Jul 19 2009
Fool Me Once, Shame On You. Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me!
Major Update: The Obama Administration and DC Congressional liberals are out on the Sunday morning news shows with a whopper of BS on health care costs – we have not scored savings from increased health!
This is so naive and lame it is laughable. How do you score increased health as a cost savings? Will they be reducing the need for health care across the population by solving nagging major medical conditions like cancer? What is this, some sci-fi fairy tale?
The only way to make the general populace healthier without major medical breakthroughs is to cull out the sickly. Is that their plan? [Update: Sebelius just hinted that Americans will be responsible for getting healthier, getting their kids off the couch, eating right. She just hinted at the ‘life style’ Nazis are coming.]
These people are way in over their heads. – end update.
President Obama’s signature policies on health care and energy taxes (supposedly to answer to mythical crisis that really don’t exist) are in deep trouble. They are in deep trouble because the liberals failed so miserably on the economy and creating jobs. So far their policies have seen over 2 million more jobs lost since February with more expected through out the next year before things could reverse.
This utter and complete failure has brought President Obama’s Hope & Change back down to reality where now we now it is not “Yes We Can” it’s “They Screwed Up Royally“. By naivelly going with the liberal congressional democrat leadership and their doomed-to-failure liberal economic experiments, President Obama is losing support for any more similar nonsense. And the news media is awash with the stories.
Let’s start with the AP and their continued confusion as to how one really stimulates job growth:
Could it be that President Barack Obama’s Midas touch is starting to dull a bit, even among members of his own party?
Conservative House Democrats are balking at the cost and direction of Obama’s top priority, an overhaul of the nation’s health care system.Â
…
With the economy continuing to sputter and joblessness on the rise, many of Obama’s staunchest Democratic supporters are anxious for his agenda to start bearing fruit.
…
Obama won Ohio, a key swing state, by 4 percentage points in 2008 over Republican John McCain. But the one-time industrial powerhouse has been hit hard by the weak economy, and a Quinnipiac University poll released this month showed Obama with a lackluster approval rating of 49 percent.
…
A similar argument came from Nevada, another swing state Obama carried. Las Vegas City Councilman Steve Ross counseled patience, saying that voters in his state want Obama to succeed and that their support would be solidified once they saw stimulus-driven building projects under way.
“Generally, folks in Nevada are waiting to see the effects of the stimulus package,” Ross said. “I think the president is probably just as impatient to get this money out in the country to employ people as anyone.“
Emphasis mine. If he is then he is more naive and ignorant of the federal government than I thought possible. Obama never spent much time in DC or dealing with the federal government. He was an unimpressive junior senator from Illinois whose only talent seemed to be his silver tongue and making wild promises. If people are impatient to “get this money out in the country” then they should have used tax cuts – which act IMMEDIATELY.
Tax cuts result in the money never leaving the country, never being gobbled up by DC in the first place. Tax cuts mean every citizen making money gets to keep more of their own money and SPRND it. Not horde it and lock it away like the democrats’ ‘stimulus’ package which involves the bureaucracy following a myriad of archaic rules and laws to plan to spend the money for about year before they actually get down to some spending.
Tax cuts mean companies retain more of their earnings, so they can cover people in their jobs through the downturn (which they want to do given the cost of training and the fact good workers are hard to find). Tax cuts means stimulus. Pork government spending programs means failure, as we all now know painfully well.
So, what is a failing (or should that be flailing) President to do? Well it seems instead of admitting they went down the wrong path Obama and the DC liberal elite are targeting their own party members:
The Democratic National Committee’s Organizing for America Arm – criticized by Harry Reid yesterday for an ad pressuring Senate Democrats on health care — has launched a similar effort in the House.
A version of the same ad, in which citizens recount their families’ health care woes and declare that “it’s time” for reform, will be running in 15 media markets around the country.
