What Was Obama Thinking? by Tunku Varadarajan

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-25/what-was-obama-thinking/full/

He was a testy clock-Nazi, the GOP was surprisingly well-briefed—and the outcome was never in doubt. Why don’t the Dems just ram health care through and spare us the spectacle?
Six and a half hours, two meals, a tub of ice cream, a gallon of coffee and 20 sheets of scribbled notes after the televised “bipartisan health-care summit” began, I still ask myself the question that popped into my head within minutes of the summit’s start: What on earth was President Obama thinking when he decided to convene this weird little powwow? 

Was he trying to make the Republicans look bad—retrograde ogres who would leave uninsured babies to die in their cribs? If so, he didn’t succeed at all. On the contrary, they came out of it looking rather alert and grownup.

Was he trying to establish—perhaps in all sincerity—that the differences between the two sides were not unbridgeable, and that there was nothing that separated the two that couldn’t be resolved by a good, cathartic heart-to-heart on TV? If so, he didn’t succeed. On the contrary, he gave the Republicans a national stage on which to air their disagreements with the health-care bill—and air them they did, with something approaching panache.
Did he believe that he would, somehow, by his sheer charisma, “win it” for his side? If so, he didn’t succeed. On the contrary, he may have chipped his image in significant ways.
The marathon TV teach-in—in which Obama was more schoolmarm than president—should be regarded by Democrats as a great disappointment. They made no clear gain, and won no clear argument. It became apparent from the very beginning—when a testy Obama said “Let me finish, Lamar!” to the courtly Lamar Alexander—that this was not to be an open-minded exploration of the issues in question. It was, instead, a simulacrum of a debate, a pretend-conversation, one in which Obama established, yet again, his command over fact and detail, but in which he also revealed reflexive superciliousness, intolerance of different opinions, and a shortness of patience unbecoming of a president. (He also showed that he’s a tedious clock-Nazi, cutting people off all the time, while showing no inclination to edit himself.)
What was so striking about the summit was the preparedness of the Republicans. All of them had done their homework: Lamar Alexander, Tom Coburn, Jon Kyl, John McCain, Dave Camp, John Barrasso, and Paul Ryan.
The Democrats, by contrast, suffered from an acute case of “anecdotitis” (is it a preexisting condition?): Almost all of them delivered speeches that boasted a story or two meant to tug at the heart. Obama set the tone with his account of Sasha’s asthma, Malia’s meningitis, and his mom’s ovarian cancer. Nancy and Harry—as Obama called them—told us, respectively, of having “seen grown men cry,” and of a “young man called Jesus” who was stiffed by his insurers. Steny Hoyer gave us a sob story, Louise Slaughter told us about a woman who had to wear her dead sister’s teeth, Tom Harkin told us of a letter he got “yesterday, from a farmer in Iowa…” This constant argument-by-anecdote was relentlessly populist; but it was also fatally weak, as it was the infantilizing of a national audience, an invitation to Americans to wince and say, “Gee, things are bad out there. We need this bill!”
What became clear in the long hours through which the summit meandered was that Obama was the best Democrat on display, a president surrounded by pygmies and paint-by-number partisans. Without his presence, the summit would have been a fiasco for the Democrats. And yet, in wading through the weeds on TV with legislators, in engaging in tetchy exchanges with John McCain, in sitting through such silliness as Tom Harkin’s suggestion that those who oppose the bill favor some kind of “segregation,” in playing—in effect—the bruising role of a prime minister in the push for legislation, he got closer to the coal-face of American politics than is dignified for a president.
The meeting wound down forlornly, with Obama attempting to enumerate issues that the two sides had in common. But there could be no escape from the one, fundamental difference that divides the two sides: The Democrats want this bill and the Republicans don’t. That—and the latter’s preference for market solutions and the former’s rejection of them—ensured that the summit was a total waste of our time and Obama's.
After this six-and-a-half-hour civics lesson, let us now return to the Leninist mode: that of crushing the opposition. I'm not keen on health-care reform, but I do wish that Obama and his friends had hammered the thing through in its full, robust, vital form, with all the "radical" logic built in. They had the political momentum and mandate and yet got stuck—as they got stuck today—tossing out or diluting all the elements that had made it the (supposedly) progressive thing it was. I so much prefer it when the winning side does what it likes, unapologetically. There’s honesty in that, and dignity. And the other side respects you more, too.
Tunku Varadarajan is a national affairs correspondent and writer at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a professor at NYU’s Stern Business School. He is a former assistant managing editor at The Wall Street Journal. (Follow him on Twitter here.)

Obama Giving Up On "Crippling" Iran Sanctions

http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11276044.html

This is the second time in as many weeks that the State Department has, for reasons that are largely unfathomable, unilaterally taken an anti-Iran option off the table. Two Wednesdays ago Clinton told Al-Arabiya that military action wasn't even a consideration, which had the predictable effect of emboldening the mullahs. Now comes this announcement, which basically tells Tehran they don't have anything to fear from sanctions. Wonderful.
Remember during the election, when Obama's surrogates wouldn't shut up about "strong sticks and strong carrots"? The original liberal tagline was actually "real sticks and real carrots" but apparently "strong" focused better than "real" so that's what we got. Dennis Ross was even dispatched to reassure Jewish voters that the era of "weak sticks and weak carrots" was over. Then after the election Clinton went to the Hill and - trying to reassure Congresspeople who were nervous about Obama's appeasement - she explicitly promised to mobilize "crippling" international sanctions if outreach failed.
Nope:

The United States said on Thursday it does not aim to impose crippling sanctions on Iran but rather to pressure the Iranian government to change course on its nuclear program while protecting ordinary people. "It is not our intent to have crippling sanctions that have... a significant impact on the Iranian people,"State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters. "Our actual intent is... to find ways to pressure the government while protecting the people."

