Yes, he did. You can read his letter to President Obama on Huffington Post. Moore wants to “help the Dems on Capitol Hill find their spines and I will teach them how to nonviolently beat the Republicans to a pulp.”

Moore reminds President Obama about the 2008 election, with Emanuel’s help, and the size of it, being frittered away:

It worked. The Darkness ended. The vast majority of the nation wept with joy on the night of the election (those who weren’t weeping went out and bought a record number of guns and ammo). Unlike the last president, you didn’t “win” by 537 votes in Florida (although Gore won the popular vote by a half-million), you beat McCain nationally by 9,522,083 votes! The House Democrats got a walloping 79-vote margin. The Senate Dems would caucus with a supermajority of 60 votes unheard of in over 30 years. The wars would now end. America would have universal health care. Wall Street and the banks would, at the very least, be reined in. Hardworking citizens would not be thrown out of their homes. It was supposed to be the dawning of a new age.

One thing about Michael Moore, he is no shrinking violet. But he offers to work cheap, $1 a year. That should make the Tea Party happy.

[Source: Huffington Post]

Here is a summary of FactCheck’s assessment of yesterday’s White House Healthcare Summit:

Senator Lamar Alexander said premiums will go up for “millions” under the Senate bill and president’s plan, while President Barack Obama said families buying the same coverage they have now would pay much less. Both were misleading. The Congressional Budget Office said premiums for those in the group market wouldn’t change significantly, while the average premium for those who buy their own coverage would go up.

Alexander also said “50 percent of doctors won’t see new [Medicaid] patients.” But a 2008 survey says only 28 percent refuse to take any new Medicaid patients.

Senator Harry Reid cited a poll that said 58 percent would be “angry or disappointed” if health care overhaul doesn’t pass. True, but respondents in the poll were also split 43-43 on whether they supported the legislation that is currently being proposed. [Read more →]

One way health insurance companies can afford million dollar salaries for their executives is to get rid of their sickest insurance holders.

trying to maximize profits by purging its sickest customers while spending millions on exorbitant salaries and retreats for its executives, congressional Democrats said Wednesday.

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said at a hearing on WellPoint Inc. that his panel’s investigators had received internal company documents showing that in 2008, 39 company executives received salaries of $1 million or more. And in 2007 and 2008, it spent $27 million for 103 executive retreats.

Waxman says “Corporate executives at WellPoint are thriving, but its policy holders are pay the price.”

WellPoint owns Anthem Blue Cross which wants to raise its rates by 39% in some instances.

[Read more →]

That is the headline of President Barack Obama’s health care plan. It was posted online sometime today and you can read it all here.

I haven’t read it all just yet. But wanted to get it up so everyone has access to it.

Keep your fingers crossed that it gets through congress.

Marla Turner sent a message to the members of Thinking Liberally on Facebook. I want to share it with you all.

——————–

Subject: Important Events Taking Place This Week

Hello Liberals!

Several important events are taking place this week on Capital Hill. It is in all our best interests to be as engaged as possible for what could be the beginning of the end for an unregulated health insurance industry and the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.

To get ready for health insurance reform actions this week, I recommend reading Noelle’s diary at Daily Kos. http://www.facebook.com/l/06a26;www.dailykos.com/story/2010/2/21/132029/805?new=true. In it she outlines the following three things that all of us can do right now to support health care reform.

1. Tell your Representative to sign on to the Perriello-Markey bill to repeal the antitrust exemption for insurance companies. This is a very easy call: insurance companies shouldn’t be allowed to collude to set prices: they should have to compete for business fairly. Period. http://www.facebook.com/l/06a26;action.progressivecongress.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=857

2. Tell your Senator to sign onto the Bennet letter in support of a public option. They can join twenty of their colleagues who have signed on this week, including Sen. Schumer – who, as the chair of the Senate Rules Committee, knows a fair amount about Senate process and how to get this done procedurally. http://www.facebook.com/l/06a26;action.progressivecongress.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=858

3. Be one of a million voices for health care: pledge to make calls on Feb 24 for members of Congress to fix and pass the health care bill. Sign up now at http://www.facebook.com/l/06a26;www.moveon.org/r?r=86481&rc=vm.mailto

MONDAY 2/22:

The White House is expected to release the details of the newest health care reform proposals. Although both President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have thrown their support to the public option, the version coming out tomorrow is not expected to contain it. Instead, it is likely to include a recommendation of utilizing the budget reconciliation procedure (for the public option) in order to bypass a potential Republican filibuster in the Senate.

You can find the details tomorrow at http://www.facebook.com/l/06a26;www.whitehouse.gov.

TUESDAY 2/23:

Testimony begins on repealing DADT. Speakers include the Army’s Gen. George Casey and the Air Force’s Gen. Norton Schwartz. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway, who is said to oppose changes to the policy, will testify on Wednesday. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen says he believes DADT unfairly forces gay and lesbians in the military to “compromise their integrity” by pretending to be something they’re not. Listen to who says what and let your representatives and senators know where you stand.

Proceedings can be viewed on http://www.facebook.com/l/06a26;www.cspan.org.

WEDNESDAY 2/24:

All hands on deck! This is the 1,000,000 Voices Virtual March, a joint project by MoveOn, HCAN, DFA, SEIU, and Progressive Congress which aims to bombard Congress with 1,000,000 contacts in support of health care reform. This is timed to occur the day before the start of President Obama’s bi-partisan summit.

Sign up now and on the 24th, you’ll be able to use their tools to contact Congress and the Senate – and to take action of your choice, whether by calling, emailing, faxing, or writing. It’s simple, painless, and takes about a minute. DO IT – we need you.