The ad doesn’t say this, but a look at the media markets indicates that the White House political operation hasn’t backed off targeting Democrats — and indeed, has stepped up that program.Â
Will this pressure work? Most likely not. In fact, the obvious (and apparently forming) result is a backlash. Once attacked by the far left fringe, the centrists are now free to chart their own course. There is no point in trying to salvage Obama-Reid-Pelosi if they cannot admit they are heading in the wrong direction and everyone on the planet knows it. So centrists will move to save the country and let the chips fall on their wayward party as they may:
Some centrist House Democrats have reached out to Republicans to explore breaking with their party leadership on healthcare and crafting a reform bill with the rival GOP, one congressman claimed Saturday.
Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) asserted that an “interesting development” is taking place underway that, if true, could effectively remove Democratic leadership from the driver’s seat on healthcare reform legislation in the House.
“There’s an interesting development occurring behind the scenes, wherein moderate Democrats — so-called “Blue Dog” Democrats — and business-friendly new Democrats are actually starting to have conversations with us to build a coalition from the center outward, to actually really come up with substantive and well-founded healthcare reform,” Boustany said during an appearance on Fox News. “And that’s the only way to do this.”
The GOP fell from power in 2006 and 2008 in a very similar manner as to how the liberal leaders could fall from power in 2010 and 2012. The far right transitioned from allies in a broad coalition that swept to left of center into purity police who denigrated anyone and everyone who looked towards the center for reasoned compromise. They still hold out delusions of returning to power, not understand they had their chance and will not get another with the current crop of ‘true conservatives’.
But that may be the last gasp of the right side fringe. If the GOP does build a center-out coalition they could dominate politics again for many years, just like Reagan did with his center out coalition of Reagan Democrats. As I noted here, there are major cracks forming on the democrats’ side and a centrist coalition of Senators from both sides of the aisle are forming to stop Obamacare.
Could this work? I think the country is more than ready to solve problems without the constant nagging about purity from both fringes. For example:
The president knows his keystone program is in deep trouble and losing momentum. That’s why his organization is sending out all those e-mails and organizing local discussion groups to mobilize grassroots support and why he drags the subject into everything he talks about.Â
…
Which sounds much like winter’s successful argument for urgent passage of the economic stimulus bill, whose benefits have yet to appear. We gotta do this now doesn’t always work the second time around.
Obama insists Congress get a healthcare reform program drafted before its members leave on….
Â
…Â Aug. 7 for their next long vacation. Why? Because members may get an earful back home from the 70% of Americans who say they are satisfied with their healthcare plans and the estimated 98% who don’t want higher taxes to pay for reforms that benefit others now and maybe them later someday, who knows.
The amazing thing is that we only need to make to August 7th to change the direction of this country, as the last article points out:
And if Obama doesn’t get his beloved healthcare reforms this year when his party has such firm control of both chambers of Congress, 2010 is a midterm election year when such immense spending will be even more controversial and when, historically, the White House party loses members in Congress. (And unemployment rates are predicted to continue rising.)
It really does come down to the next few days. From what I am reading it may already be too late for Obamacare, given the broadsides coming from the media today. Take this ‘2nd coming of Carter’ tirade in the WaPo:
Barely six months into his presidency, Barack Obama seems to be driving south into that political speed trap known as Carter Country: a sad-sack landscape in which every major initiative meets not just with failure but with scorn from political allies and foes alike. According to a July 13 CBS News poll, the once-unassailable president’s approval rating now stands at 57 percent, down 11 points from April. Half of Americans think the recession will last an additional two years or more, 52 percent think Obama is trying to “accomplish too much,” and 57 percent think the country is on the “wrong track.”
From a lousy cap-and-trade bill awaiting death in the Senate to a health-care reform agenda already weak in the knees to the failure of the stimulus to deliver promised jobs and economic activity, what once looked like a hope-tastic juggernaut is showing all the horsepower of a Chevy Cobalt. “Give it to me!” the presidentegged on a Michigan audience last week, pledging to “solve problems” and not “gripe” about the economic hand he was dealt.
Despite such bravura, Obama must be furtively reviewing the history of recent Democratic administrations for some kind of road map out of his post-100-days ditch.
