Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-07-05

is striking the Wellfleet set. # Abba is still an incredible restaurant. # Twitter:Blog Post:Mishna FaceBook:Comments:Gemara When will the first great redacted book in a 1000 years be published. Or did I miss it? # Twitter:Facebook; Blog Post:Comments, Mishnah:Gemorrah. When will the first good book in a thousand years be one that has been redacted? Continue reading

June 25th Town Hall Photos

Created with flickr slideshow. Here are some photos of our event with Representative Joe Sestak, Senator Specter; Dr. Valerie Arkoosk of the National Physicians Alliance; Jeff Blum, executive director of US Action; Ed Mooney of the Communication Workers of America; Jeff Garis, chanter extraordinaire of Penn Action, and the whole incredible scene. More photos and video coming this week.k. Continue reading

Health Care events all over Pennsylvania

In May and June, HCAN PA has ramped up its efforts. We are holding four to five health care events every week. The picture, which links to a short video, is from a Health Care Rally in Pittsburgh on May 28 which came a day after we did a Health Care Town Hall in Erie and two days after an event in Montgomery County. (Our rally was held at Mellon Square underneath Senator Specter’s office, to which I was pointing.) Continue reading

Passion and Commitment at the HCAN PA Town Hall in Washington.

I’ve been to a lot of political rallies and events. And, if truth be told, a lot of them are pretty dreary. Speeches go on for too long. And pretty much every rally is subject to the funny observation I first hear from Mo Udall about political conventions, after the first 15 minutes “everything has been said but not everyone has said it.” I think the Pennsylvania town hall yesterday was a little different, especially at the beginning and the end. Continue reading

What Mark Sanford can teach us about sex and love

The initial reaction to Governor Mark Sanford’s admission of infidelity has been to see it as one more example of the sexual depravity of politicians or perhaps of ambitious, successful men in general. Sanford was initially portrayed as another man who gave into sexual desire because he could, that is because some combination of the opportunities presented to him by women infatuated with power on the one hand, and his self-absorption, on the other, lead him risk his career and his family in pursuit of sexual pleasure. But, it did not take long for at least some people to see that Sanford is different. He’s no Eliot Spitzer pursuing sex with an expensive call girl. He’s no Jack Kennedy, keeping a few women on his staff for the purpose of satisfying him whenever he got the urge. No one in pursuit of just sex takes up with a woman thousands… Continue reading

Our buses are full but you can still virtually join us at the PA Town Hall in Washington

Pennsylvania Health Care activists have been on the move for months, holding four to five events every week all over the state. And tomorrow, about 2,000 of us are heading to Washington DC for a national rally followed by a Pennsylvania Town Hall. I know that many of you wish you could join us. We do have a few seats left in Pittsburgh but otherwise the 20 HCAN buses and the 16 buses being run by our labor partners are pretty much full. If we had enough buses, we could have taken 5,000 people from PA to Washington. But you can watch our Pennsylvania Town Hall tomorrow, Thursday June 25th at 1:30 pm, on a webcast at http://tinyurl.com/mab6sp Senator Specter and PA Representatives Dahlkemper, Doyle, Sestak and Schwartz will be speaking at the Town Hall along with many of the leaders of HCAN and our coalition partners in the state.… Continue reading

Table games part of PA budget Deal: Could this provide a path to fixing casinos in Philly?

A Terry Maddona tweet says: Reliable sources in Harrisburg suggest that table games will be approved for Pa casinos as part of eventual budget deal. I’ve argued for a long time that, if we are going to have gambling, we made a mistake by starting with slots. Table games have an appeal to members of the the professional–mangerial calss who can better afford to blow their money. I’d prefer not to finance our government with gambling. But the residents of the city live with a high end casino–preferably one where you had to wear a Tux and drink your martinis shaken not stirred—much more easily than a slots parlor. I would think that a high end casino in the Strawbridge building would have relatively more appeal to tourists and well-off suburbanite than a slots parlor, which would appeal as well to the poor and working class in the city. Continue reading