SATURDAY,  OCTOBER 17,  2009

BRILLIANT IDEA OF THE DAY - AT 11:18 P.M. ET:  Well, I guess it does take one to know one.  We get the following advice from our secretary of the treasury, who, as I recall, had some difficulty figuring his taxes:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States must live within its means once its economy recovers if it is to preserve global confidence in the U.S. dollar's status, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Friday.

Wait a second.  Stop the music.  Aren't these the guys who are spending us into bankruptcy?  Doesn't Geithner get the bill?

The comments came as the Obama administration reported a record U.S. budget deficit for the fiscal year ended September of $1.4 trillion. At 10 percent of gross domestic product, it was the biggest U.S. fiscal shortfall since World War Two.

Rescuing the economy and some of the country's biggest banks from the worst recession since the Great Depression took a toll on U.S. finances, and the White House has forecast deficits of more than $1 trillion through fiscal 2011.

"Future deficits are too high, and the president is committed to working with Congress to bring them down to a sustainable level as the economy recovers," Geithner said in a statement accompanying the fiscal data.

COMMENT:  Future deficits are too high.  Bring them down to a sustainable level.  How about trying to balance the budget, fella?  Any deficit is passed on to our children.  How do we explain this to them?

October 17,  2009   Permalink

OH PLEASE - AT 6:42 P.M. ET:  Do we laugh, or do we cry?  From CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN)– Reverend Al Sharpton and his lawyers say they are preparing to file a defamation lawsuit against conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh for an op-ed published Saturday, which Sharpton alleges "erroneously" characterizes his (Sharpton's) role in a string of violent incidents in New York in the early 90's.

Rev. Al filing a defamation suit?  Didn't he lose a libel suit filed against him by a law-enforcement officer in New York?  I don't think he ever paid up.

In the op-ed published in Saturday's Wall Street Journal Limbaugh writes Sharpton "played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews ‘diamond merchants’) and 1995 Freddie's Fashion Mart riot."

I don't recall the exact facts, but Sharpton's comments were inflammatory. 

The Crown Heights riot began after a Hasidic Rabbi accidentally struck and killed an African American boy with his car. The boy died from the injuries–sparking four nights of riots. The Rabbi was not charged, but Sharpton played a large role in rallying on behalf of the young boy’s family and the African American community.

The story doesn't point out that a Hasidic man was murdered, and identified his killer before his death.  The killer was acquitted by a racially charged jury, but later admitted his guilt.  Nothing like leaving out a critical fact.

Sharpton, on an anniversary of the riots, said publicly that African-Americans should only mourn the black child accidentally killed, not the Hasidic man intentionally murdered.  Real good will there.

Sharpton was also at the center of the Tawana Brawley hoax, in which a black girl falsely claimed she'd been raped by white men. 

According to a statement put out by Sharpton’s media consultant, a study New York Governor Mario Cuomo commissioned showed Sharpton was not involved in the Crown Heights incident until after the rioting concluded.

Doesn't cut it.  Sharpton's inflammatory past is clear.  It's amazing he'd attempt a lawsuit against Rush, unless of course he could find an O.J. Simpson jury.  Maybe he could find those same jurors.

October 17, 2009   Permalink

AFGHAN MESS - AT 5:20 P.M. ET:  It's pretty clear that the Obamans would like to find a quick way out of Afghanistan, the better to pacify their pacifist base and further impress the deep intellectuals on the Nobel Peace Prize committee.  It would be sad if the Afghan president provided an excuse.  From The Washington Post:

KABUL, Oct. 17 -- There is a growing fear among western officials in Afghanistan that President Hamid Karzai and the nation's Independent Election Commission will not accept the findings of a United Nations-backed fraud investigation that is expected to call for a runoff to settle the disputed election.

Such a decision by Karzai would deepen Afghanistan's political crisis and leave no clear method for resolving the allegations of massive fraud that have undermined the credibility of the election nearly two months ago. It would also be a setback for the Obama administration, which has urged the candidates to follow the electoral process to yield a legitimate winner.

"That's the brick wall," said one western official in Kabul familiar with the process. "It's going to be quite chaotic and confusing."

COMMENT:  Meanwhile, the region is in flames.  There's a new offensive underway by Pakistani troops next door to Afghanistan, with Pakistani stability very much in doubt.

