Mike Ford
11/11/09
MikeFordPerspective
As Mike Huckabee continues to grab early and convincing leads in numerous polls for the GOP Presidential Primary nomination of 2012, many are perplexed that Sarah Palin is not doing well. Despite the solid name recognition and a crutch of support from many main-stream "conservative" media personalities, it seems that her recent book release (and a few jabs at Barack Hussein Obama" are the only things that keep her relevant to those beyond her loyal circle of support.
In fact, Palin is placing 3rd in most polls, as "Moderate" darling Mitt Romney is still holding support from the more liberal Establishment of the Party, despite the constant comparisons between PelosiCare and his failed Health Care debacle in Massachusetts.
I have much respect for Mrs. Palin, and think we should be careful not to allow the RINO wing of the Party to divide the Conservative movement.
But we must be honest and petition our Conservative leaders to take their positions in the best place to help the team win. And Sarah's place is not in the 2012 Presidential run.
She has already taken more than one for the team, and as a relatively young and inexperienced candidate who didn't know the dangers of the Beltway backstabbing, her assassinated character is the victim of both Parties that have reduced her to damaged goods. Pair that with a handful of questionable decisions, and she just may be a liability to the Conservative Movement if she chooses the wrong role.
Dan Quayle received the same treatment long ago. And though he was a very bright and morally refreshing alternative to the political establishment, he was made out by the media to be an uneducated and simple "knuckle dragging" buffoon, and was persecuted for his Faith and Conservative values.
Bush did not help to define his image, and he failed to define himself in the public eye. And when a Conservative cannot successfully define his public image, the opposition will team with the media to define him, and leave a lasting impression of shaken confidence. Shaken confidence will always destroy the perception of leadership.To make matters worse, he was left for dead and even finished off by the RINO wing of the GOP.
Quayle was just as fit as anyone to be VP that year, and many of us believe would have made a better President than Bush SR or Clinton. But the hard pill to swallow was that he was damaged goods that would never again be a viable national candidate because his high approval rating was trumped by an offset of negative ratings.
This is known as the "Net Approval", which can be a curse to very popular prospects. Simply put, those who strongly oppose offset those who strongly approve, and detracts to a narrow net of supportive approval, or even a small net of opposition disapproval.
Sarah shows the same promise to the Conservative Base, but also carries similar Net Approval ratings and the same scars as Quayle that in all honesty, make her un-electable. Her strong opposition base would only fuel a wide open campaign for more bitter attacks from the main-stream media, and a very hostile Hollywood, which makes me curious if her presence in the 2008 election helped Obama raise so much money from this faction of the Far Left.
The White House is the most obvious choice for those of us who want to make a difference, and have the support and fundraising capability to do it.
But I will submit to you that the office of President is not the only place or most effective position of influence for someone like Sarah. It is a policy position that can only be enhanced or ruined based on a unique combination: job execution by the officeholder, and the support network they have in DC.
However, the influence of media in the public theatre, and the response to it by grassroots support, will be in flux until we have better alternatives to people that impact our Party most.
And as it stands right now, people like Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Anne Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Glen Beck and a plethora of PACs and lobbyist circles are feeding off of our frustration in a self serving and dishonest manner.
I would like to see TRUE Conservative Rock Stars and Leaders, who are committed to the actual success and promotion of our values, take these positions. And to me, Palin could advance the Conservative Movement much more from these positions without risk of the backlash from her opposition, that could potentially sink campaigns.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
What if Bush had done that?
Josh Gerstein Josh Gerstein
Tue Oct 27
A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.
Snubbing the Dalai Lama.
Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.
Freezing out a TV network.
Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.
President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more.
What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.
It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.
Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?
And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it?
“We have a joke about it. We’re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com,” former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said. “The watchdogs are curled up around his feet, sleeping soundly. ... There are countless examples: some silly, some serious.”
Indeed, Bush got grief for secret meetings with the oil industry, politicizing the White House and spending too much time on his beloved bike. But it’s not just Republicans who notice. Media observers note that the president often gets kid-glove treatment from the press, fellow Democrats and, particularly, interest groups on the left — Bush’s loudest critics, Obama’s biggest backers.
But others say there’s a larger phenomenon at work — in the story line the media wrote about Obama’s presidency. For Bush, the theme was that of a Big Business Republican who rode the family name to the White House, so stories about secret energy meetings and a certain laziness, intellectual and otherwise, fit neatly into the theme, to be replayed over and over again.
Obama’s story line was more positive from the start: historic newcomer coming to shake up Washington. So the negatives that sprung up around Obama — like a sense that he was more flash than substance — track what negative coverage he’s received, captured in a recent “Saturday Night Live” skit that made fun of his lack of accomplishments in office.
“There may well be almost an unconscious effort on the part of the media to give Obama a bit more slack because he is more likable, because he is the first African-American president. That plays into it,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California.
Democrats find the complaints of Obama “getting a pass” hard to stomach in light of the way the press treated Bush — particularly on the single biggest mistake of his presidency, relying on the faulty intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Now, Obama’s aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are succeeding.
“As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we’ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don’t,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “It’s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far — certainly better coverage than the [2-5] Redskins — but it doesn’t mean the Saints have liked every story that’s been written about them since training camp. It goes with the territory.”
There are signs the friendly tone toward Obama is ebbing. Case in point: a front-page story in The New York Times noting that Obama’s all-male basketball games drew fire from the head of the National Organization for Women, who called the games “troubling.”
But here are other stories in which Obama seems to have gotten a pass:
New Orleans
As a candidate, Obama railed against the Bush administration for abandoning and then neglecting the people of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. He made five campaign trips to the city.
But as president, Obama waited almost nine months before visiting the Big Easy, spent less than four hours on the ground there and then jetted to San Francisco for a $3 million Democratic fundraiser.
“Don’t judge anybody on the amount of time that they’ve spent there. Judge only what this administration promised that they would do, what they’ve done every day and what they’re continuing to work on,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said, pointing to positive reviews of the federal government’s efforts under Obama.
