The White House is launching a battle against childhood obesity, and DoDEA is helping lead the fight. Plus, defense leaders prepare for a tough road to take back Kandahar from the Taliban.

The White House has apparently drawn the line in the sand, with this message to the GOP: Filibuster healthcare reform and we’ll (the Democrats) proceed ahead without you and do this on our own through “reconciliation”.

That obviously raises the stakes as the Dems are basically daring the Republicans to try and block any healthcare reform.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said that no decision has been made on how to proceed, pending the outcome of the summit, but he did add that President Obama’s proposal is “designed to offer maximum flexibility to ensure that we can get an up or down vote if the opposition decides  to take the extraordinary step of filibustering health reform.”

That folks is codespeak for the Democraps moving on their own.

Speaking of the proposal, here’s some of the details, courtesy of The Plum Line:

• As expected, the plan has no public option — but this does not preclude a reconciliation vote on the public option later.
• The proposal boosts the threshold for the “Cadillac” tax on the most expensive health plans from $23,000 for a family plan to $27,500. That’s actually a better deal than some labor officials were expecting, though some House Dems will still be angry that the tax is being included at all.
• The proposal also preserves the Senate bill’s state-based exchanges, and does not have a national exchange, as the House bill did.
• However, House Dems will be cheered by the fact that Obama’s compromise closes the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” coverage gap.
• Also, the bill nixes Ben Nelson’s Nebraska deal and boosts Federal financing for Medicaid expansion in all states.
• And finally, as expected, Obama’s proposal creates a Federal panel to monitor and block exorbitant rate hikes and other unfair practices by the insurance industry.

Pfeiffer further stated that the proposal in question was not an agreement between the House and Senate, but is “the President’s bill”.

So if I understand this correctly, the Democrats, including Obama, are telling the Republicans to either accept this proposal or else, with the else being reconciliation.

Assuming this is the case, then this is yet another “dog-and-pony” show, but with a twist. This is supposed to be on television, so I am betting that the Dems are betting that the GOP will not say no to this proposal in front of a potentially large TV viewing audience.

But what the Republicans have been doing and has been noted on the Internet and in news bits on cable TV can easily be done on television, as well.

In essence, this is that “trap” meeting that had been rumored for this summit. The Dems have the condescending mindset that the GOP and the American public doesn’t have a clue in terms of healthcare reform and that they know more.

I am of the hope that when this summit is televised on Thursday, the GOP puts their foot down and expose this proposal for what it really is: a derivative of old healthcare reform that the Democrats have tried to cram down our throats.

Thursday will be an interesting day indeed, and I hope that those of you who read the Republican Temple can find some time in your day to watch the summit. This will be your chance to watch the Dems in action.

This is the ultimate game of “Chicken”; someone will blink inevitably.

By the way, if you want to see the White House proposal, click here.

Jim sent this in:

In an obvious attempt to put a positive spin on an embarrassing development, President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder may flip-flop on their decision to hold the trials of terrorists — including alleged 9-11 terror attack mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed — in New York City, just blocks away from ‘ground zero.’

The White House began looking for places other than Manhattan to prosecute five terrorists currently being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on Friday. News that the Obama Administration was backing down from its original trial plans was met with some relief by many family members who lost loved ones when two terrorist-commandeered planes flew into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

More than a few security and law enforcement experts have said the prosecution of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four alleged co-conspirators would require a huge and costly security presence, with estimates as high as $275 million.

A Justice Department spokesman on Friday reported that Holder was considering other locations for the trials, including Newburgh, New York. The New York Times and Washington Post reported that the lower Manhattan federal courthouse was out of the running, citing unnamed administration officials.

After his vitriolic attacks on intelligence agents and his threats against an Arizona sheriff who enforces immigration laws, last year Holder surprised many when he decided the trials against five Guantanamo Bay detainees would be held in a civilian court in lower Manhattan. The rationale for transferring the case from the military courts to the civilian criminal justice system was in part to send a message to the world regarding the fairness of the U.S. justice system.

“When is the United States government going to stop trying to prove to foreigners who hate us that America is a good and just country? Hell, we have Americans who believe America is evil so why should foreigners feel differently,” said a former New York City police detective and US Marine intelligence officer.

“If the Obama White House wants to send a message to the world, they should call Western Union and stop these inane attempts at placating people who hate us no matter what,” said the decorated cop. “How many times does the USA have to prove it is a great and generous nation?”

