Showing posts with label Liberal Democratic Party. Show all posts

Friday, February 18, 2011

At least 24 dead in Libyan protests - Libyan protesters prepare for "day of anger"

Monday, April 26, 2010

Election 2010: Tories to target Labour heartlands

The Conservatives hope to build on their opinion poll lead

The Conservatives are to step up campaigning in seats where Labour are defending healthy majorities, in the wake of the Lib Dem poll surge.

Tory strategists have identified a number of seats where they believe support for Labour is ebbing away.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has said first-past-the-post votes made "no sense at all" in a three-party system.

Lord Mandelson has warned Labour voters in Labour/Tory marginals: "Vote Nick, get Dave and George".

Labour will focus campaigning on its plans for the NHS on Monday, while the Lib Dems are highlighting their plans for a pay rise for junior ranks in the armed forces.

BBC political correspondent Ben Wright said the surge in the polls for the Lib Dems, in the wake of TV prime ministerial debates, had upset both the Tories' and Labour's election strategies.

Third runway

The Tories had hoped to take a swathe of seats from the Lib Dems in south-west England, thought to be needed if they were to get an overall majority.

Now they hope to take seats which have traditionally returned Labour MPs but where they believe the rise in Lib Dem support - at Labour's expense - could make a Conservative win possible. They will start to target those constituencies over the next few days.

The Conservatives are also targeting Lib Dem voters, posting about 500,000 pieces of campaign literature in marginal seats.

Mr Cameron said: "Today I want to speak directly to the people who have idealism and progressive ideals hardwired into their DNA. Everyone who is desperate for real change.

"Whether you've been a Lib Dem voter or a Labour voter or a Green voter - if you care about the environment, if you want action to improve your quality of life, if you care about civil liberties, if you want people power, you need the clean break that a Conservative government can give you."

'Eco-charlatans'

It marks the start of an offensive on two fronts for the Conservatives, as they aim to extend their lead in the opinion polls.

While four polls in Sunday newspapers suggested the party has a clear lead, they still pointed to a hung parliament - with the Conservatives short of an overall majority.

At a press conference in Edinburgh on Monday, Lib Dem leader Mr Clegg faced more questions about his comments on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday - in which he said it would be "preposterous" for Labour to come third in the popular vote, but remain in 10 Downing Street.

He said he had been "pointing out what I think is the obvious, which is we have an irrational and unfair democratic system" which he said was "going well past its sell-by date".

Asked if he would support Labour, if it won the most seats but came third in terms of number of votes, Mr Clegg said "no" and criticised the convention that if there is no clear winner, the current PM has the first right to seek to govern.

But he repeated his belief that if a party won the most seats and the most votes but was short of an overall majority, it had the right to seek to reach out to other parties first.

Mr Clegg said the way in which politicians would "speak to each other" after the election depended on the result and the "priorities that each of the parties sets out".

On whether changing the voting system would be a pre-requisite for Lib Dem support in a coalition, he said electoral reform was "an absolute precondition for renewal in this country".

He will set out his party's plans to boost the pay of junior soldiers as part of their plans for Armed Forces reform - increasing the pay of an Army private by up to £6,000 a year, to bring it into line with the salary of a police constable.

He said Labour had "failed" on the environment, the Conservatives "align themselves with climate change deniers" in Europe and that the next government would be the last that is able to stop "dangerous" climate change.

The Green Party responded to Mr Clegg's assertion that they "cannot make a difference in Westminster" by calling his party the "biggest eco-charlatans on this part of the planet".

As Labour switch their focus to the NHS in England, with hints they will spell out their vision in even more detail than the manifesto, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson rallied party supporters in an e-mail.

Saying they were "in the fight for our political lives", he reminded them that a third of the electorate remained undecided.

"In his interviews, Nick Clegg has been making clear his hostility to Labour and his preference to side with the Tories in a coalition if this arises," he said.

