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Sunday, March 6, 2011

This Week 3/06: Christaine Amanpour

 

John McCain: Gadhafi Is 'Insane'

Republican Senator Calls for No-Fly Zone Over Libya



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In calling for the no-fly zone, McCain told "This Week" anchor Christiane Amanpour, "We can't risk allowing Gadhafi to massacre people from the air, both by helicopter and fixed-wing [aircraft]."
Amanpour pointed out that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had recently noted that imposing a no-fly zone over a country as large as Libya would be a significant endeavor.
"If it's ordered, we can do it. But the reality is there's a lot of, frankly, loose talk about some of these military options," the secretary said on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. "And let's just call a spade a spade: a no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses. That's the way you do a no-fly zone."
McCain noted that, "these air assets that Gadhafi has are not overwhelming."
If the U.S. gets involved, Amanpour asked, is that taking sides?
"Clearly," McCain said, "we are on the side of the rebels. We have called for Gadhafi's removal – that's the President of the United State's policy. I want to emphasize: ground intervention would not be appropriate – certainly not at this time.
"A ground intervention by the part of the United States could be very counterproductive," he said. "But we can assist in a lot of ways: humanitarian, intelligence, providing them with some training and other things we can do as they form up a provisional government in Benghazi."
So how can the U.S. push Gadhafi to leave?
"I hope that Gadhafi understands the inevitability of --" McCain began to say.
"But he hasn't shown much indication to us," Amanpour interjected. She sat down with the Libyan leader last Monday.
"Oh, I agree with you," McCain said. "He's insane. But perhaps the people around him would begin to depart the sinking ship."
"Again," he added, "by a no-fly zone, by declaring our support for a provisional government, perhaps, which is being formed up now – there is a lot of steps we can take."
McCain, who is the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently returned from a trip around the Middle East where he met with government leaders in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia.
He said the best way for the U.S. to help fledging governments manage the transition to democracy was to avoid the appearance of interfering or dictating the countries' internal affairs.
"There's a lot of skepticism in Egypt, in Tunisia and in other countries because of our support of past rulers," he said.
McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee for President, emphasized the importance of assistance.
"The most important thing we could do in the long-run for these countries is investment. Because, you know, this was all about jobs," he said.
"This is really about the economies of these countries," McCain explained.
The senator noted that Egypt was the key to the burgeoning movement of democracy in the Middle East. "It's the heart and soul of the Arab world. The other countries are very important," he said, "but maybe we could fail in one of these other countries. We fail in Egypt: it has severe consequences."

This Week 2/27: Christaine Amanpour

 

Interview With Gadhafi's Sons

Saif al-Islam and Saadi Gadhafi sit down with Christiane Amanpour in Libya


Hard times generation: homeless kids

Hard times generation: homeless kids
For some children, socializing and learning are being cruelly complicated by homelessness, as Scott Pelley reports from Florida, where school buses now stop at motels for children who've lost their homes.
  • Video Extra: Hitting hard times After a period of homelessness as a young teenager, Aaron Boyer was finally taken in by a loving family, and then hard times hit.
  • Video Extra: Finding strength while homeless Tiffany Langhorn's parents lost their jobs and the family is now homeless, but the honors student says the experience has made her stronger and more responsible.

March 6, 2011 5:00 PM
For some children, socializing and learning are being cruelly complicated by homelessness, as Scott Pelley reports from Florida, where school buses now stop at motels for children who've lost their homes.


