In Englishhhh...
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Re: In Englishhhh...
Sylvette Sam 4 Déc - 10:48
Apres les 12 points de suture a la bouche de la semaine derniere du a un coup de coude d'un joueur sur la personne de notre president, lors d'un interview, Charles Barkley, juge le jeu de Monsieur O et conclut qu'etre gaucher (/gauchiste?) est un reel handicap pour lui! 
By PATRICK GAVIN | 12/1/10 7:54 AM EST Updated: 12/1/10 9:05 AM EST
Former pro hoopster Charles Barkley is known for speaking his mind, and he didn't hold back Tuesday night when discussing President Barack Obama's basketball abilities on "Conan."
"I'm an old fat guy now, but I'll kick his ass," said Barkley, suggesting that he could beat the president in a one-on-one.
Obama's biggest problem? "He's a lefty. He always goes left. And if you just stand there, I'm not sure if you were to open up the right side, he could go right at all." (Insert political symbolism here.)
(Related Gallery: See pics of the Obamas at home in the White House)
By PATRICK GAVIN | 12/1/10 7:54 AM EST Updated: 12/1/10 9:05 AM EST
Former pro hoopster Charles Barkley is known for speaking his mind, and he didn't hold back Tuesday night when discussing President Barack Obama's basketball abilities on "Conan."
"I'm an old fat guy now, but I'll kick his ass," said Barkley, suggesting that he could beat the president in a one-on-one.
Obama's biggest problem? "He's a lefty. He always goes left. And if you just stand there, I'm not sure if you were to open up the right side, he could go right at all." (Insert political symbolism here.)
(Related Gallery: See pics of the Obamas at home in the White House)
Sylvette- Messages : 322
Date d'inscription : 26/09/2010
Age : 71
Localisation : Port Gentil, Gabon ou Houston, Texas
Re: In Englishhhh...
Sylvette Sam 4 Déc - 11:11
Au cas ou cela n'aurait pas ete mentionne dans les media francophones.
Decidement, novembre 2010 n'aura pas ete son mois!
Decidement, novembre 2010 n'aura pas ete son mois!
Sylvette- Messages : 322
Date d'inscription : 26/09/2010
Age : 71
Localisation : Port Gentil, Gabon ou Houston, Texas
Re: In Englishhhh...
Sylvette Sam 4 Déc - 11:25
Le NewYork Times (surnomme The Gray Lady) largement devance par le Wall Street Journal, comme CNN le fut et l'est toujours par FOX News pour les memes raisons!
"La Dame Grise, dans le Ruisseau"!
Gray Lady Down, In the Gutter
by [url=http://www.humanevents.com/search.php?author_name=Daniel J.+Flynn]Daniel J. Flynn[/url]
12/02/2010
What would happen to a newspaper if its adversaries routinely outed its sources, hacked into its computers and publicized the conversations at sensitive managerial meetings?
"La Dame Grise, dans le Ruisseau"!
Gray Lady Down, In the Gutter
by [url=http://www.humanevents.com/search.php?author_name=Daniel J.+Flynn]Daniel J. Flynn[/url]
12/02/2010
What would happen to a newspaper if its adversaries routinely outed its sources, hacked into its computers and publicized the conversations at sensitive managerial meetings?
- Spoiler:
The New York Times, the U.S. printing arm of Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, began publishing illegally obtained U.S. diplomatic cables earlier this week that the paper admits “could strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.” The Saudi Arabian king badmouthing neighboring leaders, State Department officials calling Hamid Karzai's half brother a corrupt drug dealer, and Yemen’s president admitting his cover up of U.S. missile strikes on local al Qaeda outposts are among the embarrassing revelations that will make it more difficult for foreign leaders to speak frankly with American envoys.
The Times, as it did in its damaging exposés on NSA wiretapping and the SWIFT program, maintains its right to keep secrets. Indeed, the editor notes that the trove of documents purloined from U.S. diplomatic channels was “made available to the Times by a source who insisted on anonymity.” While reserving the right to keep its sources secret, and respecting WikiLeaks’s right to do likewise, the Times rejects the legitimacy of the U.S. government’s keeping matters of national security private. The Times justified its publishing of secret documents by claiming that “it would be presumptuous to conclude that Americans have no right to know what is being done in their name.”
Was it not “presumptuous” for the Times, rather than the elected government of the American people, to decide what is in the national interest to keep secret and what is in the national interest to tell the world?
The arrogance is familiar to readers of the Times. It’s certainly familiar to readers of William McGowan’s new book, Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America. Therein, Gray Lady Down depicts a newsroom drenched in “subtle and not-so-subtle anti-Americanism, anti-bourgeois hauteur, hypersensitivity toward ‘victim’ groups, double standards, historical shallowness, intellectual dishonesty, cultural relativism, moral righteousness and sanctimony.”
While the Times has understandably held the U.S. government up to scrutiny, it has exhibited little curiosity examining the claims of shady characters seeking to undermine that government. “Journalists are supposed to have an adversarial relationship to the institutions they cover,” McGowan concedes, “but when it turns into a reflexive oppositionalism, at odds with the middle register of American society and its values, there’s a problem.” The paper’s declining circulation, stock price and ad revenue would suggest that McGowan is onto something.
Why does the Times get so much so wrong, and why are its motives so suspect on WikiLeaks and other stories? Because the onetime “newspaper of record” allows itself to be driven more by ideology than by the facts. This is particularly true of the daily’s coverage of America at war.
McGowan highlights the gullible Times coverage of the looting of the Baghdad Museum in the early days of the Iraq War. “In truth, the museum was not ransacked; and much of its most priceless collections had simply been secreted away,” Gray Lady Down points out. “Pejorative information about America’s allowing the looting came from former Baath officials, who had a self-interest in representing the U.S. military as the culprit in the cultural ‘crime of the century.’” Even after the stolen objects were numbered at a few dozen, the Times reported “thousands” of items lost.
When an Iraqi identified himself as the hooded man standing atop a box at Abu Ghraib, the Times featured him in the March 11, 2006, front-page article “Symbol of Abu Ghraib Seeks to Spare Others His Nightmare.” But two years earlier, the military had identified the ugly indelible image as that of another man, and the Times retracted the story.
The following year, the Times Sunday Magazine reported on Amorita Randall, a Seabee who claimed to have been raped in the Navy prior to suffering an IED-inflicted brain injury in Iraq. The piece meshed with the jaundiced view of the military held by the Times, so the paper ran with it without fact-checking diligence. And as McGowan notes, “Three days after the article had gone to press, the Navy called the Times to say that Amoritas Randall had never been in Iraq.”
When did the Gray Lady start to go down? McGowan recounts a famous conversation during the 1960s between longtime Times Publisher Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger, Sr., a former Marine, and his anti-war protestor son/successor. “Walking across Boston Commons one day discussing the war,” Gray Lady Down relates, “Punch asked Arthur Jr. which he would like to see get shot if an American soldier came across a North Vietnamese soldier in battle. Arthur Jr. defiantly answered that he would like the American to get shot because it was the other guy’s country. For Punch, the remark bordered on treason, and the two began shouting.”
In other words, publishing the WikiLeaks story is totally in keeping with Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger’s beliefs.
Daniel J. Flynn is the author of A Conservative History of the American Left (Crown Forum, 2008), Intellectual Morons (Crown Forum, 2004), and Why the Left Hates America (Prima Forum, 2002). He has appeared on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, Sky News, PBS, CSPAN, and other broadcast networks. His articles have appeared in National Review, the Boston Globe, and City Journal. He blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.
Sylvette- Messages : 322
Date d'inscription : 26/09/2010
Age : 71
Localisation : Port Gentil, Gabon ou Houston, Texas
Why Obama can't shake Bush
Sylvette Mer 8 Déc - 18:12
Tout ce que faisait President Bush (43) etait decrie par les Democrates, Barack Obama en tete (en particulier au cours de ses deux "longues" annees au Senat. Depuis qu'il est a la presidence, il continue la majorite des decisions politiques de son predecesseur.
Hier, il est parvenu a un accord avec les Repubicains: les reductions d'impots mises en place par Bush 43 seront reconduites au grand dam des Liberaux. Cette relance, sans en etre une tout en en etant une (elle ne ciblera pas certaines industries mais une grande partie des Americains) (entre 250 000 billions et 900 billions selon qui vous ecoutez) si elle fonctionne correctement aura plusieurs consequences, elle prouvera que limiter les impots "sur les riches" dont 50% sont en fait des petites entreprises, MARCHE, malheureusement, si l'economie redemarre bien d'ici 1 an a 1 an 1/2 et que les chiffres du chomage descendent, les chances de Barack Obama aux election de 2012 seront bien meilleures, qu'elles ne le sont pour le moment, et nous risquons de le voir reelu, et alors la.... tout ce qu'il n'aura pas pu faire au cours de son premier mandat, nous y aurons droit!
Why Obama can't shake Bush
Obama has preserved a striking number of his predecessor's policies, Bush Republicans say. | AP Photo Close
By BEN SMITH & JOHN F. HARRIS | 12/8/10 7:09 AM EST Updated: 12/8/10 9:59 AM EST
Tuesday’s deal to extend the deep 2001 tax cuts is the latest evidence of the remarkable durability of President George W. Bush’s policy legacy — one that constrains and confounds his successor at home and overseas even after two years in office.
Hier, il est parvenu a un accord avec les Repubicains: les reductions d'impots mises en place par Bush 43 seront reconduites au grand dam des Liberaux. Cette relance, sans en etre une tout en en etant une (elle ne ciblera pas certaines industries mais une grande partie des Americains) (entre 250 000 billions et 900 billions selon qui vous ecoutez) si elle fonctionne correctement aura plusieurs consequences, elle prouvera que limiter les impots "sur les riches" dont 50% sont en fait des petites entreprises, MARCHE, malheureusement, si l'economie redemarre bien d'ici 1 an a 1 an 1/2 et que les chiffres du chomage descendent, les chances de Barack Obama aux election de 2012 seront bien meilleures, qu'elles ne le sont pour le moment, et nous risquons de le voir reelu, et alors la.... tout ce qu'il n'aura pas pu faire au cours de son premier mandat, nous y aurons droit!
Why Obama can't shake Bush
Obama has preserved a striking number of his predecessor's policies, Bush Republicans say. | AP Photo Close
By BEN SMITH & JOHN F. HARRIS | 12/8/10 7:09 AM EST Updated: 12/8/10 9:59 AM EST
Tuesday’s deal to extend the deep 2001 tax cuts is the latest evidence of the remarkable durability of President George W. Bush’s policy legacy — one that constrains and confounds his successor at home and overseas even after two years in office.
