Tag: Plouffed

Yesterday, I wrote about why it is a mistake for the Democrats to cling to the Senate Finance Committee’s funding mechanism for their health insurance “reform” bill, which is a punitive, regressive excise tax on the working class’s health insurance benefits themselves, which the White House persists in calling the “Cadillac tax.”

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

Since Friday afternoon is always good for a newsdump, according to Chris Bowers at Open Left, Jillian Rayfield at TPMDC, and Greg Sargent at The Plum Line, we have the usual Democratic anonymous WH sources/leadership aides

 telling us that the President intends to offer the excise tax and no Public Option to the “Bipartisan” health care bill summit next Thursday Feb 25 th.

Sargent:

Okay, I’ve got some more info for you on what the health care compromise proposal that Obama will bring to the summit next week is going to look like.

Bottom line: It’s all but certain to have the Cadillac tax in it, even though House Dems oppose it, and no public option, aides say.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov….

Oh, goody.

Now, last night at Open Left, we had the breathless BREAKING! applied to this little nugget:

Obama will support the public option if Reid will.  

http://www.openleft.com/diary/…

Based on HHS Sec Kathleen Sebelius answering an interview question put to her by Rachel Maddow.

Check out this Research 2000 polling done in Nevada, this month 2/9 – 2/10/10 :  http://act.boldprogressives.or…

88% of Nevada Democrats and 61% of Independents favor a govt. admin health insurance plan “like Medicare” for younger people to be able to obtain as a choice to compete with private plans

89% of Nevada Democrats and 56% of Independents would prefer passing health insurance reform that includes a public option, and that would make them more likely to vote for Democrats in the 2010 elections, even if this meant the bill didn’t get Republican votes.

88% of Democrats and 58% of Independents think Harry Reid should include a Public Option in Reconciliation.

Today, Friday, President Obama did a joint appearance with Senate Majority Leader Reid at a town hall in a high school gym in Henderson, Nevada.  They hugged, they praised each other, they made boxing allegories.  

 “Health care has been knocking me around pretty good,” Obama said. “It’s been knocking Harry around pretty good.”

The goal was to shift the emphasis from the unpopularity of some of Reid’s votes to, in Obama’s view, the courage it took to take expensive steps to save the economy. “Sometimes he takes his licks,” Obama said of Reid. “But he gets back up. Harry Reid has never stopped fighting.”  

Yup. Harry’s never stopped fighting.  Fighting for what, we’re not sure, and in what decade, we don’t know, but he’s still in there, swingin’ away.   Harry’s sagging in the polls in his Nevada re election race.  Nevada, with the highest percentage of veterans and retirees in the nation (think living on fixed incomes), and an economy that depends on tourism and entertainment, has been battered brutally in this recession, as it also has a 13% unemployment rate, and the 2nd highest foreclosure rates in the nation.  Harry needs a Big Las Vegas Finale to pull this one off.  

We’ve all heard from the Obama WH about the fact the the Great War on Terror, sometimes called The Long War, ended shortly after Obama took office in 2010, as was evidenced by the renaming of it to “Overseas Contingency Operations” last year.

Now after seven bloody years and by some counts over a million Iraqi deaths the Obama Administration has announced that Operation Iraqi Freedom is, according to the White House and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, finally over as well.

ABC News reported Thursday evening that…

…the Obama administration has decided to give the war in Iraq — currently known as Operation Iraqi Freedom — a new name.

The new name: “Operation New Dawn.”

In a February 17, 2010, memo to the Commander of Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the “requested operation name change is approved to take effect 1 September 2010, coinciding with the change of mission for U.S. forces in Iraq.”

You can read the memo — a copy of which was sent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen – HERE [.pdf].

[snip]

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell had no comment on the memo, saying it speaks for itself.

The move has met with some criticism. In a statement, Brian Wise, executive director of Military Families United said, “You cannot end a war simply by changing its name.  Despite the Administration’s efforts to spin realities on the ground, their efforts do not change the situation at hand in Iraq. Operational military decisions should not be made for purposes of public relations, as the Secretary of Defense cites, but should be made in the best interests of our nation, the  troops on the ground and their families back home.”

