My Way Or The Highway! Another Clunker?

If Obama leaves a bad taste in your mouth (See 1 below.) then you might want to visit Sweet-Tammys.com

This is what Tammy has to say: Believe in the power of sweets.


We've always believed in the power of sweets: the immediate gratification, the way they engage the senses, the sheer pleasure of biting into something rich and delicious. They're indulgence, reward and escape, all at the same time. Is it any wonder that they've become our lives' work?!

When we moved to Pittsburgh in 2006, we were inspired by the city and our new neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, a vibrant area where mom and pop businesses can still thrive and positively impact the community. We quickly realized that Pittsburgh is the perfect place for the bakery of our dreams - one where our neighbors stop in for a cup of coffee and a sweet treat, and we become part of each others' lives.

We're thrilled to offer irresistible goodies, made from the freshest and finest ingredients, to our friends in Pittsburgh — and beyond. This is not your grandmother's bakery, though. We know that the experience is as important as the product, so at Sweet Tammy's, you'll get a warm welcome from Daniel and Tammy, the young couple that own the bakery, bake the goodies and balance the books!

The aroma of goodies in the oven, free refills on coffees and teas, a wall of candy — all set to jazz melodies, a view of the kitchen and free wi-fi. Our bakery is an inviting haven: warm, comfortable and welcoming, just like Sweet Tammy herself. Come on in and stay awhile.

Read more about our products below. Click here to read what other people are saying about us.

So that everyone can have irresistible treats in their lives, we donate baked goods to the Squirrel Hill Food Pantry daily. The original Sweet Tammy's in Pittsburgh.

As I mentioned in one of my previous memos it was only a matter of time before Ted's death would be called upon to provide the grease for passing a health care bill.

If it were up to Obama , Kennedy would be beatified and made into a saint and placed alongside Mother Teresa. (See 2 below.)

Obama has to walk a thin line in order to appease his far Left without making Blue Dogs bluer. (See 3 below.)

No interest in fixing just want to tranfer wealth through health care and expanded government is the conduit. (See 4 below.)

Now for the other side - fawning over Obama. (See 5, 5a and 5b below.)

Two editorials that bring reality into focus. (See 6 and 6a below.)

Still did not see Obama's health care speech but the snippets I did see would suggest to me that nothing has changed in terms of his approach. As I indicated in a previous memo he continues to seem to need enemies, he still seems to be incapable of understanding that by turning his legislative initiatives over to Pelosi and the Far Left he is now stuck with the consequences of loss of control over his own agenda. Thus, blaming others, when his party is in control, does not fly. Finally, his radical ways continue to place him outside main stream America.

He needs to look in the mirror but being somewhat narcissistic he only sees his 'enemies' - the wee people!

Iran and Obama seem to be parting ways before they ever got to sit down. Pressure mounts on Israel? (See 7 and 7a below.)



Dick



1) A Man on His Way to Bitterness
By Tucker Carlson

The president Wednesday night was battling enemies, real and imagined.

This didn’t look anything like the Barack Obama I remember from the campaign. Obama the candidate seemed almost unaware of his opponents. At his best, which was most of the time, he rose above them completely, utterly unwounded by the attacks.

He also seemed like an adult. Obama was forever reminding audiences of the hard choices America needed to make, choices that had been sugarcoated when they weren’t ignored completely by politicians too fearful to tell the whole truth. Once elected, Obama promised, that would change.

Never has a president been warped by Washington quicker. At times tonight, Obama sounded like an embattled second-termer with a 35 percent approval rating. What percentage of his speech was spent lashing out at his enemies, real and imagined? Radio and cable-television pundits, George W. Bush, former Congresses, unnamed ghouls employing “scare tactics,” whose “only agenda is to stop reform at any cost”—they’re all against him, Obama said. And they’re lying.

Never has a president been warped by Washington quicker. At times tonight, Obama sounded like an embattled second-termer with a 35 percent approval rating.

This isn’t how confident leaders speak. These are the complaints of a man on his way to bitterness. So soon?

And whatever happened to the hard choices? Obama spent the early part of the speech describing his plan as the reasonable middle ground between a single-payer Canadian-style system favored by the left wing, and the laissez-faire, Hobbesian chaos so beloved on the right. It’s a plan, he said, that will add “not one dime to the deficit, now or in the future.”

Fine. But when it came time to explain where the money would come from—that $900 billion over 10 years—he flinched. His answer: Why, by eliminating waste and fraud from the current private system, of course. Also, the insurance companies (maybe the most reviled industry in the world since the makers of DDT went under) may have to reduce some of their obscene profits.