"Or, in other words, vote Nick and get Dave and George," a reference to the Conservative leader and his shadow chancellor George Osborne.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Obamas head to Hawaii for holidays-Obama's landmark health care overhaul past a final procedural hurdle

The Obama family leaves for Hawaii

US President Barack Obama headed for Hawaii Thursday on a 10-day holiday vacation in his native state cheered by a major health reform victory.

The first family lifted off on Air Force One shortly after 10:30 am (1530 GMT), hours after the Senate passed a sweeping bill to remake the battered US health care system, the president's top domestic priority.

Obama, First Lady Michelle and First Daughters Sasha, eight, and Malia, 11, were clad in thick winter coats as they boarded the blue and white presidential jumbo jet. They were sure to shed those coverings when they land in warm Honolulu, Hawaii, where they will spend time at the beach.

They are scheduled to leave Honolulu on Sunday, January 3.

Before departing the White House, Obama called 10 US troops fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- two from each of the five military branches.

Showing she has grown quite comfortable with the perks of her dad's job, Sasha said Tuesday she expected Christmas to stay this same this year, but for one thing.

"It will be easier to get on the plane than last year," she told a group of children to a chorus of laughter.

Since Obama took office in January, he and his family have had two luxuriously outfitted Boeing 747 airplanes at their disposal.

Obama was born in Honolulu in 1961, where he lived until he was 18, except for a stint in Indonesia from the age of six to 10.

Exultant Senate Democrats pushed President Barack Obama's landmark health care overhaul past a final procedural hurdle Wednesday, setting up a Christmas Eve vote to pass the legislation extending coverage to 30 million Americans. Democrats voted 60-39 to end a GOP filibuster and move to a final vote Thursday. All 58 Democrats and two independents hung together against unanimous Republican opposition.

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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Lieberman Stands in Middle of Health Care Debate

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn. and Sen. Susan Collins., R-Maine meet with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington,

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., right, accompanied by Sen. Susan Collins, Maine meets with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn. meets with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., right, accompanied by Sen. Susan Collins, Maine meets with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009.

The senator Republicans love and liberals love to hate is at it again.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, who no longer considers himself a Democrat but is holding tight to a coveted chairmanship, thoroughly rattled the Obama administration and his colleagues in the last 48 hours when he threatened to join Republicans in blocking health care overhaul over government-run insurance and an expansion of Medicare.

"Say it ain't so, Joe," Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I think Joe's judgment is wrong."

Don't count me as a "no" vote just yet, Lieberman indicated Tuesday.

As long as any government plan or Medicare expansion stays out of the bill, "then I'm going to be in a position where I can say what I've wanted to say all along: that I'm ready to vote for health care reform," the Connecticut lawmaker told reporters.

Lieberman isn't the typical Democrat the party machinery is primed to appease as President Barack Obama and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., cobble together the 60 votes required to pass a health care bill.

No, this is Lieberman — Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore's running mate in 2000 but now independent in every sense of the word. Lieberman lost his party's primary in 2006 in part because of his pro-Iraq war votes and won re-election as an Independent.

Then he committed what some Democrats still consider the ultimate apostasy: He endorsed Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona with a rousing speech at the GOP national convention and campaigned heartily for his longtime friend.

Back in the Senate with McCain — after Obama moved into the White House — Lieberman later apologized to his Democratic colleagues. Seething but needing Lieberman to get to the 60 vote-majority required to break filibusters, they allowed him to keep the chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee.

From Obama on down, they vowed to step past the unpleasantness and look to the future.

But there held another chapter in Lieberman's tortured relationship with Democrats.

By Tuesday, Lieberman was telling Obama and his colleagues that the debate has been tough on him. Outside with reporters, he blamed the tussle on Democrats trying to cram too much — namely, any kind of government health insurance — into the overhaul

"What happens then is you run the risk of losing everything," Lieberman told reporters.

