A story from TIR about the need to protect vulnerable, precious life

                                                                                                      You may have heard about the nationwide amber alert from Virginia about a missing toddler recently. Unfortunately Baby Aveion did not survive his recent abduction.theiowarepublican.com, In Loving Memory of Baby Aveion Lewis, The Recent Amber Alert Story From Virgina, Jan 2010

You can’t listen when you’re talking

When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me that when you’re talking you’re not listening. Someone might want to tell that  to President Obama who made an interesting comment yesterday while reflecting on U.S. Senator-elect Scott Brown’s big win in Massachusetts.

“If there’s one thing that I regret this year is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values,” Obama said in a one-on-one interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on the one-year anniversary of his inauguration. The interview, which aired last night on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer, took place in the Roosevelt Room at the White House.

It is an interesting way to frame Brown’s win. The remark reveals that he still doesn’t get it. The problem wasn’t about not speaking to the American people. In fact, the president talked plenty.  According to an internet posting on CBS News.com, the president gave some 411 speeches, comments and remarks including 52 on health insurance reform in his first 365 days in office.  He held 42 news conferences and granted 158 interviews (not sure if this includes the Stephanopoulous’ exclusive), far more than other presidents during their freshman year. Ninety of these were for TV, 11 were radio and 57 were print interviews.

The problem was about not listening to the American people.

In terms of opportunities to listen, the president attended 23 town hall meetings – make that 21 town hall meeting. Two of the town halls were in foreign countries (France and China) and don’t count for opportunities to listen to Americans. From news clips on TV, the 23 town halls conducted stateside looked like staged events stacked with pro-Obama, pro-health insurance reform supporters.  The people were used like props standing or sitting behind him on risers and cheering when he spoke.  There were not a lot of Tea Party folks invited to these town hall meeting. Campaigning back in 2008 then-Senator Obama learned that taking raw man-on-the street questions from non-union Republicans and Independents can be dangerous to your ratings. Remember Joe the Plumber and his pesky little question about taxes?

Indeed the Obama administration has been absolutely tone deaf to the American public this past year as they have pushed their liberal agenda forward. The President had promised to bring a new, bi-partisan tone to Washington but this has been one of the most rancorous years with Republicans and Independents shut out of the conversation while ideologues in leadership positions were incapable of collaboration.

During July and August in town hall meeting after town hall meeting across the country angry citizens begged their senate and congressional representatives to slow down, to moderate what many called “the socialization” of our American health care system, and to watch the price tag for change. As unemployment surged, spiking to 10.2 percent in November, and as the national debt swelled to $12.3 trillion and counting (it increases by about $4 billion a day), the Obama Administration has just pointed a finger of blame at the previous administration while racing to pass a health care bill that 56 percent of voters oppose, according to the latest Rasmussen poll conducted on Monday. Not only does the majority oppose the measure, only 38 percent of voters approve of it.

Certainly Brown’s win affects the balance of power in the Senate. It is no longer filibuster-proof.  However, the Republicans need to be cautious in claiming that Brown’s win is a national referendum on the health care measure. It was not. Nor is it a decisive predictor that the pendulum has begun to swing back toward the GOP. Brown’s victory may simply mean that voters in a liberal, traditionally Democrat state want more balance and civility in Washington, and they want our elected officials to act like representatives of the people them rather than an elitist tone-deaf politburo.

However, President Obama may truly be having a moment of awakening as he begins to see his poll numbers slip and the possibility of losing more national and state seats to Republicans. And he might want to take my dad’s advice to heart about how you can’t listen when you’re doing all the talking.

As goes Maine, so too, I hope, goes Iowa

Voters in Maine overturned legislation yesterday that would have allowed same-sex marriage. Voters rejected same-sex marriage 52 to 47 percent, despite being outspent two-to-one. The saying “as goes Maine, so goes the nation” might be a predictor for how Iowa voters would chose if our legislators would give the citizens a chance to vote on this issue.

Instead, the Democrat controlled legislature gets a lot of its campaign funding from the liberally left, which supports same-sex marriage.

Iowa voters will have a chance in a year to do some voting that could have an effect on this issue in the Hawkeye State. We can vote to not retain Iowa Supreme Court judges who voted for the plaintiffs in Varnum v. Brien.  Concerned Iowa voters can also vote for social conservatives to serve in the House, Senate and Governor’s offices, and turn out those state legislators who have supported the court’s ruling and who have effectively blocked efforts to bring this matter before the citizens of the state.

