shonester:

Why are you listening to him in the first place?

He doesn’t know his a-s from his head.

italienne:

Uhm, you’re perfectly incorrect. First of all, in the interview where she supposedly said she would garnish wages, she never said that. Secondly, Obama has made health care a priority, it’s all the Republicans talk in this area, his wanting socialized medicine.

Pie's_Guy:

…also, garnishing wages is the same thing that is happening already with employer healthcare (who’s premiums keep going up each year!), what do you people reckon taxes taken out of your paychecks are? GARNISHMENTS!!!!!!!!! DUH!!!! Hillary’s plot covers EVERYONE! period!
Obama’s plot? leaves out an estimated 15 million people!

battmann:

What is new? He’s a hypocrite.

The audacity of Obama’s hypocrisy?
And many thought he didn’t take money from lobbyists and oil companies?

“he talks in this area taking on special interest in Washington, but his campaign is funded by oil companies and lobbyists.

“Follow the money. Obama’s presidential campaign has received nearly $5 million dollars from securities and investment firms and $866,000 from commercial banks through October of 2007. Obama’s top contributor so far is Goldman Sachs (provider of $369,078 to Obama), identified by Center for Open Politics (CRP) investigators as “a major proponent of privatizing Social Security as well as legislation that would essentially deregulate the investment banking/securities industry.” Eight of Obama’s top twenty election investors are securities and investment firms: Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros. (number 2 at $229,090), J.P. Morgan trail and Co. (# 4 at $216,759), Citadel Investment Group (#7 at 4166,608), UBS AG ($146,150), UBS-America ($106,680), Morgan Stanley ($104,421), and Credit Suisse Group ($92,300). The last two firms are also known to be leading privatization advocates (Center for Open Politics 2007a).

Meanwhile, Obama’s presidential run has been “helped” by more than $2 million from the health care sector and nearly $400,000 from the insurance industry through October of 2007 (Center for Open Politics 2007b). Obama received $708,000 from medical and insurance interests between 2001 and 2006 (Center for Open Politics 2007c). His wife Michelle, a fellow Harvard Law graduate, was until a recently a Vice President for Community and External Affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals, a spot that paid her $273, 618 in 2006 (Sweet 2007).

And Obama’s sixth leading contributor is Exelon, the proud Chicago-based owner and operator of more nuclear power plants than any entity on earth (Center for Open Politics 2007a).

Go figure.

As for his “lobbyist ban,” last August the Los Angeles Times reported that Obama “raised more than $1 million in the first three months of his presidential campaign from law firms and companies that have major lobbying operations in the nation’s capital.” Campaign finance expert Stephen Weissman experimental that this raised troubling questions in this area the practical relevance of Obama’s much-ballyhooed pledge to turn down donations from “federal lobbyists.”

“Obama’s rise to national prominence and presidential viability, Helman learned, depended significantly on PAC and lobbyist money.”

As Los Angeles Times reporter Dan Morain clarified, “some of the most influential [lobbyist] players, lawyers and consultants among them, skirt disclosure requirements by just advising clients and friends who do actual lobbying, and avoiding regular contact with policymakers. Obama’s ban does not cover such individuals.”

Thus, to give one example, Obama received $33,000 in the first quarter of 2007 from the Atlanta-based law firm Alston & Bird, which maintains a large lobbying division in Washington. Obama’s $33,000 came bundled from a number of “consultants” employed by the firm.

Also deleted from Obama’s “ban” are state lobbyists. Obama took $2000 from two Springfield, Illinois lobbyists for Exelon, which spent $500,000 to shape policy in Washington in 2006 and gave $160,000 directly to Obama (Morain 2007).

An especially huge dent in the armor of Obama’s try to sell himself as the noble repudiator of lobbyist, PAC, and special interest money generally was inflicted in early August of 2007. That’s when the Boston Globe published a widely circulated article titled “PACs and Lobbyists Aided Obama’s Rise: Data Contrast With His Theme.” Globe reporter Scott Helman reviewed campaign finance records to find that a “more complicated truth” lurked “behind Obama’s campaign rhetoric.” Obama’s rise to national prominence and presidential viability, Helman learned, depended significantly on PAC and lobbyist money, including large sums from “defense contractors, law firms and the securities and insurance industries” to his own powerful PAC “Hopefund.” Of special interest was Helman’s determination that Obama was retaining close and lucrative funding relationships with leading Washington-based lobbyists and lobbying firms while technically avoiding direct contributions from those key campaign finance players”

Eulalia:

That’s not right–go to
www.barackobama.com/issues and click on his healthcare plot. He has not mentioned it to be mandatory—or talked in this area garnishing wages and it seems to me that this is a smarter approach because there will be people who refuse to get health care and it would not be surprising if one of those would challenge a mandatory plot that garnishes wages in the courts, claiming that this is violating his/her freedom of choice. You can’t force people to buy it–not with our constitution……

Lettie D:

Incorrect! Obama has been working on his Health Care Plot for years. BarackObama.com. I want a Health Care option. I don’t want it mandated that I have to buy it. Hillary shouldn’t be going hostile to the Constitution.

luv2bfit:

we already have all of those in some form except complete health care. We all already pay for the health care of government employees, prisoners, the indigent, bankruptcies from medical bills, elderly, the disabled, illegal immigrants in some states, unemployed, and when we buy things, part of that money goes to pay salaries and medical of the employees. The people who are paying the medical coverage, either directly or indirectly, of other people are FED UP with not being able to have coverage themselves.

We need a healthy workforce. The staff should be the ones WITH medical coverage, not the ones left out! Preventative care is vital for each American.

H

Nemesis:

Really he did work on health care issues even in IL–which is where he did not go with making it mandatory and she says he wimped out then and still does.
How are his criticisms that terrible though? Her plot is not so defined as some seem to reckon–health insurance costs vary–there is the issue of FORCING insurers to take on ANYONE and EVERYONE and what that will do to premiums, etc.
She’s not discussion in this area making a hospital or ER insurance, she’s discussion in this area forcing people to buy what exists and a lot of folks who COULD have it don’t have it because of costs, but will the government agree they can’t afford it?
No this is not so cut-and-dried as you make it sound.
No I’m not voting for Obama.