Thursday, September 4, 2008

Corndog

Sen. Cornyn: Tax Workers On Health Insurance Received From Employers

U.S. Senator John Cornyn, who is running for reelection this year, endorses Republican Presidential Nominee John McCain's proposal to shift employer provided health insurance from being an untaxed employee benefit to an insurance policy that Americans must purchase in the private marketplace for themselves and their families. "There's no reason today to have health insurance policies tied to employers," Cornyn told reporters on Monday.

McCain's plan, that Cornyn supports, would tax workers on the value of any health insurance they continue to receive from their employers. Under McCain's plan employees would have to report as income any insurance premiums paid by their employers. In contrast, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama says he wants to expand Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, and require employers to either provide health insurance to their workers or contribute to a newly created public insurance program.

Dallas Morning News
McCain's health insurance plan: More radical than Democrats'

North Texas employers are not saying they would drop employee coverage altogether if Mr. McCain's plan were enacted. But some do say the plan, which Mr. McCain detailed in July, would encourage young and healthy workers to forgo company coverage, purchasing insurance on their own rather than paying income taxes on the benefit. That would leave employers with only the costly sick workers to insure. And that, they said, could eventually lead to the death of company-provided health plans.

Rick Noriega, the Democratic Candidate running for the U.S. Senate seat against Cornyn, supports guaranteed coverage through partnerships between the federal government, states, employers, and private health care providers.

Dallas Morning News Blog
Rick Noriega Assails John Cornyn's Embrace of McCain Health Care Plan

Rick Noriega's Senate campaign has harshly criticized freshman Republican Sen. John Cornyn for seconding John McCain's plan to wean Americans off employer-provided health insurance and push them to buy their own coverage. Noriega spokesman Martine Apodaca called McCain's plan "radical."

Apodaca predicted that treating the employer health [benifits] as wages, as McCain proposes, will price families out of health insurance because the Arizona senator's $5,000 tax credits won't make up for the new burden they absorb. "Cornyn thinks forcing Texas families to fend for themselves in the individual insurance market is better than the employer based health care system.

But people don't choose to be sick like they choose to buy a car or a pair of shoes," Apodaca said. "Under the Cornyn scheme, the majority of Texans would be paying higher taxes, paying more for less coverage and employers would lose incentives to offer health insurance to their employees"

The Sarah Palin Smokescreen

The Nation
The Sarah Palin Smokescreen

by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 09/04/2008


"Here's the deal: Palin is the latest G.O.P. distraction," Bob Herbert wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday. "She's meant to shift attention away from the real issue of this campaign--the awful state of the nation after eight years of Republican rule. The Republicans are brilliant at distractions."

Herbert's right on target. Barack Obama honed in on that point in Denver too, "If you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things."

On cue, Sarah Palin attempted to paint an absurd caricature of Obama in her speech at the Republican Convention last night: "What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world."

More than anything, this election should be about the big issues of our time--ending a disastrous war, restoring America's reputation in the world and building an economy that works for more than just the very rich. The challenge for Democrats is to frame these issues in a way that connects with traditional American and progressive values, exposes Republican callousness and extremism, and in doing so trumps the GOP's political marketing which cynically and cleverly plays on symbolism. As George Lakoff wrote, "Just arguing the realities, the issues, the hard truths should be enough in times this bad, but the political mind and its response to symbolism cannot be ignored..... Democrats, in addition, need to call an extremist an extremist: to shine a light on the shared anti-democratic ideology of McCain and Palin, the same ideology shared by Bush and Cheney. They share values antithetical to our democracy."

Read the rest of the story

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Rock The Vote In 2008

From now until Election Day November 4th your Democratic friends and neighbors will be working in your neighborhoods to Get Out The Vote.

The objective of GOTV is to get more Progressive voters to the polls in Collin County this year than ever before by reminding them again and again why it is so important for them to vote in 2008; This is what "Get Out The Vote" is all about.

When the Democratic Party has a strong GOTV effort, our Democratic Candidates have a much better chance of winning. Your Democratic neighbors are already working hard with all our Democratic Candidates to Get Out The Vote in 2008 by Registering Voters, Phone Banking and Block Walking.

This year early voting starts on October 20th and continues until October 31st and Election Day falls on November 4th. We need Democrats to line up to vote starting at 7 A.M. on October 20th and keep lining up to vote until 7 P.M. on November 4th.

