Barack Obama
by David Michael Green | September 10, 2009 - 12:39pm
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Me and Barack, we have one thing in common, I guess. We're both slow learners.
Watching his long overdue speech on healthcare last night, I think maybe it's a race between the two of us to see who is the pokier.
Obama seems to be slowly learning that if you're not willing to call out evil monsters for what they are, then what you're doing probably isn't worth a damn.
And maybe I'm slowing learning that, at the end of the day, Obama doesn't really care to do anything that's worth a damn after all.
Last night I saw a guy on my TV screen who was way too little and way too late, but nevertheless looked tougher than we've ever seen him in the two years he's been part of public conscienceness. Unfortunately, in his case, that ain't actually saying much. Pointing to Obama's steeliest moments is sorta like identifying something as the smartest thing George W. Bush ever said. Big deal.
Nevertheless, Barack came out of the barracks last night, if only just for a couple of inches of tippy-toe time. You could see him trying on the political warrior's uniform, and it looked only slightly more comfortable on him than that tank outfit did on Mike Dukakis. Obama seemed visibly nervous to me, trying to draw lines in the sand, something about as constitutionally comfortable for the Capitulation Kid as Dick Cheney doing empathy. He muffed the delivery of his tough guy lines, as if his knees were knocking too violently, as if he was the 90-pound weakling in high school who finally decides to confront the defensive tackle who's been tormenting him all year.
Does it mean that Obama has finally realized that there are some nasty people out there who want to do him harm? In fairness to the president, it hasn't necessarily been obvious that that is the case. I mean, it's not like people have been calling him a socialist, a fascist, or a murderer of senior citizens or anything. It's not like people have been questioning his very legitimacy as a United States citizen, and therefore his eligibility to be president, or something as vicious as that.
Seriously though, maybe he's getting the message. On the other hand, possibly he doesn't give a damn about the life of millions Americans, but has realized that his own presidency is at stake. Or, possibly, he's just jerking off progressives yet one more time.
-snip-
Maybe this guy really cares, and maybe he's got these lofty goals about improving the political process in America of which he is reluctant to be disabused. But, like I said, even if that most charitable reading of his behavior is accurate, boy, is he ever a slow learner.
I'm sorry. These are the people who did Iraq. These are the people who stole the prior two presidential elections, using fear-mongering, racism, disenfranchisement and homophobia. These are the people who have affairs with everybody from blowup dolls to sixteen year-old male Congressional pages, and then impeach a president for lying about oral sex. These are the folks who brought you the Brooks Brothers riot and the swift-boating of John Kerry. They're the scum who turned triple-amputee Max Cleland into Saddam Hussein, in order to win an election. Who want Sarah Palin to be president. And so I have to wonder - Yo, Barack - what more did you need to get what you were dealing with here, and why wasn't the experience of the campaign last year sufficient to ice that cake forever?
In the end, maybe Obama will get his legislation. And maybe it will even be a legitimate improvement for healthcare in America. But I find myself thinking about Dwight Eisenhower's admonition concerning the hidden costs of military spending, reminding us that each aircraft carrier purchased represents a whole lot of dollars not spent on education or infrastructure or... well, healthcare. We have, in this country, a rent-seeking corporate vampire oligarchy that masquerades as a national healthcare system. It isn't fundamentally there to provide improved heath. It's fundamental purpose, rather, is to enrich a tiny segment of the population that happens to be already fantastically wealthy. And it acts accordingly. For every three dollars spent on healthcare in America, only two make into actual provision of the service. Ah, the much-vaunted efficiencies of the market. Only thirty-three percent overhead!
Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to the question of what he's really up to, though I lean toward the latter explanation. It's a measure of his failure that a mere nine months into his presidency (and actually a lot earlier), Barack Obama has already lost my trust. I no longer find it appropriate to scratch my head in puzzlement at how a well-intentioned president could be acting like George W. Bush. Indeed, my working assumption now is that his intentions are no more well than is the hospitalized patient known as the American healthcare system.
I mean, how is it that the president can talk in his speech about the insurance industry as some sort of rogue elephant while simultaneously cutting deals that will bring it enormous profits in the coming decades? And if these deals are so much in the public interest, why did they need to be done in secret? I could be grossly wrong here, but something tells me that Obama is not making secret deals with MoveOn to do something that actually benefits the country. And they didn't even get hammered in his speech.
There's more to what he said last night that rings hollow to my ear. As I understand it, the White House is talking about funding half of the $900 billion cost of this bill by finding "waste" and "inefficiencies" in Medicare and Medicaid. You know, there aren't very many laws of political science we can identify, like gravity or other laws of physics, but surely one of them is that every time you hear a politician use this line, it's a lie. And when he sings it to the tune of 450 billion bucks, it's a lie big enough that whales could swim in it for decades without ever bumping into the shore.
And why do we have to wait four years for this plan to go on line? If tens of thousands of Americans literally die every year from lack of healthcare, how do we square that with this supposed call to conscience? How is it that this country can defeat both Nazi Germany and imperial Japan in less time than that?
MORE OF THE ARTICLE AT.......
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/23754
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