Here’s your daily filter of the news:
- Gaddafi foes consider requesting foreign airstrikes as stalemate continues (WashPost) — It’s fixin’ to be decision time before long, and there’s a lot to consider. Over at the Pentagon, Gates is playing it cautious. (He does have a lot on his plate.) One reason to hesitate, of course, is that we don’t want to give Looney Tunes an excuse to say stuff like this. Meanwhile…
- U.S. Orders Ships to Libya as Battle Lines Harden (WSJ) — And there are 400 Marines on those ships. The Corps has been to Tripoli before, you know. But we’re still more likely to use air power, if anything, I would guess.
- ‘Refugee crisis’ on Libyan border (BBC) — The quote marks don’t mean it’s not happening. The BBC is just like that. If they’re attributing, they put it into quotes. They trust NOBODY — even when it’s somebody saying something that you knew was going to happen.
- Crude Oil Prices Soar on Fears of More Disruptions (NYT) — This contributes to a drop in the Dow. And it underlines the importance of weaning ourselves from foreign oil. Vote Energy Party.
- House Passes Bill To Temporarily Avert Shutdown (NPR) — And the non-divine comedy continues in Washington. Posture, bluff, step to the brink, step back, yadda-yadda.
- Haley, Obama butt heads on health care (The State) — Huh, huh — check it out! They said “Butthead.” Yeah, this happened yesterday, but I didn’t have it for my front then, and it’s just as embarrassing today as it was then.
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Hmmm… I probably should have found a way to squeeze this one onto the page: “BMW Manufacturing is adding another $100 million investment at the company’s Spartanburg County factory as well as a new X3 program to further streamline the company’s export operation, President Josef Kerscher said Monday night in his keynote speech to the annual meeting of the Spartanburg Chamber of Commerce.”
Just like last night, I completed my page, went home, and found out Jane Russell had died. Maybe she wouldn’t have made the front anyway; all I knew about her was that she was a self-described “full-figure gal,” and she dated Howard Hughes before he went bats. I’ll tell you one thing about her, though. Just going by their photographs, I’d rather have seen HER designing clothes than that guy on the previous post…
“And it underlines the importance of weaning ourselves from foreign oil.”
Yeah, by raising the cost of gasoline even MORE with a nebulous gasoline tax. If you want to really kill the economy, artificially inflate the cost of every single transaction involving goods and services that depend on transportation in order to funnel more money through an efficient entity to create some unknown magic energy device.
“Unknown magic energy device?” Next, you’re gonna scoff at my flux capacitor…
Raise the gas tax by a buck. How much do you think the cost of food will rise as a result? 5%? 10%? You willing to see poor people starve so they can ride their Delorean to the poor farm?
But… the flux capacitor is so cool…
From the State Article on Haley and Obama and health care: ““It’s not good enough,” Haley said. “He is still not letting states decide what is best for them. The bottom line is that under his plan, people will drop off private insurance plans from employers and add on to public rolls. That’s not reducing heath care costs; that’s increasing costs. That’s not increasing the quality of health care; that’s decreasing it.”
How exactly can a person who is eligible for employer offered coverage also be eligible for the public roll, i.e. medicaid? I’m pretty sure that most of the minimum wage type jobs (i.e. the kind you would have if you were eligible for medicaid) do not generally offer benefits. I don’t think that enrolling in one of the plans offered in the exchanges puts you on the “public rolls”. I suspect that is what Haley means though. I realize that there may be some subsidies involved for some people but I still think she is either being disingenuous in considering that “the public roll” or just doesn’t actually understand the law herself.
The following quote about how subsidies would work in the new law would lead one to believe that Haley is just wrong.
“Individuals and families who make between 100 percent – 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) and want to purchase their own health insurance on an exchange are eligible for subsidies. They cannot be eligible for Medicare, Medicaid and cannot be covered by an employer. Eligible buyers receive premium credits and there is a cap for how much they have to contribute to their premiums on a sliding scale.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000846-503544.html
Re #1: The key sentence came in a quote in the article from one of the leaders of the anti-Gadhafi coalition: “The two sides are not equal. There needs to be intervention under the cover of the United Nations.”
The UN. Exactly. Either “the world” (as constituted, imperfectly though it may be, by the UN) has to decide that actions must be taken, or outside military intervention is not an option. Any one nation deciding to more or less act on its own, even out of well-meaning impulses, carries with it the germinating seed of inevitable “blowback”-type consequences. It may be maddeningly frustrating to deal with either the glacial pace or the willful inactivity of the UN in matters of urgency; but ultimately, unless and until institutions of global cooperation become the decisive actors in crises of this sort, then there is no hope to reduce war and suffering in the world in any meaningful way, and the catastrophes of each century will be multiplied with ever-increasing lethality until eventually mankind is more or less obliterated.
A unipolar world (even if that “pole” is preferable to many others potentially filling the role) is inherently unstable.
Having said that, I hope the international community bands together to help the Libyans free themselves from this tyrant.
I’m with you, Phillip. That would be ideal. Of course, when you’re on the battlefield, and you’re under fire and hard-pressed, and you need air support NOW, then waiting for the UN to decide to act (with parties on the Security Council who see it as their role, and in their narrow interest, to obstruct effective action at every turn) can be a tad tedious. It could make you feel, well, impatient.
The only international body likely to move quickly enough is NATO, and I’m not sure they would see this as within their charter. The Balkans are in Europe, so NATO acted. But there is precedent — in Afghanistan. So maybe…
One great thing about NATO is that it contains most of the countries likely to contribute effectively to military action.
Now, a reason to WISH you could get the UN on board, with a consensus on the Security Council, is that it would be nice to have Russia’s HELP instead of having it obstruct. Since they armed Libya, they should have some decent intel, although I don’t know how up-to-date it would be.
The thing is, can it be done — and before the colonel wipes out the opposition?
NATO was formed as a counter to the threat of communism, specifically the brand practiced by the USSR. It’s mission has been accomplished and it should be disbanded. Given what is likely a substantial financial contribution by the U.S. the dissolution of NATO would help with our budgetary problems.
Sigh. If Bud lived in Middle-Earth, he’d be trying to bust up the alliance between Rohan and Gondor. And he would cry to the Rohirrim, “Riders of the Mark, it is far too expensive to maintain all these horses; you don’t need them!”