Fausta’s Blog

After praising China’s infrastructure during the Olympics, Obama wants to put Chicago’s infrastructure to the test:

Obama makes pitch for Chicago Olympics

President-elect Barack Obama’s transition staff released a video message this morning that he recorded to boost Chicago’s efforts to win the 2016 Olympics. The message is for the European Olympic Committee (EOC) XXXVII General Assembly meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.

“In the coming years, my administration will bring a fresh perspective on America’s role and responsibilities around the world,” Obama says in the message. “But if we are to truly meet our shared challenges, we must all work together. By uniting the world in a peaceful celebration of human achievement, the Olympic Games reminds us that this is possible.”

Obama goes on to talk about the importance of the Olympics to international relations.

“The United States would be honored to have the opportunity to host the Games and serve the Olympic Movement,” he says. “As President-Elect, I see the Olympic and Paralympic Games as an opportunity for our nation to reach out, welcome the world to our shores, and strengthen our friendships across the globe.”

Appeal on the Oprah show soon to follow?

Let’s hope Mitt Romney’s available to save Chicago from a hefty financial loss, but the traffic jams will be something for the history books.

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I’ll be in the Pajamas TV Whip this evening at 7PM Eastern with two of the wittiest, most handsome bloggers around, Stephen Green and Scott Ott of ScrappleFace. Whoot!

And no, this blog is most definitely NOT written by a man (h/t Don Suber via Larwyn). Watch PJTV and see for yourself.

Colombia has been fighting a civil war for over four decades; Mexico is in the middle of a drug war. People who can arm themselves, hire bodyguards, and purchase bullet-proof clothes and automoviles.

Not surprisingly, a Colombian entrepeneur has seen a great business opportunity, and has expanded his business to other countries in Latin America and Europe.

But The Guardian thinks it’s all because of Dick Cheney: Colombia tailor offers bespoke bullet-proof jackets for millionaires
After Dick Cheney accidentally shot a friend while hunting, Miguel Caballero’s protective jackets, blazers and raincoats are in big demand.

It didn’t have anything to do with the thousands of people killed in the drug wars, and the narcoterrorists, would it? Really?

I guess that must be why Harrods displays the garments next to the Berettas:

Harrods displays some Caballero wares near the Beretta concession in the hunting and outdoors section. The rest is in a section visited by appointment only.

For this precious bit of journalism, I nominate The Guardian for the AOTH Award.

And now for an oldie but goodie, Ten ways Cheney can kill. That’s more like it!

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My latest post, Vegetarian Vampires? is up at LadyBlog. Please visit and leave a comment!

It’s going to be a news-packed 15 Minutes on Latin America, since I’ll be talking about the APEC Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Lima, Peru taking place yesterday and today; Lula’s terrorist chief of staff who’s planning on running for office, and Sunday’s upcoming Venezuelan governorship elections:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s allies may lose elections this weekend in a third of the country’s states and dozens of cities four years after winning near-total control of the regional governments.

Chavez may respond by grabbing more power for himself, continuing on a path toward centralized control that critics say borders on authoritarianism.

“Chavez is autocratic and doesn’t want to share power,” said Milos Alcalay, 63, Venezuela’s former ambassador to the United Nations. “He’s already said he will try to put new structures above and below opposition governors.”

A majority of Venezuelans still support Chavez, 54, a charismatic leader who took the presidency in 1999 promising to empower the poor. His party won control of all but two of the country’s 23 states in 2004.

Now many voters are souring on his socialist political project as oil revenue plunges, development projects get delayed and crime spirals upward. Last year, voters narrowly defeated a constitutional overhaul that would have abolished term limits that require him to relinquish the presidency in 2013. Polling firm Datanalisis has projected opposition parties have a chance at winning as many as eight governorships this year as voters grow restive.

“If they evaluated the job that regional governments have done, and the majority of them are pro-Chavez, it doesn’t look good” for Chavez, Luis Vicente Leon, a Datanalisis pollster.