While he never openly complained about the terror trials being held in his jurisdiction, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said in a press conference that he believed the trials were “unlikely” to be held in Manhattan or the other New York City boroughs.

The decision to flip-flop on the issue of the New York trials came after President Obama faced increased political pressure and polls showing his administration’s decision was unpopular with Americans.

With Obama trying to pass healthcare reform, reduce the unemployment rate, and bring down the national debt and deficit, many believe he’s decided to acquiesce on the issue of terror trials. Also, at first New York’s popular Mayor Michael Bloomberg supported the Obama-Holder decision, but after weeks of facing protests and pleas from the families of 9-11 victims, Bloomberg flip-flopped.

New York Governor David Paterson, who’s facing a tough re-election campaign of his own, has also criticized the decision to have the trials in Manhattan.

“We are worried about the effects of mass law enforcement on lower Manhattan, congestion, traffic, resources that have to be spent,” he told reporters.

In Washington, Republicans have voiced their opposition to having terrorists tried in civilian courts in New York. Several key Democrat lawmakers have voiced their own concerns over planned criminal trials for terrorists, with some such as Senator Diane Feinstein urging that the alleged September 11 plotters be tried in military tribunals instead.

According to Fox News, an official announcement on the status of the terrorism trial is expected on Monday.

I think this qualifies as old news as most people who follow politics already know that these days, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada isn’t the cat’s meow these days, state-wide or nationally.

It looks like Reid is bringing a pinch-hitter to the plate for him as the mid-term elections are right around the corner.

According to a White House official, President Barack Obama will travel to Las Vegas next month to try and resuscitate the Senate Majority Leader’s popularity.

Stay tuned to The Republican Temple as more developments become available.

***DEVELOPING***

During the 2008 presidential race Hillary Clinton’s campaign warned that if a national security crisis arose with Barack Obama in the White House and the “red phone” alerting him rang at 3 a.m., he could not be trusted to adequately respond.

“Turns out Hillary Rodham Clinton was right all along,” declared Charles Hurt, Washington, D.C. bureau chief for the New York Post.

Hillary’s warning in a campaign ad suggested that an Obama White House would so downplay the threat posed by terrorism that “the government’s focus would shift away from the harsh and determined tactics used to protect the homeland,” Hurt wrote on Friday, adding, “Instead, Obama would turn his attention to becoming more popular in the world and stress negotiations over hardball tactics.”

That attitude has trickled down to all levels of the government responsible for national security, according to Hurt.

On Thursday, President Obama sought to calm Americans’ fears about the terror threat following the attempted bombing of a plane on Christmas Day. But “there wasn’t much to see in the White House other than bungling of previous bungling,” according to Hurt, as the administration rescheduled Obama’s address to the country several times.

At 8 a.m., the White House said the president would speak at 1 p.m. Then at 1 p.m., the announcement came that he would deliver his address at 3 p.m. At 3 p.m., the White House said Obama would speak at 4:30 p.m. He took the podium at 4:34 p.m.

Hurt cited Obama’s trip to Cairo last year to address the Muslim world, when he said it is “part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear,” and opined, “If you have time for such nonsense, then you are not spending enough time thinking about how to thwart this enemy.

“But it is not like we weren’t warned by Hillary Clinton.”

Another 2008 presidential candidate, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, declared Friday morning that the Fort Hood shootings and the Christmas Day bombing incident show Obama and his advisers have been “fundamentally wrong” in their approach to the war on terror.

Giuliani, who was New York’s mayor when terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” viewers that the president has tried to let “political correctness trump reality.”

Giuliani said the Obama administration came into power with the belief that President George W. Bush’s response to the 9/11 attacks was unnecessarily severe, and had alienated America’s potential allies abroad.

“They’d gone too far, Bush had overreacted, we make the war on terror worse if we emphasize it too much — this is what they truly believed,” Giuliani said. “But they were fundamentally wrong.”

C-Span CEO Brian Lamb mentioned that the White House allowed only an hour of coverage of the healthcare meetings, adding, ”We were used as kind of a political football during the campaign.” That’s transparency at its finest, folks.

White House officials claim they were unaware that ornaments of Mao Tse-tung were hung upon a Christmas Tree there. No folks, this is not an optical illusion. This has to be the first Communist Christmas tree in the White House ever.