Your Source To Everything

Iowa City, Iowa (CNN) — President Obama hit the road Thursday to sell the merits of the newly enacted health care law, telling an enthusiastic Iowa crowd that the measure will lead to greater economic security for most Americans.

"This is your victory," Obama said at the University of Iowa. Health care reform "was about the future of our country. And today … that future looks stronger and more hopeful and brighter than it has in some time."

The crowd, in turn, repeatedly chanted Obama’s campaign theme: "Yes, we can."

Obama made his remarks as the Senate passed a package of changes to the health care law. Congressional Democrats have promised to approve the changes before the end of the week.

In the "years to come, health care inflation, which has been rising about three times as fast as people’s wages, will start slowing," Obama said. "We’ll start reducing the waste in the system, from unnecessary tests to unwarranted insurance subsidies. So over time, Americans will save money."

The reform plan is a "common sense" law that politically is the "middle of the road," Obama asserted.

Read More

Popularity: 2% [?]

WASHINGTON – A high-stakes White House summit intended to find common ground between Republicans and Democrats on how to remake the nation’s health care system instead exposed political fault lines Thursday that both sides were unsure could be straddled.

WASHINGTON – A high-stakes White House summit intended to find common ground between Republicans and Democrats on how to remake the nation’s health care system instead exposed political fault lines Thursday that both sides were unsure could be straddled.

"We have a very difficult gap to bridge here," Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, said in reference to Democrats’ stalemated legislation to extend coverage to more than 30 million people who are now uninsured. "We just can’t afford this. That’s the ultimate problem."

But Obama and Democratic leaders cast the reform they want as critical to tackling an issue that is even more pressing to many Americans — the struggling economy.

Republicans opened the summit by urging President Obama to "start over" on health care reform and to renounce an unusual move to sidestep a GOP filibuster.

But the Democrats repeatedly highlighted several points of agreement on health care reform with the GOP in an effort to show that it made no sense to start over again. 

Popularity: 3% [?]

Associated Press Writer= BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — The Dalai Lama says he doesn’t fault President Obama for his low-key reception in Washington because he recognizes that the president must juggle ties to the Tibetan spiritual leader with concerns about angering China.

The Dalai Lama told The Associated Press he understands that Obama must be practical in exercising his commitment to human rights worldwide.

"No disappointment. The last six decades my heart hardened. I do not consider important political gestures. I don’t care. The important is meet face-to-face," said the Dalai Lama, who was sometimes assisted by a translator.

"With President Clinton, the first meeting was a ‘drop-in,’" he said. "People asked me the same question (then). I don’t care."

The Dalai Lama made the remarks while in Los Angeles to support Whole Child International, an organization that advocates better care for orphans worldwide.

Read more guardian.co.uk

Popularity: 2% [?]

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iranian opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi appeared to urge his supporters on Saturday to take part in rallies on Nov. 4 marking the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

If they gather in the streets on Wednesday, there may be clashes with police and government backers, as happened during annual demonstrations in Iran in support of the Palestinians on Sept. 18.

Iran’s presidential election candidate Mirhossein Mousavi in Tehran June 12, 2009. (REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah/Files)

In a statement posted on a reformist website, Mousavi said he would press ahead with his efforts for political change in Iran following its disputed election in June, which he says was rigged in favour of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Referring to the Iranian date of the seizing of the U.S. embassy in 1979, Mousavi said on his kaleme.com website: "The 13th of Aban is a … rendezvous so we would remember anew that among us it is the people who are the leaders."

He said: "Our green path is a rational one and a bearer of good news since it shows that we will stand firm on our demands." Green was the colour of Mousavi’s election campaign.

Read more on thestar.com

Popularity: 6% [?]

THE Obama administration’s pay tsar says he doesn’t want his authority to set pay standards, which currently covers seven US firms, to expand to a broader range of companies that have received government aid.

Kenneth Feinberg, who last week slashed the average compensation for 25 employees at the seven firms by about 50 per cent, told a House committee that additional oversight of pay practices at the hundreds of other firms that have received government aid isn’t warranted.
"I believe the final compensation determinations I make and discuss in my report are a useful model to guide others in the private marketplace. But that is where my authority should end," Mr Feinberg said in testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Darrell Issa of California, the committee’s ranking Republican, assailed "corporate greed and corruption" but said he was wary of Mr Feinberg’s role of having say over any corporation’s pay.
"Just as government bailouts of failed firms are misguided, so too are efforts to place a cap on the rewards of true innovation and success," Mr Issa said.
Mr Feinberg said he too was wary of acting outside his mandate from Congress, but said the seven firms are exceptions to the government’s broader reluctance to get involved in compensation issues and were covered by legislation passed earlier this year. In this case, the government is acting as a major shareholder in a firm it owns a significant stake in.
"These seven companies are owned by the taxpayer and the taxpayers are acting as creditors," Mr Feinberg said.

