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President Obama is set to speak before Congress and the nation Wednesday evening about his plans for universal health care in this country. So far, three promises seem to stand out among the rest as the lynch pins upon which his plan is based. Should he mention any of them in his national speech, here is an analysis of each based upon what has already been tried. I will use the state of Maine for this discussion, although I could just as easily use Massachusetts or Tennessee. All three have tried Obamacare, and, all three attempts have failed abysmally.

  One of President Barack Obama’s former top campaign advisers is “losing patience” with the White House, he told POLITICO Tuesday morning, as frustrations among the president’s liberal allies crest over issues from health care legislation to gay rights. “I am one of the millions of frustrated Americans who want to see Washington do more than it's doing right now,” said Steve Hildebrand, the deputy campaign manager who oversaw the Obama campaign’s field organization and was an architect of his early, crucial victories over Sen. Hillary Clinton in Iowa and South Carolina. Obama, he said, “needs to be more bold...

SEATTLE (AP) -- An advocacy group says 11 patients used medications to end their lives during the first six months of Washington state's assisted suicide law.

The Van Jones incident boiled to the surface and exploded very suddenly. When I first heard the sound bites and the pundits, I doubted their veracity. I thought to myself, there is no way that this man is a self-confessed communist. I hoped that the brilliant Yale Law School graduate did not really have a racial “chip” on his shoulder. Unfortunately, as I did just a little research on Van Jones’ life and times, I quickly discovered I was wrong. Now that he is gone, the average person may think that the controversy should be over. Not so. The ideological...

Odessa, September 4, Interfax – If the Constantinople Patriarchate accepts schismatics under its omophorion, it will found itself outside canonical Church, member of the Moscow Patriarchate Synodal Commission, cleric of the Odessa Diocese Archpriest Andrey Novikov believes. “If, Lord forbid, Constantinople choose to commune with Ukrainian schismatics, it will have no canonical authority as non-canonical interference in “alien diocese” is severely punished by certain canons,” Fr. Andrey says in his article conveyed to Interfax-Religion on Friday. The priest states that the Constantinople Patriarchate “again after a short repose is ready to take anti-canonical actions and interfere into jurisdiction of the...

Former Stooges guitarist James Williamson was in the parking lot of his dentist’s office earlier this year when he heard a familiar voice on his cellphone: Iggy Pop. “He asked me if I wanted to play guitar again,” says Williamson, who hasn’t performed a single gig since the Stooges dissolved in 1974. “I was about to take an early retirement from my job in Silicon Valley, so I figured ‘What the hell, let’s do it.’ ” Williamson spent time last month in Los Angeles rehearsing with the Stooges (minus Pop) — bassist Mike Watt, drummer Scott Asheton and saxophonist Steve...

The price of oil hit its all-time high in July of 2008, but since then has dropped by nearly 75 percent. Oil prices are now rising again and are likely to continue to climb as the world economy recovers. Oil man T. Boone Pickens believes that oil prices may reach $300 a barrel 10 years from now. History proves it, he said, and referred to the five OPEC revenue increases in the last five years. Why did oil prices rise last year to historic highs? And why are they rising again this year? Oil speculators are a favorite villain, but...

Clinton's advice to Obama: Forget about Republicans Posted: September 8th, 2009 01:16 PM ET From CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney (CNN) — As President Obama gets set to address a joint-session of Congress on the issue of health care reform Wednesday night, former President Clinton says it's time to forget about the Republican Party's role in the process entirely. "The president's doing the right thing. It is both morally and politically right," Clinton told Esquire Magazine in an interview published online Tuesday. "I wouldn't even worry about the Republicans. I'd worry about executing." Though it increasingly appears the White House...

From the first time I saw Barack Obama in the campaign to win his party's nomination, I found him to be arrogant, glib, shallow, and not particularly literate. He also seemed intelligent and supremely confident, absolutely sure of his destiny: he was the One we were waiting for. He would defeat Hillary Clinton, the presumptive nominee? A man about whom most Americans knew so little? Wow! Now, I know many of you might find Obama quite literate. I don't. While he might not butcher our language as often as George Bush did, I heard him pronounce Orion as Or-ee-on -...

As Will Heaven reports, Hollywood and European luminaries at the Venice Film Festival are busy butt-kissing Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan dictator. He’s anti-American, you see, and Oliver Stone has made a documentary and… what’s not to like? Well, this, maybe, especially if you happen to be a Jew involved in the film industry (not unknown). It’s an extract from a speech Chavez gave at a rehabilitation centre on December 24, 2005: The world has enough for everybody, but it happened that some minorities—the descendants of those who crucified Christ, the descendants of those who ejected Bolívar from here and who...