And that was pretty much it. Nobody else—not seniors, not the middle class or the poor or anyone else you have ever met personally—was going to have to pay anything for this wonderful new system. In Obama’s telling, there are only upsides. Free ice cream for everybody.

This is deceptive. In fact, it’s a lie. Obama the candidate would have been ashamed to say it.

Tucker Carlson is a contributor to the Fox News Channel. He previously hosted The Situation with Tucker Carlson and Tucker on MSNBC after working for CNN.


2) Obama's Health Care Pitch:Now with more Ted Kennedy.
By Fred Barnes



President Obama's speech to Congress last night can be summed up rather easily. It was 40 minutes of boilerplate followed by a socko, emotional finish exploiting the death of Senator Teddy Kennedy. Which leads to this question: was Obama's finishing kick sufficient to achieve his goal of "reframing" the national debate on health care that hasn't been going his way? I don't think so.

Obama didn't come close to offering a persuasive explanation of how he'd pay for ObamaCare. And that remains his biggest problem. He promises much, much more in guaranteed health benefits and says it will cost less. Even Obama himself couldn't really believe that. No one else who can add and subtract does. Cut "waste, fraud, and abuse?" Not a chance.

There was one mild surprise. Instead of scaling back his plan to comply with public sentiment, Obama stuck to every promise and provision on which he's dwelled in more than two dozen speeches. There was nothing new, except the size of his audience.

From this, it's clear he's decided to push a partisan bill through Congress with Democratic votes alone. We could tell this from the pleased expression House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had on her face throughout the speech. She's belongs to the no-compromise school.

But unless Obama has suddenly transformed public opinion, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won't be able to find enough Democrats, even among the usually malleable Blue Dogs, willing to vote for ObamaCare. Defy the public to bail out a president in trouble? Only Democrats in safe seats are likely to do that.

I had five questions that I looked for Obama to answer in his address. I wanted to see if he was serious about achieving moderate, bipartisan health care. It turns out he's not. Here are the questions.

1) Did he advocate real tort reform to curb health care costs? Nope. He simply talked up a pilot project that he said was President Bush's idea. This was a trifle.

2) Did he offer anything of significance to Republicans? No.

3) Did he bring up his favorite straw man about those whose alternative to ObamaCare is to do nothing at all to reform the health care system? Yes, more than once.

4) Did he demonize the health care providers he's actually made deals with? Well, not all of them, but the health insurers took their usual beating.

5) Did he repeat the false claims he's made repeatedly in earlier speeches? Yes indeed. He brought up nearly all of them, including the ones on no abortion coverage, no loss of one's current health insurance, and the "savings" that would come from more preventive care.

As a matter of stagecraft, Obama made a big mistake. He spent precious minutes delivering his same old arguments that have left a majority of Americans cold. He should have started with the Kennedy riff.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD



3)Obama's Big Political Gamble:Red-state Democrats are being asked to risk their seats.
By KARL ROVE
Millions of Americans watched President Barack Obama's speech last night to a joint session of Congress. Much of it was familiar, having been delivered in at least 111 speeches, town halls, radio addresses and other appearances on health care. But his most revealing remarks on the topic came on Monday, at a Labor Day union picnic in Cincinnati.

There Mr. Obama accused critics of his health reforms of spreading "lies" and said opponents want "to do nothing." These false charges do not reveal a spirit of bipartisanship nor do they create a foundation for dialogue. It is more like what you'd say if you are planning to jam through a bill without compromise. Which is exactly what Mr. Obama is about to attempt.

Team Obama is essentially asking congressional Democrats to take a huge gamble. The White House is arguing that ramming through a controversial bill is safer for Democrats than not passing anything. This is based on the false premise that the death of HillaryCare is what doomed Democrats in 1994. Mr. Obama told a reporter in July that the defeat of HillaryCare "Helped [Republicans] regain the House." Former President Bill Clinton echoed that thought recently by saying "doing nothing" today is "the worst thing we can do for the Democrats."

Actually, attempting to pass HillaryCare is what brought down the party. Voters rejected a massively complicated, hugely expensive government takeover of health care and the Democrats who pushed it.

In reality, it is riskier to be at odds with where Americans are than just standing by as an unpopular proposal goes down. The problem for Democrats is they are scaring voters by proposing a takeover of health care that spends too much money, creates too much debt, gives Washington too much power, and takes too much decision-making away from doctors and patients.

