Greetings President Obama,
I would like to speak to you today about your permeating theme of bipartisanship, particularly in regards to healthcare, but also on a broader scale and also the populist anger that many keep referring to in the country today; you see, they both are related.
Like you, I talk to many people for a living and then render an opinion. I'm a communicator, an entertainer that speaks to and hears from hundreds of thousands of Americans and they're angry and frustrated, and the reason is so painfully clear; yet it is something no Democrat, yourself included, seems to be able to vocalize. They don't want bipartisanship, they want leadership; right suffix, wrong word.
You see, Republicans, neocons, the Right has had their say, for eight years, and it destroyed us. Over those eight years they diid not practice bipartisanship, they practiced a mock dictatorship or coup. Democrats sat by and basically watched as the country was decimated; in 2006 when the country gave the Congress a Democratic majority, Nancy Pelosi, your speaker of the House, refused to impeach George W. Bush (we both know starting the proceedings doesn't mean removal, but it's the process that's important) and Democrats continued to support and fund the wars which the people that sent them there opposed. We didn't want bipartisanship then, either, we wanted resolutions.
The fact is, Republicans lost because We, the People, wanted them to. We were tired of their governance, their style, their lack of concern for the people and their sole focus on corporations and monied interests. We sent you, and others to Washington D.C. for change, we gave you a majority, and now we want that change. What we don't want is rehashed ideas that only serve the Republican masters of money and power.
Take heath care in the United States. Poll after poll, and call after call to my show, make it very clear that people don't want health insurance reform, they want access to health care. During your big push, you told us, We, the People, that 40,000 of us each year would die without access to health care. Many of us took the figure of 100 of us a day dying literally; in fact, when the horrible earthquake in Haiti hit, and the world responded, many of my listeners thought perhaps if the 40,000 dead in America from lack of health care ended up rotting and bloating on the White House lawn as people were in the streets of Haiti that maybe the world would care for our tragedy; maybe our Congress would respond.
No, it's clear, people want a strong public option, MediCare for all. Americans are not the idiots many, including your administration, seem to think them to be. We, the People, Mr. President, own an insurance company already, MediCare. Why on Earth would our government subsidize private insurance companies with payments, funds, fees, opening up yet another revenue stream for these faceless entities that do nothing to improve health but push paper when we own our own company? No sane people would, and we regained our sanity, we believed, by electing you.
We want the other side, the Republicans, to shut up, to sit down, to get out of the way. We want you to lead by shutting down the filibuster and getting things done. Incite the Senate to get rid of the filibuster now. We didn't elect you to a system of 60 votes and nor will we accept that number as a reason to not get anything done. The Republicans got plenty done with their majority, you are quick to list their accomplishments, two unfunded wars, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthiest, illegal wire tapping and surveillance...torture; oh yes, their war-crime laden agenda got pushed through often and without much to-do; now it's time to get a peace time agenda through, one for the people.
So Mr. President, stop pissing the people off. While they have tea parties and speak of racism, of division, using code words or thinly veiled, very thinly veiled, racist and xenophobic remarks, while they derail your agenda through ridiculous propaganda campaigns on their corporate funded media voice Fox, Americans are dying, slipping in to poverty and waiting for the MAJORITY of you in D.C. to stop trying to play nice with the other side and work.
You see, Mr. President, I've watched your appearances of late and in case Mr. Emmanuel or others won't tell you, the Republicans don't like you, at all. None of them want to work with you, and if they do, their base will punish them, so they believe. They have open disdain for you, again, thinly veiled racism wrapped in party unity and anyone that supports you. They will, and have, shut down America to get back in to power and that is as dangerous as any military coup and you and your party have let them. Stop asking them to play in your sand box, they don't want to, and stop asking them to care for their people. Didn't the last eight years show you they don't care for the people at all? Because the people certainly got the message, it's why you're in the White House.
You will lose in 2010 for the party and lose the White House in 2012 if you keep this up, not because people don't like you but because currently you are allowing the opposition party to shut down your government.
So, if you'd like to regain favor and actually help America, I, and my listeners and readers, have a few suggestions:
A: Scrap the Health Care Bill. Write a much simpler, easier to understand one of only 16 words: Every American Citizen shall be covered under Medicare from birth until death for all medical necessities. Pure and simple. All Medical necessities from birth until death because a healthy American is a healthy America. And don't bother us with the cost. We are aware that if we can spend over one trillion dollars on two unjust occupations without the blink of an eye, we can fund health care. So stop the money lie right now. We can afford it. We just can't afford it and some of the other dirty little programs out there, like Iraq. So fix it.
