Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Obama Health Care News Analysis


President Obama continues to rally for support for his health care reform bill tomorrow in his televised speech on Tuesday Sept. 9, 2009.

Obama had hoped to get the bill passed at the end of Aug. before Congress went on hiatus, but failed and is continuing to rally for support.

The president seems to be one of the few people still fighting for the bill as many democrats are growing tired from the battle, according to Robert Pear and David Herszenhorn in their article "Democrats grow wary as health care bill advances."

Time is running out for the bill to be passed and many are getting nervous.

""We’re not in the second inning. We’re not in the fourth inning. We’re in the eighth or ninth inning here, and so there’s not a lot of time to waste,” said the president's senior advisor Dave Alexrod, in Mike Allen's article "President Obama to address Congress."

"His goal is to create the best possible situation for consumers, create competition and choice," Axelrod said. "We want to bring a measure of security to people who have health insurance today. We want to help those who don't have coverage today, because they can't afford it, get insurance they can afford. And we want to do it in a way that reduces the overall cost of the system as a whole."

But why does there need to be competition in health care? Doctors, nurses and other health care providers do not work in a business but a service.

Axelrod says that making health care a competition will make people feel safer and that it will be less expensive for those who can currently not afford it. Making health care competitive and potentially a monopoly sounds like it could become more expensive than it was prior to the bill, which also makes one wonder how it would make citizens feel safer.

Obama is quoted as saying that the health care plan is his "moral obligation."

Depending on viewpoints, it is hard to understand how the health care bill is a moral obligation when funds the plan which will allow citizens to be able to get abortions in hospitals as out patients, rather than just being able to get them in abortion clinics.

How is it a moral obligation to make it so doctors have to give abortions in hospitals, whether they choose to or not?

Some citizens and political leaders also believe the bill to be socialist, since the inexpensive health care is similar to what many other socialist countries are currently practicing.

“These struggles always boil down to a contest between hope and fear,”Obama said. “That was true in the debate over Social Security, when F.D.R. was accused of being a socialist. That was true when J.F.K. and Lyndon Johnson tried to pass Medicare. And it’s true in this debate today.”

Monday, September 7, 2009

After all tomorrow is another day-Profile on Olivia De Havilland

"One day, I came back from location for Dodge City. It must have been early December -- very late November in any case -- of 1938, and the phone rang. The voice said, "You don't know me. We've never met, but I am George Cukor. I have been supervising the preparation of Gone With the Wind, and I will be directing the movie. We are in the process of casting, and I would like to know if you would be interested in playing the role of Melanie." Well, I said, "I certainly would," and then he said, "Would you consent to doing something highly illegal?" Well, I said, "What would that be?" And he said, "You are under contract to Warner Brothers. We have no right to ask this of you, but would you come secretly -- tell no one -- to the studio? ..." I said, "Yes. I'd be delighted to do this highly illegal thing." So, I did, and I read the lines for George Cukor, and he said, "I think I must call David," and he called David Selznick and said, "David, I think you must hear Miss De Havilland read the part of Melanie," said Oscar winning screen legend Olivia De Havilland

Olivia De Havilland, one of the Hollywood's last surviving greats, born in Tokyo, Japan July 1, 1916.

Best known for her role as Melanie in "Gone With the Wind," not all of de Havilland's roles were as rewarding or exciting as Melanie Hamilton. Many of her early roles as a leading lady were simply the love interest of the leading man, such as Errol Flynn with whom she starred in nine movies together.

"The life of the love interest is really pretty boring. The objective is the marriage bed. That's what the heroine is there for, and "Will he win or will he not? Will they finally make the marriage bed? The heroine really heroined. She really had nothing much to do except encourage the hero, and at the right moment... and you can't imagine how uninteresting that can be, the route. The objective might have been different, but anyhow the route is very boring. So I longed to play a character who initiated things, who experienced important things, who interpreted the great agonies and joys of human experience, and I certainly wasn't doing that on any kind of level of a significance playing the love interest," said De Havilland about her earlier films such as Dodge City (1938).

Her early rolls with Flynn were not what you would call unenjoyable, as De Havilland had a crush on him and said it was "love at first sight" when they first met for the filming of "Captain Blood" in 1935.

In her early career, De Havilland was frustrated with the roles she was playing and tired of being the inginue as well.

"They (Warner Brothers) had two ingenues, one was brunette, and one was blond, and the blond one was Anita Louise ...and they had Olivia de Havilland, the brunette ingenue. Well that's how the casting went, you see. It was either the brunette ingenue or it was the blond ingenue. It was confining in that way. I had no real opportunity to develop and to explore difficult roles, and that was tiresome."

Finally, De Havilland won the role of Melanie in the groundbreaking film "Gone With the Wind" in 1939 and was nominated for her first Oscar.

She did not win her first Oscar until 1947 for the film "To Each His Own" and won a second Oscar for "The Heiress" in 1950. In all, De Havilland was nominated for five Academy Awards.

De Havilland's career was not all just awards and glory, but also characterized with contract related court battles with Warner Brothers. She was put on suspencion for refusing to do certain roles, and when her contract came up she was going to be forced to make up the time she lost on suspencion.

De Havilland sued and won and changed the industry with that one case making it so that actors under contract were not treated as poorly.

After a long career that spanned from the 1930's to the 1980's, Olivia De Havilland has now retired and is writing her autobiography in France where she lives.

She still says that the role of Melanie in "Gone with the Wind" that made her a full-fledged star will always remain her favorite.

"I didn't want to play Scarlett. I wanted to Melanie. It's because I was so young. I had for four years been earning my own living, going through all the problems of a career woman, self-supporting and even contributing to the support of others, which is what Scarlett did. So, I knew about being Scarlett in a sense, but Melanie was someone different. She had very, deeply feminine qualities. Scarlett was a self-absorbed person," De Haviland said. "Career women have to be, that's all there is to it. But, Melanie was 'other people-oriented,' and she had these feminine qualities that I felt were very endangered at that time, and they are from generation to generation, and that somehow they should be kept alive, and one way I could contribute to their being kept alive was to play Melanie, and that's why I wanted to interpret her role. "


To Each His Own
Profile with Actress/Writer Olivia De Havilland
Photobucket
Age: 93
Siblings: Joan Fontaine
Number of Spouses: 2
First Film: Alibi Ike (1935)
Best Friend: Bette Davis

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Weird white objects on the back of throats identified as 'tonsil stones'

Check out this article which might answer some questions on what exactly those white objects are you might get in the back of your throat.

1.) (Lead) The article has an anecdotal lead. The reporter gives an example of a young girl (Meghan Swann) who suffered from strange white things on the back of her throat and she thought it was just food.

2.) (Nut Graph) The nut graph continues explaining how the young girl has grown up and still suffers from the strange objects on the back of her tonsils. We then find out, after she questions her mother, that these are a common occurance with most people and are known medically as "tonsil stones"

3.) (Body) The rest of the story continues to tell how common it is for people to have these tonsil stones or tonsillolith, as they are known in the medical world. Message boards are filled with people asking about them and world wide statistics are given for doctors and patients who have studied or suffered from tonsillolith. It also discusses the number of people who have been told that the tonsillolith was simply a piece of food or that they would be gone in a short amount of time. The body also gives possible cures for tonsil stones, such as tonsil removal.

4.) (Ending) The ending ends with another story from the Swanns who started the story. They wrap it up by saying that they still suffer from tonsil stones, but they are unsure if it is worth it to go through surgery to rid themselves of the stones.