White House Summit On Health Care

Today during the White House summit on health President Obama emphasized how health care is interconnected our economic problems and we can not fix one without fixing the other.

"We are here today to discuss one of the greatest threats not just to the well-being of our families and the prosperity of our businesses, but to the very foundation of our economy -- and that is the exploding cost of health care in America today.

"In the last eight years, premiums have grown four times faster than wages, and an additional nine million Americans have joined the ranks of the uninsured. The cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. And even for folks who are weathering this economic storm, and have health care now, all it takes is one stroke of bad luck -- an accident or illness; a divorce or lost job -- to become one of the nearly 46 million uninsured or the millions who have health care, but can't afford it.

"We did not get here by accident. The problems we face today are a direct consequence of actions we failed to take yesterday.... [T]here are those who say we should defer health care reform once again -- that at a time of economic crisis, we simply cannot afford to fix our health care system as well.

"Well, let's be clear: the same soaring costs that are straining our families' budgets are sinking our businesses and eating up our government's budget too. Too many small businesses can't insure their employees. Major American corporations are struggling to compete with their foreign counterparts. And companies of all sizes are shipping their jobs overseas or shutting their doors for good.

"Medicare costs are consuming our federal budget. Medicaid is overwhelming our state budgets. And at the Fiscal Summit we held here last week, the one thing on which everyone agreed was that the greatest threat to America's fiscal health is not Social Security, though that is a significant challenge; and it is not the investments we've made to rescue our economy; it is the skyrocketing cost of health care.

"That is why we cannot delay this discussion any longer. And that is why today's forum is so important. Because health care reform is no longer just a moral imperative, it is a fiscal imperative. If we want to create jobs and rebuild our economy, then we must address the crushing cost of health care this year, in this Administration. Making investments in reform now, investments that will dramatically lower costs, won't add to our budget deficits in the long-term -- rather, it is one of the best ways to reduce them."

The government will spend $2.5 trillion on health care this year. In less than a decade, it will constitute 20% of GDP. If we're going to improve the economy and take fiscal sustainability seriously, this won't wait. The question isn't whether we can afford to tackle health-care reform; the question is whether we can afford not to.

Watch President Obama speak here:

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Rachel Maddow was on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno the other night, and they discussed how President Obama is taking on the financial crisis, the economy in general, energy policy, and health care. Leno even asks, "Is he [Obama] biting off too much?"

Watch Rachel here:

Bobby Jindal Swings and Misses

After President Obama's speech last night, the Republicans as the loyal opposition gave their rebuttal. They asked Louisiana Govenor Bobby Jindal to give this response, and to be honest I was interested in what he would have to say. Govenor Jindal is seen as an up-and-coming leader of the party, he has put him self out there as an opponent of the stimulus package. I wanted to see what the opposition had to offer. I was not impressed. The Governor called Obama's economic plans "irresponsible" in his response speech, but offered no real evidence of this, and offered nothing new in the way of ideas. His speech was immediately panned as poorly-delivered.

Even the Fox News panelists, who are always the GOPs’ biggest cheer leaders panned the Governor's response:

BRIT HUME: “The speech read a lot better than it sounded. This was not Bobby Jindal’s greatest oratorical moment.”

NINA EASTON: “The delivery was not exactly terrific.”

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: “Jindal didn’t have a chance. He follows Obama, who in making speeches, is in a league of his own. He’s in a Reagan-esque league. … [Jindal] tried the best he could.”

JUAN WILLIAMS: “It came off as amateurish, and even the tempo in which he spoke was sing-songy. He was telling stories that seemed very simplistic and almost childish.”

Still I think Rachel Maddow had the best rebuttal to the Governor's response. Rachel while discussing with Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews expressed her disbelief that the GOP response to President Barack Obama’s address to Congress referenced Hurricane Katrina, and it left her speechless.

Watch it here:

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LibertyAir Blog

Rachel Maddow to the GOP: Get out of the way.

I am sure over the past two weeks you have seen assessments of both the stimulus and the debate over the stimulus, but if you did not see Rachel Maddow's take on Friday night then you missed the best. She plainly and clearly points out that Republicans are not trying to come up with an effective stimulus plan. Personally I believe they are trying to make the situation worse.

Watch it here:

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She rightly points out that it is completely idiotic to cut food-stamp funding from an economic stimulus package during a recession. Food-stamps are one of the best ways to get money into the economy quickly, and are spent fast. She states correctly that a whopping proportion of the Republican rhetoric about stimulus is just wrong, and it is time for Republicans to get out of the way of the people who are actually trying to save the country.