(CBS News)  Unemployment improved a bit last month but it is still nearly nine percent and the trouble is job creation is so slow, it will be years before we get back the seven and a half million jobs lost in the Great Recession. American families have been falling out of the middle class in record numbers. The combination of lost jobs and millions of foreclosures means a lot of folks are homeless and hungry for the first time in their lives.
One of the consequences of the recession that you don't hear a lot about is the record number of children descending into poverty.
The government considers a family of four to be impoverished if they take in less than $22,000 a year. Based on that standard, and government projections of unemployment, it is estimated the poverty rate for kids in this country will soon hit 25 percent. Those children would be the largest American generation to be raised in hard times since the Great Depression.
In Seminole County, near Orlando, Fla., so many kids have lost their homes that school busses now stop at dozens of cheap motels where families crowd into rooms, living week to week.
NAEHCY
Families in Transition
Feeding America
The hidden America
It's hard to watch Scott Pelley's "60 Minutes" report on homeless kids without being moved. It was even harder, as Pelley and his producer explain, to stay composed as they reported this story.
Segment: The hard time generation
Extra: Hitting hard times
Extra: Finding strength while homeless
Destiny Corfee, 11, joined the line at one local motel a year ago. "I never really noticed what people were actually going through until now; until we're actually going through it too," she told "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley.
Destiny's parents David and Theresa never imagined their family homeless. Together they were making about $40 an hour detailing expensive cars. There was a three-bedroom home, vacations and extras for the kids. But both jobs went, and then the house. Evicted, they found that the homeless shelters wanted to split their family up - boys and girls.
"That was definitely something that I wasn't gonna have, was being separated at a time like this. I figured the time like this that we needed to be together more than anything," David Corfee said.
So David, Theresa, Destiny, Jorge and Chance, moved into their van.
"I was embarrassed that maybe one of my friends might see me. I don't want anybody to know that I was actually in there," Destiny told Pelley.
The van, according to Destiny, was parked at a WalMart.
"We would actually go in WalMart and clean our self up before we'd go to school," her brother Jorge remembered.
"How would you do that?" Pelley asked.
"I would like wash my face, and like, take a tissue and wash my arms and stuff," Jorge explained.
"We would bring the toothpaste and the toothbrush and the brushes so we'll go brush our hair in the mirror and people would see us," Destiny added. "And it would be kind of weird. But we worked through it."
"Tell me about the motel that you're living in now," Pelley said.
"Well, it's a lot better than the van!" Destiny replied.
But Jorge pointed out the living space is small: two rooms for the five of them. Their possessions, family photos - you name it - went into storage. And they lost it all, seized and sold, when they couldn't pay that bill.
"Most of my stuff was in there; my scooter, my game system, all my games, my clothes. So I lost most of my stuff," Jorge said.
"I had so many of my toys and things. My Barbie dolls, clothes, and it was just all gone," Destiny said.
The neighborhood around the motel is scary, she added. "You hear on the news all the time about shootings, and it's all right there."
Produced by Robert G. Anderson, Nicole Young and Daniel Ruetenik