B: End the fillibuster by getting the Senate Majority to act, your majority, our majority. Get the health care bill approved by a 51 majority, not 60. In other words, get 'er done. The nation understands that.
C: Get party members to threaten impeachment of each of the five Supreme Court justices that decimated our election system and our nation by granting corporations personhood; impeach those that breached ethics in 2000 by accepting and ruling upon Gore V. Bush; by breaching the First Amendment by denying freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the Prop 8 trial in California and for a list of other usurpations. In 1969 the mere threat of impeachment caused a justice to resign. It is clear to all they no longer interpret whether laws meet Constitutional muster, but rule from a very ideologically conservative place incongruous with the document they are sworn to defend and uphold. Our founders gave us a process, how about you and and your party stop being too afraid to use it?
D: Give the last decade some closure. Start public, open torture and war crimes trials. If you don't have the stomach, buy Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Rove one way tickets to the Hague. I'm not being rhetorical here. Many now see you and the Democrats condoning war crimes by not at least looking in to the validity of the charges in the form of a trial or hearings. We are big boys and girls. We can, in fact, move forward, while prosecuting those from our past that did harm to us and our country.
E: Govern for the love of any God named or unnamed. Don't ask Congress to repeal don't ask, don't tell. Sign an Executive Order. The same for DOMA. Just get rid of bad policy quickly and easily.
F: And most importantly, stop asking Republicans, the party of Opposition, what they think, feel or would do in a situation or on policy. We, the People, have made it clear by a majority that we do not care about, nor want their ideas, good, bad or otherwise. Their time has come, and gone. They are the past. Treat them as such, with deference and politeness and that's about it. They will, in fact, do that to you and your party once they regain power. And if you and your party keeps up your inability to govern, then they will, in fact, regain power out of frustration of the populous and nothing else.
You are the President of the United States of America. Arguable, still the most powerful man in the free world. Stop acting like a swim coach that wants to be popular and start acting like the President. Lead your party, they will follow, and so will the people. And if they don't you lose nothing because at least you tried and if you don't start forgetting the bipartisanship mantra and start inflicting our will on government, then you'll lose the election anyway. So either way, you stand to gain much and lose nothing in the long run by at least trying.
Again, Mr. President, you are my President and I want you to win, to succeed, to govern. You, and your party. Not the Republicans and their ilk. That's not what we voted for, so please, politely, tell them to sit down and shut up, take power away from them, don't give it to them; remove the ability for any of their ideas to permeate policy, we don't want it. Even if people are too afraid of being rude to say it, we simply have heard enough from the other side.
Let me put it for you in a way one of my callers put it on my radio show to me: George W. Bush, neocons and republicans abused the country and it's people like a battering spouse. They were abusers, took advantage of everything they could, beat us down many times with fear and other methods to gain control. They never let us recover from 9/11, really recover and work through it as a nation and just beat us when we were down until we submitted. They were an abusing spouse. And now that we've gotten the divorce, broken free, moved them out of our House, you're asking us to get back in bed with them. Well, we don't want to go back, we want to go forward. We don't want to hear the ideas of those that did us harm, harm you and your party often point out to us when you want to win something. We don't want to have to date our abusers again.
So please, Mr. President, do the unpopular thing in Washington D.C. but the one thing that would gain you support across the board: stop waiting for the other side to approve or contribute and simply run with the ideas you told us about, that you said you would do once you got to D.C. with your party. Use the majority we gave you to give us things Republicans never would: an America where Americans come first, not corporations or monied interests. For once, Mr. President, for once in modern history be a President that isn't afraid to use the system the founders set up to the full extent, be it impeachment of Justices or universal health care by a 51 majority vote. If a war, wait, ,two occupations, can be pushed through easily, so can this.
In other words, we didn't send two parties to Washington D.C. by majority, we sent one. So stop making us deal with the others and their ridiculous ideas. Them, we've heard. We wanted new ones, yours. If you and your party can't lead, stop blaming the other party for the inability. And fear not, keep this up, and in a few months, and then another couple of years, we'll have nothing but their ideas all over again as they retake control as Americans have proven time and time again that in times of great despair they often will vote against their own self interests out of frustration. After all, they reelected George W Bush.
Thank you Mr. President. My best to your lovely family and doggie.