- Spoiler:
The tax cuts were probably Bush’s single most significant domestic accomplishment, and they became not just a spur for Democratic complaints about growing deficits, but a symbol of — as candidate Barack Obama put it — “that old, discredited Republican philosophy — give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else.” (See: The risky politics of taxing the rich)
Obama’s promise to reverse the tax cuts reflected a broader belief among Democrats that the Bush years were a bizarre and in essential ways illegitimate aberration, a period of panic and greed the errors of which Obama would reverse in a series of swift and decisive strokes.
Yet the tax compromise is just the most spectacular — and to Democrats, infuriating — element of a broader trend under a president who ran as the leader of the counter-revolution. It is the domestic counterpart of Obama’s early decision not to repudiate and investigate reviled Bush national security policies such as indefinite detention and warrantless wiretapping, but to refine and embrace them.
Obama has promised to refight and win the tax debate two years from now. But his compromise this week with Republicans has altered the political and policy balance of power.
By 2012, it will be much harder to argue that a change in rates on the wealthy is simply a matter of reversing an unwise Bush-era decision, rather than imposing a new tax increase. Those rates will have been in place for more than a decade. And they have now been ratified — however reluctantly — by a Democratic president, and a Democrat-controlled House and Senate. (See: Questions for Obama: Why a tax deal?)
Just as Afghanistan is no longer “Bush’s war,” but one on which Obama holds joint title and for which he must bear the political and moral consequences.
Obama is hearing howls from liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill — protests that some in the West Wing do not especially mind, since they advance the president’s aim to be perceived as an independent leader rather than merely the face of his party in Washington. But no Democratic president, even one who might wish to triangulate, wants to hear gloating compliments from the likes of Karl Rove.
“The fact that these have been identified as right policies by an administration that has [had] a knee-jerk response that if Bush promulgated it, we have to be against it — it’s a recognition of how sound these policies are and how necessary they are,” Rove said, in a POLITICO interview. (See: Rove on '12: 'There's no front-runner')
Suite...
Sylvette- Messages : 322
Date d'inscription : 26/09/2010
Age : 71
Localisation : Port Gentil, Gabon ou Houston, Texas
Re: In Englishhhh...
Sylvette Jeu 9 Déc - 10:31
La Chambre des Representants du Congres canard boiteux Democrate (Lame Duck Democrat Congress) continue a passer des lois que la majorite des Americains ne souhaitent pas jusqu'a la fin de decembre et ce malgre la vague deferlante Republicaine le mois dernier.
Hier, une loi qui permettrait aux jeunes immigres dans l'armee et a l'universite de devenir automatiquement Americains. Si je suis d'acord pour l'obtention par les premiers de la nationalite (ce qui est deja le cas generalement si pas automatiquement, Scotty est devenu Americain apres 3 annees dans l'armee - 101st), l'amnistie pour les seconds est tout simplement ahurissante. Evidemment, en faisant un amalgame des 2 categories, soldats et etudiants, etre contre la loi alors que des jeunes risquent leur vie pour la nation parait bien evidemment sans coeur...
En dehors des etudiants en situation illegale (etudiants etrangers obtiennent un visa pour entrer sur le territoire) cela voudrait-il dire que ces derniers auraient eu aussi droit a la nationalite ou bien y aurait-il injustice envers ceux qui respectent la loi une fois de plus et seuls les illegaux pourraient magiquement devenir Americains?
Bien evidemment, nous savons que le but des Democrates est d'avoir le plus de voix possibles en leur faveur en 2012. Nous verrons bien.
Selon les "experts", la loi ne passerait pas au Senat.
DREAM or Nightmare? Immigration Bill Clears House, but Appears Doomed
Published December 08, 2010
Associated Press
AP
Dec. 7: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks to the media after a meeting with Democrats on Capitol Hill.
WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday to give hundreds of thousands of foreign-born youngsters brought to America illegally a chance at legal status, a fleeting victory for an effort that appears doomed in the Senate.
CAFE!!!!
Hier, une loi qui permettrait aux jeunes immigres dans l'armee et a l'universite de devenir automatiquement Americains. Si je suis d'acord pour l'obtention par les premiers de la nationalite (ce qui est deja le cas generalement si pas automatiquement, Scotty est devenu Americain apres 3 annees dans l'armee - 101st), l'amnistie pour les seconds est tout simplement ahurissante. Evidemment, en faisant un amalgame des 2 categories, soldats et etudiants, etre contre la loi alors que des jeunes risquent leur vie pour la nation parait bien evidemment sans coeur...
En dehors des etudiants en situation illegale (etudiants etrangers obtiennent un visa pour entrer sur le territoire) cela voudrait-il dire que ces derniers auraient eu aussi droit a la nationalite ou bien y aurait-il injustice envers ceux qui respectent la loi une fois de plus et seuls les illegaux pourraient magiquement devenir Americains?
Bien evidemment, nous savons que le but des Democrates est d'avoir le plus de voix possibles en leur faveur en 2012. Nous verrons bien.
Selon les "experts", la loi ne passerait pas au Senat.
DREAM or Nightmare? Immigration Bill Clears House, but Appears Doomed
Published December 08, 2010
Associated Press
AP
Dec. 7: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks to the media after a meeting with Democrats on Capitol Hill.
WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday to give hundreds of thousands of foreign-born youngsters brought to America illegally a chance at legal status, a fleeting victory for an effort that appears doomed in the Senate.
- Spoiler:
- Mauvais droit mais sinon...
AP
Dec. 7: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks to the media after a meeting with Democrats on Capitol Hill.
The so-called DREAM Act, which passed the House 216-198, has been viewed by Hispanic activists and immigrant advocates as a downpayment on what they had hoped would be broader action by President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress to give America's 10 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants a chance to gain legal status.
Critics railed against the measure, calling it a backdoor grant of amnesty that would encourage more foreigners to sneak into the United States in hopes of being legalized eventually.
The Senate is expected Thursday to vote on whether to advance similar legislation, but it's unlikely Democrats can muster the 60 votes needed to advance it past opposition by Republicans and a handful of their own members.
"It's an uphill struggle," Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat, acknowledged.
Debate on the measure was fraught with politics. Obama has made an intense public push in recent days in favor of the measure, eager to demonstrate his commitment to Hispanic voters, a key voting bloc that's been alienated by his failure to push broader immigration legislation.
With the Republicans taking control of the House and representing a stronger minority in the Senate next year, failure to enact the legislation by year's end dims the prospects for action by Congress to grant a path toward legalization for the nation's millions of undocumented immigrants.
Tamar Jacoby of ImmigrationWorks USA, a pro-immigration employers coalition, said the defeat won't end Congress' attempts to address the issue but predicted that future legislation will look far different. "Anything that they're going to do is going to disappoint comprehensive immigration reform advocates," Jacoby said. "It's going to be a tough haul" to tackle the subject in the new Congress.
After the House vote, Obama issued a statement pledging to move forward on immigration reform and casting the DREAM Act as a way of correcting what he called "one of the most egregious flaws of a badly broken immigration system."
"This vote is not only the right thing to do for a group of talented young people who seek to serve a country they know as their own by continuing their education or serving in the military, but it is the right thing for the United States of America," Obama said. "We are enriched by their talents and the success of their efforts will contribute to our nation's success and security."
Obama's drive to enact the legislation and congressional Democrats' determination to vote on it before year's end reflect the party's efforts to satisfy Hispanic groups whose backing has been critical in elections and will be again in 2012.
The legislation would give hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants brought to the United States before the age of 16, and who have been here for five years and graduated from high school or gained an equivalency degree, a chance to gain legal status if they joined the military or attended college.
Hispanic activists have described the DREAM Act as the least Congress can do on the issue. It targets the most sympathetic of the millions of undocumented people -- those brought to the United States as children, who in many cases consider themselves American, speak English and have no ties to or family living in their native countries.
CAFE!!!!
Sylvette- Messages : 322
Date d'inscription : 26/09/2010
Age : 71
Localisation : Port Gentil, Gabon ou Houston, Texas
Une clause principale d'Obamacare, inconstitutionnelle selon un Juge Federal
Sylvette Lun 13 Déc - 19:55
L'obligation faite par Obamacare aux citoyens americains d'acheter une assurance est anti-constitutionnelle, selon un juge federal.
Key provision of health-care overhaul ruled unconstitutional
By Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 13, 2010; 12:25 PM
RICHMOND - A federal judge in Virginia ruled Monday that a key provision of the nation's sweeping health-care overhaul is unconstitutional, the most significant legal setback so far for President Obama's signature domestic initiative.
Key provision of health-care overhaul ruled unconstitutional
By Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 13, 2010; 12:25 PM
RICHMOND - A federal judge in Virginia ruled Monday that a key provision of the nation's sweeping health-care overhaul is unconstitutional, the most significant legal setback so far for President Obama's signature domestic initiative.
- Spoiler:
District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson found that Congress could not order individuals to buy health insurance.
In a 42-page opinion, Hudson said the provision of the law that requires most individuals to get insurance or pay a fine by 2014 is an unprecedented expansion of federal power that cannot be supported by Congress's power to regulate interstate trade.
"Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market," he wrote. "In doing so, enactment of the [individual mandate] exceeds the Commerce Clause powers vested in Congress under Article I [of the Constitution.]
Hudson is the first judge to rule that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. He said, however, that portions of the law that do not rest on the requirement that individuals obtain insurance are legal and can proceed. Hudson indicated there was no need for him to enjoin the law and halt its implementation, since the mandate does not go into effect until 2014.
The ruling comes in a case filed by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), who said he was defending a new state statute that made it illegal to require people to carry health insurance in Virginia.
It is one of 25 legal challenges to the federal law wending their way through the federal courts across the country. In two other lawsuits, judges sitting in Michigan and Lynchburg, Va., have found that the same provision of the law passed legal muster. A third judge in Florida is also weighing constitutionality of the individual mandate in a suit jointly filed by 20 states.
The statute's constitutionality will ultimately be determined by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ruling by Hudson, an appointee of President George W. Bush's, was widely anticipated based on tough questions he lobbed at Obama administration lawyers in oral arguments in his Richmond courtroom.
But the legal defeat will deal a significant political blow to the law, cheering those who have predicted its demise will come from adverse legal rulings rather than congressional repeal.