And the president dithers.  He was asked in August for more troops for the Afghan struggle, by General McChrystal.  It is now October, with no indication of when a decision will be made.

I'm sorry the decisions faced by the president are so tough, but he was elected to make them.  So make them.

October 17,  2009   Permalink

FASCINATING FOOD FIGHT - AT 11:20 A.M. ET:  You have to admire a man who fights on principle, even when he knows it will cost him party invitations and access even to the White House.  From The Politico:

The president of one of America’s largest labor unions, Gerry McEntee, has emerged as a major obstacle to the White House’s efforts to maintain a unified front in the health care debate.

One does not defy Dear Leader.

The veteran president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has crossed lines that few labor leaders – even those who quietly agree with him – would go near.

McEntee led workers in chanting a barnyard epithet to describe Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus’s health care bill, which would levy a new tax on expensive health care plans. He published an op-ed in U.S.A. Today warning, in terms that could be used against Democrats in the midterms, that the plan could tax the middle class and cost workers their health care.

And he is probably right.

And he blew off a plea from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and published an open letter promising to “oppose” legislation that contained the tax – published over the objections, several labor officials said, of other union presidents whose names appeared on the letter.

I hope he packs heat.

"We have had just about enough of his gratuitous slaps,” said a senior White House official Friday, calling the politically charged language “outrageous and unacceptable” from an ally — even from one that had, the official noted, devoted substantial resources to health care efforts.

They'll be angry...until they need union help again.  Then McEntee will become the greatest union leader they ever saw.

But it's gratifying to see some presidential allies willing to speak out about the mess that the White House calls health-care "reform."

October 17, 2009   Permalink

THE OBNOXIOUS CROWD MARCHES ON, AS WE PAY - AT 11:04 A.M. ET:  Something else that will, justifiably, be used by those who want to bring down the market system.  Who needs foreign enemies when we have these clowns?  From The New York Times:

Even as the economy continues to struggle, much of Wall Street is minting money — and looking forward again to hefty bonuses.

Many Americans wonder how this can possibly be. How can some banks be prospering so soon after a financial collapse, even as legions of people worry about losing their jobs and their homes?

It may come as a surprise that one of the most powerful forces driving the resurgence on Wall Street is not the banks but Washington. Many of the steps that policy makers took last year to stabilize the financial system — reducing interest rates to near zero, bolstering big banks with taxpayer money, guaranteeing billions of dollars of financial institutions’ debts — helped set the stage for this new era of Wall Street wealth.

Churchill said that democracy was the worst system in the world, except for all the others.  Well, capitalism is the worst economic system in the world, except for all the others.  This scheming on Wall Street, by the very people who helped create the economic crisis, is one of the things that can easily lead to a destruction of economic freedom.

Titans like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are making fortunes in hot areas like trading stocks and bonds, rather than in the ho-hum business of lending people money. They also are profiting by taking risks that weaker rivals are unable or unwilling to shoulder — a benefit of less competition after the failure of some investment firms last year.

So even as big banks fight efforts in Congress to subject their industry to greater regulation — and to impose some restrictions on executive pay — Wall Street has Washington to thank in part for its latest bonanza.

COMMENT:  Yup.  Washington has the solution to every problem, doesn't it?  Business is booming on Wall Street.  Just off Wall Street, where people struggle to keep retail stores open, business is awful.

The "Obama recovery" seems, thus far, to be limited to those who need it the least.  But those campaign contributions and thousand-dollar-a-plate dinners will keep flowing.

Not good for our American future.

October 17, 2009   Permalink

ANOTHER GREAT MOMENT IN EDUCATION - AT 10:20 A.M. ET:  From the Boston Globe:

Less than a year after speaking at a Harvard University student conference, the head of an anti-illegal immigration movement had his invitation to speak at a similar forum tomorrow rescinded following a student uproar over his aggressive position on immigration.

Gilchrist was slated to appear on a panel that discussed “Immigration and Its Future in America.’’

But student protests, emboldened since Gilchrist spoke at a Harvard Law School event in February, led to the cancellation of his invitation.

The Undergraduate Legal Committee released a statement that read, “Mr. Gilchrist’s participation in the conference on the behalf of the Minutemen Project was not compatible with providing an environment for civil, educational, and productive discourse on immigration, and we cannot host him at this time.’’

