Posted on 12/25/2009 1:01:29 AM PST by seanmerc
WASHINGTON -- The spirit of Christmas seems to have escaped Congress, maybe even the country.
Have you ever encountered such mean spiritedness and political conniving as are now on display on Capitol Hill?
In the past, we have had great philosophical divisions in the struggle for civil rights, especially when southern legislators ran the show. In praise of democracy, fortunately they lost.
And of course there also was the "red scare" fomented by Sen. Joe McCarthy, R-Wis., in the 1950s when he led the commie-hunting movement that ended up victimizing government officials, academia and Hollywood. We recovered from that, too.
Once again we are engulfed by a climate of malice, much fostered -- sorry to say -- by Republicans, who have made it their mission to see President Barack Obama fail. One line of attack is their stand against universal health care, a position that appeases a handful of insurance companies. The Obama administration didn’t help by making a deal with the drug industry to block the purchase of inexpensive medicine from Canada. Are the politicians in hock to these firms and lobbyists for campaign funds?
Millions of dollars have been poured into television commercials designed to scare Americans about health care reform. "Big government" interference in health care is the bogeyman, ironically even to some who receive government-provided health care through Medicare or Medicaid or the Veterans Administration. There is a disconnect here when they would deny such benefits to others.
Despite the hard times the nation is suffering, there is little magnanimity on the part of the privileged lawmakers, who don’t have to worry about their own government-financed health coverage.
Meanwhile, the president’s decline in public opinion polls clashes with his own self estimate.
In a year-end interview with The Washington Post, Obama gave himself high marks for putting the country on the road to economic recovery with the $797 billion stimulus package. Wall Street financial houses were not allowed to fail, but thousands of workers elsewhere lost their jobs and are still struggling to get back on their feet.
In the Post interview, the president said "the most important thing we did this year was to ensure that the financial system did not collapse.’’
But on health care reform -- the jewel in the crown -- the president has made too many compromises that ended up weakening the proposals. Perhaps the president’s biggest mistake was to let Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, carry the ball on health reform. Baucus and his committee produced wimpy legislation that can hardly be called a "reform" bill.
Obama let the liberals down in his own party by never fighting for the public option or a single payer system, the heart of real reform that works like Medicare. Anyone who thought the president would support a government-run health insurance system to compete with high cost private insurance companies was whistling in the dark.
Obama is so eager for any health legislation that he’s willing to compromise it to nothingness. It was left to former Democratic chairman Howard Dean to take a tough line. Dean, a physician, sharply criticized the Senate bill because it lacked a government-run insurance option that would compete with private insurers. The House version of the health legislation does contain such an option.
Obama defends his role. "Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health care bill," the president lamented. "Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in the bill.’’
In reality, the legislation is a bonanza for the fat cat insurers.
The disappointment is great among those who thought the president was another Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson. Both overcame Republican opposition in pushing liberal social legislation to help the underprivileged in American society. Hopefully, when voters elect a new Congress next year, the country will remember which political party led us into economic free fall and two unwinnable wars.
I guess it wasn’t bad when it was aimed at GWB. Oh no, THAT was GOOD !
I’m with you. For an occupant of the White House to go abroad and apologize for our country at every opportunity, means that he does not belong in that position.
GWB went too far in the opposite direction, believing the honor of the Presidency was to represent ALL Americans, so he refused to participate in a partisan way to defend his own party.
Obama is all party, all the time. Communist party, that is.
Stupid Thomas ~ Republicans don’t need to make it a mission to get Obama to fail ~ he’s doing that quite well on his own.
She’s injecting directly into her the front of her brain.
OH MAN, thank you for posting that photo, I was about to run to the doctor because of my four hour erection.
Damn...order up a boob belt for the hag.
Is this old bat senile or dishonest? Don’t bother to answer, she is a dim brained dimocrat, she is both.
“In praise of democracy, fortunately they lost.” Please pause for a moment and reflect on this sentence written by the senior member of the White House Press Corps.
It is completely incoherent. If someone were to try to translate it from English into another language, the translator would have no idea what it meant. Could it possibly mean that “fortunately they lost in their praise of democracy.” Go figure.
Helen baby. Your bias is showing-and your arrogance. One clearly identifiable problem with America is people in your profession who think like you. Your "superior" point of view is not up for debate-is it? You stopped reporting the news and started making it up as you go along. You report your opinion as fact. Go away.
Marking...
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! The Gorgon has spoken!
Only for “government”. He had nothing to do with “academia” or Hollywood, per se.
And the “victimization” consisted of a measly loss of a job - in government. No “banning” from any job, much less jail or execution. Wow, what horrid, cruel consequences.
Hell, we’re NOT supposed to be communists as implied by the security questions we get on anything even remotely tying to the government. If we are to swear we’re not before being hired, why not be fired for it?
“Hellen Thomas” thats Communist for “Ogre”
Anybody that would write something like that is an economic ignoramus.
When is that wretched wench going to meet Allah?
Merry Christmas, Helen Thomas ping list members!
You, too, seanmerc! Happy New Year!
This is from the website of the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, MI. You can’t make this stuff up:
Journalist Helen Thomas, the dean of the White House press corps, marked her 89th birthday in 2009 by sharing cupcakes with U.S. President Barack Obama, who observed his 48th birthday the same day, August 4.
Fundraising is now underway to finance this unique tribute to a legendary journalist and leading Arab American - a sculpture of Thomas by sculptor and former White House photojournalist Susan Tinsley McElhinney.
http://www.arabamericanmuseum.org/helenthomastributedonations
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