If Gates was hoping that “Operation New Dawn” would convey a new period in the US-Iraq relationship, it’s not clear that was the best choice of name.

After all, Operation New Dawn was the name for the bloody and grueling 2004 battle for Fallujah.

Yesterday, I reported on the incredulous national reaction fellow Democrats had to Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D, CA) proposed amendment to the upcoming Jobs Bill, the one where she wanted to suspend the Endangered Species Act protections to migrating baby salmon and Delta smelt in the Sacramento & San Joaquin River Delta, with the excuse that increased water pumping out of the Delta to her billionaire water broker donors would “increase jobs.”

This ignored the fact that the salmon fishing season has been suspended the past 2 years on the CA coast and may be heading for a 3rd year of cancelation because of the collapse and crash of the salmon population.

Story here:

DiFi Does a Pombo on Salmon, Jobs Bill Amend Guts EndSpecAct

I found a letter from CA Assemblyperson, Chair of the “Water, Parks, & Wildlife Committee,” Jared Huffman, to Mark Corwin, Director of the CA Dept of Water Resources (DWR) from 1 week ago, Feb 10th.  In it, Chairman Huffman asks why the CA Dept of Water Resources (DWR)  is flouting the CA Endangered Species Act (CESA) with regards to Judge Oliver Wanger’s opinion Feb 5, 2010, that Delta water pumping extraction must decrease to protect Delta Smelt and migrating salmon.  In 2008 and 2009, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service said that if water agencies such as CVP + SWP pumped high amounts of water out of the Delta at certain times, it was going to drive Federally listed endangered fish in the Delta to extinction. (state rules need to comply with Federal listings)  In the summer of 2009 the Dept of Water Resources requested rules clarification, then turned around and started attacking the new rules in court.  

 

Huffman  to DWR:

{{{   On August 3, 2009, (the CA)  Dept Water Resources (DWR) filed legal papers in support of a motion

by its water contractors seeking to invalidate the biological opinion – even though the effect would

be to invalidate DWR’s own CA Endangered Species Act coverage for the SWP pumps.

Then DWR took aim at the salmon biological opinion.  Last week, detection of salmon triggered an

obligation under the salmon biological opinion for the SWP/CVP pumps to reduce reverse flows in Middle

and Old Rivers.  State and federal water contractors went to court seeking to overturn the heavily peer

reviewed salmon biological opinion and replace it with a previously invalidated Bush-era opinion.  

Now, detection of smelt has triggered protections under the delta smelt biological opinion. As you know, a limitation on reverse flow to protect delta smelt would also meet your requirements to protect salmon and longfin smelt.  Monday, Central Valley Project contractors filed for a Temporary Restraining Order on the delta smelt protections.  And Dept of Water Resources, fully informed as to the deference the court gave its last letter, filed another “non-opposition” letter yesterday.

Having actively worked to create these problems, please explain how DWR intends to fix them.  }}}

 

______________

a pdf download of Huffman’s letter to the DWR is here:  

http://www.lloydgcarter.com/fi…

I expanded some of the acronyms above, so it would read more easily

I’m quoting this to to help illustrate the breadth of the problem Senator Feinstein created with so many levels of both state and Federal water and fisheries law, when she decided to play Top Water Distributress of the SacJoaquin Delta. The state of CA was trying to work this out with the Federal government, and she meddled to make a favor to Kerns County water brokers, and Westlake Mutual Water Company and billionaire donor Stewart Resnik, so they could sell a bigger water allotment to the highest bidder in Southern CA.  And this is going to be tacked on to a JOBS Bill.

Congress has had this week off because of President’s day. They had the previous week off because of 2 massive snowstorms.  So they’ve had plenty of time to interact people who are either mad at them or wish to purchase their influence.

Today, The Hill is reporting that Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid doesn’t have the cloture votes to even begin debate on the jobs bill.  

Now that the “Plouffe You, You Dirty Effing Bedwetter Brigade”  has taken over the public communications again for the Obama administration, we are treated to the Trial Balloon of the State of the Union address, which says the President wants a 3 year spending freeze which would exempt the Pentagon, Veterans affairs, and Homeland Security.  Of course, the senior Administration official spoke anonymously.

link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

I don’t think this is a good idea.