(CBS News)  Nationwide, 14 million children were in poverty before the Great Recession. Now, the U.S. Census tells us its 16 million - up two million in two years. That is the fastest fall for the middle class since the government started counting 51 years ago.
One of the areas suffering the most is otherwise advertised as "The Happiest Place on Earth," the counties around Disney World and Orlando. Just on Highway 192, the road to Disney World, 67 motels house about 500 homeless kids. The government counts them homeless if they have only temporary shelter.
In Seminole County schools, 1,000 students have recently lost their homes.
At Casselberry Elementary School, students whose families are at the poverty level or slightly above qualify for the free lunch program. We talked with some of those kids with their parents' permission.
When Pelley asked a group of students how many of them had gone to bed hungry in the last few weeks, many put their hands up.
Pelley got a number of responses when he asked, "Who can tell me what it's like to feel hungry?"
"It's hard. You can't sleep. You just wait, you just go to sleep for like five minutes and you wake up again. And your stomach hurts, and you're thinking 'I can't sleep. I'm going to try and sleep, I'm going to try and sleep,' but you can't 'cause your stomach's hurting. And it's cause it doesn't have any food in it."
"And it's like a black hole. And sometimes when I don't eat, my stomach, you can hear it's like growling. You can hear it."
"Usually we eat macaroni, or we don't or we drink water or tea."
"My mom will sometimes make food and then she won't have enough so at night we'll just eat cereal or something. Other times, my parents will fight about money 'cause they don't have enough money to pay the food."
"We have to sometimes take food from a church. It's hard because my grandmother's also out of work and we usually get some food from her."
"It's kind of embarrassing because the next day, you go to school asking kids if they want this, or if they want that. If they have cereal and they haven't opened it yet, you go ask them if they want their cereal."
We found a lot of families are making a choice between food and electricity: when Pelley asked how many of them had the lights turned off at their house, nearly all students put their hands up.
"How do you study when you don't have the lights on at home?" Pelley asked.
"We have emergency flashlights, and I usually have to use them," one student explained.
"I'll just light candles and sit around in a circle of candles," another said.
And another said, "I go out to the car and turn on the overhead and read out there and study."
Ashley Rhea raised her hand to add something that we didn't expect: "I kind of feel like it's my fault that we don't have enough money. I feel like it's my fault that they have to pay for me. And the clothes that they buy for me."
"They're believing it's their fault that they in this situation," Beth Davalos told Pelley.
Davalos runs the Seminole County programs for homeless kids. "Our numbers go up every day. Between five and 15 new homeless students a day," she explained.
And she told us something else is new: "When I first started this program eight years ago, homelessness lasted maybe two, three months. But now with it lasting three, six months, a year or two years, this is when children are developing who they are and their foundation is broken."
When asked how these students are doing in school, Davalos said, "They're struggling, it's much harder. They're more at risk for not doing well. They're focusing on 'How can I help mom and dad?' We have so many students that want to quit school and go to work."
(CBS News)  Davalos is working to keep Jacob Braverman on track in school. His family lost their house suddenly in October. When he got off the bus that day, the door was locked.
"That was the last thing that I expected," he told Pelley.
His mother, Rosa, lost her job. But the eviction was a shock. The bank told Rosa she had 30 days, but it was five days later that the cops moved them out. There's a lot of chaos in foreclosures all across the country because of the sheer number of them.
There were a million last year, and another million are expected this year. In Florida, the counties with the highest foreclosure rates see some of the increases in child poverty.
Rosa was suddenly on the street, and like the Corfees, she faced splitting up her family. "This is what is important is family is wherever you are...together. It doesn't matter if it is in your house, if it is in one room, or in your vehicle," she told Pelley.
"As long as you're with your family, you're going to make it through all of this that's been going on. All of it," Jacob added.
Rosa, Jacob, Joey and the dog are all in one room, right across the street from their old home. The neighbors took them in. We've seen a lot of that in our stories on the recession - neighbors, even strangers, opening homes to the homeless.
We talked to the Bravermans at the neighbor's house. They've been there three months and that is starting to worry them.
"I want to give the neighbors their own privacy you know? I don't want to be invasive," Jacob explained.
"So you miss your privacy from across the street. What else?" Pelley asked.
"Sometimes, you know, I have to go to the bathroom at night. And here I have to be really, really quiet, 'cause if I wake them up, I don't want to make them upset and get us kicked out," he replied.
Homeless kids tiptoe in a world of insecurity, hoping to be invisible.
"People said that I talk too much, and now they say I don't talk enough and that I'm really shy I guess," Jacob said.
Asked if he thinks the situation has changed him, he told Pelley, "Yeah, and I haven't realized it but I think I've gotten very mature in a very short amount of time."
Look for the homeless in Seminole County, and you'll find Robert Williams' family of five in one motel room. He and his wife lost their tourism jobs several months back.
When Angel Abreau lost his construction job, he and his wife had to split their family among relatives. They see their three young children on weekends. And on Sunday evenings, when we saw them, the goodbyes are always painful.
Destiny Corfee's family got out of the van and into a motel when her dad found a little day labor to scrape together a deposit for the room. He applied at car washes and Disney World; worked as a bricklayer's assistant, but nothing steady.
As the hotel bill came due, David was short. He found himself prepared to do nearly anything to keep his family from being split apart by the homeless shelters.
CBS News)  "So as embarrassing as it was, I sat down with a magic marker, and I've seen these people on the road with these signs before, and I wrote a sign out," he told Pelley. "It said, 'Please help, family of five.' Every truck that went by I would holler out to them, and let them see my sign. 'Hey, do you need any help? Can I get a job? Do you need any help?'"
"I didn't think that it was gonna have to come down to that. Like, he was actually gonna go and take the sign and show it to people. And I don't want people to know that I, he's my dad. I don't want to be embarrassed by people," Destiny said.
"You must have thought that you would never be that guy? The guy with the sign?" Pelley asked David.
"Never and in a million years did I think that that would be me. And I told my wife, 'This is America. And America is full of wonderful people. And I'm gonna go out and see what I can do and see if there's someone out there that can help us,'" he remembered.
He showed us the sign that eventually caught the eye of a woman who stopped to say she might have a job for him. "And sure enough that phone rang about a week later. She said, 'David, I'd like to tell you you're golden. That we have a job for you, and you can start Friday,'" he remembered.
"And that's where you got the hat?" Pelley asked, referring to a University of Central Florida cap David was wearing.
"That's where I got the hat," David replied. "And I've been wearing this hat ever since."
He's a parking attendant, making $10 an hour - enough to keep the motel room, but not enough to get out. Jorge dropped out, in his senior year, to look for work, but Destiny is still picked up on the school bus route for homeless kids.
"And when things get better again we know that there are still people struggling. So we'll be able to help out a lot more and we'll understand what they're going through," she said.
"This opened your eyes to an America that you didn't know existed?" Pelley asked.
"Mmm hmm," she said. "I can't believe it."
We all hear about the recovery - that the recession ended in 2009 - but some things are getting worse before they get better. And child poverty is one of them.
America's motel generation is growing fast.
Like the kids who came out of the Great Depression, this generation is being shaped by homelessness and hunger but also by memories of neighbors who opened their homes, and of families that refused to be broken.