Voters have rejected same-sex marriage in 31 states — every state where it has come up for a popular vote!

Marriage is one of the most fundamental institutions on which society is built. Support for same-sex marriage on the basis of “equity” shows not only an ignorance of what marriage is all about, but also a lack of respect for the institution itself.

Marriage is not just a celebration of romantic love. Although romantic love may be the vehicle for what brings two people together, it has very little to do with the long-term on-going state of matrimony. If only romantic love were the all important ingredient in making a marriage successful.

The kind of love necessary to make a marriage work is sacrificial love, the kind that gives without measure. It is the kind of love that brings children into this world, and then does everything possible to raise up and provide for those children.

Marriage was created to provide stability for the progeny of a man and woman, and to protect the virtue of women. Call me old fashioned, but marriage is irrelevant outside of the union of a man and a woman. It is an unnecessary construct for two men, or two women.

Marriage creates kinship bonds between people and within those bonds, it establishes with whom someone can and cannot have sex.  Uncles don’t have sex with their nieces. Brothers don’t have sex with their sisters. Father’s don’t have sex with their daughters. Marriage creates the rules of intimacy and also the laws of boundaries.

Society doesn’t need to rewrite its laws on marriage in order to provide a mechanism to acknowledge a committed or important relationship between two gay men or two lesbian women. There are other ways that can be accomplished without unraveling the fabric of marriage and turning society on its head in the process.

The October Nobel Surprise

Some are calling it Nobel’s October Surprise. Maybe it should be dubbed the Nobel Personality Prize. One of the problems I am having have with President Obama being named this year’s peace prize laureate is that the award is further proof that our president is more a glorified global celebrity with high star-power charisma than the right leader for the United States.

Over the past 60 years, Europe and America have lost faith in God.  Secular politics is now the new world religion and Barack Obama is its elected messiah. And a great portion of the world is just ga-ga over this president. 

I really don’t care if the rest of the world likes or doesn’t like our president – who ever that person is.  I care that our president is a good president for our country. If President Obama wants to be the popular leader of the world, that’s a different job than the one he’s got. He was elected to be POTUS, not the leader of the globe. And when this man was nominated, he’d only been in office 11 day. What kind of track record is that. He got nominated for being elected? Or for just not being George Bush. That’s nuts.

If European literati adore our president, and if dictators and communists like Chavez and Castro embrace him and speak well of him, then maybe we’ve got the wrong guy in office. He’s supposed to be looking out for this nation, not all the other nations of the world.  The captain of a football team doesn’t play for every other team in the league. He’s supposed to play for his team. Now if nations can work together for good and peace, that’s great.  But first and foremost, the president of the United States swears to uphold our Constitution, to defend and protect America. Instead, Barack Obama goes around as the great apologist of the US, as if our country is the worst nation on earth.

Our country has a unique history of freedom and independence, and the vast majority of Americans, let alone the citizens of other nations, do not know, understand, or appreciate its history or political foundations.

Several branches of my family tree go back to the early 1700s in the US. On my husband’s side we can trace one line back to the 1630s. I have many relatives who have fought and died for this nation, in the American Revolution, on both sides of our own Civil War, in WWI and WWII. My ancestors have been pioneers and farmers, shopkeepers, and salesmen. Their investment of time and treasure in building and shaping America has contributed to what this nation is today – and it is a good country. I care deeply about the U.S. as a free and independent nation with a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that the rest of the world envies.

If America is so bad and our government is so horrible, why do we have more than 1 million people immigrants clamoring to becoming US citizens each year? The US accepts more legal immigrants than any other nation in the world as permanent residents as our president runs around the world doing the mea culpa things all the time, apologizing for America strengths and successes at every turn.

This year’s Nobel Prize is an effort to coerce our president into doing things in a way that would please the socialistic Norwegians and other über liberal European elites, such as capitulating on the war in Afghanistan. If anyone wants to balk at the word socialistic look at the makeup of the five members of the Noble Prize selection committee. Three of five are politically very liberal. Former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland was head of the center-left Norwegian Labor Party.  Sissel Marie Rønbeck is a Labor Party member.  Ågot Valle is a member of the Socialist Left Party.

