links for 2009-08-17

The White House tells FOX News that third-party groups sending online petitions to the official administration Web site could be to blame for a rash of e-mails that have gone out to people who never requested them. But online petitions are not the only culprit, and critics say the White House still has some more explaining to do.

Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals in all 50 states of the union, according to the Gallup Poll.

At the same time, more Americans nationwide are saying this year that they are conservative than have made that claim in any of the last four years.

In 2009, 40% percent of respondents in Gallup surveys that have interviewed more than 160,000 Americans have said that they are either “conservative” (31%) or “very conservative” (9%). That is the highest percentage in any year since 2004.

Only 21% have told Gallup they are liberal, including 16% who say they are “liberal” and 5% who say they are “very liberal.”

Thirty-five percent of Americans say they are moderate.

Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty took an aggressive line against President Barack Obama’s proposed health care overhaul Friday and insisted that a rejection of the Democratic plan could usher in a Republican resurgence.

“It appears that President Obama is making great progress on climate change, he is changing the political climate in the country back to Republican,” Pawlenty said during a speech to the second annual GOPAC conference in Chicago.

“He went around the country last fall promising ‘change we can believe in,’ but now we see it’s about changing what we believe in,” said Pawlenty, an anticipated 2012 Republican presidential contender. “We need to be calling out the flaws and misguided decisions of the Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration.”
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Actually, Obamacare's passage will also usher in a new GOP era. The GOP stands to gain because of Obama overreaching with socialist dogma which universal single payer health care is.

Democrat Barbara Boxer's quest for a fourth term in the U.S. Senate may give Californians a chance to pass judgment on Washington in the Obama era: Do voters approve of the early performance of the Democratic president and Congress? Or is it time to restore more power to Republicans, in this case to a controversial former Silicon Valley CEO making her first run for elective office?

What looks increasingly likely is that Boxer will be in for the re-election fight of her career. While she has yet to announce her candidacy, all signs point to a run by Republican Carly Fiorina, the charismatic ex-chief of Hewlett-Packard who was ousted from her job in 2005 and last year served as a top surrogate for John McCain's presidential bid.

On the same day that a Cabinet member signaled the administration’s willingness to forego inclusion of a public health insurance option in the final version of health care reform legislation, a Texas Democrat who is also a registered nurse suggested that the public option might be a deal breaker for at least some House Democrats.

“It would be very, very difficult,” to support a bill that lacked a public health insurance option, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, “because, without the public option, we’ll have the same number of people uninsured. If the insurance companies wanted to insure these people now, they’d be insured.

Johnson added that “an option that would give the private insurance companies a little competition” is “the only way” to be sure that insurance is available to low income people and people without employer-provided coverage.

An administration official said tonight that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius "misspoke" when she told CNN this morning that a government run health insurance option "is not an essential part" of reform. This official asked not to be identified in exchange for providing clarity about the intentions of the President. The official said that the White House did not intend to change its messaging and that Sebelius simply meant to echo the president, who has acknowledged that the public option is a tough sell in the Senate and is, at the same time, a must-pass for House Democrats, and is not, in the president's view, the most important element of the reform package.

The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country's health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.

Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country – who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting – recognize that changes must be made.

"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"We know that there must be change," she said. "We're all running flat out, we're all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands."