The President discusses the state of the economy amidst positive signs from the GDP. Making clear that this is little comfort to those struggling, he notes that we appear to have averted an even worse disaster and offers hope for the time ahead.

GOP hypocrisy on health plan

Chattanooga Times Free Press, August 3rd, 2009

If there were any doubt where Republicans in Congress stand on health care reform, their position should be abundantly clear by now. But if you haven’t been listening, here’s a hint: They’re all about protecting the big profits of the greedy giants in the medical industry, and not concerned a whit about changing the system to benefit the 90 percent of Americans who struggle with soaring health care costs while their coverage falls off the cliff.

Here’s how you can measure where the Republicans stand:

* They are body and soul for keeping the status-quo that chiefly benefits for-profit insurance giants. This is the industry that has doubled the price of health insurance in the past eight years; that heartlessly denies claims with every technicality they can find; that regularly forces even supposedly well-covered insured patients into medical bankruptcy; that cherry-picks the healthy and charges far more for individual coverage than for group plans; and that has forced health care providers to hire legions of office workers solely to contest insurers’ denials for claims and treatment recommendations. (Then they have the nerve to run scare-talk ads about “bureaucrats controlling your doctor’s decisions.”) More…

The GOP’s New Health-Care Alternative. Join the Line

Time Magazine, August 4th, 2009

House Republicans on Wednesday introduced their official alternative health-care-reform plan. Well, kind of. It’s not the official alternative, but it has the support of the leadership. And sure, some leaders may support other alternative bills out there, but this one also has the support of the top Republicans on the relevant committees. Oh, wait — some of them may also support other bills. But in any case, all this should remind you that the GOP does really stand for something.

Let’s leave aside for the moment that this plan was a four-page exercise in public relations that left out how many of the 47 million uninsured Americans would be covered, how it would be paid for or even how much it would cost. The plan — and the four others introduced by Republicans in the House and five more in the Senate — is indicative of how the GOP is handling Democratic efforts to pass universal health care: death by a thousand paper cuts. More…

Huffington Post, August 10th, 2009

Gabrielle Giffords Town Hall: Guns in evidence

Town hall disruptions around the country have led to some outbreaks of violence. Unions participating in town halls have received death threats. At an event held by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) last week, the threat of violence led her aides to call the police after one attendee dropped a gun.

“Yelling and screaming is counterproductive,” she told the Sierra Vista Herald at a Congress on Your Corner event last week. There, one visitor dropped a gun at the meet n’ greet held in a Douglas Safeway, her staff says.

That has aides, who called police to the event, concerned for her safety.

“We have never felt the need before to notify law enforcement when we hold these events,” said spokesman C.J. Karamargin.

One of the callers to the Service Employees International Union said, “I suggest you tell your people to calm down, act like American citizens, and stop trying to repress people’s First Amendment rights [Free Speech] … That, or you all are gonna come up against the Second Amendment [Gun Rights].”

Personally I’m more scared of profit-driven insurance executives out to make a buck off my grandmother.

Washington Post, August 15th, 2009

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — President Barack Obama on Saturday criticized what he termed as the “scare tactics” of opponents to health care reform. He told a town hall meeting “what is truly scary is if we do nothing” to solve the nation’s health care problems.

Obama said Americans no longer should be “held hostage by health insurance companies” that deny coverage for various reasons.

And he attempted to deflect some of the sharpest criticism of the health care bill before Congress from those who say it would mean government control over health care system.

“I don’t want government bureaucrats meddling in our health care – but the point is I don’t want insurance companies’ bureaucrats meddling in our health care either,” Obama declared, unleashing a cheer from the audience.

Obama’s focus on insurance companies, a theme of earlier town hall meetings in Montana and New Hampshire as well in recent days, was an attempted to regain the upper hand in the health care debate and deflect the impact of increasing vocal and organized critics.  More…

Watch the video from Huffington Post as Obama slams “dishonest” Republican critics like Grassley, Palin and others who lie about Death Panels

Dear President Obama,

I feel that you have betrayed us. The news over the weekend that you are abandoning the public option is an absolute disgrace.

Right now, if there is NO health care reform, then no one’s situation has changed. If, on the other hand, the Federal government endorses some plan to “stuff” public money into insurance companies (i.e. subsidize some people’s insurance premiums) then we all lose.

Reform without a public option is no reform.

Health care reform must address the cost issue or you betray us all.

I was a loyal supporter. I gave money. I gave hundreds of hours phoning and walking. I gave all my energies for two years to elect you.

But understand this Mr. Obama, I am a LIBERAL before I am a democrat. Don’t mess with us….

Sincerely, Mark Griffith

Huffington Post, August 18th, 2009

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow went hard after President Obama Monday night for his willingness to give up a public health care option.

Noting that health insurance stocks did great Monday even as the rest of the market slipped, she asked, “How did we get here? how did we get to the foretold death of the public option and UnitedHealth awesome Monday on Wall Street? We got here through a collapse of political ambition and the resultant downgrading of expectations for this once in a lifetime, stars-aligned political shot at fixing the system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy.”

More…

Organizing for America announces nationwide conference call in response to outpouring of frustration.