That's exactly what Democrats feared was happening on Sunday, when they heard Lieberman call the latest iteration of their bill, a plan to allow people age 55 to 64 to buy Medicare benefits, too costly.

There, potentially, went Reid's 60th vote, a development that unnerved Democrats at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and must have come in some measure as a surprise to Reid. Only two months earlier, the majority leader had called Lieberman "the least of Harry Reid's problems."

By Monday, Lieberman headed Reid's list of senators who must be accommodated. Democrats circulated a videotaped newspaper interview from September showing Lieberman saying he supports the idea of a Medicare expansion. Lieberman said in a statement later that the details of the bill had changed since then and so had his opinion.

The White House got involved, and by nightfall, the Medicare provision was out. And Lieberman sounded like he was back in.

At a private White House complex meeting with Senate Democrats Tuesday, Lieberman said Obama greeted him warmly.

"He said 'hello, how are you brother?' It was a good conversation," recalled the senator, who in an interview with CNN signaled he could switch parties again. "It's unlikely I'd run as a Republican, but I wouldn't foreclose any possibility. I think the more likely thing is that I'd run as an Independent because that's what I am," he said.

Congressional Democrats, both furious and wary of re-offending their mercurial colleague, began speaking of Lieberman only when asked, mostly in the bland terms.

What was Lieberman thinking?

"I have no idea," Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said with a polite grin. "Our focus is on 60 votes."

Does he have too much power over the shape of the overhaul?

"That's a Senate matter," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., demurred.

"You're too Lieberman-focused," Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told reporters afterward.

Lieberman himself said later that he's prepared to live with his opposition to publicly funded insurance, convinced, he said, that it would increase taxes.

It's a truism about the Senate that the end of sensitive negotiations present outsized opportunities for clout and attention for any senator with a request or a demand. Power in this debate has flowed largely to those on the fence or in the middle. But while senators like being courted, the position can be uncomfortable.

Inside Obama's closed-door meeting at the White House complex Tuesday, Lieberman stood.

"I said, 'I haven't really had a lot of fun the last couple of weeks,'" the besieged senator told reporters.

"And then (Ohio Democratic Sen.) Sherrod Brown got up and said, 'I haven't been having fun either,'" Lieberman recalled. "And the president said, 'Why don't we all begin to have some fun? Let's pass the bill."

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Sunday, November 8, 2009

Democrats claim big victory on health care-cost in 10 years time $1.05 trilion promised health coverage of 96% of citizen

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, left, and Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) after the vote, rallied her party for months.

resident Barack Obama stands with House Majority Whip James Clyburn, Rep. Joe Crowley, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Rep. Xavier Becerra and Rep. John Larson after a caucus meeting on Capitol Hill on Saturday.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn, President Barack Obama and Rep. John Larson leave after a caucus meeting on Capitol Hill. Obama spoke with members of the House Democratic Caucus about health care reform legislation.

President Barack Obama speaks about health care reform in the Rose Garden of the White House on Saturday.

President Barack Obama waves as he walks out of the Caucus Room with House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Congressman John Larson and other leaders after a meeting on health care reform on Capitol Hill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is joined by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (left) and Rep. George Miller after the vote.

President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi achieved a stupendous - but still incomplete - victory Saturday, winning House passage of the biggest expansion of health care coverage since Medicare's creation in 1964, in the face of nearly unanimous Republican opposition.

As a matter of policy and politics, the 10-year, $1.05 trillion legislation, which passed 220-215 late Saturday night, is among the most complex and difficult Congress has ever considered. Enactment would prove the signal achievement of Pelosi's speakership. Success or failure will define Obama's presidency. In the hours before the vote, Obama traveled to Capitol Hill to urge fellow Democrats to answer a "call to history" and fulfill last year's voter mandate for change.

