Political Football

I had read this on politico LINK and it scared me – then I read this.  need to read both again when I have more time but they don’t seem to match, or maybe they aren’t focusing on the same elements of his plan.  Not yet sure what to think.  -pf

McCain Offers Market-Based Health Plan
By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 30, 2008; A01

TAMPA, April 29 — Sen. John McCain on Tuesday rejected calls by his Democratic opponents for universal health coverage, instead offering a market-based solution with an approach similar to a proposal put forth by last year.

McCain’s belief in the power of the free market to meet the nation’s health-care needs sets up a stark choice for voters this fall in terms of the care they could receive, the role the government would play and the importance they place on the issue.

Democratic Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) have vowed government action to fulfill what they cast as a moral right for Americans to have health insurance. They favor mandates for coverage; McCain (R-Ariz.) proposes tax incentives. Obama and Clinton would impose new regulations on insurers; McCain’s plan is designed to avoid direct regulation. The Democrats would build on the current employer-based system; McCain would shift to a more individual approach.

In a speech at a cancer research center here, McCain dismissed his rivals’ proposals for universal health care as riddled with “inefficiency, irrationality and uncontrolled costs.” He said the 47 million uninsured Americans will get coverage only when they are freed from the shackles of the current employer-dominated system.

McCain’s prescription would seek to lure workers away from their company health plans with a $5,000 family tax credit and a promise that, left to their own devices, they would be able to find cheaper insurance that is more tailored to their health-care needs and not tied to a particular job.

Under McCain’s plan, $3.6 trillion worth of tax breaks over a decade that would have gone to businesses for coverage of their employees would be redirected to individuals, regardless of whether they are covered by a company plan.

“Insurance companies could no longer take your business for granted, offering narrow plans with escalating costs,” McCain said. “It would help change the whole dynamic of the current system, putting individuals and families back in charge, and forcing companies to respond with better service at lower cost.”

Health experts predict a robust debate in the general-election campaign as anxiety about the cost of health care grows against the backdrop of a worsening economy, higher gasoline prices and rising unemployment.

“Health will increasingly become reframed as part of the broader pocketbook and economic concerns,” said Drew Altman, president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health research group. “The real health reform debate hasn’t really begun — the debate between the Democrats and the Republicans about the fundamental differences in how to reform health care.”

Altman’s group released a poll Tuesday showing that nearly 30 percent of Americans have faced a serious problem in paying for medical care or insurance in the past year. The survey also found that 25 percent of workers made job decisions based primarily on health-coverage considerations.

McCain’s proposal is similar to one that Bush put forth in his 2007 State of the Union address. That plan, which would have replaced employer tax breaks for health insurance with a $15,000 tax deduction for married couples, flopped in Congress, failing to get even a committee hearing.

McCain’s plan is aimed primarily at giving individuals the power to make health-care decisions by granting the same tax breaks for insurance whether workers get a policy from an employer or on their own. Aides call it a “radical” rethinking of health care that would drive costs down and give people more choice.

But it also leaves McCain open to criticism that he is not doing enough for the poor and sick, who could face steep premiums and limited choices as they search for an insurance company willing to cover them. Critics of McCain’s plan said it would do little to help people already struggling with health-care costs.

Unlike his Democratic opponents, for instance, McCain would not mandate coverage for people with preexisting conditions who have not already been covered by a company health insurance plan. Critics say that would leave millions of people without coverage.

“Our next president has to get health-care costs under control. But like President Bush, John McCain won’t stop rising health-care costs,” asserts the Service Employees International Union, which has endorsed Obama, in a new television ad running in the swing state of Ohio. “When it comes to making health care affordable . . . we’ll still be feeling the pain.”

McCain sought to answer those charges Tuesday by saying he would create what he called a guaranteed access plan, or GAP, to help provide coverage of last resort for the sick and other “high-risk” people until the marketplace has matured enough to take care of them.

He gave few details of how such a program would work, who would run it or how it would be financed. He said it might be operated by a nonprofit organization with funds from the federal and state governments. And he said he would work with governors to solicit ideas from their experiences with similar state-run programs.

McCain advisers said such a program could cost as much as $7 billion a year. But McCain vowed not to “create another entitlement program that Washington will let get out of control.” He added: “Nor will I saddle states with another unfunded mandate.”

In a statement, Clinton said McCain’s plan has “fundamental flaws” and charged that it would abandon millions of Americans to expensive, high-risk insurance arrangements. “Older Americans or those with pre-existing conditions would be allowed to get only one type of coverage in a high risk GAP pool,” Clinton said. “That kind of arrangement does more to help insurers than individuals.”

Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said, “John McCain is recycling the same failed policies that didn’t work when George Bush first proposed them and won’t work now.”

McCain also promised to fight for health savings accounts, a centerpiece of Bush’s health-care efforts, and to lobby insurance companies for better coverage of preventive care. And he said he would provide incentives for doctors and hospitals to use cutting-edge technology to reduce medical costs.

In his own television commercial, which began running Tuesday across Iowa, McCain says, “I can characterize my approach on health care by choice and competition, affordability and availability.”

The discussion about health care has for months centered on the debate between Obama and Clinton. But by highlighting his plan now, McCain is refusing to cede the issue to the Democrats.

Aides said he is driven by a belief that his rivals’ approach would drive up costs and make health care less accessible.

“Clinton and Obama would put the government in charge of the choices you have to make,” said Carly Fiorina, a top adviser. “John McCain’s plan puts the choice, the power, the decision in the hands of the individual and the family.”

Republican Leader Christopher Rants’
End of Session Remarks

.

(DES MOINES)– House Republican Leader Christopher Rants (R-Sioux City) delivered end of session remarks to the Iowa House of Representatives today. The following are his remarks, as prepared for delivery:

Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen of the House…I direct my first comments to the Pages – who unlike most, understand the direct correlation between Guitar Hero and John Galt. I hope that this year was a rewarding one. I’ve got to say that I think this is the best group of Pages we’ve ever had.

Before I get along too far I want to say how proud I am of the Republicans in this chamber. To my assistant leaders, Kraig, Rod, Linda, Doug, Jeff, thank you, and thank you Representative Raecker.

To my staff, Jeff, Josie, Allison, Lon, Brad, Mary, Ann, Lew, Kelly, Noreen and Jason, thank you for all you do.

And to all the members of our Republican Caucus, thank you. We stood at the wall ready to fight for what we believed. That willingness allowed us to save Iowa’s Right to Work Law. We did what we could to stop the tax increases, we tried to maintain the integrity of our spending limitation law and we worked in a bipartisan way, as long as we were included in the decision making, on health care reform this year.

Thank you. We fulfilled our responsibilities as representatives of our constituents.

I’d like to take this chance to point out a few of the lessons I’ve learned sitting at this desk. Some of the lessons I admittedly did not want to learn, some of them may be of interest to no one but me, and some of them are about very serious things.