Scrambling to regain lost ground, Chavez has been holding campaign rallies almost every day for a month in states and cities with tight races and denouncing his opponents as corrupt betrayers of his socialist revolution.

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Franken trails Coleman by 216 votes, so the Dems are doing what they always do: send Soros to the rescue.

And Al Gore, too.

SOROS BOO$TS FRANKEN

Left-wing billionaire financier George Soros is using his financial muscle at a Manhattan fund-raiser tonight to help Al Franken win a recount in Minnesota’s Senate election.

Soros - the hedge-fund honcho and sugar daddy of the Democratic Party - will host a soirée for Franken at his Carnegie Hill digs to help cover the candidate’s costs to monitor the statewide recount.

The special guest: Al Gore, who knows a thing or two about recounts.

At last count, Franken trails GOP incumbent Norm Coleman by just 216 votes out of 2.9 million cast. Minnesota yesterday initiated a hand recount that is not expected to be completed until mid-December.

Ed says

Gonna be a long few weeks. Don’t expect much real news until the recount is finished.

Well, I do expect a lot of Soros’s money coming to the rescue.

More from Power Line.

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By now it’s pretty clear that the Obama administration will make health coverage a priority item. The question is, what form will it take?

The NYT has a glance at the future:
Health Insurers Offer to Accept All Applicants, on Condition

The health insurance industry said Wednesday that it would support a health care overhaul requiring insurers to accept all customers, regardless of illness or disability. But in return, the industry said, Congress should require all Americans to have coverage.

The idea behind that is to avoid antiselection: When you cover the entire population, the incidence of catastrophic illnesses is minimal compared to the whole.

But there are a number of things to consider:
1. Will it still be employer-paid coverage?
If so, who’s paying for the insurance for unemployed people?
In what way is that different from Medicaid?

What happens in an economy that is contracting instead of expanding?

Do existing health savings accounts issued through insurance companies count as coverage? Or do you have to cancel that and enroll in the insurance policies?

2. What kind of coverage are we talking about?
Routine check-ups and preventive care, immunizations? How about EKGs, mamographs, colonoscopies? Dental care, eyeglasses? Plastic surgery?
How much would the insurance pay for doctor visits? Paying very little for office visits will reduce the number of physicians. France has found out the hard way.
Or would it be an HMO-type of service where the government decides who are the participating doctors?

3. What if you get sick when travelling overseas? What if you go, say, to India for knee surgery, as many Europeans are doing now?

4. Can one go outside the compulsory coverage and pay directly to private physicians?
What if you have a critical illness that can’t wait?

5. Who gets billed for the coverage? Do the elderly pay more for coverage? Again, how is this different from Medicare?

Or should we asume it will be one community rating fee for all, regardless of age, in which case people with many children will pay the most?

6. How are the fees collected? Will it be through existing governmental bureaucracies, such as the IRS, or through paying insurance companies, or will there be yet another new bureaucracy sinking in more of the taxpayers’ money? How will the department of Health and Human Services fit in the picture?

As a former group benefits administrator and underwriter, I have more questions that I can post right now. But then there’s a really big question,

Insurers did not say how the government should enforce an individual mandate: whether through fines, tax penalties or other means. Politicians have also been reluctant to specify details of enforcement, which could prove highly unpopular.

Lots of questions.

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My latest post, Japanese Princesses Love Jesus is up at LadyBlog. Go read it, and comment, please.

Among the throng of Clinton regime retreads recruited for the Obama administration we find Gregory Craig. Craig served as Obama’s advisor on Latin American during the campaign, and was appointed last week as chief White House Counsel.

The MSM has mentioned Craig’s role as Bill Clinton’s impeachment lawyer, but mostly has omitted mention of Craig’s role as chief facilitator for Fidel Castro’s shanghaiing of Elian Gonzalez.

Officially Craig served as attorney for Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. This humble man worked as a hotel doorman in a nation where the average monthly salary is $16. The high-rolling Gregory Craig worked for Washington D.C.’s elite firm, Williams & Connolly, one of America’s highest-priced law firms.