"This bill is change that the American people urgently need," Obama said Saturday in a Rose Garden speech. "This is their moment, this is our moment to live up to the trust that the American people have placed in us - even when it's hard; especially when it's hard."

Yet for all its significance, House passage would be but one step along a path to a White House signing ceremony that remains fraught with uncertainty. Senate action has stalled, and if it restarts, a long debate could widen already deep differences between the two chambers over new taxes and mandates on individuals to buy coverage and employers to offer it.

The House bill promises to expand coverage to 96 percent of Americans, but many key provisions, including a new insurance exchange where those without insurance could choose between a government option or private plans, would not take effect until 2013, after next year's midterm elections and after the 2012 presidential election.

In the interim, those denied insurance due to pre-existing conditions would have access to a government-subsidized high-risk pool. A potentially unpopular requirement that individuals buy insurance would also not begin until 2013.
Complex changes

Part of the delay is due to the complexity of implementing changes to a $2.6 trillion industry that consumes $1 of every $6 Americans spend; part is due to budget maneuvering that delays expenditures to meet Obama's pledge not to add to the burgeoning federal deficit within a 10-year budget window.

Pelosi spent months in tense negotiations to knit together the wide ideological spectrum of her caucus, from Bay Area liberals who insisted on a public option to moderate Democrats from GOP-leaning districts wary of rising deficits. Moderates succeeded in watering down the public option by untethering it from Medicare, and won a 240-194 vote on an amendment to expand a ban on public funds being used for abortion. Liberals accepted the amendment rather than bring down the entire bill.

Rep. Pete Stark, D-Fremont, a longtime advocate of a single-payer system run by the government, spoke to the House accompanied by his two young children, Hannah and Andrew. "At my age, I've learned to take what you can, when you can get it," he said.

Pelosi could afford to lose up to 40 Democrats and still prevail, and for some members from very conservative districts a yes vote would have been political suicide.

Rep. Mike Thompson, a moderate Blue Dog Democrat from St. Helena, said his constituents are divided, with about 60 percent for the bill, 30 percent against it and about 10 percent wanting a single-payer system.

Asked if he's gotten any complaints from constituents, Thompson said, "I've been getting blowback for 19 years about the health care system we have. I've been working my entire time in elected office trying to fix it."

Republicans - who led a "tea party" protest at the Capitol on Thursday - blasted the bill as a "job killer" filled with new taxes and mandates, the wrong prescription for the economy when the national unemployment rate is more than 10 percent.
GOP alternative

Waiting until a week before the vote, Republicans offered a much slimmer alternative that would barely expand coverage, but would seek to lower premiums through market-based mechanisms such as allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines.

Just one Republican voted for the Democrats' bill, Anh "Joseph" Cao, a Vietnam immigrant from Louisiana. All but Cao continued a GOP boycott of the Obama agenda that began with last fall's $787 billion fiscal stimulus. Republicans hope to tap growing displeasure with federal deficits and unemployment among independent voters, who last week handed the GOP big gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey.

The health care bill meets a key test of reducing deficits under Congressional Budget Office guidelines, through a combination of a 2.6 percent surtax on individuals earning more than $500,000 a year and cuts to private insurance companies under the Medicare Advantage program, along with reduced payments to doctors and hospitals. Democrats removed a $210 billion increase in payments to doctors and hospitals to achieve what many experts believe is a phantom budget neutrality.
Pilot programs

Experts also believe the legislation is too timid in its attempts, mainly limited to pilot programs, to attack the rise in overall health care costs that is driving premiums skyward. A notable exception is a provision Pelosi granted to Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., that could force changes to the fee-for-service payment method that rewards physicians for the quantity of services they deliver, a major factor in rising costs.

Democrats emphasized coverage expansions and the new security promised to millions whose employment-based coverage is threatened by rising premiums. The legislation would also impose new regulations on insurance companies, banning such practices as cancellation of policies when people get sick, and strip the industry of its antitrust exemption.