If President Obama doesn’t want to turn into the lamest of lame ducks, he needs to step back and figure out how to change direction. This is not changing hearts and minds time – that period is over. If he attacks allies they go over to the growing opposition. He has failed to do as he promised, and instead of admitting it he has tried to claim we were all too dumb to understand him when he was selling his stimulus disaster.
Here is President Obama’s speech on the matter back before it passed. It is a mixture of honesty and BS on the matter, now that we have 20-20 hindsight and President Obama has finally admitted the stimulus bill was never going to stimulate any new job growth for months and years. Going back over his flashy words from then, we can understand why he has lost credibility now:
Just in the past year, another 2.8 million Americans who want and need full-time work have had to settle for part-time jobs. Manufacturing has hit a twenty-eight year low. Many businesses cannot borrow or make payroll. Many families cannot pay their bills or their mortgage. Many workers are watching their life savings disappear.Â
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I don’t believe it’s too late to change course, but it will be if we don’t take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years. The unemployment rate could reach double digits. Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four.Â
This was what he promised to avoid. He failed. We will reach double digit unemployment (16 states already have). We will have piled up a record shattering $1.84 trillion dollars of debt by the end of September (that’s $6,133 per man, woman and child ON TOP OF the taxes they paid this year). Here is what Obama promised to avoid what we have now:
There is no doubt that the cost of this plan will be considerable. It will certainly add to the budget deficit in the short-term.  …  It is true that we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or long-term growth, but at this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe.
We know now this was a lie. Prior to this Obama was more honest:
It will take time, perhaps many years, but we can rebuild that lost trust and confidence.
At least that is what he is saying now, today, after his boost never materialized and we learned it was never really there. Reading through the speech we can see multiple instances of reality mixed in with wild promises. It is a classic case of mixing truth and fiction to leave a false impression. A deliberately false impression.
That’s why the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan won’t just throw money at our problems – we’ll invest in what works. The true test of the policies we’ll pursue won’t be whether they’re Democratic or Republican ideas, but whether they create jobs, grow our economy, and put the American Dream within reach of the American people.
The policies failed. The test score was an “F”. So is it any wonder America is not ready to be fooled again. We won’t be fooled again.
“If he is then he is more naive and ignorant of the federal government than I thought possible.”
I say he’s exactly as ignorant and naive as I and quite a few other people always said he was.
“We won’t be fooled again.”
America should never have been fooled the first time.
There was never any rational reason to believe we would end up anywhere but where we are right now with this man-child as President.
And so you can say you heard it here first, Obama is INCAPABLE of stepping back and trying a new direction. He will attack and destroy whoever he sees as “enemies” until he finally is completely discredited and driven from power.
This is not another Bill Clinton; this is a Robespierre.
Time to break out the tumbrils.
[…] for black’s.Jim Crow law’s (never knew much about them) were enacted between 1876 and Fool Me Once, Shame On You. Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me! – strata-sphere.com 07/19/2009 President Obama’s signature policies on health care and energy […]
I hate to say it but, everything that I knew about Obama, his parents, grandparents, associates, lack of accomplishments, world view, lead me to believe that his color and soaring rhetoric was what he had going for him. He is a royal screw up and he doesn’t even know it, or he doesn’t care. It is a very sad state of affairs for so many who had hope. If he doesn’t change course soon, those who depended on him the most will be lost for years.
I wonder when or if all those people in financial difficulties who went to his campaign rallies and thought he was going to magically spread the wealth directly to their mortgage or utility bills wii start to feel uncomfortable. I read comments on a lot of other websites and there are plenty who still blame Bush as if he is foiling Obama even now. The comments on the WaPo opinion piece by Matt Gillespie at Reason.com are amazing. There is so much out there about Obama that is left to report such as his connection with Frank Davis the communist. Hair raising stuff.
The part of the healthcare bill that chilled me was this from NYpost
“One troubling provision of the House bill compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years (and more often if they become sick or go into a nursing home) about alternatives for end-of-life care (House bill, p. 425-430). The sessions cover highly sensitive matters such as whether to receive antibiotics and “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.”
