By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 58 mins ago
WASHINGTON – What's all the fuss about? After all the noise over Democrats' push for a government insurance plan to compete with private carriers, coverage numbers are finally in: Two percent.
That's the estimated share of Americans younger than 65 who'd sign up for the public option plan under the health care bill that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is steering toward House approval.

KISIT21 - The CBO PUTS the price tag at $1 trillion+. Either a plan the help 2% of the population isn't worth it, or that 2% number is nonsense. I believe the latter. The goal is sell a benign public option that ultimately controls as many people as possible. This changes the political discussion from free market v gov., to how to best run the government program. For what its worth, Europe is a mess. Government debt per capita is 3-4 times that of the U.S.

The follow is a cut and paste from a Drudge link.
LAHORE: The leadership of Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday.

“I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” she added.

“Maybe that’s the case; maybe they’re not gettable. I don’t know... As far as we know, they are in Pakistan,” Clinton told senior Pakistani newspaper editors in Lahore, AFP reported. “The percentage of taxes on GDP (in Pakistan) is among the lowest in the world... We (the United States) tax everything that moves and doesn’t move, and that’s not what we see in Pakistan,” she said.

“You do have 180 million people. Your population is projected to be about 300 million. And I don’t know what you’re going to do with that kind of challenge, unless you start planning right now,” she said.

“If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together” then “there are issues that not just the United States but others have with your government and with your military security establishment”.

Separately, Clinton also met army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and exchanged views on a host of security-related issues. afp/sajjad malik

"Let me be precise here: Fox News peddles a fair amount of hateful crap. Some of it borders on sedition. Much of it is flat out untrue."

So wrote Time's Joe Klein Friday at the magazine's Swampland blog in a piece intended to be the columnist's critique of the Administration's recent demonization of the Fox News Channel.

KISIT - Well at least "Time" is fair and balanced.

He does make a good point about health care - "It doesn't offer the quick-fix irresponsibility of a tax cut or an invasion. It needs space, time and patience to explain. This is an enervating, midstream moment. It's not certain that the President's efforts from health care to Afghanistan will succeed. We'll know a lot more in a month, but I really hope the White House hasn't launched this attack to fill the public space while the other issues are being sorted out." One thing I am hearing here is, important decisions should not be made quickly. Funny how that doesn't apply when reforming health care. Get it done now, don't read the bill, and don't debate the issues (same argument made when stimulus bill was past - hurry, hurry, hurry).

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/10/23/outfoxed/#ixzz0V5zNhCQE

Speaking of spending, $20 trillion of debt at 5% is $1 trillion... EVERY YEAR. What is the total annual federal budget? Who is going to pay this?

BHO has play more golf in 9 months than W play in his first 34 months. I wonder what the non-seditious media would have said if that were the other way around? Speaking of CNN, NYTimes reports, "CNN, which invented the cable news network more than two decades ago, will hit a new competitive low with its prime-time programs in October, finishing fourth – and last – among the cable news networks with the audience that all the networks rely on for their advertising...

For the month, CNN averaged 202,000 viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 – the group that television news organizations use as their basis of success because of their advertising sales. That was far behind the dominant leader, Fox News, which averaged 689,000. But it also trailed MSNBC, which had 250,000 viewers in that group and HLN, which had 221,000."

The White has engaged in a war with Fox News. More from NYTimes:
"In a sign of discomfort with the White House stance, Fox’s television news competitors refused to go along with a Treasury Department effort on Tuesday to exclude Fox from a round of interviews with the executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg that was to be conducted with a “pool” camera crew shared by all the networks."

Meanwhile, newspaper circulation is down 10.6%, Gallup has American describing themselves as 40% conservative, 36% moderate, and 20% liberal.

myway.com reports: WASHINGTON (AP) - Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They're all more profitable than the health insurance industry. In the health care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making "immoral" and "obscene" returns while "the bodies pile up."
Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That's anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.

World Net Daily - TEL AVIV – President Obama's presidential campaign focused on "making" the news media cover certain issues while rarely communicating anything to the press unless it was "controlled," White House Communications Director Anita Dunn disclosed to the Dominican government at a videotaped conference.

"Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control," said Dunn.

...(also in the article)...

Dunn has been facing some criticism since she led a White House campaign last week against Fox News, slamming the top-rated network as an "arm of the Republican Party" and "opinion journalism masquerading as news."

