Alex Brandon / AP

President Barack Obama hugs Debby Smith, who shared her stuggle with cancer at a town hall meeting in Annandale, Va.

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ANNANDALE, Va. – President Barack Obama wanted to put a human face on his plans to overhaul health care, and a Virginia supporter did just that Wednesday. Fighting back tears, Debby Smith, 53, told Obama of her kidney cancer and her inability to obtain health insurance or hold a job.

The president hugged her — she’s a volunteer for his political operation — and called her “exhibit A” in an unsustainable system that is too expensive and complex for millions of Americans.

“We are going to try to find ways to help you immediately,” he told Smith as hundreds looked on at a community college forum — and countless others watched on television. But the nation’s long-term needs require a greater emphasis on preventive care and “cost-effective care,” he said.

Smith, of Appalachia, Va., is a volunteer for Organizing for America, Obama’s political operation within the Democratic National Committee. She obtained her ticket through the White House.

Reshaping the medical landscape
The health care changes that Obama called for Wednesday would reshape the nation’s medical landscape. He says he wants to cover nearly 50 million uninsured Americans, to persuade doctors to stress quality over quantity of care, to squeeze billions of dollars from spending.

But details on exactly how to do those things were generally lacking in his hour-long town hall forum before a friendly, hand-picked audience in a Washington suburb. The lingering questions underscore the tough negotiations awaiting Congress, the administration and dozens of special interest groups in the coming months. Lawmakers will return to debating the issue when they return from a one-week recess on Monday.

Some of Obama’s questioners Wednesday were from friendly sources, including a member of the Service Employees International Union and a member of Health Care for America Now, which organized a Capitol Hill rally last week calling for an overhaul. White House aides selected other questions submitted by people on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Republicans said the event was a political sham designed to help Obama, not to inform the public.

“Americans are already skeptical about the cost and adverse impact of the president’s health care plans,” Republican National Committee spokesman Trevor Francis said. “Stacking the audience and preselecting questions may make for a good TV, but it’s the wrong way to engage in a meaningful discussion about reforming health care.”

No new proposals
Obama made no new proposals at the sometimes emotional event. But he vigorously defended his plans while fielding seven questions from the live audience at the forum and on the Internet.

The president would bar insurance companies from turning down applicants because of their “pre-existing conditions.” He would establish health care exchanges that would spread the costs of treating patients such as Smith over a large number of people.

Obama called for shifting huge sums of money from current health care spending to new goals. About two-thirds of the overall new costs “will come from reallocating money that is already being spent in the health care system but isn’t being spent wisely,” he said.

He restated his pledge to cut $177 billion over the next decade from Medicare Advantage insurance plans. And he noted that doctors, hospitals, corporations and others have promised to decrease the annual rate of spending growth by 1.5 percent, or $2 trillion over 10 years.

Such savings are not guaranteed, however, and many Republican lawmakers say Obama’s plans will prove too costly.

“The biggest thing we can do to hold down costs is to change the incentives of a health care system that automatically equates expensive care with better care,” the president said. He said the formula system drives up costs “but doesn’t make you better.”

Obama did not make specific recommendations for changing the incentive formulas.

Cap for malpractice lawsuits?
One questioner said limits on awards from medical malpractice lawsuits would bring down health care costs.

Obama replied, “I don’t like the idea of an artificial cap” on such awards for a patient’s injuries. He also said there was little evidence that various states’ efforts to limit such awards have uniformly brought down costs.

Obama said, however, that he is working with the American Medical Association to explore ways to reduce liability for doctors and hospitals “when they’ve done nothing wrong.” He offered no specifics for a problem that has vexed the medical and legal industries for decades.

The president repeatedly said the current health care system is not acceptable and must be overhauled this year. He urged the audience, which included people following on Facebook and YouTube, to reject critics who say his plans are too costly or a step toward socialized medicine.

