So much for the Obama “temperament.” His health-care plan hits the skids and no more Mr. Cool. The result is “a new sense of uncertainty and strain, and a growing murmur among Democrats in Washington nervous about the White House’s tactics, and a rising tide of concern in the states as local Democratic parties eye midterm elections that are traditionally a challenge for a new president.”And you can pretty much forget that August deadline.
Maybe it won’t be ObamaCare but Blue Dog/GOP Care: “Some centrist House Democrats have reached out to Republicans to explore breaking with their party leadership on healthcare and crafting a reform bill with the rival GOP, one congressman claimed Saturday.” By Sunday, the Blue Dog leader was sounding defensive, warning Republicans not to count on them blocking health-care reform. But they sure are blocking the Obama-Pelosi version of it.
The governors don’t like it either: “The nation’s governors, Democrats as well as Republicans, voiced deep concern Sunday about the shape of the health care bill emerging from Congress, fearing that the federal government is about to hand them expensive new Medicaid obligations without providing the money to pay for them.”
Mickey Kaus on what to call mandatory arbitration that still remains on Big Labor’s agenda: “How about ‘federal pay determination’? Keep in mind that not only does the apparent ‘compromise’ propose abandoning the hoary idea that wages should be set in the marketplace, it also abandons the New Deal’s substitute idea that wages should be set in labor contest where unions threaten to use their strike power and management threatens to survive a strike. Unions seem to have given up strikes. Instead they want to authorize an official–maybe even an actual federal bureaucrat–to simply swoop down and impose what would undoubtedly be a wage increase. That’s more akin to FDR’s notorious, failed National Recovery Act–except the NRA at least let industries set their own rigid wage scales.”
Stuart Taylor really wants to like Sonia Sotomayor. But he is left with “doubts about the sincerity of Sotomayor’s testimony,” including “her dismissive rejection last year of the reverse-discrimination lawsuit by firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who had done well on qualification tests but were denied promotions because blacks had not done well. That — like some of her pre-judicial work — suggests an agenda of extending and perpetuating de facto racial quotas.” Then there is her involvement in the “left-activist” PRLDEF and her “less-than-brilliant legal mind.”
The Washington Post editors think she lied: “Judge Sotomayor’s attempts to explain away and distance herself from that statement were unconvincing and at times uncomfortably close to disingenuous, especially when she argued that her reason for raising questions about gender or race was to warn against injecting personal biases into the judicial process. Her repeated and lengthy speeches on the matter do not support that interpretation.” But they still support her confirmation. Huh?
India tells Hillary Clinton to buzz off: “India on Sunday night rebuffed an appeal by Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, to embrace a low-carbon future in which the two countries would work together to devise new ways of consuming and producing energy.” And Midwestern senators are supposed to tell their constituents they have to pay higher energy bills while India’s economy roars ahead? Hmm.
Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration are trying once again to attack the CIA and Dick Cheney, this time over alleged failure to brief Congress about a newer operation program to target terrorist leaders. The Democratic rule book: “One: We in the Obama administration get to choose to release only what is politically opportune to release. Two: We in Congress investigate only what and when it’s politically opportune to investigate. Three: As a matter of policy, we apparently shouldn’t try too hard to kill al Qaeda leaders (except if it can be done by aerial attacks). And four: We in Congress don’t need to keep classified programs secret once we’re briefed on them.”
And two big problems for them — Admiral Dennis Blair isn’t buying their line and the last time they tried a half-baked attack on the Bush administration they lost the battle when Cheney pulled out his secret weapon (the facts).
Why is the Obama administration against “saving or creating” jobs? “The Senate is kicking off next week with one of the most contentious issues engulfing the fiscal 2010 defense policy bill: whether to include money for more F-22 fighter jets and ultimately draw a presidential veto. . . Several unions, such as the Steelworkers Union and the Machinists Union, have been up on Capitol Hill lobbying in favor of more F-22s. But the weekend could also serve as a ripe time for the Obama administration to cajole undecided Democratic senators into supporting the Levin-McCain amendment that would strip the funding.”
Near the top of the list of inexplicable Obama foreign policy moves is Obama’s siding with Hugo Chavez against the Honduran Congress, which “moved to defend the country’s constitution by relieving Mr. Zelaya of his presidential duties.” The U.S. apparently jumped when Chavez made a “personal plea” to the Obama administration. As Mary Anatasia O’Grady notes, “[I]t raises serious questions about the signals that President Barack Obama is sending to the hemisphere’s most dangerous dictator.”