On the plus side, this is more honest than the last few months' of spin. Obama doesn't have the means to establish a robust international sanctions regime, even if he wanted to. The Iranians knew that and bragged about it. The pretense of credible sticks was meant for American audiences, the better to buy Obama breathing room for ever more engagement. Just because previous efforts had drawn humiliating responses didn't mean the approach was misguided. It was just that Iran's "unsettled political situation" was getting in the way!
But that only takes you so far. Eventually you need new excuses for why a crippling sanctions regime has failed to materialize. Giving up on the whole idea - that's certainly one excuse.
The other option was to continue unblinkingly asserting that Iran was still open for talks, no matter how many previous deadlines they had brazenly ignored. Again - remember "Obama says he wants progress with Iran by year's end?" If 2009 ended without a deal - the President intoned - then sanctions would be used "to ensure that Iran understands we are serious." Believable!
References and related after the jump...
References:
* US has no plan for military action against Iran: Clinton [AFP]
* In responding to Iran, a litany of bad options [Michael Young]
* Iran Shaping Up As Key Foreign-Policy Challenge For Obama [RFE/RL]
* POLICY OPTIONS FOR IRAQ - HEARINGS BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION - JULY 18, 19, AND 20, 2005 [GPO]
* Why I support Barack Obama [Ross / Jewish Journal]
* Hillary Clinton: US will organise 'crippling' Iran sanctions if diplomacy fails [Times Online]
* U.S. says does not seek crippling sanctions on Iran [WaPo]
* Clenched But - Of Course - China's Still Against Sanctions [IIFSC]
* Clenched With Exactly Zero Fear Of Sanctions [IIFSC]
* Obama's Foreign-Policy Naivete Is Making War More Likely [Commentary]
* Obama: We're Giving Iran More Time Because Of Their "Unsettled Political Situation" [MR]
* Clinton: Of Course We're Going To Let Iran Pull Our Chain Indefinitely [MR]
* Of Course: Obama WH Pushing Back Iran Sanctions Deadline Again [MR]
* Obama says he wants progress with Iran by year's end [Reuters]

CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens' rights

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/26/cnn-poll-majority-says-government-a-threat-to-citizens-rights/
Washington (CNN) – A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.
Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.
The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans.
According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken - though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what's broken can be fixed.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted February 12-15, with 1,023 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall survey.

Radical Muslim leader has past in swinging London

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/7271752/Radical-Muslim-leader-has-past-in-swinging-London.html

As part of the bohemian scene in swinging sixties London, Ian Dallas inspired Eric Clapton to write Layla and counted George Harrison and Edith Piaf among his friends.

 Born into a landowning clan in Ayr, south-west Scotland, he had left the family estate for London and quickly fell in with a host of stars after writing and directing a series of television hits.
He directed a play starring Albert Finney, wrote versions of the classics Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair for the BBC and even acted in the Federico Fellini classic 8½.
 
But these days Mr Dallas is famed for very different reasons as the leader of an extreme Islamic group with thousands of followers across the world.

He has called for Britain to be run by a Muslim council and likened the war in Afghanistan to the Holocaust.
During the Sixties, he became increasingly disillusioned with his London life and began exploring Islam. In 1967 he met Shaykh Abdalkarim Daudi in Fes, Morocco, converted to Islam and took the name Abdalqadir.
He spent years travelling north Africa, learning from various leading Muslim scholars before founding the orthodox Murabitun Worldwide Movement in the early 1980s.

It now has more than 10,000 committed followers across the world – spread from Denmark to Indonesia – and thousands more who support the movement.

Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi, as he is now known, believes the Islam world will conquer the "Jewish dominated" West with an hardline interpretation of Islamic law.
"(Israel) knows that without its massive defence subsidy from the USA it could not last one financial year," he states.

Abdalqadir's teachings range from the claim that movies and football "degrade the proletariat" to calls for Middle Eastern-style monarchical rule in Britain supported by a moral body of Muslims.
Now based in Cape Town, Abdalqadir, 79, claims Western governments stage terrorist acts to detract from the fact that capitalism has failed. He says both Richard Reid – the "shoe bomber" who tried to blow up a plane in 2001 – and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab – the man behind the attempted bombing of a plane bound for Detroit on Christmas Day – were both "planted" by the CIA.

"It is time for the enslaved billions of our world today to fear no more the exploding shoes and underpants of the idiot agents of capitalism and to learn what Islam really is," he states.

He says Britain is on "the edge of terminal decline and it is the "British Muslim population that alone can revitalise this ancient realm."

However, before his conversion to Islam, Abdalqadir led a bohemian life in London. He studied at Rada and wrote and directed The Face of Love starring Albert Finney which was also made into a television play.
A host of writing credits followed, including Conrad's Secret Agent, starring Sir Alan Bates. He lived in Tite Street, Chelsea – Oscar's Wilde's London address and a fashionable location for artists and writers.
Dallas was friends with both George Harrison and Eric Clapton, who he gave a copy of the ancient Persian Sufi parable of Layla – the story of a princess who was married to the wrong man. It struck a chord with his unrequited love for Pattie Boyd, the wife of his friend and fellow musician George Harrison.
Abdalqadir has not been back to Scotland for ten years, but is still in touch with several friends and family in Ayr who are, according to his media manager, very supportive of what he is doing.

Obama’s ‘Chicago mafia’ blamed for paralysis at the top

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7034910.ece

WHEN President Barack Obama’s secret service codename was revealed as Renegade and his wife Michelle’s as Renaissance, the names seemed perfect for a first couple who had come to Washington to shake things up.

More than a year into the Obama administration, with healthcare yet to be reformed, Wall Street banks continuing to pay huge bonuses and Guantanamo Bay prison still open, that mood of hope has turned to disillusion. Obama’s policy of engagement has yielded no progress in the Middle East or Iran; the war in Afghanistan continues to exact a big toll in lives and dollars; while the heaviest snow in Washington for 90 years seems to have stymied any hope of climate change legislation.