Obama said a government-run “single-payer” health care system works well in some countries. But it is not appropriate in the United States, he said, because so many people get insurance through their employers working with private companies.

Still, he again called for a government-run “public option” to compete with private insurers, a plan that many Republicans oppose.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31681251/ns/politics-white_house/

Book Publication Announcement

April 17, 2009

A Presidential Energy Policy: Twenty-five Points Addressing the Siamese Twins of Energy and Money
© Copyright 2009, Michael C. Ruppert

Image credit: Yuneec

Electric Aircraft Makes Successful Test Flight
There are plenty of fancy electric super cars out there proving that battery-powered does not have to mean boring. But is the world ready for electric aviation? THere’s actually more prototypes out there than you might think – from the SkySpark electric plane to the jaw-dropping, alp-crossing Sunseeker solar plane (video). Heck, there’s so much hope for battery-powered flight that there is even an Electric Plane Symposium, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has hinted at supersonic electric flight. In the meantime, another electric plane has taken flight – and this one might be on the market sooner than you’d think. Click below the fold for video footage of the maiden flight.

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Debate surrounding the possibility of geoengineering the earth’s climate by lining the atmosphere with aerosol particles has moved from idle speculation to serious consideration, and was a core topic of discussion at a recent National Academy of Sciences workshop.

However, a top Rutgers University professor warned at the meeting that tampering with the planet’s delicate ecosystem could create famines and droughts, threatening the lives of no less than a third of the world’s population.

The plan to shoot aerosols – dust particles – into the earth’s upper stratosphere in an attempt to cool the planet and offset the purported effects of global warming, should be considered as an “emergency response” to a climate crisis, according to Harvard University’s Dan Schrag, who told the workshop that such a crisis was already underway.

“I think we should consider climate engineering only as an emergency response to a climate crisis, but I question whether we’re already experiencing a climate crisis — whether we’ve already crossed that threshold,” Schrag said.

According to an NPR report on the meeting, University of Calgary’s David Keith urged the introduction of geoengineering experiments on a global scale and that they should be conducted “sooner rather than later”.

But Rutgers University professor Alan Robock warned that such experiments “could create disasters,” damaging the ozone layer and potentially altering the stratosphere by eliminating weather patterns such as the annual Asian monsoon rain season, which 2 billion people rely upon to water their crops and feed the population.

“Imagine if we triggered a drought and famine while trying to cool the planet,” Robock said.

As we have previously highlighted, discussions regarding the possibility of “geo-engineering” the earth’s climate to counter global warming by “shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays” has stoked fresh concerns that similar programs are already underway, and that chemtrails are directly connected to such experimentation.

Chemtrails differ from ordinary contrails in that they hang in the sky for hours and are often observed to be emitted from planes that fly criss-cross routes, leading to the formation of ‘X’ and grid-like patterns in the sky. Chemtrails also directly effect localized weather by turning a clear blue sky into a hazy overcast.

Last year, a KSLA news investigation found that a substance that fell to earth from a high altitude chemtrail contained high levels of Barium (6.8 ppm) and Lead (8.2 ppm) as well as trace amounts of other chemicals including arsenic, chromium, cadmium, selenium and silver. Of these, all but one are metals, some are toxic while several are rarely or never found in nature. The newscast focuses on Barium, which its research shows is a “hallmark of chemtrails.” KSLA found Barium levels in its samples at 6.8 ppm or “more than six times the toxic level set by the EPA.”

KSLA also asked Mark Ryan, Director of the Poison Control Center, about the effects of Barium on the human body. Ryan commented that “short term exposure can lead to anything from stomach to chest pains and that long term exposure causes blood pressure problems.” The Poison Control Center further reported that long-term exposure, as with any harmful substance, would contribute to weakening the immune system, which many speculate is the purpose of such man-made chemical trails.

As we covered in a previous in-depth report, numerous universities and government agencies have been conducting studies in the field of geoengineering for years.

