down health care costs and extending insurance to the 50 million people who lack it. Insurers would have to cover all comers, employers would be required to offer insurance and individuals would be required to purchase it, with subsidies for the poor. The tax-writing Ways and Means Committee met throughout the day Thursday to try to finalize plans on how to pay for the plan, with an income surcharge on high-earners of some 3 percent or more emerging as the leading option."

"But the move by the Blue Dogs scrambled the equation. It was unclear whether Democratic leaders would be able to satisfy the group's demands since in some cases they're far apart from draft language produced by the three House committees writing health legislation."

Blue Dog, New Democrat Coalition and Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) are all interconnected organizations that cater to corporate interests and believe that populist issues should be of small concern to the Democrat party. Several recent posts expand on this subject.

The AP story on Yahoo neglected to list the members of the coalition (except Mike Ross), which is a way to report the news without allowing a negative image of the perpetrators. Wikipedia lists the current dogs as:

Jason Altmire (PA-4)
Mike Arcuri (NY-24)
Joe Baca (CA-43)
John Barrow (GA-12)
Melissa Bean (IL-8)
Marion Berry (AR-1)
Sanford Bishop (GA-2)
Dan Boren (OK-2)
Leonard Boswell (IA-3)
Allen Boyd (FL-2)
Bobby Bright (AL-2)
Dennis Cardoza (CA-18)
Christopher Carney (PA-10)
Ben Chandler (KY-6)
Travis Childers (MS-1)
Jim Cooper (TN-5)
Jim Costa (CA-20)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-3)
Lincoln Davis (TN-4)
Joe Donnelly (IN-2)
Brad Ellsworth (IN-8)
Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-8)
Bart Gordon (TN-6)
Parker Griffith (AL-5)
Jane Harman (CA-36)
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD-AL), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Administration
Baron Hill (IN-9), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Policy
Tim Holden (PA-17)
Frank Kratovil (MD-1)
Jim Marshall (GA-8)
Jim Matheson (UT-2)
Mike McIntyre (NC-7)
Charlie Melancon (LA-3), Blue Dog Co-Chair for Communications
Mike Michaud (ME-2)
Walt Minnick (ID-1)
Harry Mitchell (AZ-5)
Dennis Moore (KS-3)
Patrick Murphy (PA-8)
Glenn Nye (VA-2)
Collin Peterson (MN-7)
Earl Pomeroy (ND-AL)
Mike Ross (AR-4)
John Salazar (CO-3)
Loretta Sanchez (CA-47)
Adam Schiff (CA-29)
David Scott (GA-13)
Heath Shuler (NC-11), Blue Dog Whip
Zack Space (OH-18)
John Tanner (TN-8)
Gene Taylor (MS-4)
Mike Thompson (CA-1)
Charlie Wilson (OH-6)

Reid is traitor to populist Democrats

Why does the Senate need 60 votes to pass a bill? It doesn't.

The cable media might have you believe that this magic 60 number is the only way to get legislation to a vote in the Senate, and Sen. Harry Reid has continued to promote this idea. But, there's more to Harry than procedural purity. The 60 votes are an excuse to cave in to Republican principals, because Harry is a stealth member of the GOP.

"When the Democratic party won majority status in the Senate in 1986, it was done with centrist and Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) affiliated candidates Barbara Mikulski (a participant in the DLC’s National Service Tour), Harry Reid (who recently said Democrats have to “swallow their pride” and move toward the middle), Conservative Democrat Richard Shelby, DLCer Bob Graham, DLCer Kent Conrad, and DLCer Tom Daschle. Bill Clinton ran his 1992 and 1996 campaigns as a New Democrat and became the only twice elected Democratic president since FDR. New Democrats made significant gains in both the 2006 midterms and the 2008 elections. In May of 2009, President Obama declared to the House New Democrat Coalition, "I am a New Democrat." -Wikipedia

In 2005, then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to end Democratic filibuster of judicial nominees by something called the "nuclear option." It is actually a series of steps designed to bypass the two-thirds vote requirement to change rules:

• The Senate moves to vote on a controversial bill.
  