The president and his team now find themselves under fire for mishandling Congress from everyone from senior Democrats to social columnists. Critics say that by failing to move on from the “us versus them” feeling of the Obama election campaign, they have united an opposition that was in disarray. The result is legislative paralysis despite the biggest Democratic majority in 30 years.

Last week a prominent Democratic senator resigned after criticising both government and Congress. Evan Bayh from Indiana, who had never lost a race and was expected to be re-elected in November, complained that the party’s recent loss of the Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy should have been seen as a wake-up call.

“Moderates and independents even in a state as Democratic as Massachusetts just aren’t buying our message,” he said.
“They don’t believe the answers we are currently proposing are solving their problems.”
Even society writers are disenchanted. “The Obama White House has closed ranks. They were completely overwhelmed by the new office,” said Karen Sommer Shalett, editor-in-chief of DC magazine. “I haven’t heard of them going to any house parties or Georgetown row houses to be entertained.
“That’s important because if you’re social with someone over canapés and you know their wife and you know their children, you talk business in a friendlier way.”
When the Obamas do go to someone’s house for dinner, almost invariably it is to the home of Valerie Jarrett, their old friend from Chicago who serves as a political adviser.
The Wednesday evening White House cocktail parties which were launched with great fanfare as a way to reach out to Republicans, fizzled out last spring. The two parties seem more hostile than ever.
“This administration has managed to divide its friends and unite its enemies,” said Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Programme at the New America Foundation.
He and others lay the blame on the Chicago team, advisers from Obama’s adopted city. “Obama’s West Wing is filled with people who are in their jobs because of their Chicago connections or because they signed on early during his presidential campaign,” complained Doug Wilder, who in 1990s Virginia was America’s first elected black governor and was an early backer of Obama. “One problem is they do not have sufficient experience at governing at the executive branch level. The deeper problem is that they are not listening to the people.”
Obama relies on five people, four of whom are Chicagoans. They are Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, David Axelrod and Jarrett, his political advisers, and Michelle, while the fifth kitchen cabinet member is Robert Gibbs, his chief spokesman, who comes from Alabama.
The president consults them on everything. Military commanders were astounded when they participated in Afghanistan war councils and referred to them as the “Chicago mafia”. It was this group that inserted into Obama’s Afghan surge speech the deadline of July 2011 as a date to start withdrawing.
With Democrats fearing big losses in the mid-term elections in November, the knives are out for Emanuel, whose abrasive manner and use of profanities have won him few friends. Although his job is to deflect criticism from his boss, Rahmbo, as he is known, seems to have gone over the top.
The Wall Street Journal reported him losing his temper at a strategy session in August and referring to liberals as “f***ing retarded”. He is said to have sent dead fish to a pollster whose numbers he did not like.
Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, called on Obama to remove Emanuel, arguing that he needs someone who knows how to navigate Washington or will end up being no more than a speechmaker.
“No one I’ve talked to believes he [Emanuel] has the management skills and discipline to run the White House,” he wrote in The Daily Beast.
Among those touted as possible replacements are David Gergen, a political consultant brought in by President Bill Clinton, or John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff who now heads the Center for American Progress, a left-wing pressure group.
Emanuel would be unlikely to go without a fight. “Obama needs Emanuel at the top,” argued Dana Milbank in yesterday’s Washington Post, writing that the chief of staff was being unfairly blamed for the healthcare debacle.
“Where the president is airy and idealistic, Rahm is earthy and calculating. One thinks big; the other, a former House Democratic caucus chair, understands the congressional mind, in which small stuff counts for more than broad strokes.”
In Milbank’s view, Obama’s real problem is his other confidants, Jarrett, Gibbs and Axelrod, whom he describes as “part of the cult of Obama”, believing he is “a transformational figure who needn’t dirty his hands in politics”.
While Obama may have campaigned on a slogan of change, he has shown himself reluctant to sack people.
The problem may go deeper. Douglas Schoen, former pollster for Bill Clinton, believes the Obama team misinterpreted victory as an endorsement of his liberal agenda when it was really a reaction against George W Bush and the credit crisis. “They need to recognise there is only one fundamental issue in America: jobs,” he said.
What no one disputes is that Obama is extremely clever. Were it not for losing the Kennedy seat and with it the Democrats’ 60-seat super-majority in the Senate, Obama would probably have signed healthcare into law by now.
The president has not given up on the reform. He is expected to publish a revised bill today or Monday, just before a televised White House summit on Thursday with congressional Republicans. But they are calling on Democrats to start all over again with a far less sweeping proposal.
The biggest hurdle may be Obama’s own ambition combined with lack of experience. A leading Democratic supporter described his administration as “unfocused”, adding that he had counted 137 items on Obama’s agenda.
“He needs to realise that he’s running a huge operation and has to sequence priorities,” said Clemons. “He’s not thinking like the chief executive of a complex organisation.”

Mandatory IRAs May Burden Small Employers, Business Group Says

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-25/mandatory-iras-may-burden-small-employers-business-group-says.html

By Margaret Collins and Alexis Leondis

Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. President Barack Obama’s effort to increase retirement savings by requiring all businesses to offer automatic IRA accounts may face opposition from small companies, says a Washington-based trade group.

Obama said the plan, part of a tax package aimed at middle- income Americans proposed today, would let employees automatically enroll in direct-deposit retirement accounts and expand matching tax credits. The administration hasn’t released a cost estimate.

“When small businesses are struggling to stay afloat, we oppose mandates such as this that stand to create a new administrative burden,” said Molly Brogan, vice president of public affairs for the National Small Business Association, in an e-mailed statement.

