DR. O NO LIBERALS HOWL AS BAM WOBBLES ON HEALTH PLAN
[FRONT PAGE - NY POST 8/18/09]
Here is one liberal's response.
yup
In the world of litigation time and time again reality and doing the right thing take a beating when the other side trots out, what I refer to as, "the moon is made of green cheese" defense.
The way "the green cheese defense" works is that a lawyer with a fancy pedigree, expensive suits and clients with deep pockets takes a position that could not possibly be more outrageous and unrelated to the real world - and then digs his or her heels in.
Faced with a "green cheese" defense, the other side knows its heading for years of grinding expensive litigation in a case where the only issue is whether or not the moon is made of green cheese. The alternatives are to settle cheap or drop the case.
This feels like where we are at in the health care reform battle - the wingnuts are out there disrupting town hall meetings all over the country this summer screaming that the moon is made of green cheese. Last weekend our side was on the Sunday talk shows hinting about major compromise implicitly conceding that that the green cheese guys may have a point.
Knock Knock - Hello - is anyone home!!!!? What's going on? Does this mean that the gun toting angry mobs and their the big idiotic lies about "death panels" and "socialism" have landed a punch?
I was just beginning to understand the public option - now I'm wondering if I should bother figuring out what a health care cooperative is because it feels like very soon the compromise will be that every uninsured person has the right to a "get well" card.
Come on Mr. President - you are the best thing that has happened to the United States, and the world, in decades - take a stand. Your troops, from the campaign, want to help but we need something to fight for. It's better to go down swinging on this one - let the Republicans go into the next election as the party that's pro 47 million uninsured!
Sarah Palin, is lurking off stage somewhere, field dressing a dead moose, and hoping for another chance to "make stuff up" and torture us with more winking and nose crinkling. We've got to keep these dishonest, dangerous, violent people - who really do not believe in democracy - from regaining ground. Our future is at stake.
A friend responds
Bob,
I am with you on the health don't-care blow up. Ending up with the "get well' card entitlement is well said and darned realistic. Hey, here's the monumental stupidity and hypocrisy we thought we kicked out to sea on in Nov. 2008. Turns out it just ducked for a while. It's back. On the day of your Post article (or thereabouts), the Times quoted Sec. Sebelius, back-pedalling from a public plan, as saying that the key goals were "choice and competition" in the health insurance field. I'd like someone to let me in on just what the hell that means. What is the choice people are longing for in health insurance? Are there people out there who want a plan that only covers medical problems from the waist down? Some families looking to cover their male offspring but let the girl child pay her doctor bills out of her allowance? A few gamblers want a policy that covers only diseases which strike on odd-numbered days? Putting aside dental and optometry, is there any health ins. entitled to the name if it doesn't pay the doctors and hospitals when you are sick? Period.
It was a refreshing change to see Obama go to religious leaders to pitch the premise of his health plan as a moral obligation (which has pretty much been limited to opposing other people's pleasure pursuits). You know the opposition is largely the "conservative" Christian folk who seem to think that Jesus actually said, "The truth shall make you free market..." But those who like to think we are a Christian nation should consider some of the big, obvious stuff in the Gospels. Jesus spent a large part of his waking hours going around healing people who had nothing and who, without him, certainly had no chance of getting health coverage. There are 18 miracle stories in the Gospel of Mark of which 8 are episodes of healing. And then there's at least one story of raising the dead (this benefit is no longer available). All the Gospels paint a similar picture. Aside from the many specific stories of healing (including the one of making clay with spit and applying it to some blind guy's eyes), the New Testament says that, from day one, Jesus traveled around "healing every kind of disease." And in his last earthly remarks, just before the Ascension launch, he directs his disciples to get out there and spread the gospel and tells them that "those who believe... will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover." Well, this moment is a chance for those who say they believe to lay on the healing hands.
What are the chances?
D
thanks for your great blog response D
- these guys loved the Iraq war and called people who questioned it traitors but a proposal to try to provide more people with medical care has them strapping on assault rifles and going to rallies to waive pictures of Obama with a Hitler mustache -
peace on earth good will toward men
I have this sinking feeling that the Obama phenom was a historical fluke that feels more and more like a sand castle..
