wsj.com:
President Barack Obama is significantly raising his personal stake in the effort to overhaul America's health-care system, as Democrats and the public express growing unease about the costs.
Tell Obama: The public option is not optional.
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What public is uneasy about the cost?
Who are they?
Republicans and neocons
and insurances corporations?
For those who oppose president Obama's health care reform, please do the following:
1. Volunteer to pay for one uninsured person to have health care.
2. My sister and stepson lost their jobs and no longer have health care so you can start with them.
If you are unwilling to accept this challenge then please button your lip.
Thanks.
The Socialist Party candidate for President of the US, Norman Thomas, said this in a 1944 campaign speech:
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every principle of our socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without ever knowing how it happened."
He went on to say: "I no longer need to run on the Socialist Party ticket because the Democrat Party has now adopted our platform."
Call your Congressman. Call your Senator. Tell Them to VOTE NO on health care reform. Make sure that this becomes obama's Waterloo. Break Him. Make him a Lame Duck.
Yeah, great idea. Let's privatize EVERYTHING. From now on, you can pay for your own roads, bridges, airports, you get the idea. Fire all meat inspectors for that matter. We can trust the meatpackers to self-regulate, right?
I've alled and FAXed my reps and senators to urge SINGLE PAYER health care for all. I can hardly wait to fire my insurance company.
A man from the Socialist Party back in 1944 says something, and you're shaking in your boots!
Oooh! Ooooh! Scary stuff.
Right. Tell your story walkin.'
The president should change the "firece urgency of now", to the "fierce urgency of getting it (healthcare reform) correct." Afterall, it will impact one sixth of our economy, so I wish he would quit trying to rush through it. He has not even released the mid budget review on time-saying he needs more time. So how can he try to rush Congress to do healthcare?
Democrats have no transparency in this bill...Obama is asking the people to "just trust him"....YOU GOT TO BE KIDDING
Press conference! I must have another press conference!
How many of us is under insured? I'm one of them, for I pay a lot for my Premium with a high Co-pay and still have to pay out for my treatment, because the insurance company decide wither I live or die.
Way better than Washington deciding that....lets look at the Governments failures....post office...soc-sec....medicare......Amtrak......health care (so far).....GM(future failure)....Price Controls(destroyed CA,and NY).............Now lets look at the successes........0000000000000
Social Security and Medicare are two of the biggest success stories in American history. They have kept millions of seniors out of poverty.
They are living proof that conservatism doesn't work and that their anti-government ideology is a farce. This is why conservatives are so desperate to destroy them -- not because they don't work -- but because they DO!
But what can we expect from a conservative movement that acts like "Atlas Shrugged" is non-fiction.
One must wonder what color the sky is in their world.
The interstate highway system.
National parks.
Social security.
Medicare.
I'd call these successful.
The post office is actually a very good service for far less $$ than FedEx or UPS.
There is going to be a single-payers health insurance rally in Washington D.C. on July 30 for all who wants to go or help others go to speak for you. Link:
http://www.healthcare-now.org/campaigns/single-payer-rally/
It is obvious that Congress is not acting on behalf of the American people and is using their elected power to pander to the rich insurance companies and fight against the President for political points so we, the American people, need to remind all of them who they work for - US!!!! Spread the word.
And a Tea Party on Sept 12 in Washington.......
Ooh. Failed conservatives espousing failed conservative policies are demonstrating.
I'm shaking in my boots.
We will never accomplish anything meaningful in this country as long as the people making the laws come with their own personal agenda - getting elected again. The "country first" mantra used during the campaign by the republicans is a joke and the democrats haven't got the guts to make the hard choices and possibly take the hit. I don't care if it's Obama, McCain, Ron Paul or anyone else, our current system makes it very, very, very difficult to get anything worthwhile done. Then we also have the media choosing what to report on and how negative they should be on reporting on it, thus affecting every opinion poll out there. I am so disgusted with our political system I can't stand it.
But there's 300 mil of us and only a few of them.
But over 50% dont want this
But he gives such good speeches.