Please be a good Democratic friend this year and help your neighbors get out and vote starting October 20th. To sign up to help Get Out The Democratic Vote all across Collin County send an email to the GOTV coordinator, Barb Walters, at this email address: gotv@collindems.us. Barb Walters is working closely with the County Chair and all Precinct Chairs of the Democratic Party of Collin County as well as the campaign staffs of all the candidates whose name will appear on Collin County ballots on November 4th to Get Out The Vote.


Our Democratic candidates running for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, Rick Noriega, Tom Daley and Glenn Melançon, need our support! President Barack Obama will need all the help he can get in Congress when he takes office January 20, 2009!!

PLEASE, please help send Rick Noriega, Tom Daley and Glenn Melançon to Washington to help President Obama quickly turn our country onto the right road to a 21st century America!!


And, don't forget -- Other State of Texas and Collin County Democratic Candidates will appear on Collin County Ballots for the 2008 General Election too. They must also have your support!! For a list of all our local Democratic Candidates Click Here.

Please go to any or all of the candidate's websites and contribute any money and any volunteer time to their campaigns you can spare to help them get elected.

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Undecideds Don't Like The Palin Pick

Andrew Sullivan The Atlantic Magazine:

The headlines are about the broad polling reaction to Palin. But the most fascinating part of the first Rasmussen poll on the matter is how those who are currently undecided in the election feel. They, after all, are the votes both campaigns are trying to win over with their veep picks. The key data is in the cross-tabs, which have been missed in some of the coverage so far.

On the critical question, "With Palin As Vice-Presidential Nominee, Are You More Or Less Likely To Vote For McCain," there's a striking result. . . among the critical undecideds, the Palin pick made only 6 percent more likely to vote for McCain; and it made 31 percent less likely to vote for him. . . among undecideds, 59 percent said Palin was unready to be president.

. . .Palin has helped McCain among Republicans, left Democrats unfazed, but moved the undecideds against him quite sharply.

Saturday, August 30, 2008

GOP Seeks To Outlaw Right To Choose Even Contraception

John McCain together with all of his spokespersons, which too often includes the established news media, are "marketing" McCain as a "Maverick Centrist Republican." In truth, when the vote really counts, McCain has always voted with other far-right conservatives in the U.S. Senate to enact the far-right conservative philosophy into federal law and to confirm far-right conservative judges for the U.S. Federal and U.S. Supreme Courts. His own home state paper, The Arizona Republic concluded, after researching McCain's Senate votes over the past decade that, “McCain almost never thwarted his party’s objectives.” This is particularly true on issues of women's rights.

McCain has repeatedly stated that he opposes Roe v. Wade and that, if elected, he would appoint Supreme Court Justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark court decision from the 1970s that legalized abortion. In picking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, an ardent evangelical Protestant, for his VP running mate, McCain again clearly demonstrates his extreme right-wing position on women's rights.

Palin is as ardently opposed to pro-choice rights as John McCain, and perhaps even more extreme in her position than John McCain has so far publicly stated; Palin is on record as opposing pro-choice rights for women even in cases of rape and incest. Palin is also on record as advocating abstinence-only birth control eduction for teens during her 2006 Alaska gubernatorial race. Palin believes that the pregnancy safeguards afforded by contraceptives are not subjects that should be taught to teens.


While Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska Palin’s administration began charging rape victims for so called rape kits. (Video) (Palin’s signature is on the budget.) Rape kits containing the medical supplies necessary to collect forensic evidence that is required to identify and prosecute the rapist. Rape kits includes an emergency oral contraceptive that reduces the likelihood that a woman will become pregnant as a result of the rape. Many conservatives are strongly opposed to dispensing oral contraceptives, even to rape victims, that prevent a fertilized egg from implanting to form a pregnancy.

We know McCain, his evangelical Republican base, and his VP pick Sarah Palin will eliminate a woman's individual and private right to choose whether or not to bare children by reversing Roe v. Wade.

It is becoming apparent that evangelical Republicans will not stop at just reversing Roe v. Wade. Next on their list is to overturn or circumvent Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court ruling that guarantees the right of men and women to use birth control. The 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut ruling overturned a Connecticut law that outlawed the use of contraceptives by married couples.