I’ve learned quorum calls are like watching the Godfather trilogy… every time you think they are about to end, they just keep coming. They never end and when they finally do and I’m not really sure what happened.

I’ve learned that the best way to ensure that your priorities become law is simply to make sure that they are the same priorities of Senator Gronstal. I joked last year that he’d become Speaker Leader Governor Gronstal. I don’t think it’s a joke anymore.

I learned that the best way to keep a secret in this building is to simply draft a plan that is a priority of organized labor. You can be assured that nobody gets to see it, read it or understand it before it hits the floor.

I was taught a lot of lessons over the years by a lot of people. People like Ron Corbett, Brent Siegrist and Chuck Gipp taught me how to be Majority Leader, and Dick Myers, Dave Schrader and Bob Arnold taught me how to be Minority Leader. One of those lessons was that regardless of how much you disagree with what the minority leader says in their remarks on the floor, as long as they are not being disrespectful, you always give them latitude. I can’t tell you how many times I listened to Dave Schrader and Dick Myers excoriate the Republican majority without being cut off or hit with a point of order. They were extended latitude. I learned that is not the case anymore. Democrats will not extend the same courtesy to Republicans that we extended to you.

You know, one of the things that has always frustrated me is the notion that all of us up here are the same. That Republicans and Democrats aren’t any different from each other. You hear it all the time from voters frustrated with their government – that it doesn’t matter who they talk to because they results are always the same.

I think the last two sessions have put that misguided notion to permanent rest. There are significant differences between the two parties.

In the last two years, Democrats in this chamber have raised taxes and increased state spending by nearly ONE BILLION dollars and still had to brake the expenditure limitation law to satisfy their absolutely unquenchable need for more government spending.

Even on the last day – surprise! Another $7 million dollar property tax increase that was never talked about.

All, all, in the face record revenues and with money literally pouring into the state treasury at a record level.

It’s like watching a scary movie where the teenager goes outside to investigate a strange noise. You know he’s going to do it, but when he’s does, you still can’t believe he actually went through with it. That’s what it was like watching the majority party blow through the expenditure limitation law.

Watching Iowa’s Agenda, I heard one Democrat say the following:

“We in the majority seek the assistance of the minority to help the majority party recognize when maybe there are things we’ve not seen and bring these issues forward, and hopefully we can influence enough people that our funding doesn’t get out of control.”

Well, Republicans have been holding up warning signs for the last two years – and you’ve run through them all. This time, the bridge really is out – we are facing $500 million in built-in expenditures with no new funding, all in a time of economic uncertainty.

I know how Democrats bristle at the charge of being elitists. Nobody likes to be put into that club. I know those of you in the majority party certainly don’t think you belong in that category.

Well, if that is truly the case, then explain the following:

You gave Microsoft a big tax break, but didn’t extend the same to smaller Iowa-based technology companies.

You’ve been openly hostile to Iowa’s homeschoolers, while literally dumping millions of new dollars into public schools.

You thought it was okay to mandate gym class, but it wasn’t okay to mandate the Pledge of Allegiance.

You tried to force Iowans to pay union dues, regardless if they belong to union or not.

You let big casinos drive through a loophole in the smoking ban, but you stuck it to small town restaurants and bars.

You found money for an antique organ, but you couldn’t find the money for the deaf and blind children.

You gave Principal a nice $750,000 gift for the riverwalk here in Des Moines, but you couldn’t find any money to help fix old buildings on main street.

You gave a big pay raise to the governor, but you raised taxes on hundreds of thousands of working class Iowans who just want to be left alone to live their lives and make their own way.

And you know, I think that is the enduring theme of this legislature. A legislature which has continually told Iowans that we’re going to do this for your own good – whether you like it or not, because government knows best.

Why? Why?

This legislature has made a deliberate effort to limit liberties in the name of what some of you think is the public good. Now I’m about to do something that I didn’t think I’d ever do. I’m going to quote Hillary Clinton. I apologize to the Obama supporters but I found this quote from Senator Clinton and I think it perfectly describes the attitude of this General Assembly for the last two years.

In 2004 Senator Clinton said,

“We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”

The Pages who read Atlas Shrugged know what a looter sounds like when they’ve heard one. Well, that’s a looter, and this chamber is full of them.

Republicans came in here looking to find bi-partisan consensus on things like education standards for kids, making healthcare more portable, and finding relief for the property tax payer. We worked with you where you let us. When we disagreed with you, we did it out in the open. But when the going got tough, you dropped the bi-partisan compromise in favor of political expedience behind closed doors.

You raised taxes, increased government spending, limited the ability of people to make informed decisions about their own behavior. All, I assume, in the name of helping those who can’t help themselves. All in the name of the little guy, of the forgotten man.

Ladies and Gentleman, the forgotten man the last two sessions was the taxpayer.

###

hat tip to http://powerlineblog.com

Again, let the global warming hysteria be replaced by a new and higher focus on conservation.  -pf

Predictions of environmental doom have been with us for a long time, as the Washington Policy Center reminds us:

•“…civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.

• By 1995, “…somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.

• Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “…the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.

• The world will be “…eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age,” Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970.

• “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.

• “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.

• “By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half…” Life magazine, January 1970.

• “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

• “…air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

• Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.

• “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

• “By the year 2000…the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

http://www.americanthinker.com

April 27, 2008

Another Obama Marxist

By Lance Fairchok

Barack Obama has a thing for Marxists. He befriends them, listens to their counsel, and he even hires them to work in his campaign. And they seem to feel the warmth. President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, who led a revolution there in 1979, says Barack Obama’s presidential bid is a “revolutionary” phenomenon, and Americans are “laying the foundations for a revolutionary change.” A captured computer revealed that an unknown person chatted with Marxist FARC guerillas on Obama’s behalf (they believed), stating he would be the next President and US policy towards Columbia would change. Frank Marshall Davis, a dear Obama friend and mentor was as a member of the Communist Party USA. Barack Obama just seems to attract Marxists.

If the people he surrounds himself with are any indication of his core beliefs, a higher capital gains tax to punish the rich, even if it diminishes actual tax revenue, may be only the beginning. Obama’s Official campaign blogger, Sam Graham-Felsen, a former writer for the leftist Nation magazine and a contributor to the Socialist Viewpoint, is certainly a believer in class warfare.

The capitalist ruling class of the United States exercises a virtual dictatorship not only over American society, but also over the entire world. This capitalist class rule is the basic cause of the poverty, wars and the degradation of the natural environment.