"Making Up Numbers"

This came out earlier this week, and has received too little attention. This week the Pentagon again started pushing a story that 61 former detainees from the Guantanamo Bay had "returned to terrorism since their release from custody."

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said 18 former detainees are confirmed as "returning to the fight" and 43 are suspected of having done in a report issued late in December by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Morrell declined to provide details such as the identity of the former detainees, why and where they were released or what actions they have taken since leaving U.S. custody."This is acts of terrorism. It could be Iraq, Afghanistan, it could be acts of
terrorism around the world," he told reporters.

Morrell said the latest figures, current through December 24, showed an 11 percent recidivism rate, up from 7 percent in a March 2008 report that counted 37 former detainees as suspected or confirmed active militants.

Get that, they would not provide any details such as identity, actions taken, or even an actual number as some of the numbers are just "suspected" of being militants. So at a time when there is a lot of discussion about closing Gitmo Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell (who has had a problem with telling the truth in the past) makes a wild claim, but no real details are given. Th March figures that are refrenced in the news release are themselves up from a 2007 Pentagon claim (also by Geoff Morrell) of 30 former detainees "returning to terror" after their release from Gitmo. The trouble is that claim was firmly debunked by reports from the hard-working Seton Hall School of Law.

Just as the Government's claims that the Guantanamo detainees "were picked up on
the battlefield, fighting American forces, trying to kill American forces," do not comport with the Department of Defense's own data, neither do its claims that former detainees have "returned to the fight." The Department of Defense has publicly insisted that at least thirty (30) former Guantanamo detainees have "returned" to the battlefield, where they have been re-captured or killed. To date, however, the Department has described at most fifteen (15) possible recidivists, and has identified only seven (7) of these individuals by name.

More strikingly, data provided by the Department of Defense reveals that:

- at least eight (8) of the fifteen (15) individuals identified alleged by the Government to have "returned to the fight" are accused of nothing more than speaking critically of the Government's detention policies;

- ten (10) of the individuals have neither been re-captured nor killed by anyone;

- and of the five (5) individuals who are alleged to have been re-captured or killed, two (2) of the individuals' names do not appear on the list of individuals who have at
any time been detained at Guantanamo, and the remaining three (3) include one
(1) individual who was killed in an apartment complex in Russia by local authorities and one (1) who is not listed among former Guantanamo detainees but who, after his death, has been alleged to have been detained under a different name.

Seton Hall's studies also found that a bare 55% of Gitmo detainess had ever taken up arms against the US and only 8% were suspected of being members of Al Qaida. The vast bulk of Gitmo detainees had been turned in by local warlords for bounty payments with no US witnesses to their alleged involvement in terrorism at all. No wonder their recidivist rate is so low, at a Pentagon figure of 11%. That compares with "an estimated 67.5%" in the general prison population.

Now Seton Hall has released a new report which examinins the Pentagon's dubious claims and overhyped allegations. The report is entitled Propaganda by the Numbers. Their press release states:

Professor Denbeaux of the Center for Policy & Research has said that the
Center has determined that “DOD has issued “recidivism” numbers 43 times, and
each time they have been wrong—this last time the most egregiously so.”

Denbeaux stated: “Once again, they’ve failed to identify names, numbers, dates, times, places, or acts upon which their report relies. Every time they have been required to identify the parties, they have been forced to retract their false ID’s and their numbers. They have included people who have never even set foot in Guantanamo —much less were they released from there. They have counted people
as “returning to the fight” for having written an Op-ed piece in the New York Times and for having appeared in a documentary exhibited at the Cannes Film Festival. They have revised and retracted their internally conflicting definitions, criteria, and their numbers so often that they have ceased to have any meaning— except as an effort to sway public opinion by painting a false portrait of the supposed dangers of these men.

Fourty-three times they have given numbers—which conflict with each other—all of which are seriously undercut by the DOD statement that “they do not track” former detainees. Rather than making up numbers “willy-nilly” about post release conduct, America might be better served if our government actually kept track of them.”

The study notes that the Pentagon keeps hedging the numbers they use:

Eighty-two percent (82%) of the publicly made claims catalogued in the Appendix
of this report contain qualifying language, including terms such as: “at least”;
“somewhere on the order of”; “approximately”; “around”; “just short of”; “we
believe”; “estimated”; “roughly”; “more than”; “a couple”; “a few”; “some”;
“several”; and “about.”

Why? Because the Department of Defense "does not keep track of released detainees nor does it follow their post release conduct". It makes these claims up from data collected which might show Gitmo detainee involvement but having previously claimed as recidivists men who were never in Gitmo in the first place and someone whose only terrorist act after release was to pen an op-ed for the new York Times it's amazing that the mainstream takes them seriously.

