You are so good at researching – I have been shut in this afternoon and watching a program about Al Qaeda, bin Laden and Afghanistan called Triple Cross involving Mohammed Ali, an Egyptian national who worked for the CIA, the FBI and was a member of the US Military while working with AlQaeda. What’s got me floored is the program documents all the Brooklyn, NY and Paterson mosques I knew about when i lived down there.

I will write more when I get back from an event I have to cover but if you get a chance, check the program out. Triple Cross. It is chilling.
It documents the terror cells that have existed in the US since 1987.

Here ya go, S.

www dot breitbart dot tv/pandemonium-in-the-broadcast-center-chicago-loses-olympics-bid/

…heard axelrod trying to spin the insider politcal connections…

first round…justice reigns…

Chickens, meet roost.

By Ryan J. Donmoyer

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) — The Senate Finance Committee, ending its debate over the biggest changes in the U.S. health-care system in four decades, agreed to protect millions of Americans from the legislation’s most punitive taxes and penalties.

The panel voted to spare retirees and employees in high- risk professions from a new tax on the costliest insurance plans, reduce or waive fines for people who fail to buy coverage and give states money to help insure low-income Americans. The last-minute revisions clear the way for committee passage as early as next week of the only health-reform legislation that may attract Republican support in Congress.

“We have a product that accomplishes our objectives,” Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said after what he called the longest “markup” of a bill in 15 years. “Four, five, six years from now we’re going to see real benefits.”

The fight to overhaul the health system, President Barack Obama’s top priority, is far from over. The bill that emerges from Baucus’s panel must be merged with one that passed the Senate health committee and eventually reconciled with a House measure. Those bills clash with the Baucus legislation on some of the most important issues, including how to expand insurance coverage to tens of millions of Americans and how to pay for it. Still, by the seventh day of debate, the finance panel had dealt with obstacles that have stood in the way of an agreement for months.

‘Civility’

Obama, in an e-mailed statement, praised the “civility” and “unyielding commitment” of Baucus and other Finance committee members, saying Congress has “reached another milestone” in efforts to overhaul U.S. health-care. “We have a long way to go, but I am confident that as we move forward, we will continue to engage with each other as productively as the members of the Finance Committee, and will get reform passed this year,” Obama said.

The legislation, estimated to cost $900 billion over 10 years, mandates that Americans get insurance and provides subsidies to those who need them, creates nonprofit cooperatives to offer an alternative to private insurance companies, and prohibits insurers from denying coverage to people with pre- existing medical conditions.

Cadillac Plans

Among the biggest last-minute changes was a vote to limit the impact of a new 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac insurance plans sold to retirees and workers in risky professions such as mining. The levy would generate about $200 billion in revenue to help fund the broader health reforms. The legislation initially would have subjected most insurance plans to the tax when they provide benefits in excess of $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families. The amendment adopted today would raise those thresholds to $9,850 and $26,000 for retirees and workers in high-risk jobs. While many lawmakers support the idea of everyone having insurance, there was growing concern that some Americans would be unable to afford it.

As a result, the committee last night voted to protect what aides said may be as many as 2 million people from having to purchase insurance and scaled back fines on those who fail to obtain coverage. The amendment, by Maine Republican Senator Olympia Snowe and New York Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, was adopted 22-

Lowering the Penalty

It reduces the top penalty for failing to comply with an individual insurance mandate to $750 per adult, from $1,900 per family as proposed by Baucus. It would waive the penalties in 2013, the first year that federally backed health-insurance exchanges would be in place, and phase them in through 2017. People who would have to pay more than 8 percent of their income to buy insurance would be exempt from the penalties, down from 10 percent. “I don’t want Congress to impose penalties on Americans who are struggling,” said Snowe.

The lawmakers are also still divided over whether to set up a federally run insurance program to compete with private insurers. That “public option” is opposed by almost all Republicans and enough Senate Democrats to put it in peril. Yet just two days after rejecting the public option in two separate votes, the finance panel voted for a compromise plan to give states money to help low-income Americans obtain insurance.

