And the generals are straying from the battle plan;
An administration official said tonight that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius “misspoke” when she told CNN this morning that a government run health insurance option “is not an essential part” of reform. This official asked not to be identified in exchange for providing clarity about the intentions of the President. The official said that the White House did not intend to change its messaging and that Sebelius simply meant to echo the president, who has acknowledged that the public option is a tough sell in the Senate and is, at the same time, a must-pass for House Democrats, and is not, in the president’s view, the most important element of the reform package.
Ironies abound in the health-care debate. Bush was pilloried by the Obamanians for (1) not planning for the postwar occupation of Iraq; and (2) not being able to articulate the ends and means of the administration’s war. Yet in the hubris of high ratings, Obama apparently felt that he neither had to present a comprehensive finished blueprint of health-care reform, nor that he or his associates should have to sum it up succinctly and clearly. The result is that most Americans not only do not know what the administration plan is, but sense that their president does not either.
Except that Bush eventually won in Iraq, while Obama looks to be the first American commander since Robert E. Lee to face defeat on home soil.
Plus – the incoming president of the Canadian Medical Ass’n tells us what we already know. (link fixed) Well, what most of us forced into this ridiculous system know, anyway. If there’s any single reason not to adopt publicly funded health care it’s this – it is guaranteed to render your political class deaf, dumb and terminally stupid.
Since Canadian news is dumb and not worth watching we have been watching much of the healthcare debate in the States. It is fascinating watching the messiah defeat himself. Given a teleprompter he is great but asking him to speak on his own is a lesson in silliness. He ums and ahs himself to death and of course he gives bromide answers on healthcare. He has no idea what he wants healthcare to look like other than he wants the government to control it. Failing to put forward succinct talking points about the plan he flails away day after day. The Dems are going to be slaughtered (politically) in the 010 mid terms and Obama is going to turn into a one term president. He promised changed but Americans do not want a socialist society and with evey utterance that is the change that Obama promised and they don’t much like it.
Hahahaha, I firmly believe some of our fine Politicians are getting the feeling when it comes to nationalized healthcare there is no use in re-arranging the deck chairs.
Obama and his presidency is just a really bad and concocted reality television show. It’s a big “Made in Hollywood” production. The teleprompter, the media coloboraters, the vicious attacks on anyone who dares to speak out, the clueless ness of what they’re doing. It just goes on and on.
Its true name is the “Lights Camera Action Presidency”.
Obama knows what he wants, he just can’t figure out how to organize beyond community level and actually lead a nation.
Remember, the chicago way only works by intimidation and that ain’t such a reliable method when people are willing to stand up and tell you to F&*^ off to your face.
hollium,
I agree with what you’re saying, but it had better be a “slaughter”.
These Democrat cheats will be doing everything they can to rig all of the future elections. They now have the power of government and a complicit media to be able to pull it off. After all, they all believe that Bush did just that to them.
Now is when things are going to become particularly dangerous for opponents to left-wing healthcare changes – plan B has a very strong chance of getting passed:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/792vbgus.asp
read it now and you will be about 2 months ahead of the MSM.
Kate, the second last link is also to Victor Hanson…… intentional?
It’s early, I may have missed something..lol
Blame Crash….
I agree with you. They will pull out all the stops and be as dirty as they have to be. However, the townhalls have hurt them badly. Most Americans do not trust the President and he has been caught lying on national TV. Obama is being disingenuous by saying they can keep their existing healthcare coverage. The bill does not say that and in fact the insurance companies will go out of business within five years trying to compete with the government and as the government rations reimbursements to the insurance companies. It’s sad watching the greatest nation in the world imploding because healthcare is not the only issue facing them. Cap and trade is coming. Government control over the auto industry, insurance companies and financial institutions is already in place.
I think that the Democrats are realizing that there is no way they will put through a public health care plan as outlined by Obama, or, more accurately, the BackRoom Gang.
Obama may define himself, gloriously, as a martyr to such a plan, declaring that he’s willing to be a one-term president if that’s what is required to pass it, but the Democrats in the House and Senate aren’t as willing to be elected out of office. They know, already, that such a plan won’t pass and they will be working to ensure its ‘gentle implosion’.
Some on the hard left such as Pelosi and Reid will continue the fight, which has now moved into an ad hominem strategy. Rather than dealing with the health care bill, the Democrats have turned to smearing those who dissent and question it. That will only further harm the Democrats in the 2010 elections.
