Sorry Nancy, nice try, but the other four spaces are already taken.
Posted on 11/10/2009 9:24:28 PM PST by bigbob
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi scored a giant gain for feminism last weekend. In shoving her controversy-plagued healthcare reform bill to victory by a paper-thin margin, she conclusively demonstrated that a woman can be just as gritty, ruthless and arm-twisting in pursuing her agenda as anyone in the long line of fabled male speakers before her. Even a basic feminist shibboleth like abortion rights became just another card for Pelosi to deal and swap.
It was a stunningly impressive recovery for someone who seemed to be coming apart at the seams last summer, when a sputtering, rattled Pelosi struggled to deal with the nationwide insurgency of town hall protesters -- reputable, concerned citizens whom she outrageously tried to tar as Nazis. Whether or not her bill survives in the Senate is immaterial: Pelosi's hard-won, trench-warfare win sets a new standard for U.S. women politicians and is certainly well beyond anything the posturing but ineffectual Hillary Clinton has ever achieved.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
Disappointed that she didn't weigh in on the Fox News vs. White House fight, however. She remains one of the few liberals with a brain and sense of what is really happening in the country.
Pelosi accomplished nothing:<p.
1) She shut all republicans out of conference, even changing the locks on doors so they couldn’t get in.( Pelosi democracy in Action)
2) She broke her promise to make the bill available to the public for 72 hours
Anyone can do these kinds of dictatorial things.She obtained no interparty consensus.
That means she is a failure. She is an ideologue, who has a learning curve as flat as her geriatric butt.
Sorry Nancy, nice try, but the other four spaces are already taken.
Salon still publishing?
This might be the most pathetic take on Pelosicare I have seen yet. This is like praising Lizzie Borden for her spunk.
A woman can screw over the nation just as well as any man! Feminists rejoice!
First the workplace, now the country! (I omitted the “destroying it” part).
Pelosi makes me ashamed to be a woman.
Talk about damning with faint praise. She gives Pelosi credit for getting something done, but goes on to really critique the bill in as succint a manner as I’ve seen:
As for the actual content of the House healthcare bill, horrors! Where to begin? That there are serious deficiencies and injustices in the U.S. healthcare system has been obvious for decades. To bring the poor and vulnerable into the fold has been a high ideal and an urgent goal for most Democrats. But this rigid, intrusive and grotesquely expensive bill is a nightmare. Holy Hygeia, why can’t my fellow Democrats see that the creation of another huge, inefficient federal bureaucracy would slow and disrupt the delivery of basic healthcare and subject us all to a labyrinthine mass of incompetent, unaccountable petty dictators? Massively expanding the number of healthcare consumers without making due provision for the production of more healthcare providers means that we’re hurtling toward a staggering logjam of de facto rationing. Steel yourself for the deafening screams from the careerist professional class of limousine liberals when they get stranded for hours in the jammed, jostling anterooms of doctors’ offices. They’ll probably try to hire Caribbean nannies as ringers to do the waiting for them.
Continue Reading
A second issue souring me on this bill is its failure to include the most common-sense clause to increase competition and drive down prices: portability of health insurance across state lines. What covert business interests is the Democratic leadership protecting by stopping consumers from shopping for policies nationwide? Finally, no healthcare bill is worth the paper it’s printed on when the authors ostentatiously exempt themselves from its rules. The solipsistic members of Congress want us peons to be ground up in the communal machine, while they themselves gambol on in the flowering meadow of their own lavish federal health plan. Hypocrites!
And why are we even considering so gargantuan a social experiment when the nation is struggling to emerge from a severe recession? It’s as if liberals are starry-eyed dreamers lacking the elementary ability to project or predict the chaotic and destabilizing practical consequences of their utopian fantasies. Republicans, on the other hand, have basically sat on their asses about healthcare reform for the past 20 years and have shown little interest in crafting legislative solutions to social inequities. The usual GOP floater about private medical savings accounts is a crock — something that, given the astronomical costs of major medical crises, would be utterly unworkable for families of even average household income.
