A Blue View

Lebanon Daily Star Editorial

From the Lebanon Daily Star:

Obama's new era in international diplomacy

Barack Obama's long-awaited address to the Muslim world has proven to be an event of global magnitude, and a dramatic, international projection of the bully pulpit of the American presidency. Obama's speech in Cairo was an unprecedented display of rhetorical power, coming in an important context: the last eight years of neoconservative policy based on the clash of civilizations mentality. This week, the leader of "the free world" projected his country's peaceful side, to around 1.5 billion people in 50 countries.

The address was totally in line with Barack Obama's personal history; it was also a significant departure with traditional politics, just like the precedent-setting choice by the American electorate last November.

Obama has committed his country to solving the Arab-Israeli struggle and its own long-simmering confrontation with Iran, as part of an agenda that includes confronting violent extremism and boosting democracy, religious freedom and women's rights. This can constitute a new era in international diplomacy, provided that Washington follow up with determination and evenhandedness.

To measure the impact of such an innovative address, one even needs innovative tools, as well as time to digest it before completing the full evaluation. But we should remember the Cairo speech wasn't a show - it was an exercise in power politics of the first order. The credit here probably belongs to Rahm Emmanuel, Obama's chief of staff. Without Emmanuel, whose pro-Israeli sympathies can't be questioned, Obama wouldn't be taking on the pro-Israel lobby, whether on Palestine or Iran. Emmanuel has laid down a bruising challenge: come up with a better plan on these issues, or shut up.

Thus, Obama's speech wasn't a lightweight declaration of idealistic principles; it represented a country, through its innovative leader, speaking quietly and carrying a big stick.

Obama emphasized the down side of global interdependence, meaning today's problems have real-world impact for many countries. Moreover, interdependence is a two-way street: people here are being asked to drop their misperceptions, just as America under Obama's leadership is prepared to drop its own misperceptions.

The focus on partnership isn't rhetoric; it has a real-world impact. If countries in the rest of the world step up to the plate, they will find that they have a role to play in these global battles.

It won't be a perfect symmetry of roles, since no one has the clout of the United States. But if the game is played correctly, having a positive role to play in a fair international system is an outcome we can live with. To get there, we need to keep ourselves oriented toward the new, and the innovative, and remember the contrast we saw in Cairo this week, one between a new politics of hope and interdependence, and the old politics of despair and disappointment.

Conservatives Shift in Favor of Openly Gay Service Members

From Gallup:

Americans are six percentage points more likely than they were four years ago to favor allowing openly gay men and lesbian women to serve in the military, 69% to 63%. While liberals and Democrats remain the most supportive, the biggest increase in support has been among conservatives and weekly churchgoers -- up 12 and 11 percentage points, respectively.

The finding that majorities of weekly churchgoers (60%), conservatives (58%), and Republicans (58%) now favor what essentially equates to repealing the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy implemented under President Clinton in 1993 is noteworthy for several reasons.

First, the data show that these traditionally conservative groups are shifting on this issue, supporting it to a far greater extent than they support legalized gay marriage.

Second, it suggests the political playing field may be softer on this issue, and President Barack Obama will be well-positioned to forge ahead with his campaign promise to end the military ban on openly gay service members with some support from more conservative segments of the population ...

Overall, the groups most in favor of allowing openly gay service members to serve in the military continue to be liberals (86%) and Democrats (82%), followed by Americans 18 to 29 (78%) -- whose support registered a nine-point jump in support from 2004.

While men (64%) and Americans 65 and older (60%) have levels of support more in line with right-leaning groups than with left-leaning groups on this issue, they join virtually all other demographic segments of the population in registering an increase in support since 2004.

The only exception to the trend in favor of openly gay service members is seen among those with a high school education or less, who showed 57% support in both surveys.

The Rachel Maddow Show Analyzes 'New Begininning' Speech

Part I, from The Rachel Maddow Show on 4 June 2009 was titled: The 3rd Rail - Obama's game-changing speech in Egypt.

Richard Engel describing Muslim reaction:

A lot of people in Kabul and across the Islamic world simply had their mouths open when they were listening to this speech. They couldn't believe what they were hearing. They had not heard this kind of language from an American president.

Rachel Maddow:

President Obama today spoke frankly and directly about the United States, about our closest allies, about our friends in the region and about our enemies. He said things that American politicians never say in public, especially American presidents, especially while they're overseas, especially while they're in the Middle East, especially all in one speech. It was like he grabbed onto the third rail and decided he was not going to let go.

Here are the big 8 issues Rachel actually annotates below:

1. Condemns Israeli Settlements
2. Denounces Arab Attacks
3. Labels Iraq "War of Choice"
4. Admits U.S. Role in Iran Coup
5. Dismisses 9/11 Conspiracies
6. Attacks Holocaust Deniers
7. Criticizes Arab "Democracies"
8. Admits U.S. Tortured

In Part II Zbigniew Brzezinski joins Rachel and analyzes analyze Obama's Cairo speech:

Landmark Legislation Empowering The FDA To Regulate Tobacco Likely To Pass

As posted a month ago, Philip Morris, the world's largest cigarette manufacturer, being astute enough to see the hand writing on the wall, supports the legislation the NY Times today reports is likely to pass Congress & be signed into law by the Pres:

Richard M. Burr, the Republican tobacco-state senator who tried a filibuster this week against a bill that would allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the cigarette industry, flew home to North Carolina for the weekend, conceding that the landmark legislation was likely to pass next week.

Although a Senate filibuster killed a similar measure in 1998, times have apparently changed. Mr. Burr acknowledged Thursday that his effort would probably be blocked by a cloture vote that the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, has scheduled for Monday evening. “Clearly the cloture motion will pass,” Mr. Burr said in an interview.

“Probably with flying colors,” David Ward, his press secretary, added.

After that, a final vote on the tobacco control measure could come Wednesday, Senate staff members said.

The House has already passed almost identical legislation, and President Obama has indicated he will sign the measure.

Tobacco regulation used to be a fight to the death in Congress, but now Mr. Burr stood largely alone in the filibuster effort.

“There’s been a fundamental change in the last 10 years,” Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an advocacy group that has been a leading proponent of the legislation, said in an interview Friday. He noted the rising public concern about the effect of secondhand smoke on children and the trend toward smoke-free indoor air laws in most states — even, effective next year, in Mr. Burr’s home state.

“There has been a change in attitudes about the need to act to reduce tobacco use and a condemnation of the tobacco industry’s continuing behavior,” Mr. Myers said. “I don’t predict Senate votes, but I think the debate this week showed extremely broad support.”

The legislation, known as the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, would for the first time empower the Food and Drug Administration to measure and restrict the harmful chemical components in tobacco and cigarette smoke. It would also require the agency to review new tobacco products; ban the use of terms like “light” and “low tar” that might misleadingly suggest those products were safer; require new, larger health warnings on cigarette packages; and tighten restrictions on marketing and advertising.