The Virginia suit would ordinarily next be heard by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Cuccinelli has indicated, however, that he would like to bypass the appeals court and move directly to the Supreme Court, an extraordinary legal maneuver that would require the high court to decide that the case held extreme public importance and intervene immediately.
He has asked the White House to sign on to the request, arguing they, too, would benefit from a quick resolution to legal questions surrounding the law. However, it is not clear whether the White House will agree.
Sylvette- Messages : 322
Date d'inscription : 26/09/2010
Age : 71
Localisation : Port Gentil, Gabon ou Houston, Texas
Morning Bell: Call Reid’s Bluff
Sylvette Mer 15 Déc - 16:53
Selon l'organisation de sondage Gallup 83% des Americains n'ont pas apprecie la facon dont le 111eme Congres a agi cette annee. Les chiffres les pires en 30 ans.
Bravo Mr. Reid
... Bravo Nancy... (je n'ai pas d'araignee a coller ici, mais le coeur y est.. )
Morning Bell: Call Reid’s Bluff
Posted December 15th, 2010 at 9:09am
Gallup released a poll this morning showing that the American people dislike this 111th Congress more than any Congress ever. Specifically, a full 83% of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job while only 13% approve. That is the worst approval rating in more than 30 years of tracking congressional job performance.
Bravo Mr. Reid
... Bravo Nancy... (je n'ai pas d'araignee a coller ici, mais le coeur y est.. ) Morning Bell: Call Reid’s Bluff
Posted December 15th, 2010 at 9:09am
Gallup released a poll this morning showing that the American people dislike this 111th Congress more than any Congress ever. Specifically, a full 83% of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job while only 13% approve. That is the worst approval rating in more than 30 years of tracking congressional job performance.
- Spoiler:
Why do Americans so despise this Congress? The reckless way it spends other people’s money, for starters. One would have thought that after getting “shellacked” at the polls this November, Congress would have gotten the message. No luck. Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced a $1.27 trillion 1,924 page omnibus spending bill last night that contains 6,000 earmarks worth $8 billion. Oh, and all this has to be approved by midnight Saturday or the government shuts down.
Defending the trillion dollar spending bill, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) told the USA Today: “Who among us believes we should base our spending recommendations for defense, homeland security, and veterans on whatever level was needed last year?” This is a morally repugnant statement. Defense, homeland security, and veterans can all be funded at current levels for one month through a continuing resolution, and then the next Congress could adjust our defense needs. Inouye is attempting to hold the troops hostage? And for what? Taxpayers for Common Sense reports that among the 6,600 earmarks in the bill is $6 million for parkland acquisition in Hawaii. No wonder Americans hate this Congress.
Other vanity projects buying votes in the bill — there are plenty of Republican earmarks in the bill too — include $18 million for groups named after the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Rep. John Murtha (D-PA); $349,000 for swine waste management; $2.9 million for Grand Forks International Airport expansion; and $3.5 million for termite research in Louisiana.
But as bad as the earmarks are the spending increases are even worse. The bill adds $5.4 billion in new labor, education, and health spending including money for the failed Head Start program, the failed Race to the Top program, Pell Grants, and $1.25 billion in spending on Obamacare. No conservative who promised to repeal Obamacare can possibly support this bill.
By waiting until late yesterday to unveil this 1,924-page monstrosity, Reid is playing a high stakes game of chicken with small government conservatives. Since the FY 2010 budget expired on September 30th, the federal government has been operating on a series of continuing resolutions (CR). The most recent CR expires on midnight Saturday. If the Senate does not pass a bill by then the federal government shuts down. Reid believes that conservatives do not have courage to back up their spending cut convictions. Conservative Senators should call Reid’s bluff.
This is the first Congress, in the history of the budget process, that failed to even vote on a budget for next year. A responsible Congress would have passed a budget resolution and all the necessary appropriations bills months ago. By failing to even bring a budget resolution to a vote, let alone the actual spending bills, Majority Leader Reid has already proven he is completely irresponsible. He has no legitimate claim to be dictating spending terms to the American people.
The American people thoroughly rejected this Congress’ spendthrift ways at the polls last month. There is no reason this business-as-usual omnibus should be the only spending option. The 111th Congress has forfeited all rights to set spending levels for the next year. A one-page continuing resolution that keeps the government funded at current levels, for a month or two, until the next Congress is sworn in, is the only way to go.
Sylvette- Messages : 322
Date d'inscription : 26/09/2010
Age : 71
Localisation : Port Gentil, Gabon ou Houston, Texas
Sylvette- Messages : 322
Date d'inscription : 26/09/2010
Age : 71
Localisation : Port Gentil, Gabon ou Houston, Texas
The new comeback kid
Sylvette Ven 17 Déc - 10:01
Charles Krauthammer, un des analystes politiques les plus intelligents et les plus clairvoyants convaincu qu'Obama sera reelu en 2012 s'il continue sur sa lancee apres cet enorme virage du passage de l'accord bi-partisan d'hier.
... et la, gare!!!
The new comeback kid
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, December 17, 2010
If Barack Obama wins reelection in 2012, as is now more likely than not, historians will mark his comeback as beginning on Dec. 6, the day of the Great Tax Cut Deal of 2010.
... et la, gare!!!
The new comeback kid
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, December 17, 2010
If Barack Obama wins reelection in 2012, as is now more likely than not, historians will mark his comeback as beginning on Dec. 6, the day of the Great Tax Cut Deal of 2010.
- Spoiler:
Obama had a bad November. Self-confessedly shellacked in the midterm election, he fled the scene to Asia and various unsuccessful meetings, only to return to a sad-sack lame-duck Congress with ghostly dozens of defeated Democrats wandering the halls.
Now, with his stunning tax deal, Obama is back. Holding no high cards, he nonetheless managed to resurface suddenly not just as a player but as orchestrator, dealmaker and central actor in a high $1 trillion drama.
Compare this with Bill Clinton, greatest of all comeback kids, who, at a news conference a full five months after his shellacking in 1994, was reduced to plaintively protesting that "the president is relevant here." He had been so humiliatingly sidelined that he did not really recover until late 1995 when he outmaneuvered Newt Gingrich in the government-shutdown showdown.
And that was Clinton responding nimbly to political opportunity. Obama fashioned out of thin air his return to relevance, an even more impressive achievement.
Remember the question after Election Day: Can Obama move to the center to win back the independents who had abandoned the party in November? And if so, how long would it take? Answer: Five weeks. An indoor record, although an asterisk should denote that he had help - Republicans clearing his path and sprinkling it with rose petals.
Obama's repositioning to the center was first symbolized by his joint appearance with Clinton, the quintessential centrist Democrat, and followed days later by the overwhelming 81 to 19 Senate majority that supported the tax deal. That bipartisan margin will go a long way toward erasing the partisan stigma of Obama's first two years, marked by Stimulus I, which passed without a single House Republican, and a health-care bill that garnered no congressional Republicans at all.
Despite this, some on the right are gloating that Obama had been maneuvered into forfeiting his liberal base. Nonsense. He will never lose his base. Where do they go? Liberals will never have a president as ideologically kindred - and they know it. For the left, Obama is as good as it gets in a country that is barely 20 percent liberal.
The conservative gloaters were simply fooled again by the flapping and squawking that liberals ritually engage in before folding at Obama's feet. House liberals did it with Obamacare; they did it with the tax deal. Their boisterous protests are reminiscent of the floor demonstrations we used to see at party conventions when the losing candidate's partisans would dance and shout in the aisles for a while before settling down to eventually nominate the other guy by acclamation.
And Obama pulled this off at his lowest political ebb. After the shambles of the election and with no bargaining power - the Republicans could have gotten everything they wanted on the Bush tax cuts retroactively in January without fear of an Obama veto - he walks away with what even Paul Ryan admits was $313 billion in superfluous spending.
Including a $6 billion subsidy for ethanol. Why, just a few weeks ago Al Gore, the Earth King, finally confessed that ethanol subsidies were a mistake. There is not a single economic or environmental rationale left for this boondoggle that has induced American farmers to dedicate an amazing 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop - for burning! And the Republicans have just revived it.
Even as they were near unanimously voting for this monstrosity, Republicans began righteously protesting $8.3 billion of earmarks in Harry Reid's omnibus spending bill. They seem not to understand how ridiculous this looks after having agreed to a Stimulus II that even by their own generous reckoning has 38 times as much spending as all these earmarks combined.
The greatest mistake Ronald Reagan's opponents ever made - and they made it over and over again - was to underestimate him. Same with Obama. The difference is that Reagan was so deeply self-assured that he invited underestimation - low expectations are a priceless political asset - whereas Obama's vanity makes him always needing to appear the smartest guy in the room. Hence that display of prickliness in his disastrous post-deal news conference last week.
But don't be fooled by defensive style or thin-skinned temperament. The president is a very smart man. How smart? His comeback is already a year ahead of Clinton's.
Sylvette- Messages : 322
Date d'inscription : 26/09/2010
Age : 71
Localisation : Port Gentil, Gabon ou Houston, Texas
Days of Auld Lang What? The origin of the New Year's anthem—and what it means to us.
Sylvette1 Sam 1 Jan - 20:21
Days of Auld Lang What?
The origin of the New Year's anthem—and what it means to us.
You know exactly when you'll hear it, and you probably won't hear it again for a year. The big clock will hit 11:59:50, the countdown will begin—10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4—and the sounds will rise: the party horns, fireworks and shouts of "Happy New Year!"
The origin of the New Year's anthem—and what it means to us.
You know exactly when you'll hear it, and you probably won't hear it again for a year. The big clock will hit 11:59:50, the countdown will begin—10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4—and the sounds will rise: the party horns, fireworks and shouts of "Happy New Year!"
- Spoiler:
And then they'll play that song: "Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and days of auld lang syne?"
It is a poem in Scots dialect, set to a Scots folk tune, and an unscientific survey says that a lot of us don't think much about the words, or even know them. The great film director Mike Nichols came to America from Germany as a child, when his family fled Hitler. He had to learn a lot of English quickly and never got around to "Auld Lang Syne": "I was too busy with words like 'emergency exit' on the school bus," he told me. "As a result, I find myself weeping at gibberish on New Year's Eve. I enjoy that."
The screen and television writer Aaron Sorkin, who this year, with "The Social Network," gives Paddy Chayefsky a run for his money, says that every year he means to learn the words. "Then someone tells me that's not a good enough New Year's resolution and I really need to quit smoking."