Upon accepting the case, Gregory Craig had flown to Cuba for a meeting with Fidel Castro. Craig’s remuneration, we learned shortly after his return, came from a “voluntary fund” set up by the United Methodist Board of Church and Society and “administered” by the National Council of Churches. The same reporters and pundits, who routinely erupt with snide snorts midway through any statement by a Republican press secretary, reported this item with a straight face.

But then, this media also reports that Castro’s Cuba provides free and exquisite health-care. And the explanation of Craig’s funding issued from the same source.

Craig presided over the CBS interview

During the taping of Dan Rather’s 60 Minutes interview with Juan Miguel Gonzalez in April 2000,Pedro Porro served as Rather’s in-studio translator. Dan would ask the question in English into Porro’s earpiece and Porro would translate it into Spanish for Elian’s heavily guarded father.

“Juan Miguel was never completely alone,” says Pedro Porro. “He never smiled. His eyes kept shifting back and forth. It was obvious to me that he was under coercion. He was always surrounded by security agents from the Cuban Interest Section, as they called it. When these agents left him alone for a few seconds, Gregory Craig himself would be hovering over Juan Miguel.”

Yes, Gregory Craig had led the Juan Miguel/Cuban-Security entourage into the studio, then presided over the interview as a movie director. “Most of the questions Dan Rather was asking Elian’s father during that 60 Minutes interview were being handed to him by Gregory Craig,” says Pedro Porro. “It was obvious that Greg Craig and Dan Rather where on very friendly terms. They were joshing and bantering back and forth, as Juan Miguel sat there petrified. Craig was stage-managing the whole thing. The taping would stop and Craig would walk over to Dan, hand him a little slip of paper, say something into his ear. Then Rather would read straight from the paper.”

“At one point Craig stopped the taping almost like a movie director yelling, ‘Cut!’ I was confused for a moment, says Porro, “until Greg Craig complained that Juan Miguel’s answers were not coming across from his translator with “sufficient emotion.” “So Dan Rather shut everything down for a while and some of the crew drove to a drama school in New York. They hired a dramatic actor to act as a translator, and brought him back.”

A week later, this:

Another Obama appointee: Eric Holder, who

In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton’s commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN conspirators. These pardons — of terrorists who even Holder has conceded had not expressed any remorse — were issued in the months after al-Qaeda’s 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, when the Clinton administration was pretending to be the scourge of terrorism. The commutations were nakedly political, obviously designed by Clinton to assist his wife’s impending Senate campaign by appealing to New York’s substantial Puerto Rican vote.

I don’t know which Puerto Ricans voted for Clinton for freeing convicted terrorists; instead the vote probably went because of the usual Democrat indentity politics canvassing. In any case, Power Line has the video where

Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch grills Holder concerning the lack of screening by the Department of Justice in connection with the pardons

Here’s the video:

The Obama administration: Change back to the future!

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UPDATE
Via Instapundit, Laurence Tribe’s 2000 article, Justice Taken Too Far

Although a federal court had ordered that Elian not be removed from the country pending a determination of his asylum petition, and although a court had ruled that the Immigration and Naturalization Service could exercise custody and control of Elian for the time being, no judge or neutral magistrate had issued the type of warrant or other authority needed for the executive branch to break into the home to seize the child. The agency had no more right to do so than any parent who has been awarded custody would have a right to break and enter for such a purpose. Indeed, the I.N.S. had not even secured a judicial order, as opposed to a judicially unreviewed administrative one, compelling the Miami relatives to turn Elian over.

The Justice Department points out that the agents who stormed the Miami home were armed not only with guns but with a search warrant. But it was not a warrant to seize the child. Elian was not lost, and it is a semantic sleight of hand to compare his forcible removal to the seizure of evidence, which is what a search warrant is for.

Go read all of it.

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My tango teachers:

Beautiful!