Sixty-four percent of small-business owners said revenue declined in the past 12 months, the highest percentage since 1993, according to a December national survey of 450 small- business owners conducted by the NSBA, which represents more than 150,000 small businesses. “I don’t know that there’s been enough thought to how certain small businesses, restaurants in particular, would comply with this if they don’t use a payroll company or participate in direct deposits,” said Brogan.

Almost 80 million Americans don’t have retirement accounts through their employers, according to the government. About 63 percent of low-income workers may have no savings at retirement to supplement Social Security, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.

Fill the Gap

“The automatic IRA has the advantage of being able to fill in the gap,” said David C. John, who developed an automatic-IRA proposal with Mark Iwry, now deputy assistant treasury secretary for the Retirement Security Project, a joint venture of Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute and the Brookings Institution in Washington.

A worker automatically enrolling in a retirement savings account would likely make contributions through payroll deductions into one of several investments including a stable- value fund, a special-issued U.S. savings bond, and a target- date fund that automatically shifts investments from more aggressive assets to more conservative ones closer to retirement, John said.

The accounts would likely be Roth IRAs where taxes are paid upfront to lower the budgetary cost rather than taxing withdrawals during retirement. Employees would be able to opt- out of the savings program, John said.

Investment Limit

The automatic IRA may have the same annual investment limit as existing IRAs, which is $5,000 for savers under the age of 50 and $6,000 for savers 50 and over, John said. An employer would have access to a Web site created by the government that would help them find a bank, brokerage firm or mutual fund company to administer the accounts. A freelancer or contract employee would also have the opportunity to participate, he said.

The administration also proposed today expanding a tax credit, known as the “saver’s credit,” to match 50 percent of the first $1,000 of contributions by families earning as much as $65,000 and provide a partial credit to families earning up to $85,000. The tax credit would be refundable so that families would receive it even if they had no tax liabilities.

Senator Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat, and Representative Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, previously introduced bills to establish automatic enrollment in IRAs. Bingaman is working on a new version of the bill, said spokeswoman Jude McCartin.

“We expect that a final bill will be ready for introduction in the coming weeks, and the goal will be to get it enacted before the end of the year,” McCartin said.

--With assistance from Hans Nichols and Roger Runningen in Washington. Editors: Rick Levinson, Steve Geimann.

To contact the reporter on this story: Margaret Collins in New York at +1-212-617-8925 or mcollins45@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Rick Levinson at +1-212-617-3377 or rlevinson2@bloomberg.net.

Obama's federal government can weatherize your home for only $57,362 each

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/02/obama-stimulus-weatherization.html

Who could forget the $5 billion in Obama administration stimulus money that was going to rapidly create nearly 90,000 green jobs across the country in these tough economic times and make so many thousands of homes all snuggy and warm and energy-efficient these very snowy days?

Well, a new report due out this morning will show the $5-billion program is so riddled with drafts that so far it's weatherized only about 9,000 homes.

Based on the initial Obama-Biden program promise that it would create 87,000 new jobs its first year, that would be about 10 jobs for each home weatherized so far. Makes for pretty crowded doorways.

ABC News reports that the General Accountability Office will declare today that the Energy Department has fallen woefully behind -- about 98.5% behind -- the 593,000 homes it initially predicted would be weatherized in the Recovery Act's very first, very chilly year.

The Energy Department is run by Steven Chu, like President Obama a Nobel Prize winner. You'll never guess what the federal government blames for the lack of significant progress.

RED tape.

Not duct tape. Not weatherstripping. But that infamous RED tape. In the form of, well, forms.

It seems that the Pelosi-Reid stimulus plan that was so quickly cobbled together and was supposed to immediately pump so much money into the sagging economy last year included an 80-year-old legal provision requiring all federally funded projects to pay a prevailing wage to workers.

But what's a prevailing wage for weatherization, you ask?

Who knows?

So the Energy Department asked the Labor Department, which set out to calculate what a prevailing weatherization wage is in every single one of the more than 3,000 counties across these United States.

There were some other things to figure out. It seems the law also requires some kind of National Trust for Historic Preservation review for most homes before any contracts could be estimated to be negotiated to be signed to be let to be begun. And states like Michigan have two people assigned to such tasks.

So, good luck speeding up that work.

The Energy folks did tell ABC they've so far spent 522-million Recovery Act dollars on the program. So, let's see, about 9,100 homes divided into that chunk of stimulation change to believe in is -- gee! -- about $57,362 worth of very expensive weatherstripping for each home fixed up so far.

Seems about right for a federal program.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Is U.S. Health Care System Not the Culprit?

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/is-us-health-care-system-not-the-culprit/

By JOHN TIERNEY

In my Findings column, I discuss reasons for the longevity gap between the United States and most other developed countries. Our shorter life expectancy has often been blamed on the health-care system’s failings. But after looking at mortality trends and treatment patterns, Samuel H. Preston and Jessica Y. Ho of the University of Pennsylvania reach another verdict: “We conclude that the low longevity ranking of the United States is not likely to be a result of a poorly functioning health-care system.”

This is a noteworthy conclusion coming from the eminent demographer for whom the Preston Curve is named. Dr. Preston, who is an expert on trends in mortality and disease, and Ms. Yo dispute the much-quoted scorecard from the Commonwealth Fund issued last year. The Commonwealth report ranked America last among industrialized nations in “mortality amenable to health care,” and estimated that 101,000 lives would be saved annually if the U.S. health-care system performed as well the systems in France, Japan or Australia. The estimates were based on a study, supported by the Commonwealth Fund, that was published in the journal Health Affairs last year by Ellen Nolte and C. Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The Penn researchers raise several criticisms of those estimates of preventable deaths, and I’ll discuss some of the specifics in a subsequent post, along with a response from Dr. Nolte and Dr. McKee.

