In my first diary, I mentioned I had some snaps to share from the Change We Need Rally at Chaparral High School in Las Vegas.
Bill Clinton excited the crowd with his "folksy" down home style of conversation. Not preachy but having a serious conversation with us about what we are up against. He dropped some information I thought was especially insightful on several issues some of us may not be aware of. At least I didn't know until he said it. But I'm always the last to know.
Anyway, one of those gems for me is this issue of "government health care". He made it clear the government doesn't provide health care for any of its current members and the dirty little secret is, it is all private and they get to choose who and what. And he went into the costs associated with us buying our own verses how the government negotiates these contracts is the administrative costs. We pay [paraphrasing some of this] like 18 cents out of each dollar spent for health care vs. what they pay which is 2 or 3 cents on the dollar. The McCain plan would have us paying 23 cents on the dollar for administrative costs alone.
The other gem Bill dropped on us was the big ass check (my words) we just transferred to the government for this bail out of wall street won't be spent by President Bush but will be by the next one. He said only 1/3 of that 800 billion has been dispersed so far. That was a bit of an eye opener but again, I'm always the last to know.
Anyway, that's the long and short of this diary. Here is some pics from the rally.
Bill Clinton and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
Same here without his jacket on. Pretty hot that day anyway
Headed home
Nevada Sunset ahhh