A representative from the group would not elaborate on the statement.

Gilchrist could not be reached for comment, but said in a statement on his website that the protests came from only a few and that “the minute they received threats from fellow students these pre-law students shied away from defending free speech.’’

COMMENT:  Whether you like Gilchrist or not, his charge is accurate - students are intimidated on America's college campuses, where free speech takes a back seat to political correctness and the leftist party line.

If someone had invited Ahmadinejad to Harvard, the invitation would have gone through. Reminds me of the 1930s, when Nazi leaders were feted regularly at Ivy League schools.  In fact, a lot of things today remind me of the 1930s, like a foreign policy based on appeasement and illusion.

The result will probably be the same as well.

October 17, 2009   Permalink

MORE WEAKNESS - AT 10:06 A.M. ET:  President Obama pledged during the campaign to get tough with Sudan's leaders, in order to end the slaughters in Darfur.  Apparently, someone forgot.  The New York Times reports:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has formulated a new policy for Sudan that proposes working with that country’s government, rather than isolating it as President Obama had pledged to do during his campaign.

In an interview on Friday, President Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, retired, said the policy, to be announced Monday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, would make use of a mix of “incentives and pressure” to seek an end to the human rights abuses that have left millions of people dead or displaced while burning Darfur into the American conscience.

COMMENT:  When you pledge to get tough with a bandit regime, then don't, it has profound effects.  Every thug around the world takes note, and takes pleasure, and takes action. 

Obama has been slow on Sudan, as he has been on Afghanistan.  Neither Sudan nor the United States are any better for the delay.

October 17,  2009   Permalink

FRIDAY,  OCTOBER 16,  2009

THE UNSPEAKABLE ISSUE - AT 8:34 P.M. ET:  The tragedy of the black family continues, while too many "civil rights" leaders are more concerned with Rush Limbaugh or defending ACORN:

CHICAGO (CBS) —It is a Chicago public school full of energy and spirit. It has about 800 girls, and 115 of them have something in common – something you might find disturbing.

All those young ladies are moms or moms-to-be at Paul Robeson High School. It's not a school for young mothers, it's a neighborhood school. And all of the pregnancies have happened, despite prevention talk.

If you want to know why, the people closest to the situation say there's no simple explanation.

Oh, no, no.  There's never any "simple" explanation.  But of course there is - a decline in culture, of standards, of family values, of decency.  Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned in 1962, some 47 years ago, that something terrible was happening to the black family.  For his concern he was called a racist.

Question "culture" and the multiculturalists come out of the woodwork.  Question teenage mothers, abandoned by the fathers, and the hardline feminists come out of the other part of the woodwork chanting, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."

And by the way, note the name of the school - named for a fine singer, no doubt, but a man who betrayed his country by accepting the Lenin Prize from the Soviet Union.  When asked by a reporter about Soviet artists who suddenly disappeared, Robeson said that he knew nothing about it. Even the NAACP shunned this man, but his name appears on a school in the part of Chicago where Michelle Obama grew up, Barack Obama lived, and Rev. Wright preached.

Nothing like an "anything goes" approach to naming a school. 

Chicago Public Schools says it does not track the overall number of teen moms in the district. But Robeson Principal Gerald Morrow knows the count at his school in Englewood: 115 young ladies who are either expecting or already have had children.

I love the "young ladies."  I hope they are.  But someone got to them with some very bad ideas.

To put it in perspective, their school pictures would fill roughly six pages of their high school year book.

Maybe if every liberal newspaper in the country would print a picture of all those young moms, local "leaders" would realize the tragedy, and do something about it. 

This is not racial.  The white illegitimacy rate is also increasing.  It is a reflection of a society that has allowed standards to drop to the bottom.

October 16, 2009   Permalink

WOULDN'T YOU? - AT 8:22 P.M. ET:  A new Fox poll has still more bad news for The One.  It seems the American people, for some foolish reason, trust General McChrystal more than President Obama on deciding Afghanistan strategy.  I don't know.  What's happening to this country, when a man whose military experience consists of speaking at anti-war rallies isn't trusted on military strategy?  The Fox report:

A slim 43 percent plurality of Americans now disapproves of the job Barack Obama is doing on Afghanistan, an increase from the 32 percent who disapproved last month. Only Democrats, at 63 percent, assign positive marks to the president on Afghanistan, compared with 20 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of independents. All in all, 41 percent of Americans approve of the president's handling of Afghanistan, down from 51 percent.

