Some days, "health care" is a moment: a speech, a vote, a heartbreaking story. Today, it is a series of anecdotes which, taken together, still lead to "crapshoot".
First, we have Nancy Pelosi on the Sunday shows saying that she'll have the votes in the House to pass health care. But, voting for the bill might cost several reps their seats. If, in fact, there were a bill, which there isn't. She seems confident that while there are major differences between the House and Senate, a compromise will be able to be reached. One that will seemingly need to pass the Senate via reconciliation.
Then, Barack Obama had a physical yesterday. He's in good health. Still having a bit of trouble with tobacco, but they told him to stay on the gum. A physical. Something so easy for those of us with health insurance, and such a pipe dream for those of us who don't. To the best of my knowledge (although I'm certainly willing to be wrong) there is no law that mandates a president must have a physical. IMAGINE the leadership had President Obama said that he would forgo any and all physicals for himself and his family until all families could have preventative care via a true health reform bill. Imagine the power of that. The commitment. The honour. Leading by example.
Meanwhile, we have the White House, via Nancy DeParle, saying the Obama administration wants a straight up or down vote. And indicating they'll help push it through that way.
Remember, this is the Senate that has 290 House bills already waiting for a vote. The one led by Harry Reid who split the jobs bill, pulled out the unemployment extension, passed the corporate part, and then allowed Jim Bunning to hold everyone hostage Friday night so that today 1.2 million Americans lose that part of the safety net. THAT Senate.
We all understand the need for health reform to pass, in some form, for political reasons. Believe it or not, even the Republicans want some form of health reform to pass. No, I'm not misspeaking: the difference is that most (NOT ALL) Democrats want some form of reform to pass which actually makes the situation better for actual Americans. The Republicans want something to pass which makes things worse.
In all of this, the thing I find most interesting is the idea that Pelosi believes that she can whip her members to get something passed that will cost them their livelihood. I wonder if she would be willing to give up her seat to pass health care. If she wouldn't, she'll never be able to convince someone else to. It is once again a matter of leadership. One of the things that could have been done a while back would have been for those Reps and Senators who believe in reform to opt out of government coverage (remember, they all have health care paid for by OUR tax dollars) until every American has the options they do. Again, incredibly powerful. To the best of my knowledge, there is only one person who has done that, but I just can't remember his name. If memory serves, he's a doctor from Wisconsin serving in the House.
33% strongly approve (was last higher in mid-September)
50% total approval (was last higher in mid-November)
38% strongly disapprove (was last lower in mid-November)
49% total disapproval (was last lower in mid-November)
Interestingly, the biggest part of the bump didn't show up until the weekend. Either it took a while for the effect of the State of the Union to reverberate, or the bigger influence was the Q & A with the Republican members of Congress on Friday.
So is this just a bounce that will fade in a few weeks, or does it represent the beginning of a turnaround for the Obama administration?
Yesterday, President Obama smacked down the House Republicans. In GRAND style. If you haven't seen it, click here for the video. For a lot of us who elected Obama in part because he is brilliant, this is the best kind of payback: he was prepared for anything they could throw at him. He had complete control of facts and figures. He didn't dodge, he didn't equivocate. I don't know of a time in American history when a president went to a function like this, completely unscripted, fully televised (by everyone except Fox) stared down the opposition, and put them in their collective place.
He even spoke truth. Well, except for one thing.
There was an arrest outside the GOP House gathering.
Dr. Margaret Flowers and Dr. Carol Paris were carrying a sign that said: Just Letting You Know: Medicare for All.
"We were on the hotel property holding our sign," Dr. Flowers said. "The Secret Service said we had to go across the street. We said we would go across the street if our letter was delivered to the President. The Secret Service said that wasn't possible. They said if we didn't go across the street we would be arrested. We refused to leave because we didn't want to continue to be excluded, marginalized and ignored. And they arrested us."
This is the letter they wanted delivered:
President Barack Obama 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear President Obama,
I was overjoyed to hear you say in your State of the Union address on Wednesday night:
"But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know."
My colleagues, fellow health advocates and I have been trying to meet with you for over a year now because we have an approach which will meet all of your goals and more.
