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Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Interesting story found at Newsy.com
"Woodward Exposes Obama's 'Inside Wars'" http://www.newsy.com/videos/woodward-exposes-obama-s-inside-wars
Health insurers drop coverage for children before new rules take effect; “Big” business running scar
RWB News: This isn't going to help the children. "Big" business is running scared in every private sector out there and it shows.
As reported by The Hill
Health plans in at least four states have announced they're dropping children's coverage just days ahead of new rules created by the healthcare reform law, according to the liberal grassroots group Health Care for America Now (HCAN).
The new healthcare law forbids insurers from turning down children with pre-existing conditions starting Thursday, one of several reforms Democrats are eager to highlight this week as they try to build support for the law ahead of the mid-term elections. But news of insurers dropping their plans as a result of the new law has thrown a damper on that strategy and prompted fierce push-back from the administration's allies at HCAN.
The announcement could lead to higher costs for some parents who are buying separate coverage for themselves and their children at lower cost than the family coverage that's available to them.
"We're just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of the biggest changed their minds and decided to refuse to sell child-only coverage," HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome said in a statement. "The latest announcement by the insurance companies that they won't cover kids is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest.
"Instead, they should reverse their actions immediately and simply follow the law. If the insurance companies can casually turn their backs on sick children now, who will they abandon next? This offensive behavior by the insurance companies is yet another reminder of why the new law is so important and why the Republicans' call for repeal is so misguided."
Health plans and state insurance commissioners in July raised concerns that the new rules could lead some insurers to stop children-only coverage because families could wait until their children get sick to buy coverage.
Days later, the Obama administration issued regulations clarifying that insurers would still be able to establish enrollment periods in accordance with state law.
"To address concerns over adverse selection, issuers in the individual market may restrict enrollment of children under 19, whether in family or individual coverage, to specific open enrollment periods if allowed under state law," the Department of Health and Human Services clarified.
The issue had largely dropped out of sight since then, but insurers including WellPoint and CoventryOne have announced in recent days that they're dropping children's coverage in California, Colorado, Ohio and Missouri, according to HCAN.
Original Article: http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/119823-insurers-drop-childrens-insurance-plans-ahead-of-new-rules?sms_ss=facebook
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The USA is now going to spend less money and really help other countries develop, says Obama to UN t
RWBNews: We aren't going to focus on spending money here but we'll spend it everywhere else instead. We'll be asking the countries to be accountable for our monies. Yeah, that should REALLY help the economy A LOT! 
By Ben Feller for AP at boston.com
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/09/22/obama_announces_new_us_approach_on_development/?rss_id=Boston.com+–+Latest+news
UNITED NATIONS –President Barack Obama is telling a U.N. conference that the United States is changing its approach to development to focus less on spending money and more on really helping countries develop.
That means using diplomacy, trade, investment policies and other resources to help them prosper.
The changed approach is spelled out in the administration's new global development policy, which Obama is announcing in a speech Wednesday at the United Nations in New York.
Obama says the administration will demand accountability from the U.S. and the countries it is trying to help. But, he says, make no mistake, the U.S. will remain a world leader in providing assistance.
He says the U.S. will not abandon countries that need lifesaving help.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumed by concerns at home, President Barack Obama is turning back to the world stage, hoping to remind anyone listening of his efforts to reshape the image and diplomacy of the United States.
Obama's three-day trip to the United Nations in New York, which begins Wednesday afternoon, does not offer the sense of anticipation that came with his first presidential address to the General Assembly last September. That event was about defining his new brand of U.S. engagement upon succeeding George W. Bush; this one is more about defending it.
The timing comes as domestic matters still dominate, with a jobs shortage and midterm elections sucking up attention.
On Wednesday, in his only official first-day business at the U.N., Obama will offer his vision of U.S. aid to impoverished parts of the world, speaking at an anti-poverty conference.
In his centerpiece speech to world leaders Thursday, Obama is expected to describe what he sees as clear progress since he took office — a "cover the waterfront" reminder, as one aide put it, of how the U.S. has ditched unilateral leadership and worked with the world over the last 20 months.
The president is less likely to unveil anything significantly new as he is to recount the U.S.-backed international efforts to keep Iran in line, slow the spread of nuclear weapons and revive plodding economies. On his final day, Obama will devote time to the African nation of Sudan, a political tinderbox, and to his relationship with leaders in Asia.
More broadly, this is Obama's best chance in quite some time to grab the world's attention and pull together all the episodic pieces of his international agenda.
"It's a natural moment to have a stocktaking," said Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow and expert on global governance at the Council on Foreign Relations.
To the public eye, this has been an inwardly focused year for Obama. He has made only three quick trips abroad after taking 10 foreign trips in his first year in office, many of them lengthy. He twice canceled a trip to Indonesia and Australia this year to deal with domestic priorities — first his health care legislation, then an oil spill disaster.
As always, the world's troubles will be on display at the U.N. gathering, and that includes setbacks in the Mideast peace process Obama has championed.