For now, let’s concentrate on the basic argument of Dr. Preston: that the longevity gap is due not to the American health-care system but to other factors, like rates of obesity and the exceptionally heavy smoking that prevailed among Americans for until the 1980s. (Per-capita consumption was higher than in any other developed country, particularly among women.) Dr. Preston and Ms. Ho write: “The health care system could be performing exceptionally well in identifying and administering treatment for various diseases, but a country could still have poor measured health if personal health-care practices were unusually deleterious.”

The Penn researchers cite a variety of evidence that Americans (including the uninsured) receive more thorough treatment in many ways than people in other countries. At the same time, they acknowledge the system is much costlier than other countries’ and can be criticized on many grounds. They write:

Evidence that the major diseases are effectively diagnosed and treated in the US does not mean that there may not be great inefficiencies in the US health care system. A list of prominent charges include fragmentation, duplication, inaccessibility of records, the practice of defensive medicine, misalignment of physician and patient incentives, limitations of access for a large fraction of the population, and excessively fast adoption of unproven technologies . . .

Just as we are not addressing issues of efficiency on the production side, we are not treating patient welfare as the main outcome. Practices that produce greater longevity do not necessarily enhance well-being. This potential disparity is central to the controversy involving PSA testing, which uncovers many cancers that would never kill patients but whose treatment often produces adverse side effects.

The question that we have posed is much simpler: does a poor performance by the U.S. health care system account for the low international ranking of longevity in the U.S.? Our answer is, “no”.

Now for your answer (or, if you, prefer, more questions about the paper by Dr. Preston and Ms. Ho).

The problem with France

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_312446.html

A quote cited by French writer Jean-Francois Revel in his book "Anti-Americanism" points to the longevity of what Revel calls "the anti-American obsession" in Europe, especially in France.

Hubert Beuve-Mery, the future founder and editor of Le Monde, wrote in May 1944: "The Americans constitute a real danger for France -- a danger different in kind from the threat that may eventually emerge from Russia.

"The Americans can always prevent us from making the necessary revolution and their materialism does not even have the tragic grandeur of the materialism of the totalitarians. If they cling to a veritable cult of the idea of liberty, they don't feel the need to liberate themselves from the servitudes that their capitalism entails."

As Beuve-Mery was writing those words, the Nazis had all the best tables at the top nightspots in the French capital, the Jews in France were still being rounded up and transported to Auschwitz and the 4th U.S. Infantry Division was still three months away from liberating Paris.

Beuve-Mery's warning about American liberty came a month before D-Day, the start of the invasion of Europe by the Allied forces at Normandy. Eight days after D-Day, Alfred Rosenberg, Reich minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories, ordered the kidnapping of 40,000 Polish children, ages 10 to 14, for use as slave labor. In Amsterdam, the Gestapo was still several months away from arresting Anne Frank's family and the Hungarians were only a short time away from putting upwards of 400,000 Jews on the trains to Auschwitz.

Still, what bothered Beuve-Mery was Americans who didn't feel the urge to separate themselves from capitalism and that even the manner of American materialism somehow lacked the pizzazz of the more totalitarian stylists.

Move forward a generation and National Post columnist Mark Steyn reports on his encounter with some French snootiness: "I was in Paris a couple of weeks ago and I well remember the retired French diplomat who assured me that 'a man like George W. Bush is simply not possible in our politics. For a creature of such crude, simplistic and extreme views to be one of the two principal candidates in a presidential election would be inconceivable here. Inconceivable.'"

It's also inconceivable that the French could have kicked the Nazis out of Paris without the 4th U.S. Infantry or prevented the Russian bear from gobbling up all of Bordeaux. Truth is, these bright and chic Europeans got themselves into two world wars and were saved both times by the simplistic and crude.

Remember back in August 2003 when a heat wave blew through France and killed 15,000 people? Given population differences, that's the equivalent of 75,000 deaths in the U.S., just due to a couple hot weeks. It's a death toll over 40 percent larger than the total American losses in Vietnam.

The crude would have made a quick stop at Home Depot for an air conditioner. In Paris, however, the non-crude left for a month at the beach and expected the government to keep an eye on granny.

"There are a lot of elderly people alone in big cities in August," said Health Ministry spokesman Laurence Danand. "They are often alone in Paris when their families go away on holiday." The daily Liberation newspaper called the result a "massacre" and accused the government of doing "too little, too late."

"The government was on holiday," said Dr. Patrick Pelloux, president of the Association of Hospital Emergency Doctors of France. President Jacques Chirac was at his vacation spot in Canada. Most government ministers, according to news reports, had been too reluctant to cut short their time in the sun.

The doctors, too, were missing. "Doctors, medical staff, and government personnel were on vacation," reported Norman Ho, a senior editor at the Harvard International Review. "It caught French hospitals and medical staff completely off-guard, and left many victims to die daily with astonishing frequency in crowded hospital rooms and lobbies."

See why they think we're nuts? It's what psychiatry professor John D. Gartner says in his book "The Hypomanic Edge: The link between (a little) craziness and (a lot of) success in America." We're manic without the depressive, too much so to die in the lobby, or blame ourselves for 9/11.

And it might be genetic. A nation of immigrants, suggests Gartner, might have a strong gene pool of hypomanics. 

What No One Will Tell You About the Dollar in 2010

http://worldcurrencywatch.com/2010/01/15/what-no-one-will-tell-you-about-the-dollar-in-2010/

at Von Rohr (January 15, 2010)

(Hint: The Most Successful and Respected Investors Already Know)

A silent stampede is taking place on Wall Street. While most investors cling to the hope of a rising stock market – some of the world’s wealthiest traders are doing something else.

With each passing week, they’re funneling billions into the most hated… beaten-down investment in the world: the U.S. dollar.

Don’t believe me?

Let’s look at the black-and-white figures.

