Posts Tagged ‘Health Care Reform’

Before the Super Bowl, which was a solid game, President Obama sat down with Bill O’Reilly. He spoke about Egypt, saying they will certainly change but we can’t dictate what they do. When asked about the judge’s ruling on health care reform, Obama said he disagrees with the judge and doesn’t want to continue fighting the battles of the last two years while championing some of the better parts of the bill. I do like at about the 7:00 mark how Obama makes the argument that the mandate is about responsibility. Obama also talked about his idea of winning the future in various ways. There is also an interesting point at 9:45 when Obama talks about the things that reach his desk. It’s definitely worth a listen.

Enjoy contemplating how long it will be before the next NFL game.

Adam Feser

Politifact has chosen the whopper of the year, and it is the oft-repeated (even by Dr) lie that the government has taken over our health care system.

As they (and I) have pointed out several times, it simply isn’t true. Repeating this lie seemed to be a part of the strategy of misinformation intended to stir anti-Obama/Democrat sentiments before the mid-term elections. Well done. All it took was lying over and over to your constituents.

Enjoy the second year in a row where a health care reform lie won the prize. (Last year’s was Sarah Palin’s death panels comment.)

Adam Feser

New Update:  They have had to assign extra security to several members of Congress.

Update:  I almost forgot to include the fact that a few representatives have received faxes with pictures of nooses.  That’s right, let’s send nooses to members of Congress that want Americans to have health care.

I wrote earlier about how childlike the response to health care of Republican elected officials has been, and, of course, the “patriotic” citizens opposing reform have been even worse.

There have been at least ten threats against Democrats that voted for reform. One congressman’s brother actually had his gas line cut after a tea party patriot posted his address thinking it was the congressman’s. A brick was thrown through Rep. Louise Slaughter’s office. Click on the link for a list of threats.

This is on top of the earlier intimidation tactics of “patriots” directed at Democrats for reform. They yelled racist and bigoted slurs at the elected officials as though it was a completely natural thing to do. Former civil rights activist and current member of Congress John Lewis had a group of tea partiers chant “nigger” at him at least 15 times. Black Caucus leader Emanuel Cleaver was spit on. Majority Whip James Clybourn said, “”I heard people saying things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus.” Barney Frank was called a “faggot” by the noble protesters.

I’m sure there was a lot more going on, but you get the point. Why on earth would I respect the opposition of a bunch of racist douches that probably have no idea what they’re protesting. These are the same people that protested taxes when they paid less. These are the same people pretending to hate Obama’s policies (of which they know nothing other than what crazy people like Glenn Beck told them) when they really just hate that we have a black president. That racism that so many assumed was rampant in the group came out in spades as they didn’t get what they wanted.

The reaction isn’t a representation of how much America hates this (as Gallup showed, they like it), it’s a representation of how childish and horrible much of the opposition is.

When I joined in a protest, you can be damn sure we didn’t yell backwards slurs. And you can be damn sure it was because people were dying, not because someone was getting health care. And you can be damn sure it wasn’t because we were worried about how much money we would have (though the majority of protesters hardly fall in that top bracket).

I still haven’t heard from those that oppose this bill – are you proud of the actions of your elected officials and the protesters?

Enjoy the kicks and screams of one big toddler throwing a tantrum.

Adam Feser

Remember Megyn Kelly and others wouldn’t stop talking about how Democrats were “ramming” health care reform down the throats of an American public that didn’t want it? Times have quickly changed.

I wrote earlier about how the poll numbers change pretty quickly under some scrutiny, and now there is even more evidence Americans support the plan.

Gallup has found that a majority of Americans support the bill’s passage.

I wonder if Megyn will use that poll to grill those that would attack health care reform.

Enjoy this.

Adam Feser

Biden pulled a great one today:

While letting the president know how awesome this is, Biden said, “This is a big f*#@ing deal.”

When he’s right, he’s right, which is the same sentiment shared by the White House.

Enjoy success.

Adam Feser

Senator John McCain, once a noted renegade maverick willing to go bipartisan, has decided to let sour grapes get in the way of doing his job.

“There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year. They have poisoned the well in what they’ve done and how they’ve done it.”

Mr. “Country First” has decided to put the country behind his hurt feelings, though he and other Republicans were provided plenty of opportunity to cooperate on this bill (and many of their ideas were included).

This is the type of crap you’d expect to see on the playground. He’s basically saying he will refuse to try and help govern America out of spite.

Or is it more like an old man yelling at kids on his grass? He certainly seems to be getting more and more crotchety. Perhaps it is time for Old Man McCain to retire.

You would think a statement like this would lead to a revolt, but, sadly, it will likely help him get reelected.

Enjoy the picture of McCain shaking his fist and waving his cane at those damned Democrats.

Adam Feser

Conservative writer David Frum has an interesting article on the passage of health care reform entitled “It’s Waterloo All Right: Ours.” His position is that Republicans screwed themselves.

They could have decided to compromise in the beginning, but they put all their chips on health care failing. They decided that if Obama and Democrats failed, 2010 would be looking pretty good. And now they’re in a pickle.

As Frum puts it:

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

On the possibility of a deal:

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

You wouldn’t know that this plan isn’t much different from conservative plans if you listened to Republicans, but the damn Heritage Foundation (more…)

If you hate health care reform, you should hate Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney came out and said, “America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power. President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation…”

He has to do this because he knows he’s vulnerable on the issue. He’s vulnerable because he is the only governor that has passed reform almost exactly like Obama’s.

His plan, for instance, had an individual insurance mandate and provided help to those that couldn’t afford it.

Were you confused as to who that “His” referred to? Pick a name, because both of their plans fit that description.

If you read that salon article, they make a pretty strong argument that he helped craft and pass the MA legislation in order to differentiate himself from other Republican presidential contenders. So he did it to help himself. And now that it is a Republican bugaboo, he has to pretend to really, really hate it.

It’s hilarious, but the Heritage Foundation (hyper-conservative “research” group) gave Romney their blessing for that bill. Conservatives okayed that one. But now that a Democrat is in charge, it’s the worst thing in the world.

Oh hypocrisy, how rampant thou art.

Enjoy fantasy baseball season.

Adam Feser

The CBO has said this before, but they updated their study to include the new amendments. Their conclusion is that the bill would reduce the deficit by $118 billion over the first ten years. They have also estimated that in the second decade we would se savings of over $600 billion.

As Ezra Klein puts it: “…this bill will cover 30 million people but the cost controls will, within a decade or so, leave us spending less on health care than if we’d done nothing.”

So what’s the argument against it again?

Enjoy the best night in television.

Adam Feser

“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn’t that ironic?”
- Sarah Palin in Canada

I’m unsure if she fully grasps what she is saying. The care was solid for her in her youth, but now she tries scaring the entire country by talking about grandma killing. I just don’t understand how she can say the things she does. Does she know she’s lying? Does she convince herself she’s not lying?

She goes to Canada, makes a crack about it, and I die a little inside because she remains popular.

Enjoy folksy platitudes in place of substance.

Adam Feser