Rachel Maddow interviewed Mark Denbeaux of the Seton Hall School of Law.who has rese about the Torture and Prisoners and this "Returning to the Battle Field" story:

LibertyAir Blog

The Final Legacy: A Legend in His Own Mind

The final weeks of the Bush Administration has been a full court press of interviews, press conferences, and speech's, all in the attempt to burnish the disgrace that was President George W. Bush.

Mostly they were self-pity fests, but the one thing that comes through loud and clear is that George W. Bush is a Legend in His Own Mind. Man nothing was his fault, nothing he did was really wrong. He just was in the wrong place in the wrong time.

What does it say that this man claims to have never been down any day in office, when things like 911 happened on his watch, two wars started on his watch, a U.S. city was destroyed on his watch, hundreds of thousands of people died in one of the worst natural disasters when tsnamis hit Indonesia and India.

Looks like the Bush legacy tour has finally ended, and luckily so far all of this whining has not changed the mind of this nation. Thank goodness. Dspite all of their spin over the last few weeks by George W. Bush and his enablers, the P.R. blitz hasn't worked out very well for them.

Bush's poll numbers are still in the tank despite their best efforts.

Watch Keith Olbermann remember the Bush Administration in 8 minutes:


Rachel Maddow had a really interesting interview with Matt Taibbi on her MSNBC show. Matt Taibbi has written a very creative article for Rolling Stone, where he gives his views on how Bush will be remembered: Bush Apologizes: The Farewell Interview We Wish He'd Give..

Watch Rachel Maddow discuss the Bush Legacy with Matt Taibbi:

LibertyAir Blog

Keith Olbermann Discusses Obama's Speech

Keith Olbermann reported on President-elects economic speech yesterday, and comments made by Nancy Pelosis.

Nancy made the declaration that if the stimulus package is not passed by President's Day, there would be no President's recess. Olbermann pointed out the rank hypocrisy of John Bohner who had no trouble running up deficits during the Bush years, and is now trying to paint himself as a deficit hawk.

Olbermann interviewed Howard Fineman about the growing debate within Democratic ranks over the stimulus. Watch it here:

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There is definitely a debate about the needs for tax cuts, which I think is good. I don't agree with including so much in tax cuts.


Rachel Maddow then gave her take on Obama's speech. She pointed out that Obama's speech was a break, not with just the outgoing Bush administration, but with the administrations of Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan. She also reported on the confirmation hearings.

Watch her analysis and interview Robert Reich:

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The Hoover Party

Rachel Maddow gives a brief history of Herbert Hoover, and accurately ties the modern Republican Party to him.


LibertyAir Blog

Rachel Maddow: Union-Bashing v. Facts

Rachel Maddow looked at union-bashing versus the real facts last night on MSNBC:


LibertyAir Blog

Timeline for Afghanistan?

It is being reported that President Hamid Karzai recently told a visiting U.N. Security Council delegation that the international community should set a timeline to end the war in Afghanistan. This appears to be the first time President Karzai has called for a limit on the time that US and international efforts to defeat Taliban militants.

Karzai was quoted as saying:

"If there is no deadline, we have the right to find another solution for peace and security, which is negotiations."

Now Karzai didn't specify when he wants the deadline set by. Currently the international community and the United States are ramping up military and aid efforts for Afghanistan. The U.S. now has some 32,000 troops in the country, but U.S. military leaders say up to 20,000 more American forces could be sent to Afghanistan in 2009.

President-elect Barack Obama has made it clear that he plans to send more support to Afghanistan. It is interesting to see how this will affect Obama's plans.

The Afghani president also told the U.N. team that airstrikes by international military forces and searches of Afghani homes must stop. President Karzai has made this demand repeatedly.

Rachel Maddow spoke about this on her television show:

LibertyAir Blog

National Intelligence Council: Future Is Going To Be Rocky

On last Friday's radio show, Rachel Maddow talked about National Intelligence Council's report Global Trends 2025 with Frank Micciche of the New American Foundation. And as we have come to expect from Rachel, it was a very

Every four years, the National Intelligence Council takes a stab at predicting the furture. Their Global Trends 2025 was just released. As with the earlier NIC efforts the project's primary goal is to provide US policymakers with a view of how world developments could evolve, identifying opportunities and potentially negative developments that might warrant policy action. We also hope this paper stimulates a broader discussion of value to educational and policy institutions at home and abroad.

