1) Dems snare 60 votes to move ahead on health care
WASHINGTON – Democratic leaders secured the last two votes to move ahead on historic health care legislation, clearing the way for a Saturday night showdown on President Barack Obama's top domestic initiative.
In long-awaited speeches, centrist Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana said they would stand with their party and vote "yes" on the crucial test vote despite deep reservations with elements of the 2,074-page bill to remake the nation's health care system.
…Hours earlier, Landrieu had delivered her news. The two represent votes 59 and 60 for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who needs that many in the 100-member Senate to go forward. The Senate's 40 Republicans are unanimously opposed.
Good for you, Republicans!
…A largely overlooked provision in the Senate bill would send $100 million to Louisiana to help it cover costs for Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor. In her speech, Landrieu rejected the notion that she was voting to advance the bill simply because of the money.
Nah, it has nothing to do with that!
…United in opposition, Republicans cast the bill as a costly government takeover, built on budget gimmicks.
"Move over, Bernie Madoff. Tip your hat to a trillion-dollar scam," said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., referring to the mastermind of a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
Ah yes, that fancy fraud provision that allows them to start collecting taxes in 2010, but the actual health care “benefits” are not extended to Americans until 2013 or 2014.
The action in the Senate comes two weeks after the House approved a health overhaul bill of its own on a 220-215 vote. After the vote Saturday night, senators will leave for a Thanksgiving recess. Upon their return, assuming Democrats prevail on the vote, they will launch into weeks or more of unpredictable debate on the health care bill, with numerous amendments expected from both sides of the aisle and more 60-vote hurdles along the way.
See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091121/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul
2) Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government
WASHINGTON — The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true.
But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer.
Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.
Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.
…The potential for rapidly escalating interest payouts is just one of the wrenching challenges facing the United States after decades of living beyond its means.
…“The government is on teaser rates,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates lower deficits. “We’re taking out a huge mortgage right now, but we won’t feel the pain until later.”
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/business/23rates.html?_r=2&pagewanted=2
3) California Was Among States With Record Unemployment
Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- California, Delaware, South Carolina and Florida registered record rates of unemployment in October as weakness in the labor market stretches from coast to coast and limits the economic recovery.
Joblessness rose in 29 U.S. states last month compared with 22 in September, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Michigan had the highest jobless rate at 15.1 percent, followed by Nevada at 13 percent and Rhode Island at 12.9 percent.
The national rate last month reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, weighing on consumer spending that accounts for about 70 percent of the economy.
See: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell&pid=20601087&sid=aQsHAD0w1egE
4) Glenn Beck: The Plan
I'm going to teach you how to be a community organizer next year, oh, because two can play at that game. I'm going to teach you how to be self-reliant next year. We've divided the country up into seven regions. I don't know how many of these we're going to be able to do, but we're going to do these, what would you even call them? Day-long education seminars, and the first one we announce is going to happen in March in Orlando, Florida, where we're going to teach you everything you need to know. And I'm going to try to bring in some experts. How do you build a lifeboat? What do we do right now to be able to save our country, to be able to get them to wake up before an election? Can we get them to wake up before the election? I've had enough of calling these clowns; they don't listen to us. Well, the next time we go to Washington, the next time, you know, Michele Bachmann says, hey, you've got to come to Washington, well, thousands of people did go to Washington and they still passed the damn thing. Because we don't have teeth. Well, it's time to find our teeth and sharpen our teeth, and we're going to do it (emphasis mine).
…The reason why I say I think it's going to be the last large gathering on the mall is because our government has decided that there will be no more gatherings, large gatherings on the mall with Abraham Lincoln and the Lincoln Memorial as of 2011. This will be historic. In the meantime piece by piece, little by little I'm developing this plan, and I will explain more to you a little later. It's not something I take lightly. It is not something that is something I can whip out. But two can play at this game, and I'll give you more details as things continue. But I want you to know we are all stewards of this country, and I take my stewardship of my part of the republic seriously, and I take your faith in me extraordinarily seriously. We're in it together.
See: http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/33466/
5) Chris Matthews Shocker: Obama Making 'Carteresque' Mistakes
Chris Matthews appears to have lost that loving feeling for Barack Obama.
On "The Chris Matthews Show" Sunday, the once smitten MSNBCer called some of Obama's recent mistakes "Carteresque":
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Welcome back. The word these days is optics, visuals, signals. In the Carter presidency, the optics were not exactly robust, and Ronald Reagan rode that to a big victory in 1980. Is the Obama White House sending some Carteresque signals these days? Some see that in the deep bow to the Emperor of Japan, an unforced error say critics. Then there was, there was what happened in China: Obama got nothing in the way of concessions over there in spite of playing the polite visitor. And his effort to speak directly to the Chinese was jammed by the government. Third, that decision to try the terrorists up in that federal court in New York City. Again, nothing that had to be done, and critics say it shows that Obama, his team doesn't understand this is a war we're in. David, that's the question. These optics are everything in a president. Carter used to carry that garment bag over his shoulder. This president is he making mistakes like in China like in Japan?