• At least 41 Senators call for filibuster.
  
• The Senate Majority Leader raises a point of order, saying debate has gone on long enough and that a vote must be taken within a certain time frame. (Current Senate rules requires a cloture vote at this point.)
  
• The Vice President -- acting as presiding officer -- sustains the point of order.
  
• A Democratic Senator appeals the decision.
  
• A Republican Senator moves to table the motion on the floor (the appeal).
  
• This vote - to table the appeal - is procedural and cannot be subjected to a filibuster; it requires only a majority vote (in case of a tie, the Vice President casts the tie-breaking vote).
  
• With debate ended, the Senate would vote on the issue at hand; this vote requires only a majority of those voting. The filibuster has effectively been closed with a majority vote instead of a three-fifths vote.

That scenario is the Frist method. Reid would do the same thing (if he really wanted to oppose his GOP masters), only you would substitute Democrat for Republican in the above example.

A Medicare lie from the Associated Press

"Of the $155 billion in projected savings from hospitals, about $40 billion to $50 billion would come from reducing federal payments hospitals receive for providing care to uninsured and low-income patients, according to lobbyists. Those payments are now made through the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The Medicaid cuts would be apportioned by state, as 10 percent annual reductions beginning around 2015." - Associated Press (7/8/09)

That's a lie. Medicare does not make payments to uninsured and low income patients. The Associated Press (AP) knows better, so this is obvious propoganda to change the public's image of Medicare from a program that takes our taxes, while we work, to pay part of our medical expenses after we reach 65. Medicaid is the conduit to the very poor, not Medicare.

There is a minimum number of quarters you must work in order to get the Medicare hospital benefit (no doctor benefit - for that you pay $96 a month extra). If you don't work enough quarters in your career, you can buy Medicare for some $400 plus a month. If you want a prescription plan, it's an extra premium.

The lie by the AP also ignores some other facts that many politicians would rather not admit.

Every admission to the hospital costs the Medicare "recipient" more than $1,000 co-pay. If you go in again it costs another $1,000 unlesss more than 59 days have passed. Unlimited liability every year.

Medicare co-pay is 20% - unlimited. It doesn't pay for long-term (nursing home) care, except for a brief rehabilitation period. If you spend a couple years in a nursing home, say goodbye to at least $100,000 in assets. Medicaid pays the whole bill.

The Medicare prescription plan has deductibles, co-pays, and you don't get full coverage until you shell out about $4,000 a year. That's no entitlement.

In other health news today, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) said: "It's clearly a very difficult issue. You go to the public to ask them what they think and they don't like it. A compilation of surveys reviewed by senators showed at least 59 percent of the public opposed to taxing health care benefits to pay for reform."

Conrad was talking about taxing health plans for the very rich, plans costing more than $17,000 a year, and only taxing the amount over $17,000. He was also talking about additional taxes on people making more than $250,000.

Readers of this post might wonder what kind of Democrat is Kent Conrad? He's a member of the New Democrat Coalition and Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) (see yesterday's post for a full list). Conrad and others want a pro-corporation to this problem and all others. They are anti-populist, but hold major power positions in Congress.

Americans lose healthcare reform battle

It's all over. Insurance and drug companies won. Readers of this post have lost.

"Mr. (Rahm) Emanuel said one of several ways to meet President Barack Obama's goals is a mechanism under which a public plan is introduced only if the marketplace fails to provide sufficient competition on its own. He noted that congressional Republicans crafted a similar trigger mechanism when they created a prescription-drug benefit for Medicare in 2003. In that case, private competition has been judged sufficient and the public option has never gone into effect." - Wall Street Journal (WSJ)

Emanuel is a former member of the right-wing New Democrat Movement, a group founded by the Democratic Leadership Committee. He is no friend of the populist movement in America.

The drug benefit trigger has been a joke. Medicare and all other health plans pay two or three times what citizens of other countries pay for drugs. There are patients with $100,000 a year prescription drug costs in America, and no country has higher prices than here.