Part of the reason for this shift on the handling of the Afghan conflict may be that a sizable majority of Americans (67 percent) thinks the Obama administration has not "clearly explained" what the U.S. is trying to achieve there. Even a 54 percent majority of Democrats holds this view.

Yeah, an occasional explanation would be lovely.  Don't you think?

Regarding next steps in Afghanistan, Americans are much more likely to trust the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal (62 percent) over President Obama (22 percent).

Those are numbers that Code Pink could get.

Our foreign policy is failing all over.  Our military policy is in the hands of a man who described Iran as a "small country," and we're in deep trouble.

October 16, 2009   Permalink

ISN'T THIS WHERE WE CAME IN? - AT 8:02 P.M. ET:  Please read:

LOS ANGELES (AP) | Schoolchildren dove under tables in Los Angeles and sirens sounded in San Francisco on Thursday as California practiced how to survive a major earthquake.

"Drop, cover and hold on," dozens of fourth-graders chanted just before the announcement of a simulated earthquake sent them scurrying under tables at the California Science Center at 10:15 a.m.

At the same moment, nearly 7 million other people up and down the state were expected to do the same while emergency agencies and hospitals began response drills and mass casualty exercises.

COMMENT:  As Stonewall Jackson liked to say, "Commendable, very commendable." 

We declare it good that California holds earthquake drills.  But wait a second.  Isn't this exactly what the left ridiculed when it was applied to the possibility of a nuclear attack?  Remember "Duck and cover"?  We held duck and cover drills when I was in elementary school in New York.  It was common sense.  No one could rule out a nuclear attack on the United States, and millions of lives could be saved by basic civil defense measures, like duck and cover.

But no more.  Isn't even mentioned.  At a time when terrorist groups are trying to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction, we are ignoring civil defense.  Sure, an earthquake drill can double, to some degree, as a civil defense exercise, but political correctness doesn't permit the terms to be mixed together.  Might offend someone planning to attack us.

In parts of San Francisco, if a nuclear device went off, a portion of the populace would probably start singing, "Here comes the sun, here comes the sun."

Weird, man.

Bring back "duck and cover."  We may need it.

October 16, 2009   Permalink

ELECTION ALERT - AT 4:09 P.M. ET:  Something strange is going on in New Jersey.  Okay, I know.  That's not news.  But I think, as Arthur Miller wrote, attention must be paid. 

An attempt is being made by a New Jersey court to restrict exit polling.  News organizations don't like it.  From Newsmax;

Six major media outlets are asking a federal judge to stop enforcement of a New Jersey ruling that bans exit polling near voting sites.

The lawsuit was being filed in U.S. District Court on Friday by the National Election Pool. That's a consortium that includes The Associated Press, CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, and CBS.

A Sept. 30 state Supreme Court decision bars exit polling and all "expressive activity" within 100 feet of polling places.

The news group argues that exit polling is constitutionally protected. Federal courts have struck down similar attempts in other states.

Polling experts say the ban means error rates for exit polls will be much higher.

The New Jersey court said it is a reasonable restriction of free speech because all activity is banned.

COMMENT:  We don't often cheer the mainstream media, but we'll do it this time, noting that Fox is also included in the petitioning group. 

Exit polling, while it has its flaws, and can be done well or badly, is an important check on the honesty of elections.  One of the people who opposes exit polling is Jimmah Carter, which should incline you to be for it.  Carter once advised the Mexican government to ban exit polling.

Exit polling, unlike "official" means of tabulating votes, allows outside news organizations, after people vote, to check, generally, on the accuracy of the count.  If the exit poll, taken over the entire voting day, disagrees dramatically with the official count, it may indicate vote fraud. 

Exit polling, of course, is not the entire answer to crooked elections.  Keeping ACORN and the Black Panthers away from polling booths would be helpful.  It would also help, in Chicago and other places, to keep our dearly departed loved ones off the voting rolls, no matter how strongly we wish to keep their memory alive.  And, in places like St. Louis, it would be nice if the number of voters in some inner city precincts didn't exceed the number of people living in the precinct.