• Daily volume on the market’s most popular “dollar stock,” PowerShares DB U.S. Dollar Index Bullish fund (UUP) recently soared beyond 15,000,000 shares – five time higher than normal.
• This intense interest caused the fund to sell out…and halt the issuance of new shares for 18 days.
• Meanwhile, call options on this dollar bull fund outnumber puts by a factor of 25 to 1.

Obviously, all these investors all believe the dollar is about to rise. But what (or who) is driving this quiet dollar rally?

Nobody knows for sure. But…

A Few Dollar-Bears Have Stepped Forward with a Shocking Confession!

Jim Rogers is one of the most ardent dollar-bears in the world. So much so, that he moved his family to Singapore, three years ago.

But now, he’s stocking up on dollars…

“I have been buying U.S. dollars in the last two months betting on [a] near-term rebound.”

Bond king, Bill Gross has joined the party. Until recently, his massive Total Return Fund held a $13.9 billion short position on the dollar. But just a few weeks ago, he unwound this bet and shifted billions into cash.

Marc Faber… yes that Mark Faber who claims that gold will hit $3,000 an ounce… now says the buck could soar 10% or more this year.

These aren’t exactly “Joe Blow” investors.

So why is this story so far off the mainstream radar?

Simple… Most Americans do not hold gold, foreign equities or currencies; assets most likely to dip in value as the dollar ticks higher.

For that reason, the press has banished this story to the back pages – when they cover it at all.

Federal Government Confirms: Dollar Demand is on the Rise

Luckily our research analyst, Evaldo Albuquerque, has been tracking this development.

Last week, he placed a call to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and confirmed that intense investor interest has caused PowerShares to issue 240 million new shares of their Dollar Bullish fund, UUP.

According to records filed at SEC.gov, this is the second time in 60 days that the fund has sold out.

In light of this new development, Evaldo has put together a special briefing for FX University Daily readers. In this 12-page document, he explains the rising-dollar phenomenon and reveals how small investors can exploit it over the next 30-60 days – and target returns of 36% to 301% without risky leverage.

As I mentioned, this story is still unfolding. My fellow editors will have more onMonday. Til then…

Good Currency Investing,
Kat Von Rohr, Managing Editor
FX University Daily

P.S. The last time our currency team spotted this movement in the US dollar index, we were able to pinpoint a strategy that turned every $400 invested into $1,268. This similar pattern has been spotted again. For full details, click here.

Mark Landsbaum: What to say to a 'warmer'

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/-234092--.html

It has been tough to keep up with all the bad news for global warming alarmists. We're on the edge of our chair, waiting for the next shoe to drop. This has been an Imelda Marcos kind of season for shoe-dropping about global warming.

At your next dinner party, here are some of the latest talking points to bring up when someone reminds you that Al Gore and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won Nobel prizes for their work on global warming.

ClimateGate – This scandal began the latest round of revelations when thousands of leaked documents from Britain's East Anglia Climate Research Unit showed systematic suppression and discrediting of climate skeptics' views and discarding of temperature data, suggesting a bias for making the case for warming. Why do such a thing if, as global warming defenders contend, the "science is settled?"

FOIGate – The British government has since determined someone at East Anglia committed a crime by refusing to release global warming documents sought in 95 Freedom of Information Act requests. The CRU is one of three international agencies compiling global temperature data. If their stuff's so solid, why the secrecy?

ChinaGate – An investigation by the U.K.'s left-leaning Guardian newspaper found evidence that Chinese weather station measurements not only were seriously flawed, but couldn't be located. "Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China?" the paper asked. The paper's investigation also couldn't find corroboration of what Chinese scientists turned over to American scientists, leaving unanswered, "how much of the warming seen in recent decades is due to the local effects of spreading cities, rather than global warming?" The Guardian contends that researchers covered up the missing data for years.

HimalayaGate – An Indian climate official admitted in January that, as lead author of the IPCC's Asian report, he intentionally exaggerated when claiming Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035 in order to prod governments into action. This fraudulent claim was not based on scientific research or peer-reviewed. Instead it was originally advanced by a researcher, since hired by a global warming research organization, who later admitted it was "speculation" lifted from a popular magazine. This political, not scientific, motivation at least got some researcher funded.

PachauriGate – Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman who accepted with Al Gore the Nobel Prize for scaring people witless, at first defended the Himalaya melting scenario. Critics, he said, practiced "voodoo science." After the melting-scam perpetrator 'fessed up, Pachauri admitted to making a mistake. But, he insisted, we still should trust him.

PachauriGate II – Pachauri also claimed he didn't know before the 192-nation climate summit meeting in Copenhagen in December that the bogus Himalayan glacier claim was sheer speculation. But the London Times reported that a prominent science journalist said he had pointed out those errors in several e-mails and discussions to Pachauri, who "decided to overlook it." Stonewalling? Cover up? Pachauri says he was "preoccupied." Well, no sense spoiling the Copenhagen party, where countries like Pachauri's India hoped to wrench billions from countries like the United States to combat global warming's melting glaciers. Now there are calls for Pachauri's resignation.

SternGate – One excuse for imposing worldwide climate crackdown has been the U.K.'s 2006 Stern Report, an economic doomsday prediction commissioned by the government. Now the U.K. Telegraph reports that quietly after publication "some of these predictions had been watered down because the scientific evidence on which they were based could not be verified." Among original claims now deleted were that northwest Australia has had stronger typhoons in recent decades, and that southern Australia lost rainfall because of rising ocean temperatures. Exaggerated claims get headlines. Later, news reporters disclose the truth. Why is that?

SternGate II – A researcher now claims the Stern Report misquoted his work to suggest a firm link between global warming and more-frequent and severe floods and hurricanes. Robert Muir-Wood said his original research showed no such link. He accused Stern of "going far beyond what was an acceptable extrapolation of the evidence." We're shocked.

