Really. President Obama has gone out of his REACH to be accomodating to Republicans continuously and have gotten all the crap we saw from that party over the summer. He has bent over backwards to try to be inclusive but the Republicans refuse to work with President Obama and Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is telling the President, "Don't start an enemies list."
Mr. Alexander, you need to tell that to your own members of your party than the President of the United States. Oh, Mr. Alexander, the public understands and knows that President Obama has tried, but you and your party, not so much.
A top Senate Republican invoked the memory of the scandal-marred Nixon administration on Wednesday to urge President Barack Obama: "Don't start an enemies list."
Senator Lamar Alexander told Reuters he sees the Obama White House adopting an attitude similar to that of the Richard Nixon White House four decades ago, that "everybody is against us and we are going to get them."
Alexander cited as examples the Obama administration threatening to strip the insurance industry of its exemption of federal anti-trust laws, "taking names" of bondholders who opposed the auto bailout, its reported aim to "neuter the U.S. Chamber of Commerce," boycotting Fox News Network and "calling out" of others who oppose it. read more here...
Attempting to paint Barack Obama with the Nixon paint brush is very broad indeed, so broad that it reeks on the ridiculous side. The whole Republican agenda would be valued and warranted if they had any "new ideas", something that they have been very vacant of. Through this health care debate we have gotten nothing but "I want America back", Obama = Hitler, "Don't take my Medicare", bithers, teabaggers, right wingers, but Mr. Alexander has been silent through out all of this. But now, he wants relevance and want to remind President Obama not to get enemies?
Good luck on that one, Mr. Alexander. Mr. Obama already has enemies and the bulk of them we saw on display all summer long, from your party.
Earlier today, a legislative staffer forwarded well-known West Tennessee blogger Newscomaa picture they had been sent from another staffer. It's supposed to be an "historical keepsake photo" of the Presidents. But no picture of President Obama--instead, just a "spook."
The Republican Party is continuing to fall down a very long and narrow rabbit hole, one that will be hard to get out. These types of images, statements are directly reflective of the people running around in the Republican Party.
If they think that many Americans share this disgusting view, think again, they do not. After what happened at the Holocaust Museum, one would believe we need to step back, but no, the GOP is just ramping it up for all to see and listen to.
This is racism, hatred, pure and simple. The full story of this disgust, here.
..it was a Democratic governor who would succeed in enacting the most sweeping cuts: Phil Bredesen of Tennessee. Bredesen knew a thing or two about health care: before getting into politics, he had made his fortune by founding a company called HealthAmerica—one of the fi rst commercial HMOs to cash in on managed care during the late 1980s. This experience, plus his confi dence in his own intellectual abilities (he had a physics degree from Harvard), convinced him that he could wring new efficiencies from Tennessee’s Medicaid system, just as his HMO had generated financial savings—and hefty profits—in the private market.
A lot of what Bredesen proposed to do—such as reducing fraud by providers and recipients, and improving the use of information technology—made sense. But when those quick fixes didn’t bring the TennCare budget under control, he unveiled a more straightforward plan: he would simply slash the program. More than 100,000 people who had qualified for TennCare because they were “medically needy” would lose their coverage altogether. Those allowed to remain in the program would have to make do with more limited benefi ts. The biggest change would be in the coverage of prescription drugs. “The sad reality is that we can’t afford TennCare in its current form,” Bredesen said. “It pains me to set this process in motion, but I won’t let TennCare bankrupt our state. This is the option of last resort.
Another thought on Bredesen which should have many turn on the light bulb:
That's not the only reason Bredesen worries me, though. Another concern is characterological. He is typical of the top figures in the health industry I've met over the years: Self-made entrepreneurs a bit too convinced of their own brilliance, completely unaware that the strategies for making private insurers profitable don't help--and often hurt--the sicker, poorer people whom insurance should ideally protect. Their biggest fans are often people who know a ton about health care at the macro level, but haven't spent much time observing it on the ground--where reality is often messier than the statistics suggest.