But exit polling helps.  The federal court should strike down the New Jersey restriction.

October 16, 2009   Permalink

QUICK - GET HIM ANOTHER PRIZE - AT 10:03 A.M. ET:  Rasmussen reports this morning that the president's poll numbers continue to drop, getting dangerously (or delightfully) close to the bottom they reached in the Ras poll on September 3rd.

Some 47% of likely voters approve of the president's performance, while 51% disapprove.  Maybe the Nobel Prize wasn't high enough.

In Ras's presidential approval index, measuring the gap between those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove, Mr. Obama stands at minus 11, 28% to 39%. 

If someone had said on inauguration day that Barack Obama could become a drag on the Democratic ticket, no one would have believed it. 

Believe.  Believe.

October 16, 2009   Permalink

THEY'RE BAACK - AT 9:37 A.M. ET:  The Adam Clayton Powells, I mean.  Some "mature" readers may recall Adam Clayton Powell as the Harlem-based congressman of the 1960s, an effective committee chairman, thrown out of the House for ethical violations, reinstated by the Supreme Court, then defeated for reelection by Charlie Rangel, who still serves, almost 40 years later.  From The Politico: 

Oft-troubled New York State Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV -- the son of the same-named legendary Harlem congressman who was ousted by Charlie Rangel in 1970 -- is creating an exploratory committee for a possible Rangel challenge.

“A lot of people have been talking to me for a few weeks,” Powell told City Hall. “It’s no secret that I’ve always been interested.”

If he takes the plunge, he'll join Vincent Morgan, a former Rangel associate who has said he's interested in challenging the ethics-embattled dean of the New York delegation.

Powell -- who tried and failed to avenge his father's defeat in '94 -- has quite a bit of baggage all his own.

Just last year ACP-IV was charged with DWI and earlier this year, he was was cited for the misuse of nearly $30,000 in campaign funds -- including a trip to Ireland he said was intended to familiarize himself with his district's Irish-American residents. In 2004, he was cleared of any wrongdoing following a Manhattan DA's probe into a charge that he had sexually assaulted a 38-year-old woman.

COMMENT:  Rangel should probably step down on his own, considering the ethics charges against him.  They seem to be accurate.

It's sad, though, that another ethics-challenged guy might replace Rangel.  I was having an e-mail discussion earlier this morning with a respected reader who has an extended, multicultural family, and we agreed that the African-American community deserves better role models.  But one of the tragedies of that community is that its politics is heavily influenced by the hard left, where top-down leadership is all the rage.

Rudy Giuliani, when he was mayor of New York, was responsible for saving more black lives than any other mayor before him, and maybe all combined, through his imaginative anti-crime program.  He never got a word of thanks because he refused to genuflect before the self-serving black "leadership," which then instructed "the community" to oppose the mayor. 

I hope Rangel is succeeded by a saint, not a sinner.

October 16,  2009   Permalink

WHY NOT JUST GIVE THEM THE MISSILES, AND SHOW REAL FRIENDSHIP?  AFTER ALL, THAT'S THE OBAMAN THING TO DO - AT 9:23 A.M. ET:  From Bill Gertz at, again, the Washington Times: 

President Obama recently shifted authority for approving sales to China of missile and space technology from the White House to the Commerce Department -- a move critics say will loosen export controls and potentially benefit Chinese missile development.

The president issued a little-noticed "presidential determination" Sept. 29 that delegated authority for determining whether missile and space exports should be approved for China to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.

Commerce officials say the shift will not cause controls to be loosened in regards to the export of missile and space technology.

Eugene Cottilli, a spokesman for Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, said under new policy the U.S. government will rigorously monitor all sensitive exports to China.

Yeah, right.  I'm sure we'll "rigorously monitor" those exports.  This is just the administration to do it. 

There is a history here of improper transfers of technology during the Bill and Hillary years.  I wouldn't be shocked if the same mistake were made again. 

The presidential notice alters a key provision of the 1999 Defense Authorization Act that required that the president notify Congress whether a transfer of missile and space technology to China would harm the U.S. space-launch industry or help China's missile programs.

The law was passed after a late-1990s scandal involving the U.S. companies Space Systems/Loral and Hughes Electronics Corp.

