--John R. Wooden, former UCLA basketball coach (from his Pyramid of Success).
What I really like about President Obama (among other things) is that he's a fighter. He's not afraid to take on tough causes even if it costs him some polling points and he keeps on fighting even against powerful interests fighting against his proposals.
During his townhall today in Colorado, our president got real tough against those spreading outrageous lies about his healthcare proposal. Here's a clip:
Here's a transcript of what our president said as reported in a Daily Kos diary:
". . . we shouldn’t have a public option, now I believe that we should on balance. It’s not perfect, it’s not going to solve every problem, but I think it actually would keep the insurance companies more honest. You can have a honest disagreement with me on that. What you can’t do, or you can, but you shouldn’t do is start saying things like ‘we wanna set up death panels to pull the plug on Grandma’ I mean, come on! I mean, I just. . . First of all, first of all, when you make a comment like that- I just lost my grandmother last year I know what it’s like to watch somebody you love who’s aging. . . deteriorating . . . and have to struggle with it. So the notion that somehow I ran for public office, or members of Congress are in this so they can go around pulling the plug on Grandma? I mean, when you start making arguments like that, that’s simply dishonest. Especially when I hear the arguments coming from members of Congress in the other party who, it turns out, sponsored similar provisions. Here’s what this is about, here was the genesis of this little piece of information—we had a provision in the House bill that would give the option, the option, of somebody getting counseling on end of life care or hospice care and have it reimbursed by Medicare. The option, voluntary, so that you’d have more information on how to deal with these situations. Turns out, the biggest proponent of this was a Republican Congressman who is now a Senator and a colleague of Mr. Udall and Mr. Bennett. Turns out, in Medicare Part D, which was passed by a Republican Congress, they had the exact same provision! So when I have people who just a couple of years ago thought this was a good idea now getting on television suggesting that it’s a plot against Grandma or to sneak euthanasia into our health care system, that feels dishonest to me. And we’ve got enough stuff to deal with, without having these kinds of arguments.
Yep, like Muhammad Ali once did in the ring, he floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.
And despite what some in the media who appear still mesmerized by what happened in 1993 might say, I suspect this is the most likely outcome of the healthcare fight:
Our president will succeed with our help just as Ali did in upsetting George Foreman to regain his title.
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