Tuesday November 24, 2009
For Thanksgiving 2009, U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will feast on 467,499 pounds of turkey, 199,779 pounds of ham and beef, 61,813 pounds of stuffing, and 68,020 pies and cakes.
They'll also consume 13,231 cans of sweet potatoes and 8,952 cans of cranberry sauce, per the Defense Logistics Agency via USA Today. (Cans? Our troops aren't worth fresh produce and home-style cooking?)
Sadly for both our troops and our country, they'll likely also experience Thanksgiving 2010 in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The White House leaked word yesterday that President Obama will finally announce, next week, his verdict regarding committing more troops to Afghanistan. And, as liberals who voted for Obama in 2008 feared, Obama is apparently poised to send another 34,000 troops to the endless, futile fighting in Afghanistan.
After Obama's addition of 34,000 more troops, the U.S. will have more than 220,000 soldiers embattled in two fruitless Middle East wars: 102,000 in Afghanistan, and as of now, more than 120,000 remaining in Iraq. (For the latest, see Iraq War Facts & Statistics at Nov 20, 2009.)
Despite being mired in disastrous economic doldrums at home, the U.S. continues to spend $7.3 billion monthly in Iraq, plus $3.6 billion for Afghanistan, per a Congressional Research Service report dated September 28, 2009.
You read that correctly: $10.9 billion now spent monthly on two losing, directionless, corporate-enriching wars.
And yet Obama, who won the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination by billing himself as the anti-"dumb war" candidate, plans to up the ante with more troops, more spending, more casualties, more catastropic injuries... all for naught, as history has richly illustrated. Frankly, nothing could be much dumber than throwing untold tens of billions more down the black holes of Iraq and Afghanistan.
My fervent Thanksgiving prayer is that our so-called brilliant President comes to his senses, and announces full and immediate withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from the Middle East, leaving less 40,000 American soldiers in both countries combined for a limited, well-defined post-U.S. peacekeeping transtion period.
To do otherwise... to order 34,000 more U.S. soliders to Afghanistan... would be incalculably devastating for the U.S. economy. Would be cruelly demoralizing for the U.S. armed forces, which are already badly demoralized as epitomized by record-high suicide and desertion rates.
And I fear will be as deadly to President Obama's fledgling tenure in the White House as Vietnam was to Lyndon Johnson's presidency.
If Obama loses his liberal base, he basically has no more supporters, as Palin-loving conservative crazies and the rest of the Republican Party will never, ever support him. And significantly increasing the Middle East war effort will cause liberals to irrevocably lose what remains of their beleaguered faith in Barack Obama. Period!
So please, Mr. President, do the right thing next week by telling our great country that most of our troops will finally be returning home sooner, not later, and that no more Americans will be sent to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And please tell those brave fighting men and women that next year, they can enjoy Thanksgiving turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, and lovingly homemade sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce, with their families, not in a mess hall thousands of miles away from home.
(Photo taken on November 22, 2007 of a U.S. soldier at the Baghdad eating Thanksgiving dinner with his weapon close at hand: Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
Sunday November 22, 2009
The Senate Health Care Refom bill (the
"Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," H.R. 3590), which begins debate on November 30, 2009, thankfully stripped away the pro-life abortion language found in the
House's controversial Stupak Amendment.
Instead, the Senate health care bill, which was unanimously supported by Senate Democrats for discussion and debate, replaced onerous Stupak Amendment prohibitions with mandates consistent with the Hyde Amendment, which has promulgated simply since 1976 about the use of federal funds:
"None of the funds... shall be expended for any abortion except when it is made known to the federal entity or official to which funds are appropriated under this Act that such procedure is necessary to save the life of the mother or that the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest."
The House's Stupak Amendment rightfully riled up pro-choice activists by expanding the pool of funds that may not be expended on abortions, to, in the future, cover all plans, both private and public, included on the insurance exchange established by both the House and Senate health care bills. Explains Jill of Feministe:
"What the Stupak amendment does is block funds not only from federally-funded health care programs, but from private programs as well. While it doesn't outlaw private insurance companies from covering abortion, it does block them from offering abortion coverage to people participating in the health care exchange; those numbers are expected to be fairly large, creating an incentive for companies to cut abortion coverage over time."
My colleague, Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties, crows that "... this was a pro-choice victory bolstered by one of the largest grassroots lobbying efforts in the history of the movement. We flooded our senators with calls, emails, and letters--and so far, it appears to be working."
Tom then urges, "Now let's continue to push our senators to make sure that the Senate language, rather than the House language, appears in the final bill."
I agree with Tom, of course: Hyde Amendment language is far preferable to the more restrictive Stupak Amendment wording if federal funds will, indeed, continue to be barred from payments for abortions.