Their selection of President Obama is affirmation that Obama’s politics are more in line with their leftist thinking than American capitalism in a democratic republic. America’s roots have never been left-leaning. And an American president who leads this country away from her roots, away from the principles that have helped her to become the nation that more people want to immigrate into – whether legally or illegally – than any other nation in the world.

People are not knocking at the gate to move to Norway, a nation that currently has only a half-million immigrant residents. Norway’s immigration policies are highly regulated, allowing only selected migrants to become residents. A person who is born in Norway is considered an immigrant if their parents were born abroad – none of that instant birth right citizenship that happens in the US to the children of non-citizens born on American soil. Norway is not very hospitable to undocumented individuals. It is very difficult if not almost impossible to get a job, an education, or health care benefits in Norway without being property documented.

But right now in the US –this terrible country that President Obama feels the need to run all over the world apologizing for— we are feeding and clothing and housing and educating millions of immigrants and their American born citizen-children through many different government programs at the state and local levels. We are providing defensive support to our allies around the world and have done so for decades. We step up to the plate within hours to provide assistance whenever there is a tsunami, an earthquake or other natural disaster and there are people are in need.

The Nobel committee is giving a US president an award – a president who was nominated on his 11^th day of office – for the promise of what they hope he will in bringing about a more socialistic United States, one that will fit in better with the left-leaning EU and Scandinavia nations. They are giving him an award which they hope will tie his hands in effectively prosecuting the war in Afghanistan, just as the president’s top general in Afghanistan has said that he needs more troops.

The award is not a prize. It is a straight jacket that seeks to further mold this president into a leader they believe is good for them, whether or not he is good for us. I can only imagine how many times he will apologize for America at his acceptance speech on December 10.

How’s that hope and change going for you?

Here is one of the wisest things I’ve read in quite a while about change, and this is no chump change.

Something Wicked this way comes

I won’t be buying tickets to see Wicked during its run at the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines, beginning today through October 18. The play has been among the most popular musicals both across the country and around the world since opening on in New York’s Gershwin Theater in 2003, receiving three Tony Awards in 2004. Its musical score and exciting staging are considered among some of the best that Broadway has to offer.

For me, it’s a matter of principal. I won’t be going because I can’t support the book, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West that underpins the play.

Those who have read the book and seen the play say the play is very loosely based on the book, and that you really don’t need to read it, nor even know the story of The Wizard of Oz, to enjoy the musical.

That’s not the problem. I can’t bring myself to see the play because I have read the book, and I found it so offensive that I am not going to follow the crowd in laying down my money for this play.

It is not a story about good versus evil, it’s an angry story with a dark, twisted agenda written by an author who would like to confuse people into thinking that evil isn’t necessarily so evil if one only tries to understand it.

As a kid with family roots in Kansas, I grew up loving L. Frank Baum’s story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It was always a special event at our house when the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz, starting Judy Garland was broadcast on television. In the 1960s when we got a color TV, I remember seeing for the first time the colors of OZ unfold before my eyes when Dorothy woke up over the rainbow. I was mesmerized by the magic.

As an adult I grew to understand the story as a profound allegory for the spiritual journey.  Dorothy —short for Dorothea, meaning gift of God— is whisked away in a dream by the powerful force of a tornado on a journey of maturity and discovery. In the Bible there are many instances where God speaks to people in dreams, and the imagery of the cyclone is symbolic of the breath of God, the ruhah (Hebrew for breath) or pneuma (Greek for spirit)—which gives life (Gen. 2:7; Ezekiel 37:5).

In Baum’s story, Dorothy struggles with the forces of good and evil as she looks love (Tin Man’s quest for a heart), courage (Cowardly Lion’s search for “the nerve”), and wisdom (Scare Crow’s pursuit of a brain). Along the way she looks beyond the hype of enthroned power, be it religious or political, by peeking behind the Wizard’s curtain unveiling the scandal of the wayward professor from Nebraska attempting to lord a God-like power over others.

In the end, Dorothy not only unseats a false God, but discovers that God had already given her the gifts of love, courage and wisdom. Dorothy return homes more integrated and more mature than before embarking on her adventure.

Baum’s tale is a masterpiece of storytelling, blending social and political commentary from the late 1890s with the magic of myth and fairy tale. The idea of a prequel to the Wizard of Oz is an interesting premise. In the hands of the right author, the book might have been a worthy companion to the original, but Gregory McGuire’s Wicked does not do credit to Baum’s classic.

