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To: i-node who wrote (505917)	8/18/2009 7:26:55 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1578127

>> Not Sanford. Michele Bachmann would be a much better choice. Unlike the Ds, I don't see the Rs running an extreme candidate. I believe everyone has seen what happens when you elect someone who is so far outside the mainstream. They end up being totally ineffective. Yup. Bush was pretty ineffective......esp. those last three years after Katrina.

To: i-node who wrote (505917)	8/18/2009 7:28:16 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1578127

This is why you all will keep losing. More Forged Letters: Astroturf Firm Invoked Struggling Seniors To Argue Against Climate Bill By Justin Elliott - August 18, 2009, 4:35PM We're now getting a look at some more of those forged letters sent to members of Congress by D.C.-based astroturf specialists Bonner & Associates. And these new letters plumb the depths of sleaziness. The letters, written under the names of local senior centers, urged Reps. Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA), Christopher Carney (D-PA), and Tom Perriello (D-VA), to make changes in the Waxman-Markey climate change bill because fixed-income seniors were worried about energy price hikes. As a letter to Dahlkemper, purportedly from Slippery Rock Senior Center in Slippery Rock, PA, put it: Many of our seniors, as you know, are on low fixed incomes. Some of our seniors have even received decreases to their social security payments. Further making it a difficult choice to meet the basic necessities of life (food, prescription medication and the like). The cost to heat and cool their homes, run hot water and use othe appliances is very important to those seniors on a budget. Our state gets 56% of its electricity from coal. We urge you to pass legislation that reduces greenhouse gases but at the same time protects seniors and consumers from unaffordable increases in the basic necessity of electricity. Of course, the letter wasn't crafted by concerned advocates of seniors at all -- but by skilled Washington astrotruf lobbyists. Read two other letters to Dahlkemper here and here. The letter to Carney is here, and to Perriello here. They all follow the same script. Rep. Ed Markey's Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, which is investigating the matter, now puts the number of confirmed forged letters at 13. Markey is calling on Bonner & Associates as well as coal industry group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity -- for whom Bonner was working, through an intermediary firm -- to verify whether dozens of other letters are real or fake. 58 letters were sent in all, according to the committee.

To: i-node who wrote (505917)	8/18/2009 7:40:28 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578127

I just want to make clear that you under what has happened in the last 48 hours.....the liberal world exploded when they thought the public option was dead. Exploded! The blue dogs are under seige, R senators are getting the bird, your teabaggers, I mean birthers; uh.....its August, I mean brownshirts are roadkill and the White House's phones are ringing off the hook. 'ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAS CHANGED'.... The Obama administration seems to be putting some effort into reiterating its support for a public option today. Indeed, given the uproar over the last 48 hours, the White House almost seems to be arguing, "What's everyone so excited about?" The Obama administration is not backing away from its support for a public option as part of health-care reform, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stressed Tuesday. "Here's the bottom line: Absolutely nothing has changed," Sebelius said. "We continue to support the public option. That will help lower costs, give American consumers more choice and keep private insurers honest. If people have other ideas about how to accomplish these goals, we'll look at those, too. But the public option is a very good way to do this." Sebelius' comments on Sunday -- she told CNN a public option is "not the essential element" of reform -- helped fuel speculation that the administration was willing to drop the measure from the legislation. Today, Sebelius told conference attendees, "All I can tell you is that Sunday must have been a very slow news day." White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Democratic lawmakers, worried about a possible shift, overreacted to media reports. Gibbs added that this wasn't a trial balloon. "If it was a signal, it was a dog whistle we started blowing three months ago, and it just got picked up," he said. "It's crazy. It's not a signal." I tend to think Sebelius' and Gibbs' remarks are a little coy. No one, including the president, voiced a shift in administration policy, but it was hard to miss the fact that several prominent White House voices all started talking publicly -- over the same weekend -- about the possibility of reform without a public option. "Absolutely nothing has changed"? I suspect that's true -- Obama and his team wanted a public option before and still want one now. But the key here is whether the president expects to see a public option if/when a bill reaches his desk, and how much effort he'll put into making that happen. For what it's worth, the public option isn't dead, and the rather ferocious response from progressive Dems showed that its base of support remains enthusiastic about the idea. Ezra noted today, "It's a fairly safe bet that the House bill will include a public option and the Senate bill will have a weak public option or some version of a co-op plan. Then the two will meet. What happens then?" A conference committee, where the president apparently intends to shape the bill the way he wants it.