But abortion rights extremists need to remember that this is health care legislation, not abortion legislation. Debate of the Senate health care refom bill will be a long, hard, often bitter slog, and will necessarily require difficult compromises by all participants. And some of those compromises might be about the use of federal funds and federally-offered plans to perform abortion procedures.
To deprive 31 million uninsured Americans of all health care services because a vocal minority refused to compromise on one issue that would affect a tiny fraction of Americans would be both cruel and immoral in my common sense view.
And while my colleague, whom I greatly admire, doesn't like it when I label such actions as a "self-absorbed overreaction" riddled with "selfish dramatics," that's precisely what it would be.
For the full text of what my colleague takes issue with, read Pro-Choice Advocates Are Wrong to Block House Health Care Bill .
(Photo taken on November 19, 2009: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Friday November 20, 2009
As much as one can analyze a 1,274-page health care bill in a few days, I've taken a first in-depth glance at the
Senate Health Care Reform Bill, and find it to be a good enough start.
(Read my summary at Key Provisions of the Senate Health Care Reform Bill.)
The problem, of course, is that this legislation will only get less, not more, liberal as the Senate endlessly debates and nitpicks the bill. But I digress, as that dilemma is down the road, and hardly today's challenge.
Briefly, the primary difference between the House Health Care Bill, which was passed by the House on November 7, 2009, and this Senate companion bill, the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," H.R. 3590, is NOT in coverage and benefits for U.S. citizens and legal residents: those appear to be remarkably similar, including a watered-down Medicare-like public plan option.
Instead, the primary difference between the House and Senate health care reform bills lies in planned sources of funding for the public plan option: while the House bill relies mainly on levying employers who fail to provide coverage for their employees, the Senate version relies more on new taxes and levies on the health care and pharmaceutical industries, and on high-income individuals, especially those with employer-provided "cadillac plan" health care coverage.
An interesting new wrinkle introduced by the Senate Health Care Reform Plan is a 5% tax on elective cosmatic surgery. (Pardon the "wrinkle" pun... I couldn't resist.)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has set Saturday evening, November 21st, for a Senate cloture vote to begin debate of the proposed legislation. Three moderate Democratic senators from notoriously conservative states... Landrieu of Louisiana, Nelson of Nebraska, and Lincoln of Arkansas... are said to be dragging their feet in support of this vote, which requires 60 senators to vote YES.
My guess is that these three senators will do the right thing (especially after being lured by pricey legislative goodies), and vote to let Senate debate formally commence on this overdue, urgently needed measure.
Of course, to garner the requisite 60 votes, Democrats will also need the support of former Democrat, Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, since presumably, no Republicans will vote to advance debate of the bill.
God only knows how attention-seeking, liberal turncoat Lieberman will vote tomorrow. And I shudder to even imagine what Democrats might have to concede to get this political narcissist's support on this bill.
But undoubtedly, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid will do what he must to move health care reform forward. And post-Thanksgiving, the fireworks of the Senate health care reform bill debate WILL begin!
Tuesday November 17, 2009
Without doubt, immigration reform will be to 2010 what health care reform has been to 2009: the headline-grabbing dominant issue, hotly debated, replete with plenty of ugly Republican rhetoric, and will ultimately culminate in some Congressionally-negotiated form of landmark legislation.
Under the media radar On November 14, 2009, the Obama administration, via DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano delivered an historic speech in which she succinctly outlined:
- strong economic, national security, and humanitarian cases for comprehensive U.S. immigration reform in 2010;
- Recounted vast improvements in immigration law enforcement and border security since 2007, when Congress last debated comprehensive immigration reform; and
- Described the administration's "Three-legged Stool" approach to immigration reform, which includes effective enforcement, improved legal/approval processes for workers and employers, and a "firm but fair way to deal with those who are already here."
Like I also said early in 2009 about the House healthcare reform bill, there's just nothing I don't like about President Obama's 2010 Immigration Reform Agenda.
The time is right for the Obama Administration's next big domestic dilemma, immigration reform, to be tackled with vigor. Orated Secretary Napolitano, "Like the Administration's other priorities, when it comes to immigration, we are addressing a status quo that is simply unacceptable. Everybody recognizes that our current system isn't working and that our immigration laws need to change:
- America's businesses, workers, and faith-based organizations are calling for reform.
- Law enforcement and government at every level are asking for reform.
- And at the Department of Homeland Security, we need reform to do our job of enforcing the law and keeping our country secure."
Oh, and Democrats just might have a secondary reason for moving immigration reform to the top of the 2010 issues list: it gives Republicans oodles of time to make crassly offensive, racially-based remarks about Latino illegal immigrants during the run-up to the 2010 Congressional mid-term elections... just as they did during the 2007 Immigration Reform debate, which led several normally-red western states to vote Democratic in 2008.
Take the time to read President Obama's 2010 Immigration Reform Agenda.