Fox hit back this past Friday, releasing a video of Dunn speaking to high school students last June in which she lists her two "favorite political philosophers," including Communist Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung, whose draconian policies are blamed for the deaths of tens of millions of people.

-

Senate Finance Committee members have been notified that the committee's health reform bill was filed today. S. 1796 weighs in at 1,502 pages.

-

BILL O'REILLY: The reason that Limbaugh is not going to be able to buy into the NFL is because a bunch of made-up stuff became legend, and he got hammered.

WARREN BALLANTINE: OK, we won't look at the made-up stuff. Let's look at him playing "Barack The Magic Negro", and we're going to say that's just funny, that's just a joke, that's not racial either. It is racial to real black people.

JUAN WILLIAMS: Hey Warren, you were saying my argument was a red herring. Maybe you should do some research, go back and find out that it was an article written by a black person, headlined "Barack The Magic Negro."

BALLANTINE: He made it a song and played it on his show.

WILLIAMS: So what? He was making fun of it.

BALLANTINE: You can go back to the porch, Juan. You can go back. It's OK.

The Dow hit 10,000 today... again.

Rush was forced out of the group looking to purchase the Rams.

The Polar Bear population is increasing. Dennis Miller said today, "Beware the prophet, seeking profit", in reference to Al Gore who has made $100,000,000 since starting his global warming show.

Rush Limbaugh is being attacked for trying to buy the St. Louis Rams. That fine if the the attackers would deal with facts. The are accusing him of say slavery had a beneficial side, and generally summarizing his program as racist. I have listened to his show on occasion for 17 years. He is not a racist. It is sad that "professionals" participate in this and allow it to happen. If he said these things, the real journalist could prove it. Are there any real journalist left.

Here is Rush's defense is his own words. As usual, it will convince any clear thinking individual.

There is a genuine full-fledged smear campaign being orchestrated by liberal sportswriters and picked up by other liberals in the State-Controlled Media that it's breathtaking. I'm used to being taken out of context, but we have sourced it, we have found where it was found, these fake, totally made up quotes attributed to me which are being repeated without any fact-checking at all by liberal sportswriters. The interesting thing about this to me is I think back to Tom Brokaw and Tom Friedman saying, "Oh, the Internet is a sewer. They need us, professional journalists with filters. The Internet is a sewer out there, you can read anything, people believe everything that's out there, Tom, and, yes, our professionalism, we're highly trained professionals, and only we have the ability to filter the stench that is the sewer of the Internet."

All right, fine. Only professional journalists have the ability to wander through the sewer and figure out what's valid and what isn't. So a bunch of professional journalists are believing everything in the sewer, they're not checking it at all, they're not fact-checking, they are embarrassing themselves, and the sound bite roster today is largely about this. I'm in a dilemma here over whether to waste valuable broadcast time talking about some of this. So I'm going to mix the two.

There was a guy, a sportswriter on MSNBC yesterday morning. Zirin was his name, Dave Zirin from TheNation.com. And then we had Bryan Burwell of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. And a guy named Drew Sharp and numerous personalities on ESPN have repeated that quote and another quote, both of them totally fabricated. It is breathtaking at his. There is no way anybody could have made -- and they say the statement happened in 1998. They all say that. Well, the guy that posted it, his name is "Cobra," by the way. That's his moniker on the Internet. You can hide and be anonymous on the Internet and he's been posting it all over the place, and he claims that he got it from a book.

By the way, the publisher is Nation Books in New York and the quote, he said he got it from a book written by some guy named Huberman, Huberman's book, 101 Worst People in America or whatever. It was published in 2006. The problem is he was spreading it in 2005. We know who the source of this is. We know that the guy that wrote the book did not source the quote! Nobody can source it because it wasn't ever made. I never said it. And look at all of these people who are repeating it without checking, and these are the people who tell us that they are the professionals, that they are the ones we should trust to weed out what's garbage and what's not garbage in the "sewer," they say that is the Internet. They are the sewer! They are the sewer, and they are in the midst of it...

I said that in 1998? I guarantee you the Clinton war room would have been all over it! In 1998? This quote sat dormant for 11 years and all of a sudden shows up with a vengeance in conjunction with a report that I am a minority participant, minority participant in a bid to buy the St. Louis Rams? You would think... You know, I'm not hard to reach. My office isn't hard to reach and the radio show is not hard to listen to.