"Auld Lang Syne"—the phrase can be translated as "long, long ago," or "old long since," but I like "old times past"—is a song that asks a question, a tender little question that has to do with the nature of being alive, of being a person on a journey in the world. It not only asks, it gives an answer.
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Randy Jones
It was written, or written down, by Robert Burns, lyric poet and Bard of Scotland. In 1788 he sent a copy of the poem to the Scots Musical Museum, with the words: "The following song, an old song, of the olden times, has never been in print." Burns was interested in the culture of Scotland, and collected old folk tales and poems. He said he got this one "from an old man"—no one knows who—and wrote it down. Being a writer, Burns revised and compressed. He found the phrase auld lang syne "exceedingly expressive" and thought whoever first wrote the poem "heaven inspired." The song spread throughout Scotland, where it was sung to mark the end of the old year, and soon to the English-speaking world, where it's sung to mark the new.
The question it asks is clear: Should those we knew and loved be forgotten and never thought of? Should old times past be forgotten? No, says the song, they shouldn't be. We'll remember those times and those people, we'll toast them now and always, we'll keep them close. "We'll take a cup of kindness yet."
"The phrase old acquaintance is important," says my friend John Whitehead, fabled figure of the old Goldman Sachs, the Reagan State Department, and D-Day. "It's not only your close friends and people you love, it's people you knew even casually, and you think of them and it brings tears to my eyes." For him, acquaintance includes, "your heroes, my heroes—the Winston Churchills of life, the ones you admire. They're old acquaintances too."
But "the interesting, more serious message in the song is that the past is important, we mustn't forget it, the old has something for us."
So does the present, as the last stanza makes clear. The song is not only about those who were in your life, but those who are in your life. "And there's a hand, my trusty friend, and give a hand of thine, We'll take a right good-will draught for auld lang syne."
To Tom Coburn, a U.S. senator from Oklahoma, the song is about friendship: "I think it's a description of the things we lose in our hurry to do things. We forget to be a friend. We have to take the time to make friends and be friends, to sit and tell stories and listen to those of others." Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana said he always experienced the song as celebratory and joyful until something happened in 2004. Mr. Daniels was running for office, and it became a new bonding experience for him and his father, who followed the campaign closely: "He loved my stories from the road." The elder Daniels died unexpectedly in August, "50 days short of my election as governor." At a New Year's party, the governor-elect heard the song in a new way. Ever since, "I hear its wistfulness."
Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes," enjoying one of the great careers in the history of broadcast news, thinks of childhood when she thinks of "Auld Lang Syne": "I see New Year's Eve parties going way back, all the way back to when we were little kids and you had to kiss someone at midnight and you had to sing that song." She interviewed Mark Zuckerberg recently. "Maybe in the age of Facebook you don't lose old friends," she says. "Maybe it's obsolete." Maybe "they'll have to change the song."
For the journalist and author Marie Brenner, the song didn't come alive until she moved from her native Texas to New York City, in the 1970s. That first New Year's in town, "Auld Lang Syne was a revelation to me. . . . I thought, this is beautiful and maybe written by a Broadway composer, by Rodgers and Hammerstein." She saw people singing it "on the street, and at a party in a bar downtown." There was "this gorgeous moment when everyone seemed to know the words, and people looked teary and, yes, drunk." They played the song back in San Antonio, "but it took me coming to New York to really hear it."
The song is a staple in movies, but when I asked people to think of the greatest "Auld Lang Syne scene," every one of them had the same answer. Not "When Harry Met Sally," not "Out of Africa," not, for film buffs, Charlie Chaplin's "The Gold Rush." The great "Auld Lang Syne" scene in cinematic history is from "It's a Wonderful Life," which Mr. Sorkin puckishly describes as "Frank Capra's classic tale of an angel who takes up the cause of a progressive in order to defeat a heartless conservative. It's possible I'm misinterpreting the movie, but the song still works."
The scene comes at the end of the film. Friends surround George Bailey, recently rescued by an angel. Someone bumps against the Christmas tree and a bell ornament makes a sound. George's daughter says, "Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings," and George looks up and winks. "Thanks, Clarence," he says, as the music swells. God bless the baby boomers who discovered that film on TV after their elders dismissed it as Capra-corn.
Tonight I'll be at Suzie and Joe's, with whom I worked at CBS News in auld lang syne. I'll think of some who won't be entering the new year with us—big, sweet-hearted dynamo Richard Holbrooke, and Ted Sorensen, counselor to presidents, whose pen was a terrible swift sword. I'll take a cup of kindness yet for them, for all the old acquaintances in this piece, and for the readers, for 10 years now, of this column. We mark an anniversary. Thank you for being in my life. Happy New Year.
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
Morning Bell: Tea Party Congress Returns to Constitution
Sylvette1 Mer 5 Jan - 17:04
Morning Bell: Tea Party Congress Returns to Constitution
Posted January 5th, 2011 at 9:07am in First Principles
Shortly after noon today, all 435 Members of the House of Representatives will raise their right hands and take the following oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
Posted January 5th, 2011 at 9:07am in First Principles
Shortly after noon today, all 435 Members of the House of Representatives will raise their right hands and take the following oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
- Spoiler:
This constitutionally mandated oath plays two important roles. First, by requiring all Members of Congress—as well as state legislators and all executive and judicial officers—to support the Constitution, the “Oaths Clause” obliges them to observe the limits of their authority and act in accordance with the powers delegated to them by the Constitution. Second, contrary to what leftist legal reporters believe, the oath serves as a solemn reminder that the duty to uphold the Constitution is not the final responsibility of the courts but is shared by Congress and the President as co-equal branches of the United States government.
To help Members better fulfill their oath, the House will not only read the Constitution aloud on Thursday but also adopt a rule requiring that every bill cite what specific provisions of the Constitution empower Congress to enact it. Hopefully these measures will force some Members to re-familiarize themselves with our nation’s governing document, because as the last two years demonstrated, the last Congress sorely needed the lesson:
</BLOCKQUOTE>- In August 2010, Representative Pete Stark (D–CA) told constituents asking if the Constitution limits Congress in any way: “The federal government can, yes, do most anything in this country.”
<LI class=first sizcache="22" sizset="24" nodeIndex="1">In September 2009, then-Majority Whip James Clyburn (D–SC) told Fox News: “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do.”
<LI class=alt sizcache="22" sizset="25" nodeIndex="2">In October 2009, a reporter asked then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–CA): “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?” Speaker Pelosi shook her head dismissing the question: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
<LI sizcache="22" sizset="26" nodeIndex="3">In April 2010, then-Representative Phil Hare (D–IL) responded to constituents asking about Obamacare: “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this to be honest.”
The 112th Congress has a lot of work to do. Shortly after the November elections, The Heritage Foundation released A Checklist for Congress calling on the 112th to honor the voters who elected them to Congress by (1) freezing and cutting spending, (2) repealing Obamacare, (3) stopping the Obama tax increases, (4) protecting America, and (5) getting control of government. That last item is perhaps the most significant, and it is exactly why the 112th’s return to the Constitution is so important. Our Constitution is a document of limited, enumerated powers, forming the architecture of our liberty. It is the way “We the people” control the government.
But not everyone sees it this way. The New York Times editorializes this morning: “There is a similar air of vacuous fundamentalism in requiring that every bill cite the Constitutional power given to Congress to enact it.” We’ll let President Abraham Lincoln respond:
<BLOCKQUOTE>Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;—let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.- In August 2010, Representative Pete Stark (D–CA) told constituents asking if the Constitution limits Congress in any way: “The federal government can, yes, do most anything in this country.”
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
Re: In Englishhhh...
Sylvette1 Mer 5 Jan - 17:32
Breaking News: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to Step Down Next Month
Ahhh, en voila une autre bonne nouvelle!
Ahhh, en voila une autre bonne nouvelle!
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
Re: In Englishhhh...
Sylvette1 Mer 5 Jan - 17:41
John Boehner, et non Eric Cantor (comme je l'ai entendu ce matin a la radio), qui lui, a ete elu chef de file des Republicains de l'Assemblee.
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
The States Versus ObamaCare
Sylvette1 Mer 5 Jan - 18:05
OBAMACARE attaquee par les procureurs d'un grand nombre d'etats (jusque la 24, le nombre va sans doute augmente avec au fur et a mesure que les nouveaux elus vont prendre leur place) et la semaine prochaine par les Republicains et certains elus Democrates de l'Assemblee.
The States Versus ObamaCare
As new state attorneys general take office in the coming weeks, I expect an increase in the number of states challenging the law in court.
By PAM BONDI
This week begins the inauguration and swearing-in ceremonies for newly elected officials all over the country. One thing many of us have in common is that the voters rewarded us for our outspoken opposition to ObamaCare.
The States Versus ObamaCare
As new state attorneys general take office in the coming weeks, I expect an increase in the number of states challenging the law in court.
By PAM BONDI
This week begins the inauguration and swearing-in ceremonies for newly elected officials all over the country. One thing many of us have in common is that the voters rewarded us for our outspoken opposition to ObamaCare.
- Spoiler:
The electorate's decisive rejection of the Obama administration's policies reveals a pervasive concern over the federal government's disregard of fundamental aspects of our nation's Constitution. No legislation in our history alters the balance of power between Washington and the states so much as ObamaCare does.
The tactics used to pass the health-care bill gave all Americans ample warning of the constitutional wrongdoing that was about to occur. Concerns were raised in the summer of 2009 over the constitutionality of the individual mandate and other portions of the bill, yet the president and Congress proceeded full-steam ahead. In the Senate, the much-ridiculed "Cornhusker Kickback" gave Nebraska an all-expenses-paid Medicaid expansion program. Due to public pressure, the provision was eventually removed from the final law.
Senior Editorial Writer Joseph Rago forecasts this year's action on the President's health-care overhaul.
Following Senate passage, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi planned to "deem-and-pass" the federal health-care bill, a constitutionally suspect procedure of passing a bill without actually voting on it. Instead, the speaker allowed the House to vote on the Senate version of the bill without amendments, and Congress subsequently used a parliamentary maneuver called budget reconciliation to "fix" the flawed bill. In the end, not a single Republican voted for the legislation.
Unwilling to acquiesce to such a blatantly unconstitutional act, Florida and 19 other states challenged the new law and its requirement that nearly every American purchase health insurance. The lawsuit is based on the common sense notion that an individual's decision not to purchase health insurance is not an act of "commerce" that can be regulated under Congress's constitutionally enumerated powers. Unsurprisingly, the Obama administration has invoked shifting and contradictory arguments in its efforts to defend the indefensible.
