I Am Angry & Fed Up With People Who Are Not Supporting the President

I have been seeing a lot of people pushing this "Single Payer" for all, Medicare for all and other things. I have also seen people say, the President should never have dropped Single Payer off the bargaining table in the Health Care debate.

You know, I don't consider myself very smart in lots of things. Certainly I am not as smart as our President, and I am sure a lot of these people doing the shouting out there and saying these things are not either. However, they seem to think they know more than he does, and they know more than anyone else knows about what happens in the matter of Health Care and in Congress.

At this time the best thing we can do is stand with our President and support what he has said he is supporting. Numerous times he has stated he supports the Public Option. He has called it an Exchange, he has said it is the only way to bring down costs and hold the insurance companies accountable for what they are doing to this country and to the people who have insurance and to the people who don't.

I also keep hearing these same people (and they are all on the left side of politics) saying the President has not done enough.. do you really realize how much this man has done.. all on his own.. because there really hasn't been anyone else helping him.. all he has had is people sniping at him and saying do more, speak louder, do you really support that, and on and on.

Greg Sargent says this today in his blog post:

By now you’ve heard that President Obama is set to deliver a major speech to a joint session of Congress next Wednesday, as part of a newly-energized health care push.

I don’t normally link to Fred Barnes, but this rundown of the speaking that Obama has already done on health care does seem like useful context:

Between July 20 and July 30, President Obama was a busy man, barely out of the public eye while campaigning furiously for his health care initiative. He did four town hall events, spoke at two hospitals, delivered a radio address, was interviewed on two network TV news shows, and held a prime time press conference–all devoted to promoting his health care plan. On this issue as on no other, Obama personally took his case to the people.

That doesn’t even include what Obama may have done in August. All that speaking didn’t help the numbers, obviously. Indeed, Obama was so visible this summer that aides reportedly concluded he’d been too visible. What will Obama say that’s different this time?

He also goes on to say that now they think he did too much and was in the spotlight too much... As I said.. never happy are we liberals... Either he has done too much, or he has not done enough...can't have it both ways now can we...

Today E. J. Dionne has an excellent Op-Ed in the Washington Post.. I love to read about someone else calling out the so called "Liberal Media". I have long said that is so completely a false hood, but people like to say that, especially when it suits them to make their case for an argument.. of course if it is the other way, they are silent.

E.J. has this to say...

But what if our media-created impression of the meetings is wrong? What if the highly publicized screamers represented only a fraction of public opinion? What if most of the town halls were populated by citizens who respectfully but firmly expressed a mixture of support, concern and doubt?

There is an overwhelming case that the electronic media went out of their way to cover the noise and ignored the calmer (and from television's point of view "boring") encounters between elected representatives and their constituents.

It's also clear that the anger that got so much attention largely reflects a fringe right-wing view opposed to all sorts of government programs most Americans support. Much as the far left of the antiwar movement commanded wide coverage during the Vietnam years, so now are extremists on the right hogging the media stage -- with the media's complicity.

Over the past week, I've spoken with Democratic House members, most from highly contested districts, about what happened in their town halls. None would deny polls showing that the health-reform cause lost ground last month, but little of the probing civility that characterized so many of their forums was ever seen on television.

-snip-

Rep. Frank Kratovil hails from a very conservative district that includes Maryland's Eastern Shore and says it didn't bother him that he was hung in effigy in July by a right-wing group. "As a former prosecutor, I consider that to be mild," he said with a chuckle. The episode, he added, was not at all typical of his town-hall meetings, where "most of the people were there to express legitimate concerns about the bill, wondering about how it was going to impact them" and wanting "to know the truth about some of the things that were being said about the bill."

The most disturbing account came from Rep. David Price of North Carolina, who spoke with a stringer for one of the television networks at a large town-hall meeting he held in Durham.

The stringer said he was one of 10 people around the country assigned to watch such encounters. Price said he was told flatly: "Your meeting doesn't get covered unless it blows up." As it happens, the Durham audience was broadly sympathetic to reform efforts. No "news" there.

Rep. Chet Edwards of Texas is one member who did attend gatherings dominated by boisterous opponents of health reform.

At a meeting in Waco, a man asked him what constitutional authority the federal government had to get involved in health care. Edwards replied, "Article One, Section Eight," which empowers Congress to provide for the "general welfare of the United States." Then Edwards asked the man if he opposed "the federal government being involved in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and children's health care." The man said he was, and the room roared its approval.

"I will wear it as a badge of honor that I was shouted at by people who oppose Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and children's health," Edwards said. The shouters, he added, did not speak for most of his constituents, but for "the Ron Paul libertarian position that represents 2 to 5 percent of the country."

-snip-

The money quote of the article.. emphasis mine and his...lol.

But the only citizens who commanded widespread media coverage last month were the right-wingers. And I bet you thought the media were "liberal."

Yes, the President took the Single Payer option off the table early in the game.. but he had to, because there was NO WAY it would ever pass the Congress. How can anyone think it would, when the vitriol and the rancor we are seeing is so strong just for the Public Option? They are scared to death the Public Option is going to lead to Single Payer as it is.

Give it a rest people... drop this demand for the Single Payer and support the President. Give him all the support he needs and get behind him for the Public Option in health care.

Call the White House, write the White House, EMail the White House, and let them know exactly how you feel... But drop the Single Payer nonsense, support the President and ask him to stand firm with the Public Option, and then start calling the Senators I listed in my last post about this. You can find that list here in this blog post.

There is another post I did here that showed all the names of the Senators who needed phone calls and emails that needed to be sent so our voices could be heard. Again, drop the demand for Single Payer.. just support the Public Option and the President.

Sorry, I just had to rant a little.. I just get angry seeing these complaints and the talking heads on my television telling me all the time the President is failing. No one knows what the President is going to do as of yet, however I just don't believe he has given up on the Public Option yet...I won't believe it until I hear him say it. Call me Pollyanna..