Topic: Barrack Obama

Realism required to fix health care system

By Bill Larson | February 4, 2008 |

Health care is a major issue facing Americans today. We as a nation pay the highest price for health care and prescription drugs in the world, and you would assume this would mean we get the best possible medical care. While that might be the case if you are wealthy, if you are not you face some tough choices.

Choices like do you get the prescriptions you need to have a decent quality of life, or do you eat? Do you get regular medical checkups, or do you because you can’t afford the price of a doctor’s visit skip them until a health condition forces you to the doctor, often after it’s too late to treat the condition? Do you look after your dental health, or do you have to let your teeth basically rot in your mouth?

I have personally been forced to make some of these choices, and I have friends and relatives who have been forced to as well. Choices no American should ever have to face.

Lets be realistic. The problem with health care in America is the private for-profit companies currently running it. In order to fix our broken system, we must take the profit motive out of it. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Opinion, Politics | 5 Comments

Candidates on the Issues: Abortion

By James Butler | January 14, 2008 |

Tennessee voters go to the polls on February 5th for the presidential primaries in this state. Tennessee is historically not given a great deal of attention by most candidates, and this election cycle is shaping up to continue the trend.

Unfortunately, this means Tennesseans often have to rely on news media sound bytes to obtain information about the candidates. However, since news media are businesses and therefore have as their proper goal the making of money, this often leaves viewers with precious little information about how the candidates would actually go about running the county and a disturbing amount about their private lives.

Let’s be honest, does it really matter than Barrack Obama has an Islamic heritage, that Hillary didn’t leave Bill, that Mitt Romney is Mormon or that John McCain allows his adult children to live their own lives? «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Opinion, Politics | 5 Comments

American Road Show: New Hampshire votes

By Christine Anne Piesyk | January 8, 2008 |

Crossing into blue state territory is always an adventure; being in blue state territory as the first presidential caucuses and primaries unfold is, to say the least, exhilarating.

From my cozy corner in a computer lab, far from radio and completely without television’s frenetic coverage, I watched the Iowa caucus results unfold on the web: a few surprises, a lot of predictability. Today I keep checking in on the New Hampshire vote.

One of the more interesting quirks in snow-bound New England is the midnight in two of New Hampshire’s smallest communities, Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location.

Notch voters turned up at the midnight hour to toss seven votes to Barrack Obama, three for Hillary Clinton and one for John Edwards. On the Republican side, Dixville gave John McCain six votes, Romney two and Rudy Giulliani one.

Hart’s Location voters put nine votes on Obama’s tally sheet, three for Clinton and one for Edwards. As for the Republicans in Hart’s location, John McCarn took six votes over Mike Huckabee’s five, with Ron Paul taking 4 and Mitt Romney matching Edward’s single vote. Reportedly, voters are turning out in significant numbers, and a spate of winter thaw and 50 degree temperatures won’t hurt that turnout one bit. «Read the rest of this article»

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Congress grills Petraeus on Iraq status; demands ‘no-nonsense’ answers

By Christine Anne Piesyk | September 11, 2007 |

Inch the price up, a dollar here, a dollar there. Customers rarely notice. On the day of the big sale, “slash” prices and people will come, buy, plunk down dollars and pay what you would have gotten in the first place — and they’ll be happy that they think they got a deal.

That’s what unfolded this afternoon on the Senate floor before the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as General David Petraeus made a case for keeping the war in Iraq alive even as he concedes the next nine months of war will cost America “60 soldiers a day” and “nine billion dollars a month.”

Petraus tried to sell the prospect of drawdown in US troop levels that were in fact a pulling of troops who are part of the President’s highly touted 2007 “surge,” and would not likely affect the base number of troops — 130,000 — for another 9-12 months. «Read the rest of this article»

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