Left Behind At Christmas

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Merry Saturnalia to you all.  Yes, contrary to what all the Bible thumpers may tell you that's the source of most of the traditions of the holiday we call Christmas.  That of course includes gift giving.  A year ago in spite of the deep freeze that the holiday season bought I was full of optimism  - not so this year.  I was going to do a Christmas rant but over at The Left Coaster my friend Steve Soto did it for me.

So it looks like Obama got a win on his horrible health care bill but did he?  I don't see it as a done deal yet and Steve agrees:

Despite the flowery rhetoric from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we're a long way from a health care reform bill, given that the House would have to swallow David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel's terrible handwork whole and pass it, just to prop up the administration. They won't, nor should they, because the bill crafted by Harry Reid with the White House's full blessing is a piece of crap that will be an electoral coffin for the party next year, all in a warped package just to give Obama something to crow about.

Any bill that treats women and progressives as expendable objects, that pisses all over consumer choice while requiring them to cough up 15-20% of their family incomes to the same companies that own the Senate and got us into this mess, that doesn't have reimbursement reforms in it, is a bill that doesn't deserve Democratic support just to save a presidential resume.

Like Steve I still think that the Senate bill will hurt the Democrats if passed as is.  It's no surprise that this is what the DLC corporatists Axelrod and Emanuel came up with.  We should have known - Obama never would have won if he had not agreed to not step on the Oligarchs.  So I was a fool to think that change actually meant change.

Steve feels he has been left behind:

Between Obama's bad policies and the deriliction of duty by congressional Democrats who have been bought by Wall Street, I see the Democratic Party leaving me. It wasn't supposed to be this way when Obama came in with his "new kind of politics", nor is the sad direction of the congressional Democrats a recent development. But with a Democratic president at the helm who had the bully pulpit to preach real reform, even a patient reform that took into account the need for gradual change in a time of economic uncertainty, much more was possible than what we have now. Yet he has squandered his political capital for deal-making without principles, lacking the guts to go after true enemies and those who got us into this mess.

I agree but I'm not surprised - the oligarchs are still in charge.

Comments

[t quigly]

Please refrain from repeating their Orwellian-speak; it’s NOT “health care reform” since it has nothing at all to do with “health” or “care” or “reform”. Call it what it truly is: the “mandated medical-insurance-purchase” bill. Language sets the agenda.
It is illegal and unconstitutional: the Constitution does not allow the goobermint to force us to purchase a private product.
And this bill is totally unactionable - how will they force the millions of homeless to buy medical insurance? those living in shelters? or the millions in poverty, not even able to feed themselves? those millions on foodstamps? those forced out of their foreclosed homes, or those struggling to keep their homes from being foreclosed? Congresscritters haven't a clue about real life out here. Obviously.

And it is NOT a dem/rethug issue. It is the U.S. citizens against a bunch of corrupt politicos, no matter the 'party'.

[Russ Wellen]

I've reached the point where I think we were all mistaken about three qualities that we took for granted that Barack Obama possessed: intelligence, knowledge, and compassion. I suspect he's a much more superficial person than we were led to believe by his speeches and his first book.

[Lex]

I agree with Russ. It seems like We the People swallowed the biggest advertising campaign in history. Of course, the accepted alternative (since 3rd party voting is 'throwing away') was much worse.