August 27th 2009
IT IS TIME FOR OBAMA's TEAM to CREATE THE POSITIVE VISION FOR HEALTHCARE & GET OBAMA's HEALTHCARE STORY OUT...INSTEAD OF PLAYING DEFENSE...
Obama did not get elected by responding to every smear but by getting out an overwhelming message of hope, and taking action to make a better world...
Maybe he can start with his Eulogy at Ted Kennedy's Funeral
We Need to Tell OUR OWN STORY - Instead of PLAYING DEFENSE.
Bill Moyers made a good start last week.
See: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08212009/profile.html
NEED some POSITIVE and some SCARY STORIES that both create sympathy and outrage at the inefficiency of the present system and the cruelty of Today’s system to appeal to people’s hearts not just their heads as Obama (and you) have been doing.
Like some of these 8 Topics for Ads and Speeches:
1.Seniors who love their Government supported Medicare Program and Efficient Government “Insurance” Payments
2. Poor people desperate for care – going to Emergency Rooms and costing everyone 3 to 5 X what Preventive Care would – Examples of Diabetes or Infections with associated $$$
3. People dying because they denied Care for Pre-Existing conditions (that were not related to treatment)
4. Insurance company Whistle blowers describing how the Insurance bureaucrats control Doctors decisions and Ration Care arbitrarily TODAY
5. Examples of Outrageous Pricing which show:
(a) that there is No Standard Insurance Pricing and portray how Small businesses pay 20% more than large companies
(b) Doctors who have to hire one administrator for every 2-3 nurses to handle paperwork of 30 different fees from different Insurers for the same procedure
(c) Why the Uninsured (Poor & Unemployed) pay 20 - 40% more than Insured for the same procedure –Must Pay entire Bill instead of Negotiated Rate
(d) Examples of Middle Class People who cannot afford deductibles for hospital stays
(e) Stories of Nice People going into Bankruptcy caused by normal illness or treatment
6. Shock people as to Why Status Quo is Unacceptable
(a) Healthcare taking over the Economy 17% GDP going to 25% - Scare People with size of the Deficit + Insurance Cost in 2020 and picture 1 in X people working for Insurance companies
(b) Inefficiency of spending 16% of healthcare dollars on Insurance company bureacrats vs. 5% in Germany (which has a Government paid Independent Insurance Model)
7. Portray the Insurance companies as Profiteering Monopolists
(a) Lack of Competition in many states means that a single company has 65 - 75% share in Many States (List them)
(b) Insurance Companies in the ‘90s paid out 95% of Premiums for care now they are paying out 80% and keeping the rest for administration and Profits
And finally
8. POSITIVE STORY ON MAKING A REAL INSURANCE MARKET FOR HEALTHCARE
I am a Conservative/Independent Voter that believes like Obama that we need to:
(a) Create Competition from a Non-Profit system (Public Insurance Option or Co-OP or Non-Profit Managed Care) to counter the Insurance Monopolists
(b) Get Doctors the information and incentives to use the “best” treatment for each patient based on
(i) Statistical evidence (Care/Outcome Comparison) and
(ii) Encourage Flat Rate Coverage that maximizes long term health NOT the more expensive tests and treatments based on (consciously or unconsciously) maximizing short term earnings from ‘Fee for Service’
(c) Publishing the Costs/Prices for the same procedure - Today No-one not even the Doctor knows what a patient will pay until AFTER the procedure. would also allow patients to “shop” for care – which they cannot do today. [French Hospitals – also Private Insurance based - post Rates for 100 most common procedures. See NPR Interview with author of ‘Healing of America’ See: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112172939]
So To counter the ignorant Republicans we need to show that There is No free Market today:
• No Competition
• Doctors controlled by Insurance Bureaucrats and motivated to overtreat
• Patients cannot even try to shop for efficient care - if no-one knows the prices
We need Obama’s plan to make a real insurance market for care that will:
• Drive down prices and
• Minimize administrative cost
……but with
• Care and
• Compassion to care for Sick and Dying Normal People!@!
Let’s STOP PLAYING DEFENSE and GET THE EMOTIONAL STORY OUT – not just the facts.
2. If you're an employed person sharing your health insurance premium with your employer, you live in Germany. That's the Bismarck model that was invented in Germany and used in many countries.
