It's my day off but I was so distracted all Saturday because of this...Meant to post...
...Carolyn at Make Them Accountable sent this piece from Chris Floyd out this week: But of course there will be no reform, and there was never going to be. Obama is going to "reform" America's broken health care system the same way he has "reformed" the War on Terror and "reformed" Wall Street: by taking the existing policies and making them even worse...
3 polls tonight about 2012. The choices appear very stark to me this far out. Please vote in all three. I am both curious and torn when I game the next general election out in my mind.
I find that hard to fathom and would like to know if its true. If it is true, Obama, Axelrod and crew are more cynical than even I assumed. The back room Big Pharma deals were gross but expected from No Drama, No Effort, No Real Commitment Obama. If - after all the conjured thunder and lightening on both sides - no reform will be implemented until after the next general election we can all assume that no reform will ever be implemented and this whole "debate" has been an episode of Hee Haw. Lame skits and cheap one liners to distract for an hour or a summer.
If I had to bet on the 2012 general election today I'd throw my cash down for the GOP candidate. Who knows at this point. Still, the power, media and money that massaged BHO into the WH will no doubt have good reason to line up behind Mr. Pawlenty - or whoever- if it means halting health care reform come 2013. The genius chess move here is that if nothing has changed in 2012 Obama will then be able to run on the future AGAIN. This time based in fear not hope - but fear tends to work quite well. The Republicans plan on taking away the heath care reform you don't even have yet! It's so cynical if makes cynics like yours truly cringe.
What,exactly is the point of all this agitation if no reform will become law until after the end of the Mayan calender? WTF? I would ask "How stupid do they think we are?" except I know the answer. They assume we're pretty stupid. Sadly, with good reason. I certainly hope Sowell is incorrect.
At any rate, this is how this debate goes from here on out in a few easy steps:
1. Obama makes a well received, commanding speech in which he is more specific than he's yet been. The bar for specificity is now so low any sentence in the active voice will be roundly applauded. Obots will be over the moon. He smart! He's brilliant! He's God on Earth!
Obama will claim forcefully that he wants a public option. He will not demand it. Therein lies all the information anyone who favors a public option needs. There will be no public option.
2. The media will swoon and all but masturbate on camera. They'll sing Obama's praises for about a week.
3. Sometime within the next 3-4 weeks I'd guess - after the Wednesday speech has faded - the administration will sink the public option. Possibly on a Saturday night in memory of Van Jones. They'll be some blow back from the Left - but by then I suspect the Left will be preoccupied with Afghanistan. The WH will get enough liberals in the House to sign on for passage.
4. Before Christmas (Thanksgiving?) in front of a cavalcade of cameras and Kennedys, Obama will sign a health care "reform" bill. The bulk of which won't take effect until...uh...well...the Pawlenty Administration.
Feel free to bookmark this post to see how close I come to being right.
Every big idea that works is marked by simplicity, by clarity. You can understand it when you hear it, and you can explain it to people. Social Security: Retired workers receive a public pension to help them through old age. Medicare: People over 65 can receive taxpayer-funded health care...
My God, the health care debacle enrages me. It was clear a while ago that the entire "debate" has been, in essence, staged. The public option was never going to be in the final bill. Obama knew it. The Senate Democrats knew it. The Republicans knew it. The only people left flat footed appear to be the House Democrats who - whether they like it or not - no one with real power cares about because, frankly, they don't matter.
I wrote in December that the Left wing of the Democratic party would be thrown under the bus by Obama. The clearest evidence we have yet of this has occurred in the last two weeks as Obama has backed away from the public option. Glenn Greenwald makes mince meat of the "liberal" journalists here, who are - let's be brutally frank - Obama's pimps. Jonathan Alter gets the prize for being the most brazenly whorish. He is an amoral scumbag who trashed Clinton through out 2008 and has openly flip flopped along with Obama on the public option. The man has no principles, no morality, and probably no soul.
The final health care bill will almost certainly be nothing more than a forced transfer of wealth from the middle class to large insurance companies. Buy their product or you are breaking the law.
Looting our money and redistributing it to large corporations is now the one ongoing function of the Federal Government.
Irony alert: The Healthcare bill without the public option is statism at its rawest. This is fascism if we define it in the traditional sense as the marriage of the state and corporations. So yes, the townhall screamers got it right for the wrong reasons. The Federal government has colluded to make it illegal for most of us to avoid buying health insurance. Further it has colluded to ensure that pharmaceuticals can set any price they like for drugs. This will be law by year's end. The hope and change Presidency is an unmitigated catastrophe for anyone who still holds the quaint notion that we, the people, matter.
Since 2001 our tax dollars have gone to:
The airline industry. Pharmaceutical giants (Tamiflu) Haliburton The auto industry. The banking sector. AIG Add your own - I'm sure I've missed some. The government is now a subsidiary of a few corporations. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum this fact ought to enrage you as well. Why do we pay taxes? To bailout corporations. That's why. This is not capitalism.
The perennial debate in this country - what role should the government play in our lives - is now dead. Now the only debate is which multinational corporations get to rape us.
Every "crisis" is another opportunity to transfer wealth from the middle to the richest. Under the guise of heath care "reform" we are about to see the most successful looting of the middle class yet.
Oh, and yes, you'll have no other option. Of this you can be sure.
I want to remind my loyal audience here that long before the slugs at Kos and Huffington got wound up about Obama abandoning the public option this little blog knew he would buckle. I said the health care debate was over on August 8th because he would surely shelve the public option, which makes "reform" laughable. Indications today are that the public option is dead because 3 Senators from tiny states don't like it and Obama doesn't have the stones to stand up to them.
Now it is August 16th. Before this is through one has to wonder what will be left that can be called reform? This bill should now be called the Saving the Health Insurance Cabal Act of 2009.
My hope now - though chances are slim - is for House progressives to join with Republicans and kill this rump reform bill entirely. The only aspect worth saving is the ban on denying those with pre-existing conditions. That can be a separate bill passed without the dishonest label "health care reform."