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Thursday, September 3, 2009

New government in Japan = LDP rule of half a century comes to an end.- New First Lady is confident and alleged has been abducted by aliens

-Japan's prime minister-elect Yukio Hatoyama (R) and his wife Miyuki Hatoyama, who claims she was abducted by aliens 20 years ago.-

With Taro Aso, the Japanese prime minister, conceding defeat in parliamentary after exit polls suggested a landslide victory for Yukio Hatoyama and his Democratic Party in parliamentary elections, a dramatic transformation of Japanese politics has been achieved.

More than half a century of almost continuous rule by the Liberal Democratic Party has been brought to an end.

Hatoyama campaigned on promises of more people-centred politics, and has pledged to smash Japan's rigid pro-business bureaucracy.

New Direction in US - Japan alliance ?
The newly elected DPJ, which vowed more independence from Washington, may relocate US bases in Japan and end its support for US efforts in Afghanistan.

DPJ may want to challenge the US’s large footprint in Japan. Another potential sticking point involves the 47,000 US troops stationed in Japan, as Agence France-Presse reports:

Hatoyama in the past supported calls to remove Futenma air base — long a source of friction as it lies in a crowded urban area — out of Okinawa. A plan between the two countries would shift the Marine base’s facilities to reclaimed land on a quiet part of the island.

Kevin Maher, who heads the Japan desk at the State Department, said that a realignment deal reached with a previous government on Okinawa — under which 8,000 Marines would head to the US territory of Guam by 2014 — was final.

“It’s an agreement between nations; it’s not an agreement between parties,” Maher said at the American Enterprise Institute, another Washington think-tank.
The DPJ may also pull back its support for US efforts in Afghanistan, AFP reports:

'I was abducted by aliens', says wife of Japan's new PM.

Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of Japan's prime minister-elect, Yukio Hatoyama, is a lifestyle guru, a macrobiotics enthusiast, an author of cookery books, a retired actress, a divorcee, and a fearless clothes horse for garments of her own creation, including a skirt made from Hawaiian coffee sacks.
In her claim in a book entitled Very Strange Things I've Encountered that she was abducted by aliens while she slept one night 20 years ago, that has suddenly drawn attention following last Sunday's poll.
"While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus,It was a very beautiful place, and it was very green."" she explains in the tome she
published last year.

Mrs Hatoyama's self-confidence in projecting her personality, and shattering the traditional expectations of a political wife, probably derives from her early years as a dancer in Japan's legendary all-female Takarazuka theatrical troupe. Founded in 1913, Takarazuka has long enjoyed cult status in Japan. The star players in its glitzy, saccharine, ferociously camp productions of American classics like Gone with the Wind enjoy superstar status among the armies of middle-aged women that flock to the shows.

Takarazuka's actresses are picked from thousands of teenage hopefuls in a stringent selection process and subjected to a quasi-monastic training regimen.

While a handful become household names, the great majority, like Mrs Hatoyama, retire after a few years. But the aura of belonging to this exclusive sorority clings to them for ever.

After six years Mrs Hatoyama quit the troupe and went to the United States. It was there, while working in a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco, that she met Yukio, then a graduate student at Stanford University. Miyuki was still married to her first husband.

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Friday, February 18, 2011

At least 24 dead in Libyan protests - Libyan protesters prepare for "day of anger"

Monday, April 26, 2010

Election 2010: Tories to target Labour heartlands

Friday, December 25, 2009

Obamas head to Hawaii for holidays-Obama's landmark health care overhaul past a final procedural hurdle

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Lieberman Stands in Middle of Health Care Debate

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Democrats claim big victory on health care-cost in 10 years time $1.05 trilion promised health coverage of 96% of citizen

Thursday, September 3, 2009

New government in Japan = LDP rule of half a century comes to an end.- New First Lady is confident and alleged has been abducted by aliens

'I was abducted by aliens', says wife of Japan's new PM.

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