R.E.M. and MoveOn have teamed up to make a moving video where people from across the country have sent in photos explaining why a public option should not be delayed.
Paul Krugman also chimes in on the importance of a public option in any health care reform package in today's New York Times:\
Let me add a sort of larger point: aside from the essentially circular political arguments — centrist Democrats insisting that the public option must be dropped to get the votes of centrist Democrats — the argument against the public option boils down to the fact that it’s bad because it is, horrors, a government program. And sooner or later Democrats have to take a stand against Reaganism — against the presumption that if the government does it, it’s bad.
Robert Reich has put together this great little video explaining just what the public option is, and the motives of some of the people who are opposed to it. While our representatives in Washington are fighting over this and the media coverage makes this sound very controversial, over 75% of Americans think a public option is important.
Steve Hildebrand, former deputy campaign manager, tells Ben Smith of the Politico that he's losing patience with Obama:
“I am one of the millions of frustrated Americans who want to see Washington do more than it's doing right now,” said Steve Hildebrand, the deputy campaign manager who oversaw the Obama campaign’s field organization and was an architect of his early, crucial victories over Sen. Hillary Clinton in Iowa and South Carolina.
Obama, he said, “needs to be more bold in his leadership.”
“I’m not going to just sit by the curb and let these folks get away with a lack of performance for the American people,” he said, speaking of Washington’s Democratic leadership as a whole. “I want change just as much as a majority of Americans do, and I’m one of the many Americans who are losing patience.”
Feel free to apply your own pressure on President Obama here.
Be careful, my friends, as there is a sinister force trying to brainwash our nation's children. With the children out of the way, HypnObama will next turn to Grandma:
**eenie weenie chili beanie** After HypnObama convinces your children to embrace his islamofascist agenda and join his communist re-education camps on Tuesday, he is going to address congress about creating his socialist healthcare death panels.... Bye, Grandma!
Jim Greer has been on TV a lot the last week or so railing against Obama and his plans to "indoctrinate" American students into some kind of socialist cabal:
The good people over at The Orlando Sentinel did a little research and point out how exceptionally hypocritical it is for Greer of all people to be leading the freaking out among conservatives:
There once was a political operative who loved to tell crowds he had a simple way of explaining to children the difference between Republicans and Democrats.
"Republicans get up and go to work," he would tell his son. "Democrats get up and go down to the mailbox to get their checks."
This man not only talked to his son about Republican values, he went into public-school classrooms and talked about them as well.
That man is Jim Greer -- the same Jim Greer who, as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, just threw a nationwide hissy fit, claiming that the classroom is no place for politics and Barack Obama's "indoctrination."
One Seminole County mother, Barbara Wells, remembers the day Greer spoke to her son's sixth-grade class. "My son said he made some sort of Hillary Clinton joke," she recalled.
But you know what? Wells didn't pitch a fit. She didn't call up the local TV station to scream about Republican indoctrination. Instead, she advised her son: "Whatever you are told in life, remember there are two sides to every story."
Of course, Greer thinks him talking to students about politics is entirely different than Obama addressing them because, and I quote, because he "wasn't using lesson plans."
Today, Greer is taking credit for the speech that Obama gave, and has proclaimed himself a hero. Without him, Greer suggests, Obama would have gone ahead with his speech filled with liberal propaganda, and instead rewrote the speech because he was "caught with his hand in the cookie jar."
Again, no evidence for his claim. And even Joe Scarborough called out this guy as being out of line.
If you haven't yet, I suggest you read the speech he gave today, complete with a shout out to Facebook and Twitter!
**Update** The White House has released video of the speech:
