Samuelson Nails It. Be Sure To Report Him To Linda Douglass...

Robert J. Samuelson nails it:

One of the bewildering ironies of the health-care debate is that President Obama claims to be attacking the status quo when he's actually embracing it. Ever since Congress created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health politics has followed a simple logic: Expand benefits and talk about controlling costs. That's the status quo, and Obama faithfully adheres to it. While denouncing skyrocketing health spending, he would increase it by extending government health insurance to millions more Americans.

For all the flapdoodle about his supposed brilliance, Barack Obama is clearly as uninspired, conventional, inside-the-box a political thinker as we've seen in a while. He is a walking compendium of all that was leftishly fashionable in 1968, as his policies and priorities clearly reflect. Now, when faced with opposition he neither expected nor understands, Mr. Obama has once again chosen the thoroughly conventional thing to do...

Sell out to special interests!

Comments

[markg8]

Yep let's beef up those cost controls from day one. None of this namby pamby phase in by 2013 stuff. I'm with ya Dennis.

[Dennis the Peasant]

If that's really the case, Mark, you need to start complaining to your president.

Like that's gonna happen.

[Allen]

With Obama you never know though. He might not stay bought.

Some of his new friends might have a few problems if the old polling numbers take a tumble.

[markg8]

Oh believe me Dennis all my legislators (and quite a few who aren't) and the president know exactly how I feel about reform. It would be helpful if you, a conservative former Republican, wrote them too and told them they need stronger cost controls.

[David]

"He is a walking compendium of all that was leftishly fashionable in 1968..."

It really is amazing how retro Obama's core ideology seems to be. His racial sensibilities seem are certainly sixties-ish, while his economic and foreign policies have that "failed in the 70s" feel to them.

There's always falsehood in advertising in politics, but the gap between the campaign and the governance in the last seven months has been staggering.

Not as staggering, however, as the serial refusal of the left to live up to its failures. Vietnam, affirmative action, and Nancy Pelosi's 3d plastic surgery all come to mind. Well, mostly that last one. Talk about mutton masquerading as veal.

[PeterUK]

"Oh believe me Dennis all my legislators (and quite a few who aren't) and the president know exactly how I feel about reform".

That's it then,beer in the Rose Garden,sort the whole thing out in half an hour. A quarter if Biden doesn't show.

[PeterUK]

"It would be helpful if you, a conservative former Republican, wrote them too and told them they need stronger cost controls."

I can't see them letting a qualified accountant anywhere near this scam.

[Tim]

Let's see what "the father of Quebec medicare", and hence Canadian single payer says about it. Here's a brief taste:

"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=299282509335931

[markg8]

Tim today is no day to be quoting an op-ed from the Investor's Business Daily (more on that in a minute) written by this shill Gratzer from the Manhattan Institute who is most certainly not Claude Castonquay.

While Claude Castonguay did say "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice" that mirrors what sensible Americans are saying "we propose a public option for health insurance so that people can exercise freedom of choice."

The Castonguay task force released in February 2008 said Quebec residents should pay $25 for every visit to a doctor. The report also called for an increase of up to one percentage point in the Quebec sales tax to help pay for medicare (Which I believe is what they call their public insurance system.

He is not an advocate for destroying their public health insurance system in Canada like Gratzer is. He simply wants choice. Sounds good to me.

Now back to the IBD. In one of their unsigned editorials today they attempted to prove we'll kill baby Trig and grandma by pointing out:

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Human Events, the right-wing magazines, lauded this IBD piece for having "exposed the Achilles' heel of Obamacare."

As Jay Bookman noted:

"Of course, that same Stephen Hawking who wouldn't have a chance in the United Kingdom was in fact born in the United Kingdom, has lived his entire life in the United Kingdom and lives there still today, at the ripe old age of 67. (He was in fact hospitalized earlier this month.) Hawking is, you might say, living, breathing proof that these people are first-class fools."

[Eric Blair]

Hawking is a celebrity. You don't fuck with celebrities.

What about the lady today with the heart attack who was told to go home and take an Ibruprofen?

[markg8]

Hawking is a celebrity. You don't fuck with celebrities.

Apparently the Investors Business Daily does.

[markg8]

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/08/10/i-didn-t-wake-up-planning-to-write-about-samuelson.aspx

You might want to read this before you go quoting Samuelson Dennis.