Bow Before the Limbaugh!

[Jon Miller]

I think that national healthcare should be focused on prevention rather than on expensive solutions.

JM

[Kidlicious]

The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this:

"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The "day of reckoning" has arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.
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Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/05/AR2009030502951.html

The Dem line that massive spending on health care, education and alternative energy is necessary to repair the economy is indeed retarded.

That reminds me of when they invaded Iraq and said it was for freedom.

[The Mad Monk]

Y'know. Those people were the forward thinking radicals of their time, who understood more than anyone else how changes in technology and social order necessitated a new approach to government. Has anyone noticed how much the world has changed since then?

The fact that you lot spend all your time looking back at them for advice instead of solving your own problems would be either deeply funny or deeply distressing to them.

Most of what they said has limited relevance today, unless you are really trying to live like it was 250 years ago.

Do you really believe human nature has changed that much in the past 250 years?

[Theben]

You forgot the massive bailing out of the banks.

Health care and education we should be following the Dems strategy anyways, but that is prevention and long term thinking and won't fix the mess we have gotten ourselves into.

JM

An energy plan fits into this also. Aside from nationalizing the banks, I doubt there's little anyone can do about the economy except ride it out. And there's no way the repubs will go along with nationalizing anything. So yes, we are ****ed.

[Naked Gents Rut]

So Drake, what would you do about healthcare?

I personally would like to see a two-tier universal healthcare system similar to France's. I don't want to get there via reckless deficit spending and the politics of fear, however.

That reminds me of when they invaded Iraq and said it was for freedom.

There's little difference between Obama's use of the economic crisis to push his domestic agenda and Bush's use of 9/11 to push his foreign agenda. I'm surprised that many people are too blinded by partisanship to see this.

[DaShi]

That or they support his domestic agenda.

[Naked Gents Rut]

The American people supported Bush on Iraq too, as did the Democrats in Congress. Fear and dishonesty are a good way to sell crappy policy.

[Naked Gents Rut]

George W. Obama

Washington has spent the past couple of weeks debating whether Barack Obama's ambitious agenda and political strategy are more comparable to those of Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan. Oddly, hardly anyone is talking about the ways in which Obama is beginning to resemble the man who just vacated the White House.

Most Americans are eager to forget about George W. Bush. But just over seven years ago, Bush found himself in much the same position as the new president today -- leading the country through what was universally considered a national emergency. In the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, Bush's approval rating soared above 80 percent at home. London, Berlin and even Moscow rallied behind him. A front-page analysis in The Post in late November said that "President Bush [has] a dominance over American government . . . rivaling even Franklin D. Roosevelt's command."

Then, according to today's established wisdom, Bush squandered his chance to lead. Three cardinal errors are commonly cited: The president failed to ask a willing nation for sacrifice, instead inviting consumers to shop and heaping on more tax cuts. Rather than forge a bipartisan response to the crisis, he used it to ram through big, polarizing pieces of the Republican Party's ideological agenda -- from asserting presidential powers to breach treaties to eliminating protections for federal workers. Worst, he chose to launch a war of choice in Iraq, thereby shredding what remained of post-Sept. 11 national unity and diverting attention and resources from the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
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That brings us to the first weeks of the Obama administration, set against the background of a scary and steadily deepening global economic crisis. Last month, in his first address to Congress, Obama warned the country that fixing the huge problems in the financial markets and housing and auto industries would require a historic effort. "None of this will come without cost, nor will it be easy," he said. "But this is America. We don't do what's easy. We do what is necessary to move this country forward."

Minutes later, Obama spelled out what he proposes this to mean for 98 percent of Americans: "You will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime. In fact, the recovery plan provides a tax cut . . . and these checks are on the way."

So much for summoning the country to sacrifice. Obama has been no more willing to ask average Americans to pitch in, even once the recession is over, than Bush.