In addition, the Obama administration’s interest in exploring “geo-engineering” mirrors recent publications penned by the elite Council On Foreign Relations.

In a document entitled Geoengineering: Workshop on Unilateral Planetary Scale Geoengineering, the CFR proposes different methods of “reflecting sunlight back into space,” which include adding “small reflecting particles in the upper part of the atmosphere,” adding “more clouds in the lower part of the atmosphere,” and placing “various kinds of reflecting objects in space either near the earth or at a stable location between the earth and the sun.”

The proposals in the CFR document match exactly the atmospheric effects observed in the aftermath of chemtrail spraying.

For years the government has been involved in a secret operation involving contrails – the visible lines of condensed water vapor that jets leave in the sky. If you asked them, they would suggest that this is done in the name of environmental protection as a safeguard that will alleviate global warming by reflecting sunlight back into the atmosphere. The real truth: these contrails are actually a toxic substance, or virus, deliberately sprayed upon an unsuspecting populace in order to “weed out the old and the sick”.

Synopsis -
As Seattle’s hospitals begin filling up with patients suffering from a deadly sickness, Dr. Tess Martin, a specialist from the Global Health Association, embarks on a mission to find the truth. Before long, the virus spreads like wildfire and becomes a full-on epidemic, with Tess own 10 year old son now among the infected. With over 70 percent of Seattle dying from the virus, Tess and her son’s only chance of survival is to get out of the city and find a cure, but the President has declared a national emergency and quarantined all of Seattle — nobody is allowed out, and nobody is allowed in. When the President passes a bill allowing the use of military force to keep Seattle from spreading the virus, it’s up to Tess to find a way to break free of the city in order to find a cure and expose the government’s deadly conspiracy.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

June 25, 2009

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama pushed urgently Thursday for passage of legislation to confront global warming, billing it as a job-creating machine rather than the costly “job killer” Republicans have been denouncing. He telephoned wavering Democrats on the eve of what could be a historic vote in the House of Representatives.

Speaking in the Rose Garden at the White House, Obama said the United States must not miss the opportunity to work on cleaning the air, creating new “green” energy jobs and moving the nation away from its reliance on fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas.

The White House appeared worried that momentum for the bill might be slipping, although White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that when it came time for a House showdown, “I’d bet on the president.”

Flutes Offer Clues to Stone-Age Music

(AP Photo/Jane Wiggins)DES MOINES, Iowa – Looking out the 11th floor window of her law office, Jane Wiggins did a double take and grabbed her camera. The dark, undulating clouds hovering outside were unlike anything she’d seen before. “It looked like Armageddon,” said Wiggins, a paralegal and amateur photographer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “The shadows of the clouds, the lights and the darks, and the greenish-yellow backdrop. They seemed to change.”

“They (the clouds) were the first ones that I noted of this type and I was unsure which category to put them under,” said Pretor-Pinney, author of “The Cloudspotter’s Guide.” “When we put pictures up online we list the category, and I wasn’t sure how to categorize it.”

Some scientists are skeptical. They argue that researchers who have long watched the sky haven’t seen anything distinctly new for decades.

There are three main groups of clouds: cumulous, cirrus and stratus. Each has various sub-classifications built on other details of the formation.

Brant Foote, a longtime scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said the clouds photographed by Wiggins already fit into the existing cumulous classification.

But Pretor-Pinney, who never studied meteorology, believes the clouds merit their own cumulus sub-classification. He proposes they be called altocumulus undulatus asperatus. The last word — Latin for roughen or agitate — is a reference to the clouds’ undulating surface.

“Not necessarily gentle or steady, but quite violent-looking, turbulent, almost twisted in its appearance,” he said.

The group has compiled several photographs documenting the formations from the billowy, rolling clouds shot by Wiggins in Iowa to ones from New Zealand that were much more menacing, hanging lava-like in the sky.

Foote said it would be “very unusual” for such a formation to be recognized as a new variety of cloud.