I am a pediatrician who, like many of my primary care colleagues, left practice because it is nearly impossible to deliver high quality health care in this environment. I have been volunteering for Physicians for a National Health Program ever since. For over a year now, I have been working with the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care/National Single Payer Alliance. This alliance represents over 20 million people nationwide from doctors to nurses to labor, faith and community groups who advocate on behalf of the majority of Americans, including doctors, who favor a national Medicare-for-All health system.
I felt very optimistic when Congress took up health care reform last January because I remember when you spoke to the Illinois AFL-CIO in June, 2003 and said:
"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program." (applause) "I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."
And that is why I was so surprised when the voices of those who support a national single-payer plan/Medicare-for-All were excluded in place of the voices of the very health insurance and pharmaceutical industries which profit off the current health care situation.
There was an opportunity this past year to create universal and financially sustainable health care reform rather than expensive health insurance reform. As you well know, the United States spends the most per capita on health care in the world yet leaves millions of people out and receives poor return on those health care dollars in terms of health outcomes and efficiency. This poor value for our health care dollar is due to the waste of having so many insurance companies. At least a third of our health care dollars go towards activities that have nothing to do with health care such as marketing, administration and high executive salaries and bonuses. This represents over $400 billion per year which could be used to pay for health care for all of those Americans who are suffering and dying from preventable causes.
The good news is that it doesn't have to be this way. You said that you wanted to "keep what works" and that would be Medicare. Medicare is an American legacy of which we can feel proud. It has guaranteed health security to all who have it. Medicare has lifted senior citizens out of poverty. Health disparities, which are rising in this nation, begin to disappear as soon as patients reach 65 years of age. And patients and doctors prefer Medicare to private insurance. Why, our Medicare has even been used as a model by other nations which have developed and implemented universal health systems.
Mr. President, we wanted to meet with you because we have the solution to health care reform. The United States has enough money already and we have the resources, including esteemed experts in public health, health policy and health financing. Our very own Dr. William Hsiao at Harvard has designed health systems in five other countries.
I am asking you to meet with me because the solution is simple. Remove all of the industries who profit off of the American health care catastrophe from the table. Replace them with those who are knowledgeable in designing health systems and who are without ties to the for-profit medical industries. And then allow them to design an improved Medicare-for-All national health system. We can implement it within a year of designing such a system.
What are the benefits of doing this?
It will save tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of American lives each year, not to mention the prevention of unnecessary suffering.
It will relieve families of medical debt, which is the number one cause of bankruptcy and foreclosure despite the fact that most of those who experienced bankruptcy had health insurance.
It will relieve businesses of the growing burden of skyrocketing health insurance premiums so that they can invest in innovation, hiring, increased wages and other benefits and so they can compete in the global market.
It will control health care costs in a rational way through global budgeting and negotiation for fair prices for pharmaceuticals and services.
It will allow patients the freedom to choose wherever they want to go for health care and will allow patients and their caregivers to determine which care is best without denials by insurance administrators.
It will restore the physician-patient relationship and bring satisfaction back to the practice of medicine so that more doctors will stay in or return to practice.
It will allow our people in our nation to be healthy and productive and able to support themselves and their families.
It will create a legacy for your administration that may someday elevate you to the same hero status as Tommy Douglas has in Canada.
Mr. President, there are more benefits, but I believe you get the point. I look forward to meeting with you and am so pleased that you are open to our ideas. The Medicare-for-All campaign is growing rapidly and is ready to support you as we move forward on health care reform that will provide America with one of the best health systems in the world. And that is something of which all Americans can be proud.
I want someone to explain to me why the administration won't even LISTEN to the idea of Single Payer. I understand what the president said to the IIE yesterday: that some things are political. He said that you couldn't promise to insure an additional 30 million people and undertake insurance reform and have it cost nothing. He could say that, he said, but it would be politics and not reality.
Single Payer is a bad political move, but it is a great reality move. I understand why it can't be implemented politically, but to not even take half an hour and hear a proposal? What is so frightening that those 30 minutes cannot be allocated?
President Obama put forth his first State of the Union Address last night. In case you missed it, or wish to read it and digest parts you may have missed, the full text is after the jump.
But there is something that President Obama didn't talk about, related to the economy. And that's NOT his fault. NO ONE ever talks about it. And it's the most important thing. More than the deficit. More than spending. More than taxes. Gene Steuerel and Tim Roeper call it the "Fiscal Democracy Index."
