Quit Talking It To Death and Just Do It, Accomplish Something

                                                                                                                                                   ACVDN
Obama has been in office for a few days over a year and the voters are starting to look at his record and less at the Bush record and all across America voters are less than impressed.    

                                                                               Amherst County Virginia Democratic News
Obama beat McCain 53% to 46% in the 2008 election (Virginia).     Few of the topics Obama talked about have been realized and that spells trouble for local democrats even though local democrats have nothing to loose.   (You have to hold an office to lose an office.)     The trouble is gaining anything may be impossible when there is no accomplishment to hang your hat on.    

                                                                                            Amherst VA Democrats
What do you say?     It would have been worse if you hadn't elected us.     How do you make your case?     We have been planning on fixing that for the last three years since we took over the House and for the last year while we controlled everything, it just sort of slipped by us.     

                                                                                            ACV Democratic News
Excuses no longer cut it.     The tide is shifting and we are losing the trust of the people.  

Here are results of polling in Virginia.     These results are more bleak than the preceding paragraphs.

SurveyUSA, Dec. 11-13;  SurveyUSA says 54 percent disapprove of Obama's performance while 44 percent approve, with 2 percent undecided.

Sixty-eight percent of whites (72 percent of the sample) disapprove while 88 percent of blacks (18 percent of the sample) approve. Independents disapprove by a 63 percent to 35 percent margin.
Last month, 60 percent disapproved and 37 percent approved.

Public Policy Polling, Oct. 31- Nov.1;   Public Policy Polling says Virginians disapprove of Obama's performance by 52 percent to 41 percent with 6 percent undecided.

Suffolk University, Oct. 26-28;   Suffolk says 50 percent approve of Obama's performance, 42 percent disapprove and 8 percent are undecided.

Roanoke College, Oct. 21-27;   Roanoke says 46 percent disapprove of Obama's job performance, 45 percent approve and 10 percent give him mixed marks.

Rasmussen Reports, Oct. 27;    Rasmussen says 51 percent disapprove of Obama's job performance while 49 percent approve and 1 percent is undecided.

Virginia Commonwealth University, Oct. 21-25;     VCU says 49 percent rate Obama's performance excellent or good while 48 percent say it is fair or poor with 3 percent undecided.
ACVDN

Universal Health-Care Coverage

The U.S. is the only major industrial nation that doesn't have universal health-care coverage.



The U.S. has flirted with some kind of national health policy six times over the past 100 years, only to see the reform impulse wither each time. For instance, a key plank in Theodore Roosevelt's losing Presidential campaign of 1912 was national health insurance.

President Harry Truman tried again after World War II, but he was thwarted by a
potent combination of political forces, including the vehement opposition of the American Medical Assn., which was determined to defend doctors' incomes against the threat of "socialized" medicine.

John F. Kennedy made health care a major issue in his 1960 campaign. He concentrated on what then was called medical care for the aged. He couldn't get it through Congress.

Lyndon B. Johnson did, but even with his legendary legislative skills and the overwhelming Democratic majorities in Congress after the 1964 elections, it took more than a year of hard, sometimes arm-bending persuasion to get Medicare enacted. It was a hard sell with conservative Democrats, not unlike the problem Obama faces now.

That one major victory for government health insurance was an exception to the pattern of starting each attempt from scratch instead of evolving it from what had gone before. When Johnson signed the Medicare bill in 1965 and gave Truman card No. 1, he traveled to Independence, Missouri, to share "this moment of triumph" with the president who had first proposed it 20 years before.

It provided government health insurance at age 65, tied to Social Security. Broader coverage, which FDR, Truman and Johnson all would have liked to gain, was beyond political reach. Not only for LBJ, but also for Republican Richard M. Nixon, who proposed universal health insurance in 1974, seeking to use employer-based coverage along with federal subsidies so that all Americans would be insured. It was to be done by private insurers, not the government. There was bipartisan support until Watergate intervened.




The political perils of change were dramatized in 1988 after Congress enacted a Medicare overhaul that included prescription drug benefits financed with higher fees on upper-income recipients, who rebelled. They protested, demonstrated and even chased the sponsor, then-Democratic Rep. Dan Rostenkowski to his car. Those changes were repealed the next year.

Prescription drug coverage was added to Medicare in 2003, pushed by President George W. Bush, who claimed it as one of his major achievements in winning re-election. It did not come easily. The administration understated cost estimates by half, and Republican leaders muscled it through the House by one vote. To hold down the cost, they wrote a gap into the coverage.

Most people agree that universal health-insurance coverage is a good thing. The question that rightly troubles everyone is how to pay for it. But it can be paid for, and it makes good economic sense to do so. The issue now is whether our politicians are up to the task of offering health-care benefits to all citizens.


President Barack Obama's campaign to reform health care has been won and all of the citizens of the United States are better for his efforts.

Joe Lieberman is the JOKE

                                                                                                                                          ACVDN
Joe Lieberman argues that poverty could be abolished if people were just allowed to keep more of their minimum wage.                                                                                                                ACV Democratic News
A guy was traveling through Mexico on vacation when, lo and behold, he lost his wallet ...... and all identification. Cutting his trip short, he attempts to make his way home but is stopped by the Customs Agent at the border.
"May I see your identification, please?" asks the agent.
"I'm sorry, but I lost my wallet," replies the guy.
"Sure, buddy, I hear that every day. No ID, no crossing the border," says the agent.
"But I can prove that I'm an American!" he exclaims. "I have a picture of George Bush tattooed on one butt cheek and a picture of Dick Cheney on the other."
"This I gotta see," replies the agent.
With that, Joe drops his pants and bends over in front of the agent.
"By golly, you're right!" exclaims the agent. "Go on home to Connecticut ."
"Thanks!" he says. "But how did you know I was from Connecticut ?"
The agent replies, "I recognized the picture of Joe Lierberman in the middle.
                                                                                      Amherst County Virginia Democratic News 
Joe Lieberman is on a lifeboat with a young woman who was denied insurance coverage because she was raped, a middle-class guy who can’t afford his premiums, and a sickly child. He stabs them all in the back.                                                                                                           Amherst VA Democrats 
A little girl asked her father, "Daddy? Do all Fairy Tales begin with 'Once Upon A Time'?" He replied, "No, there is a whole series of Fairy Tales that begin with 'If elected I promise'."
Joe Lieberman is the JOKE
Amherst County Democrats