Dr. Margaret Flowers at Health Over Profit writes—Obama’s support for “Medicare for All” is a turning point:
On September 7, 2018, speaking at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, President Obama said that Democrats are running on “good new ideas like Medicare for All…”
This indicates a significant shift in support of National Improved Medicare for All (NIMA). President Obama is campaigning for Democrats in the mid-terms and his public support for NIMA right at the start shows how far we have come and that we have a real opportunity to win in the next few years.
Eight years ago when President Obama was pushing through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) he asked in his State of the Union whether anyone had “a better idea.” The next day I attempted to deliver a letter to the president describing a “better idea” – National Improved Medicare for All. They refused to accept the letter so when he came to Baltimore, Carol Paris, MD and I stood outside the meeting holding a sign saying “A Better Idea: Medicare for All” and attempted to deliver the letter to Obama again. We were arrested. See the letter and the video of our attempts to deliver it below.
We have come a long way, and we appreciate Obama’s support. His support for National Improved Medicare for All is a turning point moment — it is no longer about defending the ACA, it is about putting in place the real solution to the US health crisis.
It is also significant that Democrats, including President Obama, are not campaigning on fixing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which was their message over the past two years. When Democrats said, “Fix the ACA,” the grassroots response was, “We want Medicare for All.” We are being heard.
Polls are also reflecting majority support for Medicare for All, with 85% of Democrats in support and a majority of Republicans, 52%, in support. Opponents of Medicare for All are the minority. This popular support gives candidates more comfort in publicly advocating for Medicare for All and indicates that we are making progress. [...]
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QUOTATION
“Zalasiewicz is convinced that even a moderately competent stratigrapher will, at the distance of a hundred million years or so, be able to tell that something extraordinary happened at the moment in time that counts for us as today. This is the case even though a hundred million years from now, all that we consider to be the great works of man—the sculptures and the libraries, the monuments and the museums, the cities and the factories—will be compressed into a layer of sediment not much thicker than a cigarette paper.”
~~Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2003—Another “wonderful” day in Iraq:
Rumsfeld gushed at the "wonderful start" to the Iraq occupation, and he's proven increasingly correct every day!
A suicide bomber killed himself and an Iraqi child and wounded more than 50 people, including six U.S. personnel, according to local people and the U.S. military on Wednesday.
In the fifth bomb attack in Iraq in as many weeks, a four-wheel drive vehicle stopped suddenly in front of a house in the Kurdish city of Arbil in northern Iraq on Tuesday evening and exploded with the driver inside, residents said.
They said the house was being used by U.S. intelligence agents. A military spokeswoman initially said it had been a "safe house." Later, military press officers became tightlipped, confirming only that a blast had taken place in Arbil [...]
A U.S. soldier became the 68th to be killed in action in Iraq since the official end of major combat when his vehicle ran over a homemade bomb northeast of Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon, the military said. Another soldier was wounded.
If the house was indeed being used as a safehouse by US intelligence services, then its attack would signify an inside job. It seems doubtful Al Qaeda agents (or its Ansar al-Islam allies) or Baathists would know of the safehouse's location without having been tipped off.
But whatever, the bombing is another wonderful victory for the US "War on Terror" according to Bush. You see, every time US forces are killed in Iraq we should celebrate, because those very same terrorists would otherwise be killing Americans here in the US.
See? Killing Americans in Iraq is good. Killing Americans in the US is bad.
On
today’s Kagro in the Morning show:
Happy 5779! This episode, our 9/12/17 show, will make you think it's 5778! (Well, ha! It was actually still 5777 when it was recorded!) We discussed Russian meddling via Facebook and reassessed the Steele dossier. Then, OMG—Ted Cruz’s porn habit!
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