Glenn Beck vs. Van Jones: McCarthyism Enters the 21st Century (Huffington Post can only be linked to)

China has issued what amounts to the “Beijing Put” on gold. You can make a lot of money, but you really can’t lose. I happened to see quite a bit of Cheng Siwei at the Ambrosetti Workshop, a gathering of politicians and global strategists at Lake Como, including a dinner at Villa d’Este last night at which he listened very attentively as a number of American guests tore President Obama’s economic and health policy to shreds. Mr Cheng was until recently Vice-Chairman of the Communist Party’s Standing Committee, and is now a sort of economic ambassador for China around the...

Florida Republican Party Wages War on Liberty Caucus: ‘Party Purge’ Expels Caucus Chair and Members from RPOF Positions NO ROOM FOR DISSENT IN FLORIDA REPUBLICAN PARTY JACKSONVILLE, FL — Last Friday, the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) Grievance Committee notified Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida Chairman Will G. Pitts of Jacksonville and four other Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC) members that they have been removed from positions within the RPOF or prohibited from serving in any official RPOF capacity for a period of no less than two years. “This is just the latest action in the ongoing ‘Party Purge’,” said grassroots...

The White House tried to bury the news of Van Jones’s resignation – see my news report here – by announcing it after midnight on Sunday on a Labour Day weekend. But that hasn’t stopped the Right from trumpeting a major victory or the Left from gnashing its teeth over what it regards as a craven capitulation. Although Jones was in some ways a relatively insignificant figure in the administration, the White House’s handling of the affair tells us a lot about Barack Obama and the weaknesses that could result in disaster for him this autumn if does not put...

By MarketWatch MARKETWATCH FRONT PAGE Gold surges above $1,000 an ounce for the first time in nearly 18 months, propelled by sharp weakness in the U.S. dollar. See full story. Why are the gold skeptics skeptical? Contrarian-oriented gold investors are paying close attention to the reasons the gold skeptics are giving for not turning bullish. They are looking for clues as to what it will take to turn them into bulls and thereby weaken the contrarian foundation of any future rally in the price of gold. See full story.

The weekend edition of Norway's largest newspaper contained a very interesting interview with a female IFV-gunner this week. The CV-9030 gunner, witch has the somewhat fitting name of Tone Gunnes, was just 20 years old when she went to Afghanistan in the fall of 2007. She took part in the active fighting in operation Herekate Yolo II, where she (wo)manned the 30mm gun of the CV9030 IFV. She was credited with 20-25 confirmed kills during the battle of November 5. In the interview she tells her story about the battle and how she experienced it.

MADISON, Wis. - Assembly Democrats want to pay for additional worker training and financial aid through a 1 percent income tax increase on those making more than $1 million. State Rep. Cory Mason, a Democrat from Racine, announced the plan on Tuesday. The $145 million raised through the income tax would be used to get about $135 million in federal matching money. Mason says the plan would provide additional financial aid and training to 40,000 Wisconsin residents. Under the plan, grants would also be available to help small businesses retool to attract jobs. Additional money would also go toward tax...

The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty http://www.thefreemanonline.org In Defense of IdeologyPosted By Mario Rizzo • September 2009 • Vol. 59/Issue 7 There have been many statements recently to the effect that we should not let “ideology” or “philosophy” stand in the way of solving our economic problems. Indeed, the Obama administration (like the previous Bush administration) is keen to persuade us to drop all this prejudice and to go after each problem–banking, stimulus, and so forth–on its own terms. We should examine each solution on its own merits. President Obama’s inaugural address includes an apparent attack on ideology: What the...

(IsraelNN.com) A secret IDF Intelligence (AMAN) assessment warned as early as 1993 that the Oslo Accords would likely end with The Rabin government 'completely ignored' IDF assessments. rocket attacks on Ashkelon, according to former AMAN Maj.-Gen. Yaakov Amidror. The politicians, however, were not interested. Amidror leveled the charges during a lecture at the Netanya College on Monday. According to Amidror, who headed the IDF's Research and Assessment Division responsible for preparing the National Intelligence Assessment, the decision to go ahead with the Oslo agreements between Israel and the PLO terrorist organization was made without taking into account the military implications....

Will the world run to the safety of gold as a form of international reserve currency, before the U.S. can force SDRs, its chosen alternative to the dollar, on the world? It might just be happening now. A friend sends along this comment from Adrian Douglas: I have recently described what is going on in the physical market to be the equivalent of a "run on the Bank of the Gold Cartel." There are many factors that are leading to that conclusion and here are just a few: -- China is a confirmed large buyer of gold, along with Russia....