The political risk for Democrats is clearest among seniors. A late July Gallup poll showed they were the age group least likely to believe health-care reform would improve medical care. Seniors are coming out strongly against Mr. Obama's health-care plan even though they're already covered by government care. Perhaps it's because, as a White House fact sheet makes clear, he wants to pay for his plan's $948 billion cost over the next 10 years by cutting some $622 billion from Medicare and Medicaid.

The latest Pew poll (August 20-27) found that 30% of seniors supported health-care reform while 54% were opposed. In July, Pew showed 29% in favor and 48% opposed. The same August Pew poll shows Republicans gaining 12 points among seniors on the generic ballot, compared to where they stood in the 2006 congressional elections. The generic ballot among seniors then was at 50% Democrat, 39% Republican. Today, it's 51% Republican and 43% Democrat.

This matters because seniors make up a disproportionate share of the off-year vote. CNN exit polls showed that they were roughly 16% of eligible voters in 2008, but 29% of the turnout in 2006. The generic ballot among seniors in 1994 was 45% Republican and 43% Democrat.

These numbers should worry red-state Democratic senators and the 70 Democratic congressmen whose districts were carried by John McCain or George W. Bush. The people back home are likely to punish Democrats if they vote for ObamaCare.

Already, many of them are drawing fire for having toed the party line on a stimulus package that's likely to celebrate its first anniversary with unemployment near 10%. They're also likely to be blasted for supporting a budget that doubles the national debt in five years, a new energy tax in the form of cap and trade, and a host of other liberal policies that voters did not expect from a candidate who ran as a centrist.

Until Ted Kennedy's vacant Massachusetts Senate seat is filled and there is confidence West Virginia's Robert Byrd is well enough to show up for a vote, there simply aren't 60 Senate Democrats to invoke cloture. That means Republicans will have considerable procedural sway, even if the White House isn't interested in giving them a real role by taking out a clean sheet of paper and starting over.

.
Given the Senate situation, do vulnerable House Democrats really want to go first in voting for ObamaCare? They've already done that by slamming through cap and trade, which is now stalled in the Senate. How much political capital will Speaker Nancy Pelosi have to spend to pass an increasingly unpopular health-care measure?

The danger for vulnerable Democrats is they have a president who is losing popularity while championing an unpopular proposal. The wise course would be to push for more time to figure out the best consensus policy and for more bipartisanship in crafting any solution.

Congressional Democrats will be under enormous pressure to stand with Mr. Obama. But the prospect of their own political future may yet concentrate many Democratic minds in Congress.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

4) The Convenient Fantasies of President Obama
By Michael Barone

The resignation over the Labor Day weekend of White House "green jobs" czar Van Jones tells you some interesting things about the Obama administration.

One of them is that a man who proclaimed himself a "communist" in the 1990s and signed 9-11 "truther" petitions suggesting Bush administration complicitity in the Sept. 11 attacks was considered fit for a White House appointment.

Liberal columnists have been attacking Republicans because some of their voters are "birthers," believers in the absurd charge that Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii and thus is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. But they have failed to identify any "birther" that occupied a position in the Republican firmament comparable to that of "truther" Jones in the Obama administration.

Another interesting thing about Jones is that the administration seems enamored of his "green jobs" concept. There's an understandable political reason. Legislation to restrict carbon emissions that is supported by the administration would undoubtedly kill a large number of jobs by increasing the cost of energy, and so you can see why its advocates might want to argue that there will be a compensating number of "green jobs" created -- at least if the government spends a lot of money on them.

But this sounds like fantasy. If there were money to be made in green jobs, private investors would be creating them already. In fact, big corporations like General Electric are scrambling to position themselves as green companies, gaming legislation and regulations so they can make profits by doing so. Big business is ready to create green jobs -- if government subsidizes them. But the idea that green jobs will replace all the lost carbon-emitting jobs is magical thinking.

Obama's approach to health care legislation, unless he made a major course correction in his speech to the joint session of Congress, is of a piece with his hiring of Jones. By ceding the task of writing legislation to congressional Democratic leaders and committee chairmen, he has been following a "no enemies to the left" strategy.

By refusing to rule out the government option -- which its architects see as the road to a single-payer government insurance system -- Obama has prevented the emergence of a set of policies that have a chance of passing the Senate. The Senate Republicans in the "gang of six" who have been negotiating with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus are not going to agree on a bill without assurance from the White House that they won't get rolled by hard-left House Democrats in conference committee.

Yesterday, Baucus came out with his own plan, which includes a tax on high-value health insurance policies. But this is likely to be rejected by the left, by labor unions that have negotiated such benefits from employers and by members of Congress from states like New York where, because of state policies, almost all health insurance costs that much.