Sign up here to participate on Wednesday: http://www.facebook.com/l/06a26;www.moveon.org/r?r=86481&rc=vm.mailto

THURSDAY 2/25:

The bi-partisan summit President Obama requested begins. Obama says that the summit will test Democratic and Republican lawmakers’ ability to solve not just the health care reform debate but other problems, too. Republicans consider the summit to be a trap. In a sense, I think they’re right. Because if they continue to play the role of obstructionist, they’ve outed themselves to the American public. And the insurance company rate hikes that took place last week give those in support of health care reform a great starting point to kick off this event.

The summit begins at 10:00 a.m. EST and will be broadcast live on C-Span. Check your local listings or visit http://www.facebook.com/l/06a26;www.cspan.org.

The ante has been upped and we’ve got to stay engaged to see these things through. Thanks in advance for hanging in there through this long message and for doing your part. Together, WE make the difference!

As always, be well and do good,

Marla

——————–

To reply to this message, follow the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/n/?inbox%2Freadmessage.php&t=1245687021039&mid=1eb8303G1e01b99dG4f01fe0G0

___

This message was intended for featheriver@hughes.net. Want to control which emails you receive from Facebook? Go to:

http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?notifications=1&md=bXNnO2Zyb209MTE1Nzg2NjU4NTt0PTEyNDU2ODcwMjEwMzk7dG89NTAzNDI5NTMz

Facebook’s offices are located at 1601 S. California Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94304.

Health Care Reform has been resurrected like Lazarus from the grave. I suspect Anthem Blue Cross’s raising of health insurance premiums up to as much as 39% has been the catalyst.

The Daily Beast today displays the following:

The televised health-care summit President Obama will host Thursday is being billed as likely the last chance for the GOP to influence the legislation. The Obama administration said health-care proposals will be published on its website Monday and will likely be a melding of the House and Senate Democrats’ versions of the reform legislation. The summit has been hyped as a chance to break through partisan gridlock and listen to Republican ideas. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Saturday that the final Democratic bill will be unveiled Monday evening, and that Democrats will finish up health care within the next 60 days using the budget reconciliation process, a procedure that requires a simple majority vote and would block a potential Republican filibuster. Republicans have decried reconciliation as a partisan move.

Maybe, just maybe, the Democratic leadership is about to cast off its timidity and going to move forward on health care reform. Thank you Anthem Blue Cross!

The White House will publish its updated healthcare proposals sometime tomorrow, Monday, so we can all see for ourselves what is being touted. Something that should have been done, I think, many months ago.

We can all, then see our elected representatives deal with the plan on live TV on C-SPAN when members of congress meet on Thursday. Now that is transparency!

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!

[Read more →]

Remember all the controversy a few months back about building a fence along the US border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants? Some $2.4 billion has been spent since 2005 on a still-unfinished project to erect more than 600 miles of new fence along the US-Mexico border – a finding that is being met with surprise, anger, and consternation by immigrant groups and at least some border residents. The entire length of the Mexico-United States border is 1952 miles long. [Border Fence Project]

Last September the [Christian Science Monitor] reported that “$6.5 billion will be needed to maintain the new fencing over the next 20 years. So far, it has been breached 3,363 times, requiring $1,300 for the average repair.”

The Anderson Cooper video demonstrates that the border fence does not or will not work. The cost of building and maintaining the fence is exorbitant. Those billions of dollars can be put to better use. Health care reform certainly comes to mind. If you add in the billions of dollars spent, and still being spent in the war on Iraq, was a waste of money and lives. The cost of the war in Afghanistan is questionable as well. The United States has, during my lifetime alone, spent trillions of dollars in war. My lifetime experience includes World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. The United States, as a nation, seems enamored with war. Only in World War II were we attacked by another country—Japan. We were not attacked by the countries of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.

That tunnel under the border fence with Anderson Cooper was located at Otay Mesa which is at Tijuana. The tunnel would have permitted a flow of illegal immigrants and narcotics into the United States from Mexico.

Last spring President Barack Obama’s budget blueprint canceled plans to extend the border fence along the U.S.-Mexico border beyond the 670 miles already completed or planned, symbolically breaking with a much-heralded approach to border security advocated by President George W. Bush. [Dallas Morning News] That should end the waste of money for the ineffective border fence project.

The US-Mexico border will re-emerge again as soon as Congress can get back to it from their arguing over health care reform. The question about security of the border will center around illegal immigration and Mexican drug cartel’s entry into the United States. [Politico]

It may well be that the security of the United States is in more danger from the drug cartels than either illegal immigration, terrorists or Al Qaida in Afghanistan/Pakistan. You might want to add citizens of the United States who are addicted to drugs and buy them from the drug cartels as threats to national security.

[Read more →]

The following story appeared in the St. Petersburg Times:

Monique Zimmerman-Stein and her husband, Gary Stein, have Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance through Stein’s job at the Hillsborough County Health Department. They pay $90 a week for coverage. But the insurance isn’t nearly enough.

Monique tries to picture what her girls must look like now that they’re 10 and 13. She hasn’t been able to see their faces in two years. Her days are long and dark and quiet

“I know I won’t ever see again. I’m not even asking for that,” Zimmerman-Stein said. “I just don’t think we should have to deal with constantly being harassed.”

Monique is 48. She and her two youngest daughters have Stickler’s syndrome [Wikipedia], a rare genetic disorder that causes joints to dissolve and retinas to detach. Monique lost her right eye at 16 and now sees only enough light through her left eye to tell night from day. She and her children are constantly in and out of doctors’ offices.

[Read more →]

The Norwegian Nobel Committee hailed Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

CONGRATULATIONS Mr. President!

To learn something about the Nobel Peace Prize see Wikipedia. To see a list of former people who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize go here.

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. According to Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize should be awarded “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

[Source: Reuters]