The U.S. Department of Justice first argued that the fine triggered by noncompliance with the individual mandate was not a penalty but a tax authorized by the Constitution's Taxing and Spending Clause—hoping no one noticed President Obama's claim on national television that the individual mandate is "absolutely not a tax." The Justice Department continued to press this tax argument despite the fact that Congress referred to the individual mandate as a "penalty," excluded it from the bill's revenue-raising section, and claimed the Commerce Clause as the constitutional authority to pass it.
The federal judge presiding over the states' lawsuit in Pensacola, Fla., got it right when he wrote: "Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take an 'Alice-in-Wonderland' tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely."
Associated Press
Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi walks with Congressmen before the vote on health care reform last March.
The Department of Justice has even argued that the individual mandate regulates the so-called commerce-related activities of "mental processes" and "economic decisions." It doesn't matter if a person is currently engaged in an activity affecting commerce, according to the Justice Department, but only that a person inevitably will. Gaining little traction with this thought-equals-action argument, the Justice Department pivoted and claimed that the individual mandate is "essential" for this kind of health-care reform. The Constitution grants Congress only specific powers—it does not empower Congress to pursue its policy objectives by any means necessary.
As new state attorneys general take office in the coming week, I fully expect an increase in the ranks of the states fighting ObamaCare in court. Our lawsuit, together with a similar lawsuit filed by Virginia's attorney general, has exposed the health-care law's threat to individual liberty and to the constitutional structure that the Founders designed as a means of protecting that liberty. The stakes are clear and compelling: If the courts deem the federal health-care law to be constitutional, then there are no meaningful constitutional restraints on Congress's power to regulate virtually every facet of our lives.
Those of us taking our oaths of office would do well to remember that the American people are not asking for promises of more government programs and more taxpayer spending. The people are asking only that we keep our word and uphold the Constitution.
Ms. Bondi is the attorney general of Florida.
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
The GOP Opportunity
Sylvette1 Mer 5 Jan - 21:58
The GOP Opportunity
The main Republican task will be framing the issues for 2012.
John Boehner takes the Speaker's gavel from Nancy Pelosi today, and the transfer represents much more than a change in partisan control. It marks perhaps the sharpest ideological shift in the House in 80 years, and it could set the stage for a meaningful two-year debate over the role of government and the real sources of economic prosperity.
The main Republican task will be framing the issues for 2012.
John Boehner takes the Speaker's gavel from Nancy Pelosi today, and the transfer represents much more than a change in partisan control. It marks perhaps the sharpest ideological shift in the House in 80 years, and it could set the stage for a meaningful two-year debate over the role of government and the real sources of economic prosperity.
- Spoiler:
We say "could" because much depends on which Republican Party chooses to show up. Will it be the incumbent-protection and business interest-group machine that prevailed under the final years of Tom DeLay? Or will it remember that the real sources of it power and legitimacy are the tea party activists and independents who voted for Republicans in November? So far the signs suggest the latter, but the forces of Beltway inertia are formidable and will weigh on the drive to change the politics of K Street perks and payoffs.
***
Editorial page editor Paul Gigot lays out a plan for the new speaker. Also, Global View Columnist Bret Stephens analyzes the stealth fighter and China's growing firepower.
Merely in taking the gavel, Mr. Boehner will fulfill his most important mandate, which is stopping the damage done by the two Pelosi Congresses. To adapt the Hippocratic Oath, first there will be no more economic harm. The GOP has already achieved a major victory on this score by preventing the tax increase that had been scheduled for this week.
That success alone seems to have had a cheering effect on the country's economic mood, with businesses talking about new investment and investors bidding up stocks. Minority Leader Pelosi are three of the happiest words in the capitalist language.
The two-year tax reprieve was a compromise with President Obama, and there will be other bipartisan opportunities. One will be passing the Panama, Colombia and South Korea trade accords that Democrats ignored. A second will be war funding, and perhaps a third on promoting school choice as part of rewriting the No Child Left Behind Act. There may also be narrow spending cut deals if Mr. Obama concludes he must change his fiscal image from the man who has added $4 trillion to the deficit in two years.
Immigration reform should in theory be possible as well, given the business need for more skilled workers and the desire among immigrant groups for more legal paths to citizenship. It is also in the GOP's political interest to take the issue off the table. But we fear Mr. Obama will want to play for the Hispanic vote in 2012 by portraying Republicans as anti-immigrant, and too many Republicans are also happy to call any compromise "amnesty" for their own political ends.
We do not expect much other common policy ground. The lesson we draw from the last two years is that Mr. Obama is a determined man of the left whose goal is to redistribute much larger levels of income across society. He may give tactical ground when he has no choice, as he did on taxes to avoid a middle-class tax increase. But he will resist to his last day any major changes to ObamaCare and the other load-bearing walls of the entitlement state. His abiding goal is to reverse Reaganism—permanently.
This means that Republicans should not expect much progress in reforming Social Security or Medicare, and they shouldn't fall into the trap of proud but pointless votes on either one. Some of our friends on the right are already saying the GOP should march into the fixed bayonets on these programs, even if Senate Democrats are sure to kill their reforms. But one lesson of Newt Gingrich's failure in 1995 is that such changes can't be achieved from Capitol Hill amid Presidential opposition, and the GOP should not help Mr. Obama repeat Bill Clinton's Mediscare campaign of 1996.
This cautious advice does not apply to ObamaCare, which Republicans should do everything in their power to undermine, defund and stigmatize. Mr. Boehner has planned a repeal vote in the House for as early as next week, and Mr. McConnell should quickly get Democrats on record in the Senate.
Potomac Watch Columnist Kimberley A. Strassel explains how the new Speaker is changing the House.
This will begin to frame the stakes for 2012, and from there the GOP can attack ObamaCare piece by piece. Postpone next year's tax increase on branded pharmaceuticals and biotech, reform and restore funding for Medicare Advantage, repeal the long-term care insurance program that is already scheduled to be broke within a decade. Such votes will honor GOP campaign promises, continue to educate voters about the bill's flaws, and perhaps even force Mr. Obama to use a veto or two.
The other advice we'd offer is to keep in mind that Republicans did not run in 2010 to be national accountants. While cutting spending to reduce the deficit, they should keep the political and policy focus on promoting economic growth and private job creation. This should be the larger avowed purpose of their cuts in spending, their scrutiny of new regulations, their proposals for tax reform, or their questioning of the Federal Reserve.
Thanks to the failure of the Obama-Pelosi spending stimulus, the voters are once again listening to Republicans on the economy. They should not cede that ground back by turning into mere deficit scolds.
***
In his personal modesty and rhetorical restraint, Mr. Boehner seems to understand that Republicans can't govern from the House. What they can do is stake out a GOP agenda that begins to repair the damage of the Pelosi years, begins to shrink and reform the government, and tees up the debate for 2012. This is the great Republican opportunity of the 112th Congress.
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
Government by regulation. Shhh.
Sylvette1 Ven 7 Jan - 9:32
Government by regulation. Shhh.
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, December 31, 2010
Most people don't remember Obamacare's notorious Section 1233, mandating government payments for end-of-life counseling. It aroused so much anxiety as a possible first slippery step on the road to state-mandated late-life rationing that the Senate never included it in the final health-care law.
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, December 31, 2010
Most people don't remember Obamacare's notorious Section 1233, mandating government payments for end-of-life counseling. It aroused so much anxiety as a possible first slippery step on the road to state-mandated late-life rationing that the Senate never included it in the final health-care law.
- Spoiler:
Well, it's back - by administrative fiat. A month ago, Medicare issued a regulation providing for end-of-life counseling during annual "wellness" visits. It was all nicely buried amid the simultaneous release of hundreds of new Medicare rules.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), author of Section 1233, was delighted. "Mr. Blumenauer's office celebrated 'a quiet victory,' but urged supporters not to crow about it," reports the New York Times. Deathly quiet. In early November, his office sent an e-mail plea to supporters: "We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists . . . e-mails can too easily be forwarded." They had been lucky that "thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it. . . . The longer this [regulation] goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it."
So much for the Democrats' transparency - and for their repeated claim that the more people learn what is in the health-care law, the more they will like it. Turns out ignorance is the Democrats' best hope.
And regulation is their perfect vehicle - so much quieter than legislation. Consider two other regulatory usurpations in just the past few days:
On Dec. 23, the Interior Department issued Secretarial Order 3310, reversing a 2003 decision and giving itself the authority to designate public lands as "Wild Lands." A clever twofer: (1) a bureaucratic power grab - for seven years up through Dec. 22, wilderness designation had been the exclusive province of Congress, and (2) a leftward lurch - more land to be "protected" from such nefarious uses as domestic oil exploration in a country disastrously dependent on foreign sources.
The very same day, the Environmental Protection Agency declared that in 2011 it would begin drawing up anti-carbon regulations on oil refineries and power plants, another power grab effectively enacting what Congress had firmly rejected when presented as cap-and-trade legislation.
For an Obama bureaucrat, however, the will of Congress is a mere speed bump. Hence this regulatory trifecta, each one moving smartly left - and nicely clarifying what the spirit of bipartisan compromise that President Obama heralded in his post-lame-duck Dec. 22 news conference was really about: a shift to the center for public consumption and political appearance only.
On that day, Obama finally embraced the tax-cut compromise he had initially excoriated, but only to avoid forfeiting its obvious political benefit - its appeal to independent voters who demand bipartisanship and are the key to Obama's reelection. But make no mistake: Obama's initial excoriation in his angry Dec. 7 news conference was the authentic Obama. He hated the deal.
Now as always, Obama's heart lies left. For those fooled into thinking otherwise by the new Obama of Dec. 22, his administration's defiantly liberal regulatory moves - on the environment, energy and health care - should disabuse even the most beguiled.
These regulatory power plays make political sense. Because Obama needs to appear to reclaim the center, he will stage his more ideological fights in yawn-inducing regulatory hearings rather than in the dramatic spotlight of congressional debate. How better to impose a liberal agenda on a center-right nation than regulatory stealth?
It's Obama's only way forward during the next two years. He will never get past the half-Republican 112th Congress what he could not get past the overwhelmingly Democratic 111th. He doesn't have the votes and he surely doesn't want the publicity. Hence the quiet resurrection, as it were, of end-of-life counseling.