After being expelled from Socialist Action in 1999, we formed Socialist Workers Organization in an attempt to carry on the project of building a nucleus of a revolutionary party true to the historic teachings and program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.
Socialist Viewpoint (info@socialistviewpoint.org)

The product of a Harvard education, Sam is an admirer of anti-American academic Noam Chomsky, a hypocrite and fraud masquerading as a political philosopher. Mr. Chomsky, perhaps admired by Obama as by his official blogger, is fond of visiting dictators and terrorists and giving speeches blaming all the worlds’ ills on America. All while accepting defense department contract dollars as a linguist. Chomsky was an ardent supporter of Pol Pot, and to this day denies a holocaust occurred in Cambodia (1.67 million died). He is unrepentant about the horrors his vile ideology encouraged and supports Hamas and Hezbollah with the same willful blindness today.

In an article in the Harvard Crimson, Sam writes of his hero:

For me, hearing Chomsky speak for the first time was a life-changing experience. His ability to take preconceptions and destroy them-to completely remodel one’s understanding of reality with cold, hard facts-blew me away. When I left what was then the ARCO Forum last fall, I felt as though I had been through the Matrix and back. Chomsky really has this effect because he bombards you with evidence and logic, not empty rhetoric. It is nearly impossible to hear him or read him-once you’ve actually checked his facts yourself (he even cites page numbers in public addresses)-and deny what he’s saying.

For anyone who has actually endured one of Chomsky’s muddled rants or tried to verify the claims in his books, young Sam’s praise is comical; and a clear indication he has never actually read one. You find very quickly Chomsky is not overly concerned with “facts,” as he fabricates them with abandon. He cites page numbers, to his own books, which recycle themselves with astonishing success. Hardly an example of a towering intellect, his tired canards are sufficient to impress the worshipful Sam Graham-Felsen, and endear himself to the same leftist academics that so easily embraced dictators such Ho Chi Min and Pol Pot, idolize Chavez and Castro and legitimized terrorists like Yasser Arafat. Chomsky is the master of post-modern moral relativism, quick to excuse atrocity with obfuscation.

On the day after 9-11, Chomsky wrote:

“The terrorist attacks were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton’s bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people.”

It may be simple self-aggrandizing hypocrisy that inspires Mr. Chomsky’s comments, though I suspect, more likely he mistakes the accolades of twenty year old activists as confirmation of his own genius. He plays what works with the crowd. Here are some other nihilistic gems gleaned from his pedantic and incomprehensible writing:

“If the Nuremberg laws were applied today, then every Post-War American president would have to be hanged.”

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”

“Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.”

“The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control – “indoctrination,” we might say – exercised through the mass media. ”

“Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.”

“I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.”

Sam Graham-Felsen, hired to run Obama’s blog, writes about Noam Chomsky in a Marxist publications that openly calls for revolution against the American government. This is a Presidential candidate’s choice to run the on-line portion of his campaign. That speaks volumes of his character and worldview. Contradicting what he says in public, Obama is surrounding himself with poeple who never seem to learn that their absurd ideologies end in misery and ruin.

Sam is young and has much to learn, so we can forgive his silly hagiographies, the ones about Chomsky and the ones about Obama. His hero worship is eager and emotional and completely without substance, much as Obama’s campaign promises are without substance. Obama is a community organizer in the Saul Alinsky mold, and knows where to get people like Sam who have energy and drive. His staff is nothing if not energetic. He even cut his activist teeth in Chicago, the stomping grounds of Alinsky and so many others in the “progressive” community. One wonders why the windy city still has a murder rate higher than Baghdad, after so many years of enlightened activism.

The adults in the Obama campaign expect us to believe that a campaign staff filled with Marxists and radicals does not reflect the candidate. We are supposed to believe that ideologues who distain America and Americans can improve the system that has brought humanity more prosperity and well-being than any nation before it. Speaking out of both sides of their mouths, they tell us we are great, and then insist we must change because we are responsible for all the bad things that happen in the world. That alone should anger the electorate enough to defeat them. The change Obama will bring will not be the change America needs or expects. It will be the change of naive adolescents, which think Noam Chomsky wise.

We continue to have an optimistic outlook about the revolutionary potential of the world working class to rule society in its own name-socialism. We are optimistic that the working class, united across borders, and acting in its own class interests can solve the devastating crises of war, poverty, oppression, and environmental destruction that capitalism is responsible for.
- The Socialist Viewpoint

Enough about Politics and Football for a while. This is about Life. The article below is a about a friend of a friend. I was privileged to met Bret and his girlfriend Tracie when some of us drove to Cincinnati to see a professional tennis tournament last year. If you ever get down on yourself – come back and re-read this story. -pf

Here is the original story from last August – CLICK HERE

April 23, 2008

Teaching lessons about life

Students see teacher/coach Bret Neylon as an inspiration

By Josh Duke
josh.duke@indystar.com

He still faces struggles and sometimes reluctantly asks for help, but Bret Neylon says his first full year back as a teacher and coach at Brownsburg High School has gone better than expected.

Neylon returned to the classroom last fall, 14 months after a bicycle injury left him paralyzed from the neck down.

“At first, it was kind of weird to see him in a different environment,” said Jeremy Beasley, a junior in one of Neylon’s U.S. history classes who also had him as a teacher three years ago.

“But it didn’t take as long as I thought it would to adjust and get back to history. He can do just as much as any other teacher. I’m glad to have him.”

Neylon suffered his injury June 17, 2006, during a bicycle race in Wilmington, Ohio. Unable to avoid an accident in front of him, Neylon catapulted over his handlebars and onto his head. The impact fractured a vertebra in his neck.

Neylon rarely complains or even speaks about it, but he teaches and coaches despite a neurogenic pain that he says feels like a cross between a bad sunburn and a blow to the funny bone. The pain, caused by his nerves getting mixed signals from the paralysis, is always there throughout his body and usually increases in intensity the more he speaks. His only relief from the pain comes while sleeping.

“I don’t want people feeling sorry for me,” he said. “It hasn’t kept me from teaching anything. It just makes it a little more difficult.”

Neylon has pulled positives from the injury. He believes it even made him a better teacher.

“My handicap has made me focus more on technology and given me more time to do research, prepare for class and develop better lesson plans,” he said. “Teaching U.S. history really has been one of the few things that hasn’t changed for the most part.”

To aid his return to the classroom, the school district and Indiana Vocational Rehabilitation — a state organization that helps people with disabilities — spent about $30,000 to prepare Neylon’s classroom. They added technology such as Max, a voice-activated computer software program that lets Neylon send e-mails, answer and dial the phone, and run the overhead projector and other video equipment.

The school also hired Neylon’s sister Cathy Stinson to help grade papers, make photocopies and handle other daily chores. Stinson and other teachers feed Neylon at lunch and help get him dressed for track practices or meets after school.

“What has impressed me most is just how good a teacher he is,” Stinson said. “I find myself stopping what I’m doing sometimes just to listen. Every minute of every day I think about what he has accomplished. I don’t think I could do it.”

During a recent writing assignment in class, Neylon maneuvered his electric wheelchair around desks and book bags checking to see if students needed help.