The legislation is being shepherded through the Senate by Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut. Although the effort’s longtime champion, Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, was not present because he is battling brain cancer, Mr. Kennedy’s legacy was invoked often in the debate last week.

The Abused Voter Syndrome

Air America host Mike Papantonio has an interesting thesis about Obama's popularity and its parallels with FDR. And he certainly chose an intriguing venue to discuss it: Fox News.

DOJ To Investigate Tiller Assassination

From the Huff Post:

The Justice Department on Friday opened an investigation into the killing of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller to see whether the accused gunman had accomplices.

The department will investigate possible federal crimes in connection with Dr. Tiller's slaying at his church on Sunday in Wichita, Kan. State prosecutors have already ruled out seeking the death penalty against the accused gunman, but federal prosecutors did not rule out doing so as they announced their own investigation.

"The Department of Justice will work tirelessly to determine the full involvement of any and all actors in this horrible crime," said Loretta King, head of the department's civil rights division.

Anyone who played a role in the killing, she said, will be prosecuted "to the full extent of federal law."

The department will seek to determine if the killing violated a 1994 law creating criminal penalties for violent or damaging conduct toward abortion providers and their patients.

Mideast Trip Political Cartoons

Obama's Overseas Tour

 

New White House Garden

 

Obama and the Arab World

Obama Considering Allowing Guilty Pleas For Sept 11 Detainees

From the NY Times:

The Obama administration is considering a change in the law for the military commissions at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that would clear the way for detainees facing the death penalty to plead guilty without a full trial.

The provision could permit military prosecutors to avoid airing the details of brutal interrogation techniques. It could also allow the five detainees who have been charged with the Sept. 11 attacks to achieve their stated goal of pleading guilty to gain what they have called martyrdom.

The proposal, in a draft of legislation that would be submitted to Congress, has not been publicly disclosed ... The proposal would ease what has come to be recognized as the government’s difficult task of prosecuting men who have confessed to terrorism but whose cases present challenges. Much of the evidence against the men accused in the Sept. 11 case, as well as against other detainees, is believed to have come from confessions they gave during intense interrogations at secret C.I.A. prisons. In any proceeding, the reliability of those statements would be challenged, making trials difficult and drawing new political pressure over detainee treatment ...

The draft legislation includes other changes administration officials disclosed last month when President Obama said he would continue the controversial military commission system with changes that would increase detainees’ rights. It is not known whether the White House has approved the proposed death penalty provision. A White House spokesman declined to comment.

The provision would follow a recommendation of military prosecutors to clarify what they view as an oversight in the 2006 law that created the commissions. The law did not make clear if guilty pleas would be permitted in capital cases.

Federal civilian courts and courts in most states with capital-punishment laws permit such pleas. But American military justice law, which is the model for the military commission rules, bars members of the armed services who are facing capital charges from pleading guilty ...

Weekly Radio Address

On health care reform:

"The political leader who has spent a lifetime moving between cultures envisions a world where tribal differences are trumped by common humanity and practical necessity"

From Michael Sherer:

Barack Obama's Cairo speech ... contained themes that transcend U.S. relations with Islam, and which are clearly going to be central to the next four, if not eight, years of American foreign policy. Obama, using himself as an example, was continuing to lay the groundwork, first begun in Europe, to build a global identity among the world's peoples. After a discussion of his own upbringing, as a Christian from a family that includes Muslims, who lived in Indonesia and visited Africa before arriving in the Arab world, Obama made this appeal for an emerging global commonality:

For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk. When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations. When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean. And when innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. That is what it means to share this world in the 21st century. That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings.

This is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another to serve their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.

That last sentence, given humanity's consistently bloody tribal history, seems particularly ambitious.  Compare this to the optimistic foreign policy frames the United States has projected for the last two decades. George H.W. Bush spoke of a "new world order," which, quoting Winston Churchill, imagined a globe where strong nations embraced ideas like "justice and fair play" to govern the world stage ... His son, George W. Bush, imagined a similarly idealistic world governed by clear dividing lines between good and evil, democracy and Islamo-facism, the philosophies of the Occident and the extremes of the Orient. In the latter Bush's vision, the U.S. was the hero, bringing freedom and justice to a messy world. (On this point, be sure to read Spencer Ackerman's post on how these definitions backfired on Bush and worked against U.S. interests.)

Obama envisions a different framing altogether.

New Beginnings Political Cartoons

 

 

Reactions To Obama's New Beginnings Speech In Cairo

Me:

It was a speech worth not a thousand words but many billions of dollars ... think about how much defense & counter-terrorism moneyg we will not have to spend because of this speech.

Hady Amr, a specialist on Middle East politics with the Brookings Institution:

The speech "struck such a tone, as to be an historic moment"... [Osama] Bin Laden is clearly shaking in his boots when you've got all the resistance movements in the region lining up saying this is a great speech.

As the speech sinks in, the echoes that the president used from the Bible, Torah, Quran and human wisdom [mean] we are going to be operating politically in a newly redefined world.

It is no longer possible for Israel to wiggle out of its settlements, for Hamas to make excuses about its rockets for Bin Laden to say cut your ties with Christians and Jews.

Members of Hamas at their training base in the Gaza Strip:

Gabor Steingart:

He gave a courageous speech, stating that Islam is a power for peace, that the Koran is a call for peacefulness, and that the US president finds nothing wrong with women who wear a the hijab. He added that the US must, once and for all, stop trying to export its particular vision of democracy. No Western leader before him had been as empathetic and obliging in an address to the world's 48 countries with majority Islamic populations. Obama offered the Muslims nothing less than reconciliation and partnership. It was a magnificent speech.

Ali's Notepad:

I think his biggest advantage was that he was able to get to talk to the audience on a personal level, especially with his constant references to verses of the Qur'an. He was very honest, which I think people appreciated, and his straight-forward approach got the audience cheering. He addressed all the current issues, all very controversial without without any tension, telling it like it is. ... Obama said it himself, it is just a speech. Though the fact that he was addressing the subjects with such confidence and intellect seemed like more than Bush ever did for the Arab world.

Al Jazeera's coverage: "Obama begins a new beginning"

Rush Limbaugh comparing Obama to Al Qaeda:

Jeffrey Goldberg:

An African-American President with Muslim roots stands before the Muslim world and defends the right of Jews to a nation of their own in their ancestral homeland, and then denounces in vociferous terms the evil of Holocaust denial, and right-wing Israelis go forth and complain that the President is unsympathetic to the housing needs of settlers. Incredible, just incredible.

Robert Dreyfuss:

But it was on Palestine that Obama hit the gong…How long has it been since a president spoke movingly about Palestinian suffering? And in a speech so high profile, even game-changing?

Rich Lowry:

But the speech was an act of diplomacy and as such, it inevitably was going to skate over some inconvenient truths and tilt its presentation in a way to try to make it more persuasive to its target audience. Fundamentally, Obama’s goal was to tell the Muslim world, “We respect and value you, your religion and your civilization, and only ask that you don’t hate us and murder us in return.” Bush tried to deliver the same message over and over again. The difference with Obama is that people might actually be willing to listen.