There is an element of convenient fantasy as well in Obama's health care statements to date. We are going to save money by spending money. We are going to solve our fiscal problems with a program that will increase the national debt by $1 trillion over a decade. We are going to guarantee you can keep your current insurance with a bill that encourages your employer to stop offering it.

The list goes on. We are going to improve health care for seniors by cutting $500 billion from Medicare. We aren't going to insure illegal aliens, except that we won't have any verification provisions to see that they can't apply and get benefits.

Most politicians like to promise voters all good things at once. Democrats got in the habit of doing this over the past 14 years when they could not pass legislation by themselves. Van Jones' moment in the White House is over. Exposure of his record in conservative media made him politically unacceptable, even though mainstream outlets like The New York Times ignored the issue entirely.

The Democrats' health insurance bills remain under consideration, and with large majorities in both houses passage of some bill cannot be ruled out. But August town hall meetings and national polls have put the Democrats on the defensive. No-enemies-to-the-left and convenient fantasies may work in Chicago. They don't work so well when your constituency is the whole United States.

5) Care Fixes Ignored?
By Scott W. Atlas

Obama and Pelosi reject introducing competition.


Our president and his allies in Congress have been advancing their plan to offer government as the answer to insurance reform. They claim a government plan for all is essential to promoting competition among private health insurers, but others point to evidence and experience that shows such subsidized "public options" mainly shift large numbers of individuals previously covered by private insurance to government coverage.

Ultimately, this shift rates a new and massive burden on American taxpayers, forces out private insurance choices, and finally creates government as the dominant insurance provider. Once government is the insurer, it will inevitably mean that government can determine access and availability of medical care itself--as is already the case in other countries where such centralized health care systems already exist.

President Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi must not be hearing the American people, who seem to be speaking with clarity and passion at town halls and in the polls. Despite concerns about cost, a great number are specifically opposed to government gaining more control over their health care, including via a public insurance plan. Americans realize that government is not the way other goods and services have become subject to competition. In the U.S., competition has always stemmed from the private sector competing for the dollar of value-seeking consumers. And that private-sector competition has promoted innovation--innovation that has benefited Americans with better and cheaper products and services.

A number of health care proposals--ones that don't require the government takeover that the administration desires--have been put forward, yet our president keeps insisting there are no alternatives. On Monday, in his Labor Day speech to union workers, President Obama repeated his straw man argument and asked those who oppose his reforms, "what are your plans? What are you going to do? And the answer is they don't have one. Their answer is to do nothing!" And on Sept. 3, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi repeated her insistence on the public health insurance plan and adamantly declared, "If someone has a better idea for promoting competition and reducing health care costs, they should put it on the table."

Perhaps those interested in insurance reform should first understand why millions of Americans are uninsured in the first place, and to identify who of those cannot afford current health insurance plans. Of the 47 million uninsured, the U.S. Census Bureau notes that almost 10 million are not U.S. citizens, many of whom are illegally in the country. Another 15 million adults do not need significant insurance reform, because they are already fully eligible for Medicaid or Medicare but simply have not signed up, and will be enrolled as soon as they interface with the medical system. And nearly three quarters (74%) of the 8 million uninsured children are already eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP, according to the Urban Institute.

This leaves us with 13.9 million non-elderly adults (only 5% of the population, by the way) without health insurance who do not already qualify for Medicaid or Medicare. Of these, Blue Cross Blue Shield estimated that 8.2 million are without insurance for prolonged periods of time, mainly due to lack of affordability, while 5.7 million adults lack health insurance for short periods because they are either between jobs, are recent college graduates, are part-time seasonal workers or have no perceived need for insurance.

So let's focus on these roughly 14 million Americans who are uninsured, for prolonged periods or otherwise, because they either cannot afford it, or they opt to not purchase it, presumably because they do not view it as good value for their money. Even though 9 million of these live in families with incomes greater than three times poverty level, or over roughly $60,000 per year, it always has been up to American consumers to decide for themselves if something is "affordable" or not. The goal is to reform health insurance markets so that health insurance is made more affordable, so that it may be purchased because individuals themselves determine it is worth spending their money on.

Here are five concrete steps that can increase competition among health insurers without positioning government as the dominant insurer itself:

First, government can strip back the out-of-control mandates on health insurance coverage. State-based mandates alone now number more than 2,100, and are blamed for increasing insurance costs by between 20% and 50%. On what basis does the government force Americans to buy insurance covering services many or most would never want? Do all Americans want health insurance to cover massage therapy, in vitro fertilization, chiropractors, acupuncture and wigs, just to name a few items covered under state mandates? Why not encourage insurers to offer lower cost health plans and simply let patients themselves decide what sort of coverage and benefits they want for their families?