“Don’t just write a sentence or two,” he said after glancing at one paper. “You need to think about it more than that.”

Students say they don’t see a teacher with a disability when they enter Neylon’s class. They see an inspirational leader who just happens to teach U.S. history.

Beasley said the example Neylon set in the worst of times encourages him to work harder as a student.

“He has proven to me that anything can be accomplished if you want it bad enough,” Beasley said.

This has been eventful school year for Neylon outside the classroom as well. His boys and girls cross country teams made it to the semistate in the fall — the first time both teams advanced that far in the same season in Neylon’s coaching career. He and his girlfriend, Tracie Morris, set a wedding date and will marry July 5.

“Everything in my life is as close to being as normal as I can make it,” Neylon said. “Teaching and coaching (have) meant everything to me. I can’t imagine sitting at home and staring out the window feeling sorry for myself.”

Another crucial election – who will run against first term Congressman Loebsack from District 2? Teahen and Miller-Meeks are both good candidates, but I’m supporting Miller-Meeks because she seems the most “from the gut”.

Unique characteristics (Female, medical doctor, Veteran – retired as a Lt. Col. in the Army Reserves after 20 plus years of Active and Reserve service) makes her an outstanding candidate. Her health care plan sounds like Rudy (tax credit to allow citizens to shop for the best and portable deal) and she has a firm sense of self.

Click on the pdf below to open a Document of a Miller Meeks article on Stem Cell and Abortion: 2008-0422-miller-meeks.pdf

Link to Miller-Meeks website

Click on the pdf below to open a Document of a Miller-Meeks article on Health Care: health-care-miller-meeks.pdf

iowapolitics.com

Link to original story 

another busy weekend …  please note a candidate I’m supporting for D2 House – Dr. Miller-Meeks. -pf

REPUBLICANS HOLD DISTRICT CONVENTIONS

Congressman Steve King, Ag Secretary Bill Northey, State Auditor David Vaudt and Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Stew Iverson are all planning to attend all five Republican congressional district conventions this Saturday.

Republicans will discuss and decide on their district platforms, and elect representatives to the state central committee. The GOP districts and their locations:
– 1st District: Dubuque
– 2nd District: Iowa City
– 3rd District: Grinnell
– 4th District: Fort Dodge
– 5th District: Carroll

See the RPI release on the conventions for more details: http://www.iowapolitics.com/index.iml?Article=123862 Iowa Democrats are scheduled to meet for their district conventions on April 26.

GOP insiders say Saturday’s 2nd District meeting could prove interesting as Peter Teahen and Mariannette Miller-Meeks are vying for their party’s congressional nomination. In first quarter fundraising, Miller-Meeks reported more than $68,000 in cash on hand, compared to $34,090 for Teahen. Teahen’s campaign committee also reported $31,663 in debt

MILLER-MEEKS WANTS TO HELP HEAL WASHINGTON

Ottumwa physician Mariannette Miller-Meeks has witnessed firsthand the inequities when it comes to Medicare reimbursement in Iowa. That’s just one issue that prompted the Republican to seek a seat in Congress. Miller-Meeks also wants to see more done in the area of health care reform, and she is taking her message to 2nd District voters these days in an effort to secure her party’s nomination and face incumbent Dem Dave Loebsack in the November general election. She told IowaPolitics.com this week she plans to take some of the attributes that have made her a successful physician – such as compassion and building cohesiveness — to Washington.

“I see myself as a healer,” Miller-Meeks said. “I would like to build a bridge that heals division and distrust.”

Though she boasts a background in health care and plans to fight for those issues on Capitol Hill, Miller-Meeks said she is also pushing for a flat tax to help Iowans and Americans keep more of their money and reduce confusion when filing their taxes. She calls the current tax code, which exceeds thousands of pages, atrocious and cumbersome.

“I think most people would support a voluntary flat tax,” she said. There is also a need to focus on establishing a sound energy policy, which is another message she delivers on the campaign trail. She said there is a plethora of renewable energy potential within the 2nd District, and she intends to promote them and help generate new jobs in the region.

“A lot of people who would like to stay near home and close to their families,” Miller-Meeks said. “We have tremendous opportunity with the right kind of policy. I don’t think we can completely become independent from oil, but we can make great strides with renewable fuels. That would help young people stay in the state. We are a fabulous gem of a district.”

Miller-Meeks faces Peter Teahen and Lee Harder in the June 3 primary. She said she intends to run a positive campaign. “I intend to run a very strong campaign,” she said. “The campaign is about voters.”

April 16, 2008

Obama: Silence in the face of evil

Peggy Shapiro

“Silence in the face of evil is always on the side of the aggressor.”
- Elie Wiesel

Barack Obama, the eloquent speaker who mesmerizes the media, the man whose orations make women swoon, the candidate who promises to embrace dictators and terrorists in conversation, falls strangely silent when his words are needed to stand up against evil, intolerance or injustice. In a dangerous world with evil regimes aspiring to destroy the United States and the values we represent, the silence of an American President would be an unthinkable disaster.

We know that for over twenty years, Obama listened attentively to his pastor’s diatribes against the United States and Israel and said nothing. Confronted with outright lies that the United States created the AIDS virus to destroy Africa and imports harmful drugs to destroy African Americans, Obama was silent. When the church website and newsletter carried the message of Hamas, labeled as a terrorist group by both the U.S. and the E.U., Obama maintained his silence.

Obama has not availed himself of other opportunities to speak out against injustice. When his words have taken take a stand on behalf of human decency and not be empty platitudes, Obama chose silence. Take the case of the anti-Islamist Muslim journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, who was imprisoned and tortured by Bangladeshi authorities when he requested a visa to attend a conference in Tel Aviv. Securing his release became a bi-partisan issue.

Richard L. Benkin, who is spearheading efforts to release Choudhury, notes “Democratic, Republican, left, right, moderate; you name it. And every one of them reacted with support; every one of them, that is, except one. Who was the one lawmaker that took a pass on saving the life of an imprisoned US ally and opponent of Islamist extremism? That’s right, my own Illinois Senator Barack Obama.”

Obama’s record in the Illinois legislature established his reluctance to take a courageous stand. In 1999, he was faced with a difficult vote to support a bill that would let some juveniles be tried as adults. Voting “yes” would help create the image of a man who is tough on crime, but many in the African-American community opposed the law. Faced with a moral dilemma, he did what was most comfortable: nothing. He sidestepped this issue and 130 others. “If you are worried about your next election, the present vote gives you political cover,” said Kent D. Redfield, a professor of political studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. In the United States Senate, where there are no “present” votes, Obama consistently sought the safety of voting 96.7% of the time with the majority of Democrats. That is, when he voted. He has missed 39.3% of the votes during the current Congress.