For their part, Democrats can’t see how Bush officials can muster much umbrage over anything related to New Orleans, given how the Republican administration handled the initial response to Katrina.
Managing the press
When the Obama administration moved in recent weeks to isolate and disparage Fox News as a wing of the Republican Party, there were few immediate howls of outrage — even from Fox’s fellow journalists in the media.
Press defenders and First Amendment advocates who jumped on the Bush administration for using military analysts to shape war coverage reacted with a yawn to the White House’s announcement that it had deemed Fox to be not a “legitimate news organization.”
“Had I said about MSNBC what the Obama White House said about Fox, the media uproar would still be going on,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as Bush’s press secretary until 2003. “I instinctively would have known ... the media would have leapt to their feet to defend them. I’m shocked it’s not happening now.”
One press veteran agreed. “If George Bush had taken on MSNBC, what would have happened?” said Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large of the San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s one place you can point to a real difference in how I’d imagine Bush would be treated.”
Politicizing the White House
Throughout the Bush administration, liberal critics warned that the hand of Bush political adviser Karl Rove was spreading politics into all corners of government. Reporters were on alert for any sign that politics was infecting the work of federal agencies. One top appointee got in hot water for allegedly asking agency officials to work to “help our candidates” across the country.
So some Bush aides went nearly apoplectic earlier this month when they spotted Gibbs and Obama’s political guru, David Axelrod, in photos of a Situation Room meeting on Afghanistan policy.
“Oh, the howling and screaming that would have happened if Karl Rove was sitting in on even a deputies-level meeting where strategy was being hammered out. People would have just gone ballistic,” said Peter Feaver, a former White House aide for both Bush and Bill Clinton.
Also, in about nine months, Obama has already attended more than two dozen fundraising events, while Bush did only six in his first year in office, according to a tally by CBS’s Mark Knoller.
Gibbs said Obama had to do more to raise a similar amount of money, since the kinds of soft-money fundraisers Bush did early on were banned. “This president ... doesn’t accept money from PACs or lobbyists and doesn’t allow lobbyists to give at fundraisers that he’s at, as well,” Gibbs added.
Dealing with business, in secret
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney endured years of criticism and lawsuits that stretched all the way to the Supreme Court over secret meetings Cheney’s Energy Task Force held with oil and gas companies. When the policy emerged, critics said Cheney was carrying water for the industry.
Obama pledged to hash out health care reform live on C-SPAN and excoriated Bush for kowtowing to the drug industry. But aides signed off on the drug industry’s agreement to find $80 billion in savings to support reform. However, Obama aides didn’t disclose that the agreement involved the White House promising that current health legislation wouldn’t include further cuts or give the government the right to negotiate over drug prices.
Toning down human rights
During the campaign, Obama talked tough on China. While candidate Obama pushed Bush to take a hard line, President Obama hasn’t. Hoping to win China’s help on Iran and North Korea, Obama skipped a meeting with the Dalai Lama and said little when China undertook a violent crackdown in its largely Muslim Xinjiang region. The White House has pledged to meet with the Dalai Lama later.
And while candidate Obama warned Bush against a “reckless and cynical initiative [that] would reward a regime in Khartoum that has a record of failing to live up to its commitments,” President Obama’s envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, seemed to lay out a similar incentive-driven approach.
“We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration. “Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.” The White House backed away from Gration’s characterization of the strategy but did recently lay out a strategy of engaging with the Sudanese regime.
Traveling and recreating
In his campaign and as president, Bush was mocked for a lack of interest in all things foreign — seven minutes touring the Kremlin, 25 minutes at the Great Wall of China, before declaring, “Let’s go home.”
During a trip to Europe in June, Obama chastised German and French reporters for suggesting that he was snubbing those countries by making only brief stops in each. “There are only 24 hours in the day. And so there’s nothing to any of that speculation beyond us just trying to fit in what we could do on such a short trip,” he told reporters in Germany.
But after taking his wife out for an attention-grabbing date night, Obama promptly jetted back to Washington. Within about 90 minutes of arriving at the White House, the tightly scheduled president was on the move again — headed to Andrews Air Force Base to play nine holes of golf.
Tue Oct 27
A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.
Snubbing the Dalai Lama.
Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.
Freezing out a TV network.
Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.
President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more.
What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.
It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.
Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?
And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it?
“We have a joke about it. We’re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com,” former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said. “The watchdogs are curled up around his feet, sleeping soundly. ... There are countless examples: some silly, some serious.”
Indeed, Bush got grief for secret meetings with the oil industry, politicizing the White House and spending too much time on his beloved bike. But it’s not just Republicans who notice. Media observers note that the president often gets kid-glove treatment from the press, fellow Democrats and, particularly, interest groups on the left — Bush’s loudest critics, Obama’s biggest backers.
But others say there’s a larger phenomenon at work — in the story line the media wrote about Obama’s presidency. For Bush, the theme was that of a Big Business Republican who rode the family name to the White House, so stories about secret energy meetings and a certain laziness, intellectual and otherwise, fit neatly into the theme, to be replayed over and over again.
Obama’s story line was more positive from the start: historic newcomer coming to shake up Washington. So the negatives that sprung up around Obama — like a sense that he was more flash than substance — track what negative coverage he’s received, captured in a recent “Saturday Night Live” skit that made fun of his lack of accomplishments in office.
“There may well be almost an unconscious effort on the part of the media to give Obama a bit more slack because he is more likable, because he is the first African-American president. That plays into it,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California.
Democrats find the complaints of Obama “getting a pass” hard to stomach in light of the way the press treated Bush — particularly on the single biggest mistake of his presidency, relying on the faulty intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Now, Obama’s aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are succeeding.
“As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we’ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don’t,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “It’s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far — certainly better coverage than the [2-5] Redskins — but it doesn’t mean the Saints have liked every story that’s been written about them since training camp. It goes with the territory.”