“People have been looking at clouds for hundreds of years and the general cloud classification is well defined,” Foote said. “It’s not as if someone discovered a new plant in the Amazon. It’s what you’ve seen every day. There was no atmospheric condition that caused a new kind of cloud to form.”

Pretor-Pinney is working with the Royal Meteorological Society in Reading, England, to prepare his case. If that group signs off, the proposal will go to the United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization in Geneva.

Society executive director Paul Hardaker said a small panel within the society is gathering evidence to review. Their efforts include talking with those who took the submitted photos to determinine when, where and amid what weather they were taken. Hardaker said meteorologists tend to be skeptical of such proposals.

“We like to believe that just about everything that can be seen has been, but you do get caught once in a while with the odd, new, interesting thing,” Hardaker said. “By this stage we think it’s sufficiently interesting to explore it further and we’re optimistic about the information we’ve got.”

Below are some other examples of this kind of cloud that I have had sent to me before.

Kansas City Missouri – 2006

Iowa, June 24, 2006

Eastern Idaho – November 2005

Neosho, Missouri Late 2005

From Des Moines Station KCRG – 2007

Are they natural?  That is a valid question.  They are natural in the sense that they do occur in the sky on a rather regular basis.  But, would they take form without the technologies that are presently in place to manipulate the atmosphere?  That’s also a good question, and if I am allowed to speculate, I would say no.  These clouds wouldn’t be photographed as frequently as they are without the stimulation of the planet’s Orgone energy field, artificial and space based introduction of gravity waves into the atmosphere and the additional host of other environmental manipulations that remain active to this very moment.

Is it time for a new cloud type? Probably so.  But that then opens up a whole new can of worms.  Clouds tweaked from above, clouds littered with chemtrail debris, clouds created by airfoils manufactured by these waves.

Don’t get me going now!

A strange dark ring UFO was spotted over the Kings Dominion Amusement Park near Richmond Virginia.

Kings Dominion Officials said the ring was from a ride called ‘The Volcano’ but several witnesses are not so sure. “We were like what is that, we were all stopped and we were astonished,” said witness Denna Smith, “Smoke usually looks smokey and cloudy. This ring of smoke was a perfect circle. It was lined up so tight like it was a cut in the middle of the sky.”

But then this gets a little odder. In seems that in 1957, some rather famous UFO pictures were taken at Fort Belvoir Virginia, about 70 miles north that show an amazingly similar object.

With recent jellyfish crop cirlces and jellyfish UFOs or Atmospheric Beasts floating around, could that have been what was seen at the amusement park?

From the White House blog:

It’s just another day here in the Obama Whiplash Derby, in which I’m either saying, “God, I can’t believe I voted for this guy!” or “Wow, great idea!” – sometimes within the same five minutes. (Boy, does my neck hurt.)

Of course, we have to see what’s in the final legislation, but this is one of those good ideas:

WASHINGTON — Among the sweeping changes in government regulation that President Barack Obama will propose Wednesday is the creation of an independent and powerful Consumer Financial Product Safety Commission to regulate financial products such as mortgages and credit cards.

With an eye toward protecting consumers and ordinary investors, the Federal Reserve and other bank regulators would lose their oversight over mortgages, credit cards and other financial products that are sold to consumers. It’s a radical shift in approach and a tacit acknowledgment of federal failure.

“Lets face it, the (Federal Reserve Board) has had the power to engage in aggressive consumer regulation at least since 1994,” Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, who chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel, which oversees how Wall Street bailout money is being spent, told McClatchy in an interview. “They clearly had the power to stop the mortgage crisis before it started. And what did they do with that power? Nothing.”

Warren’s view was echoed by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the chairman of the influential House Financial Services Committee, which will write the legislation to implement and perhaps build on Obama’s proposals.

“We definitely should take consumer protection away from the Fed,” Frank said.

(Source: Crooks & Liars website)