3. If you're a senior and you buy Medicare insurance from the government and go to private doctors, you live in Canada. That's the Canadian model. As a matter of fact, the Canadian health care system is called Medicare, and when Lyndon Johnson provided it for our seniors in 1965 he borrowed both the model and the name from Canada.
4. And if you're one of the tens of millions of Americans who can't get health insurance, well, you live in Malawi or Madagascar or Mali or something, because if you can pay for health insurance you get it, or maybe you can line up at the free hospital sometime.
"We've got them all and that's really the most important difference. All the other countries have decided that it's cheaper and fairer to provide one model so that everybody has the same access to the same care at the same price...."
I am beyond excitement and joy for this historic moment in history. I wish I had just ONE more year with my grandmother who passed away last November so that she could have shared this moment with me. I wish Barack Obama's grandmother lived just three more days so that Obama could have called her and said "Toot, I did it!". Both our grandmothers are looking down now with great pride and honored that their grandchildren and great-grandchildren did live to see this historic election.
To all those who made calls, raised money, knocked on doors, etc., GOD BLESS YOU!I've done it all, I canvassed in New Hampshire today too! WE WON WE WON!!!
Thank you Jesus!
New Hampshire is very much a battleground - it went to George Bush by 1% in 2000 and John Kerry by 1% in 2004.The polls are tight once again this year, but we have a very real opportunity to take away John McCain's hopes of winning New Hampshire by Getting Out The Vote and making sure every single supporter is going to the polls on Election Day. We have come too far to let up now. If you don't have plans this weekend, or if you can rearrange them, we're asking again for you to come to New Hampshire.
We only have FOUR days left to elect Barack. We need to work as hard as we can this weekend. Sign up to help with GOTV this weekend in New Hampshire. Every voter you talk to can make a real difference in this close race.If you don't have a ride, don't worry. We have a ride share website, NH.BarackObama.com/NHride that can help you find a ride with another supporter in your area.
MANCHESTER-- With less than 3 days until Election Day, Sen. John Kerry will be on the Seacoast of New Hampshire this Saturday, November 1st to rally voters in support of Sen. Barack Obama, Jeanne Shaheen, and Democrats up and down the ticket.
5:00 p.m. Unity Rally with Sen. John Kerry, Jeanne Shaheen, and Democratic candidates Portsmouth Public Library- Levenson Community Room 175 Parrott Avenue, Portsmouth
This proves that I'm not wasting my time volunteering for Obama/Biden in my great state of Massachusettes, which is largely democratic. I received this e-mail from a friend of mine and her husband this morning, who both live in MA as well. This fear-mongering bs has to stop! In the end it reads "Do you care enough to send this on?". I care, and am sending it on to my fellow Obama supporters to show that racism and bigotry are alive and well in this country and should not be tolerated.
SUBJECT: DO I HAVE THIS STRAIGHT?MESSAGE:HIS FATHER WAS A BLACK AFRICAN MUSLIM FROM KENYA. WE HAVE SEEN PICTURES OF HIS AFRICAN FAMILY. HIS MOTHER WAS A WHITE AMERICAN ATHEIST FROM KANSAS. WHERE ARE THE PICTURES OF HIS AMERICAN FAMILY? HIS FATHER DESERTED HIS MOTHER WHEN HE WAS ONLY TWO YEARS OLD AND WENT BACK TO AFRICA BY WAY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. HOW? WAS HIS FATHER WEALTHY? HIS MOTHER MARRIED AN INDONESIAN MUSLIM AND THEN MOVED TO JAKARTA WHERE HE WAS ENROLLED IN A MUSLIM SCHOOL . WHEN HE REACHED HIGH SCHOOL AGE, HIS MOTHER SENT HIM TO HAWAII TO BE WITH HIS WHITE GRANDPARENTS AND HE WAS PUT INTO AN EXPENSIVE PRIVATE SCHOOL. HE LATER WENT TO HARVARD UNIVERSITY. HOW? WERE HIS GRANDPARENTS RICH? HE LIVES IN A $1.4 MILLION HOUSE OBTAINED THROUGH A DEAL WITH A WEALTHY FUNDRAISER WHO IS NOW IN PRISON. HOW? HE 'WORKED' AS A CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST IN CHICAGO. HE HAS