Obama knows he has only so many years to change the country. In his first two, he achieved much: the first stimulus, Obamacare and financial regulation. For the next two, however, the Republican House will prevent any repetition of that. Obama's agenda will therefore have to be advanced by the more subterranean means of rule-by-regulation.
But this must simultaneously be mixed with ostentatious displays of legislative bipartisanship (e.g., the lame-duck tax-cut deal) in order to pull off the (apparent) centrist repositioning required for reelection. This, in turn, would grant Obama four more years when, freed from the need for pretense, he can reassert himself ideologically and complete the social-democratic transformation - begun Jan. 20, 2009; derailed Nov. 2, 2010 - that is the mission of his presidency.
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
Constitutionalism
Sylvette1 Ven 7 Jan - 9:58
Constitutionalism
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, January 7, 2011
For decades, Democrats and Republicans fought over who owns the American flag. Now they're fighting over who owns the Constitution.
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, January 7, 2011
For decades, Democrats and Republicans fought over who owns the American flag. Now they're fighting over who owns the Constitution.
- Spoiler:
The flag debates began during the Vietnam era when leftist radicals made the fatal error of burning it. For decades since, non-suicidal liberals have tried to undo the damage. Demeaningly, and somewhat unfairly, they are forever having to prove their fealty to the flag.
Amazingly, though, some still couldn't get it quite right. During the last presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama, asked why he was not wearing a flag pin, answered that it represented "a substitute" for "true patriotism." * Bad move. Months later, Obama quietly beat a retreat and began wearing the flag on his lapel. He does so still.
Today, the issue is the Constitution. It's a healthier debate because flags are pure symbolism and therefore more likely to evoke pure emotion and ad hominem argument. The Constitution, on the other hand, is a document that speaks. It defines concretely the nature of our social contract. Nothing in our public life is more substantive.
Americans are in the midst of a great national debate over the power, scope and reach of the government established by that document. The debate was sparked by the current administration's bold push for government expansion - a massive fiscal stimulus, Obamacare, financial regulation and various attempts at controlling the energy economy. This engendered a popular reaction, identified with the Tea Party but in reality far more widespread, calling for a more restrictive vision of government more consistent with the Founders' intent.
Call it constitutionalism. In essence, constitutionalism is the intellectual counterpart and spiritual progeny of the "originalism" movement in jurisprudence. Judicial "originalists" (led by Antonin Scalia and other notable conservative jurists) insist that legal interpretation be bound by the text of the Constitution as understood by those who wrote it and their contemporaries. Originalism has grown to become the major challenger to the liberal "living Constitution" school, under which high courts are channelers of the spirit of the age, free to create new constitutional principles accordingly.
What originalism is to jurisprudence, constitutionalism is to governance: a call for restraint rooted in constitutional text. Constitutionalism as a political philosophy represents a reformed, self-regulating conservatism that bases its call for minimalist government - for reining in the willfulness of presidents and legislatures - in the words and meaning of the Constitution.
Hence that highly symbolic moment on Thursday when the 112th House of Representatives opened with a reading of the Constitution. Remarkably, this had never been done before - perhaps because it had never been so needed. The reading reflected the feeling, expressed powerfully in the last election, that we had moved far, especially the past two years, from a government constitutionally limited by its enumerated powers to a government constrained only by its perception of social need.
The most galvanizing example of this expansive shift was, of course, the Democrats' health-care reform, which will revolutionize one-sixth of the economy and impose an individual mandate that levies a fine on anyone who does not enter into a private contract with a health insurance company. Whatever its merits as policy, there is no doubting its seriousness as constitutional precedent: If Congress can impose such a mandate, is there anything that Congress may not impose upon the individual?
The new Republican House will henceforth require, in writing, constitutional grounding for every bill submitted. A fine idea, although I suspect 90 percent of them will simply make a ritual appeal to the "general welfare" clause. Nonetheless, anything that reminds members of Congress that they are not untethered free agents is salutary.
But still mostly symbolic. The real test of the Republicans' newfound constitutionalism will come in legislating. Will they really cut government spending? Will they really roll back regulations? Earmarks are nothing. Do the Republicans have the courage to go after entitlements as well?
In the interim, the cynics had best tread carefully. Some liberals are already disdaining the new constitutionalism, denigrating the document's relevance and sneering at its public recitation. They sneer at their political peril. In choosing to focus on a majestic document that bears both study and recitation, the reformed conservatism of the Obama era has found itself not just a symbol but an anchor.
Constitutionalism as a guiding political tendency will require careful and thoughtful development, as did jurisprudential originalism. But its wide appeal and philosophical depth make it a promising first step to a conservative future.
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel
Sylvette1 Lun 10 Jan - 23:51
Prets a faire feu de tout bois pour remonter dans les sondages, la gauche n'hesite pas a blamer la droite pour la tragedie d'il y a 2 jours; soit disant une mauvaise atmosphere politique causee par les Republicains en general et le Tea Party en particulier (tous d'extreme droite, comme l'avait fait remarquer Nancy... ) Il faudrait avoir ete endormi pendant les 8 annees de presidence de George W. Bush pour ne pas eclater de rire a cette accusation.
Une histoire extreme de paille et de poutre dans l'oeil, sans aucun doute.
Il est fort peu question toutefois dans le discours enflammes des experts politiques de cette meme gauche, de John Roll, un des morts. Se pourrait-il que ca ait a voir avec le fait qu'il etait Republicain et avait ete nomme a la magistrature par George H. W. Bush?
The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel
Those who purport to care about the tenor of political discourse don't help civil debate when they seize on any pretext to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.
By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS
Shortly after November's electoral defeat for the Democrats, pollster Mark Penn appeared on Chris Matthews's TV show and remarked that what President Obama needed to reconnect with the American people was another Oklahoma City bombing. To judge from the reaction to Saturday's tragic shootings in Arizona, many on the left (and in the press) agree, and for a while hoped that Jared Lee Loughner's killing spree might fill the bill.
Une histoire extreme de paille et de poutre dans l'oeil, sans aucun doute.
Il est fort peu question toutefois dans le discours enflammes des experts politiques de cette meme gauche, de John Roll, un des morts. Se pourrait-il que ca ait a voir avec le fait qu'il etait Republicain et avait ete nomme a la magistrature par George H. W. Bush?
The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel
Those who purport to care about the tenor of political discourse don't help civil debate when they seize on any pretext to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.
By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS
Shortly after November's electoral defeat for the Democrats, pollster Mark Penn appeared on Chris Matthews's TV show and remarked that what President Obama needed to reconnect with the American people was another Oklahoma City bombing. To judge from the reaction to Saturday's tragic shootings in Arizona, many on the left (and in the press) agree, and for a while hoped that Jared Lee Loughner's killing spree might fill the bill.
- Spoiler:
With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and reporters seemed to agree that the massacre had to be the fault of the tea party movement in general, and of Sarah Palin in particular. Why? Because they had created, in New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's words, a "climate of hate."
Pima County, AZ Sheriff Clarence Dupnik held a press conference during which he blamed vitriolic political rhetoric for provoking the mentally unstable, and lamented Arizona's becoming the "mecca of prejudice and bigotry." Video courtesy of AFP.
The critics were a bit short on particulars as to what that meant. Mrs. Palin has used some martial metaphors—"lock and load"—and talked about "targeting" opponents. But as media writer Howard Kurtz noted in The Daily Beast, such metaphors are common in politics. Palin critic Markos Moulitsas, on his Daily Kos blog, had even included Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's district on a list of congressional districts "bullseyed" for primary challenges.
When Democrats use language like this—or even harsher language like Mr. Obama's famous remark, in Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"—it's just evidence of high spirits, apparently. But if Republicans do it, it somehow creates a climate of hate.
There's a climate of hate out there, all right, but it doesn't derive from the innocuous use of political clichés. And former Gov. Palin and the tea party movement are more the targets than the source.
Jared Lee Loughner, the man suspected of a shooting spree that killed a Federal Judge and critically wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, had left a trail of online videos in which he railed against the government. WSJ's Neil Hickey reports.
American journalists know how to be exquisitely sensitive when they want to be. As the Washington Examiner's Byron York pointed out on Sunday, after Major Nidal Hasan shot up Fort Hood while shouting "Allahu Akhbar!" the press was full of cautions about not drawing premature conclusions about a connection to Islamist terrorism. "Where," asked Mr. York, "was that caution after the shootings in Arizona?"
Set aside as inconvenient, apparently. There was no waiting for the facts on Saturday. Likewise, last May New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and CBS anchor Katie Couric speculated, without any evidence, that the Times Square bomber might be a tea partier upset with the ObamaCare bill.
Associated Press
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords
So as the usual talking heads begin their "have you no decency?" routine aimed at talk radio and Republican politicians, perhaps we should turn the question around. Where is the decency in blood libel?
To paraphrase Justice Cardozo ("proof of negligence in the air, so to speak, will not do"), there is no such thing as responsibility in the air. Those who try to connect Sarah Palin and other political figures with whom they disagree to the shootings in Arizona use attacks on "rhetoric" and a "climate of hate" to obscure their own dishonesty in trying to imply responsibility where none exists. But the dishonesty remains.
To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?
I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who purport to care about the health of our political community demonstrate precious little actual concern for America's political well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.
Where is the decency in that?
Mr. Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee. He hosts "InstaVision" on PJTV.
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
Re: In Englishhhh...
Sylvette1 Jeu 13 Jan - 15:17
C'est extra et tres americain: solutionner un probleme et combler rapidement la demande! ( 
mais non, mais non! )A quand les sous-vetements feminins?
A Kentucky attorney says his airport underwear line – designed to block private parts when air passengers go through full body scanners at security – has been such a hit he's having trouble keeping up with demand.
Marc Carey of Erlanger, Ky., tells AOL Travel News he launched his business, ScannerShirts.com, last month in an effort to help the traveling public, particularly families, protect their modesty as they go through the airport security machines.
"It looked to me as through there was substantial concern by the traveling public being expressed and it seemed to me there had to be some way to compromise between the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) wanting to keep travel secure and our privacy rights," Carey says.
He says of particular concern to him were reports of body scans and intrusive pat downs being done on traveling kids.
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
As portrait of Jared Loughner sharpens, 'vitriol' blame fades
Sylvette1 Ven 14 Jan - 10:58
===================================================================================
Apres la tentative de manipulation de l'opinion publique par les media (pas seulement aux Etats Unis, sur la BBC un "journaliste" regrettait le manque de remord de la part d'un elu Repubicain...