Imagine that you have a family budget. You earn X dollars a year, and you have Y dollars of required outgo (taxes, mortgage, etc.) and discretionary spending (food, dry cleaning, entertainment). If you have money left at the end of the year, you've run at a surplus, and if you have to rely on credit cards to pay for things, you end up with a deficit. The government is no different: taxes, fees, and bond sales are its income, everything else is outgo, and it borrows to deficit spend. You may wonder why I put "food" as a discretionary item, and it's important to the concept. If you go to the store to buy an apple, you're going to either pay cash or buy it on credit. If you buy it with cash, and eat it, that's straightforward. If you buy it with a credit card, that apple could easily cost double by the time you pay it off. If you have no cash or credit to buy an apple, you'll go hungry.
The Fiscal Democracy Index lists how much money is available to spend after every required outgo is paid for. It is how much money you have for an apple. And here is their chart:
That huge dip? The Iraq and Afghanistan wars. There is a lot of blame for that: perhaps 1,000 individual human beings, Americans all. Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, a number of generals and admirals, some neo-con advisers, and every member of Congress who voted to allocate money to the wars and related expenses. Some of those people are now dead. And still, we owe the money.
If you look at the chart moving forward, you'll notice that no matter how much we take in through taxes, fees, and bond sales, and no matter how much we cut from our current "apple purchases" we actually cannot 'get square' because of prior commitments. Borrowing won't help, printing more money won't help: until we address the base outgo requirements, we'll forever be in the hole.
We promised more: to Social Security, to Medicare, to Medicaid, in government contracts, in subsidies, etc., etc., etc., then we could ever pay. We, as a country, have done this for year. States complain about unfunded mandates, when it has truly been the greatest fiscal shame of administrations and congresses going back decades.
So we come to Barack Obama who is brilliant, and honestly means well in attempting to fix this mess. But one guy is going to need a lot of help in fixing things.
It will take not just what he talked about last night in terms of policy and program changes, as well as patience and the set-aside of cynicism - but people will have to take a hard look at what they pay, what they get, and what we really can do as a society to right the ship.
One of the major things would be to implement single payer health care. Once the profit motive is removed from 1/6th of our national budget, that's a whole sector healed. The second major action will be if we are truly out of Iraq by August, and out of Afghanistan in a year. And then, CUT military spending. It certainly can be done. The discretionary military budget is 11 times the mandatory side. How many times over do we really need to be able to obliterate the rest of the world?
First though, we have to talk about these things. We must be willing to slowly decrease previously promised benefits - like putting everyone on a diet whether they're overweight or not. If we ALL do with a little less, we can have a working economy (e.g. able to pay for apples with current coins) within Obama's term.
Of course, there goes your mortgage deduction. And the increases to Medicare Advantage. And ag subsidies, and arts programs, and foreign aid, and all sorts of other things we take for granted.
Still, you sleep better with money in the bank...and it's all a nightmare when the bill collectors never cease.
When I was a young girl, I read a book called The Secret Garden. In it, a little girl took a nap in India, and when she woke up, most everyone she loved had died of cholera, and she was sent to England. To her, an alien land. There was a lot more to that book, but the part that stays with me is her sense of waking up and everything being different.
I'm thinking I shouldn't have taken a nap this afternoon.
Last night I heard that Obama would be acting like a Republican (namely Herbert Hoover) tomorrow night in recommending that non-defense spending be held to 2010 levels for the last three years of his term. Stuff like that no longer makes me appalled, I have come to expect it. The president's abdication of the base is complete. It's a TERRIBLE idea, a stupid idea, and while I'm not angry, I am nauseated that Obama would play to the neo-con right this way.
Today, though, I read about his college plan, and I'm confused. REALLY confused. What I've read is that student loan payments would be capped at 10% of income for new grads, above a threshold for basic living expenses, and then after 20 years, the remainder of the debt would be forgiven. Can someone PLEASE explain that to me?