The bill will be watered down, whether by co-operatives as options or whatever, but it won’t go through as it is. Obama, will, of course, claim some sort of success.
What’s next on the agenda? Hmm. The people will want the deficit dealt with, a clear plan for a reduction in debt and intelligent, as opposed to Obama’s uninintelligent, interactions in foreign affairs. Such things bore Obama. He requires the Stage and constant Accolades.
There’s one way the Comrades can push this through.
Punch back twice as hard.
Syf: the government option was essentially abandoned over the wekend – a victory for the opponents but not an unaticipated one. While I think the push back was more than BO anticipated, it also will make it harder to attack Plan B (see link I embedded above). Plan B will achieve largely the same objectives as govt healthcare that the left has and it will get bipartisan support. It will also terminate the galloping improvements in medical care and technology that the current US system has provided for decades now. And that is a disaster for us all.
I’ve been re-reading the chapter on Marx in Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals. The thing is: the very wellspring of Marxism, Karl Marx himself, had no programme. He had lots and lots of blue book facts from the library (out of date, dead facts) but no programme at all, which is why he never completed his proposed 6 volume work on economics. He had no programme; he left Engels with the mess, ‘cos he knew it didn’t cohere. And, oh, Marx never ever, not once, visited a factory, even Engel’s own! And, he really hated the true worker communists you were just looking for incremental improvements.
It’s a mistake to opine that someone ISN’T a Marxist because he doesn’t have a programme and is concerned only with his own advancement. That is the very essence of political Marxism. And it’s a mistake to equate professorial marxism with actual political marxism. That’s just useful idiocy and they’re the first to be murdered.
That said, Alinsky the Marxist would be extremely disappointed with Obama the marxist. Rule #12 (? on #) states that you must have a alternate programme. Marx didn’t have one; Chavez doesn’t; Obama doesn’t.
The goal is to destroy, not to build.
me no dhimmi – heh, you are overreaching rationalization and moving into slippery evasions.
You now say that one doesn’t have to have a ‘Marxist program’ to ‘be a Marxist’. But a program is a set of actions that must fit into an ideological goal. This set of actions can’t be mechanical and predefined but has to fit into the current situation and therefore, is drawn up by the current activists. Wasn’t there an ideological goal to Marxism?
So what, exactly, does it take for someone to be defined as a Marxist? – that is, how do you define a Marxist? You are now denying the function and reality of ideology?
Again, in my view, and directly opposed to you, I claim that Obama has no political ideology. He’s not intellectually committed to anything. That would require him to focus on something and someone else other than himself.
His only focus is on his narcissistic control of others. He is operationally embedded within the Democratic Party and its hard left, only because their regime sets up (in opposition to Marxism by the way) – an oligarchic elite who control the unwashed masses. That suits Obama’s psychological needs; he has no ideological commitment.
Related post at “Dust my Broom”:
“Health care debate: Inconvenient facts”
Mark
Ottawa
Absent-mindedly entered in the wrong thread:
Caution: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/08/17/white-house-public-option-ploy-a-trial-balloon-not-a-white-flag/
ET.
Obama has a program, it’s to destroy both the freedoms and the economy of the USA.
This is not the old time nationalist Marxism this is global and for the communists to have control they must first destroy the defenders of freedom.
Obama has been Made for this purpose, he is not a born American, his supporters are ALL Marxists and his financing is international.
The Democrat party has been taken over by communists, the National progressive Congress and the National Black progressive congress both of which were started by known communists and peopled by communists.
Obama is a threat to the USA the likes of which they have never encountered before, I have no doubt they are working to orchestrate an attack on the USA so Obama can declare martial law.
Wanna bet?
Durward – yeah, I wanna bet. I disagree with you. The BackRoom Gang are hard core socialists, in my view, but not Marxists (i.e., not into a global system).
They are just Stuck on Stupid; that is, the BackRoom Gang consider themselves Smart and everyone else Stupid. So, they consider themselves as, alone, having the Right To Govern. Read Plato’s Republic for an outline of such a government. Read Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies for a thorough analysis of Plato, Hegel and Marx on the Smart-Stupid platform.
Obama has only one focus: himself. He hasn’t an intellectual bone or cell in his head.
The Democrats now have to regroup and refocus their plans on taking control of the country in a socialist framework. The Health Care proposal isn’t working out very well. What’s next?
