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For the record I agree something needs to be done with health care. The current system cannot possibly sustain itself. No one can afford it now with or without insurance. And as far as the "birther" issue I'm quite positive the Libertarians and Republicans spent several million in Hawaii and other places investigating Obama before the November election. If there was something there I'm sure they would have uncovered it long before now. Heck if the truth was known the Clintons probably spent a little cash investigating Mr. Obama's birthplace during the primaries. The birther thing only serves to take peoples attention away from the real issues and concerns.
I'm still trying to understand how anyone could think that there could be civil debate at a town hall meeting when there is no centralized plan to debate. Debate is what happens during session in the House of Representatives and Senate. The town hall meetings was designed for our elected officials to hear feedback from their constituents and to let the constituents hear feedback from Washington.
None of our nightly news outlets have been very efficient in reporting what exactly is in the "health care bill" and part of that is because there are three different plans being considered, which plan do they report on? This whole thing has been convoluted from the beginning. Heck half the people participating in this thread can't tell you half the crap in all three of those bills. This whole information vacuum has resulted in the far right talk shows "reporting" everyone's worst fears. Since most people don't get their news online from several different sources like most of the people here participating in this thread there's no small wonder a lot of people showing up at these town hall meetings are confused. They work all day, come home, flip on the news and sit back with a glass of tea. Since there is no in depth coverage of the "health care plan" because the major news networks don't know how to cover all three plans or even which plan to cover these people don't know what the hell is going on. So they go to work the next day and ask people they work with and then all they hear is hearsay and everyone's worst fears. It's a small wonder the town hall meetings are turning out like they are. And for some of these people to be simply dismissed as "birthers" and "racists" is pretty damn shallow. Uninformed, yes definitely, but who's fault is that? This is the core problem as I see it. Resistance to health care reform is from lack of communication, not from some far fetched right wing racist conspiracy. If they are in fact winning this "debate" it's because the other side failed and are still failing to get their message out. Just about everyone you talk to readily agrees something needs to be done about health care so if your side has a plan other than let's vote on health care reform get your message out. How are you going to fix it, what will that mean to the average joe, how will you pay for it without raising taxes or breaking the back of our country. That's what people want to hear. Unfortunately, Obama and the Democrats didn't get the jump and now they are playing catchup.
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"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."
Thomas Jefferson
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