Well, whoopee!
President Barack Obama will summon anxious Democrats and aloof Republicans to a White House summit Thursday – live on C-SPAN and perhaps cable – and gambles that he can save his embattled health care overhaul by the power of persuasion. Adversaries and allies alike were surprised by Obama’s invitation to reason together at an open forum, as risky as it is unusual.
Now that is change I can believe in!
Ahead of the meeting, the White House will post on its Web site a health care plan that modifies the bill passed by Senate Democrats last year. The modification is an effort to address the concerns of their House counterparts.
[Obama] has two main goals. One is to show the American people that the Democrats’ health care plan is reasonable, and much of its complexity reflects the sprawling nature of the insurance system. The other is to argue that lockstep Republican opposition is not reasonable and could spoil a historic opportunity on a problem that concerns all Americans.
GOP leaders in the House and Senate say they cannot accept the Democratic bills, and they want to start over to shape narrower legislation that cuts costs for small businesses and uses federal dollars to set up special insurance pools for people with medical problems.
Obama doesn’t want to stop there.
Republicans want to place limits on medical malpractice judgments, an approach the Congressional Budget Office says would save money by reducing defensive medicine. Obama has toyed with the idea, saying he agrees that something should be done, but thinks limits on jury awards go too far.
Some Republican leaders have questioned whether there’s any reason to go to the summit, but a boycott would play into Obama’s hands. To complicate matters, Democratic liberals have begun an effort to get a government insurance plan back in the bill, a nonstarter for Republicans.
That means Democrats will have to stick their necks out, and some may lose their seats this fall if they support an all-or-nothing push on health care.
Democrats are looking to Obama to give them the confidence they need to get back on track. He did it once before, with his address to Congress last September, after a summer of town hall meetings at which angry grass-roots activists attacked the Democrats on health care.
I think televising the forum live on C-SPAN is a good idea. I’m sure it scares politicians to death, but their constituents should be to watch them “at work” in real time. With an election coming up later this year I think they will behave fearing that to act up or appear obstructionistic (is that a word) might cost them votes in their districts. That thinking applies to both Democrats and Republicans.
The Republicans are already tagged with the party of NO in the eyes of the public. They will, hopefully, enter the forum arena with an attitude of trying to solve the problem rather than play word games as they do on TV interviews.
Unless they have a constructive idea they’d be well advised to keep their traps shut.
Can hardly wait.
[Source: Huffington Post]
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I’ve had my laptop since like April, and just at the beginning of this month it started getting really slow (online and offline), and eventually started warning me about how my hard disk is apparently bad, and I should send it to my manufacturer or something. I was able to hit cancel on these notifications and ignore them, and go about whatever I was doing. I don’t want to buy a whole new laptop
. Maybe ignoring the warnings of imminent failure wasn’t wise, but I can’t even boot up right anymore. It was just a bad hard disk, I don’t think I had any terrible viruses. In fact I don’t even know what caused this. —-the question——- But yeah, if I bought a new hard drive, would that fix everything? I’d be pretty much back to where I was when I first got the thing, assuming I bought a hard drive of the same size? —————————– I assume it’s the slightly cheaper option as opposed to buying a whole new laptop (Dell Studio 15). If I did, would I just unscrew/take out the hard drive in there now, buy a new one and screw that one in? And I’m good to go? I don’t care about the files that were on there, I’m not losing anything important. But like I said, it’s only the hard disk that’s bad, as far as I know. I don’t think the whole laptop is garbage or anything. It was only $700, but still… While I was getting prompts about this stuff, it recommended I take these instructions and print them/save them onto my flash drive: ” Instructions For Fixing Hard Disk Errors: We strongly recommend that you backup your computer to avoid potential data loss. After you have backed up your computer, you should contact your computer manufacturer or other hardware technical support to determine if the disk with errors needs to be repaired or replaced. We recommend that you store these printed instructions together with the media used to back up your data (for example, the CDs or USB flash drive used to store your backup), so that everything you need to fix your computer is in one place. The following information is provided to help the hardware technical support person diagnose the hard disk with errors. Disk Name: Hitachi HTS543225L9A300 ATA Device Volume: D:\;C:\” If someone who knows about this stuff could help me out, tell me what to do, that would be much appreciated. santoramaa
Well Luffie, let me toss in my two bits worth. What I would recommend you do is take your laptop to the Geek Squad at a Best Buy and let them check it over and determine if you can salvage your laptop rather than buy a new one. It may be that replacing the hard drive would solve your problem.
Since you aren’t concerned about saving any of your data files it may even be possible to just format the hard drive, reinstall your operating system and continue on with your laptop. If you have only had it since last April then it should be good for a long time to come. I’m told the average life span of a computer is 3 years.
That’s my suggestion. Good luck with it.
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My cousin recommended this blog and she was totally right keep up the fantastic work!
Thank you Pharmacist for your comment and about the recommendation of your cousin. You’ve made my day.
Thanks for an idea, you sparked at thought from a angle I hadn’t given thoguht to yet. Now lets see if I can do something with it.