From a literary point of view, Wicked has many flaws. Neither of the main protagonists —Elphaba, the Wicked Witch, or Glinda, the Good Witch— are sympathetic individuals. It’s hard to stick with a story when the reader isn’t given much with which to identify or to relate to in the characters.

It is hard to say just what the plot of the story is, and some of the book’s passages, such as the one dealing with bestiality, are awkwardly, unexpectedly and gratuitously thrown in the reader’s face.

Whereas Dorothy goes off on the yellow brick road on a mission of discovery, Wicked meanders without focus. Rather than looking at good versus evil, the author plays with themes of homosexuality, lesbianism, discrimination, and tyranny in a disjointed way trying to blur the line between good and evil. The author definitely has an agenda and he appropriates some of Baum’s characters and the setting of Oz to express his own hostilities toward people that don’t share his world view.

Wicked is nihilistic, the characters are depraved and McGuire profits on the foundation of a wonderful story which he mocks. Basing a musical however loosely-based on his book puts money McGuire’s  pockets. But I am not going to be contributing to the author’s ill-gotten gains.

Don’t cry for me, Nancy “Peron” Pelosi

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke today of angry anti-government  rehetoric that led to violence in San Francisco in the 1970s, was she referring to the February 13,  1970, bombing of several police vehicles of the Berkeley, California, Police Department?  Was she thinking of the February 16,  1970 bombing of Golden Gate Park branch of the San Francisco Police Department, when a pipe bomb filled with shrapnel detonated on the ledge of a window at the SFPD that killed Sergeant Brian V. McDonnell and injured a number of other policemen, including Robert Fogarty who was wounded in the legs, face and was partially blinded? 

These bombings were though to be the work of the Weather Underground Organization, of which President Obama’s colleague, Bill Ayers, was a known confederate. Not to minimize the 1978  murders of openly gay SF Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, other incidences which might bring tears to the eyes of the Speaker (but I don’t think she’s sympathizing with the police and the property owners) include :

7 October 1969 – Bombing of Haymarket Police Statue in Chicago, apparently as a “kickoff” for the “Days of Rage” riots in the city

October 8–11, 1969. The Weathermen later claim credit for the bombing in their book, “Prairie Fire.”

8 October-11, 1969 – The “Days of Rage” riots occur in Chicago in which 287 Weatherman members from throughout the country were arrested and a large amount of property damage was done.

6 December 1969 – Bombing of several Chicago Police cars parked in a precinct parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street, Chicago. The WUO stated in their book “Prairie Fire” that they had did the explosion.

27 December-31, 1969 – Weathermen hold a “War Council” meeting in Flint, MI, where they finalize their plans to submerge into an underground status from which they plan to commit strategic acts of sabotage against the government. Thereafter they are called the “Weather Underground Organization” (WUO).

6 March 1970 – Bombing in the 13th Police District of the Detroit, Michigan. 34 sticks of dynamite are discovered. During February and early March, 1970, members of the WUO, led by Bill Ayers, are reported to be in Detroit, during that period, for the purpose of bombing a police facility.

6 March 1970 – “bomb factory” located in New York’s Greenwich Village accidentally explodes. WUO members Theodore die in t. The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer’s dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The bomb was packed with nails TO INFILICT MAXIMUM CASUALTIES UPON DETONATION.

30 March 1970 – Chicago Police discover a WUO “bomb factory” on Chicago’s north side. A subsequent discovery of a WUO “weapons cache” in a south side Chicago apartment several days later ends WUO activity in the city.

10 May 1970 – Bombing of The National Guard Association building in Washington, D.C..

21 May 1970 – The WUO under Bernardine Dohrn’s name releases its “Declaration of a State of War” communique.

6 June 1970 – The WUO sends a letter claiming credit for bombing of the San Francisco Hall of Justice; however, no explosion actually took place. Months later, workmen in this building located an unexploded device which had apparently been dormant for some time.