Last summer, my mother who is 81 and lives with me, was acting kind of nutty. She was loopy, had a high fever- so I took her to the
hospital – turned out she had a kidney infection which apparently, when you are old, manifests itself this way – with a sort of dementia. Anyway – many antibiotics for several weeks were in order. No antibiotics and she would have died within days from kidney failure.
Let’s all close our eyes and imagine this scenario on Obama care. I think they would have withheld antibiotics and applied palliative care only. She would be dead instead of eating her breakfast next to me.
I know I keep writing this, but I am scared.
If I go to the doctor, I know that private insurance pays one rate, those with no insurance pay at another rate and medicare and medicaid pays at another rate for the same care. Who pays the most to make up for the low reimbursement rate of those not privately insured? My private insurance does. No wonder private insurance is going up at an unsustainable rate. The only way that the public plan will bring down rates is ration care and lower reimbursement rates. So my question is, how will the cap on doctors, nurses and hospital profits sustain quality care?
Lace, you should be scared. I know for a fact that the British socialist healthcare system is a travesty. An in-law from there got sick. Needless to say the story was unacceptable to us in the US. And her son-in-law was a doctor! He moved to the US and practiced at the Cleveland clinic. He invented a groundbreaking surgical method. He was making peanuts in Britain and lived in a tiny, tiny home. I know, I went there.
We ALL have to POUND the phones for 2 weeks. This is monumental!!!
Unacceptable!
Lac……we as Americans have been taught from birth that we can do anything, we can achieve anything, the sky is the limit. Should a person with a urinary tract infection die because antibiotics are withheld for cost and age reasons? It is unthinkable, but it is exactly what is being proposed. It is so diametrically opposed to American thinking. I hope with every fiber in my being this proposal doesn’t come to fruition.
I wrote Kay Hagen – my senator (who lives in my town, is very wealthy, lives in the richest, loveliest neighborhood in town, has NO CLUE, is actually very rude – I sat next to her at a fund rasier once, socializes with the hoi poloi of the city) and she sends me back boiler plate. People I know who are business leaders (own small businesses that employ 80-100 people) who are begging her not to destroy them because by doing so, she destroys HER HOME TOWN and she sends them back the exact same blather. I will continue to bombard her. The other day I sent a quote from one of the comments at ACE: “Total the truck, to collect the truck insurance, to make the truck payment.” That is it in a nutshell.
Lets take a look at how all this got started, shall we?
During World War II wages were frozen to prevent wage inflation during the war when many men were being called to service. Companies with employees having valuable skills could not be given more pay in order to keep them. So in order to add indirect compensation that was allowed under the law, companies began to provide health insurance and enhanced pension programs for employees as “fringe benefits”. Prior to WWII few companies had pension programs and fewer still provided health insurance.
So now we have evolved to a point where people EXPECT employers to pay health insurance costs. Insurance has allowed hospitals and doctors to charge more for services because their patients aren’t paying for it out of pocket. In many cases the employee does not bear the economic cost of their demand for services. Imagine your employer gave you a gasoline benefit. Do you think your driving habits might be different if you didn’t have to pay for the gas you pumped?
People do not bear the economic cost of their lifestyle choices either. They sit around on the couch eating chicken-fried bacon with a remote control and wireless phone that allows them to not have to move except for “bio breaks”.
The notion that government is going to somehow make people healthier implies, as AJ pointed out, that there is going to be some kind of Health Nazis that are going to tell us what we can and can not do. Maybe they will outlaw elevators or something. But all of that is consistent with American’s currently not being used to or having to take personal responsibility for things. They are quite happy to foist the responsibility for their health onto “the government”.
If insurance was eliminated except for high-deductible catastrophic insurance, people would get healthier on their own because they would bear the direct economic consequences of their behaviors. Being unhealthy would take money out of your pocket. This notion that people get unlimited health care for free is what is nuts … no matter who is doing the paying for it.
If people pay for their own care, they will make better decisions and you won’t see things like people who don’t feel like going to work trotting down to the local emergency room just to get a slip that says they went there to cover for their being late or not showing up for work.