See: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/11/22/chris-matthews-obama-making-carteresque-mistakes?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
6) Major Hasan's E-Mail: 'I Can't Wait to Join You' in Afterlife
United States Army Major Nidal Hasan told a radical cleric considered by authorities to be an al-Qaeda recruiter, "I can't wait to join you" in the afterlife, according to an American official with top secret access to 18 e-mails exchanged between Hasan and the cleric, Anwar al Awlaki, over a six month period between Dec. 2008 and June 2009.
"It sounds like code words," said Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a military analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. "That he's actually either offering himself up or that he's already crossed that line in his own mind."
Other messages include questions, the official with access to the e-mails said, that include when is jihad appropriate, and whether it is permissible if there are innocents killed in a suicide attack.
"Hasan told Awlaki he couldn't wait to join him in the discussions they would having over non-alcoholic wine in the afterlife," Major Hasan also wrote, "My strength is my financial capabilities."
But we mustn’t jump to conclusions, boys and girls.
See: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/major-hasans-mail-wait-join-afterlife/story?id=9130339&page=1
7) Hacked e-mails reveal global-warming fraud?
Top climate scientists discuss hiding contrary data, marginalizing dissenters
Officials at a key global-warming research center in the United Kingdom have authenticated a series of e-mails and other documents apparently taken from their computer system by a hacker, but they cannot explain what scientists in internal exchanges meant by references to a "trick" that would "hide the decline" of global temperatures nor by instructions to delete contrary data.
Author James Delingpole writes in a London Telegraph column the most damaging revelations indicate climate-change scientists may have "manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause."
According to the Australian Investigate magazine, the 62-megabyte Zip file with documents, e-mail exchanges and other information from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit apparently was posted by an unidentified hacker on a Russian web server.
One e-mail said: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd (sic) from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."
Another expressed internal doubts: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society) 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."
Further, an e-mail exchange suggested the suppression of information: "Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith re (Assessment Report 4)? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment – minor family crisis."
"And, perhaps most reprehensibly," Delingpole writes, "a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with (anthropogenic global warming) can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority."
See: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=116657
8) Ultimatum: Investigate ACORN or more videos coming
Undercover filmmakers warn Holder release will be timed to 2010 elections
Andrew Breitbart, whose BigGovernment.com rocked Washington with undercover videos exposing ACORN corruption, has issued U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder an ultimatum: Conduct an investigation into ACORN, or more videos will be released just in time to drop a bombshell on the 2010 elections.
"This message is to Attorney General Holder," Breitbart said on the Fox News network's "Hannity" last night. "I want you to know that we have more tapes, it's not just ACORN, and we're going to hold out until the next election cycle. … If you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don't give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time."
The show's host, Sean Hannity, responded, "This is a blockbuster, what you're saying here. You guys have more tapes, you'll release them before the election – that could have a big impact on the election."
Breitbart's ultimatum joins the already growing number of U.S. representatives who earlier this week introduced a House resolution requesting Holder appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations regarding ACORN.
See: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=116671
9) Case for Term Limits: Rep. John Murtha
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP: AUGUST 3, 2007, HOUSE FLOOR)
REP. JOHN MURTHA, D-PA.: Pursuant to clause one, rule one, the journal stands approved.
REP. FRANK JAMES SENSENBRENNER, R-WIS.: Speaker...
MURTHA: The gentleman from Wisconsin.
SENSENBRENNER: Speaker, pursuant to clause one of rule one, I demand a vote on agreeing to the speaker's approval of the journal.
MURTHA: Approval of the journal. Those in favor say aye.
LAWMAKERS: Aye.
MURTHA: Opposed will say no.
LAWMAKERS: No!
MURTHA: In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.
SENSENBRENNER: Speaker! Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker!
(CROSSTALK)
On that, I demand a division.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE LAWMAKER: That doesn't count!
MURTHA: The yeas and nays requested. Those favoring a vote by yeas and nays will please rise.
SENSENBRENNER: Could the chair tell me how many members rose to request the recorded vote and the total number of members present in House upon which the chair made his decision?
MURTHA: The chair's decision is not subject to question.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BECK (VOICEOVER): It was a scene that played out on the House floor more than two years ago, but you probably haven't seen it.
Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha, one of the longest-serving members of Congress in U.S. history, a man who almost became House majority leader spitting on the graves of our Founding Fathers.
BECK (VOICEOVER): That's how cap-and-trade will be passed. John Murtha has served in Congress for 35 years; 19 terms worth of shenanigans just like you saw. They've earned him a spot on the list of the most corrupt members of Congress according to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
And Murtha's not denying that he's corrupt.
In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post Gazette just this past March, the congressman said, quote, "If I'm corrupt, it's because I take care of my district."
See: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575973,00.html
10) Iran begins war games to protect nuclear sites
TEHRAN, Iran – Iran on Sunday began large-scale air defense war games aimed at protecting its nuclear facilities from attack, state TV reported, as an air force commander boasted the country could deter any military strike by Israel.
It said the five-day drill will cover an area a third of the size of Iran and spread across the central, western and southern parts of the country.
Gen. Ahmad Mighani, head of an air force unit in charge of responding to threats to Iran's air space, said Saturday the war games would cover regions where Iran's nuclear facilities are located.
The drill involves Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, the paramilitary Basij forces affiliated with the Guard as well as army units.
See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091123/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_war_games
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