NEVER HELD A PRODUCTIVE JOB IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR OR RECEIVED A PAY CHECK THAT WAS NOT GOVERNMENT-FUNDED AND/OR TAXPAYER SUPPORTED. THE PRESIDENCY IS NOT A CIVIL RIGHTS POSITION, NOR IS IT SUBJECT TO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION SET ASIDES; ON-THE-JOB TRAINING WON'T CUT IT. HE ENTERED POLITICS AT THE STATE LEVEL AND THEN THE NATIONAL LEVEL WHERE HE HAS MINIMAL EXPERIENCE. HE IS PROUD OF HIS 'AFRICAN HERITAGE' (A FATHER WHO GOT A WHITE GIRL PREGNANT AND DESERTED HER). WHERE IS THE PRIDE IN HIS 'WHITE HERITAGE'? (A MOTHER WHO FLAUNTED CONVENTION AND DID NOT BELIEVE IN GOD). SOME MIGHT THINK THERE WAS NOT MUCH TO BE PROUD OF EITHER WAY. HE BELONGS AND HAS BELONGED FOR OVER 20 YEARS TO AN 'AFRO-CENTRIC' CHURCH IN CHICAGO THAT HATES WHITES, HATES JEWS, AND BLAMES AMERICA FOR ALL THE WORLD'S PERCEIVED FAULTS. (INCLUDING CREATING THE AIDs VIRUS IN ORDER TO INFLICT IT ON AFRICANS). HE REPEATEDLY WHITEWASHES THE PASTOR, HIS CHURCH AND THE MEMBERS WHO CHEERED AFTER HEARING VITRIOLIC TIRADES AGAINST AMERICA. HE COULD NOT CONFRONT HIS PASTOR BUT HE WANTS US TO BELIEVE HE CAN CONFRONT THE DICTATORS OF NORTH KOREA AND IRAN ? YEAH RIGHT ! ! DURING HIS VERY BRIEF TIME IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE HE HAS MANAGED TO AMASS THE NUMBER ONE ULTRA LIBERAL VOTING RECORD OUT OF THE ONE HUNDRED MEMBERS. HE HAS VOTED CONSISTENTLY FOR BIGGER GOVERNMENT AND HIGHER TAXES. HE HAS VOTED FOR BIG ENTITLEMENTS AND LEGISLATION THAT WOULD SEVERELY CURTAIL AMERICA 'S ABILITY TO FIGHT TERRORISM AND TO PROTECT OUR BORDERS AND OUR NATIONAL INTERESTS AROUND THE WORLD. BUT, HE IS A GOOD ORATOR. ISN'T THAT A COMFORT? YEAH, I THINK I SEE HOW WELL HE COULD UNITE THE COUNTRY. I THINK THE TRUTH IS THAT HE HOPES NO ONE WILL PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER, AND IT LOOKS LIKE HE'S RIGHT! DOESN'T SPEAK WELL FOR AMERICAN'S CRITICAL AND OBJECTIVE THINKING ABILITY, DOES IT? LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO OUR NEW CHIEF PILOT. HE HAS NEVER FLOWN AN AIRPLANE, IN FACT HE HAS NEVER EVEN SAT IN THE COCKPIT, BUT HE SAYS HE HAS RIDDEN ON PLANES BEFORE. WE ARE SURE HE WILL GUIDE US SAFELY THROUGH THE STORMS WE MAY ENCOUNTER ON THIS FLIGHT. PEOPLE, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD THE STORY ABOUT THE WOLF HIDING IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING SO HE CAN DESTROY THEM FROM WITH-IN? THE HAND WRITING IS ON THE WALL, DO YOU NOT HAVE THE EYES TO SEE THROUGH IT ?THINK LONG AND HARD BEFORE YOU VOTE FOR THIS GUY! CONSIDER YOUR KIDS & GRANDKIDS. THEIR FUTURE IS IN OUR VOTING HANDS. Do you care enough to send this on?
Email to 'Morning Joe'
Joe: you seem to get a little misty-eyed and lose your objectivity whenever a prominent Republican is on the show.. case in point your sycophantic behavior with Jack Welch - who is about as biased toward McCain, and the Corporate perspective as he can be. Acorn? The NY Times editorial? You misrepresented what the editorial says, and you seem completely unaware of the reality of Republican attempts to supress voter turnout this year - and for the last eight years. Yes there are better, more efficient ways to register voters, but your party (and friends) have done everything they can to keep that from happening. Be honest, full registration is not in the best interest of the Republicans, and they know it. Acorn has done more to empower unrepresented Americans than many other grassroots organizations. Read the editorial Joe, and represent it honestly. And reflect honestly on the Republican record of voter supression, and their disgusting behavior in your home state in 2000. Stop kissing up, start speaking out: you may joke about your credentials as a journalist, but in your position you have the responsibility to be more honest and objective, than you ever had to be as a Congressman. - Frank Mand
From the NY Times Editorial The Acorn Story
In Wednesday night’s debate, John McCain warned that a group called Acorn is “on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history” and “may be destroying the fabric of democracy.” Viewers may have been wondering what Mr. McCain was talking about. So were we.