I have a better idea for improving health. Take all the would-be Health Nazis, give them an easily identifiable outfit (like a dunce cap), and let decent people beat the tar out of them.
The Health Nazi learns manners and libertarian principles…and the rest of us get an excellent workout.
Hey, I know! We can call it “The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” just like the Saudi Arabians have!
We can use Saudi Arabia as a model!
And once we get “free” health insurance, I want “free” car insurance, and then “free” homeowner’s insurance, and then “free” life insurance.
Most of the Republicans that are currently in Congress are pretty much conservative aren’t they? I am not sure if the Blue dog Dems can bypass their radical Dem Leadership. But, when the blue dogs were elected in such large numbers I remember the conservative Republicans saying that have always been able to work with and find compromise with Blue Dog Dems. So, let’s hope it works.
However, if the Blue Dogs were bought out by Pelosi on the Cap and Trade vote….
can we expect any different result this time?
Yeah – why should a family suffer just because the responsible adult didn’t buy life insurance? It’s a right – not an adult decision (said tongue in cheek) So – everyone should be entitled to, as a right stated somewhere in the Constitution (must be in there somewhere,) in addition to SS# for dependents, enough money to make mortgage payments and pay utility and food bills, not to mention child care. And – don’t forget long term health care insurance, round the clock care, so no one will have to deal with the old folks.
lacegrl130:
The 10th amendment has that right in there. It gives ALL rights to the people that are not specifically denied. The constitution doesn’t “give” rights to the people, the people are assumed to have all rights. What it does is gives only specific rights to the federal government. Unless it is specifically in the Constitution, the federal government does not have a right.
In fact, I believe national health care is unconstitutional. As is federal unemployment insurance. Those are the jobs of the states, not the federal government.
This is “stimulus” in DC:
What idiots!
[quote]I hate to say it but, everything that I knew about Obama, his parents, grandparents, associates, lack of accomplishments, world view, lead me to believe that his color and soaring rhetoric was what he had going for him. He is a royal screw up and he doesn’t even know it, or he doesn’t care. It is a very sad state of affairs for so many who had hope. If he doesn’t change course soon, those who depended on him the most will be lost for years.[/quote]
Kathie,
Had Hillary won instead of Obama, I think she would be no different than Obama. Why? Both of them are Alinsky disciples. The economic situation was beyond their control.
Color has nothing to do with it.
Just call him … President Nobody.
“If you like what you’re getting, keep it,” Obama said. “[President] Nobody is forcing you to shift.”
Lurk…of course color has nothing to do with it, who said it did?
The economy was melting down when Obama came to office, there are a lot of things he could have done. He could have looked at the budget and cut it 10% across the board. Leading people to believe that he understood we were in trouble. Now that would have been a confidence builder. He could have said, cap and trade and nationalized medical care are still important to me, we will tackle them when we find growth is returning. He could have done a zillion things, but he chose to explode the Federal Budget, hire 32 czars, take over 2 car companies, and then send them into bankruptcy. Sent billions to his buddies, saying it was a stimulus, or maybe a stabilizer. Then he decided to add the frosting to the cake and pass cap and trade, add flowers with nationalized health care. People are scared! But never mind he won!
Yes, the economic situation was beyond his control, I have no idea what Hillary would have done, but I bet it would have not been what Obama did, but so what? The dot com bubble and 911 were beyond Bush’s control, so was rebuilding a military, homeland security and counter insurgence, and the rest. So what?
You get what you get and you do the best you can. When it doesn’t work you don’t keep digging. Please, they saved 150,000 jobs and google has fewer hits around the economy then last month……..we’re doing great?
I still say, what in the hell are you doing, I’m screaming, what in the hell are you doing? Stop it, please! Take a deep breath, slow down and have a look around. Attach yourself to reality, instead of the hog wash you thought you knew. What you knew is not for real people, in a real world with real consequences. This is deadly serious stuff.
It has absolutely nothing to do with color does it?
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