At least he's trying to get us all Health Care. What has Bush did for us, other than have us pay for the largest tax cuts for the rich?
You want the truth.....Neither Party can help you,me,or anyone....its impossible...
He lost this fight the day they escorted single-payer advocates from the room......, It was a simple break in trust, that the bigwigs were the only one's with chairs at the table. I hope it passes for the sake of those who are being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions,but, I predict an overall failure because of the middleman costs of insurance instead of care.....,
If the President had invited single-payer advocates to the table, then his public, not-for-profit option would have been the compromise. Because he didn't, we are likely to have no public option or a "trigger" that never gets pulled.
The insurance and pharmaceutical corporations and their bought-and-paid-for Congressmen probably demanded that single-payer advocates be excluded as a pre-condition of even participating. And the Administration agreed in an act of unbelievable "new politics" naivety just to have them at the table. As if having them at the table was a worthy goal in itself.
The political strategy of the President and the Administration is to pick fights and triangulate against the base to prove how "centrist" you are -- never to pick fights with the actual bad guys, with insurance and pharmaceutical corporations and the conservative movement.
Now that they've spent six months demoralizing the base, they are surprised that they don't have the same army of volunteers to overcome $1.4 million dollars of lobbying a day.
That army he amassed during the campaign could have been holding mass rallies in major cities in favor of universal health care. Instead the President publicly tells his base not to speak out against those who are sabotaging reform.
If the President had at least drawn a line in the sand for a strong, robust public option, this entire debate would be different and he would be winning.
That's not completely accurate. IMO what he was trying to do was to temper the rage and focus it in a specific direction. He's not getting the bloggers in our corner and focusing fire on particular dems that are working against us. He just didn't want a blanket fire on everyone. He wanted an opportunity to woo a few that he knew he could get, then leave the ones that weren't going to come over willingly out to the wolves to remind them what side their bread is buttered on.
If the President is changing political tactics, that would be welcome. I just hope it is real and isn't too little, too late. "New politics" was a great campaign strategy, but it has been an utter disaster in governing.
Was anyone really that naive to think that conservatives wouldn't use their seat at the table to water down legislation to render it ineffective, which they wouldn't vote for anyway, and then because an ineffective piece of legislation didn't produce the desired results, use that as justification to return to their failed ideology? The stimulus package is a case in point of how "new politics" and bipartisanship for its own sake failed the country and failed the best intentions of the President.
Was anyone really that naive to believe that you could triangulate against your own base to prove how "centrist" you are and then not have the political army you need to overcome $1.4 million a day lobbying by the status quo?
Was anyone really that naive to believe that the health and pharmaceutical corporations wouldn't fight every dime of their profit and CEO bonuses under the current system just because they were given a seat at the table?
President Obama I volunteered and voted for you but please more work less lip !!
Democrats control the White House, has a 38+ seat margin in the House, and has the 60 Senate seats needed to overcome any filibuster. How can Republicans be holding up health care reform?
We're being held up because there are people who like to call themselves Democrats just to look good to the public.
Real leaders, great leaders, lead from the front...!
Obama stayed far back in the rear, for more than half to 3 quarters of the battle...
Now he's trying to play catch up save the day before all is lost...
Is it to late...we'll see...
The President completely misread history and OVER-corrected from the mistakes of the Clinton Administration.
Progressive changes like social security, medicare, overtime pay, child labor restrictions, aboltion, women's suffrage, labor organizing, environmental protection ONLY happen when they are rammed down unwilling conservative throats. Nothing progressive or worthwhile every came from negotiation with conservatives.
Just because the conservative movement is imploding the Republican Party from within doesn't mean that progressive legislation will actually pass through Congress. Congress may be held hostage by corporate campaign contributions, but that only proves how "new politics" was the wrong way to go.
Health care reform with a robust public not-for-profit option will only pass under old-fashioned power, arm-twisting, demonizing-the-opposition politics. That may be ugly and disappointing to the delusional who actually believed in "new politics", but it's political reality in the real world.
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Posted: 07-22-09 12:24 AM