Richard Engel's analysis of how "Arabic" Obama's speech (at about 1:30) was is particularly interesting:

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Michael Crowley:

One year ago today, Barack Obama clinched the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. In doing so, he defied Hillary Clinton's criticism that his candidacy amounted to little more than shallow and flowery speeches. Change, Clinton argued, comes from hard work--not pretty words. Today, in the Grand Hall of Cairo University, Clinton listened from the front row as Obama gave his most elegant speech yet. Perhaps it dawned on Clinton, if it hadn't already, that a great speech can do a lot of the hard work for you.

In some ways, Obama's speech was anticlimactic. He said nothing terribly surprising, broke no new intellectual or policy ground. This was another one in a familiar series of Obama addresses seeking "common ground," just as he did between pro-lifers and pro-choicers at Notre Dame last month, and just as he did in his March 2008 speech about the "common hopes" of whites and blacks in Philadelphia.

But in fact, much of Obama's speech had a different sort of familiar ring. Most of his main arguments have been made before--not just by Obama himself, but by his predecessor. "Today I'd like to speak directly to the people across the broader Middle East," George W. Bush said at the United Nations on September 16, 2006. Like Obama, Bush explained that the United States is not at war with Islam ... Bush assured Iran that he did not oppose their use of peaceful nuclear power; so did Obama.

Bush's 2006 speech, of course, was immediately forgotten--a non-event with no impact on America's image abroad. But Obama's seems to offer the potential of making millions of Muslims reconsider their view of America. There is no novel way to restate the obvious reason for this: Obama is not Bush. He speaks without a foreign invasion on his resume, and with a reputation for honesty and decency. He writes and speaks on a higher intellectual and rhetorical level than Bush. (Today's speech, of which he was said to be the primary author, may have been his best piece of writing yet.) And above all, he is a black man with Muslim heritage, as he explained in the speech's emotional and symbolic highlight: "I'm a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims," Obama said. "As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith."

President Obama's New Beginning Speech In Cairo (complete version)

"Obama begins a new beginning"

Al Jazeera's fascinating report on Obama's Cairo speech in its entirety (the title is theirs too):

It was at Cairo University's Festival Hall that the great diva of Egyptian song, Umm Kalthoum, held her greatest concert triumphs in the 1950s and 1960s.

In the hall with a massive beige dome that made it look like an elegant concert hall or even opera house, she moved educated, influential Egyptian men and women to tears and ecstasy - a joy that has not been felt in this crowded and often chaotic city for years.

Until today.

Barack Obama entered from the far right of the stage and the audience of a few thousand of Egypt's great and good rose almost as one body.

Ministers of state, Coptic bishops and Muslim imams, senior Egyptian journalists - supporters of the regime and its critics - successful businessmen and leading academics, along with a large contingent of carefully chosen students from Cairo University and the American University of Cairo, applauded and waved back to the US president as he strode with an athlete's grace to centre stage.

Moving speech

An Umm Kalthoum song could go on and on without losing its intensity for more than an hour, and Obama sustained the rapt attention of his audience - most relying on simultaneous translation and the earnestness of his body language, his lean, appealing physical presence - for nearly as long.

Obama's speech was watched live by millions around the world [AFP]

One minute into his speech he won nearly every heart and mind in the great hall, announcing his pride to be carrying "the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace Muslim communities use in my country: asalaamu aleikum.

The audience rose to its feet and I was not the only one in that vast hall with tears in my eyes.

I never imagined, as an American and a Muslim, that I would ever hear an American president invoke the blessing of Islam or to go on to quote from the Quran, as he would do several times with great relevance.

Or to refer to Muhammad as "the Prophet upon whom be peace".

But this extraordinary event was more than superb pacing and performance, more than the soaring, almost classic oratory Obama is famous for and that translates so well into modern literary Arabic.

It was more than soothing and conciliatory words for a predominantly Arab audience here in the Festival Hall, or the millions who watched and listened at home and the office, at universities and cafes courtesy of a dozen live Arab satellite feeds.

A vast Arab audience nursing the grievances of decades sharpened by the blows of the past eight years that preceded Obama's presidency – the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the collapse of the Arab-Israeli peace process, the brutality of the siege and war on Gaza that cry out for justice and conciliation.

'New beginning'

Obama vowed that he was in Cairo "to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world", a new beginning based  on respect – a word that figured significantly in this speech - as well as "mutual interests and shared values".

The US president vowed a "new beginning" with Muslims worldwide [AFP]

But it quickly became clear that he was basing that new beginning on acknowledging realities and speaking hard truths – to Americans and to Israelis as well as to Arabs and Muslims.

He went well beyond the at-best well-meaning but almost meaningless platitudes about Islam as the religion of peace, to call his distant American audience's attention to Western civilisation's debt to Islam, "that carried the light of learning through so many centuries paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and enlightenment".

He recalled a Muslim civilisation that was based on innovation, science, mathematics, printing, medicine, the fine arts, and in general, religious tolerance and racial equality.

But for his audience here and throughout the Arab world, he insisted that the impulse behind the creation of the state of Israel was a tragic history that could not be denied, alluding to the persecution of the Jewish people for centuries, culminating in an unprecedented Holocaust.

And he denounced Holocaust denial just as he denounced Israeli indifference to the suffering and the hardships of the Palestinians and the daily humiliations of occupation.

Finally, hard talk that his audience was ready to meditate upon.

Perhaps it is Obama's deep reading in philosophy that led him to seek synthesis of apparent tension and conflict.

Even in his opening words, he honoured his official hosts - Al Azhar, the citadel of Sunni orthodoxy, and the University of Cairo, the launching pad in the 1920s and 1930s for secular education - as two remarkable institutions "that represent harmony between tradition and progress".

Obama differentiated between the invasion of Iraq, which he had opposed, and the war in Afghanistan which he defined as a war of necessity, and repeated his pledge to pull out all US combat units from Iraqi cities by next month, and all troops by 2012.

Jon Stewart On Dick Cheney

Jon brings us "the moment that epitomizes everything that is wrong with Dick Cheney, his arrogance, the media, their acquiescence, and the delightfully witty relationship between the two."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Dick (Uncut)
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The Way To Get Obama To Come Out For Marriage Equality

Watch the President's safe, pragmatic answer to Brian Williams' question. Though I understand it, I'm not happy that he's not willing to politically take this civil rights issue on now.

I have an idea. I want someone to ask this constitutional scholar president what he proposes to do about the fact that a law in 12% of the states (now that NH has sided with marriage equality) is not being enforced and is not even valid in the rest of them.  Doesn't the Constitution specifically prohibit this? Here's Article IV:

Section 1. Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.

Section 2. The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.

Isn't the President, and if not him, the Supreme Court, bound by the Constitution to force the other states to give "full faith and credit" to the laws of Massachusetts, Iowa, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut and Vermont?

