The Weiner Amendment is a substitute amendment that would replace language in healthcare reforms now being debated in congress with single payer language to provide healthcare for everyone. There is still hope for real change. Please call your congressperson and ask them to support the Weiner Amendment.

For more information go to:
www.guaranteedhealthcare.org
www.weiner.house.gov

Special thanks to Michael Moore for permission to use footage from the film Sicko in the creation of this video.

“It’s a crime story. But it’s also a war story about class warfare. And a vampire movie, with the upper 1 percent feeding off the rest of us. And, of course, it’s also a love story. Only it’s about an abusive relationship.”

“It’s not about an individual, like Roger Smith, or a corporation, or even an issue, like health care. This is the big enchilada. This is about the thing that dominates all our lives — the economy. I made this movie as if it was going to be the last movie I was allowed to make.”

“It’s a comedy.” — Michael Moore

Keith Olbermann calls out Sen. John Thune, Sen. John McCain, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans – whom he argues “owns” the insurance industry – as well as a few Democrats, too – specifically the “Blue Dogs” – in a “Special Comment”.

I listened on and off for about 2 hours, both before their lunch break, (and mine), and afterward. And there seemed to be a constant theme…they are pissed off. It was PURE entertainment. What are they pissed off about?

1. Democrats demonized the republican message via social networking to the point where even they (RNC new media ‘experts’) admitted Dems were able to effectively label them as “Jerks”

2. Consistent complaints about their technology, most of all “Voter Vault”. Voter Vault from what I was to gather is the main database link that organizes grassroots efforts to connect with voters.

3. The mere volume and diversity of online activity and messaging was dismal from their grassroots compared to the Democrats.

The conference also addressed what they plan to do about this. In my opinion, the RNC would like to use new media as they have used AM Radio in the past. Saturate the market and get their message out. The question for us Dems, conservative and progressive alike is, are we going to let them? Several talking points discussed how they planned to move forward. Among which I picked up on a few when I listened in to the broadcast.

1. Integrate social networking API’s with their ‘Voter vault’ system.

2. Harness the mobile phone’s social networking components for on the ground field activities.

3. Capture democratic events, town hall meetings, press briefs, and even congress sessions, and immediately respond to them via social networks. An great example is the infamous Congressman John Culberson’s video that highlighted the power of viral internet video using Qik. Examples of his efforts in this video.

This last point needs to be made crystal clear to progressives everywhere. the RNC will use new media to capture and spin what the democrats say and do moving forward. Their New Media Conference was a starting point to a republican new media/social networking revolution.

What do progressive dems need to do? Well, according to the republican new media ‘experts’ we are already ahead of the game. Whether that is true, or not is not important. What is important is we expose the truth without the spin as we have done in the past. TRUTH TO POWER! We build upon the technologies that we have founded, we hold more workshops to teach young and old alike to embrace new internet technologies, we continue to blog our editorials and ‘vlog’ (video blog), our testimonials. Simply put the republicans will try to use the power of new media as they did AM Radio, will we let them?

Here is the link to the Republican New Media Conference that was captured using USTREAM, I highly recommend this video archive for anyone interested in this topic:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/republicannationalcommittee