How long can the Democrats get away with declaring anyone who doesn’t agree with them, a racist? And how long before Obama’s emotional appeals about ‘my grandmother’ become stale? And importantly, how can they keep Obama’s need for adulation fulfilled?
Proof of ET’s hypothesis is that the number of people thrown under the bus by BO has swelled dramatically with the far-left supporters of government-run healthcare, Pelosi and Reid now under there or about to be. It will truly be proven completely when Rahm or Axelrod (or both) are made to feel tire against cranium.
re. the “terminally stupid” link (and if it’s terminal, maybe he shouldn’t be wasting our precious nationalized resoures, clinging to life, the useless sod. He should selflessly volunteer to sail off on an ice floe; it’s a vibrant part of our Canadian heritage)… well anyway, it’s interesting that Jack “you bald twerp you” Layton mentions doctors striking in Saskatchewan in the ’60s against socialized healthcare; I would have assumed that he was in favour of union activity. If not him, who?
And so what if 92% of people like their GP? Doctors tend to be good people, mine’s great. Lovely man. I’ve still been on a waiting list for a tonsillectomy for… seven years now, is it? (I assume they forgot.)
Nice family doctors have nothing to do with the system being f*(%ed.
Canadians are blissfully unaware regarding how much of our health care gets shipped to the US via our Air Ambulances. In my province the Children’s hospital is full, thus the medivac is on standbye to ship children aross the border. However; soon to be new moms aren’t told of this development nor is MSM informed of the lack of resources it’s hidden from the public. Can you imagine giving birth and having your baby hauled off via a helicopter to another country because we lack the resources to provide medical services? The loopy left cling to socialized medicine like a life raft, and they force us to use a broken system because they are cheap and don’t want to pay a small user fee.
Durward at August 17, 2009 11:54 AM
**Obama is a threat to the USA the likes of which they have never encountered before, I have no doubt they are working to orchestrate an attack on the USA so Obama can declare martial law.**
BamBam is now more of a liability than an asset…..and expendable…..these thugs wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice (grassy knoll) BamBam to further their coup d’etat……..
Black Mamba, Just be glad you’re not in the US. I have it on the highest authority (Obama himself) that their greedy doctors would have yanked your tonsils out in a heartbeat and charged eleventy billion dollars to do it.
Kate, Since Jack! won’t die, terminal isn’t the right word. Chronically, stupendously, world-class, plumbing new depths of stupid, baldly going where stupid hasn’t gone before, sure, but not terminal.
Gee, who should I believe? The last three chiefs of the CMA or Smilin’ Jack?
What a conundrum!
Canadian Medical association heads are once again proposing
“activity based funding” as opposed to the current “block funding” of hospitals which would make sense even to an elementary school dropout.
There is no incentive for a hospital to increase the number of patients treated in “block funding”.
Patients are rushed out the door early in most cases, in order to stay within the hospital’s allotted budget.
“BED SHORTAGES ARE A LIE”.
There are plenty of beds, too few bodies because “block funding” doesn’t allow it.
The generously paid hospital bureauocrats in the system get paid from the same “block funding”.
Activity based funding should make hospitals compete for patients.
The huge fly in that ointment are two or three very powerful unions.
Whether one likes to call them Unions – the medical profession is the most powerful of all , next is the nurses Union and finally the unionized grunts that clean the halls.
Unless or until those areas can be made competitive and the state has complete control above that lot, rationing and as Sarah Palin in Alaska is wont to call them, “death panels” are an inevitable factor in our system.
Further to the comments above, the Communist Party of the USA terms the Great Leaders’ influence in world terms … the Obamajority … as in Obama’s role creating the final victory of world communism against the lone oppresor state left in the world.
It’s there for all to see:
cpusa.org
Read it and weep!
O’s pOds have arrived in Canada.
The left-liberal Body Snatchers at the Canadian Medical Association are panicmongers/fearmongers.
Canada does not need a stinking pig flu “‘czar'”.
…-
“Swine flu ‘czar’ needed: CMA Journal
CBC.ca”
If there’s any single reason not to adopt publicly funded health care it’s this – it is guaranteed to render your political class deaf, dumb and terminally stupid.
Now that statement Kate is what makes your blog so good. So true as well. Look at our own idiots in office . All they prattle about is healthcare than do nothing positive.
Time to dump this socialist millstone.
When I was younger we actually had a real system that worked. Quotas on Dr’s & Nurses his is complete blow out. Let demand dictate peoples choices.