20 July 2009

Obama: I don't believe I've ever served in Congress...

...because I insist that I inherited this mess upon my first day in office...

Boy, the healthcare reform debate is heating up. The rhetoric is becoming nasty and the strawmen are in endless supply. Opponents to Obama's agenda, or "powergrab," depending on how you look at it, are being cast as satisfied with the status quo. It seems to me those who are quick to smear opponents of ObamaCare and a host of other disastrous programs of his, are unsure whether these policies will work. Obama has had a few pieces of major legislation designed to "fix" the problems that he wants to believe he "inherited." Instead of fixing the problems, they're making them worse, and proponents of ObamaCare continue to believe the shiite coming from his piehole about this legislation saving costs, and even drawing a surplus.

Coming under fire from ObamaAid drinkers is the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Doug Elmendorf, because of a report from Speaker Mimi's office, which claims that the ObamaCare bill, HR 3200, is budget neutral, and produces a Medicare and Medicaid savings of $550B, and a $6B surplus to boot! I am sure you're asking yourself about the discrepencies between what the CBO report claimed last week and what you've read on San Fran Nan's blog. The answer lies in a charge that was made against Enron and Arthur Andersen in 2002...cooking the books. According to Ed Morrissey and Patrick O'Connor, Democrats plan to introduce new accounting rules to take away the constant headaches they suffer from the CBO's reports.

As I have said before, none of these issues deter the most ardent ObamaAid drinker. Michael J. W. Stickings and Zandar and Zandar again, are upset at Blue Dog Democrats and the GOP for having the gall to oppose ObamaCare, on the merits. Zandar is particularly apopletic because of a report by Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly, who claimed that Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, warned the GOP in 1993 to stall HillaryCare because they did not want Billy Jeff to get credit for reforming the healthcare system and lead to an everlasting Democratic majority in Washington(not that HillaryCare was a disaster, much like ObamaCare and that Obama himself didn't want to repeat the HillaryCare debacle...nah, couldn't be that...). But are the memos as horrific as Steve Benen and Zandar claim? Hell nah, it's plainly another episode of Democrat insecurities and fear-mongering (a concept they preached against on 12 September 2001).

The memos stated that Republicans didn't need to compromise on HillaryCare because public support for it had declined, which was true at the time these memos were crafted. The memos discussed how Billy Jeff had planned to use the same strategy used by the current president, to paint his program as rosy as possible, despite public opinion at the time being satisfied with their healthcare coverage. Many opponents of HillaryCare were concerned about its provisions degrading their current coverage, much like ObamaCare would. Like Clinton in the 1993 healthcare debate, Obama is pointing to the vulnerabilities in our own and magnifying them, when only marginal reform is needed. No one is claiming that our healthcare system is perfect, which is the strawman most oft used by this president, Republicans, "ConservaDems," and other conservatives alike, believe, that our system does need reform.

Both Benen and Zandar, and I would presume all those who have used Kristol's memos as some proof that the GOP is opposing ObamaCare, not on its merits, but for political reasons, aren't aware that the same clouds are forming amongst the electorate as they did in 1993. They aren't too keen on what they've heard about ObamaCare and Obama's approval ratings are slipping as a result. But Obama wants us to believe that he hasn't had a hand in our current state, because he wants the electorate to believe that he hasn't been in Congress since 2004...

First, the same folks who controlled the White House and Congress for the past eight years as we ran up record deficits will argue – believe it or not – that health reform will lead to record deficits.


The president always invoked Dr. Martin Luther King's familiar phrase, "the fierce urgency of now," but he spent that on shoving Porkulus down our throats, does he, and his acolytes believe that he gets a do-over? Perhaps, as McQ (not the John Wayne movie) said, it's not that the opponents of ObamaCare don't have anything to bring to the table, they just don't buy into the fearmongering coming from President Obama and his allies in Congress. The more sunlight shone on this bill, the less of the public approves it. The White House knows it, Democrats in Congress know it...somebody else tell Zandar and Steve Benen.

Have a great day...

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