Here's what I'm looking at: borrow $50,000 for college, make payments of $100/month to start, eventually $200/month, and then after 20 years, the remaining $20,000 is forgiven. Does that make sense? Would YOU L-E-N-D someone money knowing it wasn't coming back? A grant, I would understand, but a loan that doesn't have to be repaid? And you, the lender, knows that upfront? Is it just me? Somehow we can't make the banks lend money to small businesses because the government "shouldn't" be involved in that, but we can let them make loans and then cap the repayment?
As if the President wasn't doing enough, you have the Senate, which is pushing anti-Bernanke forces to vote yes on cloture, and then they'll only need 50 to pass his re-confirmation. Like they couldn't have done that with a Public Option? It's Wall Street over Main Street AGAIN?
I'm going back to nap-time. Maybe when I wake up the past 24 hours will have been a bad dream.
In two days, the president will deliver his first State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress and to the nation. It will be a tricky speech, and it will be interesting to see to which audience President Obama speaks.
President Obama was in Elyria, Ohio a couple days ago, giving a veritable stump speech. You can view it here. If you loved him on the trail, you'll enjoy the Town Hall. He came off populist, which is new for him. Maybe he'll run that way during the State of the Union.
The White House has said that the State of the Union will focus on jobs. That can mean a lot of things, and it is truly a tightrope. Tricky.
"Jobs" can mean a tax policy which provides a payroll tax holiday on new employees to encourage businesses to hire additional workers. On the other side, it can be a CETA-like program which pays parts of salaries of new workers to the same end. The first is a Republican approach, the second is a Democratic approach. While they both accomplish the exact same thing, that is, a business pays fewer of its dollars for a new employee, the couching is completely different. Sadly, most people don't understand the reality vs. the spin.
"Jobs" can certainly mean other things, but it is beyond my imagination that Obama would suggest things like direct government employment a la TVA, CCC, etc. Nor that he would put forth a legitimate industrial policy. The latter would include, but not be limited to, government purchase of good exclusively made by American workers, and not American companies, a tax policy which gave preference to companies that utilized American workers, and the funneling of remaining stimulus funds to direct private sector jobs and not private sector companies.
So, his jobs policy can run right or left. Or it can be "campaign style" where there are a lot of lofty statements, but no detailed policy.
He will walk the same tightrope where deficits are concerned. Historians and left-wing economists contend that any governmental pullback now risks a replay of 1937, when FDR listened to deficit hawks and caused a second major dip. On the other side, you have people saying that the deficit will swallow us whole, and therefore we must cut spending. Note: those folks never want to cut money for war, corporate charity, or anything benefiting the rich and powerful, no no, these folks only want to cut money that helps our weakest citizens.
Again, left or right?
The election of Scott Brown has given many people fits. There are those who contend that his election said the government is too far left, and needs to pull back. Others say that the true lesson is that "change" has not gone far enough, and any change is better than none. Still others see it as a referendum on health reform, which is certainly how the Democratic Congressional leadership sees it. Point is, it means something, and it will filter into the tone and frame that Obama uses in his State of the Nation speech.
Obama has contended from the start that he wanted to be the President of all the people. It has been a constant theme from which he has not deviated. In this, his first State of the Union, he is the president of all the people, and the vast majority of them are angry. Strip away everything else, and what you have is a sense that things are not going well. For some, it's the same racist junk they've spewed all along, for others, buyers' remorse. But it's all anger all the same. For the past couple months, close to 60% of the nation believes it's heading in the wrong direction.
This speech is Obama's chance to "right the ship", as it were. Or "left the ship" - you get the idea.
There is no better orator today, and if anyone can find a way to hit just the right tone, it will be the president. But will that be enough, or will there need to be details? Obama has never gotten into trouble with details. Take closing Gitmo. He said he wanted it done in a year. He directed Congress to get it done. It didn't happen, but there is no doubt that closing Gitmo was his intention, foiled by others. If he clearly communicates policy, in terms most people can understand, complete with details of the precise outcomes he wants to see, the speech will be a winner. If he has a specific jobs policy, the politicos may not like it, but the people affected by the employment-population ratio currently at 58.2 percent, and in free fall, certainly will.
To accomplish this, Obama will have to aim his tightrope to the right or the left. A centrist tightrope hasn't worked for him, and won't this time, either. I'd like to poll whether you think he should run left or right, but my polling problem is down for maintenance. Floor is open..