There are signs the friendly tone toward Obama is ebbing. Case in point: a front-page story in The New York Times noting that Obama’s all-male basketball games drew fire from the head of the National Organization for Women, who called the games “troubling.”
But here are other stories in which Obama seems to have gotten a pass:
New Orleans
As a candidate, Obama railed against the Bush administration for abandoning and then neglecting the people of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. He made five campaign trips to the city.
But as president, Obama waited almost nine months before visiting the Big Easy, spent less than four hours on the ground there and then jetted to San Francisco for a $3 million Democratic fundraiser.
“Don’t judge anybody on the amount of time that they’ve spent there. Judge only what this administration promised that they would do, what they’ve done every day and what they’re continuing to work on,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said, pointing to positive reviews of the federal government’s efforts under Obama.
For their part, Democrats can’t see how Bush officials can muster much umbrage over anything related to New Orleans, given how the Republican administration handled the initial response to Katrina.
Managing the press
When the Obama administration moved in recent weeks to isolate and disparage Fox News as a wing of the Republican Party, there were few immediate howls of outrage — even from Fox’s fellow journalists in the media.
Press defenders and First Amendment advocates who jumped on the Bush administration for using military analysts to shape war coverage reacted with a yawn to the White House’s announcement that it had deemed Fox to be not a “legitimate news organization.”
“Had I said about MSNBC what the Obama White House said about Fox, the media uproar would still be going on,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as Bush’s press secretary until 2003. “I instinctively would have known ... the media would have leapt to their feet to defend them. I’m shocked it’s not happening now.”
One press veteran agreed. “If George Bush had taken on MSNBC, what would have happened?” said Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large of the San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s one place you can point to a real difference in how I’d imagine Bush would be treated.”
Politicizing the White House
Throughout the Bush administration, liberal critics warned that the hand of Bush political adviser Karl Rove was spreading politics into all corners of government. Reporters were on alert for any sign that politics was infecting the work of federal agencies. One top appointee got in hot water for allegedly asking agency officials to work to “help our candidates” across the country.
So some Bush aides went nearly apoplectic earlier this month when they spotted Gibbs and Obama’s political guru, David Axelrod, in photos of a Situation Room meeting on Afghanistan policy.
“Oh, the howling and screaming that would have happened if Karl Rove was sitting in on even a deputies-level meeting where strategy was being hammered out. People would have just gone ballistic,” said Peter Feaver, a former White House aide for both Bush and Bill Clinton.
Also, in about nine months, Obama has already attended more than two dozen fundraising events, while Bush did only six in his first year in office, according to a tally by CBS’s Mark Knoller.
Gibbs said Obama had to do more to raise a similar amount of money, since the kinds of soft-money fundraisers Bush did early on were banned. “This president ... doesn’t accept money from PACs or lobbyists and doesn’t allow lobbyists to give at fundraisers that he’s at, as well,” Gibbs added.
Dealing with business, in secret
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney endured years of criticism and lawsuits that stretched all the way to the Supreme Court over secret meetings Cheney’s Energy Task Force held with oil and gas companies. When the policy emerged, critics said Cheney was carrying water for the industry.
Obama pledged to hash out health care reform live on C-SPAN and excoriated Bush for kowtowing to the drug industry. But aides signed off on the drug industry’s agreement to find $80 billion in savings to support reform. However, Obama aides didn’t disclose that the agreement involved the White House promising that current health legislation wouldn’t include further cuts or give the government the right to negotiate over drug prices.
Toning down human rights
During the campaign, Obama talked tough on China. While candidate Obama pushed Bush to take a hard line, President Obama hasn’t. Hoping to win China’s help on Iran and North Korea, Obama skipped a meeting with the Dalai Lama and said little when China undertook a violent crackdown in its largely Muslim Xinjiang region. The White House has pledged to meet with the Dalai Lama later.
And while candidate Obama warned Bush against a “reckless and cynical initiative [that] would reward a regime in Khartoum that has a record of failing to live up to its commitments,” President Obama’s envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, seemed to lay out a similar incentive-driven approach.
“We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration. “Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.” The White House backed away from Gration’s characterization of the strategy but did recently lay out a strategy of engaging with the Sudanese regime.
Traveling and recreating
In his campaign and as president, Bush was mocked for a lack of interest in all things foreign — seven minutes touring the Kremlin, 25 minutes at the Great Wall of China, before declaring, “Let’s go home.”
During a trip to Europe in June, Obama chastised German and French reporters for suggesting that he was snubbing those countries by making only brief stops in each. “There are only 24 hours in the day. And so there’s nothing to any of that speculation beyond us just trying to fit in what we could do on such a short trip,” he told reporters in Germany.
But after taking his wife out for an attention-grabbing date night, Obama promptly jetted back to Washington. Within about 90 minutes of arriving at the White House, the tightly scheduled president was on the move again — headed to Andrews Air Force Base to play nine holes of golf.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Federal Abortion Program in Health-Care Bill
Oklahomans For Life - LEGISLATIVE ALERT
National Right to Life warns U.S. House
not to set up federal abortion-funding program
in Health-Care bill
WASHINGTON (October 23, 2009) -- The nation's largest pro-life organization has put members of the U.S. House of Representatives on notice that it regards an upcoming procedural vote on the health care legislation as a vote on whether to establish a new federal government program that would directly pay for elective abortions with federal funds.
In a "scorecard advisory" letter sent this week to U.S. House members, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of right-to-life organizations in all 50 states, focused on a key procedural resolution (called "the rule") that the House must approve before it can take up the massive health care bill (H.R. 3200). The "rule" will specify what amendments to the bill, if any, may be considered on the House floor.
In a story transmitted today (October 23), the Associated Press accurately reported that the House Democratic leadership currently does not intend to allow the House to vote on an amendment sponsored by Congressmen Bart Stupak (D-Mi.) and Joseph Pitts (R-Pa.), and supported by NRLC, which would, as the AP reported, "include the Hyde amendment restrictions in the health overhaul bill."
