February 27, 2010 7:00 A.M.

What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand: The 20th-century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless, insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany, and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they’ve reached the next stage in social-democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over. The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1 — or just over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of about 1.3: Ten grandparents have six kids have four grandkids — ie, the family tree is upside down. Demographers call 1.3 “lowest-low” fertility — the point from which no society has ever recovered. And, compared to Spain and Italy, Greece has the least worst fertility rate in Mediterranean Europe.

So you can’t borrow against the future because, in the most basic sense, you don’t have one. Greeks in the public sector retire at 58, which sounds great. But, when ten grandparents have four grandchildren, who pays for you to spend the last third of your adult life loafing around?

By the way, you don’t have to go to Greece to experience Greek-style retirement: The Athenian “public service” of California has been metaphorically face down in the ouzo for a generation. Still, America as a whole is not yet Greece. A couple of years ago, when I wrote my book America Alone, I put the then

Social Security debate in a bit of perspective: On 2005 figures, projected public-pensions liabilities were expected to rise by 2040 to about 6.8 percent of GDP. In Greece, the figure was 25 percent: in other words, head for the hills, Armageddon outta here, The End. Since then, the situation has worsened in both countries. And really the comparison is academic: Whereas America still has a choice, Greece isn’t going to have a 2040 — not without a massive shot of Reality Juice.

http://article.nationalreview.com/426405/when-responsibility-doesnt-pay/mark-steyn

Obama advisor working for Cameron

Ken Vogel points out a story with some meaning for the U.S.-U.K. relationship: Anita Dunn, the former communications director who's still a member of the White House's kitchen cabinet, is advising Tory leader David Cameron.

Dunn isn't on staff, and there's no formal conflict-of-interest question. But as Obama pollster Joel Benenson (who works for Gordon Brown) told me and Vogel last year, consultants that close to the White House are extremely "careful" about who they work for, both to be sure clients don't tout them as semi-official U.S. backing, and to be sure they don't get entangled with anyone who would cut against Obama's values or American interests.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0210/Obama_advisor_working_for_Cameron.html

A Separate Headline: Conrad: Reconciliation Won't Work

Feb 28 2010, 11:39 AM ET

Sen. Kent Conrad, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, on Face The Nation, has a distinct opinion on whether budget reconciliation would work for health care:  yes to fixes, no to the bill itself.

"...reconciliation cannot be used to pass comprehensive health care reform. It won't work. It won't work because it was never designed for that kind of significant legislation. It was designed for deficit reduction... The major package of health care reform cannot move through the reconciliation process. It will not work... It will not work because of the Byrd rule which says anything that doesn't score for budget purposes has to be eliminated. That would eliminate all the delivery system reform, all the insurance market reform, all of those things the experts tell us are really the most important parts of this bill. The only possible role that I can see for reconciliation would be make modest changes in the major package to improve affordability, to deal with what share of Medicaid expansion the federal government pays, those kinds of issues, which is the traditional role for reconciliation in health care."

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/02/a-separate-headline-conrad-reconciliation-wont-work/36785

“Bipartisanship is a two-way street,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declares in an interview airing Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

“But let me say this,” Pelosi continues, “The bill can be bipartisan, even though the votes might not be bipartisan, because they [Republicans] have made their imprint on this.”

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/28/pelosi-health-care-bill-can-be-bipartisan-even-without-gop-votes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%2Brss%2Fcnn_politicalticker%2B(Blog%3A%2BPolitical%2BTicker)&fbid=yXmuYg5HLf3

Pelosi: Lawmakers Should Sacrifice Jobs for Health Care

AP

House Speaker Pelosi says lawmakers aren't in Washington for job security but 'to do the job for the American people.'

Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview being broadcast Sunday the ABC News program "This Week."
"We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people."

It took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, she said, "and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/28/pelosi-lawmakers-sacrifice-jobs-health-care/

Chris Matthews Compares The Republicans To North Korea's Pyongyang Assembly.

ABC: 'Pelosi Says She Has Much In Common With The Tea Party'

So began an article published by ABCNews.com Sunday about Pelosi's interview with Elizabeth Vargas on "This Week."

"The speaker now says she shares views with movement she dismissed last summer as being 'Astroturf,'" the piece amazingly continued.

And that wasn't CLOSE to being the most preposterous part of the story.

More absurd was how Vargas during this interview actually allowed Pelosi to get away with such a ridiculous comment (video embedded below the fold with transcript and commentary):

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/02/28/headline-pelosi-and-tea-party-share-views

A fundraiser as social secretary

The promotion of Julianna Smoot to White House Social Secretary is good news for wealthy donors to President Obama's campaign, for whom Smoot -- the chief campaign fundraiser -- is friend and point of contact.

Smoot, who had been working in the relative obscurity of the U.S. Trade Representative's office, will now be the key gatekeeper to the kind of social functions from which donors have complained that this administration, unlike President Clinton's, has barred them.

But the choice to unite money and access in the person of Smoot -- a career political fundraiser whose efforts were downplayed by a campaign eager to focus on small donors -- cuts against both President Obama's broader message of change and against the talking points of her departing predecessor, Desiree Rogers.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0210/A_fundraiser_as_social_secretary.html?showall

Americans See U.S. Military as No. 1 Now, But Not in 20 Yrs

Most also believe U.S. will routinely be involved in combat in next two decades

PRINCETON, NJ -- While 64% of Americans believe the U.S. is the No. 1 military power in the world today, many fewer (36%) believe that the U.S. will be No. 1 militarily in 20 years. At the same time, most Americans believe the U.S. will continue to have combat troops regularly involved in fighting around the world over the next two decades.

Obama Signs One-Year Extension of Patriot Act

AP

President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of several provisions in the nation's main counterterrorism law, the Patriot Act.

Provisions in the measure would have expired on Sunday without Obama's signature Saturday.

The act, which was adopted in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, expands the government's ability to monitor Americans in the name of national security.

Three sections of the Patriot Act that stay in force will:

--Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.

--Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.

--Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.

Obama's signature comes after the House voted 315 to 97 Thursday to extend the measure.

The Senate also approved the measure, with privacy protections cast aside when Senate Democrats lacked the necessary 60-vote supermajority to pass them. Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government's authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/27/obama-signs-year-extension-patriot-act/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+foxnews%252Fpolitics+%2528Text+-+Politics%2529

Charlie Crist: Don't Scrap Obamacare ... But I Can't Name One Part Worth Keeping

BY John McCormack

Danish newspaper provokes uproar with apology over Muhammad cartoon

Top Pelosi aide: House Dems "reasonably confident" they can pass a reconciliation package

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today that Democrats would pursue a "simple majority" strategy and her chief of staff reinforced that point telling supporters during a conference call that reconciliation is a legitimate legislative process, dismissing criticism of the move as a "non-issue," according to the notes of several participants.

If Democrats can agree on a reconciliation package, John Lawrence said, House leaders are "reasonably confident" they can pass it.

"Bottomline is we are moving forward ... expeditiously," he said.

http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0210/Top_Pelosi_aide_House_Dems_reasonably_confident_they_can_pass_a_reconciliation_package.html