The president made it public on Sunday he is determined to restate a ban went it comes to utlizing federal funds to shell out for abortions, which won over several holdout Democrats to back the health care overhaul however angered Republicans who claimed that the choice could possibly be simply reversed.
The Whitehouse stated that President obama might issue an executive order as soon as the passage of the health care change legislation that will restate the measure’s “constancy along with longstanding limitations on the utilization of federal resources in favor of abortion.”
The United states right to abortion was established in the landmark 1973 Roe versus. Wade Supreme Court judgment, however federal funding the majority of abortions have been restricted ever since 1976, and the matter is probably the most vastly charged in the abortion debate.
Representative Bart Stupak, an abortion opponent who headed a few unwilling fellow Democrats, replied to the Whitehouse proclamation of Obama’s proposed decision by saying, ‘We have an agreement.”
Stupak’s backing could possibly offer Democrats within the House of Representatives the 216 votes they require to get the bill passed.
As argument continued on Capitol Hill ahead of the health care vote, Republican abortion rivals showed uncertainty as well as disappointment at Obama’s planned decision on abortion funding.
Representative Chris Smith, a longstanding Republican opponent of abortion, referred to the decision a “trick” along with the bill incorporated a “congressionally mandated tax to provide for abortion.”
“Unborn children as well as mothers will be possibly killed by abortion in bigger numbers as a direct consequence of this legislation, should it come to pass enacted into law,” Smith stated on at a conference with other Republicans.
“An executive order put out by the president isn’t worth the document it is published on,” said Republican Representative Jean Schmidt. “It can possibly be repealed quickly.”
The Nationwide Right to Life Committee, which goes against abortion, said the executive decision was being put out for political effect: “It doesn’t fix any of the crucial pro-abortion provisions in the bill. The president can’t change a bill by putting out an order, and the federal courts will implement what the law states.”
NARAL Pro-Choice America, that favors abortion rights, labeled the deed by Stupak and other Democratic abortion rivals “extremely disappointing,” in addition to stated that withholding federal resources for abortions “cuts off low-income women from getting full reproductive healthcare.”

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President Obama is going to Moscow for a summit on arms control. Many are praying that President Obama and President Medvedev would come out a deal on nuclear weapons. But lurking in the shadows is Russia’s Prime Minister Vladmir Putin.

President Obama is going to take another round the world trip next week. But it is his work to be done in Moscow that is hogging all the headlines. President Obama figurines are flying off the shelves. The public await him eagerly with free shot dedicated to his phrase “Yes-We-Can.”.

The politics though is rather murky. President Obama does not want to make the same mistake that President Bush did. He cannot trust the Russians much as long as Prime Minister Putin is still around. That is the first element of the dance.

There is also reports out that a deal has already been worked out between them to reduce the stock of deployed nuclear weapons and the permission to allow US to ship weapons across Russian’s air space to Afghanistan. No one is confirming this or denying this. But I think that this deal has to be sealed now. It would make people jittery is it does not go through.

Salvos are already being fired though. President Obama suggested to Associated Press that President Medvedev understands that the cold war is over but Prime Minister Putin does not. “Prime Minister Putin still has a lot of sway in Russia and I think that it’s important that even as we move forward with President Medvedev, that Putin understands that the old Cold War approaches to the U.S. – Russia relations are out dated.” – President Obama

A Russian diplomat countered this claim that President Obama is not fully informed about Russia. That to me is the shot to the American President what Republicans mantra all along : President Obama is naive.

The biggest stumbling block though is nothing but trust. Neither side seems to trust each other. Russia does not like being encircled with American bases at her borders. They also do not like many of her neighbors becoming NATO members due to its “one for all all for one” rule. America does not trust Russia and the Georgian War last year seems to vindicate it.

Something that has not been mentioned is Iran. Washington wants Moscow’s assistance in dealing with her Caspian Sea neighbor. Russia’s instant recognition of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory in an obviously botched election is not helping relation either.

To me, something positive is already out of this with the lowering of nuclear stockpiles and the permission to allow US to ship weapons across Russian’s air space to Afghanistan. I think that there is really nothing much to lose, but nothing much to gain either.

Suggested reading : Reuters, CNN and Voice of America.

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20 of the world biggest economies in the world have met in the G-20 meeting in London. The topic of the day was hedge funds, regulations and an agreement to give slightly more than $1 trillion to the IMF, world bank and other global institutions that lend money to other countries.