It is the Griswold v. Connecticut ruling that also gives explicit voice to the implicit concept that the U.S. Constitution grants a "right of privacy to Americans" to make private individual decisions about family and our own bodies. This includes but does not stop with the private right to choose when or whether to have children. The Griswold decision is one of the foundation blocks for the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling.

In case there is doubt in anyone's mind that Republicans want to ban the use of contraceptives like the birth control pill, consider the Bush Administration's attempt to "administratively" define contraception as a type of abortion.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal OnLine, "The Bush Administration's Department of Health and Human Services has written a draft regulation that defines most birth-control pills and intrauterine devices as abortion because they work by preventing fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus." Evangelical Republicans define a fertilized egg, from the "moment of conception," as human live with full civil rights. Any human interruption to the natural processes that might allow the fertilized egg to implant in the uterus and develop into a full term birth is murder.

The draft regulation, as written, defines the common contraception approaches in use today as "destroying the life of a human being." By its expansive definitions, the draft furthers a key goal of Evangelical Republicans - to define single-cell fertilized eggs as legal people with full legal rights from the "moment of conception." McCain's VP running mate Palin is on record as advocating abstinence-only birth control eduction for teens. Does she also believe that abstinence-only is the only form of birth control that should be practiced by married couples?


Palin and McCain should be asked by reporters if they support the Bush administration's attempt to define common contraception, that prevents fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus as a form of abortion. They further should be specifically queried if they believe that married couples should be allowed to use birth-control pills and intrauterine devices that prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus.
If Roe v. Wade were to be overturned, it is conceivable that even the common birth control pill and IUD device could eventually be ruled a type of abortion by a very right leaning Supreme Court of the United States.

The next President will likely appoint as many as three new Supreme Court Justices to the bench. The three Justices who are likely to retire during the next President's term of office are the only remaining "centrist" judges left on the Supreme Court who believe the U.S. Constitution grants an inherent right of privacy for Americans to make personal choices about their own families and their own bodies. Long after the next president is gone, his appointments will be sitting on the bench, making decisions that impact our rights and liberties.

McCain has repeatedly stated that he opposes Roe v. Wade and has said that he would appoint Supreme Court Justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. The three evangelical-right leaning Supreme Court Justices that John McCain would appoint, joined by the very right leaning Justices already on the court, very likely will not only overturn Roe v. Wade, but they likely will also overturn Griswold v. Connecticut too. John McCain's Supreme Court likely will outlaw a woman's right to make a choice about whether to bare children beginning with her choice to use contraceptives.

Even more serious than eliminating the choice to bare children or to use contraceptives, as if that were not enough, overturning Griswold v. Connecticut would also weaken the concept that Americans have a constitutional right to privacy to make private individual decisions about family and their own bodies. Without this constitutional "right to privacy" protection same sex partners could also find that the door has been once again opened for states to pass laws attempting to control what happens in the privacy of their homes. The Griswold decision is also one of the foundation blocks for the Supreme Court overturning sodomy laws and other such same sex statutes that were on the books of many states until the 1970's.

Texans going to their polling places to vote on November 4th should remember that John Cornyn, the incumbent Republican Senator for Texas, stands shoulder-to-shoulder with John McCain and George Bush on this issue - Women do not have a right to choose, even contraceptives.

Rick Noriega, the Democratic candidate running for the U.S. Senate seat against Cornyn, supports Barack Obama's and the Democratic Party's postion that Americans should have a guarenteed right of privacy and constitutional protections against government intrusions into private family and personal decisions. Which candidate for the U.S. Senate do you want to send to the U.S. Senate to voting on the next President's Supreme Court nominees?? The choice is up to you - the voter!


Which Presidential candidate do you want to nominate the next three Supreme Court Justices for U.S. Senate consideration and confirmation? John McCain or Barack Obama?? The choice again is up to you - the voter!


A message from Cecile Richards,
President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.


It seems like the [other] person who doesn't want to discuss this issue is Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt. A few days ago, health care blogger Scott Swenson asked Secretary Leavitt whether it will be "HHS policy that the 98 percent of Americans who use contraception at some point in their lives are terminating rather than preventing pregnancy." Leavitt's reply: no comment.