) et de recuperation par beaucoup de la gauche, insistant sur le fait que la droite etait responsable de l'horreur de la semaine derniere a Tucson, les veritables motifs derriere l'action de ce derange commencent a faire surface, raison pour laquelle il vaut toujours mieux attendre avant de se lancer dans des diatribes haineuses que certains risquent maintenant de regretter (a moins que...).
Sur MSNBC, Chris Matthews ("qui a des frissons qui lui montent le long des jambes quand Obama fait un discours") explique qu'on ne peut "exonerer" Palin tant qu'on ne connait pas la veriter! Click on the image to watch.
Des appels a des actions punitives de la plus grande gravite sont lances contre Sarah Palin, sur un des "sites sociaux"!
As portrait of Jared Loughner sharpens, 'vitriol' blame fades
The suggestion that the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Saturday might have been influenced by political 'vitriol' seems less likely as more becomes known about suspect Jared Loughner.
* absolument!
Une fois de plus, je fais remarquer qu'aucune reference au juge federal Republicain, John Roll, parmi les morts de Tuscon, n'est faite par les media. Peut-etre que ca minimiserait leur insinuation ou leur soit disant imparable mise en evidence de la responsabilite de la droite.
Apres la tentative de manipulation de l'opinion publique par les media (pas seulement aux Etats Unis, sur la BBC un "journaliste" regrettait le manque de remord de la part d'un elu Repubicain...
) et de recuperation par beaucoup de la gauche, insistant sur le fait que la droite etait responsable de l'horreur de la semaine derniere a Tucson, les veritables motifs derriere l'action de ce derange commencent a faire surface, raison pour laquelle il vaut toujours mieux attendre avant de se lancer dans des diatribes haineuses que certains risquent maintenant de regretter (a moins que...).Sur MSNBC, Chris Matthews ("qui a des frissons qui lui montent le long des jambes quand Obama fait un discours") explique qu'on ne peut "exonerer" Palin tant qu'on ne connait pas la veriter!
Click on the image to watch.Des appels a des actions punitives de la plus grande gravite sont lances contre Sarah Palin, sur un des "sites sociaux"!
As portrait of Jared Loughner sharpens, 'vitriol' blame fades
The suggestion that the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Saturday might have been influenced by political 'vitriol' seems less likely as more becomes known about suspect Jared Loughner.
- Spoiler:
By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / January 12, 2011
The wave of national soul-searching about the level of political vitriol and how it might have played a part in Saturday's shootings in Tucson, Ariz., now appears to be ebbing.
Following the shooting, which left six people dead and apparently targeted Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) of Arizona, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik suggested that "vitriol ... about tearing down the government" might have played a part. Rep. Robert Brady (D) of Pennsylvania has followed that lead, promising a bill that would outlaw threatening language against lawmakers.
But emerging information about primary suspect Jared Loughner suggests that he was motivated not by a climate of hate but rather by his own troubled mind and a personal vendetta against Congresswoman Giffords, who was injured in the attack. The investigation has not concluded, and more information could come to light. But for now, a majority of Americans are dismissing the notion that the shooter was set off by a Sarah Palin political map, tea party anger, or talk about "second amendment remedies."
Arizona shooting suspect Jared Loughner: 5 of his strange ideas
A CBS poll Tuesday showed 57 percent of Americans don't believe political rancor played any role in the attack, with a plurality of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents agreeing.
Indeed, one piece of evidence collected so far is a 2007 letter from Giffords's office to Mr. Loughner, thanking him for attending a meet-and-greet event. On it is scrawled a death threat to Giffords. In 2007, Sarah Palin was a little-known Alaska governor and the tea party movement did not exist.
At this point, then, the left's initial eagerness to link the shooting to political anger on the right could backfire, says Charles Franklin, a pollster and political scientist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
"It was the immediate connection from the left of this shooting to political rhetoric from the right that polarized this, and here we have a case where there's a rush to blame Palin [and other conservatives] with no direct connection to her at all," he says. "And the more we learn about this guy, it seems there isn't any political motivation in a broader sense."
To be sure, Sheriff Dupnik put the issue on the national plate with his comments, and given that that the shooting appears to be a political assassination attempt in a politically rancorous border district, the debate on political tone was, in many ways, inevitable.
But critics point out that the nation largely refrained from linking Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan – the suspect in the 2009 Fort Hood shootings – with terrorism. *
In Loughner's case, no reported evidence so far suggests any connection to the ideology or ideologues of the right. A Loughner friend, Zach Osler, told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Wednesday that Loughner "did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right."
That doesn't mean the issue of political rancor is unimportant, and some commentators are simply using this moment to argue that – regardless of the facts of the current case – political anger can have outsized effects on troubled minds.
"Among elite circles there is a sharp debate going on about [connections to campaign rhetoric]," says Mr. Franklin. "So we're seeing some people who deny that political rhetoric had any connection to the shooting, but who nonetheless are speaking out about the question of civility and the level of rhetoric, and they're coming from both the left and the right."
In a commentary today, the Rev. Jesse Jackson drew a comparison between Alabama Gov. George Wallace's heated rhetoric around race relations and its role in fueling the bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four young black girls in 1963.
"There is no evidence that Jared Loughner ... was a member of a right-wing hate group," Mr. Jackson writes. "He was clearly a young man whose mind was unraveling. But it is exactly the mentally unstable who are most likely to be influenced by an atmosphere filled with hate and murderous rhetoric."
Sarah Palin made the boldest pushback yet in a video released Wednesday. "Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state," Ms. Palin said.
* absolument!
Une fois de plus, je fais remarquer qu'aucune reference au juge federal Republicain, John Roll, parmi les morts de Tuscon, n'est faite par les media. Peut-etre que ca minimiserait leur insinuation ou leur soit disant imparable mise en evidence de la responsabilite de la droite.
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
Re: In Englishhhh...
Sylvette1 Ven 14 Jan - 15:28
===================================================================================
Ayant ose se defendre, Sarah Palin est attaquee de plus belle... pour avoir utilise le terme: Blood libel.(diffamation de sang)
A l'origine il avait a voir avec la condamnation du peuple juif pour avoir sacrifie Jesus.
Evidemment les Romains (diriges par Ponce Pilate) etant les veritables responsables, la signification reelle est donc une accusation mensongere et erronee. Sarah Palin a evidemment utilise cette expression dans ce sens et non pour insulter les Juifs!
Les Liberaux Juifs et non-Juifs dans ce cas n'en manquant pas une.., peu viennent a sa defense mais ils comptent, entre autres Rabin Shmuley et Alan Dershowitz, un des plus grands avocats americains juifs (aussi en anglais)
Sarah Palin Is Right About 'Blood Libel'
Judaism rejects the idea of collective responsibility for murder.
By [url=http://online.wsj.com/SEARCH/TERM.HTML?KEYWORDS=SHMULEY+BOTEACH&BYLINESEARCH=TRUE]SHMULEY BOTEACH
[/url]
The term "blood libel"—which Sarah Palin invoked this week to describe the suggestions by journalists and politicians that conservative figures like herself are responsible for last weekend's shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz.—is fraught with perilous meaning in Jewish history.
Ayant ose se defendre, Sarah Palin est attaquee de plus belle... pour avoir utilise le terme: Blood libel.(diffamation de sang)
A l'origine il avait a voir avec la condamnation du peuple juif pour avoir sacrifie Jesus.
Evidemment les Romains (diriges par Ponce Pilate) etant les veritables responsables, la signification reelle est donc une accusation mensongere et erronee. Sarah Palin a evidemment utilise cette expression dans ce sens et non pour insulter les Juifs!
Les Liberaux Juifs et non-Juifs dans ce cas n'en manquant pas une.., peu viennent a sa defense mais ils comptent, entre autres Rabin Shmuley et Alan Dershowitz, un des plus grands avocats americains juifs (aussi en anglais)
Sarah Palin Is Right About 'Blood Libel'
Judaism rejects the idea of collective responsibility for murder.
By [url=http://online.wsj.com/SEARCH/TERM.HTML?KEYWORDS=SHMULEY+BOTEACH&BYLINESEARCH=TRUE]SHMULEY BOTEACH
[/url]
The term "blood libel"—which Sarah Palin invoked this week to describe the suggestions by journalists and politicians that conservative figures like herself are responsible for last weekend's shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz.—is fraught with perilous meaning in Jewish history.
- Spoiler:
The term connotes the earliest accusations that Jews killed Jesus and enthusiastically embraced responsibility for his murder, telling Pontius Pilate, "His blood be upon us and our children" (Matthew 27:25). Thus was born the legend of Jewish bloodlust and of Hebrew ritual use of Christian blood for sacramental purposes. The term was later used more specifically to describe accusations against Jews—primarily in Europe—of sacrificing kidnapped Christian children to use their blood in the baking of Passover matzos.
The Benedictine monk Thomas of Monmouth is generally credited with having popularized the blood libel in his "Life of the Martyr William from Norwich," written in 1173 about a young boy who was found stabbed to death. Thomas quoted a servant woman who said she witnessed Jews lacerating the boy's head with thorns, crucifying him, and piercing his side. While William was canonized, the Jews of Norwich fared less well. On Feb. 6, 1190, they were all found slaughtered in their homes, save those who escaped to the local tower and committed mass suicide.
Despite the strong association of the term with collective Jewish guilt and concomitant slaughter, Sarah Palin has every right to use it. The expression may be used whenever an amorphous mass is collectively accused of being murderers or accessories to murder.
The abominable element of the blood libel is not that it was used to accuse Jews, but that it was used to accuse innocent Jews—their innocence, rather than their Jewishness, being the operative point. Had the Jews been guilty of any of these heinous acts, the charge would not have been a libel.
Getty Images
Despite the strong associations of the term, Sarah Palin has every right to use it.
Jews did not kill Jesus. As the Roman historian Tacitus makes clear, he was murdered by Pontius Pilate, whose reign of terror in ancient Judea was so excessive, even by Roman standards, that (according to the Roman-Jewish chronicler Josephus) Rome recalled him in the year 36 due to his sadistic practices. King Herod Agrippa I, writing to the Emperor Caligula, noted Pilate's "acts of violence, plunderings . . . and continual murder of persons untried and uncondemned, and his never-ending, endless, and unbelievable cruelties, gratuitous and most grievous inhumanity."