What was not discussed was the crisis in Darfur and the imminent lack of respect the Arabs gave to the ICC warrant on the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir. I felt that it is a topic that should be discussed at the G20 summit. It should not be the main subject, but I felt that is should be brought up at some point in the discussion.

The reason I feel that this is not being brought up while the impending North Korean rocket launch is being discussed is the fact that the public in general have forgotten about Sudan in the midst of all these economic talk.

I however, think otherwise. The first reason is that 400 000 people died. Anytime this amount of people die, it should be a grave concern. Worse is that the manner that the killings took place were that of genocide.

The world said never again after Auschwitz, yet it happened again. It said never after Pol Pot in Cambodia, yet it happened. They said never again after Iraq, yet it happened again. They said never again for Rwanda, yet it happened. The sad fact is that the UN, without the backing of the US, seems so pathetically weak to stop another genocide from ever happening again.

The US has carried an unfair amount of burden on her soldiers. She carries the responsibility of “policing” the world. That is supposed to be the job of the UN, but due to the politics involved the UN proved to be an utter failure.

The other side of the story that is less often being told is that of why the Darfur genocide began in the first place. The entire crisis started because Arab militia began to fight for food. Due to drought and floods, Arab tribes land were all but lost. The Black Muslim farmers in Darfur had the land.

So what started by raids and theft soon turned out to be an all out war between 2 ethnic groups, between the Arabs and the Black Muslims. This was soon further aggravated by the Janjaweed, a militia group that had been radicalized by Osama bin Laden himself. It was after the involvement of the Janjaweed that genocide really took place to the state of what Darfur is in today.

The Darfur crisis highlights the need for the world to help out people in times of hunger and drought or the world should be ready to bear the consequences. There is a saying that a hungry man is an angry man. This is something that is always so true.

This is where part of the initiative to help out poorer countries come from the attempt to give money to the poorer countries in the world to help their economies. This is the reason why some states such as the US and the UK, who are in debt themselves, are willing to be contribute their share to a pile of more than a trillion dollars to help other economies.

Darfur should teach us that we should not let people all around the world to collectively go hungry. While Darfur is a case where violence had not spilled over the border of Sudan, other cases of genocide caused by hunger are not the same.

We should really take a stand and say never again to genocide and hunger. I think it is not only something that is important politically, it is something that should be a universal standard for our morals.

** For regular readers, I would give you guys an article on the G20 summit soon, but I would like to analyze the G20 communique in more detail. **

This entire thing is something that I really find rather frustrating about the Internet. It generates a lot of BS or nonsense that would be spread well and there would be people that would believe it. Another example would be of those idiots that say that George Bush caused 9/11 and that the world would end by the time the Mayan calender runs out in 2012!

First lets see the reason that Russia and China are unhappy with the US dollar. In the case of Russia, Russia is not happy that she is being affected when she does not have much of a trade relation with the US at all. Most of her raw materials and services are sold to Europe. But since the US economy collapse, the deflation that has happened caused the tremendous effect of the price of the raw materials and services in Russia making her extraordinarily badly affected by the current global crisis. E.g. America sells 35% less cars than she should, Russia is selling half what she should.

Having a global currency, should the US economy collapse there would still be a very much limited effect on Russia. Europe would still need Russian resources and Russia would not see the value of her oil drop 70% in a year.

This is similar to the case with China. Russia sells natural resources to Europe, China sells everything else to every other place on Earth. China therefore needs her currency to be “small” so that her goods are cheap. She does this by using her trade surplus to buy American debt. Now that her trade surplus is virtually eradicated, she can no longer keep her currency down, and thus her goods be deemed more expensive to Americans.

So what would a global currency do for China? For one, a global currency would not allow trade deficits or surpluses to automatically correct themselves. In other words, the Americans can keep on buying Chinese goods and China would not need to buy risky American Treasuries aka debt. That is the reason why these 2 countries are so against the dollar being the de-facto currency of the world.

Let me make this clear to anybody reading this article : The US dollar is not dying! Representative Ron Paul is wrong on this issue as he is on so many other issues. If you have traveled around the world, you would know that the American dollar is the currency that the world trust. Executives all around the world still want to be paid in the $US. For example a CEO of a Thai company would rather be paid in $US rather than Thai Baht.

