Free Republic

<p>With over $9 trillion in federal budget deficits expected over the next 10 years, lots of people in Washington are talking about the gap between taxes and spending. Rep. Paul Ryan is unusual in that he's proposed to do something about it.</p>

The Democrats are having trouble finding enough votes to pass their health-care bill — maybe you’ve heard? The trouble stems from the bill’s many unpopular provisions: It would raise taxes, force people to buy government-approved coverage, and cut Medicare. In the aftermath of Scott Brown’s election to the Senate, the Democrats had no clear way forward. Brown didn’t just deny them a crucial 60th vote in Senate; he did it by running explicitly against the Democrats’ version of health-care reform. How can a political party enact legislation that the public simply doesn’t want? The obvious solution is to convince the...

This pamphlet has been circulated to Reps and Senators as a basis for formulating a new Contract for America. Read it and discuss what needs to be included in a new contract. I thought this is a good beginning and if they follow it we could have a very good election this fall. See the link below: We the People:Wide Awake

Make sure to read Reihan’s excellent post on the misunderstanding of Rep. Paul Ryan’s roadmap. While the plan has critics on the right and left, it also appears to be unloved, at least publicly, by the House GOP leadership: “Paul Ryan, who’s the ranking member on our budget committee, has done an awful lot of work in putting together his roadmap,” Boehner said. “But it’s his. And I know the Democrats are trying to say that it’s the Republican leadership. But they know that's not the case.” Understandably, Boehner is worried about Ryan’s roadmap being portrayed by Democrats as “the...

This post from The Economist's Democracy in America blog seems pretty compelling on the surface. Unfortunately, it is based on a basic misunderstanding of how the U.S. health system works and the sources of cost growth. The post, by "M.S.," notes that Paul Ryan's plan to transform Medicare from a defined benefit to a limited defined contribution program toward the purchase of insurance is a departure from current practice, which is accurate. She or he then makes a number of interesting extrapolations from said departure. Under Mr Ryan's proposal, starting in 2021, Medicare would be gradually eliminated. Instead, seniors would...

Republican Congressman Paul Ryan unveiled a new plan to reform America’s most costly entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid...........The conservative wave in the American political life makes it seem like this kind of reforms will be welcomed. But there are few things that will make this road-map hit a dead end in the public opinion if the plan ever has a real chance to be implemented. It is one thing for the electorate to talk the talk at rallies. It is a different thing to walk the walk. The fresh example is Obama’s presidential failure. It was easy to...

day after the German press revealed that Iran would be capable of manufacturing a nuclear bomb within the coming year, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Tuesday that the continued stalemate in the peace process with the Palestinians poses a greater threat to Israel than a nuclear bomb in the hands of the Islamic Republic. "The lack of defined boundaries within Israel, and not an Iranian bomb, is the greatest threat to our future," Barak said during a conference in Tel Aviv. On Wednesday, Barak will head to Sharm e-Sheikh for talks with President Hosni Mubarak that will focus on...

Palestinian Authority PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in effect ditched the American Roadmap plan Tuesday and issued an ultimatum to Israel that there will be no talks unless Israel agrees ahead of time to surrender all of the land restored in the Six-Day War in 1967.

Mitchell, Gates, Ross and a whole US team are in discussions for the sought-after freeze among other things.One Israeli diplomat commented on Israel's position, "The Americans now understand that if they get anything from us on the settlement issue, it will only be in the broader context of some kind of Arab return," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared to confirm this in a policy speech two days after Obama's White House meeting with the Jewish representatives. "Progress toward peace cannot be the responsibility of the United States - or Israel - alone," Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations....

Senior Palestinian Authority clerics are still teaching Arabs that Jews are evil, that Jerusalem has no Jewish sites and that Jesus was a “Palestinian” and not a Jew. The incitement violates the American Roadmap, as noted succinctly by the Obama administration while it campaigns against Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. In a recent interview on PA television, the Authority’s chief religious justice, Tayseer Tamimi, taught Arab residents that the Koran states that Jews have been evil throughout their history, that Jerusalem has no Jewish holy sites and that the Israeli government is trying to destroy the foundations of the...