International models of socialized medicine have been developed for nations and populations that are usually vastly smaller than our own. There are positives and negatives in their system as in ours. So what’s the point of this trade? The plight of the uninsured (whose number is far less than claimed) should be directly addressed without co-opting and destroying the entire U.S. medical infrastructure. Limited, targeted reforms can ban gouging and unfair practices and can streamline communications now wastefully encumbered by red tape. But insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry are not the sole cause of mounting healthcare costs, and constantly demonizing them is a demagogic evasion.
How dare anyone claim humane aims for this bill anyhow when its funding is based on a slashing of Medicare by over $400 billion? The brutal abandonment of the elderly here is unconscionable. One would have expected a Democratic proposal to include an expansion of Medicare, certainly not its gutting. The passive acquiescence of liberal commentators to this vandalism simply demonstrates how partisan ideology ultimately desensitizes the mind.
All great points she makes. The issue about adding massive numbers of new patients while keeping the number of doctors the same is one that should be shouted from the rooftops every day. The massive spending and bureacracy.
Limited, targeted reforms. Sounds like she’s on board with the Boehner GOP plan.
She also has a great point about GOP inaction. We had a GOP President and a GOP Congress for 6 years. We could have passed Boehner’s plan at any time. If we had none of this would be happening now. Up until now, the GOP hasn’t really cared at all about about health care. It wasn’t a priority and they took no action on it. So they gave the dems all the opening and room they needed. No one to blame but themselves.
Paglia is one of the few honest liberal out there. Although, after reading this, I don’t know if she’s really a liberal anymore. At least on this issue.
Really? I don’t feel any better. I’d much rather have a sentient being rather than a brazen, manipulating witch represent my (supposed) interests. And her bill will hurt women more in the long run.
But if it is ‘feminism’ win, whooop-de-doo. I’ve never associated with any of their causes, the femi-nazi’s.
Sarah Palin is a ‘woman’s leader’. That is the lind of woman I identify with.
"The plight of the uninsured (whose number is far less than claimed) should be directly addressed without co-opting and destroying the entire U.S. medical infrastructure. Limited, targeted reforms can ban gouging and unfair practices and can streamline communications now wastefully encumbered by red tape. But insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry are not the sole cause of mounting healthcare costs, and constantly demonizing them is a demagogic evasion."
Pelosi’s behavior reminds me of why I ceased to be a feminist after leaving college and enduring an all female work place for 6 months : Her passage of the bill was nothing but a foot stomping temper tantrum. She wanted to show her contempt for the majority of Americans who are against her bill, and especially those who voted against Democratic candidates earlier that week-long term consequences be damned. That’s what killed my doctrinaire feminism : Watching women in the workplace do stupid, self destructive things in an emotional frenzy, over and over and over again. They did illogical, irrational things based on their feeeeelings , and they never freaking learned from experience. Watching Pelosi’s antics on Saturday brought it all back-right down to the painful moment I realized I had more respect for the less educated, less bright male co workers than I did for the brightest, college educated female ones, and had to wonder about the implications of that.It seemed to me than that men are socialized to be better team players, and to not allow all logic to go out the window by letting their feelings get the better of them...They didn’t do stupid things to “show someone where to get off’ or to “make a point”. I think a male in Pelosi’s situation would have realized that passing the bill on Saturday, even if successful, would be a Phyrric victory, as too many Americans would interpret it as a deliberate slap in the face...A taunting way of saying,”See? It doesn’t matter what the polls (or the Constitution) say, or how you vote....We’re gonna pass a law FORCING you to spend a huge chunk of your income every month how WE see fit, and there’s nuthin’ you can do about it. Ha, ha, ha, nana boo boo! So there!!!” I think a male Democrat in Pelosi’s situation might have hesitated to show Americans so clearly that the ballot box is officially meaningless, out of a residual common sense that would warn him of the implications of such an act, and to what it could lead down the road....
Good post and right on the money.
Thanks! :-)
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