The AP reported: "Such an amendment would be almost certain to prevail . . . So Democratic leaders won't let Stupak offer it. Instead, it appears they may have to take the risk of letting Stupak try to block action on the underlying bill, which he intends to do by assembling 'no' votes on a procedural measure [the "rule"] that needs to pass before debate can begin."
As approved by Democratic-controlled House committees, H.R. 3200 contains at least two major components that implicate abortion policy. It creates a new program of premium subsidies for health insurance. The AP story discusses pro-life objections to allowing those subsidies to go to private plans that cover elective abortions. Oddly, however, the AP story does not mention the other major abortion-related controversy generated by the bill, which centers on the proposed "public plan."
NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson commented: "The bill explicitly authorizes the public plan, a federal agency program, to pay for elective abortions. Democratic leaders, including President Obama, have claimed that no federal funds would be used to pay for abortions, but this is a deception, because the public plan will be a federal agency program that can spend only federal funds. The federal government would pay abortion providers for performing elective abortions -- a sharp break from decades of federal policy."
"The public plan problem and the premium-subsidy problem are really separate and distinct -- the bill would need to be amended to get abortion out of the federal government plan, even if the premium subsidy program did not exist," Johnson said. "Recent polls show strong public opposition to government funding of abortion and abortion coverage."
NRLC has obtained and today makes publicly available a memorandum prepared for a Member of Congress by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS), which confirms all of the monies spent by the public plan would be federal funds (just as NRLC has previously documented) -- implicitly refuting the claim by Democratic leaders and President Obama that no "federal funds" would be used to pay for abortions.
"The claim by Congressional Democratic leaders that the public plan, a federal agency program, could pay for abortions with 'private' funds, is a brazen deception -- a political hoax," Johnson said. "The claim is implausible on its face, and it collapses if subjected to anything more than the most superficial scrutiny. But for months, unfortunately, many journalists have allowed the Democratic leadership, Obama Administration officials, and President Obama himself, to get away with many demonstrably false statements regarding the abortion-related components of the pending bills."
For example, in recent weeks White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has said several times that existing law (the Hyde Amendment) would prevent the programs created by the health bills from funding abortions. Although this claim, too, is demonstrably false, no mainstream news operation or fact-checking operation has rebuked the White House for these deceptive statements. Today's AP story does, however, correctly observe that "the Democrats' health overhaul bill would create a new stream of federal funding not covered by the [current abortion] restrictions."
While campaigning for the presidency, Barack Obama committed to Planned Parenthood that he would cover abortion in his health care reform legislation and in its public plan. "The pending legislation would establish a federal government program that would directly fund elective abortions, just as Obama promised Planned Parenthood," Johnson said. "President Obama is trying to smuggle into law a federal abortion-funding program behind smokescreens of misleading rhetoric and calculated efforts at misdirection."
NRLC has made available detailed documentation on the abortion-related components of the pending health-care bills, including bills approved by two U.S. Senate committees, on its website at http://www.nrlc.org/ahc.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
email: info@okforlife.org
phone: 918-749-5022
web: http://www.OkForLife.org
National Right to Life warns U.S. House
not to set up federal abortion-funding program
in Health-Care bill
WASHINGTON (October 23, 2009) -- The nation's largest pro-life organization has put members of the U.S. House of Representatives on notice that it regards an upcoming procedural vote on the health care legislation as a vote on whether to establish a new federal government program that would directly pay for elective abortions with federal funds.
In a "scorecard advisory" letter sent this week to U.S. House members, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of right-to-life organizations in all 50 states, focused on a key procedural resolution (called "the rule") that the House must approve before it can take up the massive health care bill (H.R. 3200). The "rule" will specify what amendments to the bill, if any, may be considered on the House floor.
In a story transmitted today (October 23), the Associated Press accurately reported that the House Democratic leadership currently does not intend to allow the House to vote on an amendment sponsored by Congressmen Bart Stupak (D-Mi.) and Joseph Pitts (R-Pa.), and supported by NRLC, which would, as the AP reported, "include the Hyde amendment restrictions in the health overhaul bill."
The AP reported: "Such an amendment would be almost certain to prevail . . . So Democratic leaders won't let Stupak offer it. Instead, it appears they may have to take the risk of letting Stupak try to block action on the underlying bill, which he intends to do by assembling 'no' votes on a procedural measure [the "rule"] that needs to pass before debate can begin."
As approved by Democratic-controlled House committees, H.R. 3200 contains at least two major components that implicate abortion policy. It creates a new program of premium subsidies for health insurance. The AP story discusses pro-life objections to allowing those subsidies to go to private plans that cover elective abortions. Oddly, however, the AP story does not mention the other major abortion-related controversy generated by the bill, which centers on the proposed "public plan."
NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson commented: "The bill explicitly authorizes the public plan, a federal agency program, to pay for elective abortions. Democratic leaders, including President Obama, have claimed that no federal funds would be used to pay for abortions, but this is a deception, because the public plan will be a federal agency program that can spend only federal funds. The federal government would pay abortion providers for performing elective abortions -- a sharp break from decades of federal policy."
"The public plan problem and the premium-subsidy problem are really separate and distinct -- the bill would need to be amended to get abortion out of the federal government plan, even if the premium subsidy program did not exist," Johnson said. "Recent polls show strong public opposition to government funding of abortion and abortion coverage."
NRLC has obtained and today makes publicly available a memorandum prepared for a Member of Congress by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS), which confirms all of the monies spent by the public plan would be federal funds (just as NRLC has previously documented) -- implicitly refuting the claim by Democratic leaders and President Obama that no "federal funds" would be used to pay for abortions.