Second, our federal government can eliminate the counterproductive laws that restrict interstate purchasing of private health insurance by individuals and small businesses. A national market for health insurance would immediately create the competition for buyers that President Obama and Speaker Pelosi claim to desire. Existing anti-competitive barriers have resulted in dramatic price variations among states for equivalent health coverage. Since small-business employees make up the biggest proportion of uninsured workers, this one change would have a significant impact on freeing up the market for competition.

Third, government can create competition by lifting the veil of secrecy on the pricing of medical procedures and on the qualifications of doctors and hospitals. No other product or service is already purchased before anyone knows its price. In our current system, patients have no reason to ask--the existing third-party-payer structure makes patients believe that "someone else is paying." Requiring doctors and hospitals to post prices would generate the chance to compete for patients. Furthermore, backroom secret deals with specific insurers would be in full view. Let's leave the experts themselves, medical scientists in their peer-reviewed literature, to determine efficacy and clinical utility. But how about requiring hospitals and clinics to post qualifications of doctors and outcomes of procedures? Information is essential to competition, and consumers should be empowered to allow value-conscious decisions about health care.

Fourth, Health Savings Accounts increase choice for consumers, expand individual ownership and control over health spending, promote price visibility to allow value-based purchasing, and provide incentives for savings to prepare for future health care needs. By expanding the availability and simplifying the rules of lower-cost health plans with HSAs, insurance would become an attractive purchase for the millions of Americans who could afford it, but consider it a poor value in its present form.

Fifth, government can generate competition among insurers by revamping the tax treatment of health care expenses, so that millions of newly empowered Americans become consumers who will shop for their health insurance. Ideas like refundable health care tax credits--actual cash even for those who have no income tax liability--would shift purchasing power and control to a huge number of newly engaged consumers. And as a result, insurers would compete for their dollars, and Americans would ultimately own and control their health plans.

Reforming health insurance should focus on three main goals: 1) reducing the number of uninsured Americans; 2) reducing health insurance cost; and 3) creating portability of insurance during times of unemployment or job change. And government can play a helpful role in correcting current problems with our health system, restrictions that may have evolved out of good intention but have failed. One thing is very clear: Advocates for increasing competition in health care have plenty of other, concrete options besides expanding government control over the system. Americans are beginning to understand these options--even if our elected officials refuse those alternatives and even pretend they don't exist, in the name of big-government ideology.

Scott W. Atlas is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford University's


5) Obama Fires Back on Health Reform
By E.J. Dionne

After a listless summer during which his opponents dominated the health-care debate, President Obama used a dramatic appearance before Congress on Wednesday to seize control of the autumn, the season of decision for the initiative he has turned into the central test of his presidency.

Having avoided specifics in order to give the House and Senate room to legislate, he piled on the details, openly battling the "blizzard of charges and counter-charges," out of which, he said, "confusion has reigned."

It was a speech designed to clear the air by sweeping aside misconceptions about what he was for, reassuring senior citizens about the future of Medicare and insisting that the alternative to reform was a steady deterioration in the coverage Americans enjoy.

He also hit back hard against distortions and outright lies. "Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics," Obama declared. "Too many have used this as an opportunity to score short-term political points, even if it robs the country of our opportunity to solve a long-term challenge."

By joining specifics, a powerful moral argument and an unapologetic defense of government's role in promoting social justice, the president sought to rescue the health-care debate from the mire of a congressional system that has encouraged delay and obstruction. By putting himself on the line, he sought to restore his reputation for political mastery and to rekindle some of the magic he had conjured during a presidential campaign built on the expansive themes of change and hope.

He offered a robust defense of a "public option," which would give the uninsured a government-backed alternative to private coverage. But he insisted that the public option had come to play too large a role in the health-care debate, suggesting he would accept alternatives such as a "trigger," which would bring the option into being only if private insurance companies failed to provide sufficiently affordable policies.

Obama's target audiences were diverse: liberal activists and members of Congress, moderate rank-and-file voters, and a few Republican senators -- above all Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, his most likely ally in a party that has broadly rejected his overtures.

In the past month or so, Obama has seen the first signs of rebellion on a left that believes its support has been taken for granted. The administration's failure to share the left's view of the public option as the centerpiece of reform turned a dry policy idea into a potent symbol and a rallying point for progressive disgruntlement.