The dollar has got nothing to do with the current economic crisis that is happening all around the world. It is not being impacted much at all. If the dollar is dying, there would be a lot of inflation going on, not deflation. Deflation is happening now because there is not enough demand for the goods in the country. It has got nothing to do with the dollar at all.

What this speaks to in the broader sense is the sense of how people make things up and how easily the world can follow suit with it. I really urge people to study these things from credible sources such as books and articles and not from people like Representative Ron Paul or people that demand the Gold standard back. You can bet that any topic given here is genuine and not made up by the “mainstream media” or by people that are trying to take over your world.

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Most sources would tell you that the Chinese are worried because they feel that the Americans are spending their money recklessly and not paying any attention to their debt and thus worried in whether the Americans would repay the debt that it owes to China.

They are also worried that the US dollar would devalue and would make its trillion dollar investment in American debt would not be worth it. There is also concern that the investment in US debt would not be good as the Federal Reserve in the United States have is keeping interest as low as possible. This would mean that the Chinese government would earn more money by investing it elsewhere rather than keeping its money in US Treasuries and notes.

This also leaves the Americans worried. Most of the money for the Iraq war and for the lack of the revenue caused by the Bush tax cuts came from the Chinese. The money for the current stimulus package comes from the Chinese. And where exactly would the US find the money to pay back this trillion dollars to China? Another country, perhaps.

As of the time this article was being written, there is little change in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It was trading up 0.1%. However, one has to take into context of the news that Citibank announcing that it would not need any more tax payers money to survive. These two news seem to cancel out each other so far. In other words this news is to a certain extent dragging the Dow Jones Industrial Average down.

China seems to threaten that it would not invest in US treasuries thereby forcing the Americans to raise money on their own. This is because, should the US print money to pay back this debt, it would raise inflation all across the world and this would make the money that China lent is less worthy.

But what is the real reason really? The answer lies in the trade deficit between China and the US. China was manipulating her currency (the Yuan) and keeping it artificially low by buying US debt. This created a thirst for even more Chinese goods and made the deficit bigger, giving China a bigger incentive to buy American treasuries.

With the current economic crisis, American consumers has decided not to spend and buy a lot of Chinese goods. This makes the trade deficit lower and virtually nullified according to Chinese sources. Now the value of a weak yuan would not do much as Americans has a lesser consuming power than they used to. So now the Chinese are saying “Why should I lend the Americans? What would I get int return?” Before they benefited by Americans buying more of their goods, now they do not.

That being said though, I dare the Chinese to stop playing these games and manipulate her currency in the long run. I really dare them to do so. America is China’s biggest customer. China has long benefited by this lop-sided trade deficit.

A good example would be comparing it to neighboring Japan. Both these economies are export driven economies. Due to the current global crisis, both have exports that have been hit badly. China’s exports are now three quarters of what it was a year ago while Japan’s export are half of what they were a year ago. Yet we do not see the same level of destruction in the Chinese economy as compared to the ravaged Japanese one. This is all down to the money that China lent the US.

What I suggest is for the US to bite the bullet now than suffer worse consequences later. The economy is already bad. Deflation is a problem right now, not inflation. I would rather have the Americans pay off the Chinese with “worthless” money right now than let them be at the whim and fancies of the Chinese later.

This would not be an easy decision for the Americans to make. For one, this would easily cost the American public a lot thanks to the inflation and in a time where there are no jobs, that would also cost the Democrats the elections in 2010. The US too would find it more difficult for them to carry out all the ambitious agendas that President Obama has laid out.

Here is my reason why. Firstly, if there is ever a need for inflation in America, this would be it. Secondly, when goods overseas become more expensive, American and other investors would spend more money in America thereby creating jobs in the mid term ( 4-6 months). In the long term everything would even out as foreign countries that also depend on the US for a market on their goods would also see their currencies gradually decrease against the dollar thereby strengthening it.

The last reason is that China has been reacting very brashly with the United States in recent days. First was the incident in the South China see where the American vessel was surrounded by Chinese vessels in international waters. A few days later came this threat about not investing in US Treasuries. And as long as the US owes China something, China would always leverage that against the US.

I think the US should stop the buck now. She should not allow China to use the debt that she bought for her own use against America. I believe that this should be a once and for all thing that the US should do. Taking action that would hurt China would also send a strong statement to the other countries that US owe its money to, against using the Treasuries to blackmail America.

I really hope that Premier Wen starts to regret ever outbursting like that just because there is some sentiment in China to take back this money in hard times.

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