9 June 1970 – Bombing of The New York City Police Headquarters.

27 July 1970 – Bombing of The Presidio army base in San Francisco. [NYT, 7/27/70]

12 September 1970 – The WUO helps Dr. Timothy Leary, break out and escape from the California Men’s Colony prison.

8 October 1970 – Bombing of Marin County courthouse. [NYT, 8/10/70]

10 October 1970 – Bombing of Queens traffic-court building . [NYT, 10/10/70, p. 12]

14 October 1970 – Bombing of The Harvard Center for International Affairs [NYT, 10/14/70, p. 30]

1 March 1971 – Bombing of The United States Capitol. ” [NYT, 3/2/71]

April, 1971 – abandoned WUO “bomb factory” discovered in San Francisco, California.

29 August, 1971 – Bombing of the Office of California Prisons. [LAT, 8/29/71]

17 September 1971 – Bombing of The New York Department of Corrections in Albany, NY [NYT, 9/18/71]

15 October 1971 – Bombing of William Bundy’s office in the MIT research center. [NYT, 10/16/71]

19 May 1972 – Bombing of The Pentagon . [NYT, 5/19/72]

18 May 1973 – Bombing of the 103rd Police Precinct in New York

28 September 1973 – Bombing of ITT headquarters in New York and Rome, Italy. [NYT, 9/28/73]

6 March 1974 – Bombing of the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare offices in San Francisco

31 May 1974 – Bombing of The Office of the California Attorney General.

17 June 1974 – Bombing of Gulf Oil’s Pittsburgh headquarters .

11 September 1974 – Bombing of Anaconda Corporation (part of the Rockefeller Corporation).

29 January 1975 – Bombing of the State Department in (AP. “State Department Rattled by Blast,” The Daily Times-News, January 29 1975, p.1)

16 June 1975 – Bombing of Banco de Ponce (a Puerto Rican bank) in New York.

September, 1975 – Bombing of the Kennecott Corporation.

October 20, 1981 – Brinks robbery in which several members of the Weather Underground stole over $1 million from a Brinks armored car near Nyack, New York. The robbers murdered 2 police officers and 1 Brinks guard. Several others were wounded.

1981 “Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country,” Ayers said when interviewed by David Horowitz.

September 11, 2001 “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Ayers is quoted in NYT article

Talk about dangerous, “explosive” rhetoric indeed! Nancy Pelosi reminds me of Evita Perone — don’t cry for me Argentina/San Francisco….

A parent’s concern about the president’s talk to school kids

I’m struggling with the idea of the presidential pep talk to the nation’s pupils.

Not because the president of the US shouldn’t talk to school kids. President Reagan did it in 1988 and President George H. W. Bush did it in 1991.

What concerns me is the cult of personality that President Obama has encouraged and the way this talk has coincided with the release of a cultish celebrity video with pop culture icons mixed in with average people pledging their allegiance to the president and promising to do things like promote stem cell research.

Additionally the release of lesson plans prepared by the Department of Education, coaching teachers to ask kids what they can do to help the president to achieve his goals, concerns me because many of his goals are not my goals and are not the goals I want my kids to embrace, including abortion on demand.

The text of the president’s talk has been released in advance of his talk, planned for Tuesday, Sept. 8. It is a 2,483 word speech intended for students in K-12 that will take less than 10 minutes to deliver. Although some kids have been back in school for a week or two, for many kids across the country, Sept. 8 will be their first day of school, a day full of many distractions.

The kids at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia who get to hear the speech live will have a much different experience than those who are tuned into their classrooms’ television monitors. For many people, including kids, this president gets so much TV coverage that it’s easy to get viewer fatigue from his over saturation.

Ironically, the president is going to tell them to pay attention. Some kids may have some level of interest in the speech, most probably won’t care one way or the other if the president has a message to deliver to them. If the president goes on for more than 4 minutes, he will lose a lot of the early elementary students, and if he goes on more than 7 to 8 minutes he will probably lose the attention of the majority of middle school kids.

A speech exhorting kids to do their best, to stay in school, to reach for the stars is laudable, and as an African-American, Barack Obama is able to say things to many kids, especially minority kids, that other elected officials wouldn’t be able to say simply because he is who he is.

The dropout rate among nationwide is estimated to be about 16 percent, with nearly one in five Africa-American students dropping out and about one in three Hispanic students. Some urban high schools have more students drop out than graduate. A study conducted by Johns Hopkins University’s Everyone Graduates Center’s has identified that 12 percent of the nation’s 20,000 high school – about 2400 high schools – account for about half of all high school drop outs.

Initial reports indicated that the speech was going to ask kids to think about how they could help the president. That’s where the reason for this speech becomes a bit murky.