So the president sought to revive the enthusiasm of his base by insisting that his principles, including his belief in the public plan, remained intact and that any compromises would be undertaken with an eye toward advancing his, and his base's, larger purposes.

Invoking the memory of Edward M. Kennedy's lifelong commitment to the quest for universal coverage, he sought to persuade progressives that it would be a catastrophic mistake to lose a chance to achieve a central liberal purpose first voiced by Theodore Roosevelt.

To moderate voters, he argued that the whole point of change was to respond to their criticisms of America's way of delivering health care. The summer assaults had led many Americans to worry about what they could lose from health-care reform and how much it might cost. Obama reminded them of what they had to gain.

Reform would end the "arbitrary cap" on lifetime coverage and limit out-of-pocket expenses. "It will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition," he said. "As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most."

As for Republicans, there was an invitation to share credit for a historic reform and a potpourri of ideas that had originated with GOP legislators, including his 2008 rival, Sen. John McCain.

But for all of the details, the most striking aspect of the address may have been its call to battle: The days of taking incoming fire without any return volleys are over.

"I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it's better politics to kill this plan than improve it," he declared. "If you misrepresent what's in the plan, we will call you out. And I will not accept the status quo as a solution. Not this time. Not now."

It seemed as if a politician who had been channeling the detached and cerebral Adlai Stevenson had discovered a new role model in the fighting Harry Truman. For the cause of health-care reform, it was about time.

5a) Obama Back in Top Campaign Form
By Noam Scheiber


This was the best speech I've heard Barack Obama give as president--possibly the best since January of 2008. Unlike his inaugural address, or even his convention speech, this one really soared and inspired by the end--a bit counterintuitively for a health care speech. I thought the invocation of Ted Kennedy was pitch perfect: not tacky or maudlin and certainly not partisan (hence the allusions to Kennedy's friends Orrin Hatch, John McCain and Chuck Grassley). Obama managed to depict Kennedy as a completely ecumenical figure ("Ted Kennedy’s passion was born not of some rigid ideology, but of ... the experience of having two children stricken with cancer."). And then, by segueing from Kennedy into a pragmatic defense of liberalism ("hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play"), he managed to depict liberalism as a completely ecumenical worldview. That, too, was right out of Obama's greatest campaign hits. (See here, for example.)

This was also as animated a speech as I've heard Obama give as president. On the campaign trail, he was great at talking over applause to reach a rhetorical crescendo. He did that nicely a couple times tonight, including during one of his take-away lines: "Well the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action."

A couple more quick thoughts:

1.) The distillation of the proposal itself was very solid: "It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance to those who don’t. And it will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government. " Not quite bumper-sticker length, but as close as a Democratic health plan is going to come, I think.

2.) The rhetorical case for expanding health coverage involved a very deft bait-and-switch. In a nutshell: If you don't have health care, we'll help you get it by creating a new insurance exchange. This is how employees of large companies and members of Congress get insurance, and ordinary Americans should have the same opportunity. Which is to say, Obama started off with a semi-controversial substantive goal (health care for those who lack it), then shifted to an uncontroversial procedural goal (you should be able to get your health care delivered the same way Congress people do). In the course of making this shift, he elided the original question of whether we should cover the uninsured. Kudos to the speechwriter who came up with it. (Really.)

3.) The line about the Medicare trust fund was also very savvy. It reminded me of Clinton's "Save Social Security first" mantra from his 1998 State of the Union address (which, for those who don't remember, prevented Republicans from spending the surplus on tax cuts for the wealthy):

More than four decades ago, this nation stood up for the principle that after a lifetime of hard work, our seniors should not be left to struggle with a pile of medical bills in their later years. That is how Medicare was born. And it remains a sacred trust that must be passed down from one generation to the next. That is why not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan [emphasis added].

Of course, unless I'm missing something, this promise is essentially meaningless--the trust fund begins running a deficit in 2017 according to the latest trustees' report. So the question isn't whether we'll raid the Medicare trust fund, but what else we're going to raid to shore up Medicare. But it's an evocative line--as if there's a big pile of cash locked in some vault with seniors' names on it--that sounded pretty damn reassuring. Another nice speechwriting touch.

5b) A Perfect Storm of Idiocy
By Joe Conason

The wild furor over President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren raises many questions, but there is only one that really matters. How did America surrender its political discourse -- not to mention the news cycle -- to the most unreasonable and unstable elements of the far right?