Obama At Cairo University

President Barack Obama receives a standing ovation before speaking at Cairo University in Cairo:

AlJazeera's initial report:

 Barack Obama, the US president, has called for a "new beginning" with the world's 1.5 billion Muslims. Laying out his vision on Thursday for a new US partnership with the Muslim world during a visit to the Egyptian capital, Cairo, Obama said the "cycle of suspicion and discord" must end.

"I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect and based on the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competittion," Obama told a crowd of hundreds at the Cairo University.

"Instead, they overlap, and share common principles, principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings."

'Years of mistrust'

But Obama cautioned against expecting immediate change. "No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point," he said.

"But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors."

Before moving forward, the world must address the effects of extremism, he said.

"The first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism  in all of its forms," Obama said, repeating his declaration in Ankara in April that "America is not - and never will be - at war with Islam."

"We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security. Because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as president to protect the American people."

Afghanistan

Obama also addressed the war in Afghanistan in his wide-ranging speech. He said the United States does not want to keep its troops in Afghanistan, and is not seeking military bases there. But he said the US is in the South Asian nation out of necessity, following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

"Let us be clear: al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody.

"They [al-Qaeda] have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with."

[10:30 UPDATE] Complete transcript and speech.

Obama Continues To Be Flexible On Health Care: Willing To Consider Mandates

The President is clearly being pragmatic and keeping his eye on the larger prize. From the Wash Post:

One day after signaling a fresh willingness to consider taxing employer-sponsored health insurance, President Obama indicated yesterday a new openness toward a nationwide requirement that every American have health coverage.

In his push to enact sweeping health-care reform legislation this summer, Obama previewed what could be the outlines of a compromise on two of the thorniest issues confronting Congress. He said he could support mandates on both individuals and employers to contribute to the cost of health insurance if the bill provides protections to certain small businesses and poor people.

"If we do end up with a system where people are responsible for their own insurance, we need to provide a hardship waiver to exempt Americans who cannot afford it," he wrote in a letter to top Senate Democrats.

During the presidential primaries last year, Obama attacked then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's proposed individual mandate as a scheme to "go after people's wages."

In the letter, however, he said he understands that key committees are "moving towards a principle of shared responsibility -- making every American responsible for having health insurance coverage, and asking that employers share in the costs."

The approach tracks closely with a universal health program enacted in Massachusetts three years ago in which individuals must have coverage and businesses must either offer insurance to employees or pay into a state fund that provides coverage. In Massachusetts, individuals can receive free or subsidized care based on income.

Broadly speaking, the business community has opposed requirements to "pay or play," as the employer mandate is often known. But a survey conducted by the Main Street Alliance, a small-business coalition advocating reform, found that 77 percent of 1,200 small firms interviewed are willing to pay a portion of workers' health-care costs ...

That idea [of a government-sponsored insurance policy for people having trouble buying coverage on the private market] got a boost from Obama, who said in the letter that he "strongly" believes in giving Americans the choice of a public option.

"This will give them a better range of choices, make the health-care market more competitive, and keep insurance industries honest," he wrote.

Obama also pledged -- without providing details -- to trim an additional $200 billion to $300 billion out of Medicare and Medicaid spending over the next decade. That would be on top of the $309 billion in Medicare reductions in his budget, though Congress has not embraced the specifics.

For the first time, the president also said he is considering proposals that would empower the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission to implement cost controls on the health program for seniors and the disabled. The idea is similar to legislation sponsored by  Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), who wants to make the commission an independent agency in the executive branch functioning along the lines of the Federal Reserve Board. Obama, however, suggests following the model of the military base closing commission, with Congress still involved in Medicare's coverage and price decisions.

Senate Finance Committee members were told privately yesterday that the panel will probably see draft legislation on June 17 and begin marking up the bill the following week

Tiller Assassination Political Cartoons

 

 

New Hampshire Legalizes Marriage Equality - Implications For 2012 Race

First, the Wash Post report:

New Hampshire this afternoon became the sixth state to allow gay marriage, after Gov. John Lynch (D) signed a revised bill approved by both houses of the legislature.

The state senate passed the bill by a vote of 14 to 10, and the house followed later with a vote of 198 to 176. Lynch immediately signed the bill, which included revisions he had insisted upon. The changes give protections from lawsuits for organizations that refuse to participate in same-sex ceremonies on religious grounds.

The passage of the bill now leaves Rhode Island as the only New England state that does not allow same sex marriage. Iowa is the only other state with legal gay marriage, and moves toward same sex unions are advancing in New York and New Jersey.

Then, the AP discusses how this might play out in the next presidential election cycle given the importance of Iowa & New Hampshire in the selection process and the differences--particularly among Republicans--between the two states:

Iowa and New Hampshire traditionally offer presidential candidates vastly different political landscapes when they seek their party nominations. Yet legalizing gay marriage, as both states have now done, is unlikely to have much impact in 2012 because of party dynamics and the different emphasis voters place on social issues.

Gay marriage became legal in Iowa in April after the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that denying gays the right to marry is discriminatory. In New Hampshire, the Legislature approved a gay marriage bill Wednesday that will take effect Jan. 1.

While some see opposition to gay marriage easing nationwide, that's not the case among Iowa Republicans -- especially the relatively small number who dominate the state's leadoff precinct caucuses. Social and religious conservatives dominate that group, and their opposition to gay marriage is solid.

To be competitive among Iowa Republicans, presidential candidates likely will have to toe that line, key strategists said.

"I'm guessing that most of the serious candidates will be for a constitutional amendment to define marriage," said David Roederer, a veteran activist who managed John McCain's campaign in the state. "I don't think there's going to be much of a difference" ...

That isn't the case in New Hampshire, where Republicans tend to be more fiscally conservative and socially moderate. New Hampshire has allowed civil unions since 2007; Iowa never allowed them.

White House, Taking A Page From Obama Campaign, To Distribute Cairo Speech Via Multiple Media Channels

From the NY Times:

President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world will not only be delivered at Cairo University. It also will be texted and tweeted, as well as highlighted on Facebook, Myspace and a host of other social networking sites.

The White House is taking elaborate steps to multiply the audience – and vastly expand the reach – of the president’s address on Thursday. It will be translated by the State Department into at least 13 different languages and a special Web site has been created in Arabic, Persian, Urdu and English for people to receive the speech via text message.

Yes, the administration is taking a page from the playbook of the Obama campaign, which often turned to text messaging and other types of communication to draw people in.

“Welcome to the President Obama Cairo Speech SMS/Text Messaging Service,” said a message on the America.gov Web site. “Be among the first to receive highlights from President Barack Obama’s historic speech.”

The speech will also be Webcast as it happens on the White House Live section of Whitehouse.gov and streamed by the State Department as part of a live Web chat.

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said that by translating the speech and trying to market it directly to a wide range of people around the world fit with the theme of the president’s address.

Al Jazeera Report On Obama's Pending Visit To Egypt

From Al Jazeera:

Egypt has been the centre of the Arab world's cultural and political identity - perhaps one of the reasons why Barack Obama, the US president, chose Cairo to make his keynote address. Al Jazeera's Amr el-Khaky reports from the Egyptian capital where Obama's words will be measured by audiences with conflicting interests, ancient grievances and long memories of other presidents' records.

