Health Care Action: Contact The White House
Yesterday the White House announced that President Obama would address a joint session of Congress on September 9. In the address, President Obama will outline the specifics of what he expects for a health care reform bill. This is a very important address – it will determine the parameters of the final bill in Congress.
Democrats have been begging for leadership and guidance from the administration and now they will have it. Obama has a history of giving extremely great speeches at the perfect time and that time is now. We still have an opportunity to affect the outline of the final bill. It was suggested at the PDD meeting last night that calling the White House and Vice President Joe Biden’s office is important in influencing the proposed legislation. Please call the White House and tell them that you want a strong public option in the final health care reform bill.
White House comment line: 202-456-1111
White House switchboard: 202-456-1414
Keep calling Senator Kaufman, Senator Carper and Representative Castle as well.
Me thinks the tide is turning on the Healthcare debate and people have grown tired of raucus Town Hall meetings.See how quickly the Birthers have disappeared? Slow to respond perhaps, a ground swell of support for reform is growing. Regardless of what bill is passed the fight will not be over, we will yet have change and for the better.
I hope you’re right wikwox. We’re at a turning point and the president needs our help. The townhall screamers succeeded in changing the debate for a while. They are certainly less effective now – mainly because their arguments don’t make much sense and they haven’t come up with new ones and people are tired of them. They are no longer new and different. Another thing that’s happening is the townhollers have ripped the face off of the opposition. The Republicans have revealed themselves as defenders of the status quo and that they don’t think some Americans deserve health care. That’s useful to us.
Obama has a great opportunity now. He’ll have everyone’s attention and he already knows what the Republican arguments are. Obama needs to do these things in his speech:
– lay out the case for health care reform now
– explain the problems with the current system
– let everyone know what’s in it for them. There’s been too much focus on the public option. Don’t get me wrong I think the public option is very, very important but the argument about it distracts from the other elements of reform like the end to pre-existing conditions, recission, end of lifetime spending caps, subsidies to help people buy health care, portability and all the other good stuff
– explain the public option, why it’s there and what it means
– explain that there will be more options, not less
– talk up the good changes in Medicare, mainly ending the donut hole for prescription drugs
It will be very interesting to see what the Republicans say in their rebuttal speech. Will they have a new argument or will they repeat the same things that Obama will have just refuted in his speech?
Obama will deliver his Jimmy Carter ‘malaise’ speech next week.
“Julian Zelizer: ‘It’s a speech that’s not about some policy thing – it’s about defining his administration”
Obama can’t revive this one, it is dead.
The public plan is a government plan and it will cost over a $ trillion, he wants to change Medicare by cutting $500 billion, he has ignored the $30 billion in tort reform costs and over 80% like their health care coverage.
He should have gone with Wyden/Bennett and he would have been a winner. Now he will slowly slide in the polls and become irrelevant as a creature of a teleprompter who is unable to lead.
Liberals will keep blaming the GOP when the Dems have a super majority and have failed and failed badly.
Mike Protack
Obama can read polls. In this speech, he will throw a crumb to the left, and then attempt to re-package his radical health care agenda, and by so doing will, in reality, be acquiescing to the fact that his plan, as originally conceived, is dead in the water. In the East, this is known as ‘trying to save face.’
Don’t be silly. “The Left,” otherwise known as “people who can count,” are well aware that any plan that leaves the insurance companies in charge of payments is not a plan that will either save money or improve health care. This is not how and has never been a “leftist” plan; single-payer would be. It was taken off the table before the discussions even began.
Your inability to gauge the center is, once again, your problem, not ours.
Mike Protack: Have you ever put your political acumen to the test — and actually passed? Let’s see, your strategy of stealing the Independent Party gubernatorial nomination to bolster your chances of winning the Republican nomination. That failed spectacularly. Your constant challenges to the GOP leadership; that hasn’t worked out so great, either. REally, none of your moves has panned out. Yet you have the cojones to pontificate about the political strategies of people who not only have actually achieved what, for you, remains unachievable — elective office — but the highest elective office in the land? That, my friend, is the new working definition of having more balls than brains.