"The claim by Congressional Democratic leaders that the public plan, a federal agency program, could pay for abortions with 'private' funds, is a brazen deception -- a political hoax," Johnson said. "The claim is implausible on its face, and it collapses if subjected to anything more than the most superficial scrutiny. But for months, unfortunately, many journalists have allowed the Democratic leadership, Obama Administration officials, and President Obama himself, to get away with many demonstrably false statements regarding the abortion-related components of the pending bills."
For example, in recent weeks White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has said several times that existing law (the Hyde Amendment) would prevent the programs created by the health bills from funding abortions. Although this claim, too, is demonstrably false, no mainstream news operation or fact-checking operation has rebuked the White House for these deceptive statements. Today's AP story does, however, correctly observe that "the Democrats' health overhaul bill would create a new stream of federal funding not covered by the [current abortion] restrictions."
While campaigning for the presidency, Barack Obama committed to Planned Parenthood that he would cover abortion in his health care reform legislation and in its public plan. "The pending legislation would establish a federal government program that would directly fund elective abortions, just as Obama promised Planned Parenthood," Johnson said. "President Obama is trying to smuggle into law a federal abortion-funding program behind smokescreens of misleading rhetoric and calculated efforts at misdirection."
NRLC has made available detailed documentation on the abortion-related components of the pending health-care bills, including bills approved by two U.S. Senate committees, on its website at http://www.nrlc.org/ahc.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
email: info@okforlife.org
phone: 918-749-5022
web: http://www.OkForLife.org
Friday, October 16, 2009
So Much For Campaign Promises, Obama Health Care Lobby Connection
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20091016/pl_politico/28362/print
Exclusive: How Dems set stage for corporate-backed health care campaign
Ben Smith, Kenneth P. Vogel Ben Smith, Kenneth P. Vogel
At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in bolstering public support for health care reform.
The role Baucus’s chief of staff, Jon Selib, and deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina played in launching the groups was part of a successful effort by Democrats to enlist traditional enemies of health care reform to their side. No quid pro quo was involved, they insist, as do the lobbyists themselves.
The result has been a somewhat unlikely alliance between an administration that came into power criticizing George W. Bush for his closeness to Big Business and groups such as the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the American Medical Association.
The previously undisclosed meeting April 15 at the offices of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee led to the creation of two groups — Americans for Stable Quality Care and a now-defunct predecessor group called Healthy Economy Now — that have spent tens of millions of dollars on TV advertising supporting health reform efforts.
In the most recent ad sponsored by Americans for Stable Quality Care, Obama speaks directly into the camera for 60 seconds, extolling the virtues of health care reform, while text at the bottom of the screen encourages viewers to visit the websites of the White House and the Finance Committee, which this week approved a 10-year, $829 billion health overhaul.
Both coalitions operate independently of the administration and Senate Democrats, and spokesmen for both the White House and Baucus said that no pressure — implicit or otherwise — to join the pro-health-care reform groups was applied to industry representatives at the meeting.
After arriving late, Messina delivered a presentation to what was one of many such “outreach” meetings he has attended, and he left before the other participants began talking strategy. Selib, who had convened the gathering, “didn’t ask anyone for money,” said a Baucus aide.
Indeed, attendees describe a more subtle dynamic: The Democratic officials made no overt demands. Rather, they brought together the players and laid the groundwork for the creation of the coalition, and that was followed by more direct solicitations from an outside Democratic consultant, Nick Baldick, retained by Healthy Economy Now, asking attendees at the meeting to join the coalition and contribute to its ad campaigns.
One ethics expert, however, said the meeting still raises issues. No matter how careful Messina and Selib were to avoid conversation about Healthy Economy Now, their mere presence at what proved to be the coalition’s creation raises questions, said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that advocates for greater transparency and ethics in government.
“There’s no problem with sitting down at the table and talking,” said Allison. “But if they are signaling that they would really like these groups to support health care reform and trying to tell the groups how they’ll benefit from the plan, they’re laying a ‘quid’ on the table, and — even if they don’t discuss dollar amounts or advertising strategies — they’re suggesting what the ‘quo’ is, which is the groups’ support for the plan.”
The White House and committee officials said the meeting and the months of talks that followed it — between officials putting together the health care proposals and the stakeholders who would be affected by them — prove a willingness by the Obama administration and Baucus to engage groups traditionally considered adversaries of health care reform.
Ken Johnson, a senior vice president at PhRMA, called the April meeting “one of the key points where there was a coming together and a discussion of ideas and shared goals.”
Johnson said PhRMA, which ultimately provided the lion’s share of the $24 million to the two coalitions, “could have walked away at any time.”
Days after the meeting, Healthy Economy Now’s website address was registered, and meeting attendees began receiving unsolicited calls asking for cash for the coalition from Baldick, whose firm — Hilltop Public Solutions — had been hired to run Healthy Economy Now.
In addition to PhRMA and the American Medical Association, the strange-bedfellows coalition included AARP, the American Cancer Society, the Business Roundtable, the advocacy group Families USA and the Service Employees International Union, as well as trade groups for biotech and medical device firms.
Other attendees opted out. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and America’s Health Insurance Plans refused to participate in a group backing a plan that they would ultimately oppose — and the insurance group this week emerged as the most aggressive opponent to the bill Baucus shepherded through his committee.
Many participants in the meeting had a great deal at stake in health care legislation. At the time Healthy Economy Now launched the first of its ads May 12, PhRMA was negotiating with Baucus and the White House a complex deal in which drug makers would contribute $80 billion to lower costs in exchange for avoiding downward pressure on drug prices.
The Associated Press later revealed that PhRMA had agreed to spend a whopping $150 million pushing the health overhaul — a sum that included its contributions to Healthy Economy Now and Americans for Stable Quality Care.
Also attending was a group representing device makers — which has been battling plans to fund reform by taxing medical devices — and groups representing employers and workers, which also have major interests in the outcome of the health fight.