Acorn is a nonprofit group that advocates for low- and moderate-income people and has mounted a major voter-registration drive this year. Acorn says that it has paid more than 8,000 canvassers who have registered about 1.3 million new voters, many of them poor people and members of racial minorities.
In recent weeks, the McCain campaign has accused the group of perpetrating voter fraud by intentionally submitting invalid registration forms, including some with fictional names like Mickey Mouse and others for voters who are already registered.
Based on the information that has come to light so far, the charges appear to be wildly overblown — and intended to hobble Acorn’s efforts.
The group concedes that some of its hired canvassers have turned in tainted forms, although they say the ones with phony names constitute no more than 1 percent of the total turned in. The group also says it reviews all of the registration forms that come in. Before delivering the forms to elections offices, its supervisors flag any that appear to have problems.
According to Acorn, most of the forms that are now causing controversy are ones that it flagged and that unsympathetic election officials then publicized.
Acorn’s critics charge that it is creating phony registrations that ineligible voters could use to cast ballots or that a single voter could use to vote multiple times.
Acorn needs to provide more precise figures about problem forms and needs to do a better job of choosing its canvassers.
But for all of the McCain campaign’s manufactured fury about vote theft (and similar claims from the Republican Party over the years) there is virtually no evidence — anywhere in the country, going back many elections — of people showing up at the polls and voting when they are not entitled to.
Meanwhile, Republicans aren’t saying anything about another more serious voter-registration scandal: the fact that about one-third of eligible voters are not registered. The racial gaps are significant and particularly disturbing. According to a study by Project Vote, a voting-rights group, in 2006, 71 percent of eligible whites were registered, compared with 61 percent of blacks, 54 percent of Latinos and 49 percent of Asian-Americans.
Much of the blame for this lies with overly restrictive registration rules. Earlier this year, the League of Women Voters halted its registration drive in Florida after the state imposed onerous new requirements.
The answer is for government to a better job of registering people to vote. That way there would be less need to rely on private registration drives, largely being conducted by well-meaning private organizations that use low-paid workers. Federal and state governments should do their own large-scale registration drives staffed by experienced election officials. Even better, Congress and the states should adopt election-day registration, which would make such drives unnecessary.
The real threats to the fabric of democracy are the unreasonable barriers that stand in the way of eligible voters casting ballots.
Oooh, I was frightened. 'UnderDog' McCain began the last debate by growling and baring his teeth - and for a moment he was effectively scary. But quickly his demeanor changed, from angry pup, to mad dog. I have never seen a Presidential candidate make so many faces, show such disrespect to his opponent, and admit to so many looney ideas - all in ninety minutes. You can be forgiven if you didn't catch some of the more memorable moments, as McCain did quite a lot of groaning and guffawing, mumbling and interrupting. But I swear I did hear him say that Columbia was one of our most important trading partners (who cares that they're killing off their labor leaders), that Acorn was about to destroy the fabric of Democracy, (paving the way for their eventual claim that 'they was robbed) and that Obama in decrying the cries of 'terrorist' and worse that have been heard at Sarah Palin's events was somehow belittling all the Joe Plumbers, Joe Sixpacks, Hockey Moms, and veterans that attend those events.
Desperate, bizarre, pathetic, uneven, and most importantly, unconvincing.
Nevertheless, hold on to your hats: its still going to be a bumpy flight over these last three weeks. There is nothing that McCains people can do now, but go back to the sandbox and start shoveling the dirt. The Acorn Myth will, I believe, figure prominently in the last weeks of their pitiful campaign - and will also provide them sustenance (sour grapes) over the dark days ahead.
Lets not celebrate, not just yet. Lets take this win and use it to fuel our last three weeks of canvassing.
Hi there
I am new to the Obama site and just volunteered to help on 10/26 in NH to support Obama/Biden. Can anyone give me some insight as to what happens during these events/rallies? I have only received a confirmation e-mail that my request to help was received. I want to make sure I don't miss an opportunity to show my support and encourage our NH neighbors to vote for change.