Obama has found a comfortable spot straddling the fence on any potentially controversial issue. At a town hall in Malvern, Pennsylvania, Obama, was asked about U.S. policy toward Tibet and Darfur (the site of ongoing genocide against the Christian population), especially in light of the forthcoming Olympics in Beijing this summer. He equivocated, “It’s very hard to tell your banker that he’s wrong…And if we are running huge deficits and big national debts and we’re borrowing money constantly from China, that gives us less leverage. It give us less leverage to talk about human rights, it also is giving us less leverage to talk about the uneven trading relationship that we have with China.” Obama never once mentioned Tibet or China’s relationship with Sudan.

This week when history demanded his voice, Obama once again opted for silence instead of courage. Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders have strongly condemned Jimmy Carter’s planned meeting with Khaled Mashal, head of the Hamas terrorist organization. Both Democrats and Republicans demonstrated their leadership in a bipartisan letter to the former president entreating him to refrain from using his stature to undermine U.S. policy and negotiate with Hamas. (Hamas is committed to the complete eradication of Israel and has forsworn any negotiations in favor of violence.) Among Democrats speaking out on the House floor was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), “In light of Hamas’ continuing violence and calls for the destruction of the State of Israel, I strongly urge President Carter to reconsider his decision.” Others warned that meeting with Hamas would not only undermine U.S. policy and the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, but lend legitimacy to the group that thwarts all efforts for peace.

Obama, stunningly, declined to take a moral stance and instead chose silence. He said it was not his place to criticize former President Jimmy Carter… “I’m not going to comment on former President Carter. He’s a private citizen. It’s not my place to discuss who he shouldn’t meet with,” Obama (Reuters April 11, 2008)

If Obama wants to be President of the United States, it is his place to speak out for what is true, what is in the interest of the nation, and what is morally right (even if it costs him a few votes). It is called leadership.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/obama_silence_in_the_face_of_e.html at April 17, 2008 – 10:07:29 PM EDT

In one of my most satisfying dreams, algore runs for president while at the same time the real danger that he has wrought is revealed. By focusing climate change issues for political advantage and not scientific study; algore deserves scorn and ridicule for all time. -pf 04/03

04/04 – here’s another link to an article that says there has been NO global warming since 1998.  I do not doubt we are always in a climate change trend on Earth; this trend needing planning and forethought to manage survival in the next hundreds of years.  Teach CONSERVATION don’t build political mansions from the hysteria you’re causing algore!  As our workflow guru Eli Glodratt says “Be Paranoid, Be Paraoid, don’t be hysterical.”

New article from 04/04 referenced above

Link to original article below

April 03, 2008

Al Gore’s Global Warming Therapy

By Marc Sheppard

On the surface, Sunday’s 60 Minutes puff piece did little more than cheer the pending rollout of Al Gore’s all-out 300 million dollar green media blitz. But on a deeper level, it also provided disturbing new insight into just what drives this man’s unwavering and unfounded obsession.

Having dispensed with her CBS-requisite softball questions and genuflection to Mr. and Mrs. ex-vice-president, interviewer Leslie Stahl soon steered the conversation to an obviously painful topic. Gore appeared rather surprised when asked whether he had gone through “the seven stages of anger and grief” after he “lost the presidency when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of George Bush.”

Failing to parry the dogged insistence that he must have felt anger, fury and rage, Al hesitantly dmitted that he “strongly disagreed with the [court's] decision,” and yeah, he “probably went through all that.”

And although both Gores appeared somewhat unsettled by the topic, Stahl’s voiceover pushed even deeper:

“His friends said they were worried about him and his state of mind, especially after he gained a lot of weight and grew a beard.”

If you’ll pardon the lay pop-psychology, it sounded as though Al may have had some coping issues to iron out. So then — just what brought the self-proclaimed once “next president of the United States” out of his dark funk?

According to wife Tipper, “Al’s survival after his defeat in 2000 depended on his immersing himself in the climate cause.” [emphasis added] Somehow, CBS didn’t find this peculiar statement worthy of further exploration. I do — as it may suggest that the “PR Agent for the Planet” became so in an effort to lift himself from the throes of depression.

More from Tipper:

“I mean, I think that if you look at anyone who kind of went through what, what he went through and see what he’s been able to do. I’m just really proud of the way that he has not given up. That he lifted himself and our family, you know, back up as well.”

Of course, he did so “by turning his old slides that were gathering dust in the basement into that mega-hit documentary.”

The same “mega-hit documentary” that became the quintessential bible of the Big Green Scare Machine’s Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) cause, despite having the majority of its claims either disputed or outright disproved. And, on the subject of those who dare question the anthropogenic contribution to global warming, Al Gore told Stahl:

“I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view. They’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the earth is flat. That demeans them a little bit, but it’s not that far off,”

About this, Gore may have mistaken one group as two. In reality, the nutty International Flat Earth Research Society did challenge pictures of the obviously spherical Earth taken from the moon. Toward that end, they concocted this wild story that the Apollo moon landing had been “faked in Hollywood studios” and that science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (who recently died and will be greatly missed) had written the script.

But referring to the thousands of scientists questioning AGW as a “tiny, tiny minority” while comparing them to a truly diminutive group of space-cadets who believe we live upon a disk-shaped planet is, itself, a bit nutty.

As is traveling the globe — 60 Minutes featured him in India — training others to “spread the word” by continuing to present his error-filled slideshow to others still. In fact, watching this arrogant cult-like geometric indoctrination method eerily brings to mind the “auditing” techniques the Church of Scientology employs in spreading its own brand of fantastic dogma.

In essence, then, we’re dealing with a psyche that blamed at least Republicans and perhaps the world for having suffered the humiliation of a perceived power theft. While friends and family fretted over his response to that blow, he retreated to his basement to prove his mettle by resuscitating a lightly sleeping obsession. And when he reemerged, he did so reinvented — as a self-appointed savior of the planet armed with little more than an unsubstantiated PowerPoint presentation and an accordingly unreasonable mission.

A 1604 novel by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes told of another man who descended into fantastic delusions of grandeur as a victim of his own frustrated obsessions. Enraptured by tales of chivalry, Alonso Quixano fancied himself a knight errant and, sporting an old suit of armor, dubbed himself “Don Quixote de la Mancha” before embarking on an imaginary mission to save the downtrodden.

But while Quixote’s delusions were mostly benign, Don Gore de la Tierra’s are not. The “word” his misguided mission spreads has facilitated policies of potential calamity far exceeding the actual problem their implementation is meant to remedy. From economy starving Kyoto-style cap-and-trade treaties to population starving ethanol mandates, unintended consequences invariably turn such quixotic green solutions into sheer disaster.

Time and time again.

In one famous Cervantes scene, the delusional warrior encounters a group of windmills and mistakes them for “hulking giants,” which he proceeds to do battle with. Of course, Gore sees industry and capitalism as his imaginary adversaries and windmills not as the problem but rather one of many needless solutions.