AmazonGate – The London Times exposed another shocker: the IPCC claim that global warming will wipe out rain forests was fraudulent, yet advanced as "peer-reveiwed" science. The Times said the assertion actually "was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise," "authored by two green activists" and lifted from a report from the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group. The "research" was based on a popular science magazine report that didn't bother to assess rainfall. Instead, it looked at the impact of logging and burning. The original report suggested "up to 40 percent" of Brazilian rain forest was extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall, but the IPCC expanded that to cover the entire Amazon, the Times reported.

PeerReviewGate – The U.K. Sunday Telegraph has documented at least 16 nonpeer-reviewed reports (so far) from the advocacy group World Wildlife Fund that were used in the IPCC's climate change bible, which calls for capping manmade greenhouse gases.

RussiaGate – Even when global warming alarmists base claims on scientific measurements, they've often had their finger on the scale. Russian think tank investigators evaluated thousands of documents and e-mails leaked from the East Anglia research center and concluded readings from the coldest regions of their nation had been omitted, driving average temperatures up about half a degree.

Russia-Gate II – Speaking of Russia, a presentation last October to the Geological Society of America showed how tree-ring data from Russia indicated cooling after 1961, but was deceptively truncated and only artfully discussed in IPCC publications. Well, at least the tree-ring data made it into the IPCC report, albeit disguised and misrepresented.

U.S.Gate – If Brits can't be trusted, are Yanks more reliable? The U.S. National Climate Data Center has been manipulating weather data too, say computer expert E. Michael Smith and meteorologist Joesph D'Aleo. Forty years ago there were 6,000 surface-temperature measuring stations, but only 1,500 by 1990, which coincides with what global warming alarmists say was a record temperature increase. Most of the deleted stations were in colder regions, just as in the Russian case, resulting in misleading higher average temperatures.

IceGate – Hardly a continent has escaped global warming skewing. The IPCC based its findings of reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and in Africa on a feature story of climbers' anecdotes in a popular mountaineering magazine, and a dissertation by a Switzerland university student, quoting mountain guides. Peer-reviewed? Hype? Worse?

ResearchGate – The global warming camp is reeling so much lately it must have seemed like a major victory when a Penn State University inquiry into climate scientist Michael Mann found no misconduct regarding three accusations of climate research impropriety. But the university did find "further investigation is warranted" to determine whether Mann engaged in actions that "seriously deviated from accepted practices for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities." Being investigated for only one fraud is a global warming victory these days.

ReefGate – Let's not forget the alleged link between climate change and coral reef degradation. The IPCC cited not peer-reviewed literature, but advocacy articles by Greenpeace, the publicity-hungry advocacy group, as its sole source for this claim.

AfricaGate – The IPCC claim that rising temperatures could cut in half agricultural yields in African countries turns out to have come from a 2003 paper published by a Canadian environmental think tank – not a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

DutchGate – The IPCC also claimed rising sea levels endanger the 55 percent of the Netherlands it says is below sea level. The portion of the Netherlands below sea level actually is 20 percent. The Dutch environment minister said she will no longer tolerate climate researchers' errors.

AlaskaGate – Geologists for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography and their U.S. and Canadian colleagues say previous studies largely overestimated by 40 percent Alaskan glacier loss for 40 years. This flawed data are fed into those computers to predict future warming.

Fold this column up and lay it next to your napkin the next time you have Al Gore or his ilk to dine. It should make interesting after-dinner conversation.

Contact the writer: mlandsbaum@ocregister.comor 714-796-5025

THERE has been no global warming for 15 years, a key scientist admitted yesterday in a major U-turn.

THE GREAT CLIMATE CHANGE RETREAT

http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/158214

THERE has been no global warming for 15 years, a key scientist admitted yesterday in a major U-turn.

Professor Phil Jones, who is at the centre of the “Climategate” affair, conceded that there has been no “statistically significant” rise in temperatures since 1995.

The admission comes as new research casts serious doubt on temperature records collected around the world and used to support the global warmingtheory.

Researchers said yesterday that warming recorded by weather stations was often caused by local factors rather than global change.

The revelations will be seized upon by sceptics as fresh evidence that the science of global warming is flawed and climate change is not man-made.

The Daily Express has led the way in exposing flaws in the arguments supporting global warming.

Last month we revealed how the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change was forced to admit its key claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was “speculation” lifted from a 1999 magazine article. The influential IPCC then admitted it had got the key claim wrong and announced a review.

The Daily Express has also published a dossier listing 100 reasons why global warming was part of a natural cycle and not man-made.

Yesterday it emerged that Professor Jones, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, had admitted he has trouble “keeping track” of the information.

Colleagues have expressed concern that the reason he has refused Freedom of Information requests for the data is that he has lost some of the crucial paper

Professor Jones also conceded for the first time that the world may have been warmer in medieval times than now. Sceptics have long argued the world was warmer between 800 and 1300AD because of high temperatures in northern countries.

Climate change advocates have always said these temperatures cannot be compared to present day global warming figures because they only apply to one specific zone.

But Professor Jones said: “There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

“For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the southern hemisphere. There are very few climatic records for these latter two regions.

“Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th century warmth would not be unprecedented.” Professor Jones first came under scrutiny when he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in which leaked emails were said to show scientists were manipulating data.

Researchers were accused of deliberately removing a “blip” in findings between 1920 and 1940, which showed an increase in the Earth’s temperature.

John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama and a former lead author on the IPCC, said: “The apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”

Ross McKitrick, of the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited to review the IPCC’s last report said: “We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias.”

Anglo-Saxon media out to sink us, says Spain Spain's intelligence services are investigating the role of British and American media in fomenting financial turmoil

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/14/jose-zapatero-media-spain-recession

Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has said that he believes US and English media outlets want to damage the Spanish economy Photograph: Paul White/AP

It is the only economy in Western Europe still in recession: property prices are crashing, unemployment has risen to more than 4 million, and some are already muttering that it could end up with a financial crisis worse than Greece's.