If you're a regular reader, you know I know better than to even attempt anything relating to sports, but I actually DO know the difference between basketball and golf. Mostly because of the clothing: my recollection is that basketkball players have very long legs and very tight short shorts. Golfers wear plaid below their knees.
So, we know that candidate Obama played a lot of basketball on the campaign trail. That he had a mean game, he played with all sorts of different people, and he played publicly. Have you seen him playing recently? There was that one game of politicos, and a White House tennis court has been remade into a hoops court, but he doesn't seem to have been playing. The Wall Street Journal says Obama has played seven basketball games since becoming president.
Yup, WSJ - this is one of the articles on their FRONTPAGE today. (Yet another reason I read USA Today. No nonsense.)
WSJ says that President Obama, like 15 of the last 18 presidents, has been playing golf. They say he's played 25 times since taking office. And that NO ONE gets to watch. The WSJ spends the rest of the article dissing the President's golf game, taking shots at President Clinton's golf game, and goes on to lie about Shrub pretending to give up golf because of the soldiers serving in Iraq. I trust their sports reporting as much as I trust their other reporting: I found a bunch of pictures of Obama playing golf.
This a waste of dead trees: if the president wants to play golf, he's an American, let him play. If he wants to play basketball, fantastic. It pleases me that the right wingnut press has chosen this as something to place on their front page. I'm glad this is what Rupert Murdoch is sending his minions out to investigate. I wonder if he'll apply that "no error" thing to WSJ....they're related to Fox Noise.
For me, I am just confused since in the photos, he's playing basketball in long baggy pants, and he's lacking plaid on the golf course....
WASHINGTON – With the investigation into the tragedy at Fort Hood ongoing, President Barack Obama used his weekly address to call for a careful and complete review of what happened before the tragedy.
Remarks of President Barack Obama Weekly Address November 14, 2009
The Nobel Committee award the Peace Prize to President Obama for:
[H]is extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said. "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."
As a candidate, it was White Sox all the way. As President of these United States, would he keep that passion and loyalty or become more, um, national in outlook?
This Sunday and Monday, President Obama will be on six TV shows. If you think that's a record for a sitting president, you're right.
He'll be doing the Sunday morning shows on ABC, NBC, and CBS, and will sit for interviews with CNN and Univision. In addition, on Monday night, he'll be Dave Letterman's guest.
President Obama will be filming for Letterman on Monday afternoon, and will also that day address the United Nations and Bill Clinton's Global Foundation. By Tuesday, he'll be in Pittsburgh for the G-20. (By the way, a judge cleared the way for protests at the G-20.)
In the past, presidents have been on the Sunday shows, but before now, no president did them all in one day. Obama will also be the first sitting president to do Dave.
By way of trivia, by the end of the day on Sunday, the president will have undertaken 124 print, broadcast and radio interviews. By contrast, at this point in his term, shrub had undertaken 40.
If you notice the absence of one network, it's because the President said that the Fox news channel is "entirely devoted to attacking my administration."
President Carter spoke eloquently. There is no doubt that he is correct.
I'm hoping that President Carter's comments lead to a legitimate discussion and condemnation of not just racism, but the misogyny, homophobia, Anti-Semitism and other bigotries that afflict so many Americans Republicans.
I listened last night to some of the right wingnut talking heads explaining how it wasn't really racism, it was a true objection to "their country" being sold out from under them. Funny, all of the wingnuts seem to be white folks. Mostly men. One of them said Carter's comments were surprising, since none of this came up during the campaign.
Idiot.
I remember being called names because I was doing voter registration for the Obama campaign. Generally two words, the first starting with an "N" and the second being "lover". I heard candidate Obama referred to as "boy". I heard the term "the coloreds". Appalling.
It was no better in terms of what was said about Hillary Clinton: as if it is the "duty" of women to be subservient to their husbands, only allowed to stay home and raise kids. As if women should not be allowed to have thoughts of their own, much less elective office.
Now, this is America, and we have the first amendment, and people therefore have the freedom of speech. And I believe that's a good thing, right up until it crosses the line into incitement to riot, physical threats, and treason. There is nothing to be done about people who are small minded bigots, except to call them what they are.