Thank you in advance for any help!
Kasey
I first got into the election when I met Arianna Huffington about twelve weeks ago. She talked about the policies of John McCain and that they go nowhere, and that they are the same policies as the Bush Administration.
Wow, a sit com length commercial from Obama, to be aired almost right before election. I have to say I am pretty excited about this one, almost like waiting for the fist epiosde of a new show (hopefully this metaphor is a sign of things to come, keep your fingers crossed guys)
Check for more details here: http://kronomy.com/event/2bLnWX5swt/
Ruth
Just looking at the debate, I really can't say who I feel performed better. It's all pretty standard from both sides, no earth shattering new policies revealed and no major bloopers besides both sides stretching the facts a little, but that's to be expected in all political debates. What do you guys think?
http://kronomy.com/event/7GKhrYmWFt/
usbattle.com
Come on, seriously, she expects people to believe Obama is related to terrorism at the age of EIGHT? Guess Palin got no other options besides spreading obvious lies about Obama as a last desperate attempt to drag him down.
See full report here: http://kronomy.com/event/iTmUDKoPnk/
"Campaigning on Saturday in Colorado, Sarah Palin accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists" by associating with Ayers, citing as her source a New York Times story from that morning. In fact, the story concluded that the Obama-Ayers "relationship" consisted of both men attending the board meetings of two Chicago organizations and that there had been no contact between the men, other than bumping into each other on the sidewalk (they live in the same neighborhood), since Obama went to the U.S. Senate in January 2005.
The story of Obama's interaction with Ayers is drenched in irony, since it is basically a tale of Obama being co-opted into Chicago's civic establishment. In 1995, Obama, then a young lawyer with political ambitions but as yet no office, was recruited to chair the board of a school reform organization funded and established by the Annenberg Foundation -- a group that distributes the wealth of the estate of Walter Annenberg, Richard Nixon's ambassador to Britain. It was only then that Obama met Ayers, who already was a board member and a figure in Chicago's education-policy elite. (Mayor Richard Daley, that known radical, told the Times that he had consulted Ayers on education issues for years.)
Go join your city's establishment, and see what it gets you.
But if the McCain people want to rummage through presidential candidates' associations, real or imagined, to turn up figures who threaten to pull down this proud republic, they should begin in-house. Chief among those to whom responsibility attaches for the financial crisis that is plunging the nation into recession is former Texas senator Phil Gramm, McCain's own economic guru.
Gramm was always Wall Street's man in the Senate. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee during the Clinton administration, he consistently underfunded the Securities and Exchange Commission and kept it from stopping accounting firms from auditing corporations with which they had conflicts of interest. Gramm's piece de resistance came on Dec. 15, 2000, when he slipped into an omnibus spending bill a provision called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which prohibited any governmental regulation of credit default swaps, those insurance policies covering losses on securities in the event they went belly up. As the housing bubble ballooned, the face value of those swaps rose to a tidy $62 trillion. And as the housing bubble burst, those swaps became a massive pile of worthless paper, because no government agency had required the banks to set aside money to back them up.
The CFMA also prohibited government regulation of the energy-trading market, which enabled Enron to nearly bankrupt the state of California before bankrupting itself.
The problem with this exercise, of course, is that Gramm's relationship to McCain is not comparable to the relationships that Ayers or Wright have with Obama. The idea that either Ayers or Wright would have any impact on the workings of an Obama administration is nonsensical. But Gramm and McCain do have an enduring political and economic alliance. McCain chaired Gramm's short-lived presidential campaign in 1996; Gramm is co-chair of McCain's current effort. McCain has not repudiated reports that Gramm is on the shortlist to become Treasury secretary if McCain is elected, even after Gramm labeled America "a nation of whiners."
-from Harold Meyerson on washingtonpost.com'
It is a crisis. It's a toxic mess, really, on Main Street that's affecting Wall Street.
We need also to not get ourselves in debt. Let's do what our parents told us before we probably even got that first credit card. Don't live outside of our means. We need to make sure that as individuals we're taking personal responsibility through all of this.
It's not the American peoples fault that the economy is hurting like it is, but we have an opportunity to learn a heck of a lot of good lessons through this and say never again will we be taken advantage of.
Those people who say don't go into debt, they can barely pay to fill up their gas tank.