Some participants said they felt distinct pressure to sign on to the coalitions. “What were we supposed to say? No?” asked a participant who represented a group that joined the coalition but who did not want to be identified discussing the meeting for fear of jeopardizing the group’s position in ongoing talks.
But others said the meeting only formalized what had already functioned as an informal alliance.
“This is a natural outgrowth of groups that have worked together previously on health reform issues,” said Richard Deem, the senior vice president for advocacy at the American Medical Association.
The groups' backers “had a record of pooling their resources long before the coalition,” said Baldick aide Rebecca Kirszner Katz, adding that “a core group of these stakeholders approached Hilltop and others about formalizing a coalition.”
“The idea that this group of stakeholders — who deal with the problems in health care every day — needed to be told that it was important to communicate about health care, or how to do it, is absurd,” he said.
Allison said that it is not only the April meeting that troubles him but also the whole approach Baucus and the White House have taken in attempting to negotiate with potential adversaries.
“What you’ve had was the Senate and the White House sitting down and cutting deals with special interests,” he said. “I don’t think that’s quite what the American people signed up for when the Obama campaign said that they were going to limit the influence of special interests in this White House.”
Criticism — from the left and the right — of the PhRMA deal and the coalitions became more pointed after it was revealed in August that the coalitions were paying two firms with close ties to the White House to cut ads: AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by White House senior adviser David Axelrod, still owes him $2 million and employs one of his sons — and GMMB.
Liberals contended drug companies were being let off the hook. And congressional Republicans distributed talking points asserting the PhRMA deal raised “serious questions as to whether the drug lobby is helping to bankroll a multimillion-dollar severance package for one of the president’s senior advisers.”
The coalition spawned from the April meeting has evolved since its formation. AARP, a member of Healthy Economy Now, did not join Americans for Stable Quality Care, which welcomed a range of smaller medical groups left out of Healthy Economy Now. The SEIU — dissenting from the implicit endorsement of Baucus’s more conservative legislation in the group’s most recent ad — recently left the group.
But participants say the coalition will continue its large-scale efforts on behalf of the legislation.
“In the not-too-distant future, you’ll see a new set of ads” from Americans for Stable Quality Care, said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a coalition member that also belonged to Healthy Economy Now.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20091016/pl_politico/28362
CORRECTION: A quote now attributed to Rebecca Kirszner Katz was incorrectly attributed to a Democratic consultant.
Exclusive: How Dems set stage for corporate-backed health care campaign
Ben Smith, Kenneth P. Vogel Ben Smith, Kenneth P. Vogel
At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in bolstering public support for health care reform.
The role Baucus’s chief of staff, Jon Selib, and deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina played in launching the groups was part of a successful effort by Democrats to enlist traditional enemies of health care reform to their side. No quid pro quo was involved, they insist, as do the lobbyists themselves.
The result has been a somewhat unlikely alliance between an administration that came into power criticizing George W. Bush for his closeness to Big Business and groups such as the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the American Medical Association.
The previously undisclosed meeting April 15 at the offices of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee led to the creation of two groups — Americans for Stable Quality Care and a now-defunct predecessor group called Healthy Economy Now — that have spent tens of millions of dollars on TV advertising supporting health reform efforts.
In the most recent ad sponsored by Americans for Stable Quality Care, Obama speaks directly into the camera for 60 seconds, extolling the virtues of health care reform, while text at the bottom of the screen encourages viewers to visit the websites of the White House and the Finance Committee, which this week approved a 10-year, $829 billion health overhaul.
Both coalitions operate independently of the administration and Senate Democrats, and spokesmen for both the White House and Baucus said that no pressure — implicit or otherwise — to join the pro-health-care reform groups was applied to industry representatives at the meeting.
After arriving late, Messina delivered a presentation to what was one of many such “outreach” meetings he has attended, and he left before the other participants began talking strategy. Selib, who had convened the gathering, “didn’t ask anyone for money,” said a Baucus aide.
Indeed, attendees describe a more subtle dynamic: The Democratic officials made no overt demands. Rather, they brought together the players and laid the groundwork for the creation of the coalition, and that was followed by more direct solicitations from an outside Democratic consultant, Nick Baldick, retained by Healthy Economy Now, asking attendees at the meeting to join the coalition and contribute to its ad campaigns.
One ethics expert, however, said the meeting still raises issues. No matter how careful Messina and Selib were to avoid conversation about Healthy Economy Now, their mere presence at what proved to be the coalition’s creation raises questions, said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that advocates for greater transparency and ethics in government.
“There’s no problem with sitting down at the table and talking,” said Allison. “But if they are signaling that they would really like these groups to support health care reform and trying to tell the groups how they’ll benefit from the plan, they’re laying a ‘quid’ on the table, and — even if they don’t discuss dollar amounts or advertising strategies — they’re suggesting what the ‘quo’ is, which is the groups’ support for the plan.”
The White House and committee officials said the meeting and the months of talks that followed it — between officials putting together the health care proposals and the stakeholders who would be affected by them — prove a willingness by the Obama administration and Baucus to engage groups traditionally considered adversaries of health care reform.
Ken Johnson, a senior vice president at PhRMA, called the April meeting “one of the key points where there was a coming together and a discussion of ideas and shared goals.”
Johnson said PhRMA, which ultimately provided the lion’s share of the $24 million to the two coalitions, “could have walked away at any time.”
Days after the meeting, Healthy Economy Now’s website address was registered, and meeting attendees began receiving unsolicited calls asking for cash for the coalition from Baldick, whose firm — Hilltop Public Solutions — had been hired to run Healthy Economy Now.
In addition to PhRMA and the American Medical Association, the strange-bedfellows coalition included AARP, the American Cancer Society, the Business Roundtable, the advocacy group Families USA and the Service Employees International Union, as well as trade groups for biotech and medical device firms.
Other attendees opted out. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and America’s Health Insurance Plans refused to participate in a group backing a plan that they would ultimately oppose — and the insurance group this week emerged as the most aggressive opponent to the bill Baucus shepherded through his committee.