Geezer,
I think they do this (they being that side) to merely irritate people in the hopes that this side calls it quits. If you look at most if not all the posting from that side, it’s usually very, very confrontational… Words such as “Face it”, “Failed”, “Failure” etc. It’s a play to try and counter the growing support that Obama is actually getting.
BTW Mike, It’s better to be a creature of a teleprompter than a moron who can’t read and can’t pronounce the word “Nuclear”.
You know you have won the argument with liberals when the personal attacks start. Thanks, I won and you lost.
For the idiotic argument about stealing the Independent Party nomination you are calling Chancellor Chandler an idiot as when someone stupidly challenged the process in Chancery Court he ruled in my favor.
The Teleprompter disguised as a President, Obama is a massive failure at everything he has attempted as President, everything. It is a liberal MO to always transfer the argument away from their shortcomings and inadequacies to cast apersions against someone else. Even better to be a coward and do them behind a keyboard with an annoymous name.
Keep railing behind a fake name and brag how manly you are when in the light of day you have no argument and you have false cojones.
Thanks, Mike Protack
You know you have won the argument … when the personal attacks start
Like referring to someone as old gum under your shoe?
In the meantime, keep on challenging Geezer. This ought to be fun.
Thanks, I won and you lost.
Savor it…
Mike,
That’s the beauty of the internet is that we can be anonymous. We don’t have to justify ourselves to you, rather it’s the other way around that’s why you’re still posting here. If the President is TRULY, TRULY a failure, then why keep posting about it? I’m not the one running for public office and for the record, as far as “personal attacks” is concerned, my comment was about Bush not you as such that we were comparing “Heroes” here. I won’t stoop though to the nonsense that you’re trying to goad everyone into.
It just goes to show that you really have nothing as far as solid arguments when it comes to “proving” your point about Barack. Being in office for 8 months, I don’t see a failure…
Obama is a massive failure at everything he has attempted as President, everything. — Mike Protack
Really? The Wall Street Journal (not exactly known for spreading left wing propaganda) disagrees.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125185379218478087.html
Mike Protack – if you are unhappy when the economy comes roaring back, you are welcome to quit your job and turn your house in for foreclosure, if it would make you feel any better.
“You know you have won the argument with liberals when the personal attacks start.”
It wasn’t a personal attack. It was a brief recount of your failed history of involvement with electoral politics. Given your inability to accomplish your goal, I believe people should take your track record into account when assessing your observations and recommendations.
“Thanks, I won and you lost.”
Yes, I realize this is what motivates conservatives — “winning” arguments. Especially when they can’t win elective office.
“For the idiotic argument about stealing the Independent Party nomination you are calling Chancellor Chandler an idiot as when someone stupidly challenged the process in Chancery Court he ruled in my favor.”
I don’t care whether your stole it or not. The point is that it was an incredibly pointless maneuver, didn’t do what you thought it would to help your candidacy, and you stabbed them in the back to boot by withdrawing your name when it was too late for them to turn to someone else. This speaks to your character, which is as low as any elected official in the state, with the possible exception of Anthony DeLuca.
“The Teleprompter disguised as a President, Obama is a massive failure at everything he has attempted as President, everything.”
This was answered quite well by Scott P. See above.
“It is a liberal MO to always transfer the argument away from their shortcomings and inadequacies to cast apersions against someone else.”
I have not noticed that this MO is bound by political leanings. In your case, as noted above, I feel you are casting yourself as someone knowledgeable not just of public issues but political strategy. Indeed, your original post was content-free except for its animus towards Obama. And, obviously, if someone else were making those arguments, I could not cast aspersions on that person’s lack of demonstrated ability at interpreting political events. So it’s not an all-purpose argument, Mike — it’s just against you.
“Even better to be a coward and do them behind a keyboard with an annoymous name.”
As I have explained here before, I am specifically barred by my employer from using my real name.
“Keep railing behind a fake name and brag how manly you are”
Please show me where I have bragged about how manly I am. I neither consider my manly nor brag about that which I”m not. Unlike the other person in this conversation.
“when in the light of day you have no argument”
Wrong. My argument is with you. You are a pox on the Delaware body politic, and I am the vaccine.
“and you have false cojones.”
The day I let you touch my cojones, Skyboy, is the day after I”m dead.
when you call, ask for the Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, the Whitehouse’s Resident Truther.