If Its Sunday, Its Meets the Press Maarch 6, 2011

 

Exclusive! White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley

Image: William Daley in 2008
Getty Images, file
In an exclusive interview with the new White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, we get the latest from the White House on what's next in the budget battle and will the president, once again, assume the role of deal-maker-in-chief in this showdown? Plus, the situation in Libya is still not under control as a defiant dictator unleashes brute force on his own people. How will the administration navigate the lasting conflict in Libya? Could there be a U.S. military intervention of some kind? And what does all of the unrest overseas mean for oil prices at home?



Roundtable: Robinson, Brooks

Meet The Press

Getty Images
As potential GOP 2012 presidential hopefuls inch closer to a decision, we’ll look at what it will take to beat President Obama in 2012 and what sort of candidate will be best suited for the task. Plus, analysis of our new NBC News poll: how does the American public feel the president handled the crisis in the Middle East and the efforts at economic recovery back home? Our political roundtable: Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson and New York Times columnist and author of the new book "The Social Animal," David Brooks.

Exclusive! Rep. Michele Bachmann
Also, a Republican response from the head of the Tea Party caucus in the House, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). She’s traveled the country speaking to the Tea Party faithful, what does she expect now from her fellow Republicans and Speaker Boehner in the budget battle? Plus, we’ll get her take on the beginning stages of the 2012 field.  How does she think the campaign against President Obama’s re-election should be framed?
Michele Bachmann

Web Only: Take Two

David Brooks takes on  emotions in "Social Animal"


Rescinding the $105 Billion Appropriated to ObamaCare

Click the link for the official summary of appropriations already funded to ObamaCare:
 
Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann


The next battle we face is defunding ObamaCare. Recently I read startling information about the funding of ObamaCare presented by former Representative Ernest Istook of Oklahoma (now a Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation).

Representative Istook wrote, “Rather than respecting the right of future Congresses to decide on funding, ObamaCare’s sponsors included several years’ worth of current and future appropriations for the health care makeover – money that mostly has not yet been spent.”

Wait a minute. Does that mean the vote we just took in Congress on H.R. 1 to defund ObamaCare, doesn’t actually starve the health care beast of its funding?

That is exactly what Istook is saying.

You see, it turns out Pelosi was right when she said, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Because now, months after passage, we are discovering an astonishing $105,464,000,000 has already been appropriated to the Health and Human Services Secretary for ObamaCare through FY2019.

When ObamaCare was passed, Democrats knew they would lose the gavel. But this funding ensures they will not lose their prized government takeover of health care because it’s already well-funded.

