Happy Norooz!

Happy Iranian New Year to everyone. Hopefully, spring will bring good things for the Iranian people.

Meanwhile back in Stoogeland, I headed to the House today and on the way back got stuck in traffic as the President's motorcade went pass. Besides the Batmobile, he has several SUVs, a bomb disposal truck and an ambulance as well as a phalanx of police motorcycles. He had been up to the House to speak to members on the Health Reform Bill.

Since it's the Year of the Tiger, we should expect good news but things are still tight. Dennis the Menace did the manly thing and endorsed the bill. A few of the Stupak gang also have signed on. Yet, the remaining Democrats are facing a blitz of corporate ads in their home district. The Chamber of Commerce announced in addition to their $25 million this week, they will devote $55 million for the mid-year elections and target those wafflers who vote for the bill in the end.

Tea Baggers expressed disgust with Dick Armey's effort yesterday and thought he had more resources to bear on the final health care event. Oh, I'm sure he did but it's for himself.

Conservatives are now threatening to take the health care bill to the Supreme Court. That is very intriguing. We know the corporations own the majority of the court--let's not pretend anymore. But the constitutional issue would center around mandates to buy health insurance. Progressives have criticized President Obama for omitting a public option. If the present bill passes, it is a type of TARP bailout for an industry that is currently operating on a failed business model. So the industry would be faced with the new regulations, but then if the Court ruled mandates were unconstitutional they would essentially go bankrupt and enter into a financial meltdown mood. It would be interesting to see where the insurance industry actually came down on such a court case. Currently, they are playing high-price chicken over the bill but at the end of the day they stand to gain over 30 million new customers. Do they want to lose them?

The right-wing radios keep telling people the bill doesn't take effect until 2014. But here's a list of things that start immediately:
*35% immediate tax break for small businesses who provide insurance for employees;
*Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all plans;
*Lowers senior prescription drug prices;
*Eliminates lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits on all plans;!!!!
*Requires plans to cover dependent children until the age 26;
*Requires new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing;
*Provides immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans because of pre-existing conditions;
*Ensures consumers have access to an internal and external appeals process to appeal insurance plan decisions;
Requires premium rebates to enrolees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and requires public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs.

The Democrats also created a website at the House where one can see the benefits of the bill for each congressional district. It actually works great.

The Republicans are miffed that if the bill passes they aren't being invited to participate in the signing ceremonies at the White House. They hope they can get the simulus effect--voting no but showing up with the stimulus check for the project in their districts.

As of late afternoon today, the Senate has already drafted their bill, which accepts the House changes. This was a confidence-building measure for House Democrats, who were afraid the Senate would renege on their promises. The draft copy of this reads well and improves everything rather dramatically.

After seeing about a dozen representatives today performing their functions on other issues, I have severe doubts any of them would understand anything about the health care bill. It was a sorry bipartisan bunch. If you deal alot with young democracies, you forget that the first generation produces the best, most finely-tuned talent available. Thereafter the gene pool starts getting diluted.

The Senate actually passed an anemic $18 billion jobs bill with some Republican support. The bill is almost entirely tax cuts. What the Senate is really excited about is increasing the threshold for estate taxes to $10 million, instead of the Bush $7 million. Here we have alot of energetic Senators.

If the Health Bill passes, it will only provide a temporary halt to the slide of health care in the United States. For instance, Arizona, facing critical budget shortfalls and run by a neanderthal, will cut 42,000 children from the SCHIP program and another 376,000 from the health insurance rolls. The devastation of the current economy is blowing holes through almost every state's budget resulting both in health care cuts but also the wholesale closings of schools.

Apparently, the President is continuing his healthcare fight in the hustings. He's appearing a few miles away on Friday to fire people up.

On another military front, Leon Panetta testified that the Obama campaign against Al Qaeda has forced the organization deeper underground and that the group no longer has any systemic command and control. Intercepted communications had lesser Al Qaeda officials pleading with Bin Laden to show some leadership as the group has been devastated. Panetta indicated a drone killed Hussein al-Yemeni, the Al Qaeda operative thought responsible for the attack on the CIA outpost. He also served as their explosives expert for all the affiliate organizations. Panetta claimed that Al Qaeda no longer could plan large sophisticated operations against the United States. Instead, they were looking for recruits who had no arrest records or ties with terrorist organizations and who did not fit the traditional Muslim profile.

In another hearing, General Petraeus claimed that recent Israeli actions have been exploited to recruit new people to Al Qaeda. This was a bombshell on the Hill because most members were attacking the administration for the misunderstanding with Israel. He also went further and said that continued Israeli-Palestinian tensions also gave Iran greater influence in the Middle East through their relationships with Hamas and Hizbullah. He further said that the conflict fueled anti-American sentiments because of perceived favoritism and has acted to limit the degree to which the United States could form partnerships with the Arab world and build relationships with moderate countries. In a later blog I'll try and reconstruct the briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that went further in-depth on this issue. But, with a strong caveat, the biggest client of Centcom right now are Arab states so the discussion obviously tilted in the direction of Arab national interests, which are not ours.

It will be interesting to see what General Petraeus has to say when he receives AEI's Irving Kristol Award. He is supposed to give a lecture that accompanies the presentation of the award. This was all decided before Petraeus came out for a repeal of DADT, criticized Israel and said today that the Iran nuclear project has gotten sidelined for a while.

Meanwhile Hillary Clinton was scheduled to talk to Mr. Sunshine, Bibi. The quick reactions by AIPAC and others in Washington has been undercut as more and more career people like Petraeus who have strong Republican support are continuing to speak out on this issue and elaborating in full detail some of the deeper issues. Here, I believe the Pentagon is pushing their own agenda, which is too favorable to Arab states. But once Bibi decided to play with fire, expect this debate to start opening up in ways it never has in Washington before. And, frankly, I am very sorry that it has.