Yeah! You can have my cojones when you pry them out of my cold dead hands! …. Wait a minute. That doesn’t sound quite right. Nevermind.
I see someone has been studying up on their Glenn Beck Talking Point of the Day. Now, you do realize that this is not like those gas station bumper stickers, right. If a FOX employee catches you using them, you’re not going to win free Glenn Beck for life or anything.
Washington’s Willy Loman
He’s liked but not well-liked, and he’s got a deal for you on some insurance.
By JAMES TARANTO
He’s the Willy Loman of health care. No one’s buying what he’s selling, so President Obama is trying yet another pitch: a speech to a joint session of Congress next Wednesday.
“Administration officials said [yesterday] that Mr. Obama would be more specific than he has been to date about what he wants included in the plan,” the New York Times reports:
Doing so amounts to an acknowledgment that the president’s prior tactic of laying out broad principles and leaving Congress to fill in the details was no longer working and that Mr. Obama needed to become more personally involved in shaping the outcome.
But the officials said Mr. Obama was unlikely to unveil a detailed legislative plan of his own. And they insisted that Mr. Obama had not given up on the provision that has attracted the most fire from the right, a proposal for a government-run competitor to private insurers, although many Democrats say the proposal may eventually be jettisoned.
…..
so more specific, but no detailed plan…
Ahh, James Taranto. I’ll post a quote from him from a few days ago, and let everyone decide how much stock they want to put into what he says.
And funny thing, I could have sworn it was Congress that wrote legislation. I’ll have to go back and read that Constitution thing.
Sad reality, if you hide behind a name why take you serious in any way? If your employer won’t let you use your name, are they ashamed of what you say?
Obama’s ‘malaise’ speech on the 9th will be interesting. I can hardly wait for the hope and change rendition with a bit of Kennedy nostalgia to go with it.
Please keep up the personal attacks, the rants grant me the humor one needs to make life enjoyable.
Mike Protack
Remember he said he wouldn’t sign any bill without a Public option, I along with others is holding him to this statement. If he fails to act he will be just another weak leader.
If the plan doesn’t at least have a strong public option, I will call my Senators and demand they vote against it. If either of them vote for it, I will punish them the next time they run for election by voting Green.
It is my inalienable right as an American to have government provided healthcare. I will fight back against any corrupt politician who tries to deny me my basic right.
Look to my coming, at first light, on the fifth day. At dawn, look to the East
Good old Mike P got his ass kicked by a drunken chicken farmer.
No, I won and you lost. You have proven my point in spades.
Anonymous names behind a keyboard who have no courage to lay out any ideas at all.
The public option is a government option and Obama’s scary and disorganized ideas have been rejected by more than one half of America.
Like I said, Obama has saved the GOP. Obama is completely devoid of any leadership abilities.
Mike Protack
“Sad reality, if you hide behind a name why take you serious in any way?”
Because you know who I am, and you can’t refute the facts of what you are — a self-centered jerk who used IPOD for his little fantasy of running for office, then left the people who helped you stranded at the side of the road because you have no personal integrity at all.
“If your employer won’t let you use your name, are they ashamed of what you say?”
I owe you no explanation beyond what I already have offered. Besides, you need me more than I need you.
“Obama’s ‘malaise’ speech on the 9th will be interesting. I can hardly wait for the hope and change rendition with a bit of Kennedy nostalgia to go with it.”
Take notes, Skyboy. I’ve heard you speak. You could use some lessons.
“Please keep up the personal attacks, the rants grant me the humor one needs to make life enjoyable.”
Uh-huh. Sure they do. Because you’re shown yourself to be SO mature in the face of setbacks before. Did you laugh a lot the day you told IPOD to go fuck themselves?
“Medical Foibles” – numbers are ignored. The ratio of doctors to population has decreased in my life span. Half the med school populations are now female – where are the other males. Study after study has found women doctors tend to work 20% to 25% fewer hours then their male counterparts.
There are “Physics Foibles” – Chaos, Entropy, Heisenberg Uncertainty and Godel Incompleteness. Recognizing the physics foibles has led to greater understanding. Physics believes in numbers “the supreme court of science”.