The Congressional Research Service outlined the billions appropriated to ObamaCare in their report, “Appropriations and Fund transfers in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).” Some of what’s included:

-Section 1311(a) of ObamaCare provides an unlimited appropriation to the Health and Human Services Secretary to award grants to states for Exchanges.
-Section 4002 essentially creates a $16 billion slush fund for the HHS Secretary to spend and $2 billion is appropriated to the Secretary per year in perpetuity after 2015.
-Section 4101(a) allows $230 million in appropriation for school-based health centers.
-Section 5508 appropriates $230 million for expanded primary care residency programs.
-Section 2953 allocates $320 to Title XX-type education programs.

In the next two weeks, both parties in the House and Senate will engage in a showdown over funding of the federal government through the remainder of the fiscal year. We must win the battle on rescinding funds to ObamaCare. But if we do not fight, we cannot win. We must fight. Taxpayers are counting on us.

Now's the Time to Defund ObamaCare
This week Congress has a chance to defund ObamaCare, by stripping out billions of dollars set aside for the misguided program by the previous Congress.  It’s a golden opportunity.  Yet so far defunding is not on the agenda.

Republican freshmen have the chance to fix that, if they stand firm again as they did last week.

House Republicans say they are crafting a bill to save taxpayers $100 billion.  At last report, their proposal would rescind funding for 123 different federal programs and lower future funding for many others.  But so far, it leaves ObamaCare unscathed.  Except for transferring $750 million to a different public health program, the tens of billions appropriated last year for ObamaCare would remain available for the White House to spend freely.

This can be fixed by an amendment offered on the House floor, but only if House leaders expressly permit it.  Otherwise, members such as Rep. Steve King, (R.-Iowa), may be boxed out by House rules that block his efforts to go back and reclaim money spent by last year’s Congress.

Yet that’s what most of the bill does to other programs.  A different standard is being applied to permit the other reach-backs that were approved by the Appropriations Committee.  The rule against changing past appropriations is being waived in 123 instances, but not for defunding ObamaCare.

The question is whether conservative House members—especially the GOP freshmen—will again play hardball with party leaders, and oppose any measure that does not permit defunding ObamaCare, in a repeat of last week when they forced the Appropriations Committee to propose more spending cuts than originally approved.

Even now, many conservatives say the bill falls $16.billion short of the GOP commitment to make $100 billion in spending cuts this year.  The House Republican Study Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R.-Ohio), plans to offer an amendment to cut that elusive $16 billion.  This extra savings could come from ObamaCare, but only if House leaders choose to permit it.

Certainly ObamaCare is also a much better target for recisions than the defense budget, which finds itself on the chopping block even in the midst of a hot war.

Some don’t realize that last year’s Congress did appropriate money for ObamaCare, even though it failed to pass appropriations bills for anything else.  The billions appropriated for ObamaCare are outlined in Congressional Research Service Report R41301, “Appropriations and Fund Transfers in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA),” issued on Oct. 14.

There is major money that could be pulled back immediately.  Congress could rescind the $5 billion appropriated in Section 1101(g) to create high-risk pools, the $5 billion appropriated in Section 1102(e) for a re-insurance program, and the $6 billion in Section 1322(g) to create insurance exchanges.  The CRS report details billions more in current and future funding equally available for the cutting.

That’s a dirty little secret about the new law.  As further detailed in a Heritage Foundation report, rather than respecting the right of future Congresses to decide on funding, ObamaCare’s sponsors included several years’ worth of current and future appropriations for the health care makeover—money that mostly has not yet been spent.

Despite the recent court ruling that the new health law is unconstitutional, the White House insists it will go full speed ahead to implement the law and spend that dough.  The House will never have a better chance to stop it than to defund ObamaCare this week, before it’s too late.

Defunding Obamacare is a twofer.  It responds to the public mandate for repeal, plus it moves the House GOP closer to fulfilling its pledge to cut spending by $100 billion this year.

It’s a double opportunity that should not be wasted.

Illinios Weekend wrap




As far as the eye can see...posted by @MMFlint from Twitter for BlackBerry 16 hours 58 mins ago
 
 
 
 

In the Rotunda, Day 19 of the Occupation. It's been decades since I've seen anything like this.
posted by @MMFlint from Twitter for BlackBerry 1 day ago

Alaska and the famous Iditarod March 5, 2011


http://bit.ly/fc1uxz