The Arabs know what they want, and that is the end of Israel. The Jews are divided as to what they want. The left wants to get the hell out of the West Bank. The center, including Kadima and Labour, want to keep the settlement blocks containing most of the settlers but are prepared to uproot as many as 70,000 Jews, perhaps even 100,000. The right does not want to allow a Palestinian state to emerge, even if demilitarized. All are united in requiring an end of conflict and the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Netanyahu is a...

Whatever else former president George W. Bush got wrong, he was right about this at least: "The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder." (Speech to American Enterprise Institute, February 2003.) That is, foster liberty in the world’s most oppressive countries and watch the axis of evil bend, then break. Look at Iran today. True, the burden of proof is on anybody who wants to attribute a passion for liberty to Tehran’s crowds. At one point, more than a million people were thought to...

There was little enthusiasm when the Annapolis talks were launched in late 2007. Their goal - to produce at least the outline of an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians by the time president Bush left office - was widely regarded as completely unrealistic, and quite a few commentators dismissed the initiative as just more "peace processing." But when Israel's new foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman recently declared quite undiplomatically that the Annapolis process was over and done with, commentators united in a chorus of indignation - apparently, they didn't like to hear that Lieberman thought they were right all along. The...

Pres Obama, by demanding a stop to settlement construction, is contravening the Roadmap and the Bush 04 letter in the name of honouring them. Everyone assumes that Israel is committed to freezing settlement activity without preconditions. Not so. Here's why. The Roadmap demanded that Israel "immediately dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001" and provided that "Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI freeze all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)". The Mitchell Report was prepared in response to the terror unleashed by Arafat, after he turned down Barak's genererous offer at Camp David. It's goal was to make recommendations...

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) and his predecessor, Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni, looked at the American Roadmap Tuesday and found two different directions.

Some international summits have a way of arousing heated speculation about dramatic breakthroughs (or breakdowns) but often deliver more prosaic results. This is apt to be the outcome of Monday's White House meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu -- their first since they won their respective national leadership posts. For weeks, mainstream media have been pushing dire scenarios of presumed differences over Palestinian statehood and other issues apt to create a major confrontation. But in advance of the summit, each side seems to be opting for a less cataclysmic script. White House officials, feeding reporters material for...

The Obama Administration has signalled a tougher approach towards Israel ahead of fresh talks on the Middle East peace process by insisting it must endorse the creation of an independent Palestinian state. “Israel has to work toward a two-state solution,” declared Vice-President Joe Biden today in a speech to the annual conference of a powerful pro-Israel lobby group in Washington. “You’re not going to like my saying this,” he warned the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) before adding that the Jewish state should not build any more settlements on Palestinian territory, and should “dismantle existing outposts and allow Palestinians...

The Arabs cry out for justice. The Jews cry out for security. The Arabs demand their rights, even non-existent rights like the "right of return". The Jews have forgotten they have any rights. As a result, the world considers the Palestinians as oppressed and the Israelis as the oppressors. Recently, Tony Blair delivered a speech in Chicago on Global Affairs in which he said, "The ideology (radical Islam) we are fighting is not based on justice. That is a cause we can understand. And world-wide these groups are adept, certainly, at using causes that indeed are about justice, like Palestine."...

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, depicted by most media as a firebrand anti-Arab inciter, displayed a new and moderate image in a lengthy interview on Thursday. However, he insisted that there will be “no giving without taking” in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

The peace process has not brought us one step closer to peace. Just the opposite, it has brought us closer to war. In fact the closest we have been since Israel’s dramatic victory in ‘67. The Annapolis Summit promoted the last iteration of it without any success. If anything, it proved that the parties can’t agree on the terms. When pundits or diplomats argue that we know what the deal is, they ignore the fact that the parties can’t agree on it. Avigdor Lieberman has rejected Annapolis and wants to return to the Roadmap notwithstanding that it went way beyond...