Obama's Very Tall Cairo Order

From the Wash Post:

When President Obama delivers his address to the Middle East on Thursday from Cairo, he will face the legacy of names like Haditha, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, places that have become more symbol than geography over nearly a decade of perhaps the most traumatic chapter in America's relationship with the Muslim world.

More than any other president in a generation, Obama enjoys a reservoir of goodwill in the region. His father was Muslim. His outreach in an interview with an Arabic satellite channel, a speech to Turkey's parliament and an address to Iranians on the Persian New Year have inclined many to listen. Just as important, he is not George W. Bush.

But Obama will still encounter a landscape in which two realities often seem to be at work, shaped by those symbols. There is America's version of its policy toward Israel and the Palestinians, Iraq and Afghanistan, and Islamist movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah, defined in recent years by the legacy of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. There is another reality, from hardscrabble quarters of Beirut and Cairo to war-wrecked neighborhoods of Baghdad, where distrust of the United States runs so deep that almost anything it pronounces, however eloquent, lacks credibility, imposing a burden on Obama to deliver something far more than the unfulfilled pledges of Bush's speeches ...

Obama's own popularity may prove a challenge, as well. In addition to reaching out to Arab and Muslim audiences, his decisions to close the Guantanamo prison, to avoid the term "war on terror" and to end torture in U.S.-run prisons have won praise. His election still seems to impress people, although many wonder how a U.S. public could elect both Bush and Obama in a span of just four years.

"You have never seen a president who has raised expectations so high in the Arab and Muslim world, for the good," said Ibrahim Kalin, a scholar in Ankara, Turkey, and adviser to the Turkish prime minister. "People see in him something they would like to see in their own leaders, and that, in itself, creates huge expectations."

"I cannot deny that we are expecting something from Obama," said Ahmed Abu Haiba, the founder of a video channel in Egypt for devout youths. "And because of that, I'm afraid. I'm afraid he can never meet the expectations of people."

"We all know that there are no magic words that are going to solve everything," he said. "Sometimes it's much better not to have hope than to have hope and lose it."

Cornered

Leahy Bill Proposes Immigration Rights for Gay Couples

From the NY Times:

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Democrat from Vermont who is the powerful chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is adding another controversial ingredient to the volatile mix of an immigration debate that President Obama has said he hopes to spur in Congress before the end of the year.

Mr. Leahy has offered a bill that would allow American citizens and legal immigrants to seek residency in the United States for their same-sex partners, just as spouses now petition for foreign-born husbands and wives.

The senator has said the bill should be part of any broad immigration legislation that Congress considers. To highlight his initiative, known as the Uniting American Families Act, Mr. Leahy is holding a hearing on Wednesday to discuss it in the full Judiciary Committee, bypassing the usual subcommittee hearings ...

Under family unification provisions in immigration law, American citizens and legal residents can petition for residency for their spouses. There is no numerical limit on permanent residence visas, known as green cards, for spouses of American citizens, and this is one of the main channels for legal immigration to the United States. Same-sex couples, though, cannot petition for partners, and many face the prospect of an immigrant partner’s deportation.

Senator Leahy’s bill would add the term “permanent partner” to sections of current immigration law that refer to married couples, and would provide a legal definition of those terms.

“I just think it’s a matter of fairness,” he said Tuesday in an interview, noting that a number of American allies, including Canada, France and Germany, recognize same-sex couples in immigration law ...

Supporters said the bill would assist about 36,000 same-sex couples nationwide. Rachel B. Tiven, the executive director of Immigration Equality, a group that advocates for gay rights legislation, said the bill had improved chances this year because of recent same-sex marriage victories in Iowa, Maine and Vermont.

Iraq Commander Gen Sanchez Calls For Truth & Reconciliation Commission

"I support the formation of a truth commission so the American people can learn what happened."

Obama's Clever Like A Fox

Like his appointment of Gov Huntsman, this appointment gets him a qualified Republican to join his administration AND potentially pays big political dividends in the next election cycle.  Purely a coincidence right? From the Wash Post:

President Obama announced his intention to nominate  Rep. John M. McHugh (R-N.Y.) as secretary of the Army yesterday, saying his 16 years of service on the House Armed Services Committee "uniquely qualifies him to help lead America's Army."

If confirmed, McHugh would be the third Republican appointed to a senior position in the Obama administration: Former congressman  Ray LaHood (Ill.) is the transportation secretary, and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. was recently named ambassador to China. Another Republican, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, is a holdover from the Bush administration.  Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) was chosen by Obama to be the commerce secretary, but in February he pulled his name from consideration, citing irreconcilable differences with the administration ...

McHugh has served in Congress since 1993 and is the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee. He is also one of the few Republicans in the Northeast to have survived the past two election cycles, and he did so decisively, winning 63 percent of the vote in 2006 and 65 percent in 2008.

But Republicans may encounter difficulty in holding the seat in a special election. Obama carried the 23rd District 52 percent to 47 percent over  Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008.

More Tiller Assassination Political Cartoons

 

The GOP "base is becoming a remote island in mainstream America. Everyone else is paddling away."

From Kathleen Parker:

It has long been a problem for the GOP that some of the party's cherished positions are embraced most enthusiastically by people whose grip on reality is sometimes . . . tenuous. This is especially true with regard to abortion ... Rather than persuading people to think differently about abortion, the Randall Terry - Alan Keyes act makes one want to write checks to Planned Parenthood ...

Such is the continuing dilemma of the GOP: How do you get out the message when the messengers keep getting in the way?

Now comes a fanatic with a gun ... fire-breathers on the right don't help, whatever the cause. They may warm the base, but the Republican base is becoming a remote island in mainstream America. Everyone else is paddling away.

Accurately or not, the right-wing wacko contingent increasingly dominates the public perception of the GOP. And, fairly or not, that perception makes it easier for characters such as Scott Roeder, the suspected shooter, to become associated with the party ...

Some Internet commentary even refers to Roeder as a "Christian terrorist." Let's see: Christian, pro-gun, anti-government, pro-life. Sounds like a Republican, right? Oh, and he's suspected of being an assassin. Connect them dots.

No, it isn't fair. The GOP can't control who joins the party, and Republicans don't have a corner on random crazies. But what the Democrats have that the Republicans lack is a moderating voice to neutralize the party's more strident characters. While Democrats have Obama, Republicans are stuck with the squeakiest wheel du jour.

One can convincingly argue that the media have a hand in perpetuating the conservative caricature, but the Republican Party has contributed to the distortion by pandering to its less rational elements. Still fresh in our minds is the last presidential election -- a strange season that might be attributed to GOP desperation if not for a prior history in times of political prosperity.

Two words: Terri Schiavo. During that 2005 Operation Rescue debacle -- complete with death vigils and lamentations -- Bill Frist, then the Senate majority leader and a practicing physician, lent credibility to the circus performers by diagnosing Schiavo's condition via video and challenging other medical opinion that she was in a persistent vegetative state ...