But his mission to engage the “hulking giant” which is the planet’s chaotic climate system leaves little doubt which character is the more delusional.

And, needless to say — the scope and communicable nature of such fantasy make him infinitely more dangerous.

Projection: Clinton Wins Popular Vote, Obama Wins Delegate Count

March 28, 2008 02:31 PM ET | Michael Barone | Permanent Link

The Clinton campaign has taken to boasting that its candidate has won states with more electoral votes than has Barack Obama. True. By my count, Clinton has won 14 states with 219 electoral votes (16 states with 263 electoral votes if you include Florida and Michigan) while Obama has won 27 states (I’m counting the District of Columbia as a state, but not the territories) with 202 electoral votes. Eight states with 73 electoral votes have still to vote. In percentage terms, Clinton has won states with 41 percent of the electoral votes (49 percent if you include Florida and Michigan), while Obama has won states with 38 percent of electoral votes. States with 14 percent of the electoral votes have yet to vote.

The Clinton campaign would do even better to use population rather than electoral votes, since smaller states are overrepresented in the Electoral College. By my count, based on the 2007 Census estimates, Clinton’s states have 132,214,460 people (160,537,525 if you include Florida and Michigan), and Obama’s states have 101,689,480 people. States with 39,394,152 people have yet to vote. In percentage terms this means Clinton’s states have 44 percent of the nation’s population (53 percent if you include Florida and Michigan) and Obama’s states have 34 percent of the nation’s population. The yet-to-vote states have 13 percent of the nation’s population.

Thus the Clinton campaign could argue that Obama cannot win states with most of the nation’s people even if he wins all the remaining eight primaries. Could argue—but I don’t think that’s going to persuade any superdelegates that Clinton is the real winner.

The Obama campaign has argued on occasion that its primary or caucus victories in Republican states means that Obama has a better chance to carry them in the general election than Clinton. As the Clinton people point out, that’s ridiculous in some cases: No one thinks Obama’s victories in lightly attended caucuses in Idaho or Wyoming mean that he can win them in November. Even in states like Minnesota and Colorado, Obama’s caucus wins are less persuasive evidence than current polls that he can do better there than Clinton in November. Nor are Clinton’s primary victories in states like Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Ohio very strong evidence for the proposition that she’d be stronger than Obama. General election polls are better evidence; they buttress Clinton’s case in New Jersey and Ohio, and refute it for Nevada, New Hampshire, and New Mexico. Interestingly, Clinton won primaries in only five states which went heavily for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004—Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas.

This has led me to ask what would have been the result of the Democratic primaries and caucuses if the party’s rules tended to allocate delegates by winner-take-all rather than proportional representation. It would be an interesting exercise to apply the Republicans’ delegate allocation formulas to the Democratic results. Interesting—but also time consuming, since those formulas tend to allocate many delegates by congressional district (or, in Texas, state Senate districts). So instead, using the realclearpolitics.com summary, I simply assigned all of a state’s Democratic delegates to the winner of the Democratic primary or caucus. The result: Hillary Clinton gets 1,430 delegates and Barack Obama 1,237. That’s almost the exact opposite of realclearpolitics.com’s count of “pledged” (i.e., selected in primaries or caucuses): Obama 1,414, Clinton 1,247. It should be noted that the winner-take-all score would have been reversed if Clinton had lost Texas, which she carried by the narrow margin of 51 percent to 47 percent and which has 193 delegates.

That’s an Obama margin of 167 delegates. And most of that margin came from caucus states and territories, where Obama’s delegate lead was, by my calculation, 266 to 141—a margin of 125 delegates. (I’m leaving aside the minority of Texas delegates chosen by caucus.) In the primary states Obama’s margin was just 1,148 to 1,106, a delegate margin of only 42.

It’s at least theoretically possible for Clinton to overcome this lead in primary-chosen delegates in the eight remaining primaries. That would give the Clinton campaign another basis for arguing that their candidate is really the choice of the people. But the fact is that the Clinton campaign has only itself to blame for its weakness in caucus-chosen delegates. The caucuses were there on the schedule all along, and the Clinton campaign had as much time and about as much money to prepare for them as the Obama campaign did. The Clintonites simply did not prepare as well as I am sure they now wish they had. I suspect that some of the anger we see from Clinton backers comes from their own reflection that if they had planned and executed better they would be ahead in delegates now rather than behind. You get really angry when you have no one to blame but yourself.

While we’re talking numbers, here are a couple of interesting charts. First, from the Democratic MyDD website, here is a projection of Pennsylvania voting based on the results in demographically similar counties in Ohio. It projects a 57 percent to 43 percent Clinton win. (Hat tip, Jim Geraghty.) And at realclearpolitics.com, Jay Cost has prepared a spreadsheet on which you can put your own projections of the popular vote in the eight remaining primaries.

I couldn’t resist using Jay Cost’s spreadsheet to calculate the popular votes in the remaining primaries and my own old-fashioned legal pads to calculate delegate results. I used Cost’s default turnout numbers and estimates of the two-candidate percentages which I consider optimistic from the Clinton point of view but not wildly unrealistic.

STATEWIDE PREDICTIONS

This would eliminate Obama’s current popular vote margin, without including Florida and Michigan totals and even if you use imputed vote totals for the four caucus states (Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington) where Democrats did not disclose vote totals. The current popular vote margin for Obama on realclearpolitics.com is, under those favorable assumptions, 827,498. My spreadsheet numbers would give Clinton a 106,186 margin. The Obama margin if you don’t give him his imputed margin in those four caucus states is 717,276. My results would convert that to a Clinton popular vote margin of 216,408.

But note a couple of other things. One is that this popular vote margin is exceedingly small when measured in percentage terms. With my estimate of 6,444,230 turnout in the remaining primaries, that yields a total Clinton-Obama turnout (with the four imputed caucus states included) of 32,995,378. The Clinton popular vote margin with the imputed caucus result was, as noted, 106,186, which is 0.32% of the total.

The other thing to note is that all of Clinton’s popular vote margin and more comes from Puerto Rico. The turnout in other extraterritorial jurisdictions was very small: 1,921 in the Virgin Islands, 22,715 among Democrats Abroad and 284 [sic] in American Samoa. I’m projecting a turnout of 1 million in Puerto Rico, which has a population of 4 million. Turnout in Puerto Rican elections is, as a percentage of those eligible, higher than anywhere on the Mainland, something on the order of 80 percent as compared with 61 percent in the 2004 presidential general election. But Puerto Rico has not had a presidential primary before, so no one knows what turnout will be like. Puerto Rico will also be a challenge for the candidates. How do you campaign for the June 1 primary there and also campaign for the June 3 primaries in South Dakota and Montana?

