THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Is Obama The New JFK?: No he is not, argued Joe Lieberman (I-CT) in a speech he delivered to attendees of this year’s Commentary Fund dinner at the University Club in NYC:
Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.
This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided. …
[T]his was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom." …
Barack Obama … has not been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign. …
Mr. Obama has proposed … a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.
Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? I certainly cannot.
† Al Sharpton: Freedom Fighter or Terrorist?: NYC detectives Gescard F. Isnora, Michael Oliver and Marc Cooper, who were acquitted of criminal charges in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell are facing a raft of administrative charges for violating Police Department policies. Four other police officers at the scene are also being charged. PO Michael Carey, along with Isnora, Oliver and Cooper are all being charged with discharging their firearms outside of department guidelines; Isnora, who was working undercover at the time, is also being charged with not allowing uniformed officers who were present to take control, reports The New York Times. Two members of the Crime Scene Unit, Detective Robert Knapp and Sergeant Hugh McNeil, are being charged with sloppy crime scene processing, and the ranking officer at the scene, Lt. Gary Napoli, is facing charges of failing to supervise the operation. “If the charges … upheld, the officers could face discipline ranging from loss of pay to retraining to firing. But the internal investigation has been suspended as federal prosecutors weigh civil rights charges in the case,” according to The Times. Al Sharpton called the charges “a step in the right direction.”
† There’s No Such Thing As Free Healthcare (second item): A Wall Street Journal editorial observes, “Mitt Romney's presidential run is history, but it looks as if the taxpayers of Massachusetts will be paying for it for years to come.” The “universal” healthcare plan Romney saddled the state’s taxpayers with before pursuing his manifest destiny - which the local media refers to as “the new Big Dig” – is a failure:
About 350,000 more people are now insured in Massachusetts since the reform passed. Federal estimates put the prior number of uninsured at more than 657,000, so there was a reduction. But it was not secured through the market reforms that Governor Romney promised. Instead, Massachusetts also created a new state entitlement that is already trembling on the verge of bankruptcy inside of a year.
Some two-thirds of the growth in coverage owes to a low- or no-cost public insurance option. Called Commonwealth Care, it uses a sliding income scale to subsidize coverage for everyone under 300% of the federal poverty level, or about $63,000 for a family of four. Commonwealth Care also accounts for 60% of statewide growth in individual insurance over the last year, and the trend is expected to accelerate, perhaps double.
To pay for the "RomneyCare" boondoggle, legislators are looking to cut state payments to healthcare providers, hiking penalties on businesses for noncompliance, raising the state tobacco tax, and imposing additional mandates on pharmaceutical companies and insurers. Says The Journal: “We can be thankful that Massachusetts ignored the cost problems that doomed other recent liberal health insurance overhauls in California, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Illinois. The Bay State is showing everyone how not to reform health care.”
† Fed Up With Farmers: As promised, President Bush vetoed the $307 billion farm subsidy bill. As predicted, the veto was overridden by Congress (the vote was 316 to 108 in the House, 82 to 13 in the Senate). Though Republicans keep being taken to the woodshed by voters who want them to rein in spending, 100 GOP Representatives voted to save the goody-laden bill, as did 35 GOP Senators.
If you think voters are ticked off now, wait till they find out they will likely be on the hook for an additional $16 billion in subsidies should prices drop in 2009 from their historic highs this year, reports The Washington Post:
The Agriculture Department estimates that subsidy payments to corn farmers alone could reach $10 billion a year if prices - which have been $5 to $6 a bushel - were to drop to $3.25 a bushel, a level seen as recently as last year. The $10 billion figure assumes most farmers would participate in the program, a view disputed by key lawmakers. …
[A]s the farm bill moved through Congress, lawmakers sweetened the subsidy provisions, in part to encourage more farmers to sign up. The final version of the program is more generous than ones proposed earlier by the House and the Bush administration.
The new program insures a farmer's revenue at close to the current high prices. USDA estimates that a farmer could draw a payment even with corn prices at $4.39 a bushel.
Now this almost never happens outside the schoolyard, but Congress got a do-over: A House clerk apparently left out a chunk of the 673-page bill before it was sent to the White House. So, technically, Congress had overridden a presidential veto of a bill Congress never voted on and passed. Alas, given the chance to get it right this time, House Republicans helped the Dems pass the bill a second time by a vote of 306 to 110 (the original vote was 318 to 106).
† All The News That’s Fart To Print (third item): VH1’s BestWeekEver.tv is polling readers on whether Tim Russert passed wind on the air. (The Stiletto voted “Yes, that was the unmistakable sound of gas leaving the body through tightly-clenched buttocks.”)
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