Not so many years ago, nobody would have imagined that a bland presidential address to young students, urging them to remain in school, study hard and nurture their aspirations for success, could engender a raging national controversy. Nobody would have believed that such an ordinary event could excite suspicions among a significant part of the population that the chief executive is "indoctrinating" their children into a "socialist ideology," or that the fate of the republic depended on parents keeping their innocents away from the classrooms, lest they hear his words. And nobody would have believed that the resulting wave of paranoia, supercharged by talk radio and cable television, could actually grip the attention of the public when real issues demand action.

When the nation's first African-American president proposes to urge children, and in particular those children who regard him as a role model, to behave wisely and avoid self-destructive behavior, liberals and conservatives alike ought to be expected to applaud him. Indeed, conservatives especially should be clapping loudly, since they have so often bemoaned the cultural barriers to advancement faced by poor and minority students.

So why have the idols of the right, notably Glenn Beck of Fox News Channel, instead seized this moment to stir anger and fear among Republican parents by claiming that the president intends harm to their kids? Why did many Republican leaders, notably the party chairman of Florida, echo the craziness? (And why would any parent take advice from Beck, a college dropout and recovering alcoholic?)

While many Obama critics advertise themselves as "libertarians" who distrust any message from Big Brother in Washington, that healthy skepticism cannot be the reason for the current outcry -- because two of the past three Republican presidents spoke directly to the nation's schoolchildren without provoking any significant reaction at all.

In the fall of 1991, President George Herbert Walker Bush delivered a speech in a classroom that was broadcast live nationwide by the Pubic Broadcasting System, Mutual Broadcasting and NBC Radio Network. The blanket media coverage was arranged by the Education Department (which gave rise to a few grumpy remarks by Democrats in Congress that were duly noted but mostly ignored by the press).

"Thanks for allowing me to visit your classroom to talk to you and all these students," he said politely to the teacher who was hosting him, "and millions more in classrooms all across the country." He went on to tell his audience: "Make your teachers work hard. Tell them you want a first-class education. Tell them that you're here to learn. Block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart. I can't understand for the life of me what's so great about being stupid."

His predecessor, Ronald Reagan, addressed students directly on at least two occasions -- once in a broadcast speech in 1988 and once in a session with high-school students at the White House in 1986. Both times, the Gipper seized the chance to promote his own policies, with particular attention to cutting taxes and his "vision of economic freedom." In fact, Reagan's remarks were entirely political, if not partisan. He did precisely what the right has wrongly attacked Obama for doing -- but that was a message that conservatives like to hear, so they didn't object to the "indoctrination" of students at the public's expense.

The irony of this tempest of idiocy is that the same blowhards who constantly slander and slur President Obama were telling us, not too long ago, that criticizing the commander in chief during wartime was tantamount to treason. But of course, they are patriots of political convenience -- with no allegiance to anything except their own power and their extreme ideology.


6) Union-Tribune Editorial: Missed opportunity


President ignores real fears on cost, coverage

- We welcome President Barack Obama's decision to take a more direct role in the debate over sweeping proposals to overhaul the U.S. health care system, starting with his speech last night to a joint session of Congress.
The president made several points with which we strongly agree. Health insurers' must end their odious practice of hunting for ways to justify canceling coverage for the seriously ill. The difficulties those with pre-existing medical conditions face in getting coverage must be reduced. It should be easier for people to carry their insurance from job to job. The cost of “defensive medicine” driven by doctors' fear of malpractice lawsuits needs to be addressed.
Nevertheless, Obama's depiction of rising public doubts about big health changes as the product of “scare tactics” and “tall tales” undercuts his assertion that he takes seriously critics' “legitimate concerns.” This editorial page has joined many others in criticizing falsehoods such as the allegation that the president wants to set up “death panels” to winnow out the ailing elderly. But it is not a “scare tactic” to doubt Obama's claim his proposal to vastly expand health coverage would save money. The Congressional Budget Office says it would carry a 10-year, $1 trillion price tag. It is not a “tall tale” to question his claim that his plan would not affect individuals satisfied with their present coverage. It would give employers a powerful incentive to meet their insurance requirements by opting for cheaper government coverage and dropping their private insurers.
We need to have a full and open debate about these concerns. But based on his speech last night, Obama would have us believe that he has a blueprint for a health care system that miraculously would be both much cheaper and much bigger — and the only thing that those who doubt him can offer is “misinformation.”
Sorry, Mr. President. That's just not true.

6a)EXAMINER HOT ZONE: Does Obama think Americans are so gullible?