Just in case you were growing weary of all the happy talk about the economy, here's some of the reports highlights:

- ...the U.S. dollar, while remaining important, will decline to "first among equals" among other national currencies.
- U.S. global power also will likely decline, as Americans' concerns about putting resources into solving domestic problems may cause the United States to pull resources from foreign and global problems.
- China and India, following a "state capitalism" economic model, were likely to join the United States atop a multipolar world and compete for influence, the report said.
- Russia's potential was less certain, depending on its energy wealth and internal investment. But Iran, Turkey and Indonesia were also seen gaining power.
- A world with multiple power centers has been less stable than one with a single or two rival superpowers, and there was a growing potential for conflict, the report said.
- Global warming will be felt, and water, food and energy constraints may fuel conflict over resources. - "Strategic rivalries are most likely to revolve around trade, investments and technological innovation and acquisition, but we cannot rule out a 19th century-like scenario of arms races, territorial expansion and military rivalries," the report said.
- Global wealth was seen shifting from the developed West to the energy-rich Gulf States and Russia, and to Asia, the rising center of manufacturing and some service industries.
- A shift away from an oil-based energy system will be underway or complete by 2025. Better renewable technologies such as solar and wind power offer the best opportunity for a quick and low-cost transition, the report said.
- The risk that militant groups would use biological weapons was greater than the risk of nuclear terrorism, the report said.
- India, China and Brazil will rise, the Korean peninsula will be unified in some form, and new powers are likely to emerge from the Muslim non-Arab world.

While not apocalyptic, the future will be very rocky, and we can no longer afford to have children pretending to be Republican leaders in charge anymore.

Colbert vs. Maddow

Stephen Colbert hosted MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on his show this week, in a very funny segment. She is the hottest new host on television and immediately started being competitive with her; at one point asking her, "How many Peabodys do you have?"

He then gave her some patented Bill O'Reilly advice, very funny.

As for Rachel, she came in more as the Air America version over the more corporate MSNBC version. She was in sneakers and thick glasses, and was typically self-effacing - especially when Colbert brought up her pal and MSNBC mentor, Keith Olbermann, whom she called the "King of Cable," and also confirmed that he is not, in fact, a chicken.

She went toe to toe and brought up some good points.

Watch it here:

LibertyAir Blog

Greenspan Denies Economic Crisis His Fault

Speaking on Capitol Hill today, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan conceded that the economic meltdown had revealed a major flaw in his economic thinking and left him in a “state of shocked disbelief,” but he denied the nation’s economic crisis was his fault.

Now I have to admit for years I bought this guy's theory. I believed in the Milton Friedman theory of economics, but in 2000 really turned, as Greenspan set aside intelligent economic policy for partisan belief. The worst thing that ever happened to Greenspan was he had a Republican President. If he had had Gore in office, he would have remained a brake on outlandish economic policy. Instead he felt the need to back an insane tax policy, and dumped cash into the economy by keeping interest rates way to low for way too long which increased the housing bubble.

Greenspan of course wants to forget this. He stepped down in 2006, is now calling the banking and housing chaos a “once-in-a-century credit tsunami” that led to a breakdown in how the free market system functions, and tried to give the impression that no one could see it coming. But this is not true, economists like Paul Krugman were warning of this.

During today's hearings Greenspan warned that things in the economy would get a lot worse before they get better, with rising unemployment and no stabilization in housing prices for “many months.”

Tough economic reports that came out today backed Greenspan's ascertion. New jobless claims soared to just under 500,000 for last week, and Goldman Sachs, Chrysler and Xerox all said they were cutting thousands more jobs.

Republican Greenspan, who has always been a staunch believer in the Milton Friedman theory of economics, and in free markets, proposed that government consider tougher regulations, including requiring financial firms that package mortgages into securities to keep a portion as a check on quality.

Greenspan did acknowledge under some very intense questioning that he had made a “mistake” in believing that banks, operating in their own self-interest, would do what was necessary to protect their shareholders and institutions. Greenspan said that his theory had “a flaw in the model ... that defines how the world works.”

Greenspan was wrong in 2004 when he rejected fears that the five-year housing boom was turning into an unsustainable speculative bubble that could harm the economy when it burst. During that time Greenspan maintained that home prices were unlikely to post a significant decline nationally because housing was a local market. Today he was forced to admit this was wrong.

Again under some tough questioning Greenspan was asked to defend a variety of actions he took as Federal Reserve chairman; like resisting recommendations to use the Fed’s powers to crack down on subprime mortgages, for one. He was asked why he opposed efforts to impose regulations on derivatives, the complex financial instruments that include credit default swaps, which have also figured prominently in the current crisis.