[snip]
Put Bredesen in the room, where he can offer insights. But at the helm of HHS or health care reform? Sorry, no.
This job right now, in this country is the goldfish in the bowl that everyone is looking at. Health care costs in this country is also a part of the economic problem right now. Costs do need to be reeled in, but folks need to be COVERED and I mean, yesterday.
I have a look-see on this potential Bredesen. For me, right now, too close to the insurance industry. Remember, it is the insurance industry that changed medical care for millions of Americans in this country, and not for the better.
Barack post debate, Belmont University, Nashville, TN
••
A very low road campaign
First off, McCain addressing Obama as "That One", extremely poor taste.
Now, let's talk about the McCain/Palin Campaign.
There have been several instances documented by persons of the media that has happened at the McCain/Palin rallies across this country. These instances are very disturbing and should and be put at the feet of the candidates on the ballot.
And of course, that sheriff in Lee County, Florida, garnered in his sheriff attire, calling "Barack Hussein Obama", apparently in trouble.
Palin has been the typical hatchet job, ax murderer candidate when it comes to smears. She has been pumping and touting the William Ayers angle, which has been debunked by every news organization out there. But the worst part of this is that when these supporters at her campaign events and McCain's campaign events say words like these, the candidates say nothing.
These words are intended to incite people and is unnecessary, but more importantly dangerous. McCain stood there while a supporter called Barack Obama a "terrorist", now if I heard it through the television clearly, McCain heard it.
John McCain is losing, the ship is sinking fast. Sarah Palin is a sock puppet; she will say or do anything the campaign tells her to do. She delivers the lines and most of the time don't know what the hell she is talking about.
People in this country, after watching the debate last night, are worried to death about the future of this country. They are watching their 401Ks shrink, pensions destroyed, and no money for anything, wondering if there are jobs in the future and if you will lose the one you got.
These are serious times, which requires serious people.
John McCain and Sarah Palin can take their nastiness, distraction tactics, and juvenile antics somewhere else. If they cannot discuss the issues at hand, on the table with the American People, they don't deserve the highest two offices in this land, period.
I will leave you with the Editorial Board of The New York Times and what their take is on this:
....In a way, we should not be surprised that Mr. McCain has stooped so low, since the debate showed once again that he has little else to talk about. He long ago abandoned his signature issues of immigration reform and global warming; his talk of “victory” in Iraq has little to offer a war-weary nation; and his Reagan-inspired ideology of starving government and shredding regulation lies in tatters on Wall Street.
But surely, Mr. McCain and his team can come up with a better answer to that problem than inciting more division, anger and hatred.
Joe Biden was all about sports metaphors today, bragging to voters that Barack Obama has won the first two presidential debates and that he bested Republican rival Sarah Palin in their only face-off last week.
"If this were a best of five series, it'd be over," Biden said in Tampa, Fla.
While McCain during the town hall in Nashville went for a second 90-minute debate without mentioning the middle class, Obama again showed his calm command of what the country needs, Biden said.
That's what voters want, he said, "not an angry man lurching from one position to another" or "unbecoming personal attacks" on Obama.
"You didn't hear one single average person ask about that," Biden said.
He said that McCain's campaign is raising ugly fears with the veiled question of who the real Obama is. Palin, in particular, is raising "outrageous inferences" about Obama.
"This is beyond disappointing," Biden said. "This is wrong."
Biden urged voters not to be distracted by the attacks, saying that McCain is taking the "low road" because he's part and parcel of President Bush's failed policies.
When you vote with Bush 95 percent of the time, it's not surprising that nearly all of McCain's ads are negative, Biden said.
Reeling off a one liner, he declared, "You can't be a maverick if all you've ever been is a sidekick."
••
Part of Joe Biden's Speech in Fort Myers, FL and the politics of fear
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