President Obama gave a fantastic, inspiring speech this evening, fully explaining all of his goals on health care reform, attacking the myths and lies that have been spread by propagandists and critics, and calling on the country to unite around the need to give this nation what every other democracy in the world has–a commitment to health care for everyone.
He gave credit to Republicans who have worked on various aspects of health care in the past, including John McCain and Orrin Hatch. He called for bipartisan cooperation to promote a plan that would protect all Americans from illness and injury. He invoked the memory of Ted Kennedy as a leader who felt the moral cause to insure all Americans for the basic right to good health care.
It was disturbing to see most Republicans most of the time sitting on their hands, looking bored and uncaring. Some seemed distracted by their Blackberrys, leaving a terrible image for the younger generation, that it is acceptable to be rude and avoid listening to a person presenting a speech. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor particularly stood out in this regard, and that is not the type of image he should be wanting to present. 🙁
Health care propaganda has just been designed to insure continued high profits for the health care industry, and many Republicans have been well supported by lobbyists for that industry, and that is not going to be a benefit to their party in the long run. The GOP stands out as the party of NO, the party of no interest in solving this problem, and showing an image of being uncaring and mean spirited.
The hope is that the President’s eloquence and passion will finally lead, as he stated, to action on a subject that was first promoted almost one hundred years ago by Theodore Roosevelt during his 1912 Progressive Party campaign for President.
In conclusion, this moment hopefully will be a watershed moment on the way to true health care reform!
I admit to not listening to the speech last night but in the snippet played by the local news stations, I was very disturbed to hear the South Carolina representative shout out “liar” during the speech. Have we come to this?