If the president is trying to recruit kids –however subliminally– to carry a political message home to their parents to help him to achieve his agenda, then this talk is totally off base. Slipping in even the backslapping comments about how the president is “working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn,” is terribly ingratiating because funding for books, equipment and computers comes from the tax payers at the local level and not from the benevolence and hard work of the President of the United States of America.

This talk, coupled with the a video circulating on the Internet where a group of people chants “I pledge allegiance to our president and to all mankind, because together we can, together we are, and together we will be the change that we seek,” smacks of the type of propaganda campaign that Kim Jung Il might unleash on the school children of North Korea, if they had television monitors in class rooms.

The video, created by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions, concludes with everyone’s faces in a mosaic that becomes the face of Barack Obama. If a teacher chooses to use the video to begin or end (or both) the president’s speech, it could prove to be a powerful tool to help students cement their allegiance to this man, his politics, and his world view.

Kids need to be instructed in civics and encouraged to be engaged members of their communities and their country. Kids also need pep talks about doing their best. The president can be an important part of that as long as he or she remembers to respect that a pep talk should not cross the line to become a partisan stump speech trying to recruit party members.

And that’s what parents who are concerned about the president’s address to the nation’s kids are worried about.

A Sunday afternoon Iowa town hall meeting with Rep. Boswell on the health care bill

With a copy of HR 3200 in hand, I attended Rep. Leonard Boswell’s town hall meeting Sunday afternoon in the gym at AIB College of Business in Des Moines.

The meeting began at 3 p.m. with perhaps 500 people in attendance. Professionally printed signs were available at the door for people who were in support of the health care reform measures being pushed by President Obama and the Democrat Congress.

Rep. Boswell began the meeting by asking the crowed to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. He then talked for a bit about his grandson who had just faced a health care crisis due to a ruptured pancreas in Kansas City and how the grandson’s insurance had just been approved a few days prior to the accident.

He then began to call on members of the audience who wanted to ask questions. The first several people who were called upon praised the congressman for his public service and the first few questions appeared to be staged by people who spoke in favor of the proposed health care reform legislation. It seemed that the crowd was perhaps 75:25 in support of the legislation, in support of the public option and in love with Rep. Boswell.

Rep. Boswell artfully dodged questions posed by several people who were not in favor of the legislation.

Had he read the entire 1017-page bill? The congressman never directly answered the question.

In the interest of bipartisanship, what suggestions brought to the table by Republicans were being considered? He couldn’t think of any suggestions that Republicans had brought to the table regarding health care reform. This brought murmurs of “tort reform!” throughout the crowd.

A physician in charge of medical education, Dr. Larry Severidt, at Broadlawns Medical Center told the crowd that the health care system needs repair, that if you don’t have insurance you die young, but that the public option of Medicare works well. Dr. Severidt didn’t mention that Medicare is going bankrupt.

Another physician, Dr. George Lederhaas, spoke out quoting President John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Dr. Lederhaas expressed frustration about how he must practice “defensive” medicine and said that tort reform needed to be a part of health care reform. He also said that many of the health care problems that cost the greatest amount of money are related to lifestyle issues –smoking and diet, and drug and alcohol additions.

No one brought up how we need to un-link health care insurance from employment, or how HR 3200 has some very expensive components, such as $12 million for pilot programs dealing with interpretive services for people who don’t speak English very well, even though the bill is supposed to cover citizens and not “unauthorized residents.”

No one brought up how the bill provides for a visiting home nurse to pay a house call to the home of every newborn, which some might view as Big Brother coming to pay a house call to make sure you’re the right kind of person to be raising a child.

No one brought up how the bill gives unfettered “real time” electronic access to the government to your bank account and financial information to double check your eligibility and to collect payments.

No one brought up how the bill also provides protections to the government from the court for review of certain aspects of the legislation. Since when is a bill above the law?

I am going to Rockwell City Monday afternoon to sit in on one of Sen. Grassley’s town hall meetings, and then I will sit in on one in Waukee Wednesday morning with Rep. Tom Latham, to watch to listen and to learn.

 

(Thanks to Roger Miller, who sat behind me, for sharing some of his photos of yesterday’s event. I wasn’t sure I could hold a camera AND the health care bill at the same time!)

