It has been almost one year since Barack Obama was elected President and in this one year what has Obama accomplished? Nothing. In following politics I have seen President Obama speak at numerous engagements and to numerous crowds about what he plans to do like the health care reform, getting the troops out of Afghanistan, declaring peace, helping to get rid of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and more. Shouldn't at least one of those promises have been made by now? Health care is in election at the moment with its supporters and many debators. If the health care reform bill passes how will it effect you and your loved ones? Are you for it or against it? These are questions circling inside many Americans minds over this issue. How do you feel knowing that the government could be in control over a life and death situation? Being in office only one year Obama has only declared one issue: Health care. Does this mean that we should expect only one issue to be taken care of every year he is in office? It took eight years for President Bush to ruin America and with Obama wanting to set out and "change America" he isn't doing a great job at it so far. Obama has another three years to change our situation and change our minds. Respect should be given to Obama and his administration for what they are wanting to do and what they are trying to do but people want answers and relief that they are not getting. Our government needs to help its nation, not destroy it.

Media's lack of attention

On October 14, 2009 Steve Benen took to his blog, Washington Monthly, to discuss the media’s lack of attention to the gay rights rally that happened on Sunday October 11, 2009 particularly one network: Fox News Channel. The gay rights rally had the same turn out as September’s Tea Party Rally but was deemed more news worthy than gay rights. Benen took to Jon Stewart’s coverage of the matter where Stewart pointed out that Fox, who loves protests and angry Americans, spent 3 minutes and 42 seconds between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. covering their issues while in the same day they spent 8 minutes and 16 seconds covering the much smaller protest of parents in New Jersey over the song their children sang about President Obama. The only on-air coverage they showed of the rally didn’t even come from their own network but an aerial view of the march from ABC. To add more concern to the lack of attention it got NBC spent less time covering it than they did with their “Honeymoon in Hell” special and CNN sent a camera crew to the march but didn’t assign an on-air correspondent to cover it. MSNBC was the only network mentioned in Benen’s commentary to have sent a reporter out to the rally. 75,000 Americans looking for equal rights wasn’t news worthy to many and Fox News proved that. The intended audience for Benen’s commentary are those to fail to notice everyone as equals. Both Stewart and Benen are speaking out to Fox News Affiliates and other networks to realizes their mistake and hopefully change their course of action when deciding what they find newsworthy and not. It is sad when a network like Fox chooses to show a supposed spot of where a much smaller protest took place and choose to ignore 75,000 people marching in front of the United States capitol that happens to be right outside of their window.

The Health-Care Ego Trip

Robert J. Samuelson, a columnist for The Washington Post wrote a logical opinion about the health care reform bill President Obama is pushing. In the article Samuelson's opinion seems justified by statistics he researched and his comments based on them. For example, according to one study being uninsured leads for 45,000 deaths in America. As sad as it is that those 45,000 people die from lack of professional health care does it mean that those 45,000 people, given the opportunity to have insurance, would take it? According to Samuelson in another study, 10.9 million who were eligible for insurance didn't take it in 2007. In a figure cited by Baucus, the number of Americans who die from being uninsured in "itself is an unreliable statistical construct built on many assumptions." By a base of 351 deaths, 60 of them were uninsured. When averaged out the percentages weren't far apart (3 % insured to 3.3% uninsured).
To quote Samuelson: "The point is not to deny that the uninsured are more vulnerable...the point is that estimating how much is extremely difficult." To pull from personal experience, I agree with Samuelson's opinion about the health care reform for the most part. I am uninsured at the moment but do not plan to be for much longer. It is unfortunate that I lost it but at the same time looking at the percentages of those eligible to receive insurance to those who are not really delegate how much the reform may help or may cause more trouble to our ever growing recession. Politicians want us to believe that they are god and that it is their destiny to serve for our government and to make our laws but to us it makes us suspicious for their decisions and the bills they are trying to pass.
A bill like that Health Care Reform seems like a great plan on the outside but along side the big print there is also the small print most people don't read. Our question is: What does the small print fully entail? The Wall Street Journal recently pulled a poll amongst their readers and according to their responses just over 40% opposed Obama's proposal and another 39% were undecided. I believe you can add me to the undecided poll.