Posted on 12/25/2009 1:01:29 AM PST by seanmerc
WASHINGTON -- The spirit of Christmas seems to have escaped Congress, maybe even the country.
Have you ever encountered such mean spiritedness and political conniving as are now on display on Capitol Hill?
In the past, we have had great philosophical divisions in the struggle for civil rights, especially when southern legislators ran the show. In praise of democracy, fortunately they lost.
And of course there also was the "red scare" fomented by Sen. Joe McCarthy, R-Wis., in the 1950s when he led the commie-hunting movement that ended up victimizing government officials, academia and Hollywood. We recovered from that, too.
Once again we are engulfed by a climate of malice, much fostered -- sorry to say -- by Republicans, who have made it their mission to see President Barack Obama fail. One line of attack is their stand against universal health care, a position that appeases a handful of insurance companies. The Obama administration didn’t help by making a deal with the drug industry to block the purchase of inexpensive medicine from Canada. Are the politicians in hock to these firms and lobbyists for campaign funds?
Millions of dollars have been poured into television commercials designed to scare Americans about health care reform. "Big government" interference in health care is the bogeyman, ironically even to some who receive government-provided health care through Medicare or Medicaid or the Veterans Administration. There is a disconnect here when they would deny such benefits to others.
Despite the hard times the nation is suffering, there is little magnanimity on the part of the privileged lawmakers, who don’t have to worry about their own government-financed health coverage.
Meanwhile, the president’s decline in public opinion polls clashes with his own self estimate.
In a year-end interview with The Washington Post, Obama gave himself high marks for putting the country on the road to economic recovery with the $797 billion stimulus package. Wall Street financial houses were not allowed to fail, but thousands of workers elsewhere lost their jobs and are still struggling to get back on their feet.
In the Post interview, the president said "the most important thing we did this year was to ensure that the financial system did not collapse.’’
But on health care reform -- the jewel in the crown -- the president has made too many compromises that ended up weakening the proposals. Perhaps the president’s biggest mistake was to let Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, carry the ball on health reform. Baucus and his committee produced wimpy legislation that can hardly be called a "reform" bill.
Obama let the liberals down in his own party by never fighting for the public option or a single payer system, the heart of real reform that works like Medicare. Anyone who thought the president would support a government-run health insurance system to compete with high cost private insurance companies was whistling in the dark.
Obama is so eager for any health legislation that he’s willing to compromise it to nothingness. It was left to former Democratic chairman Howard Dean to take a tough line. Dean, a physician, sharply criticized the Senate bill because it lacked a government-run insurance option that would compete with private insurers. The House version of the health legislation does contain such an option.
Obama defends his role. "Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health care bill," the president lamented. "Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in the bill.’’
In reality, the legislation is a bonanza for the fat cat insurers.
The disappointment is great among those who thought the president was another Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson. Both overcame Republican opposition in pushing liberal social legislation to help the underprivileged in American society. Hopefully, when voters elect a new Congress next year, the country will remember which political party led us into economic free fall and two unwinnable wars.
Merry Christmas, Helen Thomas ping list members! FReepmail me if you'd like to be added to the list.
Yuck.
...made it their mission to see President Barack Obama fail”
How is that different from what the Dems did for years...even politicizing the war for the plain and simple purpose of increasing Republican negatives?
Yes, of course, because Obama's decades of crafting legislation would have gone into this if he'd done the job himself, right?
Yes, of course, because Obama's decades of crafting legislation would have gone into this if he'd done the job himself, right?
Mean spirited and conniving are the democrat way. Not to mention corrupt and dishonest.
More revisionist history crap out of Helen Thomas. At least she admits to being biased, now if she’d only admit to being a habitual liar.
Which is funnier, the idea that it's the REPUBLICANS responsible for the mean spiritedness and political conniving (Ben Nelson? mary Landreu???), or that she's sorry to say it's "Republicans"?
Off to the death panel with you, old man!
I knew that I was going to have to look at that picture to pay for the benefits of reading the thread, but does the photo have to be so LARGE?
I read her entire column, and it was the most disjointed piece of Old Leftist whimsy that I’ve ever bothered with. I would feel some pity for her and attribute it to her age, but all elitist leftists think like that.
All Americans have a duty to fight for our way of life and that means fighting Socialism.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/11/flashback-carville-wanted-bush-fail/
“I certainly hope he doesn’t succeed”.
— James Carville, 2001
Real nice, I had to go and wash my eyes out with soap after looking at that. The soap helped the burning to slow down but now a headache has come on. It feels like radiation poison...
Correct, Brytani!
Early on she mentions that Southern legislators opposed LBJ on the Civil Rights thing. She purposely didn’t bother to mention that they were DEMOCRATS and that it was the Republican legislators who actually pressured LBJ to sign the bill. LBJ was a huge racist and anti-black, but as a politician he realized that CR bill could be his “legacy”.
Correct, Brytani!
Early on she mentions that Southern legislators opposed LBJ on the Civil Rights thing. She purposely didn’t bother to mention that they were DEMOCRATS and that it was the Republican legislators who actually pressured LBJ to sign the bill. LBJ was a huge racist and anti-black, but as a politician he realized that CR bill could be his “legacy”.
She repeats that lie in the last paragraph when she implied that Republicans opposed LBJ on his liberal social issues.
It's different because Helen Thomas is a Democratic operative and most of the public has the attention span of a hyperactive Labrador Retriever puppy. Remember, Oceania has always been at war with...
Helen Thomas is one of the endless communist/socialist malicious liars and historical revisionists that hold power in the USA.
She lies boldly and aggressively because she has what Thomas Sowell calls The Vision of the Annointed.
98% of what Sen. Joe McCarthy said or predicted has turned out to be true.
This Hag cannot be as unknowledgable as this writing indicates, sh/it must be a LIAR!
“but thousands of workers elsewhere lost their jobs”
Thousands? Try millions, Helen.
There are so many koolaid moments in this article I don’t know where to go.
I’ll just use this one shining example of her stupidity.
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