- excerpt- BOSTON-AP-His health care plan in peril, President Barack Obama laid on a last-minute campaign trip to Massachusetts for Democrat Martha Coakley on Sunday with polls showing her struggling in an unexpectedly close race against Republican Scott Brown to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy's Senate seat.
Vice President Joe Biden, trying to turn the focus of the race away from the president's embattled health care bill, joined the fray, sending an e-mail to Democrats assailing the Republican candidate for opposing Obama's just-announced plan to tax large Wall Street firms.
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Hey Hot Wind,
I'd love to see the ratio of how much time is used campaigning opposed to actual work. If theses folks would spend more time working instead of running around, shaking hands, kissing babies and stealing lollipops, the results from their hard word would negate a lot of the campaigning they need to do to save their jobs.
- Jobless Taxpayer
~~~~~~~~~~~and yet another reader on the mess in Mass : ~~~~~~~~~~
-excerpt- Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Democrats face the possibility of losing their most iconic U.S. Senate seat, held for almost 47 years by the late Edward Kennedy, in a Massachusetts election today that could also cost them their 60-vote Senate supermajority needed to help pass a health-care overhaul.
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Prof. Hot Wind,
Boy, what a show. This Massachusetts senate seat is making for some heavy political reporting this morning. Ms. Coakley (D) vs. Mr. Brown (R). To paraphrase Ms. Coakley, “We took it upon ourselves to take on the Taliban in Afghanistan and now they’re gone”. OK, she’s a little out of touch with that issue. Here’s the killer. She said something about this particular senate seat is ours, the democrats. It’s been ours since 1952. Wrong. And Brown exploited that remark perfectly in saying the seat belonged to the people.
I’ve been tracking this on MSNBC. The buzz is that if this seat is lost to the Republicans it will bring down the Obama Administration. Don’t you just love the blame game?
- Restless in Lever Pulling America
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Dear Jobless and Restless,
A short while ago you wrote to me about your frustration with Obama and the Congress, both accused of wasting too much time in front of the camera or on a jet to the next photo-op. You concluded that this pointless time away from their desks was exactly why the problems of the country are festering in a malaise, allowed to stall and decay while our elected officials preoccupy themselves and the nation with a sexier, more scintillating narrative of the nobility-class Socialite, always in demand and on the go.
The logistics involved in successfully moving a single report/bill from Obama's "in-box" to his "out-box" however involves factors way beyond the door frame of the Oval Office, (and I don't mean clearing brush in Crawford, Texas). This is the primary achievement of our founding fathers, who feared the rulings of such legislation by one individual could jeopardize the public's right to oversee and "contribute" to the process of decision making and hide any traces of artificial, self serving calculation. This is the fundamental difference between a democracy/republic and a dictatorship/monarchy.
Availability to health insurance is the greatest factor seperating one set of Americans, the more affluent whose access to preventative health maintenance is secure, from their remaining countrymen for whom these services are financially prohibitive. Preventative health care is key to explaining the relative value of these services within their context as moderately priced medical expenditures toward the prevention of progressive stages of serious, and more costly medical conditions. The second set of Americans whose access to these procedures is restricted because of insufficient financial resources will more likely require the inevitable increase in costs for avoidable treatments resulting from many years of ignored symptoms. Our government is usually expected to pick up the tab for these hardluck cases. A "considerable portion" of the cost of the new plan is expected to come from these hypothetical savings.
Obama is trying to erase the gap between these two classes of people for reasons which range from simple issues of common decency to figures which outline the potential cost effectiveness of preventative medical check-ups and treatment. The Congress, split down the middle is standing on his IV tube. The single vote in Massachussetts will either make or kill his chances to move our Health care system forward or keep the middle and lower class Americans out of the Insurance tent.
What good will sitting at his desk, staring at his In-box do for the Americans like yourself who need Insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions but can't even find a fucking job? Let him fly. Trust me, the free food and cocktails ain't worth the hassle . . .
Yet somehow, despite the stakes, the Democrats have set themselves up with a another loser with a miserable track record to tend goal. You have every right to be amused at the drama, but with so much going on right now, shouldn't Obama be forgiven for delegating this campaign to the Massachussetts Democratic party? What a complete cluster-fuck of errors. Sometimes I honestly feel bad for the guy.
- Prof. Hot Wind
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