In response to an avalanche of emails, phone calls and negative feelings from Liberals, Organizing for America (Obama’s campaign group) announced a national phone confercerence to be held Thrusday, August 20th at 2:30pm Eastern Time (11:30am here in Arizona). Obama will be talking about health care reform and plans “to update us on the fight to pass real health insurance reform — what’s happening in D.C. and what’s happening around the country. He’ll lay out our strategy and message going forward and answer questions from supporters like you. And we’ll unveil the next actions we’ll organize together.”

If you want to participate in the call, you must sign up (RSVP) at a particular website and OFA will call your telephone number on Thursday morning.

Click this link to be taken to the OFA website where you will need to provide your email address, zip code, and a phone number where you’ll receive the call.

Analysis: Liberals tired of health care compromise

Associated Press, August 18th, 2009

WASHINGTON – Frustrated liberals have a question for President Barack Obama and Democratic lawmakers: Isn’t it time the other guys gave a little ground on health care? What’s the point of a bipartisan bill, they ask, if we’re making all the concessions?

A case in point:

Sen. Charles Grassley, a key Republican negotiator on health care, was on a winning streak as Congress recessed for August, having wrung important concessions from Democrats, including an agreement not to tax employer-provided health insurance and a limit to demands on drug companies.

How did Grassley reciprocate? With an attack that struck Democrats as stunning and baseless. Grassley told an Iowa crowd he would not support a plan that “determines when you’re going to pull the plug on Grandma.” The remark echoed conservative activists who wrongly claim a House health care bill would require Medicare recipients to discuss their end-of-life plans with doctors.

For liberals supporting far-reaching changes to the nation’s health care system, it was another sign that months of negotiations have been a one-way street. It’s time to move on without Republicans, they say. More…

Red Orbit.com, August 20th, 2009

July Global Ocean Temperatures Reach Record High

Average ocean surface temperatures reached an all-time high in July, according to a new US agency report. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center reported Thursday that the average global ocean temperature reached 62.6 degrees in July – replacing the previous high temperature record set in 1998.

The combined average of global land and surface temperature during July ranked fifth in the overall warmest since records began in 1880, according to the Asheville, N.C.-based NCDC. Last month, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature reached 1.03 degrees F above the 20th century average of 60.4 degrees F.

Ocean surface temperature in July was 1.06 degrees F above the 20th century average of 61.5 degrees F.

Additionally, the global land surface temperature rose 0.92 degree F above the 20th century average of 57.8 degrees F. It also tied the figures from 2003 as the ninth-warmest July on record.

“The greatest departures from the long-term average were evident in Europe, northern Africa, and much of western North America,” said the NCDC. “Broadly, across these regions, temperatures were about 4-7 degrees F (2-4 degrees C) above average.” More…

New York Times, August 21st, 2009

Our view: if the moral problem of universal coverage is to be solved, we must address overall cost and apportion the benefits fairly. Stuffing public money into insurance companies is not acceptable.

According to news reports, the Obama administration — which seemed, over the weekend, to be backing away from the “public option” for health insurance — is shocked and surprised at the furious reaction from progressives.

Well, I’m shocked and surprised at their shock and surprise.

A backlash in the progressive base — which pushed President Obama over the top in the Democratic primary and played a major role in his general election victory — has been building for months. The fight over the public option involves real policy substance, but it’s also a proxy for broader questions about the president’s priorities and overall approach.

The idea of letting individuals buy insurance from a government-run plan was introduced in 2007 by Jacob Hacker of Yale, was picked up by John Edwards during the Democratic primary, and became part of the original Obama health care plan.

One purpose of the public option is to save money. Experience with Medicare suggests that a government-run plan would have lower costs than private insurers; in addition, it would introduce more competition and keep premiums down. {Editor’s note: Single payer would, of course, introduce a direct competitor to private insurance thereby driving down everyone’s cost}

And let’s be clear: the supposed alternative, nonprofit co-ops, is a sham. That’s not just my opinion; it’s what the market says: stocks of health insurance companies soared on news that the Gang of Six senators trying to negotiate a bipartisan approach to health reform were dropping the public plan. Clearly, investors believe that co-ops would offer little real competition to private insurers.

Also, and importantly, the public option offered a way to reconcile differing views among Democrats. Until the idea of the public option came along, a significant faction within the party rejected anything short of true single-payer, Medicare-for-all reform, viewing anything less as perpetuating the flaws of our current system. The public option, which would force insurance companies to prove their usefulness or fade away, settled some of those qualms. More…

Salon.com, August 25th, 2009

Feingold: No healthcare reform before Christmas, if ever

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., has got to be frustrated by the process surrounding the healthcare reform proposals in Congress. While people like Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, get all the attention, liberals like him are left out of the public discussion. (In the House, the liberals are more influential than in the Senate, where the crucial votes are more likely to come from the center.)

The senator showed some of that frustration recently, telling constituents recently, “Nobody is going to bring a bill before Christmas, and maybe not even then, if this ever happens. The divisions are so deep. [I've] never seen anything like that.”

According to the Lakeland Times, Feingold later added, “We’re headed in the direction of doing absolutely nothing, and I think that’s unfortunate.” More…