But at least Spain now has someone to blame: the country's intelligence services are investigating the role of British and American media in fomenting financial turmoil, the respected El País daily reported .

The newspaper said the country's National Intelligence Centre (CNI) was investigating a series of "speculative attacks" against the Spanish economy amid bond market jitters about the country's growing national debt.

"The (CNI's) economic intelligence division … is investigating whether investors' attacks and the aggressiveness of some Anglo-Saxon media are driven by market forces and challenges facing the Spanish economy – or whether there is something more behind this campaign," El País said.

The report follows claims from prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's socialist government that speculators and newspaper editorial writers had launched a concerted attack.

The Financial Times has been especially critical of the government's handling of the Spanish economy in recent weeks. It has been joined by the Economist and other publications which have questioned Zapatero's economic management.

The newspaper said its report was based on "various sources" but said CNI sources declined to comment. Officials at the defence ministry, which runs the CNI, and Zapatero's Moncloa Palace offices were unable to confirm or deny the report.

Public works minister José Blanco, who is deputy leader of the Socialist party, has already said "somewhat murky manoeuvres" were behind market pressures on Spain. "Nothing that is happening, including the apocalyptic editorials in foreign media, is just chance. It happens because it's in the interest of certain individuals," he said recently.

"Now that we are coming out of the crisis, they do not want the markets to be regulated so they can go back to their old practices," he added.

El País reported last week that Zapatero had made a similar allegation to his party's executive committee.

Today it reported the prime minister had insinuated the media were part of a bigger offensive against the euro.

Intel chief: Al-Qaeda likely to attempt attack

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-02-03-terror-threats-cia_N.htm?csp=hf

WASHINGTON (AP) — Al-Qaeda can be expected to attempt an attack on the United States in the next three to six months, senior U.S. intelligence officials told Congress.

The terrorist organization is deploying operatives to the United States to carry out new attacks from inside the country, including "clean" recruits with a negligible trail of terrorist contacts, CIA Director Leon Panetta said. The chilling warning comes as the Christmas airline attack suspect,Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutullab, is cooperating with federal investigators, a federal law enforcement official said Tuesday.

Al-Qaeda is also inspiring homegrown extremists to trigger violence on their own, Panetta said.

The annual assessment of the nation's terror threats provided no startling new terror trends, but amplified growing concerns since the Christmas airline attack in Detroit that militants are growing harder to detect and moving more quickly in their plots.

"The biggest threat is not so much that we face an attack like 9/11. It is that al-Qaeda is adapting its methods in ways that oftentimes make it difficult to detect," Panetta told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Several senators tangled over whether suspected terrorists should be tried in civilian or military court. At the same time, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation that would force the Obama administration to backtrack on its plans to try Sept. 11 defendants in federal court in New York and use military tribunals instead.

As al-Qaeda presses new terror plots, it is increasingly relying on new recruits with minimal training and simple devices to carry out attacks, Panetta said as part of the terror assessment to Congress.

Panetta also warned of the danger of extremists acting alone: "It's the lone-wolf strategy that I think we have to pay attention to as the main threat to this country," he said.

The hearing comes just over a month since a failed attempt to bring down an airliner in Detroit, allegedly by Abdulmutullab. And the assessment comes only a few months after U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hassan was accused of single-handedly attacking his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13.

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said with changes made since the Dec. 25 attack, U.S. intelligence would he able to identify and stop someone like the Detroit bomber before he got on the plane. But he warned a more careful and skilled would-be terrorist might not be detected.

FBI Director Robert Mueller defended the FBI's handling of the Detroit attempted bombing attack, disputing assertions that agents short-circuited more intelligence insights from the Nigerian suspect by quickly providing him with his rights to remain silent and retain a lawyer.

Mueller was asked by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein whether the interrogation of Abdulmutullab continues despite the fact that the suspect had already been read his legal right to remain silent. Mueller replied: "Yes."

Mueller said that in "case after case," terrorists have provided actionable intelligence even after they were read their rights and charged with crimes. Mueller said they know such cooperation can result in shorter sentences or other consideration from the government.

Mueller also said that a new FBI-CIA interrogation team created in August to replace controversial CIA interrogations had been used several times already.

That seemed to contradict what Blair told Congress in January. He said at a hearing on Abdulmutallab that he thought the interrogation team should have been used to question the suspect but later clarified his remarks to say that the teams were not used because they were not yet fully operational.

Intelligence officials confirmed Tuesday the High-Value Interrogation Group is not yet fully formed but said joint interrogation teams are available for use.

Panetta confirmed that the agency participates on the team, though not in a lead role.

"They're backup, but they are doing some of the interviewing," he said.

Hundreds of terror suspects have already been convicted in civilian federal courts, including convicted airline shoe bomber Richard Reid.

But Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, offered a bill Tuesday that would prohibit the government from using Justice Department funds to prosecute suspects charged in the Sept. 11 attack in civilian courts.

The move comes on the heels of the Obama administration's decision to rethink whether it would try self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in a New York City courtroom.

The proposed law would cover people who legally could be prosecuted by a military commission, applying to terror suspects who are not U.S. citizens. By Tuesday evening, the bill had support from 18 senators, mostlyRepublicans.

During the terror assessment hearing, Blair also warned of the growing cyberthreat, saying computer-related attacks have become dynamic and malicious.

Obama has promised to make cybersecurity a priority in his administration, but the president's new budget asks for a decrease in funds for the Homeland Security Department's cybersecurity division.

The government's first quadrennial homeland security review states that high consequence and large-scale cyberattacks could massively disable or hurt international financial, commercial and physical infrastructure.

The report, obtained by the Associated Press, said these types of cyberattacks could cripple the movement of people and goods around the world and bring vital social and economic programs to a halt.