What about bipartisanship? Like Bush, Obama offered a few early gestures. And like Bush, he has been unapologetic about using emergency measures like the stimulus bill to press polarizing Democratic priorities, such as the expansion of Medicaid benefits to the unemployed and union-friendly contracting provisions.

The Bush administration pushed through the USA Patriot Act in October 2001 by suggesting that opponents didn't want to stop another al-Qaeda attack. In his first news conference, Obama suggested that congressional opponents of the stimulus package "believe that we should do nothing" about the economic emergency. Last week his political team launched a concerted and ugly campaign to portray Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican Party and "I want the president to fail" as its slogan. Republicans who have taken the crisis seriously, offered their own solutions and even supported the president on occasion -- Sen. John McCain comes to mind -- have been ignored.

So Obama hasn't strayed far from Karl Rove's playbook for routing the opposition. But surely, you say, he's planning nothing as divisive or as risky as the Iraq war? Well, that's where the health-care plan comes in: a $634 billion (to begin) "historic commitment," as Obama calls it, that (like the removal of Saddam Hussein) has lurked in the background of the national agenda for years. We know from the Clinton administration that any attempt to create a national health-care system will touch off an enormous domestic battle, inside and outside Congress. If anything, Obama has raised the stakes by proposing no funding source other than higher taxes on wealthy Americans, allowing Republicans to raise the cries of "socialism" and "class warfare."

Just as Bush promoted tax cuts as a remedy for surplus and then later as essential in a time of deficits, so Obama has come up with strained arguments as to why health-care reform, which he supported before the economic collapse, turns out to be essential to recovery. Yet as he convened his "health care summit" at the White House on Thursday, the stock market was hitting another 12-year-low; General Motors was again teetering on the brink of insolvency and the country was still waiting to hear the details of the Treasury's proposal to bail out banks. George W. Bush might well be asking: Is the president taking his eye off the ball?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030601328.html

My pre-election fears that Obama would be another Bush are coming true.

[Zkribbler]

The American people supported Bush on Iraq too, ...

Some Americans. Not me. Not lots of people.

[Naked Gents Rut]

Did you hope Bush would fail, Zkrib?

[DinoDoc]

Did you hope Bush would fail, Zkrib?

Probably.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/09/flashback-poll-showed-democrats-wanted-bush-fail/

[DaShi]

Foxnews: Your source for all things Democrat!

[Victor Galis]

You forgot the massive bailing out of the banks.

Obama's ignoring the financial sector to focus on his agenda that has nothing to do with fixing the economy. Geithner's plans, such that they are, have been a complete fiasco. Pundits on both the right and the left are in agreement on that.

You mean Paulson's plans, which Geithner sliced up and repackaged

Did you hope Bush would fail, Zkrib?

I certainly hoped he would fail to enact his policies, and I'm very glad Social Security didn't get privatised and invested into the stock market right during the height of the asset bubble.

I am glad there were no post-9/11 big attacks on the US, although it's hard to say if there were any serious attempts prevented by Bush politics. It's hard to estimate harm you prevent

[Arrian]

I personally would like to see a two-tier universal healthcare system similar to France's. I don't want to get there via reckless deficit spending and the politics of fear, however.

Ok, that would be nice (depending on the details of your sorta-French system). Of course, since when do our politicians get anything done without scaring people? Ideally, they would say "hey, this is a good idea, and we should do it" and people would agree and yay, presto. But seriously now, can you imagine the USA enacting a French-style healthcare system without some good 'ole fearmongering (or, depending on your point of view, forceful argument)? The case has to be made, and it has to override the opposition's fearmongering. It is ever thus, no?

As for healthcare plan = Iraq war... No, sorry, no sale. 1/10.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Ok, seriously, ENOUGH with the "hope he fails" bull****. If one is ideologically opposed to the agenda Obama has set, hoping he fails to enact that agenda is a-ok. WTF do you expect? Expecting the base of the Republican party to join hands and sign cumbaya while the Dems enact universal healthcare coverage (for instance) is silly. DEMANDING it is beyond silly: it's disingenuous.

-Arrian