Many participants in the meeting had a great deal at stake in health care legislation. At the time Healthy Economy Now launched the first of its ads May 12, PhRMA was negotiating with Baucus and the White House a complex deal in which drug makers would contribute $80 billion to lower costs in exchange for avoiding downward pressure on drug prices.
The Associated Press later revealed that PhRMA had agreed to spend a whopping $150 million pushing the health overhaul — a sum that included its contributions to Healthy Economy Now and Americans for Stable Quality Care.
Also attending was a group representing device makers — which has been battling plans to fund reform by taxing medical devices — and groups representing employers and workers, which also have major interests in the outcome of the health fight.
Some participants said they felt distinct pressure to sign on to the coalitions. “What were we supposed to say? No?” asked a participant who represented a group that joined the coalition but who did not want to be identified discussing the meeting for fear of jeopardizing the group’s position in ongoing talks.
But others said the meeting only formalized what had already functioned as an informal alliance.
“This is a natural outgrowth of groups that have worked together previously on health reform issues,” said Richard Deem, the senior vice president for advocacy at the American Medical Association.
The groups' backers “had a record of pooling their resources long before the coalition,” said Baldick aide Rebecca Kirszner Katz, adding that “a core group of these stakeholders approached Hilltop and others about formalizing a coalition.”
“The idea that this group of stakeholders — who deal with the problems in health care every day — needed to be told that it was important to communicate about health care, or how to do it, is absurd,” he said.
Allison said that it is not only the April meeting that troubles him but also the whole approach Baucus and the White House have taken in attempting to negotiate with potential adversaries.
“What you’ve had was the Senate and the White House sitting down and cutting deals with special interests,” he said. “I don’t think that’s quite what the American people signed up for when the Obama campaign said that they were going to limit the influence of special interests in this White House.”
Criticism — from the left and the right — of the PhRMA deal and the coalitions became more pointed after it was revealed in August that the coalitions were paying two firms with close ties to the White House to cut ads: AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by White House senior adviser David Axelrod, still owes him $2 million and employs one of his sons — and GMMB.
Liberals contended drug companies were being let off the hook. And congressional Republicans distributed talking points asserting the PhRMA deal raised “serious questions as to whether the drug lobby is helping to bankroll a multimillion-dollar severance package for one of the president’s senior advisers.”
The coalition spawned from the April meeting has evolved since its formation. AARP, a member of Healthy Economy Now, did not join Americans for Stable Quality Care, which welcomed a range of smaller medical groups left out of Healthy Economy Now. The SEIU — dissenting from the implicit endorsement of Baucus’s more conservative legislation in the group’s most recent ad — recently left the group.
But participants say the coalition will continue its large-scale efforts on behalf of the legislation.
“In the not-too-distant future, you’ll see a new set of ads” from Americans for Stable Quality Care, said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a coalition member that also belonged to Healthy Economy Now.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20091016/pl_politico/28362
CORRECTION: A quote now attributed to Rebecca Kirszner Katz was incorrectly attributed to a Democratic consultant.
Lieberman pushing pro-homosexual measures
Now let's keep in mind that Sean Hannity butchered fellow Republican Mike Huckabee in the 2008 Primary elections, yet he worked overtime to convince Republicans to abandon their own candidate and support this very liberal Senator...who ran with Al Gore as his would be Vice President back in 2000!
Why do Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck fight so hard for the Conservative movement during the "off season", and then act like gate-keeping assassins for the Moderate Establishment wing of the Republican Party during the time when it counts the most?
Just an objective perspective...
-----------------------------------------------
Jim Brown - OneNewsNow -
Senator Joe Lieberman is working hard to advance two top legislative priorities of homosexual activists in Washington.
Senator Lieberman (I-Connecticut) earlier this year introduced the Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligations Act of 2009 (S. 1102), which would extend spousal benefits to the same-sex partners of federal government employees. Those benefits would include federal health insurance, enhanced dental and vision care, retirement and disability provisions and life insurance and benefits in cases of death or disability.
Lieberman tells The Hill newspaper that he hopes to get the bill onto the Senate floor by the end of the year.
Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs with Liberty Counsel, says he finds it unfortunate that during an economic recession, liberals are "holding Americans hostage to a radical social agenda."
"[I]f this were to pass, [taxpayers would be] forced to subsidize a lifestyle that every major world religion and thousands of years of history have held to be immoral and destructive from a spiritual and emotional -- and certainly a physical standpoint," states Barber.
In addition, the White House is reportedly talking with Lieberman about strategies for repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy -- a policy which President Barack Obama promised a pro-homosexual gathering last Saturday that he would push to abolish. That policy bans homosexual from serving openly in the military.
Why do Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck fight so hard for the Conservative movement during the "off season", and then act like gate-keeping assassins for the Moderate Establishment wing of the Republican Party during the time when it counts the most?
Just an objective perspective...
-----------------------------------------------
Jim Brown - OneNewsNow -
Senator Joe Lieberman is working hard to advance two top legislative priorities of homosexual activists in Washington.
Senator Lieberman (I-Connecticut) earlier this year introduced the Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligations Act of 2009 (S. 1102), which would extend spousal benefits to the same-sex partners of federal government employees. Those benefits would include federal health insurance, enhanced dental and vision care, retirement and disability provisions and life insurance and benefits in cases of death or disability.
Lieberman tells The Hill newspaper that he hopes to get the bill onto the Senate floor by the end of the year.
Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs with Liberty Counsel, says he finds it unfortunate that during an economic recession, liberals are "holding Americans hostage to a radical social agenda."
"[I]f this were to pass, [taxpayers would be] forced to subsidize a lifestyle that every major world religion and thousands of years of history have held to be immoral and destructive from a spiritual and emotional -- and certainly a physical standpoint," states Barber.
In addition, the White House is reportedly talking with Lieberman about strategies for repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy -- a policy which President Barack Obama promised a pro-homosexual gathering last Saturday that he would push to abolish. That policy bans homosexual from serving openly in the military.