Just find the radio and turn it on. Hit the seek button and you'll find me all over the dial. Whatever happened to journalists calling people and saying, "Did you actually say this? I'm doing a story on blah, blah, blah. Did you actually say this?" They didn't want to take the chance I didn't say it. They wanted the excuse to run the fabricated quote. They wanted the opportunity to do it. These people are scum. They are literal professional scum and they are responsible in many ways for the deteriorating standards and quality of journalism. They are leading the pack. They are found on both the news side and the sports side, and they are doing everything they can to promote disunity and discord throughout our culture and society while holding themselves up in their own minds as great unifiers and people who care only about social justice. When they're basically just incompetent, irresponsible, impersonators of journalism.

Here is an article and some good discussion on why America is not the greatest nation in the world.

On a relative measure, this is the greatest time and place in human history. Truth is people are people. It is the founders and the constitution that set this nation on its current path. There are more free, peaceful, healthy nations today (and hence, people around the globe), because of America. Americans are people like any other. Striving for freedom, looking for love in friends and family, and desiring to have good triumph over evil, both internally and externally. It is our freedom to innovate, share our ideas, and explore our spiritual side on our own terms, that make us great. Americans are probably not the happiest people in the world, but I think much of that is because we are being informed by the likes of this author. I have heard all my life that men are bad, the U.S. Government does bad things to the rest of the world, religion is bad, and Americans are bad. I have also heard that criminals need our sympathy, social programs will solve our problems, sex all the time is good, material things are good, and to look for happiness externally. Freedom is not always easy to handle. When our dark side causes problems, we have only ourselves to blame. And that can be difficult at times.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/10/13/one_nation_under_illusion/

By MATT MOORE and LOUISE NORDSTROM, Associated Press Writers –1 hr 13 mins ago

STOCKHOLM – After cleaning up in the Nobel science prizes, the United States scored another coup: the peace prize for a president less than nine months in office.

At a time when some had begun to question how long America's pre-eminence in science and diplomacy could last, nine of the 11 nominees who won or shared this year's five prizes handed out so far are American.

On Monday, the economics prize will be announced, and Americans are the favorites.

The scientists were recognized for work that led to breakthroughs in cancer therapies and antibiotics, and brought the world digital photography and high-speed Internet.

The chief of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences sees two big reasons for the U.S. dominance in science: money and ambition.

Gunnar Oquist, permanent secretary of the group that picks the chemistry and physics winners, cited a U.S. willingness to pour money into research and an eye for the big breakthrough, as opposed to incremental steps forward.

Europe and Asia have their share of Nobel Prizes, but of the 816 winners since the first awards were made in 1901, 309 have been American. The next closest is Britain, with some 114 winners.

NYT - As the health care debate moves to the floor of Congress, most of the serious proposals to fulfill President Obama’s original vow to curb costs have fallen victim to organized interests and parochial politics.

Enlarge This Image

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Labor leaders and insurance and health industry executives joined President Obama as he discussed cost-cutting efforts in May.

A blog from The New York Times that tracks the health care debate as it unfolds.

• More Health Care Overhaul News

Health Care Conversations

Share your thoughts about the health care debate.

Top Discussions: The Public Option| Medicare and the Elderly | A Single-Payer System

Related

Obama Cites G.O.P. Officials in Call to Action on Bill (October 11, 2009)

Enlarge This Image

Susan Walsh/Associated Press

Peter R. Orszag, the White House budget director, says containing costs will be a priority as health care legislation advances.

And now the last two initiatives with real bite that are still in contention — a scaled-back “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health plans and a nonpartisanMedicare budget-cutting commission — are under furious assault.

Most economists’ favorite idea for slowing the growth of health care spending was ending the income tax exemption for employer-paid health insurance to make lower-cost plans more attractive. But that would hurt workers with big benefit plans, and a labor-union lobbying blitz helped kill that idea by the Fourth of July.

Lobbying by doctors, hospitals and other health care providers, meanwhile, dimmed the prospects of various proposals to cut into their incomes, including allowing government negotiation of Medicare drug prices and creating a government insurer with the muscle to lower fee payments.

“The lobbyists are winning,” said Representative Jim Cooper, a conservative Tennessee Democrat who teaches health policy.

I couldn't fit all of my core beliefs above:

We live in the best time and place in the history of mankind.