Viral email from “My Barack Obama”

Summer is getting in the way of posts, and traveling is making blog time challenging, but today’s email from Mitch Stewart, Director of Organizing for America, demands a response. 

To begin with I have no idea how I got on Mitch Stewart’s email list serve, but I have asked to be removed, along with email list serves from Barack and Michelle Obama, but I must be on the “do not remove” list.  I guess when a woman says “no” it doesn’t mean “no” to the president and his supporters.

Today’s email told me that OFA has “cooked up an easy, powerful way for (me) to make a big impression: Office Visits for Health Reform. The email went on to tell me to drop in on Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office to express my “support” for the president’s health care plan. The email lamented how “partisan attack groups are stirring up fear with false rumors about the President’s plan and it’s extremely important that folks like you speak up now.”

I began reading the bill day before yesterday in digital format. I went out this morning to a FedEX/Kinkos and spent about $70 to get the bill printed (more than 1000 pages, printed front to back, so only 500 some pieces of paper – how many people are going to do this????) so I could make notes and highlight certain sections.

Before I can speak out on the bill, I need to read it, which I will, in its entirety. The OFA didn’t offer to give me a copy of the bill or reimburse me for the money I had spent, but they did offer to provide me with “everything” I would “need” from Sen. Grassley’s address, phone number, office hours and a “step-by-step” guide for my unannounced and unscheduled “visit.” They even give a web link to “sign up” for the visit, not with the Senator’s office, but with whoever is behind “http://my.barackobama.com/OfficeVisit.”  As if they are going to tell Senator Grassley that I am dropping by for a visist!

My Barack Obama! Give me a break!

I am concerned about this bill, about the increased debt it will pile on our country and on our state (an additional $630,000,000 in Iowa) in addition to the unfunded mandate of Social Security and the unsustainable Medicare and Medicaid programs that exist.

Dropping in on Sen. Grassley’s office through a manipulated, staged effort of OFA is not going to do anything but upset his office staff.  Trying to manipulate people into an Astroturf style of activism is so phony. I am madder than hell at the president and his supporters for 1) trying to ram this bill down the throats of this country, 2) trying to squelch dissent, and 3) trying to drum up support from someone who has asked to be removed from the mailing list again and again and again.

The text of the manipulative and disingenuous email is posted below.

All throughout August, our members of Congress are back in town. Insurance companies and partisan attack groups are stirring up fear with false rumors about the President’s plan, and it’s extremely important that folks like you speak up now.

So we’ve cooked up an easy, powerful way for you to make a big impression: Office Visits for Health Reform.

All this week, OFA members like you will be stopping by local congressional offices to show our support for insurance reform. You can have a quick conversation with the local staff, tell your personal story, or even just drop off a customized flyer and say that reform matters to you.

We’ll provide everything you need: the address, phone number, and open hours for the office, information about how the health care crisis affects your state for you to drop off (with the option of adding your personal story), and a step-by-step guide for your visit.

According to our records, you live near Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office in Des Moines, IA.

Sign up now to visit Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office in Des Moines this week.(Not your representative, or think there might be another office that’s easier for you to get to? Click here to find a different office.)

 

As you’ve probably seen in the news, special interest attack groups are stirring up partisan mobs with lies about health reform, and it’s getting ugly. Across the country, members of Congress who support reform are being shouted down, physically assaulted, hung in effigy, and receiving death threats. We can’t let extremists hijack this debate, or confuse Congress about where the people stand.

Office Visits for Health Reform are our chance to show that the vast majority of American voters know that the cost of inaction is too high to bear, and strongly support passing health reform in 2009.

Don’t worry if you’ve never done anything like this before. The congressional staff is there to listen, and your opinion as a constituent matters a lot. And if you bring a friend, you’ll have more fun and make an even greater impact.

Click below to sign up for an Office Visit for Health Reform:

http://my.barackobama.com/OfficeVisit

Wherever you live, these visits matter: Many representatives are pushing hard toward reform, and they are taking a lot of heat from special interests. They deserve our thanks and need our support to continue the fight. But those who are still putting insurance companies and partisan point-scoring ahead of their constituents must know that voters are watching — and that we expect better.

Earlier this week, the President wrote that “this is the moment our movement was built for” and asked us all to commit to join at least one event this month. This is the way to answer that call, and rise to the challenge of this moment together.

Thank you for going the extra mile when it matters the most,

Mitch

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America