In a phone interview this afternoon, Senator John McCain expanded on his statement from this morning on General Stanley McChrystal and the general's comments to Rolling Stone:

"If the president fires McChrystal, we need a new ambassador and we need an entire new team over there. But most importantly, we need the president to say what Secretary Clinton and Secretary Gates have both said but what the president refuses to say: Our withdrawal in the middle of 2011 will be conditions based. It's got to be conditions based and he's got to say it."

But McCain says that Obama is worried about the political repercussions of that kind of all-in statement.

"He won't say this because he's captive of his far-left base."
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Obama WILL fire McChrystal and then the questions will begin – plus there is McChrystal's tell-all book.

The worsening budget impasse over Medicare reimbursements is straining not just doctors but also House-Senate relations — with taxpayers facing millions of dollars in added costs for reprocessing claims.

Having waited for weeks in hopes of a stay, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, is now enforcing a 21 percent cut in physician payments, and an estimated 50 million claims, held back since June 1, will be the first affected.

Never before has Congress allowed such a deep Medicare cut to go into effect at this scale, and complicating matters further is a public rift between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) over the best course forward.
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ObamaCare rearing its ugly head via Medicare

The top U.S. general in Afghanistan was summoned to Washington for a White House meeting after apologizing Tuesday for flippant and dismissive remarks about top Obama administration officials involved in Afghanistan policy.

The remarks in an article in this week's in Rolling Stone magazine are certain to increase tension between the White House and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

The profile of McChrystal, , titled the "Runaway General," also raises fresh questions about the judgment and leadership style of the commander Obama appointed last year in an effort to turn around a worsening conflict.

McChrystal and some of his senior advisors are quoted criticizing top administration officials, at times in starkly derisive terms. An anonymous McChrystal aide is quoted calling national security adviser James Jones a "clown," who remains "stuck in 1985."
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Will Afghanistan will go down in history as the War Obama lost?

In a phone interview this afternoon, Senator John McCain expanded on his statement from this morning on General Stanley McChrystal and the general's comments to Rolling Stone:

"If the president fires McChrystal, we need a new ambassador and we need an entire new team over there. But most importantly, we need the president to say what Secretary Clinton and Secretary Gates have both said but what the president refuses to say: Our withdrawal in the middle of 2011 will be conditions based. It's got to be conditions based and he's got to say it."

But McCain says that Obama is worried about the political repercussions of that kind of all-in statement.

"He won't say this because he's captive of his far-left base."
+++++++
Obama WILL fire McChrystal and then the questions will begin – plus there is McChrystal's tell-all book.

The worsening budget impasse over Medicare reimbursements is straining not just doctors but also House-Senate relations — with taxpayers facing millions of dollars in added costs for reprocessing claims.

Having waited for weeks in hopes of a stay, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, is now enforcing a 21 percent cut in physician payments, and an estimated 50 million claims, held back since June 1, will be the first affected.

Never before has Congress allowed such a deep Medicare cut to go into effect at this scale, and complicating matters further is a public rift between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) over the best course forward.
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ObamaCare rearing its ugly head via Medicare

The top U.S. general in Afghanistan was summoned to Washington for a White House meeting after apologizing Tuesday for flippant and dismissive remarks about top Obama administration officials involved in Afghanistan policy.

The remarks in an article in this week's in Rolling Stone magazine are certain to increase tension between the White House and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

The profile of McChrystal, , titled the "Runaway General," also raises fresh questions about the judgment and leadership style of the commander Obama appointed last year in an effort to turn around a worsening conflict.

McChrystal and some of his senior advisors are quoted criticizing top administration officials, at times in starkly derisive terms. An anonymous McChrystal aide is quoted calling national security adviser James Jones a "clown," who remains "stuck in 1985."
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Will Afghanistan will go down in history as the War Obama lost?

Looking ahead to the general election, Boxer’s campaign is wagering that Palin’s endorsement will be a drag on Fiorina as she tries to woo Democrats and Independent voters to overcome her party’s registration disadvantage. On Monday, the Boxer campaign launched a web video on their anti-Fiorina website that splices together clips of Palin and Fiorina with criticism of their positions on guns, oil drilling and abortion. The closing message: “Sarah Palin and Carly Fiorina. Wrong for California.” (Fiorina's campaign, by the way, posts their objections to the California Democrat's record on their anti-Boxer website).
Fiorina’s spokeswoman Amy Thoma said the Palin video was evidence that Boxer “is trying to shore up a base of voters that should already be supporting her," underscoring "just how endangered she really is.”
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Boxer running against Sarah Palin now? This might get real interesting……

People who buy their own health insurance have been hit lately with premium hikes that far exceed increases in premiums for employer-sponsored coverage, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The nonprofit foundation, which is separate from health insurer Kaiser Permanente, said recent premium hikes requested by insurers for individual coverage averaged 20 percent. Some customers were able to switch plans and pay less, so people paying on their own actually wound up paying 13 percent more on average.
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Well, someone has to pay for ObamaCare

About two weeks ago, following June 8 primary night, the big meme in political media was “The Year of the (Republican) Woman.” Primary victories by the likes of Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina in California, and a strong performance by Nikki Haley in South Carolina, followed on the back of victory the week prior by Susana Martinez in New Mexico.

But since then, another narrative seems to be taking hold in some quarters—that these women aren’t really women, they’re men in skirts. That is so because they a) didn’t emphasize their gender at every turn in the course of their respective primary races or b) don’t focus, or toe the line, on “women’s issues”—or both. In particular, objections have been raised that these women either are not pro-choice or are insufficiently vocal about being pro-choice, and therefore—the subtext seems to be—they’re more akin to men in skirts than “real women.”
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Read it all……

Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, broke ground in American corporate leadership and is now being heralded as a pioneer again – the vanguard of a new breed of "pro-woman, pro-life" feminists in the mold of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Darcy Linn, 51, a Contra Costa business executive who sees herself as conservative, proudly pro-life – and a feminist – said it's one reason she's drawn to Fiorina, who is running against three-term incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer.
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How will Barbara Boxer try to use the abortion issue to defeat Carly Fiorina?