Just three weeks after Obama restarted direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians, the effort appears stalled over familiar disputes. The quest for peace will surely be a central Obama message in his speech and his sideline meetings, but he has no talks scheduled in New York with the key players.
Obama heads to New York as the attention of a frustrated American electorate is stuck on the economy. Millions remain unemployed while he labors to explain that an economic recovery is happening but will take time, given the toll of the recession. He got his latest reminder of American pain at a town hall just this week: One person asked if the American dream was dead for him, and another said she was tired of defending him to her friends.
And the White House has announced that Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, was leaving at year's end.
Even Obama's first U.N. day is a sign of his juggling act.
He promoted the six-month mark of his health care law before leaving Washington and planned to cap his first night in New York by raising money for Democratic congressional candidates ahead of difficult midterm elections.
"The interest in the U.N. waxes and wanes, and it's going to be waning now, given the economic crisis and the election coming up," said Mark Quarterman, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who served for 12 years at the U.N. in a variety of roles. "People are rather preoccupied."
Still, Obama's moment at the General Assembly lectern can help, with international peers seated before him and audiences watching around the world. He used the occasion last year to declare a new era in which the U.S. does not seek to go it alone and should not be expected to solve all the world's problems.
Obama is expected this time to talk more about results, including tougher international pressure on Iran and North Korea over their nuclear pursuits. Obama has reached a new nuclear treaty with Russia, pending Senate ratification, and ended the United States' major combat role in Iraq. Since he last addressed the U.N. body, he won the Nobel Peace Prize and significantly increased U.S. forces in Afghanistan, trying to regain control of the troubled war in that country.
While in New York, Obama will hold individual meetings with leaders of China, Japan, Colombia, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan.
The president will also host Southeast Asian leaders. And he will put his weight behind an U.N. effort to secure two safe referendums in January 2011 about the future of Sudan. One of those votes in Sudan, Africa's largest country, will determine if it splits in two by giving the south independence. The circumstances surrounding the north-south vote have grown so perilous that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called the matter a "ticking time bomb.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/09/22/obama_announces_new_us_approach_on_development/?rss_id=Boston.com+–+Latest+news
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Corporate CEOs unhappy with Obama - MSN Money
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/CompanyFocus/why-CEOs-cannot-stand-obama.aspx<br><div style="color:rgb(60%,60%,60%)">Sent with <a
"Pledge to America" Unveiled by Republicans (Full Text) - Political Hotsheet - CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20017335-503544.html<br><div style="color:rgb(60%,60%,60%)">Sent with <a
Democrats are finding it easier to compare Obama to Carter
RWB News: Republicans have been making comparisons between Obama and Carter for quite awhile; now it's the Dems turn.
As reported by: WSJ
By JOHN FUND
Comparisons between the Obama White House and the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter are increasingly being made—and by Democrats.
Walter Mondale, Mr. Carter's vice president, told The New Yorker this week that anxious and angry voters in the late 1970s "just turned against us—same as with Obama." As the polls turned against his administration, Mr. Mondale recalled that Mr. Carter "began to lose confidence in his ability to move the public." Democrats on Capitol Hill are now saying this is happening to Mr. Obama.
Mr. Mondale says it's time for the president "to get rid of those teleprompters and connect" with voters. Another of Mr. Obama's clear errors has been to turn over the drafting of key legislation to the Democratic Congress: "That doesn't work even when you own Congress," he said. "You have to ride 'em."
Mr. Carter himself is heightening comparisons with his own presidency by publishing his White House diaries this week. "I overburdened Congress with an array of controversial and politically costly requests," he said on Monday. The parallels to Mr. Obama's experience are clear.
Comparisons between the two men were made frequently during the 2008 campaign, but in a favorable way. Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz, for instance, told Fox News in August 2008 that Mr. Obama's "rhetoric is more like Jimmy Carter's than any other Democratic president in recent memory." Syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg noted more recently that Mr. Obama, like Mr. Carter in his 1976 campaign, "promised a transformational presidency, a new accommodation with religion, a new centrism, a changed tone."
But within a few months, liberals were already finding fault with his rhetoric. "He's the great earnest bore at the dinner party," wrote Michael Wolff, a contributor to Vanity Fair. "He's cold; he's prickly; he's uncomfortable; he's not funny; and he's getting awfully tedious. He thinks it's all about him." That sounds like a critique of Mr. Carter.
Foreign policy experts are also picking up on similarities. Walter Russell Mead, then a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Economist magazine earlier this year that Mr. Obama is "avoiding the worst mistakes that plagued Carter." But he warns that presidents like Mr. Obama who emphasize "human rights" can fall prey to the temptation of picking on weak countries while ignoring more dire human rights issues in powerful countries (Russia, China, Iran). Over time that can "hollow out an administration's credibility and make a president look weak." Mr. Mead warned that Mr. Obama's foreign policy "to some degree makes him dependent on people who wish neither him nor America well. This doesn't have to end badly and I hope that it doesn't—but it's not an ideal position after one's first year in power."
Liberals increasingly can't avoid making connections between Mr. Carter's political troubles and those of Mr. Obama. In July, MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked his guests if Democrats up for re-election will "run away from President O'Carter." After much laughter, John Heileman of New York Magazine quipped "Calling Dr. Freud." To which Mr. Matthews, a former Carter speechwriter, sighed "I know."
Pat Caddell, who was Mr. Carter's pollster while he was in the White House, thinks some comparisons between the two men are overblown. But he notes that any White House that is sinking in the polls takes on a "bunker mentality" that leads the president to become isolated and consult with fewer and fewer people from the outside. Mr. Caddell told me that his Democratic friends think that's happening to Mr. Obama—and that the president's ability to pull himself out of a political tailspin is hampered by his resistance to seek out fresh thinking.
The Obama White House is clearly cognizant of the comparisons being made between the two presidents. This month, environmental activist Bill McKibben met with White House aides to convince them to reinstall a set of solar panels that Mr. Carter had placed on the White House roof. They were taken down in 1986 following roof repairs. Mr. McKibben said it was time to bring them back to demonstrate Mr. Obama's support for alternative energy.
But Mr. McKibben told reporters that the White House "refused to take the Carter-era panel that we brought with us" and only said that they would continue to ponder "what is appropriate" for the White House's energy needs. Britain's Guardian newspaper reported that the Obama aides were "twitchy perhaps about inviting any comparison (to Mr. Carter) in the run-up to the very difficult mid-term elections." Democrats need no reminding that Mr. Carter wound up costing them dearly in 1978 and 1980 as Republicans made major gains in Congress.
Original article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704129204575505822147816104.html
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Outrage--Obama claims citizens have no privacy - National conservative | Examiner.com
http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-national/outrage-obama-claims-citizens-have-no-privacy<br><div style="color:rgb(60%,60%,60%)">Sent with <a
Like father like son: Jesse Jackson Jr admits extramarital affair
Jesse Jackson SR's history includes paying his mistress non-profit money from his Rainbow Push Coalition to travel with him on a perpetual booty call while his wife and family were left home. The apple, as they say, often doesn't fall far from the tree. From NBC: Jesse's Girl?
Of course, Jr took a page from Sr in the 'explanation:'
Before the above sentence was entered into the computer, Stacy McCain posted pics of Giovana Huidobro (via Instapundit): As If I Actually Needed an Excuse to Post This Picture of a Blonde in a BikiniJesse Jackson Jr. doesn't deny involvement with a Washington D.C. based restaurant hostess who was named this morning in a Sun-Times story about his alleged attempt to buy an appointment to President Obama's former Senate seat.
If memory serves, Sr also included God in the list. But there's more. Other than having an affair, he also really did pay to get Obama's Senate seat, something that he denied. It's the Chicago way. From the Sun Times:"The reference to a social acquaintance is a personal and private matter between me and my wife that was handled some time ago." Jackson Jr. said in a statement. "I ask that you respect our privacy."
...the congressman vowed to stay in office in the wake of a Chicago Sun-Times report that a major political fund-raiser has told federal authorities that Jackson directed him to offer former Gov. Rod Blagojevich millions of dollars in campaign cash in return for an appointment for Jackson to the U.S. Senate, to succeed President Obama.A chip off the old block that Jr.
The allegation by Oak Brook businessman Raghuveer Nayak regarding fund-raising runs counter to public statements Jackson has made as recently as last week that he never authorized any deal to attempt to trade campaign cash for the Senate appointment, which ultimately went not to Jackson but to Sen. Roland Burris.
"The allegations about fund-raising and the Senate seat are not new," Jackson said in a written statement. "I've already talked with the authorities about these claims, told them they were false, and no charges have been brought against me.
...The Sun-Times reported on Tuesday that sources said Nayak told authorities that on Oct. 8, 2008, Jackson directed him to offer Blagojevich $6 million in exchange for the Senate appointment.
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Obama Aunt in New Vid: Despite Living Off Gov‘t She Doesn’t Owe U.S. Anything
In an new video released by WBZ-TV in Boston, Obama's aunt Zeituni Onyango praises America for being a country where one "can do whatever you want when you live here," yet believes she doesn't owe the country anything despite living here illegally for years.
As reporter Jonathan Elias writes:
Despite what's she's been given, Zeituni Onyango said flatly that she owes this country nothing in return. "But, it's given you so much?" Elias asked. "So? It's a free country under God," was her terse response.
Elias then asked about her being a burden to the taxpayers:
When asked why the taxpayers should be burdened with her needs, the feisty Zeituni said, "This country is owned by almighty God. You people who preach Jesus Christ almighty God and the rest of it, you are here to help people, help the poor, help other countries and help women. That's what the United States is supposed to do? And you have to give me my right [like any other] person's right."
Toward the end of the interview she said she doesn't understand why people are upset: "That's God's miracles," she said. "Don't you believe in miracles?"
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/obama-aunt-in-new-vid-despite-living-off-govt-she-doesnt-owe-u-s-anything/
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