We should never shoot the messenger, it should go without saying. But until the Republicans marginalize those who belong in the margins, they won't be attracting many new recruits. And the messengers will continue to obscure the message.

Rachel Maddow Reviews The Anti-Abortion Terrorist Movement In The U.S.

As Rachel shows, violence as a political strategy is working ... "the terrorists are winning."  Where's the outrage?

The Global Economy Is A Tale Of Two Worlds Now

From Fareed Zakaria:

Increasingly, the story of the global economy is a tale of two worlds. In one, there is only gloom and doom; in the other, there is light and hope. In the traditional bastions of wealth and power -- America, Europe and Japan -- it is difficult to find much good news. But there is a new world -- China, India, Indonesia, Brazil -- in which economic growth continues to power ahead, governments are not buried under debt and citizens remain remarkably optimistic about their future. This divergence between the once rich and the once poor might mark a turn in history.

Over the past six months, much conventional economic wisdom has been discredited. The experts who spoke confidently about unending global growth -- the boomsters -- have been debunked. But the new pundits of pessimism -- the doomsters -- have demonstrated a similar hubris, ignoring evidence that might complicate their story. Six months ago, stock markets worldwide swooned in unison as the U.S. financial system seemed on the verge of collapse. This led many to conclude that the emerging economies of Asia and Latin America had been growing only because of their exports to the United States and Europe; that they had no independent strengths of their own and probably would collapse faster and more furiously than the sophisticated economies of the West. After all, these were Third World countries.

But a funny thing happened on the way to a global depression. Once the panic that seized global markets abated, there began a fascinating and disparate recovery. The S&P 500 is roughly where it started the year, as is > the London FTSE. Japanese stocks have fared better, up nearly 7 percent.

Around the globe, though, markets are humming. China's Shanghai index is up 45 percent, India's Sensex is up 44 percent, Brazil's Bovespa is up 38 percent and the Indonesia index is up 32 percent. Stock markets don't tell the whole story, but many are rising because the underlying economies of most of these countries are still registering significant growth.

Consider: In April, India's car sales were up 4.2 percent from a year earlier. Retail sales in China rose 15 percent in the first quarter of 2009. China is likely to grow at 7 or 8 percent this year, India at 6 percent, and Indonesia at 4 percent. These numbers are not just robust but astonishing next to those of the developed world. The U.S. economy contracted at an annual rate of 6.1 percent last quarter, Europe by 9.6 percent and Japan by 15 percent, something that truly begins to rival the 1930s.

Compare the two worlds.

Increasingly, the story of the global economy is a tale of two worlds. In one, there is only gloom and doom; in the other, there is light and hope. In the traditional bastions of wealth and power -- America, Europe and Japan -- it is difficult to find much good news. But there is a new world -- China, India, Indonesia, Brazil -- in which economic growth continues to power ahead, governments are not buried under debt and citizens remain remarkably optimistic about their future. This divergence between the once rich and the once poor might mark a turn in history.

Clever Daily Show Parody

Guns as investments ... pretty sharp!

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Stephen Colbert To "Guest Edit" Newsweek

From Advertising Age:

Stephen Colbert will guest edit the next issue of Newsweek. This is the first time anyone has ever guest edited the magazine in its 76-year history. We don't think he'll hold true to Mr. Meacham's [the real editor] dream of "provocative (but not partisan) arguments," but he'll definitely bring a "unique voice" ... Mr. Meacham also wants people talking about the magazine, which underwent a massive redesign. This is just a PR stunt. But, hopefully, a funny one. From the Observer:

Mr. Colbert will help design the cover of the magazine, he'll write an editor's note and he'll be adding annotations to Mr. Meacham's weekly editor's note. Mr. Colbert said that he helped hand out assignments, and will play around with columnists' biographies and help pick out pull quotes for stories. There will be a section dedicated to all the unpublished letters to the editor Mr. Colbert has written to Newsweek since he was a kid.

Obama Willing To Adjust His Position To Get Health Care Passed: Tax HC Benefits

From the Wash Post:

President Obama, in a pivot from some of his harshest campaign rhetoric, told Democratic senators yesterday that he is willing to consider taxing employer-sponsored health benefits to help pay for a broad expansion of coverage ...

White House officials moved quickly to clarify that taxing the health insurance provided by businesses is not Obama's first choice, but aides refused to rule out the possibility ...

Obama instead urged senators to reconsider his proposal, which would raise federal revenue by reducing itemized deductions such as charitable contributions and mortgage payments for the wealthiest Americans, according to one adviser in the meeting. Obama included that idea in his budget, reporting that it would raise $317 billion over 10 years, a sizable "down payment" on the cost of health-care reform. But Congress immediately labeled the proposal a non-starter.

Private-sector businesses spend about $518 billion a year on their workers' health insurance, benefits that are not taxed. If workers had to pay taxes on their health coverage, it would raise $246 billion in revenue each year, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

Tax treatment of employer-sponsored health care cuts across party lines: Prominent Republicans such as  Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.) support imposing a tax on certain health plans, while Democrats such as  Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) say that a tax would unfairly hurt middle-class workers with good benefits.

Health analysts from across the political spectrum have pressed for changing the tax treatment, arguing in part that the exclusion provides the greatest tax relief to high-salaried workers with generous insurance plans.

Romney Begins His 2012 Campaign By Going After Obama

From the Wash Post:

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney roundly condemned the approach President Obama has taken to redefining the nation's relationship with the rest of the world, describing it as a "tour of apology" in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation yesterday.

In an address in which he sought to lay out his broad vision for national security -- a $50 billion annual increase in the defense modernization budget, "regime-crippling sanctions" against North Korea and full funding for a missile defense system -- the Republican saved his strongest criticism for the president.

"This is the time for strength and confidence, not for apologizing to America's critics," Romney said at one point, adding later that "arrogant, delusional tyrants cannot be stopped by earnest words and furrowed brows."

Romney's speech is part of a stepped-up effort by the 2008 contender for the GOP presidential nomination to draw contrasts with Obama ahead of what many expect will be another White House run, in 2012.

Less than 24 hours before hitting Obama on defense and national security, Romney was on "Fox News Sunday" taking issue with the administration's plan to put General Motors into bankruptcy to restructure the company ...

Although Romney is derided by many Democrats, he is one of the most popular figures among the Republican faithful, many of whom believe his work on behalf of  Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the GOP presidential nominee last year, proved his mettle.

Republicans also regard Romney as perhaps their most effective economic messenger, able to draw on his success in the private sector in combating Obama.

Tiller On Film

This video about Tiller--from a documentary based on Tom Frank's book What's the Matter With Kansas--adds some valuable (and chilling) context (h/t Jason Zengerle).

Bill O'Reilly Feels The Assassination Heat

The NY Times follows up on yesterday's Salon piece:

Dr. George R. Tiller had many critics, but arguably the one with the highest profile was Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News Channel host. Mr. O’Reilly, a vocal opponent of abortion, often called him “Tiller the baby killer” for performing late-term abortions and said repeatedly that he had “blood on his hands.”

