links for 2009-06-11

“We were, as we often do, making jokes about people in the news and we made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter [Bristol]… and now they’re upset with me…” Letterman says on tonight's show. "These are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl…. Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes. Did I suggest that it was okay for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No." Saying he hopes he's "cleared part of this up," Letterman extended an invitation to Palin to come on the show as a guest.

4. Everyone just needs to relax. Page, six, paragraph seven of the “Democrat Handbook” clearly states Republican children are fair game. Or is that the “Mainstream Media Handbook” … I get them confused.

3. It’s just been brought to my attention that during the campaign Barack Obama declared Sarah Palin’s children off limits. So, I would just like to say that this will never happen again and I hope the President will accept my apology.

2. Would you believe I was hoping to be Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World”?

1. If what I said was so wrong, why haven’t feminists complained?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer are double-teaming powerful chairmen and rank-and-file members to save health care reform from a repeat of the Democratic Party infighting that helped kill it in 1994.

In a closed-door session Tuesday, Pelosi assured rank-and-file Democrats that she won’t move forward on a bill without their consent. “We have to hear from you,” one participant quoted Pelosi as saying.
But more-liberal members want a more expansive — and expensive — plan. During the closed-door session Tuesday, Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) told colleagues that any bill should include mental health and dental insurance.

State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg said Tuesday that Democrats won't allow some of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's most drastic budget proposals to become law.

"We're not going to decimate programs that save people's lives," the Democratic leader declared, setting markers for contentious negotiations with Republicans and the governor in the next several weeks.

With the state facing a daunting $24 billion budget shortfall, the governor has proposed abolishing the state's welfare program, eliminating grants for college students and ending a health care program for children from poor families, among a host of other cuts.

Steinberg, D-Sacramento, also came out against a Schwarzenegger plan to borrow nearly $2 billion from local governments, saying it's unfair as cities and counties are struggling to balance their own books.

Senate Democrats unveiled a budget plan Tuesday that would stave off the deepest proposed cuts to California's health, welfare and student-aid programs by dipping heavily into the rainy-day fund that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants set aside in case the economy continues to sour.

The governor declared the Democrats' approach to dealing with the state's projected $24-billion deficit "hallucinatory."
With the state facing a looming cash crunch that Schwarzenegger said "literally will result in shutting down government," partisan bickering flared on Tuesday.

Schwarzenegger's budget, unveiled last month, would reduce the state's deficit by cutting heavily across state government. Unless new budget cuts or taxes are implemented, California won't be able to pay all of its bills by the end of July, according to the state controller.

For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom

Here we stand more than a year into a grave economic crisis with a projected budget deficit of 13% of GDP. That's more than twice the size of the next largest deficit since World War II. And this projected deficit is the culmination of a year when the federal government, at taxpayers' expense, acquired enormous stakes in the banking, auto, mortgage, health-care and insurance industries.

With the crisis, the ill-conceived government reactions, and the ensuing economic downturn, the unfunded liabilities of federal programs — such as Social Security, civil-service and military pensions, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, Medicare and Medicaid — are over the $100 trillion mark. With U.S. GDP and federal tax receipts at about $14 trillion and $2.4 trillion respectively, such a debt all but guarantees higher interest rates, massive tax increases, and partial default on government promises.