He tried to defend himself by saying that outside of credit default swaps, the bulk of financial derivatives had not caused major problems. This shows he still is not really up to speed on this crisis. He said the boom in subprime lending occurred because of the huge demand for investment opportunities in a global economy, and he blamed the crash on a failure by investors to properly assess the risks from such mortgages, which went to borrowers with weak credit. Again he really has no idea what this financial crisis is about, and what needs to be done to fix it.

Today on her MSNBC show Rachel Maddow talked to Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, about Greenspan’s testimony.


LibertyAir Blog

Rachel Maddow Discusses Campaign Stratagy

Rachel Maddow's new show on MSNBC has been a smashing success. And its easy to see why, she has a firm grip on the facts, asks really good questions, and has a great demeanor for approaching her work.

Today she gave a great analysis of the campaign strategies for both Barack Obama and John McCain in the final stretch, and why this is still a close race. She then interviews Virginia's Democrat Governor Tim Kaine.

Watch here:

LibertyAir Blog

Rachel Maddow Discussed the McCain campaign

On Friday Rachel Maddow reported on the Jeckle and Hyde nature of the McCain campaign, and their use of the Robocalls. Rachel interviewed Democratic strategist and senior advisor to John Edwards, Mudcat Saunders about the McCain campaign strategist.


LibertyAir Blog

Breaking News: Obama Campaign Calls for Special Investigator

Tonight on Countdown with Keith Olbermann it was reported that the Obama Campaign is not sitting still for this Republican attack on A.C.O.R.N. and the false voter fraud fantasy that conservatives are trying to sell the public. The Obama Campaign issued a letter to the Justice Department requesting that the Special Investigator Nora Dannehy expand her investigation to look into the McCain campaign's attempt at voter suppression. accused it "trying to create a much greater doubt about the electoral process altogether," by alleging that ACORN voter fraud could threaten the fabric of our democracy, as McCain claimed in the debate Wednesday night.

Keith tonight interviewed Bob Bauer, an elections lawyer with the Obama camp, who wrote the letter to the DOJ.

He basically told Olbermann that the Obama campaign are concerned that the DOJ's election-eve investigation into ACORN is a repeat of the politicization of the department that we saw in 2006 that led to the US attorney firings scandal.


libertyAir Blog

Earlier today Bauer released a letter that he sent on behalf of Senator Obama to Attorney General Michael Mukasey calling on him to have the issue taken on by Nora Dannehy, the prosecutor he appointed to investigate the US attorney firings.

Rachel Maddow followed up on this story with an interview of George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley.


libertyAir Blog

David Frum Compares Rachel Maddow To Racist Hecklers

Last night on the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, Rachel hosted former speechwriter to President Bush, David Frum, to discuss the increasingly nasty — and sometimes racist — tone among some of the attendees at McCain-Palin rallies.

David Frum has been openly critical of the McCain campaign, and Maddow intended to discuss his concerns about the campaign’s turn toward negativity.

However it was clear from the beginning that David Frum had a very different agenda: to attack Rachel Maddow.

Discussing the “ugliness of tone” in American politics, he said that Maddow’s show, “unfortunately, is itself an example of that problem.” He then compared her tone to the hateful outbursts of some McCain-Palin supporters:

MADDOW: Do you think that my tone on this show is equivalent to people calling Barack Obama somebody who pals around with terrorists, people yelling from the
audience at McCain-Palin rallies, Bomb Obama. Kill him. Off with his head. Traitor. Are you accusing me of an equivalence in tone?

FRUM: I don’t think that’s an important question. I think the question is, given the small plate of responsibility that you personally have, how do you manage that responsibility? The fact that other people fail in other ways is not an excuse for you failing in your way.

MADDOW: But you did just say it’s the same thing, that you’re seeing the same thing on this show in a lot -

(CROSS TALK)

FRUM: I worry about that.

I'm a fan of Rachel Maddow, so I am biased, but I have no idea what Frum is talking about. I have seen just about every show since it's start a few weeks ago. What I have seen is that Rachel Maddow has consistently welcomed guests who disagree with her — including Frum himself — and has interviewed conservatives and progressives alike with dignity and poise. In contrast over the past few weeks, McCain supporters have called Senator Obama “an Arab,” “Little Hussein,” and a “terrorist.” They have declared themselves to be “scared” of an Obama presidency, have called for him to be killed, and have likened him to a monkey.

Personally I believe we saw yesterday why Rachel Maddow’s ratings continue to skyrocket.
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