Murder is humanity's most severe sin, and it is trivialized when an innocent party is accused of the crime—especially when that party is a collective too numerous to be defended individually. If Jews have learned anything in their long history, it is that a false indictment of murder against any group threatens every group. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Indeed, the belief that the concept of blood libel applies only to Jews is itself a form of reverse discrimination that should be dismissed.
Judaism rejects the idea of collective responsibility for murder, as the Hebrew Bible condemns accusations of collective guilt against Jew and non-Jew alike. "The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him" (Ezekiel 18).
How unfortunate that some have chosen to compound a national tragedy by politicizing the murder of six innocent lives and the attempted assassination of a congresswoman.
To be sure, America should embrace civil political discourse for its own sake, and no political faction should engage in demonizing rhetoric. But promoting this high principle by simultaneously violating it and engaging in a blood libel against innocent parties is both irresponsible and immoral.
Rabbi Boteach is the author of "Honoring the Child Spirit: Inspiration and Learning from Our Children" (Vanguard, 2011). He will shortly publish a book on the Jewishness of Jesus and his murder at Roman hands.
is the author of "Honoring the Child Spirit: Inspiration and Learning from Our Children" (Vanguard, 2011). He will shortly publish a book on the Jewishness of Jesus and his murder at Roman hands.
==========
Dershowitz did not hesitate to defend Palin to Big Governemt:
<BLOCKQUOTE>
There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim. The fact that two of the victims are Jewish is utterly irrelevant to the propriety of using this widely used term.
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
Assez, c'est assez...
Sylvette1 Ven 14 Jan - 15:51
==================================================================================
O'Reilly comme tres souvent remet les choses au point de facon ponderee et juste (apparemment lui non plus n'a pas oublie, pour ne parler que d'elles, le discours politique d'une grande partie de la gauche pendant les dernieres 10 annees):
O'Reilly comme tres souvent remet les choses au point de facon ponderee et juste (apparemment lui non plus n'a pas oublie, pour ne parler que d'elles, le discours politique d'une grande partie de la gauche pendant les dernieres 10 annees):
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
La Maison des Representants abrofe Obamacare
Sylvette1 Jeu 20 Jan - 2:05
===================================================================================
La Maison des Representants vient d'abroger Obamacare.
Evidemment, ca ne suivra pas au Senat (majoritairement Democrates) et les modifications qui risquent de passer avec l'accord de Democrates candidats aux elections de 2012 plusieurs dans des etats rouges, seront bloquees par le Veto d'Obama.
La grande majorite des Americains est toujours contre la loi.
Certains disent que ca sera un des sujets les plus importants de la campagne 2012 sinon le plus important.
En attendant, 26 etats dont la Floride suivent la filiere legale. Pour les Procureurs de ces Etats, l'obligation d'acheter un produit quelconque, meme une assurance medicale, est anti-constitutionnel.
House votes to repeal Health-care law
By Felicia Sonmez and David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, January 19, 2011; 6:33 PM
The House on Wednesday evening passed a bill that would repeal the national health care overhaul, approving the measure on a largely party-line vote.
La Maison des Representants vient d'abroger Obamacare.
Evidemment, ca ne suivra pas au Senat (majoritairement Democrates) et les modifications qui risquent de passer avec l'accord de Democrates candidats aux elections de 2012 plusieurs dans des etats rouges, seront bloquees par le Veto d'Obama.
La grande majorite des Americains est toujours contre la loi.
Certains disent que ca sera un des sujets les plus importants de la campagne 2012 sinon le plus important.
En attendant, 26 etats dont la Floride suivent la filiere legale. Pour les Procureurs de ces Etats, l'obligation d'acheter un produit quelconque, meme une assurance medicale, est anti-constitutionnel.
House votes to repeal Health-care law
By Felicia Sonmez and David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, January 19, 2011; 6:33 PM
The House on Wednesday evening passed a bill that would repeal the national health care overhaul, approving the measure on a largely party-line vote.
- Spoiler:
The repeal bill passed 245 to 189, with three Democrats - Reps. Mike Ross (Ark.), Dan Boren (Okla.) and Mike McIntyre (N.C.) - joining Republicans in backing the measure. The three were among the four Democrats who voted earlier this month to advance the measure. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who remains in serious condition following this month's mass shooting in Tucson, was the only lawmaker not voting.
The bill's passage came after Democrats unsuccessfully staged an eleventh-hour vote in an effort to derail the Republican-sponsored measure.
The Democratic move, which would have made the repeal effort ineffective unless a majority of lawmakers gave up their federal health care benefits within 30 days of the bill's passage, fell short in the GOP-led House.
While the repeal passed the House, ultimately, it is expected to fail.
To actually repeal the law, Republicans would need the approval of the Democrat-controlled Senate and President Obama, unless they have enough votes to override his veto. They are not likely to get that approval.
That made Wednesday's debate look like a dress rehearsal for an entirely different discussion: not whether the bill should be repealed, but how it might be changed.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in his remarks on the House floor that repeal would prevent more than $770 billion in tax hikes, reduce spending by $540 billion and protect more than 7 million seniors from losing or being denied coverage through Medicare Advantage.
"Repeal means paving the way for better solutions that will lower the cost without destroying jobs or bankrupting our government, and repeal means keeping a promise," Boehner said. "This is what we said what we'd do. We listened to the people; we made a commitment to them, a pledge to make their priorities, our priorities."
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) defended the law by citing some of the stories of seven Americans who gave testimony on Tuesday at a hearing called by House Democrats. "Nothing speaks more eloquently to the success of health care reform than the success of their own personal stories," she said.
"We don't want them to think that in order for them to have the same kind of access to health care that we do, we should say to them, 'Run for Congress,'" Pelosi said.
Throughout Wednesday's debate, some Republicans said that elements of the current law - such as a ban on denying coverage for for pre-existing conditions, or the ability for parents to keep young adult children on their insurance - might be included in a replacement bill they want to write.
"We will address, with a replacement bill, pre-existing conditions," said Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.). But Walden said Republicans wanted to to keep out of the replacement bill other elements of the overhaul law, which he said included an increase in the overall cost of healthcare.
"We can do better than this, given a chance," Walden said.
Democrats also said they would be willing to change elements of the law.
"This is political theater. It's a charade," Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said of the repeal proposal. He continued: "I'm willing to change the bill. But repealing it is the absolutely wrong way of doing it."
The two sides still seemed a long way from actual compromise. Republicans have not said exactly how they would replace the current bill with one that provided these benefits with lower costs. And Democrats seem unwilling to budge on some elements most unpopular with Republicans, like the requirement that all individuals buy health insurance.
The tone of Wednesday's debate was far more muted than the first debate over the healthcare overhaul--there were fewer mentions of "job-killing," or comparisons of the bill to socialism.
But, as the day went on, both sides slipped in bitter jabs at the other. Freshman Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), compared his state's fight against the health-care overhaul to the American Revolution.
"We did not accept the chains of George III, nor will we accept the chains of Obamacare," Griffith said.
After him, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) said Republicans were telling untruths about the healthcare legislation. He said that, if anyone watching on television was playing a drinking game that required them to drink when a Republican bent the truth, they needed to get a designated driver.
Weiner said the Republicans' tactics should be called the "'We don't really mean it' strategy."
The night before, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) had compared the Republican tactics on this issue to ones used by the Nazis.
"They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels," Cohen said. "You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing.
"The Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it--believed it and you have the Holocaust," Cohen said.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on Wednesday called the health care overhaul "the crown jewel of socialism." And a handful of members of both parties used heated rhetoric in charging that the health care overhaul would "kill jobs" -- or that its repeal would result in "killing Americans."
Wednesday's floor debate was a chance for both sides to try out the arguments they are likely to use in this year's longer debate, as Congress considers changing or eliminating the healthcare legislation one piece at a time.
Republicans largely used their floor remarks to tie the health care law to the economy, arguing that the health care overhaul will do away with fiscal discipline through increased spending and higher taxes, cost the country jobs and create economic uncertainty.
Some lawmakers went further, arguing that the law itself is unconstitutional, would overextend the reach of government and would allow for taxpayer-funded abortions, even though Democrats say that is not the case.
Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), a prominent conservative who is mulling a bid for president or governor, said that with Wednesday's vote, House Republicans "are going to stand with the American people and vote to repeal their government takeover of health care lock, stock and barrel."
"Now I know the other side and some liberals in the media don't like us using that term -- government takeover of health care -- but let me break it down for you: When you mandate that every American purchase health insurance whether they want it or need it or not ... and you throw in public funding of abortion against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the American people, that's a government takeover of health care and the American people know it," Pence said in his floor remarks.
In the battle of constituent anecdotes, Republicans told stories about small businessmen worried about the bill's costs. Democrats, on the other hand, talked about patients: people who would get help paying for pre-natal care, or the treatment of cancer or other diseases.
At one point, Reps. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) sparred over how women would be affected by a repeal of the health care law.
"Thanks to the new law, women do not have to worry anymore about being treated as second-class citizens or about being discriminated against for being a woman," Slaughter said, arguing that the health care law made it illegal for insurance companies to charge women higher premiums and would require that insurers provide coverage for victims of domestic violence.
Blackburn shot back that the health care overhaul would make it "more difficult for women under the age of 50 and over the age of 75 to get mammograms."
"One of our primary concerns with this legislation was the way in which women would be adversely impacted," Blackburn said, adding that "we need this bill off the books."
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
Re: In Englishhhh...
Sylvette1 Jeu 20 Jan - 12:12
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Les Etats Unis, la plus vieille democratie du monde a dit, Mr. Obama. (il y en a qui doivent bouillir...)Si George W Bush avait dit ca, on l'aurait qualifie d'ignard et d'arrogant, mais la... comme une lettre a la poste.
Les Etats Unis, la plus vieille democratie du monde a dit, Mr. Obama. (il y en a qui doivent bouillir...)Si George W Bush avait dit ca, on l'aurait qualifie d'ignard et d'arrogant, mais la... comme une lettre a la poste.
Sylvette1- Messages : 104
Date d'inscription : 01/01/2011
Re: In Englishhhh...
charly Jeu 20 Jan - 12:28
Sylvette1 a écrit:===================================================================================
Oui,tout dépend de qui le dit!
Chez nous c'est pareil,une déclaration de la gauche est acceptée comme du pain
béni,et la même par la droite ou les libéraux passe pour une ineptie!
charly- Messages : 799
Date d'inscription : 26/09/2010
Age : 77
Localisation : Province de Liège
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