Thank you to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), New Democrat Coalition and the rest of the traitors out to remake the world on the backs of Americans. You might argue that is an extreme conclusion, but consider that the reason given for us to pay insane prices for prescription drugs is to subsidize research. We wouldn't want the British, Germans or French to have to pay more, would we? Take from Americans, and subsidize the world. However, American sacrifice only includes citizens, but not big corporations and their lackeys, who always seem to benefit by recent government actions.

WSJ also said: "the president and his aides already have signaled a willingness to consider an alternative to a public plan under which a network of nonprofit cooperatives would compete with for-profit insurance companies. That is the leading idea in the Senate Finance Committee."

President Obama is caving to a finance committee dominated by the DLC and New Democrat Coalition, groups that pander to international corporations.

Current or recent New Democrat Coalition Senate members, according to Wikipedia, include, in addition to Max Baucus (D-MO):

Blanche Lincoln (AR, founder)
Dianne Feinstein (CA, by 2001)
Thomas R. Carper (DE, by 2001; co-chair from 2003)
Joseph Lieberman (CT, founder)
Bill Nelson (FL, by 2001)
Evan Bayh (IN, founder)
Mary Landrieu (LA, founder, co-chair from 2003)
John Kerry (MA, from 2000)
Debbie Stabenow (MI, by 2001)
Kent Conrad (ND, from 2000)
Ben Nelson (NE, by 2001)
Tim Johnson (SD, from 2000)
Maria Cantwell (WA, by 2001)
Herb Kohl (WI, from 2000)

Past New Democrat Senators are:

Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY, from 2001; retired from Senate in 2009)
Bob Graham (FL, founder, chair 2000-2003, then retired from Senate)
Max Cleland (GA, from 2000; defeated in 2002)
Zell Miller (GA, from 2001; retired from Senate in 2004)
John Breaux (LA, from 2000; retired from Senate in 2004)
Jean Carnahan (MO, from 2001; defeated in 2002)
John Edwards (NC, from 2000; retired from Senate in 2004)
Bob Kerrey (NE, from 2000; retired from Senate in 2000)
Richard Bryan (NV, from 2000; retired from Senate in 2000)
Chuck Robb (VA, from 2000; defeated in 2000)

McNamara dead, member of CFR and TC

Robert Strange McNamara died this morning. Strange was his mother's family name. For the families of tens of thousands of normal American soldiers killed in the Vietnam War, his passing is no great loss.

As the defense secretary from 1961 to 1968, he was overseer of the growth of the force in Vietnam from less than 1,000 to some 535,000. He had served as president of Ford Motor Company before the war, and the World Bank after he left the cabinet.

McNamara introduced systems analysis into the defense department, which is a revered methodology, except that it uses math and modeling to decide policy, rather than experience, professional expertise or other traditional tools. A systems analyst would conclude that cutting a workforce by ten percent is logical if there have been no cuts in a number of years, using the assumption that mathematically there is a percentage of positions not necessary to the proper functioning of operations. Indeed, it could be said that the McNamara approach, carried to the extreme, reflects the inhuman management philosophy of many large corporations today.

McNamara was trained at Harvard Business School, where he got his MBA, just like our recent President George Bush, Jr.

If McNamara is responsible for the millions of jobs lost in America through the "new management" philosophy of today's business schools, then his legacy is not just families deprived by death, but also impoverished by job cuts. He was a proud member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Trilateral Commission (TC), two organizations who seem to display intense interest in globalization, world government, outsourcing, and world banking. A communist Vietnam would have obviously been a stumbling block to free world trade (capitalism).

He was an Eagle Scout, and served in the Army Air Force in World War II, and left the service in 1946 as a Lieutenant Colonel. He was awarded the Legion of Merit.

At Ford he wisely pushed for the Falcon, one of the first American compact cars, and derided the Edsel, which was a sales dud. He was also credited with changing Lincoln from a boat into the smaller Lincoln Continental.