We deserve answers from Secretary Leavitt on this secret plan to radically change family planning funding rules, and we need you to help us get those answers. Here's what you can do:
  • First, leave a comment on Secretary Leavitt's blog urging him to respond to Swenson's question and growing concerns that the Bush administration's proposed rule would severely threaten women's health care. Just leave a comment on his most recent blog post. Leavitt uses his official blog to communicate about government policy — it's time he came clean on this issue.
  • Second, let us know you left a comment. Because the blog comments are moderated, some may be blocked from visitors to the site. We need a way to keep track of the growing outcry about the Bush administration's proposed attack on women's health care — we can't let them keep this quiet.
Please, help us stop this proposed rule change before it can harm the people who most desperately need access to quality, comprehensive health care. The first step is to get straight answers from Secretary Leavitt. And don't forget to tell us what you said to Secretary Leavitt.

Thank you for standing with us, and please keep an eye out for future updates on this vital issue.

P.S. Our best chance of stopping this assault on the fundamental health care rights of women is to raise a massive public outcry. Help us get a head start by urging your friends to contact President Bush. Click here.

Cecile Richards interview on MSNBC

Hurricane Gustav Timed For The Republican Convention?

The video below is just one of several possible storm tracks projected for Hurricane Gustav. (Track modeled early on Aug. 27 by the National Weather Service.) If Gustav does take this particular track, it will hit the New Orleans area around the same time that the Republican National Convention begins in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

On Saturday August 30 the National Hurricane Center upgraded Gustav to a Category Four storm, with maximum sustained winds near 145 mph, making it the strongest Atlantic storm of 2008. However, by 4 P.M. CDT Sunday afternoon Hurricane Gustav had dropped to Category 3 strength and is not expected to reach Category 4 strength again before hitting the U.S. Gulf Coast sometime Monday, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

It could strike the U.S. coast anywhere from Mississippi to Texas, but the storm track remains centered on the Louisiana coast west of New Orleans as of 4 P.M. CDT Sunday afternoon. Whatever its exact landing point, a Category 3 storm surge can still cause serious damage throughout the region, including the City of New Orleans.

Republican officials are actively considering delaying the start of the GOP convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul because of Tropical Storm Gustav, which is on track to hit the Gulf Coast, and possibly New Orleans, as a Category Four to Five hurricane early next week.

ABC News' Karen Travers reports: In an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace that will air Sunday morning, Sen. John McCain indicated that the GOP convention could be suspended because of Hurricane Gustav. A Republican convention official tells ABC News, however, that at this point, there are no plans to cancel the convention. This official says the Republican National Convention Committee is "still moving forward with opening the convention on Monday" as planned and notes that there is official business that has to happen at the convention, like the actual nomination of John McCain and the platform ratification.

McCain Out Of Touch On The Economy

McCain out of touch on the economy video

Friday, August 29, 2008

Please Help Spread the Word About Our Democratic Candidates!

Please email the link for this blog to all your friends and neighbors!!! From now through election day we will be blogging about all of our Democratic candidates whose name will appear on the election ballots in Collin County. We will also highlight the positions and voting records of our Democratic candidate's Republican opponents too.

Blogging is the Internet age version of block walking and phone banking to Get Out The Vote. While other Democratic volunteers are busy Getting Out The Vote (GOTV) by block walking and phone banking we will be doing our GOTV part by blogging. If you would like to author postings (like letters to the editor) for this blog, please email me at the blog editor's address given in the top block of the left-hand sidebar.

Remember, our Democratic candidates running for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, Rick Noriega, Tom Daley and Glenn Melançon, need our support! Please contribute your much needed dollars as well as your volunteer time directly to these candidates. They also need our support to help get the Democratic message out to the voters. Blogging to get out the message is another way to support our candidates.

President Barack Obama will need all the help he can get in Congress when he takes office January 20, 2009!! PLEASE, please help send Rick Noriega, Tom Daley and Glenn Melançon to Washington to help President Obama quickly turn our country onto the right road to a 21st century America!!

And, don't forget -- Other State of Texas and Collin County Democratic Candidates will appear on Collin County Ballots for the 2008 General Election too. They must have your support too!!! These local Democratic Candidates include:
Please go to their websites and contribute any money and any volunteer time you can spare to help them get elected. Even a dollar or two or an hour or two a week will help, if that is all you can spare!

And please, help us spread the word about our Democratic candidates by forwarding the link for this blog to your friends!

American Prayer by Dave Stewart

By Special Request
We Post The Following
Barack Obama Music Video
"American Prayer by Dave Stewart"