President Obama’s address to Congress and the nation Wednesday evening was yet another illustration of his seemingly endless ability to soar to genuinely impressive rhetorical heights without ever landing back on truthful ground. Nothing better illustrates this than Obama’s medical malpractice “demonstration project” gambit. Here’s the essential fact about federal demonstration projects – they are nothing more than a dodge, a deceitful way for Washington politicians to appear as if they are doing something concrete when in reality they’re tucking the idea at hand safely out of sight over in a corner. Obama might as well have said Wednesday night that he will appoint a presidential commission or have challenged Congress to create an emergency national task force on medical malpractice. The Democratic majority sitting in the House chamber would have stomped and clapped and yelled with delight, knowing the chief executive had just consigned medical malpractice caps to irrelevance, along with any GOP senator or representative gullible enough to think Obama was thus doing anything other than playing them for suckers.

So it was throughout this 47- minute nationally televised monument to presidential flimflam. Sometimes the prevarications were so obvious that even the president’s most ardent supporters – like the news staff of The New York Times - had to concede that he was playing fast and loose with the facts. For instance, the Times quoted Obama’s repeating of his familiar claim that “if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance, nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.” That is technically true,” the Times carefully admitted, “but there is a real possibility that existing policies could change as a result of the legislation. The government, for instance, would set new standards, and employers that already offer insurance would have to bring their plans into compliance.” In other words, when, as is inevitable, the cost of providing health insurance is more than the federal fine Obama seeks for not providing it, companies will drop their employee plans, forcing millions of people into the government-run health care system against their will.

Similarly, Obama claimed “most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse.” If $675 billion equals “most” of the $900 billion Obama says his proposal would cost, why wait to get those savings? Finally, there is abortion and illegal immigrants. Obama said “no federal dollars” will fund abortions under his proposal and “the reforms I am proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.” If Obama truly believes that, then he will have no objection when Democrats in Congress reverse their previous votes barring such provisions from the legislation when they were proposed by Republicans. In short, did the president sleep through August?






7) Washington accuses Iran of attaining nuclear weapon capability


Timed to follow on the delivery of Tehran's response to the big powers' offer of nuclear talks, US intelligence agencies informed the New York Times Thursday, Sept. 10, that they have concluded in recent months that "Iran has created enough nuclear fuel to make a rapid, if risky, spring for a nuclear weapon."

The White House is quoted as saying that "Iran has deliberately stopped short of the critical last steps to make a bomb."

A few hours earlier, a US diplomat warned that Iran is close to producing its first nuclear bomb.

Military sources say these steps add up to a new US intelligence assessment that Iran is now in position for deciding at any moment to take that last, extremely short step, toward making a bomb - or even two.

Wednesday, Sept. 9, Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki finally handed representatives of the six-nation group of nuclear negotiators (P5 + Germany) his government's long-promised reply to the package of incentives it offered for talks to resolve the dispute on Tehran's nuclear program.

Although the contents of the package were not published, Washington sources report extreme US frustration with the document which bars any discussion of its nuclear issues

According to our Iranian sources, it consists of a long-winded, sanctimonious treatise, with no proposals for solving the nuclear issue, but rather a sermon on the need for a new world order based on Iranian revolutionary Islamic tenets. Iran's rulers offer to discuss reforming the new world order with the big powers and "reaching a comprehensive agreement on issues beyond the nuclear file," including the crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

From the document's tone, Iran is putting itself forward as the seventh world power and demands a key role in all important international political, economic, social and cultural policy-making.

The document has only three things to say on the nuclear subject:

First, Iran is fully entitled by the Non-Proliferation Treaty to carry out uranium enrichment without interference or limitations.

Second, Iran is not ready to discuss its nuclear activities with any foreign power.

Third, It is willing to discuss the worldwide nuclear problem.

The package follows on Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's public declaration that his country's "nuclear rights" are not open to negotiation; the UN nuclear watchdog's determination that its interaction with Iran is in stalemate; and the statement by US chief envoy to the IAEA, Glyn Davis, that ongoing enrichment activity is moving Iran "closer to a dangerous and destabilizing possible breakout capacity."

Iran's "package" takes the entire controversy into a fresh blind alley. President Barack Obama must now decide on his reaction to Iran's virtual slap in the face in response to his offer of direct nuclear dialogue.

7a) Iran crosses nuclear red line

The Obama administration might conceivably decide to live with a nuclear-armed Iran. Israel does not enjoy that luxury. Now that Iran has got all the components for making a nuclear device at extremely short notice, as affirmed by US intelligence. Israel can no longer delay a decision on pre-emptive action