It goes back to the discussion of what it really means to be a Democrat, and to believe in the Party Platform. If you're a long time reader, you know that I'm a proud, liberal Democrat. NOT because someone told me to, but because after a lot of thought and reason, I know that this is the tent in which I belong. The big tent, the one that fights for what is truly morally correct, for the betterment of all. Regardless of colour, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or country of origin. You know what's coming:
What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."
It's time to stand up again - be PROUD to be a liberal. To say to the wingnuts: NO, not this time. We know you for what you are, with your unnatural attraction for a world that thankfully died many years ago de jure, and now must die for ever de facto.
Our President, the leader of our party, the leader of the free world, in his speech to Congress last week said that we will call you out when you lie. I stand proudly with my president. I stand proudly with my retired President Carter. I am Spartacus.
President Obama is going after health care in a no-holds-barred fashion. Per the Washington Post:
With skepticism about the president's health-care reform effort mounting on Capitol Hill -- even within his own party -- the White House has launched a new phase of its strategy designed to dramatically increase public pressure on Congress: all Obama, all the time.
Senior White House aides promise "an aggressive public and private schedule" for Obama as he presses his case for reform, including a prime-time news conference on Wednesday, a trip to Cleveland, and heavy use of Internet video to broadcast his message beyond the reach of the traditional media.
"Our strategy has been to allow this process to advance to the point where it made sense for the president to take the baton. Now's that time," said senior adviser David Axelrod. "I don't know whether he will Twitter or tweet. But he's going to be very, very visible."
We know that the President and his team excel at the ability to pick an issue, hone the message, and take it directly to the people. The organization and focus required to do so were hallmarks of his presidential campaign. I contend that the 2008 Obama campaign was the best run campaign of all time, predicated on its ability to outreach, organize, utilize technology, stick to message, and only on the rarest of occasions become distracted from the ultimate goal by anything.
Will it work here? With health care?
When campaigning for President, the Obama team had to do one thing: get enough people to vote for Obama. A vote is an individual thing. The organization and the message led to minions of people who helped get out the vote, recruit other people for voter registration, phone banks and canvasses. Not registered? It was hard to avoid people with registration forms. Don't know when election day is? We've dropped a flyer at your door. Need a ride to the polls? We'll send someone over. And then, the 4 pm phone call: "We see you haven't voted yet, can we bring you to the polls?...Yes, we can certainly entertain your kids while you vote."
The difference here is that Obama must make health care the cause of each and every American. He will have to dumb down the differences in the competing bills so people understand why bill "A" is a better choice than bill "B" - why, for example, a bill with a public option is a far better option than one without it. He will have to answer difficult questions about funding, coverage and rationing using those same nuanced tones that worked on other issues. And he's got to get people to understand WHICH of the competing bills they need to support.
If he can do that, he then needs to get people to call and write their reps in the House and Senate. That's not a private vote in a booth - that's a public declaration of support. There are a lot of people who would never miss an election, even a primary in an off-year who have NEVER called or written one of their reps. It's hard to move them to do so, MUCH harder than getting them into a voting booth. Enough people need to call to make every rep know how important passage is. And it's got to be done in a matter of weeks, as the President wants passage by 7 August.
That date is important because then the bills are complete, Congress goes home, and returns in September to conference the House and Senate bills into one bill that can be voted on again, and signed in October. If the August date slides, the danger becomes very real that the whole process slides to next year.
Can he do it? Can the President of the United States activate enough voters to bring enough pressure on legislators so that the bills pass in time?
That huge dip? The Iraq and Afghanistan wars. There is a lot of blame for that: perhaps 1,000 individual human beings, Americans all. Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, a number of generals and admirals, some neo-con advisers, and every member of Congress who voted to allocate money to the wars and related expenses. Some of those people are now dead. And still, we owe the money. 
In two days, the president will deliver his first State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress and to the nation. It will be a tricky speech, and it will be interesting to see to which audience President Obama speaks.
So, we know that candidate Obama played a lot of basketball on the campaign trail. That he had a mean game, he played with all sorts of different people, and he played publicly. Have you seen him playing recently? There was that one game of politicos, and a White House tennis court has been remade into a hoops court, but he doesn't seem to have been playing. The Wall Street Journal says Obama has played seven basketball games since becoming president. 
This Sunday and Monday, President Obama will be on six TV shows. If you think that's a record for a sitting president, you're right. 