In a free and educated society, the whole will make more right decisions than wrong.

The US is the greatest nation to ever exist. The U.S. Constitution lays the foundation for a free and just society where we can truly focus our energy toward the pursuit of happiness.

If you are not happy, look inward. This world is too beautiful, and life is too short to spend it unhappy. If you think sacrificing any freedoms will bring happiness, look inward.

Religion is a net plus as each of us searches for answers to the mysteries within us and in this wonderful world.

In each of us there exist darkness and light. Both are necessary to survive, but in the end we need to let our goodness and the goodness of mankind shine.

TimesOnLine - The Nobel Peace Prize is a notoriously difficult award to predict, but yesterday's decision was clearly a political choice, with three of the past six peace awards going to Bush adversaries.

In 2002 the prize went to Jimmy Carter as an explicit rejection of the Bush presidency in the build-up to the Iraq war. In 2005 Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN atomic agency chief who had clashed with Washington over the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, was honoured. In 2007 Al Gore received the prize for his warnings on climate change, denounced by President Bush as a liberal myth.

KISIT21 - The initial reaction this morning, across the board was, surprise, too soon, and what has he done? Obama himself said he was "shocked". He was nominated for the award about 12 days into his presidency. This is 6 days after SNL finally and accurately criticized BHO for not accomplishing anything. Note on SNL skit; CNN did a segment on fact checking the accuracy of SNL. I don't remember them doing that to Bush and Palin.

NYT - KABUL, Afghanistan — A car packed with explosives blew up beside the Indian Embassy on Thursday morning, leaving 17 people dead in what India’s foreign secretary said was a direct attack on the embassy compound, the second in two years.

The bombing comes at a delicate moment. President Obama is deciding whether to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, as the top military commander here, Gen.Stanley A. McChrystal, has advised.

Larry Kudlow - ...year-to-date, while the S&P 500 is up 18 percent—a great showing no doubt—gold is up even more. The precious metal is up 21 percent. In other words, measured in true, gold-backed purchasing power, stocks have really done nothing this year. Zip. It is most disappointing.

As Afghanistan takes the lives of 8 more Americans, the Democrats continue their march.

From politicsdaily.com

After Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) yelled "You lie!" when President Obama told Congress that illegal immigrants would not benefit from health care reform, the president responded, "That's not true." But behind the scenes, Democrats scrambled to make sure that the president was right.

In the days that followed, congressional staff added language to the Senate Finance Committee requiring verification of applicants' citizenship or legal residency to receive benefits. The bill already bill stipulated that illegal immigrants would not receive benefits, a provision also in the House version.

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans tried to push Democrats one step further with an amendment from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) to require a photo ID to verify a person's identity before he or she could apply for Medicaid or children's health insurance. Grassley said that photo identification would cut down on fraud and is routinely required for everyday activities like getting a fishing license. "Should states require more to get a $10 fishing license than to get health care"? Grassley asked.

This picture of Obama was in the Boston Globe this week. Can you imagine if a conservative published this.

American Spectator:

ACORN's lawyer warned ACORN 15 months ago to begin fixing its massive internal problems or face certain catastrophe. ACORN didn't listen. It let the problems fester.

The advice from Elizabeth Kingsley of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg Eisenberg LLP came in the form of an eerily prophetic legal memo to ACORN dated June 19, 2008, the day before ACORN's national boardfired disgraced founder Wade Rathke.

The memo is a kind of Holy Grail for ACORN researchers...

Founder Wade Rathke might have been wise to adopt an anti-nepotism policy. His brother Dale embezzled $948,000 from ACORN while working there. Even after Wade covered up the theft, he kept Dale on the payroll for eight years. Wade's wife, Beth Butler, and reportedly, his two children also work at ACORN.

Kingsley slams her client for not keeping political activities separate from other activities. "It may be that activities are carried out with adequate independence, but without formal policies and separation of staff functions, there are potential liabilities and problems of proof."

Another global warming setback - George Will column:

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will100109.php3

The New York Times recently stated that they missed the boat on the Van Jones story. They blames it on being short staffed during the Labor Day weekend. Are you kidding? The New York Times. So, anyway, they decided that they would assign someone to watch Fox News so as not to miss the next one. I guarantee this leads to a detailed story about Fox News bias, lies, and ignorant viewers. Good luck NYT.