Monday, October 12, 2009
White House in Denial of Reality Again!
Today, the Insurance Industry announced that the current Health Care Reform plans being debated in Congress will cause them to raise the cost of their premiums significantly.
In fact, one spokesperson was quoted as saying that the premiums of those who already have health insurance will "skyrocket" far above the cost of their current rates.
The industry leaders cite higher taxes and imposed government mandates as the reason for the hikes. They insist that their costs will rise steeply and force them to raise prices just to stay in business and meet new budget requirements. It is said that the profit margins of insurance companies are actually just 3% after all costs are accounted for.
Yet the Obama administration says that this is just a scare tactic to stop Health Care reform.
My perspective:
Now wait a minute...
If a company who provides a service says they will raise prices if they are forced to comply with new mandates, it might be a good idea to listen to them. Unlike Obama, I have a little management experience and know for sure that many companies look for any excuse to raise prices in order to widen their profit margins. And most of the time, especialy in a market that is over regulated, business owners navigating through a recession will do whatever it takes to survive.
The White House seems to think they won't raise their prices. This coming from a man who has never had a career with business that required a profit. Never managed a company, or even a small business. Never served as an executive of even managed the budget of a department or a small town. And though it seemed easy to run the largest corporation in the world (AKA the US Government) a year ago, he is failing miserably to manage the budget that he is currently responsible for.
So how on Earth does he think he is qualified to defy common sense and basic logic? To assume that they will lie down and allow new mandates and taxes to eliminate their profits and cause them to go bankrupt is a little arrogant, don't you think? Or is there an agenda?
I think it is more than coincidence that the economy was rolling strong when the Republicans lost control of Congress in 2006, and in less than 2 years, we ended up in a recession that became more important to voters than the War on Terror or social issues. Could a Far Left(Neo-Socialist)Democrat win a presidential election in 2008 with these economic indicators staying at their 2006 levels?:
Price of gas $1.98
Unemployment 4.5%
Dow Jones IA 16,500
GDP at late 50's standards
As Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says, “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,”
Is it at least half way conceivable to imagine that the economy needed to crash in order for the Neo-Socialists to take power? To justify a bailout of all of their political allies? To take over the Auto and Banking Industries?
After the concept of ObamaCare takes effect, will it lead to the Insurance Industry going bankrupt and needing a bailout? A government takeover because it is "too big to fail"?
In fact, one spokesperson was quoted as saying that the premiums of those who already have health insurance will "skyrocket" far above the cost of their current rates.
The industry leaders cite higher taxes and imposed government mandates as the reason for the hikes. They insist that their costs will rise steeply and force them to raise prices just to stay in business and meet new budget requirements. It is said that the profit margins of insurance companies are actually just 3% after all costs are accounted for.
Yet the Obama administration says that this is just a scare tactic to stop Health Care reform.
My perspective:
Now wait a minute...
If a company who provides a service says they will raise prices if they are forced to comply with new mandates, it might be a good idea to listen to them. Unlike Obama, I have a little management experience and know for sure that many companies look for any excuse to raise prices in order to widen their profit margins. And most of the time, especialy in a market that is over regulated, business owners navigating through a recession will do whatever it takes to survive.
The White House seems to think they won't raise their prices. This coming from a man who has never had a career with business that required a profit. Never managed a company, or even a small business. Never served as an executive of even managed the budget of a department or a small town. And though it seemed easy to run the largest corporation in the world (AKA the US Government) a year ago, he is failing miserably to manage the budget that he is currently responsible for.
So how on Earth does he think he is qualified to defy common sense and basic logic? To assume that they will lie down and allow new mandates and taxes to eliminate their profits and cause them to go bankrupt is a little arrogant, don't you think? Or is there an agenda?
I think it is more than coincidence that the economy was rolling strong when the Republicans lost control of Congress in 2006, and in less than 2 years, we ended up in a recession that became more important to voters than the War on Terror or social issues. Could a Far Left(Neo-Socialist)Democrat win a presidential election in 2008 with these economic indicators staying at their 2006 levels?:
Price of gas $1.98
Unemployment 4.5%
Dow Jones IA 16,500
GDP at late 50's standards
As Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says, “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,”
Is it at least half way conceivable to imagine that the economy needed to crash in order for the Neo-Socialists to take power? To justify a bailout of all of their political allies? To take over the Auto and Banking Industries?
After the concept of ObamaCare takes effect, will it lead to the Insurance Industry going bankrupt and needing a bailout? A government takeover because it is "too big to fail"?
White House in Denial of Reality
It's just my perspective, but...
Joe Biden says we should focus on beating Al-Qaeda and not the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Hmmmmm. That's like saying that in the upcoming elections, Republicans should focus on beating the Liberals, not Democrats.
The Taliban were removed from power for "State Sponsored Terrorism". They allowed Al-Qaeda to roam freely and train terrorists in their country. They gave aid and comfort to the enemy.
Is this the seed for justification of giving Iran normalized recognition as a peaceful nation? Can we assume that according to old Joe that Hezbollah and Hamas are to be separated from the one nation that has supported them with arms and financial support?
I can see it now:
Mike Ford
Joe Biden says we should focus on beating Al-Qaeda and not the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Hmmmmm. That's like saying that in the upcoming elections, Republicans should focus on beating the Liberals, not Democrats.
The Taliban were removed from power for "State Sponsored Terrorism". They allowed Al-Qaeda to roam freely and train terrorists in their country. They gave aid and comfort to the enemy.
Is this the seed for justification of giving Iran normalized recognition as a peaceful nation? Can we assume that according to old Joe that Hezbollah and Hamas are to be separated from the one nation that has supported them with arms and financial support?
I can see it now:
"We should focus on deterring Hezbollah and Hamas from acts of terrorism, and build normalized relations with Iran."
Mike Ford
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