Sleep tight tonight.  Barack Obama is watching out for you.

October 16, 2009    Permalink

A COLOSSAL FAILURE - AT 8:09 A.M. ET: That's a perfectly reasonable description of Hillary Clinton's mission to Moscow, which just concluded without so much as a nice going-home gift. 

I've always liked Wes Pruden of the Washington Times because he takes no prisoners and says things bluntly.  He would not have been hired as a diplomat in the unarmed army of Obama.  Pruden:

A soft answer can sometimes turn away wrath, but not always, and presidents have to be wary of showing timidity and weakness in the face of a bully. This is the expensive lesson the tinhorns of the world are teaching Barack Obama. So far he is not an honors student.

He'll get an "A" from MSNBC anyway.  Easy grader, if you're a liberal.

Throwing Poland and the Czech Republic under that celebrated bus, a cramped space already brimming with old friends, pastors, mentors, tutors and even members of his own family who are no longer useful, was costly. It's never easy to be a friend of America, and Mr. Obama is making it impossible to be one.

He got a humiliating reminder of reality this week when the Russians, to whom he had paid such humble obeisance, gave him a hard slap across the face, just to remind him who he is and who is meant to be in charge of the world.

Don't worry, be happy.  We're talking.  We're sensitive to other cultures.  We're showing our good side.  Hillary smiled in Moscow.  Ah, for the good old thinking of the sixties, when she lectured a U.S. senator about Vietnam at a Wellesley College commencement.  Those were the days when you could bash America and be so proud.

Mrs. Clinton could not even see Mr. Putin, the real head man; there was a conflict of schedules and he had to depart for Beijing. This was a remarkable snub, treating the secretary of state as if she were merely the representative of the PTA, lobbying for more vegetables in the school lunchroom. Maybe there really was a conflict; maybe Mr. Putin had scheduled a haircut at the only hour she was available.

Ouch.  Hillary wronged by another man.  Will there be anger?  Will there be pain?

Mrs. Clinton and her acolytes at the State Department, ever eager to seek the softest way to say nothing, tried to put a nice face on her visit to Moscow. The United States, Russia and China are "closer than before" on their policies regarding Iran's nuclear-weapons program, Mrs. Clinton told a radio interviewer. She seemed to be taking care not to say that actual positions are closer, just that everyone understands those positions: Russians tough, Americans soft.

That says it.  But are enough Americans concerned?  Our colleges, and, increasingly, our high schools, are churning out students who are taught a moral equivalence in international relations.  Some of those students go into journalism and teach moral equivlance to readers and viewers.  Unless we get to the root of America's corrupt educational system, and increasingly twisted press, we will be in mortal danger of a "citizen's surrender," which is what has happened in much of Western Europe.

October 16, 2009   Permalink

HE MAY BE RIGHT - AT 7:49 A.M. ET:  Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana), is sounding awfully confident these days about the fate of health-care "reform" in the Senate, as Fox News reports:

WASHINGTON -- When it comes time to vote, every Democrat in the Senate -- and perhaps more than one Republican -- will support legislation overhauling the nation's health care system, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee predicted Thursday.

Could be correct.  The Blue Dogs have a notorious history of caving at the last minute.  The "perhaps more than one Republican" comment is an obvious allusion to Olympia Snowe, whose final vote for passage Baucus apparently feels he has. 

That assertion by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., was a notable show of confidence coming in the midst of negotiations with Majority Leader Harry Reid and White House officials to finalize legislation that can satisfy liberal Democrats without alienating moderates -- and get the 60 votes needed to advance in the 100-seat Senate.

Baucus told reporters that lawmakers have a moral obligation to repair the health care system to rein in costs and extend coverage to millions of the uninsured.

The problem is, the bill likely to be presented for final passage won't do either, but the Dems will claim that it will.

"And that is why we are going to pass health care reform legislation this year, and it is why every Democrat will vote for it, and it is why there will be at least one Republican and maybe a couple more who also will vote for it," Baucus said.

COMMENT:  The opposition may well be exhausted.  We don't see the kind of eruption we saw in August.  Or, organized opponents may be waiting for final bills to emerge in both the House and Senate.   Final versions in each House may be weeks away.  They would then have to be reconciled in a Senate-House conference.

October 16,  2009   Permalink