Negotiate for Coverage

The amendment, passed in a 12-11 vote, would give federal funds to states so they can negotiate and buy coverage for people who don’t qualify for the Medicaid poverty program. The idea is to harness the purchasing power of states to cut premiums, said the sponsor, Senator Maria Cantwell. “It is a public plan but negotiated with the private sector,” said Cantwell, a Democrat of Washington State. It “hits the sweet spot” of interests for the state, insurers and the uninsured, she said.

The public option is the centerpiece of the bill that passed the Senate health committee in July and is included in versions of the legislation approved by three House committees. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has to find a compromise that placates Democrats on both sides. Reid told reporters yesterday he would do his best to get a public option into the final legislation, though he said it’s a “relative term.”
“There is a public option, there is a public option and there is a public option,” the Nevada Democrat said.

Baucus’s panel also took aim at insurance companies, voting to limit tax deductions for executive pay at companies that stand to gain millions more customers from the overhaul. It voted 14-8 to deny compensation deductions for annual pay over $500,000 for executives of insurers that derive at least 25 percent of their premium income from people required to obtain coverage. “We’re not going to subsidize a windfall that benefits these companies,” Arkansas Democrat Blanche Lincoln said before the vote.

Current law denies deductions for executive salaries that exceed $1 million, although many companies avoid the limit by paying their officials with stock options and other benefits.

bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aIrf9uoyT0Rw#

Not likely!

——————————-
October 2, 2009

Barack Obama holds runway summit with General Stanley McChrystal

President Obama squeezed a 25-minute council of war into his Copenhagen visit today, meeting General Stanley McChrystal aboard Air Force One before returning to Washington.

The general was summoned to the airborne White House on the day it was announced that four more British and American servicemen had died in Afghanistan. He was on his way back to Kabul from London, where he made a powerful public pitch for more troops to be sent to the battlefields.

Until today, General McChrystal had been in direct contact with Mr Obama only twice since taking up his post as Nato commander in Kabul six months ago – once via video link to the Oval Office and then as a participant in a major Afghan strategy meeting on Wednesday, again via videolink.

Since arriving in Kabul, General McChrystal has written a damning assessment of the Afghan security situation, and an election marred by widespread fraud has undermined the case for propping up the regime of President Hamid Karzai.

Whatever Mr Obama and the general discussed, their meeting will go some way towards inoculating the President from Republican claims that he has been neglecting the business of government for the sake of a sales pitch for his home town. He has said he will not decide for several weeks whether to send more troops to Afghanistan. One purpose of the meeting, in the forward cabin of Air Force One, may have been to pre-empt further public statements by the general, whose speech in London was intended to counter the arguments of many in the White House for a new strategy aimed at al-Qaeda in Pakistan, rather than the Taleban.

The discussion came soon after it was announced that three more American soldiers had died in Afghanistan in the previous 24 hours. The Ministry of Defence also said that an airman from 34 Squadron Royal Air Force Regiment was killed by an explosion while on patrol near Britain’s Camp Bastion in Helmand province yesterday. Lieutenant Colonel Nick Richardson, the spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said: “The death of this courageous Royal Air Force Regiment Gunner is a true loss. He will be mourned by his friends, colleagues and all of us serving in Helmand province. We know that whilst our loss is heartfelt, it is nothing compared to the sorrow of his family, to whom we extend our deepest sympathies.” Next of kin have been informed and have asked for a period of grace before further details are released.

One of the US soldiers died after a grenade attack in the east of the country. An ISAF media officer said the other two were killed in an incident west of Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. “There was an incident. There were casualties associated with that,” the officer added. No further details were immediately available.

A total of 384 foreign service personnel have died in Afghanistan so far this year, including 226 from the United States and 82 from Britain.

timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6858796.ece#