Are my projections for Clinton’s share of the vote too optimistic? Quite possibly. But I think they’re at least defensible. I have her carrying Pennsylvania by 20 percent–a 60 percent to 40 percent margin of the two-candidate (Clinton and Obama) vote. That’s better than she did in Ohio, where she won 55 percent of the two-candidate vote. But her showings there in the 6th congressional district (70 percent to 27 percent), the 17th congressional district (63 percent to 35percent) and the 18th congressional district (66 percent to 31percent) have influenced me; those areas are a lot like most of western and central Pennsylvania, where you also find very few blacks and upscale whites. Those results have also influenced my projections of even bigger percentage margins for Clinton in Indiana, West Virginia, and Kentucky. I projected a 10 percent margin for Obama in North Carolina; the realclearpolitics.com average of recent polls has him ahead 57 percent to 43 percent in the two-candidate vote. I have Clinton losing also by 10 percent in Oregon. That’s roughly comparable to her showing in the nonbinding February 19 primary in next-door Washington, where she got 47 percent of the two-candidate vote. I have Clinton winning Montana and South Dakota by 20 percent margins, when the conventional wisdom seems to be that these states lean to Obama.

It’s true that Obama did very well in caucuses in Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Idaho, and Wyoming. But my hunch is that the wider primary electorate will go the other way. The closest comparable I can come up with is the nonbinding primary in Washington, where the vote in eastern Washington, the heavily Republican area east of the Cascades, went 50.3 percent to 49.7 percent for Obama. I don’t think he’ll do as well in Montana or South Dakota as he did in his halcyon days in February in this nonbinding contest. In any case, the popular vote margins in Montana and South Dakota are so small that they’re unlikely to make much difference in the bottom line. My projection for Puerto Rico is a guess, nothing more. Clinton has done well with Latinos in other states, but they’re a diverse group and voters in Puerto Rico may be different. Governor Anibal Acevedo, who has endorsed Obama, has just been indicted; other leaders of the two major Puerto Rico parties, the Popular Democrats (PPD) and New Progressives (PNP), are, according to this post, for Clinton.

My projections on Jay Cost’s spreadsheet put Clinton ahead in popular votes, however they’re measured. But my projections on my legal pads leave her behind in delegates. Each of these contests allocates most of a state’s delegates by congressional districts, except for South Dakota which has only one congressional district; Montana also has only one congressional district, but it allocates most of its delegates in the two congressional districts it had in 1980, before the apportionment following the 1980 Census reduced its number of House seats to one. I give Obama small delegate edges in North Carolina (5) and Oregon (6), and Clinton relatively small edges in Pennsylvania (22), Indiana (12), West Virginia (10), Kentucky (17), Montana (3) and South Dakota (3) and a relatively big edge in Puerto Rico (20). Even so, that reduces Obama’s current lead among “pledged” delegates (those selected in primaries and caucuses) from 1,414-1,247 to 1,655-1,565.

These two projections, if they come to pass, seem likely to cause maximum pain among the superdelegates. Clinton will be able to claim a lead in popular vote. But only because of Puerto Rico—and because Puerto Rico this month replaced its caucus with a primary. Obama will be able to claim a lead in pledged delegates. But only because he gamed the caucuses better. His lead in caucus-selected delegates is currently 125, as best I can calculate it; that would mean Clinton would have a 35-delegate lead among delegates chosen in primaries. Both sides will be able to make plausible claims to be the people’s choice.

Let me add that my projections don’t leave much room for a cascade of superdelegates to Obama. On each day’s contests I have Clinton leading Obama both in delegates and popular votes (because North Carolina would be outvoted by Indiana on May 6 and Oregon outvoted by Kentucky on May 20). She would be getting closer to the nomination, not farther away.

Of course my projections could just be plain wrong. Clinton could win Pennsylvania by an unimpressive margin on April 22 and get clocked in Indiana as well as North Carolina on May 6. Then you might see a cascade of superdelegates toward Obama, and the race might effectively be over. But if all those three things don’t happen, then I am sure the contest will go on through June 3. And in that case I think my projections are within the realm of possibility.

Link
Dan Calabrese
Read Dan’s bio and previous columns here
March 31, 2008

Watergate-Era Judiciary Chief of Staff: Hillary Clinton Fired For Lies, Unethical Behavior

As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.

The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.

Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach – including Kennedy’s purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.

The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel. Zeifman says that Hillary, along with Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar, was determined to gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon. And in order to pull this off, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.

The brief involved precedent for representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. When Hillary endeavored to write a legal brief arguing there is no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding, Zeifman says, he told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970.

“As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer,” Zeifman said.

The Judiciary Committee allowed Douglas to keep counsel, thus establishing the precedent. Zeifman says he told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files. So what did Hillary do?

“Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public,” Zeifman said. Hillary then proceeded to write a legal brief arguing there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding – as if the Douglas case had never occurred.

The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.

Zeifman says that if Hillary, Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even participate in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.

Of course, Nixon’s resignation rendered the entire issue moot, ending Hillary’s career on the Judiciary Committee staff in a most undistinguished manner. Zeifman says he was urged by top committee members to keep a diary of everything that was happening. He did so, and still has the diary if anyone wants to check the veracity of his story. Certainly, he could not have known in 1974 that diary entries about a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham would be of interest to anyone 34 years later.

But they show that the pattern of lies, deceit, fabrications and unethical behavior was established long ago – long before the Bosnia lie, and indeed, even before cattle futures, Travelgate and Whitewater – for the woman who is still asking us to make her president of the United States.

Link

Obama had greater role on liberal survey

By: Kenneth P. Vogel
March 31, 2008 10:37 AM EST

During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion — positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he has projected during his presidential campaign. The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group’s detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat. Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he “never saw or approved” the questionnaire. They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who “unintentionally mischaracterize[d] his position.”

But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago nonprofit group that issued it. And it found that Obama — the day after sitting for the interview — filed an amended version of the questionnaire, which appears to contain Obama’s own handwritten notes added to one answer. The two questionnaires, provided to Politico with assistance from political sources opposed to Obama’s presidential campaign, were later supplied directly by the group, Independent Voters of Illinois — Independent Precinct Organization. Obama and his then-campaign manager, who Obama’s campaign asserts filled out the questionnaires, were familiar with the group, its members and its positions, since both were active in it before Obama’s 1996 state Senate run.

Through an aide, Obama, who won the group’s endorsement as well as the statehouse seat, did not dispute that the handwriting was his. But he contended it doesn’t prove he completed, approved — or even read — the latter questionnaire.

“Sen. Obama didn’t fill out these state Senate questionnaires — a staffer did — and there are several answers that didn’t reflect his views then or now,” Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Obama’s campaign, said in an e-mailed statement. “He may have jotted some notes on the front page of the questionnaire at the meeting, but that doesn’t change the fact that some answers didn’t reflect his views. His 11 years in public office do.”