Within hours of the shooting that left Dr. Tiller dead on Sunday, Mr. O’Reilly found himself under attack from liberal journalists and bloggers who accused him of inciting violence. By early Monday, some Web sites were asking, as a newsletter from the Air America radio network did, “Is Bill O’Reilly to Blame for Murder Of Kansas Doctor?”

Mr. O’Reilly responded to the critics on his program on Monday night, saying that “clear-thinking Americans should condemn” the killing. He defended his remarks about Dr. Tiller, declaring that “every single thing we said about Tiller was true, and my analysis was based on those facts.”

Finger-pointing is nothing new, but the nature of the accusations thrown at Mr. O’Reilly show the swiftness and vociferousness with which the blame game is now played.

Within nine hours of Dr. Tiller’s death, Salon magazine had catalogued references to him on 29 episodes of “The O’Reilly Factor” from 2005 to 2009. In one, Mr. O’Reilly talks about him and the lawmakers who supported his “business of destruction,” saying, “I wouldn’t want to be these people if there is a Judgment Day.”

Bloggers quickly found new examples of Mr. O’Reilly’s condemnation of Dr. Tiller. A commenter on Daily Kos noted that Mr. O’Reilly once sent a producer to ambush the doctor at his home in Kansas. After the producer told him that some people called him a “baby killer,” the doctor tried to leave his house and called 911. The camera crew ended the confrontation.

On Monday, Media Matters for America, a left-wing group that catalogs what it calls “conservative hate speech,” published a 2006 clip from Mr. O’Reilly’s radio show in which he said, “If I could get my hands on Tiller,” followed quickly by: “Well, you know. Can’t be vigilantes. Can’t do that. It’s just a figure of speech.”

Mr. O’Reilly draws wide attention because he has ranked as the top-rated host on cable news for the past seven years. Inherent in the criticism were questions about media responsibility; the blogger Andrew Sullivan suggested that the case “could be the end to O’Reilly’s dangerous, demonizing game.”

On Monday night, Mr. O’Reilly rejected those questions, saying instead that “far-left zealots” and “Fox News haters” were exploiting Dr. Tiller’s death by taking aim at his commentary. Citing estimates published by The Washington Times that Dr. Tiller had performed 60,000 abortions, he wondered why his critics were not writing about “the 60,000 fetuses who will never become American citizens.”

Tiller Assassination Political Cartoons

Reaping What You Sow:

Hopefully It'll Teach Us All: 

Tiller Assassination Reactions

Andrew Sullivan has a very good, expansive set of reactions to Dr Tiller's assassination, including many readers sharing their personal experiences with abortion/Tiller:

Today on the Dish we continued to follow the Tiller tragedy. We composed a reax of the blogosphere, but more illuminating were the testimonials we got from readers; they touched upon the trauma, the risk, the terror, the regret, the uncertainty, and the ultimately personal nature of late-term abortions. We also featured accounts from a Tiller patient, a Tiller protester, a Wichita pastor, a Catholic mother, and one of the last remaining late-term abortionists.

"It's going to bite them in the leg. And it's going to do it in a very big way."

From the Wash Post:

The shooting returned the violent side of the abortion issue to the spotlight just as a diverse array of advocates has begun meeting with White House officials to explore President Obama's appeal for common ground.

The political effect of Tiller's killing is hard to gauge. Shaun Kenney, executive director of the antiabortion American Life League, worries that "extreme" groups "will try to use it for political advantage" and harm the larger movement.

Cynthia Gorney, author of "Articles of Faith," a book about the abortion wars, said the killing will weaken antiabortion forces because Americans will see all opponents in the same light, whatever their moral and tactical differences.

"It's going to bite them in the leg," Gorney said. "And it's going to do it in a very big way."

The GOP's Slippery Slope

The Personal Is Political

What else would explain the fact that on marriage equality, Dick Cheney is to the left of Barack Obama? From the Wash Post:

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney waded into another roiling public debate yesterday, saying that he supports legalizing same-sex marriage as long as the issue is decided by the states, rather than the federal government.

Cheney, whose youngest daughter has a longtime lesbian partner, said at the National Press Club that "people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish."

He added, however, that he does not support a federal role in the matter. "Historically, the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level," Cheney said. "It has always been a state issue, and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis."

Cheney has long departed from conservative orthodoxy on the issue of same-sex marriage. He said during the 2000 presidential campaign that the matter should be left to the states, and he caused a small uproar during the 2004 race by appearing to distance himself from a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, a measure that was strongly supported by his boss, President George W. Bush.

Cheney's position appears also to put him to the left of the current president on the issue. President Obama has said he supports civil unions, rather than marriage, for gay men and lesbians.

Watch him

Sotomayor Political Cartoons

GOP Paints Sotomayor

Careful:

Straw Man:

Putting Pressure On Israel's Settlements

Following-up on Change Comes To US - Israel Relations, there's this from the NY Times:

As President Obama prepares to head to the Middle East this week, administration officials are debating how to toughen their stance against any expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The measures under discussion — all largely symbolic — include stepping back from America’s near-uniform support for Israel in the United Nations if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel does not agree to a settlement freeze, administration officials said.

Other measures include refraining from the instant Security Council veto of United Nations resolutions that Israel opposes and making use of Mr. Obama’s bully pulpit to criticize the settlements, officials said. Placing conditions on loan guarantees to Israel, as the first President Bush did nearly 20 years ago, is not under discussion, officials said.

Still, talk of even symbolic actions that would publicly show the United States’ ire with Israel, its longtime ally, would be a sharp departure from the previous administration, which limited its distaste with Israel’s settlement expansions to carefully worded diplomatic statements that called them “unhelpful.”

Mr. Obama is to give a much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world from Egypt on Thursday. “There are things that could get the attention of the Israeli public,” a senior administration official said, touching on the widespread belief within the administration that any Israeli prime minister risks political peril if the Israeli electorate views him as endangering the country’s relationship with the United States.

But, the official added, “Israel is a critical United States ally, and no one in this administration expects that not to continue.” He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

White House officials said Mr. Obama would not make the Cairo speech entirely about the Arab-Israeli conflict, but would instead seek to engage Muslims on the panoply of issues facing Islam and the West, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

But the core issue, administration officials said, is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. “I want to use the occasion to deliver a broader message about how the United States can change for the better its relationship with the Muslim world,” Mr. Obama told reporters last week. “But certainly, the issue of Middle East peace is something that is going to need to be addressed. It is a critical factor in the minds of many Arabs in countries throughout the region and beyond the region”...

Mr. Obama’s remarks in Egypt, though aimed at the Muslim world, will also be carefully parsed in Israel, foreign policy experts said. The president will be walking a fine line between reassuring Israel that America will remain a guarantor of Israeli security and between sounding a warning that he is getting impatient with the slow movement toward Palestinian statehood.