Read more on theaustralian.news.com.au

Popularity: 2% [?]

When Heinrich Boere is asked how he was able to shoot three Dutch resistance fighters, he tells interviewers: “Not difficult, you just curled your finger around the trigger and pulled. Bang!” And then he laughs.

The 88-year-old former Waffen SS member never hid his past, but has managed to use every possible loophole to escape trial and imprisonment. Yesterday, however, the robust pensioner finally reached the dock.

His case in Aachen, in western Germany, will be followed by the Munich trial of John Demjanjuk next month.

Mr Demjanjuk, 89, is facing charges of complicity in 27,900 cases of murder.

Read more on timesonline.co.uk

Popularity: 1% [?]

Afghanistan is in the midst of a legitimacy crisis. The recent elections there did not comply with Afghan law, nor with international standards. It would have been logical to postpone them, given Nato’s inability to provide the security required for proper election monitoring.

At the core of the question of legitimacy in Afghanistan is a tension between what is best strategically and what is right morally. Sadly, the two may be mutually exclusive. First, there is the government of Hamid Karzai. Already ineffective in the eyes of most ordinary Afghans, it is now seen as illegitimate to boot. The run-off election just announced for 7 November may improve the situation, but only slightly. Most Afghans do not like Karzai. Non-Pashtuns see him as a western stooge and Pashtuns share this assumption, but they figure at least he is a Pashtun stooge, so they "support" his presidency. Pashtun support is critical for Nato’s efforts, given that the most volatile area of the country is the Pashtun south.

The problem for the international community – for which read Barack Obama – is how to enact what the American public expects in Afghanistan as opposed to what is achievable. The public expects that their soldiers are dying to secure America. They have been told that a democratic Afghanistan is the best way to ensure this in the long term. Somehow the idea of young Americans or Brits dying to support an unelected, illegitimate government in Kabul does not go down well. Thus Obama must support a democratic process in Afghanistan.

Paradoxically, the president has to balance the public faith in democracy abroad with American impatience. The US electorate wants out, and so do many Democrats up for re-election in the 2010 mid-term elections. You can bet the calculus at Number 10 is not much different.

To achieve this goal, we need stability in Afghanistan. If stability can be provided by a strong-arm government that is not democratically elected, should we perhaps look the other way? This, however, will not be seen as a legitimate course of action at home or in Afghanistan. Such a course of action may also undermine the new counterinsurgency strategy recently outlined by the Nato/Isaf commander General Stanley McChrystal.

Read more on guardian.co.uk

Popularity: 2% [?]

David Cameron is facing a major revolt by the Conservative Party grassroots over his policy on Europe, according to a survey for The Independent.

The poll of 2,205 Tory members by the ConservativeHome.com website found that more than eight in 10 want him to call a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon even if it has been approved by the next general election – a pledge he is refusing to make.

Read more on wn.com

Popularity: 1% [?]

Obama Administration Frees Three More Gitmo Detainees

The Department of Justice Saturday evening announced that two detainees had been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to Ireland, and one had been transferred to Yemen.

There are more than 220 detainees remaining at the prison. In the last couple months, the White House has made it increasingly clear that the President will not make his self-stated January 22, 2010 deadline to close to prison.

Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, a native of Yemen, was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and returned to Yemen today. The Yemeni Embassy to the US issued a statement saying the country welcomed, "with enthusiasm, the release and transfer of its citizen."

Read more on abc.news.com

Popularity: 2% [?]

The United States on Saturday said India’s position on non-proliferation and CTBT will not impact the nuclear deal between the two countries and expressed hope to move forward with the landmark agreement.

"We’ve said before that the resolution that was passed on Thursday unanimously by the Security Council does not have any bearing on our bilateral civil nuclear cooperation," Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake said.

Blake was briefing journalists after a bilateral meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and External Affairs Minister S M Krishna here.

The UNSC had adopted a resolution seeking all non NPT signatories to join the treaty but India, which views it as discriminatory, refused to accept it.

Read more on indianexpress.com

Popularity: 2% [?]