But the questionnaires provide fodder to question Obama’s ideological consistency and electability. Those questions are central to efforts by Obama’s presidential rival Hillary Clinton to woo the superdelegates whose votes represent her best chance to wrest the Democratic nomination from Obama.

Taken together — and combined with later policy pronouncements — the two 1996 questionnaires paint a picture of an inexperienced Obama still trying to feel his way around major political issues and less constrained by the nuance that now frames his positions on sensitive issues.

Consider the question of whether minors should be required to get parental consent — or at least notify their parents — before having abortion.

The first version of Obama’s questionnaire responds with a simple “No.”

The amended version, though, answers less stridently: “Depends on how young — possibly for extremely young teens, i.e., 12- or 13-year-olds.”

By 2004, when his campaign filled out a similar questionnaire for the IVI-IPO during his campaign for U.S. Senate, the answer to a similar question contained still more nuance, but also more precision. “I would oppose any legislation that does not include a bypass provision for minors who have been victims of, or have reason to fear, physical or sexual abuse,” he wrote.

The evolution continued at least through late last year, when his campaign filled out a questionnaire for a nonpartisan reproductive health group that answered a similar question with even more nuance.

“As a parent, Obama believes that young women, if they become pregnant, should talk to their parents before considering an abortion. But he realizes not all girls can turn to their mother or father in times of trouble, and in those instances, we should want these girls to seek the advice of trusted adults — an aunt, a grandmother, a pastor,” his campaign wrote to RH Reality Check. “Unfortunately, instead of encouraging pregnant teens to seek the advice of adults, most parental consent bills that come before Congress or state legislatures criminalize adults who attempt to help a young woman in need and lack judicial bypass and other provisions that would permit exceptions in compelling cases.” Both versions of the 1996 questionnaires provide answers his presidential campaign disavows to questions about whether Obama supports capital punishment and state legislation to “ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.” He responded simply “No” and “Yes,” respectively, to those questions on both questionnaires. But a fact sheet provided by his campaign flatly denies Obama ever held those views, asserting he “consistently supported the death penalty for certain crimes but backed a moratorium until problems were fixed.” And it points out that as a state senator, he led an effort to reform Illinois’ death penalty laws.

On guns, the fact sheet says he “has consistently supported common-sense gun control, as well as the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”

After Politico’s story on the first questionnaire, Clinton aides seized on the handgun-ban answer in particular, which a campaign press release asserted called into question Obama’s electability.

That was a curious argument to make in a Democratic primary. But Republicans will certainly seek to make it in the general election if Obama is the Democratic standard-bearer against the presumptive GOP nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

It could also provide ammunition for a line of attack quietly peddled for some time by Republicans. They allege Obama has a penchant for blaming his staff for gaffes ranging from missing a union event in New Hampshire to circulating opposition research highlighting the Clintons’ ties to India and Indian-Americans to underestimating the amount of cash bundled for his campaigns by his former fundraiser, indicted businessman Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

And the questionnaires play into storylines pushed by both Republicans and Clinton suggesting Obama has altered his views to appeal to differing audiences.

That suggestion is galling to many members of IVI-IPO, some of whom have relationships with Obama that date back nearly 15 years. The group had endorsed Obama in every race he’d run — including his failed long-shot 2000 primary challenge to U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) — until now.

The group’s 37-member board of directors, meeting last year soon after Obama distanced himself from the first questionnaire, stalemated in its vote over an endorsement in the Democratic presidential primary. Forty percent supported Obama, 40 percent sided with Clinton and 20 percent voted for other candidates or not to endorse.

“One big issue was: Does he or does he not believe the stuff he told us in 1996?” said Aviva Patt, who has been involved with the IVI-IPO since 1990 and is now the group’s treasurer. She volunteered for Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign, but voted to endorse the since-aborted presidential campaign of Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) and professed disappointment over Obama’s retreat from ownership of the questionnaire.

“I always believed those to be his views,” she said, adding some members of the board argued that Obama’s 1996 answers were “what he really believes in, and he’s tailoring it now to make himself more palatable as a nationwide candidate.” It’s more benign than that, contended fellow board member Lois Dobry, who voted to endorse Obama last year and hosted the 1996 interview session at her home. That “was a long time ago,” she said. “And anybody who hasn’t refined their ideas over that period of time … is not anybody I’m interested in,” she said. Dobry asserted Obama’s views have evolved mostly at the margins and that he’s still the same person she met in the 1990s. “He always was right from the start very, very clear on where he was coming from on most issues,” she said, “and he certainly wasn’t letting anybody else decide that for him.” Dobry, Patt and current IVI-IPO state chairman David K. Igasaki, a Clinton supporter, agreed Obama likely didn’t write every word of his campaign’s 1996 answers. But they all dismissed as unbelievable his presidential campaign’s assertion that Obama never saw or signed off on the state Senate questionnaires.

Campaigns are routinely bombarded with all manner of questionnaires from advocacy groups of every stripe, so it’s not uncommon to have staffers fill them out in candidates’ names. But usually there’s some process by which the answers are vetted to insure consistency with the candidates’ views.

And there were plenty of reasons to believe that occurred in the case of Obama’s 1996 IVI-IPO questionnaire.

The group was very influential in Obama’s South Side district. It also was a leader on government reform issues, which Obama has made a centerpiece of his political persona.

He and his campaign manager, Carol Harwell, were both active with the IVI-IPO prior to his candidacy, and they had once helped interview candidates seeking the group’s endorsement, according to Igasaki.

Dobry called Harwell “an extremely experienced person, also someone highly familiar with IVI. And she would know perfectly well that the candidate would have to answer questions based on these answers and to suddenly have the candidate discover that somebody else had written answers that they were in no way in agreement with would be pretty embarrassing, right?”

Harwell, a veteran Democratic operative who got her start working for the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington in the 1980s and who now works for Cook County Clerk David Orr, last year told Politico she filled out the first questionnaire.

But she did not return several telephone messages asking about the second questionnaire and the handwritten notes on it.

They appear under a question asking candidates to “list all endorsements you have received so far.” In typed text that matches that of the rest of the answers, both of Obama’s questionnaires list four local Democratic organizations and two aldermen. But the latter questionnaire adds to that with handwritten notes listing another 10 endorsements, including an Illinois seniors group, AFSCME, AFL-CIO, Sierra Club, IBEW and unions representing nurses and firefighters.

Igasaki said Obama was shoo-in for the IVI-IPO endorsement, but that it was important to have a strong showing because “our chapter basically was his field operation. … Those people were already working for him, and it was important for him to identify with us.”

Patt, though, conceded the inevitability of the group’s endorsement could have led Harwell to be “less than 100 percent careful” in filling out the questionnaire, “because it probably didn’t matter that much at the time. It’s only in the context that it’s now found that has much greater importance than anyone could have imagined it would back in 1996.”

© 2007 Capitol News Company, LLC