Killing Peace

 

Cairo Trip Begins This Week

From the Wall St Journal:

President Barack Obama this week will try to capitalize on his popularity in the Middle East to improve relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world. A much-anticipated address in Cairo on Thursday will be the most significant effort to-date in a string of outreach measures that began with Mr. Obama's inauguration -- although no major policy changes on the thorniest issues, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are expected to be announced.

Rather, Mr. Obama will attempt to "change the conversation" with the world's one-billion-plus Muslims, said Denis McDonough, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications at the White House. "We want to get back on a shared partnership, back in a conversation that focuses on the shared values," he said.

Mr. Obama's visit is scheduled to begin on Wednesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and will end with stops in traditional U.S. allies Germany and France. The highlight is his Cairo speech, which White House officials have described as a major outreach effort to the Muslim world. In 2007, Mr. Obama had promised to deliver such an address if elected president.

The president is likely to highlight his personal story: He has Muslim family members, spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, the world's most-populous Muslim nation, and has a Muslim name -- Barack Hussein Obama. He has already taken some steps welcomed in the Muslim world, promising to end the war in Iraq and to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Polling in the Arab world shows that Mr. Obama at this time is better liked than former President George W. Bush and that many are hopeful about his administration. But the U.S. is still seen in a mostly unfavorable light in the region, and those attitudes have only marginally improved since Mr. Obama took office.

In his inaugural address, in a video message to the people of Iran and in an April speech to the Turkish parliament, Mr. Obama offered words of outreach.

Much of the negative feeling stems from anger over the lack of progress toward Palestinian statehood, for which many blame the U.S. In his first interview after his inauguration, given to the Arab-language broadcaster Al-Arabiya, Mr. Obama promised to re-engage on the peace process and bring a new attitude on Mideast and Islamic affairs.

Since then, he has invited regional leaders to the White House to discuss the matter, but there has been little progress so far. The White House has said no major policy initiatives should be expected this week.

Many in the region would like Mr. Obama to outline new, specific policy proposals. "We don't need pretty words. We need actions to satisfy ... [those Arabs] looking for transparency, human rights and justice," said Ali Al Ahmed, a Saudi human rights activist and director of the Institute of Gulf Affairs in Washington.

Those looking for a dramatic change in policy are likely to be disappointed, said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. He said Mr. Obama could try and lower anti-American sentiment by highlighting areas of agreement and making clear he is willing to listen to alternate views.

"That's the first task for the president -- to frame U.S. policy in a way that takes some of the passion out of widespread hostility to the United States. For a lot of audiences out there, moving them from violent hostility to grudging disapproval would be a tremendous victory," he said.

Schismistic Contradictions

The Impact Of Tiller's Murder

From Al Giordino:

An assassin in Kansas has just inadvertently strengthened the hand and command of this head of State. A very similar dynamic will come into play as did on April 19, 1995, when a terrorist car-bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building killed 168 people, and wounded 450 more, including children in a day care center there. That terrorist act - the man convicted for it, Timothy McVeigh, believed he was avenging an act of State terrorism two years prior in Waco, Texas - returned the upper hand to an already embattled President Clinton. His Democratic Party had lost the US House in the 1994 elections to what then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s called his “revolution” of the right. The Oklahoma City bombing shook public opinion enough to considerably slow what had been, prior, a juggernaut's momentum by the Gingrich revolution, allowing Clinton to again claim the terrain of the political center.

That today’s atrocity occurs not under the helm of an embattled liberal president, but of one that enjoys 67 percent support, still, from the American people, will have even more devastating consequences for the cultural and political right that has placed abortion at the center of its agenda. There is no need to demonize them with a broad brush for it. The first immediate consequence of the assassination of Dr. Tiller will be that it virtually removes the political points to be scored by those who planned to wage an anti-choice argument against US Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

I would also be very surprised if, in the coming days, some right-wing radio talkers and those from anti-choice organizations like Operation Rescue can’t help but make the sorts of outrageous statements about this act of terrorism that shock and provoke backlash from the American public. As a crew, they have already whipped themselves up into a mental state of frenzied derangement. The countdown now begins to find out which will shovel their own political graves over this one.

Al was right. The grave digging has begun: Operation Rescue Randall Terry Calls Murdered Dr Tiller "A Mass Murderer ... A Nazi".

He also quotes the President's prescient May 17th speech at Notre Dame:

A few days after I won the Democratic nomination, I received an email from a doctor who told me that while he voted for me in the primary, he had a serious concern that might prevent him from voting for me in the general election. He described himself as a Christian who was strongly pro-life, but that’s not what was preventing him from voting for me.

What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my website – an entry that said I would fight “right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose.” The doctor said that he had assumed I was a reasonable person, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, “I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words.”

Fair-minded words.

After I read the doctor’s letter, I wrote back to him and thanked him. I didn’t change my position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my website. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that – when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do – that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.

That’s when we begin to say, “Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions.

So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.

Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.”

Bill O'Reilly's Campaign Against Murdered Doctor

First, watch excerpts of O'Reilly's attacks on Tiller:

Then, read Gabriel Winant's Salon piece:

When his show airs tomorrow, Bill O'Reilly will most certainly decry the death of Kansas doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday while attending church services with his wife. Tiller, O'Reilly will say, was a man who was guilty of barbaric acts, but a civilized society does not resort to lawless murder, even against its worst members. And O'Reilly, we can assume, will genuinely mean this.

But there's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists. Tiller's name first appeared on "The Factor" on Feb. 25, 2005. Since then, O'Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as "Tiller the Baby Killer."

Tiller, O'Reilly likes to say, "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000." He's guilty of "Nazi stuff," said O'Reilly on June 8, 2005; a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida, he suggested on March 15, 2006. "This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union," said O'Reilly on Nov. 9, 2006.

O'Reilly has also frequently linked Tiller to his longtime obsession, child molestation and rape. Because a young teenager who received an abortion from Tiller could, by definition, have been a victim of statutory rape, O'Reilly frequently suggested that the clinic was covering up for child rapists (rather than teenage boyfriends) by refusing to release records on the abortions performed.

When Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, an O'Reilly favorite who faced harsh criticism for seeking Tiller's records, was facing electoral defeat by challenger Paul Morrison, O'Reilly said, "Now we don't endorse candidates here, but obviously, that would be a colossal mistake. Society must afford some protection for viable babies and children who are raped." (Morrison ultimately unseated Kline.)

This is where O'Reilly's campaign against George Tiller becomes dangerous. While he never advocated anything violent or illegal, the Fox bully repeatedly portrayed the doctor as a murderer on the loose, allowed to do whatever he wanted by corrupt and decadent authorities. "Also, it looks like Dr. Tiller, who some call Tiller the Baby Killer, is spending a large amount of money in order to get Mr. Morrison elected. That opens up all kinds of questions," said O'Reilly on Nov. 6, 2006, in one of many suggestions that Tiller was improperly influencing the election.

Operation Rescue Randall Terry Calls Murdered Dr Tiller "A Mass Murderer ... A Nazi"

Wow